Vestara turned to look at Ben. He didn’t flinch from her brown gaze. They all knew he would indeed do so if it came to it.
“You can’t run before you can walk,” Luke said. He made sure there was no censure in his voice or expression or, indeed, even in his Force presence. “And I would be a poor teacher if I asked that of you. I agreed to train you in the ways of the Jedi. If you still wish me to do so, then consider this your first order from your Master.”
She bit her lower lip, then she nodded. “I do not like it, but—I understand. If I was willing to obey Lady Rhea when she was my Master, who cared nothing for me other than how she could use me, I will certainly obey you.”
Ben’s pride in Vestara was like a small sun. She still stood at attention, but Luke saw her lips curve in the slightest of smiles.
“Obedience is seldom fun, but it is necessary,” he said. “Knowing that you, Ben, and Natua will be away from this … maelstrom of energy … eases my mind. Thank you for understanding, Vestara. We’ll comm you if anything happens. And keep us posted if you find anything that will help us.”
“Of course, sir.” She nodded at him. Luke gave Ben a final concerned, affectionate glance, then started off with his Jedi.
Toward a city more full of concentrated dark-side energy, of hate, and anger, and fear, and violence, than anything Luke Skywalker had known before.
“I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU TWO, BUT I FOR ONE AM QUITE CURIOUS TO see what is down there,” Natua said. “After studying the Sith so intensely to help Master Luke, it is exciting to perhaps be the ones to stumble onto something.”
“I don’t remember you as being such a scholarly sort,” Ben said. He set his shoulders, clearly trying to shake off the unpleasant conversation with his father, and the three of them turned and marched toward the cave opening.
“I’m not,” Natua said. “At least, I didn’t think I was. History seemed very dry to me. But having to do this research in order to help with something that was going on right now—that made me feel that I could do something.” She looked over at both of them. “As you can imagine, I don’t harbor a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings toward Abeloth.”
Vestara thought of the first time she had penetrated Abeloth’s illusions, of the hideous thing that had been the reality; of the sickness of Sarasu Taalon and the unhinging of her father’s mind.
“Neither do I,” she said. “Neither do I.”
Worn surprisingly smooth by the flow of lava millennia past, the caves had a geometric beauty to them that seemed more than random. The glow rods provided light, but also cast strangely shaped shadows, illuminating some areas and leaving others pools of darkness. A few stalagmites and stalactites impeded their progress, but it was clear the passage of liquid, not the shifting of the planet, had made the volcanic tunnels.
The caverns had very few narrow passages, so most of the time they could walk three abreast. Vestara could sense that Ben was still put out with his father for removing them from the real action. She, however, was more or less resigned to it, and when Natua paused and shone the glow rod into an offshoot cavern, all three of them came to a dead stop.
Thus far all they had seen was what nature had wrought. Now they peered into what could only be called a “room.” It felt as though the temperature had dropped several degrees, but the chill was not entirely physical. The walls—which bore delicate writing—floor, and ceiling were even and flat, not curved. There were remnants of what appeared to be rugs, cushions, and tools. And over in one corner, covered with droppings, debris, and dust, were—
“Lightsabers,” Natua breathed.
“They surrendered their weapons here before going on,” Vestara said.
“You guessed that?”
“I read it,” Vestara said, pointing to the writing on the wall. She took a step inward, feeling the chill wrap around her like a cold mist. She knew Ben and Natua sensed it, too; this little pocket was steeped in dark-side energy. The initiates who had come here had been afraid—and judging by the number of abandoned lightsabers, rightfully so.
“What’s it say?” Ben stepped next to her, touching her lightly on the shoulder. She knew what the contact meant: I am here. I believe in you, even as we stand awash in dark-side energy. And Vestara felt a little—a very little—warmer.
“ ‘Initiates, you who would master the dark side, prepare yourselves. Leave your weapons, and your former selves, here in this chamber—or depart now and forever in shame, before it is too late to turn back.’ ”
“They were allowed to go?” asked Ben.
Both Natua and Vestara shrugged. “It probably wasn’t like walking away from a sabacc game,” Natua said. “They would be, as it says, forever shamed. I’d bet that included exile.”
“Or some type of particularly vicious punishment, or ritual suicide,” Vestara said. “Whatever the case, they wouldn’t live long afterward.”
“Do you think the lightsabers were left by the ones who were too scared to go through with it?” asked Ben.
Vestara turned to him. The dark-side energies here, old and patient, were too familiar for her liking, and she knew she had dropped into her former coldness as she responded. “No, Ben. I think if you refused to complete the ritual, your lightsaber was taken and given to someone more worthy. I think these lightsabers were left by owners who didn’t survive the initiation.”
Natua looked at the weapons and grimaced. “To reinforce fear and apprehension,” she said. “Sounds like the Sith for sure. They don’t even really take care of their own.”
A cold, unhappy pang shot through Vestara, but she kept her expression neutral. “No,” she said. “They don’t.”
“I’m going to make some recordings,” Natua said. “We need to document everything we find.”
Vestara and Ben stepped back into the main tunnel to give her room to work. “Hey,” Ben said gently. “You doing okay?”
She smiled uncertainly. “For the most part,” she said. “I think I’d honestly prefer to be fighting Ship than be down here with all this.”
“I know. I wish we were. This stuff seriously creeps me out.”
Vestara didn’t answer. It creeped her out, too—but it also stirred up an unexpected longing. She was between worlds now. She had turned her back on her culture, her people, and their ancient rituals. Soon, she would be embraced—she hoped—by the Jedi, and belong to their culture, and experience their rituals. But now, she felt adrift. The feeling surprised her, and she found herself reaching for Ben’s hand.
They stood in silence for a while, hands clasped, until Natua emerged. “Let’s keep going,” the Falleen said. “This is fascinating, and important data to have, but I’d just as soon not linger.”
The tunnel curved slightly, and the three of them followed the path, staying alert for any other signs of ancient Sith activity that had survived the eons. There was no more writing on the walls, or caverns carved into the stone. There were, however, fragments of old bones, scattered pieces of what was clearly equipment, and an increasing sense of unease as they traveled deeper into the heart of the planet. The bones they examined carefully; some of them turned to dust in their hands, but others remained semi-intact.
“Human?” asked Natua.
“Impossible to tell without analyzing them,” Ben said. “We only know of the tiny hallucination-inducing bugs. All kinds of animals could have made this their home over the centuries.”
“You don’t need to protect me, Ben,” Vestara said. And from the quick flush of embarrassed compassion, she knew she was right. “If the Sith left those who had failed where they fell, surely it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“You wouldn’t want to—you know, bury them? Or do whatever the Lost Tribe does with their dead?”
“I’m not a member of the Lost Tribe anymore. And if that Sith’s own people didn’t care, why should I?”
She had intended it to sound as though she wasn’t upset. Instead, she knew it came out sounding brutally uncaring, and
she frowned a little. “I didn’t mean that to sound as harsh as it did.”
“This place is unsettling us all,” Natua said, smiling kindly. “I think we’ve learned about all we can without getting hopelessly lost.”
It was a white lie. Vestara could sense that Natua wanted to continue for at least a bit more and was cutting the exploration short in order to make it easier on Vestara.
“Please, neither you nor Ben need to coddle me,” Vestara said. “If you want to continue, let’s continue. It’s better than sitting outside twiddling our thumbs while Luke and the others take down Ship. At least we’re doing something useful.” She strode forward purposefully. And because they couldn’t argue with her logic, Ben and Natua fell in behind her.
The tunnels continued on. And on. As long minutes passed with no further discovery, Vestara herself started to wonder if perhaps they had indeed discovered all there was to find. It made perfect Sith sense: provide a single chamber to collect the weapons and warn the initiates close to the entrance, then turn them loose to meet the Dream Singers, letting them lie where they fell. Her steps slowed and she came to a halt as the tunnel opened up into a large, naturally formed chamber, with smaller tunnels leading in different directions.
She had just turned around, her mouth open to suggest they retrace their steps, when they all heard the sound.
It was so soft at first that for an instant Vestara wondered if she had imagined it. But Ben and Natua were listening intently, as well.
“Were there any descriptions of sounds?” Ben asked Natua. “I don’t know my geology that well. Maybe caves make noises?”
It came again, a soft, low groaning, and Vestara’s stomach clenched. The air suddenly grew cold, as it had in the chamber they had first encountered.
Wordlessly the three activated their lightsabers and dropped their glow rods, automatically moving so their backs were against one another and they faced outward.
“What was that you asked earlier about animals, Ben?” Natua said. Ben didn’t answer, and neither did Vestara. She was too busy dealing with the sudden wave of dark-side energy that crashed over them like the ghost of the lava that had formed these tunnels so long ago. The shadows, black as full night and dancing now from the glow of the lightsabers as she and the two Jedi moved them about slowly, seemed like living beings as they surged forward and back.
And then one of the shadows reared above them, and for a second Vestara wondered if her protective mask had somehow been damaged. For surely this … monster could only come from the darkest corners of a deranged mind’s nightmares.
Well over two meters tall, its shiny, sectioned body a deep blue-black, the thing gazed down at them with two pairs of glowing red compound eyes. Its mandibles clacked as ooze dripped from them. Lashing behind it were two extensions looking like a double tail. Each one ended in pincers that looked as if they could lop off an arm with no effort.
Vestara noted all this in the space of half a heartbeat as it descended on them. Four of its six arms, each ending in a hook, reached out to swipe at them while the hideous head darted with shocking speed toward—
“Ben!” Vestara cried. Ben dived away as the mandibles scraped at his mask, rolling on the cave floor and coming up fighting. The instant he moved, Vestara laid into the creature, her red blade sizzling as it bit into the hard substance that protected its body. Natua Wan charged at it as well, and the two women moved swiftly so that the creature was being attacked on two sides.
One of the tail pincers snapped at Natua, taking a huge chunk out of her leg. The Falleen hissed in pain but faltered only a little, renewing her attack while Ben dived at the creature from behind. It let out a terrible, screeching wail as Ben’s lightsaber struck at the pincer, burning and blunting it but doing far less damage than it should have, and then whirled to again target the young Jedi. Their blades seemed to have only minimal effect. When the lightsabers struck the creature, their glow dimmed, somehow, as if the thing was draining energy from the blades.
Vestara extended a hand, trying to Force-shove the creature away from Ben. To her astonishment, the creature merely stumbled a little and continued its onslaught. Ben grunted in pain as slaver splashed down on his arm, burning it like acid.
Vestara felt a wave of pain at Ben’s injury—a deep, dull ache in her chest—and growled furiously as she charged forward, her lightsaber almost musical, singing an angry song—
—singing—
The realization struck her so hard she stumbled and lost a precious second. How had they been so stupid!
She knew what the monstrosity before them had to be. They had been unbelievably, unforgivably complacent to think that simply because nothing had been recorded about these tunnels and what dwelled within them, there was nothing they needed to fear.
The monster that had come out of the shadows—which was now attacking Ben—was a mutated rhak-skuri.
Once it had been only a few millimeters in length, a harmless, natural being, but centuries of exposure to the Sith and the energy of dark-side rituals—and quite possibly deliberate alchemical efforts—had transformed it.
“Rhak-skuri!” she shouted. “Come for me!”
It knew its name.
It paused, ever so briefly, in its assault on Ben, whirling to stare at her with its glowing, multiple eyes, its antennae waving as if in agitation—or pleasure. It Force-shoved Ben and Natua back without removing its attention from Vestara, and for a second she felt heavy and sluggish.
… Ssssssiiithhh …
The word, spoken in her mind, was like a cold hand clamping down on Vestara’s heart.
No. She wasn’t a Sith, not anymore, she—
… Ssssssiiithhh …
It was not harming her, and without knowing how she knew, she understood what it wanted.
It had gone from a simple insect to this monstrous entity over centuries. By exposure to the dark side; by honoring rituals in which it had been encouraged to unleash nightmares. And it had learned not to give without taking.
Somehow she understood that it would not harm her. She was Sith. She was one of the things-that-make, and long, long had it been since the Dream Singer had encountered the Makers. But it needed a sacrifice.
It would feed, and remain strong, and serve the dark side.
As would she.
No! Vestara summoned all her energy and renewed her attack. She realized suddenly that only two were attacking the Dream Singer—herself, and Natua.
Ben stood stock-still, ignoring the acid eating into his arm, his eyes wide, his mouth open—
—his mouth—
Vestara realized with a shock of horror that Ben’s mask had been ripped away by the rhak-skuri’s last attack. He had inadvertently inhaled the pheromones and was now experiencing horrors that even she could not imagine.
And she understood just how the rhak-skuri fed.
It was a living being. It would consume flesh. But it would also be sated by the victim’s terror.
Like Abeloth.
For a fraction of an instant that lasted an eon, Vestara stood as if paralyzed.
Ben was out of the fight, eyes shut, convulsing in terror. He would pass out soon, if his heart—or his mind—did not give out before then. She and Natua were by no means weak in the Force. But this thing was ancient. And evil. Fed by centuries of terror and thoughts of violence and darkness, it was much stronger than the tuk’ata or other Sith “demons” she had encountered. It had grown powerful on sweeter food.
It wanted her to ally with it. And Vestara knew that unless she and Natua could defeat it, it would have its sacrifice—with or without her aid.
And the sacrifice it wanted was Ben.
THE GROUND BENEATH THEM TREMBLED AS THE JEDI STRODE, PREPARED for battle but with calm in their hearts, toward the ominous cloud that hovered over the city. In the air that stirred their hair like a vile caress, in the very soil beneath their feet, they could feel the dark side.
“Well,” said Jaina, �
�I can’t sense Ship specifically. But I’m sure that if even the whole Lost Tribe were gathered in one building raising a toast to Abeloth, I wouldn’t be able to sense them, either.”
“None of us could. It would be like trying to pick out a single flower in a field full of them,” Luke replied. All his senses were alert, but that did not distract him from continuing to work things through in his head. “Natua didn’t mention anything like this concentration of dark-side energy in her briefing. This … is new for this world.”
“I think perhaps Saba had the right of it,” Octa Ramis said, falling into step beside them. Like all the Jedi, she held her lightsaber, but it was not ignited. “Maybe Ship is here, and he’s stirred something up.”
“Somethings,” Luke amended. Now that he was growing at least somewhat used to the particular nuances, the swirls and eddies of the dark side as it manifested here, he realized that it was not a singular energy they were sensing.
Barv, mitigating his stride so that his friend Yaqeel could keep up with him, grunted that he, too, seemed to think it was an awful lot of somethings, but that he was completely confident it was nothing the Jedi couldn’t handle. After all, they were Jedi, and they stood for the light side. Yaqeel looked up at him with soft, affectionate eyes, then away. Luke sensed that she, like himself, wasn’t quite as certain as Barv of the eventual outcome.
“Then why haven’t they attacked?” Kyp asked. “If these things are ghosts of Sith past, we’re practically sitting on their doorstep.”
“Perhaps they can’t,” mused Kyle. “They might be imprisoned—servants chained long ago by the Sith, only able to do a master’s direct bidding.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Jaina said with her usual bluntness. Even in this moment of tense awareness and uncertainty, constantly keeping the darkness from seeping into him, Luke smiled. The conversation was good for them. It helped them feel more in control of the situation. Now was most definitely not a time for feelings of revenge, anger, or a desire for victory at all costs. It was a time for calmness, and tranquillity, and rational thought. These were their greatest weapons.
Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Ascension Page 37
