“If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, he might be in a very vulnerable position. Are you sure we should barge in?”
While the Twins are going with Jerus, I take Luci’s hand. “Come on. This Sith undead stuff gives me the creeps. Let’s go see if the Mandos have anything good to drink.”
Down the hall, I look at Zar’kun, Caalin and my mother. “Alright. Let us explain: after Gendry and his friends turned on our father, they basically dumped all of us into a cell together. Guess they figured it would be funny to lock us in a room with his corpse.”
“But they underestimated how clever we can be when we’re together. We put our heads together and worked out a plan to escape. We managed to pick the locks, snuck our way to Father’s quarters, stole his armor and his personal shuttle and were gone before anyone noticed.”
“The armor, as you guessed, was the key. It was embedded with Sith Alchemy by our grandfather, Darth Tepes. He wore it until his eventually capture by Sevard Salcar. Afterwards, it spend a few years at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant until the sacking, when it was stolen back by the servants of Darth Arctis. It spent a decade being passed around from Sith to Sith, hoping in vain to unlock its secrets.”
“Buts that’s the thing. No ordinary Sith can wear the armor. I mentioned to Jerus when I first saw Stoneheart that the Armor of Tepes can only be warn by a member of the Greshh bloodline. Every other Sith who wears it will die, and their force essence...” I stop, turning to Gavin with a sick look.
“The suit sucks the life out of those it believes unworthy to wear it, or from those the wearer kills. If the armor finds its wearer worthy, it channels that stolen energy into him. That way, even if the wearer is an inch from death, the suit will sustain them indefinitely. So... when we recovered our father’s body, and we sensed the last ember of life still flickering inside him, we thought the armor would help.”
“We took him to the Tomb of Freedon Nadd, the nearest place of Dark Side energy. We hoped to charge the armor with the concentrated power of the tomb and, hopefully, bring our father back from the abyss. But... we misjudged the amount of power the suit demanded.”
“It nearly killed us; draining the life out of both of us. I got the worst of it, but we were both significantly weakened from the ritual. When we woke up, we were in Mandalorian custody, and none of them had any idea what we were talking about when we mentioned the armor. We had assumed that meant we’d failed, and that both the armor and Father’s body were disintegrated. But now we see we were mistaken. The ritual indeed brought him back, but if what you are saying is true, it did not come without a price.”
“It warped him, didn’t it? Turned him into the Stoneheart Killer.” I think for a moment. “After Hayden and I escaped Boz Pity, you messaged her asking her to meet you on Dxun. You wanted her to add her power to the ritual, didn’t you?”
Shrugs. “She loves our father just as much as we did. She’d have given her life for him if you’d not stopped her.... So, I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m glad you stopped her.”
