Star Wars: Beyond The Sky

[Aisling]

Nyrellis stood next to Mar at the constables office, a largely gray building just outside of the entertainment district. In the end she'd ended up calling for a transport, bringing the hutt back to the bridge at the canyon and having her loaded into the back of a police shuttle, along with the boys. She took the time to destroy each collar personally.

As it turned out, most of them had done it for a promised lump sum. It amounted to little more than an IOU. With no resources, nowhere to go and nobody to turn to she'd made it part of her mission to make sure that they weren't left stranded. All of them were pretty subdued and as she took the time to speak to them, she could see older injuries, healing bruises and marks. Keller was the youngest of them, the oldest in his mid-twenties.

She'd left corralling the hutt - Mar hadn't bothered asking her name - to the constables, sticking to the boys instead. In an hour, her entire viewpoint on males had undertaken a massive shift in perspective. To this point, she'd only seen men in positions of power, usually exploiting others. It was the first time she'd ever seen any as a victim, vulnerable and confused. The usual nervousness she had around men in crowds just wasn't there and she found in herself a fierce protectiveness with a strength that startled her. She hadn't let them out of her sight.

"Are you alright?" Nyri's voice was soft, one hand on Mars shoulder. "I can feel the conflict in you."

"You didn't see what my life was like before." Mar spoke quietly. "I think So'duun might have understood. I didn't really get why you'd send me off like that into a big, strange city I barely know, but now I see that it was a test. Not from you, but from the Force. I keep encountering this, bound servitude and exploitation. I hate it. But I can't hate it." She shook her head. "I know I need to let go of it, but that's not easy to do. If not for the meditation every day, resetting my mental state to that center of peace, I'm not sure I could have done this. Just... arrested her without killing anybody."

"Those gamorreans were pretty injured by tumbling down the bleachers. I think the one outside got a concussion."

"Yeah... and they're still alive." Mar sighed. "Today was a test of my resolve and control. I almost failed it."

"You didn't, though. I'm proud of you." Nyri squeezed her shoulder lightly. "I've been making arrangements. Keller and Jace aren't in very good circumstances and it's clear nobody is taking care of them properly. We'll find them a foster home, or possibly one of the group homes."

"What about the others?"

"They're all of adult age. The best we can do is give them some credits and a guide on where to go next. But the good news is that Jelka, the hutt you brought in, has a bounty on her head. Not a very big one, it's only a few thousand credits, but still."

"Give it to the boys." She spoke without hesitation. "Divide it up for them equally."

"I'll do that. How did you feel about wandering the city?"

"This planet is... something else." Mar shook her head. "I could spend a lifetime wandering around doing what I did today and I don't think it'd make a difference."

"More than you might think. The path to inner peace isn't one of strict control, but learning to channel your emotions in positive, constructive ways rather than giving in to your passions and allowing them to corrupt you. You didn't give in to your anger, though I'm given to understand your approach was fairly heavy-handed."

"Eh." Mar shrugged. "Got the job done and nobody died. I know I'm small, I didn't really want to fight all of them. I figured if I postured and went for 'tiny but scary' they'd be less likely to try and swarm us. I guess it worked?"

"We had to give the quarren a change of clothes. He soiled himself."

"That's what he gets for being full of shit." The comment made Nyri snort, bend over and laugh, completely losing herself for a moment.

"Oh. Oh wow." She wiped one eye, still laughing. "Well, I can't argue with the results. But I hope you don't plan to approach every situation like that."

"No, of course not." Mar spoke softly. "It's just becoming increasingly clear to me that these places, the underbellies of planets... it's beyond civilization. It's a kind of world of it's own, isn't it? It has its own rules and they're not nice ones. Time and again, we encounter people exploiting others and using intimidation and physical force to threaten and coerce. Time and again they fight, even though they'll lose. You'd think they'd see the lightsaber and think twice about it but nope."

"It's possible to kill a jedi you ambush with the proper level of force. Don't become complacent." Nyri said it lightly. "But you're right, it baffles me a little too, when I have to fight some big group of thugs. It's been known to happen, overwhelming one of us from all sides, but it's not easy. I suppose they tend to hope to have numbers on their side."

"Heh." Mar shook her head. "How's Fenet doing?"

"Her trial of insight went well, but she's locked herself in the bunk room and vowed to sleep for at least a day. Also that she'll throw something at us if we ask her to solve any riddles, puzzles or mazes in the next week or two."

"That sounds about right." She couldn't keep the amusement out of her voice. "Guess I get that to look forward to some day. What about So'duun?"

Nyri nodded. "I wondered when you'd ask about that. Preparations have been made for us to return to Nar Shaddaa. We're not going to go in fighting this time, but rather we're simply going to bribe some people to find out where So'duun went. She'd have had to take a ship, which limits her to either stealing or hiring one. If we can find out which ship it was, we can find out their recorded jump vector and try to work out where she might have gone."

"Hmn. Did the archives have anything on the 'rakata'? Or something called the infinite threat?"

"I'm not sure. I've mostly been making arrangements for us to have what we need when we set out, I haven't really done any back-reading on this case yet. Figured I could do that while in hyperspace."

"So'duun translated some inscriptions that mentioned them. It's not something we really chased down ourselves, but... I don't think we're going to be able to track her from Nar Shaddaa. If we can't find anything, we need another lead and the best thing I can think of is to try and pick up her line of research and follow it. She's doing all of this because she wants to find out the history of the Jedi Order, to find Tython. If we can do that, we don't have to find So'duun. We can get to Tython and then she'll come to us."

"Not a bad idea but it depends on her actually succeed in finding it. On us finding it, too. You know the hyperlanes there were lost, right?"

"Yes, of course." Mar nodded. "What if we found new ones?"

"That would be convenient."

"Well, yes, obviously. We have records of where the old hyperlane vectors were, right? Maybe we can find a way through. When was the last time anyone from the Order went looking?"

"About fifty years. It's not a terrible approach, though. If she's following the same clues, maybe we can too. Rakata, you said?"

"Yeah."

"Alright. You finish here and I'll go pull the data from the archives and go get Fenet. We'll see what we can find." She patted Mars shoulder again, then turned to leave the room, leaving Mar alone in the office. She watched Nyri passing the boys, focusing on Keller and Jace for a moment.

What'll happen to them now, I wonder? She thought to herself, then slipped outside the office to flag down one of the constables behind the main desk.

"How can I help, padawan?" The officer was a kaminoan, blinking heavily at her.

"That bounty on the hutt, I'd like you to divide it up and give it to the boys, please. The two youngest, is there a work program or anything they could join up?"

"I believe there is space in trade apprenticeship programs they may be interested in, but you would be better off speaking to the social services office in sector-"

"No, no. I can't stay to make a big case of it, as much as I'd like to. Do me a favor and get in touch with the jedi temple? We have workshops and kitchens, places where a couple boys might learn some useful skills. They don't have jedi potential, but I think the temple might be able to find them better work than the city social services would, if the underbelly is any judge." She sighed.

"Policing the lower sectors is a constant struggle and the help of the jedi is invaluable in it. I will do what I can to make sure they are taken care of. Is there anything else I may help with?"

"No, thank you." Mar nodded to her, then walked over to Keller and Jace, waving.

"Hi." Keller was quiet, kind of withdrawn. He looked mostly human, but his ears were shaped with a tip, speaking to some other bloodline besides human in his family tree. "Thank you for getting me out of there. It seemed like such a good deal at first..."

"What happened?" Mar sat down in front of him, cross legged.

"I just needed some money." He looked down at the floor, unable to meet her eyes. "They said I just had to dress skimpy and serve drinks. It's just looking, right? They told me I'd be serving the lady of the club, I thought it sounded great. Then it turns out the 'lady' of the club was that... thing." He shuddered.

"You won't have to worry about going back." Mar shook her head. "Either of you. I asked them to find you something, work and a place to stay. You won't be thrown back out on the streets."

Jace's face screwed up and she could see he was trying not to cry, hugging his legs and hiding his face against them. Keller just nodded. "Thank you. That... that means a lot. We've always been on our own."

Mar nodded. "Yeah... I can relate." She spoke quietly. "But you're not anymore. The next time I'm on Coruscant, I'm going to come and check on you two. Make sure that, wherever you go, you keep tabs with the temple, okay? So I can find you?"

They nodded and Keller answered. "We will. May the Force be with you."

Mar smiled at the words, standing up and clasping Keller's hand for a moment. "You too." Then she let go, turning to the constabulary exit.

Outside she found a speeder bike waiting for her with an officer standing next to it. "Greetings, padawan. We've arranged a ride for you back to the temple, one we'll retrieve at a later date. The Republic thanks you for your service."

She wasn't sure what to say to that. "Um... thanks?"

The officer softened a little, smiling. "You jedi do good work. Thank you, kid." He gave a sloppy salute, then walked past her to leave her with the speeder and the roiling thoughts in her own mind as her own hubris fought against the feeling of unworthiness that she'd been struggling with since she began. For the first time, she felt like she'd proven herself.

Kicking the speeder bike on, she revved it and took off, whooping loudly and letting her voice get lost to the wind as she rode one for the first time.

 

[Aisling]

The wind was uncomfortably cold as So'duun sped across the snow-scattered landscape of Belsavis towards the entrance of The Tomb. Getting past the roadblocks had been simple enough. The Tomb stood open to any who might walk in, but few tended to ever walk back out again, warning of the hundreds of hostile droids still roaming around inside plastered all over the barricades. She'd simply flown the speeder over them, ignoring them completely.

The Tomb's main entrance was massive, to her. Wide enough for thirty people to walk abreast, four times her height, she simply drove the speeder inside, igniting her lightsaber. She didn't want to fight the droids, not really. Speeding past them and trying to deflect seemed a better option.

She sped into the Tomb, braking a hard left down the corridor as a droid fired its blasters at her. A tripod-leg design, its main body also seemed to serve as a head, sensors on the front making a 'face'. The two arms on either side both held weapon launchers. The shot went side as she swerved, gunning down the hallway straight and then braking as it curved downward.

That proved to be a mistake. The speeder bucked like a tiny god had kicked her as a micromissile hit the back end of it, sending her spinning hard just before hitting the ramp. She jumped off the speeder, letting it tumble down into one of the droid guards below, both of them exploding violently. The droids she'd sped past behind her continued trying to fire and she was forced to deflect blaster bolts back at them, yanking one of them with the Force and throwing it into the other with her sheer indignity at being shot at. When the droids collided they both smashed into the wall, tumbling and then jerking apart as one of their weapon launchers exploded, pushing them both aside.

With nothing else shooting at her, she sighed and took a moment to look around. The walls had ledges holding pillars up to the ceiling, but some of the ledges held pottery instead. Some of it was broken and scattered around. She made her way down and found the floor tiles had pictographs of animals she didn't recognize.

The entire place reminded her more of a stone temple than a prison facility. Even the lighting, which was a soft beige-gold rather than anything harsh. Bronze was inlaid at the edges of some of the architecture, especially in the statues. They depicted a species she didn't recognize with oval heads and eyestalks sticking out the sides.

Making her way inside was painfully slow. The guard-droids were everywhere, forcing her to fight her way down. In some places they were too many to fight alone, forcing her to pull back and fight them in the corridors as she pulled down statues to use as cover. The wanton destruction of what was clearly ancient pieces of decor bothered her, but the statues were all alike, so she felt a few could be spared. In other places she was forced to fight by agility, making the droids fire on each other in their attempts to hit her.

Several hours into the Tomb she felt herself getting tired from the constant fighting and sought out a chamber to fortify and rest in. She'd brought rations with her in her pack, but hadn't planned on staying long. She realized now that that had been a mistake, because the droids were clearly self-replicating somewhere else in the facility. The destroyed ones would be replaced, but she didn't know how quickly. It was entirely possible she'd turn around and find them all in the way as she tried to leave.

She realized that it might be a one-way trip, but she'd known it would be dangerous going in. She finally settled on what was essentially an open chamber at a dead end corridor split off from a four-way junction. Destroying the guards felt more like a chore than anything else, but this chamber had a rather larger version of the droids she'd been fighting so far. It took her time to kill it, mainly because the damned thing had some kind of shield generator.

She stopped once she finally felled it, panting hard and taking a look around. The chamber was as richly decorated as the rest of the facility, but it held four stasis cells. The prisoners were suspended in a glowing blue field inside of a niche set into a pillar, each pillars base having a console built into it. She walked up to one of them and looked at it, not recognizing the controls at all.

The prisoners themselves were species she recognized. A red-skinned Twi'lek, a Human and a Devaronian. All of them showed signs of dark side corruption, their features darkened, skin ashen. The Twi'lek and Human both had several prosthetics. They were, in short, Sith.

She decided to leave them in there and sat down against the wall, taking a few hours to rest, napping lightly in a sitting position.

When she got up again, she found the guards had not been replenished, something she took as a good sign. As before, making her way down was a fighting effort, but about an hour of combat saw her breaking into a massive chamber with what looked like hanger blast doors. Another one of the larger guard droids awaited her there, but she was thoroughly sick of seeing them by now.

As she walked into the chamber to face it she extinguished her lightsaber, summoning up all of her frustration and anger and hostility towards an enemy, then threw it at the droid. She pushed her hands forward and the malevolent intent ignited at her fingertips as lightning, racking the droids shields and overloading them, causing a minor explosion at the back of its torso at the same time she wracked it with the Force-energy. The droid shuddered violently, sparked a few times and dropped to the floor smoking.

The effort left her feeling drained and she took a moment to kneel there, focusing inwards to use the Force to replenish herself. She found herself struggling to do it, taking deep breaths as she forced herself into the meditation. It came slowly, more slowly than she was used to, but she could feel herself revitalizing.

She didn't investigate the doors immediately. Instead she started work translating the inscriptions on the walls and at the base of the statues.

HERE LIE THE ENEMIES OF THE RAKATA
KNOW THAT THEY WILL NEVER ESCAPE
THEIR TORMENT WILL LAST ETERNAL
THE INFINITE EMPIRE WILL NOT FORGIVE

She frowned. "Infinite empire. So, the threat was the Rakata and their civilization was the Infinite Empire. But that means... they had a fully advanced spacefaring empire twenty-five thousand years ago. How have I never heard of them before?"

Of course, nobody answered.

The vault doors themselves had control panels built into the walls with the same strange alien interface that she now guessed was a Rakatan computer system. With no other choice she began tapping random controls, getting nowhere until she figured out which button was 'open the doors' by trial and error.

The chamber inside turned out to be another stasis vault like the one she'd found before. This one held another species she didn't recognize, which the translations listed as the 'esh-ka'. It didn't bother to list any crimes, so she left them there.

The sith being in the previous chamber puzzled her. They couldn't have been put here by the Rakata. Why were they here? More importantly, how and when? She pressed on, opening the second chamber and stumbling on her answer.

It had been modified, the consoles replaced with an interface she could recognize. Each of the stasis chambers held what appeared to be a dark side user, all of them zabrak, each of them women. They were unlike anything she'd ever seen before, forsaking the traditional black garb for rich clothes and robes of dark red and burgandy. Their skin was an ashen gray-beige, their horns painted red. Two of them had face tattoos around their eyes.

She had no interest in trying to free them but the consoles gave her something to work with and she got to work accessing one of them immediately. They were focused mainly on the maintenance and control of the stasis chambers, but - as she had hoped - it also provided an interface that allowed her to interact with the Rakatan computer systems by proxy. Dealing with new interfaces despite her lack of sight wasn't anything novel for her. She'd been doing it her entire life. Taking a small, custom-built disc out of her pack she slapped it against the droid interface for the computer, keeping her hand held against it as it translated the screen into her version of braille.

It was like being let loose into an archaeological candy store. The computer system had detailed descriptions of all the species and prisoners listed there, including something called the 'world razer', which it absolutely did not want to talk to her about. Since it wasn't her goal to meet that thing, she didn't worry too much about it, instead diving into the computers files on the Rakata themselves.

They were self-described conquerers, rulers of all they surveyed. The database listed the details of thousands of invasions, battles and the enemies they'd genocided rather than bothering to keep any in the Tomb itself. It was clear that at some point the Republic had taken over part of the facility to use as a prison for Sith, but she couldn't figure out when. What really fascinated her though was when she found the description for force sabers.

The device was rather different to the lightsaber she carried with her. It required a power pack and had no kyber, using an artificial focusing lense. She could see from the schematics how inefficient the design was, but it was clear that this was the pinnacle of their melee weapon technology at the time. She started plugging data tablets into the interface, working to download as much of the database as she could for later analysis.

While it did that she kept browsing, looking for how the Rakata had controlled this vast stellar empire they spoke of. They'd described themselves as ruling the entire galaxy, something even the Republic hadn't managed - though to be fair, not mapping the Unknown Territories was mostly due to the difficulty of exploring new hyperlanes and the area had a reputation for being notoriously unstable. Hyperlanes that were discovered sometimes collapsed, blocked by gravity wells.

As she was looking through their logistical receipts she realized that she was looking at troop movements, whole companies moved between worlds without ships being listed for transportation. It puzzled her and she began digging, trying to find out how the Rakata moved around. What did their ships look like?

As it turned out, their ships were pretty crap. She could see how primitive the hyperdrives were. Then, she came upon a data entry for 'infinite gates'. Opening it, she gasped, having to repeat the section after moving her hand off the translator in shock.

The Rakata hadn't just had ships - they'd had planet-to-planet teleportation technology! A gateway that allowed somebody to walk from one world to another as though crossing a room. She found a visual description of the gate and realized one of them must be here, in the Tomb itself.

It took another four hours of searching through the computers before she found its location. It was deep, deep inside the facility itself, but she was closer to the gate now than she was to the surface. It was possible to reach it, possibly even get it functional. Exhausted, she closed the vault door and slept in the chamber for several hours.

In the 'morning', she got up and began the heavy, violent trek downward again. The fighting got intense the closer to the gateway she got, but the worst weapons the droids had were flamethrowers and some kind of electrical discharge, both of which she had ways to deal with with some effort. The final chamber that held the gateway held three of the large droids, all of whom teamed up on her at the same time.

The ensuing battle took place across a lot of the path she'd cleared already, using corners to make it harder for them to swarm her. She whittled them down, then would overwhelm one with the Force Lightning when its companions weren't in a position to help, screaming her rage and determination to get past them and harnassing it to overwhelm the droid. By the time she'd finished the final one, she was ready to fall over from exhaustion. But in the end, they had only been droids.

She drew herself up and made her way back to the chamber holding the Infinite Gate, then opened her pack and began to set up for the long work of figuring out how to activate it. She could only hope she managed to do so before she ran out of supplies, because the prospect of fighting her way back up was daunting.

 

[Aisling]

Yeah, I know I've been slacking. But now we're at the end of ch. 5!

Sorry about that, but a triple entry should help make up for it a bit.

 

[VirtualFox]

Yeah, I know I've been slacking. But now we're at the end of ch. 5!

Sorry about that, but a triple entry should help make up for it a bit.

Click to shrink...

I see no slacking here!

:looks behind me to see Callera looking at me: "I'll focus in a bit! I promise!

In all honesty, just write at the pace that feels right

 

[Aztez Fan]

She drew herself up and made her way back to the chamber holding the Infinite Gate, then opened her pack and began to set up for the long work of figuring out how to activate it. She could only hope she managed to do so before she ran out of supplies, because the prospect of fighting her way back up was daunting.

Click to shrink...

Well that is the find of the century, still those imprisoned Sith make me slightly nervous, but thankfully So'duun hasn't decide to free any of them. Frankly while the skills of past Sith are, wildly inconsistent, facing as many as a few dozen even deprived of their weapons would be more then So'duun can handle.

Also wonder what planet this infinity gate connects to. I need to look those up again to see.

Checks

Oh boy yeah Tython, that'd be fun. Wonder how the local Flesh Raiders are doing and if Fashk has some kind of ruling bloodline since the Old Coldwar era. Thats be a funny adventure, walks though the gate and ends up in what is pretty much a Stargate episode. Also it's a neat note that tython seems to have the vibes to allow these decedents of the Rakkata to regain force powers. Another interesting factoid to uncover.

 

[Aisling]

I see no slacking here!

:looks behind me to see Callera looking at me: "I'll focus in a bit! I promise!

In all honesty, just write at the pace that feels right

Click to shrink...

Not gonna lie, I have a lot of time on my hands lately so this is mostly a way to pass it, but I'm not focusing specifically on writing. If I set myself a limit and decided to write for a solid block of time for a day - like 4 hours or something - I'd be writing 6000-8000 words a day. But I have ADHD and a pretty whomping case of depression, both of which require a lot of mental energy to reach an equalibrium with. Sometimes I'm just incapable of that kind of focus. There are times when I wake up and just can't really do anything productive at all. So when I get the motivation to write I just go with it while it lasts and sometimes it results in days like this where I can drop three posts back to back and feel sort of accomplished for once.

 

[VirtualFox]

I know that feeling. Good luck and strong energy your way

 

[Aisling]

When Light's Touch broke hyperspace, Nar Shaddaa loomed in front of them. The traffic around the planet had changed somewhat, the heavy freighters that had been everywhere before thinned out and partially replaced by a series of what might generously be termed 'combat ships'. Mostly things the Hutts had procured, stolen, bought or re-serviced, they were a motley crew of various classes and types all modified with different kinds of weaponry. Fenet was flying with Mar co-piloting, Nyrellis taking Mar's old seat at the secondary console to handle power distribution. One less thing for Mar to worry over, allowing her to handle the systems Fenet couldn't because she was busy steering the ship around.

They landed without incident, something which made Mar oddly uneasy. With nothing to pin the feeling on, she kept it to herself for the time being, joining the others in gearing up for leaving the ship. Rather than the skimpier costume Mar used before to fit in, she dressed herself in loose pants and a vest, several belts with tools and her lightsaber, pulling on the collar for one of the environmental suits. The loose ring around her neck allowed her to unfold the helmet around her face to act as a translator or environmental filter, though not a perfect one. Nyrellis chose simple beige robes, roughly spun to look shabby. Or perhaps she'd simply had them for so long they'd become worn out. Either way, she fit right in with the rest of the refugees and poverty-stricken locals.

When Fenet joined them, she was wearing most of Johena's armour. Both Mar and Nyri took a step back to get a good look at her when she joined them at the airlock, but it was Mar who was the more shocked of the two. She was wearing a simple brown hooded cloak over the armour, barely hiding it at all.

"I thought you were reluctant to wear the armour?" Mar sounded puzzled.

"I was. I… changed my mind."

"How come?"

"Something I saw during my Trial of Spirit." Fenet looked uncomfortable. "I'd rather not discuss it."

"Alright, I understand." Mar nodded, opening the airlock door. Nyri just shrugged, too new to the crew to really understand the significance of it. She took point, leading them down the ramp and into the docking bay.

"I want to go talk to the flight controllers. I think I'd prefer it if we all stick together, we won't be going far from the ship."

"Shouldn't be a problem." Fenet said absentmindedly as she looked around at all the different ship types. "What are we looking for?"

"A list of the ships that were coming and going during the days that So'duun was likely to be trying to leave. I'm going to go see what I can do with a few credits greasing the wheels, but you know computer systems, so if you see an opportunity to get a look at theirs, you should probably take it."

Fenet nodded, glancing behind her at Mar.

"Oh, don't worry about me." Mar gave a royal wave. "I'm just along for the ride this time. I'll be good, I promise."

"I trust you." Fenet smiled a little, then following Nyri into the hanger bays main exit corridor to the turbolifts.

When the lift arrived, they piled in with a dozen other people of various species. The lift stopped several times with most of them going but a few joining as well. Since they were going to the very top, more and more left until it was the three of them and a single man in white-and-red robes.

None of them thought much of it, simply assuming he worked for the Hutts somehow. When the lift doors opened, Nyri and Fenet stepped out, Mar following behind them. The stranger didn't move, but the lift doors snapped shut in Mars face, closing her inside the lift with the stranger.

She glanced behind at the man, turning to face him with one hand on the hilt of her lightsaber.

"You won't need that." His voice was soft, bass-heavy. "I'm not here to threaten you."

"Trapping me in a lift with you feels vaguely threatening."

"Yes. I apologize. I know it must be startling, especially considering your history."

Mar felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. "What do you know of my history?"

"I know." He gestured, and the inside of the lift got… strange.

Nothing changed in the confines of the lift, but it felt like the colour had been drained somehow, despite the fact everything was made of grey plating anyway. She could see shapes in the air, glyphs written in something between fire and smoke, glittering blue. The writing surrounded them on all sides of the lift while the man stood with his hands together, palms touching, index fingers pointing up and down respectively.

Mar went from startled to puzzled. "Are you doing this? Are you Jedi?"

"I am a monk, much as you are training to become. My name is Ran. I am a member of the Order of the Dai Bendu."

Mar took a sharp breath, recognizing the name. "How could you be? I know that name, but it was written about people who lived over twenty millennia ago. That's insane."

"And yet, here we are." He said serenely. "It was I who left the sigil for you in Light's Touch before, but I was not prepared to face your former master yet. It is not our way to be confrontational. The Dai Bendu do not seek combat."

"What do you seek, then?" She tapped the hilt of her lightsaber, trying to decide if she needed it.

"Balance. Neutrality. So'duun is now on a path, she has set in motion a chain of events that will echo for hundreds of years. You chase her with the thought of stopping her, but you will not. I have come to warn you that you must not feel this is a failure on your part. You are meant to walk together at the end of things, I think. You will not find it easy. On Tython stands a test for you, the likes of which no Jedi has faced for two hundred centuries. One of you will weigh the light, one of you will weigh the darkness, and one of you will stand in between."

"What's so special about Tython?"

"The Tho Yor still stand, waiting for the children of the Force."

"You're saying that it's possible to go back to the roots of Force-sensitive training. To learn the skills the Jedi Order evolved from."

"You will see. There, the ancient mystics of the Force laid their prophecies. Most have come to pass, but some still yet remain."

"A prophecy?"

"You will see." The strange effect snapped off around them like somebody had hit a control as he moved his hands apart. "But it's not my place to join you, nor seek any side, one way or the other. I wish you well." The lift door opened behind Mar, and he smiled, unmoving.

Mar stared at him, then stepped backward out of the lift and let the door close.

"Mar?" She turned to find Fenet staring at her while Nyri was busy speaking to a pike sitting at a console. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah." She quickly weighed up the consequences of talking about what she just saw, weighed against where they currently were. "Yeah, I'm alright. I'll tell you about it later."

"Did something happen?"

"Yeah. I got an answer about that paper you found on the ship." Fenet looked interested, but nodded, letting it go.

Nyri walked back to join them with a data tablet, gesturing for them to call the lift. "Let's go, before their security people start asking questions and I have to bribe them too."

"What did you get?"

"The list of ships I wanted and their stated destinations and manifests. This is actually pretty interesting, but most of these are for freight. I'm trying to narrow down the filters for any ship that might have been carrying passengers, I just hate the hutts computer interface. It's so sloppy."

Fenet opened her hand to Nyri, who gave her the data tablet and made a vaguely dismissive gesture with both hands. Fenet browsed through it while the lift stopped to take on passengers on their way back down to the hanger bays. She worked silently, making quietly thoughtful noises to herself all the way to the bottom.

When they piled out of the lift and had the chance to spread out a little from the crowd, they moved out of earshot and Mar was the first to ask. "What did you find?"

"Only two ships were taking passengers. One was going to Coruscant, which we know she didn't go to. The other is flagged because its stated destination was supposed to be Dantooine, but it broke its flight plan and went off course to a different jump point instead. Its hyperdrive reported it as being charted for Belsavis. It's been flagged for a fine."

"What the hell is on Belsavis?"

"Not much." Nyri's tail lashed behind her as her confusion became mild agitation. "It used to be a prison world, and there has been talk of founding a colony or port once or twice there. Most of the planet is locked in a mass ice age, with only small regions of equatorial jungle."

"Used to be? If there are ruins there, I bet that's why she went." Mar nodded.

Fenet nodded her own agreement as well. "Probably. Let's get going."

They piled back into the ship, Mar closing the airlock door and taking a deep breath. "I saw something in the lift."

"Yeah?" Nyri glanced at her as Mar made her way in with the others. "What happened?"

"The man who was in the lift with us did something to close the door, so he could speak to me. He could use the Force."

That got their attention, Fenet turning to look at her from the hall where she'd been about to go to the cockpit. "What?"

"I don't know what he did. He made some kind of writing in the air and everything seemed to slow down. Then he told me that he'd come to warn me that we'd find So'duun, but wouldn't be able to stop her. That something waited for us on Tython, some kind of puzzle or test."

Fenet groaned, tilting her head back. "Not more puzzles." The sheer misery in her voice was palpable.

"Nobody has been to Tython for hundreds of years, but it used to be an active site. The Jedi once had an academy there during the Cold War era several thousand years ago. There would be more than enough to sustain anybody with even moderate engineering skills willing to work there."

"Even after all this time?" Mar blinked.

"We build things to last. Maybe. A competant engineer can rebuild any system from scrap with the right tools, but I don't know much about So'duuns engineering skills. The ship is heavily stocked with anything we might need for at least half a year, we should be fine." Nyri gestured to Fenet. "Go start the pre-flight. I'll join you in a moment."

Fenet nodded, leaving them alone in the airlock. Nyri watched Mar for a moment. "You look disquieted."

"He didn't mention you at all." Mar spoke softly. "I don't know what that means."

"I'm not going anywhere, don't you worry."

"He said one of us would be the light, one of us the darkness and one of us in the middle. Has there ever been a jedi who was both light and dark?"

"There have been Jedi who fell to the darkness and were redeemed. It's never too late to turn away from it. But the dark side is corrosive, you don't just use it a little. It's addictive."

Mar nodded slowly. "No neutral jedi?"

"No."

"So why did I just meet a Force-sensitive monk who was?"

 

[Aisling]

Sorry, I plan to update soon, just kind of not doing so wonderful at the moment. My computer broke, and I'm working to find something to continue writing on. The prospect of updating this story on my phone is super unappealing. The frustrating thing is that I'm a tinker, and technically I could fix it, but the computer is ten years old, and it's the CPU that's given out. May as well just buy a new goddamned computer at this point, but fixed income prevents it, so I'll have to figure out… something. I dunno. I'll work the problem.

 

[VirtualFox]

*starts praying to the Omnisiah*

Oh wait, wrong fandom.

Life does like to throw us inconveniences at the worst possible moment. Hopefully things don't cause too big of a hiccup in your life.

 

[Aisling]

*starts praying to the Omnisiah*

Oh wait, wrong fandom.

Life does like to throw us inconveniences at the worst possible moment. Hopefully things don't cause too big of a hiccup in your life.

Click to shrink...

The main problem is just the idea of trying to find a 10-year-old compatible CPU. I just don't think I can do it. My only hope is to either borrow equipment from a family member - MAYBE - or wait for the Canadian government to unfuck a mistake they made back in February. Which might get resolved by September.

My jimmy status is currently at maximum reverse-polarity ultraviolet over-rustle.

I'll know by tomorrow either way.

 

[Aztez Fan]

"So why did I just meet a Force-sensitive monk who was?"

Click to shrink...

To be one in the middle, to advise but never intervene, to be in balance but never move for fear of fall either side. The monk here could only advise her on the path that is to walked and the potental future there in, but they can never intervene in changing that path, as that would inevitably lead them into conflict with others. For that is up to the individual to decide for themselves.

Also forgot that the Monastery still existed, and as such the Dai bendu themselves, also their shockingly good commercialists as per legends at least lol.

 

[Aisling]

Roight so, I suppose somebody somewhere has been wondering what I'm gonna do with this story.

I've done some phoning around and if I'm lucky, within a 2 month period I'll have enough money to buy a new computer. Until then I'm kind of stuck entirely with my phone and what might be the shittiest laptop on the face of the earth. This thing runs windows 7. It's so old, people are looking for funding to feature it in archaeological studies. I plan to replace it the very goddamned moment I can.

In the meantime I think I am slowly losing my mind.

I plan to begin updating again shortly, if I leave it too long I'll lose the thread of the story, which would be annoying. Sorry about the delay, I hope you'll be patient with me. I just kind of stopped writing WOTB but I have no intention of doing that here. I have a whole plot course and a good idea of where I want to end it.

 

[VirtualFox]

Take your time and don't force yourself, but at the same time…tech is ebil!

 

[Aisling]

The drop to the atmosphere was uneventful, with Nyrellis running scans the entire way down. As Fenet rotated the ship so that the planet was 'down' instead of 'sideways', she skimmed the atmosphere until they picked up a return on So'duuns stolen ship. She had made essentially no effort to hide it whatsoever, apparently under the assumption that nobody knew where she was going. When they pulled Light's Touch in to land, their sensors began to pick up the droids she'd missed or sped past. They'd fanned out around So'duuns ship, blockading it.

None of the guard droids fired at them as they landed, but the moment the ship's ramp opened, several of them turned and immediately opened fire with an electrical discharge. Rather than fight them in person, Mar simply deployed the ships point defenses, which then proceeded to shred the guard droids nicely. While the team got ready to leave, the remaining blockade guards began to converge on the Light's Touch, allowing the automated point defenses to wipe them out before they even got to the ramp.

"Hey, M8." Mar waved to the droid as it clanked its way into the airlock. "Planning on coming with us?"

"No. I will do a visual inspection for damage from that attack, then go back inside the ship and keep it secure until you return."

"Sounds good. Thanks for watching our backs."

When they stepped out, Fenet waved to M8 while Nyrellis took point, with Mar bringing up the rear guard. They set off into the tomb on foot, finding the path fairly clear as they did, save for the occasional errant droid guard which had wandered in to the spaces So'duun had apparently cleared.

Nyrellis couldn't help but shake her head. "Did she really fight her way in all by herself? Oh, I guess not." They reached the top of the ramp where the speeders wreck remained on top of the droid it had taken out. "Does the ship have speeders?"

"No." Fenet shook her head. "Too expensive. We have the space to store a couple, but not the credits to buy them outright. Usually we just rent them wherever we happen to land."

"Ah. We'll have to see about correcting that. Lets go back."

Mar blinked. "What? Why?"

"We don't know how long this is going to take or how deeply she got inside. I want to go get survival packs before we go wandering into the giant maze."

"Ah. That makes a little more sense."

The trip back to the ship didn't take very long, since they knew the path was clear. They simply jogged back, greeting a very confused M8 before heading back out again, this time with heavy backpacks. If they hadn't spent several weeks straight on training, Mar was pretty sure she would be struggling with this. Even that wasn't really sufficient.

Once they'd returned to the spot where they had doubled back, they proceeded downward, finding the path littered with the debris of guards that So'duun had fought. It wasn't difficult to follow her path at all. As they got further downward, Mars sense of disquiet, the one that had been nagging her since they left the Hutt skydock, began to sharpen.

"I have a bad feeling about this." Mar said it quietly, Fenet nodding beside her.

"Mars right. Something feels off."

They found themselves in a particularly large chamber with the debris from a huge guard droid and various empty cells. Nyrellis sniffed the air, stopping for a moment.

"People have been through here recently. Not So'duun, her scent is all over the ship."

"Her scent?" Fenet tilted her head.

"The muzzle isn't just for show. Those of us who have it have a very acute sense of smell. I'm not sure what it is, but it's people."

"Hmn." Mar stood up from where she'd been poking at the destroyed droid. "This stuff is old. It was in good shape, though."

"Let's keep going."

When they eventually reached the chamber with the computer interface, they found the interface being manned by a rather harsh looking Twi'lek woman. The black leather was kind of a giveaway, but the fact she was holding a red lightsaber caused the three of them to fan out as they entered the chamber. The woman turned to face them, jamming her finger on a control at the same time.

"How typical. Jedi showing up when they're least wanted." The woman spit, the contempt dripping off her words. Behind her, the stasis cells began to shut down, women in reddish clothing dropping to the floor. "Your timing is awful."

"Who are y-" Fenet was cut off as the woman raised her hand, throwing Force lightning at the arch above her, shattering it. The three were immediately forced to retreat from the falling debris as the entrance collapsed.

"Lucky for us we didn't get crushed." Nyrellis coughed while trying to speak. "That might have been an actual Sith. She's freeing prisoners, we need to stop her."

"We came to find So'duun." Mar frowned at Nyri as she got to her feet.

"We came to find So'duun because So'duun is being corrupted by the dark side and we may have just seen the Sith responsible for it. We need to find her and stop her. I strongly suspect doing so will also lead us to So'duun."

Fenet was already heading down another hallway adjacent to the chamber they'd been in. "This way. Keep your guard up, there's probably droids."

She was soon proven right, forced to rush and dice one of the guard droids as it took notice of her, firing micromissiles. Fenet's dash brought her past them and while she tore the droid apart, Nyrellis focused on deflecting the projectiles while Mar cut down the ones she missed.

Once that was taken care of, Mar groaned at herself. "Of course."

That got the other's attention. "What is it?"

Instead of answering, Mar plunged her blade into the wall, letting it sit and slowly heat the stone. Nyrellis understood at once, joining her while Fenet stood to watch their backs.

Slowly, painstakingly, they melted their way through the thick stone wall into the corridor they'd been cut off from. Getting through the hole was tricky, since the edges still glowed with heat of the cut, but soon they were in the right corridor. They found the chamber they'd been cut off from abandoned, then immediately doubled back to head down the hall they'd cut into.

The chase was on, interrupted only by the occasional errant guard who showed up to harass them or slow them down. For some reason, the droids seemed to be ignoring the group they were chasing, which let them get a lead. Fenets inner archaeologist was pained by the stuff they were passing by, the inscriptions and pottery—pottery in a prison, of all things—and the statues. When she found some statues smashed, she assumed the Sith had done it and was actually outraged by the historical sacrilege.

When they broke into the gate chamber, they found one of the massive guard droids waiting for them. It was clearly slapped together with the remains of the other two guard droids which had been dragged into the chamber. The first thing they saw was, of course, the huge droid activating its shield generator. The second thing they saw was the shimmering doorway on the other side of the chamber, which... hurt to look at. The spatial dimensions were doing something Mars brain struggled to comprehend, and Fenet was having no better luck.

The third thing was So'duun standing next to the group of women they'd been chasing, walking through the gateway as they followed.

The droid opened up on them with a massive flamethrower and Nyrellis pushed, the flame split around them. But the droid seemed only able to focus one target at a time. Immediately, the three spread out, relying on agility and testing the shield with repeated strikes. The generator on the droid wasn't exactly in the best shape to begin with and folded pretty quickly, allowing Fenet to scramble up its back and take it down with a clean cut across the back of its 'head'.

"Okay, so, what the hell is that?" Fenet asked as she landed next to the other two. Mar frowned.

"I think it's a gateway." She jogged over towards it, staring at the event horizon.

"Yeah, it's obviously some kind of d-" There was a flash of disorientation as Mar touched the event horizon. The temple vanished and she found herself standing in the middle of a swamp.

Only the twi'lek woman could be seen. She'd been standing on the other side, waiting. "Well, well. Got a little ahead of yourself, didn't you?" She radiated smug as the gateway shut down behind Mar.

Shit, she thought to herself. Then she activated her saber.

"Oh? You want to play?"

"Who are you? How do you know So'duun?"

"Wow, you're a virgin, huh? No buildup, no foreplay at all. Just straight to wanting to stick it in." The Twi'lek jabbed with her saber, pointing the red blade at Mar. "Why don't you try it? You might like it."

The woman rushed Mar, forcing Mar to parry the red blade to the side and shoulder-check the woman. The Twi'lek grabbed her, thrown off balance but pulling Mar with her, somehow enhancing it with the Force to send Mar sprawling instead of stumbling. She rolled to her knee and one foot, blade above as the Twi'lek brought hers down in a hard, overhand cut that Mar parried just barely.

She pushed to her feet, throwing the woman backward a little and making the Twi'lek giggle, making her feel like she was being played with. In the back of her mind she was trying to figure out what to do, circling the woman while the woman circled her.

Getting impatient, the Twi'lek rushed her and she was forced to parry a series of rapid strikes. Below, above, to the side, from below again, then a hard overhead followed by a boot which knocked the wind out of Mar and sent her flying backwards, losing her blade.

"Is this the best the Jedi can do these days? What happened to your friends?"

"I don't need them to handle you."

"Oooh, promises, promises." The woman blew a kiss at her, which left Mar feeling a little weird. Which was probably the point because she immediately followed that by trying to Force Lightning Mar. Her world turned into light and pain and her awareness of what was going on around her suddenly dropped to a point as it broke her focus for a moment. Forcing herself -

"I have a knack for energy absorbtion," Nyrellis had told her.

- she brought her hand up and tried to pull the lightning at first, which didn't work at all. The word diffusion came to mind and she bent over double as the woman lit her up again, struggling to bring her arm up -

The dark side is corrosive. Like an acid, caustic to the soul.

- and opened herself to the Force, giving up herself completely to it. She pulled from deep within herself her sense of rightness, of justice -

The dark side is selfishness. If that's acid, what's the base?

- the Force lightning suddenly curling into her palm and striking her no longer. She closed her fist as the Twi'lek woman stopped, puzzled.

"What? How did yo-"

Mar cut her off as she unleashed that sense of righteousness, her need to make the universe right. To correct the injustices she'd seen, to help others. She didn't even think about what she was doing, not really. She was inside her own mind, calling up the deepest parts of her sense of morality, the tenets of the Jedi that she'd memorized and internalized and taken for her own. The lack of any definable moral code as she grew up meant it was the only one she really knew.

Her wrath struck from her fingertips as golden lightning, catching the Twi'lek woman and bringing the sith assassin to her knees, lightsaber sparking in her hand as one of the bolts struck it directly. Mar brought her free hand up, called her lightsaber to it and activated it as she closed her striking hand, giving the Twi'lek woman just enough time to look up at Mar. Mar struck her down, the womans corpse falling into the mud.

Panting, still twitching from being struck by lightning, she bent over and picked up the remains of the womans lightsaber, then checked her survival pack. The tracking beacon was still working.

She wasn't quite screwed yet.

 

[Aisling]

YEAH so, I'm back.

I still don't have a computer but I got a sort-of-working laptop to work on. With any luck that problem will be resolved in a couple weeks. My computer died in May and I've been losing my mind with a lack of things to do because I did EVERYTHING on it.

 

[Aisling]

Mar sat on a large rock, cross-legged, near the remains of the gate. She hadn't wandered far. If So'duun could get the gate working, it wasn't impossible that Fenet would be able to reactivate it. She had the survival pack and…

She glanced over at the corpse of the woman she'd felled. In her lap was the kyber from the woman's lightsaber, bright red. Holding it gave her faint echoes in the Force when she stilled her mind, echoes of pain and rage. It felt dark, in much the same way the swamp did. Even though she'd come out in what seemed to be daylight, a grey pallor hung over the entire swamp, seeming to drain things of colour. She could hear the chirps and groans of various small animals, but she'd been sitting there for about an hour now and hadn't heard anything particularly large.

The crystal in her lap continued to silently scream while she let her mind wander. She picked it up, slipping it into a small pouch on her belt, the sensation fading as it stopped being in direct contact with her bare skin. She could still sense it, but it wasn't quite as immediate, now. Standing up, she took a moment to stretch and get the kinks out from having sat in one position for so long before wandering over to the gate, the body just in the corner of her eye.

What exactly had she done? It wasn't the first time she'd encountered Force Lightning, but everything Fenet and Nyri had told her suggested it was strictly a dark side power. But she hadn't felt rage when she'd done it and the lightning hadn't been blue, it had been gold. The colour of So'duuns blade is what it reminded her of, not the cold, electric hate that she'd encountered on Ossus.

Taking a deep breath, Mar stilled her mind and went over it again.

She'd been hurt, her mind leaping around… something about diffusion? Before she attacked, she'd done something that felt weird. Unlike anything she'd ever done before. She tried to recall it, put her mind back in the mental headspace, but she'd been in agony and her mind was functional now. Getting back to that feeling without the exact circumstances wasn't going to be easy, and it wasn't something she could practice without being attacked anyway. She'd felt the lightning pulled to her palm and then… equalized?

The word wasn't quite right, but it was the best one she could think of.

After the pain had stopped was when she could remember clearly. She'd attacked with a righteous indignation she'd never felt before. The woman was a clear and present target, a dark side user who had been in a prison. She'd no doubt hurt people before. People who had been like Mar had been, unable to get away or escape. When she'd struck she hadn't been striking the woman, she'd been striking the idea of the woman, seeing in her every time she'd been looked over by her people growing up. Or worse, when she'd grown up and started to be interesting to them. She'd had a lucky escape there, but this woman's victims never did. She'd struck back for every time she'd ever been in a position where she couldn't fight back or argue or get away from it, and poured all of it into the attack.

When you got right down to it, what was justice, anyway? The entire concept revolved around finding people who were anti-social and then delivering retribution, or at the very least, stopping them cold. Presumably there would be an element of rehabilitation in there, but she wouldn't fool herself and pretend that a lot of prisons wanted to reform prisoners. Lots of them really sucked, that's why they were prisons. A few places treated criminal elements as psychiatric cases, and those actually had a lot of success in terms of preventing recidivism. But most places simply chose to substitute suffering and retribution for anything as complicated as that.

So, when you stopped to think about it, justice was really just one step to the left of revenge. When she'd attacked, she'd felt in her mind a sense of rightness, to strike down a blight on the world and make it better. She wasn't sure if she was right to feel that way, but it seemed better than hoping she hadn't had a brush with darkness by doing that. In Mar's mind, the paragon of being a Jedi was to allow one's sense of rightness to guide their actions without any of the mess of emotions getting in the way. It felt like that was what she'd been doing, but what did she know? She was just a padawan with delusions of adequacy.

She looked up at the sky and sighed, then walked over to the body, grabbing it and dragging it away. If she was going to set up a base camp at the gate, she wouldn't be doing it next to a corpse. So'duun and whoever those other women were, they were probably still on the planet. The sound of ship engines weren't exactly subtle, anything they'd gotten into that was within walking distance would be something she'd heard.

Dropping the body a dozen yards into the treeline, she frowned in thought, walking back to the gate. Maybe she should try to-

Oh.

Standing at the gate was one of the women who had walked with So'duun through the gate. As she stepped out of the treeline, she drew her blade, igniting it and letting the tip of it drag along the mud to make a popping, bubbling hiss. It announced her presence in a slightly more pointed way than clearing her throat might have been.

The woman smiled without looking at her. "Look at you. So confident in yourself, but so new. So'duun said you didn't seem very strong, but that you did have a knack for learning. Do you like to learn, little padawan?" There was a strange, echoey quality to her voice that Mar couldn't understand. Like people were speaking in time with her. "Are you going to strike me down too?"

"I'm still mulling it over. Where's So'duun?"

"Oh, she's safe with my sister. We have a great deal to teach her. And perhaps you, if you've the mind to learn."

"So'duun went chasing after the darkness. We came to stop her, bring her back to herself. Why would I co-operate with somebody who was hanging out with a Sith?"

"It's not like we were allies, you know. We were simply on the same block when the power was turned off. So'duun didn't quite think about where the power to open the gate might come from. The answer, as it turned out, was the nearby cells. Thank you for killing her, she was rather annoying."

"Why don't you take me to So'duun and we can call it even?"

"Why in such a hurry?"

"I'm pretty sure you're evil and trying to corrupt me."

"I'm lots of things." The woman smiled and as Mar got closer, she could see that her skin was an odd greyish colour. Her hair was black and what Mar had taken for a mane of hair was actually scraggly, unkept and tangled looking. The womans clothes had seen better days but she carried herself with a sort of unshakable dignity that didn't seem right for how she appeared. "The Force is more than just light or dark. Such neat labels for something so vital and versatile. There are many techniques that are unknown to the Jedi, secrets of ancient magic..."

"Explains why So'duun wanted you, at least. You know things."

"I know things." She nodded. "Ah, but now... I want to know you."

Mar gasped, her world turning green. She suddenly found it very hard to form a thought, stumbling in her step and stopping completely, hand on her head as she tried to shake it off. She dropped her blade, unaware of doing so as she fought to keep whatever this was out, trying to open herself to the Force-

"Ah, ah, ah. Now I have you."

Instead of the Force, the woman's magic overwhelmed her, and for a time she knew no more.

---

When she awoke, it wasn't in a prison cell. She found herself coming to gradually, consciousness rising up slowly out of the darkness that had overtaken her at the gate.

"...isn't what we agreed on." There was a ringing in her ears that made it hard to focus, but was slowly fading.

"Oh, don't worry, she's fine. She just needed a little convincing, is all. You know, I think you might be on to something with her. She killed Moru and made it look almost easy. Do you know what that technique she used was? It looked like Force Lightning."

"No. I recognized the absorption, but I've never seen a Jedi use that who hadn't fallen first."

"I think she's very near to the edge between light and dark. I'm not entirely sure she wouldn't have struck me down if I'd allowed her to get too close to me. She had a look to her that didn't bode well for me."

"I don't like it." She was beginning to notice what she was hearing, recognizing So'duun's voice. And the woman she'd met at the gate. There was a third one, the one who'd spoken of absorption, that she hadn't seen yet but something told her to keep still, pretend to continue being unconscious.

"She's a canny little thing, though. You were right. She's pretending to be asleep."

Dammit! Why did that only ever work in stories!

Mar opened her eyes, finding herself on one side of a room that looked like it belonged to a ship that had seen better days. There were signs of dirt, rust, and dust everywhere. No cleaning droid had worked here for a long time. Pushing herself up off the floor slowly, she reached for her blade on reflex and was surprised to find it there, glancing at it before flicking her eyes to So'duun.

"Planning to fight me?"

"Do I need to?" Mar looked at the other two women. The one from the gate was the younger looking one. The third woman was a crone, with grey hair and sunken eyes. She also wore the same burgandy outfit the younger woman had, but So'duun did not. It suggested that they might exclude So'duun from their little social circle, even if they were working with her. Their motives would not be So'duuns motives.

"Hopefully not. I was thinking we could complete your training." So'duun gestured. "Do you want to sit?"

"I'm fine right here. And I don't need it. Fenet was the one who did most of the work, if you'll recall. Master Nyrellis has picked up the rest."

"Hmn."

"Why'd you run, So'duun? What are you doing?"

"Chasing secrets the Jedi Council won't like. You know, I've been skeptical for quite awhile about their attitude towards certain things. The trouble they gave me over the fact I had a relationship. The trouble they gave me over you, too. They're awfully quick to decide who gets to know what as far as history is concerned, covering things up when it suits them."

"What are you talking about?"

"The Jedi Order was founded in blood, did you know that? They only founded the temple on Ossus after a great war back on Tython in which all of the dark side users were mercilessly hunted down and exterminated. Doesn't seem like a very jedi thing to do, does it?"

"Is there a bathroom between here and the point, or...?"

So'duun and the old crone both chuckled while the gate-woman looked annoyed with her impudence. "Come sit down Mar, and let me tell you about an order called the Dai Bendu..."

 

[Aisling]

"NO!"

Fenet had just enough time to see Mar flash before disappearing like the others. With her passing the gateway overloaded, panels exploding in parts of the wall where relays gave out, the gate shutting down. The reaction didn't end there, though. Power crackled in the 'door' of the gate as the energy trying to power it kept pouring in with nowhere to go. Fenet turned and scrambled to get way with Nyri just ahead of her as the overloads began to send wild arcs of power around the room.

They didn't stop when they got out of the gate room. Fenet sped past Nyrellis, pushing herself to get to the surface as fast as possible until Nyri was forced to speed herself up just to keep pace with her. Fenet seemed almost frantic to get back to the ship but wouldn't stop long enough for Nyri to say anything. Each time they came to a rise in the corridors going up, Fenets legs burned but she kept going regardless.

By the time they reached the ship Fenet was ready to fall over, but Nyri wasn't. She sped past Fenet as Fenet stumbled, gasping for breath with stars at the edges of her vision. She only kept going for a second though, turning in a circle rather than forcing herself into a dead stop to come back around to Fenet, slowing down as she did. A moment later Nyri picked her up in a firemans carry, pushing herself to the last leg of the race back to the ship.

When they finally reached the ramp, M8 was outside the ship waiting for them. "What is wrong? Where is Mar?"

Rather than give it an answer, Nyri handed Fenet off to the droid, then raced inside to get to the cockpit and begin a preflight.

M8 helped Fenet to her feet, the girl still gasping for breath, though not quite as raggedly as she had been before. "Have to... get inside." Her legs felt weak, forcing her to lean a little on M8 as they made their way inside. Fenet wobbled her way to the cockpit while M8 secured the airlock and ramp, dropping into the pilots seat.

"I've got her beacon signal. She's in the unknown regions. Reaching her is going to be tricky."

"We have anything on the system she's in?" Fenet's hands were racing, then she suddenly stopped, realizing they were trembling.

"Just a name. What's wrong?"

"I just need a moment." Fenet closed her eyes, forcing herself to relax as she opened herself to the Force, letting it in. She was letting herself run away with what she was feeling and liable to make a mistake in this state. The best thing she could do right now was to be centred, reliable. She didn't know Mar was in any immediate danger and the beacon signal meant she wasn't dead.

Probably.

Fenet exhaled slowly, opening her eyes and lifting the ship off the surface, tilting back the nose and GOING. "So, the name?"

"Zakuul. Looks like there were records, but it's just a short synopsis. Used to be pretty important but that only lasted a few years, apparently."

"I don't know the name."

"Hasn't been relevant for millennia, so that's not very surprising. Apparently, they had an independent Force-using order at one time, though."

The blue sky of the atmosphere was thinning out, the stars becoming visible. Fenet pulled up the ships HUD on the front window. "I need hyperspace calculations."

"Yeah, working on it. I can do that and read at the same time."

"...You can?"

"The computer is doing most of the work for me, I only have to remember the variables, not work the calculations out. I have a good memory. Here, sending them over now." Nyri made a swiping motion with one hand and the waypoint appeared in front of Fenet, forcing her to turn the ship back at the planet and fly past it to the other side. She'd been heading in the wrong direction as she left the surface. Oops.

Outside the atmosphere she could kick the engines in to full force though, so reaching the waypoint only took a few minutes. She pulled back her speed as she approached it, primed the hyperdrive and the stars became lines as the Light's Touch left light speed behind.

With that done, Fenet turned the pilots chair slowly to face Nyri. "Okay. Independant Force tradition."

"Yeah." Nyri stood up, pulling her tail around to her lap before sitting down again. "The 'Knights of Zakuul'. Apparently, during the last period when the Sith Empire was still a thing they managed to garner a great deal of power in a very short amount of time. A former Sith Lord by the name of Valkorion was able to unite the tribes of Zakuul and forge them into an empire. From what this says, Valkorion had some way of keeping himself alive for centuries and was the single guiding hand to these people for that entire time. Eventually they were able to hijack a droid-controlled, highly advanced space fleet built by another race - doesn't say who, naturally - and used that to conquer a massive area of space and give both the Sith Empire and the Republic quite a lot of trouble until their toys were taken from them."

"So why does nobody know about them now?"

"The surface of their planet got a nice fat orbital bombardment once or twice and pretty much everything they'd built on it was a write-off. They ended up being folded into other organizations or splintering off into independent groups."

"No more Knights of Zakuul?"

"Doesn't look like it."

"Then why would So'duun want to go there?" Fenet sounded puzzled, crossing her legs at the knees and tapping her chin, deep in thought. So'duun was an archaeologist at heart and always had been. Ever since Fenet had joined her, she'd taken a sort of unfiltered but gritty joy any time they came across ruins or some ancient artifact. Gritty because it often resulted in the two of them spending days at the site cataloguing everything, taking images and holographic scans and compiling data on the site. Fenet had never had the passion for it So'duun had, but she'd found the results interesting and So'duun was her master so she'd never really complained, just went along with it.

If there was anything left on Zakuul, So'duun might be interested in going there, but it sounded like they'd been scoured during the conflicts they'd been caught up in. But that only worked under the assumption that So'duun was choosing where to go, wasn't it?

"I'm not sure. I don't know her very well."

"What if it wasn't a choice?" Fenet said it curiously. "What if she just turned on the thing and it just connected randomly? Or if those other women had given her a destination, convinced her to go someplace? The Twi'lek really looked like bad news but the two women were just... women. I'm sure they were in that prison for a reason."

"They were not just women." Nyri sounded a little grim now. "The Twi'lek, I think, was a Sith. Perhaps not a Sith Lord, she didn't feel very strong in the Force. An apprentice or assassin, maybe. But the two women, I recognized those clothes. They were Nightsisters of Dathomir."

"I've heard of them. Aren't they dark side users too?"

"Yes. Sort of." Nyri frowned. "It's not entirely clear because the way they access the Force is different to any other Force tradition we know of. They think of it as magic and specialize in illusions, dark alchemy, things of that nature. They manipulate and obfuscate, they don't fight directly. Not unless forced, and even then they won't just come at you, but strike at you from oblique angles. They tend to treat their men like minions and leave the direct fighting to them instead. It's matriarchal society."

Fenet took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, again. "So Mar is trapped on a planet with four dark side users by herself, one with a destroyed surface and no further signs of civilization, with only a survival pack and her lightsaber."

"Don't worry, she's smart. I think she'll be okay."

Fenet passed her hand over her face, wincing. "I hope you're right."

Behind them, M8 listened silently, unmoving. It had noticed that when it did that, the crew tended to... not forget that it was there exactly, but they'd unconsciously stop paying as much attention to it. While they mused over what to do when they got there, M8 turned and headed back to the cargo bay.

Once it got there, it went over to the area Fenet had designated her work zone. It began to put a kit together, the most commonly necessary parts for building or repairing a lightsaber. It had paid attention to Mars work and now, that would pay off.

It took some time to gather all the necessary parts and assemble them into a field kit, mainly because M8 needed to include basic tools as well. She might be less happy about having some of these off the ship, but it calculated that she would be happier still to be able to repair her weapon if it had become damaged. Once that kit was assembled, it packed the kit into a small crate, then began to add other supplies. Survival gear, mostly. After some debate, it included a blaster rifle. The jedi would not look to use the weapon as a first measure, but if they had picked up any allies along the way, a spare gun might be useful. Even if they didn't, M8 itself could use the rifle.

It took a moment to stop and reflect on the fact that it was... well, calling M8 an astromech would be a stretch at this point. It didn't look like one anymore. It certainly had better processing power now and a much stronger body. The additional programs, modifications, and upgrades had turned M8 into something rather unique in terms of droids in general. It had been allowed to define itself, rather than be defined by the needs of the humans around it in whatever role they had for a droid.

Picking up a small pack of explosive charges, it wondered idly if droids could be people one day.

---

Mar walked between the two mysterious women, with So'duun just ahead of them. The swamp was uneven and rough and without speeders, traversing it had been a nightmare. Nothing in particular had showed up to threaten them, thankfully. All of them were muddied and sour by the time they reached the edge of the swamp.

The land began to rise and soon they were climbing the back edge of a ridge. When they reached the top, they found the land dropped down a dozen meters and they were standing at the top of a bluffs, the cliffs too sheer for them to climb down. They would have to follow the ridge until they found a way to lower ground again.

When they finally found one, the going was slow but they made it down with a little patience. Halfway down the ridge Mar lost a handhold only to find herself hanging with So'duun gripping the back of her tunic. She had just enough time to grab the cliff again and look up, but So'duun wasn't looking at her, of course. She couldn't, so there was no reason to move her head.

At the bottom of the ridge they followed a stream down, breaking the treeline to find themselves at the edges of a settlement. They dragged themselves towards it, walking openly down the desire path leading from the stream to the town. As they got close, they found sentries in golden-plated (or at least, something that looked golden plated) armor, holding spears. One of them leveled the weapon at them from a distance, calling out.

"Halt and identify yourselves, by order of the Knights of Zakuul!"

 

[Kaernetron]

I just started reading this story and so far, I've enjoyed seeing what our flawed heroines get up to.

I'm up to chapter 4/09 (splitting the party on Nar Shaddaa) and have to say:
Damn Sodie, u dun goofed (pun intended) big time!

A fine example for why Darth Trainwreck's "teachings" should be classified as a cognitohazard in its own category.
Iirc her goal is/was to get rid of the Force or more practically all force-sensitives so the galaxy can have peace - no way following her philosophy won't end in tears and regrets.

Q: How do you know Kreia is manipulating you?
A: Her lips move.

 

[Aisling]

"Who are these guys?" Mar asked. Her hands were bounds, the golden-plated Knight walking her along with one hand on her shoulder.

"Don't know, don't care." The older woman asked.

"Actually, who the hell are you two, too?"

The woman grunted while the Knight walking her along hmm'd. His voice was tinny, echoing inside his helm. "You lot don't know each other?"

"You could say it's complicated." So'duun replied from behind them.

Mar sighed as the Knights marched them into a duracrete building with a fortified door. "I'm an apprentice monk. The blindfolded woman was meant to be my master, but she ditched our group for her own reasons. These two, I don't know them."

"Good." The Knight with his hand on Mar's shoulder turned her away from the rest of the group, marching her down a corridor. Mar expected the others to act up somehow at her being separated, but they didn't. Hmm.

The Knight walked her into what seemed to be an interview room with a bench built into the wall. "So, lets start with your name."

"Mar."

"Mar what?"

"Mar. That's it. It's short for Marenna."

"No last name?"

"No." She shook her head.

"How did you get here?"

"Do you know about the gate out in the swamp?"

The Knight reached up, pulling his helmet off. He turned out to be an older man—she'd have guessed mid 50's—with beard stubble and short trimmed hair. "Is that what it is? It's been there as long as anyone can remember. You're telling me you came through it somehow?"

"Yes. I was chasing So'duun. The blindfolded woman."

"Why?"

"'cuz I have a bone to pick with her is why! We've been chasing her since she ditched us."

"So what makes her so special?"

Mar gave him a look. "You have my lightsaber hung on your belt, what do you think?"

"That anybody who uses the Force is dangerous and I need to figure out what's going on now-ish. The Knights of Zakuul are the only ones who carry lightsabers like this. Yours is the wrong colour too, all our focusing crystals come from the same place, so all our blades are yellow. And you're carrying a red crystal."

"Took it off a dark sider who confronted me at the gate. Her body won't be too far, unless something moved her."

"You murdered somebody, and you're just admitting it?"

"No, I defended myself from somebody trying to kill me, and I'm just admitting it. I'm a Jedi padawan, I don't just run around killing people."

"The Jedi are just stories." He said it disdainfully. "Do you think I'm stupid?"

Mar stared at him. Kinda beginning to wonder? She didn't say it out loud, though. "All of us are Force users. I don't know why they're just going along with this."

"They dangerous?"

"YES. YES THEY ARE."

"Hm." He folded his arms, tapping his finger on his elbow. "Let me get this straight. You're an apprentice, who went chasing after a master and her supposed accomplices -"

"No, they just happened to be at the prison."

"Prison?"

"The gate we entered was at the bottom of a prison on Belsavis. An ancient one. It's not in active use and the guards are all rogue, attacking anybody who gets close. Just getting to the gate was a fight."

"So she lets these people out of this prison for... some reason, and you chased her here?"

"My friends were right behind me, but the gate closed before they could get through. Look, I never said I was good at forward planning, okay?"

"Clearly. Why don't you just wait here for a bit?" He turned, leaving the room and locking the door behind him.

Mar took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. With nothing else to do, she settled in to wait, clearing her mind to meditate. For some time, nothing at all happened, the faint sounds from outside the room catching her attention until she shut them out, too.

The holding cell's wall in front of her has vanished when she opens her eyes, a yawning darkness as the room is made into a corridor that stretches forward forever. Standing between the corridor and her is a large blue alien with grooves in its chin, looking at her with an expression her mind interprets as sadness. When she blinks, it's gone.

She blinked a few more times, looking around the room. No, everything normal again. She was fairly sure she hadn't ingested any psychoactives, but it was possible something was being pumped into the room that she was unaware of. She opened herself to the Force and took a deep breath, drawing it in and letting it fill her, fill her, until her body felt like it almost hummed. She held it for a few seconds, allowing it time to purge toxins from her body before exhaling and letting it flow away, leaving a sense of warm emptiness.

She felt a ripple through the Force, a discordance bordering on alarm. Then sudden hostile intent. Outside of the cell she could hear commotion.

Relaxing her shoulders, she moved her wrists down to move the binding from her back, under her butt, to under her legs. Thanking Fenet silently for the torturous physical training, she leaned forward and tucked her knees against her chest. She got the binding around her feet and... didn't exactly free her hands, but now they were in front of her and she could use them.

She had a sneaking suspicion she might need to.

She could clearly hear the sounds of fighting now, but then it began to taper off as the fight moved away from where she was. She stood up, pacing in the room back and forth, impatiently waiting now. She didn't have to wait long. The older man who had been interrogating her thundered the door opened, stomping inside.

"Four of my men are DEAD!"

Mar nodded. "I'm sorry to hear that. I did warn you."

"You said they were dangerous, not witches!"

Mar frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"They did something to enthrall my men. One moment they're being questioned, the next they're giving orders. What the hell did they do?"

"Whatever it was, it wasn't a skill they showed me. What about So'duun?"

"Fought with them."

Mar swore violently. "Did you take anything from them?"

"Yes. This So'duun got her lightsaber back, but not the device she'd been carrying with her."

"Can I see it?"

"Why should I- wait a damn minute, how'd you free your hands up?"

"I'm small, it helps. Notice how I didn't attack you the moment you walked into the room?"

The man paused, staring her down. "My name is Gren. You're going to help me find these women."

Mar nodded. "Yes. I will. Do you mind?" She waggled her hands at him a little, prompting him to grab the bindings and unlock them.

She took a moment to rub her wrists, then pulled her saber off Gren's belt. As she caught it he suddenly ignited his, dropping into a defensive stance, ready to fight. She didn't ignite hers though, putting it on her own belt instead. "Little jumpy?"

He waited a moment before standing up and turning his blade off. "Call it an excess of caution around somebody I don't know yet. You're just a kid, kids are unpredictable."

She gave him a withering look. "Not right now, but the kid will happily spar with you later and show you what she can do. Now, what happened exactly?"

"They turned my men. Before I came back here, they had broken out of the building and were being pursued."

"Do you have a spaceport?"

"Not here. There's one about a days travel by speeder."

"That will be their target the moment they find out about it. The device?"

He made a rumbling noise in his throat. "Very well. Come."

Leading her out of the interview room, he walked her down the corridor they'd come, instead continuing the way they'd led the rest of the group. Mar could see gouges in the walls from blade strikes as they were swung around. They passed a knight on the ground being tended to by a medic, his armour stripped down to reveal a slash across his chest and shoulder.

"Is my survival pack here too?"

"Your backpack? Yeah. Why?"

"There's a beacon in it. That's how the rest of my group will find me."

"More 'jedi'?"

"Yeah. My Master and my best friend. Who is... also sort of my Master." She frowned at herself.

"What do you mean?"

"So'duun left the basics to Fenet—my friend—to train me when I first joined the crew. Then when she bailed, Nyrellis joined the crew and took over my training. Now we just travel together."

"Sounds like she really half-assed it before leaving. Unreliable."

"I didn't know her long enough to decide." She followed him to an equipment locker, which he opened. He passed her backpack to her and Mar shouldered it on while he pulled out the strange-looking holocron.

"What the hell?" Mar said as she took it in hand. "It feels like a holocron."

"A what?"

"A device that can only be activated using the Force. Jedi and Sith use them to record events, or training..." She was turning it over in her hands, frowning. "But this is the first I've seen it. I suspected she might have gotten something on Korriban she didn't tell us about, this must be it."

"How do you activate it?"

Mar held it up, channelling the Force into it. The holocron lifted and split apart, the ghostly image of a woman forming between the pieces.

"A new hand touches the holocron."

"Yuh huh. Who are you?"

"I am Darth Traya."

"What have you been telling So'duun, exactly?"

"I showed her the truth. That we are all slaves to the Force and free will is an illusion."

"And she bought that?"

The hologram stared at her, narrowing its eyes. Gren chuckled beside her.

"No, seriously. That's what this has all been about? You filled her head with a bunch of crap about the Force being bad and now she's suddenly evil?"

"Foolish child. She has seen beyond the veil and seeks the beginning. She seeks Tython."

"I know that."

"To find it again, she searches for the Kwa. They were the firstborn."

"Nice. Whatever. You have no idea what she's looking for, do you?"

"I'm a holocron, idiot child, what do you think? I exist to reveal the truth, to-"

"Talk endlessly about anything that isn't helpful, apparently." She 'pulled', drawing out what she'd been channeling into the holocron, shutting it down. As it came together again, she took it in hand, pulling her lightsaber.

"What are you doing?" Gren turned to her. "That's evidence."

"It's dangerous." Mar held it in place with the Force, then activated her lightsaber, holding the blade in the middle of the device and letting it burn through, sparking violently. "So'duun is an experienced Jedi Knight. This thing somehow convinced her to go off the rails after years with the Order. I don't care what Darth Traya has to say and don't want to hear it. Neither do you."

He hmm'd quietly, watching as the device fell apart in molten slag, hissing as it hit the floor. Mar deactivated her blade. "I don't like it, but I also feel like I've walked into a bar fight and don't know where the punches are coming from."

"That's not a bad analogy, actually."

"We need to find So'duun and those two women first."

"Did you get names out of them? I didn't."

"We hadn't gotten that far. They weren't as co-operative as you. So'duun fought so I want her as well."

"You'll probably have to argue with Nyrellis about that. If I know them, they're already on their way here. You said 'Knights of Zakuul', so... this planet is Zakuul, then?"

"Yes. We're in what the rest of the galaxy calls the 'unknown regions'."

"Explains why I've never heard of you. Well, time's a-wastin'. Lets go find our fugitives."

 

[Aisling]

Light's Touch dropped out of hyperspace and turned, Fenet swinging the ship around to bring the largest point of mass to the front of the ship. She did a barrel roll as the planet came into sight on the viewport, making it 'down' and plotting an orbital insertion. The viewport lit up as the course was projected in front of her, an easy-to-follow flight guide. While she did that, Nyrellis ran a scan, tail lashing side to side behind her in agitation.

"I'm picking up her beacon, but it looks like she's in the middle of a blast crater. Or, what was a blast crater. The edges are a little eroded, but the shape of the land is correct."

"The gate was in the middle of a crater?"

"No, she's just entered the rim. I think she's in a vehicle of some kind. If so, quick work on her part. She's moving too fast to just be on foot."

"I wonder where she's going?" She glanced over to Nyri, who just shrugged. While Fenet refined the projected course to have them intercept, Nyri flicked the control to open a comm channel. Nothing happened. She flicked it again, but nothing. She sighed, punched the side of the control and the button lit up, opening the channel while Fenet tried not to laugh.

"Hey Mar, you there?"

There was a delay, presumably while Mar dug the commlink out of her pack. After about fifteen seconds, she finally replied. "Good to hear your voice, Master Nyrellis. I'm currently with one of the natives, chasing after So'duun. She's hijacked a land speeder and it looks like she's headed for the local spaceport, but she got a bit of a lead on us."

"Let's see if we can do anything about that." Fenet muttered to herself, splitting her attention between her sensor feed and the flight controls, correcting the ships course. "M8, could you do me a favour and pull the crate from section one, second shelf, yellow space? Inside there's a couple thermal detonators." That got an alarmed glance from Nyri, but she didn't say anything.

"I have the explosives, Fenet."

"Good. We're going to do a fly-by over a fleeing vehicle, I want you to drop the cargo lift and throw them just ahead of their vehicle as we pass by. Think you can do that?"

"Probably. Most vehicles, droids, and people aren't very blast-proof. I may have an alternative solution, though."

"Just hang on tight, we don't want to lose you. Coming in now."

The ship swooped, the nose tilting up sharply to bring the ship parallel to Mar, coming up behind her. Fenet could see the landspeeder ahead of them now, a big hulking transport vehicle. "Hang on, M8. Lowering the lift now."

"Excellent. I will see you when you land."

"Wait, what?" Nyri sounded startled.

As Light's Touch swooped over So'duun's land speeder, M8 jumped. Behind them, Mar watched with her breath catching in her throat as time almost seemed to slow while M8 was in the air. Then it impacted, smashing into the front of the landspeeder and compacting the engine, blowing it partially out of the side of the vehicle as the droid rebounded with the force of the impact, the speeder sandwiched into the ground. It flipped while M8 was in the air, landing heavily and skidding as M8 landed on its back. It pulled its legs to its chest and snapped itself to its feet, ignoring the fact it was now completely covered in grass, dirt and shrapnel.

Light's Touch swooped around in the sky, circling back to the site just as Mar and Gren rolled up to the crashed landspeeder. Mar got out, hopping down to walk up to M8, looking it over. "Seriously? I mean, I'm the last person to complain about a dynamic entry, but wasn't that a little over the top?"

"It seemed to stand a better chance than using grenades."

"Do you still have those?"

"Why would I bring grenades to a sword fight?"

As though on cue, the yellow blade of So'duun's lightsaber tore through the landspeeder. The cabin exploded outwards as she used the Force to send it flying, clearly pissed about M8's landing. Gren didn't wait for talking, he pulled his blaster up, firing immediately only for So'duun to bat the bolt away, then yank the gun from his hand. It didn't go far as M8 yanked it out of the air, then aimed it and began firing instead.

"Stupid! Blasted! DROID!" Each time she swung the blade to knock a bolt away, she emphasized it with a word. "I will end you."

"Where are the other women, So'duun?"

"Maybe they ran off."

Mar shook her head. "Yeah, not buying it."

"I don't care. You keep getting in my way. You're like an annoying gnat!"

So'duun charged them and M8 moved to the side, flanking her only for the woman to begin aiming the blaster bolts back at it. It stopped firing immediately, then pulled out the training sabers it was given. While Mar activated her blade and attacked from one side, M8 attacked from the other, forcing So'duun to draw back and split her attention.

"You don't have to fight us. Just surrender, So'duun."

"I never wanted to train you. I only did it because I was asked. You think I'm dangerous? You're nothing but trouble, Mar. You have been since you arrived." So'duun struck at her, moving to bring Mar between her and M8. M8 moved around to the side, acting in synch with Mar and forcing So'duun on the defensive. Her blade whipped around to keep the two of them at bay as she fought to keep both Mar and M8 at least somewhat in front of her.

Though they outnumbered her, M8 was still relying on reflexes and programming while Mar was still only a student, even if she did have an affinity for combat. It wasn't long before So'duun got an opening, grabbing M8 with the Force and using it to throw the droid overhead, then smash it down into the wreck of the speeder. The result was that she barely parried a sideways slash from Mar, then turned her attention to focus on Mar entirely.

Suddenly Mar lost the initiative, and it was her struggling to keep up her defence. She parried cuts to the side, a sweep at her legs, and leaned back just in time for So'duun's blade tip to come within an inch of her face. As she tried to correct her balance So'duun kicked her, sending her sprawling while the Light's Touch landed off to the side of the fight.

Then she reached for her belt, pulled a blaster pistol and shot Mar.

The bolt hit Mar's sword arm, and she yelped, dropping the lightsaber as the bolt instantly cooked the flesh in her forearm. She dropped back on the ground, the damage too extensive to hurt at first, leaving her looking at her mangled arm in horror just before the pain FINALLY kicked in. Then the screaming began.

Fenet and Nyri got to the bottom of the ship's ramp just in time to see Mar get shot, both of them rushing So'duun as green fog swept into the entire area, suddenly. Both of them ignited their blades, Fenet's orange and Nyri's bright blue visible in the mist, but only for a moment. The mist suddenly cleared and Nyri turned to find the two Nightsisters standing on the ramp of Light's Touch.

"That ship is mine!" So'duun yelled at them.

"You abandoned us!" Fenet screamed it back, every ounce of the shock and betrayal she'd felt suddenly channelled into her voice.

Nyri charged the two Nightsisters, leaping at them. They split, moving to the sides, but the goal wasn't to chase them. The goal was to keep them from stealing the ship. She dashed inside, picking up the nearest thing she could - a hydrospanner, as it turned out - and throwing it at the ramps controls. While the ramp began to close she ran at it, jumping from the edge and spinning mid-air to bring her saber down in a vicious cut at one of the Nightsisters. She stepped to the side, bringing her hand up and sending Nyri flying with what looked like a green fireball, tossing her a few feet into the air. Instead of sprawling though, Nyri landed on one foot and did a backflip, lowering into a crouch and springing herself back at the Nightsister.

While Nyri defended the ship, So'duun charged Fenet. Fenet met her blade and leaned into it, orange sparking against yellow between them as they stood face to face.

Fenet's showed determination.

So'duuns showed rage.

She pushed Fenet back suddenly and Fenet could see it. She could see the exact moment that So'duun truly turned, tapping into her rage for power. She felt the shift in the Force as So'duun pulled herself into it to attack with Force Lightning, screaming in frustration at Fenet. Fenet brought her blade up to parry it, the lightsaber bucking and jerking in her hand as she fought to control it against the assault.

A green flash of fire behind So'duun was the only warning. Suddenly the pressure vanished as the younger Nightsister grabbed So'duun, vanishing with her in some kind of translocation that Fenet didn't know.

Nyri was giving no quarter to the older woman but even without a blade, she seemed to be holding her own. With each sweep of the blade she moved out of the way, her efforts economic, allowing Nyri's blade to come within inches of her at times. When Nyri swept the blade at her sideways she held her hands up and suddenly Nyri found an opposing force pushing against her lightsaber as the woman used a push to parry the blade.

She sneered at Nyrellis, but Nyrellis just smiled at her, showing teeth.

"You think you've stopped me?"

"I hold your lightsaber."

"No." Mar's blade appeared through the older woman's chest. The Nightsister had just enough time to look shocked before her efforts failed and Nyri's blade sheared through her, impacted Mars and both swept out the other side of the woman, who fell to the ground in several pieces.

Then Mar dropped to one knee, her damaged arm limp at her side. Nyri knelt next to her, looped Mar's good arm over her shoulder, then lifted her to begin dragging her into the ship.

Fenet turned when So'duun and the other woman vanished, saber held in front of her, looking around. She whipped to face the speeder wreck as M8 ripped itself out of the debris, shaking off part of the windshield from its arm. She couldn't spot them though, moving to cover Nyri as they got back into the ship.

"M8, do you see anything?"

The droid took a moment to look around. "The human you arrived here with appears to be dead. His vehicle is also missing."

Fenet stopped, then looked around, realizing it was right. She turned off her saber, swearing loudly and forcing herself to take a moment, letting the frustration flow away before it began to rule her. She focused on her breathing, slowing it down and then turning towards the ship, gesturing to M8 to follow.

She darted ahead of it, following Nyri to the bunk room. "Mar."

"I just gave her a sedative. But her arm... We need to get her to a medical facility. She's going to need a prosthetic."

Fenet winced, passing her hand over her face before realizing that it was her job to fly the ship. "We can't keep chasing So'duun. Mar takes priority."

---

So'duun drove the speeder while Kali wept behind her. The womans tears didn't move her. Sila had been a threat, with the two of them outnumbering her. Now it was just down to one and Kali alone would be easier to manage than Kali and Sila together. In her heart she felt nothing but a smoldering sense of resentment that her ship was in stolen hands, the hands of her enemies. The others had betrayed her, obviously, or they wouldn't have attacked her. They tried to kill her!

She owed them nothing.

While Kali's heart shattered behind her, the emptiness that was So'duun drove on towards the nearest settlement. Perhaps they could find the location of a spaceport there. The spaceport would have repair centres and she needed a particular set of parts to get the gateway working again. Then she'd be back on track. She didn't need to steal a ship. Tython was already in her reach.

 

[Aisling]

I FINALLY HAVE A NEW COMPUTER AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Needless to say I am pleased by this and will be focusing on getting everything set up ASAP.

 

[Aisling]

Hi. If you were following this story, I probably owe you an apology. I got a new computer and got really distracted by all the shit I can do with it now. Having a really good computer is a novel experience for me and I sort of went off the deep end installing and running anything and everything I could.

But this story has been sitting in the back of my brain giving me dirty looks for awhile now. Six months is a long time to lose the thread of a story, but I still have all my original notes. I'm actually re-reading the entire thing now, just so I can pick up the flow again. The number of spelling errors really bothers me and I probably should have spent the time editing them, but I'll have to do that another time because I can't really stand re-re-reading things. If this story is new to you (and you feel like it), I'm totally open to correcting any errors you happen to find, if you're like me and the kind of person who aches for that sort of shit to be fixed.

You know I actually had some asshole accuse me being a fucking AI writer because I did that? I edited my own shit to remove mistakes and they decided I had to be an AI because I'm anal-retentive about perfect grammar. Assholes.

In any case, I'd really like to update this again as soon as I reach the point where I left off. Fenet, Mar and So'duun haven't reached the end of their road yet. Tython still awaits.

See you soon!

 

[VirtualFox]

Take your time and write when it comes. Your readers will be here!

 

[Kaernetron]

*glances at dust-covered black metal box at the other end of the room* I should get a new computer... or at least install a still supported OS... and get back to writing my own stuff, but getting motivated can be hard. Especially when life gives you lemons, but refuses to give you salt and tequila.

We'll be here.