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This week we’re about to enterprise again to the early days of the Clone Wars in Mike Chen’s Star Wars: Brotherhood, however at all times in movement, the long run is—and there’s at all times extra Star Wars fiction to tease. Up subsequent is Shadows of the Sith from Adam Christopher, and io9 has a glance inside… and a take a look at the e-book’s mysterious villain.
Set between the occasions of Return of the Jedi and The Pressure Awakens—practically 20 years after the previous, in reality—Shadow of the Sith sees Jedi Grasp Luke Skywalker crew up along with his outdated Insurgent ally, Lando Calrissian, because the pair crew as much as examine some dire rumors. Not solely has Lando heard rumblings of a returned Sith menace, mendacity in wait on the planet Exegol, his younger daughter has been kidnapped—and the one lead he’s obtained has despatched him into the trail of Ochi of Bestoon, a Sith murderer on his personal private mission to seek out a toddler who will change the galaxy perpetually…
Suffice to say, there’s a lot of Sith-y issues happening in Shadow of the Sith (it’s within the title, actually). However whereas Luke and Lando discover themselves on the path of The Rise of Skywalker’s mysterious murderer, Ochi is just not the one Sith agent that the novel goes to be coping with. There Is One other, as Star Wars so typically likes, searching them in flip, and io9 has your first take a look at this secretive adversary, within the type of an unique look contained in the Barnes & Noble unique model of the novel, together with a poster of this new enemy:
Who is that this unusual, lightsaber-wielding determine? We don’t know for certain but, however io9 can verify that should you’ve been studying the canon Star Wars novels, the true identification of this masked determine will be a well-recognized face to you. And whilst you ponder on that, you’ll be able to learn an excerpt from Shadows of the Sith beneath, as this mysterious girl receives a dire message from her darkish masters…
THE SEPULCHRE, COORDINATES UNKNOWN
NOW
One thing strikes within the darkness—a shadow, forged lengthy, crawling by the abyssal night time. The shadow is a factor aside: neither alive nor useless.
It’s a relic. It’s an . . . echo. A presence from an older time, a malignancy that in some way survived, in some way discovered a method.
Discovered a path.
She will see it now. Black and blacker nonetheless, transferring, at all times transferring. An intelligence, sure. A thoughts, however one with out type or substance.
However right here—current—nonetheless.
She closes her eyes. It makes no distinction. There’s nothing to see however a gulf, a nothing, the place the shadow lives.
The place the shadow thrives.
Within the darkness, within the perpetually night time inside her head.
And the void is just not silent. It’s something however. It’s a cacophony, a sound so loud it lights up each nerve fiber of her complete being, regardless that she is aware of there may be nothing to listen to, bodily.
It’s the sound of ache. The sound of dying. The sound of a thousand thousand thousand souls crying out in sorrow and agony earlier than they’re snuffed out instantly. Brothers and sisters. Little kids. Moms and dads. Podlings, branchlings, kithkin. Sporechilds and denmothers; house fathers and their brethren, and their gene-clusters and their shoots. Spawn, and offspring. Youngsters.
Total generations of the residing, consumed, their dying cries absorbed and left to replicate perpetually, trapped inside a darkish vessel crafted centuries in the past by an influence unusual, inhuman.
By a darkness.
By a shadow, forged lengthy.
And there may be one other sound. A voice, from the traditional previous. It’s far distant, a name echoing throughout an enormous valley of house and time.
The voice is horrible.
The voice is as acquainted as her personal.
SOON.
She opens her golden eyes. The room is vibrant and, mercifully, silent. Her ears ring like a bell, the sudden absence of screams nearly as painful, the echo of the voice nonetheless reverberating in her thoughts.
Slowly, slowly, she remembers the place she is. As she lies on the ground and blinks the world into existence round her, she pulls up a hand and touches her face. It’s heat, and moist, the blood on her fingertips the brilliant blue of the Pantoran sky.
The place is lit by flickering flame, and the flickering flame lights the plinth of meteoric iron, and beside the plinth lies the masks product of the identical starstuff. The masks faces away from her. It rocks, gently, prefer it has simply been thrown.
She stares behind it, the curve of nothing, of darkness, of deep shadow.
And he or she hears the voice once more.
SOON.
SOON.
She closes her eyes, and she or he sleeps, exchanging one nightmare for one more, at midnight, within the useless of house. She wakes to a different sound, one technological, trendy. She lifts herself from her nest, ignoring the throbbing in her head, the ache of her limbs.
As a result of she will be able to’t maintain them ready. They’re affected person, sure. Infuriatingly so.
However they’re additionally fast to anger, and if there may be one factor she dares not do, it’s make them indignant.
She agreed to assist them. They agreed to point out her the best way.
That is the way it was.
And he or she would do nothing to jeopardize that.
Standing, she prompts the communicator, and her nest is lit within the sudden electrical blue of a hologram. The picture shimmers and pulses, tinged with the identical static and interference that protects the caller’s level of origin.
She kneels earlier than the determine, cloaked in darkness, the hood barely concealing a face that’s wrapped tightly in heavy black bandages, within the method all cultists of the Sith Everlasting disguise their options.
She doesn’t know why. She doesn’t care.
However she does obey.
“What’s thy bidding, my Grasp,” she intones, repeating the litany that echoed by time just like the screams contained in the masks she knew she must placed on once more, quickly.
The looming determine speaks, and she or he listens, and she or he wonders whether or not this would be the final time or whether or not they are going to ever honor their promise.
Maybe sooner or later, they are going to ask an excessive amount of.
You’ll be capable to discover out extra when Star Wars: Shadow of the Sith hits cabinets on June 28, 2022.
Need extra io9 information? Try when to count on the newest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on movie and TV, and all the things it’s worthwhile to find out about Home of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Energy.
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