Chapter 13: Fahrenheit
A counter verses a parry, versus a riposte, versus a dodge, feint, disengage, bind and a powerful slash. The two traded blows that would've made the ancient saber masters flush with embarrassment. It was all tactics and foresight on Revan's side, as his suit prevented perfect maneuverability; but the thing responded in blinding speed.
The system worked. The flow, ebb and back and forth of battle was grueling and tested the limits of the battleground to such an extent that Revan was nearly forced off the edge of the ship to the other side.
Revan did his best to ignore the surrounding and focus of the movement of his opponent's blades. This technique failed when the Hawk drifted into a dust encrusted satellite of Malachor. It was an old ship that had circled Malachor V so long that dust accumulation had made it into a small moon.
Revan flipped backward onto the moon. His landing caused the drifting object to dislodge from the Hawk and float away. He saw the creature, glaring jealously from the Hawk's hull, which was now above him.
Revan smiled to himself, he knew that in their next encounter no long lost mother, Selkath squadron, or pressure suit, would save it's mottled skin. He would tear every scrap of flesh from it's pale bones.
It brought a chuckle to him, remembering how poorly he had faired against the thing on Korriban. That had been it's only chance of killing him, and it failed. He retracted his saber. The ship he had landed on would have some form of escape pod.
Revan felt the right boot of his pressure suit crunch on the hoary rock crust of the moon. He could not hear his footfall from inside the suit; just as he did not hear the footfall behind him. He did not hear the lightsaber ignite, nor did he see the glow. He did not hear it hum when it swung to attack, but he felt it. Dodging the attack in an awkward tumble, he spun around to see that horrible dysgenic malformed creature. It's flesh was dwindling as it was depressurizing in the light atmosphere. The thing was dying.
Revan awed at the thing, it was incredible!
Revan couldn't attack in the suit. He no longer had his sabers, he had lost them in the tumble and were now behind the thing.
The creature flailed forward in a quick and uncoordinated swing. Revan tried to dodge, but it struck the right leg of his suit, rupturing the maintained pressure. He could feel the air suck out of the suit, like a balloon deflating. He cupped the break with his left hand while trying to roll away from the creature's wild attacks.
It was over; he would die, here on the edge of a rock of nowhere, after having accomplished nothing. No grand outline of destiny or design of the force would save him. No Jedi trick or Sithly manipulation would save him from this thing that would not die. He would not save or rescue or bring balance. All his plans, his genius schemes came to death at the hands of such a simple puppet. He would have to let it end. Malak was right. He could not become the Sithari. He would be everything and nothing. He could not walk on water…
Fear.
He felt it again.
It was killing him.
Now.
On this moon…
The same fear that petrified the Jedi. The same fear that Malak could not understand. He may have underestimated it. Indeed, it was powerful. A power that would paralyze.
Revan steeled his nerves and reached out into the force. There it was. It was staring at him with It's real eyes. It was hate and power on a different plane, unlike anything in this galaxy, Sith or other. Fear was it's fuel, unlike the Sith's anger or the Jedi's peace. Revan felt the debris of force about him, floating across the moon. It was with him like a fallen comrade, but it was enough. Rallying all his concentration on the fear. He felt it precede down the same line. Fear leads to anger. He felt it swell in him like a sickness. The creature was thrown from the surface and struck by a cloud of lightening that reduced it's pitiful form to ashes.
Revan felt those hideous eyes close and the fear end. Revan felt confused. What was it he had been afraid of? What could it have done to him that would've been that horrible? He watched the mist of ashes scatter and flutter down to the moon's surface.
'The Hawk!'
He watched as it throttled into reentry. The pressure in his suit began to get light. Revan looked at Malachor V. Even from his view, he could've pointed out Trayus academy to any bystander. He looked at the ship he was on and then once more back at the planet.
'Bother the damn escape pods!' He thought. Picking up his dropped sabers, he began to run towards the edge of the moon. In one massive leap, he bounded straight for Malachor V.
Revan soared through the dust and metal scrap that was floating around the planet. He smiled, as he recognized the Orniter's hull plate. It was a ship he had once boarded for a time and the same one he had placed in Nasher's care. He rocketed past it until he felt himself caught by the definite pull of the planet below. He could ride it all the way in. It was Revan's way of daring the universe to kill him. He dared it. If it did kill him, then it didn't matter, but if it didn't…
It was few minutes before he felt the friction of the first layer of atmosphere. A quick brush through the force and it was no more than mere pressure. What seemed like minutes later, he felt the heat seeping through his barriers. Revan tightened his focus and brought his descent to a slow so he could control the tremendous heat. By the time he could make out land, the heat was throbbing through the little protection he could muster. He wouldn't have even tried it, but he had credited Malachor V with a thinner atmosphere.
He felt his pressure suit charring and disintegrating. The remains of the suit broke apart and fluttered away. The heat was now starting to char his robes.
The force is like a tremendous muscle, the pure force it can exert is sometimes unknown even to the user. Revan felt an untapped well of muscle that he had been unaware of, even in his dark days. It was the last reserve of power that practically crystallized the barrier around Revan, making it impenetrable.
He could see the bridge to the academy through the blur and the occasion spurts of flame. …It was guarded too. There must've been nearly forty Sith apprentices keeping watch, to fend off Storm Beasts.
How staggered they were, when a black streak of lightening struck the ground before the bridge, creating a huge crater and kicking up a smoke screen of dust. Fifteen or so were brushed off the bridge into the chasm below. Several others were struck by branches of the lightening and disintegrated. Many others seemed afflicted with a pressure that gently crushed them into little puddles. The rest burst into blue flames and were ate alive by them.
When all cleared there was a figure in black that silently passed down the bridge into the academy.
Revan saw to it that the door was shoved aside and that the quaint lightsaber-wielding doormen were immolated into piles of ashes.
There was a throng of motionless dumbfounded students, whose ranks blocked entrance to the core. Revan waved a gloved hand and they flew aside, smacking into the granite walls. The doors separating him and the core, burst open. Several students, who had righted themselves, charged, lightsabers drawn. They were tossed aside without Revan even acknowledging them.
The smooth, albeit sharp and cold architecture reminded him so of the days he had spent under it's roof after that final battle of the Mandalorian wars. It was a powerful place far before the wars, but it had doubled in strength. Far off in the core he saw the old woman and a select few of her apostles. They were naïve enough to listen to her ideology and bent philosophies. He laughed inwardly, because several years ago he could have been any one of those eager fools.
Upon seeing him approach, the crowd responded. He felt four of them through the force worthy of slight regard. They were the charred remains of the battle that had been fought here.
They approached him, lightsabers drawn. One dared to take the time to speak. With a wave of a hand he was sent to his death into the planet core. The other three, he could sense, had thrown up walls of defense against such obvious ploys. Having fought the original Sith, these few paled in comparison. The three of them rushed him. Revan's lightsabers hummed to life. Quickly dispatching the attacks with a Soresu parry of eight in the left hand and an Ataru parry of four in the right, he dodged the third attack and sliced one of the sith into three equal pieces with a flying Sai Tok. He was about to dispatch the next two when they stopped, frozen in mid-action. An annoyed old voice cackled over the hum of the lightsabers. It sounded with every taste of royalty and haughtiness as Bastila's.
"Have you come merely to slaughter? Genocide was never your style."
Revan waved his hand and sent the stunned students skidding into the center ring of the platform. Revan's dark voice crackled from behind his mask.
"I have come to slaughter, witch. I see that you are poised to assume the title of Lady of the Sith."
Her cold eyes, in their fogged way, were critical and stony as if they still held sight of a kind.
"I assume nothing; whereas, you assume much." She held a bony finger and pointed at Revan. "I can read it through that fake disguise you wear." She lowered her hand and sighed. With a careful gait, she strode to Revan where she whispered. "If it answers those questions, I meant never to veer down this path; but the force, as always, has designs on me that I could never control."
Revan brushed past her, cackling.
"How unsithly of you. Letting the force control you."
He passed to a column and waved his hand. An aperture in the column slid open to reveal a concealed elevator. Kreia, walked into the elevator and Revan followed. The door closed and the machinery whirred as it descended even lower to the core.
"Don't be foolish. The force commands us all." She said in a huff.
"It does not control me." His voice boomed. "And spare me your lectures I have heard them before."
"And evidently you have not learned." She countered sourly.
"Yelena is dead now."
"Ah. So you are…"
"I will do. I am not the Sith'ari, just a Sith'ari. You no doubt have seen the one who will come to best fit that title. A millennia or so from now, and I will better compare to any half-wit Jedi or fool Sith that this universe has ever seen, than they to his right arm which he will lose."
She stared at him in appraisal.
"You see more in him than you do yourself?" She shook her head. "You do not yet understand that contrast in power between that comparison. You are already better than the sum of every force-wielder I've seen."
The elevator ceased descent and the screen slid away again to reveal an office of sorts. Kreia proceeded to the far side of the desk and sat in the chair located there. Revan sat in a chair provided on the opposing side.
"Why have you come? Your battle is not here. We are simple Sith, not the threat that I know you seek."
Revan smiled beneath the mask and replied in a throaty rumble.
"I am not assured of that yet, but I have a request of you."
Revan gazed at her through the mask, he could feel her heart beat jump.
"And what would the great Revan have me do?"
Revan's eyeless mask bore into Kreia's milky cataracts.
"You will find my exiled Jedi."
There was a sigh of approval.
"Ah, that one. He will be difficult to find, much time and effort will be consumed in locating him, and in the end I do not think he will meet your expectations."
"I find that if a man may survive the force being ripped from his still living body that he can survive, oh so much more."
"I see that the attack of the Jedi has damaged your memories. He did not survive, he merely retained the use of his limbs. His spirit and strength deserted him as he deserted the Order. You will find him little use against the trials you face."
"That is why I have come to you. You once taught a slightly impulsive force-sensitive the ways of both the Jedi and the Sith. You made him intimate with the force in ways that perhaps a handful of force-sensitives have been in all remembered history. I only ask that you do it again to one perhaps a little less gifted."
Kreia rested her hand on the desktop. Revan already saw it as an aggressive move. She was purposing to attack him in mid-discussion.
"I am unable to see why I would be predisposed to do all of this."
Revan reached up and unlatched his mask and let it clatter down on the desk. He smiled as he breathed in with a hiss and laughed darkly.
"I had forgotten how smothering that mask was." His smile promptly faded into a sneer as he refocused on Kreia. "Don't be absurd. You already know you will do as I propose. You find the prospect of the Exile even more fascinating than I do. One who has rejected the force to survive. Your various philosophies and ideals must be tingling with apprehension."
Kreia retracted her hand and her eyes hardened.
"That is not to say-"
Revan held his hand up to silence her. He seemed annoyed and frustrated and Kreia did not want to task him too much.
"You listen well, witch. I see your mind and it's traps and baits; I hear your voice as I always have, but it's influence is tired and spent. There is one who needs your aid, as I needed your aid. The summation of the force and the teetering balance of galactic life is on a blade's edge and that one has far to come. He has endured my grinder and has survived. Respect that, as it was more than you or I could possibly hope, but not yet enough. I gift you the Ebon Hawk and it's droids which have no doubt landed outside the academy. You should use it to track him, test him and train him. I see what you will do, but that is beyond my power to stop and if he is truly who I seek, then it won't matter anyway."
Kreia looked like someone who was about to accept a wager. She seemed hesitant and eager in the same breath with indecision at the helm.
"It is my offer to you. You may test your precious little theories and dogma on my creation. In return, you must train him as you did me." Revan's smile crept back upon his face as he folded his hands over his lap. "Think. How can you refuse?"
"But why are you so confident that he will not listen to me?"
Revan had to think fast. This was the question that would set in stone, or shatter, his entire plan. He saw a million possible answers and more than half of them would make her utterly refuse.
"I fought alongside him. I know what he is capable of; and exactly what he would do."
Revan saw resolve quicken on Kreia's features. He wanted to laugh aloud and smile in victory, but maintained his sour expression. Faith in a person's beliefs and or abilities and their loyalties were not highly prized by Kreia. She knew that a person could be broken to do practically anything. If she had only known that Revan knew. He simply knew without a measure of doubt. In her mind, they had just made a wager on a man's decision, and their differences in doctrine would war and the best ideal would triumph. But far from the truth, Revan had just won. He knew.
"I agree to the terms." She said.
An air of relief passed them both. Kreia would no longer have to attack him and he would no longer have to kill her. She was far too valuable.
Having his mind turned from his moment of tension, Revan moved on to mundane details.
"Now that that's settled, I will need a small list of provisions."
She made a funny noise that she no doubt thought was a laugh.
"I can imagine."
"Palatable food."
"We may be pressed for the amounts you will require, but I think we can manage it."
"A flyable vessel."
"I hope style is not a requirement?"
"Unimportant."
She nodded her head.
"Fuel."
She sighed with obvious boredom.
"Yes, of course."
Revan smiled unpleasantly.
"Excellent. By the way, the students out-"
"They are your creations as well."
Revan tilted his head back and gave loud long laugh, to which Kreia looked away in disgust.
"Is that display necessary?" She asked, icily.
He rose from his chair, grabbed his mask and tucked it under his right arm. He stretched languidly.
"Then I should be back within the next six years, give or take."
"I would not rely too heavily on untested apostles." She said, warningly.
Revan glared at her intensely.
"I find that untested apostles are often more reliable than tested ones." He said with a touch of foreboding. He shrugged, dropping his glare to the floor. She no doubt did not understand the irony he had intended. Revan noted that being too close to the problem often obscures perspective, especially when looking to the future through the force.
"I will have your 'provisions' seen to under the condition that you do not slay any more of my 'tested apostles'."
Revan nodded. He had killed enough to ensure that Kreia would survive their inevitable revolt. What happened beyond that was in the hands of the force. But he did not like the looks of the two that had survived in the core. Creatures of the force that survived the orchestrated tragedy that befell Malachor V would become twisted and hollow. They would not be easily recognized by the Jedi, nor defeated.
They would attack… Revan felt a deep dread strike him in his center. He saw the splinter factions of the Sith attack, confuse and destroy what remained of the Jedi. Bastila would fall.
"Are you quite alright?"
Revan heard Kreia's voice. It snapped him back to reality. She was attempting to pry his mind! He snapped it shut on her like a steel trap. She cried out in initial pain but then it faded.
"You're mad!" She cried. "You are going back after that foolish child!"
Revan growled and shoved her away.
"I'm warning you! Stay out of my mind, witch!"
"After what the Jedi did to you, you are going to go to Coruscant!"
Revan scoffed.
"Is that concern, Kreia?"
She smiled and shook her head.
"Amazement mixed with disappointment."
"Ah. Go, and prepare my ship."