Star Wars_ The Old Republic_ Revan - Drew Karpyshyn [73]
There wasn’t even any wind, and the air tasted stale in Scourge’s mouth. The temperature was neither cold nor hot, but he felt himself starting to shiver.
“You feel the chill of the Void,” Nyriss told him. “The Force is energy; it gives heat to our emotions and our minds. But here it has been stripped away.”
She led him along the deserted streets as Scourge stared in fascinated horror, trying to grasp the magnitude of what he was witnessing. The buildings seemed to be almost fully intact; there was none of the damage and destruction normally associated with millions of simultaneous deaths. However, there were other signs of what had happened here.
Mangled speeders and shuttles were strewn about, the remains of vehicles in motion that had crashed to a halt when their pilots were taken by the ritual. And everywhere Scourge looked there were small piles of clothes: jackets, slacks, and boots that had survived what their owners had not. Normally these remains would have been picked over by scavengers, but on Nathema even the vermin and insects were extinct.
“Where are the droids?” Scourge asked.
He was shocked at the sound of his own voice. It was flat and dull, as if even sound waves had been distorted by the ritual.
“The ritual overloaded their circuits,” Nyriss explained, her voice as hollow and washed out as his. “The damage was irreparable; even their memory cores were completely wiped out.”
Scourge glanced upward and noticed something else unusual. The sun shining down on them from above—a star that had appeared bright orange as they’d approached the planet—was now a pale shade of brown. In fact, everything around them was either brown or gray, as if the colors had been leached out.
Scourge was well acquainted with death. He had no trouble understanding massacres and mass slaughter. Death and destruction unleashed powerful emotions like fear, suffering, and hatred; they fueled the power of the dark side. But what had happened on Nathema was different, and it disturbed him in a deep and profound way.
The Emperor had consumed everything. Life, sound, color, even the Force—nothing remained. This wasn’t about conquest or domination or destroying an enemy—all concepts Scourge embraced.
Everything on Nathema had simply been snuffed out, extinguished so completely that it ceased to have any meaning or purpose. It was a vacuum of existence; a blight on the natural order.
“I’ve seen enough,” he declared.
Nyriss nodded, and they turned and made their way back to the ship.
Scourge finally understood why Nyriss and the others wanted to take the Emperor down. Destroying your enemies—even destroying a planet—was understandable. But this wasn’t simple destruction. It was annihilation; obliteration. The very fabric of the Force had been shredded. Anyone capable of turning an entire planet into a nihilistic abomination had to be completely mad. After seeing the horrors of Nathema, he truly believed the Emperor might declare another war against the Republic, exposing them to the Jedi and leading to the eventual extinction of their species.
By the time they reached the shuttle, Scourge’s stomach was churning. He had lived his whole life attuned to the Force; having it stripped away had left him physically ill. The shuttle shook as they took to the air, and he fought against the urge to vomit.
As they broke the atmosphere of the cursed world, some semblance of normalcy returned. Scourge felt the Force rushing in to fill the emptiness inside him; he felt its power invigorating him and restoring his strength. At the same time, he also felt something else: the presence of someone strong in the Force—someone who was neither Nyriss nor him.
Nyriss suddenly began punching away at the shuttle’s controls, scanning the system for another vessel, and Scourge knew she felt it, too.
“There,” she said, pointing at the readout. “A ship just dropped out of hyperspace in this system.”
“Could the Emperor have sent someone to follow