Shades of Grey

The Force is a difficult thing to comprehend, full of contradiction and riddled with mystery. It is both alive and yet not alive, it has its own will and yet mortals still use it as a tool as though it did not. It flows through every molecule of the universe's being and yet it is still stronger in some places than others. It is not inherently good or evil: Like any other power, it is only the way in which it is used by its wielder that defines what it is.

And what are good and evil? Do they really exist outside of the teachings of the Jedi and the Sith? Outside of the minds of mortals do those dualistic concepts really mean anything? Do they really serve any purpose but to divide people into 'us' and 'them,' to teach us who our enemies are? And what does the Force care for such notions, does it in itself divide into things 'good' and things 'evil'?

How can it care for the ideas of these limited fools?

The Force was my tool for most of my life, I was both Jedi and Sith and like them I thought I understood the true meaning of the Force. But both the Jedi and the Sith are fools, they are too steeped in their tradition, their petty rivalries, to comprehend what I now see: The Force; it uses people, not the other way around.

I am blind, my eyes have long been useless, but I see more clearly now than I have ever done. I am well aware of the irony of a blind seer, but when the Force flows through me I am also not truly blind, nor a true seer. When I was a Jedi I thought nothing of using the Force to give me a form of sight and when I became a Sith I revelled in my so-called power over my body's weakness.

Yes I was once such a fool too, no more wise or insightful than a Jedi or a Sith and like them I thought that their teachings granted true wisdom. As a Jedi I thought that self-control was all that mattered and as a Sith I craved power beyond anything... such was my folly to believe that these limiting philosophies grant their followers anything.

It was not until my apprentices cast me aside that I saw how things truly are, where power truly lies. Darth Sion, he who became a shattered shell of a man at my command, battered my flesh and feasted on my pain. And Darth Nihilus, who was little more than primal hunger given a human shape, drained me of my power and stripped me of my connection to the Force. I was a Jedi who fell twice, once I fell to the so-called Dark Side, the second time I was cast down to become... something else entirely.

They did it to humiliate me, to show me they had become more powerful than their Master. They saw it as more cruel to leave me powerless than to kill me, to abandon me there at their feet, as if I were beneath their notice. And as I lay there, truly blind, truly weak, I wished they had killed me... for a Sith to be alive and yet weak beyond the possibility of revenge is a fate far worse than death.

Once again I see the irony in the situation; my apprentices thought they were destroying me when they cast me down. They could not have known that their humiliation would strengthen me, empower me, beyond anything they could ever have imagined. Like Revan I would one day return to strike them down, but unlike my former pupil, I would not use my own hands to do it.

My apprentices could not destroy the Force power within me, they could only rob me of my connection to it, my ability to feel it and wield it: A blind woman may not be able see light, but that does not mean the sun does not exist and at first living without feeling the Force is like living without sunlight, especially since I was physically blind without it, but one does not need light to live and so, slowly, I adjusted.

Those who have never learned to feel the Force might wonder why it would seem so terrible for any Force sensitive to lose their connection to it. The simple truth of it is that any Force user, be they Jedi or Sith, comes to depend upon the Force and without it they are merely human. They have to rely on their own strength, their own skill and face their foes with their own meagre bravery. However there is strength within this apparent weakness; to look upon this old, fragile form of mine, much creased and bent with the passage of time, no one could suspect of the power I can and do wield.

A Jedi might understand that strength can be found within fragility, but a Sith would certainly not. However neither of these peoples can understand the techniques I have learned since my second 'fall.' It is not known or accepted that the absence of the Force can be a power of its own, for one that cannot feel where the Force flows, can still use its power to shape her will.

Like my former apprentice I am a wound within the Force, a gaping maw that can devour its energy, but the Exile and I differ in many ways: She is a leader; she draws people to her without ever trying... whereas I push them away. The Exile draws strength from her friends, inspires them to sacrifice themselves needlessly, out of some misguided sense of loyalty to her.

They tried, foolishly, to murder me, to protect the one they called leader. They do not see that my 'betrayal' is just another test and a test that is for the Exile alone. Fools each and every one of them, for all their skills, for all the training that the Exile lavished upon them... they still comprehend nothing.

I killed them: The one-armed Zabrack, the broken Mandalorian, the pacifist bounty hunter, the Exile's faithful lapdog of a disciple and, of course, Nihilus' former blind slave girl. I admit I was curious as to why Nihilus wanted the Miraluka at his side, if I thought him capable of nostalgia I'd wonder if the blind puppet was a keepsake, perhaps some reminder of my self.

Although I killed them without hesitation, I felt no satisfaction or remorse at their deaths, just as I felt nothing when I instantly slew the remaining Jedi Council members. Although it was something of a relief to have Sion finally silence Atton's banal bravado, I am glad I was spared having to listen to his final words. I killed them out of necessity, not out of hate. And the Exile, being the sentimental creature she is, will only find it easier to hate me for it.

And that is exactly what I desire from her.

She never did trust me, probably the only sensible thing she ever did, but she would not think me capable of murdering her friends, her apprentices. She still adheres to her foolish ideas of right and wrong; she clings to the Jedi Code even though the Order rejected her. At first she will try to 'turn' me, to bring me back to what she calls the right path, but you cannot redeem what was not lost in first place. And eventually she will be forced to strike me down, just as I have always intended her to do.

I do not fear death; my life is the necessary price to make the Exile finally understand what I see. She does understand all I have sacrificed, all the pain I have endured to make her strong and peerless. In Peragus I sacrificed my hand to keep her safe, now I sacrifice my life to make her see the world as I see it. After all, what is the life of one being, even my own, compared to the death of all things?

The Exile is an emptiness, not a power-hungry mouth like Nihilus, but an absence, an inversion. She is like a counterpoint to Revan, one controls the Force, the other destroys it, and that is why they need to be together. There is a pestilence within the universe, a thing whose very existence warps the threads of time and space. It is a canker, a virus, a plague that leeches into the minds of Jedi and Sith alike. Out beyond the outer rim, Revan battles endlessly, but futile against it, but with the Exile as her ally she may yet defeat it.

I cannot tell what the future may hold, my visions are piecemeal at best, but if Revan succeeds it will be the death of the Force and if she does not, it will be the death of us all. Either way, it does not matter much to me anymore, I have already chosen my future, my path was set in stone the moment I let Sion take my hand on Peragus. I always knew it would end here, where Revan took her first steps into darkness, where the Exile became what she is, where Nihilus was born... here in the blackness of Malachor.

'At last you have arrived. Is Malachor as you remember?'