The Unchronicled Adventures Of Ahsoka Tano, Book Ten

Chapter Eighteen: Visions Of Darkness

AHSOKA TANO

It was dark, and the air filling her lungs with every breath she took was cool and dry. The maroon light permitting her to see around her was dim, but growing steadily brighter, as if it were leeching the energy from the very air.

The only thing Ahsoka was really conscious of was a desperate need to get to... someone. She didn't know who, or where, or why, but they were close by and they needed her help. And she was not about to abandon them.

She moved on silent feet across a smooth marble floor. The ominous red light was coming from all around her; burning through her boots from beneath her feet and bouncing off of the polished stone carvings that surrounded her, resonating with a dark and malevolent power.

Ahsoka sniffed the air. The temperature was rising.

Although she had no memory of moving from one point to another, it appeared that she had reached her destination.

A figure wielding a crimson lightsaber turned to face at her. "It was foretold that you would be here. Our long-awaited meeting has come at last."

Ahsoka's hands tightened around her two lightsabers, but she couldn't remember taking them off her belt. Then, her mouth began to move and form words, but she was not the one moving it. "I'm glad I gave you something to look forward to."

"We need not be adversaries..."

Where there had previously been partial clarity, Ahsoka was beginning to feel herself slipping away. Her conscience was being pulled from the body that didn't quite feel like hers – not at this point in time, anyways – and she could only hear fragments of speech, floating in and out of definition.

"Emperor... if you tell him..."

"You and your Inquisitors have seen to that," she said, but Ahsoka found that it didn't quite sound like a completed thought. Something had probably come before it.

The figure paid the tightening grip her body had on her lightsabers no mind. "Anakin Skywalker was weak. I..."

There were tears in the corners of her eyes. But whether they were tears of sadness or of anger, she didn't know. They felt so alien, so unnatural.

Finally, she was completely free of the body that didn't totally match up with her conscience. She only just caught the last words it said as she floated away, spoken in a whisper full of rage and sorrow and love.

"Then I will avenge his death."

Ahsoka awoke with a start, her blue-eyed gaze flitting agitatedly over her surroundings for a few moments before she realized she was back in the pilot's seat of the New Hope.

The dark energy and polished stone floors were gone: only thing smooth enough for her to cast a reflection upon in here was the viewport. And even then, it was hard to make out more than the reddish-brown of her lips and orange of her skin against the blue and white spirals of hyperspace.

And, for some reason, in her mind's eye, she was replaying all of her best and worst memories of one person in particular: Anakin Skywalker.

What even happened in that dream? Ahsoka wondered. It's starting to fade away now, but it felt so real. I hope it wasn't a vision, because I'm sure that person I saw dressed in black was the Sith Lord we've been looking for. And if everything that happened is starting to slip away, I could be losing valuable insight into his identity...