Before
She lay beside him, the only one who touched him tenderly.
His wife. His trusted ally. His
victim.
There was little that the two men within him, locked inside a dying brain encased in a metal shell, could agree on... but they could agree that The Mongrel did not deserve Mercy. He was responsible for what she had become, for all the suffering she had endured and all the suffering she had caused to the galaxy at his order. He listened as she recounted their first meeting, that clash in the snowy streets of Carlac's capital, and he wondered: how much pain could have been avoided for them both if she'd succeeded at ending him?
But that was not why she was telling the story.
She never blamed him, even when she
should.
~ I am proud of you, ~ he told her, meeting her gaze and offering a gentle smile. And it was
true. He was proud of what she had
survived, all the trials she had overcome. There were few
warlords who had endured among the ranks of the Maw since Carlac, let alone frontline soldiers or high-risk infiltrators; so many of the Brotherhood's very
founders were gone now, and yet here they were, the two of them, the twisted weapons the Taskmaster had made.
~ I am proud of your strength, and your skill, and your loyalty. ~
~ You have always been my most trusted agent. ~
Yes, he was proud of her accomplishments. From a military perspective, capturing her alive had been the best decision he could have ever made. Without her the Scar Hounds would have been annihilated to the last man on Odessen. Without her he would never have recognized the truth about Thomas Barran, who would rise to lead the tribe one day. Without her he would never have recovered his will to live, and The Mongrel's glorious flame would have guttered out to nothing long ago.
~ Without you, I would have nothing. ~
Yes, he was proud of her, and of her many accomplishments.
The shame he felt was only for
himself.
It was Kallan's doing, or so he chose to believe. The echo of the man he had been before the Maw, this second personality that still lurked beneath the surface of his mind, was compassionate and empathetic and
weak. He dragged The Mongrel down with his guilt, distracting him from the Brotherhood's holy purpose. He could not see what the warlord could see, what the Heathen Priests had opened his eyes to: that the galaxy was too broken to save, and that killing it was a
kindness, for only then could something new and better grow.
Mercy had been working hard to find a way to remove this weakness lurking inside him, to separate Kallan from Mongrel, a fate that both personalities were
desperate to achieve... but it might be too late now. Dreams had haunted the warlord for months, dreams of a kind he had experienced only once before: when he had been guided to Durace and discovered Thomas Barran, his chosen successor. The Mongrel could not touch the Force, so he knew that these nightmares were sent by the Three Avatars, premonitions of his destiny.
In his dreams, The Mongrel did not leave Tython alive.
His martyrdom was coming. Paradise beckoned.
He did not tell Mercy of this. Soon she would be free of him, and that would be better for her, a release from the torment he had caused her... but she would not see it that way. She would grieve for him, though The Mongrel - plunderer of planets, general of genocides, agent of apocalypse -
deserved no mourners. He could only hope that she would heal, or - failing that - pass soon into paradise beside him. Their twisted love could not endure in this galaxy, but if they were reborn by the grace of the gods in the Galaxy To Come...
.... perhaps then they could begin again, freed of sin.
How are you today, Lord Kala'myr? she asked him. She called him by the title
she had earned now, for they were joined.
~ I am always well when I am with you, ~ The Mongrel replied, reaching out to gently touch her face. But then she asked him a question, one that sent his mind reeling. She had asked him for a new name once before, and he had given her an old one: Kallan, his
self before the Maw. But Kallan had become his own person, recovering his strength, and now The Mongrel was just The Mongrel once more, a Mawite creature.
He had no other name to give her, no name that was his own.
But he did not wish to
ever disappoint her.
~ Kallan has returned to who he was, ~ he replied.
~ I cannot. I am what the Brotherhood made me, and Mongrel is the only name I was ever given. It was a term of derision in the beginning, a name they spat at me when I was a lowly slave-soldier, but it came to mean something more. ~ The warlord sighed, closing his eyes.
~ But you have known me in a way they cannot. You are the keeper of all my secrets, and the only one I can love. If you ask me, I will give you another name, one I choose for myself. ~
~ Call me Asher. ~ Among his people, it meant
Blessed.
And it fit. She was a blessing to him.
He
needed one last blessing.
Deep inside his mind, locked away from Asher's awareness, Kallan watched Keilara rise. He liked to see her in his shirt, to know that she wanted him close to her
always. The morning sun played over her skin as it streamed through the window, and he dreamed of a time when they might feel the warmth of the
real sun, and not just the illusion they had built from their memories. Mercy was close, Keilara told him, close to finding a way to separate him from the
thing that the Maw had placed in control of his tortured body.
He was desperate for that release.
~ I hope so, ~ he told his wife.
He wanted to leave war behind.
---------------------------------------------
Now
Tython. A beautiful blue-green jewel in the void.
The Mongrel remembered looking at it, fixing its pristine surface in his mind. When the Brotherhood was finished here, it would be only a memory. The Dark Voice was making this planet, the birthplace of the hated Jedi who had kept the galaxy in stasis for thirty thousand years, the nexus of his final ritual. When his work was complete, when he called the Avatars and opened the way to the Galaxy To Come, all of reality would be rewritten. All kings would fall, all suffering would end, and the cycle would be restored as it was meant to be.
Everyone would have a fresh start. No gods, no masters.
But would he live to see it? The warlord knew that his dreams spoke true, that his end was coming... but he knew not what form it would take. He was no gifted telepath, not like Mercy. Perhaps he would fall in battle here, martyred at last, praying with his final thoughts that he would prove worthy of the impending paradise. Or perhaps the Maw would sweep the field and the Dark Voice would achieve total victory, and his end would come when
everything was erased, this corrupted cycle ending so that another could begin. He could not know.
He could only find out.
Mercy approached, and he acknowledged her salute with a nod. In public she was his subordinate, not his equal, and he must show her no deference.
"At last we strike at the heart of the Jedi tradition," he replied, letting his booming mechanical voice wash over the row upon row of Scar Hound warriors that packed the hangar bay.
"Today we erase the history they desperately cling to. Today we take away their beginning, and become their end!" A thunderous roar of approval echoed up from all around him, chanting his name.
MONGREL! MONGREL! MONGREL!
But he hardly heard them. Inside, Mercy was speaking. She longed to return to the comfort of the house they shared in their minds, to finish the holomovie they'd begun on the long voyage into the Deep Core. In his figurative heart - his real one had long since been removed - The Mongrel knew they would never have the chance. He would not be returning to the Mawite warfleet, one way or another. But he did not want to make her worry, to put her in danger through fearing for him.
~ I can't wait to see how it ends, ~ he told her.
But he didn't really mean the movie.
---------------------------------------------
The Battlefield
In the sky, the moon itself shuddered.
Beneath that grim omen, the apocalypse descending upon Tython's once-serene surface, the Brotherhood marched to war. As their brothers the Bloodsworn took up their positions around the Dark Voice's chosen ritual site, prepared to fight to the last in their quest to ensure this reality's end, the Scar Hounds boiled out in a different direction. Theirs was a more traditional objective. The mighty Alliance vessel
Prosperity hung over the ruins of ancient Kaleth, the old and the new joined in preserving galactic stasis. That was the target.
Seize the ship. Kill the past.
Though they had been badly depleted by the battles of Nirauan and Odessen, the Scar Hounds had been granted time to recover. The forges of Mar'Zambul, fueled by the melted-down durasteel of a dozen conquered worlds and a thousand stripped battlefields, had been kept hot day and night for a
year. Out of them had poured War Skiffs and Raider Walkers and LuchsHai technicals, plus a million brutal weapons of war to arm the fierce tribesmen who would march upon the fields of Tython. Together they would fight and die in glory.
For most of them
would die; The Mongrel had no doubt of that. They were in the very heart of Alliance territory, and the entire galaxy was arrayed against them, an even greater force than the Brotherhood had faced at Csilla. There was no escape from this place, not with the endless fleets and armies pouring down from the sky to confront the Avatars' chosen. There was only victory or death, and even
victory would only come
in death for the vast majority of the warriors who fought here. But they knew no fear. Paradise was waiting.
"March south!" The Mongrel commanded, his voice like the grinding of tectonic plates as it echoed across the field.
"Seize the ruins of the Jedi Temple, for it is from there that we will launch our assault on their crumbling city! Die well, my warriors. This is our greatest test, and the Avatars are watching. A million saints shall be raised to glory in the wake of this battle!" For a moment, utter stillness greeted his words, the warriors all around him hanging on every syllable. Then, slowly, a great
thump. Then another.
Thump.
The noise crescendoed, a gradual rise, as more and more Scar Hounds beat their weapons against their armored chests. In the space of thirty seconds it grew from a whisper to
deafening thunder, the salute of men and women unafraid to seek a worthy death. This was the greatest battle the galaxy had seen in centuries, one lone army of the faithful against every last one of the Great Powers, and all of them were eager to meet whatever fate the gods had chosen for them here. The traditional cry soon rang out above even the pounding:
"WAR! DEATH! REBIRTH!"
In a great wave, the warriors of the Scar Hounds tribe rolled southward, War Skiffs leading the charge while walkers, speeders, bikes, and hordes of warriors filled the space between and behind them. The wet mud and tender reeds of the flooded plains squelched beneath their trampling feet as they advanced, making their way toward higher ground - and the ancient Jedi Temple that lay there, a relic of their foes. Beyond it lay Kaleth, the
Prosperity, and the key to their ultimate destiny. One step at a time, they would find glory.
But The Mongrel? He did not join them.
The warlord felt a tug within his metal frame, a mental call that he recognized as the voice of destiny.
There will be another place for you, it whispered.
A final clash, the end of your cycle. ~ I must go, Mercy, ~ Asher told her.
~ I feel... I feel a call. The gods are beckoning to me, and I must follow. What I do here will shape the course of this battle. ~ He turned and mounted his speeder bike, feeling the hum of the engine vibrating up through his chassis. One last ride. He wished he could feel the wind on his face as he went.
Perhaps in the next world he
would.
