Chapter 54 (Patreon)

“Forgive me, Master Dziha, but we cannot allow you to keep most of these… artifacts,” Master Windu said, his face an unreadable mask as he looked over the room crammed with all manner of junk practically radiating Darkness. Beneath that outward calm, however, the Korun was close to losing his inner peace and starting to swear most unbecomingly. Hmm… under his breath.

Siith’khara’Dziha had, once again, set most of the Masters of the Jedi Order scrambling.

Vacation. Right. Where does a sentient usually go when they take a vacation? Resort planets. Coruscant. The Smuggler’s Moon, for crying out loud! At the very least, Shili to visit the Togruta! Some even head into Hutt Space for the enormous range of entertainment on offer.

And where does the sorcerer from Jabiim go?

Dathomir and Korriban, of course.

What kind of stupid question is that?

And what does a normal sentient bring back from vacation? Souvenirs? Cute exotic animals? Traditional clothing from other cultures? Maybe a thoroughly drained bank account after an unfortunate encounter with betting and gambling?

Yeah. Not Siith.

He brought back to Jabiim a whole pack of dangerous creatures from Dathomir, five slaves sold to him by the Nightsisters, and half the Consular’s cargo hold crammed with dark Sith artifacts from Korriban!!!

“Oh, come now, Master,” the sorcerer said with a grin, spreading his hands. “That’s exactly why I asked the Council to send someone over to inspect the loot— uh… souvenirs! I just didn’t expect half the Order to turn up, with you and Master Kuro at the head of the procession!”

“You see…” The Korun allowed himself the faintest of smiles, with just a trace of irony in his eyes. “The Council has faith in your ability to bring back something… interesting from the worlds you visit.”

“Sadly, we never did find a terentatek,” Siith sighed. “My daughter’s sulking at me now.”

A red-eyed girl standing a couple of meters away, dressed like her father in a black hooded robe, let out a deep, almost heartrending sigh and pointedly ignored Siith.

“Believe me, Master Dziha, a terentatek is not something you would want to see on this planet. You would be hard-pressed to find creatures more dangerous or vicious anywhere in the galaxy. So…” The Master caught the child’s deeply wounded look as tears began to gather in the corners of her eyes. “I would recommend giving your daughter something a little safer.”

“A krayt dragon!” the girl cried happily, bouncing on her toes and instantly forgetting her grievances.

“For example, a fathier*,” the Korun continued implacably; when it came to dealing with younglings, he was an old hand. “They may not be cheap, but they’re highly intelligent, beautiful, and graceful. They’re easy to tame, very affectionate, and wonderfully gentle with children. Give them spacious enclosures, let them out often to run and play, and surround them with care, and they’ll make excellent companions for both the children and Karray. Besides, riding a fathier to fetch sweets is much more convenient than taking a rancor.”

“Booooring…” the girl drawled sulkily, pointedly turning away. Windu’s eye twitched ever so slightly.

“You know, Jabba was bragging recently that there’s a sarlacc living on his territory,” the sorcerer mused, and the girl immediately perked up. “I was already considering buying it, but after seeing the manners of a certain young lady… I’m beginning to have doubts…”

“O-ho-ho-ho,” the girl covered her mouth with one hand as she turned back toward her father and the Jedi. “But now that I think about it, fathiers are sooo adorable! Only someone as clever as you, Master Windu, could have come up with such a wonderful idea! You’re absolutely right—terentateks are terribly dangerous! Daddy! My very, very best Daddy! Isn’t it wonderful that Master Windu himself came to visit us?”

Looking at the girl’s sincere, slightly unsettling smile and those utterly, utterly honest red eyes, Windu wholeheartedly thanked the Force that this child wasn’t gifted. Well, not gifted in the conventional sense. The Korun was absolutely certain that THIS child would have become the cause of a truly monumental headache—if not for the entire Council, then for him, Windu, personally!

He could practically see it happening: the girl befriending every troublesome youngling and Padawan she could find! Skywalker already spoke of the young sorceress with enthusiasm, and to Windu, that was an alarming sign. And then there was Ahsoka Tano, who regularly made the Jedi instructors roll their eyes. Add a couple dozen younglings running around as though something had bitten them on the backside! And the cherry on top would be Master Rancisis, who, for all his ostentatious disapproval of violations of the Order’s rules, had been quite the troublemaker himself in his younger years! Master Yaddle occasionally shared “interesting stories, mmm.”

“Can we get back to this incredible pile of dark artifacts already?” Kuro, who had come to Jabiim officially this time as part of a hastily assembled commission, was none too pleased that the conversation had somehow drifted to animals when right in front of her were heaps of unmistakably Sith… whatever all of this was.

“Of course!” The sorcerer gestured invitingly toward the collection in question. “Only, Master Kuro, Master Yoda promised I could keep anything you deem safe, so I’m counting on your objectivity.”

“Of course,” the Shadow replied coldly, her displeasure obvious, before nodding toward the collection to the three Jedi archaeologists. “Master Windu, I’ll… supervise.”

“Very well, Master.” The Korun nodded. “Now, Master Siith, you wouldn’t object if we examined the girls you brought back from Dathomir?”

“What objections could I possibly have? I’ve already examined them every which way myself,” the Director of the Academy and head of the Jabiim Mages’ Guild said with a “friendly” smile. “How could I deny my colleagues the pleasure?”

“There’s nothing interesting about them,” Karray informed the Korun sadly. “Just ordinary half-Zabrak, half-human girls. Of course, the proportions differ from one to another, but Dad and I didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. By the way, Master Windu… does anything hurt?”

“No, young Karray,” Windu replied, keeping his expression calm.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Absolutely sure?”

“Y-yes.”

“Oooh… Pleeease?”

The Jedi Council member looked into the young sorceress’s eyes, opened his mouth to answer… then snapped it shut so sharply his teeth clicked. The man had almost agreed that, now that she mentioned it, something did seem to hurt.

“Your daughter, Master Dziha…” the Korun began, then hesitated.

“Adorable, isn’t she?” Siith finished for Windu. “So skillfully taking advantage of her age and the general impression of being a sweet little child… I’m proud of you, sweetheart!”

“Thanks, Dad!” the girl beamed. “Can I—”

“No modifications to your body until you reach full biological maturity,” the sorcerer said with absolute finality. “And tell Romri that if she shares any more ‘girl secrets’ with you, I’ll saw off her montrals. And tie her lekku in a knot!”

“Dad, you’re a tyrant!”

“That’s what I stand for,” Dziha Senior agreed proudly, letting Windu and his daughter go ahead of him through the entrance doors of one of the Academy buildings.

“Master Windu! Dad just admitted he’s a tyrant! You need to arrest him immediately!” The girl thought for a couple of seconds while the Korun slowly raised his right eyebrow. “For a month or so! Yes, a month should be enough for me to get everyth— I mean, you need to investigate! What if he really is a tyrant? Question witnesses, talk to… uh… Master Yoda, the Supreme Chancellor…”

“Master Siith,” the Master decided to ignore the child’s attempt to turn in her own father for some rather dubious purpose. “Don’t you think keeping ancient Sith equipment and artifacts here at your Academy is a bad idea? Perhaps they should be moved to a separate storage facility?”

“Quite the opposite—it’s an excellent plan! I’ll be staying here for the next month. Too much piled up while I was on vacation. That means I can keep an eye on them and, if necessary, reach the storage site in no time.” The sorcerer gave the Jedi a serious look, then smiled and swept a hand around the Academy courtyard. “And really, what could possibly happen here?”

At that exact moment, an explosion thundered somewhere behind the bushes. Something on the level of a C-16, Windu thought as he activated his lightsaber. He sensed no danger, but…

“Well, look at that,” the sorcerer said, catching a head that came flying out from behind the bushes. “Now there’s a familiar face.”

“THEY KILLED KENNY!!!” a girl’s voice screamed from the site of the explosion.

“BASTARDS!!!” a second voice echoed the first, this one male.

“MY N’W SUIT!!!” a third male voice joined the chorus.

“What could possibly happen, you said?” The Korun raised both eyebrows at once, giving Siith a pointed look.

“It’s fine. Dead Man getting killed is perfectly normal,” the sorcerer waved it off, listening as the argument behind the bushes gathered steam. “Karray, sweetheart, cover your ears.”

“Ahem…” Windu was even slightly embarrassed when he heard the first female voice suggest what certain “first-years” ought to do with a rancor named Pancake. The third speaker—the one with the speech impediment—was loudly informing everyone present that those “greenhorns” had gotten completely out of hand and that it was high time someone did something about them, because respectable artifact-makers didn’t fucking need that kind of publicity.

“I’m serious,” Siith’khara’Dziha sighed without a trace of a smile. “Dead Man dies with enviable regularity. If I were a follower of Fatum, I’d say it was simply his fate.”

“I see…” the Master nodded, recalling that Knights Rig Nema and Stass Allie had mentioned something along those lines in their reports—after which Windu himself had been surprised, while the head of the Healing Corps had… expressed her opinion rather forcefully about “that abnormal sorcerer’s abnormal chimerologists.”

“Can I uncover my ears now?” Karray asked, dutifully standing there with both hands over them.

“Yes.” The sorcerer nodded, taking the dead man’s head by the hair with his left hand while gently patting his daughter on the crown with his right.

“I don’t care.” Meanwhile, the commotion behind the bushes had died down, leaving only one voice speaking—the first. “Whoever put Dead Man to rest gets to haul the corpse. Find some bags, collect all the big pieces, scrub the blood and guts off the paths. And find his head: without it, the Director will transplant your eyes onto your asses. Maybe even someone else’s eyes.”

“B’tter go to Karray,” the third voice advised. “You’ll get off with a cake instead of twenty m’nutes of lecturing.”

“You were calling for their blood yourself a minute ago, and now you’re helping them,” the second voice said in surprise.

Listening to all this, the sorcerer merely shook his head. The head hanging from his left hand, that is. Then he tossed it over the bushes.

“Oh, there’s the head!”

“Good s’ntients haven’t died out in the galaxy yet.”

“He looks so peaceful…”

“Peaceful? His tongue’s hanging out and his eyes are bulging! Fluffy, are you even all right?”

“What would you know, Shipwright! Anyway, Penro, give the head to the first-years and let’s go look at the Jeddies.”

“We’ve got two of our own. Wh’t’s the point?”

“New ones! They say a handsome Korun flew in. A Master, Council member! Distinguished, bald man—just the way I like ’em!”

“F’rst it was a Mando, th’n Director Dziha, now a J’di M’ster… Shelly, you’re one flighty woman!”

“What would you know, Muun, about the delicate feminine soul of a Devaronian woman! A Master means authority. Opportunities! Besides, they say his glowing stick isn’t the standard kind—it’s purple! My fur stands on end all over just thinking about how rare his kyber crystal must be! And imagine if he knows where to find another one?”

“Hm-m-m… He really does sound like a very pl’asant sentient! I wish you luck in f’nding true love!”

“Don’t worry, Master Windu,” the sorcerer said, pulling the Jedi out of a state bordering on shock. “As long as I’m with you, your virtue is safe. But I’d recommend deactivating the glowing stick. No need to attract attention.”

“And those are…?” The Korun took Siith’s advice without even bothering to correct him about the “stick,” gesturing questioningly toward the voices.

“No, no, that wasn’t the sound of a plan to conquer your heart being born. Sorry,” Dziha snorted quietly and continued on his way—to Windu’s relief, away from the cluster of students. “Students. In every age and every world, they’re a special subspecies of sentient life. Though sometimes even calling them sentient is a stretch. Every now and then they pull something so outrageous that Alto just grabs his head.”

The red-eyed sorcerer scratched his beard thoughtfully and, a couple of moments later, added:

“I think you understand what I mean, Master.”

“More or less,” the Korun agreed, thinking that the Temple younglings really weren’t all that troublesome after all. And Padawans were their Masters’ responsibility anyway, so he rarely had to intervene. Thank the Force that this kind of… “Sith nonsense” didn’t happen on Coruscant. Master Yoda had been right, after all, when he decided not to open negotiations with the mages about relocating their Academy to the Republic’s capital world.

“Dad, can I go now?” the young sorceress tugged at her father’s sleeve. “There’s supposed to be cake…”

“Yes, of course. Go on. You know where the spare bodies are. And no more jokes about ‘mixing them up,’ all right?”

“Three times wouldn’t be funny anymore,” the girl agreed, skipping off toward one of the Academy buildings.

Master Windu watched the child go with reluctant respect. If not for the reports from Knights Nema and Allie, he might have doubted that this little girl was actually capable of… literally reattaching a head to a separate body. He still remembered how thoroughly the Korun had been taken aback when he learned that the Guild had grown several bodies for Dead Man at once, specifically for “quick replacement.”

“The girls are staying here,” Siith said with a nod when they reached a small cottage, one of a couple dozen standing a short distance from the Academy. “We built these houses for the students’ families. They sometimes fly in to visit their little monste— children, I mean. Yes…”

Windu allowed himself a thin smile at the sorcerer’s “accidental” slip and followed him inside.

Inside, everything turned out to be… ordinary. Comfortable, even with a hint of luxury. Hardly surprising, considering HOW much tuition at this Academy cost. The Korun sensed no Dark Side presence. The Force was there, but it felt the same as everything else in the Academy—impersonal and austere. The same sensation came from the sorcerer’s own “magic,” and from the amulets and protective charms purchased on Jabiim.

The Jedi wasn’t worried about an attack. First, Dziha had been under observation for years. Second, why would Siith even do such a thing? For all the sorcerer’s eccentricity, he had proven himself a perfectly reasonable sentient. The Order’s relations with the JMG weren’t merely neutral—they were closer to friendly. Strange as it might sound, Windu considered Dziha… far too Sith-like on the outside to actually be a Sith. More than that, the sorcerer clearly enjoyed all the misunderstandings, even as he sighed and complained about constantly being mistaken for an enemy of the Jedi Order. And most importantly: his character.

Sith, with rare exceptions, sought power. One way or another, they pulled everything under their control. Dziha, on the other hand, reminded the Master of the head of the Corps of Balance… or Jocasta Nu, the “Mistress of the Archives.” The former cared only for journeys through the Force during meditation; the latter was concerned, for the most part, with nothing but her Archives. Everything else… weighed on those worthy Jedi. Had they been given the chance to leave their posts behind and devote themselves solely to what they loved, they would have done exactly that, handing their Stargazers and archivists over to their successors.

The sorcerer seemed much the same. Given his way, he would have dumped both the JMG and the Academy on someone else, then either set off traveling the galaxy in search of new things to study—breaking the brains of everyone he met along the way—or holed himself up in some laboratory with his experiments.

Frankly, Alto Stratus had far more of a Sith-like personality than the head of the JMG did. Even Sheev Palpatine looked more like a Sith than Siith did, as ridiculous as that sounded.

“Heh.” The Korun gave an almost soundless chuckle. Come to think of it, their eternal enemy really would have taken the position of head of the Republic with pleasure—just to revel in the power and savor the fact that he had the entire Jedi Order dancing to his tune.

“Master?”

“Forgive me. I got lost in thought,” the Jedi said, coming back to himself after already giving the five girls a careful once-over.

Pale skin, white hair. That was roughly how Quinlan Vos had described Nightsisters by birth. These five had been less fortunate—their blood contained roughly as many midi-chlorians as an ordinary human. Siith had sent over the blood-test results he’d obtained shortly after leaving Dathomir. Their prospects within the Clan had been grim: slavery. The Dathomiri women greeted him with a range of emotions, from wariness to outright hostility, which was hardly surprising either, considering where the girls had come from.

The Master produced the necessary device from the folds of his robe and immediately began collecting samples. The Order needed to run its own tests. Trust, but verify. No one wanted a witch Clan suddenly appearing on Jabiim. Their minds would need to be examined as well—Mother Talzin was notoriously fond of all kinds of dirty tricks.

After all that, he could afford to spend a little time on himself. Master Kuro would be supervising the archaeologists with such diligence that the Korun would most likely have to “rescue” some of Siith’s trophies just so the man had anything left at all. So Windu didn’t really have much else to do.

He planned to head to Choal and see the capital. Visit one of the Libraries of Hecate, stop by the main square, take a walk through the capital’s park. Windu had read that, at the government’s request, the mages had created something incredible there.

To be perfectly honest, Master Windu liked Jabiim. A strong world, inhabited by people of character—people the Jedi had… failed. Yes, there weren’t many of them by galactic standards, but still, when Jon Tolm and his Padawan, Aayla Secura, sent their findings to the Council… Or rather, no. When the Jedi pulled up every request that had ever come from this world, when they went through the reports… In short: it was shameful. And painful, too, because Jabiim was hardly alone! There were hundreds of worlds just like it, far removed from the Temple on Coruscant, worlds the Jedi simply lacked the time and resources to reach.

And thank the Force, this rain-soaked planet had been lucky enough for Siith to choose it as his home. Things were far better now than they had been a decade ago. The contrast was astonishing. There was even a small trickle of tourists now, coming to see the “homeworld of the mages” and curiosities found nowhere else. The “window into space,” for example. Even Windu had been impressed by the sight as the eternal clouds slowly and solemnly closed behind the Jedi ship like the iris of some colossal airlock. It was genuinely beautiful—and mesmerizing.

And what about the “Return Home Assistance Program”? The Master himself had witnessed a small bounty hunter’s ship being greeted by a civilian delegation holding a banner that read WELCOME HOME. He had seen the happiness on the faces of the family who had arrived aboard it, and seen that those who had come to meet them were genuinely glad to have their fellow citizens back.

That was… good, as far as the Jedi Master was concerned. The way it should be.

“All right.” After checking the analyzer’s readings, the Jedi nodded. The results were accurate. Only one of the girls might, at a stretch, have qualified for admission into the Order. And even then, the Stargazers would most likely have been as far as she could go. “Now I’m going to ask you a few questions. Relax and answer honestly.”

Author’s Note:

Fathiers, also known as space horses, are non-sentient quadrupedal animals that can be domesticated and used as mounts. They were taken from the new canon (because they’re simply adorable creatures and the Author liked them—unlike Luke Skywalker trying to poke his nephew with a glowing stick while the poor guy was asleep. The Author generally believes that poking your nephews is a bad thing, ’kay?).