During the attempted annihilation of Korriban…
Ishani was leaving the library, her arms laden with books, when something made her halt. An eerie silence seemed to have descended upon the empty corridors of the Academy, like the calm before a storm. She hadn’t noticed it that morning, as she had mechanically gone about her routine, numbed to it all, but now the silence seemed loud.
The Sith who ran the Academy on Korriban had gone into hiding. Acolytes disappeared by the dozens every day, swept away to unknown havens by their masters or abandoning ship as what was supposed to have been an “eternal” rule came to an abrupt, unceremonious end. Those who remained did so only out of necessity.
Ishani was among those few still attending “classes” run by a skeleton crew of brutal overseers still clinging to threads of power. One morning she had awoken to an empty bed, with no sign of Arcturus—and her life had been spiraling out of her hands ever since.
The silence was broken by a rumbling that shook the ground. She let the books she had been carrying fall from her arms, landing in a pile at her feet. Then she turned and ran back to her room, scrambling to stuff her most important belongings into her backpack. Within minutes, she was headed out the door. Her ship would be waiting for her. She only needed to reach it and escape—
The sound of voices, foreignly accented, reached her ears. Ishani ducked behind a weathered pillar, her heart hammering in her chest. She was not a great warrior and her experience in battle was limited. There were no allies at her side, only… only a clay servant.
Closing her eyes, she reached out into the Force. The golem was stowed away aboard her ship. She bid it awaken, hoping that it could at least provide a distraction so she could escape.
Sweat ran down her back as she waited impatiently for it to arrive. She tried to stay focused and alert, but it was difficult to stave off her growing terror. Her ears picked up the sounds of battle in the distance, and unfamiliar voices somewhere just outside the deserted academy. The floor occasionally trembled from the shockwaves of explosions, causing dust to fall from the ceiling. Part of her feared the entire structure of the newly rebuilt Academy would collapse on top of her.
Where would she go once she reached her ship? Folende? No, too close to the Bryn, and she wasn’t sure if her and Arc’s claim of sovereignty over the planet was valid now that everything they knew was gone. Naboo? Heh, she couldn’t afford it. Coruscant? But that would be akin to surrender. She’d have to be really desperate…
Home?
Maybe going home wouldn’t be so bad, she thought, even as hopelessness gripped at her heart like the claws of a slow, meticulous predator. Stop thinking about it, she warned herself as her hands began to tremble. But her thoughts would not stop racing, and that damned golem was taking its time getting there.
Get a grip, Ish. You know what will happen if these crusaders find you unprepared. Either they will kill you, or they’ll take you prisoner, and Force knows what will become of you then.
Ishani pushed sweat-soaked hair back from her face. Why oh why hadn’t she left at an earlier date? Then she wouldn’t be in this mess. But no, she had decided to stay here and wait to see if Arcturus would come back. Which was stupid, clearly, because he hadn’t come back, and now their entire world was falling apart. She’d become much too dependent on Arc, building her life around him. She had her own ship—but nowhere to go without him. He’d even changed the shape of her dreams, her desires and hopes for the future. She had even asked him if he would marry her someday—
The voices were getting closer, echoing through the Academy’s halls from the inside now. She thought she could hear her golem approaching as well, clay scraping against marble. Or was it the enemy dragging bodies away to be burned?
Movement out of the corner of her eye made her heart fly into her mouth, only to sigh in relief. Her golem had arrived, a clay chimera. Half woman, half serpent, it stopped and gazed dully at her, awaiting her command.
“Follow me,” she whispered. “Guard my back.”
The medusan monster produced an energy bow from its back and slung a glowing pink arrow, slithering along behind her as she left the safety of the stone pillar and crept toward the hall, a route she knew would take her toward the hangars. But no sooner had she reached the archway, she became aware of other presences closing in on her position.
Her right hand opened to accept the arrival of her blade, summoned from a pocket dimension. She took a deep breath, then stepped out, weapon held at the ready.
“I know you’re there,” she said, hating how soft and timid she sounded. “I don’t want any trouble... I'm leaving now...”
"Glad to hear that you're leaving,” a familiar voice replied. She turned around to face a man standing in the hall. His arms were clasped behind his back, and he wore a blindfold over maimed eyes.
Oh, great. It’s this clown again.
Ishani’s expression betrayed first surprise, then carefully arranged contempt to hide her fear. Even if he was dressed differently, having exchanged his spacer outfit for a set of robes, she recognized Aaran Tafo at once—and the sight of him brought back painful memories. She and her fellow acolytes had barely survived their duel with the Jedi Battlemaster on Ossus, and he was probably the last person in the galaxy she wanted to see right now.
"I would not advise anyone really to spend too long on this world. I feel nauseous just by being here." A slight smile appeared on Aaran’s face as he nodded his head once in greeting. "Ishani, right?" When she didn’t respond, he asked, "I hope you'll forgive my prying, but can I ask where you intend to go? Because I would not recommend trying to meet up with your masters. I feel as if you're intelligent enough to realize where that leads."
She still refused to answer, remaining silent and stony. Aaran’s polite, measured tone didn’t waver.
"Is Arcturus also around?"
That got a reaction out of her. In her frazzled, paranoid state of mind, Ishani thought she heard smugness in his tone. “He’s not here,” she snapped. “So if you’re hoping to kill or capture him, don’t bother.”
“He left you alone?”
Her heart plummeted into her gut. “He can go wherever he pleases, whenever he wants. I don’t try to control him,” she snarled. “It’s none of your business anyway. Why do you care?”
Aaran had no answer to that, but she could sense that he pitied her. Arcturus was indeed gone, had been gone for a while now. Another sudden separation—except this time, he was well and truly gone without a trace. His ship was still docked, his belongings remained untouched—he had literally vanished into thin air, it seemed. She couldn’t even feel his presence in the Force anymore. With so little clues, she’d been left to theorize his fate. Had he been taken prisoner? Exiled? Killed? Her lips twitched at the recollection of a last kiss goodnight. No, he wasn’t dead. She knew it, somehow. So she had settled down to wait.
But he still hadn’t come back, even though she had waited for him until the eve of Korriban’s destruction. Well, she knew he wouldn’t have wanted her to die here. She could get out on her own and take care of herself until she found him again.
Provided she could get past Aaran Tafo.
“Are you and your friends going to get out of my way?” she demanded.
"For what it is worth, I would not advise taking a ship from here,” Aaran said, hands still folded behind his back. "The airspace above the Academy is locked down. Grayson and his fanatics have pretty good control of the skies."
This was admittedly something she hadn’t considered—whether she would even be able to make it offworld. All of her focus had been on reaching her ship in one piece. Now she realized this might be an impossibility. Her fear grew, then gave way to anger and resentment born of impotence. There was nothing she could do, then. She was going to die here, unless she could hide or smuggle herself offworld—
"Alternatively,” Aaran interrupted her spiraling thoughts. “You can come into my custody, and I can guarantee your safety. As well as the safety of any other acolytes who might still be around here."
Ishani’s eyes narrowed. “You pulled this same chit last time. What makes you think it’ll work now? Just because it looks like I have no choice, I’ll agree to be your fething hostage?”
Aaran frowned. "I will offer this 'chit' to you and any other Acolyte I come across,” he said, his tone still placid. "And you do always have a choice. You can take many different paths from here. The choice of which one of those paths you end up on is up to you."
Ishani grit her teeth in frustration. It wasn’t as if her aversion to the idea of coming into the custody of a Jedi was misplaced. Apart from the NJO’s terrible reputation when it came to how they handled Sith acolytes, no one knew what actually happened to Sith who were taken prisoner by the Jedi. Most of the time they were never seen nor heard from again. The Jedi insisted that they had been persuaded to cease their evil ways and left to begin new lives in hiding, but that had always seemed unlikely to Ishani. She suspected that they might even be severing the acolytes from the Force in order to accomplish their goals of “reeducating” them.
No thanks.
"I do have to ask,” Aaran said, his voice once again derailing her train of thought. “Do you have a bigger plan here? Because if you're just going to leave this whole conflict behind and wash your hands of the Sith, I'm happy to let you walk away."
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Ishani muttered. “I don’t know where the rest of the Sith are anyway. They all went into hiding or something. They definitely aren’t here on Korriban anymore, that’s for sure.”
"’Yeah, sure, whatever,' is not exactly reassuring, Ishani. This is not a game,” Aaran insisted. "If you have a concrete plan, tell me and I'm fine letting you go. Provided of course it won’t involve you falling back in with a dying cult…"
I don’t owe you anything! she wanted to scream. I don’t care about your star wars or your endless feuds! I only want to find Arc! Where I go and what I do is none of your business!
"... and if not, I can help you. You're not the first person I've helped leave the Sith and start a new life." Aaran held out a hand. "I am genuinely trying to help you out here. You and the rest of the acolytes."
Ishani was breathing hard, her thoughts racing. It was easy to hate Aaran, here and now, with the forces of the Light on her doorstep and murder in their hearts. But Ishani also didn’t want to die here and now, and Aaran was at least offering safe passage away from this nightmare.
No. She couldn’t. He would take her to the Jedi, and they would treat her like a criminal, a monster. She thought of all the things she had done during her short time with the Sith. Fighting and killing other acolytes and masters, or the filthy Graug in battle. Participating in the subjugation of Ossus. Dueling with Jedi. Seeking more power for Arcturus and herself. Creating Sithspawn that could turn sentient beings into rabid thralls…
She was starting to feel physically ill, waves of nausea churning in her gut. Her face grew flushed with strain. “I… I can’t,” she blurted, before abruptly turning to flee.
Her golem followed her, but Aaran did not. Somehow the pair went unnoticed, even as Ishani fell to her knees in the dust of the courtyard. Grains of sand bit into her palms as she leaned forward, her chest rising and falling with panicked, shortened breaths. Such symptoms weren’t uncommon when she was under stress, but this seemed different. Her body felt strange. Was she actually sick?
With the Force she examined her body, seeking to find the cause of the ailment. There—a cluster of foreign cells dividing and multiplying somewhere in her…
Her breath caught in her throat. She sensed Arcturus. Well, not Arcturus exactly, but the essence of him, woven into the new cells as they grew and expanded and sought purchase in her womb.
Ishani’s fingers curled, gathering grit underneath her fingernails. How was this possible? They had taken every precaution—well, except maybe when—but this was crazy! Arcturus had been gone for weeks now, and—and this might be all that she had left of him…
All her thoughts ground to a halt as her nausea reached its peak, and she was sick in the bushes. Once she had emptied her stomach, trembling hands wiped her mouth, the bitter taste of bile lingering.
“Arcturus,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “Arcturus, where are you? You have to come back. Please. Please…”
A rumbling in the earth beneath their feet caused Ishani’s eyes to widen. Bits of sand and stone trickled from the marble ceiling of the Academy. Some of it landed in her hair, or dusted her shoulders, black on white.
She dragged herself to her feet, re-summoning her sword. It felt as heavy as lead, her grip slick with sweat. She stretched out with the Force, searching one last time for foes hidden behind the marble pillars, but the Academy was silent save for the crack of rock and adobe.
Though it still hadn’t fully registered that she was pregnant—the shock of that revelation was too new for her to have processed it—she did feel a renewed sense of urgency. A major chapter in the book of her life was about to end. The classrooms where she had studied, the labs where she had experimented with alchemy, the dorms and the suite, the oasis—all of it would likely be gone in a matter of hours, minutes even. But so would the basement chamber where Darth Maliphant had drugged and tortured her and the other acolytes, along with a whole host of other painful memories. Bullies had roamed these halls in search of prey; rivals had schemed in the shadows of the pillars; blackmailers and gossips had whispered in the alcoves. Perhaps this place should have crumbled a long time ago.
But this didn’t have to be the end of Ishani Sibwarra. There was still hope for her, right? Provided she got out of here alive.
She and her golem rushed toward the nearest exit, determined, at the very least, to survive.
Ishani was leaving the library, her arms laden with books, when something made her halt. An eerie silence seemed to have descended upon the empty corridors of the Academy, like the calm before a storm. She hadn’t noticed it that morning, as she had mechanically gone about her routine, numbed to it all, but now the silence seemed loud.
The Sith who ran the Academy on Korriban had gone into hiding. Acolytes disappeared by the dozens every day, swept away to unknown havens by their masters or abandoning ship as what was supposed to have been an “eternal” rule came to an abrupt, unceremonious end. Those who remained did so only out of necessity.
Ishani was among those few still attending “classes” run by a skeleton crew of brutal overseers still clinging to threads of power. One morning she had awoken to an empty bed, with no sign of Arcturus—and her life had been spiraling out of her hands ever since.
The silence was broken by a rumbling that shook the ground. She let the books she had been carrying fall from her arms, landing in a pile at her feet. Then she turned and ran back to her room, scrambling to stuff her most important belongings into her backpack. Within minutes, she was headed out the door. Her ship would be waiting for her. She only needed to reach it and escape—
The sound of voices, foreignly accented, reached her ears. Ishani ducked behind a weathered pillar, her heart hammering in her chest. She was not a great warrior and her experience in battle was limited. There were no allies at her side, only… only a clay servant.
Closing her eyes, she reached out into the Force. The golem was stowed away aboard her ship. She bid it awaken, hoping that it could at least provide a distraction so she could escape.
Sweat ran down her back as she waited impatiently for it to arrive. She tried to stay focused and alert, but it was difficult to stave off her growing terror. Her ears picked up the sounds of battle in the distance, and unfamiliar voices somewhere just outside the deserted academy. The floor occasionally trembled from the shockwaves of explosions, causing dust to fall from the ceiling. Part of her feared the entire structure of the newly rebuilt Academy would collapse on top of her.
Where would she go once she reached her ship? Folende? No, too close to the Bryn, and she wasn’t sure if her and Arc’s claim of sovereignty over the planet was valid now that everything they knew was gone. Naboo? Heh, she couldn’t afford it. Coruscant? But that would be akin to surrender. She’d have to be really desperate…
Home?
Maybe going home wouldn’t be so bad, she thought, even as hopelessness gripped at her heart like the claws of a slow, meticulous predator. Stop thinking about it, she warned herself as her hands began to tremble. But her thoughts would not stop racing, and that damned golem was taking its time getting there.
Get a grip, Ish. You know what will happen if these crusaders find you unprepared. Either they will kill you, or they’ll take you prisoner, and Force knows what will become of you then.
Ishani pushed sweat-soaked hair back from her face. Why oh why hadn’t she left at an earlier date? Then she wouldn’t be in this mess. But no, she had decided to stay here and wait to see if Arcturus would come back. Which was stupid, clearly, because he hadn’t come back, and now their entire world was falling apart. She’d become much too dependent on Arc, building her life around him. She had her own ship—but nowhere to go without him. He’d even changed the shape of her dreams, her desires and hopes for the future. She had even asked him if he would marry her someday—
The voices were getting closer, echoing through the Academy’s halls from the inside now. She thought she could hear her golem approaching as well, clay scraping against marble. Or was it the enemy dragging bodies away to be burned?
Movement out of the corner of her eye made her heart fly into her mouth, only to sigh in relief. Her golem had arrived, a clay chimera. Half woman, half serpent, it stopped and gazed dully at her, awaiting her command.
“Follow me,” she whispered. “Guard my back.”
The medusan monster produced an energy bow from its back and slung a glowing pink arrow, slithering along behind her as she left the safety of the stone pillar and crept toward the hall, a route she knew would take her toward the hangars. But no sooner had she reached the archway, she became aware of other presences closing in on her position.
Her right hand opened to accept the arrival of her blade, summoned from a pocket dimension. She took a deep breath, then stepped out, weapon held at the ready.
“I know you’re there,” she said, hating how soft and timid she sounded. “I don’t want any trouble... I'm leaving now...”
"Glad to hear that you're leaving,” a familiar voice replied. She turned around to face a man standing in the hall. His arms were clasped behind his back, and he wore a blindfold over maimed eyes.
Oh, great. It’s this clown again.
Ishani’s expression betrayed first surprise, then carefully arranged contempt to hide her fear. Even if he was dressed differently, having exchanged his spacer outfit for a set of robes, she recognized Aaran Tafo at once—and the sight of him brought back painful memories. She and her fellow acolytes had barely survived their duel with the Jedi Battlemaster on Ossus, and he was probably the last person in the galaxy she wanted to see right now.
"I would not advise anyone really to spend too long on this world. I feel nauseous just by being here." A slight smile appeared on Aaran’s face as he nodded his head once in greeting. "Ishani, right?" When she didn’t respond, he asked, "I hope you'll forgive my prying, but can I ask where you intend to go? Because I would not recommend trying to meet up with your masters. I feel as if you're intelligent enough to realize where that leads."
She still refused to answer, remaining silent and stony. Aaran’s polite, measured tone didn’t waver.
"Is Arcturus also around?"
That got a reaction out of her. In her frazzled, paranoid state of mind, Ishani thought she heard smugness in his tone. “He’s not here,” she snapped. “So if you’re hoping to kill or capture him, don’t bother.”
“He left you alone?”
Her heart plummeted into her gut. “He can go wherever he pleases, whenever he wants. I don’t try to control him,” she snarled. “It’s none of your business anyway. Why do you care?”
Aaran had no answer to that, but she could sense that he pitied her. Arcturus was indeed gone, had been gone for a while now. Another sudden separation—except this time, he was well and truly gone without a trace. His ship was still docked, his belongings remained untouched—he had literally vanished into thin air, it seemed. She couldn’t even feel his presence in the Force anymore. With so little clues, she’d been left to theorize his fate. Had he been taken prisoner? Exiled? Killed? Her lips twitched at the recollection of a last kiss goodnight. No, he wasn’t dead. She knew it, somehow. So she had settled down to wait.
But he still hadn’t come back, even though she had waited for him until the eve of Korriban’s destruction. Well, she knew he wouldn’t have wanted her to die here. She could get out on her own and take care of herself until she found him again.
Provided she could get past Aaran Tafo.
“Are you and your friends going to get out of my way?” she demanded.
"For what it is worth, I would not advise taking a ship from here,” Aaran said, hands still folded behind his back. "The airspace above the Academy is locked down. Grayson and his fanatics have pretty good control of the skies."
This was admittedly something she hadn’t considered—whether she would even be able to make it offworld. All of her focus had been on reaching her ship in one piece. Now she realized this might be an impossibility. Her fear grew, then gave way to anger and resentment born of impotence. There was nothing she could do, then. She was going to die here, unless she could hide or smuggle herself offworld—
"Alternatively,” Aaran interrupted her spiraling thoughts. “You can come into my custody, and I can guarantee your safety. As well as the safety of any other acolytes who might still be around here."
Ishani’s eyes narrowed. “You pulled this same chit last time. What makes you think it’ll work now? Just because it looks like I have no choice, I’ll agree to be your fething hostage?”
Aaran frowned. "I will offer this 'chit' to you and any other Acolyte I come across,” he said, his tone still placid. "And you do always have a choice. You can take many different paths from here. The choice of which one of those paths you end up on is up to you."
Ishani grit her teeth in frustration. It wasn’t as if her aversion to the idea of coming into the custody of a Jedi was misplaced. Apart from the NJO’s terrible reputation when it came to how they handled Sith acolytes, no one knew what actually happened to Sith who were taken prisoner by the Jedi. Most of the time they were never seen nor heard from again. The Jedi insisted that they had been persuaded to cease their evil ways and left to begin new lives in hiding, but that had always seemed unlikely to Ishani. She suspected that they might even be severing the acolytes from the Force in order to accomplish their goals of “reeducating” them.
No thanks.
"I do have to ask,” Aaran said, his voice once again derailing her train of thought. “Do you have a bigger plan here? Because if you're just going to leave this whole conflict behind and wash your hands of the Sith, I'm happy to let you walk away."
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Ishani muttered. “I don’t know where the rest of the Sith are anyway. They all went into hiding or something. They definitely aren’t here on Korriban anymore, that’s for sure.”
"’Yeah, sure, whatever,' is not exactly reassuring, Ishani. This is not a game,” Aaran insisted. "If you have a concrete plan, tell me and I'm fine letting you go. Provided of course it won’t involve you falling back in with a dying cult…"
I don’t owe you anything! she wanted to scream. I don’t care about your star wars or your endless feuds! I only want to find Arc! Where I go and what I do is none of your business!
"... and if not, I can help you. You're not the first person I've helped leave the Sith and start a new life." Aaran held out a hand. "I am genuinely trying to help you out here. You and the rest of the acolytes."
Ishani was breathing hard, her thoughts racing. It was easy to hate Aaran, here and now, with the forces of the Light on her doorstep and murder in their hearts. But Ishani also didn’t want to die here and now, and Aaran was at least offering safe passage away from this nightmare.
No. She couldn’t. He would take her to the Jedi, and they would treat her like a criminal, a monster. She thought of all the things she had done during her short time with the Sith. Fighting and killing other acolytes and masters, or the filthy Graug in battle. Participating in the subjugation of Ossus. Dueling with Jedi. Seeking more power for Arcturus and herself. Creating Sithspawn that could turn sentient beings into rabid thralls…
She was starting to feel physically ill, waves of nausea churning in her gut. Her face grew flushed with strain. “I… I can’t,” she blurted, before abruptly turning to flee.
Her golem followed her, but Aaran did not. Somehow the pair went unnoticed, even as Ishani fell to her knees in the dust of the courtyard. Grains of sand bit into her palms as she leaned forward, her chest rising and falling with panicked, shortened breaths. Such symptoms weren’t uncommon when she was under stress, but this seemed different. Her body felt strange. Was she actually sick?
With the Force she examined her body, seeking to find the cause of the ailment. There—a cluster of foreign cells dividing and multiplying somewhere in her…
Her breath caught in her throat. She sensed Arcturus. Well, not Arcturus exactly, but the essence of him, woven into the new cells as they grew and expanded and sought purchase in her womb.
Ishani’s fingers curled, gathering grit underneath her fingernails. How was this possible? They had taken every precaution—well, except maybe when—but this was crazy! Arcturus had been gone for weeks now, and—and this might be all that she had left of him…
All her thoughts ground to a halt as her nausea reached its peak, and she was sick in the bushes. Once she had emptied her stomach, trembling hands wiped her mouth, the bitter taste of bile lingering.
“Arcturus,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “Arcturus, where are you? You have to come back. Please. Please…”
A rumbling in the earth beneath their feet caused Ishani’s eyes to widen. Bits of sand and stone trickled from the marble ceiling of the Academy. Some of it landed in her hair, or dusted her shoulders, black on white.
She dragged herself to her feet, re-summoning her sword. It felt as heavy as lead, her grip slick with sweat. She stretched out with the Force, searching one last time for foes hidden behind the marble pillars, but the Academy was silent save for the crack of rock and adobe.
Though it still hadn’t fully registered that she was pregnant—the shock of that revelation was too new for her to have processed it—she did feel a renewed sense of urgency. A major chapter in the book of her life was about to end. The classrooms where she had studied, the labs where she had experimented with alchemy, the dorms and the suite, the oasis—all of it would likely be gone in a matter of hours, minutes even. But so would the basement chamber where Darth Maliphant had drugged and tortured her and the other acolytes, along with a whole host of other painful memories. Bullies had roamed these halls in search of prey; rivals had schemed in the shadows of the pillars; blackmailers and gossips had whispered in the alcoves. Perhaps this place should have crumbled a long time ago.
But this didn’t have to be the end of Ishani Sibwarra. There was still hope for her, right? Provided she got out of here alive.
She and her golem rushed toward the nearest exit, determined, at the very least, to survive.
