Kowani reverted to real space with a giant globe of various shades of green staring back at her through the transparisteel canopy. Violent storms arcing their fury with duels of lightning across both hemispheres. The natural beauty was not lost on her, even at this altitude. She established a high orbital pattern and began running scans on the planet below, tasking R3 with locating Ahsoka’s inherited ship. She was somewhat confused at the readings, her own task was returning fully expecting at least some semblance of civilization, instead bewildered by the massive lifeform readings and little else. The blips and beeps coming from R3 did nothing to negate her confusion as his scans were coming up negative. Although quick and barely audible, she would have gambled her life that Ahsoka had said Dagobah. She tried hailing over the shared sub space comm frequency with no response. Fearing the worst, she assigned her signal relay to identify the ship as nothing more than an orbital nav buoy to waylay any suspicion should the Empire come prying and swiveled her seat around to face R3. “Where could she be?”
R3 swiveled its dome to place her in the center of its photoreceptor and issued a diminutive whir, processing the relevance of her inquiry against its coding and protocol to establish a routine to provide a solution. Subspace communication being dismissed as there was no reply. Holo transmission was also ruled out as the frequency was never established. R3’s processing did establish one affirmative that kept checking affirmative the further up the thread he processed. “Beep beep BEEP, Whirl BLIP!”
“Signature trace from the ‘borrowed’ nav maps…. R3, that’s genius!” Kowani wasn’t sure how efficient that data trace would be but began hammering away on the keys at her comm station anyway to link it to the encrypted upload she had managed to transfer from her data pad. The returning ping and blinking image of the coded D5 was in the Eriadu system according to the star chart on her screen. “That is the most heavily garrisoned system in the outer rim! What the hell is she doing there?” Both statement and question clearly meant for her own benefit. R3 only chirped away, affirming her statement, and dismissing her question. “Well, we don’t really have a choice do we R3, off to Eriadu.” She slid over to the pilot’s seat again and entered the jump in to the navicomputer, wishing she had refueled at Yavin as she shot out of orbit on Dagobah with a crack.
The black spires rising from the molten rock freely flowing around them were all she could see, accented by the red hued lightning strikes behind the edifice that only added to the imposing visage. An occasional distant thunder broke the eerie silence of the lifeless vision. Ahsoka looked back on the D5 being the lone inhabitant of the spacious landing platform at the base of the gargantuan doorway. She swung her gaze back to the fortress itself and proceeded towards the silently opening entry way without reservation. A sickly human male shuffled his way towards her through the dank entry hall, his pale white skin clinging precariously to the bone below it, hovering like an object upon a cocoon of black spun robes and garments blending in seamlessly with the black duracreet walls and floor, the ceiling out of view, on account of the color of choice. As he ambled closer, Ahsoka, could see the frail lips pursing back to reveal rotting teeth to form words, his eyes a putrid milky yellow that she couldn’t sense where centered or focused on anything.
“The Master has been expecting you Miss.”
“I would imagine he has.” Ahsoka returned entirely for her benefit. The man proffered hands from deep within the mass of robes in an open gesture of welcome, long fingered, and bony, just as sun starved as his face, they began an upward journey at his sides with palms prone to the ceiling above as his head began a decant in a showy bow. Ahsoka returned the gesture with a carefree and thoughtless grab for the saber at her right side and had it ignited and thrust through his skull before his arms had even reached their zenith. She removed the saber, switched it off and had it attached at her side just as quickly. Without hesitation she stepped over the body of the fallen man and proceeded down the hall towards the pulsating red light of the chamber ahead. There was no fear in her whatsoever, even as she came upon the entrance to the chamber.
Seeing flowing lava encircle a large central platform connected at each ninety-degree interval to an identical hall disappearing into the blackness beyond, the source of the light was identified. Stepping from the darkness of all three of those halls were platoons of black armored troopers. She reacted immediately and sprung from her location tucking into a somersault while simultaneously reaching for both sabers, landing fifty meters away at the platform’s center. The troopers responded with instant blaster fire as she recovered from the feat and ignited the crimson and violet blades, deflecting the initial volley back into as many as had fired. The blinding whirlpool of light, a testament to her incredible speed, was making targeting her all but impossible for those that hadn’t fallen in a burned and scorched heap. Commanded orders in their helmeted comm devices where inaudible over the echoing snaps and hisses of blasters sending bolts towards the center of the dazzling array of light as well as the electric fizzle of those bolts being deflected in every direction and their impact on either the hard surfaces of the structure or into the molten river of rock below.
The congealing smoke, emanating from the saber’s deflections, the blasters barrels, and the burning flesh, making matters worse for the doomed troopers. The impossibility of the situation, as well as the ridiculous notion of firing blindly, prevented those troopers that remained from pulling their triggers. Ahsoka scanned the threat quickly after they had ceased firing and wasted no time in hurling the violet saber from her grasp, burying it into the chest of the closest trooper to her secondary side. She called upon the force just as quickly to rip it sideways through his body and without thought cleaved the trooper adjacent in two. Thinking they had advantage, the two remaining troopers at her primary began opening fire again, which she dodged cleanly. With her left hand open, she called the violet saber back into her grasp as she crouched to her knees firing the crimson saber into the audacious troopers, cleaving, and burning to the same results. The three that remained withdrew their weapons from a firing position and took a step back into the hall directly across from the one Ahsoka had initially entered. Sensing the change in tactic, she returned to her feet and established a more relaxed stance, reluctant to switch off the sabers, however.
The cacophony of sound beginning to abate with the diminishing echoes, an eerie silence began to take its place. All was still in that moment, outside of the smoke rising in the spacious chamber to a split in the ceiling only visible by the flashing lightning above, its light catching in the smoke’s heaviness adding a sinister feel to the standoff. Heavy footfalls emanating behind the troopers, were beginning to rekindle the echoing effect, breaching the silence that had fallen. She could hear the rhythmic inhalations and opposing regulatory exhale she had expected before she could see him but knew those to whom the footsteps belonged. She extinguished the blades and calmly dropped to her knees in a meditative position as his helmeted visage appeared in the halls entrance, arms outstretched before his massive chest as he posited himself into stance five paces forward of the obedient troopers. The inhale exhale exchange never falling out of rhythm, it’s echo beading its way into her very soul. Ahsoka closed her eyes and took a deep breath of her own, matching his cadence as they fell into synchrony, each refusing to utter a word. With each breath she felt more at peace, each time she matched his exhale she felt the cradling force flowing effortlessly around her. Lightning strikes from above broke the standoff as they filled the room for an instant with their bright red glow, reflecting off the polished dome of his helmet and dissipating into the luminescence of the lava below. His next breath falling slightly out of its laborious measure, Ahsoka knew the words were coming.
“End this struggle Ahsoka, I can feel the conflict within you. Embrace your destiny and take your place at my side. We’ve been fated since Chritophsis. Come home, Ahsoka.” The respirations coming in quick bursts to re-regulate after he had finished his statement with intentional pause and inflection, falling back into cadence with her own unchanging prosody.
“Anakin, there is no conflict.” She began, eyes still shuttered. “You’ve lost your way and have outlived your purpose. Realize your own fate and fulfill your own destiny, just take care in choosing where to dig your grave. Tatooine or Naboo?” Wasting no time for the dagger-like words to inflict their intended damage, she removed her hands from her knees and calmly began moving them in opposing circles with her palms facing the lifeless stone floor. Vader paused with registered hesitation, abating the anger swelling within at her insolence. She spared no avenue in memorializing his past, one that he had gone to great lengths to remove himself from.
Her radiating circles became more fevered and deliberate, changing the ambiance in the room with each measured cycle. A cold chill was replacing the radiant heat as the red glow from below was fading to a purple hue. Vader inspected Ahsoka herself through the action, watching as the dark blue pigmentation in her Lek’ku bled away into a glossy black, the cream inheriting a reddish tinge. Her darkened orange flesh taking on a more sinister sickly shade of the same, reminiscent of decaying foliage. He heard the troopers behind him shuffle momentarily but concentrated his gaze on his former apprentice with unparalleled focus, intent on standing his ground.
Ahsoka felt the swell of Force energy as it gave itself freely to her designs. With each rush, each wave, she opened herself to it even more, accepting it all without hesitation. It responded with ever expanding deluge after deluge, compliant to her will and channeled efforts, as if to prove that she, and it, were one and the same. When Ahsoka reached that conclusion herself, registering that her sense of self was fading and that she was indeed the Force, she slowly opened her eyes and saw everything around her for what they, or it, was. Vader was nothing more than a broken down, aging human male surrounded by mechanical contraptions and circuitry. The troopers behind him were obedient slaves to dogmatic promises, and knowing Anakin’s background intimately, the irony was not lost on her. Her very surroundings were a decaying shell of ambivalence, constructed only to house its decaying master. The only ‘life’ in the room, aside from her own, was the living rock flowing freely below her and it was to that her efforts were being channeled. She began to rise slowly to her feet, bringing her palms up in the process without breaking the cyclical rhythm of the radiating circles.
Upon seeing her eyes opening, Vader lost measure in his voluntary thought and his suit doubled down for a cycle to regulate his lost breath, his mind however was completely assaulted by the black orbs that replaced her blue eyes. Like miniature galaxies, they glowed with the power of billions of stars set near and far. At that moment Vader unfettered his merciless grasp of Anakin within and he was a small boy, perched on a wall with a long haired and bearded Jedi in Mos Espa, promising to explore the galaxy and reach out to every one of the tiny spheres of speckled light in that night’s sky. Try as he might he could not shake that thought or bring himself back into the present. Something was preventing his intent from materializing.
Ahsoka’s assault was having the precise, intended, effect she had envisioned from the outset. Depriving Anakin of his greatest strength by cutting off his access to the living Force. There would be no premonition or unrestricted flow of dark side energy, only that of the light, she would allow him that, to dwell as he once did. To remain in memory only, as a small boy, as a lovestruck padawan, as a devoted husband and finally, an expectant father. “Where are your thoughts Anakin. Place yourself in your emotion and feel.” She mouthed words only he could hear. Convinced she was now the sole force user in the room, she put more effort into the physical display of the encounter, displacing the red glow completely as the lava gave way to blackness with transitioning purple and blue glows. She at once ceased the radiating circles and brought both hands high above her head, the lava following suit as it negated gravity and flowed effortlessly up the walls, the sizzle of baking duracreet snapping with its advance.
She lowered her right hand without taking her gaze from the assemblage before her, keeping the lava in place with her left. Shifting her stance to bear an invisible weight, right leg angled behind her, she snapped her right hand up to her left, clasping both together as the lava rushed up the remainder of the walls to match the gesture, a violently stewing froth of purple and blue under-lied with black tailings, closing off any retreat from the troopers and capped with an unrivaled visual display as the red lightning from above once again bathed the chamber in a mosaic of color. The doomed troopers fought bravely against their fear, standing their ground as they awaited further orders that would never come. Ahsoka wasted no more time and engulfed them in the lava’s embrace in one quick movement, snapping her left hand closed into a fist.
Vader was cognitively aware of his physical surroundings but lost in his own mind to react in turn. The mental assault was beginning to take its toll on him physically as he dropped to a knee, staring at the ground in a state of weakness, unable to so much as raise an arm. His only thought in the present centered completely on her ability to manipulate the Force to her will, and all aspects of it. She was utilizing light energies, dark energies, a mixture of both, to assail him on countless fronts and was at a loss to do anything to abate his coming fate. What little Force energy he could center on, he had surmised, was being deliberately fed to him through his former padawan. “How….is…. this…. possible?” he finally managed to eke out, albeit raggedly and with considerable effort.
“That knowledge would be lost on you. Your cup filled long ago…...Master.” She spat out, slowly measured and with great emphasis, bringing both hands before her. He forced his head up to catch sight of her stretching out her fingers and unleashing a deep purple lightning from all extended digits with such ferocity it blew his helmet mechanism into disarray, scrambling his vision. The world plunged into sudden darkness and in that moment, he realized her initial mental assault was her parting gift.
“The necessary eradication of a blighted disease. No more will you bastardize the Force for your own pathetic whims. The heart of the viper will be stamped out leaving only the head to contend with. You will die as Anakin Skywalker.” Ahsoka took the time to relay after her initial blast of Force lightning. She knew full well he was still alive, barely, underneath the failing circuitry, smoking mechanisms, and scorched suit. What he was thinking would never materialize as worthy thought in her mind however as she brought her hands before her again, outstretching each finger with deep purpose. Again, she blessed what was left of the smoking black heap with an even more concentrated delivery of the purple lightning, blasting the helmet from his head completely, fracturing his skull and ripping what remained of the suit from what was left of his body. She continued the unnatural killing force beyond what was necessary to complete the task, her mind giving the action validity by convincing herself he needed to be purified in the power of the Force. Life extinguished, fully, from Vader, she ceased the barrage and released the lava from its gravity defying cling to the chamber’s walls. The sudden expungement of Force use caused her to collapse to the cool stone floor in exhaustion, forcing her to her knees and catching a forward lean with both hands before colliding with it face first.
Panting for breath, she was only partly aware of the reddish color taking its prior form in the basin below, returning the chamber to its original ambiance. The smell of overcooked flesh and meat, however, would never leave the room, she was certain. The silence, then, was all that remained. A deafening silence, one born from the echoes of words meant but never said. A single sound began to penetrate the sense dulling cloak, like the cackle of a lone carrion bird, pieced together in rapid succession that took her a minute to identify. Laughter. She heard this same laughter after defeating T’zar Ek, although it was different, impossible to locate. This laughter was coming from a place, she was sure, behind her. Lacking the energy as she was to physically turn her body, however, she could only estimate its source.
“Good. Good. You are indeed powerful Ms. Tano. My intuition was clearly understated.” Powerful emphasis on the vowels and the meticulous citation indicated to her immediately that her estimate was correct.
“Sidious” She expelled.
“The proverbial ‘head of the viper’ I believe you referenced.” Sidious responded. “And your intuition is clearly more attuned than even I could have imagined. Regain your strength, young one and take his place, as you’ve spared me the task, you’ve established yourself in his stead.
The sudden urgency that welled up within her, born from lingering rage reignited, tore her from her energy depleted stupor and with a sudden rush of uncalled upon Force energy she felt every cell within her respond to her immediate need to rid the galaxy of the Sith once and for all. Everything snapping into rejuvenated determination, she gripped the hilt of her crimson saber and prepared her lungs for a throaty scream when she felt a touch on her right shoulder. The tightly coiled spring of intention exploded within her, and she had the saber ignited and arcing from her waist only to see an olive-skinned head dodging the lethal blade at the last possible second. Gone was the chamber on Mustafar, replaced with the sights of the holosuite in the bowels of the Morai. Blinking and stable lights from the host of panels and control stations in the spacious room, the echoing raspiness of the verbal exchange moments before replaced with the static hum of the life support system assured her, she was in realities grasp once again.
“What the hell was that about?” It was Kowani’s voice. Ahsoka spun to her left to find her friend facing her with blaster drawn. Only then, aware the lightsaber was still activated, she switched it off dropping it to the corrugated flooring, coming to rest before the other three she had ‘symbolically’ placed before her. Without words to speak, she stared at Kowani, open mouthed for longer than anticipated. Kowani lowered her weapon and quickly adopted the expression of concern she had been implementing far too often in her exchanges with Ahsoka as of late. “We’ll worry about questions and answers later when you’re up to it. I’m going to jump us to Dagobah before we have to concern ourselves with our usual Imperial engagement prior to exiting a system.” She holstered the blaster, knelt to give Ahsoka an assuring pat on the shoulder and left the cabin to make good on her statement.
Ahsoka stared upon the space previously occupied by Kowani and felt a renewed sense of emptiness. Grateful for her friends understanding but deeply concerned over her wavering ability to distinguish reality from the growing tempest within her. The thought caused her to chuckle slightly as tears began welling at the corners of her eyes. Reality. A blanket term used only to assuage oneself in definition of what normal was to them. How could anyone know what her reality truly was? Even she couldn’t define it, and the off times she could, she found it changing as often as the Coruscanti landscape. She sat up only to draw her knees closer to her, resting her elbows on them, her head in her hands. She could still smell the burning materials and flesh from the confrontation on Mustafar, a metallic tinge to it, as of slagged debris, accenting the sensory retention rendering her almost incapable of full awareness. Wiping the tears from her cheeks, her mind would not let go of the link it was trying to form to answer her involuntary queries in an attempt to define its own reality. The answers seemed to be so close to her, within view but only in pieces, those that weren’t a semitransparent fog. Obscured by design or intent she could not decipher. In her own mind or through an outside source was just as indistinguishable.
She gazed through the doorway Kowani had left and placed her soul at ease knowing she had allies despite her erratic, often mystical, behavior. She gathered the sabers at her feet, taking a long moment to reflect on her recently constructed black hilt. What she had accomplished was only theoretical, according to collected data she had chanced upon while assigned to the archives in the Jedi temple. It was theoretically possible but had never been substantiated, “Till now,” she thought out loud, however certain she would never have updated that particular holocron in any event. Securing them at her waist, she got to her feet, did a quick personal inventory to assure herself her mind was the only thing lost at the moment and headed for the cockpit.