Red and blue lightsabers collided and locked as the enemy Jedi attempted to pin Revan in place, only to slide off again as Revan relaxed and slid around her opponent like a river. Her second saber swung down aiming to remove the Jedi's kneecaps, but missed as the Jedi lightly hopped over the glowing blade – a far cry from the dramatic flips and leaps her opponent had been using earlier in their duel.
"No acrobatics that time. Are you getting tired, Jedi?" Revan questioned as she pressed the attack. But unfortunately the Jedi's defence was still solid, even if it had shifted to a more economical style.
"You can only maintain your corrupted Force techniques so long. Even if you hide it, The Dark Side will always struggle against the Light and the Goddess." Lymrase argued back, which almost made Revan openly scoff.
She was starting to understand why the Jedi she had come across so far had seemed so confident sending only a single Knight after her, and then why a single Master – one that didn't specialize in combat even – felt she would be enough to handle a Sith Lady.
Revan was willing to bet that this Galaxy had never had a proper Dark Side sect. Or at least not one that survived long enough to pass down its teachings. If the Jedi here really were more militant than the ones she was familiar with and actively hunted down and destroyed any Force user that didn't follow their tradition, as they seemed to be so far, then Revan supposed the 'strongest' Sith would be fallen Jedi simply brute forcing their techniques in ways that harmed the user for more immediate power.
It probably never occurred to Lymrase that a Sith could use the Force for long without that damage, let alone using both 'Sides' like Revan did that made her able to stand against several of the greatest Masters in her own Galaxy for a decent length of time, and certainly not that Revan could outlast a 'Master' like herself.
Lymrase probably thought that if she was tiring then Revan had to be exhausted and was just masking the signs.
"Perhaps you are just out of shape from watching your pirate friends attack innocents." Revan stated as she dodged a counter strike.
"There are no innocents when they are working with a Sith." Lymrase reiterated her earlier opinion. "Not when it comes to removing the greatest evil in the Galaxy."
Revan's attacks picked up speed, her two sabers probing every presented weakness the Jedi Master presented and forcing her entirely on the defensive. "The 'Greatest Evil'? You are either willfully ignorant or just blind. You've attacked my Empire, you've seen the people just living their lives until you attacked for simply being under my banner while ignoring the Reapers destroying entire planets. And you have the gall to judge me worse than them?"
"Y-you would corrupt the Force itself!" Lymrase gasped as a lightsaber narrowly missed removing one of her arms. "Once you are destroyed the Order will deal with the Reapers."
Revan batted away a feint and dodged a sneakily positioned object meant to hit her from behind by a Biotic Pull. "The Reapers have existed millions of years longer than your Order. You underestimate the scope of the problem because you refuse to acknowledge you were wrong. Let me show you exactly what you are up against." The Sith suddenly lashed out and smashed the Asari Jedi's saber aside. Instead of using the opening to kill her opponent, Revan dropped one of her lightsabers to grab the Asari by her head – using the physical connection to amplify the telepathic connection she used to force several memories into the Jedi's mind.
Memories of reports about the first appearance of the Reapers her scouts had sent back mixed with some of Revan's own where she had used Farsight to observe the Reaper's tactics directly. Of Baterian planets being razed while sentients of all species were gathered up by the Machine's slaves. Of how the people with sufficient biomass were impaled on 'dragon teeth' devices to be slowly converted into Husks, alive or dead, and younglings were separated out and shoved into the same pods the Collectors had used on the captured human colonists. Revan even included memories of how those pods would be used to melt their captives into a biological slurry to be used in other ways by the Reapers.
Lymrase instinctively fought against the flow of information and while Revan could have fought to keep the connection going, she didn't want to risk damaging her potential information source and allowed herself to be pushed back.
"Still think the Sith are the greater evil, Jedi?"
Instead of answering, Lymrase fell back into a defensive stance and visibly tried to recover. Revan wasn't going to give her the chance, surging forward and attacking from various angles so the Jedi couldn't fully settle long enough to center herself while keeping up her mental attacks.
"You say your Order will deal with the Reapers? How? With what army? What navy?" Visions of Palavan burning while battered Turian fleets tried to drive off the Reapers slipped past Lymrase's defenses. "The Citadel races are divided, and the Asari on their own don't have the power or the numbers."
"We have the Force." Came the expected reply, but Revan could tell her enemy was shaken by what she had been shown. Her arms trembled every time she blocked one of the Empress's attacks. "We have the Goddess."
"You have dogma and false promises." Revan said bluntly. "That's why your Order is so determined to fight me. Because I am Sith. Because it is easier to focus on a known enemy of old than admit they are unprepared to fight the actual threat to the Galaxy. One that you have no chance of defeating like you usually operate, as blades in the dark."
Anger, hot and searing, flickered in Lymrase's mind. Revan was once again pushed back, but this time it was because Lymrase had touched on the more physical side of the Force. Or in other words, the Dark Side.
"We are the Swords of Light! The protectors of the galaxy–"
"Then why are you here fighting miners and civilians when there is a threat to the galaxy out there?" Revan interrupted.
"Y-you were building a weapon. Corrupting a Saint Stone and creating something you would use against us…"
"That was what drew you to this planet. But you were raiding my Empire well before that. And even if I was, so what? The weapons I create, I use to destroy the Reapers. Out in the open, instead of sneaking around like the bandits your Order seems to prefer."
Lymrase went on the attack, her earlier precision and grace absent as she attempted to simply overpower the Sith. "Lies! We hunt your kind wherever they hide, dig you out of every wretched corner. All to keep you from twisting the teaching left to us!"
Revan weathered the attack even as she redoubled her mental assault. Lymrase certainly tried to shield her mind but the Sith was too skilled, too practiced at slipping past defences of Masters far more used to mental combat than a 'Master' that may have faced an Acolyte at one point – at best.
More visions assaulted the Jedi – the Collector base and what the Reapers had twisted the Protheans into. Seeker swarms darkening cities while Husks dragged struggling sentients out into the streets. Starships racing to flee the main bodies of the Reapers in orbit and being picked off by the tentacled machines.
And then the tone changed.
Images of Revan fighting alongside Commander Shepard in the heart of the Omega 4 Relay base. The Empire's ships destroying the Reapers over Palavan. Imperial soldiers fighting slavers, pirates, and even small incursions of Collectors on planets throughout the Terminus Systems. A bombardment of visions and images of the Sith Empire fighting against the general scum of the galaxy as well as the invaders and not only just fighting, but winning as well.
Revan felt a massive crack in Lymrase's fraying self control when Revan included the raid the Jedi's pirate fleet had initiated, followed by an older vision of a Reaper scout being destroyed using similar tactics as her Battlegroup did over this planet. Neatly comparing the two in a way the Asari did not appreciate.
All she needed to do was give the Jedi just one more push.
"This is what the Sith Empire, my Empire, has accomplished against the Reapers. What has your Order done besides help them and hide in the dark, hoping the monsters will pass them by?" She pressed, subtly using the Force to guide the Jedi's reactions. Encouraging and enforcing her doubts that appeared showing how outmatched the Turians had been at their homeworld, suppressing ingrained justifications, and reinforcing certain lines of thought.
It wasn't outright mind control – even a distracted Jedi's mind was too powerful to succumb to such in such a short amount of time – but it was enough for Revan to shape the directions her opponent's thoughts would go, even once she retreated fully from the Jedi's mind. And ironically this sort of manipulation was even more effective on zealots like Lymrase seemed to be simply because once their most common justifications were denied to them, there was nothing for them to fall back on that would alert them to their altered mental state. And eventually the new thought patterns that emerged would be just as strong or even stronger than the originals.
Lymrase made one final attack, a single overhead slash with everything she had behind it, that Revan caught between her own blades.
The two briefly struggled as the Jedi Master tried to physically overpower Revan, but it was quickly apparent in her compromised mental state the Sith Empress could easily hold her off.
"The Order has a plan to deal with the Reapers. They HAVE to." Lymrase whispered quietly, desperately. "Otherwise we would have been…"
"Been indirectly working with the Reapers to destroy the only real obstacle to their victory because your Order couldn't admit they failed to prepare?" Revan finished bluntly. "Then why have they not announced it? Why are they sneaking through shadows instead of meeting the Reapers' armies on the battlefield?
"It's simple, they don't have a plan. They don't have the numbers to change the tide coming for them. All they can do is pretend while the end comes for them."
The Asari's face crumpled and she disengaged a few feet back.
"That-that can't be true."
"Search your feelings. Why else would you be sent to act as a pirate when the smarter – better – path is to unify against a common threat?" Revan pressed. "It's because they have given up. But just because they did, does not mean you have to."
Revan put away one of her lightsabers and held out a hand.
"Join me." The Empress offered. "And together we will fight to actually save this galaxy instead of following old grudges simply to soothe the egos of a few sentients that failed to prepare for this threat while they wait for destruction."
The Sith's offer hung in the resulting silence for a few moments before Lymrase Jatora, Jedi Master…
…deactivated her lightsaber and bowed her head in submission.
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