The Nights of Lothal [For Orren]

[apathy_is_death]

When the Ebon Hawk settled itself onto the grasses of Lothal, the evening was rapidly coming on. It had been a hot day, but the night promised welcome relief - a small mercy for a population in fear for their lives. The pirate lords - for that was what they could be termed - had found Lothal to be the perfect base of operations in the aftermath of galactic-scale conflicts. It was out of the way, and not important enough for the Republic to assemble a task force to push them off.

And so they ruled, absolute, the open grasslands and hills host to at least three rival factions. Eventually, one would rule, and all knew this. And so they fought, incessantly, and the people of Lothal were caught in the crossfire. It was an irony, she thought; a planet so strong in the Force, to suffer so under such an undignified, mundane yoke. She wondered, idly, why the Jedi had never come here. There was...a peace here, underneath it all. The woman she had once been would have found great solace here.

When Surik came to her, she allowed some of her weariness to show on her face. "Go forth without me," she said, her plan weaving itself around what she sensed of the place. "I find myself tired, and I will retreat into the grasslands to meditate and re-center myself. Take the Fool and the Iridonian with you - they have the most experience of such places, and will blend in the best. Under no circumstances should the assassin leave the ship."

Meetra looked doubtful, wavering. It was her way, to question. She loved that about her, truly she did. Her mind was always ready to question what it was told - and that is what made her special. Dogma would never chain her. Lies would never stop her. But that kindness would be her undoing, if she could not contain it.

"Heed my words, those who oppress this planet are stupid but suspicious. Give them nothing that will arouse such thoughts. Go, now. I will be waiting when you are done."

When they had left, of course, she slipped away. It was simple enough. None of the others on board were powerful enough to track her movements, if she did not want. In fact, with some careful manipulations, they not only didn't note her but would be certain they had seen her. It was likely unnecessary, but again, questions. Had she not been born to change the universe, Meetra Surik would have still had a career as the greatest of detectives.

She wandered into the grasslands, seeking her quarry. He sought to hide from everyone - she wondered, idly, if he had closed himself off so much from the Force that he did not sense Surik. They had, she knew, been very close, once. Back when she had still taught under the banner of the Jedi, and Revan was a name unknown to the galaxy. Had time dulled their connection so? Or had the walls he erected at least buried it, for now? She couldn't take the risk. If events were to proceed as she had foreseen, he was a pawn that needed to be removed from the board. Let the others deal with the pirates; she had no doubt that within a day, at most, the Exile would have broken them forever - but she could not find the Jedi they sought, however much the Exile's eyes had sparked with joy and fear when she had read the name on Atris' list.

Sightlessly, she moved through the long grasses, occasionally letting her remaining hand brush over their tips. Yes, she could have found peace here, once. She and...

She locked the thought away. Had Atris been able to sense her on Taris, she might have struck her down to keep them apart. As it was, the woman once known just as Kreia knew exactly why her daughter was in Atris' employ. A last insult, from a woman who despised her. Who would, in a heartbeat, take the Exile from her, too. One from spite, the other from jealousy. Another pawn to be removed, when the time came. And one whose mind she would take pleasure in ripping apart, before shredding her body to the last molecule.

She wore her visage as the old Jedi woman well. He might see through it, when they met. He might not. Nevertheless, Darth Traya came for him.

Comments

[orren]

Orren had chosen Lothal partly because of that peace. It was quiet, serene ... not unlike Dantooine in a way that both warmed his heart and made it ache.

The greater reason, though, was the planet's connection to the Force. Despite the fact that it lacked the population of a place like Coruscant, the Force was strong here. It was a roar on Lothal, where elsewhere it was a whisper - a blinding light within which one could evade detection. It gave him time to ponder the problem before him and the others, and an opportunity to reflect on himself ... on his part in what's come to pass and what he can do about it.

Though the planet hasn't been entirely peaceful. The pirates that have made it their home so that they have a safe haven to retreat to beyond the reach of the ailing Republic has made life hard for the people here. Orren's done what he can to confound them, to frustrate their interests and protect the locals, but there's only so much he can do. Play his hand too far, he risks exposing the larger game and jeopardizing everything.

He doesn't like it ... but he has to sit on his hands to a certain extent to maintain his cover.

And so his day was passing quietly the way that many others had. Quiet meditation - moving or still - and contemplation.

Then ... he felt something.

Lothal's presence in the Force was strong - deafeningly so - but Orren had become somewhat accustomed to it over time. His sight was lessened, here, but he was far from blind.

He couldn't sense who was drawing closer. He felt the echo of them in the Force - like the water disturbed by the motion of a ship - and for some reason that sent an uncomfortable shudder tingling down his spine.

He rose to his feet and walked to the door of the small hut that he'd made his home.

[apathy_is_death]

It did sing here. Perhaps part of what made it special was that it had been isolated so long. Much like Dantooine, it by and large had avoided galactic politics, for better or for worse.

She followed the sense of him, like a small, glowing fin flickering in dark waters. He hid very well - better, she thought, than the other Jedi Masters would managed. It was a testament to his skills, which had always been considerable. Part of her wondered how things would have gone if he had ever formally been one of her students.

She could have shaped him into something even more than he was. A lost opportunity. But when he exited his hut, she would be standing there, silent.

[orren]

And when he sees her, he's stone still for a very, very long moment.

"Kreia ..."

He thought that she was dead, and ordinarily, being proven wrong about another Jedi's seeming demise would bring him a good deal of joy ... but he doesn't feel any of that right now.

Whatever she's here for, he's not sure it's good.

[apathy_is_death]

"I see your powers of observation have not declined," she replied.

His manner is telling. And she would applaud that, if she felt it worth lauding him. He was always more perceptive than so many of the others.

"And, I must confess, a superb choice of hiding place. Were it not for Atris' aid, we might not have found you."

[orren]

"Atris?"

That ... that was not a name he was expecting to hear, clearly.

"She'd escaped Katarr?"

Considering the scale of the attack and those who'd perished without any sign of a struggle, that had seemed impossible ...

[apathy_is_death]

"Yes," she replied, almost sighing. "Atris has some talents, aside from casting judgment - survival, it would seem, is among them."

She moved closer, and her loss of a hand would become rather more readily apparent. She couldn't remember whether he had known her to be blind or not - her sight had atrophied many years before, and she did not miss it. Frankly, it was a detail she had neglected to even consider.

"There are others, scattered. The task has been set of finding them. Vrook Lamar, Kavar, Zez-Kai Ell. And you, hiding here."

[orren]

Ordinarily, he might glibly agree with the comment about Atris's propensity for judgement, but the rest ...?

It does him some good to know that - for the moment, at least - the others are likely still alive. The fact that she is the one searching for them, and the unease he feels at her presence, wipes that away.

"'The task has been set.'" Orren echoes. "By whom? And who is taking up this task?"

He notices the missing hand, but doesn't comment on it just yet. After all, she isn't the only one who's suffered that particular injury. His own right hand isn't the flesh and blood she'd remember, but rather a mechanical prosthetic.

[apathy_is_death]

"It would be simple," she began, "to merely speak of destiny. And foolish. Atris believes the design is hers. An arrogant presumption, but she still believes she is what she was."

She moved a bit closer, readying a much bolder move.

"But the task is really that of another. One you know well."

Let hope rise in him, but slowly at first. Lulling his suspicions of her.

"Meetra Surik."

[orren]

Orren is more than capable of obscuring the echo his thoughts and feelings within the Force. His work in the Mandalorian Wars as Revan's diplomat gave him a great deal of practice, and he's wary enough of Kreia that his defenses are high as she steps forward.

But Meetra's name cracks those walls. His eyes widen and a ripple of surprise disturbs the eddies of the Force around him.

"Meetra?"

It doesn't seem possible, not with the way things ended after Malachor. His sense within the Force closes again and his eyes narrow - scrutinizing Kreia for any sign of falsehood.

"Atris brought her back?"

It strikes him as unlikely, given her aforementioned pechant for judgement and ability to hold a grudge, and Atris had been furious with Meetra ever since she went to join Revan.

[apathy_is_death]

"Atris orchestrated her return," she began, with a nod, "but I do not believe she truly brought her back. A choice was made."

And, in the end, that is one reason why she finds she cares for Surik, despite her own plans. She who made hard choices - and snarled the plans of the powerful.

"Atris has grand designs, derived from being too long under the ice of Telos. Designs to cause the Sith to reveal themselves, and ensnare them." Designs, she knows, that will work full well on the likes of Sion and Nihilus. By their very nature, they are drawn like moths to the flame.

"But the Exile has her own mission. Her memories are fragmented. Fractured. She seeks to restore them, and herself. Her connection to the Force."

[orren]

And in a few, short moments, she gave him a great deal to process.

Atris and her machinations should be his focus. On some level, he knows that. If she's attempting to lure these new Sith from the shadows, she's either gleaned something about the situation that he hasn't, or she's paving the way for her own end.

But the question looming at the forefront of his mind doesn't have to do with Atris.

"You believe such a thing is possible?" He asks. "This ... mission of Meetra's?"

He was with Meetra after Malachor. He ... he wasn't himself at that time. His senses were dulled into numbness by the sheer weight of the war's bloody end, but even through that haze he could feel that something had fundamentally changed within her.

Instead of the vibrant glow of the Force within her, he felt nothing. A void, a vacuum, emptiness.

He didn't know such a thing was possible, let alone whether or not it was reversible.

[apathy_is_death]

She is silent for a long moment, as if weighing her own beliefs. As if something, deep inside her, needs to comprehend it as well. Even if she has seen it first hand.

"Yes," she replies, "for she has opened up parts of herself - and of me. I, too, was stripped of my abilities. Traveling with her has...reawakened me. Reawakened all who travel with her, even if they do not yet know it."

More than even Meetra knows.

"The Exile has returned, and will become greater than all of us. This much I know, and this much I have foreseen."

[orren]

Once again, Orren is quiet.

He'd rarely seen eye-to-eye with Kreia, even when he was far younger ... but she'd always had a gift for prophecy. If she could see these things - and if she was honest about them, it could very possibly come to pass.

"What part do you play in all this?" His tone isn't overtly hostile, but it is guarded.

"What's brought the two of your together, and what's brought you to my door alone?" After all, if they'd come seeking his help, why wouldn't Meetra be here?

[apathy_is_death]

He had always been wary of her, for reasons she only guessed at - without evidence, without proof.

"I am her guide, though in ways she is mine. A bond has been forged, and it must be protected."

"I ask you to leave Lothal. Tonight. Before she finishes with the pirate gangs. Perhaps in future she will require your aid, but the time is not now."

[orren]

Orren's brow furrows.

"And why is that?" He asks. "Considering the situation that you've found yourselves in, I'd think you need all the help that you can get."

Which is most certainly true ... though his reasons aren't entirely selfless.

The solitude of Lothal is good for reflection, but he's done his fair share of that. He feels ... useless, here. As though he's simply waiting for the moment where he can actually do something and he's loath to ignore a chance to try and set things right.

And it has been ... years since he's seen Meetra. Years where he was fairly certain he never would see her again.

[apathy_is_death]

"Yes," she replied, slowly. "But yours is not the sort of help required. She needs followers, not an old lover."

Whatever they had actually been or done in the past, the title was appropriate to her mind.

"There is much she has to do, and must be guided to it. You will merely cloud the necessities of the situation. In time, of course, you can return to her side - but not yet."

[orren]

"Shouldn't the people who accompany her on this be for her to decide?" Orren replies cooly, eyes narrowing slightly.

[apathy_is_death]

"Life is not ideal," she retorted. She had doubted he would cede the field, but it had to be tried. The blunt approach was never her first choice.

"Accept that there are facts you do not, and cannot know. For now, withdraw. I have given you the courtesy of informing you she lives, and will be restored."

[orren]

"Facts that I cannot know, or facts that you desire that I don't?"

Despite what she may think, there is a difference between the two.

[apathy_is_death]

He was always so good at picking apart words like that. A skill that, had he been born to be anything other than a Jedi, could have been used to raise nations. Instead, it stands in her way. Thus, the vicissitudes of fate.

"Both, as it happens. But I advise you to heed me now, unlike in your youth. I am not just the...what was it, you and Revan called me? When you assumed I was too addled by advancing years and half-madness to hear?"

[orren]

"Revan always had the utmost respect for you." Orren replies, lip curling slightly. "I don't think she ever called you anything but 'Master.'"

[apathy_is_death]

"Mmm, so it was all you, then, Master Organa."

She wondered. It was possible. The gift was rare, but the Force did grant it. Strange he had not found it fully, though. But perhaps, even then, he'd known what she would become.

"Leave. Tonight. Let this end in...pleasant memories, of better days."

[orren]

Orren chuckles mirthlessly.

"Bold of you to assume that I find much peace in memories of days gone by."

More often than not, they just left his heart aching. Wondering where it all went wrong. Wishing that things could be as they were and knowing that they couldn't.

Of course, his past isn't far from the most pressing concern at the moment.

He takes a step forward. Out of the doorway of the hovel he's made his home and onto the loose gravel of the ground.

"You'll have to forgive my skepticism." He says coolly. "But between your having found me here, coming on your own, and refusing to explain yourself, I don't think I fully trust your intentions"

[apathy_is_death]

She almost sighs. It is now, in practical terms, all to be settled. But the motions must be played out.

"No, I do not. I have no forgiveness left. The Order took it from me, as they did so much else. But you, it seem, remain wiser than they were. You should not trust me. But you should step aside, regardless. You cannot stand against my path."

She had been cast down twice, and both times had risen as something more powerful, more dangerous than before. Powerful enough that the most heretical Sith Lord of the age, perhaps any age, could stand before a Jedi with her true nature utterly unseen.

Though, if he had even hints of the gift she suspected - he would still find unease.

[orren]

He does. He feels the dark, threatening shadow cast itself across the Force even through the near-deafening presence of Lothal itself. His defenses raise, protecting his mind from hers. His posture doesn't shift, but he braces himself for an attack.

"Perhaps ..." He replies. "But I don't think I have any other choice."

[apathy_is_death]

"Noble, as ever. But so very foolish."

And then, like a curtain being raised on a performance, the mask drops away. The air itself might seem to ripple as her true nature reveals itself. The robes of a Jedi fade from view, replaced by the black of a Sith. Her power uncoils, and a feeling tht might have felt far-away and distant is suddenly very near indeed.

In her long exile, Meetra Surik found who she was. In her long exile, Kreia had found something else beyond who she had been. An outlet for the betrayal she had felt, and caused betrayal in turn. A new sort of teaching; a blending of truth and lies that will burn the Force itself. So she thinks. So she hopes.

The Exile is almost primed. The hour is so near at hand where she will wrench apart those who betrayed her and save the galaxy from torment and the cruelty of the Force. But for Orren, facing her, all this would be far from his mind - what he would feel is the sheer intensity of her darkness, slamming into him.

"Perhaps now," she said, stepping forward with a different sort of confidence, "you begin to understand."

[orren]

In an instant, the faint ripple of her presence in the Force explodes into something far greater, far darker, and uncomfortably familiar ... an echo of the emptiness of Malachor that sends a chill down his spine.

It momentarily stuns him, but that moment passes quickly. His lightsaber appears in his hand in a flash of movement and the golden blade ignites. His foot slides back and he lowers himself into a fighting stance.

"Kreia ..." He shakes his head. "I've had my reservations about you and your teachings for a long time, but this is ..."

This is beyond anything he'd ever have imagined that she was capable of.

[apathy_is_death]

"Reservations," she repeats, a cold anger in her voice. "Where were your reservations when Atris chose me as scapegoat for Revan? When the Council cast me aside? Were were your reservations, your principles then? They betrayed me time and again, and all you had were reservations about my teachings. Blindness worse than mine, by far."

Oh, it undoubtedly - but betrayed as she had been had unlocked potential even she had never known. A red lightsaber is suddenly in her hand, then, her one remaining hand.

"I gave everything to the Order, and was betrayed. And now they will learn a final lesson in their folly. In what it means to be betrayed in turn."

[orren]

"Do you think you were the only one that the council used and tried to blame?" Orren snaps in response. "The only person that Atris wanted to see burn for her own satisfaction?"

He took a step forward. "The council decried me as a threat every day of the Mandalorian Wars, and when the fighting was done they promoted me to try and sway me to denounce the others - to turn me against the very memory of my friends and what we had set out to accomplish when all I felt was grief, and guilt, and emptiness! When all that I could do was hate myself because I chose to be blind rather than face the truth in front of my own eyes as the war drew to an end!"

Another step. "The council has made more mistakes and cruel decisions than I could ever begin to count, and I would need to be truly blind to pretend otherwise, and the only reason I didn't leave it all behind was the hope of what the Order might be should the lessons of Malachor ever be learned. But you ... "

Orren ignites his saber's second blade. "From the moment I met you, I sensed that whatever lay at the end of the path you walked was something that I had no desire to see. With what I sense in you now ... I finally understand why."

[apathy_is_death]

"Perhaps not - Atris has more than enough venom for so many. But her fall, already begun by her own pride, I have ensured will be long, and quiet. And terrible. She will bear no influence on what comes next."

But she shook her head, standing tall and unwavering.

"But you are blinder than I, Orren Organa, for you have not the faintest idea where the end of my path rests. You know nothing of where I have walked, what I have come to understand. But perhaps you will, when it is all done."

She sighs.

"But come, test your strength if you must. There are no words left for this moment."

[orren]

No ... no, there are not.

Drawing upon the Force, Orren propels himself forward with a tremendous burst of speed. The gold-bronze blade of his lightsaber flashes, swinging in a wide but impossibly fast arc towards Kreia's own lightsaber - a spot just below the emitter, but just above her hand.

It's a disarming strike. He doesn't expect to land so easily, but he is hoping to disarm and incapacitate rather than kill ... he has a great deal of questions that need answer, and he suspects Kreia has far more answers than she's given.

[apathy_is_death]

What may surprise him, then is the speed with which she moves. Certainly faster than she ever did as a Jedi, and with a strength to it, a precision that is a level beyond anything she had ever known before. The Sith were fools, by and large. Prisoners of their own ideology. But their methods were quicker, and kept an aging body strong.

She simply isn't there when the blow cuts the air, but rather a foot to the left of it. Sightless eyes regard him, for a split second.

"Ah, Zez-Kai Ell taught you well," she said, referring to one of the Jedi Masters waiting on Dantooine - and one who had specialized in the double-bladed saber, and had taught practically everyone, in his day.

Her handless limb lifted, and issued a powerful Force push, with all the force behind it of a small avalanche.

[orren]

Kreia had always had a profound command of the force, but even in her physical prime she'd never been considered an expert duelist. So, yes, how easily she evades his attack does catch him by surprise ... but it doesn't render him so flat-footed as to leave him defenseless against her follow-up.

Orren draws upon the Force for a counter-push - an unseen lance to split and divert the wall of concussive force that she's attempting to batter him with.

It isn't entirely successful. He's still driven back - feet skidding back through the rocky scree littering the ground ... but he's still standing.

"Yes," Orren replied, "he did. Though you seem to have learned a few tricks of your own."

His stance shifts. His feet spread wider and his hands slide just a little further apart on the hilt of his saber.

He always had favored Ataru ... it was a style that suited his agility and long reach quite nicely.

[apathy_is_death]

She had tapped into so much power, since. But it was true, the mental arenas of the Force had always been her métier. But if she were honest with him, she wanted to know what he would do. Intellectual curiosity had always been a hallmark. And he's grown significantly in confidence and in skill since before.

Still, she is pressed for time. From her robe three other lightsabers emerge, beginning to orbit her, purple blades flashing into being and casting strange shadows between her and the red weapon in her hand.

"More than you can possibly comprehend," she said.

[orren]

He's not sure that he wants to comprehend the depths of the darkness ... the emptiness ... that he senses within her. Whatever she has learned, the stain it's left on her fills him with a discomfort that it is difficult to fully describe.

His discomfort, though, isn't important right now.

Whatever Kreia has become, she must be stopped. Every instinct that he has is practically screaming it. Whatever designs she has for Meetra, whatever her goals are beyond that ... he must prevent them from coming to fruition.

He advances carefully. The tip of the blade pointed towards Kreia, slowly shifts from one side to another, teasing angles of attack as he evaluates Kreia's defenses.

Then, he strikes. He slashes at the lead saber - a hard, hacking blow aimed at batting it aside. At the same time, he reaches out with the Force, trying to contest Kreia's telekinetic grip with his own.

Hopefully, it would slow their movement long enough for him to disable one of the orbiting blades floating around her.

[apathy_is_death]

"Foolish," she says, disgust in her voice, "you used to know better."

He should have retreated. He might have avoided her, found his way to Meetra. There is no long-term planning in it at all. Revan would have understood. Then again, Revan would have posed much more of a threat.

She doesn't bother contesting it. She lets him overinvest, extend himself towards that goal - and then simply aims her hand downwards, Force Lightning spreading outwards like a searing cloak across the ground.

[orren]

Retreat was an option in his mind, just one he hadn't chosen to exercise yet for two reasons.

The first was that he wasn't sure his options for stopping her here and now were exhausted yet. Her power had clearly grown since they last met, supplimented by knowledge of darker things ... but he had faced far more than his fair share of challenges over the past few years as well. He's bested Vrook, Kavar, his own former master, and many of Revan's Sith beyond that. What Kreia was capable of, he didn't know, but the situation wasn't a hopeless one in his mind.

If it was, though ... if the darkest possibility was true and she was somehow responsible for the death at Katarr, then a retreat might not be possible.

That was the second reason.

The lightning arcing from Kreia's finger-tips was not a surprise, but it did catch him at an inopportune moment. The lunge that set him up to slice one of Kreia's levitating lightsabers out of the air also left him open and, quick as he is, he didn't have the time to muster a complete defense. He barely has the time to draw upon the Force to try and push back against the crackling energy - to try and divert it away from him or back on her.

He finds some success in that. The worst of the attack is channeled away from him. Some of the bolts snapping through the ground bend away from him and strike the hut behind him instead, starting small fires along the front of the hovel.

Kreia's attack does find some purchase, though. Thin fingers of light fork up from the ground, stabbing into his legs and lower extremities. He feels the searing pain lance through his body along the pathways of her nerve endings. He feels his strength ebb momentarily, and the mechanical servos of his prosthetic hand begin to lock up.

But he's not done. Far from it.

He pushes through the pain, lifting his hands and pushing back with all the strength he can muster - a wall of telekinetic force that launches from his fingertips with enough force that it churns up the ground between them.

[apathy_is_death]

Her robes whipped around her, and she was pushed back a good ten feet. But her stance held. And what he would feel when it was done would be unlike anything he had felt before. She was righteous fury; a woman scorned in ways that bit far deeper than merely spurned or betrayed love. No, she had known far worse betrayals. She had fallen. Oh, how she had fallen; twice over and each time betrayed. But not now. Not again. Not to an impudent love-lorn little child, despite all he should have learned.

"Enough of this."

The retaliatory strike he feels will come seemingly from nowhere, and then the sabers will begin to strike. One after the other, as she begins to advance, darting in and out like thrown knives, alternating stab after stab at him.

"You are a fool, Organa. You should not be. You learned your lessons well, but never enough. You could have seen, as I have done, you could have realized the truth of the universe. You could have severed yourself from the strings of the Jedi and of the Force itself."

The worst part, perhaps, was the calmness in her voice. Her fury was deep, profoundly so, but it was channeled, honed. It came with purpose.

"You, who witnessed the futility of it all, the decay of the Order, the horrors of the wars - and here you stand, hoping you can save her. But she doesn't need you. Soon enough, she will not need me - she will become a force of pure destiny, the greatest hero in the history of the universe. A moment is coming, Orren Organa, that can reshape the universe forever - free it from its chains. The Jedi will fall. The Sith will fall. And then...we shall have peace."

And the next force push comes with the power of a tank shell, a concussive blast that is aimed to shatter bones or bricks, to cave in armor plate and liquefy its target with the fury of an angered god.

"But I have just enough rage left at the Jedi," she added, face still impassive, "just enough hatred left, to teach you a lesson this day. Because someone needs to be left who knows. Someone to let that fool Atris know who it was who caused her to fall, and why. Once, when students like you closed their ears to thinking about my lessons, I found love. There was, for a time, perfection. And it was taken from me, and my child made to debase herself as a servant of that pathetic woman - stripped from me, stripped from her heritage, her birthright."

She paused, only for a moment, seeming to grow in the darkness, a dark and sickly purple light emanating from her.

"Atris is fallen, by my whispers. Your masters, my betrayers, will die for the stupidity they are about to unleash, out of their weakness, their fear...their apathy towards making the universe truly better. I will tear down everything. Know that, and suffer."

And the force lightning came again, all the stronger.

[orren]

To his credit, Orren meets her assault readily. Her sabers dart in an out, attempting to lance through him and he turns them aside, parrying with his own blade or pushing them back with the strength of his own mind.

The Force push - the telekinetic cannon ball she launches at him ... it hurts. It rattles his bones, knocks the wind out of him, and staggers him ... but his own strength, his own push in return spares him from the worst of it.

Without that, though ... she'd have killed him outright with that. It's clear that whatever she has learned, whatever dark power she has claimed for herself, it has made her into something far beyond the Kreia that he used to know. She was always strong with the Force, but he'd have been able to overpower the woman that she used to be.

Whatever she is - Jedi, Sith, or something else ... it's becoming increasingly clear that she's beyond his ability to fight on his own.

'Atris is fallen, by my whispers. Your masters, my betrayers, will die for the stupidity they are about to unleash, out of their weakness, their fear ... their apathy towards making the universe truly better. I will tear down everything. Know that, and suffer."

The words cut deeper than the blades would have if they'd struck home. They cut because she's capable of delivering on every, single one of those promises - he can feel it. In that moment he can almost see the faint outlines of what would come if her ambitions were fulfilled. They are amorphous, almost entirely without shape, but the impressions of them fill him with a familiar dread.

Perhaps he's always known where that path ends.

Perhaps that's why he'd always felt ill at ease in her presence, even decades prior to her fall.

He doesn't have any time to consider it. The storm of force lightning she unleashes crashes into him. He's able to block some of the tongues of forking energy with his lightsaber and blunt others with the force, but the assault is far more than he can defend against. Other bolts of searing energy stab into him, burning across his skin and along his nerves, sapping his strength.

"You're every bit as lost as the masters who wronged you!" He snarls through teeth gritted against the pain. "Just as they let themselves be consumed by their dogma - their self-righteousness - you've given yourself over to the pain and rage from the betrayals you've suffered!"

He takes a step back. His body instinctively begins to draw into itself, as though he can somehow shield himself from the pain.

"What was done to you was wrong. The Jedi have been in wrong for a long time, they've forgotten the ideal the need to live up to, but unleashing a travesty on the galaxy won't undo their mistakes!"

Orren drops to a knee. He can't withstand much more. He'll lose consciosness soon, and be left at her mercy.

Behind him, the fires started by her first volley of lightning are beginning to consume the hut that had been his home for the past year, and in that, he sees an opportunity. A desperation play that might give him the opening he needs to escape.

"I am sorry, Kreia, for what was done to you ... for all the failings of the Order ..."

And there are many ... far too many to count.

He still holds hope, though. That the Jedi might learn from all the mistakes that have lead them to this point ... that they might live up to the lofty ideal that they're meant to embody as protectors, and start helping the galaxy again instead of harming it any further.

He reaches out through the Force. He feels the wooden walls of the hut, weakened by the flames, start to splinter.

"But you must be stopped."

Orren pulls on the weakening structure with everything he has left. The walls shatter, shredding into a cloud of splintered wood, burning debris, and cinders - a swarm of missiles that Orren guides towards Kreia with as much force as he can put behind them with his rapidly depleting strength.

[apathy_is_death]

The debris swirls around her, and she is forced to switch her attention to it. With gritted teeth, she summons her strength. She doesn't bother trying to stop the projectiles, that is a fool's errand. But she redirects their energy, swirling them around her, turning them and accelerating them.

Finally, when a dense enough cloud is turned around her, she pushes them outwards like a whirlwind of shrapnel. She steps from it with deep purpose then stops, reaching down. One piece of wood is pulled from her side with an annoyed grunt, before she applies a healing touch - a light side power - to the wound. It wouldn't do to come back bleeding, after all.