Anakin Skywalker infamously went to the dark side in “Star Wars” lore, but he’s not the only Jedi to take that particular path.
In author Delilah S. Dawson’s new book “Star Wars: Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade” (out Tuesday), a young Jedi apprentice named Iskat Akaris generally feels out of place among her peers and masters. When she gets thrown into battle during the Clone Wars, however, she is one with the Force like never before.
When Order 66 comes down from the evil Palpatine to eliminate all Jedi in the galaxy, she survives the mass homicide and, maybe even more surprisingly, begins a new life as one of the Inquisitors, a lightsaber-wielding group who carries out the Empire’s murderous missions. (They played a key role in the recent Disney+ series “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and USA TODAY has an exclusive book excerpt where Iskat meets the Grand Inquisitor for the first time.)
Set during the latter half of George Lucas’ prequel trilogy and beyond, “Red Blade” chronicles an era of “Star Wars” that’s “seeing a lot of change in a short amount of time,” Dawson says. “There’s so much possibility for personal change and growth, and for characters to explore who they truly are, even when that means they venture down a darker path.”
While the character of Iskat first appeared in Marvel’s “Darth Vader” comic books as an Inquisitor, Dawson wanted to explore her beginnings and “what would make a good-hearted, honest, earnest Jedi turn to the dark side and eventually accept the task of hunting down her fellow Jedi.”
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The author adds that Iskat’s journey “shares some vectors” with Anakin’s transformation into Vader as well as other characters like Ahsoka Tano, who pushed back against the Jedi’s handling of the Clone Wars.
“It’s hard to imagine being raised to become a diplomat or teacher and suddenly being forced into the chaotic front lines of war with little training, no grief counseling and no input into your own future,” says Dawson, who also drew on her own experience “as a neurodivergent person who has always had a hard time finding my place, thus giving Iskat a sense of profound otherness.”
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And in writing about Iskat and her dissatisfaction with the Jedi Order, Dawson says she “definitely felt shades of what I’m seeing online from generations younger than mine – that they have little hope for the future and little say in how their world can be saved. Rebellion feels like a natural eventuality. Of course, for Iskat, rebellion against the Jedi Order involves a darker turn. She can’t imagine leaving, and so she is given a choice: Join the Inquisitorius or die.”
Read an excerpt from “Star Wars: Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade” below:
“Where are you taking me?” Iskat called, but she knew there would be no answer.
The ship took off and jumped into hyperspace, and Iskat had nothing else to do but wait. She realized that she could probably use the Force to bust the door open, but she also knew full well that this wasn’t a situation she could fight her way out of. She’d chosen this, whatever it was, and perhaps her current treatment didn’t suggest respect or dignity, but she had to have faith that whoever had spared her from certain death would live up to their part of the bargain. The Jedi had never promised answers, only peace. The cloaked figure in the holoprojector had offered both answers and freedom, the two things Iskat Akaris wanted most.
She sat on the bench and closed her eyes. Meditation was supposed to help her better understand the Force and herself, to help her control the emotions that seemed too big and aggressive for her body to contain. But this time, she didn’t reach into the Force to calm herself and make herself smaller. She opened herself like a tap that had been dripping for years and was finally allowed to flow freely without any worries that she might be overwhelmed. The Force rushed in and around her like a joyful river, like a happy hound greeting a master kept too long from home. She felt a new sense of fathomless potential, a new fount from which to draw her strength. There were darkly swirling eddies there, shadowy places she’d never delved, and she wasn’t ready to fully explore them right now, but she hoped this new opportunity would offer the chance to study them with an open mind. Already, she felt more powerful, more certain.
She didn’t let herself think about Tualon, about Masters Uumay and Klefan, about the Jedi High Council, about the younglings she’d grown to know and care for. What was gone was gone. The only path was forward. She had not chosen their fate; she’d only been given the gift of choosing her own.
The troopers regularly slid food and drink through a slot in the door, providing her with enough water and nutritive paste to stay functional. They didn’t speak; all their former jocularity was gone. Something huge had changed, something more than just one simple order. She ate and drank as necessary and discovered that the top of the bench lifted up to reveal the sort of facilities one might need in a brig, if one didn’t like to do a lot of cleaning. That was the only pleasant surprise.
One day, halfway through her tube of bland gray paste, she let out a huge yawn and realized she couldn’t keep her eyes open. As she struggled to stay conscious, the brig door opened. Bright light blinded her as rough hands grabbed her arms. She tumbled forward into oblivion.
When she woke, she was in a cell. Small, rectangular, with high metal walls and one tiny, barred window near the ceiling that let in a wan, milky light. The sound of waves crashing and the scent of saltwater and minerals suggested she was near the sea, and a cold and unforgiving sea it was. She still had no lightsabers, no personal effects, no toiletries. The cell was slightly bigger than the ship’s brig had been, but now, instead of that comforting sensation of moving toward a goal, she felt stifled and buried and still.
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She began to wonder if the figure on the holo had lied to her, if there was something more at play here. Why would anyone kill all the Jedi but one, and keep her locked up in some sort of prison? Whoever it was, they had to have a plan. Perhaps they were waiting for something to happen. A change in power would require time, after all, and the Jedi were clearly no longer part of the equation.
She thought about screaming, beating her fists against the door, using the well of rage inside her to try to blast open the wall that led to the sea. But Iskat Akaris had been tested before, and she was determined to never be found wanting again. If they wished to find her limits and plumb her depths, they would have to try harder than this. It would take more than another box to break her.
Despite the small window, time lost all meaning. Days here were strangely long, and her sleep suffered further. She spent so much time meditating that she had no idea how long she’d been communing with the Force. She did calisthenics and body-weight exercises and practiced climbing all over her cell. The view outside the small window showed nothing but endless gray water. Meals came at seemingly random times, more nutritive paste shoved under the door. She knew now that they could drug her at any moment, that she was completely in their power. And it wasn’t that she trusted them—whoever had masterminded her capture and imprisonment—it was that she understood that she had no choice but to surrender. She’d been doing it all her life.
If she really considered her situation, it was an absolute farce. She’d been offered answers and freedom, and she’d received silence and captivity. For someone who had been offered a second chance, she’d been stripped of all comforts and shoved into a dark hole where her only company was her own thoughts.
The thoughts of Iskat Akaris had not been good company recently.
They were dark, twisted things, her dreams like drowning, and sometimes she felt as if the very air around her was filled with pain, like it had soaked into the walls.
Perhaps it was days or weeks or even months when she again felt the heavy pull of her eyelids as she stared down at the remains of mealy brown paste on her plate.
“Here we go again,” she murmured, guiding herself to the floor before she fell fully unconscious.
When she awoke, she immediately realized she was in the brig of a ship again. Perhaps the same ship as before.
A mad sort of laugh burst out of her mouth.
It was just so ridiculous.
She told herself that perhaps this was part of a test, that maybe she was being treated this way on purpose. Before the traditional Jedi trials, which she’d never properly had the opportunity to face, the Padawans were encouraged to spend a period of time fasting and meditating to purify themselves, so she reasoned that perhaps this was something similar. Stripped of her weapons, her supplies, her sanity, she was left only with herself and her worries, fears, and doubts.
Every time her rage rose up, hating the darkness and the confinement, she pushed it back down and clutched her amulet, seeking her newly deepened connection with the Force, that joyous river that had been waiting so long for her to welcome it. She’d put herself in a mental cage for nearly two decades; what were a few more days of physical captivity? She could tell that they were traveling through hyperspace, and it seemed unlikely they would transport her to yet another prison when the first one had been perfectly wretched. Perhaps enough time had passed that whoever was in charge had figured out how to move forward. Maybe she was finally going to get answers. Once she was on the other side of this journey and out of the brig, she could express her dissatisfaction with her treatment to whoever had chosen to spare her life.
When the ship dropped out of hyperspace, Iskat’s eyes opened from a deep level of meditation, and she stood, sending out her senses. She knew immediately that they had to be headed toward Coruscant; nowhere else in the galaxy held such massive, teeming amounts of life.
Was she being taken back to the Jedi Temple, which surely had to be empty now?
Was she being taken to the Senate, or to some other governing body?
Or would the ship descend into the lower levels, where the crime bosses ruled and where she’d first explored the possibility of a life without strict control?
She wouldn’t know until they wanted her to know.
The ship landed, and after some time, the brig door opened. Iskat was already standing, waiting, her arms by her sides. Captain Spider stood there, his face unreadable behind his helmet. He offered her a blindfold and waited for her to take it and shroud her vision.
“Step out of the brig.”
Iskat obliged, and his hand clamped around her upper arm, guiding her across the ship and down the ramp. She couldn’t tell by smell or sound where she might be, but the air quality and the noise of the nearby space lanes suggested it was an upper level of Coruscant. It sounded similar to the Jedi Temple, large and empty, but felt entirely unfamiliar. A smooth grate was under her feet, and after she walked through a grand doorway, she could feel a cavernous space bound in metal echoing around her. It felt almost like a warehouse, perhaps in parts unfinished.
As Spider led her forward, the heavy tromp of his troops escorting her in perfect time, Iskat began to feel a powerful presence, dark and pulsing, heavy in the flow of the Force.
They were walking directly toward it.
Toward him.
“Welcome, Iskat Akaris,” this figure said, his voice crisp and cruel. It was, oddly, not the same voice from the shrouded hologram.
She inclined her head in a nod but did not speak; her words, she felt, were unnecessary.
The blindfold was lifted from her face.
The figure standing before her was a Pau’an. He wore stylized black-and-gray armor with a long cloak the color of dried blood; he seamlessly blended in with the soaring industrial fortress in which they stood. The Pau’an had white skin, burgundy facial tattoos, piercing yellow eyes, and sharpened teeth. He had been a Jedi once, Iskat realized, but he had fallen. He had chosen otherwise.
Just like her.
He held out his hands, presenting all three of her lightsabers, and she took them, feeling like a part of her soul had been returned. She hooked the green ones on her belt but kept the yellow one in hand, unlit. This being—she did not trust him.
After all her time locked in isolation, she wondered if she would ever trust anything or anyone again.
“Are you ready to leave behind everything the Jedi have taught you and finally forge your own path?” he asked with grave finality.
Iskat did not have to give this question a moment’s thought.
She’d been waiting her whole life for someone to say those words.
“Yes,” she responded. “I am.”
Whether it was true or not remained to be seen, but she would not voice that concern.
Much like with the Jedi, she would hold back the questioning part of herself.
Her first interest was in staying alive.
With a sinister smile, the Pau’an reached behind his back, revealing a glowing red lightsaber with a crescent-shaped hilt. Holding her gaze, not blinking, he assumed a dueling position, his yellow eyes reflecting his crimson blade.
“Welcome, then, to the Inquisitorius.”
