Chapter 2: Red Temples
21 BBY, Maridun
His new companion practically clapped his hands in excitement, “Wonderful. Oh, and the name is Harry, Harry Potter, and I have a feeling that this will be a very informative little adventure.”
Anakin walked on this strange planet, doing his best not to show his suspicions about his new companion. There was no reason why he had. After all, Rex had woken up a few minutes after their confrontation, just as Potter said he would, but the sense of danger that the Force continuously radiated around him, as well as following the shard of a Sith Holocron, was certainly suspect.
He wasn’t sure that he believed the fact that he had just ‘found’ it while he was looking for interesting plants for his wife. There was only a single person who would be interested in a Sith Holocron, and that was a Sith, much like Count Dooku. It was only a theory, but it was one that fit far too well for comfort.
Maybe the man wasn’t all that bad, given the fact that he healed him and Rex, likely using some of the oils from the pods, which Anakin sensed was brimming with the Force, enough to jumpstart the natural Force healing that every creature in this galaxy possessed, though it was more pronounced for Jedi.
Anakin honestly wouldn’t have been half as suspicious without the Sith Holocron, whose malice he could still feel in the Force to this moment. He would have been tempted to just restrain the man and wait for Ahsoka and Aayla to return, or better yet, just go to them, but he had refrained, listening to the Force, and followed Harry Potter on his ‘adventure’. He had left a small message for Snips not to worry about him and that he was healed, and hopefully, they would even be back before she even noticed he was gone.
After all, as a Jedi Knight, he could not allow Dooku from potentially getting access to an old Sith Holocron. Even if the Sith’s tool, Harry Potter, seemed like a personable man, who was very ignorant of Jedi affairs, calling a Lightsaber a laser sword. Something told Anakin that the man had definitely not called it that in front of Dooku, because he wouldn’t have survived the insult, as Lightsaber combat was an art that the Sith had mastered to an extreme. Anakin’s prosthetic hand was proof of that. So that meant that Potter wasn’t exactly a meaningful pawn of Dooku’s and didn’t know exactly the dangers of what he was holding, which made Anakin pity him a bit.
Speaking of the man, he was looking at the impassive Rex, trying to coax any words from him, “Oh, come on, Rex, buddy… You wouldn’t still be mad about the gun, wouldn’t you?”
The clone continued to ignore Potter, though in Anakin’s opinion, it had nothing to do with the blaster that Potter stole from him, but the fact that they were in a foreign place without any backup. Anakin had told him to privately keep an eye on Potter, just in case, and he was taking his job pretty seriously, but it was quickly grating on his nerves, given the way his grip sometimes tightened on his rifle.
After all, Anakin wasn’t particularly trusting of a man who was using a Sith Holocron as a compass. The man also acted strangely, seeming almost enamoured with the hand-blaster that he picked up from Rex. It wasn’t a particularly powerful or rare piece, and was actually part of a pair, whose second one Rex still had sheathed on his belt. That’s aside from the blaster rifle, of course… It would be relatively easy to get a gun like that anywhere, so this excitement was really weird.
Deciding to save Rex from Potter’s pestering, Anakin decided to speak up, “So, Potter, which system are you from?”
“System?” the man repeated.
Anakin rolled his eyes, “Yes… Which Star System are you from?”
Understanding dawned in the man’s eyes, and he spoke up mischievously, “Oh, I doubt you’d know of it.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Anakin teased, though his eyes hardened at the evasion, “I’ve travelled around. I might surprise you.”
The man shrugged and said, “I was initially born on a planet called Earth.”
Anakin felt the truth of that statement in the Force, and that alone made him incredulous, “You called your planet after dirt.”
The man shrugged, “I suppose its official name would be Terra, the third planet orbiting the star Sol.”
Anakin furrowed his eyebrows, “I’ve never heard of it. Is that someone in the Unknown Regions?”
“You can call it that, I suppose,” the man cheekily answered, “Where are you from?”
“Tatooine,” Anakin answered brusquely, not really liking to remember his time in the desert planet.
“What about you, Rex? Where are you from?”
Both Rex and Anakin stopped and gave Potter an incredulous look, “I’m a clone. So, I was born in Kamino…”
“A clone, huh?” Potter muttered.
Rex was quickly getting uncomfortable with this and turned towards Anakin, his voice controlled, but his irritation obvious with the Force, “Do you know where we are going, General?”
“General?” Potter tilted his head in confusion, “Didn’t you say that you are a Jedi Knight?”
That stopped Anakin in his tracks again, and even Rex’s irritation turned into pure incredulity, as he spoke up slowly, “Jedi Knights and Masters became Generals of the Republic since the beginning of the Clone Wars.”
At Potter’s lack of recognition, Anakin couldn’t help but continue, “You know, the war that spanned across the Galaxy in the last couple of years, the one between the Republic and the Separatists.”
“Ah, that… Sorry about that. I haven’t been keeping track of stuff in the last few years. I’ve been travelling around, you see. I suppose there’s a lot I would need to catch up on,” Potter said.
Anakin supposed that it would make sense, especially if Potter’s planet was in the Unknown Regions. They wouldn’t have been affected by the Clone Wars, even if half of the galaxy burned because of Dooku’s manipulations.
As the Jedi began to think of a way to explain the current state of the conflict, the Force warned him of an impending attack. He yelled out, “Take Cover!”
He grabbed both Potter and Rex, pulling them down, and barely dodged the impossibly fast creature that had seemingly attacked them. In the meantime, Anakin used the Force to summon his Lightsaber to his other hand and slashed as their attacker moved above them.
Surprisingly, his Lightsaber didn’t go through his victim completely. There had been… resistance, which he hadn’t really expected. It was different from Lightsaber combat, since it still cut through whatever it was, but this resistance did exist.
It was then that Anakin turned to see what had actually attacked them and was immediately on guard. It was a large predatory creature, almost like some kind of hound, but only in the vaguest sense. Its proportions were off, as if it had been crossbred with a Rancor or some other monster, and it also had large, jagged teeth, clawed paws that were as fine as blades, and most importantly, felt absolutely drenched with the Dark Side, enough that its crimson eyes almost glowed with it.
To make things worse, the slash that he had hit the creature with his Lightsaber was visibly healing using the Force. He hadn’t even known that the Dark Side could do something like this, but here he was, seeing it with his own eyes. Anakin had fought his fair share of beasts, but he hadn’t seen that thing mentioned anywhere, not even in the Jedi Temple Archives.
Still, that thing would be healed soon, and Anakin prepared to think of a plan to deal with it, only to freeze as he felt two more of its kind appear, having hidden their presence to the Force somehow.
They were quickly being encircled, and Anakin spoke up, “Rex, focus your fire on the eyes. Keep evasive manoeuvres and avoid getting closer to them.”
It was a common tactic against large creatures that worked more often than not, and the clone nodded and took out his rifle, “Yes, General.”
The Jedi then turned towards his biggest problem at this moment, “Stay behind us and try not to die, Potter.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” the man casually said, completely unconcerned by the situation, “I’ll be fine.”
The man raised his small hand-blaster, and Anakin suppressed the urge to sigh in exasperation as he knew that this would barely tickle the monster. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the time for this, and he quickly jumped towards the attacking beasts.
He sliced at one of them with his Lightsaber as he spun, before sending one back with a Force Push, though the Dark Side seemed to grant them some resistance towards direct force powers. Seeing that, Anakin raised his hand, using the Force to lift boulders that were around them and sending them flying at them.
The beasts were clever and fast enough to dodge a few, but one of them was hit by one of them, sending it flying back. Just as one approached him, he smirked and moved to the right, letting Rex’s blaster bolt pass where his head was, and hit it in the eyes. The beast screeched, and Anakin quickly jumped up and cut off its head with his Lightsaber, though the slice required a lot of strength and effort to actually cut through its skin and flesh.
He was barely able to kill the thing before one came behind it, expertly dodging Rex’s shots, with the few that hit almost bouncing from its hide. It ambushed Anakin, opening its maw, ready to kill him, only for the Jedi to react with the force, trying to stop it.
As it reached him, Anakin almost growled as he used the Force to stop the beast’s maw from closing in on him. It was a lot stronger than it looked. Still, he persevered and positioned his Lightsaber right in the middle of the creature’s maw and activated it. The blade of plasma appeared, cutting through the roof of its mouth, hitting the creature’s brain and killing it immediately.
The Jedi relaxed slightly but froze as he saw the beast that he had sent flying earlier, trying to kill Potter. The man was strange, but he didn’t deserve to die because of Anakin’s weakness, “Potter!”
If anyone asked Anakin what happened, he would have some trouble explaining it, as three insane things happened at once. First, Potter, for some reason, threw his blaster, his only weapon, at the creature, not that it would have helped much. Second, the blaster somehow landed exactly in the open jaws of the creature and stopped it from closing them. And third, the blaster fired on its own, killing the creature from the inside.
What had just happened should have been impossible. For one, as Anakin realised earlier, the creature’s jaw should have easily been strong enough to crush the blaster. And that’s aside from the fact that blasters just don’t fire alone, and that the blast itself shouldn’t have killed the creature, even if it was from the inside.
The only explanation was that the Force had been involved in some way. The Force had felt... strange for a moment, but Anakin’s senses were being overwhelmed at the time with the Dark Side that these creatures radiated, so he hadn't really focused on it much.
Still, that didn’t mean that he didn’t stand there agape, as Potter casually walked over and brought back his blaster from the corpse’s mouth, and the damn thing looked completely undamaged, as if nothing had happened.
Rex stood there, frozen in shock, alongside him, “What was that, General?”
“I have no idea, Rex,” Anakin confessed, “But I feel that there is more to our new friend than we believed.”
They both shared a look, and Rex immediately nodded, understanding that they needed to be wary of the man. Speaking of Potter, he was slowly walking over them, as if they hadn’t been attacked by beasts brimming with the Dark Side. Honestly, Anakin could easily see a few inexperienced Jedi Knights die to these creatures’ ambush. He would try to research what the Kriff that thing was when he returned to the Temple. A Dark Side creature like this was bound to be in the Archive somewhere after all.
And despite the danger, Potter didn’t seem concerned at all by the attack, and by the sheer dumb luck that saved him from a very ugly and very messy death, “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get going.”
The man raised his Sith Holocron compass, something that he still thought was absurd, as if this situation wasn’t already, and they quickly found themselves walking towards a valley. There was something stifling about it, and something to do with the Dark Side. Anakin wasn’t sure what it was, since trying to sense it was like trying to catch a cloud. The traces of the Dark Side seemed almost elusive, actively hiding away in secrecy somehow.
It was then that Potter stopped and looked around. Rex stopped and asked him, “This… This feels wrong…”
The man knelt down and grabbed a bunch of dirt, throwing it forward, yet the dirt almost seemed to disappear. Anakin’s eyes widened at the effect and cursed beneath his breath, “This entire place is cloaked…”
He should have recognised it earlier, but there was something in the Force, something that stopped him from noticing it, somehow. Anakin found himself disliking the thought of something influencing him without noticing it like that.
Just as he said, the small fragment of the Sith Holocron that Potter was holding began to thrum, releasing a faint crimson glow. The glow seemed to affect the cloaking mechanism somehow, as the world changed around them, and not for the better.
For one, the greenery completely disappeared and was replaced with an arid wasteland of black stone and crimson sand. The Dark Side also stopped hiding its presence, completely enveloping the entire valley with an intensity that Anakin had never felt before.
However, most importantly, was the appearance of a structure. For where the valley was empty, instead showed the presence of what was unmistakably a temple, one made of dark stone and dark metal, starting from layered rings at the bottom, before converging into a large tower. The structure itself was surrounded by walls, though they seemed almost collapsed through time.
Anakin had no doubt that every grain of sand, every piece of stone and metal, was somehow filled with the Dark Side itself, and it was exactly the place that a Sith Holocron would lead them to.
Besides him, Potter released and whistled, “I did tell you that this thing would lead us somewhere interesting, didn’t I?”
Interesting… Yes, this was certainly interesting, and not in a good way. Anakin could already feel that nothing good waited for them inside that temple, and yet, that did not stop a smile from appearing on his face as he prepared to walk towards it.
AN: Well, that's the second chapter of this story, and I hope that you all liked it. I thought the idea of Anakin dealing with Harry's shenanigans would be neat, even if they're subtle. Also, the creatures that they fought were Tuk'ata, old Sith war-beasts. The whole temple thing was a bit of a nod to the fact that Maridun was once part of the Eternal Empire, something that I will explore a bit in the future, including the whole thing with the Sith Holocron.
As I said before, I have never written a Star Wars story before, so I’m sorry if anything feels off. I’d really appreciate it if you had any comments about this chapter, so that I’d keep them in mind in the future.
About the title, I liked a few of your recommendations in the comments of the previous chapter, so I thought to do another poll, if you guys were interested. Let me know if you like the idea.
Also, feel free to let me know if you have any things you'd like to see in that story. SW lore is pretty expansive, especially Legends stuff, and there's a lot that I'll probably miss, so I'm counting on you guys :)
As usual, I don’t mind rewriting this chapter depending on your feedback, so please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.