*
What will take place in the future...
The Sith Temple was deserted. Or, rather, it looked deserted as the spatter of rain washed across it's stone and steel edifice trailing down gullies of mortar and chasms of architecture, the purpose of which known only to the first builders whose names have long since been forgotten.
The lush vegetation of the surrounding jungle-forest had claimed the area in the interim of years. Now, where once stood simple materials of construction and terraforming, a conglomeration combining the aggressiveness of nature and the nuances of Sith alchemy had given birth to a symbiosis of both life and death. If the inanimate could speak, of what sort of horrors would this structure shout out to the galaxy?
The sap of the vegetation dripping from hidden orifices down interior walls as blood from a dying body mixed with the mold that clung to walls dark, damp and rank with misery.
A lone figure was found scurrying across the empty corridors, looking every which way as if he was being followed stealing across stained crimson carpet making no sounds. A paranoid sort of person and one who's healthy sense of self preservation was appreciated by the one to whom the figure had come to see.
The cold within the stone ebbed away as flickers of light and the warmth of fires permeated outward with each step towards the inhabited chambers.
It was a welcome sight to the visitor and he proclaimed his joy out loud when having reached his destination. "You would not believe how bad it is out there, Master Perrin," the man exclaimed removing his rather thick outer garments.
"Dar, I assume the seasonal snows have begun?"
"Begun? They've been falling for the better part of the week. Rain, sleet and snow. Not a climate one expects here." The tone was friendly but Perrin knew the visitor was everything but..
The old man, wrapped in blankets sitting in a high-back chair simply shrugged, his white hair tied back despite it's being dry. This was a man used to the comforts in life and this was a man who spared no expense in enjoying them.
For what use was the Dark Side if you could not enjoy it?
When the visitor, Dar, had shed his coverings he moved to the carpet at Lord Perrin's feet and sat down.
"I take it you are here for another story?" the Sith Master asked in a slight tone of annoyance. The question was both unnecessary and painful for it held out to Dar the hope of the old man complying to the request without the actual commitment.
"I have come to hear the rest of it," Dar said eagerly.
A little too eagerly. Perrin was instantly wary of the turnaround in attitude for upon the boy's first visit, he was unruly, arrogant and a general pain in Perrin's side. Such persons weighed heavily on what little patience the Sith Master had nowadays and so he prepared to make Dar an ex-member of the living for the mortal sin of having the arrogance of the young..
A sin he knew well for he was arrogance personified at a younger age.
The boy wanted to know things but had not the patience to listen. He even had the audacity to grow angry when he did not like the answers that had come. Perrin had finally cut the boy's blathering short by brushing his hands across the youngling's forehead causing the young force-user to stagger back as if the Sith Master had struck him a powerful blow.
Perrin had, however, given the other a taste of something far more powerful than a mere blow...
Vision
The young man had come back several times after wanting more. Each time, the aged 'Master Perrin' would simply say, "Come back tomorrow" silently enjoying the torment that played across the stage of the boy's face.
Each successive visit drew the boy's patience thinner and thinner but, at the same time, also drew out his dogged determination. Each attack on his patience drew the youngster's anger out to the fore. That anger propelled his desire.
Until such a time that the boy, even with the probable risk of being turned away, ventured into the blistering cold and snow at the mere idea of the chance that Perrin would say 'yes'. It was one thing to sacrifice time but this time, for what he sought, the boy sacrificed his life.
It became a payment adequate enough for Perrin's time.
but....
...to know what?
What was the boy really after? It was a subtle question that preyed upon the older man's mind like an amusing puzzle.
Despite the fact that the boy tried to hide his force aura, Perrin deftly plucked it's existence out of shadow and into the Sith Master's full awareness, watching...judging.
It was amusing to the old man to witness the raw strength contained within the boy's frame and his novice attempts at masking it.
Why do those with the power attempt to hide it?
It was an observation that brought a memory to conscious thought and upon realizing the connection, linked the two. It was a similar observation made as a younger man at another place, in another time..
His eyes took in the seated boy with experience knowing that the young man had stationed himself in such a strategic manner... easily able to avoid any unsuspecting attack, easily able to draw his own lightsaber, the hilt of which was not nearly so cleverly hidden as the boy would have liked to have thought, with room enough to launch his own attack and cut down the old man if necessary.
It was as if the boy had thought of all the natural combat alternatives that might come upon him not willing to give Perrin the benefit of the doubt, much to Perrin's approval.
But it was a trap. An insidious trap to be sure but one most effective.
A trap that the old texts referred to it as a Double Blind. It was a trap that very few could successfully cast, especially against great numbers, largely because part of its success depended on the actions of those being trapped.
Especially hard when your foes held onto their force-awareness like children to security blankets.
Perrin's hands clasped together in front of his chin contemplating the youngster.
"What do I show you, young man? I wonder.. what would make an impression on your logical, yet skeptical, progression of thought? Or what passes for thought in that mass you call a mind? Should I take you to the beginning? To a cusp period? To the end?"
The boy leaned closer and closer to the old man as he mused to himself.
Perrin suddenly snapped his fingers.
"I know just the thing! A Lesson in Stupidity!"
The boy looked confused and Perrin wagged a wrinkled finger at him. "All you've heard are stories, legends and made up myths of these larger-than-life people. So romanticized are you by their accounts you are already on the road to self delusion!"
His finger tapped his chest. "I. I have lived during the time of Gods and Men. Of Men and Gods! I have lived during the time of Daemon Hyfe, of Lupercus Darksword and of Darth Vicirus! Of Lady Skygge, Recon Klain, of Doan Silk...and yes, of that baffoon Lord Maim and his whore, Athena.
But most youngsters nowadays? All they want to hear is the story of Dacian Palestar!"
He rasped out a chuckle and gestured, moving another piece of wood onto the two fireplaces set on either side of the room.
"A story of monumental stupidity on such a grand scale as I have ever seen."
The young man's features drew closer in anger. "If you are going to..."
"Oh shut up," petitioned Perrin, waving the youngster's comments away as if they were no consequence, which, in fact, they were not.
The old man leaned forward and gestured for the boy to move up as if they were two old hands scheming.
"Don't take my word for it... Let me show you."
His trembling arm stretched out and as his fingers touched the boy's forehead, they were no longer seated in the room. In fact, they were no longer in the Sith Temple in the middle of a jungle in the middle of a freezing winter.
They were standing on a mountain top with winds blowing wildly at their clothes and in the far distance, amid both white and dark smoke rising heavenward, stood the defiant Sith Temple.
"Where... Where are we?" the youngster stammered, suddenly feeling weak at the knees.
"Xa Fel," The old man, Perrin, answered quietly, himself taken aback by the sights before him. "I stood on this very spot and gazed at this very scene, the bloody stupidity of everyone's position so crystal clear at that moment in time to one with insight it's a wonder I did not fall down dead at my lack of it!"
"Stupidity!?" cried the youngster over the roar of the winds.
"No, Insight..." Perrin purred in response. He knew the boy was balking at his heroes of old suddenly having the faults of ..of... mortals?
Well, we all are mortal! Foolish child!
Perrin waved his hand about the scenery in irritation. "Things you do not know... Lupercus Darksword and his pet Ithron stupidly come back into the inner sanctum of Darth Vicirus knowing that they both are at odds! Darth Vicirus stupidly allows Lupercus a foothold into his own kingdom and while he licks his wounds from that!" he points to the black smoke rising high in the distance.. "his entire Order now is in the hands of his fellow rival, Lupercus! Doan Silk stupidly submitted before a Church which is, yet again, another variation of Sith power probably following in his old fool-Lord Maim's footsteps. A hack if I ever heard of one!"
"And Dacian?" Dar's voice seemed like a squeak.
"Palestar?" Perrin snorted, "He had the stupidity of the young."
Even his contempt, so crystallized in one of his advanced age, for the players involved in the scene before him did not erase his acknowledgment that these giants, in this place, at that time, were probably the largest gathering of those who were the most powerful beings in the entire galaxy. Never mind the Empire's machines! These titans among men swept up in their personal passions were far, far more dangerous!
Beings of which were the Tales that mortals trembled in telling!
At that moment, a low boom was heard, more like distant thunder, as energy pulses sizzled through Xa Fel's atmosphere in a downward descent striking the Sith Temple without grace. The intent of the attackers shouted in detail with each weapon fired...
They wanted the Sith Temple to burn!
To be wiped from the face of the planet!
The constant fury behind the intent revealed in the mass of enemies in the far distance.
Perrin could not hear their war cries, their yells or the sounds of fighting as the wind dispersed such sounds in the distance that separated the Sith Knight and the apparent war taking place without him.
Without him..
The old man's eyes blinked in the wind even now, his desire to fight, stirring from deep within his soul. He clearly remembered the emotions of a younger self opening and closing his fists at the sight laid out in the distance.
But even the temptations and stirrings of old emotions at the memory before him could not dissolve the admiration for the Double Blind trap forming so far away. He had never seen such a trap constructed so intricately and encompassing so many at one time.
At the time, standing far off on a mountain peak, he had not recognized the glaringly obvious that was spelled out before him. Truth wrapped in a package of feral combat.
The boy beside him was silent in awe at the distant spectacle.
I was just as stupid..., the old man mused to himself.
The enemy had complete air superiority and having it, had landed their barges in such a way that surrounded the Sith Temple all the time keeping their orbital weapons standing at the ready. Bombers and fighters circled from above and with the brilliance of hindsight came a realization that the old coot, Azrael Zell, was right all along:
As powerful as the fucking Sith are, they can't execute a plan for shit! Take Xa Fel for example. If you are going to blow the shit out of the Temple, you don't achieve air superiority only to fuck it up by landing thousands of soldiers! Who the fuck are the bombers going to bomb now? Their own forces? An electromagnetic pulse in the heart of that air-fucking-superiority would have downed all those birds on their own fucking people! Crusading dipshits. Sith by another name, if you fucking ask me!
Perrin's chapped lips parted in a grin. Only an Imperial would care about the numbers. Perhaps that is why they won wars. But the nature of the enemy attacking the Sith Temple told the Order that they did not give a damn about numbers. They would sacrifice as many of their soldiers, their entire army possibly, to make a point. Perhaps the pragmatic Imperial military response would be to simply let them until they burned themselves out but what sort of action would this mean to a Sith? Sith who have survived for thousands of years?
"It is obvious.." the old man whispered watching the sealing of the enclosure surrounding the Sith Temple. No other place on this world was being harrassed. No other structure seemed to hold interest to these... Crusaders.
He knew who they were now... but then? Then it was just shock at the idea of such an assault against the center of the Sith Order. The kernel of a future Sith Empire.
The memory of what was above the Temple, in orbit, was like a dark blot against a white sky. To see it filled one with a searing burn of pain as if the craft high above them had traveled to Xa Fel on the dying souls of a million, million beings. As if the very coffers of hell were thrown opened to fuel a ship whose keel was laid in misery, whose armour were screams of shattering terror, and whose weapons were the combined spite of an entire universe rolled into one and spit out into the eye of god.
The darkened masses of bodies moving about on the ground below, some in chaos and some in ordered arrangement, were shadows upon the land surrounding the Temple. Most took no note of anything else destroying only that which they found hindering their march, rank and file, towards the Temple.
All of these things... were clues. Obvious, glaring, and shouting as to a fact that Perrin himself missed. He wondered if anyone else at the time had made the connections..
This was personal!
The enemy knew exactly where they were going.. knew exactly what they were doing.. knew exactly how to arrive, when to arrive and by what route to arrive.
The Sith Order should have known who was on the other end of the swinging saber!
An errant child of the Sith coming home to burn the house his parents lived in? A wronged alcolyte or apprentice returning to show his Masters that he had entered into power on his own?
To move forward, to advance... the parents must die!
Was this the catalyst that added fuel to the Double Blind that was being enacted?
The irony of the situation was that the Double Blind was not set in place by any Sith Master that he had known. The Double Blind was the trap of the Temple itself.
Those ancient builders immersed in the arts, alchemy and powers inherent with the Dark Side knew their craft and took pride in their work. They knew intimately the philosophy and psychology of those that would reside in such a place and of those that would dare attack it.
Those who simply walked it's corridors and trained in its halls and left never realized the power of such a place that served as seat to many Sith Councils.
They couldn't!
Those nomadic Sith cults and offshoots that roamed the stars looking for their place in the legends of galactic history never realized the truth about such historical centers of Sith activities.
They couldn't!
That the structure itself could take the beating these invaders were unmercifully pounding into it was a testament to the galaxy that these buildings were something more.
These were structures whose outer skin was the cold sweat of the darkside itself and the only thing in want of these beautifully crafted works of art was simply a worthy resident.
Those attackers were declaring their worth and value with every step they took towards the Temple. Their marching between it's doors and crossing of it's threshold put the ownership of the Temple on notice and in question.
..and that was what was at the heart of a Double Blind.
The surrounding of an enemy from the center. A contradiction in terms to be sure but a circumstance that trapped a hunter just as completely as they thought they had trapped.
The invaders had surrounded the Temple preventing the Sith from fleeing but they themselves could not leave for to leave was to admit defeat and failure. The very design of the Temple augmented the power of the one while reducing the power of the many. The invaders were trapped in a circle of their own self delusions, their own plans that they would not, could not, admit were flawed.
To do so was to go against everything that a leader of fanatics, a cult of personality, thrived in.
For who followed a leader that was unsure?
Who followed a leader whose philosophy and whose callings were ulitmately... flawed?
Especially if such ones were powerful in the use of the Force!
That was the deception that was the darkside. And to succumb to such deception was to allow the darkside to rule oneself instead of the other way around.
And being ruled by the darkside took away the one thing that made one powerful. All powerful, in fact.
Choice
Which was why once you start down the road to the darkside, forever would it dominate your destiny.
For those that started down the road did so by choice!
Spurred on by their blind hatred, warped visions, flawed strategies and the chains of desire... the invaders, these Crusaders, would soon find their choices diminishing at a cascading rate.
Their actions would be dictated by brutal necessity rather than choice and once the invaders found themselves led rather than leading, they would fall apart, unraveling under the force of the Double Blind.
*
The old man smiled grimly.
The Double Blind worked another way as well. For the Temple only served those worthy of it.
Darth Vicirus and his minions....
Lupercus Darksword and his minions...
Doan Silk and his minions...
Dacian Palestar and his minions...
...Self delusion could go either way.
"So... what happened?" the boy's wretched voice intruded and Perrin felt a wash of annoyance flow through him.
He gazed down from his vantage point seeing a younger self slowly climbing down in an effort to get to the fight.
But the truth was, his younger self was too far away and the fight would more than likely be over by the time he even felt the heat of the cratered Temple grounds.
But there were always options and he remembered being resourceful as a youngster, wincing at the next memories recalled.
I was stupid when I was younger...
"Boy, I've polished my boots on the skulls of Dark Lords. I've walked in a time of giants. You do not have the steel in your backbone to see what happened next!"
There was a flash of anger in the boy's eyes and his voice calmed. "What do I have to do to prove myself to you?"
And there it was.
"What do I have to do?"
The aged Perrin almost laughed out loud at the pathetic platitude.
"What do I have to do?"
A voice of humility.
A voice for enlightenment.
The tremor of soft spokenness, of earnest expression, especially in the face of such awe inspiring sights, would have allowed one in Perrin's position to feel smugly secure in their knowledge but that was, of course, an illusion.
"What do I have to do?"
Laying bare each thread of the illusion that sat cloaked upon the voiced request was all to easy for the Sith Master.
It was not a voice of humility as much as it was desperation.
It was not a voice for enlightenment as much as it was a pleading of desire.
And yet Perrin stripped those strands further and was not disappointed for he found the banal and rudimentary lie within the request.
For it was also not a voice of desperation as much as it was of purpose.
And it was also not a voice of pleading as much as it was a demand.
What did this fool want?
What was he after?
Perrin withdrew his hand from the boy's forehead and the mixture of cold and warm from his Sitting Room within the Temple suddenly flooded their senses causing him to shiver slightly. He gestured and more wooden logs were added to the fire.
He was often suprised at the lack of certain modern facilities within a structure as large as the Temple. The builders probably felt that a little cold or hot would do the Temple's residents good... perhaps toughen them up. Yet he still cursed those ancient builders for if they had access to such building materials and they knew about electricity and other forms of power, surely they could have added automated environmental controls so he would not have to freeze himself to death with this fool of an aloclyte.
That the aloclyte, Dar, did not offer to lay more logs onto the fire told Perrin that his pennitant nature was merely a cloak. But covering what he had yet to penetrate.
"You are so thirsty for this tale of Dacian that you overlook the obvious." the old man remarked, trying to clear his throat before a fit of coughing.
"That the Palestar moved against you." the alcolyte answered directly, "That you actually fought against him."
The fool had so much awe in his voice that Perrin did actually choke. On a cackle. "What? No overwhelming awe for the great Crimson Emperor?"
The alcolyte frowned. "Who?"
In truth, the Crimson Emperor was the name of the ship that the person Perrin was referring too road the galaxy in and not the person himself, ironically.
"The Lord Protector of a Dead Dark Lord," Perrin spat out, "which," he concluded, "says something about his ability to protect..."
The alcolyte stared stupidly at him.
"Doan Silk!" Perrin snapped in anger.
"Oh... he was the Palestar's greatest servant," Dar replied as if history had somehow been rewritten to fit his foolish fancy.
Perrin scowled at the comment wondering what the Lord Protector would think of himself being thought of by posterity as Dacian's minion.
Dar interrupted his musings, "So you fought against the Palestar?"
When did the fool's name suddenly become a title?
Before the Sith Master could respond, Dar clarified, "I saw your younger self clearly attempting to traverse the mountain-side to get to the battle."
It was interesting to note that Dar's hand involuntarily twitched toward his saber hilt but there was no presence of purpose on the alcolyte's face.
The Sith Master supplied his own clarification of the account, "I was too late to join the battle proper. By the time I arrived, the Palestar was in full retreat." Perrin was delighted to see that his inflection of the fool's hero caused the boy's skin to twitch.
"The Palestar is no coward!" shouted the boy and with a wave of his hand, Perrin pushed the boy back.
"Spare me your hero-worship foolish boy," the Sith Master declared unmoved. "You think there is but one reason to retreat in battle which shows just how much of a fool you are! In truth, there are three reasons to retreat in battle!"
"In truth, Master?" the boy suddenly saw vindication for the reputation of his hero.
"Oh, now I am a Master am I?" Perrin snapped back sardonically. "There is, as I am sure you know, you being a coward as to why you might retreat from battle. The other two reasons are less thought of but are no less valid. You might retreat from battle because you are brave enough to swallow your pride knowing that to commit more to a foolish endeavor is to allow yourself to lose that much more. Or, you might retreat from battle because you have already done what you came to do."
As the boy pondered this revelation born from experience, Perrin remembered the tactical analysis given by Azrael Zell after Dacian's Crusade.
How does a mob leader get his mob? By pretending he's the biggest badass out there and throwing around useless phrases like 'the galaxy will burn'.. I mean, how the fuck can fire survive vacuum? Every fucking idiot that joins the cause thinks that they will die for something larger than them which is this great big fucking burning of the galaxy. But you can be sure that unless this Dacian Palestar is an idiot himself, he is not looking for himself to die in this great big fucking burning because if he is looking for death there are a lot easier ways to accomplish it than trying to lead idiots against our guns. Chaos for the sake of chaos is not a reason. It is an excuse that the stupid use with other stupid people.
Xa Fel showed that our little crusader had a fucking revelation. An epiphany of insight which would change the strategies of future attacks. Applying overwhelming force is great an all when you don't give a shit about the numbers you throw away. But Xa Fel showed us that, in the midst of that fight, our little Dacian suddenly found that he did care about how stupidly he was throwing away his only resource to make a name for himself.
His base, the foundation worlds on which his fucking crusade started from, was probably intended to be simply throw-away worlds. And like any warlord, he ran into that age-old fucking revelation that any holomap could have shown him. That space is fucking HUGE! And the small pittance of warriors taken from these worlds, though numbering in the thousands, are just not enough to fucking take the galaxy...much less burn it. Xa Fel taught him that!
The peckerwood thought he could unzip his fly and show the universe his dick. And when he got it lopped off he had to run away like the castrated eunich that he was.
Now the bastard is meaner for the lesson learned. And so now our young warrior conquering, crusading bastard finds that he must not only maintain his foundation worlds, but he must protect them for the pussies they are and add to his budding new empire to keep up with the constant resupplying his dipshit military leaders require.
Otherwise, his great big fucking galaxy burning will be nothing more than a fucking grass fire.
Perrin knew Dar would have had a heart-attack if he had felt the full brunt of Old Zell's cutting remarks of his hero. The Imperial had a way of turning even the most innocent of girls dressed in pretty white dresses into cheap whores and the beautiful flowers they held into pieces of shit.
"The Palestar also attacked the Imperial Occupation Zone," the boy remarked as if trying to justify a strategy of a bygone era that did not require the justification of the living anymore.
But that did not invalidate the strategy for history is the ultimate judge of such things and with the wisdom born to Perrin Descartes of hindsight, he did feel the move to attack in the Occupation Zone was a worthy one.
For was this not also the strategy he had used on Xa Fel?
Even as the Double Blind held sway over the fate of the battle or the fate of the Temple itself there was found much confusion sown within the turmoil.
Powers unleashed both from the starry heavens above and from the defending masses below smashed friend and foe alike.
It was into such confusion that Dacian penetrated the Temple and found himself standing not at the command of any Sith Master but by his own will and power.
It was into such confusion that Dacian's second attack of his Crusade upon the galaxy at large poured his armies setting their sights on the Imperial Occupation Zone.
"There is a quote," started the old Master, "that the Lord Protector Doan Silk liked to espouse: 'A Sith's worst enemy is himself, or his fellow Sith.'" Perrin's eyes narrowed as he tried to recall the old speech, "'This, we Crusaders, have overcome. Your will is our own, our ambitions a single goal; to see the galaxy burn! First on the altar of sacrifice - the Sith Order, pretenders to the throne.'"
The boy scratched his head in irritation and Perrin pointed a gangly finger at him.
"What I want from you, Dar, before you can stand before living Gods is to find the reality within that statement."
Once given a task that would allow him to cast his gaze once more upon the triumphs of his hero, Dacian Palestar, he asked for the Sith Master to repreat the quote and, with much contempt, Perrin did repeated himself.
The alcolyte grabbed at the first meaning he could, hastily saying, "He called the Sith... you! their worst enemy. He said that the crusaders had overcome you..But you are still here! So.." the boy trailed off confused not really knowing where his blabbering would take him.
Perrin clapped his hands as if a retarded individual had just counted to three and required the obligatory praise that would allow it to continue its lack of significant accomplishment.
"Their goal was to see the galaxy burn. They called the Sith Order a pretender of the throne." the old man muttered.
The alcolyte simply stared at him at a loss.
"THEY WANTED TO PLACE THEIR BACKSIDES ON A THRONE IN A KINGDOM OF ASH!" Perrin shouted.
Dar took a step back at the vehemence.
"They were not simply out to topple governments or rid the galaxy of competitors!" the old man snapped out. "Their purpose went much deeper. They wanted a Kingdom of Ash! They wanted to change the very essence of life in this galaxy!"
Perrin sank back into his heat, his bones feeling the chill that wsa not due to the winter winds outside. "To bring the world of myth into the world of reality." he whispered.
"Are you going to show me more?" the boy asked petulantly and at that moment, Perrin almost lost control. If he could have swept the fool away in a Force Storm, he would have but such displays were better left to those following in the footsteps of Darth Vicirus or Lupercus Darksword. He had not the patience for such displays and even though he was a Sith Master, his experience and skill lay not in those areas of brute power.
No, what he excelled at was a bit more specialized and he was unmatched in the field. Or so he liked to smugly believe.
"Come closer." he murmured, as he sagged even further into his seat. As if he feared what he was about to do.
The boy, Dar, shifted closer, within arm's reach and now he was too close to draw his saber if he so chose too. But Perrin could see that such thoughts had left the boy's gestures for there was a disgusting eagerness that masked his features, as if he would get to see his 'Palestar' in the flesh this time around.
The memory of what followed was not a time that Perrin liked to think about. For even while the telling of this tale would show his own rise and growing significance, he could not forget the sights he had seen and the vision of Dar's Palestar.
"Let me show you hell on earth.." he whispered and touched the alcolyte's forehead once more.
The fires burned all around them as they stared at the toppled tower. Perrin remembered that time of disbelief, that the Crusaders had, by sheer force of numbers and stubborn insistence penetrated the threshold of the Sith Temple.
It was as if, all at once, stone and structure that for centuries sang the song of the Darkside had suddenly dried up, blistered and flaking off like flesh from burnt skin.
An aura of power seemed to suddenly vanish and Perrin remembered knowing then as he knew now that nothing would ever be the same. The Temple had been breached and the Double Blind held sway.
Only the worthy could claim the Temple and that worth was being contested. That worth was in question.
The fighting had diminished too various localized skirmishes on the surface and down within the catacombs but their fight was no longer serving the purpose of such martial terms as offense and defense.
Worth was now involved and a hunger resonated throughout world as echoes. Force users on both sides of the same spectrum pitting their best against each other to measure...
No!
..to set a new standard.
To be that defining standard that would direct the Sith for the next decade...Direct the very threads of destiny that seemed to bind the galaxy together.
As they approached the Temple, Perrin remembered his own approach decades earlier, seeing the bodies strewn across burned earth, the wind howling against broken stone and the Force Storm raging overhead as if the Sith Order itself raged at the Crusader's sacrilege.
He remembered stumbling over the vast sea of flesh discerning both their fallen foes and the price they exacted in Sith alcolytes.
The arguement would continue for years over whether such resources indicated waste or merely a trimming of the fat and ossification that permeated the inhabitants of Xa Fel of late.
The old man peered down, his bony hands feeling the smooth black cloth of the sightless enemy that lay in it's deaththrow underfoot.
"Is that..?" Dar intruded and Perrin felt a wave of irritation.
"A Crusader." was all the old man had said. It was amazing how memory sat inside the mind, a soft and faded presence when at rest. But tactile contact engaged those long dormant images he thought he was better off forgetting and his eyes closed.
A tear streamed down his face as memory came to the fore. The cloth even felt the same as his eyes raised to view the horizon of sprawled bodies.
What was your worth?
Lives discarded for purposes yet unknown, from regions unknown, by parties....unknown.
A young Perrin came into view moving silently among the bodies, stretching out trying to learn all he could from simple observation of an enemy now dead.
The younger version stopped and turned staring straight through Perrin and Dar not perceiving their existence.
"What is he?..What are you doing?" Dar asked and Perrin felt the young fool shift into a competitive stance which amused the old man.
"Learning about our enemy." the old man whispered noting the Sith Knight grabbing objects, running his hands over them, keeping some and discarding others as if their very nature would squeeze out the secrets of these invaders.
"And what did you learn?" Dar persisted.
"That the total sum of my knowledge about this enemy was zero." Perrin shot back sarcastically and yet quietly for he remembered the confusion of emotions running through his younger self. He was not here during the battle proper and it looked like the Sith took the fight into the Temple and catacombs but they had surrendered the surface. The toppled Temple spires a beacon to all who could see that the future was in question. Worth was in question.
And try as he might, the stripping of the enemy of what little that could be found still did not produce any revelations of value.
A decision needed to be made and Perrin closed his eyes, remembering the road that his choice paved for him that would ultimately carry him here once again.
Full Circle.
Xa Fel.
The Temple.
As if no matter what he did, no matter how much effort he put into the choices he made in life, no matter how much time had passed...he would find himself inexorably drawn back.
Here...
The Temple..
The surrounding of an enemy from the center...
Was the Double Blind at work even now?
"The Crusaders!" Dar shouted. "They are leaving!" and with a wave of his hand, their point of view shifted closer to the Temple.
There was still fighting going on beneath them but even so, the old man's eyes narrowed at the retreating forms of people who had only, just moments before, thrown their lives at the Sith with such abandon at the mere prospect of crossing the threshold of the Sith Order's stronghold.
A flutter of cloaks flashed and they caught a glimpse of Dacian Palestar passing through the Temple doors lost in thought.
"The retreat.." Perrin remembered.
Hundreds of enemy soldiers were leaving the field of battle...vast throngs headed back to the barges that had landed encircling the Sith position.
"They won't be so filled returning," the Perrin remarked, watching as his younger self left off his search and theft from the dead, knowing that his force presence had already been minimized ...
And that was when it happened.
The higher floors and upper crests of the fallen spires began to rise as the Force Storm gathered overhead as if preparing for a final blow that would dash all life against the surface of Xa Fel.
Even from his own vantage point with years of experience behind him, Perrin could not help but be impressed.
The calling of Vance Jas, Darth Vicirus... Where the Force was taking him... whatever calling the Sith Master had would remain a mystery for now.
But one thing was for certain....
He had relinquished his claim upon the Temple...
But, with the retreat of the Crusaders, so the Palestar also relinquished his claim..
And yet, they both took portions of the Temple... that which they both thought of as valuable for whatever their purpose.
The crumbling black blocks of stone continued to fall as the upper portion of the Temple had been ripped from the main structure taking Darth Vicirus with it... the Crusaders more intent upon their retreat than really watching the Sith Master's spectacle.
And, as fast as it had happened, the Force Storm turned inward and vanished, taking it's portion of the Temple and the man who had led the Sith Order.
The silence where so much wind, power and force howled once before was deafening in it's own right. But the point was clear...
The challenge of worth had been made and now all parties ventured forth to carry out each their destiny. To lay bare their worth upon the altar of the Force.
Dar seemed excited, his eyes betraying a lust that Perrin felt simmering just under the boy's skin but never saw. Awe at seeing his 'Palestar' in the flesh, perhaps?
The look...that look.. disturbed the old man but why, he could not yet say.
"This was not hell on earth.." whispered the boy. "This was.... this was wonderful!"
Perrin's hand went up to shade his eyes from the sun as he looked up at the barges that filled the skies. Going back to the Crusader's capital ship in orbit...that was still engaged with the vanguard of whatever Imperial forces were in the area.
"You haven't seen anything, yet.." the old man whispered as he caught sight of one barge in particular.
"There is still so much more to see..."
His hand went back into the folds of his cloak, the Temple coming back into view and sounds of the crackling firewood snapped.
Dar looked around in sudden confusion, anger lighting his features. "What was that?!" he demanded hotly.
"I could show you no more of Xa Fel," Perrin rasped out, a wave of nausea overcoming him.
"Why not?!" the boy was indignant.
"Because, you foolish boy, I cannot share what I did not witness nor can I not share what I could not perceive."
"So was this your brush with the greatness that was the Palestar? This perception only?" Dar's voice became sarcastic and biting.
Perrin had had enough. A simple motion of his hand and Dar screamed out loud at the painful sharp end of his eyesight. The boy covered his face feeling the sticky slickness of his own blood and with another flicker of thought, the boy's lightsaber was thrown from his belt.
"Shall I remove your skin from your bones as well?" the old man's voice penetrated the searing pain stealing into the every crevice of conscious thought that Dar experienced.
The boy was sobbing and Perrin's voice was like a salve of cool water running through the cracks of sanity, soothing the burning of his mind.
"WHAT ARE YOU AFTER?!" the Sith Master shouted. "Do you think you can hide from me?!"
"I..," screamed the boy, "I-... I want to know the Palestar!" tears ran down his cheeks.
"WHY?" roared Perrin and at that moment, a part of him knew that despite his growing power and specialized abilities, he still lived in fear. He trusted no visitors and dealt with people only on his terms.
Every alcolyte that visited him to benefit from his...'insight' had mysteriously and suspiciously disappeared and after a while, no one came to visit him. It was as if others had tried to forget his very existence which served Perrin's needs.
Alone.
Until Dar had come.
Until Dar crossed that line which made his life forfeit.
Surely the fool has heard the stories. Of the mad Sith at the Frozen Temple?
And despite Perrin sending him away, he still came back sinking his fate further, testing and finally surpassing the Sith Master's patience.
The boy was going to die and the only matter left was the manner of death and it's time.
Curiosity stayed the old man's hand.
"Why?" he whispered, his sickened fear being drawn up from a well of suffering buried so long ago.
"Because he is my father!" Dar cried out and the old man reared back at the revelation.
"Impossible!" he hissed, losing his concentration and releasing the illusion that gripped the boy.
Shaking and weak, Dar removed his hands from his face finding the sight that had been denied and sobbing at the memory of pain the likes of which were unimagined mere minutes before.
"I... I wanted to know him..." the boy murmured between tears that Perrin ignored.
The Double Blind!
"It is still in effect.." he whispered in awe. "After all these years, the question of worth is still unanswered. The challenge still drawn!"
Dar shook his head uncomprehending and Perrin measured his sincerity satisfied at what he felt.
"Come, boy. It is time to leave.."
"What? Where? It's snowing!"
"It is time to go to Xa Fel. It is time to set the record straight once and for all.."
"Record?"
"Worth! Boy! Worth!" Perrin shouted in gleeful anticipation. Are we really the last of our kind? Me of the old Sith Order and this poor fool the Crusade's only legacy?
A look of confusion crossed the boy's face, the memory of his torture still fresh but not wanting to upset the old man in any way.
"A Double Blind! The surrounding of an enemy from the center! I should have known! I should have realized that I could not escape it that easily! Sooner or later I would be drawn...coerced...forced back into the center. As if I was surrounded with nowhere to go."
"And that center is..."
"On Xa Fel."
"But no one knows where it is.." the boy started and Perrin laughed.
"I used to live there, fool. Onward! A ship! A crew! Easily obtained and we can be there quickly enough..." and Dar followed the eccentric old man with both a sense of fear and a sense of hope.
For you, father...
The events pertinent to our story...
A young Perrin came into view moving silently among the bodies, stretching out trying to learn all he could from simple observation of an enemy now dead.
The younger version stopped and turned staring straight through Perrin and Dar not perceiving their existence.
"What is he?..What are you doing?" Dar asked and Perrin felt the young fool shift into a competitive stance which amused the old man.
"Learning about our enemy." the old man whispered noting the Sith Knight grabbing objects, running his hands over them, keeping some and discarding others as if their very nature would squeeze out the secrets of these invaders.
"And what did you learn?" Dar persisted.
"That the total sum of my knowledge about this enemy was zero." Perrin shot back sarcastically and yet quietly for he remembered the confusion of emotions running through his younger self. He was not here during the battle proper and it looked like the Sith took the fight into the Temple and catacombs but they had surrendered the surface. The toppled Temple spires a beacon to all who could see that the future was in question. Worth was in question.
And try as he might, the stripping of the enemy of what little that could be found still did not produce any revelations of value.
A decision needed to be made and Perrin closed his eyes...
"The Crusaders!" Dar shouted. "They are leaving!" and with a wave of his hand, their point of view shifted closer to the Temple.
There was still fighting going on beneath them but even so, the old man's eyes narrowed at the retreating forms of people who had only, just moments before, thrown their lives at the Sith with such abandon at the mere prospect of crossing the threshold of the Sith Order's stronghold.
A flutter of cloaks flashed and they caught a glimpse of Dacian Palestar passing through the Temple doors lost in thought.
"The retreat.." Perrin remembered.
Hundreds of enemy soldiers were leaving the field of battle...vast throngs headed back to the barges that had landed encircling the Sith position.
"They won't be so filled returning," the Perrin remarked, watching as his younger self left off his search and theft from the dead, knowing that his force presence had already been minimized ...
*
Perrin's hand went up to shade his eyes from the sun as he looked up at the barges that filled the skies. Going back to the Crusader's capital ship in orbit...that was still engaged with the vanguard of whatever Imperial forces were in the area.
"You haven't seen anything, yet.." the old man whispered as he caught sight of one barge in particular.
"There is still so much more to see..."
His hand went back into the folds of his cloak, the Temple coming back into view and sounds of the crackling firewood snapped.
Dar looked around in sudden confusion, anger lighting his features. "What was that?!" he demanded hotly.
"I could show you no more of Xa Fel," Perrin rasped out, a wave of nausea overcoming him.
"Why not?!" the boy was indignant.
"Because, you foolish boy, I cannot share what I did not witness nor can I not share what I could not perceive."
What Perrin witnessed, What he perceived and Where the Crusaders went...
From: Void Knight: Seizing a Mantle
The personal domain of Dacian Palestar was a terror to behold. A black monolith of steel, it jutted out of the pierced molten heart of the planet below. At a distance it seemed like a dark mountain, dwarfing the jagged ridges of stone thrown up around it by the messy death of Ukitan and the ill-omened birth of Symbol.
A little closer, and one could see the mountain was in fact a massive fortress. Built on deeply sunk foundations driven into the magma sea, walls and battlements rose as steep peaks, studded with huge and crude cannons at every plateau. Landing pads and hangar bays stuck out here and there, connecting into the deep labyrinth of barracks, command centers, communications centers, interrogation chambers, foundries, and more that filled the mysterious heart of the mountain.
Crowning this fort was a command center for visiting dignitaries of the Crusade, the coming and going of their ships and men, and other more mundane activities. This ensured that the goings on of the lower fortress was kept entirely secret and separate from the rest of the Crusade. Dark rumours were traded amongst the hardened Crusaders of evils taking place that put their meager sins to shame.
Rising at last out of this public meeting area was a slim tower, piercing the oppressive clouds of smoke that filled the sky. Pale when compared to the darkness of the rest of the fortress, it was easy to miss entirely. It was inadvisable to do so, however, for this tower held the private residence of Dacian Palestar himself.
Dwelling in his throne room at the very apex of the tower, Dacian was reading. Undisturbed by servants, soldiers, or strategists, he had rested alone since returning from Xa’Fel, immersed in study...
...What remained of his Void Knights had been despatched to the Maiden’s Retreat with their caretaker, and Silk had departed to attend to his own mysterious agenda. The Crusader armies neither needed nor much desired his oversight.
What Perrin remembered most from the long trip from Xa Fel was the smell. Or, rather, the lack of it as the air circulators and automated environment controls wiped away the odors of the planet left behind. It was an occurance starfarers rarely kept in mind but it was also true. Planet's stank. Eventually, one got used to it but climb back aboard your starship and breath in the neutral odors of your environmental controls (assuming they worked as some ships stank worse than planets) and the next world's odor will hit you like a full Star Destroyer broadside.
Not all the odors were rank or unpleasant but the initial whiff was a bit unsettling.
Still, Perrin always enjoyed the air conditioned and controled systems of starships and to his pleasant surprise, what remained of the Crusader Fleet had excellent working systems, especially since they left Xa Fel with far fewer soldiers than they arrived with did not tax them.
In that travel time Perrin had come to realize that these soldiers were fanatics. They disembarked as a mob and retreated as a mob, many leaving on a different barge they had arrived in. Units were either wholly destroyed, gutted, reformed into other units or ignored. The choice was usually up to the strongest of the higher ranked soldiers.
At least in the mobs.
Not all of the Crusaders were the country bumpkins and as talk, boasting, fighting and general chitchat of the mess table was any indication, these soldiers ached to prove themselves worthy of the highest corps of soldiers.
Those soldiers that had conquered the worlds that were the core of Dacian's far off empire, Mandalorians it seemed and the vaunted Crimson Guards or other such Crimson indentity under a powerful man that did not wear the cloaks of the Palestar's Void Knights. It was the one person who dared walk with Dacian side by side and among the Void Knights without fear and as more and more descriptions were heard, it could be none other than Doan Silk.
Even among the conquered worlds, however many there were (as even the soldiers Perrin accompanied did not know this fact), there were stations and those that held the highest station under those soldiers that were Dacian's before he set up his power base, were the Nyxans.
Everyone else, the mob soldiers and fodder (so Perrin thought) were below the Nyxan station. It was a Nyxan named Sun (who was born in the city Cycle of Serenity) who had grabbed Perrin, Happy, Blurp, Vetti, Rat, OP, and Pop from the bunks they confiscated from the dead that did not come back and moved them to another deck and room that was under Sun's command. Apparently he was reforming his unit and wanted to make sure it was up to strength for whatever whim excreted from their glorious leader's butt.
Organization was exceedingly simple. You lived and fought. The better you did, the higher you climbed and if not, you were dead. Dead people were replaced by new converts.
The Nyxan's hero, a man named Maxson who was their Supreme Commander (evidently a popular rank among empires) had gone off to attack a place called Onyx. Perrin's eyebrow rose at the ever telling plans this Crusade seemed to execute and wondered just how far those plans went. Whatever the case, the leadership of this motly group certainly did not think small.
The army was breaking up, those of Silk's going to take care of the business of Silk, the remaining Void Knights leaving with their hell-cat-devil-witch of a leader and Dacian had issued no proclamations of another attack as yet so Sun (and his newly formed unit) were going home.
Secretly, Sun hoped to be in on the next big Maxson push when they received word of his victory over Onyx.
It was not until he saw it that the seriousness of the Crusader's purpose, the depths of their insane fanaticism, and the totality the danger of the combination posed actually sank into Perrin's mind.
The shipyards were massive. The fleet in orbit nothing to laugh at and at the 'bumpkin's' expression, Sun laughed harshly. "We are the pride of the Crusade! We are the heart of the Crusade!" he boasted and Perrin had to agree.
Destroy all this and you rip the heart out of the Crusade. Of course, if Dacian's still beat, the madness would continue. The Nyxans were, after all, merely tools.
He could see the trap of pride that Dacian used to shape a national conscious and focus it to his ends and these people were only so ready to climb aboard the burning ship.
And as they neared, Perrin's mind was awash with possibilities and opportunities...
For before him lay the planet, Nyx.
What will take place in the future...
Interlude
The Sith Temple was deserted. Or, rather, it looked deserted as the spatter of rain washed across it's stone and steel edifice trailing down gullies of mortar and chasms of architecture, the purpose of which known only to the first builders whose names have long since been forgotten.
The lush vegetation of the surrounding jungle-forest had claimed the area in the interim of years. Now, where once stood simple materials of construction and terraforming, a conglomeration combining the aggressiveness of nature and the nuances of Sith alchemy had given birth to a symbiosis of both life and death. If the inanimate could speak, of what sort of horrors would this structure shout out to the galaxy?
The sap of the vegetation dripping from hidden orifices down interior walls as blood from a dying body mixed with the mold that clung to walls dark, damp and rank with misery.
A lone figure was found scurrying across the empty corridors, looking every which way as if he was being followed stealing across stained crimson carpet making no sounds. A paranoid sort of person and one who's healthy sense of self preservation was appreciated by the one to whom the figure had come to see.
The cold within the stone ebbed away as flickers of light and the warmth of fires permeated outward with each step towards the inhabited chambers.
It was a welcome sight to the visitor and he proclaimed his joy out loud when having reached his destination. "You would not believe how bad it is out there, Master Perrin," the man exclaimed removing his rather thick outer garments.
"Dar, I assume the seasonal snows have begun?"
"Begun? They've been falling for the better part of the week. Rain, sleet and snow. Not a climate one expects here." The tone was friendly but Perrin knew the visitor was everything but..
The old man, wrapped in blankets sitting in a high-back chair simply shrugged, his white hair tied back despite it's being dry. This was a man used to the comforts in life and this was a man who spared no expense in enjoying them.
For what use was the Dark Side if you could not enjoy it?
When the visitor, Dar, had shed his coverings he moved to the carpet at Lord Perrin's feet and sat down.
"I take it you are here for another story?" the Sith Master asked in a slight tone of annoyance. The question was both unnecessary and painful for it held out to Dar the hope of the old man complying to the request without the actual commitment.
"I have come to hear the rest of it," Dar said eagerly.
A little too eagerly. Perrin was instantly wary of the turnaround in attitude for upon the boy's first visit, he was unruly, arrogant and a general pain in Perrin's side. Such persons weighed heavily on what little patience the Sith Master had nowadays and so he prepared to make Dar an ex-member of the living for the mortal sin of having the arrogance of the young..
A sin he knew well for he was arrogance personified at a younger age.
The boy wanted to know things but had not the patience to listen. He even had the audacity to grow angry when he did not like the answers that had come. Perrin had finally cut the boy's blathering short by brushing his hands across the youngling's forehead causing the young force-user to stagger back as if the Sith Master had struck him a powerful blow.
Perrin had, however, given the other a taste of something far more powerful than a mere blow...
Vision
The young man had come back several times after wanting more. Each time, the aged 'Master Perrin' would simply say, "Come back tomorrow" silently enjoying the torment that played across the stage of the boy's face.
Each successive visit drew the boy's patience thinner and thinner but, at the same time, also drew out his dogged determination. Each attack on his patience drew the youngster's anger out to the fore. That anger propelled his desire.
Until such a time that the boy, even with the probable risk of being turned away, ventured into the blistering cold and snow at the mere idea of the chance that Perrin would say 'yes'. It was one thing to sacrifice time but this time, for what he sought, the boy sacrificed his life.
It became a payment adequate enough for Perrin's time.
but....
...to know what?
What was the boy really after? It was a subtle question that preyed upon the older man's mind like an amusing puzzle.
Despite the fact that the boy tried to hide his force aura, Perrin deftly plucked it's existence out of shadow and into the Sith Master's full awareness, watching...judging.
It was amusing to the old man to witness the raw strength contained within the boy's frame and his novice attempts at masking it.
Why do those with the power attempt to hide it?
It was an observation that brought a memory to conscious thought and upon realizing the connection, linked the two. It was a similar observation made as a younger man at another place, in another time..
His eyes took in the seated boy with experience knowing that the young man had stationed himself in such a strategic manner... easily able to avoid any unsuspecting attack, easily able to draw his own lightsaber, the hilt of which was not nearly so cleverly hidden as the boy would have liked to have thought, with room enough to launch his own attack and cut down the old man if necessary.
It was as if the boy had thought of all the natural combat alternatives that might come upon him not willing to give Perrin the benefit of the doubt, much to Perrin's approval.
But it was a trap. An insidious trap to be sure but one most effective.
A trap that the old texts referred to it as a Double Blind. It was a trap that very few could successfully cast, especially against great numbers, largely because part of its success depended on the actions of those being trapped.
Especially hard when your foes held onto their force-awareness like children to security blankets.
Perrin's hands clasped together in front of his chin contemplating the youngster.
"What do I show you, young man? I wonder.. what would make an impression on your logical, yet skeptical, progression of thought? Or what passes for thought in that mass you call a mind? Should I take you to the beginning? To a cusp period? To the end?"
The boy leaned closer and closer to the old man as he mused to himself.
Perrin suddenly snapped his fingers.
"I know just the thing! A Lesson in Stupidity!"
The boy looked confused and Perrin wagged a wrinkled finger at him. "All you've heard are stories, legends and made up myths of these larger-than-life people. So romanticized are you by their accounts you are already on the road to self delusion!"
His finger tapped his chest. "I. I have lived during the time of Gods and Men. Of Men and Gods! I have lived during the time of Daemon Hyfe, of Lupercus Darksword and of Darth Vicirus! Of Lady Skygge, Recon Klain, of Doan Silk...and yes, of that baffoon Lord Maim and his whore, Athena.
But most youngsters nowadays? All they want to hear is the story of Dacian Palestar!"
He rasped out a chuckle and gestured, moving another piece of wood onto the two fireplaces set on either side of the room.
"A story of monumental stupidity on such a grand scale as I have ever seen."
The young man's features drew closer in anger. "If you are going to..."
"Oh shut up," petitioned Perrin, waving the youngster's comments away as if they were no consequence, which, in fact, they were not.
The old man leaned forward and gestured for the boy to move up as if they were two old hands scheming.
"Don't take my word for it... Let me show you."
His trembling arm stretched out and as his fingers touched the boy's forehead, they were no longer seated in the room. In fact, they were no longer in the Sith Temple in the middle of a jungle in the middle of a freezing winter.
They were standing on a mountain top with winds blowing wildly at their clothes and in the far distance, amid both white and dark smoke rising heavenward, stood the defiant Sith Temple.
"Where... Where are we?" the youngster stammered, suddenly feeling weak at the knees.
"Xa Fel," The old man, Perrin, answered quietly, himself taken aback by the sights before him. "I stood on this very spot and gazed at this very scene, the bloody stupidity of everyone's position so crystal clear at that moment in time to one with insight it's a wonder I did not fall down dead at my lack of it!"
"Stupidity!?" cried the youngster over the roar of the winds.
"No, Insight..." Perrin purred in response. He knew the boy was balking at his heroes of old suddenly having the faults of ..of... mortals?
Well, we all are mortal! Foolish child!
Perrin waved his hand about the scenery in irritation. "Things you do not know... Lupercus Darksword and his pet Ithron stupidly come back into the inner sanctum of Darth Vicirus knowing that they both are at odds! Darth Vicirus stupidly allows Lupercus a foothold into his own kingdom and while he licks his wounds from that!" he points to the black smoke rising high in the distance.. "his entire Order now is in the hands of his fellow rival, Lupercus! Doan Silk stupidly submitted before a Church which is, yet again, another variation of Sith power probably following in his old fool-Lord Maim's footsteps. A hack if I ever heard of one!"
"And Dacian?" Dar's voice seemed like a squeak.
"Palestar?" Perrin snorted, "He had the stupidity of the young."
Even his contempt, so crystallized in one of his advanced age, for the players involved in the scene before him did not erase his acknowledgment that these giants, in this place, at that time, were probably the largest gathering of those who were the most powerful beings in the entire galaxy. Never mind the Empire's machines! These titans among men swept up in their personal passions were far, far more dangerous!
Beings of which were the Tales that mortals trembled in telling!
At that moment, a low boom was heard, more like distant thunder, as energy pulses sizzled through Xa Fel's atmosphere in a downward descent striking the Sith Temple without grace. The intent of the attackers shouted in detail with each weapon fired...
They wanted the Sith Temple to burn!
To be wiped from the face of the planet!
The constant fury behind the intent revealed in the mass of enemies in the far distance.
Perrin could not hear their war cries, their yells or the sounds of fighting as the wind dispersed such sounds in the distance that separated the Sith Knight and the apparent war taking place without him.
Without him..
The old man's eyes blinked in the wind even now, his desire to fight, stirring from deep within his soul. He clearly remembered the emotions of a younger self opening and closing his fists at the sight laid out in the distance.
But even the temptations and stirrings of old emotions at the memory before him could not dissolve the admiration for the Double Blind trap forming so far away. He had never seen such a trap constructed so intricately and encompassing so many at one time.
At the time, standing far off on a mountain peak, he had not recognized the glaringly obvious that was spelled out before him. Truth wrapped in a package of feral combat.
The boy beside him was silent in awe at the distant spectacle.
I was just as stupid..., the old man mused to himself.
The enemy had complete air superiority and having it, had landed their barges in such a way that surrounded the Sith Temple all the time keeping their orbital weapons standing at the ready. Bombers and fighters circled from above and with the brilliance of hindsight came a realization that the old coot, Azrael Zell, was right all along:
As powerful as the fucking Sith are, they can't execute a plan for shit! Take Xa Fel for example. If you are going to blow the shit out of the Temple, you don't achieve air superiority only to fuck it up by landing thousands of soldiers! Who the fuck are the bombers going to bomb now? Their own forces? An electromagnetic pulse in the heart of that air-fucking-superiority would have downed all those birds on their own fucking people! Crusading dipshits. Sith by another name, if you fucking ask me!
Perrin's chapped lips parted in a grin. Only an Imperial would care about the numbers. Perhaps that is why they won wars. But the nature of the enemy attacking the Sith Temple told the Order that they did not give a damn about numbers. They would sacrifice as many of their soldiers, their entire army possibly, to make a point. Perhaps the pragmatic Imperial military response would be to simply let them until they burned themselves out but what sort of action would this mean to a Sith? Sith who have survived for thousands of years?
"It is obvious.." the old man whispered watching the sealing of the enclosure surrounding the Sith Temple. No other place on this world was being harrassed. No other structure seemed to hold interest to these... Crusaders.
He knew who they were now... but then? Then it was just shock at the idea of such an assault against the center of the Sith Order. The kernel of a future Sith Empire.
The memory of what was above the Temple, in orbit, was like a dark blot against a white sky. To see it filled one with a searing burn of pain as if the craft high above them had traveled to Xa Fel on the dying souls of a million, million beings. As if the very coffers of hell were thrown opened to fuel a ship whose keel was laid in misery, whose armour were screams of shattering terror, and whose weapons were the combined spite of an entire universe rolled into one and spit out into the eye of god.
The darkened masses of bodies moving about on the ground below, some in chaos and some in ordered arrangement, were shadows upon the land surrounding the Temple. Most took no note of anything else destroying only that which they found hindering their march, rank and file, towards the Temple.
All of these things... were clues. Obvious, glaring, and shouting as to a fact that Perrin himself missed. He wondered if anyone else at the time had made the connections..
This was personal!
The enemy knew exactly where they were going.. knew exactly what they were doing.. knew exactly how to arrive, when to arrive and by what route to arrive.
The Sith Order should have known who was on the other end of the swinging saber!
An errant child of the Sith coming home to burn the house his parents lived in? A wronged alcolyte or apprentice returning to show his Masters that he had entered into power on his own?
To move forward, to advance... the parents must die!
Was this the catalyst that added fuel to the Double Blind that was being enacted?
The irony of the situation was that the Double Blind was not set in place by any Sith Master that he had known. The Double Blind was the trap of the Temple itself.
Those ancient builders immersed in the arts, alchemy and powers inherent with the Dark Side knew their craft and took pride in their work. They knew intimately the philosophy and psychology of those that would reside in such a place and of those that would dare attack it.
Those who simply walked it's corridors and trained in its halls and left never realized the power of such a place that served as seat to many Sith Councils.
They couldn't!
Those nomadic Sith cults and offshoots that roamed the stars looking for their place in the legends of galactic history never realized the truth about such historical centers of Sith activities.
They couldn't!
That the structure itself could take the beating these invaders were unmercifully pounding into it was a testament to the galaxy that these buildings were something more.
These were structures whose outer skin was the cold sweat of the darkside itself and the only thing in want of these beautifully crafted works of art was simply a worthy resident.
Those attackers were declaring their worth and value with every step they took towards the Temple. Their marching between it's doors and crossing of it's threshold put the ownership of the Temple on notice and in question.
..and that was what was at the heart of a Double Blind.
The surrounding of an enemy from the center. A contradiction in terms to be sure but a circumstance that trapped a hunter just as completely as they thought they had trapped.
The invaders had surrounded the Temple preventing the Sith from fleeing but they themselves could not leave for to leave was to admit defeat and failure. The very design of the Temple augmented the power of the one while reducing the power of the many. The invaders were trapped in a circle of their own self delusions, their own plans that they would not, could not, admit were flawed.
To do so was to go against everything that a leader of fanatics, a cult of personality, thrived in.
For who followed a leader that was unsure?
Who followed a leader whose philosophy and whose callings were ulitmately... flawed?
Especially if such ones were powerful in the use of the Force!
That was the deception that was the darkside. And to succumb to such deception was to allow the darkside to rule oneself instead of the other way around.
And being ruled by the darkside took away the one thing that made one powerful. All powerful, in fact.
Choice
Which was why once you start down the road to the darkside, forever would it dominate your destiny.
For those that started down the road did so by choice!
Spurred on by their blind hatred, warped visions, flawed strategies and the chains of desire... the invaders, these Crusaders, would soon find their choices diminishing at a cascading rate.
Their actions would be dictated by brutal necessity rather than choice and once the invaders found themselves led rather than leading, they would fall apart, unraveling under the force of the Double Blind.
*
The old man smiled grimly.
The Double Blind worked another way as well. For the Temple only served those worthy of it.
Darth Vicirus and his minions....
Lupercus Darksword and his minions...
Doan Silk and his minions...
Dacian Palestar and his minions...
...Self delusion could go either way.
"So... what happened?" the boy's wretched voice intruded and Perrin felt a wash of annoyance flow through him.
He gazed down from his vantage point seeing a younger self slowly climbing down in an effort to get to the fight.
But the truth was, his younger self was too far away and the fight would more than likely be over by the time he even felt the heat of the cratered Temple grounds.
But there were always options and he remembered being resourceful as a youngster, wincing at the next memories recalled.
I was stupid when I was younger...
"Boy, I've polished my boots on the skulls of Dark Lords. I've walked in a time of giants. You do not have the steel in your backbone to see what happened next!"
There was a flash of anger in the boy's eyes and his voice calmed. "What do I have to do to prove myself to you?"
And there it was.
"What do I have to do?"
The aged Perrin almost laughed out loud at the pathetic platitude.
"What do I have to do?"
A voice of humility.
A voice for enlightenment.
The tremor of soft spokenness, of earnest expression, especially in the face of such awe inspiring sights, would have allowed one in Perrin's position to feel smugly secure in their knowledge but that was, of course, an illusion.
"What do I have to do?"
Laying bare each thread of the illusion that sat cloaked upon the voiced request was all to easy for the Sith Master.
It was not a voice of humility as much as it was desperation.
It was not a voice for enlightenment as much as it was a pleading of desire.
And yet Perrin stripped those strands further and was not disappointed for he found the banal and rudimentary lie within the request.
For it was also not a voice of desperation as much as it was of purpose.
And it was also not a voice of pleading as much as it was a demand.
What did this fool want?
What was he after?
Perrin withdrew his hand from the boy's forehead and the mixture of cold and warm from his Sitting Room within the Temple suddenly flooded their senses causing him to shiver slightly. He gestured and more wooden logs were added to the fire.
He was often suprised at the lack of certain modern facilities within a structure as large as the Temple. The builders probably felt that a little cold or hot would do the Temple's residents good... perhaps toughen them up. Yet he still cursed those ancient builders for if they had access to such building materials and they knew about electricity and other forms of power, surely they could have added automated environmental controls so he would not have to freeze himself to death with this fool of an aloclyte.
That the aloclyte, Dar, did not offer to lay more logs onto the fire told Perrin that his pennitant nature was merely a cloak. But covering what he had yet to penetrate.
"You are so thirsty for this tale of Dacian that you overlook the obvious." the old man remarked, trying to clear his throat before a fit of coughing.
"That the Palestar moved against you." the alcolyte answered directly, "That you actually fought against him."
The fool had so much awe in his voice that Perrin did actually choke. On a cackle. "What? No overwhelming awe for the great Crimson Emperor?"
The alcolyte frowned. "Who?"
In truth, the Crimson Emperor was the name of the ship that the person Perrin was referring too road the galaxy in and not the person himself, ironically.
"The Lord Protector of a Dead Dark Lord," Perrin spat out, "which," he concluded, "says something about his ability to protect..."
The alcolyte stared stupidly at him.
"Doan Silk!" Perrin snapped in anger.
"Oh... he was the Palestar's greatest servant," Dar replied as if history had somehow been rewritten to fit his foolish fancy.
Perrin scowled at the comment wondering what the Lord Protector would think of himself being thought of by posterity as Dacian's minion.
Dar interrupted his musings, "So you fought against the Palestar?"
When did the fool's name suddenly become a title?
Before the Sith Master could respond, Dar clarified, "I saw your younger self clearly attempting to traverse the mountain-side to get to the battle."
It was interesting to note that Dar's hand involuntarily twitched toward his saber hilt but there was no presence of purpose on the alcolyte's face.
The Sith Master supplied his own clarification of the account, "I was too late to join the battle proper. By the time I arrived, the Palestar was in full retreat." Perrin was delighted to see that his inflection of the fool's hero caused the boy's skin to twitch.
"The Palestar is no coward!" shouted the boy and with a wave of his hand, Perrin pushed the boy back.
"Spare me your hero-worship foolish boy," the Sith Master declared unmoved. "You think there is but one reason to retreat in battle which shows just how much of a fool you are! In truth, there are three reasons to retreat in battle!"
"In truth, Master?" the boy suddenly saw vindication for the reputation of his hero.
"Oh, now I am a Master am I?" Perrin snapped back sardonically. "There is, as I am sure you know, you being a coward as to why you might retreat from battle. The other two reasons are less thought of but are no less valid. You might retreat from battle because you are brave enough to swallow your pride knowing that to commit more to a foolish endeavor is to allow yourself to lose that much more. Or, you might retreat from battle because you have already done what you came to do."
As the boy pondered this revelation born from experience, Perrin remembered the tactical analysis given by Azrael Zell after Dacian's Crusade.
How does a mob leader get his mob? By pretending he's the biggest badass out there and throwing around useless phrases like 'the galaxy will burn'.. I mean, how the fuck can fire survive vacuum? Every fucking idiot that joins the cause thinks that they will die for something larger than them which is this great big fucking burning of the galaxy. But you can be sure that unless this Dacian Palestar is an idiot himself, he is not looking for himself to die in this great big fucking burning because if he is looking for death there are a lot easier ways to accomplish it than trying to lead idiots against our guns. Chaos for the sake of chaos is not a reason. It is an excuse that the stupid use with other stupid people.
Xa Fel showed that our little crusader had a fucking revelation. An epiphany of insight which would change the strategies of future attacks. Applying overwhelming force is great an all when you don't give a shit about the numbers you throw away. But Xa Fel showed us that, in the midst of that fight, our little Dacian suddenly found that he did care about how stupidly he was throwing away his only resource to make a name for himself.
His base, the foundation worlds on which his fucking crusade started from, was probably intended to be simply throw-away worlds. And like any warlord, he ran into that age-old fucking revelation that any holomap could have shown him. That space is fucking HUGE! And the small pittance of warriors taken from these worlds, though numbering in the thousands, are just not enough to fucking take the galaxy...much less burn it. Xa Fel taught him that!
The peckerwood thought he could unzip his fly and show the universe his dick. And when he got it lopped off he had to run away like the castrated eunich that he was.
Now the bastard is meaner for the lesson learned. And so now our young warrior conquering, crusading bastard finds that he must not only maintain his foundation worlds, but he must protect them for the pussies they are and add to his budding new empire to keep up with the constant resupplying his dipshit military leaders require.
Otherwise, his great big fucking galaxy burning will be nothing more than a fucking grass fire.
Perrin knew Dar would have had a heart-attack if he had felt the full brunt of Old Zell's cutting remarks of his hero. The Imperial had a way of turning even the most innocent of girls dressed in pretty white dresses into cheap whores and the beautiful flowers they held into pieces of shit.
"The Palestar also attacked the Imperial Occupation Zone," the boy remarked as if trying to justify a strategy of a bygone era that did not require the justification of the living anymore.
But that did not invalidate the strategy for history is the ultimate judge of such things and with the wisdom born to Perrin Descartes of hindsight, he did feel the move to attack in the Occupation Zone was a worthy one.
For was this not also the strategy he had used on Xa Fel?
Even as the Double Blind held sway over the fate of the battle or the fate of the Temple itself there was found much confusion sown within the turmoil.
Powers unleashed both from the starry heavens above and from the defending masses below smashed friend and foe alike.
It was into such confusion that Dacian penetrated the Temple and found himself standing not at the command of any Sith Master but by his own will and power.
It was into such confusion that Dacian's second attack of his Crusade upon the galaxy at large poured his armies setting their sights on the Imperial Occupation Zone.
"There is a quote," started the old Master, "that the Lord Protector Doan Silk liked to espouse: 'A Sith's worst enemy is himself, or his fellow Sith.'" Perrin's eyes narrowed as he tried to recall the old speech, "'This, we Crusaders, have overcome. Your will is our own, our ambitions a single goal; to see the galaxy burn! First on the altar of sacrifice - the Sith Order, pretenders to the throne.'"
The boy scratched his head in irritation and Perrin pointed a gangly finger at him.
"What I want from you, Dar, before you can stand before living Gods is to find the reality within that statement."
Once given a task that would allow him to cast his gaze once more upon the triumphs of his hero, Dacian Palestar, he asked for the Sith Master to repreat the quote and, with much contempt, Perrin did repeated himself.
The alcolyte grabbed at the first meaning he could, hastily saying, "He called the Sith... you! their worst enemy. He said that the crusaders had overcome you..But you are still here! So.." the boy trailed off confused not really knowing where his blabbering would take him.
Perrin clapped his hands as if a retarded individual had just counted to three and required the obligatory praise that would allow it to continue its lack of significant accomplishment.
"Their goal was to see the galaxy burn. They called the Sith Order a pretender of the throne." the old man muttered.
The alcolyte simply stared at him at a loss.
"THEY WANTED TO PLACE THEIR BACKSIDES ON A THRONE IN A KINGDOM OF ASH!" Perrin shouted.
Dar took a step back at the vehemence.
"They were not simply out to topple governments or rid the galaxy of competitors!" the old man snapped out. "Their purpose went much deeper. They wanted a Kingdom of Ash! They wanted to change the very essence of life in this galaxy!"
Perrin sank back into his heat, his bones feeling the chill that wsa not due to the winter winds outside. "To bring the world of myth into the world of reality." he whispered.
"Are you going to show me more?" the boy asked petulantly and at that moment, Perrin almost lost control. If he could have swept the fool away in a Force Storm, he would have but such displays were better left to those following in the footsteps of Darth Vicirus or Lupercus Darksword. He had not the patience for such displays and even though he was a Sith Master, his experience and skill lay not in those areas of brute power.
No, what he excelled at was a bit more specialized and he was unmatched in the field. Or so he liked to smugly believe.
"Come closer." he murmured, as he sagged even further into his seat. As if he feared what he was about to do.
The boy, Dar, shifted closer, within arm's reach and now he was too close to draw his saber if he so chose too. But Perrin could see that such thoughts had left the boy's gestures for there was a disgusting eagerness that masked his features, as if he would get to see his 'Palestar' in the flesh this time around.
The memory of what followed was not a time that Perrin liked to think about. For even while the telling of this tale would show his own rise and growing significance, he could not forget the sights he had seen and the vision of Dar's Palestar.
"Let me show you hell on earth.." he whispered and touched the alcolyte's forehead once more.
The fires burned all around them as they stared at the toppled tower. Perrin remembered that time of disbelief, that the Crusaders had, by sheer force of numbers and stubborn insistence penetrated the threshold of the Sith Temple.
It was as if, all at once, stone and structure that for centuries sang the song of the Darkside had suddenly dried up, blistered and flaking off like flesh from burnt skin.
An aura of power seemed to suddenly vanish and Perrin remembered knowing then as he knew now that nothing would ever be the same. The Temple had been breached and the Double Blind held sway.
Only the worthy could claim the Temple and that worth was being contested. That worth was in question.
The fighting had diminished too various localized skirmishes on the surface and down within the catacombs but their fight was no longer serving the purpose of such martial terms as offense and defense.
Worth was now involved and a hunger resonated throughout world as echoes. Force users on both sides of the same spectrum pitting their best against each other to measure...
No!
..to set a new standard.
To be that defining standard that would direct the Sith for the next decade...Direct the very threads of destiny that seemed to bind the galaxy together.
As they approached the Temple, Perrin remembered his own approach decades earlier, seeing the bodies strewn across burned earth, the wind howling against broken stone and the Force Storm raging overhead as if the Sith Order itself raged at the Crusader's sacrilege.
He remembered stumbling over the vast sea of flesh discerning both their fallen foes and the price they exacted in Sith alcolytes.
The arguement would continue for years over whether such resources indicated waste or merely a trimming of the fat and ossification that permeated the inhabitants of Xa Fel of late.
The old man peered down, his bony hands feeling the smooth black cloth of the sightless enemy that lay in it's deaththrow underfoot.
"Is that..?" Dar intruded and Perrin felt a wave of irritation.
"A Crusader." was all the old man had said. It was amazing how memory sat inside the mind, a soft and faded presence when at rest. But tactile contact engaged those long dormant images he thought he was better off forgetting and his eyes closed.
A tear streamed down his face as memory came to the fore. The cloth even felt the same as his eyes raised to view the horizon of sprawled bodies.
What was your worth?
Lives discarded for purposes yet unknown, from regions unknown, by parties....unknown.
A young Perrin came into view moving silently among the bodies, stretching out trying to learn all he could from simple observation of an enemy now dead.
The younger version stopped and turned staring straight through Perrin and Dar not perceiving their existence.
"What is he?..What are you doing?" Dar asked and Perrin felt the young fool shift into a competitive stance which amused the old man.
"Learning about our enemy." the old man whispered noting the Sith Knight grabbing objects, running his hands over them, keeping some and discarding others as if their very nature would squeeze out the secrets of these invaders.
"And what did you learn?" Dar persisted.
"That the total sum of my knowledge about this enemy was zero." Perrin shot back sarcastically and yet quietly for he remembered the confusion of emotions running through his younger self. He was not here during the battle proper and it looked like the Sith took the fight into the Temple and catacombs but they had surrendered the surface. The toppled Temple spires a beacon to all who could see that the future was in question. Worth was in question.
And try as he might, the stripping of the enemy of what little that could be found still did not produce any revelations of value.
A decision needed to be made and Perrin closed his eyes, remembering the road that his choice paved for him that would ultimately carry him here once again.
Full Circle.
Xa Fel.
The Temple.
As if no matter what he did, no matter how much effort he put into the choices he made in life, no matter how much time had passed...he would find himself inexorably drawn back.
Here...
The Temple..
The surrounding of an enemy from the center...
Was the Double Blind at work even now?
"The Crusaders!" Dar shouted. "They are leaving!" and with a wave of his hand, their point of view shifted closer to the Temple.
There was still fighting going on beneath them but even so, the old man's eyes narrowed at the retreating forms of people who had only, just moments before, thrown their lives at the Sith with such abandon at the mere prospect of crossing the threshold of the Sith Order's stronghold.
A flutter of cloaks flashed and they caught a glimpse of Dacian Palestar passing through the Temple doors lost in thought.
"The retreat.." Perrin remembered.
Hundreds of enemy soldiers were leaving the field of battle...vast throngs headed back to the barges that had landed encircling the Sith position.
"They won't be so filled returning," the Perrin remarked, watching as his younger self left off his search and theft from the dead, knowing that his force presence had already been minimized ...
And that was when it happened.
The higher floors and upper crests of the fallen spires began to rise as the Force Storm gathered overhead as if preparing for a final blow that would dash all life against the surface of Xa Fel.
Even from his own vantage point with years of experience behind him, Perrin could not help but be impressed.
The calling of Vance Jas, Darth Vicirus... Where the Force was taking him... whatever calling the Sith Master had would remain a mystery for now.
But one thing was for certain....
He had relinquished his claim upon the Temple...
But, with the retreat of the Crusaders, so the Palestar also relinquished his claim..
And yet, they both took portions of the Temple... that which they both thought of as valuable for whatever their purpose.
The crumbling black blocks of stone continued to fall as the upper portion of the Temple had been ripped from the main structure taking Darth Vicirus with it... the Crusaders more intent upon their retreat than really watching the Sith Master's spectacle.
And, as fast as it had happened, the Force Storm turned inward and vanished, taking it's portion of the Temple and the man who had led the Sith Order.
The silence where so much wind, power and force howled once before was deafening in it's own right. But the point was clear...
The challenge of worth had been made and now all parties ventured forth to carry out each their destiny. To lay bare their worth upon the altar of the Force.
Dar seemed excited, his eyes betraying a lust that Perrin felt simmering just under the boy's skin but never saw. Awe at seeing his 'Palestar' in the flesh, perhaps?
The look...that look.. disturbed the old man but why, he could not yet say.
"This was not hell on earth.." whispered the boy. "This was.... this was wonderful!"
Perrin's hand went up to shade his eyes from the sun as he looked up at the barges that filled the skies. Going back to the Crusader's capital ship in orbit...that was still engaged with the vanguard of whatever Imperial forces were in the area.
"You haven't seen anything, yet.." the old man whispered as he caught sight of one barge in particular.
"There is still so much more to see..."
His hand went back into the folds of his cloak, the Temple coming back into view and sounds of the crackling firewood snapped.
Dar looked around in sudden confusion, anger lighting his features. "What was that?!" he demanded hotly.
"I could show you no more of Xa Fel," Perrin rasped out, a wave of nausea overcoming him.
"Why not?!" the boy was indignant.
"Because, you foolish boy, I cannot share what I did not witness nor can I not share what I could not perceive."
"So was this your brush with the greatness that was the Palestar? This perception only?" Dar's voice became sarcastic and biting.
Perrin had had enough. A simple motion of his hand and Dar screamed out loud at the painful sharp end of his eyesight. The boy covered his face feeling the sticky slickness of his own blood and with another flicker of thought, the boy's lightsaber was thrown from his belt.
"Shall I remove your skin from your bones as well?" the old man's voice penetrated the searing pain stealing into the every crevice of conscious thought that Dar experienced.
The boy was sobbing and Perrin's voice was like a salve of cool water running through the cracks of sanity, soothing the burning of his mind.
"WHAT ARE YOU AFTER?!" the Sith Master shouted. "Do you think you can hide from me?!"
"I..," screamed the boy, "I-... I want to know the Palestar!" tears ran down his cheeks.
"WHY?" roared Perrin and at that moment, a part of him knew that despite his growing power and specialized abilities, he still lived in fear. He trusted no visitors and dealt with people only on his terms.
Every alcolyte that visited him to benefit from his...'insight' had mysteriously and suspiciously disappeared and after a while, no one came to visit him. It was as if others had tried to forget his very existence which served Perrin's needs.
Alone.
Until Dar had come.
Until Dar crossed that line which made his life forfeit.
Surely the fool has heard the stories. Of the mad Sith at the Frozen Temple?
And despite Perrin sending him away, he still came back sinking his fate further, testing and finally surpassing the Sith Master's patience.
The boy was going to die and the only matter left was the manner of death and it's time.
Curiosity stayed the old man's hand.
"Why?" he whispered, his sickened fear being drawn up from a well of suffering buried so long ago.
"Because he is my father!" Dar cried out and the old man reared back at the revelation.
"Impossible!" he hissed, losing his concentration and releasing the illusion that gripped the boy.
Shaking and weak, Dar removed his hands from his face finding the sight that had been denied and sobbing at the memory of pain the likes of which were unimagined mere minutes before.
"I... I wanted to know him..." the boy murmured between tears that Perrin ignored.
The Double Blind!
"It is still in effect.." he whispered in awe. "After all these years, the question of worth is still unanswered. The challenge still drawn!"
Dar shook his head uncomprehending and Perrin measured his sincerity satisfied at what he felt.
"Come, boy. It is time to leave.."
"What? Where? It's snowing!"
"It is time to go to Xa Fel. It is time to set the record straight once and for all.."
"Record?"
"Worth! Boy! Worth!" Perrin shouted in gleeful anticipation. Are we really the last of our kind? Me of the old Sith Order and this poor fool the Crusade's only legacy?
A look of confusion crossed the boy's face, the memory of his torture still fresh but not wanting to upset the old man in any way.
"A Double Blind! The surrounding of an enemy from the center! I should have known! I should have realized that I could not escape it that easily! Sooner or later I would be drawn...coerced...forced back into the center. As if I was surrounded with nowhere to go."
"And that center is..."
"On Xa Fel."
"But no one knows where it is.." the boy started and Perrin laughed.
"I used to live there, fool. Onward! A ship! A crew! Easily obtained and we can be there quickly enough..." and Dar followed the eccentric old man with both a sense of fear and a sense of hope.
For you, father...
**
The events pertinent to our story...
A young Perrin came into view moving silently among the bodies, stretching out trying to learn all he could from simple observation of an enemy now dead.
The younger version stopped and turned staring straight through Perrin and Dar not perceiving their existence.
"What is he?..What are you doing?" Dar asked and Perrin felt the young fool shift into a competitive stance which amused the old man.
"Learning about our enemy." the old man whispered noting the Sith Knight grabbing objects, running his hands over them, keeping some and discarding others as if their very nature would squeeze out the secrets of these invaders.
"And what did you learn?" Dar persisted.
"That the total sum of my knowledge about this enemy was zero." Perrin shot back sarcastically and yet quietly for he remembered the confusion of emotions running through his younger self. He was not here during the battle proper and it looked like the Sith took the fight into the Temple and catacombs but they had surrendered the surface. The toppled Temple spires a beacon to all who could see that the future was in question. Worth was in question.
And try as he might, the stripping of the enemy of what little that could be found still did not produce any revelations of value.
A decision needed to be made and Perrin closed his eyes...
"The Crusaders!" Dar shouted. "They are leaving!" and with a wave of his hand, their point of view shifted closer to the Temple.
There was still fighting going on beneath them but even so, the old man's eyes narrowed at the retreating forms of people who had only, just moments before, thrown their lives at the Sith with such abandon at the mere prospect of crossing the threshold of the Sith Order's stronghold.
A flutter of cloaks flashed and they caught a glimpse of Dacian Palestar passing through the Temple doors lost in thought.
"The retreat.." Perrin remembered.
Hundreds of enemy soldiers were leaving the field of battle...vast throngs headed back to the barges that had landed encircling the Sith position.
"They won't be so filled returning," the Perrin remarked, watching as his younger self left off his search and theft from the dead, knowing that his force presence had already been minimized ...
*
Perrin's hand went up to shade his eyes from the sun as he looked up at the barges that filled the skies. Going back to the Crusader's capital ship in orbit...that was still engaged with the vanguard of whatever Imperial forces were in the area.
"You haven't seen anything, yet.." the old man whispered as he caught sight of one barge in particular.
"There is still so much more to see..."
His hand went back into the folds of his cloak, the Temple coming back into view and sounds of the crackling firewood snapped.
Dar looked around in sudden confusion, anger lighting his features. "What was that?!" he demanded hotly.
"I could show you no more of Xa Fel," Perrin rasped out, a wave of nausea overcoming him.
"Why not?!" the boy was indignant.
"Because, you foolish boy, I cannot share what I did not witness nor can I not share what I could not perceive."
What Perrin witnessed, What he perceived and Where the Crusaders went...
Mantra
“Men, I am Dacian Palestar, and you now fight for me. I have only one ambition in this galaxy, and that is power. I have no philosophy. I have no desires or lusts or vices. I obey no code, I follow no god, I know no other pursuit. Follow me now into the Unknown regions to carve a piece of power and glory for ourselves. I have but one command for you.
“Fight!”
Swords, guns, and axes were hoisted into the air. “Palestar! Palestar! Palestar!”
The Palestar Crusade had begun.
“Men, I am Dacian Palestar, and you now fight for me. I have only one ambition in this galaxy, and that is power. I have no philosophy. I have no desires or lusts or vices. I obey no code, I follow no god, I know no other pursuit. Follow me now into the Unknown regions to carve a piece of power and glory for ourselves. I have but one command for you.
“Fight!”
Swords, guns, and axes were hoisted into the air. “Palestar! Palestar! Palestar!”
The Palestar Crusade had begun.
Palestar Empire, circa - the Present
Symbol
Nyx
New Mandalore
Gerrevo Station
Maiden's Retreat
Ordon
Fangol
Symbol
Nyx
New Mandalore
Gerrevo Station
Maiden's Retreat
Ordon
Fangol
From: Void Knight: Seizing a Mantle
The personal domain of Dacian Palestar was a terror to behold. A black monolith of steel, it jutted out of the pierced molten heart of the planet below. At a distance it seemed like a dark mountain, dwarfing the jagged ridges of stone thrown up around it by the messy death of Ukitan and the ill-omened birth of Symbol.
A little closer, and one could see the mountain was in fact a massive fortress. Built on deeply sunk foundations driven into the magma sea, walls and battlements rose as steep peaks, studded with huge and crude cannons at every plateau. Landing pads and hangar bays stuck out here and there, connecting into the deep labyrinth of barracks, command centers, communications centers, interrogation chambers, foundries, and more that filled the mysterious heart of the mountain.
Crowning this fort was a command center for visiting dignitaries of the Crusade, the coming and going of their ships and men, and other more mundane activities. This ensured that the goings on of the lower fortress was kept entirely secret and separate from the rest of the Crusade. Dark rumours were traded amongst the hardened Crusaders of evils taking place that put their meager sins to shame.
Rising at last out of this public meeting area was a slim tower, piercing the oppressive clouds of smoke that filled the sky. Pale when compared to the darkness of the rest of the fortress, it was easy to miss entirely. It was inadvisable to do so, however, for this tower held the private residence of Dacian Palestar himself.
Dwelling in his throne room at the very apex of the tower, Dacian was reading. Undisturbed by servants, soldiers, or strategists, he had rested alone since returning from Xa’Fel, immersed in study...
...What remained of his Void Knights had been despatched to the Maiden’s Retreat with their caretaker, and Silk had departed to attend to his own mysterious agenda. The Crusader armies neither needed nor much desired his oversight.
What Perrin remembered most from the long trip from Xa Fel was the smell. Or, rather, the lack of it as the air circulators and automated environment controls wiped away the odors of the planet left behind. It was an occurance starfarers rarely kept in mind but it was also true. Planet's stank. Eventually, one got used to it but climb back aboard your starship and breath in the neutral odors of your environmental controls (assuming they worked as some ships stank worse than planets) and the next world's odor will hit you like a full Star Destroyer broadside.
Not all the odors were rank or unpleasant but the initial whiff was a bit unsettling.
Still, Perrin always enjoyed the air conditioned and controled systems of starships and to his pleasant surprise, what remained of the Crusader Fleet had excellent working systems, especially since they left Xa Fel with far fewer soldiers than they arrived with did not tax them.
In that travel time Perrin had come to realize that these soldiers were fanatics. They disembarked as a mob and retreated as a mob, many leaving on a different barge they had arrived in. Units were either wholly destroyed, gutted, reformed into other units or ignored. The choice was usually up to the strongest of the higher ranked soldiers.
At least in the mobs.
Not all of the Crusaders were the country bumpkins and as talk, boasting, fighting and general chitchat of the mess table was any indication, these soldiers ached to prove themselves worthy of the highest corps of soldiers.
Those soldiers that had conquered the worlds that were the core of Dacian's far off empire, Mandalorians it seemed and the vaunted Crimson Guards or other such Crimson indentity under a powerful man that did not wear the cloaks of the Palestar's Void Knights. It was the one person who dared walk with Dacian side by side and among the Void Knights without fear and as more and more descriptions were heard, it could be none other than Doan Silk.
Even among the conquered worlds, however many there were (as even the soldiers Perrin accompanied did not know this fact), there were stations and those that held the highest station under those soldiers that were Dacian's before he set up his power base, were the Nyxans.
Everyone else, the mob soldiers and fodder (so Perrin thought) were below the Nyxan station. It was a Nyxan named Sun (who was born in the city Cycle of Serenity) who had grabbed Perrin, Happy, Blurp, Vetti, Rat, OP, and Pop from the bunks they confiscated from the dead that did not come back and moved them to another deck and room that was under Sun's command. Apparently he was reforming his unit and wanted to make sure it was up to strength for whatever whim excreted from their glorious leader's butt.
Organization was exceedingly simple. You lived and fought. The better you did, the higher you climbed and if not, you were dead. Dead people were replaced by new converts.
The Nyxan's hero, a man named Maxson who was their Supreme Commander (evidently a popular rank among empires) had gone off to attack a place called Onyx. Perrin's eyebrow rose at the ever telling plans this Crusade seemed to execute and wondered just how far those plans went. Whatever the case, the leadership of this motly group certainly did not think small.
The army was breaking up, those of Silk's going to take care of the business of Silk, the remaining Void Knights leaving with their hell-cat-devil-witch of a leader and Dacian had issued no proclamations of another attack as yet so Sun (and his newly formed unit) were going home.
Secretly, Sun hoped to be in on the next big Maxson push when they received word of his victory over Onyx.
It was not until he saw it that the seriousness of the Crusader's purpose, the depths of their insane fanaticism, and the totality the danger of the combination posed actually sank into Perrin's mind.
The shipyards were massive. The fleet in orbit nothing to laugh at and at the 'bumpkin's' expression, Sun laughed harshly. "We are the pride of the Crusade! We are the heart of the Crusade!" he boasted and Perrin had to agree.
Destroy all this and you rip the heart out of the Crusade. Of course, if Dacian's still beat, the madness would continue. The Nyxans were, after all, merely tools.
He could see the trap of pride that Dacian used to shape a national conscious and focus it to his ends and these people were only so ready to climb aboard the burning ship.
And as they neared, Perrin's mind was awash with possibilities and opportunities...
For before him lay the planet, Nyx.