When Lathril opened the Edusa compound’s door, it got stuck halfway through pulling back into the wall. After edging sideways in through the narrow portal, he saw the reason: old lightsaber strikes on the edges had fouled the opening mechanism. Judging by the height, they had been left in the middle of a battle: probably the same battle where Lord Sarak had rescued Lathril from Karse’s clutches.
He likely could have bent the metal back into alignment with Telekinesis and make the door open more smoothly, but Lathril decided to leave it alone and tread deeper into the abandoned building. For abandoned it was now: skid marks on the floor from massive crates or equipment being shifted around was all that was left of the Jedi insurgents who had once stayed here. When Lathril moved over to a computer console, it took him several tries before he realized the data in the machine had been fried: likely through a memory-wipe program and then through the judicious use of a lightsaber applied to the circuitry. So it seemed that the compound had long been empty, any useful information either brought with the evacuees or destroyed.
Lathril had one trick left, however. He sat down in the most trafficked section of the building (or so he assumed, by the positioning of the doors and hallways), and stretched his senses out along the Force.
If he had expected emotional resonance from the previous occupants of the building, he was disappointed: instead he only sensed, dizzingly, his own. Through the Force’s power, he witnessed himself carried in as he had been those months ago, unconscious and bound, and then he was released, limp, onto the floor. He sensed his own fear, replaced by a slow relief as he caught sight of a Jedi. Lathril winced as that past self naively trusted the Miraluka Jedi, allowing Karse to break into his mind and rip from him the memories that would be used to sabotage Sarak’s ship and kill so many people.
The Drained Knowledge had been humiliating enough, but now, knowing what it had been used for… a deep fury suddenly awoke in Lathril. He broke from his meditation and pinched the skin on his forehead, just above his cybernetic. The Jedi Order had taught him to avoid anger like this, to let it go without acting, but now he wondered. It had been a lack of emotion that had led him to trusting Karse: he had ignored the prickle of fear in his gut, believing in the calm logic that Karse would recognize him as a Jedi far from home and help him, or at least respect his declaration of friendship for the Lord Sarak and so steer his hunt for Sith somewhere else in the Empire. Instead, Karse had taken advantage of Lathril’s trust, nearly killed Sarak, killed people Lathril had come to consider comrades.
Did all Sith feel so when their people were attacked? Was that why they hated the Jedi so?
Lathril let out a long breath. No, not all Sith. Some were broken, selfish, and twisted as a spire of blackroot curving its way into the heart of its victim. But there were others like Lord Sarak, who straddled what Lathril would call the line of morality: dipping dangerously into the Dark Side, bending it to see good be done.
And that, Lathril finally decided, was the proper use of anger. Confident action… force when negotiations had failed… and retribution. Jedi carried lightsabers because sometimes the battle came to them, and when that happened, they had to win it.
Lathril continued to meditate, though he no longer touched the Force especially. Instead he sifted through, laid, and discarded plans. He no longer lived in the Republic, was no longer a Jedi, but he still held the values that made up their laws. Karse had murdered, he had used the Dark Side of the Force, he had lied and manipulated, and now justice must be done.
Here, where the Republic could not reach the Miraluka, the task fell to Lathril.