- Coruscant
- Jedi Temple || Temple Gardens
- Gardens of Remembrance
Niynx grimaced, then nodded. Slowly at first, reverently, he unclipped one of the three lightsabers from his belt and placed it within Lao-ta's dominant hand. It was a worn and bandage-wrapped hilt, engraved with little etchings and complete with wooden panels and a clunky looking blade-length adjustment dial. Compared against most other lightsabers within the Order, the blade of Master La T'vil had so much character and accessory as to be almost impractical as a weapon.
"By the time she reached for this, I fear it was all already too late. We were surrounded aboard an enemy gunboat, in deep cover for a local weapons smuggling ring off Mon Gazza, collecting our payment for a job well done. Somehow though, we never saw it coming." Forlorn, Niynx retrieved a second lightsaber from his belt-clip and placed it, too, in Lao-ta's other hand. Unlike the first, this was clearly the weapon of an experienced killer. It was smooth and well balanced, built of lightweight composite materials and sleek in its design. Niynx imagined that, even to one unpossessed the talents of precognition or psychometry, it carried with it the cold wonder of a weapon which had taken many lives merely because it could. A chill passed over him, raising the hair at the back of his neck.
"When our true enemy struck, he did so with this. An emerald blade, like that of a Consular, built by a Jedi's hands. But it was no Jedi that took my Master's life."
Niynx inhaled, then let his breath out in a steady, long sigh. As he did so, his eyes slowly closed and he moved his hands atop Lao-ta's own, hovering in the spaces above them, inches from the two lightsabers.
"I can feel you so distinctly in the Force, Master," he said to Lao-ta, his voice taking on the airy, almost dreamy quality of one settling into meditation.
"This will only work if we open ourselves to one another completely."
Niynx stretched out with his senses and touched the mind of Lao-ta, brushing against her warmth with his own. His breath became regular and deep, and he focused on the self at his innermost roots. He felt his sadness and his pride and his joy, he felt his gratitude and his fears, and then he let Lao-ta feel them too. He opened himself, letting his feelings become impressions to be passed along from one mind to the other. Time lost all sense of meaning after this, his mind with the Force, his experience entangled with Lao-ta's. Shadows began to shift, the birdsong faded in and out of its various iterations, but only when he was ready did Niynx finally place his palms against the sabers in Lao-ta's hands, his fingertips against the small of her wrists. The vision overtook him.
"For too long, we have lingered in the shadows, biding our time, honing our skills, and waiting for this moment," seethed a cracked and chilly voice. The snap-hiss of a lightsaber's activation glowed a sickly green against the gunboat's inner walls, then a wet sizzle sounded as blade seared flesh and bodies began falling to the floor. Screams abruptly ended and grunts of surprise died before they could finish as pirates became corpses. Master La T'vil only just managed to bring her own weapon to bear before the assailant was upon her, forcing her backwards in a stumbling retreat.
"I have felt the currents of the Force shifting, a tempest of darkness rising to engulf the galaxy. The Force has granted me this opportunity, this destiny, to ascend as the blood tithe, as harbinger, and cast aside the feeble shackles of the weak-minded Jedi ways." Niynx had drawn his lightsaber then, and prepared to aid La T'vil, but the Master sensed his daring and screamed for him to stay back. Too late, and Niynx was slammed by a concussive wall of the dark side and thrown back through the long walkway to the Minnow's inter-station docking module. La T'vil bellowed a shriek of exertion, and the sound of lightsabers crackled back into silence. The vessels shook underfoot and the air throbbed as Master and assailant pulled upon the Force and shaped it against one another in deadly combat. All the while, La T'vil shouted for Niynx to run, run as fast as he could. Something hard hit his chest, clattering to his feet, but in that moment all he could feel was futility and fear. It paralyzed him and made him shake. La T'vil was still struggling when the ultraviolet glow of Force lightning ripped through the chamber beyond, turning her shouts into shrieking pleas, a symphony of pain and death.
"No longer shall we be hidden," continued their ghastly foe, "no longer shall we be oppressed by your hypocrisy and dogma! Too long have the weak been allowed to infest your Order. It is time now they are culled. We are the rightful harbingers of true power, the chosen few who dare to embrace the full spectrum of the Force. We are the Sith, the embodiment of passion, the epitome of strength, and the living examples of indomitable will."
Run— was all he could think. Save yourself and run! You're useless here! All you can do is get in the way. All you can do is run! And so he had, even as he felt the life of his Master fading away, even as guilt and anger and fear crawled over one another in their struggle for dominance. Stumbling, he found La T'vil's lightsaber resting on the ground before him, and beside it another, one he'd never seen before. When had those...? Must run—
Niynx's eyes fluttered wildly behind closed lids. Absently, almost incomprehensibly, he whispered out in shallow breaths.
"Master... no... I'll come back... I'll come back...!"
"Flee, little Jedi," he'd heard the Sith cry out. "Run while you can. Bring the gifts of my vision back to your vaunted Temple bastion on Coruscant; a new tide is rising and those without strength shall be swept away in it! Soon, I shall come again, and behind me: a new era of darkness."
A foreboding shadow passed across the seated pair, air growing thick with a palpable sense of despair. Finally, the vision concluded with one last, harrowing image— one shared between Lao-ta and Niynx both— a towering inferno consumed the Jedi Temple, its majestic halls reduced to smoldering ruins. The dark assailant's ominous laughter filled their minds.
Trembling, gasping, Niynx pulled himself away from the grip of vision and back into the present moment. His eyes were wide and he was out of breath. The killer's lightsaber fell free of the Jedi's touch and landed in the grass with a soft thud. Sweat covered Ninyx's body, and the garden's gentle breezes felt chilly against his skin. He swallowed and wet his lips, then swallowed again, chest heaving. A single tear streaked down from his left eye and pooled at the bottom of his chin.
"There," he said bravely, once he was able.
"Always I have run," he continued, wiping his chin with a sleeve.
"That is what I fear, Master Lao-ta."
Unbidden and unasked for, Niynx thrust himself forward and into the embrace of Lao-ta's arms, his shoulders shaking as eventually more tears came.
"Forgive me, Master," he whispered.
"I should have been stronger. I should have gone back... can you make me stronger...?"
Lao-ta
Niynx Ioune
