This is the Way?

[Gett'se Vizsla]

Gett'se Vizsla felt the soft crunch of the glassy sands of Mandalore under his open palm, his head bowed, kneeling. Once, long ago, he had come home to pay his respects to the wasteland of Mandalore and all it meant for his people. His hand balled into a fist, grains spilling from his fingers. Once, long ago, he had laid the fore of his buyce upon the sands in reverence.

Now his buyce rested on the helm of his youngest son. He held the young man's hand as he passed, his lifeblood staining the dust of his people like so many Mandalorians before. Around them, a half score of other Mandalorians lay dead. Clanless raiders who represented what had become of his people. Gett'se held back tears as he felt the strength leave his youngest son's hand, and a piercing ache filled his heart. Was this what they had become?

He settled back on his knees and stared blankly into the horizon where the sun had just begun to set, a sight that he might have once considered beautiful. He felt numb. Cold. He had raised many children over the years, buried a few of them, but this would be his last. The ache of the battle swept over him, an ache that was becoming all to familiar as the years were beginning to catch up to his aging body. He had always thought he would die in glorious battle, to join the other Children of Mandalore in the Manda.

Of late he had been sending far too many of those children to the Manda himself.

He looked around at the beskar'gam corpses that surrounded him. Blood staining the sands. Weapons cast idly upon the ground where they had slipped from dying fingers. Mandalorians fighting Mandalorians. Was this... Was this the Way? He knew that they grew only through strife, had grown, only through the conquest of the aruetii that seemed to dominate the galaxy. What had the Way brought them...

Only ruin.

Ruin, and damnation.

His knees screamed at him as he found his feet, years of marching in beskar'gam taking their toll. Yet he persevered. He looked around him. He looked down at his dead son. He had buried far too many children over the years. It was not right, for a father to bury his child. It should have been him. His head hung low, his buyce heavy upon it. The weight of it all was becoming far too much.

He took one last look at his son. And then he began to walk.

 

[Gett'se Vizsla]

The sun set, and Gett'se walked. the sands of Mandalore shimmered in the evening glow. Darkness fell, and Gett'se walked. The stars twinkling like the soul's of fallen children in the sky. He did not stop walking until he had arrived at his destination, the ancient Y-wing gunship that he called home. He stared at the ship he called home as grief gripped his heart, the clan's colors still painted there though faded and marred by combat.

Gett'se stooped, grabbing a fist full of the glassy sand that covered the planet as he approached the side of the ship. He ground it into the Clan Vizsla sigil, scraping it across the old paint, further marring it until it was unrecognizable before letting his arm fall limp. Grains of sand slipped through his fingers.

Turning, Gett'se took one last look across the horizon of Mandalore. The stars shined over the vast desert landscape. A wasteland, bereft of the necessities of life. A wasteland that Mandalorians clung to like maggots that writhed on a rotted corpse.

Gett'se looked out over the wasteland one last time, hoping that it would be the last time before climbing into his ship. The old engine fired up and he guided the ship up off of the surface, blasting into the atmosphere as fast as the throttle would carry it out to orbit.