Drew Karpyshyn - Darth Bane - Path of Destruction

Hoth nodded somberly. For a moment he said nothing, just enjoying Pernicar's presence once again, even if he was only here in spirit. Then, knowing there must be some purpose to this elaborate charade his subconscious had created for him, he asked, "Why have you come?"

"The Army of Light is an instrument of good and justice," Pernicar told him. "You fear you may have lost your way, but look to the Force and you will know what you must do to find it again."

"You make it sound so simple," Hoth said with a slight shake of his head. "Have I really fallen so far that I cannot even remember the most basic teachings of our order?"

"There is no shame in falling," Pernicar said, standing up. "There is only shame if you refuse to rise once again."

Hoth sighed heavily. "I know what I must do, but I lack the tools to do it. My troops are on the verge of collapse: exhausted and outnumbered. And the other Jedi no longer believe in our cause."

"Farfalla still does," Pernicar noted. "Though you had your differences, he was always loyal."

"I think I've driven Farfalla away for good," Hoth admitted. "He wants nothing more to do with the Army of Light."

"Then why are his ships still in orbit?" Pernicar countered. "You drove him away with your anger, and he fears you may have fallen to the dark side. Show him this is not so and he will follow you again."

Pernicar took a step back. Hoth could sense himself beginning the slow climb to consciousness again. He could have fought against it. He could have struggled to stay in the dream world. But there was work to be done.

"Good-bye, old friend," he whispered. Slowly, his eyes opened, revealing the waking world and the empty darkness of his tent. "Good-bye."

Sleep did not return to him that night. Instead he thought long and hard about what Pernicar had said to him in his dream. Pernicar had always been the one he'd turned to in times of confusion and trouble. It made sense that his mind would conjure up the image of his dearest friend to set him on the proper path again.

He knew what he had to do. He would swallow his pride and ask Farfalla's forgiveness. They had to set aside their personal differences for the sake of the Jedi.

First thing in the morning he emerged from his tent, determined to send an envoy to Farfalla. But to his surprise he found that one of Farfalla's people had come to speak with him.

"I wondered if I had made this trip in vain," the messenger admitted once Lord Hoth had welcomed her into his tent. "I was afraid you would refuse to even see me."

"Had you come a day earlier you probably would have been right," he confessed. "Last night I had a… revelation that changed things."

"I guess we're lucky I came today, then," she replied with a cordial tilt of her head.

"Yes, lucky," he muttered, though part of him believed the timing of the dream had nothing to do with luck at all. Truly, the Force was a powerful and mysterious ally.

Bane could still feel the poison in his system as he drove the land crawler across Ambria's vast and empty plains. The rumble of the engine couldn't quite drown out the rattle and clank of the junk piled in the back. The clatter kept him from pushing the memories of the vehicle's previous owners completely from his mind, but he felt no remorse over their deaths.

He'd left their bodies lying where they'd fallen, in the midst of the battlefield where they'd gathered their prizes. Their deaths had given him the strength to press on, but already the surge of power he had felt was fading. He had the strength to keep the synox at bay for a few more hours, but he needed to find a permanent cure.

He needed to find Caleb. If he could reach the healer, there was still hope. But the man's dwelling was still many kilometers away.

It was only a matter of time until his body succumbed to the paralysis and his mind was swallowed by the fevered madness brought on by the toxin. For now, though, his anger allowed him to keep his thoughts clear.

He wasn't angry at Githany. She had only acted as a servant of the dark side should. His rage was directed inward, toward his own weakness and misplaced arrogance. He should have anticipated the true depth of her cunning.

Instead he had let her poison him. And if he died now, his great revelation, the Rule of Two, the salvation of the Sith, would end with him.

Caleb felt the land crawler's approach long before he saw or heard it. It was like a storm on the wind, a black sky rushing in to cover the sun. When the vehicle rolled to a stop before his hut he was already sitting outside waiting for it.

The man who climbed out was large and muscular, a sharp contrast with Caleb's own thin and wiry frame. He wore dark clothing, and a hook-handled lightsaber dangled from his belt. His skin was gray as ash, and his features were twisted into an expression of cruelty and contempt. Even were he not sensitive to the ways of the Force, it wouldn't have been hard for Caleb to recognize him as a servant of the dark side. What he might not have sensed was how powerful this grim visitor truly was.

But Caleb had dealt with powerful men and women before. Jedi and Sith alike had come to him in the past, and he had turned them all away. He was a servant of the common people, those who could not help themselves. He wanted no part of the war between light and darkness.

The man began walking toward him, moving stiffly. The foul stench of poison wafted out from the dying Sith's pores, smothering the scent of the boiling soup hanging over Caleb's fire. Jabbing a stick into the coals to stir up more heat, Caleb now understood his visitor's unnatural complexion. The effects of synox were unmistakable. He figured the doomed man had at most a day before he died.

He didn't speak until the man stood directly above him, looming like the specter of death itself.

"There is venom in your body," Caleb said placidly. "You have come for the cure," he continued. "I will not give it to you."

The man didn't speak. Not surprising, given his state. The poison would have left his tongue cracked and swollen, his mouth parched and blistered. But he didn't need words to convey his message as his hand dropped to the hilt of his lightsaber.

"I am not afraid to die," Caleb said, with no change in his voice. "You may torture me if you want," he added. "Pain means nothing to me."

To prove his point, he plunged his hand into the bubbling cauldron. The scent of seared flesh mingled with the smells of soup and poison. His expression never changed, even as he withdrew his hand and held it up to show the scalded flesh.

He saw doubt and confusion in the newcomer's eyes, a look he had witnessed many times before. In the past his stoicism had served him well, usually thwarting the plans of those Sith or Jedi who had sought him out for one reason or another. They couldn't understand him, and that was how he wanted it.

He cared nothing for their war or what either side valued. In fact, there was only one thing he cared about in all the galaxy. And this performance was his only hope of protecting it from the monster standing above him.

The implacable man before him puzzled Bane. His only hope for survival had just been denied him, and he wasn't sure what he could do about it. He could sense the power in this man, but it wasn't the power of either the dark side or the light. It wasn't even the power of the Force in any normal sense of the word. He drew his strength from ground and stone; mountain and forest; the land and the sky. Despite this difference, Bane could sense that the man's power was formidable in its own way. Bane found its strangeness disturbing, unsettling. Was it possible he was actually going to lose this battle of wills? Was it possible this simple man, a man with only the faintest flicker of the Force inside him, was actually able to defy a Dark Lord of the Sith?