Perfect Balance

Spirits

  "What now Maul?" Ezra asked the looming specter of the dead Zabrak. No response was given, only the cold feeling his spirit gave off slipped away. "Yeah, run like you always have." He turned back to the controls of the ship, knowing he needed to focus on them. "Ezra." He stopped mid-motion as he heard his name. But this spirit wasn't Maul. "Or maybe you would prefer Vectivus?" He swallowed the lump in his throat. "Kenobi, you've never come to me before."

The Spirit of the Jedi master chuckled at him. "No need to state the obvious. I've come because of Maul's influence on you. He wants you to learn the night sister magic, so that through you, his people could live on. But, as I'm sure you know, cheating death isn't the Jedi way. You may be reborn, but will you still be... you?" Turning to face the spirit he finds nothing but the empty space of the cockpit.

The ship lightly jerked as it fell out of hyperspace. "We're here apprentice. Prepare yourself."

"So who are you?" Luke asked Kanan as they talked in the common room of the Ghost. "My name is Kanan Jarrus: Jedi Master." Luke nodded, taking in the information. "So, why'd a Jedi master come looking for me?" Kanan sighed at the question, not terribly sure how the kid would react to all the information. "My former padawan, Ezra Bridger, had lost himself for a time. In his rage, he came here to kill Maul, one of the lords of the sith. He succeeded in his goal, but his mind was clouded by the dark side. In his haze, he killed Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and derailed your destiny. I've come here to fix that and restore your destiny."

"Come, apprentice, the nexus resides in the bowels of this world." The spirit told him while pointing to the entrance of a cave. "Don't think I'll revive you, Maul." He told the spirit of the former Sith Lord. "Hehe, you don't have too." He didn't like how that sounded but has little choice if he wants to survive his own destiny. "I hate you." He couldn't see Maul but the laugh was more than audible.

"Mother, are you sure we should have let him go alone?" Mira sighed, not sure herself if her decision to not overly involve her self wither her son was a wise decision or not. "I do not know, I don't believe even the force truly knows. All of us who can, have felt him through the force. His destiny, his final outcome, I believe it will remain unknown, even to him, right up until that very last moment." The two let a steady silence fall between them as they watched and supervised the many padawans training.

As she entered the grand hall of the family stronghold sabine felt alone. Despite the slew of family members that flanked her on all sides. "You seem to be troubled, Sabine? Does Ezra's departer trouble you so much?" Her father asked from behind as he walked close to stand at her side. "It's not that he's gone again. It's that I might not see him again. And even if I do, he may not be the same man I saw last time. For years he's been telling me about how he feels the Darkside permeating his very being, how once it takes root in someone, no matter how hard they try, they'll be forever changed, even if in the smallest of ways. I'm afraid that if he does survive the attack on the sith and come home to me, all of us, that he won't be the same man that had left." Alrich hummed at his daughter's words, taking in each one and its meaning. "I see, and if he is, consumed, by the Darkside he will forever lose himself to it, never to fully return." She nodded, glad that he understood. "You didn't know him before the first time he really touched the Darkside. He changed so much, his dumb little jokes went from essentially dad jokes to dark and even a little macabre at times. He went from trying to not hurt people to deciding that losing both legs was a suitable alternative to a simple slash wound across the chest or arms. I'm afraid he'll decide that everyone that's not a friend of his needs to die for us to be safe. We couldn't let that happen, we'd... We'd have to stop him."

"And the only thing that could stop him is death." Alrich said allowed now fully realizing the amount of faith and risk Sabine has placed in her husband. "Sabine, don't let such worries haunt you. Yes, he may be followed by the dead, those he has slain. But he never let such spirits keep him down, so why should you let them keep you down?"