Episode X Dark Hunter

All is Spent

It was well into the night by this time, and stars speckled the sky with unfamiliar and unfriendly constellations, like eyes watching silently from another realm. The freezing air was still, but it needed no wind to accomplish its purpose. Videsse would have been shivering if her body was not failing. Instead, she had punctuated moments of shakes, enough to break the ice that was slowly forming on her sweaty under-armor and tunic. Two acolytes threw her down unmindfully onto the black obsidian circle on the east side of the mosaic, the pedestals, her ship, and the speeder arranged around her.

Nolan walked over to the one empty pedestal and placed Kylo Ren's cross-bladed saber onto it. The hilt was caught in an invisible magnetic cylinder and floated unnaturally a hand's breadth above the pedestal.

"It would have been more appropriate if you led this ritual, Lord Kylo Ren," he stated, looking at the floating hilt as if imagining a distant and pleasant memory. He turned to Ben who was restrained outside of the circle.

They forced Ben to his knees, and two acolytes strongly pressed his shoulders on each side. Ben gritted his teeth, but remained still.

Nolan walked to him with high shoulders and an arrogant stride. He produced both of Ben's confiscated blades and lit them, hot yellow and blue brands crossed in front of him.

Nolan inspected them quietly, the dichromatic blades lighting his face with mingled white light. He seemed pleased with something.

"Lord Kylo Ren," he addressed. "Murderer of our Lord Snoke, and traitor to the Dark Side." The history of Snoke's demise was common knowledge in the galaxy, since Kylo Ren and Darth Irata (Ben Solo and Rey Skywalker), had made a public display of Snoke's dead body before the First Order's generals.

Ben looked at the ground, but one of the acolytes gripped his hair and forced him to look up.

"You have rejected our Master," Nolan said as if passing a judgment. "And so our Dark Master has rejected you."

Ben muttered something defiant under his breath. Nolan's white eyebrows raised, but he did not acknowledge Ben's words further.

"And now you are a Jedi?" Nolan continued, and he produced a slight huff, almost a laugh. "A Jedi without the Force? What did our Lord Snoke do to you when you became a traitor?" He squinted his eyes in thought as he seemed to probe Ben. "You are... empty."

Ben looked surprised. Somehow Nolan could perceive Ben's separation from the Force, and even more surprising to Ben, Nolan divined that Snoke had done it to him.

Still, Ben said nothing.

"And her," Nolan continued, hardly moving his chin toward Videsse's collapsed body. "Has our Lord Snoke dealt with her as well?"

A millisecond of confusion passed over Ben's face, but it was not lost on Nolan. "Ah," Nolan smiled. "Is it another working of the Force you Jedi are ignorant of? That is hardly surprising."

Ben struggled to loosen the acolytes' grip on his shoulders.

Nolan held the blue blade down and directly at Ben's neck to check his opposition. Ben restrained himself in the blue light and winced at the heat of the blade on his face.

"Midichlorians," Nolan stated evenly. "Another word you Jedi use for something you know nothing about." He turned the blade so that it laid perpendicularly under Ben's chin and he leaned in as if to show Ben more closely some detail. "This is our Lord Vader's blade. His Midichlorians (to use your ignorant Jedi terms) still dwell in it. And your Midichlorians--" He held the opposite blade in the air above his own head and extinguished it. "Well . . . yours seem to have abandoned you."