Meetra left the Trayus Core in a daze, her traveling companions packed around her in the small piece of junk Bao-Dur had managed to make spaceworthy while she was off defeating Kreia and her friends on their own quests. Revan? Off to defeat some threat beyond the edges of the galaxy?
Revan never fell, Kreia had claimed. But Revan had been her student, and Kreia herself had fallen to the dark. A teacher blind her student's flaws, driven mad by the tangled web of justifications, or the only one to see the truth? Meetra had been in the epicenter of the disintegration. Whether that gave her a place to see the center or an inability to observe the whole was a question that led to depths she had no desire to plumb.
She'd followed Revan into war once. The tomb of Ludo Kressh had revealed to her that even if she were to know everything that transpired, she would do it again. Now, Revan had found herself another war, and Meetra seemed to be rushing to join her.
“General?” Bao-Dur quietly asked.
“What's happened?”
“It seems Revan found another war.”
Bao-Dur gazed at her consideringly. “And you will follow her to the bloody end.”
“Yes.” Meetra sighed. She had walked away after Malachor, but-
“I will follow you.”
Meetra's head snapped up. “No. You can't.”
“I followed you to Malachor, and I chose to follow you afterwards. We all did. Do we not get to choose anymore?”
Meetra sighed. She closed her eyes and turned to the Force bonds, the little threads leading away from her to her traveling companions, that she'd missed until the Jedi Masters on Dantooine had pointed them out. Were her companions able to make their own choices, or did she insidiously exert her will and deny their own?
“General?”
“I'll make an announcement once we're away from Malachor,” she said.
Bao-Dur did not look quite happy with this proclamation, but nodded and rose. “I'll hold you to it.”
Meetra was left alone for a moment. She straightened her spine and rearranged herself into a meditative position. She'd been a Jedi once, and had a horde of apprentices now; let her become a Jedi anew.
The Force, so recently dark and deceptive, was now placid like a mirror-calm lake. She didn't cast about for the thread-ends of thoughts or suggestions. Instead, she breathed. Inhale the darkness and corruption of the world. Exhale the gifts of kindness and justice.
What was a Jedi? Kreia, her most recent teacher, would have said a Jedi was rigid and naïve. Revan and Kavar would have agreed that a Jedi was a tool for Justice. Her first Master, though, long dead and half forgotten, had told her that a Jedi was a tool for transformation. Corruption to justice, pain to peace, darkness to the light.
Meetra considered her apprentices. She thought old Master Iru would approve of her work with Visas, if nothing else.
Anticipation swirled around her. It was not the Force, nor herself. They must've arrived.
Exiting meditation was always a jarring experience, like stepping into a room and discovering an unexpected change in temperature. When she hadn't had enough time in meditation, like now, it was worse. Thus she had the beginnings of a headache when she walked up to the room now holding all her companions on her recent journey, save for G0-T0, missing on Malachor, HK-47, who'd left on Telos for a journey of his own, and Kreia.
“Kreia is dead,” she said. “But before she died, she claimed Revan had disappeared to the Unknown Regions due to there being a threat there. She was a liar, yet Revan disappeared for a reason. I will go to investigate, but I don't expect any of you to accompany me. In fact, I'd prefer it if you stayed.”
Her comrades in this journey were silent for a moment, some looking at each other, others simply looking at her. Bao-Dur she thought had made his decision already. Visas as well.
“What would those who stay behind do?” Brianna asked.
“Rebuild the Jedi Order,” Meetra replied. She held a hand to stop the questions. “I have taught you much. Atris's academy has a great deal of holocrons you may consult, and perhaps Atris herself will have climbed back to the light. Some Jedi may still live in hiding and come to you when they discover the Jedi Order yet lives.”
“I will ready the Mandalorian tribes,” Mandalore said.
Meetra nodded. “And the others?”
In the end, it took over an hour of wrangling, but she dropped Brianna, Mical, Atton, and Mira at Telos to deal with Atris and bring back the Jedi. Mandalore spoke to Kelborn, and soon enough, Meetra was heading towards the Unknown Regions in a new ship with Visas, Bao-Dur, and T3-M4.
“Do you think we will find something, Master?” Visas asked while Meetra was staring at the navicomp display, trying to decipher the Force and what little clues it may bestow upon her.
“I hope we do,” Meetra replied. “The Mandalorians are organizing. If they don't have anything to fight against...”
“...the consequences could be dire, especially with the Republic in its current condition,” Bao-Dur finished. “I still wonder if we chose wrong, leaving the Mandalorians alive.”
“I had the same thought, when Revan crushed Mandalore's helmet before the Mandalorians after Malachor and declared the war over. Had we not set out to stop the Mandalorians, once and for all? Were we not merely leaving them in place to wage war on the Republic again and again?” Meetra shook her head to dispel the emotions that had risen from the depths of her memory. “Then I realized that what I was contemplating was genocide, and genocide is not the Jedi way.”
“And you returned to Coruscant to be judged.”
“Yes.”
Meetra closed her eyes and reached out through the Force once more. The rippling was still there, but she couldn't decipher its direction.
A small nudge toward the ship. There was no threat to the Republic on the ship. Unless Meetra herself counted? Would Revan have gone to the Unknown Regions in search of her old comrade in arms?
“Can we help?” Visas asked.
Or perhaps the Force was telling her that she no longer roamed alone. “Let's meditate together,” Meetra said.
Visas and Bao-Dur folded themselves up in the cockpit of the Gathering Storm. It was roomier than the Ebon Hawk's had been, but their knees still brushed together. Meetra guided the other two into the Force.
It was exhilarating. Meetra found she'd missed this, brushing souls with her fellow Jedi. Bao-Dur was a hyrra flower, slowly opening its petals to bathe in the eternal light of the Force. And Visas- Visas was the light conquering the dark, the sun slowly melting the frost off the ground so a paradise valley could once more rise to bloom.
With their connection, it was suddenly easier to see. Meetra felt the Force wash over all three of them, circling the places where they touched and skipping over the edges of their presences. A vision of the stars rose and swallowed them. For a brief moment, Meetra was weightless and tetherless, floating through the aether between the stars, hyperlanes long and short, bound and roaming lighting up before her in colors she had no words for. The Force sang the song of a starry night, of wanderlust, and suddenly she knew the path before her like she knew how to breathe.
The Force gently withdrew, first the colors of the hyperlanes and then the sensation of disembodiment. Meetra opened her eyes to reality in perfect synchrony with Visas and Bao-Dur.
“I do not know the name of our first step, but Nihilus did his best to avoid it,” Visas said.
“I doubt it's in any Republic star charts. T3?”
“Dwoop,” T3-M4 confirmed Bao-Dur's guess.
Meetra rose. “But we know its coordinates, and we know it will lead us onward. The Force has guided us. Let us follow.”
Visas said “Of course, Master,” as Bao-Dur said “Of course, General.” Meetra wondered how long it would take for Bao-Dur to stop calling her by a title she had relinquished as she programmed in the coordinates for their nameless world.
The planet loomed large in the viewport. It was an orange world, not unlike many she'd fought on during the war, but now her first association was Korriban. The Force beckoned her closer, clearer now that the world was so near Meetra thought she might be able to pluck it out of the sky.
There was nothing exceptional about the system: a single yellow star had had its accretion disk coalesce into a number of rocky worlds, two small ones embracing the star's glow, baked lifeless by whatever stellar activity may exist, a third one in an eccentric orbit that spanned the inner and outer edges of the habitable zone, followed by a wide disc of asteroids that started at the outer edge of the habitable zone and reached outwards until swept aside by the orbit of a colossal gas giant that glowed golden in a human's visual range. Beyond that, the system turned to rocks once more, a belt followed by a void that gradually turned into the miscellaneous gathering of rock and ice that defined the edges of a star's gravitational influence.
“What does the planet feel like in the Force?” she asked Visas and Bao-Dur as T3-M4 brought them in.
“Old,” Visas said.
“Dead,” Bao-Dur said.
Meetra made a noise of assent. “And beyond that?”
Visas frowned. “It is not Korriban, but – there is a thread of something similar. Perhaps this world, too, is a tomb.”
“But if not for the Sith, then for whom?” Bao-Dur mused.
“Indeed.” Part of the legacy Revan had left for her forces, before her Fall and during the re-emergence of the Jedi Knight, had been hints of mysterious alien artefacts that Revan had been convinced would hold the key for defeating her enemies. Soldiers there at Malak's final defeat had spoken of a Star Forge that could generate vast ships out of nothing, destroyed at the Jedi's behest. Perhaps Revan had been right, and discovered the aliens still existed. They would be a credible threat to the Republic if so.
The stars flickered out as they entered the atmosphere. The sky gently brightened from black to navy to a dull blue. The ship's sensors showed a high amount of dust in the atmosphere.
“Looks like there's a large potential for sandstorms,” Bao-Dur said, leaning over Meetra's shoulder to look at the sensors. “I wonder what the risk for hull damage is.”
“T3, could you monitor the atmospheric conditions and bring us out of atmo if there's a risk to the ship?”
T3-M4 bleeped assent and continued steering the ship down. The dull blue turned to a yellowish tint a few moments before the landing gear sank into the sand.
The Force hummed in contentment. They were where it had wanted to lead them.
Meetra took one final look at the sensor readout – they were in the long orbital winter of the world, so the desert would be cool – and pulled the hood of her cloak over her head. “Come. Let's see what the Force wanted to show us.”
The cold pinched Meetra's cheeks the moment the ramp descended. She drew herself deeper into her cloak and descended to the desert as the wind played with the hem.
Weathered metal pillars jutted out of the sands, pitted and worn. Meetra thought she might see a statue or two in the midst that depicted some bipedal species with a protrusion on each side of a tall and narrow head.
“These were gold, once,” Visas said with the certainty of one whose eyes were the Force.
“It does not look like it collapsed due to weathering,” Bao-Dur said with the certainty of one who'd observed the structural damage resulting from a variety of explosions.
Indeed. Meetra looked at the tops of the pillars, the large gouges in the visible walls, and the afterimages in the Force visible even after the passage of time had rendered the world lifeless. She knelt and ran a hand over one of the walls. “Something sprang up from the inside and tore open the building.”
“The forces would be immense,” Bao-Dur mused. “Do you know what could've done it?”
Meetra touched the Force. “Visas?” she asked upon coming up empty.
“Yes, Master.” Visas knelt beside her, fully opening up to the Force where Meetra could observe every nuance of her existence. She pressed against the stone, molding against the nooks and crannies of the broken pillars and statues and the echoes of Force presences that had once been etched into them.
Meetra let herself bask in Visas's existence and gently fed in some of her own strength in the Force. Something within her let out a deep breath and relaxed.
Visas gathered herself back to her body. “I cannot tell.”
“Perhaps there will be murals?” Bao-Dur suggested. “Or signage, though this seems too elaborate for a simple storage building.”
“It was a temple of some sort,” Meetra said with the knowledge the Force had automatically bestowed upon her.
Bao-Dur turned to take in the ruins. “That would make sense.”
“I'll have to teach you how to listen to the Force better,” Meetra promised. Likely he already knew how – had been able to know instinctively that soldering there would doom his project, had known components would fail before they did – but did not know he knew, and thus could reach out only through instinct. He heard, but had yet to learn how to listen.
The three of them spent the rest of the daylight taking images of what survived, pilasters and statues and sections of wall, and listening to what imprints were left in the Force. There was not much; the sands perhaps covered more, but much was eroded to nothing. Every surface was pitted from the sand. Any original texturing or coloration had been lost, leaving only the flecked stone.
They called latemeal and retreated to the Gathering Storm. Meetra thought the wind had picked up as they worked.
“Dwee. Do doop,” T3-M4 greeted them.
“Yes, I noticed it as well,” Meetra replied. “Bring us into orbit; we can sleep without worrying about sand clogging things.”
“Breet,” T3-M4 agreed and whirred back to the cockpit.
“T3 is our new pilot, then?” Visas asked.
“Yes. Come, let's eat and look over our findings.”
Nothing new arose on examination of the images they'd taken, so they agreed to call it a night. Meetra crawled into her bunk and waved the lights off. Sleep hovered at the edges of the room, but did not come to claim her, wary of the the new environment, the new bed, and the lack of people. Her mind turned the day's events over in her head: the Force's call, the pillars enrobed in gold, the ruins destroyed by calamity within.
Exhaustion tugged at her. She lost track of time; perhaps she even slept.
At some point, though, the restlessness grew, and she rolled in bed until she rolled out of it. She groaned and, recognizing sleep would elude her, decided to walk a bit.
Her feet brought her to the bridge. The nameless world loomed large in the viewport, now covered by a planet-wide sandstorm.
That was surprisingly rapid. Less than a rotational period before, the planet's skies had been clear. Was this normal, or some consequence of their arrival?
Listen, the Force said. Wait.
“Did the atmospheric sensor readings look reasonable, T3?” Meetra quietly asked.
T3-M4 pulled up a readout and scrolled the numbers just fast enough Meetra couldn't process them, though he did agree that the readings weren't that extreme and the sandstorm looked odd in that context. Especially since it hadn't been brewing when they first arrived.
“How long do you think it'll last?”
T3-M4 warbled a no. He turned back to the dataport.
Meetra stared at the world. The once orange ball had turned a darker shade and the thin sliver of blue atmosphere visible around it had taken on a brown cast. It was as if the boundaries of the planet itself had become hazy, this little kernel of rock and dust blending into the gas it had trapped around it for its eternal sojourn through the vast vacuum of space.
The bridge door whooshed open behind her. “Master,” Visas said.
“Did the Force wake you as well?”
“Yes.” Visas drifted toward the viewport and stopped half a pace behind Meetra. She couldn't see, probably, so-
“The planet's darker, now; completely covered in a sandstorm,” Meetra explained. “There wasn't any sand in the air when we arrived.”
“Look at it in the Force,” Visas said. “It's ... changing. Like a dancer changing their clothes, or a butterfly in its chrysalis. But the purpose is unclear.”
Meetra closed her eyes and tried to reach out. Now that Visas had pointed it out, she could see it at the edge of her vision, like details in the dark. Wait, the Force repeated.
The door whooshed open once more. “Is it the Force that woke you up?” Bao-Dur asked, quiet despite the evidence before him that no-one on the ship was asleep.
“Yes,” Visas replied. “Can you see?”
“Close your eyes,” Meetra said. “Become nothing. You have come to observe, not affect. Let your thoughts wash over you like a river while you are the bedrock. Find the stillness in the storm of the universe.” She took a breath. “And when you have become nothing and everything, look.”
“Oh,” Bao-Dur said, breathless. “It's ... words cannot describe it.”
“The Force flows through every living thing, but even things we would not think of as living – places, planets, stars, the vacuum of space – have a presence to them,” Meetra said, repeating what her old master had once taught her. “It is most noticeable with planets, since all of them have a biosphere with a mass of bacteria supporting life as our eyes can see it. A singular bacterium might not have much of a presence, but a planet's worth of them echoes with the thrum of the galaxy.”
“And stars?” Bao-Dur's eyes were still closed.
“They sing,” Meetra said. She sank down into the Force as well and turned to this system's star. Beside her, Visas was doing the same. “Listen.”
And her students did. The star sang a low song, forever immortalizing its moment of birth in the ever expanding universe. Galaxies might be drawn away from each other by the expansion of space, but this star had its eternal companions forever drawn by its gravitational pull, and this star sang of its joy.
The sandstorm lasted for three days. Meetra, Visas, and Bao-Dur spent the time meditating and sparring. Meetra held a Jedi symposium of sorts as she went through what philosophy she remembered. She hoped Atris's archives had opened for those back in the realm of civilization.
T3-M4 had paused upon seeing the images of the statues they'd taken. He had dismissed any concerns with an unconvincing Dwoo and was currently avoiding Meetra.
Revan's astromech knew something about these aliens. Perhaps they were on her trail.
When the sandstorm cleared and exposed the planet surface again, Meetra felt the Force tug at her. She gave T3-M4 the new coordinates and watched their descent.
The new site was closer to a pole, though that wouldn't affect the length of the day. The planet didn't have much, if any, axial tilt, and its seasons came from the eccentricity of its orbit.
T3-M4 brought the Gathering Storm down gently. Meetra took a deep breath and headed for the exit ramp.
The temperature was similar to that of the previous site. There were no obvious ruins in the sand, though they would have to search. The Force was clear like the chilly air and told them Here.
Meetra sank into a feather-light trance and breathed. The planet hummed beneath her and the grains of sand still skipping in the air left echoes in their wake, but between them the Force lit up with energy, a lodestone for Meetra to follow. She stepped slowly through the sand, careful with her weight, and followed the Force's urging.
She came to a stop and opened her eyes. She was standing in front of a small depression in the sand that nonetheless had a flat bottom, rather than the crater shape one would expect.
The Force was with her. She called up a breeze to brush away the sand, and found a trapdoor made of metal.
Visas had drifted to her side. “A door,” she breathed.
“What does it lead to?” Bao-Dur asked as he walked over.
“Darkness. The light.”
Meetra knelt and touched the door. It had no inscriptions save those engraved by the sand, but the Force shivered with anticipation and foreboding in equal measure. “The next item on our itinerary,” she added to Visas's words. A small tap with the Force, and the door sprang open.
“Lead the way, General.”
There was no ladder, but they were all Jedi and Meetra could see the floor. She jumped down and slowed herself with the Force enough that the impact was silent. Visas followed her scant moments later.
“I suspect I'll need some help,” Bao-Dur said from above.
Another thing in which to train him when they had the time. “I'll catch you. Jump.”
She heard Bao-Dur take a deep breath he took his leap of faith. He was familiar in the Force, and catching him to place him softly on the ground easy like breathing. As an engineer, he'd mostly stayed on the capital ships and base camps during the Mandalorian Wars; Meetra might've pulled him up to a shuttle as part of an evac once, but she wouldn't put money on it. She'd have fun teaching him about all the joys of the Force.
“Hmm.” Bao-Dur looked around once Meetra let her Force embrace dissolve. “The people who built this were roughly similar in height to us.”
The passage was roughly square in cross-section, just under two and a half meters to a side. Perhaps a bit taller than the standard human-scale ship, though that might just be for ease of ventilation, and narrow enough that it wasn't a major throughway.
A look in the Force did not warn of any traps. Meetra breathed out and followed the eddies in the Force left in the wake of her exhalation.
She was standing at one of the side walls. Something in her urged her to reach out-
The wall was rough. Not pitted, no, but- “The walls have carvings on them.”
Immediately, Visas had her lightsaber out and Bao-Dur started casting about for a lamp. Meetra brought up her own lightsaber and lit it. The Force flowed through the crystal with a snap-hiss and sang as the plasma hummed. A sense of purpose settled over her like a mantle. Jedi, her crystal sang in joy.
“What do you see?” Visas asked.
“Some sort of ... ritual?” Bao-Dur suggested. Having been reminded of his own lightsaber's illuminatory properties, he brought it out and raised the blade to a useful height. The passageway was bathed in blue. “I think those beings look similar to those of the statues.”
Meetra was inclined to agree. Their bodies were near human, based on their rendition in the reliefs, though their hands and feet looked elongated. Their heads, though, were tall and rose to a blunted point that greatly resembled the silhouette of an Ongree. The most distinguishing feature was the stalks that jutted out to the sides at roughly two thirds of the way from crown to chin. The reliefs did not have much detail, but likely they were eyes or some other sensory organ.
The three of them slowly walked along in the sabers' light. Meetra and Bao-Dur kept up a running commentary on the walls.
Figures reveling in the vegetation, followed by figures face down on the ground. Mass extinction? Had this once been a verdant world, full of life, before its old sun baked it to a crisp?
Another crop of figures stood in a circle, clearly arguing. Most of the walls were covered with such vistas: arguing figures, kneeling figures, figures obviously attempting a myriad and one different rituals.
“What people would not attempt everything to restore life to their world?” Bao-Dur asked.
“No,” Visas said. “There is something more. Something ... deeper.”
Meetra frowned. This was the obvious interpretation of the imagery. What did Visas see that they didn't?
She leaned her forehead on the cool stone and breathed. She let gravity pull her body from her spirit and draw what grounded her to the stone beneath. She was a luminous being, and the Force called her home.
Dig deeper, the Force echoed. Dig deeper.
Craftsmen chiseling at the wall based on drawings. The buildmaster's overseeing eye and lingering sense of wrongness. Historians, collating events, turning them into a narrative.
This is not a place of honor.
Despair. The bitter end of all hope. A stranded populace seeking to go home.
This is a warning.
Warning, the Force echoed. Warning. This is a warning.
Meetra tugged herself out of the semi-meditative state and back to reality. She straightened herself with a deep breath in and let the secondhand emotions, so clearly transferred despite the vast gulf of time, fall away as she exhaled. “You are correct,” she told Visas. “This was ... something more. This was not their homeworld, merely an – outpost, I suppose.”
“Then were the rituals there to beg their homeworld to take them back from exile?” Bao-Dur asked. “If it were something simple, like a hyperdrive malfunction, then any hyperspace-capable species should be able to build a comm array that could transmit over interstellar distances. Unless their malfunction brought them so far off course that the homeworld couldn't send anyone to fetch them?”
“No, it was something more fundamental,” Meetra said, going over what the Force had showed her.
“A collapse,” Visas said. “A collapse of everything they had ever known.”
“But what could produce such a thing?” Bao-Dur turned his lightsaber to cast light on the opposite wall. “What calamity could bring down an interstellar civilization in the blink of an eye?”
“I suspect we will find out more as we get past this listing of what did not work.”
They walked down the passage. Both walls were encrusted with depictions of the figures kneeling, fighting, communing, and more. Meetra did not recognize the rituals they were attempting to perform, though she was certain they were Force rituals. A number of species had their own domestic Force traditions; some, like the Baran Do, were born of predicting the weather and thus focused on seeing the future. Others sought to influence things: first usually begging for it to rain, then gradually using what skills they had to bring forth the defeat of their opponents. Some ended up with a set of rituals surprisingly similar to those of another sect halfway across the galaxy. Apparently the Force really liked circles.
The passage terminated in a heavy pair of doors on which another ritual was engraved. This time the figures were large enough Meetra could conclusively state they weren't Ongree: the mouths were beneath the eyes, the eyestalks wider, and there was no beard of tentacles at the bottom.
“This ritual must hold some significance,” Bao-Dur said. “I don't suppose there's a written description anywhere?”
“No.” Meetra took a step back to observe the relief in whole. Distant cousins of the Ongree sitting in a circle, with lines in a pattern between them, and a single censer in the center. And in that censer...
Meetra pursed her lips. “Visas? Do you recognize the ritual?”
Visas stepped closer and ran her hands over the door. Meetra watched with bated breath. If she was right, then it would explain the destruction of the previous location's structures. Though the implications of correctness were not something she cared to explore.
Eventually, Visas spoke, hand still resting on the engraved censer through which ran the seam between the doors. “I do not recognize it, but it is a ritual of the dark side which non-Force sensitives can perform.”
“There are such rituals?” Bao-Dur asked.
“Yes,” Meetra said. “My old master collected them before her death. Most Force rituals require a Force sensitive to activate, but some of the dark side require only unsavory deeds.”
“Sentient sacrifice.”
“Exactly.”
“So this world had dark side cultists who tried to solve a calamity that befell them with a dark side ritual.” Bao-Dur touched the wall next to the door. “But what was the ritual for?”
The doors creaked into the walls at his touch, exposing a further chamber. The three of them looked at each other.
“The Force said this place was a warning,” Meetra said. “Come. Let us investigate.”
This room was cubical, with the walls again covered with engravings. The center held a shallow, circular obsidian plinth on which an almost spherical shell rested. It hummed with a slumbering potential. Meetra ignored it in favor of the walls.
Unlike the walls of the passageway, there were arrows leading them around the room counterclockwise. The first wall had depictions of the summoning process: the figures taking one of their own and burning it alive as they knelt in a circle. A starburst shape appeared in the center of the array and the figures stepped back.
“Did they not mean to do what they did?”
“So it seems.”
The next wall was filled with depictions of destruction. Whatever the figures had summoned was represented mostly as a starburst shape but occasionally as something different yet equivalently geometrical. Meetra suspected it was nonrepresentational. It leveled structures, sentients, and societal class.
The final wall was the interesting one. Whatever the denizens of this world had unleashed, it was not here anymore, so it had been defeated somehow.
Unfortunately, Meetra couldn't make heads or tails of the murals. The ones with weapon-toting warriors assaulting the creature were easy enough to decipher, but they were also the ones that ended with the warriors dead on the ground. Others depicted yet more rituals, figures standing or kneeling in circles with heads bowed, only for the starburst shape to appear and raze them. Then, halfway across the wall, it turned into abstraction.
“Is that text?” Bao-Dur asked.
“I ... doubt it,” Meetra said. It was a mixture of geometric patterns, circles and straight lines like in her favorite meditation chamber back on Dantooine. Perhaps another array for a ritual? “Visas? Do you recognize it?”
Visas ran her hands over the raised lines on the wall. “No. Though it feels like I should. It's ... I cannot describe it. Like the doors to my room opening before it.”
Meetra stared at the pattern. Straight lines bisected circles, became triangles, and connected with swooping arcs. Just like in her favorite meditation chamber.
And like in another meditation chamber she'd been in on Devaron. And several antechambers on Coruscant. The Force niggled at her.
“It is a creature of darkness,” Meetra said. “Perhaps what it fears most is the light.”
Bao-Dur turned to the wall. “How did you get that out of-” He gestured at the wall. “-this?”
“The patterns are similar to those I've seen in several Jedi meditation chambers. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Visas leaned her forehead against the wall. Her breaths echoed in the quiet room. “Yes. It was the light,” she said. “But how could they call upon the cleansing light of the Force if they had no connection to it?”
Oh how Meetra wished her old master were here. She'd walked through the ruins of the past and found the truth amongst the dead. Not only would she have known what they were looking at, she would've loved it here.
But her old master had taught her much, some of which Meetra still remembered. “Just like some rituals of the dark side do not need a connection to the Force, sometimes the light doesn't need conscious manipulation. It simply needs a – conduit.”
Bao-Dur frowned. “What do you mean?”
Meetra smiled. “What is the light?”
Exasperation threaded into the Force from both her apprentices. Meetra kept her smile.
“It is warmth,” Visas said. “It is like knowing there is a home you can always return to.”
“It is balance,” Bao-Dur said. “It is knowing what you must do and doing that but no more.”
“It is both of those, yes, but it is selflessness,” Meetra said. “It is doing what is hard, or unpleasant, or dangerous, solely for the salvation of others – and finding it heroically self-creating.”
“So there was someone who rose against this creature not for their own sake, but for the sake of others, and this was enough?” Bao-Dur asked.
“Perhaps. Selfishness and greed may always spawn, but the Force is a force for good.”
“Is one person enough?” Visas asked. “Even we required allies.”
“Sometimes, all it needs is one person to be the catalyst that changes everything.” Meetra joined Visas at the wall and set aside her speculation. Only an empty cup could be filled, after all.
The Force accepted her overtures and shone bright on her. There were no images, not even vague suggestions thereof, but there was a sensation of grim certainty. Meetra knew it well from the war: the single soldier willing to sacrifice themself for comrade and country. Self-sacrifice over each organism's individual desire to live.
The Force did not show whether the soldier had lived or died – the Force often set trials where the correct choice looked like it led to death, only for the executioner's blade to turn immaterial at the last moment – but their comrades had lived, and their people had lived without the monstrosity of the dark side that had plagued them. The one soldier had won the most decisive victory, even if their people had crumbled to dust over the millennia.
“Self-sacrifice,” Meetra said. “One for all, and the victory of hope.”
“I don't suppose there were any more details?” Bao-Dur asked.
“The Force doesn't work like that – fortunately or unfortunately.”
Visas stepped back. “The Force is what it is. We can only hope we do not fail in the tasks that are set for us.”
She turned and walked towards the door. In doing so, however, she passed closer to the center with its obsidian plinth than they had before. The Force shuddered with something awakening as they all snapped their lightsabers toward it. The black stone sphere split along seams Meetra hadn't noticed and blossomed open line a flower.
Light winked into existence above the obsidian petals. The air buzzed with a sudden streak of color, blues and whites dotting the space in a revolving swirl.
“Is that the galaxy?” Bao-Dur asked.
“So it would seem.”
Certain stars were highlighted throughout the galaxy. They weren't concentrated in any one sector, but spread throughout.
Meetra stepped closer. If that was the star they currently orbited, then that looked like Korriban, in which case that would be Dantooine and that Kashyyk and Manaan...
“The highlighted worlds have a strong presence in the Force,” Meetra said. “The vast gulfs between are the normal worlds.” She scanned her eyes over the map once more. There. “The most highlighted one would be the species's homeworld.”
“The heart of their empire,” Visas said. “Is that our next destination?”
“No,” Meetra found herself saying before she could think about it. The Force was being surprisingly direct. “It seems our path leads elsewhere.”
The question was, where to? There were hundreds of worlds highlighted on the map. Meetra took a deep breath and let herself become nothing. She was but the wind which carried the sands of time and through which shone the light. The Force was her breath and her form.
Her surroundings dissolved into a clouded marsh. Water lapped at grey-green shores and the clouds were a steel blue, illuminated from behind by the cool light of a star. The vision didn't have a sense of temperature.
Abruptly, she was back in her body. She opened her eyes and scanned over the map. “There,” she said, pointing at a star in the Unknown Regions, near the species's homeworld but not on a direct path to it. “That is our next destination.”
Visas bowed and turned to leave, but Bao-Dur wasn't ready to let go yet. “Do we even know the coordinates?”
“Scan the map, please,” Meetra replied.
As she watched Bao-Dur do just so, she realized she'd addressed him like she'd addressed him during the Mandalorian Wars. He probably didn't mind, as he still called her General, but she minded. He was too old for her to treat him like her master had treated her – as was Visas – but the correct answer had yet to come to her.
She mused on the matter as they walked back to the Gathering Storm. The Force wasn't prodding her one way or the other, so this must be something she needed to find for herself. She let the matter drop.
They left the nameless world of sands behind them with as little fanfare as they'd arrived with. All four of them observed from the bridge as a sandstorm rose to cover what had been exposed.
A map of worlds strong in the Force, and a set of rituals that did not need the Force to function. Something about it niggled at Meetra's mind as she slept.
She woke an hour or so before they were projected to arrive. She brushed her teeth, tossed cold water on her face, and drank something. The Mandalorian Wars had left her the ability to do her morning routine in but a few minutes, something which had not given her comfort, exactly, during her self-exile, but a constant nonetheless.
Then she settled down to meditate. It had been less than a tenday since Kreia had killed Masters Vrook, Kavar, and Zez-Kai Ell on Dantooine and Nihilus had tried to consume Telos. Much had changed since Meetra had woken up in a bacta tank on Peragus, most of it in the past weeks.
She sat down cross-legged and straightened her spine. She was a Jedi, trained from birth. Letting the dusts of sleep wash away from her and the Force fill the nooks and crannies of her soul was second nature to her.
Some time later a distant knocking roused her. She blinked open her eyes and the knocking jumped closer.
She opened the door with a wave of her hand. Visas stood behind it, face mostly hidden by her headdress and the shadows it cast. “We're about to enter realspace,” she said. “Would you like to be on the bridge?”
“Certainly.”
Meetra rose – oh, how she felt better after a solid meditation – and followed Visas to the bridge. Bao-Dur was already there, and T3-M4 was once more plugged into the systems. Based on the datascreens, he looked to be going over the images they'd taken of the underground passage and the map they'd discovered there.
“General.”
“Bao-Dur.”
Bao-Dur automatically stepped to the side to give Meetra the center spot as they watched hyperspace streak by. The Gathering Storm didn't have the countdown or sirens of the warships they'd once ridden on, but her mind had no trouble providing the accoutrements of realspace entry even without external stimuli.
With a shudder of pseudomotion, they dropped out of hyperspace. The planet they faced was a beautiful swirling blue, the haze of its atmosphere stark against the vast blackness of space. Grayish texturing swirled over the planet.
The rest of the system was dominated by small, rocky planets. The star at the center of it all was blue and bright, young by stellar standards and ancient by those of mortals; it had three planets it had baked gray and lifeless inside the inner rim of its habitable zone and this priceless blue marble cozily within the region of liquid water. Further out, another two rocky followers revolved, these bright with a layer of ice. A pair of brilliant blue gas giants paraded at the edges of the system, gravitational wells shepherding the occasional icy rocks from the hazy edges of the star's domain toward the inner worlds or out into the vastness between the stars.
“It's beautiful,” Meetra found herself murmuring.
“Yes. But is it breathable?”
And that was the thousand-credit question. The previous world settled by the unknown species had been, so likely this one was as well. But it was no guarantee, and any world could be beset by calamity.
T3-M4 bleeped and brought up the planet's specs on a screen. Breathable to all three of them, and if the previous world had been cold and dry, this one was warm and wet.
As they approached the world, the thick bank of clouds acquired details. It was a hazy steel blue, darkening to purplish grays in places. Only the star pierced the haze.
Beneath the clouds, small mesas of dark rock jutted out of the green-blue marsh. They were perhaps ten meters tall on average, some taller, some lower. Vegetation crowned their tops and water had eroded their sides. A delicate veil of mist floated above the sections of open water that dotted the ground.
“Yes, you can stay on the ship; there is no need for you to rust,” Meetra replied to T3-M4's earnest wish.
The Gathering Storm touched down with a soft squelch. Meetra took a look at the local sun's blue disc, made safe to the eye by the clouds covering the world, and led the way out.
Her lungs were assaulted with moisture in the air the moment the ramp opened. The previous world they'd visited had been exceedingly dry, spaceships and space stations were kept dry to keep corrosion to a minimum, and Malachor had not been a wet world, either. For a moment, she was back on Dxun, fighting Mandalorians, but Dxun had been hotter and less humid, and the vegetation here was less of a jungle and more of a mat of mosses with the occasional frondy fern or flower sticking out as a lump of color.
“Master?” Visas asked.
Meetra shook her head. “I'll be fine. It...”
“...is, in some ways, similar to Dxun,” Bao-Dur completed her thought. Of course. He'd been there, too.
The Force thrummed with a polite anticipation. Meetra stepped onto the moss and found herself ankle deep in water. With a sigh, she trudged forward.
They had set down between two banks of mesas. The Force led them along the wide marshy strip that was relatively clear of the larger plants. This was, or had once been, a thoroughfare, and the Force echoed with the footsteps of millions.
The moisture in the air clung to her skin after a while, a sensation like yet unlike sweatiness. The Force lapped at her like a gentle current pushing her on.
After perhaps ten minutes of walking beneath the blue glow of the clouds, they passed a slightly thicker mesa. Behind it was the first moving thing they'd seen on this world.
The creature rose. Its skin was a greenish brown, and while it resembled an Ongree in general form, its hands looked different, and the mouth was set at the bottom of the head. The eyestalks protruded slightly more. It was definitely the same species as shown in the engravings of the desert world.
“Greetings,” Meetra said. She'd been trained in diplomacy, once. “We come in peace.”
The alien blinked in incomprehension. “The slave races have returned to us!” it – she? – eventually said in a dialect of Ancient Selkath so old Meetra barely comprehended it. “The priests were right. The Infinite Empire will return to its glory once more!”
“The Infinite Empire?” Meetra asked in the same dialect, for the moment ignoring the bit on slave races. She might've misremembered her vocabulary.
“The glorious empire of the Rakata!” the alien – the Rakata – exclaimed. “We ruled the galaxy before our powers were taken from us. But now our priests have found a ritual that will bring back our powers and let us use the relics once more. Rejoice, slave, for the Infinite Empire will rise anew!”
Important, the Force prompted, though Meetra would've figured it out even on her own. “I see. Perhaps we should witness this ritual?”
“Go, go!” the Rakata said. “Witness the rise of the Infinite Empire!”
She then turned away from Meetra and the others and returned to what she had been doing before. On a better look, it seemed to be some sort of dance.
The Force carried them along the thoroughfare. It twisted and turned on occasion to avoid the largest and hardest of mesas, and eventually opened up into a plaza of sorts, coated with mist. The sun hung halfway up to the horizon and made everything glow an eerie blue. A structure rose from the mist, less built and more carved into a small mesa. A throng of Rakata had gathered around it.
Chanting in a language Meetra did not speak carried over on the moist air. Meetra weaved through the crowd, Bao-Dur and Visas in her wake, eliciting annoyed words and disdain and hatred from the Rakata.
The Force twisted as the chanting suddenly intensified. Somewhere in front of them, something died, and the Dark spread out like an oil slick. They were too late.
Around them, the Rakata started cheering. They couldn't feel the Force, though, so they had no idea of what they had unleashed. A cold shiver ran through the heart of the Force and embedded itself beneath Meetra's skin. Suddenly, the damp turned clammy, digging in and freezing her bones.
The world shivered. Something in the Force tore, and the earth started quaking. The Rakata fell silent in fits and starts. Some started taking steps away from the scene.
A great something slithered out of the tear in the Force. It was ... Meetra did not have the words to describe it. It did not resemble the sunburst of the engravings, but it did not have any other possible depiction. A central maw, perfectly spherical, sucked up all light and warmth, and was surrounded by an ever-shifting cloud of many-jointed limbs that flickered in and out of existence. The limbs ended in flat hammer-like fists and grasping claws.
The thing smashed the ground, sending everyone but the Force-sensitives flying to their backs. Now the Rakata woke up to the danger they were in and began fleeing in terror. Meetra turned sideways to let the stampeding herd better pass her and tried to breathe away the fear that wanted to infect her.
She was a Jedi. Fear was the path to the Dark Side. She would not fear.
The air vibrated in a bloodcurdling scream. Meetra drew her lightsaber and walked forward past the corpses of the Rakata trampled by their kin. She was a Jedi; this was her duty.
The thing reached at her with a clawed limb. She waited, then at the last moment took a step to the side and slashed the limb with her lightsaber.
The severed claw fell to the ground and dissolved in a puddle of darkness. The thing itself did not react.
But what had they theorized on the desert world? This was a creature of the dark. Perhaps what it most feared was the light. And the Rakata had tried to go at it with weapons without success.
The question was, how to best defeat it? Meetra reached out with the Force. Bao-Dur and Visas were keeping well ahead of the arms with Force-enhanced reflexes. The maw of the thing moved slowly, tethered to the rend in the Force.
Of course. “Visas. Bao-Dur. I think we need to heal the tear in the Force.”
“How?” Bao-Dur asked as he cut off another arm.
“Follow my lead.”
Meetra closed her eyes and reached for the Force. It would tell her if she needed to dodge, though she suspected the thing would stay away from beings of the light.
She thought of the love she felt for her apprentices and the duty she'd felt toward the Republic. She thought of the teachings her old master had given her, the meditation rooms, the crystal caves of Dantooine, the infinite stars speckling the night sky. She thought of kindness as a gift she could give, then handed it over to the Force.
Where the Force had previously been loose threads and ripped fibers, it now started to heal. First the slow tear in its fabric stopped progressing and then started healing.
The thing screamed. Buoyed by Bao-Dur and Visas also healing the rift, Meetra let herself feel sympathy towards this thing of the dark, forever at risk of being destroyed by the light and kindness that everything craved.
With a jerk, the final threads intertwined, closing the rift. The thing dissolved into a dark smoke with a final, heartrending scream. It had been afraid to die and seen its demise come. Meetra let the sympathy she'd felt wash over her and suffuse into the Force, washing out the last stains of dark that the thing had left.
“Master?” Visas asked from somewhere far away.
Oh yes. There were people awaiting her.
Meetra disentangled herself from the Force with an agonizing slowness. Her old master had said something about this being a task best done slowly, perhaps, or perhaps it was just that she couldn't speed up the redrawing of hazy boundaries. Was this her, hole in the Force, or just how every sentient felt after going too deep?
She was a hole in the Force. She'd just mended one. If she mended herself – if she could mend herself – what would happen? Would she, too, crumble to vanishing dust?
A damp sensation abruptly appeared all over her back and someone was touching her shoulder. She dragged open her eyes to find Bao-Dur and Visas looking down at her.
“What happened?” Bao-Dur asked.
“I went too deep,” Meetra said. She let Bao-Dur help her up. Water sloshed in her boots as she took a staggering step. “It ... can take a moment to properly rejoin reality.”
The Force was still electric around her, like a myriad tiny shocks from everything living in the vicinity. The Rakata, blind to the Force though they may be, had stopped fleeing. Oh yes, the sounds. That must be it. It was silent here now.
“We should leave this world,” Visas said. “The locals ... will not rejoice in our presence.”
“Agreed,” Bao-Dur said with the memories of liberating a planet from the Mandalorians only for the inhabitants to blame them for the destruction. “Let's get you to the ship, General.”
They made their way along the thoroughfare slowly, Meetra half hanging off Bao-Dur's shoulder. It was not the first time one of them had supported the other, but it had been some time since the previous occasion.
With the Force still holding her much too close, the planet's presence was omnipresent. It was proud, like Revan on the cusp of her Fall, and resentful, but that was the surface: beneath what the Rakata had etched into it over the eons, it gave the impression of a wry ambush predator, ready to bear its fangs should someone come too close. The clouds kept it hidden from the greater galaxy, and its waters were clear on the ground and in Meetra's boots.
Farewell, Meetra sent to the Force when she thought the planet's gaze rested upon her.
She received the impression of a self-satisfied smile. You will not leave that easily, something said. It was hard to say whether it was the planet, the Force, or some echo of precognition.
“You!” the dancing Rakata from earlier screeched. All her fellow citizens had run off to distant crevices. Only she was out in the open. “You disrupted the ritual!”
“We did not; we simply cleaned up your mess,” Bao-Dur tried to argue – he'd always had the urge to argue with the mistaken locals – but what sentient would accept correction from someone they considered inferior? Certainly not this Rakata.
“For the Infinite Empire!” she screeched and threw herself at them, claws first.
It would've been the work of moments to kill her: grab lightsaber, turn it on, sweep it in a wide arc through the body. Instead, Meetra pushed her to the other side of the thoroughfare. Her body impacted the rock face with a thud.
“Is she alive?” Visas asked.
Yes, the Force said. Meetra nodded.
“Let's hurry, then.”
The world sounded much louder on the way out. The moss squished under her steps, water pressing out and the greenery indenting to become a puddle once her weight left it. Somewhere, insects chirped. All life felt the Force to some extent; perhaps they'd been in hiding.
They walked into the mist and gradually the blanket of haze released the shape, definition, and finally color of all it coated. The Gathering Storm slowly emerged before them.
Meetra let Bao-Dur carry her past the common area to the bridge. “Bring us out of here,” she told T3-M4.
She could feel the Rakata rally somewhere in the distance, but that was all right; they would be offworld before they could arrive. They would not shed the lust for power if they hadn't shed it yet, but the Force settled around her with the knowledge they would not be repeating that ritual. Perhaps they had grown to see the error of the way; perhaps they thought doing the ritual again would summon outsiders to invade their community. In any case, their work here was done.
The Gathering Storm shuddered out of its swampy berth with a wet squelch. They rose above the mists, the word gradually veiling itself once more.
Then they were above the clouds, the sky dark above the blue-gray masses, and Meetra let out a long breath. A clinging film seemed to shed itself from her soul.
“Where should we go next?” Visas asked.
“Wherever you wish,” Meetra said. “Meditate on it.”
She stared at the dark sky out the viewport. Distant stars glimmered.
“Take us to the void between the stars, T3,” she said on a moment's whim.
T3-M4 whistled an affirmative and the view dissolved into streaks of blue. Something in Meetra felt lighter to be here, away from the pull of gravity.
“Something's bothering you,” Bao-Dur said.
Meetra snapped her eyes open. She had not noticed closing them. For a moment, she considered avoiding the question, but she was the example to which her apprentices would aspire. “The thing came from a wound in the Force.”
Bao-Dur and Visas both frowned before realization hit them. “You may technically be a wound in the Force, but you feel different to the one formed by the ritual,” Visas explained. “It's like the difference between a volcano and a regular mountain. They might both rise to touch the heavens, but they were formed by different processes and the volcano is much more likely to try to destroy you.”
Meetra mulled it over. “Perhaps you're right.” She sighed and sat down in a chair as they entered realspace. “Thank you.”
“Do you wish to be healed?” Bao-Dur asked. “We fixed the rip in the Force that brought the monstrosity. We might be able to connect the edges around you.”
And that was the question Meetra realized she'd been avoiding. She closed her eyes and settled down with herself. She was avoiding it, so it must cause her pain of sorts. But what was the pain?
She sank down deeper into the well of her soul. The Force was with her still – she was a Jedi; she suspected that even when she'd cut herself off from the Force, it had still looked over her – but only as a quiet companion rather than a bright beacon with which to orient herself.
Something played at the edge of her mind. She let herself embrace the memory.
Malak stared back at her. For a moment, she thought this was some memory from the war, but then she noticed the others standing in line next to her, and the shape of the chamber so unlike anything she'd been in at the time. This was the tomb of Ludo Kressh.
Xaset Terep walked to stand with Malak. “So if you could do it all again... the real question is would you?” the vision Malak's voice asked once again. “The Mandalorians await on the edge of space eager to crush the Republic. You know how this turns out. Would you do it any different? Knowing what it costs you, knowing what it costs the rest.”
“I wouldn't do anything differently,” Meetra felt herself say once more. “My choices have made me the person I am today.”
The memory faded away. Meetra sent a pulse of warmth to the Force and floated in the well of nothingness.
Her choices had made her the person she was today: defeater of three Sith Lords, redemption of a Sith Assassin, the founder of the Jedi Order reborn. Meetra Surik, Jedi Knight of the Republic.
“No,” she said. “I do not wish to be healed. Not at this point in time,” she added.
“Very well,” Bao-Dur said with a fondness to his voice.
“T3? Could you please dim the lights?”
T3-M4 turned the lights off with a bleep. The bridge was bathed in darkness – but now they could see the little pinpricks of light that were the stars. The four of them stared out the window at the vastness of the universe, and Meetra let herself become one with the vast web of the galaxy.
They slept with their ship in the heart of the void. Meetra felt herself relax more deeply than she had in weeks, cradled by nothing but presences in the Force she knew deeply.
Shipboard dawn came and raised them to their ablutions. Once Meetra had led her two students through a morning meditation, she brewed them a yellow tea and spoke. “I intend to continue on this journey until I find Revan,” she said. “I do not know what her mission is. Nor do I know whether we're on the same quest, or whether we're ever meant to find her. I might spend the rest of my life here in the Unknown Regions, chasing a ghost.
“But just because I've chosen this for myself doesn't mean you are bound to that choice. So if you wish to return to Telos-”
“I am with you to the end, Master,” Visas said. “Where else would I go?”
“I chose to follow you twice, General,” Bao-Dur said. “I see no reason to choose differently.”
Meetra ducked her head with a smile. She hadn't dared expect any response, really, but she was glad she would not be flying alone into the unknown. “Thank you,” she said. Her voice was surprisingly hoarse. “I am glad to have you both by my side.”
“There is no place I'd rather be,” Visas said plainly.
“Likewise.” Bao-Dur worried at his cup. “Though on the topic of our next destination, I think the Force has given me directions. Could you help me interpret them?”
A frisson of pride spread through Meetra's heart. “Show us, then.”
“Ah-”
“Through the Force,” Meetra instructed. “Gentle yourself into a meditation, but instead of existing within yourself and gradually unfurling to greet the galaxy, reach out. Try it.”
She sat patiently as Bao-Dur followed her instructions. When he hesitantly reached out, Meetra reached back and let herself sink into his presence in the Force. A quick check revealed Visas wasn't far behind.
They settled into an infinite well, the holes of which were surrounded by drawers. Bao-Dur led them towards one and opened it.
It was hard to describe someone else's Force vision – Meetra's old master had shared some of her own, once – but this one was intricate like clockwork. A myriad things came together to produce a single nudge toward one corner of space.
They exited the meditation together. She saw Bao-Dur wince with the beginnings of a headache, as mind sharing often gave to the uninitiated, and thought about what the Force had shown him. The world wasn't on the Rakata map they'd retrieved from the nameless world, but that was all right. They were Jedi. There was more than one foe in the universe for them to vanquish.
“We have our destination,” Meetra said. “Shall we?”
“Lead the way,” Bao-Dur replied.
Once they were on the bridge, Meetra gave T3-M4 the coordinates and felt the Force dance around her. The distant stars turned into streaks of blue. Meetra couldn't help the grin spreading on her face as they hurtled into the new tomorrow.