The Force Always Says Yes [Star Wars]

[aedrik_doubletree]

I wonder how long until she teaches him the Theoretical Youngling Massacre Moves (tm)?

 

[TFTwink]

Our boy is going to end up specializing in forbidden moves at this rate

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That's basically Knighthood for a Sentinel

 

[Hyenanon]

Chapter 26: Both The Jedi And The Sith​

Nerim carefully piloted the airspeeder over the Vast Veldt, watching seemingly endless grasslands pass below him in hills that approximated the waves of a grand sea. The thought crossed his mind that he was not at all like Tetha; flying did not come naturally to him, and his whole focus was placed upon it.

Despite that, the passengers seemed relatively at ease. The three Jedi sat facing each other in the seats in the back, while Jianno sat in the passenger seat next to him. The warbling of the repulsorlift and the rush of wind were muted to near silence on the inside of the cab, which was blessedly climate controlled.

He somehow felt the sudden straightening of Haaka Mahn's back, and the crystallization of Arwain's focus. After a moment, Haaka turned to his Padawan. "Do you sense anything, my Apprentice?"

The Padawan (Nerim resisted the urge to bang his head into the steering wheel over not knowing her name) was silent, still deep in meditation. After a moment, she spoke. "I sense an...unclean feeling."

Nerim's grip on the wheel tightened. He didn't sense anything. But then again, he was mostly just trying to keep level with the horizon.

"We're closing in on something intense, that's for sure," Arwain noted, looking out the window. "Everything just looks like grass to me, though."

They continued flying for a few minutes, before reaching the edge of the Vast Veldt, where it broke off into a short stretch of cracked mesas and desert that would continue until eventually reaching the sea. Nerim began to ask if he should turn around, when Jianno pointed out of the front windshield.

"There," she said, pointing to a mesa that rose up from the sparse grass and arid soil. It was tall compared to the surrounding area, and dropped off on the other side towards the dunes. A deep crack ran down the middle of it, from some old earthquake. "If we're going to start anywhere, it ought to be on that hill. Favorable terrain, for an underground base. You'd want the highest natural ground, so you get the most passive surveillance while still being underneath others' view. The shape leaves a lot of room for hidden entrances and exits."

Arwain smiled. "I have a good feeling about this. Take us down, Nerim."

Nerim refrained from voicing any trepidation, lowering the airspeeder as directed to the top of the mesa. The group exited the speeder, and all unconsciously turned towards the great gouge in the middle of it. Nerim could feel something emanating from it, almost like the sound of a waterfall. It wasn't a comforting sensation, but it wasn't exactly dangerous, either.

Arwain and Jianno both set off walking towards it before anything could be said, and the rest of the Jedi found themselves moving to keep up. They reached the precipice of the fault in the mesa, and Jianno donned her helmet, the T-shaped visor glowing a light blue as she used its advanced optics.

"It's here, somewhere," Arwain said quietly, barely audible over the wind.

Jianno kept her hand to the side of her helmet, twisting a dial. "Aberrant airflow. Temperature differences...Spectral analysis implies there's either a vent or an entrance right...there," she pointed to somewhere Nerim couldn't make out. "Hand prints on the wall. Someone's been here already, recently."

Arwain closed her eyes and took a deep breath, a rare intense expression crossing her face. "Padawan, do you sense danger?"

The other Jedi closed their eyes and meditated, while Nerim and Jianno peered down the crack in the earth. That waterfall sensation was there, but there was no sludge in his viscera, no electricity trailing up his spine. There was trepidation, like he was standing on the edge of a cliff—which he was—but there was no malice. To fall off a cliff was a danger, but it's not as though the cliff is evil.

"I don't even sense the Dark Side," Nerim muttered. "Not like I ever have before, at least. But there's something...precipitous about it."

Arwain kept her eyes closed, but smiled and relaxed her shoulders with uncharacteristic relief, as if she had been anxiously awaiting that answer.

Haaka Mahn shook his head. "I certainly sense a tainted aura. It is mute, relatively undisturbed, but there is a stagnant darkness here. And you?" He turned to his Padawan.

She was frowning. "There's something very bad in there."

Jianno jumped off the plateau, bouncing and sliding down the walls until she had found her way near the bottom of the fault. She shimmied to the side and then began pressing at the rock wall, while Arwain followed suit and jumped behind her.

Haaka Mahn sighed. "There is no helping it. Master Arwain is impetuous as always," he said, beginning to lower himself down the cliff. "Be careful, the both of you. I am not sure if this place is entirely uninhabited."

He began sliding down, and Nerim shared a look with his Padawan counterpart, who frowned disapprovingly at him.

"Are we, uh, fighting?" Nerim asked.

"Your Master is going to get us into trouble."

"Does she really have such a bad reputation?" Nerim asked, deflated.

"They call her a gray Jedi, a maverick," the Padawan replied, with some restrained expression he couldn't quite make out. "She actively defies the Council and strains the Code."

"So I've heard," Nerim said dispassionately. He had heard many such terms to describe her, and he gathered that most Jedi were uncomfortable with the idea of associating her.

"That she took you on as an apprentice is only more worrying," the Human girl said gruffly, taking her turn to climb down the cliff.

"So we are fighting," Nerim sighed wearily, following the method of Arwain and Jianno, hopping from wall to wall of the fault instead. As he reached the bottom, his eyes slowly started to adjust to the shade.

Jianno scanned the wall, and then banged her fist on it, causing a small resonant sound. "Here," she said. "Can't figure out how to open it."

"I believe that's my job," Arwain said, pressing the palms of her hands against it. There was a rusty clicking noise and a screech as the wall rumbled and slid to the side, revealing a dark passage. Cold air escaped from within, buffeting Nerim and sending a chill through him.

Haaka Mahn peered into the darkness, and then nodded to Jianno. "You are quite adept at this."

Jianno didn't physically react, her expression obscured behind the helmet. "This is standard procedure for Mandalorian fortifications. They're almost undetectable if you're not looking specifically for them, but they're easy to find if you know they're there. That's how most of our temporary dwellings work. Keeps away tourists and petty criminals, but there's no point hiding from people like you."

"Interesting that it uses a Mandalorian design," Haaka mused.

"I think I know why," Arwain said, retrieving a flashlight from her utility belt and shining it down the hall. The stone was smooth and featureless at first, but as the hallway extended, it began taking on a completely different architectural style, with columns and carved walls. It almost seemed like the Jedi Temple, through a strange mirror. "Well, no time like the present!" She said, cheerfully stepping into it.

Nerim followed thereafter, and heard a rather unsure silence and then quiet clamber of footsteps behind him. "Should we be a bit more cautious?" He asked, glancing at the reliefs on the wall of robed figures and Cathar. "Are we sure this place is unoccupied?"

"Anyone who may be here most certainly doesn't belong any more than we do," Arwain said, tilting the flashlight at an odd circular symbol on the wall. "It would be a little hypocritical of them to be upset with us. This Temple is nearly four thousand years old, and has been unoccupied for almost that entire time."

Nerim tried to think back to his historical studies. Four thousand years ago? "...The Jedi Civil War?"

"A year earlier, would be my guess," Arwain said.

"The Mandalorian Wars," Jianno stated. "This is a Revanchist Temple. The wall carvings are of the Cathar Genocide, and the subsequent arrival of the Revanchist Jedi, who swore to avenge them."

"They were not Jedi," Haaka made a deep, resonating sound somewhere in his chest. "Darth Revan himself may have walked these halls. Cathar was a world of great spiritual significance to the Sith."

"They were far from Sith at that time, also," Arwain said, leading them into a large, circular antechamber. "Turn off your lights."

The other Jedi did so, and Nerim reluctantly turned his own off afterwards. The room was at first lit only by Jianno's visor, and then, after a moment, Nerim felt a familiar glow. He blinked rapidly, and before his eyes appeared crystalline shapes, greens, blues, yellows, and occasional rarer colors.

"This is a lightsaber crystal cave," he said breathlessly. "Like Ilum."

"How terrible," the other Padawan quietly spoke in reverence, "For a place like this to be corrupted."

Arwain took a deep breath of the cold air and placed her hands on her hips. "Well, it's been about forty-three years, but if I recall correctly, this is where we're all supposed to split up."

"Madness," Jianno scoffed.

Haaka shook his head. "I am inclined to agree with the Mandalorian."

"Oh, so it was good enough for you as a Padawan, but now you think you've outgrown it?" Arwain teased.

"This is not Ilum, and we are not here to perform a Gathering," Haaka Mahn said firmly. Nerim noticed the Knight had his hand on his lightsaber hilt, and his broad-set eyes swiveled from side to side, clear membranes flitting across them.

Arwain glanced at him for a moment, before returning to observing the crystals. "Calm. This place is more dangerous the more you fear it. It is like a snake. If you are placid, it won't even notice you. If you stir, it will strike."

The Knight took a deep breath and removed his hand from the pommel of his lightsaber, though it remained at his belt only an inch away.

Jianno retrieved a small orb-like remote droid from her belt and tossed it in the air. It caught itself and hovered in place, and then projected a half dozen slices of light, scanning the environment. It then wandered off down a hall.

Arwain watched it disappear through a doorway. "Such technology is fraught in places like this. I doubt it will give you any information, much less anything useful."

"No information is useful information," Jianno said firmly. "It at least lets me know what I can or can't rely on."

Haaka Mahn made an odd clicking noise. "I still can't rule out that this place is occupied by hostile beings. In a vergence, you can hide your presence quite effectively."

As they spoke to each other, Nerim wandered forward, crouching down at a particular outcropping of crystals. He listened closely to the soft tinks and rustling noises they made, almost imperceptible to the ear, like dust falling in a glass. It was somehow such an...innocent noise.

He turned back to see the other three Jedi watching him. Arwain nodded. "What do you think, Nerim?"

"Master, I'm certain there are no Sith here," Nerim said, not quite sure where his confidence came from, "And if there ever was, it was a very long time ago. As for anything else...Well, I can't say for sure."

Arwain smiled. "I think so, too. Still, the thought of confronting a Dark Jedi is not entirely unreasonable. And given the environment, if they exist, it's likely they would be well-armed. I think—"

She suddenly stopped and whipped her head around, towards the hallway they entered from. The others followed her gaze, only to see the entrance slide shut with a creaking, rusty clang. Nerim saw the Knight and his Padawan pull their lightsaber hilts from their belts and Jianno unholstered her blaster pistols.

They traced their steps back down the hall to the door, and when Arwain placed her hand against it, it did not slide open.

"I still sense no one," the Padawan said in a shaky voice.

"There probably isn't anyone," Arwain said, her voice as steely as the Padawan's was shaky, "It's more likely just how the Temple was built."

"Cut it open," Jianno said, keeping her pistols leveled down the hall towards the antechamber.

Nerim raised his lightsaber hilt and activated the blade, but Arwain's hand reached out and guided his wrist down gently, and so he deactivated it just as quickly. "I wouldn't recommend that," she said, placing her ear against the wall.

Nerim did the same, and closed his eyes, stilling his breathing until he could hear it. Tink. Tink. He blinked. "Lightsaber crystals?"

"Embedded in the walls, and in the door," Arwain nodded. "Microscopic crystal shavings. Contact with your lightsaber blade may scatter it randomly. It will definitely cut through the rock, but maybe yourself as well. A last resort at best."

"Sithspit," Jianno grumbled. "I have a detpack, but we're at the bottom of a ravine. Blowing open the wall is just as likely to cause an avalanche that will cave in the entrance anyways."

Arwain sighed. "So much effort being put into not exploring for the answer."

Haaka Mahn made some sort of strange snorkeling sound. "Exploring a place that, as we've just established, is in itself a trap?"

"You should have known that going in," Arwain chided, "Revan only ever built traps. Although a more accurate term would be crucibles. My guess is, well," she shrugged, "We're here until we see whatever the Revanchists wanted us to see."

Nerim swallowed. "Crucibles sound just as dangerous as traps."

"Yes, they are. And part of the expected process is to remove the unwanted elements. But there's an important difference in that something is supposed to make it out intact."

 

[Simonbob]

I do like that, even with her rep, Arwain's a proper Master, always reaching for the good and showing wisdom. Sometimes mildly weird wisdom, but still.


And Nerim is growing.


Heck, I think even Jianno is getting something from all this. It's a pretty rare Mando who travels with a Jedi Master, and see's such Mando history.

 

[Kaine941]

That copy of The Jedi Path has been passed down for two hundred years. It's a very useful book. My master's master's master's master held it in his hands

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She had been Grand Master of the Order since the Ruusan Reformation.

In truth, Nerim still had yet to read the Jedi Path, but he understood it to have been written by her, and to have contained a passage in which she jokingly remarked she did not plan to abdicate her position any time soon. She wrote that passage 800 years ago. She still looked exactly like the illustration.

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he had been completely unaware her Master had been Fae Coven.

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Thinks there's been a continuity change and this didn't get edited.

Edit: or maybe you changed it by having her first master die.

 

[Hyenanon]

Thinks there's been a continuity change and this didn't get edited.

Edit: or maybe you changed it by having her first master die.

Click to shrink...

I knew I should've changed the order the information was presented in, aargh! I should've briefly introduced Arwain's first master before her second one, but I didn't realize until it was too late, and I realized it totally reads like a continuity error. That would bring me out of it if I read it too.

 

[Hyenanon]

Chapter 27: You Must Understand This​

The group slowly, cautiously explored the underground Temple for over an hour. Including the entrance, the antechamber lead to five hallways, which lead to a further twenty rooms. There was a dining hall, training rooms, meditation chambers, an archive full of datapads that had long-since burnt out, and more. Each was empty and covered in dust, although according to Jianno, there were several signs of recent disturbance. Each creak and groan sent shivers up the spines of the explorers, except Arwain, who looked as if she were enjoying her time at a museum.

The last room was a relatively large chamber, with reliefs carved into the walls depicting a grand narrative, beginning with the war between the Cathar and Mandalorians, a lone Mandalorian standing against her kind, the death of that Mandalorian and the genocide of the Cathar, a still, quiet graveyard, and then the arrival of the Jedi Knights, including the one who would become Darth Revan, who took the lone Mandalorian's helmet for a face. This room, more than the others, swelled with some sort of emotional pressure, a disturbance in the Force that even Nerim felt clearly.

The carvings were disturbingly detailed. The looks of horror, pain, fear, and rage on the faces of the Cathar. The defiant, righteous body language of the lone Mandalorian, followed by the twisted broken form of her body. The deaths of men, women, and children, their bodies split apart and gore descending from the wounds. Nerim felt his hands balling into tight fists as he viewed the carvings, a molten core forming in his chest, buzzing in his ears as blood rushed through his face and eyes.

Haaka Mahn spoke in a constrained voice. "There is...so much anger in this room," he said, looking down at his own hands. "To think that such rage was embraced by the Revanchists..."

Arwain took a deep breath, closing her eyes and relaxing her body. "It is not anger. Not exactly. Anger is an emotion centered on the self, an ego lashing out at its own perceived mistreatment. This is righteous fury; a type of rage that does not even require a self to be sustained. Felt on behalf of others. It is even more powerful than anger, and even harder to resist."

The Human girl began to hyperventilate, until Haaka Mahn put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She relaxed, if only a little, and Haaka guided her out of the room.

Nerim looked to Jianno, and when Jianno realized he was staring, she shrugged. "It is what it is," she said dispassionately, looking up at the reliefs.

Arwain raised an eyebrow. "You have no feelings on the matter? Of the Cathar genocide, or the Revanchists?"

"Mandalore the Ultimate began the Battle of Cathar. He was a grand figure. He saved the Mandalorian culture, which had almost been completely dispersed at the time. He also began that fool's errand of revenge, petulant attempts at genocide, which would lead to him dying like a dog at the end of Revan's blade, and the almost complete dispersal of our culture. And then Revan was instrumental in helping Mandalore the Preserver put it back together again." Jianno shook her head and turned away from the carved walls, and looked back to the two Jedi. "We all have grand figures in our histories that have done as much evil as they have good. Figures you can't condemn or celebrate, but you have to grapple with them all the same. Just look at who's Temple you're standing in. In a way, Revan is that for both of us."

Nerim's eyes scanned the dead and dying Cathar, and his mind flashed back to the City-Tree. He thought of the young Cathar hopping from branch to branch, the dancers, Aesha sitting and smiling at him, and in between each were cut together scenes of suffering and pointless death, slaughter and torture, children ripped apart by blaster fire and vibroblades. His heart kept beating faster and faster, and he wanted to scream at Jianno, ask how she could possibly be so calm in the face of this.

He felt his mind thrashing around, out of his control, slightly dissociated from what he knew he should be feeling and thinking. He tried to take a deep breath, but he just grit his teeth instead. Echoes of screams and sobbing seemed to fill his ears, and his knuckles itched with the need to beat something into a bloody pulp.

"I—" Nerim gripped the sides of his head, "I can't get the emotions out!"

Arwain took a knee and placed her hand on Nerim's shoulder, directing him to look into her eyes. "Listen to me, Nerim. Fury is like pain. You cannot block it out, you can only allow it to pass through you without giving into the current. Sit upon the shore of your mind for a moment. Why are you so furious?"

His eyes darted from side to side as he tried to think through the rage. "Because it's...unfair! It's cruel!"

"And?" Arwain prompted him to continue.

"The Cathar didn't deserve this," he said weakly at first, his tone growing in intensity, "So many lives cut short, so many things that could have been good and wonderful just erased from the future for such...inane reasons!"

"Inane..." She echoed, smiling softly at him. "You're furious because you like this world and its people. Do you remember the difference in how a proper Jedi and a Dark Jedi call upon the Force?"

Nerim tried to take his breaths slowly and deeply, to middling success. "The Dark Side is called upon in anger or fear, with negative emotions. A Jedi calls upon the Force in peace and placidity."

"Yes. But this leaves a question open," Arwain said gently. "If the Darkness is found through negative emotions, and the Light through lack of emotion, then what of positive emotions?"

He took another halting breath, trying to remember Fae's words from when he was a youngling. "It's an inaccurate question, because...positive and negative emotions are intertwined?"

Arwain nodded. "The reason the Jedi Order teaches its students to avoid positive emotions is that to give into a positive emotion is necessarily to invite its negative. To feel love is to later feel fear and loss. To feel taste is to become dissatisfied with bland meals. To feel sexual pleasure is to feel unrequited craving. To feel pride is to feel shame. But the opposites are not true; loss does not lead to love, craving does not lead to pleasure, shame does not lead to pride. Your love of the Cathar people has necessarily lead to to being vulnerable to rage at their mistreatment. The Order shuns these things because positive emotions drag you into an inescapable well of negative feelings. Do you understand?"

Nerim's mind kept racing, his eyes scanning the floor to avoid seeing the wall carvings any more. Every word she said deflated him, but slowly he nodded. "It...it sounds like it makes sense."

"Then listen to what I'm about to say. If you ever take anything I say to heart, then take this."

Nerim felt her cold hands against his cheeks as she directed him to look her in the eye. Her eyes were steel and her expression was one of pure assuredness.

"To hell. With all of that." She said with deep conviction. "Everything I just said is an absurd little word game. It cannot be the case. It cannot be the case that life is a negative-sum game. It cannot be that the natural state of things is decay towards infinite suffering. If it were, there would be no point to life, there would be no nobility in providing health and joy to others, everything we hold to be good would be backwards. The very concept of the Jedi acting as servants of life would be absurd if, by providing for life's happiness, we were only creating greater suffering."

The thrashing of his mind stopped in confusion. He was struck with a profound sense of disorientation, as if he suddenly had no idea where he was or what he was doing. His wide-eyed young face looked into hers, soft yet strong, like the limber branches of a tree.

"Nerim, I cannot tell you a reason to escape this spiral of negative emotions. One of the aspects of life is that is easy to verbalize why one should choose negative emotions over positive ones, but not vice versa. What you need to realize is that you do not need an easily verbalized reason. You do not have to argue with the spiral because it is on its face absurd. Love, and joy, and goodwill, and laughter is the default, and no convincing argument has ever been made that we should choose numbness or suffering instead. By living in such a carefree manner, you will appear aimless and silly from a mid distance. But you will be able to walk in the Dark places of the Galaxy and not fall, not because you are unbending like iron or ignorant like an animal, but because you know that evil is completely inane."

Nerim felt as though the floor dropped out from under him, and that constricting snake of rage that had fastened itself against him slipped right off of his body and fell out with it. All of the sudden, the fury was just a possibility. It was as if he stepped out of his frame of reference, and could now choose where to reenter.

From this distance, the room was just a room. From this distance, he was not a weak fleshy animal trapped in a cursed Temple of torture, horror, and hate, threatening to drown him in its current. He was a Jedi, he was on a mission, he was surrounded by his allies. Every danger and current of Darkness suddenly took a different tone. His moments of pain, fear, and rage were not circumstances, they were opportunities. From this distance, it simply made no sense for him to define himself or his situation by these negative emotions.

He blinked away the fog and unclenched his hands. "Master, I...I think I understand now why you always look so foolish."

She smiled at him, and her eyes sparkled with pride.