Legends of the Jedi: The Beast of Rutan/Part I

''...some sort of unknown hostile entity who is believed to be responsible for a long string of abductions and murders over the past local year. The incidents have all occurred within an approximately twenty-square mile area near a well-traveled road. Lone travellers and entire trading parties alike have gone missing. Vehicle wreckage is often recovered. Bodies, on the other hand, are found infrequently, but always mutilated or defaced in patterns that could only be described as barbaric.

The perpetrator of these crimes has never been seen by anyone still living, and the reports I've read have not conclusively identified it as animal or intelligent. For instance, despite the prowess evident in its lethality and thoroughness, it never seems to scavenge food or supplies from its victims.

It does sound a most queer and ambiguous case; therefore I have taken it upon myself to journey there and investigate it. Rutan is a remote system, one of the few fully-mapped ones of its sector, and both Republic and Jedi archives have little information about it beyond a few planetary maps and a basic historical entry. Since I have been to the planet several times before, however, that will not be an issue.

Others might think that this is a problem too trivial for a member of the Jedi Order, and I must admit I am puzzled that the planetary security forces could not handle it themselves, but the people are apparently easily frightened by such violence. So I think that it is fitting that a Jedi should resolve the situation. The removal of such a threat will no doubt inspire this timid people to stand up for themselves.

I have conferred with my colleague, Master Vinere, and against his advice I have decided to handle this assignment myself. I may have only been Knighted a few years ago, but I am perfectly capable of completing it out of my own resources. My disciple, Euthsia, currently resides on Rutan with his family and has volunteered his services in the successful completion of this undertaking. I am confident that the two of us will be enough.''

The air was crisp, breezy, and delightfully cool as I disembarked from my vessel and left the docking bays of Sparla, the closest settlement to my destination. Surrounding me on all sides was a collection of buildings, few of them wider than they were tall. The prevailing color was a light, weathered gray, and I couldn't tell whether the textured-looking surfaces of most of the structures was durasteel or some type of stone.

I took a nice walk through the streets, through a sizable but not intimidating crowd of citizens. Their chatter combined with the whine of passing speeders and the humming of droids floating this way and that. A sea of individual agents – The lifeblood and very definition of civilization, I thought. Remove a single variable from this gargantuan equation and all of the others must be reorganized, however slightly.

A few moments later I stood on the outskirts of the town facing an expanse of rolling hills stretching to the horizon, the dry, rocky ground choking a thin layer of grass. There was almost nary a cloud in the sky, a dome of azure that I could not behold for long without squinting.

At this spot I was met by a representative of the mayor, a thin man in a gray suit who stood one head shorter than myself and had skin almost as white as a sheet. He gave a quick bow as he came up to me, and then spoke.

"I wish to thank you on behalf of Mayor Tril for volunteering to resolve this situation, Jedi Knight Kelbus," he began. His nervous, cautious voice made him sound as though he were perpetually out of breath. "These incidents have been causing considerable public anxiety."

"No doubt," I remarked. "Do you have any information for me that was not already sent?"

He handed me a datapad. "This contains a map and some other information. It will give you the precise boundaries of the territory that has been deemed unsafe... about twenty square miles. It is mostly encompassed by a field of old burial grounds. Many centuries ago, our people built many tombs out of stone to bury our elders. The... that which you are looking for may be hiding within one of them."

As he said all this, I took the datapad from him and briefly review of the map. It would take about half of a local day to reach it, so if I departed soon I would be at my destination well before sunset. Switching the device off and tucking it inside my robe, I thanked the official, who then asked me if there was anything else he could do to help.

"Also," the man went on, handing me something else, a black, roughly tube-shaped object no larger than twice the size of my thumb. "A distress beacon. I have been told that you intend to handle this yourself, but if you need an emergency extraction for any, press the button and a shuttle with a squad of armed men will be at your location in moments."

I turned the item over in my hand and pocketed it. "All I require now is a landspeeder," I said.

The official directed my attention to a boxy, well-maintained-looking vehicle nestled up against the blank side of a nearby building. I thanked the man again and expected him to bid me farewell, but he did not, just yet.

Instead, looking up at me, he said in a more hushed tone, "I do hope very much that you will be able to stop whatever... whatever thing is preying on our citizens, Jedi Knight Kelbus. We have already had too much innocent blood shed in this town alone... I remember around this time last year there was a grisly murder involving a couple that had just arrived here to live. As far as anyone knew, the two were perfectly content, but then..."

He seemed to have trouble breathing at this point. "I was there when they found the woman's body. It was... terrible."

He suddenly remembered himself and gave a start. "Forgive me, Jedi Knight Kelbus," he stammered. "I did not mean to distract you. I was just caught up in the past."

I assured the man that he had not distracted me. Having concluded his business with me, the man wished me luck and made his exit, heading back toward the center of town and eventually disappearing into the distant crowd.

Satisfied and feeling fully prepared, I headed for the landspeeder. There was only one thing that remained.

''After my short meeting with the governor's representative, I set out for my destination at once. Euthsia lived with his family at an isolated homestead located a few scarce miles out of town and just off the road leading to my objective. So I was able to lose no time in allowing him to join the expedition.''

Euthsia, as always, met me with a fresh face and beaming smile that was customary for him. I found him waiting for my arrival, leaning up against the domed wall of his house. He was already standing next to my landspeeder as I brought it to a stop. Upon my exit from the vehicle, he siezed me in a hug that caught me off guard with the surprising physical strength behind it. While the embrace momentarily arrested my ability to breath, my friend and I had not seen each other in months, and so it was welcome.

"It's been too long," He said at once, unable to restrain his excitement. "I have prepared everything I need for this endeavor and can depart at once." He was referring to a pair of small backpacks that leaned against the house where he had been standing. Alongside them, I glimpsed a blaster pistol and a dagger, resting in a holster and a sheath respectively.

Had this occurred a year or two ago, Euthsia would likely have invited me to stay for a meal and converse with his family while he prepared his things; but I had taught him of how Jedi were called to place little value in the material things of life, so in turn those who chose to serve them as he had ought to travel light. This he had learned well.

As we sped down the well-traveled, dusty road, Euthsia took some time to speak about what he had been doing since we'd last met. Much of his time had been occupied with helping maintain his family's moisture farm, but he continued to train himself, as I had instructed him to. He briefly boasted about how his marksmanship had improved, but soon fell silent, lest he seem overly proud of himself, and took some time to consult the briefing in my datapad. In my opinion, the man had legitimate reason to be proud, but it was right that one should not speak at length about such things.

After a long pause, he resumed conversation with a new subject. "So, what sort of villain do you believe is behind these atrocities, Master?"

"It is too early to say," I replied, keeping my eyes focused on the path ahead of us. From time to time I had had to navigate around small boulders and other obstructions. "Our quarry seems to possess great skill and cunning to remain so well-hidden. Its selective, discriminatory methods of desecrating the victims' corpses suggests some sort of intelligent mind at work, but..."

I trailed off, the question taking charge of my thoughts for a time. What indeed were we soon to face?

My disciple's words brought me back to myself. "Surely you don't think some animal is responsible, Master?"

I paused for a moment. When no answer surfaced, I simply repeated, "It is too early to say. For the moment, the only thing that concerns us is reaching our destination. We must exercise patience and remain in the moment."

"Of course, Master," Euthsia said, turning his eyes to the road that stretched before us, the brown line that time and civilization had drawn through a dry, blustery field dotted with dead-looking alien trees.

I kneeled on the shore with my arms crossed, staring blankly out across the surface of the lake, which itself was nearly as motionless as I. Though I had been eager to make every speed toward our destination, some time into the journey I felt strangely perturbed and decided to make a short stop near a lake just off the road.

At the time I was unable to say exactly what had come over me – it was some obscure feeling of discomfort, as though the blood in my veins had grown thicker, except in a mental way. Something in this part of the universe was not as it should've been, and my presence in the Force was not reacting well to it. I decided that a short period of meditation would help me to compose myself.

Letting my eyes drift shut, I took a deep breath and allowed the Force to settle around me, unhindered by my physical, temporary senses and presence. In truth, the universe is only partly composed of the crude matter upon which we place so much value. I allowed the Force to flow into me and used it to examine my surroundings. I felt as one with the surrounding grass, the lake, the small gathering of life forms within. I could feel them as though they were a part of me. All things were at one with each other in the Force.

I stretched out, reaching further and further, past Euthsia as he paced around the opposite side of the lake, past the speeder that rested near the road, further and further away. My senses magnified somewhat beyond words, I turned my mental gaze inward. I was a Jedi; my power rested in the light, and light always banished the dark.

Ignorance, yet knowledge.

Whatever lay in store for me and my disciple, we would conquer it. What was clouded at first would be cleared.

Passion, yet serenity.

Far off in the distance, many miles past the normal range of my Force senses, I detected something that caught my attention, like a man waving at me from across a chasm. It was a sort of emotional scent that wafted far and wide, coming from the direction of the burial grounds for which I was bound. It was simple yet powerful – an odor of primal, unthinking rage.

Chaos, yet harmony.

I focused on this new development, reaching for it with my power. It was like a massive plume of smoke rising from a forest fire. The closer I came to it, the harder it seemed to breath; the Force seemed to... for lack of a better word, thicken around me.

Death, yet the Force.

The smoke throttled me, and a vivid image thrust itself into my mind and hung there like a fading memory of something I had just seen. Within my mind's eye I saw an open field of white grass being dusted by gray, dead-looking snow – or was it ash, perhaps? The ground was covered in bones, stark white, stripped of all flesh and laying in broken, shattered heaps. I then distinctly felt as though I were standing within this field and as though the lake was also there in front of me, its waters turning a dark red. On the horizon before a smoke-gray sky I could see black, inhuman shapes sprinting back and forth, flailing and howling in a feral chorus that made my ears burn.

"Master?"

The sound of my disciple's voice caused my eyes to snap open and my consciousness to thunder back into my skull. "Yes, what is it?" I asked numbly.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, Master. Are you all right?"

"I cannot be sure," I said as I rose to my feet, breathing deeply. Not turning to face Euthsia, I again stared out across the lake. "I have just been... attempting to learn something about the foe we seek."

Euthsia's voice was one of genuine patience, patience like a mighty brick wall built over the course of many years; he had long ago learned the folly of questioning the Force. "What have you learned, then?" he asked.

"I cannot say. It seems that he, or it, has a very strong presence within the Force. And it seems to have reacted to my observing it. Even if it only did so on an unconscious level, this is troubling."

"Indeed, Master?"

"Yes," I said, gazing downward at my own reflection in the lake. "It is troubling because what we have learned about our quarry has only raised more questions about its nature. I am not certain that we should remain here much longer."

"I'm ready to leave when you are," Euthsia said, sounding a trifle too casual. I could sense unease within him, like a man circling around his own mind and continually prodding it with a long stick.

"What troubles you?" I asked bluntly. It would be best to resolve the matter before the dangerous portion of our mission began.

Euthsia didn't seem surprised at my perceptiveness, though to one who has been a Jedi as long as I, it wasn't particularly impressive. My friend took a deep breath and said, "Master, I feel inadequate."

This surprised me. "Why is that?"

"Because I cannot feel the Force. I have lived as pure a life as I can, since meeting you. I've trained, meditated, exercised, fasted, and renounced my former, weaker self. But no matter how much I train, I could never match you blade-for-blade, nor could I ever survive without food for as long as you. I am still an ordinary man and always will be. I do not regret becoming your disciple, but... sometimes I long to be greater than I am. To be a real Jedi, like you."

"Rest assured, my friend, I would have chosen you as an apprentice long ago if I could. But tell me, what does it mean to be a Jedi disciple?"

This query harkened back to the first creed which I had taught to Euthsia. Barely a second later he answered, "To be a Jedi in all ways but one."

"Exactly," I said, turning to face him. "And that one way is the training which a Jedi receives in the power of the Force. Despite what you may think, however, being a Jedi is much more than feeling this power or even commanding it. Consider: Jedi are the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy; what have you done in your service to me but guard those things? Jedi improve themselves through knowledge and training; I know that you do this every day. And particularly relevant is that Jedi are servants of others; you have done this as well as I ever have."

Color flooded Euthsia's face a bit as he took in these words, but he seemed not entirely convinced. "And so?" he asked.

"And so I say, you are indeed a Jedi in all ways but one, and if I had the power I would give you the ability to be a full Jedi Knight. But the Force, in its will which we all can never comprehend, chooses those in whom it manifests the most strongly. And for reasons we will never know in this lifetime, it has not chosen you for that. You must accept it; we all have our own unique callings in the universe that we can never change.

"Everything that exists..." Over my disciple's shoulder, I observed a lumbering, four-legged reptile covered in black scales making its way through the yonder hills; they were used as beasts of burden on this small world. "Even the roaming animals have their own small purposes, when viewed through the lense of the Force. We all have a destiny, my friend – and you are enough of a Jedi for me. Be at peace with that."

Satisfied with myself, I stepped around my disciple and headed for the landspeeder. He stayed at the lake for a moment, absorbed in thought, but soon joined me. So the journey continued.

I halted our speeder at the very outskirts of the burial grounds up against the first landmark we reached. Sitting just over a stone's throw away from the road, it appeared to have once been a sort of above-ground crypt, a simple stone box built to house a dead wise man. Time had been particularly harsh to this one; its ceiling, front, and back walls lay in half-buried, shattered fragments within and around its borders. The small, ancient words carved into the walls were now hopelessly jumbled. It seemed that even past the point death itself there was a form of decay.

As we disembarked, Euthsia asked whether he should stay and guard our vehicle. I told him that it was unnecessary, since our business would likely be concluded by the day's end. He also questioned whether it was unwise to leave it unattended. Likewise, I assured him that there was no cause for concern. The landspeeder was expendable, and if it happened to be rendered unavailable for some reason, I could simply use the beacon I had been given to summon a shuttle from Sparla when we needed to depart.

The burial grounds seemed not much to look at at first; from the outskirts where we started, there were only four structures within sight. As my disciple and I approached the center of the area on foot, however, it revealed itself to be rather more crowded. Coming to the top of one of the larger hills, we observed a large expanse of above-ground tombs and smaller structures, all carved out of bright gray rock and usually arrayed in rows or clusters with small fields of unoccupied land dotted with trees – most of them spindly, short, or both – separating each.

As we passed down between two rows of three structures each, I referred back to the datapad that the governor's representative had given to me. According to the map, there were many such groupings of tombs, separated by swaths of untouched fields and occasional hills but growing more and more concentrated near the center; it would take some time to search the entire area on foot, but if we did so in our landspeeder we would be bound to overlook something. Besides, the Force was our guide, and it would keep our business here from extending beyond the time we had.

Since my departure from Sparla, several billowing clouds had begun to dot the sky, and a cool, intermittent breeze was present. Glancing at our surroundings, I observed the lack of visible vegetation and remarked that this region of the planet was nearly a desert in all but name.

My disciple stayed a few steps behind my right shoulder. "Can you sense anything?" he asked anxiously.

I stretched out with the Force; we were within the area encompassed by the signature which I had detected from the lake. That malevolent aura seemed to rest on everything around us in a very thin layer like a light blanket of snow. I sensed that the presence would grow stronger as we moved closer to the center of the grounds.

"Not as of yet," I replied. "Nothing that will help us, at least."

Immediately after these words, I rounded the corner of the last tomb on the left, took two steps, and halted. As my disciple came up behind me, I held up a hand to halt him. Together, we stood motionless and took in the first of this journey's many grisly sights. Lying face-down on a red-stained patch of dirt several yards ahead of us was the body of a male human. Scattered around him was a backpack and some type of ranged weapon. With a hand-signal, I ordered Euthsia to inspect the pack as I moved closer to the body.

Closer inspection quickly revealed the cause of death. His head had been caved in with one or more strikes from a hard object – likely a large rock. His killer had apparently not been content with that, however, as most of the flesh on the corpse's torso and arms was stripped off, and I also observed that a number of organs were gone. His head and lower half, aside from the rock wound, appeared to be untouched.

"Disgusting" was the most eloquent word that I could mentally summon for the moment. I had seen a share of death in my years as a Jedi Knight, but I could not recall any time where I had seen such flagrant disrespect for a dead man; this was savagery, far more than simple murder.

Again, the question came to mind: Man or beast?

Shaking my head and looking up from the body, I stretched out with the Force, spending a moment in search of any sign of the culprit – or anyone who might be watching us – but felt no presences nearby.

After I was content that Euthsia and I were alone, I decided to break the silence. Moving to inspect the dead man's weapon, I asked, "What is in the pack?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary," he said. "Rations, water, a datapad, and some ammunition. Doesn't look like anything was taken from it."

I squatted down before the weapon. It was an ordinary high-caliber slugthrower. "This fits with our information on the bodies that others have found," I observed as I rose, mentally running through the information from the datapad. "Severe defacement of the corpses and none of the victims' possessions taken. This is certainly the work of whoever or whatever we are looking for." After saying this, I noted a trail of blood leading from the body. Though it seemed to point further into the burial grounds, it quickly faded and disappeared as it left our vicinity.

"Who do you suppose he was?" my disciple asked. He had, as I had trained him to, buried his personal outrage and disgust at our finding and instead summoned the empirical, logic-guided demeanor which proved to serve him well in these types of situations. Even in his voice I could sense the transition.

"It does not matter," I said simply. The identity of one of the two hundred or so victims would bring us no closer to our goal. "Let us move on. There is much more to this than we will see here."

No less than an hour later we stopped at yet another site, this one further inside the grounds. This set of tombs, five in number, was arranged on the perimeter of a circle, facing inward toward a stone bistre obelisk that jutted up from the ground. Wind swept between the ancient monuments with a low, whistling howl.

Euthsia and I were probing the space within the circle. The burial grounds' disturbing Force aura now felt stronger, its uncomforting blanket ever so slightly thicker than before. However, there was a number of more physical signs that suggested something amiss.

Four holes had been dug in seemingly random places in the ground, each of them circular and about four feet in diameter. They contained nothing, but from all indications they had been added within the past few days.

I also took note of the small variety in the design of the tombs, and more importantly in the state which we found them in. Most of them had squared archways that had long ago been filled in by solid blocks of stone, though there were some that instead sported large disks that were rolled into place over the doorway, never intended to be removed.

Out of the five tombs in this collection, three of them had been opened. Two of them, their doorways in the square variety, had had their featureless stone "doors" smashed apart, and the third one's disk had been rolled away from the entrance. The featureless interiors sported only an elevated structure on which the dead would be lain; each of the three were unoccupied.

For some time Euthsia seemed unable to do do anything other than ask ineffectual questions. "Do you suppose that whatever we are looking for is what opened these tombs? No animal in the vicinity could do this, could they, Master? What do you suppose happened to the skeletons that these tombs must have once contained, Master?"

I could have given half-answers, but none of them would shed any further light on the situation. If our adversary had broken into these tombs, there was no reason evident for it; there was no evidence of riches ever having been inside. And whether a sentient being or not was responsible did nothing to answer why it had been done.

However, I had no right to be hard on my disciple. In fact, his last question – the one regarding the apparent disappearance of the opened tombs' occupants – called to mind one detail of the briefing which I had not given much thought to.

The ratio of disappearances and presumed deaths to bodies actually found is peculiarly imbalanced.

I repeated this detail aloud to my disciple, who received it in silence as he stared down into one of the empty holes in the ground. Shaking his head in frustration, he said, "I feel like we're wasting time, Master. We've been here for hours – how can we have not yet discovered anything certain about the thing that's here?"

I would be lying if I were to say that I did not share his sentiment at all.

"We should be patient, Euthsia," I said, drawing on a fundamental Jedi virtue. "A solution will present itself when the time is right."

Walking a few steps away to stare at the stone obelisk, Euthsia was silent for a moment, clearly in thought. "Regarding these opened and unoccupied tombs," he said at length, "perhaps whoever we're after uses them as shelter and removes the remains for comfort's sake."

I nodded. "You are probably correct, Euthsia. But I do not think that there is anything more for us here. The Force grows stronger the closer we move toward the heart of this place. I think that more clues will present themselves further in."

We came upon another anomaly as we left this group of tombs. Ten yards out of the circle they formed was another hole, this one not empty. I frowned in puzzlement as Euthsia and I stood on its edge and stared down three heavily decayed human skeletons, broken apart in places and their pieces mingling with each other. It seemed then that my disciple's speculation about the opened tombs was correct.

Euthsia looked up after a moment and glanced around, up at the sky which was now dotted with clouds, then at the empty field around us, its only feature the odd spindly tree, tree stump, or rock. I, however, continued to peer down at the age-old corpses. This time, it was I who was lost in thought.

"Euthsia?" I said after a moment.

"Master?"

"Do you remember when you asked me whether I believe that our objective is a man or a beast?"

"Yes, I do."

I looked up, stretching out again with the Force but still sensing no one else nearby. "I believe that the proper question would be, ' How much is it man, and how much beast?'"

At the next grouping of structures, my question was not entirely answered. A trail of worn dirt ran between two rows of six tombs like the street of an old village or a primitive road. In the narrow alley-like spaces between each pair of tombs were more holes, also holding skeletons. But not merely holding a few, hundreds of years old. Rather, Euthsia and I could see a pile of bones – not all of them human – tangled together and stained brown with blood that could not have been older than a month.

I was more interested, however, in a black mass left just off the path. Close inspection revealed it to be the remains of a campfire, still just barely smouldering. It was at this moment that, within my head, I replayed a memory of Euthsia and myself walking through one of the fields between two clusters of tombs. One detail from that memory was now at the forefront of my thoughts: the trees that dotted those fields. Half of them were nothing more than stumps – they had been cut down.

Euthsia agreed with me that this particular finding was concrete evidence that the one we sought was an intelligent being. But that still left the matter of whether it was a rational being that acted according to some reason or planning, or an irrational one that followed instinctual patterns. Until we encountered it in the flesh, we could not be certain.

Further and further in we journeyed, the hours crawling behind us. As sunset approached, we found more of the same – more old campfires, more corpses in varying states of decay thrown into pits. The fresher ones had been mutilated much like the first body we found, missing large amounts of flesh in random areas.

Single minutes began to feel like hours, and even I began to grow agitated as we travelled amongst the dead, our questions no closer to being answered. This particular part of the grounds was defined by two narrow formations of hills that stretched snake-like for about a mile and a half. Rows of tombs built into the side of the hills gave a canyon-like effect to the path. As usual, some of them had been broken into. On an impulse, I chose one such tomb and headed inside, hoping that perhaps it would hold some clue or another within. My disciple followed me slowly, his Force aura portraying a rising state of fatigue. I stopped a few paces inside and swept the room with my senses, but found nothing of interest except an open, unoccupied stone coffin set up against the far wall.

Euthsia's slightly eroded disposition had begun to manifest outwardly by this point; he had started to contribute hypotheses less and less over time, and now took to fidgetting restlessly. As I finished scanning the wallls more closely, he suddenly said, "Master, did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Footsteps."

I raised an eyebrow and stretched out with my Force sense. With thousands of invisible feelers I swept the area surrounding the tomb, searching for any sign of another presence. A moment passed, and there was nothing, not even an animal. It then first occurred to me that I had not seen any animals near the tombs – perhaps the dark side energies had repelled them.

"No," I said, turning to stare at the empty coffin. "I do not sense anything," I added, but Euthsia did not relax.

"I simply do not understand," I blurted after a few seconds, my patience continuing its slow and inevitable death. "It kills those who intrude. It skins them and takes their organs, but takes none of their possessions. It breaks into the tombs, it desecrates the dead, piles their ruined corpses in holes. Yet why have we not seen it? Why does it hide from us?"

My disciple's reply was unexpected and alarming beyond words. No sooner had I finished articulating my question than I heard him shriek the word, "Master!", his voice drenched in fear. I spun to face the doorway of the tomb, only to see a flash of color as Euthsia's boot disappeared from view, seeming to fly backward in such a way to indicate that he had been seized and pulled from behind with astonishing strength.

For a bare second I stood frozen in shock, staring at the empty space my disciple had left. In another second, however, I had bounded out through the tomb entrance, focusing my power outward in search of the disturbance. I had no doubt in my mind that the enemy we had come for was now present.

My Force senses had swept in a sixty-yard radius around me before I even touched the ground, but I could detect no one except my disciple. His presence in the Force was horrifyingly faint and he was still moving away... but behind me? Whirling around, I looked up to see a struggling blur that must have been Euthsia disappearing over the hill that the tomb had been built into the side of.

Without a second's hesitation I sprang to the edge of the tomb's boxed roof and then leaped again, propelling myself over the hill. As I cleared it, however, a large, solid object that could only have been a stone slammed into my right shoulder. Though I had taken care to wrap myself in a protective bubble of energy, the impact still sent a paroxysm of pain through my entire body and completely threw my balance off. I spun madly in the air for a second or two before my flailing body struck the ground in the middle of the path.

The pain had actually seemed to temporarily blind me. I struggled, commanding the Force to encompass me and dull the pain. Slowly it did, but before my sight returned my ears allowed me to bear witness to a grisly event.

I heard footsteps on the dusty ground nearby, frantic steps made by a man trying to put distance between himself and something else. I heard Euthsia's voice as he shouted the word "Master!" again, followed by a single blaster shot and a muted pumf as the blast struck dirt. Then a low shriek of metal as a dagger was drawn from its sheath, and... screams.

Then moaning.

Then a series of wet, sickening cracks.

Then the sound of something heavy falling to the earth.

Then footsteps heading away.

Then silence.

As I lurched to my feet and my vision began to return in a blurred mass of color, I beheld a gray shape lying on the dirt before me. I blinked several times, begging that the Force should spare me this sight and knowing that it would not.

Euthsia lay on his back. His green eyes and mouth were wide open, a ghastly expression of unadulterated, uncomprehending terror – the terror of a child – frozen on his visage, his face as colorless as rain. All four of his limbs were outstretched and mangled, savagely broken an astonishing number of times, lending the appearance of having countless new joints added to them. His tunic was torn and stained with dirt, and his blaster pistol and dagger were scattered on opposite sides of him.

Tears dampening my cheeks, I stretched into the Force for even the faintest glimmer of life. There was none. My legs suddenly lost their ability to support my body and I fell to my knees next to my disciple, grabbed onto his tunic with both hands, bowed my head, and ground my teeth uncontrollably. As I clamped my eyes shut, a single word seared my consciousness.

Failure. I had failed my disciple, my friend. I ought to have known that something was wrong, that he had heard something. Had I simply not turned my back, I might have been able to save him.

I had trained him and myself for years. Both of us had grown powerful in many ways, but it seemed now that it had all been for nothing. Whatever monstrous presence we had been hunting had in turn chosen to hunt us and murdered my companion with insulting, agonizing ease.

So strong, I had thought.

So wrong.

At this moment I became aware of the Force ripple of an unfamiliar being several dozen yards off to my right. It radiated a malevolent amusement. It laughed at me, taunted me without words.

My eyes snapped open and I sprang to my feet, snarling with anguish. I looked in the direction of the Force presence down the aisle. It was moving away quickly now, but I could just barely see a strange distortion of light, like that seen near a fire, off in the distance. In the blink of an eye I drew on my power. The Force instantly answered my command, wrapping itself around me and penetrating into every muscle in my body, powering it with the energy of the universe.

Enlivened by a burning fury that I had never felt before in my life, I sprinted after the presence I felt. The tombs and hills around me turned into a seamless blur and I felt as though I was flying above the ground. In seconds I closed the gap between myself and the ripple, only to find that it was no longer there, but now in the aisle to my left.

"Where are you!?" I screamed as I soared over the hill and landed on the next path. I looked ahead and behind me and saw nothing, but the presence was very close, yet... changed, spread out so that I could not pick out its exact location. Clearly, my foe was capable of screening itself from my Force senses. It had struck and was now hiding, toying with me.

"Show yourself!" I roared. The power of the Force thundered within me, seeking release. Extending a hand toward a nearby tomb's circular door, I unleashed a blast of telekinetic energy that shattered it into a cloud of dust and splintered stone. There was no response except another gust of wind.

I ran past row after row of structures, cursing the skies, my enemy, and myself. Blindly I ran, my burning power lashing out at my surroundings again and again, producing an ensemble of stone grinding and cracking. I ran like a man on fire who struggled to complete a final task in his last frenzied moments, but the presence I followed grew fainter and fainter. But even after it had gone altogether, I still ran on.

I felt almost as though I were trying to kill myself from exhaustion; or that I was some other creature, a different person entirely that was only clothed in the skin of a Jedi that I was trying to shed. My burning rage sustained me until my muscles felt worn away by time and my breath felt weak, insufficient. I shrieked at the empty hills and the broken-open tombs – many of them opened at my hands by this point – until my voice left me. When the last sliver of lava-light from the sun had disappeared over the horizon, so did my power seem to.

My anger spent, my body wasted, and the flame of my power extinguished, I dropped to my hands and knees as the ground grew cold and the night began to close around me.