Bitter winds surrounded him, cut into him like a thousand knives, but it was also that bitterness that guided him, with its faint taste of engine degreaser on his tongue.
Brant’s shuttle stood just behind him, but even from a few paces away it was already beginning to disappear into the darkness of the blizzard gales. Brant had turned its headlights as bright as they could go; if he did not know them for what they were, they would have looked like twin spirits floating anchorless in the darkness.
Brant turned his back on them, drawing his hood down over his head. He had no need to see except for picking out the footing just upfront of him, as the distant sense of something, like the Other but not, was guiding him on. The wind chafed his cheeks, and some distant part of him wondered if he shouldn’t have waited to grow out his beard for the extra warmth. With an absent tug on the patch he usually left on his chin, he bowed his head against the wind and pressed forward.
Brant trudged along until the ship’s headlights were fully invisible behind him, and the darkness pressed all around, seething with an unspoken malice. The wind shoved into him like a shoulder-checking Mandalorian, only to whip around again like the hooks of an Inquisitor, dragging him back the other way. He swallowed some of the surrounding darkness, bending its Force to flood through his body, making his legs stronger against the wind. Each step sunk him into the snow up to his thighs, permeating the fabric of his leggings, like a second sheen of cold sweat against his skin.
He continued bullying the Force into circulating through the rest of his body, capturing the warmth he generated as he walked and pulling it back inward rather than let it escape on the winds. He became a knot of energy in the wasteland, and he sensed the Force pooling around him, as if being drawn down a drain. Its power was invigorating, but he could feel other beings in the dark taking note of it, watching him as they trailed along in his wake, some stalking, others merely curious.
Brant ignited his lightsaber to provide a little light, but no reflections of beast eyes popped out of the gloom. These beings were spirits in the Force only, and Brant reached out to each one, picking among them with his Force Sense, but none resonated with him; none were the Other. Some of them were travelers, others were Sith, and one or two, he believed, were the old souls of Jedi. All of them, he believed, had come seeking the same thing that he had, and now they watched like spectators in an arena, to see if he would succeed or if he would fall like they had.
“Help me, and I’ll free you from this place,” he offered one, an angry spirit with the feel of a Pureblood. The spirit only scoffed and disappeared, turning around and spiraling into a small dot of consciousness that blew away on the next wind.
“Do you even understand what it is you seek?” asked one of the Jedi, breaking from the entourage to match Brant’s gait by his side.
“And who are you?” Brant countered angrily.
“One you could become,” said the Jedi, and he, too, disappeared.
Brant resolved to ignore the spirits from then on, pressing harder into the headwind. Whether it was because the dawn was coming, or the storm was lessening, or simply his Force Sense growing, the atmosphere around him began to lighten in color, shifting from a deep blue to a lavender to the faint traces of a red sunrise. Each of his footsteps bit with more energy into the snow as the ground began to slope upward.
Suddenly, he stepped into a stone-floored alcove, and the air was so still here that the snowflakes glistened, trapped in midair as if held fast in pale amber. Brant stumbled forward, pushing himself into a wind that was no longer there, then stopped to look around.
Four stone pillars rose into the dark sky around him; lines like water channels trailed from them towards a bowl, scooped out of the flagstones in the center. There was a knot of agony there, but not like the Dark Side’s torture. This had a more noble quality about it, like a selfless sacrifice or an exorcism. When Brant touched it gently through the Force, it sent a ripple through him that was as cold as ice: soothing as a drink of water after a long hot day of Tatooine dust, but also as bracing as opening the door of his warm apartment and being slapped in the face with the Kaas rainstorms outside. Brant snorted at it, as if by clearing his nostrils he could clear himself of that feeling, but it only strengthened, to the point he was trembling.
Then he saw, floating serenely just inside the bowl, a holocron. It was shaped like a prism. Brant reached out to it; it could just fit into the palm of his hand. He had used such things before, and he pushed the Force into it. Little geometric shapes pressed inward all over its surface with soft clicking noises.
And suddenly, Kyolath stood before him.
“D-Dad??” Brant quailed back, almost dropping the holocron, but of course the image drifted right along with him, bound to the object as it was.
“A fragment only,” said the projection. Like the Other’s voice when Brant had stood just outside the tomb, its voice was faint, but it was not watery: instead strong, like the echoes of an old song, sung in a deep voice.
“H-how?”
The man turned his head away. He looked more healthy than Brant had ever seen Kyolath, even when Brant had only been a child. His face was unscarred, the cut of his jawline clean, the hollows of his cheeks filled. Yet his voice was otherworldly, as if heard through a tube or echoing down a mountain valley towards him. It did not sound like a real person at all. “I am part of that which was cut from Kyolath long ago. It was here he broke his chains, and he left me behind as a reminder of what he’d had to sacrifice, through another’s help.”
“A Jedi?” Brant frowned, but the projection continued on as if it hadn’t heard him.
“When the Karkemir woke and came down from the mountains of Serenno, the valley which Kyolath lived in was laid to ruin, his first wife and children slain. Kyolath was one of those who rose up to stop the Sun Eater, but instead of fighting the darkness, it consumed him.”
“He was weak,” Brant muttered. “I might have known.”
The projection continued, “He knew that power was necessary to achieve victory, but he also learned that victory is lessened by every price one pays for the power. Do you understand?” The projection then paused, looking up at Brant and folding its hands, like a droid that had been instructed to wait for his next signal.
Brant put a hand to the old injury in his stomach as he considered the projection’s words, then clenched it as he realized what he was doing. “That’s Jedi osik,” he snapped rebelliously. “The alternative to power is to be weak — to be nothing but an empty vessel for what others want to put inside you. That is no life worth living!”
“You are right,” said the projection, and Brant fell silent in surprise. “Kyolath sought to walk the edge as you do. In some ways he failed, and in some he succeeded. Ultimately, he came here, choosing to surrender his power, rather than let it corrupt him further.”
“A Jedi beat him and made him cave, you mean,” grumbled Brant.
“No,” said the projection. “As he grew older, Kyolath knew he could not hold back the Sun Eater’s power forever, and rather than allowing the will of the Force to consume him, he slit its throat. Here. That which belonged to the dragon was returned to Serenno, and I was left to watch and wait and to provide guidance as he needed: a reminder of what he would stand to lose if he could not contain his hungers.”
“He Force-severed himself?” said Brant in disbelief. “It wasn’t a fight with a Jedi? He did this to himself?”
“In a manner of speaking, it was a Jedi,” said the projection. “There are noble purposes to anger, fear, and suffering, which the Jedi might champion if they were brave enough to seek them out. Protection, courage, prudence, and wisdom come from these, and more. But since the beginning of time there has also been a darkness, a twisting influence, that lingers on the edges of the Force. If you delve too deeply into it, it breathes back into you, forming a new entity in the shape of your husk: corrupted, unnatural, and broken. That is what Karkemir is.”
Brant shook his head slowly. It made a lot of sense, but it also didn’t. He had felt Karkemir’s strength in the tomb, and it tasted to him of all that awaited Brant if he lost control of his powers. Yet it was different, he swore, from what he touched when he used the Dark Side. The Dark Side to Brant was will and energy: passion, power, ferocity, like the tooth and claw of beasts. It was purposeful and driven, like the Sith Code. He took it as an affront that something like that could invade and change the core of who he was, as this holocron suggested. That, he believed, was what happened to the weak of the Sith: the ones who could not handle the influx of power and became mad, conniving, and foolish. It would not happen to him.
“But why would Karkemir want the permafrost crystal?” he asked. “It sent me here to find it, not you.”
The projection gave a slight nod. “The permafrost crystal represents the Sun Eater’s failure here. It believes that the deep, killing cold of this planet should be aligned with it, but it is not. Permafrost crystals are strong in the Force, but they are not tied to either Dark or Light. They simply are, while Karkemir wishes everything to instead be as it is: hungry and covetous.”
Brant said nothing, and the projection went back to waiting patiently, hands folded up front of it. He thought of what Hu’izei would counsel in this situation, particularly — he shuddered — what the Darth would say about the time and credits wasted if he couldn’t complete the task. Karkemir wanted the crystal, too, and perhaps Brant could entrap its spirit through such a gift, but something warned him against it. He did not want to give the valuable artifact away, particularly not to something that sought to use him.
Through all these thoughts, the projection continued to watch him with a nonjudgemental silence. Finally Brant cleared his throat and spoke.
“Tell me how to find the crystal. I will use its power to conquer Karkemir, once and for all.” It wasn’t entirely a lie; the Sun Eater chained to him would be as harmless as the Sun Eater destroyed, Brant thought.
“Through your greed, you would empower the Sun Eater,” the projection warned.
“No,” said Brant. “I’m stronger than that.” Then, spurred on by a burst of recklessness, he added, “I killed Kyolath! He was weaker than me. He could not hold onto the Sun Eater’s power, but I can.”
His words echoed and died against the tall stone pillars and the frozen blizzard outside them. The projection considered him without expression, and Brant suddenly wondered if it had been programmed for such an eventuality. The only other holocron he had ever perused, back at the Sith Academy, had seemed to be prideful, defending its creator’s achievements as if it were its own. But this one…
“I believe he hoped you would be right,” said the projection quietly.
It wasn’t the answer Brant had been expecting at all. “And?” he snapped defensively.
The projection lifted its head, gazing at the blizzard outside, though of course it couldn’t really see it. It was a native gesture only, captured and reflected perfectly from the Sith who had made the device. “Karkemir is already inside of you,” said the projection, “as any who touch upon the Dark Side of the Force without care. If you can prove now that you can conquer that small piece of it, I will release to you one such crystal.”
“I’ll do it,” breathed Brant. “Just show me how!”
“We will see,” said the projection, in an eerie reflection of the Other’s words to Brant on Serenno. “Place me back into the center, with my edges aligned to the four pillars. I will do the rest.”
Brant did, kneeling next to the bowl in the middle of the plaza, fitting the square end of the prism into it so that the corners lined up with the channels branching from the stone pillars. Nothing happened at first, then there was a click. The bowl-like indention suddenly dipped down past where Brant could see it, the edges falling inward as a tunnel opened beneath his feet. Brant scrambled back, grabbing onto a pillar, and soon he was looking down into a pit. In stark contrast to the black stone and blue-lit snow around him, this pit was lined with moss-covered stone, the bottom with red sand. It was an arena, shaped much like the ones on Yavin 4 where Brant had learned his first saber form, yet also bearing some resemblance to the sand-lined pits of the Mandalorian trials.
Brant dropped gingerly down into it. The feeling of intense cold left him, and he released his grip on the Force — that which had been regulating his inner temperature before. He turned about once in a full circle to take in the walls, and when he reached his original facing, he saw another had joined him in the pit.
It was Kellaro, but subtly different: the clan markings on his face were made in a different pattern, the hair cut short instead of tied back in a messy ponytail, and he bore a small scar under one eye that Brant suddenly recognized. The scar was his own, given to him when he had walked into the path of an oncoming speeder as a boy. This was not Kellaro then, but him, him if he had been a Mandalorian: a deep-seated dream.
“I don’t understand,” said Brant uneasily, looking around for the holocron. “This is part of me, not the Sun Eater.”
“Though your master likely had other things in mind when he forced you to take up arms against your kin, in this much, he had a point.” It was the voice of the projection, echoing from everywhere, yet something was subtly off about it. For one, it was speaking to Brant as if it knew him intimately, instead of just mindlessly passing him information from its own databank. “This is a thing that you can never have,” it went on. “In the same way Kyolath’s life as a simple yeomen on Serenno was taken from him, this life was taken from you, never to return. Yet in the facing of this suffering, you will find strength.”
“That made sense until the last thing you said,” growled Brant, watching the other him bounce a blaster rifle in his arms with a cavalier attitude before smirking back at Brant. “Nevermind. If this is what it takes to get that crystal, I’ll do it!”
The other Brant’s smirk grew, and he beckoned him forward.
They stalked each other, circling like prowling narglatchs. Then, as quick as a flash, the other Brant pulled up his rifle and fired several shots. Brant’s lightsaber leapt into his hands, the violet blade singing slightly as it absorbed the bolts and sent them pinging into the sides of the arena. As his blade ducked this way and that to scoop up the blasterfire, Brant began advancing, slow and relentless as a glacier.
The Mandalorian Brant fired several more shots at him and then jumped away. With small, subtle flicks at the control panels on his wrists, the Mando’s boots reoriented themselves to the walls and stuck there, and he now fired on Brant from several feet up in the air. Brant laughed at him and just kept walking right up to the Mandalorian, his own feet sticking to the walls by the power of the Force. It was the same tactic, yet a different source of power.
The Mandalorian aimed a slap of his rifle butt in Brant’s face, then leaped away again. Brant followed, pushing off the wall, orienting his lightsaber to drag a long line of red-hot down the back of the Mandalorian.
He was not ready for the scream, so much like his own, that sprang from the other Brant. He felt his own lightsaber blow, though, like a beast breathing down his own neck: not quite burning, but still desperately uncomfortable.
You will draw strength from your suffering, the projection had said, so Brant did. He welcomed the pain, even as he landed several more blows on the other Brant, turning the shared pain into rage and the rage into Force power. He cut pieces of the sacred Beskar armor from the other Brant’s frame, then chopped his blaster in half. Finally, he kicked the pieces away, sheathing the lightsaber in one smooth movement at the same time as he reached for the other Brant and grabbed his head.
They stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment, corrupted-yellow into dark blue. Wistfulness and nostalgia rose up in Brant’s throat as he stared, and he felt an odd urge to embrace the man instead of kill him.
But then the other Brant smirked, and that he could not allow, even from himself!
Brant gripped the head tighter and snapped it sideways, feeling a break in the neck below it. The other Brant’s eyes widened, then began to go glassy, and Brant cupped his chin, watching the life die from the eyes, like he had with so many other targets he had taken down while on the hunt for the Covenant. It didn’t stop there, though: the eyes sank in as they closed, becoming black pits, and the skin began to grow thin and bloodless, as Brant finally let go of it, of this part of him — of his dream to become Mandalorian, like his brother and mother before him.
He sensed something else curdling inside the broken form of the Mandalorian, then, like an evil, animating spirit, sending it tendrils through the black veins beginning to appear in the rapidly aging skin of the other Brant’s face.
“Look away now,” advised the projection’s voice. “What you see is Karkemir: that which corrupts all that engages with it.”
“No,” said Brant. “I want to see what happens!”
And so he did. The body continued to age and deteriorate, and then it began to fall apart entirely; the skin was no longer able to hold the dark vapors, consumed from within by them, and now they were spilling out, filling the air with a malaise like rot. Brant gagged and shied away, but in his core, he challenged it. “You tried to latch on to my dreams and make it a chain,” he shouted. “You tried to become me. You failed! I am your master, as I am master of myself!”
He swiped at the vapors with his violet saber, and a body fell out of them: the Mandalorian Brant again, but this time only dead, not decaying. The vapors sunk at his command into the flooring of the arena, and there they stayed. As Brant got to his feet, he could feel them undulating beneath him. He threw out a hand and drew them up again, forcing them to twist and turn to his liking before sending them cascading back down, into the floor, into their cage. “As you should be!”
The shade of Kyolath appeared again then and walked towards him, pausing only once he had reached the body of the dead Brant. This Kyolath had more presence than the projection somehow, and Brant felt the hairs on the back of his neck go up. Was this Kyolath’s actual spirit? Or was it a figment of Brant’s imagination, an illusion caused by the holocron? He saw lightsaber wounds in the man’s chest and gut — the ones Brant himself had inflicted.
“I will always be with you…” The voice came up thin and cold, and Brant started shivering uncontrollably.
No…
“Go away,” he begged. It was like every nightmare he’d suffered through since the night of the killing. Was this one of Karkemir’s tricks? Brant brought up his lightsaber, summoning up a wild, killing rage to end it, but when he looked into his father’s eyes, the emotion abruptly died. He couldn’t… he hadn’t been able to… Kyolath and his master had forced him… His knees went out from under him, the lightsaber hilt bouncing away across the arena, doom closing all around him. He had failed the Ascension after all. He had only put it off; the weakness had not been cut out of him–
Kyolath continued speaking, as if in mockery: his very last words, before Brant had killed him.
“Good men are not pacifists, Brant… If they were, they would merely sit and wait until the darkness overcame them… No, good men are monsters on the inside… monsters who have learned to control their monstrosity.”
Brant put up his hands in silent plea, but the spirit continued to advance on him. Its voice grew stronger, more firm.
“All those who would fight must embrace the darkness, for that is what gives them their strength. From this pain, you will find meaning. From this meaning, you will find purpose.”
Brant dared to look up, blinking hard. The old Mandalorian had bowed his head to him, and he was smiling, gentle and kind. It was not the kind of gentleness Brant saw in the Jedi: it was a gentle that chose to be so, that controlled a roiling darkness within. This thing, his father, chose… to forgive him.
New words were on the air now, that Brant had never heard before, yet he also felt, by the resonance of the Force around him, that they had been said before. As the projection had been left here to remind Kyolath of who he was, he suddenly realized this echo of the Force had been left to remind him of who he was. The dying wish of a father…
“When I held you for the first time in my arms, you broke my chains…” said Kyolath. “For when you give yourself to greater purpose, you are freer than any man has a right to be. You become guided by something far stronger than you are, and through that power comes freedom.”
Something cold as a mountain stream was pushed into Brant’s hands, and something else touched his hair. It was Kyolath, one last touch, before he began to withdraw.
“Passion leads to pain,” said his father, “and pain will transform us… but whether it will be for good or for evil, only you can decide…“
And then his father, and the vision, faded away.
A cold pall hung over the arena now, drifting down into it as the snowflakes from the blizzard above finally broke through the glass-like pallor that had kept them still. The power of the Force left the stones, slowly, like it was being drawn back like a tide, back into the greater whole. The green moss darkened and cracked and fell away, until Brant was only standing on an old ruin, its flat floor paved with flagstones. A depression lay in their center, with lines drawn towards it, like water channels from the stone pillars standing all around.
But the holocron no longer stood in its center. Instead, glowing faintly, lay the jagged, icy form of a permafrost crystal.
Brant gingerly reached down to pick it up, and a cold feeling spread through him at the touch: hardening like a frost would harden flesh, but also biting like an anooba nipping at the heels of its quarry.
“Remember the price you have paid.”
Suddenly the blizzard came rolling up on Brant, breaking the spell entirely. He could not be certain, but he sensed that the Other, the holocron, his memories — all the last traces of his father — were now gone for good. Only the crystal, transformed by his suffering, remained.
The snow soon covered the ruin like it had covered his tracks on the way here, and Brant was left to stumble back to his shuttle through the blizzard. In his hand, he clutched a crystal that was a deeper cold than any of the winds, yet in some, strange way, that strengthened him.
Once Brant brought the shuttle up out of Rekkiad’s atmosphere, he set it on auto-pilot to power through the hyperspace lanes back to Dromund Kaas, and then he went to bed. The cold had sunken into him, exhausting him more than even a long day’s training could. He carefully set the precious crystal on the bedside table, then bundled up in as many blankets as he could pull from the shuttle’s cupboards. Then he lay down, just staring at it. His mind was too tired for thinking, and at some point, he must have dozed off.
When he dreamed, he dreamed of Kellaro, telling Makkia stories and watching the stars come out through a break in the clouds. They weren’t on Dromund Kaas, however, but on Tatooine, and the breaking clouds were that of a passing rainstorm. Kellaro pulled Makkia close, whispering to her, and Brant heard a mother’s lullaby, faintly, in the distance.
“Goodnight, Brant!” his sister cried out into the dream.
Goodnight, he answered in a whisper, and then he sank more deeply into his sleep, and he dreamed no more.