Myra was alone. Truly alone. They’d left her here to die. She had no sense of how much time had passed since the cave-in, but she was only just coming to terms with the idea that they’d left her. She sat crosslegged on the floor of the caved-in passage—presumably a Sith tomb—and let her mind wander the path she’d taken to get here.
For almost 10 years she’d been with them, Threxx and his crew. Nearly half her life was spent crawling through ruins and caverns, her slender frame and “all-sight”—as Threxx had called it—fine tools for a band of treasure hunters.
Myra was born a Miraluka, blessed or cursed with dead eyes but a mind opened to the Living Force. She could see, but in a way very unlike most species in the galaxy. As a child, she’d assumed everyone saw the way she did. Someone different is often the last to find out they’re the odd one, she mused.
She didn’t hate being a Miraluka, but she didn’t love it either. The Empire hunted those who could use the Force, though to what end she didn’t know. They’d killed the Jedi, so the story went, so she didn’t imagine they had anything good in store for the ones they found.
Krem, the one who’d raised her, had been a soldier in the Grand Army of the Republic. They’d fought alongside Jedi and had watched their friends kill Jedi. Some kind of programming, they’d told her, something put into the clone troopers that hadn’t worked in them.
So Krem had fled their comrades, ending up on the city-planet of Taris at just the time Myra’s parents had either died or abandoned her. Krem had never told her how they’d found her, just that she was a toddler, seemingly blind, left in a trash heap in the Undercity; a perfect pet project for a defective clone trooper facing a crisis of character.
It was Krem who’d taught her what she was and how she saw. In what was another example of ludicrous coincidence, they’d served alongside a Miraluka Jedi in the Clone Wars. Her people, Krem had told her, weren’t exactly common in the galaxy these days, and the Empire seemed to have an eye out for those who remained.
So her formative years were spent in a musty Undercity apartment being called “girl” by a renegade clone trooper until the day it was decided (entirely arbitrarily) that she was now 10 years old and needed a name. She’d remembered telling Krem that names were given to people, and she didn’t know what name she’d been given. Krem replied that the only name they’d ever been given was a set of numbers, so they picked their own. So she did the same, and on that day the blind girl became Myra.
The tiled floor of the passage grew uncomfortable, and knowing her thoughts were about to take a darker turn, Myra stood up and dusted herself off. To her right, the collapse barred her way, though—since she could see through it—she knew it was nothing that couldn’t be dug through with a shovel. Threxx had taken the supplies and left the instant the passage collapsed, without even trying to contact her. She’d screamed herself hoarse into her commlink, telling them she was alive, telling them they could get her out. Mostly she’d been begging them not to leave her alone.
To her left, the passage extended deeper, long enough that it faded in the darkness that marked the end of her vision. She set off walking down it, figuring that if she was to be trapped, she might as well do some exploring while she was there.
As she walked, her thoughts went back to Krem. The old trooper had been killed in a botched mugging not long after her impromptu birthday, and Myra had been left an orphan for a second time. She lived in Krem’s apartment for the few months it took the place’s owners to realize they weren’t being paid rent before she was unceremoniously evicted.
Krem had taught her to hide what she was and, even as a child, she demonstrated a remarkable talent for the very difficult art of pretending to be blind when she could always see. She lived by scrounging for food, panhandling, and stealing for a few years until she met Threxx and his crew a few weeks shy of her 14th birthday.
Threxx was a foul-mouthed Devaronian with a penchant for day drinking and losing at cards. What he lacked in decorum he made up for in street smarts, and from the moment Myra had tried to steal from him he’d worked out that she was a bit more than a blind street urchin. In recompense for her attempted thievery, Threxx had required she help him and his band of misfits on a job.
Myra smiled at the memory, then felt a pang of sorrow as she saw again in her mind’s eye the group turning away from the collapse and leaving her behind. From beneath the sorrow came a wave of uncharacteristic anger. Her mind twisted and raged at anyone and everyone who’d ever left her alone. At Threxx for leaving her after the cave-in, at Krem for trying to fight the mugger instead of handing over their damned credits, and at her parents for abandoning a baby Miraluka on Taris of all places: a planet-wide city built atop the ruins of a dead one and haunted by its ghosts even four millennia later.
She cried out in equal parts frustration, grief, and fear, falling to her knees in the corridor. Hot tears streamed down her cheeks from beneath the black cloth that covered her eyes. At that moment, she hated all of them; hated them and missed them in equal measure.
She looked down at her hands. They were awash in color: the emanations of her emotion radiating off her, shifting her aura in the Force with each swing. Rather than just drifting off into nothingness like usual, though, the aura was moving out ahead of her, as though pulled on by something deeper into the complex.
Flying to her feet, Myra took a good look at the walls around her, her rage forgotten and replaced with her characteristic curiosity. The architecture was old, that was certain, but they weren’t Sith. The support beams ended in rounded embellishments more elegant than the oppressive style so often found in Sith tombs.
She stepped closer to the wall and ran her hand across its surface. The smooth stone emanated a warmth she didn’t expect, and she pulled her hand back sharply. It was only then that she noticed the writing.
Somehow, lost as she’d been in her memories, she’d missed the words engraved into the walls. Each word shifted jarringly in both font and language. It took her mind a moment to discern the meaning, but before long she realized she was surrounded by an endlessly repeating mantra, carved into the walls in alternating Sith and an archaic form of Galactic Basic:
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“Passion, Peace. Strength, Knowledge. Power, Serenity. Victory, Harmony. Freedom, the Force.”
The words glared out at her from the stone, each letter hand-carved with exquisite care. There was something else too that was different about the space, she realized. Since she was a child on Taris she’d often found she could sense imprints of emotion in certain locations. Her adopted homeworld, which had been completely destroyed by Darth Malak’s bombardment 4,000 years ago, radiated fear and sorrow. This place, this beautifully enigmatic enclave set into the mountainside, radiated feelings she knew all too well. Loss, abandonment, longing.
The pull from deeper within the complex grew stronger, tugging, albeit gently, at the back of her mind like a tether. Something in this place wanted her to find it. Something that knew what she felt, and felt it too even after all this time. Myra took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds. As she let it go, her feet began to move closer to the heart of this place and whatever secrets lie ahead.
As she walked, she found herself reciting the mantra engraved on the walls. “Passion, Peace,” she chanted, “Strength, Knowledge.” She felt like she’d seen these words, in an order like this, somewhere before but she couldn’t place it.
“Power, Serenity,” she continued, and something about the words seemed to embolden her. ”Victory,” she said, her heart glowing with newfound confidence, “Harmony,” she followed on, as the path before her curved slowly to the right. Every fibre of her being drove her onward.
“Freedom.”
Her heart was pounding, every limb full of energy she’d never felt before. She rounded the final corner just as she ended the mantra, “The Force.” Her mouth hung open as she finished the word, as the corridor opened into one of the largest underground spaces she’d ever seen.
It was a vast library, the walls lined with books. Actual paper books! Her heart soared. Her Force-granted vision was unable to read text written on a screen, but the physical distinction between ink and the parchment it was printed on enabled her to read books. She hadn’t read many, but she’d clung to every single one she’d found on her adventures with Threxx. This single space easily contained a hundred times as many books as she’d seen in her life, let alone read.
Through her own joy, she felt the emotion of the space, stronger now than it had been in the corridor. The room hung heavy with loss, sorrow, grief, anger, fear, and underneath it all, love? She followed the emanations with her Force Sight, each one a color swirling around the space, touching everything, but all of it seeming to be drawn as she was toward a plinth in the center of the library.
Myra made her way into the room, knowing full well she could be the first person to enter it in a thousand years or more. Her natural explorer’s curiosity was emboldened by the connection she felt with this place and the feelings that swirled around it. As she stepped up to the plinth she found before her a small prism thrumming with violet light. Around it, the energies of the room danced and swirled.
This thing, which could only be a Holocron, was the source of imprint on the space, she reasoned. She’d never seen one herself, but she knew from her treasure hunting days with Threxx that they were ancient repositories of Jedi and Sith knowledge and were incredibly valuable.
Without thinking, she reached out toward the prism, the violet light inside it flaring brightly as she touched its surface. Like the walls of the enclave, it radiated a warmth she didn’t expect, and she recoiled again as it began to buzz and whirr before her.
Her heart pounded in her chest. You’ve broken it, Myra, stupid girl! she thought, until, from within the now opened prism, a figure of light appeared.
Myra gasped. Before her now was the figure of a Togruta woman, likely not much older than she was. She was dressed in an armored robe, like the ones Krem had told her some Jedi had worn. Her eyes, even through Myra’s perception of the holo, carried a sadness beyond her years.
The woman looked directly at her and spoke, her voice soft and sad, trembling as though she’d been crying, “My name is Ashara Zavros, apprentice to—” her voice caught for a second, “—apprentice to the Sith Lord Darth Occlus of the Dark Council. I was once a Jedi, but she showed me a different path.” There was something in her voice when she said the Sith’s name that pulled at Myra’s heart. She could feel in this woman, this Ashara Zavros, the same deep longing that was in her.
Ashara, or the rendering of her in the Holocron at least, continued, “I followed her to war, against the Republic, against the Jedi, against Darth Revan returned from death, and I loved her all the while. Jedi are forbidden to love, but I am a Jedi no longer.” The figure paused for a moment, as though wondering whether or not to continue. Myra silently begged her to go on.
“Now she’s gone. It’s been almost five years and I don’t know if I can keep hoping she’ll come back. I’m afraid I’ll lose what she taught me, and I’m afraid I’ll become a pawn again if I do.” She seemed to steady herself a little before adding, “So I’m recording this so that what I’ve learned shall never be lost. Like Revan, like Darth Traya, and like my master I’ve walked both sides of the Force. From two paths I’ve made another, and in this holocron I will store all that I have learned.”
Myra couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She’d spent her entire life afraid and confused by her connection to the Force. It was such a part of who she was and she knew nothing about it, yet now she’d found an entire repository of knowledge, a lifetime’s worth of teachings that could give her the tools she needed to control it. The words of the mantra on the walls came back to her: Freedom. The Force.
“Before I continue,” Ashara’s voice came from the Holocron, “Master, if you find this before I find you, please know we never gave up on you. Andronikos, Talos, and I have searched the breadth of the galaxy for you, from Rishi to Yavin, Morriband to Ossus. I love you, now and always.”
* * * * *
Myra spent, in total, well over a year within the Enclave, learning from Ashara and from the books contained within. She learned that the Enclave had been built by Ashara’s master and wife, Darth Occlus, to house Force knowledge away from the prying eyes of other members of the Dark Council that ruled the Sith Empire. In the midst of the Second Great Galactic War, three and a half thousand years ago, Darth Occlus vanished. Ashara and her companions had tried to find her but failed.
Unfortunately, much of the data on the holocron had become corrupted over time, and Myra could only access certain sections of the treasure-trove within. She learned of lightsaber techniques, and the Makashi dueling style, which she practiced with an ancient Sith sword housed in the library. She learned of Ashara’s training with the Jedi, and of her relationship with Darth Occlus from long before the Sith Lord won her seat on the Dark Council.
All throughout, Myra began to feel that for the first time in her life, she wasn’t alone anymore. Though Ashara was long gone, the piece of her that lived in the Holocron felt like family. When she reached the end of the data that remained on it, she went through it again and again, until she deduced that the only way forward for her was to leave this place and seek other repositories of knowledge. Ashara mentioned that she’d left other copies of the Holocron at different locations she believed Darth Occlus might return to.
Her path ahead was clear: to travel to the worlds Ashara had visited and find, at any cost, the rest of her knowledge. For the first time in her life, Myra felt like her life had a purpose. She wouldn’t let Ashara’s teachings die out. She cleared the cave-in slowly, over weeks, and left Yavin with the Holocron, her sword, and what few relics she was willing to sell to buy passage off-world. Her first target: the jungle planet of Rishi, where Ashara and Darth Occlus had pursued the reborn Revan.