Star Wars_ Darth Bane 02_ Rule of Two - Drew Karpyshyn [136]
A four-sided crystal pyramid small enough to be held in the palm, the Holocron contained the sum of all Bane’s knowledge and understanding. Everything he had learned about the ways of the dark side—all his teachings, all his philosophies—had been transferred into the Holocron, recorded for all eternity. It was his legacy, a way to share an entire lifetime of wisdom with those who would follow him in the line of Sith Masters.
The Holocron would pass to Zannah on his death, providing she could one day prove herself strong enough to wrest the mantle of Dark Lord away from him. Bane was no longer certain that day would come.
The Sith had existed in one form or another for thousands of years. Throughout their existence they had waged an endless war against the Jedi … and one another. Time and time again the followers of the dark side had been thwarted by their own rivalries and internal power struggles.
A common theme resonated across the long history of the Sith Order. Any great leader would inevitably be overthrown by an alliance of his or her followers. Lacking a strong leader the lesser Sith would quickly turn against one another, further weakening the Order.
Of all the Sith Masters, only Bane had understood the inescapable futility of this cycle. And only he had been strong enough to break it. Under his leadership the Sith had been reborn. Now they numbered only two—one Master and one apprentice; one to embody the power of the dark side, the other to crave it.
Thus would the Sith line always flow from the strongest, the one most worthy. Bane’s Rule of Two ensured that the power of both Master and apprentice would grow from generation to generation until the Sith were finally able to exterminate the Jedi and usher in a new galactic age.
That was why Bane had chosen Zannah as his apprentice: she had the potential to one day surpass even his own abilities. On that day she would usurp him as the Dark Lord of the Sith and choose an apprentice of her own. Bane would die, but the Sith would live on.
Or so he had once believed. Yet now there was doubt in his mind. Two decades had passed since he had plucked the ten-year-old girl from the battlefields of Ruusan, yet Zannah still seemed content merely to serve. She had embraced his lessons and had shown an incredible affinity for the Force. Over the years Bane had tracked her progress carefully, and he could no longer say with certainty which one of them would survive a confrontation between them. But her reluctance to challenge him had left her Master wondering if Zannah lacked the fierce ambition necessary to become the Dark Lord of the Sith.
Stepping into the library, he reached out with his left hand to close the door behind him. As he did so, he noticed the all-too-familiar trembling in his fingers. He snatched his hand back involuntarily, clenching it once more into a fist as he kicked the door shut.
Age was beginning to take its toll on Bane, but it was nothing compared with the toll already wrought upon his body by decades of drawing upon the dark side of the Force. He couldn’t help but smile at the grim irony: through the dark side he had access to near-infinite power, but it was power that came with a terrible cost. Flesh and bone lacked the strength to withstand the unfathomable energy unleashed by the Force. The unquenchable fire of the dark side was consuming him, devouring him bit by bit. After decades of focusing and channeling its power, his body was beginning to break down.
His condition was exacerbated by the lingering effects of the orbalisk armor that had been killing him even as it gifted him with incredible strength and speed.
The parasites had pushed his body well beyond its natural limits, aging him prematurely and intensifying the degeneration