At that, Sifo-Dyas closed his mind to Darth Tyranus, terminating the Force horror feedback loop that had crippled Tyranus. Tyranus's legs buckled and failed him, leaving him to splash chest-first into the mire. Slowly, painfully, he rose from the muck, even as it dripped from him anew, even as his mental faculties returned to him through the fog of utter exhaustion. Sifo-Dyas looked on him warily.

Tyranus's defiant, baritone growl broke the silence between the two men. "Oh? And just what has your fevered mind divined of my fate?"

Sifo-Dyas simply shook his head before replying. "I call you Dooku because I still sense the good in you. I can see how you can turn back from the ways of the Sith, how you can reclaim your Jedi heritage.

"But it will not be an easy road, and it will..."

Dooku testily interrupted. "Save your righteous prattle, Jedi. I will not have you attempt to 'save' me so that I can rejoin the decadent Jedi order and serve a tottering Republic. My destiny lies on a path toward remaking the galaxy's ponderous bureaucracy into an ordered, efficient, and responsive machine, servile to my will."

"That is one path before you, yes. But to follow it, you would have to fail in the mission that sent you here."

Tyranus cocked a quizzical eyebrow. "How so?"

"We have battled back and forth, trading blows with both lightsabers and the Force. If we kept up our fight, you might find an opening and exploit it, striking me down for your Master. But if you do that, you will never forgive yourself."

Tyranus glanced askance at Sifo-Dyas. "I hardly believe I would need to forgive myself for ridding myself of the last reminder of what I used to be."

"Perhaps in time, that would be true. Given another five or so years of deadening your soul with the bludgeon of Sith teachings, you very well might be dead enough to yourself that you would be capable of such a deed without remorse. But your Master has not driven your humanity from you fully yet. More than a sliver of your old compassion remains in you, no matter how fervently you attempt to bury it.

"And because you are not yet inured to those feelings that the Sith consider 'weak,' my death would not have the effect you intend. Instead of ridding you of the last nettle on your conscience, it would solidify it. My death would become the grain of sand that your ruminative mind would coat over into a pearl of remorse and regret. And a beautiful pearl it would be to me, indeed, as it would force you to renounce your Sith ways when your Master makes one too many demands upon your nascent cruelty.

"You would rise up against Sidious and put up a noble fight against him, valiantly exposing his corruption of the Senate in the face of an unbelieving Jedi Council. Though your actions would lead Sidious to strike you down personally, the Jedi would finally be awakened from their slumber and would confront the Chancellor once and for all. The Jedi would lose a measure of prestige in the public's eye for their seemingly unprovoked aggression against the leader of the Republic, but the furor would be short-lived as the details of the conspiracy you would have unearthed became public knowledge, vindicating the Jedi's apparent assassination. And you would be remembered as the hero of the Republic, having sacrificed yourself to bring the dominion of the Sith to light - and to an end."

Tyranus scoffed at these notions. "Oh, such outlandish and romantic fantasies you conjure for me..."

Sifo-Dyas steeled his gaze and voice at Tyranus. "I'm not finished yet.

"Doubtless, you envision the future that results from your arrogant defiance of your Master, returning empty-handed from Dagobah and confronting your Master with your willfulness. You may even apply some of the techniques you learned here to force your Master into a stalemate. Your Master will respect your skills all the more, but he will become more wary of you, and will divorce himself from you. Both of you will work against each other behind the scenes politically - him in his role as Supreme Chancellor, you in your newfound role as the Senator from Serenno.

"Eventually, your Master will confront you. But this time, the confrontation will happen diplomatically on the Senate floor, and you will have behind you the full weight of the forces you two propose to array against the Republic. The Chancellor will have a vote of no-confidence leveraged against him, a vote your puppets in the Senate will orchestrate to avoid a costly, all-out civil war. And thus will you use your mentor's favorite political machinations against him, ousting him from his office to secure for yourself.

"Broken, Palpatine will duel with you in the Chancellor's office to repay your treachery. You will fight each other to a stalemate again - a fatal one. You will impale him through the heart, and he will sever your head from your body. Again, you will be regaled as a hero of the Republic, albeit posthumously.

"Either way, you die. And the ways of the Sith will die with you for a very long time."

Tyranus could do nothing but stare, broken at the erstwhile Jedi Master's hands. How could he have known? The competing visions that had bedeviled him for years, the futures he had suppressed from his Master's most intrusive mental probes - all laid bare, plain, obvious. The things he had struggled to block from his own consciousness, lest they deter him from pursuing his monomaniacal ambitions - forced to his consciousness, repeated to him, and followed through to their logical conclusions. For him, the way of the Force was but a cruel farce.

Sifo-Dyas gave his former friend a compassionate glance. "Apparently, your Unifying Force is good for something, after all. As much as I had complained that it seemed to do nothing in the moment, I now see how its revelations about the past and the future can influence your actions strongly.

"And by touching your understanding of it, I believe I have a third way for you to follow. One that will let you live a long life, albeit one that I would not ordinarily condone. You will still die at the hands of a Sith, but your years will be prolonged, and I will not have to suffer your loss until I have more strength to bear it.

"As much as I detest what you have become, the path to which you have apprenticed yourself, after touching your mind, I now recall the nobility and the strength you gave to the Jedi Order for so many years. I remember the support you gave me in my darkest hours, and how your sage counsel saved many a Padawan from falling prey to their passions."

Sifo-Dyas walked toward the felled tree by the bog, breaking off a branch with his bare hand. The sharpness of the bark made his palm bleed profusely, and he winced as he pressed his lightsaber into his bloodied hand. Then he tossed the lightsaber at Tyranus's prostrate feet. It made a marshy splash as it landed.

"Take this to your master. I have no further need of it - my strength with the Force now allows me to fight any adversaries that come my way. And I have seen how it will save your life. The blood on the hilt will convince your master that my body was lost to one of the myriad creatures of the bog."

Sifo-Dyas paused for what felt like hours. His eyes regarded Tyranus with alterate looks of pity, contempt, and nostalgia. Tyranus looked back at Sifo-Dyas, absorbing his gazes with increasingly pained expressions. Finally, Sifo-Dyas found the answers he was looking for written on Tyranus's face. The Jedi Master turned abruptly on his his heels and spoke his parting words to the wind.

"Now, depart from me, Lord Tyranus."

And with that, Sifo-Dyas strode away from the fallen tree, from the depths of the bog, and from the wracked body of Lord Tyranus. The form of the Master of the Light faded into the mists of Dagobah, leaving Tyranus to struggle to his feet - and to regain his composure. Amid the calls and cries of the Dagobah wildlife, he straggled back to his ship, thoroughly covered in that world's grime, the ruddied lightsaber of Sifo-Dyas clutched tightly in his hand.