Chapter Text
Approximately 1.5 years after meeting the Ghost Crew
Ezra clutched his lightsaber so hard he worried he’d crush the metal hilt. He would not hesitate to activate his blade should Maul even shiver in a threatening manner.
“What am I waiting for, Maul?” Ezra demanded through gritted teeth.
“Patience, my apprentice…” Maul answered almost nonchalantly. “All in due time…”
Ezra wasn’t having it. He grabbed Maul by the shoulders and slammed him against the nearby wall. He flipped out the blades on his right vambrace and shoved them threateningly close to Maul’s throat.
“I am NOT your apprentice! The ONLY reason you are still alive is because you are useful to me, so ENOUGH GAMES!” Ezra shouted.
Maul, for his part, didn’t look the slightest bit perturbed, and instead gave Ezra a mad grin that almost reached his bloodshot yellow eyes.
“Heh heh heh, yes, yes! Your anger gives you great strength, and you wield it well. Not as a Jedi, no no no nonono… but something more… The Mandalorian’s influence is clear. You and I… we are not so different. I too was drawn to their people’s strength. Their spirit!”
Ezra snarled and let Maul go.
“You and I are nothing alike.”
Maul gingerly touched his throat where Ezra’s blades had just been poking, but grinned.
“No? Were we not both tools used by higher powers? Commanded to fight wars on their behest, only to be branded as traitors and our allies to turn against us… to be betrayed by our masters…”
“My master never betrayed me.” Ezra said.
“Oh, of course not, merely… replaced you.” Maul looked off into space. “As mine did…”
Ezra looked away, trying to mask his feelings and not let Maul read his personal thoughts. The last thing Ezra wanted to do was give Maul the satisfaction of knowing his assessment of Ezra’s feelings weren’t that far off.
“…It wasn’t… wasn’t like that. He thought I was dead.”
Maul looked back at Ezra and grinned again. “And you say we are dissimilar.”
Maul moved around him, chuckling, and walked towards a table with several strange object and items resting on it. Ezra, meanwhile, tried to not let Maul’s words rattle him. Maul was a manipulative evil monster. A power-hungry war criminal. A mass murdering psychopath… but he hadn’t lied. Ezra shook his head. He couldn’t let Maul get under his skin.
“Whether or not we are similar is irrelevant. We are here because I have knowledge you need, and you have knowledge I need. So how does any of this… junk…” Ezra gestured dramatically around the room. “help me free Mandalore?”
“Patience, young one” Maul said. “Did the old masters not stress the importance of such values?”
Maul picked up several items around the room. Some were liquids he poured from one bottle to another. Others were solids he broke or crushed into powders. Some he picked up and seemed to just… shake in his hand and toss aside.
“What is all this, anyway?” Ezra asked, looking around. His curiosity has finally gotten the better if him.
“Artifacts of my past. From a time when my power was… almost absolute. Helpful relics and knowledge of my people.” Maul answered. “Tools to achieve our goals. My people, you see, the Nightsisters? Masterful witches, they were. Rich in ancient magics and knowledge, which, of course, made them a threat to the empire. I… I am the last survivor.”
Ezra pursed his lips and doubled his efforts to shield his thoughts. Ezra knew firsthand that Maul was NOT the only survivor of the Nightsisters, but he wasn’t about to let Maul know that.
Ezra looked around the room, being too frustrated to dwell on Maul any longer. The space was filthy. Things were haphazardly strewn around with neither care or any discernible semblance of order. Some items looked like they might even be of some value, but their decrepit state made it impossible to be sure. A crude painting made Ezra stop his perusing for a moment. As far as artwork went, it was… questionable. Ezra knew what actual good art looked like, after all. This was more of an oily smear on a wall; the ravings of a madman. The painting was the likeness of a woman with golden blond hair, and whose eyes had been violently scratched out. After a moment of inspection Ezra recognized the woman as the Dutchess Satine, sister to Bo Katan and… aunt… of his friend Korki. Ezra recognized her likeness from other, more flattering, artwork of the late ruler of Mandalore by his father-in-law, Alrich. Maul had murdered her during his takeover of Mandalore. Ezra had heard the story several times. But as to why Maul would want to paint her, Ezra had no idea.
Ezra’s eyes trailed down to just underneath the portrait, where a simple wooden pedestal stood. And on that pedestal rested a… wait. A lightsaber? Maul’s lightsaber cane was still on his ship, far as Ezra knew. Maul had left it there on his own accord as a “show of good faith”. So who did this blade belong to? A Jedi Maul had killed? Maul hadn’t gloated about recently killing a Jedi… And this lightsaber’s design was unlike any Ezra had seen before… Most strange of all, Ezra hadn’t sensed this lightsaber before physically seeing it, and still couldn’t now. Hell. He could still faintly detect Maul’s lightsaber cane on his ship over a hundred yards away. It was as if this blade had no Kyber crystal at all. Could a lightsaber’s crystal go dormant? Or maybe it had been remo—
“Get away from there!” Maul yelled, startling Ezra.
Maul walked up to where Ezra was standing to see what had peaked his interest. Upon seeing the blade, Maul’s expression became complex and difficult to read, like he was in deep thought upon seeing the hilt.
“What kind of lightsaber is that?” Ezra asked, his curiosity peaked.
“You mean you don’t recognize it?” Maul asked almost incredulously. “Hmph. Shameful, Mandalorian, to not recognize such a pivotal part of your peoples’ history. If your beloved partner were here, heh heh, she would enlighten you.”
Maul walked away, back to his preparations, not sparing Ezra nor the blade a second glance. Ezra looked back at the blade. A mandalorian lightsaber? That would explain the advanced-yet-ancient design of the hilt. And the color of it, Kriff it must be because it’s made out of Beskar! But wait…that would mean this was the… it couldn’t be! Sabine has told him the legend of Tarre Visla, her ancestor. Even shown him the the former ruler’s giant statue. But his legendary blade was supposed to be lost to the ages. How did Maul get it?
Maul turned away from the table he was working at and held his hand out to Ezra.
“Now… I believe you have something of mine…” Maul said, expectantly.
Ezra broke his gaze away from the blade and gave Maul a confused look, making the Zabrak rolled his eyes.
“My horn? The one you ripped from my head on Malachor, and is currently attached to your belt? A truly haughty display, I may add.”
Ezra’s expression hardened and he subconsciously touched the horn on the string tied to his belt, next to where his old Palawan braid was.
“Why should I? You have an eye lying around here somewhere? To give my master back the one you took from him?!”
“How poetic.” Maul mocked. “An eye for a horn. Appropriate, perhaps. But unfortunately for us both the Nightsisters’ demand compensation for use of their magic. Payment of the flesh. My horn is needed for the potion, now… hand it over.”
Maul held out his hand further. Ezra snarled, but snapped the horn off the cord with a jerk, dropping it into Maul’s outstretched hand.
“If you need any of my flesh, you can forget it.” Ezra spat.
“Fortunately that should not be necessary.” Maul replied, plopping the horn into the vial and giving it a swirl. He turned back to the table to do other final preparations, and once apparently finished, he poured the concoction into two separate bottles. Grabbing both, Maul turned back around and offered one to Ezra, who simply crossed his arms.
“I’m not doing, let alone drinking, anything until you tell me exactly how this works.” Ezra said with finality.
Mail growled in frustration and smacked the rim of one of bottled against his forehead several times.
“The only way to access the knowledge we seek is to merge our minds again. That is precisely what this potion will do! The effect will only last a moment; just enough time for both of us to find the answers to our questions… Trust me, Ezra, *sigh* I only want to give us the answers we deserve. Nothing more.”
Ezra still had reservations, but relented. Maul being self-serving was the ONLY thing Ezra could trust about him. Accepting a cup, Ezra saw that inside was a foul-looking neon green liquid. The liquid seemed to almost be smoking, despite the bottle being freezing cold in Ezra’s hand.
“Drink all of it.” Maul advised, and clinked their cups in a mock toast before throwing his back. Seeing Maul take a definite first sip of the liquid, Ezra did the same.
The drink was… mostly tasteless, which was a mercy, but the texture was almost worse than any taste could have been. To say he was drinking the liquid would be an overstatement. It was more like he was trying to drink a heavy gas. The liquid seemed to pour itself down his throat on its own volition, rapidly and violently shaking its own way down to his stomach, pulling more liquid behind it. Ezra drained the cup fairly quickly whether he wanted to or not. And all of the sudden his senses exploded. The world took on a greenish hue as the concoction seemed to spread to his eyes, and the force flowed through him, opening a third. Fog was burned away in Ezra’s mind, knots he didn’t know were there were untangled, and a million shattered pieces knit together until all these things lead way to what seemed to be half of a whole. That half, Ezra’s half, lurched from his mind and through his open eyes, before colliding violently with the second half that came from Maul.
“WHERE IS HE?!” Maul screamed at their combined mass of magic.
“Tell me how to free Mandalore!” Ezra pleaded at the same time.
The sphere of magic answered them, and sent a pulse back towards Ezra and Maul, electrifying their minds, enlightening them.
“I… I see… I understand…” Maul said in a trance.
“Who… is that? I… I know her!” Ezra said in wonder and confusion.
The vision was overwhelming, it was too much! Decades, no, centuries, flew by him in milliseconds. Entire bloodlines being founded, explandinf, and then snuffed out. Cities rose from nothing, and then crumbling to dust. A thousand wars, billions dead. All pointless, but necessary. Leading to something, but what? A dark shadow, with two blades, one red, one purple. The shadow faced against a warrior, whose blade was black as the night. They clashed, they prevailed, they lost, and then they joined into one, one spark that raced on beyond them. A spark so insignificant and small that it should have died out, but then it caught hold to fuel, and erupted into a ball of fire. The light from the blaze engulfed all of Mandalore, filling the planet with hope and life, the light growing and growing, blinding Ezra—
Ezra and Maul collapsed onto the nearby table, coughing and breathing hard. Trying to regain themselves. The vision, now much more clear, was burned into his mind. He would not soon forget it. Maul stumbled around behind him, chanting in triumph that “it would all end where it began”. It was at this moment, Ezra saw green tendrils of flame and smoke snake into the room. More Nightsister magic, but this magic wasn’t summoned by them. This magic had a far more sinister intent. Ezra’s senses screamed in warning, and dread started to fill his stomach. In the distance he could hear the shouting of his master and Sabine……
<>~<>~<>~<>~<>~<>~<>~<>~<>~<>
Ezra walked towards the door to Caleb’s cabin on the ghost. He raised his hand to knock, but hesitated a moment.
“Come in, Ezra” The voice of his old master answered without Ezra having to knock.
Ezra sighed and activated the door, walking into the room. His master was meditating in the middle of the floor. Closing the door, Ezra kneeled down in front of his former master.
“You seem troubled.” His master said, with his eye still closed. “Because of todays events, no doubt.”
“Yes.” Ezra answered. “I can’t stop thinking about how close I came to losing you and Sabine today, solely because I was arrogant and selfish.”
“You were neither of those things.” Caleb answered him, still with a closed eye. “You sought answers. Not for personal gain, but for the betterment of all Mandalorians. For the safety of your family. Your source for those answered was, admittedly, questionable, but that simply makes you an idiot. Not selfish. A fact I’m sure Sabine will remind you of often.”
Ezra smiled in spite of himself. His master then opened up his last remaining b blue eye and looked at Ezra directly for the first time in the conversation.
“But that’s not why you came here…” Caleb said.
Ezra sighed. “No… it’s not. I… when Maul and I joined our minds, I saw something. A vision. I think I got the first pieces when we joined the holochrons, but the picture… it’s complete now. But what I saw… I’m not sure what to make of it. And… I’m not sure I want to.”
Caleb nodded, seeming to be in deep thought.
“This vision, do you want to share it with me?”
Ezra nodded slowly and began to explain what he saw as best he could...
“I… I saw a woman. She was standing in an open field. She wore beskar armor. There was fire and smoke and bones all around her, skeletons strewn in circles. Some wore beskar like she did, others wore Jedi robes. Some with stormtrooper armor, and others with simple garbs with the rebellion crest. All hollow and empty inside save for the dry bones.
I recognized her, but… I’m positive I have never seen her before. She had midnight blue hair, olive skin, and amber eyes, and she wielded the Dark Saber. The force was strong with her. She was equal parts Jedi AND Mandalorian.
From her father, the blood of Revan flowed through her veins: the last of his line. And from her mother, the direct descendant of Tarre Visla. The first time in history the two bloodlines had ever been united. And i watched all of Mandalore gather around her, with the leaders of every clan stepping forward. She lifted the Dark Saber above her head, and they all, every last one, fell to their knees, and proclaimed her Mand’alor.”