1 Prologue

In the beginning, it was like the canon...

"There's someone up ahead," whispered Zannah.

"Wait here," said Bane.

She obeyed.

Bane, without looking back, took off on a run.

A minute later, the Sith camp appeared before his eyes.

Six robbers had knocked down on a clearing in the middle of the camp, sharing their prey. The other two were on guard.

The Sith rushed towards the mercenaries, Bane scornfully measured their gaze. The power allowed one quick glance to assess the situation. The guards did not even think to notice it, they watched in full view of the angry disagreeing scolding of their six accomplices fighting over stolen junk.

Bane made the final leap and a devastating whirlwind descended upon the camp. In one gentle movement he grabbed and lit the lightsaber. The monotonous rumble of the scarlet blade ahead of the attacker gave his position a few precious seconds before he appeared. A fleeting warning was enough for the nearest sentry to snatch the phaser, but it did not save him from a dangerously close and deadly blade.

Bane emerged out of nowhere and hit the first victim with a gust of dark wind, effortlessly dividing his body diagonally from shoulder to thigh. Bane's blade effortlessly passed through the protective layers of the armor and crashed into the flesh and bone under the armor.

When the first victim fell, Bane jumped high into the air and rushed toward another enemy. In an instant he overcame the ten meters separating them and simultaneously dodged a sentry's hasty shot. As soon as he jumped on the enemy, he knocked down with two hands. It was a classic shot by Djem So, the fifth, most powerful and aggressive form of light sword combat. The strongest blow divided the poor man's helmet into two equal parts and deeply cut his skull.

The terrible death of the two mercenaries allowed the others to realize what was happening. As soon as Bane turned in their direction, they took up arms and opened heavy blaster fire at the other end of the camp.

Smoothly shifting from an attacking style of Form V to a more defensive style of Form III, Bane effortlessly, and even a little bored, repulsed close energy discharges with a two-handed sword of light.

Rotating his weapon in his right hand, he slowed down the attack, enjoying the despair and horror of five living mercenaries who realized the imminent fact of their own death. At first, having knocked themselves down in a pile in the clearing between their tents, now they had done the only thing that would help them survive. They split up and rushed away.

They ran all over: one of the women to the left, two men to the right; the other three turned and rushed right in the opposite direction to the deadly stranger.

Bane straightened his right hand, opened his palm, and released the wave of explosive energy of the Force into the woman that ran to the right. The wave did not leave a stone on the stone.

The force wave hit the woman in the back, fell face to face in the mud and pressed her in the ground, rubbing her spine in powder and twisted her neck. Her body twitched and froze in eternal rest.

Clutching her left hand in her fist and raising her to heaven, Bane turned to the two men on her right. A dozen rounds of blue lightning bolts swept above his head, clinging to the screaming soldiers, burning them alive with blue fire. In agony, they danced and twitched like puppets on electric strings before smoking bodies fell to the ground.

In the seconds it took to slaughter the mercenaries, the three remaining robbers reached the camp borders. A few meters from the tents, a strip of dense forest began. Heavy branches beckoned and promised shelter and made the people driven by terror move even faster.

Bane watched the escape with lazy indifference, savoring the fear of the mercenaries.

A few steps before freedom, one of the men made a fatal mistake looking over his shoulder to see if the enemy was chasing them. Bane sloppyly threw a lightsaber at him. A rotating blade cut the air, circling the camp in a fraction of a second and rushing back into the palm of his master...

...and at that moment something shuddered in the Great Power. And much has changed...

Suddenly, as the handle touched Bane's palm, new notes were added to the singing of the scarlet blade.

The figure in the shapeless grey hoodie appeared out of nowhere, pointed his right hand with a hooked hilt at Bane, and activated the blade.

A scarlet blade with a hissing split the palm of a new Sith Lord, destroyed the hilt of his sword.

Half of the hilt and half of the palm fell to the ground with a deafening sound, catching the hilt of the sword.

Rising from surprise, Bane flipped back, dodging a possible attack.

Sith ducked down and focused on his new enemy.

"Funny, isn't it?"

A voice from under a deep gray hood, distorted by a vocoder, sounded with subtle intonations.

Zannah, who decided to see the teacher in action, moved decisively to the scene, but then, seeing an unexpected guest, sniffed around the corner of the nearest surviving tent.

She gently sticks her curious face out from behind the corner, watching the action unfold.

Bane, the growl from the pain that had just reached the brain from the limb stump, released a stream of bright blue lightning from his left hand, which the stranger easily intercepted on the blade.

"Whoever called himself Darth's title is just an ignoramus!"

In pronouncing these words, the gray figure moved counterclockwise, slowly approaching the bald big man in a wide arc.

"Who are you?" shouted Bane.

"It doesn't matter."

The gray made some of the blade's rotational movements typical of Juyo.

"What matters is that whoever calls himself the dark lord can't control his sense of danger."

Busy would look and listen carefully, forgetting to breathe.

The expression on the stranger's face was not visible behind the hooded helmet, but the condescending baritone left no doubt that her teacher was being bullied.

Sizzling with anger, Bane turned his pain into the energy of the dark side and, twitching a little awkwardly because of the torn pain in the stump of his hand, emitted a powerful Force Wave.

A moment before, his opponent had fallen to his right knee and pushed a scarlet blade into the ground.

The Wave released by Bane encountered a similar but much weaker gray wave, and, after a moment of delay, went further, sweeping away everything in its path, adding a few fat swabs to the picture of the ruined camp.

The dust rose at the point where the two waves had collided, the dust settled slowly, and the eyes of the approaching Bane saw a broken body lying on the ground in wrinkled armor, visible in the rifts of a grey hoodie.

A slight movement of thought, and the hilt of the enemy's sword lay in the left hand of the Sith lord.

"Wow, the same bend as my sword," thought Darth Bane.

Zannah boldly approached the place of the fight.

The giant's angry eyes in black slipped on a fragile figure.

The bottomless blue eyes turned to the sniffing teacher with pain, and then she broke through, and the girl started asking her questions:

"Was he weak, too? How could he hurt you? Did he hurt you?"

When Bane exploded with anger, he turned his back.

At that moment, the broken body moved a little and the vocoder wheezed:

"Bane."

And three seconds later:

"I know the rule of two."

Something pierced the speaker and, with a groaning, the voice continued:

"The real Rule."

Bane activated the lightsaber and in one jump overcame the distance to the figure and put an angry buzzing tip to the mask of the defeated enemy.

"What did you say about the rule of two?"

I don't know how, but the Lord was hissing the bass.

"All the more real?"

He slightly moved the blade forward, burning the helmet.

Busy clutching her fists, she was standing a few steps away from the teacher. She could clearly see that for a moment there was a mirage behind the teacher's back, which instantly thickened to a figure in a grey hoodie.

In the hand of the figure again appeared the same curved handle.

A scarlet blade was activated and instantly pierced Bane, described in his back the intricate figure.

The dark Lord fell to his knees, staring at the blade coming out of his chest.

The stranger pulled the sword out of the victim's back, circled it, and stood up so that the eyes twisted by death could see him.

The blade fell out of Bane's hand, jumped up and slipped into the winner's left hand.

The broken grey body on the ground slowly melted.

"Illusion," thought the killer should explain to the victim. "Assassin school on Ryloth."

Something shocking came out of the big guy's throat.

Only Bane's power in the Force allowed him to cling to life with his spine cut in three places.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it," the voice from under the hood exuded loud and clear. "You mean Rule of Two."

And the severed head of the former lord was heard:

"Always have Two lightsabers!"

Busy, she's numb. She watched as a stranger cut the head of the teacher into three parts and laid them on a collapsed body, stepped back a few steps and, as if evaluating the resulting composition, bowed his head sideways.

The girl heard strange sounds. The stranger sang some song not loudly! She had never heard anything like it. Words were absorbed in consciousness, attracted, beckoned and seemed an expression of the undeniable truth of this world.

"Here we are. Born to be kings.

We're the princes of the universe.

"Here we belong. Fighting to survive

In a world with the dar powers.

And here we are. We're the princes of the universe.

Here we belong. Fighting for.

We're come to be the rulers of your world.

I am immortal. I have inside me the blood of kings.

I have no rival. No man can be my equal.

Take me to the future of your world."

A stranger interrupted his hymn. Nodded his head, paid tribute to his fallen enemy.

Then he turned to the girl.

The moment the child's gaze with horror looked into the helmet visor passed, and the stranger squatted down.

"Come here, child."

The girl froze for a moment, dared not understand what, and the figure threw the hood of a hoodie and took off the helmet.

Under the helmet was the face of a young boy in his twenties.

Blond hair with a short haircut, light face, framed also by a short beard, brown eyes, mouth, which played an ironic smile.

Having gathered all her strength in her fist, the girl stepped towards her teacher's killer.

"What's your name, child?"

The stranger's voice didn't differ much from the distorted vocoder, but there were sympathetic overtones.

"Zannah."

The girl was beginning to shake up noticeably. She suddenly realized he wasn't interested in the answer. In fact, this stranger knows everything! He can see right through her. He knows very well what her name used to be and what her name is now.

Nodding back, her companion put his hand on her shoulder.

As if a warm wave had passed through her body, sweeping away doubts and burning fear.

"I have several names. You may address me by the name of Janus.

And I will be your teacher."

"May I ask you a question?"

For the first time in a long time, the girl has experienced a state of complete peace combined with some reckless fun.

"Of course."

"What if he had repulsed you?"

Her new teacher smiled and threw away half a hoodie.

There were a few curved handles hanging from the wide belt.

"Then I would have applied the Rule of Three. Or Four. Or Five."