Ren gazed through the folds of his hood at a small, gray skinned lizard-like creature crawling up the vertical side of a large jagged rock. Ren could feel its simple mind concentrating entirely on the surface in front of it. The small creature—no bigger than his foot—was displaying remarkable physical strength to climb up through Tessar's nearly three times galactic standard gravity. The slow tremble of its muscles reminded him of his own struggles. Like him, the small creature had to work incredibly hard to stay alive. Like him, it had evolved to develop the strength to meet the harsh demands of its existence.

The lizard could not see Ren, he knew. Ren was hiding, perched under an arch of rock. He was still and silent in the arid heat, and shrouded very heavily within the Force. Light bent and shifted around his form, as did heat and many other forms of energy. This was among the more advanced Sith abilities he had begun mastering in the last few years as his powers had begun to truly flourish. He was a ghost on the desert world. He could fool the naked eyes of most people unless they were very close to him, and even advanced droid sensors had difficulty locating him. The technique had saved his life more than a few times since he had attained it. He practiced it now out of habit. The old woman had taught him to develop his abilities at all times and, in her particular style of training, slacking off even a little would mean his death.

Maintaining his cloaking field, Ren held up his wrist computer and aimed its three-dimensional camera at the lizard and took a holographic image for his collection. Then he tapped the screen and initiated a voice recording.

"It is day seventy-four on planet Tessar," he said, hearing his voice crack in the dry air. "No one has attempted to kill me in thirty-four days." He eyed the lizard as he spoke, watching it move ever so slowly higher. "I wonder what that means, master. Have you forgotten about me?"

Ren tapped the screen, ending his recording. The sun was starting to set, which meant movement would be easier. He summoned the Force through his body and rose to his feet on the rough sand. Tessar, like so many other planets his master had deposited him onto to survive, had severe environmental challenges. Ren had to constantly focus the Force in order to counter the massive gravity field that was always pulling downward on every bone and sinew in his body. If he failed, even for a few minutes, he would tumble to the ground hard enough to crack his own bones or, barring that, his heart and lungs would fail under the enormous strain the planet placed on them. He had not failed at this anymore than he had failed to survive in any of the environments that should have killed him. The old woman had thrown onto worlds with temperatures cold enough to freeze the blood in his veins or hot enough to burn him to ash or worlds where the air had less than a tenth of a percent of oxygen in its atmosphere and he had to constantly filter toxic gas from his blood stream. Always he had persevered.

Ren moved silently over the sand, his taught legs carrying him one step at a time. Ren was not a heavily muscled young man as he sometimes supposed his master wished he were. Over his twenty years of life as a Sith apprentice and all its constant physical challenge he had developed his body into a mass of tight, chorded sinew. His training and discipline were written all over his body, from the scars that littered his tanned skin to the neatly shaven stubble on his scalp to the way he moved: lithe, graceful, and perfectly silent.

Physiologically, Ren had been something of a gamble, half-human, half-miralukia. His mother had told him once she had not been certain whether he would develop eyes. He had: a pair with deep green irises flecked with gold. He saw with them, and yet saw as the miralukai see as well. Alwayshis mind sent waves out with the Force and formed a perfect and precise mental image of his surroundings, often seeing things his human eyes missed. It did this even when he slept. That was his gift from the old woman, and one that had helped keep him stay alive.

Ren had only traveled a few meters when the Force whispered to him of danger. Something knew where he was and wanted to kill him. He turned, gazing around the stony desert plain. Jagged rock jutted up in all directions, leaving numerous hiding places for predators, some large enough to hold a small army. Ren was more than accustomed to being attacked by mercenaries. The old woman hired soldiers to kill him on a regular basis. It was part of her training regiment that he should fight to the death with vicious killers. Ren sensed that the killer that was hunting him now though was not of human level intelligence. It was a primitive animal - a powerful one - and it saw Ren as food.

Ren did not quicken his pace, but his hand slipped delicately under his cloak to the hilt of his light saber. The attack would come on very swiftly, he sensed. He reached out with the Force, searching for the creature that was stalking him. He found it in seconds: one of the hulking, ravenous predators he had come to call "Black Bulls." Black bulls were the second largest creatures on the planet. They were fiercely strong and wild, and their thick, inky black bodies were covered in sharp, bony extensions that could rend flesh with alarming ease. The "bull" part of the name Ren had given these creatures came from two particularly long bone extensions that they had on their heads, which seemed to be designed for goring prey and enemies. They reminded Ren of the Thalisian bulls he had had to hunt for food when he was five on the planet Thalmack.

This particular black-bull was very hungry, Ren sensed. It was stalking him by scent from a distance, but it could barely contain its eagerness. Any second, the creature would come bounding over the desert sand. It's thickly muscled body, at least thirty times the mass of Ren's, could move surprisingly fast under the planet's intense gravity field. Ren pitied the creature for that. If it were a lesser predator, he could simply use the Force to propel his body at preternatural speed away from the attack, but this creature could run for hours and track him by scent anywhere. He would likely have no choice but to kill it.

A screech came from behind a rock cluster. It was a horribly loud sound Ren supposed was meant to shock prey into a state of frozen terror. Ren turned calmly to face his attacker, mentally tuning out the nigh eardrum-splitting noise. The monster raced at him over the sand, as Ren had known it would, and made for a great leap when it was within five meters or so.

Ren's hand shot out and he mentally took hold of the creature's neck, gripping it with the Force and stopping all its great momentum dead in the air. He held it still, watching its legs dangle in the air as it struggled desperately for breath, and then suddenly he sent it back, hurling it with the great power at his disposal. Ren, in truth, was only a mediocre duelist with a light saber, at least according to his mother's standards, but his talents in the mental side of the Force were far greater. He walked toward the creature as it snarled and gasped at the air. It did not understand what had happened. Its simple mind could not connect the invisible energy that had strangled it to Ren, who was a tiny creature some distance away. As it stood up and looked at him, he sensed that it still intended to kill him.

Ren moved closer. A warm feeling had come over him that often came when he was locked in mortal combat with another being. It was both intoxicating and immensely focusing at the same time. His mind ceased to wander to all its various facets. Nothing existed except for this creature and himself. He watched in vibrant excitement as the creature began to charge him. This time Ren reached deep into the dark side of the Force and let a torrent of violent blue lightning rip from his right hand. Ren was especially gifted with Force lightning. He could reduce men in full mandalorian battle armor to charred corpses in seconds. The black-bull took the full onslaught of Ren's power and let out a scream even louder than the one it had made when it first attacked. Its massive body stumbled and it came to a skidding halt in the sand just in front of Ren.

Ren held up his hand, his power seeming almost to itch from within him to come out and bring death to this creature. At the same moment, the Force touched his mind to that of the black bull, sending Ren a flood of images unexpectedly. He saw this massive predator back at a nest of sorts in a dark cave, giving meat from its mouth to four very small, underdeveloped versions of itself. It was not a male, as he had originally imagined from its shape, but a female and a mother.

The dark side quelled within Ren and all desire to kill the creature died away. He reached instead for the light side. This was something his mother had taught him long ago - a technique she had ripped from the mind of a jedi before she had killed him - a manner of using the Force to heal. She had never been able to use it well, and only considered it useful in emergencies, when she was injured and there were no organic forms around from which she could use the Force to rip away the life energy and pull it into herself. She had taught it to Ren expecting him to be as inept at it as she, but Ren had developed the skill with prodigious ease. Summoning his will, he sent a wave of healing energy into the creature and he watched as hideous, burning and oozing strips on its black hide smoothed over and became healthy scars.

The beast stood up after a few seconds and looked at him. He was still connected to its simple mind, and still held the image of its children. Concentrating, he filled the creature's mind with an overwhelming urge to return to them. It turned, disregarding Ren, and bounded off over the sand.

A familiar voice came through Ren's wrist computer very suddenly, saying: "That was very un-Sith-like of you."

Every muscle in Ren's body tensed. Knowing she was watching him was enough to align his senses to her presence. He turned and saw the old woman standing atop a mountain perhaps a half-kilometer away. She had kept her distance from him, knowing the range of his senses well. He could only guess at how long she had been shadowing him.

"Hello, master," he said. He did not dare refer to her as 'mother.'

Ren watched as she leaped off the side of the mountain and dropped perhaps two or three hundred meters to a smooth, gentle landing on the desert floor. She began walking toward him, and he toward her.

"Did you feel compassion for that creature?" his mother asked. There was a shift in her cold, calloused tone when she spoke the word 'compassion,' as if it were something ugly and blasphemous.

"I saw no reason to kill it."

"It tried to kill you. It was your competitor for food on this barren world. It was potential food itself."

Ren stared in silence at her. He could attempt to argue around what he had done, but the old woman was too clever and too perceptive to be persuaded of anything other than the truth, and he did not like lying anyhow. Finally he said: "I wanted it to live."

He and his mother had drawn near enough to one another that he could make out the features on her face. Her mouth was pursed shut, though he could see the slightest little twitch in her jaw muscles that gave him the impression of tightly contained fury. The red fabric rapped around the flat skin where her eyes would have been if she were human gave away nothing, but Ren could sense anger from the mind within.

His mother drew one of her twin light sabers rather suddenly and lunged at him. Ren had less than a fraction of a second to react to the blood red, glowing blade as it came at his neck. His reaction was so unconscious that he was almost surprised to see the red blade of his own weapon blocking the attack just before it would have taken his head off.

"Hmmm," the old woman grunted, "still a touch slow."

Her blade whipped out twice more and Ren was only barely able to parry her attacks. She was of course holding back. She could kill him in such a close range fight with ease, he knew. Ren's mother, Magretta Blakthar, was considered by many to be the greatest assassin class Sith alive. While he was beginning to surpass her in terms of his mental command over the Force, he could not begin to match her prowess with a light saber, nor might he ever, he suspected.

She drew back her weapon and faced him. A tense moment passed between them where the only sound Ren could hear was the hum of their two light sabers. Then she said in an almost gentle voice: "Come with me." She turned and began to walk back in the direction from which she had come.

Ren obediently moved up and caught pace with her. "Is it time to leave this planet?" he said.

"Yes," she said.

Ren noticed something strange in her tone - the faintest sliver of emotion. He tried and failed to reach into her mind. He had never been able to penetrate the veil of the old woman's consciousness.

"Where will we go?" Ren asked.

She did not answer, but only walked in silence for a moment. When she did speak she said: "How many people have I sent to kill you on this particular planet?"

"Forty-one," said Ren. In the months of solitude, he kept careful track of all he could if only to keep his intellect working.

"And how many have you killed?"

"Forty-one," he said again.

"Did the dark side rise up inside you when you killed them, as it did with that beast just now?"

"Yes."

A low, angry chuckle escaped her lips. "Yet no matter how many times it does, you can simply let it go?"

The words seemed not to be an actual question. His mother's voice was distant, as if she were trying to ask the universe. Ren said nothing. They had had this discussion many times over the years, and it had often ended in severe beatings, but she did not seem angry this time and that felt ominous.

"Have you sensed why I have come?" she said.

"No. You can still seem to block me from your thoughts."

"Does that surprise you?"

"No one else can - at least no one I have encountered in the last two years or so."

"I have never pitted you against other Sith."

The Force seemed to tighten within Ren at this sentence, as if it were letting him know that there was some strong significance to these words - a connection to his future perhaps. And then he could feel it suddenly: his life was about to change.

"Something has happened," he said.

His mother chuckled. "Perceptive boy."

"You did not come here to take me to another planet for more training."

"No," she said.

"What then?"

"I do not know." The words came out slowly.

Ren stopped walking and turned to face his mother. She stopped as well and faced him. "Are you going to kill me?" he said.

"That would be the correct course of action," she whispered.

"Why?" Ren demanded. "I have passed all your tests!"

"Yes, you have. Your talent - your power - as well as your resourcefulness has always been quite remarkable." The muscles around her lips tightened. "You are not Sith though. You know that as well as I. The dark side flows through you but it never takes root. It is not natural. I have never seen nor heard of anything like it. Truly, I do not know what you are, my son."

Ren could not remember her calling him "my son" in his entire life. He was always either "Ren" or "apprentice." He wondered if this was some respect she was giving him before she took his life.

"There is no room in the heart of a Sith for mercy," she went on. "The life of those such as we is one of the fiercest competition in the universe. Do you think you can contend with those who are able to embrace the dark side? They are treacherous, ruthless, calculating enemies who will seize upon your weakness and use it to kill you. To be able to compete with such foes, you must be willing to sacrifice anything or anyone in an instant." Her lips curled in an almost beast-like expression. "If we had an enemy that managed to take me hostage, would you sacrifice me and press on or would you make concessions in the hope of saving your mother?"

Ren knew the answer that she wanted to hear, but he could not say the words. He had learned long ago it was utterly futile to attempt to lie to her, or even to try to bend the truth. Yet he was just as reluctant to given an honest answer, for it led to conclusions he was not ready to accept. Thus he remained silent.

"Yes, that is what I thought," she said. "You're heart is soft."

"I love you," he said in a quiet, bitter tone.

"I never asked for your love. The Force knows I have done nothing to engender it. How do you know how to love? The word should be alien to you. You were raised on the battlefield. You should only understand power and death."

"I read all the time," he whispered, holding up his wrist computer. "I steal bits of literature and news and personal journals from all the people you have forced me to kill. " He took several slow breaths, his heart pumping hard in his chest, then said: "It's more than that though. I can feel all over the galaxy. I can feel people being born and people dying all the time. I can feel emotion flowing through countless individuals on planets I have never even been to." He gazed into the fabric wrapped around where her eyes would be, knowing that she could see every detail of his expression. He was angry. "You failed to hide the depth and complexity of this universe from me."

Her light saber was at his neck so fast he did not even sense her movement until the blade hummed less than a centimeter from his trachea. He knew it was foolish to provoke her, but then there was nothing to lose. At such close range she could kill him with ease.

Through gritted teeth she hissed: "You are a failed apprentice. I have taught you all of my secrets - taught you what it has taken a lifetime of violence and intrigue to acquire. It is the way of the Sith that I should kill you, unless you are able to kill me."

"Then why are you wasting so much time talking, mother?" he said back, glaring.

She leaned in closer. "Knowing you are about to die, is there anything you would like to say?"

Ren's heart, his muscles, his very soul seemed to tighten in that moment. "No," he whispered.