Part One
IC: Hesper
Zakuul (New Moraband) – 5 ABY
IC: Hesper
Zakuul (New Moraband) – 5 ABY
The sky above was aflame with blooming red-petaled flowers. Sprays of fire and metal illuminated the sky with a ghastly wash of color, wreathing the firmament with a crown of bloody blossoms. Beyond, through the thick cover of smoke and clouds that blanketed the air, tiny pinpricks of stars could be seen where the clouded veil was thinnest. Shuttles and starfighters raced and spiraled through the fray above, up where she had been but moments earlier, and Destroyers loomed threateningly even beyond them. This was the Battle of New Moraband.
Hesper blinked slowly. It all seemed to spin, and from where she lay, the whole scene appeared to be turned on its head. Shattered glass and tangled golden hair surrounded her head like a strange halo, blood-stained and disarrayed. Her face was beaded with sweat and her rouge lip paint had been smeared across one cheek. Somewhere nearby, she could hear the sound of a raging fire and the strangely pleasant sound of metal popping and groaning in the heat. She touched a hand to her head and came away with red fingers.
Ah. She had been someplace like this before—in another age, another timeline, a different future. The ache in her skull was familiar. The piercing sensation in her gut was too well-known. She blinked again, bringing the stars above into focus.
Somewhere, at some point, a wrong decision had to have been made.
Perhaps it was her decision to be loyal to Insipid, that conniving brat of an Emperor—or perhaps it was her decision to accept jewel-grabbing Bellorum's offer to become her Hand. Perhaps it was the decision to return from the shadows she had once slipped into as a respite from the insanity that had ensued after her fateful jump one hundred and fifty years into the past alongside a slew of other Sith. Hesper could have written a staggeringly long list of "perhapses" that might have brought her to this point.
But none of it mattered anymore.
Hesper laid an arm across her blurry eyes, blocking out the battle above her. Instinctively, she knew—she could not stay here. And by here, she didn't mean in the burning wreckage of a nasty shuttle crash on the 137th floor of the Citadel Tower of New Moraband, a planet formerly known as Zakuul. She meant here as in, here in this timeline. Here, 5 years after that ever-fateful Battle of Yavin IV. Here, in an era she did not belong in, here, where her memories meant nothing and there was no trace of her existence. She cried out in pain and heartache before throwing her arm from her eyes and finding a surge of strength within herself to push herself off the bloody floor and sit up. She looked around herself to see the flaming wreckage of the shuttle she had been in when it had been caught by a turbolaser bolt and gone down, she saw the mangled form of what remained of the shuttle pilot, and, a little way off in the other direction, her lightsaber. Crawling over to it on her knees, she scooped up her weapon, rubbing soot and grease off its silver chassis with her thumb. Shakily, she stood, noting passively that her tunic was torn and one of her boots was missing.
Her head and vision swam, and the air around her shimmered with heat. Everything seemed to tilt as she turned and began to walk away from the crash, towards the gash in the side of the building the shuttle had created. Every limb and extremity ached as she moved. Despite the pain, despite the battle raging outside, and despite the fact that she knew she was abandoning her mission she had been given by Emperor Insipid—the one where she kills Ike, Kronos, and Bellorum—she simply stood in the yawning opening of the shattered bank of windows, and stared out into the battle before her.
There had to be a way to get back to where she belonged.
Lothal – 5 ABY
Months passed her by—like a great, shuddering, lumbering creature, two, three, four standard months crawled past. It was a dreadful time full of dead ends. There was so little to cling to, so few places to look for answers, and Hesper's evergreen patience was beginning to slip away. Holed up away from the prying eyes of what remained of the Sith Empire, Hesper searched and searched for something, anything, that could give her what she so desperately wanted. Each promising lead died almost as soon as she picked up the trail, and even her precognitions were maddeningly elusive, never showing anything more than flashes and impressions of… rustling, flaxen gold, pale light, then… nothing. Each time she peered into the future, she was met with the same thing. Increasingly frustrated and teased to the brink of insanity, at last… she found a clue.
The pleasant, pastoral world of Lothal, a recent hotbed of rebel activity and uprisings, held a secret. A secret that had been disturbed but just a bit over a half a decade prior. There had been a Jedi temple on this world which housed a fantastic mystery—Hesper had read about this thing in a rare transcription of an old Jedi text. It was called the Vergence Scatter, the Chain Worlds Theorem, described and illustrated by some unnamed Jedi. According to this mystical text, an extraplanar place existed outside of time and space, where every moment in time, in every possible timeline, was theorized to intersect. Palpatine must have understood its potential, too, for he had sought entrance to this place. Even had it within his grasp. To set foot into this world between worlds granted the traveler access to, theoretically, every single moment in time… and the ability to enter into them. It held the potential to be one of the most ultimate powers in the entire galaxy.
If she could harness this power and access this place between time and space, she could get back to where she truly belonged.
And thus, Hesper made her way to Lothal. The journey was long and arduous, as it was on the opposite end of the galaxy from where Hesper had been hiding in the systems nearest to New Moraband, in the Mid Rim; she was forced to travel in secret, seeking passage on passenger liners and freighters. Many times she had to double back or take detours to cover her tracks and keep her journey difficult to follow, should the remnant Sith send anyone after her. Paranoia kept her looking over her shoulder constantly, always expecting to have been followed, despite the fact she had presaged that no one would. Keeping her obvious scarred left eye and long blonde hair hidden beneath a silken scarf and wearing a worn, yellow-striped cloak and hempen sandals, she posed as nothing more than a weary traveler.
When at last her sandaled feet touched the susurrating tawny grasses of Lothal and the white afternoon sun shone on her freckled cheeks, she understood. Rustling, flaxen gold, pale light. And in the air, on the wind, was the imperceptible yet unmistakable keening melody of the Force. It was here.
But… it wasn't.
The Jedi Temple was gone; in its place was worn earth forming interlinked circles with a large stone medallion in its center, half covered in dust and tufts of reedy grass, bearing the sigil of Ashla—the light side of the Force. Hesper stood at its edge, gazing down at it with her one uncovered eye, her face unreadable. The hem of her short cloak and kaftan brushed her mid-calf in the gentle Lothal wind as she considered what she had found.
It had to be here. The place was positively singing in the Force; surely, the place where the portal to the Vergence Scatter was housed used to be on this very spot where Hesper stood. Closing her eyes, she reached into her clairvoyance, grasping for what may become of this very spot where she stood. Again, she was met with just simple impressions; this time of stone, wind, blackness, and a vast, yawning emptiness. Opening her eyes and sighing, Hesper allowed her bag of belongings to fall from where it hung on her shoulder down to the ground. She followed it, lowering herself to her knees, tucking her feet under herself and sitting in a tidy kneel before the Ashla medallion.
Hesper bowed her head and slumped her shoulders, feeling defeat weigh down on her. Months of searching, wasted. All that was here was plain earth. She grimaced and pressed the heel of her hand to the scar over her left eye, feeling its phantom ache radiating into the bone of her skull. After a moment she pulled her hand away and began to undo the scarf swaddled around her head, her traveler's disguise. She untwisted and unknotted its ochre and rust patterned length, and her golden hair spilled about her shoulders. Wrapping the scarf about herself, she turned her focus inward and simply sat, taking in the sun on her hair and skin, and feeling the breeze dance past. It was a half-hearted meditation, and soon the afternoon sun dipped below the horizon, bringing cool evening to bear. Stars winked to life in the darkening sky as the last red shreds of sunset faded away, and Hesper pulled her cloak tighter about herself.
With her face tipped towards the sky, she beheld its beauty. She leaned back until she fell softly to the grass, and she continued to stare up at the net of stars above as she hugged herself. Her empty mind began to swirl with thoughts of home—strange notion, it was. Where was her home? Even if she were to somehow figure out this elusive, dead-end Vergence Scatter and return home to her correct era, where would she go? The Empire proved fruitless, its leadership divisive and fragile, and she dreaded whom she might find on the throne when she returned, knowing her former master and Emperor had effectively vanished. Moraband would likely not be the same kind of place it was when she left it for that fateful trip to Mortis, and she could not envision it as "home", as it had been when she was an apprentice. Coruscant, too, was no longer home. And Naboo, her homeworld, was too distant a memory.
Curling up with these thoughts, Hesper pillowed her head on her satchel, the Ashla medallion just an arm's length away. The sky was now black as pitch above her, dotted liberally with pearl-white stars. Exhausted from travel and wrung out by her futile research, her eyes slid shut and she drifted off into sleep.
Soon, she dreamt.
And one by one, tiny white dots of lights pricked the insides of her eyelids, needling the velvet black. In her dream-state, she sat forth with a start and cold sweat on her brow, feeling what should be solid ground beneath her with her hands as she drew her knees to her chest, only to recoil when she saw there was none—just blackness spanning onward above and below. In a rush of panic, she stood and whirled, taking in the place where she had found herself.
In this dream, she stood in the midst of starry black space, feet touching down on a transparent ribbon edged with radiant white. This place felt simultaneously as familiar as her own name, and more foreign than anything she had ever encountered. As she stood and peered out into the void around her, she felt the unmistakable sensation that she was not alone.
"Hello?" she called out, and her voice fell strangely flat. She took one step forward; the ribbon beneath her feet rippled where her woven sandal touched it. Inhaling sharply, she withdrew her foot and the ripple gently dissipated.
A sound like rustling wind brushed past her, though there was no movement—then, a murmur in her ear:
"Hello, Hesper."
Every hair on Hesper's body stood on end. This voice was unnervingly familiar.
"I’ve been here before," she realized, and gasped as searing, burning pain lit up the scar on her left cheek. Suddenly, there was the sensation of a hand on Hesper’s shoulder, and she startled, taking a wide step backwards. But as she did, there was no purchase for her feet to find and with a great backwards lurch, Hesper plummeted through the invisible ribbon.
She fell for what felt like eons, her hair and cloak whipping about her as she plummeted through space—and somehow, she knew, time—until—
With a great, heaving gasp, Hesper awoke with a flinch as the weightless sensation of falling grabbed at her stomach. An eerie dawn mist had gathered around where she lay, and Hesper's clothes and skin were damp with dew and sweat. She rolled onto her side and propped herself up on an elbow, looking to the stone Ashla medallion. Its surface was dark with moisture, still shadowed in the darkness of early morning. She reached out a hand and touched its wet surface, sensing something approaching. Much like in the dream she had just awoken from… she could feel she was not alone.
Withdrawing her hand and pushing herself off of the ground, she sat up and peered into the fog. Far ahead of her on the westerly horizon, a vague figure took shape; it was tall, and beastly. Instinctually, she knew.
"Loth-wolf…?" Hesper breathed, and as soon as the word left her lips, the figure turned and vanished.
Nearly a week passed after Hesper saw the loth-wolf; she spent her days meditating and contemplating the conundrum she found herself in, never straying too far from the stone medallion. She would walk among the tall grasses, frustration burrowing in her chest and anger tugging at her limbs. Day by day her resentment grew, burning wildly in her mind. Each night she would lie awake, staring at the darkened sky, wondering over and over again where it all went wrong until she fell asleep with her fists balled up like lumps of iron. In the morning she would wake with the first dew, and sit and meditate until she could bear it no longer.
On this night, the sky was clouded and surly, dark storm clouds having rolled in from the north. They roiled and rumbled, but no rain fell, and Hesper slept with her cloak pulled over her head, curled along the contour of the medallion.
Her sleep was fitful and frightfully cold, and she awoke in the early morning, before the first light had even peeked over the horizon, as fat raindrops fell on her uncovered face. She opened her sleep-weary eyes and gasped at the sight she saw.
Hesper was staring down the shaggy white muzzle of a massive loth-wolf as it exhaled hot, wild breath in her face; the creature's aura was tremendous, and she felt as if its mere presence would crack the earth beneath her and send her tumbling in. Genuine panic took root in her chest. A deep, grave growl tore from the animal's throat and Hesper shrank away as it bore down on her. Her mind raced—here was a creature blessed with the Force, poised to rip her limb from limb.
"DAAAARKNESSSSSSSS," it thundered, and Hesper could feel the ground beneath her quake. Her heart pounding, she reached for fistfuls of reedy grass and wriggled backwards, trying to get out from under the loth-wolf's yellow gaze. She felt the wet, cold edge of the Ashla medallion beneath her back as she crawled, and the dawn rain soaked her the moment she was out from under the loth-wolf's great form. Then, the wolf lifted a massive paw and dropped it down on Hesper's chest, pinning her to the medallion and knocking the wind out of her.
She wheezed, wrestling to get its paw off her. "Let me go!" She spat. Shoving its paw aside, Hesper scrambled, yelling when the great beast opened its maw and snapped at her, tearing at her flesh and raiment. She threw up an arm to ward off its fangs and the loth-wolf seized it, giving it, and Hesper, a violent shake. Heaving for breath as it released her arm, Hesper scrambled further backwards still, over the edge of the stone medallion and onto its mossy surface. Again, the loth-wolf pinned Hesper down with a massive paw, breathing hot in her face.
"DOOM-BRINGER." The loth-wolf snarled, peeling its reddened lip back to bare its gleaming teeth. In the Force, the loth-wolf's emanation spelled destruction, a sheer, powerful energy that could rend life. It wormed its way into her mind, whispering wordlessly to her, suggesting to her that she did not belong here, that she needed to leave, now. That something was coming, an all-encompassing darkness that would shred the cloth of reality, a darkness so deep that no Sith could fathom it. Hesper lifted her hands and called upon the dark side, sending a forceful wave towards the wolf in an effort to send it flying away from her so she could breathe. But the loth-wolf resisted, and the Force wave merely ruffled its white fur; in turn it bore down harder, squeezing every drop of air from Hesper's lungs. Gasping, she began to see stars forming in her vision.
It roared, and the ground under her did indeed tremble with bone-rattling intensity.
Then, with a great shove, the loth-wolf pressed down on Hesper against the stone medallion with such great strength she feared her bones would shatter and her organs collapse, yet instead—she passed through. With a crackle of yellow-white lightning and an otherworldly ripple, Hesper simply phased through the stone beneath her, accompanied by that all-too-familiar sensation of falling through empty space.
And, just like in her dream from just a week before, she found herself in the midst of starry black space, touching down on a transparent ribbon edged with radiant white. This place felt simultaneously as familiar as her own name, and more foreign than anything she had ever encountered. Looking behind herself, she saw the doorway through which she had just come—it was large, the same size as the stone medallion where the Jedi Temple once stood—and it was limned with white and circled by spinning, pointed rays, enclosed in another thin white outline. Hesper breathed a sigh of astonishment.
The Vergence Scatter.
She knew immediately what it was in her heart; as she looked out across the vast expanse of inky black dotted with tiny white stars, scattered with round doorways which glowed with light and sound. Bridging walkways arced this way and that, leading high and low to all the different doors. As she stood and sloughed off her soaked cloak, favoring her bitten arm, voices swam through the air around her head, snippets of dialogue from voices both familiar and unfamiliar.
"You have persevered in darkness, now darkness shall persevere in you…"
With wonderment, she took a step forward, and the pathway before her rippled with dim light upon the touch of her foot. Each step she took was like a drop in a placid lake, and she marveled at the vastness of the place she was in. "Hello?" she called out, and her voice echoed endlessly into the void.
"Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design."
Each extending walkway led to a different circular doorway outlined with a unique pattern—some bore animals, others bore symbols. Some were edged with foreign writing and some were just a simple circle. Hesper knew without needing to prove it that these were all doorways into different times and different realities. She knew that if she were to choose to step fully through any one of them, she would not be able to find her way back here to this incredible world between worlds.
Hesper cradled her arm as she wandered up and down the bridges, eyes wide as she studied their gates. One of these would lead her back to the time and place where she truly belonged. At last, she would be able to get out of this horrific limbo. The words of the loth-wolf nagged in the back of her mind: Doom-bringer.
"H-he is no god. He is a monster…"
Who? Who was this doom-bringer? Was it Hesper? She chewed the inside of her lip as she considered. Surely, it couldn't be—the loth-wolf had been clear in its intentions as it had worked its way into her mind. There was something transpiring that needed to be stopped.
"We must go to Atale at once. If it is a seal, it cannot be broken…"
Hesper approached one of the many doorways and placed her hand along its ethereal frame. It was ornate, beautiful, with intricate scrolls and curlicues of pure white. Her mind was abuzz—she peered into the future and saw only this space she was in. Thoughts and fears swirled and intermingled, and she could not pick out a single thread of coherent progress. Standing here, in this place… nothing led forward.
Feeling as if she were disembodied, she reached a hand through this portal.
"The future, by its nature, can be changed."
With a crackle of pale lightning and a distorting ripple, her hand passed through, grasping at air on the other side. Inhaling sharply, she withdrew her hand, clutching it suspiciously to her chest. "I can't believe this is real," she breathed. Already, she was eager to find which portal would be the one to take her back to where she belonged.
The innermost ring around the portal began to glow as she stood before it, rubbing the wrist of her bitten hand. It radiated sinister red, and a scene came into focus through it, as if Hesper were watching something on a screen. She could see a wide, metal-surfaced landing platform extending into a crimson nebula—atop the platform was a throne, and before it stood a figure quite familiar to Hesper. It was Dreadwar. A strange tightness seized her chest, somewhere between anger and hope.
"…And using the creation engines of the Star Forge, the powers of the Mirror, I have forged you all amulets in its image, to guard you from all harm…"
His sibilant voice was distant, removed, and Hesper strained to hear it before the image faded away.
"It's the Dagger—the Dagger of Mortis!"
She stepped away from the portal showing her former Master and ghosted down the next pathway. Somehow, she felt… off-kilter. Something was not right. She had spent months dreaming of a way to return home, and now she was standing amidst the solution, surrounded by mythic constellations and white-limned doorways leading to any imaginable timeline. But there was something very vexing about the whole thing that Hesper could not quite put her finger on.
"Let it be known the butcher of Coruscant has had her revenge…"
The next portal she approached was simple, framed by a plain triangle—she stopped before it to see what it had to show her, and in short order it radiated ominous black before bringing into view the familiar red sands of Korriban under a darkened sky. Dire black pyramids hovered in the sky, and Sith stood bewildered in the desert below, looking upwards. Terror—sheer, unfettered terror—oozed from those beings. Hesper could feel it too, deep in her bones, like ice had replaced her marrow.
"What… what is that?" a quavering voice asked as the scene dimmed and the portal went blank.
Startled, Hesper took a wide step away from the doorway. Hands shaking, she wrapped her arms about herself to ward off the ominous cold.
“Die, become nothing...”
Her heart beat heavy in her chest, and the loth-wolf's words echoed loud in her ears. Darkness. Doom-bringer. Reaching into her foresight, she was again met with vast nothingness, and she began to feel a fearful heat rising in her cheeks. She broke into a run to get to the next portal and skittered up to it, clutching at its frame with pale fingers.
This one glowed violet before giving way to an image of a massive black hole, wreathed by the cold gleaming of thousands of stars. The image was so eerily still. Curled around this black hole, frozen, unspeakably colossal—was a worm. Loathsome, tentacular, dead.
A whisper: "Are you not beautiful?"
Hesper backed away, her head shaking. She didn’t like the things she was seeing through these portals. They spoke of ill portent, a future she could not perceive, of omens unknown. She swallowed hard and balled her hands into fists.
"Existence is fleeting. Destruction is eternal."
With a quickened pace, she went to the next portal. She could not see into the future on her own—all was too clouded, too changeant—but she could piece together what may happen through the Vergence Scatter. Yes, this was something she could solve, she needed only to see more. The next doorway was at the end of a long, arcing walkway, ringed by ancient, arcane text. She ran towards it, but before she could get close, a crippling wave of intense fear buffeted her and she abruptly stumbled over her own feet and fell heavily to her knees. She was trembling.
Then, as she looked up—
An eye—emerald, brilliant, terrible—swept its shadowed gaze across a dark horizon through the portal before her. It shone down from the zenith of the Tower of the Son, a landmark which she knew with fearful familiarity, and glanced out to the galaxy beyond. A deep rumbling crescendoed as Hesper beheld this oculus, paralyzed. At that instant, as if it knew Hesper was watching, the eye snapped its focus to her, like it were gazing through the doorway into the world between worlds.
Her heart stopped, and she knew.
It was him.
An apocalyptic roar tore forth through the portal, blowing back Hesper's golden hair and ripping at her black garments. She braced herself against its magnitude, rooting herself in place with the Force. It took every ounce of her crumbling willpower to force herself to stand and flee, sprinting towards the doorway she had first come through, where she had left her wet cloak in a heap. The deafening roar followed her, even as she stopped to gather up her striped cloak. Turning, she beheld the horror of the Eye one last time. It stared her down, piercing and sinister.
She knew what was coming.
"And when darkness finds you, you will face it alone."
Hesper could bear it no longer. Holding her breath, she clamored through the portal ringed with the spinning rays. Crackles of white lightning danced around her as she went.
On the other side, she reached for fistfuls of loam and wet grass, pulling herself up and out of the portal where it had formed atop the stone Ashla medallion. Cold sweat plastered her hair to her face, and the pouring rain soaked the rest of it. She gasped for breath, and her heart beat strongly in her chest again. Sitting on its haunches a few paces away was the white loth-wolf, watching with piercing yellow eyes as Hesper crawled out of the ground.
"You knew!" Hesper hissed as she rose from her knees, holding her dirt-caked hands like claws at her sides, addressing the haughty wolf. It inclined its head, revealing nothing. "You knew what I would see in there! You knew!" She shouted, pointing down at the portal. Furious, scared, and bitterly cold, Hesper paced, and in the Force, she radiated a flighty, anxious aura.
The loth-wolf parted its lips in a toothy canid grin, and without acknowledging Hesper's outcry, stood, turned, and left, disappearing into the torrential rain.
"Stop!" Hesper hollered after it—but the loth-wolf was already gone.
Alone, Hesper stood in the rain, a million different thoughts racing through her mind. He was coming; and though there had been no indication, she knew when he would be coming. She had been there at Mortis when the seal was broken, and he walked among the towers there and wrought destruction upon the Sith who dared to do battle against him. Numbly, Hesper threw her wet cloak about her shoulders and fastened it. There had to be something she could do, some kind of stratagem she could use, perhaps employing the Vergence Scatter, to stop him before he was unleashed upon the galaxy at large. She looked down at her feet, and at the rippling portal she had just crawled out of. Just then—with sudden clarity, the future laid itself out before her, almost as if it were playing out within the portal. She saw people she knew, places she’d been, each scene telling her what needed to be done. The revelations reeled her, and her vision swam with tesseracting light and color. Gasping, her hands shook and her eyes slid shut.
A plan formed in her mind.
So long as this portal into the Vergence Scatter remained open, or so long as she could access it readily, she could use it to plant her own machinations throughout time. She could change the future. And she could still get back home, to the time where she belonged.
Soaked, frightened, yet strangely triumphant, Hesper took a seat beside the portal, crossing her legs and placing her hands upon her knees. She called upon the Force to halt the rain from falling on her, and then she delved deep into her own mind, beginning to form a plot.
For the rest of the day, she sat beside the portal, considering her options, stacking her deck, and deciding what to do next. She knew she could not let this miraculous doorway come to harm, so she decided—she would build a temple to house it, here where the Lothal Jedi Temple once stood. It would be great and glorious, a grand pyramid of white stone. And until she was ready to make her passage back through the Vergence Scatter, into the era to which she belonged, the temple would be her home and shelter, too.
On the morrow, she woke with the morning dew as usual to a clear day, and felt the watchful eyes of the white loth-wolf upon her. Sitting forward and wiping the dew from her eyes, she fixed it with a stormy look. Without a word, she rose for the day and began to make her preparations to build her temple. She found her stone and cleared her space, trekking arduously across the Lothal plains; and by noontime, she was ready. From afar, laying with its shaggy head resting upon its crossed paws in the shadow of a rocky mound, the loth-wolf watched Hesper work.
Like a priest breaking communion, Hesper held her hands upward to the sky, calling upon the deepest depths of the Force. All around her, the white stone she had gathered began to break and shape itself forming into massive blocks, building the foundation of the new temple. A deep rumbling shook the earth beneath Hesper's feet, the result of the very earth cracking and reshaping—she lifted her hands ever higher, her pale brow beetling under the exertion. Her focus was like a razor, and she could feel each and every vibration of the stone coursing through her body. And with every stone she placed, she could sense in her prescience that they were intruding into a different timeline, perhaps the correct timeline; as if the world between worlds above which she was building were warping itself so as to mirror her temple.
Tirelessly, she built her temple; she did not rest until the first star of evening shone low in the sky, a bright silver beacon. At last, she placed the last stone atop the split pinnacle of her pyramid, and her hands dropped to her sides in exhaustion. She staggered, startling when she was pushed back upright by the white loth-wolf's cold nose.
She gazed lovingly upon her creation: A towering pyramid of white stone, surrounded at its base by squat, square halls and boasting a strange, soaring split down its middle from zenith to center which culminated at a large, round hole in the pyramid's middle. Already, the name of this new cathedral was on her lips. "Temple Eventide," she spoke aloud.
Behind her, the loth-wolf rumbled. "PRIESTESSSS," it said, and pointed towards the grand entryway Hesper had sculpted; but Hesper turned to stare at it.
Priestess, it had said. It was a strange title to Hesper's ear; she had grown used to being called "High Lord", "Butcher", or "Darth". To be called Priestess sounded so soft, so susurrating. She reached out a hand to touch the loth-wolf's great head. "Yes," she murmured. "Priestess." Turning, she padded to the entrance, pausing to remove her worn hemp sandals before entering.
Inside, the smooth white stone was cool under her bare feet. She moved like a ghost through the pristine hallways, working her way inwards towards the central chamber, where the portal to the Vergence Scatter was now housed. The halls were labyrinthine, but she already knew them by heart—and soon, she stepped into the lofty chamber. Its ceilings were arched and vaulted, soaring high above Hesper's head, and relief carvings of abstract and arcane geometric shapes and symbols ringed the circular skylight above, positioned right below the apex of the pyramid and the porthole through its middle. Softly illuminated by Lothal's twinned moonlight, the still active portal to the world between worlds sat, unperturbed by the excitement of the day.
Reverently, Hesper approached. She knew what her first step would be. Standing at the edge of the portal, she sloughed off her yellow striped cloak, and set it to one side. Then she knelt, gripping the edge, and lowered her face to the placid black of the doorway, the same way one lowers their face to a pool of water to drink. But instead the new priestess passed through, with a flourish of pale lightning, and found herself again on the other side of the veil.
Moving quickly, peering through each portal as she went, Hesper breezed through the world between worlds. She was looking for the moment in time in which Bellorum and Kwea Acantha would take the Dagger of Mortis from the Daughter's crypt—it was her intention to reach through and swipe it from their hands, thus preventing the events of Mortis. If she could just stop him there, then perhaps, just perhaps, she could prevent him from walking elsewhere in the galaxy.
But as she went, a different portal caught her attention, one she did not know to look for; within it, she saw a mirror.
Gold as sin it was, lustrous as temptation and shining as the primeval dawn, a perfect disc that filled the portal with the precise entirety of its primordial geometry. Yet within its gilded stone hall, the reflection of some vast treasure chamber of yore, not a single contour of Hesper's countenance could be seen, nor the metallic twines and shining portals of the world between worlds. How, then, had Hesper known it was a mirror? Had the thought bubbled within her mind without bidding, some unnatural comprehension of the incomprehensible, some faint echo of a memory from hoarded lore?
"The mirror reflects all within its gaze," came the whisper, scratchy where the mirror was unmarred, cold where the mirror was warm, dark where the mirror glowed like the sun. "You are not within its gaze... for which you should be most thankful... Tribune."
A strange fascination crept over Hesper, and she paused in her step to look closer. How she had known it was a mirror, she did not know— she had simply supposed it was. The voice emanating from the doorway was unnatural, warped. She fought the urge to reach through the portal and stroke the gilded surface of this mirror as she approached, ever curious.
"Tribune?" She echoed.
"Your entitlement," the susurrus returned, sedulously swelling, now, with poisonous malignancy, "my... young... apprentice. Your destiny."
The mirror rotated, its gilded face shining with the gleaming lusts of ruby-red holocrons, of twisted arcane machinery, of torture racks and books. As it lazily spun to its side, its field of reflection panned the span of the room, revealing to Hesper the full contents of the dread hall, accursed objets d'art and profane statuary, winged scarabs and marble women, writhing worms and depraved deformities—until only its side could be seen, the intersection of its frame between the golden face and the plain backside of grey stone.
A cortosis gauntlet rested on the back, and to that gauntlet was attached a shadow, a trailing sleeve of rotting raiment, black as the vergence void. From that outstretched limb swelled the hideous approximation of humanoid shape, swathed in mummiform midnight, the hood of its all-concealing cowl lowered over abyssal darkness, a portal into nothingness. The rippling cowl whence the unhallowed whisper came, emanating through worlds to echo in her mind. "Has it been so long you do not recognise me?" the dead Emperor hissed.
Hesper was glued to the image in the portal as the mirror turned, showing her a gallery's worth of precious, wretched sculptures and strange, angled machinery. She could not figure where or what this doorway was showing her. Her mouth gaped open as she tried to piece together what she was seeing, until a familiar stygian gauntlet could be seen... along with the wraith attached to it. Her mouth snapped shut, and her grey and opal eyes widened.
Entitlement. Apprentice. Destiny.
A familiar cold crept up Hesper's limbs.
"My Master," she breathed, dropping to one knee before him, head bowed in reverence. "I did not know you yet lived," Hesper said, raising her head to behold the sable specter in the portal before her. "It has indeed been so long."
"I do not live," the old wraith hissed, "and I do not die. That is not dead which can eternal lie." The gauntlet raised, beckoning. "Closer, child. Closer."
Hesper could not resist; she rose, and stepped closer.
"Let me look upon you," the Emperor hissed, invisible eyes raising hairs in their passage; a gaze felt, not seen, in icy prickles crawling down one's spine. "The scars of war," he mused, empty hood piercing the black gulf of a hundred years. "From what time do you hail? Whence do you come, and where do you go?"
Hesper lifted her chin as Dreadwar's obfuscated visage looked her over; even over the vast distance between them, both in time and space, she could feel the chill of his gaze the same way she had felt it when she had been bestowed apprenticeship. She could feel his stare lingering over the mark across her left cheek. "Scars of war come with stories attached, my Lord," she said, a coy twinkle in her eyes, "and I am afraid the one that took the sight in my left eye does not." Cocking her chin, she continued. "I am currently hailing from the time five years after the Battle of Yavin. The Sith are again at war with one another, and I sought to escape it all. I have discovered what the Jedi called the Vergence Scatter—it is my intention to utilize it to return home to Moraband, to the correct era."
"As I have foreseen," Dreadwar whispered, leaning back in seeming satisfaction, arms folding. "My enemies cleared off the gameboard, manoeuvred with the snare of false security." Dreadwar provided no further explanation, but then, he didn't need to. The meaning of his words was obvious, cast into plain sight to boast, nothing more.
"I possess mastery of time of which you know not, my young apprentice," he hissed. "To decouple a world from time, to fling it four thousand years into the future... to plant the bait to lure back adventurers to free me, to complete the loop of time I knitted... Such is within my power." Now, his meaning fell into occlusion; he may as well have been speaking a different language. Yet each strange sentence brought with it a flash of imagery, as if the portals around Hesper revolved to show her. A world shattered to its core, the misshapen skull of a black planet, wreathed in shadow and bathed in baleful green light. A ship flying into hyperspace, only for the tunnel to twist and contort, spitting it out into a sea of unknown constellations, where the black world rolled without luster or name. And from Dreadwar rose the miasma of unbridled pride in those eldritch things he spoke of, rising to choke Hesper like a cloud. "Now again shall time service its lord... and you shall service your massster." The hiss grew serpentine, the coils twining like the ribbons of the Vergence Scatter, Dreadwar's arctic presence seeping into the stillness of the void. His hand stretched forth from the portal, a glowing green dagger in hand!
"Take this," he hissed. "Drawn forth from the magic of the mirror, to resemble the blade of Mortis in every aspect. Venture forth to the moment you seek," –had he so easily breached her mental defenses?— "and substitute the true Dagger for the false. Return to me on Korriban, before the coming of the void beyond which you cannot see."
Her master was an enigma—unsolvable, powerful, magnetic. Hesper felt chastened and small before him as she reached out her fingers to take the Dagger from his stygian hand which jutted forth from the portal. "I had intended to take the Dagger from Bellorum," she murmured, distractedly, dreamily. The false Dagger was heavy in her grasp, its blade gleaming dully in the starlight of the Vergence Scatter. Her mind, barraged with visions, was numb. "I will do as you command, Master," Hesper said, fixing her eyes on Dreadwar's hood.
Dreadwar's hand withdrew, the gauntlet resting once more upon the back of the gleaming gold mirror, as he turned it back towards her. "Save them at the tunnel," he said, cryptically. "And know that in performing this task, you enact your greatest deed... A deed which will make your life worth living." In that hissing whisper lurked an odd tone. "You can be proud of that, Lady Hesper, and know that you will have achieved more than the legends you sculpted." Or perhaps it was not the tone, per se, so much as the fact Dreadwar had never uttered something so…
Supportive?
Wistful?
"Farewell."
Sad.
The portal closed.
Hesper said nothing as her master's visage faded from the portal; she felt strangely adrift, shocked into silence by the appearance of one she thought to be far, far gone. An odd hopefulness was blossoming in her chest, and she hefted the false Dagger in her hand. She would do as her master bade her.
The aura of the Dagger was just as she remembered it, strangely wistful in the Force. She considered it; for a moment, she thought to keep it for herself, but the screaming image of him flashed across her mind like a black clap of lightning and her grip on the Dagger momentarily flagged. No—she would do what she must.
Save them at the tunnel. Her master’s instructions echoed in her mind, yet as was increasingly typical, she could not decipher his meaning. What tunnel? Where? When? Frustrated, she screwed up her brow and rubbed her forehead, raking her fingers through her hair before turning her eyes to the Dagger again. She would have to solve her master's mystery later. She pulled the Dagger close to her chest, clutching it to her body, and turned to face the expanse of the Vergence Scatter, something far more stunning than this radiant blade resounding in her mind.
Dreadwar lived.
It was as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She recalled with clarity the last time she had seen him—the battle at Empress Teta, where he had called her to him when she was still yet an apprentice, only to vanish into thin air, leaving her held at the end of Tobias Sun's blade and in the hands of oily Insipid. She wanted to curse him for that, for his deception and for leaving her to this fate which wrenched her from her true era, to swear at him and condemn him. But he was still her master. However far along she had come in the time since—he was still her master.
Taking a step, she carried on down the ribbon pathway before her, following the same divined path she had been on before Dreadwar had appeared. She moved more slowly now, her limbs seemingly weighed down by her new purpose. The Dagger was like lead in her arms, and the memory of Bellorum and Kwea Acantha rushing to the Daughter's crypt on Mortis played in her mind on an infinite loop as she checked each and every portal she passed by.
As she went, she witnessed all manner of futures and pasts playing out in whirling doorways; she saw again the same portents she had first seen when she entered this place, and heard the same whispers. But she also saw different scenes—of hope, of disaster, of tragedy, of planets she had never seen or heard of before, of victory, of failure, of grief and despair. Of that unending blackness—for a moment she hears that blood-boiling scream of his, though she knows it's just an echo in her mind—which had been lurking at the edges of her consciousness. She saw and heard, too, a miscellany of people, and somehow she knew they belonged to her, in one capacity or another. Followers. She saw planets, as well—a verdant world, a world of ice, a world of molten rock and fire, a tempest world, the now-familiar golden grasslands of Lothal, and more… But among it all the faces of a choice few hovered at the forefront of her mind. She knew them. She knew them.
The thought lodged itself in her mind, and a word came to her lips: Hesperians.
Peering into portal after portal, seeing the same handful in all manner of mise-en-scène, she turned the idea over and over in her mind. When she returned to her correct time bearing the news of what she had thus far witness here in the Vergence Scatter, of what she knew would inevitably come to pass, she would need people to support her claims, and, if push came to shove, fight for her. She needed people willing to spill blood for her. Momentarily, she stumbled and paused, staring with a haunted gaze into a portal to her left. She saw a few of those who would be her staunchest supporters, their faces like beacons among a crowd of others. They were people who would corroborate for her, and people who would put their faith in her. She knew. Followers of the elusive darkness.
She sucked in a sharp breath and tucked away their faces into her memory as she hefted the precious item in her grasp. When the Dagger was safe, and the others whose stories were not yet through were safe, she would find them. Her Hesperians.
Steeling herself, she carried on, and soon, voices that sounded as though they were plucked straight from her memory floated about her head. And… the sound of scurrying. Hesper's skin crawled at the memory of millions of black-carapaced scarabs, sharp-toothed and thirsty for blood, scampering over her limbs, biting into her flesh. Physically, she shuddered, her grip tightening around the Dagger.
"…We get the dagger, then we end Abeloth. There's no time to waste."
Ah, there it was. The familiar nag of Bellorum's voice cut through the air, and Hesper couldn't help but laugh at what folly their "battle" at Mortis had been—how foolish they'd been to think they'd been even a modicum triumphant. Hesper's feet carried her closer to the voices and din of the skirmish she'd fought in, and her hand found the hilt of the dagger and held it in a vise grip, very nearly brandishing it before herself as she held it at the ready.
There was no mistaking which portal was the one. Before Hesper glimmered an open doorway, a pattern of luminescent crossed daggers twined and spun around its frame, and in its aperture she could see it—the tomb of the Daughter, alive with activity. The figure of Abeloth shrilled, and blue Bellorum and gentle Kwea fought against her. From Hesper's vantage, she could see where the stone slab that covered the Daughter's coffin had been shattered, baring the peaceful Daughter's corpse to the open air, and, in her grasp… the true Dagger of Mortis.
"Go back to the swamp you crawled out of!"
Kwea was crumpled on the floor, heaving ragged breaths, and Bellorum stood and taunted Abeloth. Hesper didn't pause to think— now was the time! Deftly, she plunged her arms and the false Dagger into the portal, feeling the crackle of the portal's pale lightning against her skin, and pulled the true Dagger from the Daughter's grasp, quickly replacing it with the one given to her by Dreadwar. With the true Dagger firmly in hand, Hesper stumbled backwards from the doorway, the scene of Kwea and Bellorum battling Abeloth fading back to inky black.
Hesper found herself breathless, and sunk down to her knees, cradling the Dagger of Mortis in her arms. Its aura was almost electric—and through it, Hesper could feel and see its lingering memories. Through all the Dagger had experienced, searing pain and a vision of cold celestial death among a sea of ethereal, eternal memories cracked like a bolt of lightning, and Hesper gasped, dropping the blade and scrambling backwards. It clattered away from her on the otherworldly pathway, leaving a trail of rippling white rings behind itself.
She heaved great, shuddering breaths, sitting with her legs akimbo as she eyed the Dagger of Mortis from a distance. Its straight blade reflected the light of the stars above it, cold and distant. Murmuring to herself, Hesper crawled over and retrieved it, scooping up the precious blade. She held it gingerly and stood, wondering now what to do with it—all she knew was that it needed to be hidden.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Hesper tried to call upon her prescience to ask for its guidance, reaching out for the ample Force around herself… but she was met with nothing. Her eyes snapped open as she realized—she couldn't foresee anything! Her hand flew to her forehead, and her jaw hung momentarily slack. The second realization struck her that all she'd seen of the future while here in the Vergence Scatter she had witnessed through its myriad portals. Her thoughts floundered as she pieced them together. If… if she could not see anything in the Vergence Scatter, could it be because there was truly nothing? Or, more likely, was there too much to see? She raked fingers through her golden hair, then bit down on her thumbnail. No matter, she thought. I still know how to act upon visions, whether they appear in my mind or in a magical doorway.
Clinging to the Dagger, Hesper padded back up the pathway she had followed, retracing her steps to a crossroads where a wide, circular area was situated, the skies above and below it broad and glimmering with stars. Here would be a good place to sit and think—Hesper settled down, cross-legged, in its center, placing the Dagger of Mortis before herself in quiet ceremony. She contemplated its fate as she did—she hoped to find in the recesses of her mind a thread to follow which would put the Dagger someplace safe. Someplace it could hide until it is found and returned to the rightful hands it belongs in. What manner of people would find it? With whom would it rest until its true purpose would be realized? With a deep breath to fill her lungs with cool interstellar air, Hesper closed her eyes. She took another breath. Then another. And another—and soon, she slipped into a deep meditation.
Within her placid exterior, her mind cast itself outward to the memories she had of the millions upon billions of doorways within the Vergence Scatter, wildly reaching for strands of futures that may match her desires. It reeled her; through all the endless possibilities, how could one singular one ever be the path forward? But it had to be true that there was a fine, tenuous filament of reality that above all others was the One. In her meditation, Hesper searched for it. And if she could not find it…
She would make it.
Her brow furrowed, and before her the Dagger of Mortis began to rise, dragging its tip until it hung in ethereal, telekinetic suspension, rotating lazily in Hesper's Forceful grasp. Determination bubbled up inside her chest, bolstered by the same white-hot furor which drove her to the Sith. It was powerful—a sheer force of will which she let lead the way as she explored all the futures she had witnessed. In her mind's eye, time tessellated and whirled as she began to piece together a pathway, braiding together strands of futures to create a tailored string of events.
A jungle world, sweltering and swarthy, underbelly of the galaxy; she would see bejeweled fingers grasping at the Dagger, appraising its worth and admiring its cut and quality.
The Dagger of Mortis continued to gently spin, light from the constellations above and below making its polished edges gleam. Below it, Hesper's own body began to levitate as her submersion in the Force deepened, her black kaftan and long golden hair blustering about her body as if in a wild wind. Her hands were limp in her lap, her legs still crossed, and her pale brow remained rumpled in unflappable concentration. Even the prickling, crawling sensation that radiated from the thin scar across her face could not break her focus.
The Dagger would slip into antiquity, and the span of a hundred years would crawl by; its value forgotten, it would change hands, be bartered and sold, only to be locked away in an abandoned crate, until…
Sweat began to bead on Hesper's forehead and her scar burned; her mind was grasping, straining to orchestrate.
For years it would wait for three Sith Lords and an unlucky pirate; together they would find it, completing what others could not on that very same jungle world.
Hesper's eyes snapped open. Brilliant, luminant light burst forth, her grey-and-opal eyes having gone entirely white.
The Dagger would then be reunited with the Sith! Its true purpose would at long last be fulfilled!
With a wild gasp, Hesper released her hold on the threads of fate she was weaving; they would knot together, a pathway of intention and willpower blazed through time and space. She sank to the ground, shoulders slumping, as the Dagger of Mortis dropped to the pathway with a metallic clatter. The light and silvery white faded from her eyes and she heaved a deep breath, feeling the painful sting of her scar across her face. She touched it gingerly, her fingers coming away red with blood. Strange, she thought, wiping away the blood with the edge of her dress. She raised her eyes—both rimmed with red and one flooded with blood— to the Dagger. With great purpose, Hesper scooped up the blade with tremoring hands. She knew where she would put it—and there was that same sort of gossamer thread of voice and noise that swelled on the air, again, guiding her to where she needed to go.
Ghostly, she padded towards where the alluring whispers were calling her—the swindling, low voices of pirates and smugglers, and the lush sounds of a jungle world—until she came upon the portal she desired. An aperture ringed with what looked to be the shapes of cut precious gems, spinning and wavering. Within, it shimmered purple and gold before revealing the jostling cart of an antiques peddler, carting their wares to be appraised. It was close enough to touch—gilded necklaces, brooches encrusted with rare gems, statuettes of fine stone, and now… a dagger of cool grey hue, its hilt wrapped in red and gold. Entirely unassuming in the piles of curios. Gentle lightning crackled as she reached her arm through the portal. Hesper's heart raced as her fingers released the Dagger of Mortis and it fell with a soft clink into the peddler's cart.
As she watched the cart recede and the portal fade back to black, Hesper hugged her arms to herself, her will that the Dagger find its way into the right hands taking deep root in her mind and heart. A new power had blossomed—one she could wield like none other. She turned away from the gem-circled doorway, wiping a trickle of blood off her chin, and began to meander her way back to the portal to her temple.
But all dark sight and willful machinations aside... something in Hesper's mind had perhaps begun to slip.