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Revan was already inside the base before he noticed that Meetra had not followed.
She must have lingered on the ship, requiring time, perhaps, to acclimatise to the echoes here.
Understandable, but unfortunate, since it left him with no excuse not to answer the call from his Master.
‘It is richer and deeper than you knew,’ she told him. ‘Every figure depicted, Jedi or Sith, has its own unique texture, in the paint, in the stone, even in the Force itself, resonating in its own unique key in that tiny slice of space within the panel. I am hopeful that with further study I might identify some of those depicted boarding the ships that landed on Malachor, and in so doing find some lead to reignite your search.’
Revan chose his words carefully. ‘This is fascinating, but the work is unnecessary. You may return to your family if you wish, Master. I have what I need.’
For once, she didn’t correct him about the title. ‘Do you, child?’
So, she knew there was something, but if she had any inkling of exactly what it was she would have said so. ‘Yes Master.’
She considered him. He recognised the look. ‘Revan our convictions bind our will, but they can also blind our minds and our senses to that which is right in front of us, and that is often far more dangerous.’
Once they were done Revan ended the transmission, regretting all the things left unsaid. As he did so, he sensed Meetra finally approaching.
I have to do this, he reminded himself, ignoring the voice in his head that asked why, if that was so, he hadn’t been able to tell Kae.
She watched him fade into the ether, remaining only as an imprint of light behind her eyes.
She thought about what he had said, and about what he had not. It was not like him, to be evasive with her, even when he was ashamed.
Unlike the rest of them she found that the mask never bothered her. She could read him as easily as she had since he was a child whether he wore it or not.
Still, she wished she could be with him, that she could see him in the flesh one last time – as she hadn’t for so long now – before he took this great step she could feel the Force dragging him toward, that she’d felt it leading him to the whole time she’d known him.
It disturbed her beyond measure that she could not sense what lay beyond. For a moment, memories of the others crept up from her nightmares, but she shoved them away. Revan was not like the rest. With him she had had time, had been able to intervene early.
Him she had raised, had grown to love; he was as much her child as the one she’d carried herself.
His fate would not be theirs. It must not be. She must have faith, in herself and above all in him.
He explained what he wanted them to do, and how he knew to do it. Meetra could scarcely believe what she was hearing, even after all that she had seen and done at his side, all that she had felt through their connection.
‘You want me to create a wound in the Force?’
‘Direct one, perhaps, but yes.’
‘There is already one here, Revan, as I think you know, so ancient it has been rendered near dormant by the passage of time. Your plan will reawaken it, and join its nightmare to ours. I assume that is at least part of why you chose this place?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know what they really are, Revan, these “wounds in the Force”, beyond the words, beyond the vague stories we were taught as children, of places of horror, of the dark side, where atrocities of such magnitude have occurred that it rent the Force itself?’
The mask was fixed on her. She wished she could see his face. ‘No.’
‘I didn’t either, but we’ve come across so many now, even made a few of our own – I couldn’t help but learn.’
She twisted the knife; she would sway him now, or no-one ever would: ‘I’m surprised you haven’t realised intuitively. It was remembering your own words that made me understand, from when you were telling me about whatever you did to those people who threatened Yusanis and Kae.’
He took a step back from her. She’d struck home just by saying the name.
‘“It’s just the lives we live,”’ she intoned, quoting him, ‘“and the connections we forge, creating and sustaining a kind of energy that echoes in the space around us.”’ She smiled sadly. ‘It’s the same with wounds you see, except the echoes are all of pain.’
Nothing to say to that, apparently. She looked away from him, staring off into the middle distance. ‘Do you know when the Masters first took an interest in my connection to the Force?’
‘No’.
‘When we were children, there was an accident in training, and Atris broke her arm. I was in a different part of the Enclave, advanced sparring with Feron, but I felt it as strongly as if it had been my arm that had been broken, and I was so terrified that she was hurt, I was near hysterical.’ She paused, lost in memory. ‘They had to sedate me in the end.’
She remembered the two of them recovering together, how close they had felt to each other. ‘They told me it was a gift, in spite of the pain and the terror, and eventually I believed them. I believed them for so long, when I was in such harmony with all the jedi around me, when I could always feel their calm, their patience, when I could, when I could feel what Atris felt, when we could share everything as we grew up together, every day.’ Her eyes hardened, and her tone spiked with anger and grief. ‘And then the Mandalorians attacked Cathar, and created a wound in the Force, and in my room on Dantooine I felt every moment.’
She looked directly at him. ‘That’s where the power will come from, for your great weapon, this echo of these ancient monsters whose example so inspires you. It’s what will make my connection so useful, but to make it work I’ll have to feel it, to live all that death; it’ll have to be real to me, as if it were me that were dying, every time, from the moment I begin the ritual until it has run its course.’
Still he was silent.
She would make him say it. ‘You want me to do that for you, deliberately’.
The mask stared back at her. Then, eventually, ‘Yes.’
She threw up her hands. ‘Every Mandalorian we kill, every jedi or soldier or civilian who falls, you know I feel it Revan, that I live it, like it were happening to me. I’ve hardened myself, enduring far more than I ever thought I could bear, because that is the price, to end the war and with it the pain, but if you make me do this it will destroy me.’
‘I will not make you, Meetra, but I am asking. There are only three in this part of the galaxy that I am certain have the power required, and I don’t trust him anywhere near it, so he commands the fleet, and never sets foots on the surface.’
So, even Revan was worried about Malak. ‘You’re scared he might learn enough to replicate it later.’
‘A true jedi is beyond fear.’ From the tone it was clear what he thought of that particular maxim. ‘Then again, I’ve never really been much of a jedi. So yes, he scares me.’
‘And you left Kae on Dxun, very far away, which leaves you and me, and I gather you’ll be busy with Mandalore himself, maybe Cassus Fett if you get the chance.’
‘You think Kae is there so it would have to be you and not her?’
He sounded confused – hadn’t even considered Kae for it, Meetra realised, even though he must know from all those years at her side how powerful she was. Why not? Well, of course.
He’d still have wanted Meetra to do it instead, obviously, if it came to that, but the possibility never arose, because he didn’t want Kae to know what he was up to.
‘Revan, aren’t you a little old to be afraid of disappointing your mother?’
Was the connection strong enough? she wondered. The trigger was Kae, as always, the vector his shame, as it always would be.
The mask watched her in silence. She could feel it, the shame, gnawing at him, and then the resolve, as he convinced himself that it had to be done, that whatever pangs of conscience remained to him were irrelevant, fears to rise beyond. ‘I am sorry Meetra, but this is what it will take, so I’m asking.’
So, that was it. Still, she would tell him, make him admit what this was.
‘They say Naga Sadow had power over the stars, did you know? They say that was why his attack on the Republic was so destructively successful, at least until his apprentice betrayed him.’
She could feel his wariness. ‘They also say he was a master of illusion.’
She nodded. ‘I thought it would be that, or a story from the Republic, propaganda to explain how their defences had so thoroughly collapsed in the face of his advance. Only now I wonder, perhaps Naga Sadow just met a monster in a box. Perhaps Ajunta Pall did, all those thousands of years ago, when the eyes of jedi willing to push the boundaries were first opened to the possibilities of the Force; especially all the way out here, far from the Core, from civilisation and constraint, amidst all this darkness you always speak of with such mournful regret.’
She made it explicit, in case he hadn’t already got there himself. ‘Perhaps that’s all the Sith ever were, just echoes of memory from the millennia-dead criminals of an ancient and forgotten empire, the ones who grew so powerful and unconstrained their peers felt compelled to lock their minds away inside prisons of the Force itself.’
She asked the question, knowing it was futile but saying it anyway. ‘Have you considered that you were seduced by a spirit here after all, Revan? Something darker even than the Sith, of such evil that a civilisation so monstrous the Sith would quake at first contact with them banished it to that thing you found him in?’
‘Meetra.’
‘I will do it Revan,’ she told him, hating herself, ‘this thing of nightmares, this abomination you are determined to bring forth from your dreams. We will do it together. But you will acknowledge what it is.’
He didn’t hesitate. ‘I do.’
‘And do you acknowledge what it must mean, afterwards, should we succeed?’
‘It will mean the end of the Mandalorian threat.’
‘That too.’
His resolve burned bright as one of Naga Sadow’s stars. ‘There is a difference between a fall and a sacrifice.’
True, as far as it went, but insufficient regardless.
‘Not to those who suffer the consequences.’