Star Wars_ Darth Bane 01_ Path of Destruction - Drew Karpyshyn [138]
The inferno consumed everything in its path.
Heat and fire. There was nothing else in Bane’s world. It was as if he had become the storm itself: he could see the world before him, swallowed up in red and orange and reduced in seconds to ash and embers by the unchained fury of the dark side.
It was glorious. And then suddenly it was gone.
There was a jarring thump as his body dropped from where it had been hovering five meters above the ground. For several seconds he was completely disoriented, unable to figure out what happened. Then he understood: the connection had been broken.
He rose to his feet slowly, uncertain of his balance. All around him were the forms of the Sith, no longer kneeling in meditation but collapsed or rolling on the ground, their minds reeling from the sudden end to the joining ritual. One by one they also regained their composure and stood, most looking as confused as Bane had been only seconds before.
Then he noticed Lord Kaan standing off to the side, over by the fliers.
“What happened?” Bane demanded angrily. “Why did you stop?”
“Your plan worked,” Kaan replied curtly. “The forest is destroyed, the Jedi have fled to open ground. They are exposed, vulnerable. Now we go to finish them off.”
Kaan had broken the connection, and somehow he had managed to drag the others out along with him, as if he had some hold over their minds. Perhaps he does, Bane thought. Further proof that they all had to be destroyed if the Sith were to be cleansed.
As the others regained their senses, Kaan was shouting out orders and battle plans. “The fire flushed the Jedi out into the open. We can mow them down from the sky. Hurry!”
They jumped at his command, rushing to their waiting vehicles and taking to the sky with battle cries and shouts of triumph.
“Come on, Bane,” Githany said, rushing past him. “Let’s join them!”
He grabbed her arm, pulling her up short. “Kaan is still trying to win this war through blasters and armies,” he said. “That is not the way of the dark side.”
“It’s more fun this way,” she said, the excitement obvious in her voice. She shook free of his grasp.
As he watched her run to join the others he realized that she had been corrupted by the teachings of Qordis and the Academy on Korriban. Despite her promise to follow Bane, she couldn’t see beyond the Brotherhood and its limitations. She was tainted—unfit to be his apprentice. She would have to die with all the others.
There was the faintest hint of regret as he made the decision, but the regret was hollow: the echo of a feeling, the last vestiges of an emotion. He snuffed it out quickly, knowing it could only make him weak.
“You frighten us, Bane,” a voice said from behind. He turned to see Kopecz studying him carefully.
“When we were focusing the Force through you, it felt as if you had your teeth on our throats,” the Twi’lek continued. “As if you were trying to suck us dry.”
“The power of the dark side is strongest if it is concentrated in one vessel,” Bane replied. “Not spread out among many. I did it for the sake of the dark side.”
Kopecz shook his head and climbed onto his flier. “Well, we know you weren’t doing it for us.”
Bane watched him soar off. Then he climbed onto his own flier, but instead of following Kaan to the battle he set a course back to the Sith camp. The first phase of his plan to destroy the Brotherhood was complete.
When he arrived back at the camp twenty minutes later, he wasn’t surprised to find it completely deserted. All the Dark Lords had been on the plateau for the ritual, and they had all flown off in Kaan’s wake to face the suddenly vulnerable Jedi. The soldiers, servants, and followers who made up the bulk of the Sith army had originally been left behind at the camp, but they had since received commed orders from Kaan and the others to join them at the battlefield.
Bane brought his flier in for a landing in the heart of the camp, right beside Lord Kaan