13 BBY

The scorched plain is a battlefield, haunted by blaster wounds and petrified wood.  It was some time since the flailing of sabers and firing of carbines had ceased and now, in the aftermath, bodies were strewn across the flatland.  The sky was an unpleasant nebula of crimson light and ashy clouds, which periodically blot out the red light.  

Within this large basin, a single figured armored in black with a large cape that cascades over the back of the rock he sits upon is present.  His compatriots have spread out, but he remained behind in this large graveyard.  In the battle at some point his helmet had been knocked off or destroyed, as pieces were seen behind him from the shattered dome.

His face is smudged with dirt and dried blood and dripping with sweat.  He breathes in exhausted gasps as if he had ran a marathon and rests his forearm against his knee, leaning upon it.  His armor is worn with cracks, dents, dings and burns but first and foremost he is alive.  This elite soldier, named Magnus, now directs his gaze in front of him, down about the floor is a woman with a prominent lightsaber wound through her.

“You would think I feel regret,” he questions.

The body, unmoving, is obviously dead.  But had not been dead for long.  The body is of a human female prone on the ground in a sad heap.  Magnus looks down at her, speaking as if she could answer,

“After all you’ve done for me,” he continues, “you would think me to feel remorse.”

He nudges the shoulder of the corpse, but other than slightly slumping down there is no response.  The body hasn’t even undergone rigor mortis yet.  Magnus scowls, “I feel nothing.”  The young shadow guard makes a grim expression as he turns her over with the end of his armored boot.  She was beautiful, peaceful, but deathly pale.  Racla lay there marred with a hole through her stomach, her clothes stained with dirt.  His green eyes stared down at her expecting something of her, abhoring her, shocked by her.  “I feel…”

I – Ten years prior

“Nothing.”

Racla stared back at him, this time looming over him.  “Nothing?” She cocked her head back with shock and a tinge of anger.  “Magnus, you nearly killed him, what’s gotten into you?”

He didn’t answer, he simply stared down at the ground.

She grabbed his shoulders, “Magnus, you are turning to the dark side.  The only reason you are still here is because not only I but others believe there is good in you.”  The young apprentice looked up at her a saddened look in his eyes.  “He was better than me…” the young Jedi murmurs.

“These are your brothers and your sisters, not your rivals, Magnus.  They are on your side.”  There was an awkward silence.  Deep down she knew it, Magnus was over the deep end.  She was being selfish, and had let her emotions get the best of her in convincing the council not to immediately imprison him.  The truth was that Magnus had been spiraling downwards for a while now, she believed herself able to pull him out of this descent.  Maybe she couldn’t, maybe the ten-year-old had fallen to far.  To think something so innocent was capable of such rage, such anger, such power.

Jodul’s senses had come back to her, it pained her to accept the truth, but she knew she would have to do it.  She had to turn Magnus in.  It was foolish for her to convince herself into an alternative.  The council hadn’t even delivered a verdict yet, but she knew what they would come to – the same decision she had come to.  The council knew it, she knew it, and Magnus knew it, of all these she was certain.

“The code, Magnus, do you remember the Jedi code?”  Jodul queried.

“There is no emotion,” Magnus recited, bowing his head sullenly, “there is peace.”

Racla stood there, the backs of her hands on her hips as Magnus continued, “There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.”

“There is no…”

 II – Ten years after.

“Passion, there is serenity,” Magnus says, as he gazes down upon the corpse of Jodul.

“There is no harmony, there is chaos.”

“There is no Jedi, there is death.”  He could hear the revived sound of blaster fire in the distance, undoubtedly they had found another pocket of Jedi fugitives.  Magnus inhaled deeply, “I hope you don’t mind the modifications.  Nature no longer abides by a Jedi perspective…”

 III – Ten years prior.

“The council demands you are watched, Magnus.”  Jodul said, sternly

The two were sitting at a long table, which was next to the large doors of his parents mansion they each had a meal placed in front of them, but Magnus felt little appetite, only a deep-seated fear that weighed heavily in his stomach.  To him, the situation was a sad joke; it was imprisonment without the force field.  It was also hopeless.  Magnus couldn’t possibly hope to escape his fate, now.  If he ran from Racla, not only would she catch him (she was faster, stronger, and more attuned to the Force than he,) but he would also lose any precious time he had before he were actually placed in a prison cell.  His mind was racing and every breath fluttered through his trachea, accentuated only by the pure terror of uncertainty.  Would they kill him?  Or would he just die in prison?

“More drink, Master Jodul?” queried a twi’lek female – the family servant.

Jodul hesitated, as if something had caught her attention far beyond the twi’lek.  “No…” she said, distantly, “I actually think you had better take everyone else into the back.”  The twi’lek looked at her, confused, but obeyed.  It was as soon as the servant began to turn to hurry off to the back that Magnus soon sensed it as well, a presence at the door.  He fidgeted as his Master rose from her seat.  The suspense was cut short by the front door flinging open with several droids standing in the opening, their visors red with unabated hostility.  

“Protocol 5 initiated, termination sequence engaged,” they chanted, in unison.  That was just before they unleashed a hail of blaster fire, but the Jedi master was quick, deflecting the many of the blaster bolts with little effort.  Politics many times were filled with dirty schemes on Coruscant, who knew that one that was intent on possibly assassinating him and his entire family would be his chance to escape.  Racla’s back was turned to him and she was just about to move to dispose of the droids when Magnus flings his arm forward, pushing a couple of parked chairs at her with a force push.  Racla, distracted, was caught off-guard by the chairs, and toppled over.  Between the Jedi Master making impromptu deflections of oncoming blaster fire, to throwing these chairs off her and into the droids, she had lost Magnus completely in the fray.  A few of the droids rose to their feet, but became little more than bisected scrap metal when the Jedi master was through with them.

She exhaled, briefly, then turned to where Magnus was, to find where he no longer is.

 IV – Ten years after

Magnus recalls these events with vivid clarity – his escape from certain incarceration, to his stowing away on a primitive transport vessel.  “There can be only one driving perspective that governs the galaxy,” he mutters to the corpse.  He wipes some of the sweat off his brow with his cape before standing up, then looks down at her and whispers so silently it is almost inaudible even to himself,

“Mine.”