Epilogue
Jedi Sentinel: Cult of Fear
Auspicious Gloam was happier than he’d been in ten thousand years. Maybe longer. Who knew?! All it took was a teenaged girl, gravity, and a pit full of spikes. Had he known, he would’ve done it ages ago.
Gloam had long assumed he was immortal, but he’d never put it to the test. Since leaving the cave, he’d never been hungry, never thirsty, just kept on going, day after day. He’d never really wanted to die, but he hadn’t really cared about living, either.
And then that violent, psychotic girl dropped him into a pit. Wooden pikes pierced his chest, his abdomen, his leg. His body grew cold as it drained of blood and, for a blessed moment, he truly thought he was about to die. He lay there in the pit and imagined the world continuing on without him. Brigg would lose control of the cult and die in obscurity. His faithful would devour each other.
The sun would rise and set, rise and set, rise and set. Life on the island would shuffle down whatever path evolution had planned. Perhaps toy elephants would be the next big thing to spread into every niche, swimming in the surf and gliding through the treetops, burrowing beneath the earth and hunting their own kind in the dark of the jungle.
He realized how little his life had actually mattered, in the grand scheme of things, and a tidal wave of relief crashed over him. It washed the dust of ages from his eyes and revealed a truly delightful truth…
Auspicious Gloam wanted to die.
Would the island ever let him go? Gloam doubted it. He’d laid in that pit and stared up at that ridiculous treehouse, waiting for his vision to dim, but nothing happened. Or rather, all the usual things kept on happening. Even pierced and bloodless and desperate to die, Gloam just kept on living.
Still, the feeling stayed with him. Even as he pulled his deathless body free of the stakes and clawed his way up the earthen walls of the pit, it stayed with him. Relief, peace, happiness. It was strange, but a welcome sort of strange, so much so that Gloam climbed into the treehouse and left his would-be killer a Thank You card before departing for the spaceport. He hadn’t even meant it as a threat!
You see, he’d hatched a plan and part the first was stealing a starship. Well, a spaceship at the least. He found one that was being prepped for departure and slaughtered his way through the crew. He stopped to watch the last of them die. Gloam envied him.
It was a good ship for his purposes, built for sightseeing. Long and chrome, it flew sideways like a fisherman’s knife slicing open the universe’s belly. The bridge was an enormous globe on the port end, with stations for a full crew and a circular balcony above, for the owner and their guests, but Gloam didn’t mind doing things for himself. He’d been a pilot before the people who built this ship had mastered fire. Probably.
He powered up the six primary engines — seemed like overkill, but he’d appreciate having the speed when he needed it — and set an elliptical course for the edge of the system. The ship had a hyperdrive, but Gloam doubted he’d need it. This was strictly a local affair.
The lower deck was all engineering and crew quarters, but the upper deck was a palace. Staterooms and picture windows faced out the front of the ship in a long row. A common room in the center included a staircase up to the domed observation deck. Gloam expected to spend a great deal of time up there.
But for now, he was camped out in the medical bay. The gaping holes in his body weren’t going to sew themselves shut! Gloam knew that from experience; his wounds dried out and stopped bleeding, but they never healed. That meant no bacta and no bandages. Instead, he packed his cavities with gauze and stitched them with thick, black thread.
The results weren’t attractive, but they’d keep everything where it should be. He looked like a pauper’s toy, handed down from one child to the next. In a way, it suited Gloam. He already felt like Fate’s threadbare plaything.
Besides, he wouldn’t need his body for much longer. There was finally a light at the end of this unimaginably long tunnel. Now that Gloam knew he wanted to die, there was only one course of action: destroy the cave beneath Serenity tower, the cave that was keeping him alive. Easier said than done, especially with the army of frothy-mouthed fanatics he’d spent several decades positioning around and above it… and occasionally locking inside it.
What he needed was a weapon, and Parassis just happened to be the home of a planet-killer. The alien wheel that murdered his people and obliterated his city waited for him, out there in the black. He could feel it. What it had made, it could unmake.
All he needed was time and, thanks to the cave, he possessed an inexhaustible supply. He’d find that otherworldly weapon, drag it back to Parassis, and force it to fulfill its original mission. He’d fire an arrow right through the tower he’d built, through the heart of that spiteful cave. He’d reduce them both to a cloud of dust and vapor.
And then, at long last, he could die.
It might sound monstrous, but life would recover, in time, just as it had before. But this time, Auspicious Gloam would not be around to see it. Neither would Daros Brigg, or that Jedi and his maniac friends, or any of the pitiful souls who had clung to Gloam’s robes.
He would find the weapon that killed his world and he would use it to put an end to this new one, put an end to everything.
He could hardly wait.
Written by Daniel Bayn
Cover image by Midjourney
