In Which the winds of the Force blow Fay to the frontline of the war, and then into the heart of her past.
When Fay first hears the rumors of galactic war, she brushes them aside. Someone has always been at war with someone else, in this galaxy, and some larger skirmish is is nothing to be concerned about- she's halfway across the galaxy from Geonosis and the Trade Federation, bringing what aid she can to the survivors of a solar flare in a system whose names she's never been able to keep straight, they change so often.
But the rumors don't stop.
There's word, that reaches Melida (or is it Daan these days?), of outbreaks of violence all over the Outer Rim, as far-flung as Dantooine and Ryloth, all connected by a cyst or something of the like.
But then, once she is done healing the too-recently battle-scarred planet as best as she can, the Force (and something else, something she hasn't acknowledged in centuries) calls her away, to a planet named Queyta.
On the way, she connects to the Holonet for the first time in months, to take in as much news as she can. Very little of what she finds is good.
The fact that a corporation is bold enough to attempt to have a Senator assassinated in broad daylight, on Coruscant of all places, is one thing. The attempted summary execution of said Senator and two Jedi accompanying her by a planet that seceded from the Republic, which did nothing to release them from the individual treaties that granted diplomatic immunity to all three in the wake of the last Sith war, is another, and Fay can understand how that might spark war out of a stubborn refusal to break alliances, even over such a foolish move.
Well, she can understand it as the product of someone pulling the strings as she'd seen so many times in so many wars, at least.
Still, the puppetmaster behind the war is a concern for after this mission.
On Queyta, she finds Jon Antilles as the first of the other Jedi there, mere minutes before Knol Ven'nari and Nico Diath land in their freighter.
"Where's the fire?" asks Antilles, a joke he's more than played out with how many times he's used it upon crossing paths with Knol.
The Bothan, in reply, snaps her fingers and ignites edges of Jon's cloak. "You're wearing it, drifter," she snarls, half-heartedly.
A twitch of Fay's fingers blows out the flames with a gust of wind. "Patience, Master Ven'nari." She reaches for the Force, and it guides her words. "We wait on one more Jedi for our little party."
As if on cue, the pallid face of a human or near-human Jedi too recently ill for her tastes came into view, too-tense shoulders up around his ears.
Then she realizes what her senses are telling her: it is not illness he is suffering from, but poison.
She's not aware of what is said, even on her part, or the shuffling of the other Jedi around her- the world shrinks down to the press of her hands against his head and the knowledge that comes as she wipes away the poisons that remain in his system.
The substance itself feels familiar, in the Force, but not enough that she would be willing to concretely say that she's seen it before. More than that, though, the effects (as muted as they are, by the time the young Knight had made it to Queyta) are more familiar, and she can even put a name to them.
Admittedly, she hadn't expected to encounter either Flesh Rot or the Slimy Doom again, not in her second life, but somehow the mystical diseases had made it out of the graveyard that had been home, before the Rakata had come.
Still, just because the symptoms were older than the Jedi Order didn't mean that she couldn't solve the issue with a bare moment to lay her hands on him.
Fay only returned her focus to the mission at hand when she felt the Force swirling around the other Masters, turning her eyes to them just in time to see them leap from the cliff's edge with the younger Jedi- Kenobi, the Force whispers in her ear- and sighs at the dramatic choice her friends have made, watching them descend, robes billowing behind them as they descend slowly to the platform floating across the river below.
Fay takes one, two, three quick steps, and as the fourth lands on open air, she dissolves into a whistling gust, flowing down faster than the rest of her party fall and reconstituting herself well before they manage to land, not a hair out of place.
"Shall we?" she asks, taking no small amount of pleasure in the way they startle and whirl on her, blades blazing with iridescent light- all save for Knol, who offers her a wry grin so familiar it hurts.
"By all means," says the Bothan, fur gently ruffled by the invisible updraft that her mastery of flame kept wrapped around her. "Lead the way."
The ancient Jedi does, guided less by the Force whispering in her ear and more by the feeling of the air currents curling through the passages, following the winds back to the beings that breathed them out- to the child that could, in another time, have become a Sith Acolyte and the ancient weapon in all but name, charged with killing her if she sets one foot out of line.
A weapon she recognizes.
"Durge," she says, grateful for whichever aesthetics-crazed designer left the research area suspended in the center of the platform, looking out over the lava river it was drifting along- the Gen'Dai was durable, but even its unnatural regeneration could not save it from that level of immolation.
"You," he snarls, drawing both blasters as he glared at Fay. "I've been looking for you for a long, long time."
"I see." Fay gestures once, and the vial that the aspiring acolyte was trying to slip into a belt pouch surreptitiously jerked itself out of her hand, landing gently in her palm. "Well," she says, inspecting the vial briefly before slipping it into a belt pouch, "I am in the middle of a retrieval mission, but I suppose I have the time to handle you, Durge."
"No, you don't," snarls the ancient warrior, and both of his blasters rise, prompting every other sentient in the room save for her and a Skakoan not far from Knol.
The blasters perform an admirable imitation of a heavy repeater, in volume of fire if nothing else. Fortunately (or, perhaps, unfortunately, if one looks at things from Durge's point of view), Fay catches every single bolt, plucking them out of the air as if they were lightballs thrown by younglings and not energy blasts capable of punching through most forms of armor.
Durge snarls wordlessly and switches targets- initially, it appears as if he was aiming for Knol, which was not something Fay found herself particularly concerned with, but that impression vanishes like morning dew once she tracks the line of fire.
"Knol!" she snaps, lunging forwards as she sends the younger Jedi the impression of flames erupting from the Skakoan, then puts it out of her mind as she lands in front of Durge, shattering both blasters with two finger flicks and the shockwaves those induce in the blasters, albeit not before he manages to get his shot off at the Skakoan.
Fay feels as much as hears the detonation of the sentient's methane tanks, but can't bring herself to dedicate any more attention to them- one way or another, Knol has it handled, and she has an old enemy to handle for her own part.
The armor is more impressive than she remembers, obviously having been upgraded or replaced since he last slunk away into the shadows, with more protection around his core nervous bundle and what passes for a central nervous system on the species. He's also sporting more peripheral equipment, like the flechette launcher and the rocket launcher built into his gauntlets, but those aren't of particular concern given how far inside his reach she is. Even the energy shields he likes to wear are of less use than a glass of water in an endeavor to conquer the City of Brass, and she's more than strong enough to tear holes through his armor with just her bare hands.
She feels Knol approach, blade lit, and throws up a hand. "Lightsabers will only make this problem worse! Protect the antidote!" She hops up, landing lightly on the leg that Durge used to try and kick her, then leaps over his head, sending the vial flying to Knol with the Force, before landing behind Durge and tearing the entire backplate of his armor off, ripping the armorweave underneath and exposing some of the ancient being's flesh.
Unfortunately, Fay isn't fast enough to drop the metal plate, and the almost skeletal frame of a jetpack attached near the top expands and ignites, dragging her along for a moment before detonating.
While not directly physically injurious to her, it did hurl her past the edge of the platform, and had it not been for the scaffolding holding the platform up, she would have fallen much farther before recovering.
As it stands, she's more than capable of making the jump back up to the platform, where the acolyte has been disarmed both literally and metaphorically, Nico's blade at her throat, and Knol and Kenobi are being menaced by Durge and his phrik-forged flails.
They're doing better than most other Jedi would, at least- Kenobi knows how his blade catching the chain would change the heads' trajectories and how to stay out of said changed trajectories, and Knol is barely visible within the shroud of flame she has wrapped around her, tongues of the stuff licking out to deflect attacks and occasionally probe at Durge's defenses.
All of this, naturally, serves as a perfect distraction, letting Fay land gently next to the Gen'Dai and strike him under his arm with both hands.
Durge goes flying, all three meters of rot-gray flesh and heavy armor, and lands in the lava river with a sound that sounds vaguely like "sploop", guided by Fay's command of the Force and the winds alike.
"My apologies," she says after being sure that Durge's burning hate-rage-pain in the Force vanishes into Kelemvor's hands, brushing a dangling lock of hair back behind her ear. "Normally I'm better than that. It appears I'm a little out of practice."
Kenobi laughs, a ragged, desperate sound. "If that is what you call out of practice, Master Fay, then I don't think I'd want to see you on your best day."
Fay chuckles in return, no small amount of bitterness. "No offense, Kenobi, but I hope you never have to see that. There's a reason I try to pick up as many relief missions as I can, as opposed to the kind where I have to fight. Too many bad memories to be dug up, not that I'm going to have the luxury of that for too much longer."
Kenobi's eyebrow rises. "I'm not sure whether to be concerned or relieved by that, Master Fay."
Again, Fay chuckles, more rueful than bitter this time. "I've always been told that both are appropriate, at least by the survivors." Then, she sighs, the weight of what she's done and what she still has to do before the war ends pressing down on her through the Force. "I won't be able to accompany you to finish the mission. Be safe, and may the Force be with you."
"If we can ask, what are you doing?" asks Nico, one eyebrow rising.
"You can ask, but I can't answer, not until it's done."
"Swift winds, then, Fay," says Knol, cutting off the other Jedi and the struggling acolyte, "and may the Force be with you."
"Is, was, and will be. Good hunting." One gesture from Fay has a sprout in a hydroponics stand in the middle of the platform erupt into a tree that looks like, perhaps in a hundred years, it could stand among the wroshyr of Kashyyyk as an equal, which they stride through as though walking through a door. When the tree explodes into the Living Force, leaving only the sprout behind, Fay is nowhere to be seen.
While Fay might wish to rely on Tree Stride to make it to the planet that, once upon a time, had been Abeir-Toril, the use of the Dark Side of the Force- first by the Rakata, then after them by the various Sith empires- has made that all but impossible, even without the way that the Stygian Caldera interfered with the connections of the Weave that tried to reach across its boundaries.
It was, technically, possible to punch through the Caldera by way of Plane Shifting to somewhere like Baator or Limbo, or even the use of Gate, but the former would be entirely too time consuming to prepare the planar rods and the latter… well, Fay wanted to avoid drawing too heavily on the Weave too quickly, both for her own health and for the fear of someone taking notice- while most of the knowledge of Mystra's gifts (which, at that point, was de facto exclusively Sith secrets, her and those few she tried to teach aside) had been lost in the wake of the Battle of Ruusan, she knew for a fact that Bane had slithered away, and by the time she'd managed to convince enough of the remaining Lords to help her search for him, the Senate had already largely defanged the Order, and after seeing Farfalla's corpse, as well as the rest of the Jedi he'd taken with him, on Tython after Bane finished with them, the Order became unwilling to hunt him down and, eventually, forgot he had survived in the first place.
Still, for all the old memories and ill presage around Dromund Kaas, that was where both the Force and what influence Mystra could exert through the Wave were pulling her, so into the Caldera she goes.
Seeing Dromund Kaas is just as painful as it always was- from the physical appearance of the planet, it could almost be mistaken for Toril, as it once appeared from the Astral Sea, but only from a distance- once Fay got closer to the planet, the scars from so many wars and bombardments became more visible, and perhaps more unnervingly, both the Weave and the Force grew ragged.
This wasn't anything she hadn't felt before, on the other times she'd been on Sith planets over the centuries, so she pushes on, landing near the ruins of the Emperor's palace.
"Thou hast returned." Fay turns and smiles, seeing Withers- Jergal- again. "Perhaps you will be better company than these half-witted palm-readers."
It takes a moment for Fay to register the crumpled bodies scattered around Withers' feet, and even longer to smell the stench of the Dark Side roiling off of them, all rot and despair and imminent collapse.
"What did they try?" asks Fay- she already knows that Jergal will, given half an excuse, happily remain uninvolved outside of those he considered his, so for him to have killed them so directly (and she can feel the reverberations that Jergal's Circle of Death left in the Weave after tearing the life from these bodies- he had to have done it directly).
"They claimed to follow the Lord of the End of Everything, and attempted to bind me into service of their false god." Fay winces- there isn't a god she's met who would take anything resembling imposters kindly, especially in the wake of the hare-brained scheme Bane and his two compatriots led with Karsus' crown.
"I understand." Fay pauses for a moment, as much to see if Withers has anything else to say as to gather her own thoughts. When no further response from the ancient god is forthcoming, Fay speaks. "I have been called here, in part by the Force and in part by the Weave. Is there anything you can tell me about that?"
The Scribe of the Dead's head tilts to the side as he scrutinizes her, then returns to vertical. "The man whose strings the war dances on is, indeed, the last true heir of Bane. His name you will have to discover on your own, but you will not be alone for it- many of those who are, as is said today, marching far away are not so distant as to be unreachable, if you look."
Fay's breath hitches, but otherwise she doesn't outwardly react. "Thank you for your advice, Lord Jergal."
"Before you do depart," he continues, "you will need to decide whether to take up the trident again- it is as much yours as Akadi's, and not even Vitiate could change that."
As if summoned by the god's words, the winds coalesce into a trident, green and glowing, irregular in ornamentation between what has been worn smooth and broken off over the millennia, haft jutting towards the sky like a particularly belligerent purple worm sticking its head out of the earth.
"I've spent long enough leaving this behind," says Fay, after a moment of just feeling the weapon in the Force. "It's time I stopped hiding from the wind and started dancing with it again.
Her hand closes around the haft of Nyrulna, and in the instants between her fingers closing and heaving the trident from the ground, there is a flash of light, and the Weave draws the armor that once, when Fay's name was Tav, they had all but lived in.
A smile touches Withers' lips. "Just so. I will come when you call."
The god vanishes in a puff of bone dust, leaving Fay standing among the dead on a dead world, ready to shelter the light of the universe just as they had in ages past.
And that's that!
This would have been shorter, but first Fay got chatty and then so did Withers.
This one's probably not gonna stay a oneshot, but ojala my muse cooperates on the next chapters of Incense and Unplanned Obsolescence plus my Meetra Surik examination before it drags me back here.
Here's a picture of the BG3 character (an avariel paladin) that I deliberately tried to make look like Fay: httpd (:/) (/) (/) a (/) cHS351R (remove spaces and parentheses)
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