The Hunger

There must always be a Darth Traya, she told me. She, one of those who had led us to Malachor V against the Mandalorians. She, whom, I no longer recognized so corrupted by the Dark Side had she become.

I’d heard the sounds of battle from my cell where I’d languished for years, having my connection to the Force siphoned away by the Sith Lords that inhabited this place. They’d told me that I would soon be the last of the Jedi. Soon, they said, the Exile would be dead and then there would be no more. What manner of creature feeds on the Living Force, I wondered. There were many such creatures there, and it had been my lot to feed them until I was a mere shadow of myself. My faith in the Jedi code had long since failed me, and I wished only for death. But destiny had other plans for me.

Because after what seemed an eternity, the silence of the place was broken, one evening,  by the sounds of lightsabers, blasters, disruptors and the screams of the dying. A clamor like I hadn't heard since being on one of the battlefields of the Mandalorian War was right outside my cell. All at once, it stopped and the silence was broken only by the sounds of the cells being opened. I cringed in terror in the corner of the cell against the cold, grey stonework dreading what was to come next, the sickening feeling of my connection to the Force once more being drained from me. And then my cell door opened.

At first I did not recognize her, as she no longer resembled the General I'd once followed. She was terrible to behold, her skin grey and stretched as if from age, and her eyes glazed over. There was no mistaking the power in her, power I hadn't sensed since I was last in the presence of Revan. Her shape was of smoothly flowing lines that hinted at her former beauty. All of this was irrelevant next to the power of her gaze which created in me an irrepressible urge to look away. She no longer war the robes of a Jedi as I had known here, but in the black of a Sith.

“Rise, Jedi,” she commanded, simple words with so much power that I found myself rising against my will, anxious to obey her command, though in truth I feared to draw near her. Again her presence reminded me of Revan.

“I wish to die,” I said in the hoarse whisper that my voice had long since become through the long years of my captivity. The words just came out, a simple truth which I’d dreaded hearing myself say. The shame of admitting I’d failed as a Jedi. There is no death, there is the Force but that the Sith had even taken that from me. "Please..."

“You shall not die,” she said, sharply.

I felt myself wince as if I’d been struck.

“You shall be my apprentice. You shall help me rebuild the Traya Academy. There must always be a Darth Traya. Atris was unsuitable for the role, and so it falls to me,” she said, those eyes never leaving mine.

Could it be Jedi Master Atris of the Jedi Council that she spoke of? Was it possible that she too had fallen to the Dark Side? What of the rest of the Council? What of my former Master, Vash? Surely she would not have fallen? Perhaps at that moment I was the last of the Jedi, but for only a moment.

The Exile had looked away as if in thought and then turned those fierce eyes back to me, and I felt my will crumble beneath them. She extended a hand out towards me, her fingertips almost brushing against my forehead, and I felt a surge of the Force flow through me, the likes of which I had not felt since I’d been a Jedi Knight on Dantooine. But it was tainted, and even as it flowed through me, I felt something leave me, the last remnants of whatever had once made me a Jedi. Possibly the Force itself, or even my very soul. I could not be sure. All that the Jedi stood for was taken from me, and a terrible hunger awoke inside me. Not a hunger for food, but for something else. A hunger for power, the likes of which had just run through me. A hunger which made it impossible to think of anything but the need to feed. I sank to my knees, suddenly feeling weak.

She smiled, a cruel smile that revealed the darkness within her. She slipped a hand under my arm and raised me to my feet. She led me to the next cell, where a human female was captive. At once I recognize here, Jedi Knight Erissa, also of Dantooine. We’d been Padawans there together. At one time, I called her friend. But at that moment, she had what I craved, and ceased to be a person to me. I saw the glint of recognition in her eyes, but I had not the will left to acknowledge her.

Before I realized what was happening, I was reaching out toward here, sensing the weakness of her own connection to the Force. And I understood at that moment, the nature of my hunger. At once I was upon her, dragging her up from the cold stone floor, bringing her face up near mine, looking up into her eyes seeing a fleeting panic amidst the sheer exhaustion as she staggered against me. I felt myself draw the Force out of her, while she struggled weakly in my gasp, until she grew still. Her head rolled back, and I let her lifeless body drop to the floor. Or so I thought.

All the while the Exile, Darth Traya, looked on impassively.

The rush of power that filled me was like nothing I had ever experienced, and at once I sensed the immense power of the structure around us. Everything became clear in that instant. The cold, precise logic of the Dark Side unfolded before me. All the actions and words of Revan that I never understood became comprehensible, and her great wisdom was revealed to me. Sith, Jedi, the relation of each to the other, I was made to understand in that instant. The memory of the Jedi that I was faded until it seemed to be of another person entirely. I accepted what I had become. I had chosen my path, and though I still harbored some reservation, I would walk the Dark Path from then on. There would be no turning back for me, and I would adjust as each challenge presented itself. Erissa was my sustenance, nothing more now.

“Come, My Apprentice,” she said. “There is much to be done.” She led me down passageways and through rooms large and small, past a great many bodies of Sith and Sith Troopers. Down a narrow walkway and to a circular platform from which carved stone protrusions like great horns or talons curved upward. “This is the Trayus Core. This is where the former Darth Traya met her doom by my hand. Into the depths of Malachor she fell, my former Master. It’s the way of the Sith that the strongest must always endure,” she explained. Again she turned those grey eyes on me, but now the terror was largely gone replaced by mild trepidation and an overwhelming fascination. At that moment, she was beautiful in power, and I would leapt into the crevice surrounding the platform had she so commanded. I would gladly live and die at her command now.

“It may be your destiny to strike me down, as I did my Master. You are welcome to make the attempt whenever you feel strong enough.” She smiled again, a terrible smile that would put fear in even a fool.

Of course I felt no such compulsion. Quite the opposite. I kneeled before her. “Master, command me.” Her presence had become intoxicating the longer I remained near her, and the thought of being parted from her was terrible indeed.

“The Republic is weak,” she said. “I, myself, have struck down the last three Jedi Masters in existence. The galaxy is ripe for the taking, and it shall be ours. Revan and Malak have prepared things for us nicely, and the death of the Jedi brought about by Sion and Nihilus before I was forced to strike those two Sith Lords down will all but deliver the Republic into our hands.” She looked over the edge of the pedestal and her face suddenly showed fury.

I felt myself take a step backward at the expression she now wore.

“But these three Sith who previously ruled this Academy, squandered their resources. Sith Marauders and Assassins meeting their deaths in a vain attempt to test me before my final confrontation with Kreia. Such a waste. They would have been the vanguard of our new army. Now their bodies litter the hallways of this place, their deaths serving no purpose other than to remind us of the madness that those who are not prepared for true power suffer when it is suddenly thrust upon them.” She turned back to look at me. “It is the power of this place, of course, of the Trayus Academy that allowed Revan to turn the tide in the battle against the Mandalorians. Now it will serve us, My Apprentice.” She handed me a lightsaber of exquisite workmanship.

I took it and stared at it, admiring it’s craftsmanship, flicking the switch and seeing a beam spring forth, as red as the partly exposed core of Peragus.

“This lightsaber belonged to the former Darth Traya. Use it well.”

“Then there are no more who can oppose us, Master?” I asked, turning the lightsaber off and hooking it to my belt.

Her brow furrowed as she answered. “There may be isolated Jedi in hiding somewhere in the galaxy, as there also may be Sith Assassins still wandering, hunting their prey. They will join us or die. And somewhere in the Unknown Regions, Revan and Bastila seek out the ancient Sith Empire. But this Academy belongs to me now. None shall take it from me. Not the Jedi and not Revan.”

I confess her words filled me with conviction, with a sense of purpose that I’d never felt as a Jedi. Her presence, her calling me “Apprentice”, her poise, gave me great confidence for the days ahead and whatever trials and tribulations we would face. It made me realize how very much I’d longed for a strong leader to follow. How very much I missed Revan. How the inaction and constant hesitation of the Jedi Masters had drained away my courage, made me feel weak and almost helpless in a galaxy full of dark things. And then there was the Dark Side, soothing after years of pain and horror. I was no longer afraid of the Dark Things, I was one of them.

“It is alluring, is it not?” she asked, smiling and clearly reading my thoughts. “The Dark Side. It’s what they always warned us about, drilled us to avoid, made us fear at the Jedi Enclave. But there is no good and evil, only power and those to weak to seek it out. The more they spoke against it, the more appealing it became, did it not? A small taste at first, just enough to make one feel true freedom from the fetters of the Jedi code. A taste so sweet that you crave another and another until you feel it flowing through you. Then you feel strong and truly alive. And in this place, you feel it like no other save for Korriban.” She breathed deeply, letting it out slowly. "This is your home now, My Apprentice. Here you shall always return."

That word 'return' I found disturbing. Strange, it seemed, for I would have liked to have gone and seen the galaxy again, yet I doubted I could summon the will to leave this place, to leave her presence so intoxicating it had become. "Master, surely you would not send me away." I scarcely needed to voice the thought, my mind was laid bare before her. This I could sense.

"I have a mission for you," she said. "It is something I can no longer do myself. They can sense me coming, can feel my presence from afar. But you could still be taken for a Jedi albeit a tainted one. They may well welcome you into their midst. I believe there are Jedi still in hiding. I need to go find them and bring them to me. You are to use whatever means you find necessary. Do this for me, My Apprentice."

And that was all that I needed to hear. A request which I neither had the will to refuse, nor the desire to. "Master, I will do as you request. My life is yours." I bowed low.

"But first you must learn the higher mysteries of the Sith," she said. "I shall teach you."

We found the great library of Trayus, and there I studied, under her guidance, the ways of the Sith Assassin and the higher mysteries of the Dark Side. There and in the Proving Grounds, I spent months perhaps. It was difficult to tell in that place .The training was both savage and meaningful . I sparred daily against the Master learning humiliating lessons time after time. Her lightsaber techniques and her strength in the Force were astonishing, and she held back only from killing me, but still I knew pain like I had never known it before. I was never afforded the luxury of full medical care, instead was forced to rely on the pain to fuel my anger, and my anger to gather the Force in me so that I might use it as a weapon. Again and again I was beaten down until I learned to fight with the full force of my fury, and only then did I begin to hold my own. I learned how to draw strength from the Dark Side and how to better make use of the ability to drain the Force from others. I learned how to track my prey through the Force, and I became familiar with a variety of new weapons for better killing targets out of stealth. Once I became sufficiently adept in the ways of the Sith Assassin, I began to practice on the storm beasts that inhabited the planet, until I could creep up on them undetected and then strike them down with a single well-placed blow.

Though I'd come to enjoy my training, the day came that I had been dreading. She'd been, in recent days, studying my progress, and after a particularly long sparring match with her, she nodded at me. "Follow me to the hangar," she said turning and walking down the corridor. "Our campaign against the galaxy begins with you."

In the hangar we found a row of Sith fighters, the sort I had so often flown against in the Republic. But also in the hangar, we found Erissa, waiting in the dark robes of Sith. She was pale, but stood firm and had a fierceness in her grey eyes that made me wonder if she would seek revengeance for my draining the Force from her. But she merely regarded us with a blank expression.

"Erissa will join you in your task. She has shown great promise in her training." the Master said.

"Thank you, Master." Erissa said.

"The Master turned to me, "You had thought her dead, no doubt, but this is how the Sith are created from the ashes of the Jedi. She had opted to study the ways of the Sith Marauder. Together, you will find the recruits we need to rebuild this Academy once more."

With that, Erissa and I climbed into two of the Sith fighters.

It seemed a vile thing to be climbing into the cockpit of one, and yet vile things no longer seemed to bother me. How could they? I had become one. As I went through the pre-flight checks on the equipment and powered up the ship, I reflected on all that had happened and how quickly I had become what I now was. Indeed the Master was right about falling to the Dark Side. As a Jedi I had always imagined it to be a slow buildup to evil, a series of phases one went through with more than ample opportunity to reverse one's course. But my own fall dispelled this popular misconception. In this place, it had been swift and almost completely without any regret. Almost without, for there was a small voice in the back of mind that insisted it was not too late. But as I brought the canopy down and looked through it down at the Master who was still watching me, looked into her eyes once more, there was no will in me to resist her.

I lifted the Sith fighter off the pad and took it up into Malachor's violent atmosphere, avoiding the storms,  up into the orbit where wrecks of Republic and Mandalorian cruisers floated helplessly and finally into hyperspace...