Author's Apologia: This story was first uploaded to the Star Wars Fanon Wikia on November 2, 2019. If you'd like to read it in PDF format or else get some more in-depth information on its rationale and other behind-the-scenes crap, there's a link in my user profile (failing that, you can use a search engine). Far as authorial commentary goes, I'll only give the bare bones here.

Torchbearer is the first in a series (God willing) that is meant to be my own take on the idea of a KotOR 3 storyline. We open six years after the events of TSL. The background is DSF!Revan and DSF!Exile, but the cast starting off is a mix of other characters, some familiar and some original. Along with the two KotOR games, the general history of the old EU leading up to them are acknowledged, and will not be contradicted any more than necessary. Past the events of TSL, all bets are off. Though some elements from The Old Republic and other sources set later will be borrowed, nothing is guaranteed. In short, AU is the name of the game.

I've set the rating at what it is because the level of violence might perhaps warrant it, though I could be wrong (which case, be so good as to inform me). As for the genre? It's a Star Wars story.

That's all I've got. Hope it's a good read.

- MPK - Memorial of St. Charles Borromeo - November 4, 2019

Darkness is soon to descend upon the galaxy. Bereft of the guidance of the fallen JEDI ORDER, the Galactic Republic labors to rebuild itself after the devastating War of the Star Forge. With the last remnants of Darth Revan's forces diminished and withdrawn into the Outer Rim, the free people of the galaxy believe that peace is at hand.

Meanwhile, in the far reaches of Unknown Space, the ancient SITH EMPIRE prepares to unleash itself in a new war of conquest and vengeance against the unsuspecting Republic.

The only one standing in the way of these sinister plans is a lone defector who scours the galaxy for allies. Pursued by ruthless agents of the dark side, he races to the remote planet of DANTOOINE in search of the last surviving Jedi, hoping that she can aid him in his desperate mission to stall the coming Sith invasion and preserve freedom in the galaxy...

Year 21,108 of the Age of the Republic

Six Years after the Death of Darth Traya

Eleven Years after the Battle of Rakata Prime

Enough.

It should have been enough when Darth Malak's fleet had appeared over Dantooine and scoured its surface with bombs and turbolaser fire. When his legions had come and slaughtered the Jedi, brutalized the settlers, and left a wound in the galaxy where a secluded oasis of light had once been. And that hadn't even been the last time that minions of the dark side had come and defiled the fields and stone with their presence. Everything the Enclave had suffered—it should have been enough.

But as the cold, insulating quiet of the sublevel was shattered by the pandemonium of battle, Kaevee grimly understood that the Force had its own idea of enough.

The lone Padawan didn't often show herself, and she didn't want to now. Even as she strode through the barely-lit corridors, letting the Force guide her toward the disturbance, she was slowed by the palpable and all-too-familiar urge to run—the feeling of a noose tightening around her gut. But she urged herself onward, feverishly repeating a mantra that had sustained her for the past eleven years. "I am a Jedi, the Force is with me, I am a Jedi, the Force is with me…"

Much as she doubted that it was, however, she was far too ashamed to think of running. Her Master had always told her to trust the Force. The fact that she wasn't exactly sure what that meant was irrelevant. She still had to do it. She had to stay this time.

Groups of laigreks rushed past her, their huge compound eyes glowing like charcoal, their sword-point legs clacking across the stone floor. Long ago she had used the Force to bind their wills to hers; like her, their purpose was to guard the Enclave. In this they had served her well, keeping the salvagers of Dantooine at bay, frustrating their efforts to steal from the ruins of the Jedi. But Kaevee knew that they could not stand up to Sith, and these intruders were no mere band of lowlifes; with each passing moment, the air grew thicker with the ethereal stench of the dark side, and the sounds of mayhem soon reached her ears: heavy footfalls, inhuman shrieks, and the whines of vibroblades and they cleaved through exoskeleton and flesh.

The Padawan paused before a corner, sensing that she was close to the battle. "I am a Jedi, the Force is with me," Kaevee told herself firmly as she reached to her belt for the lightsaber that had once belonged to Master Vrook Lamar. Its blade came to life, dispelling the shadows around her with a brilliant emerald glow as she rounded the corner.

Just a stone's throw ahead, the melee was raging. The aggressors were Humans, or humanoids at any rate, clad in black uniforms with flexible, light armor plating and masks with bulging, opaque red eye-lenses. They carried a variety of vibro-weapons; some had a single blade, others a pair, and still others a double-bladed pike. They were swift, silent, and moved with such agility that it was hard to tell how many there were.

Toward the front, one of the assassins was too slow to dodge a nearby laigrek, whose slashing scythe-leg nicked his forearm. Rather than react to the pain, the man backed off a step, falling into a defensive stance. As the laigrek crouched on its hind legs, preparing to leap and skewer him, one of the assassin's partners came to his aid, his vibro-pike impaling the insectoid through the throat with a blood-curdling hiss.

Kaevee bared her teeth as she approached. Extending a hand, she used the Force to throw the wounded assassin to the side, right onto the front mandibles of another one of her pets and dousing it with blood. Feeling stronger, the Padawan lashed out at a second assassin, slamming him into a third and bowling both of them over.

Another group of laigreks emerged from a side-corridor, their more mature members spitting brief jets of fire as they joined the fray. The assassins scattered before the sudden attack, but just as quickly they regrouped and went back on the offensive despite being sorely outnumbered. They fought as a team, each individual covering for another, and the scene turned to a dizzying maelstrom of flying blades and limbs. Laigreks hissed, buzzed, and chittered as they fought and were dismembered, but the Sith remained eerily silent. Before Kaevee could choose another target, the darkness not far ahead of her was split by another lightsaber blade.

Its bloodshine glow revealed a woman in elaborate black and maroon robes. Strangely, her hood came all the way down over her eyes, ending in a sort of veil adorned with some elaborate gold embroidery. Her face waxed pale except for her lips, which were dark and seemed frozen in tranquil indifference. Laigreks pounced at her from all sides, but her lightsaber spun and whirled with terrifying grace, and each assailant fell in twitching, smoking pieces. Hardly slowed down, the woman cut a scarlet-flashing channel through the battle, straight toward Kaevee.

Then she was on her, and their blades met in an eye-searing clash of light. Without words or invocations, Kaevee called on the Force to guide her hands and feet, to recall the lessons she had been taught so long ago. But the lightsaber was clumsy and weightless in her grasp, and she turned aside only two of the dark woman's slashes before she found herself backpedaling in a frenzied panic. The red blade buzzed once by her face, then her neck.

Then the dark woman struck again, lower this time, cutting horizontally through the hilt in Kaevee's hands and leaving a smoking singe across the front of her robe. As the emerald blade vanished, Kaevee thrust out a hand and pushed with the Force; but the Sith absorbed the worst of it, only pausing in her tracks before retaliating with a telekinetic blow of her own that knocked Kaevee's breath from her and left her flat on her back. The sparking pieces of Master Vrook's lightsaber rolled across the floor beside her.

As though sensing its master's distress, one of the laigreks disengaged itself from the brawl and tried to come to her aid, but the Sith caught it in a telekinetic grip and sent it careening into a nearby wall with a splash of ochre blood. Then, not wasting a second, she flipped her saber high and advanced on her prey. She raised her hand again, and a crushing, invisible weight fell on the Padawan and pinned her to the floor.

Wheezing, Kaevee tried to fight back, but the Force was not with her, and her hands were pinioned so that she couldn't even reach for the blaster in her pocket. She didn't want her life to end this way, but even as she felt her heart ready to burst, it also fluttered with a curious sort of relief. Her own Master, Emon, had died on this world at the hands of the Sith, and so had Master Vrook and so many other Jedi. To finally die the same way—in the back of her mind, it somehow felt right.

She was pulled away from this half-conscious revelation by a disturbance in the Force—and by the sound of footfalls, of someone sprinting up behind her. Only a stride away, the Sith woman looked past Kaevee and hesitated, bringing her saber to guard as several of the assassins came to flank her. But then they were flying back into the darkness like leaves caught in a gale, tumbling into the midst of the bloodbath that still raged with the laigreks. The red blade vanished with a hiss.

Freed of the Force grip, Kaevee began to stir, favoring her aching joints until she was grabbed by the collar and yanked onto her feet. Her rescuer was a man, Human or Near-Human, but the poor lighting and the shock of still being alive made it difficult for Kaevee to make out his features, or even to pay much attention to him at all. She swayed until he put both hands on her shoulders and snapped, "Hey, you all right? I said, you all right? We need to get out of here!"

Behind her, Kaevee heard the Sith woman's lightsaber reignite, followed by the agonizing sounds of more of her pets dying. Staring at the indistinct face before her, she managed to say, "Who are you?"

He gave her a shake. "What do you mean, who am I? I'm the guy who's rescuing you! Now come on, run!" Without another word he took off back down the corridor, but Kaevee bent over, spending a precious second in the hopes of retrieving her ruined weapon. Though the floor was splattered with blood and cleaved chunks of the laigreks were everywhere, she managed to find one piece of the lightsaber before her nerve ran out and she bolted after her mysterious new ally.

To her surprise, the man led her with uncanny certainty through the half-destroyed maze of the sublevel, avoiding dead ends created by collapsed sections of ceiling or heavy doors sealed permanently by damage or loss of power. He deftly avoided smaller hindrances as well, steering around piles of fallen masonry or stepping between smaller chunks that could easily give someone a twisted ankle. Either he also knew the Enclave sublevel by heart, or the Force was with him indeed.

Kaevee quickly realized that they were heading toward the southwestern exit. They passed only a few laigreks on the way; perhaps the Sith had already slaughtered the majority of them.

The Jedi—he had to be a Jedi, Kaevee realized with a surge of raw joy—led the way up the long shaft of a stairwell to the exit. Several strides outside he stopped, allowing her to join him under a glimmering night sky. Both of Dantooine's moons shone at their full intensity, penetrating the night with a stark white glow. Before them stretched the broken, vine-choked ruins of a courtyard, pocked by decade-old craters.

Breathing deeply, the Jedi pointed past the courtyard to the Janta plains beyond. "She's gaining on us," he said. "I'll hold her here. The ship's parked just over the hills. Get on board and tell the droid to bring it over."

As Kaevee stared at the gentle humps of the hills as though they were mountains, it occurred to her that they were going to flee the Enclave, not defend it, and a dozen nameless, conflicting emotions welled up inside her. Her first thought was to blurt out, Are you serious? Studying her new companion by the light of the moons, however, she was puzzled by his appearance: rather than the traditional robes, he wore a plain shirt and pants, a spacer's boots, and a battered, heavy-looking jacket. But the face beneath his tousled hair was earnest, collected, a picture of transcendent certainty—he was a Jedi.

The only other Jedi.

Annoyance flickered across his face. "I wasn't sent here to watch you get yourself killed," he snapped. "Get going, now."

In unison they glanced back to the doorway, where a threatening red glow was beginning to spill up the passage.

Embarrassed and grateful, Kaevee managed to say, "Please don't leave me alone," and ran.

Atton watched the girl race across the ruined courtyard, but only for a second. His thoughts were racing, as usual. Hope she makes it. Hope I make it. Wish I had a thermal det. Play the plus-two card, the totals are five-ten…

He faced the doorway right as Visas Marr stepped through it, holding her weapon loosely, its glowing blade angled toward the ground. She cocked her head and spoke, her words dripping with contempt. "Meetra says she misses you."

Atton shrugged, letting the Force flow into him, and the monologue of the pazaak game in his head grew quieter. Putting a hand into his jacket pocket, he shrugged and said, "Yeah, I know."

The Miraluka took a step closer and her voice returned to its usual smooth monotony. "She hopes you will return to her willingly."

"She wants me so bad, she'll have to settle for my carcass."

One side of Visas' mouth peeled back in some vicious parody of a smile. "That is what I hoped you would say."

There was a flash of movement as Atton drew his lightsaber; Visas moved in response, easing herself into a guard stance, and Atton copied her pose. Then there was a long moment of stillness as they paid silent reverence to the impending business of killing each other.

Atton's eyes traveled the length of the alien weapon in his hands. He felt stupid for having it, much as he had six years before, when he had cobbled it back together from the wreckage of the Jedi Kavar's lightsaber. The blade itself spoke of his less than masterful craftsmanship. Wreathed in deep blue, its white core flickered and pulsed as though it was barely able to contain itself, and even its hum was an unsteady, electric growl.

Second-hand power cell, the emitter circuits misaligned, a scratch on the focusing lens… Good enough was what he had called it. He may have felt stupid, but merely stupid was still he'd felt in six years.

He extended his Force perception, brushing against the contours and edges of the irregular terrain around him, taking in the Miraluka's menacing aura. For a brief interval his hearing sharpened, telling of stamping feet coming up the stairs—more lackeys—and he wished again for a thermal detonator. Also, he sensed, there were a couple of critters, not laigreks, though, lurking somewhere just out of sight…

And also, there was the girl just a stone's throw behind him, crouched down on the incline of one of the shallower craters, watching as he bravely risked his life for her. He reached out to her and prodded her mind with the Force. For good measure, he thought, RUN, YOU IDIOT, as loud as he could.

Telepathic communication wasn't his forte, so he could only hope that the idiot in question understood him well enough to break out of whatever stupidity had given her pause. There was no way to be sure, though, because Visas Marr had taken a little leap and closed the distance between them, and he had to switch his focus from what the girl was doing to not getting cut to pieces.

Kaevee's vision was swimming with a dark outline by the time she was done dragging herself to the top of the last hill. At the bottom of its incline rested the squat, rounded E-shaped hull of a freighter of some kind, its engines idling and glowing a faint yellow. She half-ran, half-fell down the hill and collapsed onto the edge of a boarding ramp that she found extended from the ship's starboard cleft.

A bizarre-looking probe droid regarded her from the top of the ramp. It was headless and legless, with three long, spidery arms sprouting from the top of a drum-shaped body. Suspended in midair by a repulsorlift which gave off a noisy, undulating hum, its four red photoreceptors flickered spastically as it whistled, buzzed, and beeped down at Kaevee.

The Padawan understood a smattering of Droidspeak, and the inflection made her think the utterance was a question, but she could not hold her thoughts together enough to translate it in her head. As she stared back at the machine, wheezing and gasping like a garfish, it repeated itself, louder and a bit slower than before.

Recovering her breath, Kaevee started to ask, "Are you with…" Then, remembering that she didn't know the Jedi's name, she started over. "He's in trouble! Says to bring the ship…" But even as she said this, the droid zipped out of sight. Following the sound of its repulsorlift, Kaevee stumbled up into the ship and toward the cockpit. While passing through the main hold, she hesitated and glanced back, thinking she had heard footsteps, but there was apparently no one to greet her but the droid.

In the cockpit she found the machine hovering over the pilot's seat, its three manipulators clumsily hammering at the main console as a rising whine sounded from the engines at the back of the ship. Seeing the droid take hold of the steering yoke, Kaevee scrambled into the empty co-pilot's seat. Not a second later the ship lurched up from the ground, its nose dipping slightly, and began to wobble its way noisily over the hills.

Atton didn't expect that he could kill Visas in the few minutes it would take to either get killed himself or escape once the Hawk arrived, but he gave it his best shot. First he tried one of his preferred methods for dealing with arrogant Force users, letting the Sith expend her energy in going on the offensive, waiting for a split-second vulnerability to appear. As she came at him again and again, he fell back, parried, or sidestepped, watching his own footwork on the uneven terrain. But the Miraluka kept her balance as well, not overcommitting to a single strike.

Then three of her goons emerged from the Enclave and joined the fight. As they tried to hem him in from four directions, he caught Visas' saber and one assassin's blade in a lock, slid aside from the second one's stab, and kicked the third, sending him sprawling down into a crater. He whirled back and forth to block the slashes of the other two. Visas held back for a few seconds, which Atton found puzzling until a collection of small ferrocrete chunks rose from the ground and launched themselves at his head.

One of them gently—so to speak—grazed his cheek as he deftly twisted away. He bit his lip, savoring the pain as he had been trained to, and let it carry him deeper into the fight. Crimson saber and cortosis-woven steel came at him again, and his hungry blade met them. The assassin he'd kicked into the crater had almost finished clawing his way out, only to be knocked back down to the bottom by the falling, decapitated corpse of one of his fellows.

A second later, Atton leaned to one side and winced as Visas' blade zipped upward, past his ear in a slice that nearly burned off one side of his skull. He threw the third assassin off his feet with a Force push, then gave the Miraluka his full attention.

For the past few months, Atton had been too busy to get into any real fights against other Force-users—he might have joked that he was getting older and had to be more responsible. Even though his aim here was more to stall than to kill, he figured he might as well cut loose and see if he was as sharp as he had been before getting himself into this mess.

As opposed to the mess that had immediately preceded it.

As he parried a flurry of strikes from Visas' lightsaber, Atton employed an old trick of his and retreated partway into his own head, letting instinct and precognition take over the duel while he stoked the emotional embers that could be ignited into rage. He pulled up a particularly searing and persistent memory: the moment he had first seen Meetra standing in the middle of Trayus Core, her face aglow with bloody light. She'd been smiling at him, but her smile looked stiff and arranged, like that of a corpse.

He had been taught to summon the power of the Force this way, to think of it like some lumbering beast that had to be baited and coaxed and herded around—at first, anyway; Sith put passion first, as the means to gathering strength. Supposedly, after much more training, the Force became more like a tool that one could simply select and use. To Atton, though, this process already was a tool. Manipulating himself and making his mind do what it was supposed to do, that was natural to him. All the philosophy stuff, he could've done without that.

Just flip the switch, turn the valve, play the plus-eight card. Make your brain work. Feed the fire. Entice the Force, get the power you want…

Fire ran into his veins, set his brain to a boil, burned his eyes clear. Faster than he could think, he threw himself on Visas, his blows crashing against her guard. The woman fell back at once, sometimes shunting his blue blade aside, other times blocking directly though it rattled her shoulders. He kept up the offense, striking harder, advancing faster, but she kept her balance. Her footwork carried her between rocks and along the edges of craters with eerie precision—grace, even. Though she was a little smaller than Atton and could not equal his natural strength, she was plenty able to use the Force to compensate for that. What's more, she knew his fighting style, was familiar with many of his tricks, and perhaps had also guessed that he was not at the top of his game—just as Atton was beginning to realize the same thing.

Frustrated though he was by his ineffectual offensive, Atton went at it harder and harder, driving his partner-in-swordplay from the courtyard and onto the field beyond. As the high started to peter out, he sensed the two assassins running to catch up with the due. Despite this, he also had a feeling that he should stop, so he did. Still retreating, Visas kept going a few paces, and the upward viper-flick of her red blade flashed through empty air, as opposed to going between his legs.

The close call almost made Atton laugh. Instead he bit down on his amusement, letting out his frustration in another Force blow that roared over the plain like the breath of a hurricane, throwing the schutta back head over heels… but the Force was with her too—or whatever—allowing her to flip in midair and come down in a crouch, landing as lightly as a gwayo bird.

Atton, in contrast, called on the last of his power to take flight like one, soaring twenty meters more or less straight up into the night sky, where he was swallowed by the open boarding hatch of the Ebon Hawk as it rumbled past overhead. Closing down his lightsaber and shutting the hatch with a slap to the control panel, he staggered through the ship and into the cockpit. "Outta my chair," he barked, though Ecksee was already floating away from it.

The girl, seated at the other station, jumped halfway out of her skin at his appearance. "Glad to see you made it, kid," Atton grunted as he sat down and his hands began to fly over the controls. "Just strap yourself in and sit tight."

Then he threw a lever, and the engines really kicked in as he turned the Hawk skyward. The girl sat rigid and fused to her chair, staring with lidless eyes as the starfield over them became the galaxy ahead of them, and Dantooine's moons slid out of sight. Moments later the stars stretched into needle-thin lines, and they leaped into the tunnel of blue fire beyond.

Squinting up against the sunglare, Kaevee looked where Shen had pointed. Though she couldn't really see the brith, she could sense it easily enough. "No," she said, restraining a giggle. "Absolutely not."

Still leaning against the speeder, Shen regarded her with exaggerated disappointment. "Oh, really? Why not? I thought Jedi weren't supposed to be scared of anything."

"I am not scared," she protested seriously.

"Are too."

"Yeah, well how about you? I'll tell it to come down—let's see you try and ride a brith."

"Why would I need a brith when I have this thing?" he said as he climbed into the speeder, which actually belonged to his father, like everything else Shen had.

The girl scoffed, but they smiled at each other as Shen started up the vehicle. "I'll see you around, Kaevee."

"Bye."

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