There's indication in the opening scenes of "Knights of the Fallen Empire", that the attack on Korriban had already occurred by the time our characters are meeting with Darth Marr. I had already been imagining this particular scene, that showed that particular attack. Because I was wondering after seeing the initial trailer, what would happen if the attack on Korriban happened when Lusiel's daughter was on the world, training. When I heard them say in KotFE's opening, "The energy signature matches the attackers of Korriban," I knew I had to actually write it down. Here it is.
Cytharat was screaming, screaming. But it wasn't the first time the sands of Korriban drank down such cries. The air didn't even tremble under the peeling refrain. His screams were just ripped away by the tearing winds that rose up against the red sky overhead. The Sith Lord only writhed there on the stone table where perhaps countless Sith had been plopped over the eons past. Like some scene from long-ago, like a story Talos Drellik might have chanted at her during one of his visits to Korriban, even. The entire landscape – with its ring of stone obelisks and the long length of rock table – all of it declared days when blood was spilled and given over to now-nameless gods and angels high above the world.
Jessa murmured to the others, "He'll die under their hands, long before he tells them anything they want to know." That ninny of a girl, Gratham's pitiable waste of a daughter, only snorted at her. Why was she so saddled with such burdens as this idiot girl, Jessa wondered. And now of all times, no less.
"He's a Sith! And a Lord, to boot! He'll destroy them!" Gwyn Gratham declared pompously, "I highly doubt you'll ever achieve so much of a place in our ranks, anyway."
Jessa's mouth etched itself into a snide grimace as she twisted her dark head around to look at Gwyn. The acolytes who followed her called her Winnie. Like a bovine creature you rode across the fields of some distant worlds, maybe. What an ass, Jessa thought.
Jessa nodded at her slowly, "Not if those gold-armored warriors have anything to say on the matter, at least. They do seem pretty determined to find us." Jessa wasn't entirely certain where the warriors came from, actually. The shape of their armors were dreadfully unfamiliar, and she ached at the sheer lack of understanding. If she only knew who they were, she could hate them and the place they came from alike. Hate would heighten the power trembling through her muscles right then, tighten them into readied strength.
But she could only watch them, study them and their techniques. Her aunt's voice, her training rang through Jessa's mind just then, "You figure out how your enemies fight, it gives you a chance to meet them on equal footing. You watch, until you can anticipate their motions, their steps, so you can counter them before they're even made." The gold-warriors moved in synchronized pairs, like two halves of some whole team. They depended on each other. There was balance, rhyme in their steady cadence – need of each other, above all. Good to know.
Jessa looked past Winnie's shoulder at the other acolyte huddled there in the obscure entranceway into the tombs, bit her lip to keep from smiling at him. Jole was her very favorite of the acolytes that crowded the classes with her; he shared her interests and fascinations, and even some of her abilities. They naturally fell together when Lord Cytharat approached the academy and declared his intention to instruct the potentials who gathered, there.
She didn't fail to discern Jole's real motivations in seeking out her friendship, either. Self-preservation at its finest - to seek out the strongest acolytes, the ones most likely to succeed, and to follow them accordingly. But Jole impressed her, all the same. He didn't pretend, didn't hang his head down, abashed. He looked at her boldly, instead, "You're going to succeed, here. In ways unheard of, even. I want to see it for myself."
She snorted back at him, "Rather keep your head attached to your shoulders, more like."
Jole chuckled, "Would you prefer I was stupid? I can play at that, if you'd like." He made her laugh every day, with his bright red hair that fell in a mop over his eyes and his joking references to every challenge Korriban threw their way. The pair of them proved fast friends. They watched over each other's back, marching through the halls of the Sith Academy like dual halves of the same mirror. Whispers started following them along, words murmured behind them of alliances and unions. Then came the sneering comments, denouncements of Jole's family line – some obscure clan from Balmorra of all places. Jessa ignored the lot of it, just shrugged when her mother confronted the issue during a holocall, "I don't care what they think. I like him." And Lusiel nodded, her dark eyes approving of her daughter's certain adamancy, the Sith-strong determination that moved her to claim the boy.
Now Jole shoved the crazy tumble of his red hair away off his forehead, his dark blue eyes dull with studious consideration as he stared out from their tiny alcove at the tumbled bodies of those other acolytes. The ones who didn't move fast enough when the attack came on them, who didn't duck and weave into some semblance of sheltered cover. The ones who'd failed.
Jole was always determined, never to be like them. Like his brother, the one who came here to Korriban ahead of him and was destroyed. These sands consumed his brother's pain and blood, and Jole was quick to assure her they wouldn't take so much as that again. Not from him. Now he looked at her, "They're looking for us, Jessa. The Force itself is riding them, to find us. They sense our power, and they won't give up the fight just yet."
Jessa's small, pert chin lifted up, "Fine. We show them what it is they're looking for, then." She looked out, towards the long stone table where Cytharat was twisting under the onslaught of those staffs the warriors used upon his body. His screams rippled towards them again, desperately loud to compel them into running away. He only wanted them to run, to flee and leave him behind, and Jessa knew it.
She knew it was more than fear or even agony that kept Cytharat from telling those warriors how to find the entrance into the Tombs, where the three acolytes were hiding. She knew it was affection that bound his silence, even more than the pain.
Her mother's brother - his dark eyes that always shimmered with soft bemusement when he considered her, as if he only ever saw her mother when he looked at her. And the pleasing games of "Sneak and Hide" he played with her, that always underscored the lessons he tried imparting, "The Sith say it's fear and hate that's strongest. But love will bind a friend to you, with chains stronger than you can imagine, Jessa. Make your friends carefully, keep them. And they'll be tools on any field you battle."
Jessa tapped her small foot against the dust-ridden floor, tightened her grip on the handle of her training saber. Jole grunted, moved to stand alongside her so they could both peer out into the swirling red-dust of the stone circle. Neither one of them paid the slightest attention to Winnie's grumbled admonishment from behind them, "You're so stupid! Both of you!" They knew the gold warriors wouldn't consider a mere acolyte who would fight them, rather than run.
Let alone two.
Jessa and Jole flowed together, moved through the Force itself to meet the warriors gathered around Cytharat's shattering form. Their small bodies whipped the dust up into dervishes that slapped against the men's gold armors. And then came the ringing blows of their sabers, finding those soft places on their bodies not covered by armor at all – the slender curve of throats just under the rims of helmets, the tender line of groin between thighs and torsos, that low spot just behind their knees. Blood spilled out and onto the ground, and the warriors cried out wildly. They each shouted commands at the others, called each other knights as they tried finding order in a maelstrom of incredible drive and terrible potential from two tiny figures they could not really find. Even now, not in the mess and swirl of the flying sand and dust the young acolytes sent up into the air.
And that's when Cytharat reached up at them all, leaning on one arm against the table where he still lay prone. He flung his own power at them, using all the hate and anger their torture of his frame had nurtured and fanned into being. The fire of his rage bloomed in their bellies, burned with bitterest pain as they clutched at their stomachs and began screaming, dying there on the Korriban ground and far from whatever place they called home.
Jessa stopped then, stood proudly framed in front of one of the warriors and reached out to grip his helmet. She ripped the armor from his head to stare into his eyes, to see him, and she heard him grunt through lips stained red with the blood from where he bit himself to stop screaming. "… You're only a little girl!" Jessa smiled at him, just before bringing her training blade against the side of his neck with all the Force she could muster and heard a violent crack wing up into the sky overhead. Blood splattered the ground at her feet, and she stepped back, looked over towards her overseer.
Cytharat glared at her, "Damn your blood, Jessa Quinn! A Sith serves only his own interests, his own needs. He does not strive to benefit anyone else, but what might save his own self, rather." The Pureblood's fringe trembled against the sides of his face. But that was the only sign of his ordeal, as he lifted himself up from the table and slapped the dust off from his pale, tailored robes. If they were anywhere else - than standing in a circle of ancient obelisks with the scattered bodies of strange warriors crumpled all around them - Jessa might have thought him idly brushing himself clear of a brief stumble during a leisurely afternoon stroll. He utterly ruined the illusion by snarling through one more pained blast of breath, "You should have left me here to die! Too damn much like your blasted uncle, you fool!"
She crossed her slender arms over her small chest, sniffing her own nose clear of the Korriban dust. Jole stepped up to stand just behind her, skirting the small pools of blood and gore that thickened against the sands. He only grunted an amused sound when Jessa muttered a half-sniding grumble towards Cytharat, "You are welcome, my lord."
Cytharat waved a hand through the air, "Enough. I am in no particular mood for your absurd inanities, not today." He stiffened even further as Winnie tumbled out from the Tomb's entrance and raced towards them, yelling. Cytharat shifted a sideways glance at Jessa again, remarked, "The girl lives. I am … surprised. Do you make such decisions to only deliberately flummox me, then?" Jessa slowly wiped the perspiration that glistened along her dark brows as she watched the other girl march towards them.
Winnie pointed accusingly at Jessa as she stumbled to a stop in front of them, "You almost killed us all! How dare you!" Jessa shrugged, "It worked." She ignored Winnie and Cytharat alike to kneel down by one of the men she had destroyed. She tried to ascertain some notion of what they were. Aside from human, at least. She prodded the broken figure with her knee, before lifting his weapon up from the sand to consider the markings etched into its handle.
Jole pointed towards the man's belt, "It looks like a communicator of some sort." Jessa tossed the device towards him, watched him deftly handle the technology with keen, discerning eyes. So many people disparaged Jole's origins on Balmorra. But you never called a Balmorra native idiot when it came to military machines, even if it was so limited as a communications device, mind you. "The signal is keyed to the man's genetic signature. I can change it, though." He returned the thing to Jessa once he was done, watched her tap against its face and crowded close to her as the image of a beefy strong-looking soldier slowly took shape over its top.
Jessa wrinkled her nose at the figure, "Captain Pierce. Where are you?"
"Tombs, my lord." Pierce only sideways glanced at her through the holo, as he continued firing his weapon down whatever range was out of their sight, "We're nearby the entrance that leads out to the platform. You know the one? That Drellik fellow likely showed you the way, back when he visited last time. Your father's ordered you off-world, sent the Way on ahead. So get yourself to my location, do you understand?"
"I am not alone, captain."
"Noted. Just move fast."
Winnie kicked some of the sand on the ground over Jessa's foot, sneering towards the device as Pierce's holoimage disappeared. The girl had always disparaged the regular habit Jessa made of lauding and supporting Korriban's stationed troops, said it was a sign of her "common origins" and an utter weakness. It didn't stop Winnie from following behind Jessa at every turn, though. Sheltering beneath her shadow like a mouse hiding from a swooping predator might. Winnie just snarled, "We're to depend on the assistance of mere base men? Really?"
Jessa smirked at her, "You can stay right here, rather. I don't particularly care either way." At least Jole didn't hesitate. He quickly gathered up the scattered supplies that littered the area where they had come to study and understand the darker energies of the world. That new blood added to the place's power was no real surprise to either of them. They only worked quick to avoid losing their own lives there, too. Jole fell in behind Jessa, following her as she rushed back towards the Tomb entrance all over again.
Cytharat was next to her just before she stepped down into the dark, though. He laid a hand along the slender curve of her small shoulder, his tone slowly adamant, "They look to destroy our future today, destroy our legacy. You will ensure they fail!" Jessa looked up at him, unsmiling as she accepted the commanding glare in his eyes, the reproach that lined his stoic features. She only nodded. No one remarked when Winnie stumbled after them into the Tomb, chased them through the curves and twists of the tunnels towards the sounds of fighting men.
They all followed Jessa, all of them moving in a rush and ignoring the rustling motions of kor'slugs along the walls and in the corners of each alcove they passed. They followed her, because she well knew the way. She trailed Talos Drellik whenever he ventured to Korriban, to search through its dark tombs and hidden passageways. They called him Darth Nox's seeker, the historian who discovered every one of the Dark Council's most prized secrets. Jessa only called him interesting, though. Now the others followed her experienced step.
And because she was strong enough to get through any slug that tried stopping her, to boot. Even the darkest ghost in those Tombs would've quailed back from the strength of the Wrath's child. She had Sith stamped across her very spirit, Jole would say so much later on. And they all knew it, sensed it like it was a living, breathing thing there in the dark.
Jessa heard the sounds of percussion and blaster fire as they neared the bend of the last tunnel, so that she slowed just before leaning around one stone corner to look out through the yawning entrance of the Tomb. Through the door, Jessa could easily discern the breadth of the Academy itself off at a distance. And the gold armored warriors that swarmed the grounds around its entrances, too. She scowled angrily.
Jessa hated every blasted lot of them right then, considered the utter joys to be won from consigning them to the most dire, painful chaos of the Abyss itself. Spilling their blood over the ground would be a pleasing start to the venture, perhaps. And for only a moment, Jessa gleefully imagined the ways and means of making as many of these Knights – they were no Jedi worth the word knight, either – make them scream, writhe and finally die right there on the red sands.
They were making Korriban burn.
Breaking it into pieces, apparently. She watched as slews of gold-armored warriors gathered into neat circles around one of the looming monuments overlooking the Academy's pathways. They were working in coordinated order, like bright, shining insects rushing back and forth and around, and shouting at each other several orders and calls. Until the tall stone figure shook, trembled and finally toppled onto its side in wide, awful chunks of rock and dust. Burying fallen Sith and acolytes underneath, too.
Their own soldiers were fighting breathlessly there in the entranceway. Pierce stood head and shoulders above the others, his helmet tossed aside so that the shorn fringes of his red hair stood up straight on top of his head in spiky, sweat-ridden clumps. He was pointing, shouting loudly to those soldiers still fighting alongside him, "Cover each other, use every blasted bit of energy in your weapons if you have to! We'll cut them all down!" The stone path of the entrance was littered with corpses in bright gold splattered red with blood, too. As if underscoring his command of the scene.
Jessa trilled a call towards him, a slow whistle he would understand was her very own. Pierce's chin lifted up, and he smiled widely as he released the handle of his bladed weapon, gripped the knife against his thigh. But he didn't look back towards her in the reaches of the tunnel. He only called out loudly enough for her to hear, the game they used to play on the training field together, "Four-flush, you bastards! Every last one of you!" Then Pierce tumbled down onto one knee, grunting and curling inward as if painfully wounded. Pretending, playing. His soldiers yelped out with distress and shock and the gold-plated Knights swarmed towards his back with loud winging cries of victory.
But Jessa flew! Like a bird let loose from its nest, she leaped through the Force and landed right in front of Pierce on the balls of her tiny feet, just as the Knights reached him in a single, terrible circle. Pierce grinned, slipped the handle of his blade along the dusty floor towards her left hand before ducking from under her way. And Jessa sprang up into the air, twirling on the very tip of her toes in a crazed milling circle. Like a child's toy, spinning, spinning, and both her blades flashed out in a ripping, whipping arch of vicious sharpness.
The blades caught the attacking Knights, one by one. Jessa was short enough, small enough the blades reached the men's most tender spots. Blood splashed out, struck the walls on either side of them in thick ropes and lines and coated Jessa herself. And the Knights began screaming, screaming as their lives were spilled out onto the ground and along the stone paths and walls alike. She destroyed all of them in a single incredible display. Until the ones still milling against the door tumbled back from the entrance in a rush.
Jessa lifted herself up from her crouch, breathing roughly hard and panting from the exertion. She sensed Jole coming up behind her, soaked in his Force-strong energy and smiled darkly at him. Blood dripped down across her small jaw, and Jole reached out with a single pale cloth to slowly swipe her face clean. Pierce rose up, glanced over at the remaining Imperials, "Now you've seen a real Sith. Never forget it." The soldiers ringed Jessa slowly, toeing the dead Knights from their way as they fell into neat formation around the young Sith lordling. Cytharat moved closer, murmured, "There's no time, we must move quickly."
Pierce grunted, "The platform's outside, come along."
Winnie stomped her foot, though. She glared at each one of the soldiers with the most imperious disdain, "Don't think to command me. You will obey, rather." But Pierce just snorted at the arrogant girl.
"You're a fool, if you think I'm half as worried over your commands. As I am those of the Wrath. She's the only one I really obey, trust me. I fail to get her daughter off this dustbowl of a planet, and I'll lose more than my teeth this time." Pierce gestured, moving the soldiers into a rough formation around the Sith acolytes and their overseer.
They moved towards the entrance in a sharp wedge, fanning out directly as they marched steadily towards the landing platform. Their weapons began firing as they emerged out from the Tomb, and the red sand swirled up and over their heads in brilliant twisted eddies of hot air. The world of Korriban itself seemed to be screaming its defiance of the force attacking it, and the Imperials yelled just as loud, their wild cries of rage and anger reaching up into the heady sky. They cheered and called aloud, falling in a rush towards the landing platform at the far end of the dust-strewn pathway.
But the Empire's soldiers stopped short, stumbled to a halt as they suddenly came face to face with two men, the twins who'd cut such a terrible path across the galaxy's worlds. One dark and one light, their garb as compelling bright as their respective miens. The determination that highlighted their approach, as each one of the twins stepped forward and down from the platform. Korriban's destruction lighted their gaze, the hard, terrible looks they leveled on the soldiers in their red and black armored plates. And the gold of their sabers sang out shrill and vivid up into the spinning madness of the air, as they strode forward.
The gold warriors were commanded by twins. Of course they would move in pairs.
Then Jessa hummed her own song, commanded the soldiers around her. The Imperials moved from her way as she stepped out in front of them, with Pierce alone looming just behind her. He was huge behind her small, fierce frame, so that she looked even more tiny as she braced herself in the center of their path. Pierce leaned down, whispered against her ear. Jessa breathed in slowly and nodded, her right hand clutching the folds of a long cloth scarf against her side. Her training saber tapped her left thigh in a slow, steady cadence. Tapped, like the rhythm of her own heartbeat, or her breaths. One, two, again and again, slowly, surely.
The twins faced her, both men studying her with methodical precision. Trying to discern her, understand her. Jessa pressed her lips into a thin smile, so that her blue, blue eyes shined brightly out from under the dark wash of her ebony-colored braids, and she promised them through the very Force that ached in the sand and dust of Korriban. Promised that she would fight them. The one in dark robes called out to her, "What are you called, girl? What is your name?"
His brother grunted, "Before we destroy you."
Jessa tapped her blade against her thigh again. "I am Sith," she told them. And she launched herself forward, running fast. With energy whipping against her small feet, using it to compel herself along and then up. Jessa lifted herself up, up. Until she was sailing through the air and over the heads of both the twins. They twisted their heads up, trying to follow her and saw her whipping out at them with that piece of waving cloth even as she flew along. The trailing ends of the scarf lashed out; like a flog, it wrapped around the throat of the light-colored brother. He spun around on the balls of his feet to face the small girl as she tumbled down behind them onto the red dusty ground in a single crouch, and he glared at her through narrowed gold-brown eyes.
Glared at her, until the thunk of the other end of the scarf falling against his back rang out through the stillness between them. Jessa smiled at him one last time, just as his eyes went wide with realization. She lifted her hand up, waved her middle finger through the air in his direction. Taunting him with the crude hand signal taught her by the soldiers who gathered and instructed her over the years. Then the grenade she had tucked into the folds of the cloth before sending it around his neck - it exploded.
The percussion of the blast lifted all of them up, sent some of them tumbling backwards onto the ground. Red sand shot up in crimson sharp needles that flew at them, burned their skin and peppered their softest bits of flesh. The warriors gathered around the twins screamed and writhed in pained lumps all along the ground, and then they all disappeared as the sand fell back onto the ground in a dark cloud of dust and smoke. Pierce appeared out from the storm of swirling dust clouds, rushing towards Jessa with his thick arms outstretched and yelling behind him towards the other Imperials, "Here comes the Way! Overhead!"
The huge freighter winged low, zipping down from the red sky over their heads to settle into neat place right alongside the shuttles lining the landing platform. Gorgeous piloting, as usual. Jessa jumped into Pierce's hold, her gaze flying to find Jole running behind the soldiers as the ramp of the Freedom's Way lowered with clanging force against the Korriban ground. Pierce ran with her in his arms, focused only on reaching the Way. To get off the planet with his charge. And then they caught sight of Gaibriel Duncan, watched him duck out from the Way's airlock and wave at them, shouting.
Jessa looked back only one last time. Looked back, in time to watch another monument collapse onto the ground under the weight of attack and fomented rage. And she saw them both, saw those twins together there on the ground. The dark-garbed one looked back at her, his eyes wide and sad as he held onto his bloodied brother.
That one looked at her, too. He screamed his hatred towards her back, his face splattered from the blood that streamed out of the wounds on his head, his face, from his shattered, destroyed arm. Screamed loudly, just as her uncle reached out to grasp her, hold her and carry her away to safety.