Anzat was not what most would consider a welcoming planet. In fact, it was not a controversial opinion to state that the whole world had the feeling of a massive tomb. It was a misty, grey, place, lit by strange and shifting auroric patterns that splayed across the atmosphere like waves over a sea before a storm. The inhabitants were no better: sinister, predatory beings who moved like living shadows and held secrets older than most planetary governments, the local Anzati were creatures that seemed displaced in the realm of the living.
T'ra Saa, despite her accepting nature, had been frightened upon her first encounter with this species. Her first memories of the Anzati were of the fearsome Dark Jedi Volfe Karkko, a wicked and powerful man that had done terrible things to the Galaxy. Karkko had given her cause to be wary of these strange beings; but that was before she met Tholme. Tholme had changed the way she had seen so many things, not least of all the Anzati. He had opened her eyes in a million ways, giving her a path to walk among the shadows and yet remain unstained by the dark.
And Tholme was gone now. His final resting place was set, a tomb within this tomb of a world. A large but humble stone crypt, nestled within a dark and moss-covered hillside on some remote stretch of the planet, was where the great Jedi now lay. Once he had fought and adventured across the Galaxy, seen more than nearly any other man alive: he had battled and nearly died in the struggle against the greatest evil in history; learned the secrets of many orders and cults; loved with a fierceness that awed all who knew him.
T'ra Saa had not been able to imagine life without him. He had been her hope and her solace in times so dire they exceeded understanding. He had been the one who guided her through every grief, and her companion in every joy. T'ra had always known that his life would be dwarfed by her own in terms of years, but this knowledge had done little to soften the pain of her loss. She was hundreds of years old, and as a Jedi Master she had watched countless peers pass on into the netherworld of the Force. But nothing had hurt like this - it was as if she woke up one day and was living life without her own heart. There she was, still made of flesh, but no blood was within her. No heat in her skin.
She couldn't do it. In one last gesture of love transformed to grief, T'ra Saa had made a pilgrimage back to the sight of Tholme's grave. She had sat upon the sloping hillsides of his burial mound and wept, and then prayed, and then sank into a silence nearly as deep as the one her lover endured below. She had meditated for days without interruption, and as she did, her body began to change. As she ached, her legs split and sprouted roots. Her flesh broadened and then elongated, hardening at the edges into the texture of bark. The long hair of her head spread above her and then drooped, becoming soft auburn leaves that hung around her trunk. Her eyes closed against the world, and she disappeared into the body of a mighty plant.
This is where she resided now: not true death, for that, she could not find. It was not yet her time, and she obeyed the call of the Force. All around her was the slow voice of the soil and the hum of the air itself: the soft movements of nutrients and sunlight within her skin became the only presence in her mind. Life stirred within her still; deep life, the life of the Trees. Older than the mind, than the flesh that bleeds, was the life she held now - a life of sap and of seasons. T'ra Saa held to the movement of this Life, letting it ease the grief that had nearly destroyed her. It held her in return, giving rest, returning the woman to herself.
But as she rested, another voice began to grow. A whispering insistence towards wakefulness - the pale persistence of a day not yet to come. The day when she would have to rise again, return to the struggle she had known before, return to the realm of those who have a tomorrow not measured in eons. T'ra resisted - she needed her sleep. The earth was gentle between the curls of her roots, and she did not want to release it. For her to have a tomorrow - would it not be the living corpse of yesterday's lost love? The actions, the thoughts, the impulses to act and to think that were the burden of a waking mind - untraceable, half-concealed intonations and feelings - they scratched at the door of her sleeping mind like monsters scraping beneath the bed of a child.
But closer, closer they came - for the time for T'ra Saa to return to the affairs of the living had nearly come.
A'Sharad Hett's ship pierced through the mist of Anzat like the blade of a slowly descending dagger. The tattooed face of the former Jedi was impassive as he gazed down through the glass of his cockpit at the eerie landscape unfolding below him, desolate and uninviting. The planet had a very strange presence in the Force – not quite evil, but certainly sinister. It felt like being lost in a mild state of intoxication on some depressive drug. The metaphysical plane by which a Jedi navigated the living world became blurry and unfocused on Anzat: everything moved in shadow, and all voices were reduced to that of a whisper.
Hett closed his eyes, reaching out into these murky waters and searching for what he had come for. After a long moment of simply gliding high above the planetary surface, he finally sensed something key: a glimmer in the Force, like a light drifting deep within a swamp. It was subtle, but it was real. Hett knew that this must be the place where Tholme was buried.
Hett brought the ship down on a rocky outcrop near the place he sensed to be Tholme's burial site. He disembarked, gazing around into the strange swirling fog as his boots crunched against the loose stone beneath him. Somehow, in the silence of this odd planet, that crunch held an ominous finality.
Hett's presence brought an unsettling juxtaposition to the planet's quiet melancholy. The once-noble Jedi now bore the marks of his long and painful transformation into a hardened and cynical bounty hunter. No more did the great A'Sharad Hett adventure beyond every limit in service of the ideals of justice and peace; no longer did his eyes gleam with the pride of knowing he was his father's legacy. His Tusken Raider heritage was no longer evident, as the traditional wrappings that had once cloaked his body were now discarded. His mechanical arm was somewhat clumsily grafted onto the site of his dismemberment at the hands of Obi Wan Kenobi all those years ago on Tatooine. Hett was truly a man burdened by the weight of unwanted knowledge and an unsettled past, both of which had driven him deeper and deeper into the clutches of the dark.
The landscape seemed to respond to his arrival, the mist swirling in gusts around him like a living entity. Hett's heightened senses reached deep into his surroundings, tugging at the strange presences drifting around him in a constant whispery hum at the edge of his consciousness. In this cluttered space he did find that which he sought: Tholme's presence was indeed anchored here, a faint echo of the man who had once been his friend and mentor. But it was another presence that burned even more brightly, that pulled him in and sang to him like a beacon of peace in this forsaken place.
As he made his way through the gloom, the crypt itself became clear to him amidst the shadows. Hett drew closer, the ground beneath him becoming looser and shifting more uneasily as if it could sense the conflicting energies carried by the man above.
And then he saw her: the great tree, rooted in all its glory atop Tholme's grave, the strange and living patterns of her bark themselves seeming to carry the energy of the Light Side. Hett knew immediately who it was. Her leaves rustled soothingly in the wind, their friendly auburn hue a stark contrast to the murky lines and washed out tones of this strange planet.
As he neared her the air itself seemed to grow happier. Hett finally reached the base of the burial mound and stood there beneath this tree that had once been his friend and above the earth that had once been her lover. His voice, when he finally spoke, was rough.
"T'ra Saa… I felt Tholme's passing. I came… to pay my respects."
T'ra Saa slept, but in her sleep she felt a presence - and with the presence, there were images. Images of the past, and images of the future. The sound of a familiar voice, laughing and talking and sharing counsel. Then the same voice cackling, screaming now, roaring with pain and rage as it lashed out at the Galaxy with a furious need for vengeance. In T'ra's ancient mind she witnessed battles that had passed and battles yet to come: the sounds of armies marching; the voices of warriors swearing allegiance to their Lord; the bright lights of blasters and lightsaber blades; lightning bursting from hands and clashing against the sky and tearing through flesh. Bodies falling and burning. The screams of the terrified and the wounded, the wailing of inhuman beasts. The grim faces of allies - and those of enemies, menacing and determined. All of this swam into the mind of the sleeping Neti. It shook her, and shaken, she began to change again. Hett stepped back, slipping on the loose rocky soil beneath him as a slow, moaning creak rang out into the night around the grave. The tree that sat high upon the mound began to shake, its branches twisting and its leaves casting wildly about. The soil thrummed under his feet and shook so hard he nearly fell as the roots of the great tree writhed beneath it. The mighty trunk shrank and twisted and pulsed. It began to take a shape - the shape of a humanoid body, with long hair and a gentle face. The tree shrank and shook and the night was alive with the sounds of this transformation.
Finally, T'ra Saa was formed from this long metamorphosis. She sat pooled across the ground where the tree had been planted, and opened her eyes to the world for the first time in a long time.
A long moment passed as she blinked against the cold night air. Hett stood uncertainly before her and gazed up.
"It has been many years." Hett finally said aloud to her, with some surprise. "I come before you in order to visit an old friend."
T'ra Saa lifted her gaze, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light of the planet. She breathed deeply, adapting to the shape of a humanoid body, and slowly drew herself upright so she sat upon her knees, her legs folded beneath her. Her long hair fell down around her, covering her body. Her chin lifted, and her eyes rose to the sky. She paused like this, serene. The woman had sensed immediately the dark presence of the man before her, but did not rush to react. Instead she simply breathed, studying the shifting lavender patterns of the planet's auroras for a long moment before dropping her gaze.
"A'Sharad?" Her voice was soft, gentle, as if she did not want to startle the man before her. It held pain, and a bit of distrust even. It was almost as if she wanted him to deny what she already knew - that the man present was no longer the one whom she remembered.
"What... has happened to you?" Her eyes closed for a long moment. "You are different to me now than you were before."
Hett let out a small gasp, hurt that these were the first words from the lips of the Neti master. He stepped back, recoiling, and cast his eyes to the ground. Then, shaking off this pain, he drew himself upright and looked upon T'ra with hard and narrowed eyes. "Indeed. I am no longer the Jedi you once knew," he spoke, his voice tinged with bitterness. "The Galaxy has changed, T'ra Saa, and I with it."