You Chose This Life (a Star Wars fanfic)

Prologue

Quickly, Ri, a 19-year-old human with shoulder-length strawberry-blonde hair, many freckles, and deep blue eyes walks behind a Cantina. Even though she has no idea where she is headed, she does know that, no matter what, she can't let the people following her catch her. If that happens, life as she knows it is over.

As the approaching footsteps seem to get louder, Ri begins to panic, afraid that they will reach her soon.

While breaking into a run, she glances behind her, hoping that she won't regret doing so. In addition to seeing three men lurking in the shadows of the Cantina, she sees a man in a navy blue uniform step out of the Cantina. When her eyes meet the man's, she expects to see a large, sickening smile appear on his face, but there isn't one. Instead, he calmly looks at her, making her feel more unnerved than the smile would have.

The second she hears four sets of pounding footsteps behind her, she begins to run faster than she ever has, forgoing paying attention to her surroundings in hopes that she will be able to outrun them easier.

A few minutes later, she skids to a stop. During her panicked run, she didn't realize that she was nearing an alley that turned into nothing more than a dead end. She was planning on losing them by going through the alley, but that won't happen now.

Regardless of how unlikely escaping is, Ri runs toward the narrow opening of the alley.

When she is no more than ten feet away from the opening, she begins to think for the first time that escape is possible, causing her hope to soar.

Only a few seconds later, that hope is shattered when the four men arrive, standing in groups of two that block her path completely.

While wiping away the tears that are beginning to spill, she slowly backs away from the men, feeling so trapped. She has nowhere to go. In front of her are four men who want her dead. Behind her is a wall that is much too tall for her to climb.

It's over.

It seems like, with each backward step she takes, the men move forward a step twice as large.

When the cold wall meets her back, causing the tears to fall much faster, she bites her tongue to keep from screaming in frustration.

It's over.

Now that she can't go any farther, the men quickly walk toward her, eager to finally please their boss by bringing her, which is certainly not an easy task.

"Can't we talk about this first?" Ri asks in a small, shaky voice when the men are only a few feet away from her.

"You will have plenty of time to talk once you are with Lord Malum," the man with the navy blue uniform says, but his voice is not a sneer like Ri expected, simply spoken matter-of-factly.

"Y-you're taking m-me to Lord Malum?" Ri asks the man in a fear-filled whisper, knowing that, instead of these men killing her quickly, she will die a slow, painful death at the hands of a brutal Sith Lord.

Lord Malum has only one goal in life: destroy the Jedi. Due to the burning desire to have his dream become reality, Malum is willing to do anything necessary to make the Jedi fall to their knees before him, begging for the mercy that he will never grant. For three years, Malum has been in hiding, not wanting the Jedi to be at all prepared for when he strikes. Up until this point he has had trouble finding the Jedis' weaknesses, knowing that capturing one could lead to them discovering him, but he has finally found what he has spent years searching for. Just yesterday, Ran, one of his favorite guards, found Ri Corvale, his way to destroy the Jedi. Once he has Ri, the Jedi will finally come to fear him, see him as the deadly threat that he truly is.