Decades, if not centuries, of layered dust, loose stone, and as Nara’s face encountered on several occasions, webs from native arachnids prevented her from controlling her trajectory or speed as she slid over cold stone through chaotic darkness. Fear that had gripped her in the initial seconds of the path falling from under her feet had been replaced by reaction and instinct to keep herself alive. Whatever the device was that she pulled from the hole in the chamber that had fallen with her, it’s projected light falling beside her, causing a miasmic dance of tumbling shadows, only adding to the chaos that continually threatened to bring her to madness. She had lost count of the times she had either scraped or smacked her head and knew she was bleeding from severe cuts and scratches from pointed stone edges coupled with her velocity of travel along her arms and legs. With a crack of bone and a loud thud her body jolted to a stop as she planted her face into cold stone once again, sending a bright flash of white-hot pain shooting through her skull. Her head was splitting into a massive singular pang as a pinging ring grew louder in her ears, then vibrated through the entirety of her bones. She caught a quick glimpse of an inverted Iktochi female before her just as the blood from broken vessels blinded her completely. ‘Not real….holo…’ she struggled to even think the reality as her head began to vibrate with the rest of her skeletal structure, expanding the excruciating torment tenfold. She could feel shock setting in and knew she only had seconds of consciousness left to her. She fired her hands out in a craze of directions, asserting that they were still there, that they weren’t broken, and she was at least on solid, flat, ground. She could still breathe, although each inhale brought new levels of suffering. “Broken ribs.” She said aloud, spitting blood across the stone before her. She attempted to wiggle her toes, finding at least six that would cooperate. Pain? ‘yes.’ Alive? ‘yes’ Intact? ‘mostly’ she answered her questions in thought, assessing that it was safe to just stay put and not move for a few moments. ‘Good plan.’ She thought in finality as dizziness overtook her and consciousness failed her completely.
✦
Nara had no perception of time, only her perception of pain as she returned to some form of lividity. Some heavily accented voice kept repeating itself in her head, a voice she had never heard before. More immediately, everything hurt. Not one specific area, region, or part. Everything. She dared to open her eyes finding only the left that would comply, and painfully pressed her hand down to push herself from the dusty stone floor. Although the ringing in her ears had subsided it still chimed in sync with the voice that continually repeated in her mind. Her left eye struggled to focus but she realized there was flickering blue light emanating from somewhere close to her as she pushed herself up high enough to roll to her side, and with significant effort, seat herself on her backside. Patting her right hip, she was grateful that her saber hilt was present although she didn’t remember having the time to reaffix it to the clip before falling into...what? “Where the hell am I?” Her voice was almost foreign to her, crackling and, yes, painful. She attempted to grip her saber hilt and remove it from the clip finding the pinky finger broken as it shot painfully back in protest, her thumb bent the wrong way and cascades of blood streaming from ruptured knuckles. She knew she had to fix the thumb before anything else and without wasting time wondering how painful it was going to be she slid the hand into her lap, gripped the thumb with her left hand and snapped it back into place. Not having the energy to scream aloud, she seethed the anguish through clenched teeth then dropped both hands as the swelling commenced, retiring her right hand to disuse at her side for the time being. She reached across her body with the left hand to grip the saber hilt and jerked it off the clip with an audible grunt. Closing her left eye, she blew out breath slowly so as not to disturb her aching ribs then proceeded to calm herself as thoroughly as possible. “Darth Cognus.” The voice that had yet to cease repeated again, the same term that had brought it to her attention subconsciously she thought. Ignoring her body wide aches, she opened her eye and tried locating the flickering source of light. Attempting to lift her right hand she used her index finger to push at the puffy flesh around her right eye forking the index and middle fingers to try prying it open. Although only a sliver of light appeared it settled her nerves to know the eye was still operational. She renewed her search for the light finding the small cylinder at her right side pointing the flickering image behind her. Grabbing at it with the fingers that worked she spun it around, so it shone on the stone wall in front of her. Her earlier observation being correct she rolled it over, so the image was upright as her left eye focused on the image of an aged female Iktochi, creases lining her wrinkled face and one of her downward turned horns broken off. Her eyes, color indiscernible through holoimage, burned with a wisdom incomparable to anyone Nara had ever known. The image flared with a static buzz then repeated “Darth Cognus.” She remembered the name from her independent studies and understood the relevance of the cerebral connection her memory was making. “Zannah.” Nara said aloud, listening as her voice indicated the diminutive chamber she had come to rest in by its lack of echo. “Bane?” She thought aloud, remembering at least portions of some of the writings authored by Zannah referring to her Master as well as her own eventual, “Apprentice.”
Nara ignited the lightsaber in her left hand, it’s warm hiss a welcome addition to the foreign cold silence, scanning the chamber with her good eye, the crimson saber coupled with the blue holo emission bathing her surroundings in a created purple hue. It was a vacant stone enclosure adorned only with a stone bier carved out of the wall to her right. She transferred the ignited saber to her right hand pushing herself to her feet with her left, groaning through her grinding teeth as her bones fought in protest. The bier carved internally from the stone wall had a sole occupant, tight wrappings of a crude fabric encapsulated a humanoid form of average height. Nara braced her aching body against the edge of the bier, lifting the saber to see more clearly. She placed a hand over the body’s head, feeling the features underneath. A moment of silence passed as Nara considered any options available to her. From what she could assess she was trapped in a stone chamber, with a dead person, a light saber, a mini holoemitter and multiple injuries. Casting her gaze about the room she saw the hole in the ceiling but no other form of exit, crevasse, crack or otherwise. “How the hell did they get you in here in then.” She said, looking back at the tightly wrapped body. “Darth Cognus.” She heard again, knowing the device had repeated it itself several times over, she focused on the cylinder lying on the ground a meter away and shuffled with a groan over to retrieve it. Nara deactivated it via the same button she depressed earlier, hoping there were no other surprises in store for her. She raised it before her aiming it the wall opposite the stone bier and depressed the button again, the device activating from the beginning with a refreshed image of the aged Iktochi:
“I am Darth Cognus, Dark Lord of the Sith.” The woman began, pausing, Nara suspected, for effect. She knew of her, yes, but very little. “I have seen you Mirialan, though I do not know from where you come.” ‘What?’ Nara thought, deactivating the device again. “That’s impossible, she died at the hands of her apprentice…” Nara fumbled for the name, remembering the excerpts both written and committed to holo data, realizing only then that she had said the words aloud. ‘At least I thought she died.’ Her mind grateful for something other than pain to concentrate on. Activating the device again, she stared blankly into the woman’s eyes, their greenish hue hinting at the sickly yellow she knew them to have been in life and listened through the first portion again, “More to the point, I do not know from ‘When’ you come.” Again, the Iktochi paused, Nara forgetting the burgeoning aches and groans of protest as she remained standing, “I do not know what draws you to Ambria, only that my Master has foreseen it.” Nara swiveled partially to eye the wrapped body behind her, “She has fallen from the teachings of the Sith and cast away from the Dark Side, however remaining vehemently opposed to the Light.” The Iktochi continued, sounding neither harsh nor critical. Where Nara would expect Sidious to spit the words from his mouth with venom, Cognus almost sounded saddened. The context of what was said piqued Nara’s interest most of all, Zannah had embraced her own journey toward balance in life. “Zannah is worthy of the Darth title no more, thus, has become expendable. Her defeat will come at my hands. This I have foreseen.” Again, Nara swiveled to eye the body, ‘an Iktochi apprentice is a dangerous risk mistress.’ “Yet your presence Mirialan remains a mystery to me that I cannot divine.” ‘How could she know. Precognition, premonition was one thing, this was another matter entirely.’ Nara thought as she worked the centuries out in her mind, remembering Cognus’ apprentice along the way, ‘Millennial.’ She laughed despite the pain in her chest, “Appropriate.” She said aloud, gripping her side. The Iktochi continued, “Fitting then that you find yourself in a tomb built for two.” Nara’s worst-case scenario realized, “Know only this going forward, whatever fate befalls you, HE, remains and will be forever with her. I have said this, I am Darth Cognus, Dark Lord of the Sith.”
The device deactivated itself this time, reducing the chamber to the blood red hue of Nara’s activated light saber. She only stared at the wall where the prophetic Sith Lord from Zannah’s time had conversed with her through the ages. She felt the weight of the words fill the room as they began to truly register in her mind, that weight beginning to press down on her already damaged body. She fought the oncoming sense of absolute hopelessness, knowing it wouldn’t serve her here, if she gave in to it she would only give Cognus’ words power. She had not come all this way, ventured so far onto her path to give credence to a recorded message a millennia removed from her time and space. Yet, looking around, the chamber was precisely as advertised, a tomb. She broke her gaze from the nascent wall and half turned toward the wrapped body, no doubts remaining in her mind whatsoever who it was. “Zannah?” She chanced the audible evocation, mildly curious why the spirit had been silent since she entered the cave. The thought occurred to her that this may all be transpiring in her own mind, the same way it had been when she arrived on Ambria, but she knew better. She knew she had shattered the veil, Zannah hadn’t dropped it, only because she had finally seen what she had expected to. Nara strode over to the bier once again, lifting her saber as she did, its crimson light bathing the enclosure like a portrait of blood. She focused her gaze on the figure’s head, placing a hand slowly on the wrapped forehead and brushing downward over the pits of its eyes, the bridge of the nose and the creases of its mouth, her fingers pulling back just as slowly as she crested the chin. Nara was amazed with the inspection, feeling lividity under the pressure of her touch, ‘how,’ was her singular thought. She stared for a long moment at the shrouded figure’s head, the electrical snapping of her light saber providing the only sound in the tomb as it crackled with vibrancy, too much so as it caught her attention fully. She withdrew the saber and herself from the body, stepping back a few steps to swing the blade in an arc, the motions screaming pain through her bones. As she had expected, the variable pitched hum of the blade reacting with the very air before it created an identical crackling electronic discharge. “There’s air in here.” She said, shaking her head, ‘of course there’s air in here,’ her mind answered, ‘your breathing, yes?’ “Fresh air you idiot.” She felt she may be losing a portion of her sanity as she had come close to losing an argument with herself. Nara hobbled her way toward the hole in the ceiling that had unceremoniously dumped her into the chamber, breathing increasingly deeper as she neared it. She couldn’t feel or sense any change in the air itself coming from the ‘chute,’ as she crunched up her face in thought, new pains making themselves known in her cheekbones. She limped back toward the body, giving herself fully to the senses that were working, feeling a subtle yet notable change in the air itself the closer she came. As it had felt heavy, dense, and aged it was beginning to lighten and freshen. For the first time she gave herself fully to her sense of smell, noting the lack of scent completely from where she stood. The closer she came to the body the sweeter the air smelled, like dried wildflowers or aromatic herbs, although she couldn’t place them with any form of precision. Cognus had gone through great lengths, it seemed, to lay her Master’s body to rest. “But how?”
Nara felt assured the answer she sought lie with the body itself as she had done some diligence eliminating simple explanations. Again, she approached the body, holding her saber over the prone form, deciding the answers did indeed lie within. She laid her saber lengthwise on the other side of the body freeing up both hands to inspect the wrappings themselves. Finding an end plastered to the conglomeration of infinite folds, she pried it loose with her left hand as she slid the working parts of her right hand under the head. Again, the lividity of the corpse surprised her as the neck bent forward from her efforts with little resistance. She was vaguely aware of her heart slamming in her chest, the claustrophobic nature of the chamber pressing in around her, applying pressure to her already aching head. “Fear?” She said as she pulled the edges of the end piece free and began slowly unwrapping the layers, wincing as she brushed against her broken right-hand fingers. “Not fear. I’ve embraced my fear.” She said aloud as she continued unwrapping. “Certainly not fear of death.” Pale flesh beneath the final layers began to reflect the crimson light. “Not yours or mine.” She whispered, decanting the pitch of her voice as she revealed a pair of supple lips and a soft chin. Momentarily startled, she found it quite odd that the body had not decayed beyond recognition as her mind filled in the passage of time by decade long leaps not mere seconds. The flesh was pale, and the lightest shade of white Nara had ever seen but its surface was buoyant and smooth. She continued unwrapping, revealing ear length golden curls, still vibrant and soft rather than dry and brittle, her ears and cheeks, the same hue and texture as the chin and mouth. A powder of fine cerulean covered her eyes, Nara gently blowing the layer away, uncovering closed eyes. “Zannah.” Nara whispered slowly. The aromatic fragrances overtook her as they fanned away from the body, filling the chamber with their welcoming aroma. Nara breathed them in deeply, feeling a semi-intoxication work its way into her mind. Instead of the anticipated grogginess, she seemed the opposite. Her sense of self felt heightened as doubt itself migrated elsewhere. Whatever inkling of fear she may have harbored cast itself from her completely. She felt rooted to her place, knowing where her feet were in comparison to veins of composite materials within the structure of the stone all around her. Cracks, striations in the stone’s strata suggested themselves to her mind as she pushed farther with the ability in all directions. She saw the last strains of rock give way to the open prairie beyond to her left and knew she had found her exit. Refocusing her gaze on the body before her she began to delicately, yet swiftly, remove the remainder of the wrappings. The rest of the body was clothed, the chest and torso adorned with a smooth overshirt and layered with a thigh length crimson and brown patched leather coat. Brown synth leather leggings and mid leg black leather boots rounding out the sight. At her waist was a black belt and affixed to it was the longest saber hilt Nara had ever seen. Her attention was drawn to the hands overlaying the chest, brown gloves covered the flesh and appeared to be holding something close. Prying the fingers loose, and again surprised by their supple nature, she pulled then pushed the right hand away as the left hand turned on its own toward her, fingers flattening outward as if to present Nara with the small two by two-centimeter cube displayed within the hands palm. Startled, Nara staggered back briefly. ‘There is no way that just happened.’ Yet, it did, her mind told her. She studied the cube from her new vantage point before working up the nerve to approach it once again. The item was a non-descript tan with several lighter colored striations as she squinted her good eye to get a better view. Each side that she could see had a circular opening revealing a matrix of sorts of the same-colored material. Her curiosity would not be satiated in simply viewing it, she hobbled toward the proffered hand and took the item from Zannah’s palm. Requiring both hands, it was ridiculously heavy for its size, but she turned it over, nonetheless, understanding that all six sides were identical, the material stone, which surprised her. With effort she brought the stone cube to her eye and inspected the complex matrix within. A ten-sided geometrical hex, without sides only it’s frame, hovered within the cubes own frame. A smaller identical hex was suspended inside the first and then another and another, all comprised of the same stone material. Yet it was unlike any stone Nara had ever encountered, Thana or Barriss for that matter. She had no idea what it meant, what its function was or even why it was presented to her, only that it was now in her hands. Nara looked from the cube to Zannah’s body, walking closer to the raised hand. She gently pushed it back into place, folding the other hand atop, returning them to their eternal vigil. Nara turned her head to take on the visage of Zannah’s restful face, giving into the urge to brush an eye open, gasping slightly at the sight. A pearly white orb, vibrant and pulsing with a life of its own stared back, the same swirling spheres garnishing Zannah’s spirit. Nara shook her head, feeling a hypnotic trance within their depths that wouldn’t hesitate to draw her in completely. She laughed slightly, “even in death you draw in the living.” She said as she brushed the eye closed again and turned toward the far wall, her perceived escape, grabbed her ignited saber and plunged the blade into its depths. Arcing the implement clockwise, she stepped back as the blade met its initial cut and raised her damaged right hand to call upon the force to break the rear of the circular stone free of its mooring. Loud cracks and pings, the smell of forced friction and ruptured dust filled the chamber to the point of deafness and blindness. Through a fit of coughing up the inhaled stone particles, she realized that even if her method worked there wasn’t enough room in the chamber to house the amount of cylinders she would have to cut free. Watching the mist of fragmentation settle on the smooth floor she approached the wall again and began slashing body lengths through its surface vertically. Although working, the process would be arduous, the task severe. Her blade simply wasn’t hot enough to follow through with each slash, requiring a second and a third to complete the action. It was also not wide enough; she would have to increase her swathy pattern threefold to keep her skin from blistering from the muscle beneath. And she was also in no position to expend enormous amounts of energy without losing consciousness again, broken and battered, damaged and almost blind, half naked and barefoot. She stopped slashing at the wall as she could feel the unmistakable pangs of doubt, hopelessness, and anger toil to retake control. Her mind had no problem whatsoever just slinking in a corner and letting itself die. ‘You’re too weak. You’ll never be strong enough. Give in to your anger, your hate and end this now.’ She could feel the screams emanating from deep within her core, the solidity of the stance she would take against anyone, even herself, that doubted her strength of will or intent. In the second it took her to think the next thought she was both proud and ashamed. Calling upon the anger and hate to destroy the stone would only end up in her bringing the remainder of the stone around crashing down through her, yet she knew she had the ability, the power, to do just that. “No. There is always another way.” Panting she watched as the last of the rocky silt settled to the tomb’s floor, stared at the opening she had already produced. A sudden memory took hold of her, a similar hopelessness she felt in the distant past, as someone else entirely. Ahsoka Tano, squeezing her shoulder as she cowled in the gloomy wake of a destroyed droid factory on Geonosis, affirming her that they would make it out, that she would live...that they would do it together. And they had. With that in mind she sat down with extreme effort onto the dusty floor slipping slightly on the scree, loose pebbles. She deactivated her crimson blade, drowning the chamber in absolute darkness as she closed her eyes and did something she, Nara, had never done. Calling upon the light side of the Force through her memories as Barriss she concentrated on her breathing, feeling it flow into her without reservation. She closed off the Dark side completely as the Light filled every part of her. Images of Unduli floated through her subconscious mind, her form smiling, nodding with satisfaction. Images of Masters Yoda and Saesee Tin seated at either side of her, adding their meditative concentration to her own. She envisioned her escape through the walls and out onto the open plains of Ambria through numerous scenarios, however none of them resulting in anything but the complete collapse of the chamber from the millions of tons of stone above her. The Light side offered nothing but the sweet consolation prize of death, albeit a path less destructive yet more sudden than that of the Dark side. “What is the path between. Think Nara.” She knew there was an answer that was eluding her, anything was possible, it is just a matter of figuring out how to traverse the path, Ahsoka had told her years ago. ‘Belief is not always the correct tool, but a starting point nonetheless.’ She mouthed the words verbatim Ahsoka had uttered while sparring on occasion in the Jedi temple, her friend helping her to maximize the defensive superiority of Soresu. Despite her inner turmoil regarding the Togruta she was finding with each passing day how beneficial her mentorship had been. “Belief in what?” She said, feeling the dust caking on her lips. ‘In the Force?’ She thought. ‘No.’ Her mind answered. ‘Not this again.’ She felt the hopelessness begin to creep back into the forefront, ‘If not now, when?’ Her mind retorted. ‘You’ve been removed from every hinderance imaginable Nara. You’ve turned your back on others authoring your life, you’ve made peace with your old master, you’ve accepted responsibility for actions that weren’t even yours. You’ve embraced both love and compassion, courage, and fear, yet you remain stoic in your stubborn refusal to accept yourself.’ Nara spun her head looking for a voice that wasn’t there. She was being foolish and falling victim to her own observation. ‘You will never succeed if you do not believe you can Nara.’ The voice was hers, a wavering and timid voice that threatened the very core of the power she thought herself capable. ‘Belief is not weakness Nara; it is your strength. Embrace it. Embrace it and get us out of here.’ Nara pushed herself back to her feet, feeling the aches and pains had subsided somewhat, grabbed her saber hilt, and ignited the blade once more. She looked at the crimson saber, felt its vibration in her hand, watched as the energy waved along its edges then stared at the lack of progress the blade had made in the wall. “Believe in myself.” She was beginning to understand what her mind had been telling her.
Instead of walking toward the wall, she peddled the three meters back to Zannah’s body and wrapped her damaged hand around the long hilt. The cool cylinder felt weightless in her hand as she flipped the clip open with her partially dislocated thumb, wincing only slightly as she brought the item before her. She turned it over in her hand, inspecting its surfaces and intricacies within the crimson glow, noting the opening at either end, and then understanding that the legends were true, Zannah had indeed wielded a saber staff. Twin activators placed a fingers breath apart allowed for ease of use with one hand. There were no other controls that she could see, no tuning dials or amplifier nodes. It was what it was, Zannah’s saber. Feeling as though time itself froze as the aftereffects of her earlier attempts drowned the chamber in an almost oppressive silence, she deactivated her own saber returning the tomb to its complete darkness. In the next instant she gripped the saber staff in her left hand and placed her middle and index finger over the activators and depressed them simultaneously, bathing the chamber in a brilliant orange light that forced her to close her left eye partially.
✦
Palpatine snapped his attention to the aether, far from his current surroundings, the voice of Ysanne Isard drowning into obscurity. His mind reeling from being dragged so far from his grip of reality. A vision began taking form as the immediacy of the conference chamber he was seated wavered at its edges and flung him to a desolate landscape far removed from his current position. With wavering images brilliant in their reds, oranges, and yellows he traversed the ground in spirit at lightning speed to face a crimson rock wall standing a hundred meters above him. A deep rumble presented itself as it resonated through his feet and into his very bones, vibrating at threatening levels of internal destruction. The wall before him exploded in a mass of stone shards and chunks, although solid, the image resembled an internal bodily explosion given the coloration of the stone and debris. As the dust settled and smoke cleared he saw a figure emerge from the gaping wound in the wall, walking slowly, dripping power. The figure looked familiar although the twin orange beams of energy adorning either end of the saber staff in its hand did not. The figure was familiar, although his first instinct was to utter the name ‘Zannah.’ “This could not be subject twenty-three.” He said aloud as the figure of the Mirialan clone stepped free of the stone and deactivated the saber staff. She scanned the horizon before her from left to right then swung her gaze to the solitary figure, him, clad in black and deepest purple from head to foot. Palpatine watched carefully as she stretched a broken smile across her damaged face, her right eye swollen shut, then, before he could blink, she was directly in front of him at supernatural speed. She made no threatening moves only bowed before him with condescension, a mocking tribute she laughed through. ‘Yes, she is laughing.’ His mind registered. She erected her frame, winked her good eye briefly before saying, “Thank you.” She gestured out with her hand at an impossible speed thrusting the Dark Lord of the Sith back through time and space, forcing his visionary spirit back into his corporeal from with enough force to knock him from his seated position back in the conference chamber. A cascade of voices, notably alarmed, rushed to his aid. Although their speech was garbled at best it was the laughter that accrued his interest, his complete interest and focus. A deep gargling laughter that he had heard before. One that would inspire fear had he known of such things. The laughter ended abruptly. “I told you Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the Sith. I warned you.” Bane said as the laughter ensued then faded from his mind.
Panting feverishly, a crazed grimace creasing his already deformed features, he batted away the numerous hands and arms extended in his direction as he pushed himself to his feet and returned the cowl to its position over his craggy forehead. The images of those standing around him spinning, he searched for the only one that could aid him now. Finding the warbling form of Sate Pestage, he grabbed at the man’s arms, taking three successive attempts to do so before pulling his advisor close, “Where is Vader?”
Sate brought his head in closer to his Emperors’ ear, “carrying out your directive in the Kuat system, both Cylo and Tagge have been eliminated.” He whispered confidently.
“Get him back here at once Sate, I need to speak with him...in person.”
“My Lord.” Sate Pestage responded in a similar whisper meant for his Emperor's ear only, as he procured a hand on Palatines back and helped usher him from the conference chamber.