Later, history would remember this as one of the first strikes the Empire ever took against a neutral planet. Even later than that, history would forget it entirely. Dathomir would be swathed in its fog and ignore the Empire as thoroughly as the Empire ignored it, focusing on its own wars and politics.
Those same studies would also reveal that Darth Sidious had mounted this attack on Dathomir not to wipe out its largely Force-sensitive population, nor to make a xenophobic statement, nor even to fight the tiny, disorganized band of Rebels who would later, believing the Rebel leadership under Bail Organa, Leia Organa, and Mon Mothma to be too human-centric, split off into a less radical nonhuman rights group. Darth Sidious had arranged this attack in order to finally get rid of Darth Maul, and to test Darth Vader against a large, concentrated group of Force-users before the former Jedi faced a large, probably less concentrated group of Jedi. Dathomir was practice for Jax Pavan and Galen Marek. It was also, although no historians would ever figure this out, and laughing grade school younglngs would only surmise it, arranged because Darth Sidious wanted to place Darth Vader and Darth Maul in proximity to one another and see what happened. Some combinations are primed to explode.
Darth Maul plunged through the forest. Leaves and vines whipped at him, but he ignored them and pressed through the paths of least resistance through the jungle. He was almost out of breath by the time he got to the Nightbrothers' walled compound.
Smoke obscured the walls. A ship had landed not far away, and he could see pointed silver wings and red and yellow landing lights that reminded him of the senate's color scheme.
Hadokar lunged out of the smoke. He didn't seem to be injured, but his cape was torn, revealing one splotched shoulder. As soon as he saw Maul he narrowed his eyes. "What have you brought down on us?"
The other man crouched, curled his fingers like claws, and Maul felt himself relax as he grew more and more certain that this person, one of the first kinsmen he had ever met, was going to lunge and try to kill him.
Talon ran out of the fog and grabbed Maul by the shoulder so hard that he almost spun the shorter man around. "They've taken Bao-Tan."
Good, Maul thought. The kid was annoying. The Imperials probably wouldn't have to do a lot to break him, though, which could be dangerous.
Then, the sound of a ship descending fast through the atmosphere blasted from one side of the sky to the other. All three Zabraks looked up.
It was Yujan's ship, big and yawing. As Maul watched, the hatch cracked open and Draz leaned out, her hair whipping in the wind, waves of wind running across her clothing and crinkling it. More Nightbrothers ran out of the smoke, confused and angry. She gazed out over all of them, settled on Talon.
"The Nightsisters didn't want anything to do with us," Draz said over the roar of the ship. "They said the Empire won't come here, believe it can't."
"The Empire is coming!" Talon yelled back even as the crowd of Nightbrothers grumbled and shuffled forward, thinking that maybe they could board the ship and get out.
"Did you offend yours too?" Draz said, momentarily light-hearted, but then his words sank in. "The Empire? Hurry up - get in!"
She banged on the hull of the ship and it lurched lower, kicking up dirt that stung Maul's eyes and then made him squeeze them shut. The crowd began to shout.
Talon immediately ran toward the ship, took a flying leap, and missed. As he fell down he grabbed the edge of the ramp. Draz nearly stepped on him in her surprise, but then helped him clamber up, grabbing his wrist and the back of his shirt.
"Come on!" Draz pushed Talon aside and leaned out, extending a hand toward Maul. Nightbrothers shoved forward, pushed Maul. He stood his ground and dug his toes into the dirt. Draz recoiled, her lips curling, but then reconsidered and banged on the hull again. The ship lurched downward. "Don't shove!" Draz shouted as the Nightbrothers crowded onto the ship. "We can't fit all of you..." She started to look worried.
Maul shook his head. He was staying now, he knew. Vader was here, and where one Sith was there must be two, to fight or to forge. They drew each other like magnets.
"What are you doing?" Draz said, moving aside for another Zabrak to get in. The crowd wasn't endless, though - many were probably still occupied by the Imperial ship. About ten men had boarded Yujan's ship, only slightly more than the number of nonhuman activists who had abandoned the mission when they learned Yujan was flying the banner of the Rebellion. Draz barked at Maul when he didn't move. "Stupid!"
"I'll hold them off!" Maul said, the words sounding foreign to himself, his gaze sliding away from the ship even as he spoke them just to get the Rebels to leave. He wasn't paying attention any more. It was definitely Vader. That presence batted at him. "I will stay here," he muttered.
Draz sighed, a sharp sound like she was chastising him, but she eased backward. "Good luck."
Shouts erupted from the other side of the enclave, and then, the unmistakable hum of a lightsaber, throaty and deep. Draz turned and shut the airlock.
Maul plunged into the smoke.
He could see stormtroopers in white armor, but, strangely, they weren't moving, just standing still with their guns held across their chests. They were placed evenly, like a corral. When they saw Maul, they would just look at him, some of them shifting close together.
They were driving the Nightbrothers toward something, and most of their job was already done.
In the first glimpse Maul had of Vader, the other Force user was a black pillar just like in Maul's dream. A curve of smoke blurred and distorted the shape, making the pillar break into waving clouds. Maul could see from where he stood that both a thatch roof and the triangular-winged Imperial ship were on fire: the ship had probably gotten a few laser strikes into the tiny village before the Zabraks had somehow retaliated.
There was a Nightbrother sprawled out in front of Vader. As Maul watched, Vader brought his lightsaber down in a move that Maul recognized. It was a move made out of either arrogance or desperation, and here with his opponent in the dirt it was probably the former. Vader stabbed the man through the collar, slashed back and forth a few times to messy the wound, and stepped over his twitching victim.
Maul looked at him. The Force prickled, and Maul knew that Vader had seen him. He itched to fight right here, but the smoke was thick. Instead he moved, trying to draw Vader into the forest. After running through it twice Maul felt he had a better handle on which leaves were stable and which would slide, which plants were thicker than they looked and which could be easily pushed aside. He could use that advantage over Vader just like Zanja had used it against him.
But instead of going after him, Vader turned and took two almost inhumanly long strides toward his ship. Maul furrowed his brow. Vader was going to try to strafe him from above! That was not the behavior he had expected from a lord of the Sith. There was supposed to be honor in these things, wasn't there? Even if Maul didn't have a lightsaber, a one-on-one duel was something that he had thought would be inevitable.
Vader didn't seem to think so.
Maul backed into the forest as the ship rose up. Vader didn't waste time, and began strafing the forest with thick yellow laser blasts even as the ship - Maul couldn't recognize the model, but it was small enough to be maneuverable while still carrying at least a squad of ten stormtroopers - continued to smoke.
Vader tracked him for a long time.
Long, boring hours, while stormtroopers were forming up in runic maneuvers to try to drive him one way or another. Maul had had a lot of practice in not being driven. He moved with the currents of the men and the ship which were also the currents of the Force, and soon, Vader would have to realize, the only rock Maul would collide with would be Vader. Maul crouched in the forest, smelling the spicy red sap of crushed leaves, and listened to the quiet. There were surely birds hidden in the trees, nestling up against ridges of tree bark, waiting for the predators to go on about their business and leave the birds alone.
Finally, the ship settled again. Maul lost it when it settled into the clearing. The forest was too thick now, and he was hopelessly lost, far from the Nightbrothers' camp. That didn't matter, though, not really - what mattered was that Vader would come to him, would be baited by Maul's hiding.
It worked. Maul heard Vader come crashing indiscriminately through the trees a few minutes later, sensed his angry, bitter presence. There was something familiar about it, perhaps just because Maul had imagined that the man from his dream would have a similar presence.
"Where have you been hiding?" Vader called, and Maul eased out of the forest, letting dappled shadows fall over his shoulders.
"Do you know what I am?" he said.
"I know who you are."
Maul shook his head. "That matters less."
Only then did the lightsaber come out. Vader swung his blade like he was cutting down a tree. The red plasma cut an arc into the sunlit day, and Maul didn't even have to step backward. He wished he had his own lightsaber, could nearly feel it in his hands. He could balance it between his hands and dip to the right and strike-
So easy, so perfect.
Impossible. The fantasy dissipated like cloud, although like dew he could still feel it on his palms.
Vader's blade was a scarlet spike.
Darth Maul drew his blaster. For the first time, the gun in his hands felt like a tiny thing, a toy dwarfed by his palm.
Vader made a sound that was almost a deep laugh and almost a smirk. Then he swept the blade up, left to right, aiming for the gun or the hand holding the gun. Maul saw it as clear as a vision that he was aiming to lop Maul's hand off.
Maul circled the blade and shot Vader in the chest.
Two bolts sparked off his armor, dissipating harmlessly into the ground. The man backed up, though, lurching. He was nearly two feet taller than Maul, and when he fell, he would fall like a tree.
"I know exactly who you are," Vader said, and Maul knew that the first few moves of their fight had been just a delay; Vader had wanted to say this. "You killed Qui-Gon Jinn. You tried, and failed to kill Obi-Wan Kenobi. You have..." he paused as if he was not sure what word to use next. Vader had an orator's voice, but not an orator's head. Maul could sense his impatience as he wasted time choosing words. "...hounded the Sith for a long time, Darth Maul. Now, it's over."
"How do you know my name?"
Vader paused.
"Only my Master knew," Maul said. "And the Jedi, because they found the records he left behind."
The anger that the word 'Jedi' elicited in Vader helped Maul identify him more quickly, because Maul so intimately knew that anger. He had had to quell it a lot, on Glee Anselm, but he knew exactly what it felt like when someone vehemently denied that they were a Jedi, and so Vader's personal addictions to that particular emotion stood out to him. Maul remembered another presence who had glowed with light like this one exuded dark, and he had to blink a few times and feel out the Force before he knew.
Anakin. Maul's anger blazed.
Vader's did too. As soon as he knew that Maul had discovered his name he retracted the Force, pulling his name out like a whip from under Maul's hands.
"Skywalker," Maul said, and the birds exploding out of the tree canopy echoed it, taking the name out with them, creating a pictogram from it as natural as falling, as natural as flying.
Vader slashed downward.
Maul skidded out of the way, kicking up dirt, not gaining as much momentum as he would have liked. He shot twice again, and Vader deflected both shots with his lightsaber. Light flared in front of Maul, and the Force hurled him out of the way of the returning blasts. Maul reached out both hands, the fingers clawed and the heels of his hands pressed together, and tried to wrench Vader's lightsaber out of his grasp.
It almost worked. The blade shook, and Vader hunched his shoulders with the effort it took him to hold it.
Maul foresaw that he wouldn't let go. The Zabrak would need some new strategy, something else. The Force prodded him backward, and the instant he let go of Vader's lightsaber he somersaulted backwards into the trees. Landing in a crouch on a thick branch, he watched the other Sith stalk forward.
Anakin. Maul almost laughed. The boy had not been angelic even as a child, but in his teenage years his annoyances had been so petty. Funny that they had grown him into this, that his hatred had taken him down such a grand path for reasons as small and petty as the jealousy of one man and the love of one woman.
Vader jumped.
Maul had not expected him to be able to jump so high. He nearly flew, his cloak billowing out behind him, his body stiff and his arms held out in front of him like a child pretending to fly like a starship.
He leapt down from the tree just in time to see Vader's feet hit the branch and crack it. The tree shook, leaves raining down onto the smaller foliage on the forest floor. When Maul stepped backward again he was surprised to feel not the feathery touch of more plants, but empty space and a downward-trending landscape. He glanced behind him. Vader fell into the forest with a crash, standing up with his lightsaber still lit and anger burning just as bright in Maul's mind's eye, but Maul had seen the pit behind him now, a small crater lined with ridges like tiny concentric mountain ranges. An old meteor strike, the ground still burned black and bronze with strange energies. Boulders lined its edges, and Maul had a momentary, pleasant vision of Vader lying crushed under one of those speeder-sized rocks. That would even kill a Sith.
He moved back into the pit just as Vader leapt for him again. "Are you frightened, Sith?" Vader shouted, swinging his lightsaber in a choppy, ungainly arc that sliced through the moss-colored side of a boulder. Spores and dirt puffed outward. Maul bared his teeth and pressed them tight together, only loosening his mouth when he needed to move again. Maul jumped to the top of the rock, crouched there, and shot two bolts toward Vader. This too-bold pattern was easy to predict, though, and Maul immediately slid down the other side of the boulder, the dust caking his hands, and blasted once more from his hidden space. Vader cleaved the boulder in two, knocking one red-glowing half into another cluster of rocks.
Maul was tired of running, tired of his predictable pattern. He shot once more, dashed forward. Vader aimed a swing at his shoulder, but Maul had the measure of those wide, slow swings now. The way Vader wielded a lightsaber, the blade looked heavy, and Maul knew very well that it was not. Just as the tip of the brightly glowing red blade touched the ground Vader punched out at Vader's chest, diverting a moment later to hit the weaker looking cloth at his armpit instead of the armor. It only hurt Maul's knuckles.
He immediately retracted, realizing that Vader had either armor under the cloth or had mechanical limbs, but continued with the kick he had been readying to throw at Vader's side. It impacted, and there was some flesh there - Maul felt it give slightly under his metal foot, and Vader howled, a deep sound of anguish that sent more birds rocketing out of the forest in fear. Maul dropped that foot and picked the other one up at the same instant, hooking Vader's other wrist with a kick. He ducked a lightsaber strike that swept over his head and lashed his foot away from Vader's wrist hard enough to break it. As he was beginning to expect, it did not break.
Vader stepped back one long step, his feet slipping on the rocky ground, putting enough distance between them that Maul was in dangerous reach of the lightsaber again. He was in the moment now, though, in the way that both the Jedi and the Sith taught, seeing each move almost before it happened in a transparent overlay over the real world. His plans took only seconds to adjust, perception flying by faster than words could travel. Vader stabbed forward, a straightforward push that foreshortened the lightsaber in Maul's sight into a single dot of light.
Maul dodged to the left, pointed his blaster at Vader's foot, and fired. Cloth scorched, but the man did not seem to be troubled by the blast.
So, it was to be a fight of attrition.
Vader's next strike was faster, and he caught Maul's left pant leg on the burning edge of the blade. Maul hissed, and reeled backwards, but he was far more agile than Vader and was not hurt, instead using the time in which Vader stared at the metal leg thus revealed to dance around to Vader's back. The man's neck was wisely covered in a plain sheet of metal, and although Maul ached to aim a punch at the back of his head he knew it would only hurt his hands. Instead Maul reached out with the blaster, shot three times. On the third, something exploded near Vader's right eye.
Maul reached into the blind spot, turned the blaster so that the top, flat except for the small scope, lay against Vader's neck, and grabbed the muzzle of the gun with his right hand. He practically had to climb up Vader's back to pull the other man in an arc backwards and complete the choke.
Vader was far taller, though, and when he spun around he dragged Maul with him and broke the hold. His lightsaber slashed down again and broke another boulder in two, which rolled into more.
Boulders started to spill over the side of the crater. There were enough of them that they might fill it.
Just like Maul had wanted, the bowl of rock was suffering an avalanche, but Vader was not in the right place. Maul was up hill from him now, and the boulders were rolling away from both of them, turning the crater with its delicate ridges into a hole that was about to be filled and flattened by the boulders.
Both Sith scrambled out of the crater, only to teeter on the edge of a cliff. Trees grew in scattered copses on the sides and bottom of this larger crater. It was huge, the size of a canyon - Maul could barely see the other side, and the wind and water-carved rock pushing up from its sides looked like cities. A narrow pool glimmered at the bottom.
Maul shot at Vader's foot again. He thought he might try distraction, and started to speak without knowing how the sentence was going to end - "Anakin!"
Vader had become immune to his name. He stabbed forward, and Maul leaped over the blade in a Force-assisted burst, but felt the lightsaber nick his leg. When he landed the wound flared, but it was minor - he could still stand, didn't feel muscle coming undone or bone grating together.
He pushed out with both hands, fingers splayed around the blaster butt, pushing out with the Force as if to slam Vader in the armored chest with both palms. The strike hit, and Vader bent backward toward the cliff, like ancient architecture crumbling. The red lightsaber pointed toward the distant crater wall, and Maul gestured again, right hand clawed, and threw two small, broken rocks at Vader's hand and hip. They broke his balance completely.
Maul had just started to grin, just started to watch Vader's fall blend in to the rocks that had tumbled some time between now and the creation of the planet, when he felt the tug on his injured foot.
The Force betrayed him. Vader was pulling from beyond the cliff edge, and the burst of pain from his injured leg prevented Maul from breaking the grip immediately. Instead, he gasped as his chest smacked against the dirt and forced his breath out. His skin prickled. Vader was somewhere behind him, still alive.
Jut when he turned his head, his cheek covered in dirt, he felt himself falling further over the edge of the cliff.
He released the blaster in an effort to catch at the ground, but then the Force rose again, and even as Maul turned to retaliate, orienting himself against the spiraling tornado wind of Vader's pull, he felt the ground slam into him. A flash of Bandomeer. What creatures lived beneath this world's surface? His skin prickled, but the vision was torn from him as he rolled, brown dirt spraying around him. All immediate tumult.
Vader fell above him like a black tower.