"Betrayer. We meet again."
The cyborg's voice ground its way out of its massive metallic frame, which appeared to Rey to be even larger than last time they'd met. Was that an upgrade or downgrade? Hard to tell. She'd find out the hard way and wouldn't make the mistake of going easy on him, it, this time.
Its bulk blocked the entrance to the temple, a plain opening cut into the black stone cube that stood at the end of the path of bone under her feet.
"This time I'll kill you right," she said, "I'm going to slice you up so fine I'll be able to cook you and eat you and take a huge metal shit into that volcano," she nodded at one of the fire-spitting peaks, "That should do it."
The cyborg winced at the thought of such a dishonorable and thorough death. "You're no Jedi," it growled.
"The first and last thing we'll ever agree on," she ignited her saber and stepped forwards.
The cyborg advanced a step, and from the entrance behind him emerged two columns of Darksiders; Knights and their followers and acolytes, practitioners of the ways of the Sith. A variety of races and species and weapons, but all wearing the same scowls or looks of cool contempt, clothed in the standard Darksider black, red or tasteful combination thereof. United in the hate she could feel radiating from them like the heat from the distant volcanoes. It brought a warm glow to her heart to know that she was held in such low regard by such total scumbags, though she simultaneously shivered a little in anticipation; she'd known there were a few here, but not this many, not so organized. There must have been fourteen, fifteen. Too many.
They formed two rows, either side of the cyborg. "This is where it ends, Betrayer," it rumbled, "How long did you think we would let you pick us off one by one?"
"Well, well. The gang's all here," she couldn't help her lip curling in a defiant sneer, "You're going to need every single fucking one of them."
"Traitor to your bloodline," shouted a Knight as he stepped forwards, out of the rank, "This is where you fall." He ignited a sputtering red saber as he advanced. Red had always been big, naturally, but sputtering had been a popular trend ever since the fall of the First Order. Rey briefly wondered what Ben would make of that. The Darksiders had never believed that he had turned at the last moment...
Focus, girl! The Knight was a massive, male human, at least a head taller than her, armor pads placed more for cosmetics than protection, perched upon an unnaturally well muscled physique that was tightly wrapped in something black and shiny. A panel populated by blank red and grey buttons was strapped between his bulging pectorals. His shaven head was gruesomely scarred, with a sickly grey pallor, but she doubted that to be the result of actual injury; everything about him looked derivative of Sith hall of famers.
Rey watched him bear down upon her, his filed teeth bared in a snarl and was vaguely aware that to any sane, normal person, he would be terrifying, but the thought of these guys having a big game of rock-paper-scissors for the privilege of taking down Rey Skywalker and thereby achieving everlasting glory was actually quite amusing. Too bad for this dope that he'd won.
"When this is done and you are beaten, oh what games we shall play," he growled, "I've dreamed of them a thousand times. You will beg for death."
Rey frowned. "Is that from your Cinder profile? I think I swiped right on you last week."
She could see the other Knights moving to flank her. This guy wasn't the threat, just the biggest, hungriest distraction they had. Still, he was going to do his best to slice her limbs off and transform her life into a living hell. She wondered how many other women, or men, he'd played his games with.
Lightsaber in his right hand, he reached around to a back holster with his left to draw a vibro axe and leap at her with a roar, both weapons bearing down on the space she occupied. It would have been an impressive way of cleaving her into bloody chunks, if she'd not spent years hunting beings just like him, so sure of their strength and power, so sure that she was all reputation, a grand façade created to hide a weakling girl. A Force-assisted step to snap her in a fraction of a second to a place outside of the line of attack. A whip of a yellow arc and the hand holding the sputtering saber was falling to the bone-white path. Surprise in his eyes and a second yellow flash left the other hand and the axe clattering across the ground. Fury and shock twisted his face; the pain wouldn't hit for seconds yet. Eyes wide in disbelief followed the skittering axe and went dumbly to where his hands should have been but she wanted him to look at her before she did it. Their gaze met, and she swept the saber up between his legs, stopping halfway through his torso. His eyes bugged out of his head, mouth a gaping 'o' of horror as he crumpled to his knees, disconnected from legs that might support him, blood and shit and fluids flooding from the split body.
Good. It was her mission to rid the galaxy of such worthless creatures and return it to the light. Let the cleansing begin.
Now the fight was on. Two rushed at her from the left, a tall human male with close cropped silver hair, and a bith, Sith prayers etched into its bulging yellow skull. She felt an intangible assault from her right, Force fear, from something that might once have been human and female. It wouldn't work on her. She skipped backwards down the path, luring the two on, to avoid being surrounded. They had numbers. She needed to move, to take them on in ones and twos, or she was dead.
The human reached her first, just, and launched a quick thrust with his red saber. Not quick enough though; she blasted him back against a head, hard, and took the fight to the bith, who was skilled, but it took only a couple of seconds to get to her go-to feint and deliver a fatal slash across the midsection.
The rest were trying to surround her. The correct tactic. All they needed to do was get some behind her and she was done. If she continued to retreat, she would end up on the glass plain, but the heads were useful cover. So, forward, into the vanguard, reduce the numbers.
She loved this. She shouldn't, but these moments of blood and clarity when she could forget all the shit, all the regrets and pain and be free from expectations, without judgement, holding life and death in her hands alone, were when she felt most alive. These were the moments she was closest to the Force, the most in touch with a heritage best denied, deep in a connection without limits. She loved it far too much, she knew.
So she fought. She spun, she flipped and skipped, a blur, a savage dance. She used the heads to block and divide them, quicker than their fastest, crueler than their worst. They fought atop the temple entrance, leapt from head to head, skated on the expanse of black glass and atop the bones of the dead, and the Darksiders fell one by one.
But they were many. A Force blast caught her by surprise, sending her flying from the top of a stone head to a heavy landing on a painfully twisted knee. A grazing blow from a vibro scythe rattled the teeth in her head hard enough to taste blood and permanently blur the vision in one eye. A fast, precise kick from a long limbed togrutan, drove the wind from her and slammed her into a head, bright points of light swirling before her eyes as she watched her blood spatter on the bones at her feet.
Still she did not fall, and as the battle continued, she relished seeing the expressions change on their hateful fucking faces, as they knew they were done, that their dreams of status and Sith superstardom were going to come to nothing, just another one cut down by the detestable Rey Skywalker, the Betrayer. She loved to watch the dwindling remainders grow increasingly uncertain, and start to look for escape, but they were so far from help. Poor them.
Until at last it was just her and the cyborg, standing before the temple entrance. That seemed fitting. One arm hung limp by its side, the other clutched the huge dual bladed vibroscythe-saber.
"Here we are again," she tried not to limp as she walked towards it. Not looking her best, she knew; that eye was fucked and the left side of her head felt weird. Get this done and get back to the med bay.
The 'borg threw down its weapon, without a word.
"Huh," she was left bemused and a little confused by this act of apparent surrender. "I'm not really going to eat you. I'm on a low titanium diet. We'll do this the old fashioned way." She cast away the saber, which spun a golden disc as it looped away in a grand arc to the rear of the stone cube.
Their eyes met.
"Strike me down," it rumbled, "You lose either way, Palatine."
The spinning saber returned from the opposite side of the cube to slice the Knight in half, the two pieces falling and striking crystal splinters from the brittle ground. Rey caught the hilt and stood over the creature's torso, focusing to split its armor into curling strips and delve within, as she had done before, but this time not searching for some lifeless artifact. She wasn't going to make the same mistake again; this time she would end it.
"There you are," she whispered, exposing the small, wriggling humanoid in the heart of the machinery, the master of the monster that was its home and identity. She used the Force to peel back the metal that enclosed it, and it hissed, recoiling from the light, defenseless now.
The compassion that bloomed within her was unexpected, but it was hard to reconcile this weak, squirming creature with the monster that moments ago had tried to kill her, and that she knew had shown others no mercy. It was one thing to kill a Sith acolyte, a vessel for evil, in combat, and something else to end this life in cold blood.
A chill gust ruffled her hair and wrapped her in an embrace that brought a shiver to bones that had fought too hard for too long. Adrenaline ebbed away, leaving her heavy, feet rooted to the ground, fatigued and aware of the dirt and blood that covered her, a burnt hand, a dozen other hurts. Rey looked back at the path behind her and the bodies strewn across it. Beyond that the black mirror of the obsidian sea of the dead and the peaks that dominated the land, spitting fire from the heart of this burning planet. The shuttle waiting in orbit and the expectant Council. All the steps that had brought her to here and now, where it was too late to turn back, too late to choose another, less bloody, destiny.
She turned back to the creature, levelled the saber at it and quickly ran the blade through its scrawny, naked body. It stiffened, gasped and went still. A new injury, a new ache from deep within her, flared up and she pushed it away, almost, but not quite, burying it as just another act of war. Another wound that wouldn't show, but left a scar all the same.
From deep in the hidden heart of the temple, the artifact called. She had not yet fulfilled the mission. Rey extinguished the saber and entered.
Finn strode the surface of the great glass expanse and felt the ghosts beneath his feet, in the burnt air around him and the sky above, surrounding him, their pleas whispered wordlessly. The shock and fear they felt in their final moments permeated this place, held here embedded in the Force, the calls becoming louder with every step.
They didn't deserve to die, they protested. They were innocent. Who had done this to them, they asked. Millennia-old regrets, unfulfilled wishes, unrequited loves and broken promises flowed through him, filling him with ancient pains and sorrows, resurrected to burn his soul. He sought a way to block them out without disconnecting entirely from the Force; he had to, because how could he help them, how could he fix this? It was impossible, an ages old crime, the perpetrator long gone. The voices that had no sound reached a crescendo and became overpowering, bringing him to a stuttering stop as they crowded out his own thoughts, leaving him unable to feel anything but the dead.
Finn screwed his eyes shut. Trust the Force. Let it guide him. Let the Force and the lifeforce of those that died here, carried within it, flow through him. Don't fight it. He surrendered to the flow, let himself be immersed, swam in it, drank it in and understood; by allowing them this contact, by hearing them, he was releasing them. They needed to be heard, after so long trapped in a perfect and total silence. He would bear this for them.
On he walked, across the dark plain and felt the release of the thousands that had died here as they passed through him. Their anguish and regret still burned, but with every step the pain this fire brought was diminished, replaced by a strength, building within him.
Finn shuddered a little as he stepped onto the white path and understood its story, kneeling to lift a piece and turn the fragment of bone in his fingers. A little way along, he encountered the first of the bodies, maybe Knight, maybe Sith, or some acolyte - he was never up on Darksider fashions - but definitely killed by a lightsaber. Rey had been here. Further on, blood, a vivid scarlet spattered on the ivory ground, still fresh. She had been here only minutes before. Could the blood be hers? He scanned the scene and saw other bodies but recognized none of them, thank the Force.
At the end of the path of bone, a stark black cube and an entrance cut into it. He could see steps leading down into an interior hidden by shadows of perfect pitch, but Finn didn't need eyes to know what lay deep within. The sins of the Dark Side emanated from the temple like a stench that assaulted his every nerve end.
Rey never should have come here. It was a place that should remain forever locked away, forgotten, untouched by any being that hadn't surrendered every spark of light, every good thing in themselves to the appetites of the Dark Side, but she was inside somewhere, misled and confused by forces he didn't yet understand, facing dangers she would not be able to overcome alone.
And only he could save her. Hero time. Finn pushed his cape over his shoulder, ignited his saber and descended into darkness.
