The Dragon and the Force

by FenrisianBrony


Beskar'gam

“I’ve just got here, and now you’re kicking me out?” Spike asked, a small smirk betraying his true emotions as he folded his arms.

“Oh yeah, casting you out completely, may you never return,” Seugtai shot back, his helmet unable to hide the smile he too wore. “I told you when you first made that armour that it was just a temporary set. My ancestors' traditions dictate that armour has to be able to protect your from your own weapons, since you wield your lightsaber, that leaves you with very few options. Normally I would suggest Beskar, but since the war that’s extremely rare, Canderous reserving it for more...normal suits of armour than what you’ll need.”

“Lucky me,” Spike deadpanned. “What about you? What plans has Canderous got for you?”

“Searching the Outer Rim,” Seugtai replied simply. “When Revan beat us, he hid Mandalore’s mask, but there’s only so many places it could be, he only left his forces for three days after Malachor V before departing. Anything within a day and a half of Malachor, that’s our search area.”

“Unless he handed it off to someone who took it further,” Spike pointed out.

“Unless he handed it off to someone who took it further,” Seugtai conceded. “Regardless, Canderous wants us to start the search, and as my Alore I obey. When you return, you will join us, or be welcomed to the Clan of the new Mandalore, whichever one happens first.”

Spike considered that for a moment. On one hand, he felt like he was abandoning the Mandalorians just moments after they had taken him in, having only arrived on Ordo a few weeks earlier, and yet on the other hand, Spike was more than old enough to forge his own path in the galaxy, not some newly found child warrior still being shown the ways of the Mandalorian. Creating his armour was the amongst the last of the steps to finish on his path forward, even his grasp on language growing rapidly now he was more readily exposed to it. Nor was he about to question Seugtai’s traditions, the old Mandalorian having taken him in, the least Spike could do was respect his wishes in this.”

“Canderous is ok with my departure?” Spike asked.

“Not particularly,” the voice caused Spike to turn, Canderous approaching them both, his face obscured behind a neo-crusaders helmet. “If it were up to me entirely, every warrior would be beginning the search now.”

“You are the Alore, it is up to you,” Spike pointed out.

“You still have a long way to go before you understand what being in command of Mandalorian’s truly means,” Canderous laughed. “I may be in charge but nobody truly ‘rules’ anyone else save the Mandalore. I just make the most sensible suggestions that those beneath me wish to follow, and since when have Mandalorians needed to be told what makes sense?"

“Canderous has agreed on my behalf,” Seugtai added. “He knows my traditions are declining, he has agreed that we can spare you to keep them alive for at least another generation. Be quick though, our Alore is right, an extra pair of eyes could make all the difference.”

“I will return when I can,” Spike bowed his head towards Canderous. “My thanks, Alore.”

“Don’t make me regret this by doing anything foolish,” Canderous warned, before turning, Seugtai falling in beside him, the two warriors already deep in conversation as they left Spike by the edge of Harmony.

“So, ideas?” Moonstone asked, appearing at the top of the boarding ramp.

“A few. We’ll break orbit first, I need to plan our jumps and path from there.”

In short order, Harmony had lifted off from the outskirts of the village, breaking orbit from Ordo and slowly heading for the systems jump point, its engines idling as Spike moved to the chart room, a holographic galaxy map springing up as he entered. It had been a while since he had come in here now he thought about it, the room staffed by a dedicated crew during the wars. Now it was just Spike however, any detailed planning would have to be done from here, by Spike alone.

“Feels weird to be completely alone, doesn’t it?” Moonstone appeared once more. “Well, as alone as we can be.”

“It has been a while,” Spike admitted. “We don’t exactly have the best track record when alone either. Last time was after killing Desolation, I’m not intending to become a gladiator again.”

“Well what are we intending then? There’s plenty of places you can find materials needed for new armour, but I have a feeling you want to do more than just ‘make do’.”

“I do. Seugtai has placed his traditions on me, I want to do them proud, but if I’m going to be carrying them forward, I’m going to add my own legacy to them. I just need to figure out exactly what that’s going to mean.”

Spike lapsed into silence as he looked at the galaxy map, occasionally zooming in on a specific part with a gesture, looking at individual systems or planets for a while before banishing them and moving on. Dozens of planets would make sense to start, any mining worlds that could provide Ultrachrome or Songsteel, but none that had a link to Spike himself. Those worlds he did have a greater link to, Kashyyyk springing to mind instantly, lacked the resources required for the main point of the journey. 

Then, a thought came to Spike, casting his mind back further than he had in a long time, before Revan and Malak, before the Mandalorian Wars, to the days of the Great Hunt when the Terentatek had stalked the surface of a hundred worlds. Spike had fought dozens of such creatures alongside Nexu Clan when the majority of them were still alive. He had fought close to half a dozen more alone after the Great Hunt was mostly put to an end, the death toll amongst the Order considered too grave for most to continue. Of all those hunts, few had affected Spike as much as his final one, when Moonstone had at last returned to him, and on a planet that held a deep meaning to the Order he had once called his own.

“Tython?” Moonstone sounded surprised as the planet enlarged. “It’s lost, the hyperlanes collapsed after the Great Hunt ended.”

“It will take time to find it again,” Spike agreed. “If we were trying to rebuild the hyperlanes then that time would take even longer, but as it is...”

He trailed off, his mind already running through possible outcomes of his plan, reasonings and chances for success. Tython was the ancestral homeworld of the Jedi order, more than that, it was the home of the Je'daii, those who came before either the Jedi or the Sith, some of the first recorded Force Users in the galaxy. It had been their main point of operations in the galaxy before they had moved to Ossus before finally moving to Coruscant itself, and yet Tython had always remained a vital part of the Jedi Orders history. At least until the Great Sith War. With the destruction of the Cron Cluster and the ruination of Ossus, the Jedi had relocated much of their workings to the capital of the Republic itself, and when the war had come to an end, the force rich world of Tython had become a breeding ground for the force-hungry Terentatek. The hunts on the world had been long, Spike killing the last remaining creatures on the planet himself, but the damage of such an outpouring of creatures had damaged the reality of space itself. The Hyperlanes that connected the deep core world to the wider galaxy had collapsed, and so far, none had tried to re-establish them, cutting the planet off from the wider galaxy.

“An outcast,” Spike chuckled to himself. “It sounds fitting if you ask me.”

“You always were melodramatic,” Moonstone laughed. “Best get a course plotted then, we have a long way to go.”

***

Lightning lashed the ship as Spike fought with the controls of Harmony, the droid pilot beeping in protest as it attempted to assert some level of control over the craft. All around them, reality and hyperspace seemed to blend together, every calculation at this speed needing to be perfect to avoid smashing into a comet at hyper-luminal speeds. There was a reason hyperlane scouts were considered mavericks.

“Just a few...more...seconds,” Spike grunted, fighting with the controls as a timer counter down.

As it hit zero, a screeching sound was heard through the ship, cut short as Spike wrenched a lever back towards him, the ship slowing with a jarring lurch as they were spat out of hyperspace. Klaxons sounded as automated damage repair systems kicked in, Spike allowing the droid brain some control once more as he looked at the scanner.

“We made it,” he breathed softly, his eyes darting between the scanners and the viewport, a vast continental world looming before them, Spike’s heart stopping for a moment as the memories washed over him. Moonstone returning, the Great Hunt, back when life and the Jedi Order had all been so simple. There was good, there was evil, black and white, Spike knew where he stood. Then grey had appeared. Spike hated grey. 

“Chart a course for Vur Tepe,” Spike ordered, the droid beeping its ascent to the order, the ship beginning to move towards the planet. 

For being abandoned for decades, the temples that loomed out of the clouds were in remarkable shape, their stone walls covered in overgrown trees, but each one fully intact, their stonework unblemished by age, the ancients knew how to make something to last. 

Rain lashed Harmony as she descended through the clouds, heading for a vast mountain range Even from this distance, Spike could ready see the great pyramidal ship, the Tho Yor. The ship still hung just above the tallest mountain peak, lacking discernible entrances, sensors already wailing as they returned a hundred impossible false positives and paradoxical readings from the great ship. No one knew where they had come from, who had built them, even how the early settlers of Tython had travelled in them was a mystery, the lack of doors making such a strange craft indeed.

“Are we here to find the history of the Jedi, or take a step on the path of the Mandalorians?” Moonstone teased, breaking Spike out of his rumination.

“The latter, of course,” Spike answered, taking his seat once more. “We’ll be there shortly, let's just hope everything works.”

It took Harmony an hour to reach the landing pad, and a further thirty minutes to negotiate the landing as gale force winds slammed into the ship. More than once Spike had to break off the descent, starting again so as to avoid slamming into the walls of the temple of Vur Tepe, but eventually, they were down, Spike and Moonstone battling through the elements that lashed at them as the moved from the ship to the temples main entrance, the doors sealed, but at Spike’s approach, machinery long dormant spurred into life, the doors screeching as they opened, plants stuck to them now dislodged, permitting Spike inside. 

Were he on Coruscant, alarms would now be sounding at the presence of an unauthorised intruder, Spike ruminating as he walked through the barely familiar halls. Tython being long abandoned had its perks, there was no one to update the records of the Jedi who entered. Before today, Spike had only been to Vur Tepe once, but that was enough, reaching the central complex that all paths in the temple led to, pushing the door open to be met by a physical wall of heat blowing up from the planet's core. The ancient forge’s fire was still lit, and no wonder, Spike approached the centre of the room, pushing aside the cover of the forge, laying his eyes upon the caldera of an active volcano. 

“You’ve never done this before,” Moonstone pointed out as Spike began stripping his armour off, piece by piece and laying it to one side.

“I’ve worked a forge before,” Spike shrugged. “Can’t be that much different.”

“Not this forge. Not here. Not for this purpose. Can you do it?”

“Lets find out.”

Spike was now stripped down to just a belt around his hips, his armour piled neatly beside him, his Lightsaber holding pride of place beside his helmet. Emptying his mind, Spike allowed his body to relax, his magic melting away as he instead reached into the force.

It was an odd sensation, Spike growing so used to the sensation of magic on its own or a mixture of his own magic and the living force that he had almost forgotten what it felt like.  For a time, Spike simply stood, unmoving, barely breathing, his situation washing over him.

Jedi. Mandalorian. The Force. The Resol'nare. Two schools of thought. Two ways of life. Conflicting. Intertwining. Never Merging. Forced Together. One could not exist without the other. One could not exist with the other.

Spike’s hand shot out unbidden, a simple hammer flying from its moorings on the wall. The air whipped around Spike as he brought the hammer up in a swinging arc, the forge seeming to come alive as his force poured into it, in control of Spike as much as he was in control of it. 

Mandalorian

The hammer slammed into a durasteel bar that had appeared on the forge, Spike not sure where it had come from, the white hot metal bending beneath his touch. His body was on auto-pilot now, it knew what it wanted to do, it knew what Spike needed. Nothing could stop it now. This was different from when Moonstone or Desolation had taken over his body, he was less a passenger and more a completely separate observer, and yet he still felt his arm come up once more, slamming down into the metal bar for a second time.

Jedi

Again and again his body worked, ceaselessly striking the metal into its new shape. Each strike was met with a near blinding flash, each flash heralding more memories as here, alone on the ancient homeworld of the Jedi order he had once been a part of, forging the arms and armour of the Mandalorians he now sought to be one of, his mind finally went to war with itself, settling in differences on the face of the metal, Spike pouring everything he had into his creation.

Clan Ordo

Hammer rise. Hammer fall.

Nexu Clan

Hammer rise. Hammer fall

Ba'jur bal beskar'gam

Hammer rise. Hammer fall

There is no emotion, there is peace

Hammer rise. Hammer fall

Ara'nov, aliit,

Hammer rise. Hammer fall

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge

Hammer rise. Hammer fall

Mando'a bal Mand'alor

Hammer rise. Hammer fall

There is no passion, there is serenity

Hammer rise. Hammer fall

An vencuyan mhi.

There is no chaos, there is harmony

Hammer rise. Hammer fall

There is no death, there is the Force

Spike raised his hammer for the final time, bringing it down as a light brighter than all that had come before it engulfed Spike, pushing him from his body entirely. The forge, the blade, the armour, all were forgotten as Spike tumbled through his own mind.

“Awaken.”

The word brought Spike clarity, brought his mind into focus, his out of control tumble stopping in an instant, Spike now looking out at an endless grey environment, floating alone. 

“Not alone.”

Spike turned, though he felt no movement, the horizon utterly identical, Spike utterly alone.

A figure appeared in front of Spike. They did not walk, they did not move, they just were there, Spike struggling to remember that they weren’t always there.

No words were said, even as Spike wanted to speak. There were no voices here, Spike knew that to be true, despite the fact he had heard a voice not moments ago. This was not a place of the living, nor a place of the dead. This was not even a place of magic, and yet it would forever be a part of him, the Living Force now surrounding him.

The figure before Spike was Spike, or perhaps Spike was the figure, reality blurring, Spike seeing the other as if he was looking directly at it, both images held in his mind. Which was real, which was the image?

On one side was the Jedi, Spike clad in the flowing armoured robes of a Jedi Master, both his lightsabers upon his hips, a sense of serene calm written across his face. His body was unmarked by scars, untroubled by injuries.

On the other was the Mandalorian, battered armour covering his form, determination writ across his entire body, the anger of a soldier flashing behind his eyes. Pistols lay at his hips, a huge two handed axe across his back, his wings ragged but outstretched. 

Spike knew which one he had preferred once, which one part of him still preferred, the peace of the Jedi clear for any to see.

Reality blinked.

When it stabilised once more, the Mandalorian was unchanged, the self-same expression and pose still evidenced across his form, across Spike’s form, the feeling of looking at yourself as if through a mirror but not feeling it fully sending Spike’s mind spinning.

The Jedi was changed. Hatred written across Spike’s face now, his robes now jet black, the armour well used and more prevalent. Once again, the figures moved without ever seeming to change, the lightsabers both erupting into light, but these were no white and purple blades, crimson light dancing off Spike, Jedi no longer, now standing as Sith.

Peace is a lie. There is only Passion

Emotion, yet peace

Through Passion I gain Strength

Ignorance, yet knowledge

Through Strength I gain Power

Passion, yet serenity

Through Power I gain Victory

Chaos, yet harmony

Through Victory my chains are Broken

Death, yet the Force

The Force shall free me

“No!”

Spike’s voice roared out as the illusion shattered, Spike back in his body, the hammer still in his hand. He didn’t know how much time had passed, a pile of armour held in the air beside him. Looking down, an axe rested on the anvil, almost finished.

“No!” Spike roared again, raising the hammer for what would be the final times.

He would not have this, no Sith or Jedi, no choice between the two and the way of the Mandalorian. For once, Spike would make his own choices, for once Spike would be his own person, he would form his own tradition in the footsteps of Seugtai’s.

“There may be bitterness, but there is kindness!”

Slam, crack.

“There may be betrayal, but there is loyalty!”

Slam, crack.

“There may be deception, but there is honesty!”

Slam, crack.

“There may be greed, but there is generosity!”

Slam, crack.

“There may be sadness, but there is laughter!”

Slam, crack.

“When all five elements are united, magic will burn bright!”

Slam, crack.

“And Harmony will bring peace throughout life!”

As Spike roared the last line, his hammer hit the anvil, the tool shattering in an explosion of energy that sent Spike sprawling across the room. The wind that had been whipped up since he had started died instantly, the axe and the armour glowing softly as Spike got back to his feet, his eyes taking in every detail of the new armour and weapon.

Both were crafted from the same dark durasteel, yet both glowed with the inward light common amongst force imbued weapons. The axe mirrored Seugtai’s own weapon, overlapping blades forming the fan crest that normally would have been made from the bone of the long extinct Mythosaur. The armour was similar to Spike’s original design, and yet was in a different class from that armour. Raised pieces on the gauntlets housed pairs of heavy looking blasters. Scales that looked as though Spike had plucked them from his own body covered the gaps where the plates would leave him exposed. The helmet, elongated and still possessing the T-Visor so linked to Mandalorian culture now had a built up mouth piece, Spike knowing with the surety of the armours creator that such would allow him to once again breath fire without fear of damaging his own armour, despite not remembering forging the plate at all. 

He didn’t remember anything, and yet he knew everything. The ancient techniques of imbuing weapons with the force was strongly connected to Vur Tepe, the techniques first devised in these very walls, in this very forge. The metal was stronger now than any mundane forge could hope to make, a little of Spike held within each piece. Blasters would not sully them, armour would not stop the fall of his blade, even his own lightsaber would not slice through the armour, every bit as strong as the Beskar Ore Seugtai had wished to be available. 

Moonstone appeared beside Spike, looking as confused as Spike himself was, and yet she didn’t speak. There were no more words for this place, nothing more to say. Whatever power Tython had held, it was gone now, just an abandoned temple on a near forgotten world. And yet, despite that, Spike felt more connection to Tython than he had ever thought possible, more connection to the Force than he ever remembered. Clarity filled his mind as he donned the armour, carrying his old plates back to Harmony in silence. 

The force was not the Jedi, the Jedi were not the Sith, and Spike was neither of these things, and yet he would always be part of them. He could run, he could turn exile like Meetra Surik had done before him, cut off from the force as if it were simply something you could forget. He could no more forget the force than he could tear off his own wings and still hope to fly. Having the force did not make a Jedi, having the force did not make a Sith. Spike was one with the force, the force was one with Spike, and though he had told himself the self-same words numerous times before and truly meant them, only now did he feel them fully.

On the bridge of Harmony, clad in new armour forged from the techniques of the Jedi in the visage of the Mandalorian clans, Spike knew who he was. He did not need labels for it, he did not need the creed of the Jedi to know himself or the code of the Mandalorians to anchor himself to reality. Freed from his own shackles, Spike knew his path was now his own, one that would lead him in service of an old enemy and now friend in the Mandalorian clans, and yet that path was his own. He could leave it, he could join it. It was his alone and no other could make him step from it.

“I am Spike,” he breathed softly. “I am a dragon. I am free.”