If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War, III.18

"But Master Ocera, why is Master Sun's treatise not suited for Jedi? We're fighting a war against the Sith; surely his words on warfare - which are studied on Carida, Coruscant, and Dromund Kaas alike! - are ..."

"Ashara," the older Human Jedi told his young Togruta student calmly, "you just undermined your own argument. These words are studied by the Sith, not the Jedi. They are the words of a soldier, for those without the Force as an ally."

"But Master, the treatise makes so much sense! Otherwise, why would they teach it at the Republic Military Academy?" the young orange-skinned Togruta nearly whined. "We have to drive the Sith back with everything we have!"

"Be careful of your emotions, Padawan," a Cathar male stated calmly, stepping beside Master Ocera. "This ancient pre-Republic work is studied by soldiers on both sides of the conflict, as you have said, but the author was not a Jedi, nor I suspect even a student of the Force in any way. Be careful with his words. He speaks of calling your side to anger; that is a path to the Dark Side."

"Yes, Master Ryen," Ashara said, nodding her head in respect. I don't care what the Masters say, she thought to herself, this work will help us defeat the Sith. If the Jedi had studied this better, the temple on Coruscant wouldn't have been sacked.

"I didn't think we had a copy of this work in our enclave archive," Ocera mentioned, taking the datapad from Ashara's hands and studying it. "Where did this come from?"

"I bought it in the Olaris settlement," Ashara admitted, blushing in a bit of shame.

Ocera handed it back to her. "Sell it to a soldier the next time you're there," the man told her. "Now go meditate on our reasoning for a while, and on why this does not apply to Jedi."

"Yes, Master Ocera." Ashara nodded and walked off down a corridor.

"I fear that girl will dive headlong into disaster when the opportunity rises," Ryen told his colleague after he was certain the young Togruta was out of earshot.

"As do I, old friend" Ocera replied, his eye lingering on the passage Ashara had disappeared down. "As do I."

Ashara fumed with pent-up frustration. She knew she was disobeying her Masters' orders, but instead of meditating she had instead entered the training room of the enclave, activating six of the training droids. She kept the lights low; the only real light came from her two blue lightsabers and the six blue, green, and yellow blades of the droids.

"Not suitable for Jedi," she grumbled aloud as she fought the droids. She flipped over one, burying her blades in its back, before moving her offhand blade to intercept the incoming green blade of one of the others. She felt a tug in the Force, and in an instant surrendered herself to its will, moving her blades in a defensive position as a second blade attacked from an angle out of her eyesight. A twist of her wrist later, and that droid's lightsaber hand flew through the air. She didn't see where the lightsaber landed, as she ducked low and spun, both arms out, deftly slicing three of the droids' legs in half at the knee joints, and then as they fell she sliced their weapon hands off.

The last droid picked up the lightsaber of one of its fallen comrades. Ashara smiled to herself, her species' predator teeth visible in the blue light of her sabers. Very few droids had been programmed for Jar'Kai; this one apparently had been. Blue met green and yellow repeatedly, as the droid took the offensive, forcing Ashara to back up slowly as she deflected its blades with her own. After a few seconds, she realized that the droid was deliberately attacking her weapons' blades directly.

"You're flynning, droid," she scoffed, and took the offensive. She feinted with her right-handed saber, as she flipped her left-handed one to a reverse grip. The next second, the droid's head detached from its neck and flew through the air, bouncing off one of the walls as her left-hand blade met it. She paused for a moment, then turned to the droid which was continuing to stand.

"This is where you fall down."

As if taking that statement as its cue, the droid literally fell apart.

A slow clapping caught her attention as she extinguished her sabers. She spun to face the newcomer, and groaned. "Varek," she scoffed. "Come to witness a real duelist in action?"

"No," the dark haired human boy replied calmly. "Master Ryen said I needed to practice my saber techniques."

"Let's spar then," she challenged him. "You have learned to not cut off your own head with your lightsaber, right?"

"Don't be like that, Ashara," he replied with a sigh. "Yes, you can defeat the masters and make it look easy. No one here can beat you with a saber. But even you were a beginner once."

"Fine then," she told him, clipping one of her lightsabers to her belt, and adjusting the settings on the other one. She ignited it, holding it in her left hand. "I'll even go easy on you; it's set to stun, and I am not left-handed."

Ashara stood there, almost ignoring the kid as she effortlessly moved her saber to block his clumsy attacks. At one point she even yawned. "Remember," she told him as she continued to deflect his attacks, "study your opponent. In war, the way to victory is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak. Where is my defense weak? Strike there now!"

"Ashara, enough!" Master Ocera's voice called out before Varek could move. "You were told to meditate, not taunt your fellow students." Both Padawans stopped in their tracks; Ashara extinguished her saber before Varek followed suit.

"But Master Ocera, I wasn't embarrassing him this time!" Ashara whined. "Well, not too much," she finally admitted under Ocera's harsh glare. "I knew where he was going to strike next anyway," she explained as Ocera continued to stare at her, "and was about to grab his wrist as he tried." Varek blinked at that, then scowled.

"Ashara, we will discuss your philosophies towards victory at another time," Ocera told her. "For now, just return to your meditations." Slumping her shoulders, Ashara skulked off. Ocera turned to Varek, and told the boy, "You're improving, but the point where Ashara let you think was her weak spot was really where it was strongest."

"How did you know?" Varek asked.

"I felt it in the Force," the Jedi Master explained. "The Force will let you see where and when to strike to disable your opponent. The Force is your ally, not a tool or servant, and will always grant you victory. Learn to trust in the Force, and you will be unbeatable."

"So Ashara trusts the Force that much more?" Varek asked.

"Not always," Ocera replied calmly. "She shows too much emotion when she fights, but only through elimination of emotion can one truly commune with the Force."

"Then how did she beat you last week?" Varek asked. Master Ocera placed his hand on Varek's shoulder, and shook his head.

"I let her," came the measured reply, but something in his voice made Varek question whether his Master was truly admitting the truth.

Ashara sat crosslegged on a flat stone in one of the enclave's meditation rooms. She felt something strange in the Force as she meditated.

~~She stood on a planet with an orange sky and brown foliage. A man, a red-skinned Zabrak with black facial tattoos, stood next to her, while another man, a human, stood hovering over a pair of corpses. With a growl, Ashara launched herself at the human, igniting a pair of red-black blades as the Zabrak shot lightning from his hands...

~~The ice cavern shook, as her Zabrak lover (Why did she see him that way? Jedi don't take lovers!) fought at her side against a group of alien pirates. She grinned as the final one fell, then she kissed her lover passionately.

~~A clearing in a conifer forest in the mountains, as she stood over the body of the Jedi she had just killed. "You are no Jedi either," she said coldly, "sitting here meditating rather than fighting." Her eyes blazed yellow.

~~She felt the Force flow through her, burning hot, as she felt the life disappear from her victim. In front of her, Varek gasped for air, hovering in mid-air and clutching at his throat, before his neck snapped. "Weak!" she spat at him.

Ashara's eyes popped open, and a tear rolled down her cheek. "No," she sobbed. "No, say it's not so," she cried. Standing up, she searched the entire enclave for either of the masters. She found both of them in the practice room, where Master Ocera was sparring with Varek. To Ashara's distaste, it looked like he wasn't even challenging the student. Meanwhile, Master Ryen was busy repairing the droids she had demolished earlier.

"Master Ryen, I need to speak with you."

"This can wait until later, Ashara," Ryen told her. "You're supposed to be meditating. Return to it."

"That's just it, Master," she continued. "I saw something while meditating, something that scares me."

"And we can discuss it later, Ashara," the master told her. "Hand me that hydrospanner?" With a sigh, she did just that, handing him the tool. "There is a time for everything, Ashara. We will discuss this vision you had later."

"But Master...?" she whined.

"Enough, Padawan," Ryen chastised her. "This whining of yours is unbecoming of a Jedi. Go back to meditation, and we'll discuss this later."

"Yes, Master," she sighed, walking away. Ryen didn't even spare her a glance as she walked away, engrossed as he was in his work. None of them heard Ashara's comlink chime . . . .

"Ashara Zavros?" the male Zabrak figure on the holocomlink asked. "I discovered an item which I believe might be of interest to you: a holocron of some power."

Ashara frowned, instantly wary. The Zabrak on the holo appeared quite similar to the one from her vision. "Who are you?" she asked, a hint of suspicion in her voice. "How did you know my name? What makes you think I'd be interested in a holocron?" She inwardly grimaced as she let that last item slip. Still, she thought, he's kinda cute. She tried to banish that line of thought from her mind

"Holocrons are incredible sources of knowledge," the Zabrak mentioned. "Jedi value knowledge, do they not?"

"'There is no ignorance, there is only knowledge'," she said, reciting by rote a piece of the Jedi Code. She shook her head slightly, almost imperceptible over the holo (or so she hoped). "But some knowledge is too dangerous for Padawans." Stars! she thought, I sound like Master Ocera! "Why call me? Why not take this holocron to one of the Masters; Ryen or Ocera?"

"Aren't you a Jedi?" the Zabrak on the other end asked her. She felt a swirl of emotion surround her. "Why should you have to defer to them?" The questions took her by surprise.

"Uh, um . . . Well, yes, I am a Jedi," she affirmed. Maybe, just maybe, she thought, bringing the Masters a holocron would show them I'm worthy of the trials. Still, better to be cautious, given my vision earlier . . . if it was true. "But even if I was interested," she continued, "I shouldn't leave the base."

"This is your chance to show your Masters that you're worthy of handling such a delicate item," he told her.

She blinked. Could he be reading my thoughts from here? Or am I just that obvious? "You're right," she admitted, "I can prove myself." Her voice was firm with determination. "I'll come. Just tell me where to meet you."

"I'm sending you the coordinates of an enclave in the swamps," the Zabrak told her. Underneath his figure, she read the projected coordinates, and smiled.

"Yes, I know the place," she said. Indeed, she had scoured the place hundreds of times looking for a few medical holocrons that had been lost there a year before, before locating them. She hadn't gotten to handle the holocrons, though; Master Ocera had actually collected them. "I'll meet you there as soon as I can. If the Masters ask, I'll tell them I've gone to train." She hated lying to her Jedi Masters, but this, she figured, was for the greater good.

The holocomlink died off. Ashara took a few deep breaths, gathering her courage. Still, she figured, it wouldn't be the first time she'd snuck off into the Tarisian swamps to train under less than ideal conditions.

"And it sure beats meditating on a cold rock for twenty hours," she muttered. "I wonder what that little Mon Cal is up to? We used to get into so much trouble together, before I got shipped to this rock."

I'm pretty sure most people by now have figured out where this is going. I haven't yet figured out a name for my future Darth Nox. (My own Darth Nox in SWTOR is a Miraluka female, but I wanted to pursue a mutually dark side romance story.) Unlike other tales, which are from the Sith Inquisitor's point of view, I figured I might as well make Ashara the point-of-view character, focusing on the instances where she decides to follow her own path, and then ultimately choose to be a Sith rather than Jedi.

I adapted Sun Tzu to being a Pre-Republic Jee'dai Ranger, making him a predecessor or contemporary of Master Rajivari. It kinda makes sense for Ashara, who started off pushing 'we have to fight the Sith with everything we have' would study military treatises. The Jedi being a primarily monastic order wouldn't want impressionable Padawans to study it, though the militaries certainly would.