Nathan Bloodscrawl
House Bloodscrawl Patriarch
Wearing: Nathan's Robes
Armed With: Nathan's Training Lightsaber
Constructing: Nathan's Jedi Lightsaber
Equipment: Rebreather
Earlier: Cathar
Something had drawn him here.
At first, he had thought it was the collapse of a mine shaft that had a bunch of workers trapped in it. That had been easy enough a reason to volunteer for a rescue, going to try and reach the miners through a dangerous alternative route into the mine network...a long abandoned, structurally unstable shaft that was in danger of full collapse itself. But it was the quickest route. The trapped miners were running out of air.
But as Nathan ventured deeper into the mine shaft, the only light provided by the glow of his training lightsaber, he began to suspect something else drew him to this world.
The route was treacherous, and the creaking of unstable supports made him keenly aware of how thin the metaphorical ice he walked on actually was. It would take at best a minor disturbance. A hard enough impact on any of the shaft surfaces might trigger a cave in even he would not survive.
He crept as quietly and as carefully as he could, the only sound other than the blade's hum being that of his Rebreather as he breathed in and out.
He sensed the life force of the miners ahead but couldn't go any quicker lest he trigger a collapse that risked dooming them both.
As he got closer, he felt the pull of the Dark Side...it was sickly...a rot in the Force...
What was going on here?
He eventually reached a blocked off pathway, the route ahead cut off by tons of rock, save for a single tiny crack in the blockage...
Nathan used the night vision function of his cybernetic eyes to peer inside.
He saw the miners in a circle around...something... something that glowed red.
Teleporting inside, Nathan crept carefully through the crowd of Cathar miners, his cheap robes brushing past their fur as he ventured to see what the source of the dark energy was...
It looked like an open grave, a Sith Sarcophagus upon which lay the skeleton of a Cathar man in Jedi Robes, long rusted over lightsaber held to its rib cage.
"Oh chit..." Nathan hissed. The miners had dug way, WAY too fethin' deep...
Whatever was going on in this death trap, he had to destroy whatever was in that sarcophagus...
Nathan suppressed his emotions. There could be no room for fear. Or anger. The thing in the coffin would feed on that.
It was a deadly risk. Everything was on the line.
But he had... motivation...
Nathan placed his hand on the Sarcophagus and found himself in a burning landscape full of death and a hundred other horrid things.
He spotted a black spire covered in a beam of white light, sighed, and started walking towards it, spotting the miners, all frozen in place by translucent purple flames, and a familiar looking Cathar Jedi in a hovering meditation, encased in a bubble of white light.
"Eldridge Parrnosso..." Nathan whispered in surprise, finally recognizing him. Parrnosso had been a Jedi, one of Nathan's friends from during the Gulag Era. He walked towards the hovering Jedi.
"Eldridge...is this what became of you?" Nathan asked as he approached the bubble the gray furred Cathar Jedi was encased in.
Eldridge blinked open deep blue eyes.
"How can this be... Morris Crownwraithe?!" Eldridge said in total surprise. "My old friend...you are the LAST face I expected to see here..."
The Cathar 's brow furrowed. "I heard you were slain by Darth Phyre."
"I was..." Nathan confirmed, not offering any further information beyond that.
"I sense a troubled spirit in you, Morris...a churning, boiling madness deep within, restrained by a thousand locks and endless vigilance. It was very dangerous for you to come here, however you managed it, while such conflict lies within you. What causes your terrible suffering?"
"It doesn't matter. I'm not letting that thing you are holding at bay take advantage of it. It's my own matter to deal with. The Force has sent me to release you. How did you come to be in this place?" Nathan asked.
Eldridge sighed.
"I had sensed a great evil stirring on my home world. Visions of an old Sith tomb haunted my sleep. I journeyed here to find it and stop it. I bit off more than I could chew, unfortunately. I was not strong enough to defeat the evil... merely hold it at bay. But my strength is starting to fail me and these poor miners are the victims of my failure..." Eldridge said sadly.
"If we do not defeat this thing now, they will all die in the real world eventually."
"What IS it? A Sith Spirit?" Nathan asked, brushing away Syd's telepathic pleas to allow her to help.
"This is not the ghost of some petty Lord I hold at bay. This is an evil so ancient I doubt that even it remembers from whence it came. An evil so foul, so utterly corrosive, that I doubt that even The Sith ever bothered to give it a title. All the Sith could do is seal it away, and barely, at that..." Eldridge answered. "But together, perhaps...we might finally put an end to it. It must not be permitted to escape. All of Cathar would be in danger, should we fail to destroy it. It would ravage the land and it's people."
"It won't escape. I won't let it. We WILL put this monster down, and I will give you rest..." Nathan vowed. "We can end this whenever you are ready."
"We must do it now...while I still have the strength to be of some use..." Eldridge replied. "May the Force be with us..."
"Yeah..." Nathan muttered. "The Force..."
"Get ready..." Eldridge warned, closing his eyes. The bubble of light around Eldridge faded and he floated to the ground as the tower started to crumble.
Nathan felt a wave of Dark Energy. It was trying to cling to his spirit, fill his mind with visions of hate and despair. Of a thousand different atrocities.
It was a boiling shadow with tentacles and screams. Nathan wondered if it was even sentient at first until he heard it speak.
"SO THE JEDI'S MIGHT AT LAST FAILS. FIRST, YOUR SPIRIT. THEN, THE SPIRITS OF ALL YOUR PEOPLE, ELDRIDGE..." it spoke.
Let me help! You need me! Syd begged in his skull.
No. Be silent. he ordered back.
"I'm not alone this time, monster!" Eldridge snapped activating the mental construct of his lightsaber, a shining white blade springing forth from a bronze colored hilt.
"THE CONFLICTED ONE WILL BE EASY PREY..." the Shadow Monster Replied as Nathan activated the mental construct of his own lightsaber.
Nathan leapt away from the shadow tentacles as they lashed out in mid air, cutting away at some of them as they changed course. Eldridge held the tentacles away with his will, while Nathan aggressively charged, cutting away at the tentacles by the dozens. He didn't bother trying to talk to it. He doubted it would accomplish anything. It was too evil to permit it to continue to exist.
"PITIFUL MAD JEDI..." it hissed. "SUCH TERRORS HAVE I TO SUBJECT YOU TO..."
Nathan ignored its taunts, cutting away at it, getting closer and closer to its main trunk. He understood it was a battle of will.
And his will to survive, to come home to his family, to destroy The Cult Of The Brain Demon, was stronger than it's mindless, sadistic urges.
Eldridge took advantage of Nathan's mental aggression, pressing forward, forcing the tentacles away as it grew more and more focused on destroying this new interloper and taking his power for its own use.
Both eventually reached the trunk, Nathan's mental lightsaber in a constant blur intercepting it's telepathic tentacles, Eldridge's will simply forcing them back to reach the trunk.
When they both reached it, both shoved their blades into the trunk.
He heard it roar. He felt no fear as the direct connection plunged him into the greater horrors of his own subconscious. The Battalion in place of Elaine Tear slaughtering the inhabitants of Castle Bloodscrawl. His mother's head falling from her shoulders as a lightsaber blade went through it.
He would suffer his father's death in the Gulag plague. Like his father, he had watched the wife die first.
"SUCH INCREDIBLE TORMENT...AND NOW BOUND TO THE ONE WHO STARTED IT ALL..."
Nathan fought past it, his urge to return to his wife crushing the beast's attempt to subvert his mind.
"YOUR BOND TO HER IS PURE TORTURE, JEDI. WALLOW IN IT. GIVE INTO THE PAIN..."
Nathan shoved it out of his mind with sheer brute strength. White cracks of light from where his saber had pierced the shadow-beasts mental flesh began to spread out and it howled in surprise.
"TOO LONG I HAVE RESTED IN THIS COFFIN. YOU WILL NOT DENY ME MY FREEDOM..."
"Yes I will. I will do all that and more to you, abomination." Nathan replied quietly, focusing his will.
Again it assaulted his mind. Again he forced it out. Again he battered it back with his own now crushing strength in the Force, the white cracks on its trunk spreading further.
"It is weakening, Morris!" Eldridge yelled out, white cracks starting to spread out from where his own blade had pierced it. "I can feel it! Focus!"
The mental tendrils of the ancient evil shot out towards the souls of the trapped miners and Nathan pulled his blade out of the trunk and threw it at the tendrils even as his mental body was pierced by the tendrils. Nathan screamed in pain as he felt it trying to eat his spirit, but he kept manipulating his mental blade, now at a distance, defending the trapped souls of the miners from the tendrils trying to feed.
"MORRIS!" Eldridge yelled.
"NEVER MIND ME!" Nathan yelled back, still in great pain as he defended the miners even as his own spirit was under direct threat. "I'M NOT LETTING THEM DIE JUST SO I CAN GET AN EASY KILL!"
"SO EVEN THE MAD JEDI STILL CARES FOR THE WEAK..." The shadow beast snarled, laughing as it drove more and more tentacles into his mental body. Eldridge continued focusing, heard it groaning in pain as the white cracks spread from his blade. The situation was dire.
Nathan's pain was immense. But he desperately focused on keeping the souls of the Miners safe, not wanting them to suffer the horrible fate of his first wife, Lysandra, which he knew would happen if he faltered for even a second at protecting them with his mental blade.
Somewhere, he heard his Father's voice.
What are the Three Directives of a Bloodscrawl?
"Directive...One...Serve...The Public...Trust..." Nathan hissed, standing up, even as more tentacles pierced his mental body. He could feel it growing enraged, frustrated that his spirit would not give in.
"Directive...Two... Protect...The... Innocent..." he choked out through the pain, making his mental blade move ever more furiously in a continuous barrier around the souls of the enthralled miners.
"Directive...Three..." he whispered, turning around with all his might, grasping two of the mental tentacles, which felt cold and slimy in his mental hands...
"Uphold...The Will...Of...The...Force..."
Nathan opened himself to the Light Side, let so much energy from it course through him that it risked annihilating him along with the ancient abomination, which screamed as white light side energy channeled through his arms up the tentacles.
The main trunk burst open with light and fire, the abomination shrieking in pure unbridled agony as the tentacles it had put in Nathan were destroyed and the ones trying to pierce his mental saber barrier protecting the miners were dissolved.
"WHAT ARE YOU???!!" it screamed at Nathan.
"Eldridge, now!" Nathan yelled as he summoned his blade back to him, leaping for the wounded beast.
They both chopped, stabbed, and slashed at it repeatedly, its cut away pieces dissolving in bursts of light as it continued screaming until they both reached its hissing core and delivered the final impalement with their mental blades at the same time.
It gave a final, unholy shriek as it burst into a trillion sparks that faded out of existence...
Nathan and Eldridge shut off their mental blades, watching the nightmarish mental world around them fall apart like pieces of glass.
"Is it over, old friend?" Nathan asked Parrnosso.
Eldridge nodded. "Finally. Yes. And I have you to thank for helping me fulfill my duty, Morris. I do not know how much longer I could have held it off. You arrived just in time. It might have been a matter of weeks, maybe days before my strength at last left me..."
As the souls of the miners vanished back to their bodies in the real world, Eldridge focused on Nathan.
"How did you return from the dead, Morris?"
Nathan only shrugged.
"You adhered to the way of the Jedi...yet I sense such pain within you still. Such conflict. It saddens me, despite our mutual triumph and my gratitude towards you." Eldridge admitted. "I wish I had some way to help you..."
"Let me worry about my own journey, Eldridge. Rest now. You have earned it. Your journey is at its end."
"You still have much to learn, it would seem..." Eldridge replied. "My journey is only beginning..."
Eldridge stepped up to him, placed his hand on Nathan's shoulder and Nathan's otherwise stoic, unfeeling expression softened for a moment.
"I foresee a difficult path for you ahead. One surrounded by enemies as much as friends. You have many weapons. Many resources. In the end, however, final victory will only come by your willingness to wield your most powerful weapon."
"What weapon would that be?" Nathan asked.
Eldridge smiled.
"Mercy. You didn't use it, once...and it cost you everything. But as you have shown today...it is still in your arsenal. But it may be the hardest one to deploy for you in the end, given on who it must be used against..."
Eldridge paused, running his furry chin thoughtfully a moment as the fake, death ridden world around them continued to fall apart.
"But perhaps I can be of some encouragement..."
Eldridge placed a hand on Nathan's mental forehead. The world flashed white.
(Plasmid Acquisition Theme Plays)
(Nathan has moved closer to the Light Side of the Force)
(New powers learned!)
POWER: TRANSFER FORCE
POWER: BATTLE MEDITATION
POWER: FORCE MELD
Nathan staggered back, fully awake as he watched the Sarcophagus break apart into dust...along with Eldridge's remains
All that remained of his old friend, in fact, was a single, glowing white object that called out to him...
Nathan bent down and picked it up.
It was a Tiger's Fang...
The miners, released from their torment looked around in confusion, realizing they were trapped in a mine shaft still. But that the one they had watched rescue them was there still.
"My name is Nathan Bloodscrawl. I'm here to rescue you." Nathan said to them, pocketing the glowing white crystal.
With a wave of his hand, he teleported himself as well as all of them to the entrance of the mine shaft they had gone through to reach them. He did not stay as they started cheering in celebration, leaving just as the medics that had been waiting outside for him to return rushed to them...
Present, Coruscant...
Nathan worked on a new Lightsaber in the comfort of his red colored TIE/SRRET. It had few amenities beyond small sleeping quarters, an even smaller galley and a basic refresher unit. The vehicle had served as his Jedi Courier for years in the Alliance, and the one he was always seen traveling in. He had more expensive ships at his disposal... WAY more expensive. But those were used only for the times when he wasn't the simple Jedi Courier--
(Cutaway of Caesar's Legionnaires being turned into goo piles by a plasma rifle)
--of various enclaves
Word of what he had done on Cathar had spread. It had actually made the news in some systems.
On instinct he had begun working on the new blade, having attuned himself to it. Like his training saber, it was meant to be simple looking. Something a basic Jedi would construct.
It would mainly be used in Alliance Space, he had decided, adding a non-lethal function in the form of a special Synth Crystal his artificial daughter
Sera Mina
had purchased for him anonymously.
"Tell me, Nathan..."
Nathan turned his head from his work at the galley's small dining table, spotting a hallucination of Surt'r, also known as
Syd Celsius
...
The bond between them was unbreakable. He couldn't stand it...
"Was it really necessary, facing it alone without my help? Even though it would have been over far quicker had you allowed me to help?"
"Your presence was not requested." Nathan replied tersely, ignoring her, trying to continue his work
"I'm always there, Nathan. I'm not going away this time..."
"I don't need this right now..." Nathan replied, tone even, but the displeasure of having to even speak to her evident on his face...
"Yes. You. Do." Syd replied firmly. "You always have. You did a good thing. A great thing, even, saving all those people, freeing that Jedi's spirit. It's what so vexes me about you...how can such a man who is otherwise doing exactly what a Jedi is supposed to be doing be so determined to fight me to the death when he finally reaches his goal?!"
"You really wanna do this now?" Nathan replied, tone genuinely harsh. "Really?"
"You keep me around for my knowledge. Yet I am no more than a burden. I am tired of our arrangement, Nathan. I have paid for my mistakes a hundred, a thousand times over. And so have you. You think the Force is cruel, yet look at your position in the Galaxy. You have a family again. You...you have everything I ever wanted with...with..."
Syd stopped. Even after so many years, she still could not say Laertia's name out loud.
Syd struggled to get her emotions under control.
She failed.
"Do you honestly believe you are better than me?!" Syd shouted desperately, tears falling down her face, though even this stirred not a hint of pity in Nathan.
"No." Nathan answered.
"Well YOU SURE AS HELL ACT LIKE IT! You fed a Jedi Master to the wolves, Nathan Bloodscrawl! You could have gone to your death with Lysandra clean! Honorable! A TRUE JEDI AT LONG LAST! But no...the idea of Elaine Tear getting to go on after all she had put you through while you rotted in the dirt with the rest of your family was too much for you!" Syd accused, her mental construct pacing the galley like an agitated animal.
"And that reason and no other is why you will not let go of your need for a final reckoning between us! Because it's easier to blame me, hate me, than to hold yourself even the tiniest bit accountable!" she continued, hyperventilating. This had been building for months.
Nathan wasn't having any of it.
"Hate you?" Nathan replied quietly. "No, Phyre. I don't hate you. I don't loathe you. I don't even despise you. I'm far beyond any of that, now."
Nathan stepped towards the telepathic construct.
"I dismiss you..." he elaborated crisply and quietly in that way that had always thrown her off when speaking to him.
"You think I am not fully aware of what my treachery towards Elaine Tear cost me? Cost the innocent? I didn't just stop being a Jedi when I sent her into the Cult's path, I stopped being a Bloodscrawl! I willfully violated the Three Directives!" Nathan hissed at Syd.
"Everyone
The Battalion
slew was my kill by extension! I thought it would be worth it to avenge my family. To do something for me...for once!" Nathan added bitterly. "I wanted closure! I wanted to go to my death knowing that at least my parents might finally get justice, after Elaine cut my Mother's head off and stabbed my Father through the heart! And I didn't even get that!"
Nathan turned away from the construct, only to find Syd's construct in front of him, listening silently.
"But at least they are one with the Force...at least they went to their death as heroes!" Nathan spat. "Lysandra...suffered a fate incomprehensibly worse! And so did Julia. Do I hate you? No. Not anymore, anyway. But I loved Lysandra. I loved Julia. Lysandra deserved better than you. Julia deserved better. They were my everything. I gave up my own life to protect Julia from you. Even that wasn't enough. You will not escape your reckoning with pleas to my better nature, or appealing to the Jedi Code. Where you and the Cult are concerned, the Code has no authority over me, no matter how much I may try to obey it otherwise."
Nathan stared her dead in the eye.
"To let you slide? That would be tantamount to saying I never loved Lysandra or Julia at all. It would be like saying they meant nothing to me. It would be saying I am glad they no longer exist."
Nathan took a step closer to the construct.
"Be honest, Phyre. If I killed Starlin the way you killed Lysandra... would you let me slide, even if I was genuinely sorry afterward? Would you just let it go?" Nathan asked.
Syd didn't answer.
Nathan leaned forward. "I didn't think so." he whispered in her ear, turning away.
Before he headed to his table to continue his task, Syd asked two more questions that shook him to his core.
"And how is your reasoning now any different than with Elaine?" Syd asked. "And how do you know it will not blow up in your face just as it did with her?"
Nathan turned to her.
"Because it's the only justice left that I can possibly hope to give someone who was killed so permanently, so cruelly. I went insane when that happened, Phyre. I'm...still insane." he admitted to her, and her expression went to one of complete horror as she finally, FINALLY fully comprehended the depth of his mental suffering.
"Whatever else The Force has given me, Vera, Grendel, Sera, Thel, Draco, my Sisters, My adoptive Mother...none of them can remove the insanity. I love them. Deeply. Immensely. I'd die for any one of them. Or all of them. But they can't remove the insanity...no matter how much I wish they could. No matter how much I would let them, were they capable of it..." he admitted with a deep sadness he never thought he would willingly expose to her of all people.
"And if you do not fight me...then all you have fought for, struggled for, suffered for, will be as empty, as violent, and as meaningless, as the corruption of Laertia Io herself." he stated flatly.
(Cutaway of Darth Traya floating three lightsabers)
Syd said nothing at this, feeling the quietly spreading terror of knowing deep down that he was right.
"If I fight you and win, the insanity leaves me. If I fight you and die, I die knowing I did everything I could to give some form of closure to Lysandra's memory, and the insanity leaves me via euthanasia. If you fight and win...you never have to think about me, or Laertia afterwards, because your past will finally be dead and buried." Nathan continued.
"It doesn't work like that, Nathan. There would still be memories..." Syd said, sadly, trying to sincerely reason with him and break the cycle. "You're not describing a reckoning. You're describing a mutually assured destruction."
Nathan seemed to genuinely consider this a moment. Then he shrugged.
"Perhaps..." he admitted. "But what Lysandra and Julia meant to me goes beyond the Jedi Code. Beyond the philosophy and pretty words of any of the Masters who preach it. It goes beyond any temptation the Dark Side could offer. I must fight you to the death. Not for power. Not for hatred. Not even for revenge..."
Nathan turned away from her to go back to finishing his lightsaber, hands working meticulously on the components with his small set of tools.
"But simply so that I don't have to think about that day on Dantooine any longer...so I no longer see Lysandra being mummified and dismembered by you every time I close my eyes or when I sleep..."
Syd tried to speak only for Nathan to cut her off.
"I must fight you so that I am no longer forever failing her, so that I don't have to still feel the pain as she died. That is something no version of the Jedi Code can moderate. Regulate. That is something neither of us can escape.
"Nathan..." Syd trailed. "This pain can't be cured by death. Either yours OR mine! How would I even live with myself if I killed you again?"
"That's a 'you' problem..." Nathan replied casually. "Just like silencing Lysandra's constant, agony filled screaming in my head as her soul is eaten alive is a 'me' problem..."
"And if you lose, what of your family? You'll be leaving them without a father! I'm not going to just lay down and die to your blade, Nathan. I have people to live for, too." Syd replied bitterly even as the terror of knowing he was totally right continued to spread in her.
"I don't expect you to lay down and die..." he replied calmly, hands gliding over the crystal chambers of his new blade as he finished installing the crystals.
"But I am going to fight you. Because if I do not...then everything other than my new family? It will be as empty, as violent, and as meaningless as the death of Lysandra Crownwraithe herself..." Nathan replied. "And if you have any shred of honor in you...you will fight me as hard as I will fight you."
Nathan began installing the lens to his emitter.
"Now leave me, while I'm still in a good mood." he finished, putting final touches on his weapon.
Syd's construct vanished, leaving Nathan deeply disturbed by the entire conversation, and for the first time questioning his own reasoning...
Hours later, dawn.
Nathan had been summoned to the council chamber
From all those years ago when he first started as a way seeker of the Jedi in the now defunct Rimward Trade League, to when he had first fought for the GA during the Annihilation of Exogal, slaying multiple Mawites and Sith Marauders, countless reports of him assisting Jedi and GA in law enforcement matters such as hostage rescue, his efforts as a field medic (He was a fully accredited heart surgeon!), defending the Jakku Enclave, capturing Sith Lords and basically dumping them at the temple steps to be arrested and detained, losing his left arm saving a Jedi's life from a lightsaber thrown by a Sith Lich after Tython had been reclaimed by the GA a long with battling and defeating an ancient Dark Side abomination most recently on Cathar...
his deeds had slowly, surely accumulated...
Nathan was curious. Nervous. He had never been summoned to the Council Chambers before. He wasn't sure what was going on. He had always tried to be a background face. An NPC character to everyone else's main player character. That was how he preferred it. No one pays an NPC much mind.
Not today, it seemed.
He had tried to go in something decent other than his shabby cheap Jedi Robes that only reinforced his status as an NPC. But nothing that would stand out too much. In the end he had chosen to enter the council chamber in his simple, black NJO Jumpsuit, his Training Lightsaber along with his newly constructed lightsaber dangling from clips on his belt, the main crystal of his new blade provided by his long deceased friend.
There were a dozens of stories about how he had actually been recruited into the GA. No two were the same. Nathan did nothing to clear up the issue. Records of how he had actually been recruited were long since lost, either in the chaos of record keeping in the war against the Maw, or his actual recruiters have died in the field against others, their names also lost in the chaos. One day, Nathan Bloodscrawl had simply just... appeared and gotten to work, and everyone else had been too busy with their own issues to give the quiet, mysterious older Padawan more than a passing glance. Most masters couldn't even be bothered to remember his name half the time, not that he minded this. Ironically, only the Padawans had paid him more than a second glance, but even they had eventually moved on to more interesting issues in their own lives.
Nathan stood at attention before everyone present, hands clasped behind his back, hair and beard neatly trimmed, face its usual grim, unsmiling expression that seemed permanently frozen to his face. He never smiled, laughed, or joked around other Jedi or GA personnel. He spoke only when spoken to first, and most times was busy with his work transferring supplies and messages between Jedi Enclaves. As nobody tries to engage a wet blanket, it had been even easier to dismiss him than it otherwise would have been for most. Only the rare handful like
Braze
,
Lossa Aureus
,
Elias Edo
,
Jax Thio
or
Caltin Vanagor
had gotten a more than a glimpse past the surface among the Jedi. He was a ghost otherwise.
"I have arrived as requested." Nathan said in a clipped, formal tone.
"How many I be of service?"
Valery Noble
Armed With: Nathan's Training Lightsaber
Constructing: Nathan's Jedi Lightsaber
Equipment: Rebreather
Earlier: Cathar
Something had drawn him here.
At first, he had thought it was the collapse of a mine shaft that had a bunch of workers trapped in it. That had been easy enough a reason to volunteer for a rescue, going to try and reach the miners through a dangerous alternative route into the mine network...a long abandoned, structurally unstable shaft that was in danger of full collapse itself. But it was the quickest route. The trapped miners were running out of air.
But as Nathan ventured deeper into the mine shaft, the only light provided by the glow of his training lightsaber, he began to suspect something else drew him to this world.
The route was treacherous, and the creaking of unstable supports made him keenly aware of how thin the metaphorical ice he walked on actually was. It would take at best a minor disturbance. A hard enough impact on any of the shaft surfaces might trigger a cave in even he would not survive.
He crept as quietly and as carefully as he could, the only sound other than the blade's hum being that of his Rebreather as he breathed in and out.
He sensed the life force of the miners ahead but couldn't go any quicker lest he trigger a collapse that risked dooming them both.
As he got closer, he felt the pull of the Dark Side...it was sickly...a rot in the Force...
What was going on here?
He eventually reached a blocked off pathway, the route ahead cut off by tons of rock, save for a single tiny crack in the blockage...
Nathan used the night vision function of his cybernetic eyes to peer inside.
He saw the miners in a circle around...something... something that glowed red.
Teleporting inside, Nathan crept carefully through the crowd of Cathar miners, his cheap robes brushing past their fur as he ventured to see what the source of the dark energy was...
It looked like an open grave, a Sith Sarcophagus upon which lay the skeleton of a Cathar man in Jedi Robes, long rusted over lightsaber held to its rib cage.
"Oh chit..." Nathan hissed. The miners had dug way, WAY too fethin' deep...
Whatever was going on in this death trap, he had to destroy whatever was in that sarcophagus...
Nathan suppressed his emotions. There could be no room for fear. Or anger. The thing in the coffin would feed on that.
It was a deadly risk. Everything was on the line.
But he had... motivation...
Nathan placed his hand on the Sarcophagus and found himself in a burning landscape full of death and a hundred other horrid things.
He spotted a black spire covered in a beam of white light, sighed, and started walking towards it, spotting the miners, all frozen in place by translucent purple flames, and a familiar looking Cathar Jedi in a hovering meditation, encased in a bubble of white light.
"Eldridge Parrnosso..." Nathan whispered in surprise, finally recognizing him. Parrnosso had been a Jedi, one of Nathan's friends from during the Gulag Era. He walked towards the hovering Jedi.
"Eldridge...is this what became of you?" Nathan asked as he approached the bubble the gray furred Cathar Jedi was encased in.
Eldridge blinked open deep blue eyes.
"How can this be... Morris Crownwraithe?!" Eldridge said in total surprise. "My old friend...you are the LAST face I expected to see here..."
The Cathar 's brow furrowed. "I heard you were slain by Darth Phyre."
"I was..." Nathan confirmed, not offering any further information beyond that.
"I sense a troubled spirit in you, Morris...a churning, boiling madness deep within, restrained by a thousand locks and endless vigilance. It was very dangerous for you to come here, however you managed it, while such conflict lies within you. What causes your terrible suffering?"
"It doesn't matter. I'm not letting that thing you are holding at bay take advantage of it. It's my own matter to deal with. The Force has sent me to release you. How did you come to be in this place?" Nathan asked.
Eldridge sighed.
"I had sensed a great evil stirring on my home world. Visions of an old Sith tomb haunted my sleep. I journeyed here to find it and stop it. I bit off more than I could chew, unfortunately. I was not strong enough to defeat the evil... merely hold it at bay. But my strength is starting to fail me and these poor miners are the victims of my failure..." Eldridge said sadly.
"If we do not defeat this thing now, they will all die in the real world eventually."
"What IS it? A Sith Spirit?" Nathan asked, brushing away Syd's telepathic pleas to allow her to help.
"This is not the ghost of some petty Lord I hold at bay. This is an evil so ancient I doubt that even it remembers from whence it came. An evil so foul, so utterly corrosive, that I doubt that even The Sith ever bothered to give it a title. All the Sith could do is seal it away, and barely, at that..." Eldridge answered. "But together, perhaps...we might finally put an end to it. It must not be permitted to escape. All of Cathar would be in danger, should we fail to destroy it. It would ravage the land and it's people."
"It won't escape. I won't let it. We WILL put this monster down, and I will give you rest..." Nathan vowed. "We can end this whenever you are ready."
"We must do it now...while I still have the strength to be of some use..." Eldridge replied. "May the Force be with us..."
"Yeah..." Nathan muttered. "The Force..."
"Get ready..." Eldridge warned, closing his eyes. The bubble of light around Eldridge faded and he floated to the ground as the tower started to crumble.
Nathan felt a wave of Dark Energy. It was trying to cling to his spirit, fill his mind with visions of hate and despair. Of a thousand different atrocities.
It was a boiling shadow with tentacles and screams. Nathan wondered if it was even sentient at first until he heard it speak.
"SO THE JEDI'S MIGHT AT LAST FAILS. FIRST, YOUR SPIRIT. THEN, THE SPIRITS OF ALL YOUR PEOPLE, ELDRIDGE..." it spoke.
Let me help! You need me! Syd begged in his skull.
No. Be silent. he ordered back.
"I'm not alone this time, monster!" Eldridge snapped activating the mental construct of his lightsaber, a shining white blade springing forth from a bronze colored hilt.
"THE CONFLICTED ONE WILL BE EASY PREY..." the Shadow Monster Replied as Nathan activated the mental construct of his own lightsaber.
Nathan leapt away from the shadow tentacles as they lashed out in mid air, cutting away at some of them as they changed course. Eldridge held the tentacles away with his will, while Nathan aggressively charged, cutting away at the tentacles by the dozens. He didn't bother trying to talk to it. He doubted it would accomplish anything. It was too evil to permit it to continue to exist.
"PITIFUL MAD JEDI..." it hissed. "SUCH TERRORS HAVE I TO SUBJECT YOU TO..."
Nathan ignored its taunts, cutting away at it, getting closer and closer to its main trunk. He understood it was a battle of will.
And his will to survive, to come home to his family, to destroy The Cult Of The Brain Demon, was stronger than it's mindless, sadistic urges.
Eldridge took advantage of Nathan's mental aggression, pressing forward, forcing the tentacles away as it grew more and more focused on destroying this new interloper and taking his power for its own use.
Both eventually reached the trunk, Nathan's mental lightsaber in a constant blur intercepting it's telepathic tentacles, Eldridge's will simply forcing them back to reach the trunk.
When they both reached it, both shoved their blades into the trunk.
He heard it roar. He felt no fear as the direct connection plunged him into the greater horrors of his own subconscious. The Battalion in place of Elaine Tear slaughtering the inhabitants of Castle Bloodscrawl. His mother's head falling from her shoulders as a lightsaber blade went through it.
He would suffer his father's death in the Gulag plague. Like his father, he had watched the wife die first.
"SUCH INCREDIBLE TORMENT...AND NOW BOUND TO THE ONE WHO STARTED IT ALL..."
Nathan fought past it, his urge to return to his wife crushing the beast's attempt to subvert his mind.
"YOUR BOND TO HER IS PURE TORTURE, JEDI. WALLOW IN IT. GIVE INTO THE PAIN..."
Nathan shoved it out of his mind with sheer brute strength. White cracks of light from where his saber had pierced the shadow-beasts mental flesh began to spread out and it howled in surprise.
"TOO LONG I HAVE RESTED IN THIS COFFIN. YOU WILL NOT DENY ME MY FREEDOM..."
"Yes I will. I will do all that and more to you, abomination." Nathan replied quietly, focusing his will.
Again it assaulted his mind. Again he forced it out. Again he battered it back with his own now crushing strength in the Force, the white cracks on its trunk spreading further.
"It is weakening, Morris!" Eldridge yelled out, white cracks starting to spread out from where his own blade had pierced it. "I can feel it! Focus!"
The mental tendrils of the ancient evil shot out towards the souls of the trapped miners and Nathan pulled his blade out of the trunk and threw it at the tendrils even as his mental body was pierced by the tendrils. Nathan screamed in pain as he felt it trying to eat his spirit, but he kept manipulating his mental blade, now at a distance, defending the trapped souls of the miners from the tendrils trying to feed.
"MORRIS!" Eldridge yelled.
"NEVER MIND ME!" Nathan yelled back, still in great pain as he defended the miners even as his own spirit was under direct threat. "I'M NOT LETTING THEM DIE JUST SO I CAN GET AN EASY KILL!"
"SO EVEN THE MAD JEDI STILL CARES FOR THE WEAK..." The shadow beast snarled, laughing as it drove more and more tentacles into his mental body. Eldridge continued focusing, heard it groaning in pain as the white cracks spread from his blade. The situation was dire.
Nathan's pain was immense. But he desperately focused on keeping the souls of the Miners safe, not wanting them to suffer the horrible fate of his first wife, Lysandra, which he knew would happen if he faltered for even a second at protecting them with his mental blade.
Somewhere, he heard his Father's voice.
What are the Three Directives of a Bloodscrawl?
"Directive...One...Serve...The Public...Trust..." Nathan hissed, standing up, even as more tentacles pierced his mental body. He could feel it growing enraged, frustrated that his spirit would not give in.
"Directive...Two... Protect...The... Innocent..." he choked out through the pain, making his mental blade move ever more furiously in a continuous barrier around the souls of the enthralled miners.
"Directive...Three..." he whispered, turning around with all his might, grasping two of the mental tentacles, which felt cold and slimy in his mental hands...
"Uphold...The Will...Of...The...Force..."
Nathan opened himself to the Light Side, let so much energy from it course through him that it risked annihilating him along with the ancient abomination, which screamed as white light side energy channeled through his arms up the tentacles.
The main trunk burst open with light and fire, the abomination shrieking in pure unbridled agony as the tentacles it had put in Nathan were destroyed and the ones trying to pierce his mental saber barrier protecting the miners were dissolved.
"WHAT ARE YOU???!!" it screamed at Nathan.
"Eldridge, now!" Nathan yelled as he summoned his blade back to him, leaping for the wounded beast.
They both chopped, stabbed, and slashed at it repeatedly, its cut away pieces dissolving in bursts of light as it continued screaming until they both reached its hissing core and delivered the final impalement with their mental blades at the same time.
It gave a final, unholy shriek as it burst into a trillion sparks that faded out of existence...
Nathan and Eldridge shut off their mental blades, watching the nightmarish mental world around them fall apart like pieces of glass.
"Is it over, old friend?" Nathan asked Parrnosso.
Eldridge nodded. "Finally. Yes. And I have you to thank for helping me fulfill my duty, Morris. I do not know how much longer I could have held it off. You arrived just in time. It might have been a matter of weeks, maybe days before my strength at last left me..."
As the souls of the miners vanished back to their bodies in the real world, Eldridge focused on Nathan.
"How did you return from the dead, Morris?"
Nathan only shrugged.
"You adhered to the way of the Jedi...yet I sense such pain within you still. Such conflict. It saddens me, despite our mutual triumph and my gratitude towards you." Eldridge admitted. "I wish I had some way to help you..."
"Let me worry about my own journey, Eldridge. Rest now. You have earned it. Your journey is at its end."
"You still have much to learn, it would seem..." Eldridge replied. "My journey is only beginning..."
Eldridge stepped up to him, placed his hand on Nathan's shoulder and Nathan's otherwise stoic, unfeeling expression softened for a moment.
"I foresee a difficult path for you ahead. One surrounded by enemies as much as friends. You have many weapons. Many resources. In the end, however, final victory will only come by your willingness to wield your most powerful weapon."
"What weapon would that be?" Nathan asked.
Eldridge smiled.
"Mercy. You didn't use it, once...and it cost you everything. But as you have shown today...it is still in your arsenal. But it may be the hardest one to deploy for you in the end, given on who it must be used against..."
Eldridge paused, running his furry chin thoughtfully a moment as the fake, death ridden world around them continued to fall apart.
"But perhaps I can be of some encouragement..."
Eldridge placed a hand on Nathan's mental forehead. The world flashed white.
(Plasmid Acquisition Theme Plays)
(Nathan has moved closer to the Light Side of the Force)
(New powers learned!)
POWER: TRANSFER FORCE
This Light Side power transfers part of the life force of the user to a mortally wounded recipient. To be used only in extreme circumstances.
POWER: BATTLE MEDITATION
Used to affect whole armies, influencing their morale positively or negatively. Requires immense concentration
POWER: FORCE MELD
Light Side focused extension of Battle Meditation, focused on merging the minds of multiple Force Users in User's side to fight as one. Carries great risks and requires immense concentration
Nathan staggered back, fully awake as he watched the Sarcophagus break apart into dust...along with Eldridge's remains
All that remained of his old friend, in fact, was a single, glowing white object that called out to him...
Nathan bent down and picked it up.
It was a Tiger's Fang...
The miners, released from their torment looked around in confusion, realizing they were trapped in a mine shaft still. But that the one they had watched rescue them was there still.
"My name is Nathan Bloodscrawl. I'm here to rescue you." Nathan said to them, pocketing the glowing white crystal.
With a wave of his hand, he teleported himself as well as all of them to the entrance of the mine shaft they had gone through to reach them. He did not stay as they started cheering in celebration, leaving just as the medics that had been waiting outside for him to return rushed to them...
Present, Coruscant...
Nathan worked on a new Lightsaber in the comfort of his red colored TIE/SRRET. It had few amenities beyond small sleeping quarters, an even smaller galley and a basic refresher unit. The vehicle had served as his Jedi Courier for years in the Alliance, and the one he was always seen traveling in. He had more expensive ships at his disposal... WAY more expensive. But those were used only for the times when he wasn't the simple Jedi Courier--
(Cutaway of Caesar's Legionnaires being turned into goo piles by a plasma rifle)
--of various enclaves
Word of what he had done on Cathar had spread. It had actually made the news in some systems.
On instinct he had begun working on the new blade, having attuned himself to it. Like his training saber, it was meant to be simple looking. Something a basic Jedi would construct.
It would mainly be used in Alliance Space, he had decided, adding a non-lethal function in the form of a special Synth Crystal his artificial daughter
Sera Mina
had purchased for him anonymously."Tell me, Nathan..."
Nathan turned his head from his work at the galley's small dining table, spotting a hallucination of Surt'r, also known as
Syd Celsius
...The bond between them was unbreakable. He couldn't stand it...
"Was it really necessary, facing it alone without my help? Even though it would have been over far quicker had you allowed me to help?"
"Your presence was not requested." Nathan replied tersely, ignoring her, trying to continue his work
"I'm always there, Nathan. I'm not going away this time..."
"I don't need this right now..." Nathan replied, tone even, but the displeasure of having to even speak to her evident on his face...
"Yes. You. Do." Syd replied firmly. "You always have. You did a good thing. A great thing, even, saving all those people, freeing that Jedi's spirit. It's what so vexes me about you...how can such a man who is otherwise doing exactly what a Jedi is supposed to be doing be so determined to fight me to the death when he finally reaches his goal?!"
"You really wanna do this now?" Nathan replied, tone genuinely harsh. "Really?"
"You keep me around for my knowledge. Yet I am no more than a burden. I am tired of our arrangement, Nathan. I have paid for my mistakes a hundred, a thousand times over. And so have you. You think the Force is cruel, yet look at your position in the Galaxy. You have a family again. You...you have everything I ever wanted with...with..."
Syd stopped. Even after so many years, she still could not say Laertia's name out loud.
Syd struggled to get her emotions under control.
She failed.
"Do you honestly believe you are better than me?!" Syd shouted desperately, tears falling down her face, though even this stirred not a hint of pity in Nathan.
"No." Nathan answered.
"Well YOU SURE AS HELL ACT LIKE IT! You fed a Jedi Master to the wolves, Nathan Bloodscrawl! You could have gone to your death with Lysandra clean! Honorable! A TRUE JEDI AT LONG LAST! But no...the idea of Elaine Tear getting to go on after all she had put you through while you rotted in the dirt with the rest of your family was too much for you!" Syd accused, her mental construct pacing the galley like an agitated animal.
"And that reason and no other is why you will not let go of your need for a final reckoning between us! Because it's easier to blame me, hate me, than to hold yourself even the tiniest bit accountable!" she continued, hyperventilating. This had been building for months.
Nathan wasn't having any of it.
"Hate you?" Nathan replied quietly. "No, Phyre. I don't hate you. I don't loathe you. I don't even despise you. I'm far beyond any of that, now."
Nathan stepped towards the telepathic construct.
"I dismiss you..." he elaborated crisply and quietly in that way that had always thrown her off when speaking to him.
"You think I am not fully aware of what my treachery towards Elaine Tear cost me? Cost the innocent? I didn't just stop being a Jedi when I sent her into the Cult's path, I stopped being a Bloodscrawl! I willfully violated the Three Directives!" Nathan hissed at Syd.
"Everyone
The Battalion
slew was my kill by extension! I thought it would be worth it to avenge my family. To do something for me...for once!" Nathan added bitterly. "I wanted closure! I wanted to go to my death knowing that at least my parents might finally get justice, after Elaine cut my Mother's head off and stabbed my Father through the heart! And I didn't even get that!"Nathan turned away from the construct, only to find Syd's construct in front of him, listening silently.
"But at least they are one with the Force...at least they went to their death as heroes!" Nathan spat. "Lysandra...suffered a fate incomprehensibly worse! And so did Julia. Do I hate you? No. Not anymore, anyway. But I loved Lysandra. I loved Julia. Lysandra deserved better than you. Julia deserved better. They were my everything. I gave up my own life to protect Julia from you. Even that wasn't enough. You will not escape your reckoning with pleas to my better nature, or appealing to the Jedi Code. Where you and the Cult are concerned, the Code has no authority over me, no matter how much I may try to obey it otherwise."
Nathan stared her dead in the eye.
"To let you slide? That would be tantamount to saying I never loved Lysandra or Julia at all. It would be like saying they meant nothing to me. It would be saying I am glad they no longer exist."
Nathan took a step closer to the construct.
"Be honest, Phyre. If I killed Starlin the way you killed Lysandra... would you let me slide, even if I was genuinely sorry afterward? Would you just let it go?" Nathan asked.
Syd didn't answer.
Nathan leaned forward. "I didn't think so." he whispered in her ear, turning away.
Before he headed to his table to continue his task, Syd asked two more questions that shook him to his core.
"And how is your reasoning now any different than with Elaine?" Syd asked. "And how do you know it will not blow up in your face just as it did with her?"
Nathan turned to her.
"Because it's the only justice left that I can possibly hope to give someone who was killed so permanently, so cruelly. I went insane when that happened, Phyre. I'm...still insane." he admitted to her, and her expression went to one of complete horror as she finally, FINALLY fully comprehended the depth of his mental suffering.
"Whatever else The Force has given me, Vera, Grendel, Sera, Thel, Draco, my Sisters, My adoptive Mother...none of them can remove the insanity. I love them. Deeply. Immensely. I'd die for any one of them. Or all of them. But they can't remove the insanity...no matter how much I wish they could. No matter how much I would let them, were they capable of it..." he admitted with a deep sadness he never thought he would willingly expose to her of all people.
"And if you do not fight me...then all you have fought for, struggled for, suffered for, will be as empty, as violent, and as meaningless, as the corruption of Laertia Io herself." he stated flatly.
(Cutaway of Darth Traya floating three lightsabers)
Syd said nothing at this, feeling the quietly spreading terror of knowing deep down that he was right.
"If I fight you and win, the insanity leaves me. If I fight you and die, I die knowing I did everything I could to give some form of closure to Lysandra's memory, and the insanity leaves me via euthanasia. If you fight and win...you never have to think about me, or Laertia afterwards, because your past will finally be dead and buried." Nathan continued.
"It doesn't work like that, Nathan. There would still be memories..." Syd said, sadly, trying to sincerely reason with him and break the cycle. "You're not describing a reckoning. You're describing a mutually assured destruction."
Nathan seemed to genuinely consider this a moment. Then he shrugged.
"Perhaps..." he admitted. "But what Lysandra and Julia meant to me goes beyond the Jedi Code. Beyond the philosophy and pretty words of any of the Masters who preach it. It goes beyond any temptation the Dark Side could offer. I must fight you to the death. Not for power. Not for hatred. Not even for revenge..."
Nathan turned away from her to go back to finishing his lightsaber, hands working meticulously on the components with his small set of tools.
"But simply so that I don't have to think about that day on Dantooine any longer...so I no longer see Lysandra being mummified and dismembered by you every time I close my eyes or when I sleep..."
Syd tried to speak only for Nathan to cut her off.
"I must fight you so that I am no longer forever failing her, so that I don't have to still feel the pain as she died. That is something no version of the Jedi Code can moderate. Regulate. That is something neither of us can escape.
"Nathan..." Syd trailed. "This pain can't be cured by death. Either yours OR mine! How would I even live with myself if I killed you again?"
"That's a 'you' problem..." Nathan replied casually. "Just like silencing Lysandra's constant, agony filled screaming in my head as her soul is eaten alive is a 'me' problem..."
"And if you lose, what of your family? You'll be leaving them without a father! I'm not going to just lay down and die to your blade, Nathan. I have people to live for, too." Syd replied bitterly even as the terror of knowing he was totally right continued to spread in her.
"I don't expect you to lay down and die..." he replied calmly, hands gliding over the crystal chambers of his new blade as he finished installing the crystals.
"But I am going to fight you. Because if I do not...then everything other than my new family? It will be as empty, as violent, and as meaningless as the death of Lysandra Crownwraithe herself..." Nathan replied. "And if you have any shred of honor in you...you will fight me as hard as I will fight you."
Nathan began installing the lens to his emitter.
"Now leave me, while I'm still in a good mood." he finished, putting final touches on his weapon.
Syd's construct vanished, leaving Nathan deeply disturbed by the entire conversation, and for the first time questioning his own reasoning...
Hours later, dawn.
Nathan had been summoned to the council chamber
From all those years ago when he first started as a way seeker of the Jedi in the now defunct Rimward Trade League, to when he had first fought for the GA during the Annihilation of Exogal, slaying multiple Mawites and Sith Marauders, countless reports of him assisting Jedi and GA in law enforcement matters such as hostage rescue, his efforts as a field medic (He was a fully accredited heart surgeon!), defending the Jakku Enclave, capturing Sith Lords and basically dumping them at the temple steps to be arrested and detained, losing his left arm saving a Jedi's life from a lightsaber thrown by a Sith Lich after Tython had been reclaimed by the GA a long with battling and defeating an ancient Dark Side abomination most recently on Cathar...
his deeds had slowly, surely accumulated...
Nathan was curious. Nervous. He had never been summoned to the Council Chambers before. He wasn't sure what was going on. He had always tried to be a background face. An NPC character to everyone else's main player character. That was how he preferred it. No one pays an NPC much mind.
Not today, it seemed.
He had tried to go in something decent other than his shabby cheap Jedi Robes that only reinforced his status as an NPC. But nothing that would stand out too much. In the end he had chosen to enter the council chamber in his simple, black NJO Jumpsuit, his Training Lightsaber along with his newly constructed lightsaber dangling from clips on his belt, the main crystal of his new blade provided by his long deceased friend.
There were a dozens of stories about how he had actually been recruited into the GA. No two were the same. Nathan did nothing to clear up the issue. Records of how he had actually been recruited were long since lost, either in the chaos of record keeping in the war against the Maw, or his actual recruiters have died in the field against others, their names also lost in the chaos. One day, Nathan Bloodscrawl had simply just... appeared and gotten to work, and everyone else had been too busy with their own issues to give the quiet, mysterious older Padawan more than a passing glance. Most masters couldn't even be bothered to remember his name half the time, not that he minded this. Ironically, only the Padawans had paid him more than a second glance, but even they had eventually moved on to more interesting issues in their own lives.
Nathan stood at attention before everyone present, hands clasped behind his back, hair and beard neatly trimmed, face its usual grim, unsmiling expression that seemed permanently frozen to his face. He never smiled, laughed, or joked around other Jedi or GA personnel. He spoke only when spoken to first, and most times was busy with his work transferring supplies and messages between Jedi Enclaves. As nobody tries to engage a wet blanket, it had been even easier to dismiss him than it otherwise would have been for most. Only the rare handful like
Braze
,
Lossa Aureus
,
Elias Edo
,
Jax Thio
or
Caltin Vanagor
had gotten a more than a glimpse past the surface among the Jedi. He was a ghost otherwise."I have arrived as requested." Nathan said in a clipped, formal tone.
"How many I be of service?"
Valery Noble
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