Book One: The Cat, the Dragon, and Me
Chapter Four: In Which A First Impression Goes Poorly
Location: Hyperspace
Date: Still Don't Have a Fucking Clue
The next thing I remember clearly was waking up strapped into the pilot's chair of a strange starship, looking out the window at the unmistakable swirly blue tunnel of hyperspace. I remember vaguely wondering if anyone had gotten the number of the truck that must've just hit me.
I looked down at the control yoke in my lap, which turned out to be a bad move because the change of angle sent a hundred different needles jabbing right into my brain from every angle. Ohhh God Almighty, my poor head. My brain felt like it was being shrink-wrapped and my tongue was practically glued to the roof of my mouth. Opening my mouth split my chapped lips in roughly a billion separate places, filling my mouth with blood. All that blood did moisten my tongue enough to peel it loose, though, which would've been nice if my brain could've stopped flipping the fuck out long enough to string a sentence together.
Darth Occlus' voice purred inside my head:
Oh good, you're up. It was getting boring in here by myself.
Oh shit. Oh God. NononononononoNO—
"Ock—" was all I could get out before my dried, swollen throat closed up. I coughed up a huge razor-edged wad of haven't-had-a-drink-of-water-in-days and tried again. "O-occlusss…"
That's my name.
"Hhhhhhow… y-you… how did…"
This is all part of the process, Mikkian. What exactly did you think having a Sith spirit bound to you entailed?
I fumbled with the seat harness until it let me up. My head spun as I stood and nearly toppled over again, fighting the black clouds creeping in from the corners of my vision. I looked around the tiny cockpit, fighting to hold back my mounting panic. My head-tendrils fluttered limply like ribbons in a breeze, trickling a low drip of smell-tastes deep into my brain. There was the strong chemical scour of industrial lubricants, a fish-oily metallic tang which was probably Mikkian sweat on metal, a dried bitter scorch like something had been burning and—
Shit, that was blood wasn't it?
"Where did… how… Occlus, what happened?"
Silence.
"Occlus, what the
fuck happened!?"
You mean you don't remember anything? Try and think back.
I tried, but it was like trying to grab a wet bar of soap. The last week was a smeared impression punctuated by unnaturally clear flashes—flashes of boiling desert heat that morphed into crowded city streets and ended in the crimson flash of an igniting lightsaber. But what actually happened, how the different flashes knitted together, was beyond me. God, it might never be clear.
"All I remember are moments," I said. "Why can't I remember, Occlus? What the fuck did I
do?"
Wow. You must be more dehydrated than I thought, if you really can't remember anything. Well you're not dead yet, so I must've done something right.
"This isn't funny! Answer the question!"
Oh relax, said her voice from nowhere.
Nothing serious happened. We got to Dreshdae, then you went to the spaceport and took a small scout ship. Nobody died—really. Though the human who owns this tub will need a change of pants. Some people just can't handle threats, especially when a lightsaber-wielding madman steals their ship. I knew tagging along with you would be fun!
My knees nearly buckled, but I caught myself on the back of the pilot's chair. My heart pounded in my ears as my stomach squirmed into knots. This was
not how I wanted this to go. "I what? Are you telling me
I stole a goddamned starship at swordpoint!?" My voice cracked.
Occlus' exasperated sigh echoed inside my skull.
You don't have to keep shouting like a crazy person, you know. You'll damage your throat. Just think of me and imagine the words, and I'll hear it.
Like this?
Just like that, she said.
Did you have anything to do with this? Did you take control of my body?
No. I told you, that's not how the Force-walk ritual works. My spirit is bound to your body, not controlling it. Like… you remember back when you were a kid, whenever you went to a birthday party you'd get a balloon? And your mother would tie it to your wrist to keep it from floating away? Well, I'm the balloon. I'm attached to your Force aura, but not really a part of it. At least that's how Tulak Hord's holocron explained it.
Really? The balloon metaphor and everything? I tried to imagine a Sith kid having a birthday party, balloons and all, but the picture was just too surreal.
No, Hord talked about a Geonosian worker drone harpooned on the end of a chain. Probably drawing on personal experience too. Poor little buggo.
Does this have a point?
Oh, right! What were you saying? You were freaking out again, right? Saying I had possessed your body and made you steal this ship or something? Nothing to worry about. The ritual gave me no power over your mind, except for this Force connection that lets us talk. Everything that happened in Dreshdae? That was all you, little noodle.
I took a step only to pitch forward, barely catching myself on the cockpit doorway.
I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation, Occlus. If you're telling me the truth, I threatened a guy and stole his ship. There's no way that's not grand larceny. Dreshdae's probably sent some kind of law enforcement after us.
Occlus laughed.
Dreshdae has no law enforcement. It barely has a local government. Even back in the days of my Empire it was a shithole people avoided. Not much of what you'd call a "night life," anyway. I always did my drinking with the other apprentices in our common room at the Sith Academy.
Whatever. I didn't feel like arguing anymore; it took all my energy just to keep the room from spinning. My tendrils shifted and I got another smell-taste of the overpowering mix of dirt and excretia clinging to my skin. I was grimy with sand, sweat, and dried blood from any number of sources, and my stolen cape looked and tasted like it'd been dragged across a Guadalcanal beach.
Just point me to the shower, so I can get this crap off me when I—wait! Where are we headed!?
Ossus, she said,
to the old Jedi Academy, apparently. Why, I don't know—the planet's a wasteland. Nobody's been living on Ossus for millennia since the Krath put the boot in when they ignited the Cron Supernova, but once you found out what year it was you insisted we go there.
Shit, that's right! I had to warn
the Jedi about Darth Krayt while there was still time!
What year did the ship's computer say it was, again?
Thirty years after some big battle in the Gordian Reach. The Yavin system or something. Just something else I missed in my tomb, I suppose.
I whirled back to the control console with a shout, ignoring the creeping fingers of unconsciousness trying to knock me to the floor. "There's still so much time!"
Hey, quit shouting! Time for what?
"Time for anything! I can stop them! I can… GAH!!"
Turns out I was looking out the scout ship's cockpit viewport just as we shuddered out of hyperspace. Suddenly a huge golden hemisphere shot up from
nowhere and hung there in space. From my perspective it looked like a huge lidless eye, white clouds swirling like cataracts, peering in at me. Cool, sure, but Jesus was I not expecting that.
First time? Occlus asked snidely.
Shut up, it startled me.
It's just a planet. Be more concerned about the fact that you haven't urinated in five days. Without the Force you'd have died of dehydration by now.
I'll survive. I staggered back to the console and stared at the unfamiliar interface.
I can worry about my health after we land this thing.
Occlus scoffed.
The autopilot console is at the copilot's station, Voidwolf.
It took a few minutes, but I eventually locked onto a landing trajectory for Ossus, just outside the Jedi Academy, and got the autopilot to make the landing. Out the window the rocky hemisphere looked close enough to touch. Our scout ship rapidly spiraled closer and closer to the planet until the hemisphere became a horizon—a craggy plain crisscrossed by interlocking mountain ranges and scattered patches of grey-green scrubland, with towering columns of thundercloud rising overhead. Gorgeous.
I barely noticed.
Any runner will tell you about "hitting the wall": at some point in every race, that furious rush of energy and focus just…
ends, and a huge wave of fatigue slams into you all at once. What happened to me was like that—even my tendrils fell limp. It took every last bit of my concentration not to curl up on the cold metal floor and go to sleep. Darth Occlus was screaming something in my mind but her words fuzzed together into a smeared yowl. Nonexistent needles stabbed above and behind my eyes. My mouth was frighteningly dry and full of gluey saliva that I couldn't spit out for some reason.
By the time we'd begin our final approach (I think), I could actually feel myself fading. My mind. Complex things like my plan were starting to lose meaning—I could tell you what I needed to tell the Jedi on Ossus but I couldn't explain why it mattered. The importance.
The landing ramp dropped, and gold-orange glare burned away my vision. I thought I saw some humanoid silhouettes backlit against the sun. The flash filled me with a surge of power that raced through me like the biggest, most nerve-frying jolt of caffeine you ever felt.
I faded away, and came back.
The world was a smear of sunlight in my face. I could feel my limbs moving, half-numbed as though in a dream. It felt like I was just a passenger, watching it happen to someone else, like I was halfway in and halfway out of my body. Was this what it felt like to be Occlus?
Something slammed into me, or maybe I slammed into it.
I faded away, and came back.
I was on top of the dockhand, pinning her to the ground by her shoulders, face just inches away from her own. Her eyes were yellow as daffodils and wide in stark terror. A tendril brushed her face and my brain filled with the smell-taste of tropical fruits infused in water. I was vaguely aware that my lips were moving. With focus I could make out what I was saying, but none of the sounds that came out were words; just gabbles and moans and incoherent shrieking syllables, all topped by a gluey froth of blood and spit.
NononononononothisisallwrongwhyisitallgoingsowrongpullittogethermanPULLITTOGETHER—
With a titanic push of my will, I
forced my lips and mouth to move. My dessicated mouth finally started to choke out understandable words:
"
Please! Sith! Korriban! Luke! Take me to Luke! He nee—"
And that's about as far as I got before she headbutted me and the world exploded in white fire. The last thing I remember after that was my body going limp and pitching forward onto the terrified dockhand. Shit. Well, hopefully she wouldn't hold it against me.
———
Location: [Confused Screaming]
Date: [Confused Screaming]
zzzzzzznnnnananananananananananananananananamamamamamamamamamamamamamamamamam—
I open my eyes to a black sky speckled with cold white stars. Then my perception shifts down, and my mind slams back into my body. I look around. The nightscape still hangs above, but I stand in the middle of an impossible jungle. Slick-leafed trees bend at unnatural angles in every direction, winding around and through each other at bizarre angles to weave together into a canopy of fronds over my head. The path formed by their gnarled trunks stretches laser-straight in front of me, all the way to the horizon and beyond with no end in sight. Shafts of bluish starlight stab down like lightsaber blades through the holes in the canopy, gleaming off waxy leaves and leaving thorny branches glittering. Clear liquid drips down slowly from every leaf and branch, just a little too viscous to be water. It drips from the leaves and slimes down the branches and pools in hollows along the path. A sickly-sweet taste of rotting flesh hangs in the air.
A chill runs up my head-tendrils as the inexplicable logic of dreams tells me that everything in this forest is poison. Everything.
I look down the path, trying to see an endpoint. There isn't one. I take a step and hear my foot squelch into the toxic mud. It burns my skin like chili juice in an open cut, even through my boots. I recoil, and the pain vanishes. But the smell of death never leaves the forest.
I try to wake up, and find that I can't. None of the lucid dreaming techniques I experimented with in grad school seem to work here. Was this horrible poison forest even a dream, though? Maybe this was a Force-vision. Occlus said that the Force was strong in me. But was this a vision of the past?
Holy shit, was this the future? What even happened, where is this supposed to be?
I shrug mentally despite my looming fear. Seems like there's only one way to leave a Force vision: power through it. And it really seems like the Force wants me to follow this path through the trees here.
No sooner do I think that exact thought than I just barely make out a Shape, black and murky, at the far end of the path. Right at the horizon. Seems like as good a place to go as any.
I take a step, and howl at the pain as my foot plunges ankle-deep into the poisonous mud.
I grit my teeth and take another one.
Another.
Another.
Progress is slow, and my legs feel like they're encased in mud up to the knees now. No, I'm losing feeling in them.
The mud.
The poison.
Something's not right.
But somehow I keep going, step after step, teeth gritted and groaning through them as my numbed, alien legs move forward seemingly out of my control. I can't stop, or subconsciously know that stopping is pointless, either way. Every step is an exhausting feat, every breath of the toxin-vapored air ignites little supernovae in my lungs. The numbness creeps up through my thighs, to my groin, my chest, my arms, until I can't feel even my face anymore. I might as well be a disembodied mind just leisurely floating down the path to the Shape.
Damndest thing: I know I'm numb, but somehow I can still feel the poison throbbing and burning through my skin.
The Shape is looming up faster and faster now; it's coming towards me—or maybe I'm moving towards it—faster than I could ever walk. Every impossible stride seems to carry me miles down this canopied path to nowhere. Starlight and venom pass around and through me like I was a ghost.
Suddenly the path opens up into a circular clearing. Gnarled poison-trees reach up to the night sky all around me. I'm close enough now to make out some detail in the Shape. It's humanoid, but its form is indistinct—like a puddle of oil pretending to be a man. As its black mass shifts I see coiling iridescence flashing countless colors in the starlight. Almost beautiful, but that just puts me even more on edge.
A voice hisses at me through a wind I can hear but not feel:
"Three Sith Orders, three Sith Lords. The Dreaming Dragon. The Man of Sorrows. The Gardener-King. Destroy the Two, and the One shall go free."
Now that doesn't sound good at all. So there are three Sith Lords to worry about?
As if sensing my thoughts, the Shape ripples again, more strongly than before. Its oily shapelessness solidifies into a new form, a titanic human coated in pebbled scales and spiny plates of crabshell. Behind a mask of thorns gleam two mismatched eyes, one icy blue, and the other the corrupted red-yellow of the dark side. A chill runs through me. I know this man. How could I forget him, I nearly interrupted his nap. And I know that's a face I'll be seeing in nightmares for years to come.
Darth Krayt.
The Shape-as-Krayt looms over me like a cliff, hands clasped behind his back, a dark general on an inspection tour. A low, growling voice grinds out from behind his mask:
"You wake the Dread Lord, interloper—the Dragon of the Sith. My Sith are one nation, united in darkness. You cannot stop us. You cannot stop ME. I will conquer death through the dark side; the Force itself dwells within me. I will make all things new. You think that just because you know what happens next, that you can stop what I have set in motion? Foolish boy. You play with powers beyond your understanding. You are but one, and we are legion. We will rule, long after you are dead and forgotten. It is inevitable. You cannot fight the galaxy's fate."
No. No, it's not real. None of this is real. Krayt is still in stasis on Korriban—I know this, I saw him. This is just my fear talking. I can't give up. The One Sith are still going to be there in the shadows even if I don't fight them, and I can't just sit by and do nothing. I can't have the death and suffering of that many people on my conscience. Even if I die fighting, I have to do everything I can to prevent this evil from coming to pass.
I want to say all that to the Shape, but what comes out instead is something along the lines of "eat shit."
"Your efforts will fail," The Shape-as-Krayt snarls. "Our agents are everywhere, and the Dragon hears everything. We will sabotage every effort you make to expose us. If you are not ignored as a madman, we will simply kill you. Give up now, and perhaps you will live a full life and die before we take power."
"I'll try my best anyway," I say with conviction. "Even if I can't stop you, I'll do everything I can to try."
The Shape-as-Krayt nods. "I believe you. But know that you have earned yourself a short life and a painful death, interloper."
I repeat my recommendation that he eat shit.
Apparently that's enough to end his interest in me, because Darth Krayt's visage melts back into the oily formlessness of the Shape.
Then, after a few moments of churning black iridescence, the Shape reforms into a new person. Human again, early thirties this time, clad in black commando armor and a long dark cape that flutters dramatically in the nonexistent breeze. His hair is shortish and brown with prominent bangs, and his face is stoic and good-looking in a vaguely nebbish way. If you'd seen him walking down an ordinary American street, the phrase "nice Jewish boy" would instantly spring to mind. The only thing that marks him as a Sith Lord is the horrible flat gold of his eyes, like a starving jungle cat.
I'm confused for a moment before a cold chill hits me in the gut and I realize shit, I know this guy too.
"Jacen." I say quietly. "You're Jacen Solo."
The man shakes his head, his soft voice low and patient— as though speaking to a child. "Jacen Solo is dead. I am Darth Caedus."
"Aw, well that's… too bad," I say, at kind of a loss. "Let me guess, you're here to tell me that I can't stop you from falling to the dark side, right?"
The Shape-as-Caedus shakes his head again. A rueful smile breaks across his face. "Actually, no. You probably could, if you put your mind to it. Stranger things have happened in the history of the Force. You know how and why I fall, and you'll probably be in a position to stop it. You probably can change the future as you know it. But have you thought about whether you SHOULD?"
Cold fear grips me. "What do you mean?"
"The Force has no sides, Mikkian. All is one. Every action you take affects the galaxy in ways you can't even comprehend. What makes you think that every change you make for the better won't be balanced by an equal change for the worse? What makes you think that you won't just plain make things worse? Maybe as horrible as the coming future is, it's already the best it could be. If there's even a chance that this is the case, then wouldn't the responsible thing to do—the sacrificial thing to do—be to not act? To let events play out, and accept the universe as it comes?"
"That's a load of crap. There's always another way, and I'll find it."
"But do you even know what to do?" challenges the Shape-as-Caedus. "Where would you even start?"
"I'm here, aren't I?" The fear filling my chest begins to melt away, and I feel a sudden delirious urge to giggle. "Far as I'm concerned, that's already a good start. Well begun is half done, right?"
The Shape-as-Caedus' smile becomes cold and cruel. "You," he said, voice deepening into a croak, "are a terrible Vergere."
"And you're a pretty terrible Sith, oh mighty Gardener-King." I wince mentally almost as soon as I say it. Maybe trash-talking Force apparitions isn't the best move, but sometimes cracking a joke is the only way to keep sane.
"Oh, you've got it all wrong," says the Shape-as-Caedus. "I'm not the Gardener-King, I'm the Man of Sorrows. Trust me, I'm just crying it up on the inside." His cruel smile widens and his golden eyes flash sulfurous. "And if you think I'm bad, you're really going to hate the next guy."
Darth Caedus' visage melts back into the Shape, whose oily surface immediately starts churning again. Okay, who's it gonna be this time? Let's get this vision over with. Though I'm kind of curious, despite myself. I'm not the biggest expert in this area of Star Wars, so maybe there's some third Sith Lord I've just forgotten about who—
And then, as the third Sith Lord, the Gardener-King, bulges into shape from within the black rippling mass, the realization hits me like a punch to the gut. Cold chills run up my back and I forget to breathe.
Oh, I should've seen this coming. I really should've seen this coming.
The third Sith Lord is me.
But not as I am right now. Slightly taller, maybe a little broader in the shoulders, Mikkian head tendrils writhing and feral like a headdress of vipers. I'm smiling, but it's a manic, vicious smile, and accompanied by a glint of something not quite right behind my vivid blue eyes. I have no lightsaber, but my nails are significantly longer than I normally let then grow.
But the most terrifying part is the poison leaking from every fluid and opening in my body. I'd probably be able to smell it even in my old human body, but now my tendrils pick it up with a thousand times the strength and I know without a doubt that a hundred different types of deadly toxins are dripping and wafting off my blood-red skin like an oily black steam.
The Shape-as-Me finally looks at me. The smile widens. One hand sweeps dramatically over my head, venom dripping from sharp nails, to encompass the corrupted forest surrounding us on all sides. I hear a voice croaking in echoes that ring too long in my ears:
"Amazing what you can do with a little planning, innit?"
The Shape-as-Me's voice is mine too, but it sounds rough and cracked, like I've just spent days screaming in my sleep—or laughing maniacally. Shit, this is bad. Bad, bad, bad.
"Whu…" I swallow and try again. "What happened here? Where are we?"
"Where we are is irrelevant—by the time you understand its significance it'll already be too late to do anything about it. As for what happened here, well… I happened here. I always sign my work."
I follow the finger to see more poison slowly oozing down a nearby leaf. The universe contracts around me until it feels like that one clear jewel of liquid is all of existence, that by looking in it I can find the answers to all the horrified questions running through my mind. How the hell could this happen? It's not a matter of never being tempted by the dark side—I know enough about how Star Wars works that I know it's going to tempt me, and if I'm not careful I can lose myself in the power it offers. But I always assumed I'd at least be reasonable about it if I did fall—a pragmatic, genre-savvy Dark Lord. How the hell did I become this... twisted?
Somehow, I doubt I'll be getting any answers out of me.
I turn to my guide once more. "So Krayt tried to threaten me and Caedus tried to persuade me. Which one do you do?"
"Neither. I merely offer two riddles. A gift free of charge from me to… well, me." The Shape-as-Me chuckles madly at the novelty of it, sharp white teeth flashing with a manic jauntiness. "Okay, enough playing around. First riddle: what is the difference between a flower and a weed?"
I frown. I know the answer, but come on. Traitor references? Really?
"The choice of the gardener," I answer.
The Shape-as-Me nods, still smiling. "Exactly! Now here's the second riddle: what is the difference between a GARDENER and a weed?"
Wait, what? "That question doesn't make any sense," I object.
"And that," says the monster wearing my face with a melodramatic sigh, "is why I am your future. Look up, and read the portents in the heavens above my garden."
I look up and notice one star shining brighter than I remember from before. It gleams distantly, with a cold white light like the eye of God. And—is it getting brighter?
And is it moving?
It is! As I watch the star it seems to brighten and stretch into a straight line slicing slowly across the sky. The forest lights up around us in a wash of blue-white light. It brings back hazy memories of one time in my old childhood when Dad set off a phosphorus flare in the backyard. I remember the way everything lit up in a ghostly white glow, just like this.
Is it just me, or is that line—that beam—getting brighter because it's moving towards us?
I look up again, and suddenly the beam now fills half the sky. The half right above us, of course. I shade my eyes from the piercing glare. "Uh… what is that thing?"
"Oh, you poor stupid child. Haven't you figured it out yet?" The Shape-as-Me's face—my face—becomes a flat mask in the harsh white glare. Those eyes, their irises rapidly putrefying from blue through green to settle at a sickly yellow, reflect the descending light until the manic glow from within overtakes them completely. My shoulder crunches under a vice grip as nails dig in, and my blood burns as one last dose of venom enters my body.
Suddenly I feel very, very small.
"This is our reckoning."
The beam hits. A searing wave of fire blasts me back into unconsciousness.
I die, and my eyes shoot open.
NOTES: I had a lot of fun writing this chapter. Between the Occlus banter and the trippy Force dream sequence, it was just a blast. This should give you plenty to speculate over until Friday. Also, questions, commentary, and criticisms are always welcome.