Chapter Text
CHAPTER 1 | War.
War was not glory. There was no fortune among the dead that littered the smolder battlefield. She took no pleasure in the bloodshed — in the icy grip of death as it closed in upon the hundreds of soldiers huddled behind the feeble barricades erected on the opposite side of the battlefield. It was a horrible, merciless necessity. Nothing more, nothing less.
Her lightsabers were heavy in her hands, the hilts slick with blood. The blade, a deep, calming orange reminiscent of the Courscanti sunset, cast an ominous glow upon the smoke and dust choking the air. All around her, the pained cries of soldiers — good men and women risking their lives to stop the advancing Mandalorian invaders — echoed above the roaring of the battle overhead. They were dying, their presence in the Force fading faster than she could grasp, the list of casualties growing longer by the minute.
Questions encircled her thoughts, each as heavy and devastating as the bombs striking the blood-soaked earth. The stench of burnt flesh and ozone clung to the air. She tasted it on her tongue, a weighty acrid taste that set her mouth alight with every breath she drew. The pungency of war. Of violence. Of death.
Tel fought to prevent it — to put an end to the carnage and the hallow ache that blossomed within her chest with every world that fell to the Mandalorian conquest. The Jedi Council refused the Republic's plead for aid. Were they right to do so? Had he made the right decision when she defied their greater wisdom and left to join the war? How many of these deaths were her fault?
"General Agarwin! We can't take much more of this! If we don't retreat soon, they'll overwhelm us!"
Tel couldn't place a name with the voice. She struggled to hear it above the din of battle — the screams, the explosions, the thunderous drone of ships overhead. Somewhere off to her right, a thermal detonator exploded, soldiers crying out in anguish as their presence faded beyond her awareness. More dead. Even more dying.
She released a sharp huff through her nose. They had limited options. Until Revan and Malak dealt with the fleet overhead and lessened the heat of the cannon fire, it would be impossible to get a ship off the ground. Under Revan's command, the Republic forces fought the Mandalorians to a standstill, but when the bombers arrived and unleashed torrents of proton torpedoes, the front lines descended into chaos. The bombardment showed no signs of letting up. It was almost as if the Mandalorians intended to destroy the entire planet to prevent another Republic victory.
Tel knew they would. Long before the start of the war, while the Republic turned a blind eye to their movement and the Jedi ignored the devastation, the Mandalorians wrought havoc on the Outer Rim. They razed and raided worlds, captured and enslaved, and slaughtered without care. The Mandalorians sought victory at any cost; if it meant destroying planets and sacrificing millions of innocent beings to achieve it, they would do so without hesitation.
Belligerent brutes. Murderers and marauders, the lot of them, she thought.
"Fall back!" she barked. "Lure them into the caves. We can't do a blasted thing until Revan's fighters take out those bombers, but we can funnel them through the entrance and pick them off."
A full retreat was not an option. With every able ship focused on the battle above and the continued barrage, the present forces had no means of evacuating her division. She had no choice but to stand and fight — pray like hell Revan's plans worked. They rarely failed, but even she was not infallible.
Though many believed otherwise, she was still human. There were matters that lay even beyond her power, outcomes she couldn't change, variables she couldn't manipulate. She couldn't win every battle; and some had to be lost if the Republic hoped to win the war. Tel hoped this wasn't one of them.
As her troops braved the continued bombardment and fled into the nearby cave system, she remained at the front lines, lightsabers still heavy in her hand. Blaster fire streaked past, blurs of muted red against the smoke. A pair of frag grenades landed at her feet, the tiny red lights blinking rapidly. She could hear the sound in her head, a series of short, staccato beeps growing faster by the second, as she waved her hand and sent them into the Mandalorian front lines. A moment later, they detonated.
Once the last of the soldiers abandoned the barricades, she turned on her heels and followed suit. Regardless of how she felt about the matter — the war, the death, the bloody carnage — there was a time and place to dwell on such matters. It was not in the middle of battle, where her mere presence had too great of an impact. She was a Jedi, a Knight of the Order, a symbol of peace, a leader; a beacon of hope in an otherwise dismal war with no end in sight. If she faltered, so would the soldiers.
As she wove through the battlefield, dodging bodies, missiles, and blaster fire alike, she repeated the Code and forced all other thoughts aside.
There is no emotion, there is peace.
A sudden, blinding pain swept over her. A strangled cry tore from her lips as her knees buckled. In the distance, there was an echo, a violent tremor in the Force; a chorus of hundreds of screaming voices that fell silent a moment later. She knew that feeling well. She felt it during the early days of the war, when Revan's plans to defy the Council were little more than whispers among the Padawans and the fear of war held the galaxy in a vice grip. It was death of a catastrophic scale, a sudden, gaping wound in the Force that resonated with the final moments of hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.
It stole her breath away, a twisting knife buried deep between her rips. The world dimmed, the battle a distant, ringing hum in her hears. Time slowed, each second an eternity in passing. It was blinding — the fear, the death, the rumbling shock wave of a nuclear bomb devastating an entire civilization in a matter of seconds. Someone called her name, the voice tinny and distorted as if spoken through a modulator. The commlink on her wrist flashed, the telltale beeping lost beneath the clamor of war. Holding her arm closer to her ear, she stumbled to her feet and ducked behind a downed starfighter as another round of proton missiles erupted around her.
"Tel, get your men and get out of there! We're retreating! Head for the evac, now!"
"Revan? What...?"
Revan's response came in interment pieces. "City destroyed... lost two ships... Tel, answer me! Blaster... jamming comms... I can't..."
Her voice dissolved in a shower of static.
The note of panic in Revan's voice set her stomach in a frenzy. She was calm, poised, and graceful as a Jedi should be, a once stunning example the Masters looked upon with pride; steadfast and unbothered even before the greatest of threats. Something far more significant than another city lost rattled her.
That was not a good sign.
With the dismantlement of the front lines, the Mandalorian ground forces pushed forward. She called upon the Force for aid and hurried across the battlefield, issuing the retreat order to anyone within earshot. Panic overwhelmed her senses as the soldiers scrambled, the passing of the order lost beneath a sudden round of blaster fire. A group of heavily armored Mandalorians, armed with vibroblades and repeating cannons, quickly overtook the retreating soldiers.
"We won't make it to the ship!" the panicked cry of a soldier broke above the calamity.
With a deft flick of a lightsaber, a low whine and a flash of orange, she deflected several of the bolts. One struck a Mandalorian woman in the crevice between her neck and helmet. She stumbled, the life slipping from her body before she hit the ground. Another stuck a larger man in the helmet. Though it bounced harmlessly off the beskar, it disrupted his focus, sending the multitude shots from his repeating blaster wide.
"If you have time to panic, you have time to run," she snapped. "Get moving, solider. None of you are to die on me, understand?"
The soldier's response disappeared beneath the thundering explosion of another round of proton missiles. Lowering her lightsabers, she drew in a deep, calming breath and turned her focus inward. She felt a tugging deep in her core as a sudden wealth of power spread through her like a rush of water across a sandy shore. It shot through her, from her chest to her arm, then pooled in the tips of her fingers. She raised her hand to the sky, and with a deep, deliberate exhale, allowed the power to flow outward.
Like an invisible blast, the Force rippled across the battlefield and slammed into the advancing Mandalorians. A chorus of startled cries and a string of angry Mando'a rose from the group as the front of the line careened backwards. The sound of falling weapons and the clanking of beskar offered a momentary respite from the constant drone of blaster fire.
Turning on her heels, she hurried after the retreating Republic soldiers. The evac ship was in sight, a hazy silhouette behind a smoky screen of dust and debris.
Another bout of blinding pain crashed over her, only this time it was not a sudden rent in the force, but a searing heat that slammed into her without warning. The ground disappeared, a sense of weightlessness taking over and then, with enough force to drive the air from her lungs, she hit the ground. Her temple slammed into something solid, a sharpened edge biting into her skin. Dark spots danced across her blurred vision. A sharp, grating ring echoed in her ears. Her awareness dimmed, the Force muffled and distorted, as distant and muted as the battle raging around her.
Was this how it happened? Was she fated to be a casualty of war? Another victim of the senseless slaughter? When she agreed to defy the Council's wishes and followed Revan to war, she knew she'd meet her end sooner than most; sooner, she found, came far more quickly than she would've liked.
As darkness crept across her vision, the final line of the Code drifted through her fading consciousness, a fragmented thought lost among the growing haze in her mind.
There is no death, there is the Force.
Then there was nothing.