Dissolution
Marai
We passed the huge shape of the mass shadow generator, and there ahead of us was what looked like a vitrified stone road. I led with Atton and Bao-Dur behind me, Brianna and Visas next, and Mira at the rear. The road meandered along the rills of old fissures, then leaped across them in a span that was obviously not natural.
"The technology used is odd." Bao-Dur commented. He knelt, running his hand along the stone of the bridge. "You see? This looks almost as if they ripped stone upward somehow, liquefied it, cooled it, and then added the center span from rock torn from there and there." He motioned to the edges where it looked almost as if it had been scooped out. "We can't do that even now. This would have to be heated to over 3300 degrees C, formed then cooled, all in less than a minute. Not once, but three times."
"I've seen bridges like it before." Atton demurred. "On Rakata Prime, the planet where the star Forge was located."
"But who made them?" Bao-Dur asked.
"Well the ancient..." Atton looked at us. "The Ancient Rakata made them."
"So this is designed by the Rakata?" I knelt and touched it. "This bridge is older than the Republic!"
"The romantic life of a Jedi!" Mira snorted. "Coruscant, Corellia, the bright spots of the galaxy! Do we go there? No! We don't even go back and clean up Nar Shaddaa! We could have ended up on Deralia, or Echana, or even Ithor! But no! We have to go to a dirt ball of rotten stone and nothing either moving or growing!" The others chuckled. "No excitement at all!"
Something howled, and everyone flinched. Nothing living could exist here for long. Nothing to eat, and moving around to find something with pockets of toxic vapors wasn't happening. But that sound definitely came from the throat of something alive.
"All right, I take it back. This was fine up until a minute ago!"
I looked back, and signaled for the others to stop. Behind us a furry shape stood on the edge of the escarpment. I pulled out my electro-binoculars, and looked at the figure roaring and waving a sword.
"It's a large furry being." I said.
"Furry?" Mira reached over, and I handed her the electro-binoculars. She focused, and hissed. "It's a wookiee. The problem is, I not only know who it is, but I killed him on Nar Shaddaa. That's Hanharr."
"But how-" Brianna asked.
"Kreia. She wanted something to keep the rest of us distracted while she deals with Marai." Atton said.
"Hanharr won't keep us all distracted." Visas said.
"No. But it will keep me distracted." Mira said. "He's hunted me for years, and it looks like it's his chance to catch me."
"Mira-"
"No, Marai. I'm sick and tired of running from him. It ends here." She shook her head. "Besides, he's got that fancy tricked out bowcaster of his. Want to bet he won't try to pick us off when we cross the bridge?" She handed me the electro-binoculars back. She was right. He had pulled the bowcaster off his back, and had aimed it in our direction, eye to the scope.
Mira walked out in plain sight then knelt down into a meditation seat as if she'd done it her entire life. "Go on. I'll be okay."
"Mira-"
"Damn it Marai, he scares the hell out of me, but if I stay here, you get the chance to stop this madness! Please..." She looked at the ground, the lightsaber in her hands. "Please go."
I nodded, and we crossed the bridge. The last we saw of her was that frail form still waiting.
Atton
Marai seemed to lose heart after we left Mira. She pushed on, only her own determination to end this keeping her going. The road ran straight and true, coming to a hairpin turn. Rocks fell from the escarpment, and we stopped. Five silent figures clad in white stood there. They looked down on us, and Brianna stepped forward. "What madness is this?" She screamed.
"What-"
"My sister! My dead sisters!" She screamed again, this time in pain. "Why has she done this? Kreia!" She started up a path in the rock face.
"Brianna!"
"Marai..." She looked back at us then ran back down, leaping into Marai's arms. "Forgive me sister of choice. As Hanharr was with Mira, these are mine to face." Then she turned, charging up the trail toward them.
Marai stood there, tears on her cheeks. Then she turned and led us on.
We came to yet another ramp, and climbed it. It proved not to be a ramp, but another constructed bridge sweeping almost a kilometer over as massive chasm. Visas stopped, looking backward. From a dust cloud, four figures came. They were dressed in tattered Jedi robes, and each bore a lightsaber. They paused at the bottom of the ramp, looking up at us.
"Visas..."
"Demons from our past." She whispered and turned to face Marai. "Kreia is delving into our past, finding what has pained us the most, making us relive it here." She motioned toward the figures. "This is of my past. Something I must face. Go." She walked back down the bridge toward them.
"Visas!" I caught Marai's arm as she tried to leap after the blind woman.
"If Visas is right, you're the only one that is going to go on. But you won't if you face all of our fears with us."
"But-"
"Damn it, Marai, we're here because you needed the help. This is the price of our help." I looked after Visas, who now stood facing the four figures, her saber blade gleaming in the darkness. "We have to go on."
She hung against my arm then turned. Bao-Dur and I were all that was left, and he looked back at her. I don't know what she saw in his eyes, but it seemed to strengthen her.
We went on, coming to a small cul de sac to the edge of the path. One figure stood there, bright red hair flowing in the wind. I froze. Oh gods, if I had considered what Visas had said I would have known. I heard Marai shouting at me, but I was running toward my own fate.
Marai
I saw the woman standing there, and Atton was first walking then running toward her. Part of me was being torn away as each of my companions abandoned me to my own fate, and part of me wanted to call him back, go back defeat whatever faced Visas, fight Brianna's sisters at her side, face Hanharr alongside Mira.
But somehow I knew that I would fail if I did. I looked at Bao-Dur. He would be leaving me in the next few minutes; I knew it. I wanted to hold him, keep him from what would no doubt be his nightmare, but I could not. The power of this place was unassailable. It could never be defeated only destroyed.
We went on, there was nothing else we could do.
We came to a wide area where the path became a ramp again. A dozen Sith assassins moved from the shadows, standing before us. Then they moved, forming an honor guard, and knelt. I stopped.
"This is where I get off, General." I looked at Bao-Dur. He wrapped me in those strong arms, and gave me a hug. "Eight side-boys as a captain, 12 as a General or Admiral. I try to go forward, and they'll kill me."
I understood. The others had nightmare in their past. His nightmare was sitting on the plain and would kill us all if we weren't already dead. I looked into his eyes. He was finally at peace. If the Mass Shadow Generator were activated, he'd have seconds to watch the sun approach. He knew he'd die, but dying didn't bother him if he destroyed that device and this place as well.
I strode forward. As I passed them, the assassins stood and turned, facing Bao-Dur.
Destiny
Mira
I saw Hanharr approaching. Part of me gibbered, wanting to run, to hope to all the gods that I could get away, survive. But I knew if I ran, I would lose. Hanharr would hunt me as he'd always threatened, and if I ran, if I gave into that fear he would find a quivering mass of tissue at the end of it, not a person.
He stopped ten meters from me. He threw down the bowcaster and the bandoliers of charges for it. Then he drew that huge Ryyk sword he favored.
"The grey-maned witch said you would come." He growled. "At last it ends. On this graveyard of a planet there is nowhere you can run or hide. Today. Here. It ends."
"I don't want to have to kill you, Hanharr. Why can't you let it go?"
"The life debt calls. As long as it is there, I cannot be free."
"I never held you to the life debt, you did!" I shouted. "I relieve you of it!"
"Run or fight!" He roared. "I feel the hate of this place, but it is nothing compared to my hate of you!" He came at me, and I deflected his sword as I leaped backward onto the bridge. He swung again and again. Lightning fast for someone so huge, but I had been paying attention in training, and it showed.
He had the reach on me. His arms were twice the length of mine, but all I needed was one lucky cut, and he'd be dead. He knew that as well as I did, and held the range open, trying to beat me down. He slashed again and again then suddenly he threw the blade away, leaping at me. I cut to the left, and his hand above the wrist flew aside, falling into space. Then the right caught me.
I kicked upward, feeling his elbow snap, and as I fell toward the bridge, I put both feet into his chest, and as he came down on me flipped him toward the edge.
He crashed into the slick stone, scrabbling frantically for a grip, and I lunged after him, catching the manacle on his severed left hand as he slid off the edge. I was slammed down on the stone as his weight almost tore my arms out of their sockets.
He hung there, looking at me with those mad eyes. "Release me! Let me die!"
"Hanharr, I can't!" I screamed back. "I will not just let you fall!"
He was snarling at me. "I will not suffer another life debt. The grey-maned one, and you! I will not!" He whipped his right arm up, slapping me away as he twisted his wrist and the manacle was still in my hand as he dropped away.
A huge black shape caught him from midair, and I found myself walking behind Hanharr. Around us trees lifted to the sky so high above that the foliage cut off all but the dimmest light. I recognized where it must be... The Shadowlands at the bottoms of the great trees of his home world. He stopped, and as big and angry as he had always been, he seemed almost diffident. I moved to the side so I could see past him. A mass of wookiee fur stood before him. They just stood there, a silent crowd that would judge His worth. He reached out imploring and one of them; a massive elderly Wookiee came forward.
He stopped within easy reach if he intended to slap Hanharr. "My son?"
"Father." He fell to his knees. "I beg forgiveness."
"For what? For being stupid enough to lead the humans to us? For ruining the lives of so many? For defaming the life debt?" He pointed, and Hanharr turned and saw me. His father stepped past him. "We will let you judge him, little human. You have lived up to the life debt as he should, done everything honor demanded. Even tried to save his life yet again." He waved, and I witnessed the fight, Hanharr hanging from the bridge, me frantically trying to save him yet again. I had never seen such a determined face in my life. I had been ready to die for him... Maybe I had.
"I was ruled by fear of him for a time." I found the language easy. As if all I had needed was a larger set of... lungs to speak it as they did. "But soon all I felt was pity for him. So wrapped up in his hate, unwilling to let it go. Have none of you ever done something stupid? Have none of you harmed another by accident? He wanted a family again so much that he tried to get me to accept the life debt when I didn't even understand what it meant! And this, all of his trying to kill me since is because I did not understand, and ran instead. So part of this is my fault." I walked past the huge wook to stand in front of Hanharr.
"I forgive your actions, Hanharr. I release you from the life debt you felt you owed me. I am sorry I did not try to understand it. But I will not see you left alone out here because of me." I waved at the blackness around me."I turned back to his father. "If you feel he is still owed punishment, you can do as you will. Any hatred between us ended when he died, for I had none in my own heart."
The massive wookiee slapped his son, laying him out. "See? That is what the life debt is about!" He grabbed Hanharr by the throat. "Will we forgive you? How can your own family do less than a human?"
He hugged Hanharr. "Come, the meat cooks, the fruit awaits! The family and clan will feast!"
"But..." Hanharr looked at me then slowly his left hand came up. "My life debt still calls."
"Go on Hanharr." I shoved him. "Go to the feast. When I come, I'll look you up, all right?"
He growled then suddenly he picked me up in his arms. For the first time since we had met, he wasn't trying to kill me. I hugged him back, feeling my tears soak into his fur. "Go on, you big lug."
He set me down, rubbing my head as if I were a kid. "I will look for you in time as well, little sister."
As Marai had said in training me, I lay upon the bridge, holding that manacle to my chest, and cried for my enemy.
Brianna
I clawed my way to the top of the escarpment. My hands were bloody from the sharp stone, but my sisters had merely stood there looking at me. I stood, facing them.
"So you come to kill us again." The eldest said.
"Infamy upon infamy." The second said.
"Evil upon evil." The other twin said.
"Actions that will damn you." The next said.
"As you have done all your life." The youngest said.
"No." I flung down the lightsaber, stalking toward them. "My sisters of flesh, have you ever looked at the world through my eyes?" They gave back before me. "Sisters of flesh and blood you were, beloved by father, by your mother. Beloved of me!" I looked from face to face.
"But what did I get in return?" I looked from face to face. "Derision, anger, scorn. You cast everything I ever did to earn your love aside. Why? Because I was not a sister of blood as well!"
I was close enough to touch them. "Kirana eldest, you I admired every day of my life. I wanted to be like you from the moment I knew your name. Saliha, eldest twin. How I wished as a child I had a twin, because never have I seen the devotion you gave Trian, your younger.
"Miralia, do you know how much I wished my hair was like yours, my skin like yours, my eyes like yours? Saterna, my closest in age, how I envied the love you got, which I never did." I was now surrounded. "Do any of you think I cared for you only because of your flesh that I shared? I spent my life trying to be good enough to be among you, even so far as to taking oath to Atris."
"An oath you broke." Trian said.
"She broke it to us first, sisters. She told us over and over that she would teach us, that we would be the new Jedi, mothers of the new Jedi beliefs. Yet where did she get those beliefs? She got them from the Sith! The very enemy we hid from!" I looked around at them. "Did she care that any of you had died facing me? That I had been forced to kill five women I had admired and loved and respected all my life?"
I fell to my knees. "If you think I was wrong, strike me. Kill me here. I betrayed no oath that had not already been betrayed. I did not hate you because of your blood, only loved you because of our flesh."
I looked upward at the stormy skies above me. Their staffs snapped to full extension, and rose as one. Then they came whipping down. I did not blink or close my eyes.
They stopped, less than a centimeter above my head in a perfect circle above me.
Kirana knelt, and I felt her arms enfold me. "Sister of spirit; more valued than all other ties. I greet you as you should have been all those years." She whispered. Then I felt other arms, and all of them were hugging me as I had wanted to be hugged all my life.
Mira came running up to me a few moments later, kneeling on the path, alone.
Visas.
They were the Jedi I had killed. I knew that as I approached. I could feel the areas of their bodies where those mortal wounds had been inflicted. I stopped, and my lightsaber gleamed.
No.
I would not do this again, I would not re-inflict those wounds as I knew I must to survive. Their deaths had driven me down the paths of despair, and behind them I could feel my late master waiting. Knowing that I would join him if I did.
My saber died, and I walked forward. The first struck, and I bit back a scream at the pain as he sliced into and through me from my neck to left hip. The second struck, cutting through my right arm and into my side. The third cut downward, and I felt it sever my left arm and imbed in my side. The fourth punched forward, and I felt the blade lance through my heart.
I fell to my knees, head turned up to face them. "As I did to you, you have done to me." I whispered. I looked past them at the shade of my late master. "Quintain, I killed them from fear of what you would do, but I will not bow to fear ever again. Do your worst."
He reached out, and fire lanced across my flesh. I screamed into unconsciousness.
I felt a hand touch my cheek. I reached up, and suddenly the world seemed to brighten. As I had with Marai, I looked at the true faces of Mira and Brianna and saw them. "Why are you so worried?" I asked. "Wouldn't the world be a better place with my death?"
"And have Marai mad at us?" Mira snapped. "No way!"
"Besides, if you died who would I pick on?" Brianna asked.
"Me, that's who!" Mira said. "No way. You're going to live a long time to spare me that!"
"If you insist."
Atton
As I came close to her, the world rippled. It was the bunkroom I had back on Sulien. She knelt on the bed, the cover held up to conceal the body I had learned so much about that evening, before I had dragged off to torture and death.
I walked up to the edge of the bed. She smiled, reaching out, grasping my hands, and brought them to her neck. "You know what to do, Darius." As she said it, the scene changed, she was strapped to the table, face bloodied from all I had done. But still she smiled as she had done then.
Darius Meldan. My name had been Darius Meldan, a gutter kid from Coruscant that had climbed into the light, and joined the Army to get away from it forever.
I felt my fingers start to squeeze, and stopped them. She looked at me a little piqued. "What, you can't kill me?" She leaned forward, and it was Marai who was in my grasp now, back in the bunkroom. But the voice was the same. "Would you rather repeat what else we did in this room before you tortured and murdered me? We both know you have wanted her here like this, your body upon hers."
I shook my head, stepping back, stepping away from her. "I will not do that again. I will not love you or kill you any more."
"Why not?" She stood. I didn't know if Marai really looked like that under her clothes, and suddenly I was embarrassed for her. "It set you on your path. Took you to Nar Shaddaa, and finally to Peragus." She took my hands, and put them back on her neck. "What if I tell you this time they will choose you. They will send you to Malachor, and you will become one of the faceless ones? That you will murder Jedi and dream of nothing else?"
I pushed her aside. "I will take it as it comes. I'm sorry for what I did, and I will not do it again. Even to save me from that fate."
"Oh really." I spun. I was in a gray stone room. The maniac from Peragus was stalking toward me. He threw something that I caught in the air. I found a stud with my hand, and a golden blade flashed before my eyes as the lightsaber lit.
"Then you will get what you deserve." He said.
I leaped back, instinctively going to guard. "All right big man. Let's dance."
Academy
Marai
The ramp led into the wall of the escarpment, and through a fissure. A massive door opened at my approach. A pair of Dark Jedi awaited.
"Our mistress has ordered that your path not be impeded." The man said.
"We are unsure why though." She stepped forward. "I feel no capability of the Force within you at all. You are merely a baby playing in the shallows. Why are you important?" I merely looked at her. She glared at me. Then she reached out. She tried to draw the Force from me as Quintain had done, and the shock blasted her off her feet into the wall. She crumpled then looked at me. Now there was fear there.
"You feel like them."
"Them?"
"The masters, the ones that taught us this ability." She staggered to her feet. "They cannot be touched by us." She stood, bowing deeply. "I apologize for my rash acts."
I nodded. They both moved aside.
I went on. The architecture was... wrong. There is no real way to explain it unless you have seen architecture from other alien species before. This looked like nothing I had ever seen before. Angles that felt subtly wrong to my eyes.
I walked through the complex, and everywhere I went, the students saw me and backed away, bowing deeply.
I came to a large room. In the center of it, the Sith lord from Peragus knelt in meditation. Near him lay a crumpled form. I stopped then leaped forward. "Atton!"
I caught him up. His right arm had been badly mangled by a lightsaber; no, the bastard had treated his arm like a kanthis bird breast, skinning it from shoulder to wrist with his lightsaber, so he didn't bleed to death. He groaned, looking at me. "Marai... Get away."
"Oh Atton..." I whispered.
"He's good, but I'm wearing him down..." He smiled. "I'll win..."
"Pathetic." I looked at the kneeling lord Sion. "He knows nothing of the blade, and his will is weak. I have broken better men in my sleep."
I stood, facing him.
"You should not have come to Malachor. You were free of it." He looked up, pale unseeing eyes aimed at me. "Now you are here, and she will break you. She is good at breaking people. She will mold you into what she wants you to be, as she has done to all of them." He waved toward the Academy beyond. "Make you weak and fearful."
"As she did to you." I said.
"As she did to me." He agreed. "What became of Nihilus? She told me he died."
"I drained him of life, gave it back to those he had stolen it from, and blew up his ship." I replied.
He smiled. "Good for you. Do you know anything about this place?" He asked conversationally. "The ancient Rakata built it. They placed it where not even our technology could reach, at the heart of a gas giant." He waved his arm. "Their priesthood met here, and their teachings permeate its walls. Acolytes came from their worlds, and here they were infused with the power of this place. Remade in the image of their teachers."
He turned back to me. "But then you came. You came with that monstrous device out there, you stripped the blanket away. You gave us, then Revan and then Malak access to this."
"It wasn't my intention." I replied. "Quintain, the one you call Nihilus is the one that fired the device."
"True. I heard him boast of it so often that I grew sick of his prattling. He stopped talking, even went so far as to extend his mind as Kreia can, reaching out and telling others what he wanted without speaking. Though he never really mastered it.
"As I was saying, their priesthood was broken into four parts. The seers, who look to the future. The executioners, who killed those that did not adhere to the faith, the warriors that fought for it and the judges, who chose. Each was given his own capability from this well of power, and they ruled the galaxy for thousands of years.
"Then their empire crumpled, their priests sickened, then died, trapping the few students where they could not even escape until they too died. But this remained. A focus of dark side energy greater than anything imaginable." He tightened his fist. "A focus we used not for the students that came later, but for ourselves. We would decide who would get that power. And all that proved not to be worthy?" He laughed softly. "They fed it, made us stronger."
"I have studied you." He looked toward me again, and I saw what, hunger, yearning? "I was told to allow you to pass, but I find I cannot, knowing what will happen to you." He reached out in entreaty. "Leave, go back to your ship. Flee while you have the chance."
"I cannot."
"I know this. I would wish you to live a bit longer, but she has grown too powerful for me to face alone. If you go, you will prove too weak. Together, perhaps, we would have a chance. But I see in you too much good to agree to that."
"We are Djarik pieces to her, Sion. We move where she wants, live if she wills, and I for one will not be a piece on a playing board any more."
"Then turn aside. Deny her what she wants. I have discovered that all of this, the destruction of everything we planned together was so that you could be brought here. Leave her with me."
"You betrayed her once, Sion. What makes you think she will ever trust you again?"
"That does not matter." He looked away. "I studied you, learned everything I could about you. I feel now as I did ten years ago when I saw you for the first time on the bridge of Ravager.
"So shy then. Unable to say anything. You were the great General of the Armies, I was just a Jedi youngling, not even an apprentice, drawn to the struggle."
I walked across the deck. There were two Jedi assigned to this ship, three if you counted the Helmswoman that I knew had once been ours. I spoke to each. There had been a man, boy really, that had come, stowing away on Ravager rather than go through channels. I remembered that earnest face, the shy worship I saw in his eyes. I asked how he was, and he stuttered so horribly.
"Oh, Gods..." I looked at that face. I pictured it ten years ago, with long brown hair, and a hopelessly shy expression. "Kielan Sandrotha?" I whispered.
"Yes." He almost smiled. "I see your memory is still good. I worshiped you from afar then. But Malachor changed that. Being trapped on this hell world with no way out will do that to you.
"Over half of our crew was dead from the fusion plume. More died trying to escape in life pods." He gave a slow sad laughed. "Do you know what happens to the human body when it goes from a standard gravity field to over a million in a microsecond?" He asked rhetorically. "The same as happened to all of those ships that fell into it. The human body reduced to a paste on the deck in an instant. When we came in barely under control, less than a hundred had survived. Forty lived through the crash.
"I believed you would come, that the fleet would rescue the few that survived. Our instruments were gone, we could not see you in orbit, but you never came. You never came."
"I was unconscious for most of that time." I whispered. "No one knows what happened to me. I was sent home."
"But they didn't bother to even look did they?" He asked. "Forty people trapped here, unable to escape. No atmosphere to speak of, nothing to eat but the supplies on our ship." He stood. "Quintain was livid. How dare you all ignore him in his moment of triumph?
"Then the other ships crashed. Their crews were dead of course, but they came down and that was when we saw the wonder of what the Rakata had built, because all of them were drawn down and set aside as if they were toys a child's mother had collected. Kreia worked it out first. Perhaps if one of us had thought of it we would be in charge instead. She left the ship. Found the road that led here, entered the chamber at it's heart before any of us."
"She came back, and she was powerful and terrible. Knowing all, seeing all. Able to reach into your mind and draw out those terrors of your life and make you live through them over and over again. Wahansi tried to resist her. She fought against Kreia, but died in a screaming lump as all of her past fears were rammed back into her memory as happening at this very instant. Kreia stood there and watched her die foaming like a rabid hound, making all of us watch.
"I was too young. I could not resist her. But Quintain?" He laughed softly. "Quintain wanted that power, wanted to be what his parents had denied him all those years ago. He went willingly.
"Kreia the seer. Quintain, now Nihilus the executioner. He drained over half of our surviving crew just because he could. When I finally gave in, I became the warrior, the church militant of a lunatic faith.
"But the Rakata believed in balance. There must be one of each, or the balance is not there. Without it the full potential of this temple would be unrealized. We needed one to be judge. But with Wahansi dead and none of the others Force sensitive, we could not be in balance.
"It was like we had a completed engine, fuel system perfectly in alignment, already set in gear, but couldn't find the ignition. With all four we could have reached out as the Rakata did so long ago, put the entire Galaxy under thrall with a single thought. In fact Kreia believed that with at least a Judge, we might have some of that potential.
"Then Revan came. She was looking for a place to leave the captured Jedi. She chose this world because it was new, and no one had surveyed it yet. We had changed so much by then. Only Kreia was pure enough to speak to her. The men and women were dumped here, and Revan left. Quintain immediately took charge of them. We had no fences, no guards, we didn't need them. Any who tried to fight me found that I would not die. Any that fought Nihilus became a snack. Any that resisted when told what to do were banished to the surface to die. After a short while we were alone except for those too mind blasted to be of any use.
"Kreia was livid. She explained as if to children that without the judge we could not reach our full potential. When someone came next, she told us, she would be in charge. We had already discovered that Nihilus could not drain us, but Kreia could reach into our minds and inflict suffering. She was our master, and never let us forget it. But no more ships came.
"We thought Revan had stopped the delivery of Jedi here. But it was years later that we discovered that Malak had. He had use for them somewhere else.
"Revan returned with Sith hopefuls that wanted training. The Academy on Korriban wouldn't hold enough, and here we would be undisturbed. Besides these were to be special troops. Resistant to the Force in all ways, yet sensitive enough to find and capture Jedi.
"But none of them proved worthy of being judge. Their minds were too easily warped, they gave in too easily. I was frightening enough, hacked to pieces yet I returned to confront them again and again. None were worthy of my skills, and I refused to give them the powers I possessed. Facing Nihilus was easier. If you toadied to him, he gave. If you did not, he sucked you dry and left your husk there.
"They became even weaker when faced with Kreia. None proved worthy of being the Judge at our side."
He sighed. "Then Revan was killed, we thought. Now we trained them to kill rather than capture. But even that ended when Malak died and the Star Forge was destroyed. We knew it even as it happened, for like the Star Forge, this is alive in it's own twisted way. We were the most powerful Sith the galaxy had ever seen, and we stood here as our forces self destructed around us! Kreia wanted to wait, to study this more." He waved at the structure around us. "But Nihilus and I were so impatient. We had the force to break the Republic at last. Without the Jedi it would have fallen, been ours.
Alone we were to weak, but together we defeated her. We stripped her of her powers, left her wandering the surface to die. But she left. She found you." He faced me.
"So she brought me here..."
"Yes. You were the one Jedi she felt could have been one of us, that could have filled the role of judge and brought the entire engine to life. The one already touched by the Trayus Core and already chosen by it amidst the hell of the battle. But you had left, and then been exiled. No one knew where you were, but she somehow had a clue.
"Without Kreia to guide us, Nihilus no longer cared if we controlled the galaxy or not. His appetite had grown so great that all he was from that point on was a vessel to carry it to where it could be fed. But I? I wanted to stop her because if you became the judge, you would be her judge, not ours.
"I took a ship that came. I tortured and murdered over half the crew to gain control, then we went after her, for I still do not feel you fully in the Force. She faced me in Peragus rather than let me save you then. I warned you at Korriban, but still you stayed with her. I decided that I must kill you if only to save you from what I have become."
"Why have you told me this?"
"Because you and she are alike in a way I cannot understand. Yet you are different in all ways that should matter. I hate her, and I must hate you as well. You have felt her presence in your mind, watching, guiding, directing. I have felt you in the same way. I have since I saw that frightened woman on Peragus. But your thoughts hold no teachings, no judgment of me yet. That will change.
"I hate you because you left me to die, because you lived an entire life out there while I was trapped here. I hate you because I am repulsive and deformed but you are beautiful and untouched by it. I yearn to be at your side as he was." He jerked a head at Atton. "That weakness makes me hate you even more.
"But I found that weakness mirrored in Kreia. She has a weakness, and perhaps that will lead to her destruction."
"What weakness?"
He looked surprised. "You are her weakness, Marai Devos. You call to part of her she thought dead, and that gives you an opening to destroy her." He lifted a com link, whispering into it. Four men in Sith armor came in. "Take that one and dump him outside with his friends." They picked up Atton, and carried him away. "Your friends are all still alive. Unlike us, they seem to be quite... resilient on their own. I will no longer ask. Come away from here with me, or die."
I looked at him, and suddenly realized that what he wanted more than anything was to be free of this place and his curse. Even if death was the only way. "Why have you not merely allowed yourself to die?"
"The dark forces of this place feed me, heals my wounds, knits my flesh whole again. The fear and pain of those I fight is my meat and drink. My pain is all I have left now, and it sustains me." Yet I knew he lied. He had wanted so much more from life than to be the master of pain in a lunatic asylum.
I shook my head slowly. "I must end this, Kielan. By destroying it or dying."
"Please, Marai. Leave. If you will not I have no choice."
"Neither of us has a choice in it. I do not want to kill you. I hold no malice for you. But if killing you is my only option, sobeit."
Bao-Dur
The 'honor guard' merely stood there watching us. The others except for Atton had joined me, and we faced two dozen of them now. The massive doors opened, and four men carried out a limp body.
"Atton!" Brianna almost leaped forward, but there was a tension in the ones facing us. The men carried Atton down, setting him on the ground before us then returned to the crowd.
Visas and Brianna fell to their knees, and frantically bound up his wounds. Mira took a flask of something, and held it to his lips, and at the first taste Atton came back to consciousness with a start.
"Marai..." He whispered.
"We haven't seen her since she went inside." I told him.
"Facing... A monster... Can't be killed..." He fell back into oblivion.
