The Revenant Saga, Chapter 1 - The Descent.

Malak's stasis was a more thorough variety; more sadistic... not even a true stasis but more of a full paralysis it seemed. Through the bond he could feel Bastila struggling to breathe through nearly immobilized lungs. Surely Carth was enduring the same but that was an afterthought and he knew it, though he had the grace to feel a slight pang of guilt at the awareness. Reaching out with the Force, Raven Skywalker tried to soothe them both and using his depleted strength he was able to loosen Malak's grip on them a small amount. Coldly, Raven realized that he had to find Malak, the coward, and finish him or at least distract him to break the power's hold before they suffocated. When Raven's double-saber had cut through the ceramite plate on Malak's abdomen he had fled through a nearby blast door and magnetically sealed it so lightsabers could not penetrate it. 'Strange...' Raven thought to himself. 'I can barely remember being Revan at all, yet I can feel this loathing like an old and comfortable blanket... I feel exhausted and disgusted with his fear like I've dealt with it a million times before, despite the fact that I can't even remember his face... my apprentice's face.' Shaking his head to clear it, Raven reached out with the Force and examined the structure around him, poking and prodding at the hangar bay's door mechanisms with his senses. Within seconds he had opened a path around one side of the defensive area. Focusing, he prepared his body for the burst of speed he needed to catch Malak. Before he blurred away, he paused to send a quick thought through the lifebond to Bastila. :Hold on Bastila-ashke, just hold on a few moments more and I'll get you out of there.: Even as he blinked around the corners towards his quarry he felt her panic subside, replaced by her faith in him and a serene stillness as she forced her pinned lungs to take every bit of oxygen possible from the surrounding air. In a quiet part of the back of his mind, he asked the Force to make him worthy of such trust.

Even as Raven flew into the small chamber, Malak was spinning his red saber in vicious anticipation. Despite Malak's outwardly cocky bearing, Raven felt the fear flowing from his enemy and in an instant saw how to exploit it. Snapping his violet double-saber to life, he clutched the hilt diagonally in front of himself and jumped into a tight forehand corkscrew so that the blades struck at Malak at a frenzied speed, alternating like the threads of a screw. The blades clashed again and again at such furious speeds that the sound of their impacts was like a low rumble of thunder in the hangar bay. As Raven had anticipated, Malak tried to counter the tactic by spinning away with the rotation, the exactly correct way to retreat from it at minimal risk. Grinning savagely, Raven launched his actual strike. As Raven's right-hand blade came in for a high strike, Malak had finished his twirl into a fencer's stance and was prepared to lunge and catch Raven in the back on the anticipated next spin. Instead of continuing the spin as Malak expected, Raven shifted all his weight onto his right foot and twisted backward, turning the overhand slice into a reverse thrust at Malak's extended knee. When the metallic howl told Raven he'd connected, he waited to feel the chop that Malak hoped would remove Raven's right arm. Sensing the movement even as Malak began the anticipated counter, Raven wrenched back around on his still-planted right foot. Summoning up a burst of Force energy to power the move, he feinted a backhanded stab at Malak's right shoulder. Malak's blade whirled up in the perfect parry for the move, leaving him no recourse as Raven used the tension of the locked blades to further amplify the devastating hook kick that blasted Malak's metallic jaw cleanly off his face and sent it skittering across the hangar bay. Sensing victory, Raven executed a savage spinning jump, aiming the forehand blade with all his might at the back of his adversary's unprotected neck. However, Malak was indeed Dark Lord of the Sith and not so helpless as Raven took him to be. Calling up all his pain and fear, he lashed out with the Dark Side and captured Raven's trailing left foot, and with a savage twist flung Raven spinning limply into the bulkhead nearly 5 meters distant. Raven's left temple hit the corner of the blast door, rending flesh and bone and blinding him with white-hot agony as he slumped to the deck. Reflexively, he analyzed the wound and realized that if he didn't heal it, it would prove fatal in moments. Reaching out with the Force Raven began to heal the wound, knitting bone and rebuilding the shattered muscle around it even as he scrambled feebly away from the Dark Lord's approach.

Malak stalked him across the bay, following the trail of blood from Raven's head with the cold grace of a natural predator. Time appeared to slow around Raven as Malak's blade raised inch by agonizing inch for the killing blow. Raven suddenly realized he was beaten... he was going to die here. Dropping deep inside himself, Raven took all the power that remained to him and broke the paralysis holding his friends. As Malak's blade began to lower, he sent a single telepathic message to Bastila: :I love you, now run while you can!:

He hadn't been afraid to die, but a chill of dread filled Raven as he felt Bastila become aware of his plight and he helplessly saw what she planned to do. :No beloved, don't! Get OUT of here! NO!!!!!: The world slowed even further, to a mere crawl. Horrified, he heard the door open and Bastila's cry of defiance. Her throw was perfect, her double-saber parrying the downward slash and striking Malak's abdomen in a single graceful arc. Predictably, Malak re-focused on her and flashed to the attack. Even as Raven regained enough sense to begin to stand, She threw Carth through the blast door and slammed it shut between them, and activated the magnetic shielding on every door that led to them. Mentally, she screamed at both of them: :I'll hold Malak off, you have to get out of here! You have to find the Star Forge and stop Malak!: Even as Carth's anguished cries gave voice to what he could only think, the Leviathan's automated defense systems reinforced the magnetic field with powered energy shields on each wall. Blurring into motion, Raven frenetically struck every surface he could reach with his lightsaber, praying to find a weakness in the shielding, but there was none to find. Tears of rage and despair flowing freely, Raven opened himself up wide to the Force and started drawing in power. Instinctively, as if remembering something he had long forgotten, he drew in the power and focused it deep inside, compressing it into small spark at the center of his being, running power into it until it lashed back against the constraints and burst out in a wave of pure telekinetic energy. He felt as if a remote and insignificant thing the impact of the power on the walls of this chamber. With an almost nonchalant shrug he continued blasting power into the effect as the walls of the hangar bay itself began to creak and buckle. :I don't care if I have to tear this ship to its component parts you filthy monster, you CANNOT have her!: He didn't know or care if Malak heard him, he just kept pushing, tearing massive sections of bulkhead apart and starting to separate the walls themselves away from the doors. A voice, distant and remote at first, penetrated the haze of rage and pain that filled his mind.

'Raven. Raven! Dammit, RAVEN! REVAN!' Carth roared against the cacophony of grinding and buckling durasteel. At the last, he saw a dim glimmer of recognition in his companion's eyes. 'Dammit, Raven! Bastila's going to need you to be yourself if we're going to have any chance to save her, and if you slip back to being Revan she'll be lost forever. We have to get to the Ebon Hawk and find that last Star Map if we're going to save her at all. If you rip this ship open like you're trying to do, you'll just kill all of us, even her. I know that's not what you want, right, partner? She sacrificed herself so we could get away, don't let it be in vain!' Carth held his breath for what seemed like an eternity, until at last Raven let out a great scream full of agony that sounded as if it was torn from the very bottom of his soul and sagged onto Carth's shoulder. Carth shook off the effects of the Force-amplified cry of anguish and half-dragged his heartbroken friend towards the boarding ramp of the Ebon Hawk. 'Well,' Carth mused to himself 'at least after that what guards might have been between here and there will be too busy bawling their eyes out to stop us.'

After the Hawk was safely on the hyperspace route to Korriban, Carth sucked in one more stabilizing breath. 'And now for the hardest part of this journey yet;' he told himself, 'seeing if I can figure out how to help the rest of the crew remind Raven of who he is now and keep him from turning him back into who Saul said he was.' Carth rubbed his thin beard thoughtfully as he continued. 'Well, Raven has picked on me about my suspicious nature since I've known him... if I play the suspicious role that just might snap him back into at least the person I've known.' He sighed profoundly. 'Well, it's at least the best idea I've got... it's now or never.' Steeling himself for the verbal sparring he knew was coming, he headed back to the main crew area where everyone was busily attempting to soothe and console the desolate Raven.

The discussion had gone fairly well all things considered, Carth supposed; (He had to wonder really, how well could it have gone telling people that their close friend used to be Dark Lord of the Sith, but he's all better now!) but something in Raven/Revan's attitude and carriage just wasn't adding up. Sure, Bastila was an important team member and a good friend, but Raven was acting like he'd lost an arm or worse. His friend had seemed so far distant, his eyes so vacant. It was almost like something had died inside him... died and been replaced with something angry, at that. At least Raven had had the good sense to go back to the entertainment area of the Hawk. During the long journeys together, Carth had become quite fond of the music that Raven so frequently recorded back there to pass the time or commemorate special events. He had to grudgingly admit he'd even developed a fondness for that bizarre instrument that Raven had bought from Igear, that scavenger in Taris' Undercity. A guitar, Raven had called it. Sighing, Carth did have to figure that it only made sense that the tones he would hear coming from back there now were not the soothing kind he'd hoped for, but angry, clashing noises as Raven vented his anger and despair through the music,1 bled it out through the strings of his strange alien instrument. Despite himself, Carth was humming along by the time Raven played his angry song for the last time to record it into the data arrays. Carth relaxed a few minutes more, and had just started to sit up and smile when a cry like that of a dying animal rang through the Hawk. Grabbing his blades, he darted in the direction of the noise, not even sure what it was he was so afraid to see.

Raven didn't even remember crying out, but from all his friends' dazed and worried expressions he knew he must have. Through the haze of uncontrolled tears, he saw them all there, weapons ready to defend him from whatever great threat it must have taken to put him into such pain as they no doubt felt radiating from him. He tried to reach up and deactivate the holo-recorder, but was stopped by one of Juhani's surprisingly gentle hands. He had stumbled upon the recording by accident, seeing a file array that he didn't recognize and pulling it up and seeing it was Bastila's, he had to look at it and see if it gave any clue that he could use to help find her. He had also hoped that it contained some snippet of her voice, just so he could hear it again even for a moment. He had been utterly unprepared for what the file actually contained. The recording started again, and all he could do was watch, tears and more streaming down his face in unabashed anguish. The holo-recorder on the entertainment array's computer displayed Bastila, dressed in those beautiful blue knight robes that matched her eyes. All eyes in the room focused on the display, and it seemed that all other sound in the universe stopped as the scene unfolded before them.

'Beloved, I am leaving this message in here where I am sure only you will find it. I have to tell you that I am so proud of you for being able to not let our feelings for each other show through and distract us and the others from our mission. I need to tell you this, but I cannot do so face-to-face without breaking through my control and giving us away entirely. I love you, and I know in my heart of hearts that you will defeat Malak. And when you do, you deserve to know that whatever else you decide, my priority from that day forward will be to be at your side loving you as you deserve, and hopefully finding a way to make up to you the time we have to spend so close to each other without being able to share all those feelings we so desperately need to.' She hesitated a moment before continuing. 'I am scared, Raven. I'm scared of losing my friends in the Order and I'm scared that our love might put you or our mission at risk. I'm terrified, and I can't even ask you to hold me and make it all go away.' The note of sadness in her voice was accompanied by a girlish gesture of biting her lower lip for a moment before she composed herself and continued. 'There are so many things I still need to tell you... by the time you get this recording you should hopefully have heard the only secret I still keep from you, and if I have not, come find me when this recording ends.' The holographic recording displayed her face changing to her charming smile with such vibrance that every heart in the room, even Canderous's nearly broke as her next words came out. 'I've chosen this method of communicating with you because I know how dear music is to your heart, and because no-one else is usually back there with you. I love you and... I hope you like it. I can hardly wait to be with you again, my love.' The image zoomed out some, showing her sitting at a keyboard even as the first plaintive notes of her song poured out through the speakers.2