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In the deep dark of space, cradled by an arm of the galaxy, the planet Dathomir turned, half-dead; her magicks slumbering under the skin of the world. As she slept, out amongst the stars a darkness long poised on the brink of revelation burst like a storm across the galaxy. The power of the Sith, patient and terrible, rose again like a dark star.
That power was foreign to Dathomir’s own native darkness. So the planet slept on, untroubled by the currents of suffering moving across the galaxy.
She slept, even as a strange starship, tiny and vomiting black smoke, hurtled through her atmosphere and crashed into the planet’s surface in a cloud of red dust. She slept even as the creature inside, half conscious and alight with pain, crawled through the shattered transparisteel from the cockpit to fall and land in the dirt.
But deep down, in the planet’s unfathomable dreams, Dathomir recognised the creature. He had walked on the planet before. He had dived in her waters, he had surrendered to her venom. Quinlan Vos.
Even so, Dathomir slept as the creature dragged himself away from his broken ship and into her bare and haunted woods.
The creature—the Kiffar, the man—called Quinlan Vos made it as far as the gaping entrance to the hall that led under the mountains before he passed out. Down he went, down and down, into dreams of darkness and loss. Although she could have, Dathomir granted him no peace, because peace was a delusion that had no place in this cruel galaxy. Vos’ pain, Vos’ grief—it was pure, and real, and powerful.
Some time passed. In planetary terms, not even the smallest fraction of an instant.
Then another ship entered Dathomir’s orbit.
Large, sharp, and busy with life, it dispatched gunship after gunship that plummeted into Dathomir’s atmosphere. Inside the bellies of the gunships, the creatures there all wore the same face under their white helmets. The Force signatures of each of them bore telltale scars, scars that to sleeping Dathomir’s mind felt like the aftermath of a shiv to the brain. There was something wrong with them—all of them.
These creatures, the planet did not know. They hadn’t been here before. They were hunters, hungry for blood, and that was good and right—but the darkness that curled around them was not. Though she didn’t know these creatures, she had tasted before that alien darkness, that malevolent purpose—on a cyborg general and his army of battledroids that had come to the planet to destroy the Nightsisters.
From her deathlike sleep, Dathomir awoke.
Deep under the mountain, in a great cavern pillared by stalactites and stalagmites, a faint light disturbed the perfect darkness of one still, black pool. The light grew, spirit green, illuminating the pool from within. As it brightened and spread, a mist rose from the surface of the water.
And from the water, like something forgotten being remembered, came a face. It rose, blind, turned up toward the cavern roof, followed by a slender neck, shoulders sluicing water, arms, a sloping ribcage, a waist, hips and long graceful legs.
Green water streaming from her, she rose from the pool and stepped onto the stone. Her pale skin was striated with the dark scars of Dooku’s Force lightning. The black ballgown they had buried her in hung from her in rags. Her short hair was sodden and stuck to her scalp. The woman who had once been Asajj Ventress opened her eyes, and instead of ice blue they were the luminous green of the water of her resurrection.
Dathomir, in the body of a woman, walked out of the cavern, her bare feet leaving wet footprints behind her.
The creature, the Jedi, called Quinlan Vos lay at the entrance to the great hall, life seeping out of him. But even at the doors of death, Jedi instincts lived deep. Sensing something coming, he stirred, and with tremendous effort lifted his head from the floor to peer down along the length of the hall.
Lithe and graceful as a goddess, she walked out of the darkness, burning cold with purpose. Vos wondered for a moment if he was hallucinating. Was this the last sparks of his dying brain making shapes out of his memories? He’d seen her dead; he’d lowered her into the water himself as his heart had broken inside his chest.
But she was as real as the Force. The blistering chill of her magick radiating from her proved it. Vos stretched out his hand across the grit. "Asajj," he croaked.
When she came level with him, she paused. She turned her head to regard him with those eyes he now saw were not hers at all, and put her head on one side, like an animal. A cold spike of fear struck through Vos’ heart. She could kill him, easy as breathing, if she didn’t know who he was. If she wasn’t her.
Her strange green eyes narrowed. Her lips parted, showing a glimmer of teeth. Then she said, in a voice that echoed with hundreds of voices, "Quinlan."
Vos huffed a breath into the dust, like a laugh of relief but too weak. "You remember."
The woman who had been Ventress stood, still as the great stone women behind her. "We remember dying for you."
That we sent a shudder all through him. He summoned the energy to say, "Remember what we had? You and me?" He sucked in a painful breath, felt it whistle in his chest. "It was good."
A long, crystalline moment. Then she said in her many-throated voice, "We remember."
There came a distant noise from the skeletal trees beyond the mouth of the cavern. Ventress’ head snapped to face it, like a predator’s.
Vos breathed, "They found me. They’re coming for me." He could taste blood in his mouth. "I’m sorry."
A long breath hissed between Ventress’ teeth. "Trespassers," she growled.
Settling back on her heels into a fighting stance, she lifted her arms, curling her hands up like claws. In the wells of her palms, green magic kindled, swirling into life. It coiled around her wrists, up her forearms, her biceps, to her shoulders and down around her body. It flowed like water, endless, effortless. Armoured in viridian smoke, the woman who had once been Ventress glanced down again at Quinlan Vos. She said, "We’ll return for you."
And then she was gone, bounding like a tiger into the forest and vanishing into the Dathomir fog. Vos watched her go before letting his head fall back to the dusty floor. As unconsciousness rose to sweep him under, he could dimly hear the nightmare sounds of blasterfire and screaming. Vos’ last conscious thought was pity for the clones, despite their betrayal, to have to meet their ends at the hands of whatever Asajj Ventress had become.
Meanwhile, the planet turned, and Dathomir tasted blood once again.