Shattered

This story was co-written by Delerius_Jedi and Prisoner24601, and yes; we're back with "that" character again ;)

Blood slid down Mical’s arm and over his large, scholarly hands, making soft splattering noises as it dripped onto the cold stone floor of Trayus Academy. Wary of being attacked again, Mical made his way into the bowels of the fortress, following the trail of scorched and crushed bodies as he searched for the Exile.

Blast it, Atton! You should have listened to reason!

The fight between the two men had been brutal. Even though Mical had seen battle after battle in his time spent with the Exile, he’d never fought anyone with such burning hatred and seething bitterness as Atton. Atton’s fury had been absolutely terrifying; it had taken nearly every ounce of strength Mical had to fight off the jealous pilot, and now his Force powers were nearly gone.

The things he said…they made no sense. Mical paused and peered around a corner, taking care not to trip over yet another smoldering body the Exile had left in her wake. I did not steal her from him! I didn’t even think of her like that.

But then, Mical knew that wasn’t entirely true. Even before he’d found her on Dantooine, he’d been unable to forget the woman he’d idolized as a child. When he met her again, that interest had turned into obsession, despite his best efforts to remain distant and detached from her; to keep himself true to the ideals of the Jedi Order. The obsession still burned even though she delighted in seeking him out only to claw into his soul and tear those beloved beliefs down. Despite everything that he believed in and everything he’d witnessed her do, he was still drawn to her.

The sound of lightsabres clashing up ahead forced all thoughts of intentions from his mind. Slowing his breathing, he reached out with his Force senses and felt two presences ahead; one howled a familiar tangle of fury and pain, the other a dark empty void that fed on the power of Malachor itself.

What is this power? Just then, the blades stopped and he could hear muffled voices, and while he didn’t recognize the dark and powerful male voice, the second was unmistakable. Riss was near.

He pulled his head back sharply, as a blaster bolt singed the wall right above him. Turning, he saw a red-armoured guard coming towards him, indiscriminately firing a blaster rifle.

Mical raised and ignited his blade in one move; the blue bathed the corridor in light as he assumed a combat stance. Summoning the Force through his exhaustion, his blade weaved through the air, catching the bolts and deflecting them back squarely into the faceplate of the soldier. He dropped to the floor; the only sound was the clunk of his armour.

Glancing around, but seeing no one else, Mical deactivated his sabre and listened again; the voices from before had fallen silent. Drawing a deep breath, he moved forward, past the corner and down towards the large door at the end.

Riss stood over a broken man lying bloody on the ground, an unfamiliar red lightsaber in her left hand bathing the dark room in crimson, making her look like she was covered in blood even though she didn’t have a scratch on her. She flung the weapon across the room with a snort of disgust, the blade at last extinguishing when the hilt clattered along the cobblestone floor.

She looked up at him, her yellow eyes gleaming in the darkness. “You’re just in time to watch me cut down the betrayer. Or have you come to guide me back to the light?”

Mical’s throat went dry, as he tried to figure out what to say. “I came to help.”

He wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that, but by the way Riss smiled he knew that she found his uncertainty amusing.

“And exactly what are you planning to do, Mical? Kill me? Or have you finally seen that your path is useless and have come to join me?”

Mical shivered as bitter bile, fueled by fear, crawled up the back of his throat.

“I have come to redeem you. To lead you back to the light.” Saving the woman he’d once idolized from the darkness that plagued her was the reason he’d followed her across the galaxy and endured the constantly encroaching darkness that she inflicted on him. Or at least that’s what he’d kept telling himself.

But the words that he had once tried to live by were now hollow and flat, and he didn’t know if they ever held any meaning. Nothing he’d studied in the Jedi Code had prepared him for Riss. She confounded everything he’d studied and learned about the Jedi and shaken his cherished beliefs to the core. The darkness was becoming more and more mesmerizing daily, obscuring his once unchallenged ideals.

Riss laughed. It was a cold, hideous sound that echoed in the halls. “Redeem me?” A slow smile spread across her face “To be what? A puppet of a deceased Order? To be what you once wanted to be?”

She stepped away from the corpse of her opponent and began to circle him slowly.

“Tell me, Mical, why do you cherish the Jedi? They denied you your chance at greatness and power because they didn’t believe you were even worth taking the time to train.”

He wanted to tell her she was wrong. To say it hadn’t been like that, but the words hit too close to home, too close to the bitter resentment he’d carried over his rejection for years.

“What are you going to do now? Devote yourself to your tarnished ideal? Rebuild the Order that didn’t deem you as worthy enough to join?”

“What about you?” he shot back, finding unexpected strength in his anger and fear and hatred. “You waste your life on spreading darkness and never living for anything but power.” He was growing desperate. “It’s a life of nothingness.”

“You’re wrong. That’s not what I’m doing,” Riss growled, her eyes gleaming yellow in the dark. “I’m wiping out the last remnants of a corrupt Order. I’m making sure that the Jedi can’t do what they did to you and me to anyone else. I’m scouring their hypocrisy and lies off of the face of the galaxy. I’m saving the Republic from them. But you can’t see it because you’re one of their puppets.”

She unclipped her lightsabre from her belt. “It’s time for you to choose Mical. It’s time to decide whether you want to be a Jedi puppet or whether your want to free yourself from their dogma and lies.”

The silver blade sprang from the hilt, and Mical stepped back with his hands in front of him. “I’m not going to fight you.”

But he wanted to. He wanted to hurt her for making him question the things that he’d taken as absolutes, for making him witness horrors that he wished he could burn from his mind. And so even though he knew that he shouldn’t, that there had to be another, better way, he ignited his own lightsaber and faced her, drawing power that he didn’t even know he had from the surge of emotion.

It occurred to him that he was trying to succeed where others, including Jedi Masters, had failed. He’d watched her cut down three Council members, tear through an entire ship of Sith, and obliterate two Sith Lords. Most likely he was a dead man, but he still had to try, even though he found he almost preferred death than thinking of her words, that he was beginning to hear the truth in them.

He hated her for that, and he hated himself for believing.

Mical reached deep into the fountain of energy spawned of his emotion. He knew it was wrong, but it was necessary. If the past had revealed anything, it was that “serenity” was no match for Riss.

If my anger is the means to end you, then I shall use it. With that he charged, his blade in a high guard, the Force infusing him with speed and grace.

Riss’ silver blade seemed to appear out of thin air; one moment he was charging towards her, the next his blade was batted aside with impossible strength. The wind was knocked out of him as a boot hit him square in the chest, and he staggered backwards, falling on his back.

His head hit the floor and his vision reddened. When it cleared, Riss was standing over him, her blade pointing down at his throat; he welcomed the end, the nothingness. The doubt would be gone, that gnawing uncertainty of faith ripped away.

“I should kill you, but I’m feeling generous today.” She pulled the blade back a bit. “So I’m giving you a gift, Mical. Your life, and the knowledge of how your Jedi principles have utterly failed you today.”

At that moment, he finally understood. She wasn’t simply removing the ideals of the Jedi, but the hope they represented. He despised her in a way he never thought possible, and cursed her for condemning him to a life he only wanted to forget. He made one last attempt to call his saber to him.

She raised her free hand and slowly made a fist; Mical felt his airways contract under her grip. As the world went dark, the last thing he remembered seeing and hearing on Malachor V was the twisted smile and laugh of Riss Varn, and of defeat.