Revan.
A name which inspired rage and wonder. Teth heard it many times during his years on the fields. On the holonews, or on the patio of the seedy Telosian cantina which he used to frequent with the other do-nothing farmers. He even spilled it once or twice from his own mouth while doing something banal like washing his hands in the stained sink of his mobile home, or while programming another droid armed with a mechanical hoe, although he couldn’t remember why. The name flew by now and then like an insect whose buzzing wings made a song that sounded ordered yet could not be deciphered. It harassed an ear and spared the other, and it plagued the slumbering, lazy parts of his mind until he no longer remembered the haphazard notes. Suffice to say, Revan was a name that meant little to him. And it meant even less after Telos. In those days, Teth was lost in a transient population of aimless spacers, and by the time he wandered the poisoned streets of Nar Shaddaa, scrounging for the next crumb of spice, and breathless from the smog, he realized his ears were deafened by another tune. This realization came in the Jizz club he lurked around because the Bith band there played daily, and the frontman had a funny yellow wig, and the kloo horn and fanfar bounced off each other in the most riveting conversations about nothing and everything. On the night Yellow Wig was shot dead at the zenith of a spectacular solo, under a red spotlight, a silence followed and festered for what seemed like an age and a half, and it took a millennium for Teth to remember the buzzing he’d been avoiding. It was a sound so distinct that one had to hear it but once to remember it forever: the deafening reverberations of orbital bombardment. The erasure of thousands of lives with the press of a button. The tearing of threads all around him, like someone bit off a section of some grand tapestry. While Yellow Wig’s bandmates fired back at the gunman, Teth covered the bar counter in vomit. The next day, he awoke with a pang of hate oozing from the wound dealt to him on that rotten day.
Revan.
A war hero at the head of an Empire which took everything from him. Teth arranged and re-arranged the letters enough times that they coalesced around him as one singular esoteric symbol hinting at the presence of some hidden truth whose language eluded him. On Viscara, the name habitually came and went as some kind of deep space frequency. He joined the Sith there because they had strength and he wanted some of it too, and in many ways, he experienced a rebirth. They put a sword in his hand and showed him the Force. The Honor Guard taught him to use his teeth. The Fatebinder taught him to use his stomach. The Inquisitor taught him to use his guts. The Lord taught him to use his head. And the Pilot taught him to use his heart. All that he learned, he rushed to put into practice. The recognition of passion to its wrangling. The cultivation of strength and the meanings therein. The will to power in its natural state. The taste of victory on his lips when he kissed the ground of a smoldering battlefield. They fought a war that reason condemned as folly, but to live was to wage war. He knew this all to well.
Revan.
Who was Revan anyway? He was dead. Betrayed and killed. Teth heard Revan was the hero of the Mandalorian wars. That he chose to act when the Jedi chose not to. Revan took the helm of the Republic’s forces and fought back Mandalore the Ultimate. Many were those who told him such things, usually with the treble of conviction in their throat, in the clutches of admiration. A trooper under his command was there, at Malachor, when it all ended, and told Teth all about it with an air of complete certainty. The Inquisitor idealized Revan’s willingness to do what was necessary. The Lord quoted Revan himself several times, though Teth never quite remembered the words. Something about the burdens one had to bear. Something about necessity. They were Revan’s Chosen and were present when he died. Only they could retake the Empire and maintain the course of its ascension in his image.
Revan.
Who the fuck was Revan? A Jedi? A Sith Lord? Revanchist? A unifier or a destroyer? He was not an answer, but a question which haunted him, as Teth sought to understand the depths of their agenda. What would happen once they won the war and executed Malak? Teth knew enough about the Sith to realize it wouldn’t happen like that. There would be no clean execution, no coup, no recapture. The Empire seemed fractured enough, and any instability could undermine its exactitude. He began to see it too, among his people. He saw the frictions and the nearly avoided conflicts among his betters. He saw the differences of opinion when a Lord said left, and another said right. When Teth slew his Master’s apprentice and claimed his lightsaber, his Master revealed to him the truth. Heresy could not survive forever. One day, ideas would collide as comets on perpendicular trajectories. Some would perish and others would carry on with their course.
“So you met him yourself?”
“I fought his battles,” the Master said. “I saw him once or twice.”
The same as everyone else. Another man whose glimpse of a ghost somehow evoked tremendous inspiration. Teth sensed it. The existence of Malak allowed the Revanites to maintain an amorphous identity defined by opposition. But one day, Malak would be dead, and they would look at each other and their views of Revan would arise as family secrets long buried. They would disagree. And they would turn on each other. They would fight over the meaning of a dead name. Lord against Lord. Darths would rise and fall while the Republic cleaned house. It was inevitable.
Revan.
A name like water. When Teth struck the surface, it responded with equal force. When he shed a light on it, photons scattered across the ripples. When he dove in headfirst, the depths were too dark to see. Neither sun nor moon could penetrate it. Confused, lost, the name meant less and less with each passing day. The answers he found were incomplete.
Revan.
“And what do the Mandalorians think of Revan?”
“He gave us everything we ever wanted.”
Revan learned from the Mandalorians to defeat them. He adopted their ruthlessness, their strength. And the end result was the Sith Code. Teth vowed to do the same. He would labor at the site of his grand edifice, and build his pyramid stone by stone until passion, strength, power, and victory, were stacked in the most perfect of formations. He would climb to the greatest heights. To the apex on which Revan had stood, so he could behold the same landscape he had, and see through his eyes. Only then could he find the truth and learn who he really was.
“The answers lay in Malachor.”
There were many battles ahead and many chains to break. He would either die or succeed.
Teth marched through the tunnel of rage in search of transcendence.
Over his shoulder, the light dimmed and dimmed.
Was this the purpose of freedom?
