• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Scourge slowly clambered to his feet as Revan helped Meetra up. In the corner, the upended astromech let out a plaintive whistle and awkwardly managed to rock himself back into an upright position.

Revan walked over and knelt beside the closer of the two dead soldiers. He placed a hand on the man’s chest, but didn’t speak.

“We have to go,” Meetra said softly, coming over and gently touching Revan on the shoulder to interrupt his thoughts. “We don’t want the Imperial Guard to know you were here.”

He stood up and slowly turned to Scourge.

There was something unnerving about staring into the faceless mask; it made Revan seem more intimidating, more powerful. Or maybe Scourge just felt that way because he’d watched him destroy Nyriss.

Whatever the reason, he was more confident than ever that he’d made the right choice. If anyone had the strength to stop the Emperor, it was this man.

“This is yours,” the Sith said, taking the hilt of Revan’s lightsaber from his belt.

Revan accepted the gift with a brief nod, then simply said, “Get us out of here.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

SCOURGE LED THEM UP the stairs and back to the breach in the wall where the Emperor’s Guard had first burst in. Though they could hear the distant sounds of battle echoing faintly through the halls, they didn’t encounter combatants from either side.

Once they were outside Meetra allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief.

Night had fallen, but several fires burning inside Nyriss’s stronghold illuminated the grounds, giving them a clear view of the destruction. The thick stone wall surrounding the courtyard and the building had been reduced to rubble, and judging by the number of bodies strewn about the courtyard, this had been the location of the fiercest fighting.

They picked their way through the carnage to where Scourge’s speeder stood unharmed near the landing pad. Every vehicle around it had been destroyed by artillery fire.

“It’s a miracle this thing’s still in one piece,” Revan remarked.

“The Guard must have been watching our arrival,” Scourge said. “They knew which speeder was mine.”

The four of them climbed in, Revan and Meetra helping T3, then headed for the cave where Meetra and Scourge had first met.

During the journey, Meetra tried to study Revan without being too obvious. He was still wearing the red-and-gray mask; for her this was his true face. She knew what he looked like beneath his helmet, but he had almost never removed it during their campaign against the Mandalorians.

Seeing him in the cell without it had struck her as odd. The passage of the years and the suffering he had endured as a prisoner were clearly etched on his features. When he wore the mask, however, all that was hidden. It made him look indomitable, invincible—a legend come to life.

Meetra remembered what Bastila had said to her when she had given her the mask. She said she had hidden it from Revan for all those years because she feared what it represented. She feared it would change him. Now Meetra understood what she meant.

Without the mask he looked more human. It was easier to remember he was just a man, with all the weaknesses and vulnerabilities that implied. With the mask, however, Revan was an icon, a symbol. He was the shaper of history, an individual defined by his actions rather than his thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.

Maybe Bastila was right; maybe Revan needed to become what he once had been to survive this. He had easily bested Darth Nyriss, but the Emperor was a much greater opponent. And yet she couldn’t help but feel some small tinge of regret knowing the man Bastila loved might have been swallowed up by the weight of Revan’s own past.

Scourge brought the speeder in to land, and the three passengers disembarked.

“You’re not coming?” Meetra asked when the Sith made no move to join them.

“I’m going back to Kaas City,” he said. “I’ll see if I can learn any more details about the attack. If we’re lucky, the Emperor has