Jedi Insurgency 290

As the party progressed, Corvus had set his sights on those ten Jedi Masters who would aid him in completing his Shadowmaster quest. It was rare for them to gather like this, and they all fit the criteria. One, they were not strong enough to sit on the High Council-with the exception of Paratus-and two…Corvus really had no respect for their strength. Spamming the [Shadow Wrath State], he was certain he could one-shot any of them, or at least win within five moves. 

This once, most challenging portion of the quest now appeared rather trivial given the wide spectrum of what constituted a Jedi Master. His ten targets were: 

Jocasta Nu, a librarian. 

Bolla Ropal, the guy who searched for Force Sensitive children, and never fought in the Clone Wars. 

Tera Sinube, an old as balls purist detective who hadn't fought in a decade. 

K’Kruhk, he would go on to become a supreme badass 20 years from now in Luke's Order, but in this timeline was still the same guy who got one-shot by Grievous. 

Kazdan Paratus, an engineer. Without his power armor, Corvus was not worried about the tiny genius. 

Stass Allie, a healer and Form III user, she could be tricky, but not out of bounds. 

Tsui Choi, honestly, a solid Jedi General. Not too strong, just right. 

Roblio Darté, another average Jedi Master, nothing noteworthy about him. 

Shadday Potkin, same as the others, average. 

Hylon, a bit of a trickster Jedi, but otherwise standard. 

Amongst these names, perhaps only Jocasta, Bolla and Tera could be genuinely classified as weak. Although Corvus thought victory was certain-especially with all the training he had done-most Jedi had been training too. He was curious, and eager to see how far the Masters in the Order had progressed. 

Entering a sort of meditative state from invisibility, Corvus honed in on the Shadow Hearts. He saw them as black reflections behind the Masters’ souls, like some sort of twisted silhouette that subtlety influenced them. 

Drawing them towards himself, reality shattered like cracked glass, and his body entered a prison-like mindscape. The valley vanished beneath Corvus’s feet, and he fell through a silver surface that had not been there an instant before.

During his descent, voices whispered from unseen depths, repeating every accusation he had ever heard. 

Traitor.

Murderer.

False Jedi.

Failed savior.

The mirror realm unfolded around him, trying to attack his psyche. However, as he had conquered this realm before, these words did little to affect him. 

Floating islands drifted through a starless void, their inverted mountains narrowing into jagged points below. Waterfalls poured from their edges, and silver streams of the past, present, and what may be were revealed. Corvus briefly saw a reality where he had abandoned the Jedi during Order 66, and the cold lifeless corpses of Yon, Jax, Keira, and Tann. 

The water then cascaded & curved through the air before vanishing into another island, flowing upward, sideways and in spirals that defied gravity.

One waterfall showed the Jedi Temple burning, whilst another displayed clone troopers firing upon children. Farther away, Corvus saw himself upon the bridge of a Republic warship, masked and armored, condemning thousands to death with the lift of one gauntleted hand.

As he descended, landing upon one of those floating islands, he regarded ten shadowed figures who stood opposite him. 

They resembled the Jedi Masters who remained outside beneath Tython’s stars, yet each had been distorted by the secret darkness within them.

Jocasta Nu’s robes were made from torn pages, every sheet covered with names she had failed to preserve. Her eyes burned with the pale light of a library set aflame.

Bolla Ropal’s narrow face was bound in golden chains, each link bearing the image of someone he had once been unable to save.

Tera Sinube leaned upon a blackened cane, ancient and bent, his patient expression replaced by the madness & guilt of a detective unable to solve Palpatine’s crime. 

K’Kruhk towered over the others. His hide was scarred, his tusks cracked, a circular halo of darkness hung over his head like the weight of a fallen angel. 

Kazdan Paratus crouched inside a spider-like machine fashioned from the wreckage of the Jedi Temple. His shark-like teeth were extremely pointy as his jaws opened up wider than seemingly possible, as if he were some eldritch being. 

Stass Allie’s pale features were veiled in smoke. Black fire smoldered beneath the skin of her hands. Where once her touch healed, it now burnt and corroded. 

Tsui Choi stood small and still, surrounded by a cyclone of shattered lightsaber crystals. The dying cries of his former Padawans wailed around him in a chorus. 

Roblio Darté wore armor of frozen blood. 

Shadday Potkin appeared only in fragments, her body flashing in and out of existence as though ashamed to be seen.

Hylon stood at their center, wrapped in a mantle of living shadow.

All ten raised their heads.

“You have no authority here.” Jocasta said, her voice came from every waterfall at once. 

“I am Order Master. You ten have poisoned my Jedi long enough.” Corvus steadily replied. 

Ten lightsabers ignited at once in response. Blue, green, yellow, orange, they all pointed towards him promising violence. 

Red & blue ignited on Corvus's side as he buffed himself, preparing for battle. 

Before he could make his move, a sudden, unexpected change assailed his mind. The mirror realm magnified his own inner demons, pulling upon a memory that wasn't his, yet belonged to him. Suddenly Corvus was standing before the Jedi Council of another age. Vrook Lamar stared down at him in judgment, Atris stood beside him, cold and immaculate, and Malak’s voice thundered from behind.

“You corrupt everything you touch. You are worse than these ten a hundredfold!” Malak's voice boomed. 

Corvus shook the mental malaise off just as Shadday Potkin moved to strike him. The female brunette Human lunged at him, blue lightsaber in hand. 

Mid jump, she vanished, then reappeared behind him. Corvus turned to meet her, but an invisible hand seized the back of his head and forced an alien thought into his mind.

‘They fear you. Will you not take pity upon them?’ 

His [Force Barrier] rippled, pushing back against the [Mind Trick]. A 0.1 second lapse of judgement nearly cost him his head as that blue blade slashed for his neck.

He bent beneath it, and as Shadday materialized behind him, she was already transitioning into a second strike. Corvus caught her wrist, but her image burst into smoke. Three false Shaddays appeared around him, each attacking from a different direction.

Corvus closed his eyes, his mind pulsing furiously within the Force, he stood still as the three blades passed through him. The true Shadday rose from his shadow, to which he then pivoted and struck her across the chest, intent on ramming her through with his crimson blade. 

Her [Energy Resistance Shield] flared to life. 

Golden light coated her body, catching Corvus’s lightsaber less than a finger’s width from her robes. The crimson blade shrieked against the barrier but did not penetrate.

The technique had been Corvus’s gift to them. Something he had willingly taught all Jedi this past month in the hopes of increasing their survival. Now it saved her from him.

Shadday smiled bitterly, and before he could end her with a different skill, K’Kruhk hit him.

The Whiphid Master’s fist landed against Corvus’s ribs like a charging bantha. Corvus flew across the island, struck a pillar of mirrored stone and passed through it into a memory.

For an instant he stood on Dxun beneath a storm-black sky. Mandalorians burned in the jungles. Republic soldiers screamed his name in triumph as nuclear fire blossomed beyond the horizon. Then, K’Kruhk entered the memory after him.

Roots erupted from the ground as the brown skinned alien had been learning deeply from Kina Ha this past month. The plant fibers twisted around Corvus’s ankles, hardened like stone, and then pulled. The earth split beneath him, holding him in place. K’Kruhk advanced with both hands wrapped around the hilt of his immense green blade.

Corvus found he was slow to cut through the roots, as if it were an extremely thick slab of durasteel. [Shadow Hopping] behind K'Kruhk, he stabbed forth. 

K’Kruhk brought his saber down to block at the last minute. 

Blue & red met green and the memory buckled around them due to the sheer magnitude of their violence. 

K’Kruhk pressed with monstrous strength, forcing Corvus to one knee. The roots crawled higher, fastening towards his waist, while the Whiphid Master’s dark halo'd head drew close.

He released his lightsaber with one hand and struck K’Kruhk’s chest with an open palm. The Force detonated between them as a fierce electrical current launched the alien backward, momentarily paralyzing him. 

K’Kruhk was hurled backward, tearing through the false jungle, and Corvus ripped himself free of the vines, intent on finishing him off, only for the world to turn white.

Tsui Choi-the tiny blue dinosaur-like alien had extended both arms. Before him, a sphere of light erupted from the small Jedi Master. It was brighter than a star seen from orbit.

Corvus’s vision was severely impacted, not even his dual use shields were as effective against this purest expression of light. His senses reeled as the light burned not only his eyes, but his awareness in the Force. He heard claws race across stone, and Tsui Choi struck him twice. One cut was aimed across the shoulder, and the other against the thigh. He had been using Pause, but even so, all he could make out behind the vast curtain of light was a pale shadow. 

The diminutive Master became the eye of a hurricane. Shards of kyber whirled around him, every fragment humming with half-born lightsaber energy. They shot toward Corvus in a glittering storm.

Corvus raised his [Energy Resistance Shield] to protect himself.  Kyber fragments struck it like luminous hail. Each impact sent a bolt of pain through his body. His boots slid backward, carving trenches into the mirrored floor.

Then Stass Allie thrust out both hands, and fire poured across the island.

It came in white flames from above, and black flames below. The white burned flesh, whilst the black burned away at memories. Corvus felt names peeling away inside his mind: Bastila, Meetra, Canderous, Jolee.

He roared and reinforced his shields in defiance. 

Roblio Darté joined her, making the air freeze.

Ice raced over the golden barrier, sealing the flames against it. Heat and cold compressed together until Corvus stood inside a blazing, frozen sphere. Cracks spread across his shield, threatening to consume him whole. 

Kazdan Paratus laughed maniacally from atop his mechanical harness. Stones folded upon themselves, reshaping into crude imitations of battle droids, war beasts and fallen Jedi. Hundreds dragged themselves from the ground. Some bore the faces of Younglings. Others wore the masks of Sith soldiers.

Kazdan’s mechanical legs launched him over Corvus’s prison. Four green lightsabers spun from the arms of his harness.

“Everything breaks! Everything beautiful breaks!” The blue-skinned, shark-like alien shrieked. 

All four blades descended, and Corvus let his shield collapse. Almost instantaneously, fire, ice and kyber shards exploded inward.

At the instant before they struck, Corvus disappeared. He emerged above Kazdan in a coil of black vapor. His heel struck the Jedi Master’s mechanical harness, forcing Kazdan to plunge downward and smash through six of his own constructs.

Corvus landed amid the army of droids, redirecting the elemental attacks with one hand, and transforming into a wheel of spinning hot death with the other. 

He severed limbs, bisected droids and turned aside lightsabers. The constructs multiplied wherever their fragments landed. Ten became twenty, twenty became forty, etc. 

Jocasta Nu stood beyond them, one hand lifted. Pages circled her like white birds, and every page became a doorway. From one came the memory of Darth Malak, Darth Nihilus, Sion, and Mandalore the Ultimate. 

Each was an illusion the venerable librarian conjured up from the pages of history, and carried with them a hint of physicality, despite their unreality. 

Malak’s red blade crashed against his own, Nihilus reached for the life inside him, Sion seized Corvus’s shoulder with a hand of shattered bone, while Mandalore’s axe cut through the space where his head had been.

Corvus fought, slowly retreating backward. Bolla Ropal, the green-skinned Rodian, meanwhile, extended his golden chains. They passed through the apparitions and wrapped around Corvus’s arms. Every link carried a different grief into him. Jedi screamed upon Coruscant, and families wept on worlds Corvus had bombarded during his campaign.

The chains pulled his arms apart, holding him high in the air like a man put on display for crucifixion. 

Tera Sinube approached slowly, the old, hunched pale-skinned alien walked with the steady help of his cane. With each tap of the cane, time around Corvus seemed to slow down. 

Malak’s saber pressed nearer to his throat, Nihilus’s hunger reached through his chest, Sion’s fingers tightened, and Corvus strained against Bolla’s chains, but his body moved as though submerged in deep water.

The ten Shadow Hearts drew closer, and defeat drew near. 

Corvus however, closed his eyes, and the mirror plane trembled. Shadows long and tall fluttered around him from the past, present, and what may be. Images on the waterfalls all reflected one singularity. One thing that was inevitable:

Revan. 

The [Shadow Wrath State] eclipsed him, and the Darkside Siphon ability suckled upon this vast nexus of power like a starving babe. 

Malak’s blade touched his throat…and promptly dissolved. Nihilus collapsed into an empty robe, Sion became a skeleton, and Mandalore’s armor fell hollow to the ground.

Jocasta’s pages caught fire as her illusions were burst. Corvus squeezed his fist, 

Bolla Ropal’s chains shattered.

The pieces did not fall, they raced around Corvus, forming rings of golden light, and time resumed with a thunderclap.

The Order Master opened his eyes, silver fire burned within them, and the mirror realm trembled in anticipation. 

He thrust both hands outward, and the floating island split into ten pieces.

Each Shadow Heart was carried away upon a separate fragment of land. Waterfalls twisted between them, forming vast reflective walls that imprisoned each Jedi with the memory feeding their darkness.

Jocasta Nu stood inside the burning archives, frantically gathering books while screams echoed beyond the doors.

“You could not save all that was known.” Corvus told her. “Knowledge is not sacred because it is old. It is sacred because it serves the living.”

He entered her shield, caught her blade between his bare hands and touched two fingers to her brow. Her shadow ignited and vanished.

Bolla Ropal knelt amid countless prisoners, golden chains stretching from his body to every soul he had failed to protect.

“You were never meant to carry everyone alone.”

Corvus then severed the chains at their source, and light poured from Bolla’s chest as the Shadow Heart screamed before perishing. 

Tera Sinube stood within a city frozen in the instant before catastrophe, forever examining clues, forever searching for proof that Palpatine was the hidden Sith Lord.

“Wisdom without action does not belong in my Jedi Order.” Corvus said, breaking the old Master’s black cane with the squeeze of a fist, then cut him down. 

K’Kruhk fought upon a field covered with dead Jedi, roaring at the heavens because he had survived again where all others had perished. 

“Surviving where all others fall is not grounds for guilt. Harness this ability, become the man the Order requires you to be.” 

Corvus allowed the Whiphid to strike him, then he embraced him, tanking the hit with his overly exaggerated buffs, Constitution, and traits. K’Kruhk’s rage broke in his arms, and without even needing to hit the Jedi Master, he dissipated with a sob. 

Kazdan Paratus crouched within a ruined Temple, rebuilding the same training droid again and again while Younglings called to him from behind a door he could never open.

“They are gone now, but your love for them is not. A new dawn has settled, it is time to let go.” Corvus said softly, and with great pity. 

Kazdan’s mechanical harness collapsed. Corvus lifted the small Master from its wreckage and placed him upon his own feet. The tiny alien clung to Corvus's thighs like a child, looking up at him with tear-streaked hope before fading. 

Stass Allie burned within black fire, using her gift of healing to close wounds that reopened the instant she touched them.

“You cannot heal suffering by taking all of it into yourself, allow me to share in your burden.” Corvus placed his hand over hers, then the flames turned gold. A healing radiance exploded outward, and she bowed at him as she disappeared. 

Tsui Choi leapt between a thousand blades, moving faster and faster, for fear of failure. 

Corvus stood at the center of the storm and extinguished every weapon with a single sweep of his hand.

“Haste makes waste.” Corvus murmured, halting Choi with [Slow], then he carefully ran the gauntlet at a much more sedate pace. Proving to him that skill was just as, if not more important than raw speed. 

Tsui Choi finally stopped, and bowed. 

Roblio Darté remained trapped beneath ice, preserving every pain inside, because to open himself up to others would be admitting fault. 

Corvus drove his hand through the frozen armor and seized the darkness beneath.

“Grief must move on. No man is an island unto himself, others care about you. The Order is not what it once was. Be free to express your feelings.” 

The ice became water, and Roblio melted at his touch, crying a river as his emotions became unsealed. 

Shadday Potkin hid among endless false versions of herself, each lying, vanishing and changing shape to survive another moment.

“Do not feel ignored. You have value. If you lack someone to rely upon, place your faith in me. I will never abandon you.” Corvus said, offering out his hand. 

The words destroyed every illusion, and she tentatively took his hand with a hopeful smile. 

Hylon waited last.

The tenth Master stood upon the highest island, mantle spreading across the sky until it covered the realm. Unlike the others, Hylon did not attack.

The darkness simply deepened around him. 

Corvus climbed toward him through a rain of memories. With every step, despair weighed more heavily upon him. He saw the Jedi hunted to extinction, the Empire swallowing worlds, new Knights dying beneath red blades and Younglings once again hiding due to the slaughter. 

Hylon’s Shadow Heart did not rage, or attack him as the others did. Instead, it had surrendered itself to despair. 

“What if hope is only the pause between disasters? Are we doomed to repeat this process again and again?” Hylon asked in a desolate tone. 

“A Jedi does not give up, even in the face of despair.” Corvus answered.

Hylon looked into the waterfalls. “And if we fail?”

Corvus deactivated his lightsaber and placed it upon the ground between them.

“We will fail to save some. We will misjudge others, and make choices that haunt us. In life, it is inevitable that we shall bury friends, lose battles and watch evil rise time and again. This is the way of the Force.” 

Dark vapor swelled around Hylon, threatening to corrode him, inside out. He very well could experience true soul death at this very moment. Corvus stepped into the vapor, braving disaster. 

“These inevitabilities are as true as the rise of good. However, I am but one man. I cannot do this alone. Please, Master Hylon.” 

He reached into Hylon’s chest, his hand passed through flesh and bone, entering towards a small beating light covered in shadows. His fingers closed around something cold, small and impossibly heavy.

Pulling it out, a black heart made out of ethereal goop emerged. It beat once in Corvus’s palm, and the sound shook every island. Corvus then pulled upon the nine other Shadow Hearts, each one of them slowly floating above his head in a ring. 

They fused in his hand, and for a moment he held a sphere of absolute darkness. He could have destroyed it then and there, instead, Corvus pressed it into his own chest.

Corvus staggered as their grief flooded him. Jocasta’s helplessness. Bolla’s guilt. Tera’s doubt. K’Kruhk’s survivor’s shame. Kazdan’s madness. Stass Allie’s exhaustion. Tsui Choi’s fear. Roblio’s buried sorrow. Shadday’s self-loathing. Hylon’s despair.

Corvus accepted all of it.

Then he gave them something in return.

He gave them the sight of Yon and Zork kneeling beneath the stars. He gave them the Younglings watching their first Knighting ceremony, and the new Temple rising on Tython. Corvus gave them Mace Windu playing music with healed hands, Shaak Ti tending gardens, Obi-Wan agreeing to take on a new Padawan, Jax standing beside the Zillo Beast, and Yoda smiling before becoming one with the Force.

The black sphere within him cracked, and Light shone through his pores, then the Shadow Hearts burst one by one. Dawn swept across the mirror realm.

For the first time, the waterfalls displayed more than dark deeds. They showed the triumphs and good deeds of these Jedi. Depicting scenes of mercy, lives saved, lessons taught and hands extended. The floating islands drew together until they formed a single continent beneath a brightening sky.

The ten shadows became ten pillars of light, then the mental construct collapsed.

Corvus's psyche returned to Tython, and virtually no time had passed. The party was still in full swing, and a subtle change rippled through the air. One after another, the ten Masters bowed.

Although he was invisible, each one of them felt a subtle connection with him. And in their heart of hearts, a slow, steady acceptance was born. The future was no longer so bleak. 

In Order Master Revan, they saw something reflected within themselves:

A New Hope. 

~~~~~

AN: We'll be going over the stats/quest upgrade specifics next chapter. Then wrap up a couple loose ends on Tython, and ship out to Kuat! The time to commit more war crimes is nigh.