Jaxton continued up the left path and soon found why the Croke hadn't intended for Jaxton to follow it. The trail was short, leading to a small hovel littered with the bones of Gorgodons and what appeared to be other smaller creatures. Some humanoid, some weren't, but Jaxton had the sneaking suspicions that the ones that weren't Gorgodons were sapient. Jedi padawans who'd lost their way in the tunnels or travelers who'd lost their way amongst the stars only to get more lost at Illum. He needed to do something, honor these dead men and women somehow. For a long while Jaxton merely just tried to dig, but found that the frozen rock of the cavern below was dang hard, and with no tools? Missing one hand? With enough Force Speed Jaxton could have punched through it, but he'd had a broken forearm before he could dig anything suitable for a burial, let alone a mass burial.
Without many other options Jaxton sat the center of the small circular room, and began to meditate. Trying to find guidance from the Force on what to do, perhaps echoes of the young Jedi killed and buried here. But the Croke Dark Jedi? He had been here longer than Jaxton thought. The air of this place, it crept up on him. Quicker and quieter than it should have. As Jaxton meditated corruption began to come at him, the entire home a Nexus of the Dark Side. When Jaxton felt it, the overwhelming feeling in his gut of
wrongness he opened his eyes and stood to his feet with a gasp. More than just his eyes his senses had changed, perhaps lying to him. The cold had left him, the room was completely gone, replaced with a stark white nothingness that implied a nihilistic infinity. Save for one thing, the man standing right in front of him.
"Who are you?" Jaxton asked, and the man let out a familiar cackle.
"The question is not who am I, but when are you?" He asked, in a tone that sounded corrupted.
"No. You can't be-"
"I am! Did you think you could just bathe in the pool of knowledge and remain a man?"
"The Force doesn't make us gods."
"Tell that to the trillion people on Coruscant, serving the One Sith due the conquering of a holy war."
"They can rise up. Empires have ruled more of the galaxy with more power and been overthrown."
"And yet the Sith still remain. Things have changed since the Plague Jaxton. You, We,
I are the evolutionary imperative. We survive because we are strong. And the rest of the galaxy shall bend at our heels because they are
weak."
"I am strong because the Force gives me strength."
"
NO!" He, I yelled. "You are strong because you
take your power. When you discovered your talent of the Force you didn't wait for the Force to decide a path for you, you went out and found the Jedi. When you chased down the Sith Lord Odium you could have ended him as he went Beyond Shadows, tried to cleanse the Dark Side from the Pool of Knowledge. But instead you
took it's power.
Bathed in the darkness, because you knew you needed to!"
"I was trying to save people. Odium was a murderer, a beast who had lost sight of all but his own hunger."
"Tried to save people? In killing this man you saved no one. The planet of Erida was destroyed, serving as a mere morsel to the nautolan's power."
"No. He can't have come back. I killed him."
"Search your feelings. You know it to be true."
"I . . . how can I?"
"You can't stop him. Unless you consume him yourself. Take his power as your own. Do what you should have done at the Font of Power."
"But can I? No, I can't."
"You can. You've felt the drain of the Force before, you could learn that hunger. Take that power."
"I- I shouldn't."
"You should. You want to save the Galaxy but it will not be saved. Thus your only option is to build a galaxy that will save itself."
"N- no. No. I need to protect the weak, not eliminate them."
"They will eliminate themselves if you do not. Why not prey on their weakness, fuel your strength? You abandoned the Jedi long ago, why hold so quickly to their values?"
"Because the galaxy is worth saving."
"Is it? Do you forget why you left the Jedi? You hope to protect but their will always be those who deem life valueless, even amongst your own ranks."
"But there are those who will help a stranger, heal an aggressor. There's hope for the Jedi yet, far more than when I left."
"And you'd try to help them? More of the Jedi may be as you were when you left, but if you join again you will leave a worse person than the one you left because."
"I won't."
"I will consume you. Become you. Even should you not accept it now it will only be a matter of time until the Pool corrups you. We shall ascend to another life, whether you wish it or not."
"No!" Jaxton screamed, and the pitch-white realm they inhabited began to shake. "I will lose the Force first." He declared, and what was hopefully his former future disappeared with the blink of an eye. The white surroundings disappeared to show the small hovel he previously inhabited, with but one change. A decent sized rock, previously hidden under the snow, was now creeping out past it's frosty blanket. Jaxton went down and pulled it out of the snow, before walking just outside of the hovel and into the cavern corridor from which he emerged. He looked at the wall of the hovel, pulled the rock back, then launched the rock at the wall with all the might force speed could give him. It cracked into the wall, the small cavern shaking before stalactites and snow came tumbling down, giving the dead a burial of sorts. At the edge of a debris laid a small blue crystal and Jaxton looked at it and knew that it was
his, but only for a short while. With a frown as he knew his time was winding down he picked up the crystal and began to head home.
[member="Shule Windspeaker"]