The Witch Of Malachor

"The Council is blind. You look, but you do not see. You hear, but you do not listen." Jedi Master Kreia stood in the middle of the Jedi Council chamber facing the charges against her.

"You've grown arrogant, Master Kreia." Master Vrook said. "Your teachings have led to the fall of many students. All of those who studied under you have defied the Jedi Council and have went to fight alongside Revan whom also was a student of yours. It because Revan has fallen that we have summoned you here."

"I did not train Revan alone, but that is of no consequence," Kreia said. "Indeed, the Council needs to be able to absolve itself of guilt in these matters, and someone must be held responsible. But it is not through the removal of members of the Jedi Order that the answers to the questions in your minds will be found. An examination of the teachings of the Jedi Order is needed, but that is a task that cannot be undertaken. Not without shaking the very foundations on which the Order stands. No, instead Jedi will be cast out, perhaps even stripped of the Force, and in this way the Council will delude itself into believing the problems solved. If you intend to cast me out, then get on with it."

There was silence from the assembled members of the Jedi Council as they looked upon the elderly woman in their midst. Finally Vrook spoke again. "Your lightsaber. You will surrender it. You are a Jedi no more. You are exiled."

There being nothing further to say, she bowed,  laid her weapon on the floor and walked out of that chamber for the last time. She returned to her quarters, activating her holo-journal, and began to pack the few items in her possession.

“I have been cast out today. The Council believes me responsible for Revan’s fall. I have surrendered my lightsaber and now must pack my meager belongings. It is, perhaps, my tone or the sound of my voice that casts suspicion on me more than any facts. The Council needs to cast blame on someone, and though I was but one of Revan’s teachers, I have been chosen. Regardless of what the Council believes, I would not have wished any to fall the Dark Side, and it is my sincerest wish that Revan can still be saved.. I am, therefore, going in search for her to find the reasons for her fall. I have little hope that this will vindicate me in the eyes of the Jedi, but it is important to me, nonetheless.

The unfortunate set of circumstances surrounding this is that all of the students I have trained have went to fight in the Mandalorian War. In the eyes of the Jedi Masters, I am a failure. Whether this is because of the methods I employ in my teaching or because the urgency of the war preys on a young Jedi's mind, we shall see. The Force shall guide me as always. The truth shall be revealed.

It is my full intention to make a recorded record of my travels so that future Jedi may learn from my, and perhaps also Revan's, examples. I..."

At that point, the machine abruptly shut off. It had been malfunctioning for some time and now it had completely failed. She muttered under her breath in annoyance. She’d contacted the head technician several times to fix it, and each time he claimed the machine was fixed, only to have it become faulty again within a day or two. She sighed and looked around the room. It was as if the Jedi Temple, itself, wanted her gone. On that day, her last in the Temple, the building itself suddenly seemed a cold and unfriendly place. Nothing remained of the bright and cheery place she had come to so long ago as a padawan. The Mandalorian Wars had changed all that, possibly forever. Grim faces replaced the smiles that once were commonplace. Despair could be felt lingering about the place.

Certainly no other Jedi that passed her in the corridors would deign to look her in the eye. Even before her trial, every Jedi in the Temple seemed to know her fate. There had been whispers, whispers which she had sometimes caught the tail end of, but hadn’t given much credence to. Like an other assemblage of sentients, the Jedi Temple too had its gossip, and at the present time, she was at the center of it. Had she never heard a spoken word about herself in those final days, the looks she received when people thought she wasn’t watching were enough to tell the tale. Looks that silently spoke of disapproval and even fear. As if she were Revan, herself.

But she was not Revan, and nobody felt the immense loss that Revan represented as she did. Nobody took to her heart the way she did, the fact that the Dark Side was claiming her students. And nobody felt the pain as she did when they fell. It was like a great weight about her shoulders, and she felt it crushing her. Being cast out of the Jedi Order merely made the weight greater. Though she spoke honestly in front of the Council about her feelings, she was not without private doubts about her abilities, about her training methods, about Revan. Other teachers had watched their students fall in the Mandalorian Wars, but there was real discussion amongst them as to why. Some Jedi simply chose to believe that the students themselves had failed, while others simply began to leave the Order.  The “Lost Jedi” they were being called, and doubt was being cast on their commitment to the Light Side even as they wandered in self-imposed exile. Their loss was lamented in the Temple, but in the end they became objects of suspicion, regarded little better than the Sith. And somewhere in between the Sith and the Lost Jedi was how they regarded Kreia.

Sighing again, she grabbed the pack that contained her belongings and left those quarters, walking down the corridors, pausing in the Room of a Thousand Fountains one last time and out the main doors of the Temple. Looking back over her shoulder at the Temple one final time, she squinted in the unusually bright Coruscant sunlight. With another sigh, she turned away from it found a shuttle that would take her to the spaceport, and from there who knew. People did not seek new beginnings at her age. Her sight was not what it once was, and she relied more and more on the Force to see. Sometimes, she was even mistaken for a Miraluka.

By the time, she’d reached the spaceport, she’d decided where she was going. She bought her ticket and boarded the transport, finding her cabin small but sufficient. Not many were going where she was, and she was mercifully allowed some peace away from the stares of those who felt the Jedi had abandoned the Republic. Something a Jedi had learned to appreciate in recent days, those times when they were able to return to the Temple away from the eyes of those who’d either seen or heard of the devastation in the Outer Rim caused by the Mandalorians. But the cabin would suffice.

She had to see it one last time, though she’d find no welcome there either. Dantooine. She’d spent some of her better years as a Jedi Master there. Had trained Revan and other students, and knew some of those returning as Sith. Knew that tragedy that had occurred there. Darth Malak, another once promising Jedi Knight who had fallen under Revan’s corruption, bombarded the Jedi Enclave savagely murdering the Jedi there. She hadn’t trained Malak but did know him as a Jedi. His falling to the Dark Side, becoming what he did was not easily foreseen. So much ability squandered on a dream of conquest. To the padawans at the Temple, the Dark Side represented only evil, and those who followed it, monsters. But the Jedi Masters knew better. Those who walked the Dark Path were victims, sometimes innocent and sometimes not. But without exception, they were seduced by it, suffered underneath the burden of it and were eventually destroyed by it. That is why they deserved pity. Because they tried to bury their suffering deep underneath hate and rage, and had lost their way to such an extent that they knew of nothing else, could conceive of no other way to exist. The wise knew that what the Dark Side truly represented was all the worst fears of sentient beings acted upon until they became the very identity of the person, until they became the hateful, evil things the Sith were known for being.

But why? Falling to the Dark Side was not simply something that happened, and seldom so suddenly as it did with those who had joined Revan. Certainly Revan was a natural leader, but that alone could not account for so many renouncing the Jedi Order. True, there was discontent with the Council’s lack of willingness to aid the Republic in its time of need, but that also could not explain what had happened. And nothing explained how they had fallen so far, so quickly. These questions lingered in her mind, disturbing her meditation and even sleep throughout the course of her journey to Dantooine. And it was a tired old woman that arrived on the green planet once home of a Jedi Enclave.

The settlement nearest the ruins of the Enclave was called Khoonda, and was located in the former estate of the Matale family who had been there for generations, even when Kreia had taken up residence on Dantooine for a time. A new spaceport had been dug into the hills behind the estate and the transport left them off there.

Kreia had taken off her Jedi Robes in favor of the simple long skirt she often wore underneath that. Over that, she wore a tan cloak with the hood thrown over her head to shield her face from any who might recognize her still. She got off the ship carrying her bag, and left the spaceport. Outside, she paused seeing the Khoonda building, noting that it hadn’t seemed to have changed at all from when it belonged to the Matale family. Apparently, Malak had completely ignored it, reserving his vengeance for the Enclave. But vengeance for what? The questions kept appearing, and no answers came to Kreia. And if she thought being on Dantooine would bring her any peace, she was sorely mistaken. For as she looked around at the familiar landscape, visions of Revan as a padawan came back to her, the most promising student she’d ever had, almost like a daughter in fact. She bowed her head at the tragedy of Revan’s loss and stood there for a long moment, eyes closed, wondering where Revan was, if she still lived, if she would turn away from the Dark Path before it destroyed her utterly.

Taking in a long breath and letting it out slowly, Kreia raised her head and began to walk, ignoring the settlement and heading across the bridge in the direction she knew the Enclave to be, through the clearing, in between a pair of low plateaus and into another clearing. There she was to have another surprise at how things had changed.

The Kath hounds that students had at one time practiced using the Force to still beasts of the wild on, were gone. Instead, spidery Kinrath wandered the clearing fighting with each other and waiting for prey to pass through. But this old woman, they barely noticed, thinking no more of her than they did of the waving blades of grass as she moved among them to the other side of the clearing the. The “Beast Trick” as it was simply known had been one of her specialties, as were all Force abilities that affected the mind. And so the Kinrath went about their activities, their feeble minds only barely aware of her, and soon she had left the clearing.

Passing in between another pair of low plateaus, she found a group of people gathered in a sort of open air market. They stood conversing amongst each other or selling their wares to passersby.  One vendor, a human female in light assault armor, hailed her as she paused looking them over. “Hey, looking for real Jedi artifacts, Offworlder. I’ve got them and prices you won’t be able to turn up your nose at.”

Apparently, they’d mistaken her for a tourist. In that she was able to take some comfort. No doubt they thought her some doddering, old woman, lost in the wilderness and one easily conned by a slippery tongue as well. Still, it reminded her of something she hadn’t given much thought to. She was unarmed as of leaving the Jedi Temple, and while blasters and other weapons were plentiful, they were far too clumsy for her taste. Amongst these thieves there might be just the items she needed to construct another lightsaber. She nodded at the vendor, and began to look the through crystals, lenses and other items for sale. Amazingly, the some of them still looked in good shape. She selected the parts she needed, noting that the only crystal available was a red one. She sighed at the thought of using that color, so famous had it become as the color Dark Jedi preferred. Still it would have to do.  Prices were near would what she would have expected them to be, but with a wave of the hand and the slightest bit of concentration, the vendor drastically reduced them to fit her budget. In return she was able to reveal to the vendor which parts no longer were functional and therefore worthless, and also that some of them were quite a bit more valuable than she had been asking.

“The Jedi brought us nothing but misery. You’ll see when get to the Enclave if you’re going there. It was a Jedi who did that, you know,” the Vendor was saying. “The bombing. If you ask me, they brought it on themselves.” She seemed to think she had an attentive audience, but Kreia was ignoring her, sorting through the items.

“Boy, you sure seem to know your stuff. You must be a Jedi, huh?” the woman asked, excitedly.

“No. But indeed, I do know my ‘stuff’.”

“Well, then you must be a salvager,” the woman persisted.

“Oh, and why must I be a salvager?” Kreia inquired.

“Because that’s all that comes out her. Salvagers and mercenaries, and I don’t figure you for a mercenary.”

“I am neither,” Kreia told her. “I am simply a visitor to this world, merely passing through. Farewell.”

And she began to walk again, throwing the pieces she’d bought into her pack. Rounding the corner of a low cliff, she looked up from it finding herself before a bridge crossing a familiar stream. Beyond that was the ruins of the Enclave, the damage from the bombardment serious, but not enough to completely level the building. Craters extended out from the main building, and a pack of Kath hounds paced nervously near the main entrance to it.

Immediately she felt the sorrow hit her again, remembering the building in better times, but now seeing the damage she had only heard about while on Coruscant, guilt crept into her, and the words of the Jedi Council she heard in her mind again. But whereas she’d been able to dismiss them as the words of those only looking to cast blame, she wondered now if there might not be some hint of truth within them. A follower of her favorite student had done this, brutally killed many of the Jedi who lived her senselessly, and seeing the effects in person made it that much more difficult to detach herself from the accusations. Her heart became heavy, and again she felt the burden of her former students fall to the Dark Side, but it was worse now. Averting her eyes was all she could do.

She could not bring herself to cross that bridge, but instead walked the other direction, past the salvagers and down a path until she came to the Sacred Grove where Jedi had once come to meditate. But meditation was not on her mind. Instead she found a tree to shield her from the Sun and sat on the ground. She took off her cloak, carefully arranging the parts she’d bought from the vendor on it. From her pack she removed a set of tools, and feeling the Force flow through her, she levitated the crystal before her, focusing her concentration on it, probing it with her mind, until satisfied she lowered it on top of the cloak. Then picking up the grip she had bought, she pulled the appropriate tool out of her kit and began to work...

Several hours later, she took a careful look around to ensure she was not being watched and activated the lightsaber. With a hum, the red beam sprung out of the hilt. She slowly moved the lightsaber back and forth, testing its balance, and with another look around, stood and adopted a fighting stance. She began a series of movements of the Ataru fighting style, slashing with the blade through air, dodging, blocking imaginary lightsaber strikes. A short while later, she switched the lightsaber off satisfied with her craftsmanship. She repacked her tools and slid the kit into her bag along with the lightsaber. It would not do to be seen carrying it. Not by the locals and not by any Jedi who might still be in the area.

The Sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, and the thought occurred to her that she should seek lodging at Khoonda, but there was yet something she wanted to see as long as she was this near to the Enclave. The ancient temple of the Builders was not far off, a structure she’d never visited but heard much about. It was, of course, the location of the Star Map, that had initially sent Revan on her quest to find the Star Forge. She would later visit it again after she had been reprogrammed.

Yes, that was the word. What other word for it could there have been? She had protested it stringently, both the programming and, failing that, the fact that she was not allowed to be on Dantooine when it was done. It was an abhorrent thing the Jedi had done, neither in accord with the tenets of the Order nor was it an effective method. It was something the Sith would have done, and like so many things they did, it backfired on the Jedi. For a time, Revan walked again on the Light Side, but upon Malak revealing her true identity, she began the slide into the Dark Side once more. The legendary patience of the Jedi had given way to desperation. Kreia had been present when Carth Onasi, the decorated Republic war hero, was present to give his testimony of Revan’s last moments with the crew of the Ebon Hawk. How she’d went into the temple on the Star Forge planet to find Bastila Shan and had been corrupted by her. How he was the only survivor aside from those who chose to remain with Revan, Canderous Ordo and the droids. Jolee Bindo, Juhani, Mission Vao, Zaalbar all slain on that beach, and he only just escaping. Onasi, who knew all about betrayal, had placed his trust in her, and then was forced to witness the horror of Revan murdering those who considered her a friend and ally. She and Bastila would then go on to defeat Malak, and seize both the Star Forge and the Sith fleet for themselves. The Republic fleet was destroyed there. Master Vander was killed, and Revan once more declared herself Dark Lord of the Sith. And then strangely, perhaps mercifully, she disappeared from Republic space. The Sith turned on themselves and slew each other. The Star Forge ceased its operation with nobody to control it. Korriban became a graveyard again. The galaxy was in ruins from the Mandalorian Wars. The Jedi Order a shadow of what it had once been.

If only they'd given Revan a proper chance to redeem herself, taken the time to show her the way again. For some inexplicable reason, when it came to the Mandalorian War, the Jedi Council had seemingly infinite patience. But for Revan they had none. And it was primarily for that reason, that Kreia had no more patience for them.

The Sun was dipping below the horizon when the stone carvings that marked the entrance to the Rakata Temple came into view. Down the slope she moved to the entrance, and passing a hand over the archaic opening mechanism, the door slid open. Kreia disappeared into the darkness.

(to be continued)