THE MASTER CALLS - 05 -
We cross the threshold of the citadel entrance and find ourselves standing in a large main hall of what seems to be a palace cut out from the ice itself from times past. My fellow Knights and I sense the Dark Side guiding us, Bogan whispering to us, leading us ever forward. We make our way slowly, cautiously, aware that the wound in the Force's presence ebb and flow closer and closer as we approach.
Ushar surveys along with Kuruk, while Ap'lek and Trudgen alternate between serving as rearguard and looking about upwards, against any surprise attacks from towering interior, cracks of light barely illuminating our way, lightning silently flashing from the outside and the constant rumble of distant thunder, soft in its resonance, but consistent in reminding us of the instability of Exogol.
"How long has this... Storm raged, I wonder." Trudgen states aloud, before Kuruk answers, looking down his disruptor rifle's sights and surveying at a corner on the far right wall, before lowering it and moving with Ap'lek again. "Its are definitely not recent, if anything. The rate and manner in which this particular storm is assailing us lends to the fact it might have appeared in the last few years."
Another whisper in the Force and we stagger slightly, unprepared for the wound's effects affecting us again. This time it is as if Master Ren is with us in the moment, standing beside me in the middle of our formation, when just like a fleeting glimpse, it was gone again. "Did you-?!" Ap'lek began, and I gave a curt nod. "Yes. I saw him among us, with us. Master Ren." I motioned beyond the hall to large doors in front of us, made of reflective metal that shone against the ice and frozen over. We stood in front of the strange doors, before looking at one another.
"Phrik." Ushar stated, running his gloved finger across the script etched on the doors. "And these runes... These are nothing like I've ever seen." Before I can ask any of our number to focus within Bogan to call upon the answer, a familiar voice graces us, as he walks among our number from behind us. "I thought I would have taught you better to read in the extinct scripts during the decade I taught you and your Master, my Knights." We spun round, weapons ready - only to be greeted by the Force ghost of Lord Snoke. We fell to one knee as he stood in the middle of our gathering, mere steps from the Phrik double-doors.
"Supreme Prophet...!" I started, not being able to comprehend how he was with us, but at the same time I dared not raise my gaze up to our deceased former leader. "My Lord..." The others managed, all barely grasping at who stood before us. "We sensed your death in the Force, my Lord. How is this..."
"-possible? Did you all forget what I taught you already? That Bogan itself is a pathway to many abilities..." We all felt ourselves awash with realization within us, remembering what had happened when we were affected by the wound in the Force. We drew upon Lord Snoke's teachings, and found ourselves again in Bogan. "When Kylo Ren struck me down, I became more powerful than anyone could have possibly imagined. Now, come my loyal Knights. You have served well, but your mission is not yet complete. It lies beyond these doors."
More questions now, and my Brothers shared them in our confused and frustrated silence. The fact we were sent to this blasted husk of a world, leaving our Lord undefended and losing the First Order, the Empire's inheritors, to be usurped by a self-serving power-hungry warlord and losing our Master to the Ashla, which in turn cost us Lord Snoke. We were without a purpose, simply moving forward on this last mission because it is what was given. I found myself speaking up.
"Lord Snoke. What is this place...? We were dispatched here because you ordered us to close a wound in the Force, but we believe it to be so much more. If it is what we think it is, we could step into it, use it..." Snoke appeared surprised and amused that I was speaking, listening intently. "...and how would you use it, Vicrul?" I raised a clenched hand at Snoke. "Make it so that our enemies would be undone before they even had a chance to strike... Rewrite the mistakes of the past. We could find a way to prevent Master Ren from being retaken by Ashla, and preserve the First Order after the loss of both Starkiller Base and the Supremacy."
Lord Snoke simply shook his head, and beckoned us to the Phrik doors themselves. He declared that it was pointless to mull over what has happened, because they weee unavoidable and inevitable... In this time. "They have already happened... All of them, what could be, should be or will be... Has already happened. You could not manipulate the doorway insomuch as you cannot hold back the torrent of an ocean yourself."
Now we were more confused, but Lord Snoke told us to walk through the doors and see for ourselves, and that we would understand. He pointed to the first two scriptures of writing on the distant top of the doors.
"Rakatan and Massassi." Lord Snoke began, running his ghostly fingers across both texts.
"The Rakatan word - Daritha is Immortal, while the Massassi one used is Darr Ta, or Dark One. Both are forerunners of the title Darth."
There was that feeling of being washed over by a tide of cold darkness, liquid dread that started to build as Lord Snoke read the writing, because the next few scriptures were in High Galactic, while the last one was in basic script.
"The Brotherhood of Darkness.
The Nightsisters.
The Sorcerers of Tund.
The Sith.
The Prophets of the Dark Side."
Lord Snoke paused, almost deliberately, because we were seeing a double door made out of indestructible metal, impervious to lightsaber scoring from a bygone age, having been etched and wrought millenia before we even existed, or any of the groups present on the doors at the time of its installation did.
"Knights of Ren."
The Phrik double-doors opened, cracking away the ice that encased them and slowly retracted then inward. Lord Snoke led us into a spacious antechamber, which housed a pink crystal in the distance amid the walls of cut blue ice. It was jarring, to move between freezing blue-ish black tints into an area with pulsing pink illumination, given the time we spent tracking in near-darkness.
Inside, were the six priestesses which we knew when Lord Snoke was still the Supreme Prophet of the Prophets of the Dark Side. Their bodies strewn about the floor, their golden ritual masks still concealing their faces, the masks' foreheads emblazoned with the old Sith symbol from the time of the Brotherhood of Darkness. There was death here, and it was recent. It didn't make sense with the age of the doors, the sheer time that it took to ice over, and it seemed that the priestesses of the Prophets of the Dark Side seemed to have been present here little over a few days prior, dead in half that time.
Something wasn't right. But things only served to become far more stranger...
Lord Snoke's shimmering outline began to waver, as if part of a faulty transmission. But the wound in the Force took hold again, and it seemed like Kylo Ren was among us one moment again, before flashing to another moment when we were all Jedi, standing where we stood, our lightsabers at the ready against Lord Snoke and the crystal, before returning to what we were- Knights of Ren in the present.
"That wasn't... It couldn't have been-" Trudgen began, before Kuruk drew his disruptor rifle and looked about, trying to blink away what we saw and felt. "That was us- we are trying to destroy or attack you at one point. But how could we still be Jedi while serving you, Lord?" Kuruk exclaimed. Lord Snoke stretched his arm out towards the towering pink crystal, seemingly growing out of the ice which the entire keep was carved and cut out around it to keep it hidden from prying eyes and hands.
"As I said earlier, my Knights... Whatever has happened has already happened. No way of changing the past.." Snoke began, and then we saw it.
In the many-faceted faces of the uneven, jagged surfaces of this strange, oversized jewel. Shapes and silhouettes that coalesced into people that we knew from historical records, before shifting with what the Crystal displayed, other worlds and other beings, each becoming more fantastical than the last.
But with each shift and change, the more unfamiliar and strange they became. A time when Ben Solo did not exist, and the Knights of Ren never came to be. When the Prophets of the Dark Side declined from it's founding under Darth Millenial, and no Lord Snoke to steward the order. Another time where Darth Vader was redeemed and wore stark white armor, rejoining his twins, the General Leia Organa and the former Master Skywalker they were familiar with in their world.
Ushar spoke at the shifting possibilities that were present before us. "This... Is the wound in the Force? You ordered us to close us, Lord. But how would we do this even? This is not a window into the past..." Ap'lek spoke now, his polearm axe at the ready. "It's a window into the future. A window into possible futures." Ap'lek started, before I found myself completing the sentence. "What would you have us do, Lord Snoke?" The shimmering outline of Lord Snoke began to pulse with iridescence as he smiled, regarding the dead priestesses which lay about us with his outstretched arms.
"The priestesses gave up their life essence to stabilize my incorporeal form after your ingrate Master Kylo Ren struck me down. But I was prepared, ready to conquer death like the Jedi of old who believed in feeble things like selflessness and compassion." Lord Snoke explained that The First Order would attempt to retake this Galaxy from the Republic, and he would preside over a Galaxy of perpetual conflict, strengthening the Dark Side, making us stronger beyond anything or anyone imaginable.
"Ever since the discovery of this strange crystal at the edge of the Galaxy with Darth Sidious and the other adherents of Bogan, they all feared in tapping into its power, even among themselves." Lord Snoke then explained that after his 'death', Kylo Ren would have visions of Exogol and expose the power of this place to Skywalker, who would come and try to retake this planet and reverse the effects of the crystal tearing it apart.
We looked at each other, both the possibility of other versions of ourselves existing already too much to even understand, much less comprehend the ramifications of what Lord Snoke desired. He desired to become a God through Bogan, and we, his Apostles. We were taught to follow Master Ren, trained by Lord Snoke as his personal vanguard, loyal to the Dark Side itself.
Lord Snoke embodied the Dark Side, at least that's what he wanted us to believe. But this... It's far too much, and far too vast for any one being alone. "Do you so swear, Reclaimers of Bogan, Knights of Ren?" Snoke questioned, feeling his psychic command to kneel before him, the would-be God of the Dark Side. "Swear to serve as you have vowed before your Supreme Prophet, against Skywalker and the traitor Solo?!"
"Lord Snoke is insane." I heard Ap'lek in a distant corner of my head, trying to shield our conversation from Snoke's pervasive view of our minds.
"Worse, he is weak." Kuruk interjected, and I could feel his disgust. "He gorged on those priestesses' lifeforces because he was desperate not to die after being bisected by the Master."
"...and now he wants to destroy the crystal because Skywalker and Master Ren know of it. He would not risk the planet we stand on now if he had a further plan than perpetual war in the Galaxy." Ushar reflected on our situation, seeing as we did not possess a backup flock of women willing to give their souls for us.
"...notwithstanding what the Crystal is. If Snoke wants us to destroy it so as not to fall into the hands of the Ashla, it could have far-reaching consequences. The Galaxy- reality- could be undone." Trudgen stated, a second time he observed a radical thought.
I considered options in the span of seconds which seemed like the gulf of parsecs. What I planned would be insane, but it might be enough to save us from Snoke's madness.
"I so swear..." I began, going down on one knee once more, as my fellow Brothers Ren followed suit.
"We so swear, having heard your call, your last command, Supreme Prophet Snoke." Each of us readied our weapons as we assumed stances from our kneeling vows, in a way we could spring the trap which hinged on Snoke himself.
"Excellent, my Knights! Now, as for the crystal... Destroy it, before Skywalker and Solo can arrive...!"
We tensed. Ushar and Kuruk readied for their thermal detonators and disruptor rifle, while Trudgen and Ap'lek's hands shivered as they held their weapons out. We were to use our Lightsabers as last-resort weapons, just like the Master taught us in our new role as Snoke's chosen.
The Reclaimers of Bogan.
The Knights of Ren.
This would be the moment that we truly served the Dark Side.
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