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

Click to shrink...

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

Click to shrink...

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.

Click to shrink...

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

Click to shrink...

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.

 

[Simonbob]

Meanwhile, the other jedi are wondering what the hell just happened.

 

[Hyenanon]

Chapter 28: Twice The Pride...​

Hours passed, and then yet more hours, until it seemed that everything that could be found had been found. What remained were things that couldn't be found; evidence that many places had been disturbed, and that there were missing artifacts. The only cold comfort was that, if this place had been ransacked by tomb raiders, then there must be a way out.

But what that way was had no clear answer, and the hours stretched until fatigue compelled them to sleep in shifts. The hours turned into a day, and then days, wandering the ancient corridors. At some point it occurred to Nerim that they should have told the Cathar where they were going. Such a childish mistake that the Jedi made, not to rely more heavily on the locals.

Jianno had been wise enough to bring a few meager rations for herself, but as for the Jedi, they had to subside on the Force. This appeared to be no great feat for the Master and Knight, who were unbothered by the lack of food and water, even as the Padawans' stomachs rumble and lips cracked. Whatever well serviced this Temple must have, over 4000 years, gone dry.

On the third night, Nerim sat in perfect stillness aside Arwain's sleeping form and the vigilant watch of Haaka Mahn and Jianno, attempting to conserve his resources as best he could. An unfortunate side-effect of this process was that he began to meditate, which he always hated doing. His thoughts flowed and morphed, a game of free association being played in his mind without his willing participation.

He thought about how, as time went on, the group began to lose more patience with one another. They had become easy to annoy, eager to disagree with one another. Haaka Mahn struggled to maintain a cordial deference with Arwain, who seemed to simply ignore his doubts whenever they arose. Jianno had nearly caused a fight to break out among the group when she offered to share her water with Nerim, but not Chey-Linn, and bluntly said she didn't care if the other Padawan was suffering. He appreciated the thought, but—

He suddenly jumped in place, his eyes snapping open and heart racing. By the Force, that's it! That's her name! The other Padawan's name was Chey-Linn!

Haaka Mahn raised a curious eyebrow. "Have you come to an epiphany, young Nerim?"

"Yes!" He said proudly. Then he realized how pathetic it was and frowned. "I mean, no! I mean, just – wait, where's Chey-Linn?"

"Ah. You've remembered her name," Haaka Mahn nodded sagely.

Sithspit!

"Arwain told us not to tell you," he said, stroking a cephalic lobe.

"Why?!"

"I think she just thought it was funny," he said. Then he smiled with his broad mouth. "It was."

Nerim reached over and punched Arwain in the shoulder, causing Jianno to suddenly bark out a laugh. She didn't fully awake; her eyes screwed tighter shut, and her lips pursed and she wordlessly grumbled as she curled tighter into a ball on the ground. "You're the worst Master the Order has ever seen! Stuff like this is gonna turn me into a Sith Lord one day!"

Arwain began to mumble, still half-asleep. "Listen to the Force, my Padawan...wake me up later..."

He sighed. Listen to the Force? Well...He considered it. His meditation obviously wasn't the work of the Force, it was just the way brains worked when trying to recall words. Except, as Arwain had been relentlessly drilling into him, it's all the Force. If so, then there had to be a reason he recalled her name just now. "So where is Chey-Linn?" He asked.

Jianno nodded towards the door. "She's been in the antechamber for a while."

"I believe she is frustrated with me," Haaka Mahn sighed.

"Great, now she's on bad terms with all of us," Nerim said, standing up and moving towards the doorway of the sleeping area. All the way down the hallway was the antechamber, where he saw Chey-Linn sitting on her knees and staring at a particular crystal formation.

Nerim walked over to her and knelt down. "You meditating?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied tersely.

"About what?"

"How to ignore distractions," she said, even more tersely.

"What kind of distractions?"

Chey-Linn turned and glared at Nerim's grinning face. He was enjoying this a little too much. "You are a distraction," she said, turning back to the crystal formation. "You and your Master. And now you're antagonizing me for reasons I cannot comprehend."

He supposed she had a point, but still. He lowered onto his rear, his knees bent in front of him and his palms on the ground behind him. "Come on now. You've been angry at me since we landed. It doesn't matter if I give you an excuse or not, so why not?"

"You could decide not because you wanted to be a good Jedi. For once." She grumbled, staring forward as her stomach rumbled.

"Tch," Nerim scoffed. This was the one thing that made him instantly run out of patience. "Big talk coming from the sulker right next to me. I think you'll make Knight one day, maybe even Master with that attitude. Hell, you could be on the High Council. 'Be at peace, or I'll lose my temper with you!'"

She hunched forward slightly, her jaw clenching and her grip on her knees tensing. "I don't get it. I don't get why you even bother with this. You obviously have no appreciation for the Order. You never even try."

The cold air of the crystals sent a slight shiver through Nerim, and he was suddenly reminded of the freezer on Raxus Secundus. "Okay, smartypants, what is it that you think I should do then?"

"Go be a spice miner," she said ruefully.

He rolled his eyes. "It bothers you so much that I'm not exactly like you."

"No, it bothers me that I have to pretend like you are. Like you're an equal. A superior, even! I made a single misstep in the tournament and I have to pretend like you're the 'best duelist in the class,'" she said with audible air quotes, "and Haaka Mahn just puts up with everything your radical, malcontent Master does to him, because for some insane reason, she outranks him. It's demeaning! It's demeaning to have to scrape around to people who hold the very rules we're following in contempt!"

Nerim sighed. "Yeah, welcome to my world."

She didn't respond, and they sat silently for a few moments. Nerim followed her gaze. The formation of lightsaber crystals contained branches of dazzling greens and blues, all lightly glowing from within. He was so hungry he had half a mind to just take a bite out of it. As he idly considered the thought, something suddenly stood out to him. A small branch, outcropped on the crystal, glowing a soft dark blue and ringing a beautiful tone.

It suddenly looked so pretty. He reached towards the glowing, inviting crystal, and snapped it off into his hand – although it was more like it jumped into his palm. It was somehow refreshingly cool to the touch, like the silk sheets he had slept in the other night, or the cool breeze on the mid-branches of the City-Tree. Like Tetha's hand against his in the cold cargo hold.

After a moment of contemplating it, he turned, and saw Chey-Linn's eye twitch. Her already disapproving frown grew more intense. "It's nonsense. It's just nonsense that we have to treat you as any more of a Jedi than the betrayers who built this haunted Temple."

"You think I'm going to go crazy and start a war?" He asked rhetorically.

"Not if we die in here. Which we very well might," she glared down at the floor, where some sort of beetle scampered by. Jianno had identified it as a Kilnit, a scavenger related to the mythical Kiltik beetle. Their presence explained why there were no bones, or organic matter of any sort, and left no way to know just how many people died in this Temple.

Nerim took a deep breath, and held the crystal in his palm. "You know what I think?" He asked. She raised her eyes back up to him. "I think neither of us are happy with living in the Order. So we want to fight each other. We spend our lives chastising each other and practicing to hit each other with swords. We're trained to seek out faults and find problems, and so that's what we do. Incessantly. The life of a Knight is to just go around looking for fights. I bet everyone in the Service Corps are better Jedi than the both of us."

Chey-Linn's brow furrowed. Then she stood up and walked away, back towards the sleeping area. "We are not the same," she said under her breath as she left, her footsteps echoing away.

Nerim watched her leave, and then sighed and laid down on the stone floor, staring aimlessly at the dome above him. No matter what he tried, he could never really connect with his fellow Jedi. Maybe, he thought, he was destined to simply not; to be an outsider among his kind, like his Master.

He laid there among the crystals for a few minutes, when suddenly his eyes found focus, doing a double take at the dome above him. Barely-visible and cobwebbed, scratches in the roof formed letters – Mandalorian script. He underwent the clunky process of translation in his head.

"Let no Mandalorian live, except, the one who died," he muttered under his breath. "Let no name be remembered, except the one without a name. So sayeth Revan."

Nerim slowly crawled his way back to his feet. He remembered a phrase he heard Jianno say frequently, almost every day before bed, while in prayer. It was a remembrance for Mandalorians who had passed on, and a way of ensuring they stayed within the Manda, the oversoul of the Mandalorian people.

He walked to the room of remembrance, where the reliefs of the Battle of Cathar were carved into stone. The Dark current swirled around and through him, but he barely felt it as he approached the carving of the unnamed Mandalorian who stood against her own hoard, and died to protect the Cathar. He placed his hand against the carving, and closed his eyes. "Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum."

As he finished the prayer, he felt something like a halting resistance in the walls, like he was trying to press two north magnets together. He tried to use the resistance to feel the shape of the structures. Two bars, hollowness, metal plates...A door.

"Master!" He shouted, keeping his eyes closed and his focus on the sensation behind the wall. He wasn't sure how much time passed, but it couldn't have been long before the entire group had jogged into the room.

"Apprentice?" Arwain asked.

"There's another door behind here!"

She walked up and placed her hand on the wall, focusing. After a moment, she frowned. "I feel nothing."

"B-but—"

"I'm not saying you're wrong," Arwain quickly added. "But whatever is behind there is clouded in my vision. This Force nexus is strong, particularly in this room."

Haaka Mahn shuddered as he looked around the room. "How did you know to look here?"

Nerim kept his hand pressed against the wall and his head lowered, trying not to lose it. "There was Mandalorian written into the ceiling. I don't know how, but I just...knew what to do."

Chey-Linn kept her hand on her lightsaber pommel, her foot tapping anxiously. "You shouldn't mess around with this. This is Sith engineering."

Arwain placed a reassuring hand on Nerim's shoulder. "Mess with it, Padawan."

Nerim could feel Haaka Mahn grimace. "Heed my Padawan's counsel, Arwain. This is a dangerous thing to attempt. This alone may constitute a Trial! Nerim has only been a Padawan for a year!"

"For the Trial of Spirit, he is uniquely suited," Arwain smiled. "Now we hope that Grand Master Fae Coven was right; he may have learned a great deal in the short time he spent brushing with the 'Sith.' Open it, Nerim."

Nerim focused his mind as tightly as he could, feeling the springs and pneumatic tubes he would have to manipulate. It felt beyond insurmountable, each heavy with durasteel and rust, slightly misaligned over the millennia. His mind was as at peace as much as it could be in this room, and it was most certainly convinced this was beyond his capacity.

He felt his stomach ache, a bolt of frustration coursing through him. It seemed to magnify his power, just a flicker, just slightly, but it was not enough – and moreover, it frightened him, threatened to make him lose focus. He retreated away from it just as quickly, returning to his detached state.

How could he do this? He had never understood a single Jedi when they explained how it worked, he had never seen the inner machinations as they lifted a stone or moved a box. No matter how many times he had observed them, it made no sense. Although, now that he thought of it, he had once in his life witnessed a unique application.

Nerim's mind flitted to the memory of fighting Tetha, when she grabbed the blaster pistol and ripped it out of his hand. At that time, she had tapped into her anger. Or when she knocked him off of his feet, tapping into her fear. He remembered it clearly, the flush in her face, the bulging of the veins in her forehead and around her eyes, the single-minded exertion of her very soul. It wasn't like the Jedi, who simply seemed to sit there and allow the stone to float: When Tetha used her power, it was like the Force itself had taken her side in the conflict between them. Like it had decided she deserved to win those micro-engagements.

He felt strength swelling in the air around him. He hadn't tapped into his emotions—or at least, not anger, or fear. There was admiration, confidence. Love, even, if he were confident enough to use the word—which, after three days trapped in the dark, he damn well was. He couldn't help but think there was something cute about her furious expression in his memory.

He felt warmth against his skin as he flushed, felt his veins pulsing harder, his muscles tense. He dug his fingers into the stone and grit his teeth. His hunger turned from a form of suffering into a form of pleasing expectation. There was some sort of giddiness in his chest, something that made him want to laugh as he pushed with all his might. It was like that tensing, shivering excitement he saw in the Cathar moments before a race began; an unconditional excitement for whatever may happen next.

As he welled up the swirling motion in his soul and then sent it rushing into the wall in front of him, his body shivered at the unexpected sensation, like having jumped into a freezing pool. He felt shocks like static electricity at his fingertips, and a lifting sensation in his feet that made him briefly feel as if he were floating on a wave. The stone depressed into the wall in a perfect rectangle around him, and then slid to the side with the creaks and groans of old metal.

Nerim's jaw dropped as the door opened into a new, dark corridor. "I...I did it!" He shouted, more in surprise than celebration.

He turned to look at the others. Arwain looked at him carefully with an evaluating gaze, a hand on her chin. Haaka Mahn was deeply concerned, and Chey-Linn seemed outright horrified.

"He...he tapped into the Dark vergence!" Chey-Linn said. Nerim blinked and looked around the room. Somehow, it did seem significantly...thinner. Like the pressure of the Force had been used up somehow.

"...I did?" Nerim blinked.

Arwain continued giving him that silent, considering gaze. "That was a little more dramatic than I had been expecting. It flowed through him like a siphon."

"It what?" Nerim frowned.

"This needs to be put before the Council when we return," Haaka Mahn said shakily.

"It does?!" He paled.

The Jedi were roughly shoved out of the way as Jianno pushed them aside and moved into the corridor. "Whoop-dee-kriffin'-doo," she said flatly, "Spooky magic, big deal. Let's g—" She stopped, and her visor glowed slightly as she looked at the floor. She slowly crouched down, reaching to an apparently barren piece of stone, and pinched between her fingers a strand of hair that had fallen on it. "Ori'jate," she nearly purred.

 

[deadal]

Nerim's jaw dropped as the door opened into a new, dark corridor. "I...I did it!" He shouted, more in surprise than celebration.
[...]
"...I did?" Nerim blinked.
[...]
"It does?!" He paled.

Click to shrink...

I did it!.... by the way, what did i do?

 

[Psyentific]

Someone really needs to tell these jedi to get over themselves. Closed-minded and quick to judge, tut tut.

 

[shargle]

peak as ever

great job purifying the darkside buy going backward through the emotional spiral, nerim

fear to anger to hate to suffering?
fuck that, (cathar) suffering to (revan's) hate to frustration to fear to confidence to love

 

[Hyenanon]

Chapter 29: I Know You Both Too Well​

Exiting from the Revanchist Temple into the cool, dry night air was fresh and exhilarating enough to slightly calm Nerim's shaking hands. The sky above was crystal clear and lit by billions of stars, and the dust beneath his feet made a satisfying crunch as he found himself entirely free of the dark, oppressive underground.

From here, of course, came the long and arduous climb back to the top of the mesa to reach their airspeeder. Jianno immediately jumped up, grabbed hold of a crevasse, and began climbing like someone at the top owed her money. Haaka Mahn and Chey-Linn shared a brief moment of eye contact, and then followed after.

Before Nerim could put hand to stone, Arwain grabbed his shoulder and leaned in. "Nerim, we should talk about what you just did."

His hands began trembling again. "Am I in trouble?"

She took time to think about the answer, which made him feel so much worse. "Listen carefully. That Temple wasn't exactly of the Sith, and what you tapped into wasn't exactly the Dark Side," she said slowly. "But these are nuances that are best explored with a much more solid foundation than you have at the moment. You don't need to be ashamed of it. But I ask that you refrain from tapping into that again, until much later in your development. It's dangerous for you to enter that state."

Nerim looked up at her serious expression, and swallowed. "Okay. I'm sorry."

She smiled apologetically at him. "No. Do not be sorry. You haven't done anything wrong, yet. And besides, I believe it is my doing. I think I've been influencing you more than I realized."

Nerim glanced up at the wall, Jianno already nearing the top. "...You said it's dangerous for me to enter that state. What state?"

Arwain quietly stared up into the sky in thought. Then, she spoke. "A more...holistic view of the Force," she said, jumping up and grabbing a handhold. "Like traversing the tall branches of a tree. There is nothing wrong with the tall branches, but they are dangerous to beings like us, and you have no climbing gear."

Nerim followed suit. "The Cathar seem to handle it just fine."

Arwain smiled. "They do."

"I don't have climbing gear now, and I'm still expected to scale this cliff," he huffed in exertion.

"You are," she chuckled.

"So what do I do if I end up somewhere in those tall branches of the Force, like I ended up climbing this cliff?"

She paused for a moment to look at him, and then she smiled again. "Exactly what you're doing now. You calm down, accept the moment, measure your distance, and do the best you can," she said reassuringly, and then began climbing again. "Also, you should try not to let me get you into these situations!"

"Easier said than done," Nerim grumbled.

Once they had reached the summit where things leveled out, Nerim saw Jianno was already starting up the airspeeder. He had no objections to letting her drive, and let himself collapse into the passenger seat with his weary limbs scattered haphazardly. He was light-headed from a lack of food and water, and emotionally exhausted from his experiences.

He let his eyes close for a moment, and he was seized by inaction, as if his body and senses had simply turned off. The sound of the engine grew distant, the conversation impossible to make out. His mind felt like it was running as fast as usual, but things kept dropping out of his grasp; words, actions, concepts themselves were slipping through his grasp. His mind was simply running, without access to the information needed to think.

All he could do in his own mind was run in circles, waiting for rare flashes of images and emotions to rise to the surface. They were just experiences; he didn't even have the capacity to process them in any way.

Images appeared before him of the Council, staring at him as if from atop towers, and disappeared into the darkness of his dreams. He felt the sensation of Kilnit beetles running across his skin as he slept in the Temple. A brief memory flashed of a Cathar missing his jump in the branches and falling, but there was no ground beneath him; he just kept falling, and falling, and falling, until landing in the shallow water off the shore of a great sea.

He felt the sudden concussive force and burn of blaster fire, he heard screams of terror and sobs of desperation. He felt fear, and sorrow, and rage—that indignant, righteous fury most of all. Then there was a sensation of great impotence, an inability to change fate. He saw the Lucky Worm flying away above him, disappearing into the distance, the scene morphing around him until he was once again in the freezer on Raxus Secundus, shivering, unable to save himself or anyone he cared about.

Then something struck him, a lack, something he wasn't experiencing: The presence he felt on Ilum. There was a great deprivation, something deeply missing from these scenes. It was if he realized at once that the thing he had felt in the crystal caves of Ilum was with him his whole life, and abandoned him somewhere in the dream, not even an echo of it to be found.

Suddenly his eyes opened, and he was being herded out of the craft and into the small nook in the City-Tree that served as an airspeeder garage. Jianno pulled him to his feet, and disorientated, he looked around, attempting to determine if he was still in a dream. For just a moment, his confidence wavered, and then he began to feel that something again, and a steadiness came to him. There was a firmness in the ground his feet were on, he was certain he was back to the waking world. The wordless, soundless voice from Ilum was back.

Arwain gave him a concerned look, and put her hand on his shoulder. "Nightmares?"

He shook his head. Not because it didn't feel like a nightmare, but because he was pretty sure he wasn't sleeping. He didn't quite have the energy to explain it, though, and he was shepherded through hallways and structures until he sat in some sort of conference room, where the helpful Cathar provided them with food and water, along with a place to work.

Nerim was about halfway through lethargically trying to figure out what exactly had been placed on a plate in front of him when Jianno spoke up. "Connected to the holonet. Analyzing..."

She placed the hair she had picked up into a small compartment in a datapad, and the logo of the Bounty Hunters Guild appeared on the screen, as it flashed data on the genetic databases it was accessing. Nerim's stomach rumbled, and he decided to take a bite of what appeared to be some sort of meat pie. It was one of the most delicious things he had ever tasted, although he wondered if that was just because he hadn't eaten in a little over three days.

As he scarfed down the food, he heard Jianno make a concerned hum, and repeatedly tap at the pad. Another moment passed and she leaned back in her chair and sighed. She exhaled out an expression in Mandalorian, which meant something like 'You've gotta be kidding', but with an extra word somewhere in there.

"Found something?" Arwain asked.

Jianno turned around the data pad and slid it across the polished wooden table to where everyone could easily see it. The writing was in Mandalorian, so only Nerim and Arwain could make out the name, but the picture made it clear enough to everyone.

"Aesha?" Nerim balked. He was suddenly much more alert.

"I had a feeling there was something odd about her," Arwain frowned. "But to think she navigated a Revanchist Temple on her own...?"

"Perhaps not on her own," Haaka said contemplatively. "I did not sense her to be a Force Sensitive, and the standard blood tests she took at birth would surely have revealed that anyways. I have a hard time believing she could have even found the Temple on her own."

"She's not an idiot," Nerim said defensively.

"It took the four of us quite some time to find it," Haaka responded calmly.

"Three of us," Chey-Linn mumbled. "I still don't know what he was doing while we were in the archives."

"Oh, I doubt that you were very much help in the library," Nerim responded with annoyance.

"Calm yourself, now." Haaka said firmly, though it was slightly unclear which Padawan he was responding to.

"One of us, really," Arwain pouted. "I did all the hard math."

Jianno raised her hands up. "So, did I never even enter consideration, or...?"

Nerim's brow furrowed in frustration. "For the love of—Look, everyone just shut up for a second. If we can be certain that the hair we found in the Temple belongs to Aesha, what's the next step? Just ask her about it or something? It's not like it's a crime."

"Finding it is not a crime, no," Arwain said, drumming her fingers on the table, "And neither is leaving it unreported, exactly. But if she's holding onto certain artifacts, that may well be a crime. If she found an ancient lightsaber, or a holocron, or some sort of texts connected to the Sith Order..."

Haaka Mahn nodded. "And we know such things have been circulating recently."

"I've been thinking about that, actually," Nerim said, placing his utensils down. "Darth Machina recorded his holocron somewhere around a thousand years ago. But the Revanchist Temple is nearly four thousand years old. Could it really have been sourced from there? How many times could that place be rediscovered and forgotten, really?"

Arwain nodded slowly. "I've considered that. It's unlikely. And like I said, that Temple wasn't exactly of the Sith in the first place. But there's no way to know for sure right now. We may have a bigger problem or we may not, but either way, we need to investigate more, and that starts with Aesha. Jianno, do you have any way of knowing how long ago that hair was left?"

Jianno tapped at her datapad in between shoveling mouthfuls of food. After a few moments, she swallowed. "Hard to say, but at the very least a couple of standard months. Maybe one or two years."

Nerim thought for a moment, and then straightened up. "The Vast Veldt is used as a place of testing and meditation for Cathar, right? They keep it unoccupied, but they use it for coming of age rituals and such. Aesha underwent one of those trials right after she returned to Cathar, after our Raxus mission. That would probably be the most likely time for her to be out there, unsupervised."

Arwain considered it for a moment and turned to Jianno, who nodded. "Sounds like a reasonable assumption," Arwain said in a curious tone.

"So then it couldn't have been her that unearthed Darth Machina," Nerim said. "There's no way it got all the way down the Hydian Way and hopped the Rimma Trade Route, from Galactic Far North to Galactic Far South, changing hands however many times it would need to in order to end up in the possession of an Utapauan cloner in the...what? Three months in between those two time periods, at best?"

Haaka Mahn shot Arwain a stern look, to which Arwain responded with an equally firm stare that said something along the lines of 'mind your own business.'

"What?" Nerim asked defensively.

Chey-Linn broke the silence. "You're putting a lot of mental effort into defending the Cathar princess."

"I've yet to see you put mental effort into anything but attacking me!" Nerim bit back.

"Okay," Arwain said, suddenly standing up from her seat, "We're not going to make any more progress sitting here pontificating about it. We need to approach Aesha's father, Jarroa, and ask him for permission to detain Aesha for questioning."

An expression of bewilderment crossed Chey-Linn's face. "That is unnecessary. Cathar is a world of the Republic, we have the right to detain citizens under reasonable suspicion."

Haaka threaded his fingers together and thought for a moment. "That is true. But the Cathar are a fiery people, and may not react well to us taking such drastic action without warning. Gaining Elder Jarroa's permission would be a significant boon in making the process go smoothly."

"Great," Arwain said tiredly, beginning to walk out of the room. "Glad you see reason. Nerim, come with us. Jianno—"

"I know," Jianno interrupted, raising her hands. "Diplomatic liability. I'll stay out of it. I haven't slept in twenty hours anyways."

Haaka Mahn stood up along with his Padawan, and nodded in affirmation of the plan. "Good idea. Chey-Linn, while we are petitioning Jarroa, I want you to track down Aesha's current whereabouts. Keep an eye on her, just in case she tries to run. Do not intervene, however."

"Yes, Master," Chey-Linn said calmly.

Arwain suddenly stopped, and slowly her eyes narrowed. "I have a bad feeling about this," she mumbled. Then she turned back. "Nerim, I changed my mind. You should find Aesha too."

Nerim blinked in surprise. Haaka seemed even more surprised. "Master Arwain," the Knight started, "is that really wise?"

"Dunno," Arwain said, continuing moving around the table towards the exit.

"I heavily suggest against it!" Haaka objected, moving to the exit at the same time as her, so that they both had to stop at the door. They both looked so exhausted, even more than Nerim was. "After the events of the Temple, he should be at rest, or at least under our supervision. He is unstable!"

Arwain rubbed her forehead in exasperation. "Your lack of faith is enervating."

"Faith? I have had nothing but faith in your approach, Arwain," he replied. "But you have been unconscionably reckless!"

Chey-Linn took the moment of argument to slip out through a side door. Nerim felt that sludgy, crawling sensation in his soul, stood up, and followed her. Jianno silently watched Nerim exit, giving him a nod of confidence as he did so.

He sped up as he left the room, jogging down the hallway until catching up with Chey-Linn, who shot a glare at him. "Why are you following me?" She asked with thinly veiled hostility.

"Actually, I'm passing you," Nerim said, continuing to jog. "Like always!" He added with some amount of vitriol.

He felt a sudden surge of annoyance, and heard Chey-Linn speed up to follow him. She was significantly smaller than him, and at least a year younger, but she somehow kept up just fine. "Hey! You're going to compromise the mission!"

"What mission?" Nerim asked, as she moved alongside him.

"To observe the target without her noticing!" Her voice nearly squeaked as she spoke loudly.

"Oh no," Nerim gave her a cruel smirk, "That's your mission. My Master never said anything about her not noticing me."

Chey-Linn's eyes widened. In surprise, she lagged behind for just a moment, before rushing to try and catch back up. "You—You half-witted, arrogant, laserbrained—"

"Real calm of you!"

"—fuckhead!"

Nerim slid to a stop in shock. "What'd you call me?"



_____________

Spoiler: A/N

If you're gonna break one rule of Star Wars...Then it's going to be to utilize the single f-bomb that Revenge Of The Sith was allowed but never used.

 

[chiefnewo]

Lol, damn. Chey-Linn has been nursing this hate boner for a while! Someone needs to remind her that hatred is a path to the Dark Side.

 

[waffelmeister]

You know you've succeeded in life when you start making (padawan) Jedi cuss.

 

[Iridium Flare]

...So I don't know whether this has any bearing on the story, but it occurs to me that since the word 'fuck' doesn't exist in Star Wars, it would be an excellent litmus test to discover any potential transmigrators.

 

[Hyenanon]

...So I don't know whether this has any bearing on the story, but it occurs to me that since the word 'fuck' doesn't exist in Star Wars, it would be an excellent litmus test to discover any potential transmigrators.

Click to shrink...

This is actually a highly complex AU based on a divergence point where Yoda takes ketamine and invents the fuck word in 600 BBY

peak as ever

great job purifying the darkside buy going backward through the emotional spiral, nerim

fear to anger to hate to suffering?
fuck that, (cathar) suffering to (revan's) hate to frustration to fear to confidence to love

Click to shrink...

Also, I just wanna say this reply made me really happy. I'm so glad someone caught that

 

[shargle]

He let his eyes close for a moment, and he was seized by inaction, as if his body and senses had simply turned off. The sound of the engine grew distant, the conversation impossible to make out. His mind felt like it was running as fast as usual, but things kept dropping out of his grasp; words, actions, concepts themselves were slipping through his grasp. His mind was simply running, without access to the information needed to think.

All he could do in his own mind was run in circles, waiting for rare flashes of images and emotions to rise to the surface. They were just experiences; he didn't even have the capacity to process them in any way.

Click to shrink...

Then something struck him, a lack, something he wasn't experiencing: The presence he felt on Ilum. There was a great deprivation, something deeply missing from these scenes. It was if he realized at once that the thing he had felt in the crystal caves of Ilum was with him his whole life, and abandoned him somewhere in the dream, not even an echo of it to be found.

Click to shrink...

For just a moment, his confidence wavered, and then he began to feel that something again, and a steadiness came to him. There was a firmness in the ground his feet were on, he was certain he was back to the waking world. The wordless, soundless voice from Ilum was back.

Click to shrink...

Seems like Nerim's finally figured out how to perform a complete force sever. Really love the metaphors his subconcious conjures up to convey this to him- especially the extension of Arwain's earlier metaphor. The tree totally disappearing out from under the leaping Cathar is extraordinary.

This also solidifies my belief in a theory I've had for a while- that Nerim's midichlorians have been in a 'recieve-only' mode for essentially the entirety of his life. He's been on a 24/7 IV drip of information and mental guidance, boosting his perception and intuition well beyond the norm at all times, so now that he's left to his natural faculties he feels as if he has been struck dumb.

Hopefully this is a 'don't know what you've got till it's gone' situation and Nerim will be able to leverage his newfound sense of the force towards some more active powers.

Also, I just wanna say this reply made me really happy. I'm so glad someone caught that

Click to shrink...

Love you too pookie

 

[Hyenanon]

Chapter 30: ...Double The Fall

​

Chey-Linn slid to a stop along with Nerim. "Just listen for once in your life!"

Nerim crossed his arms and stared down at her. "Why is it that I constantly need to remind my fellow Jedi that listening is not a synonym for obeying?"

She ignored the comment. "If you interact with the target in any way, you could say something that leads to her fleeing or destroying evidence."

"First off, she's not a target," Nerim scowled, "And secondly, I don't think she's done anything wrong, that's you. I'm not gonna say anything that upsets her. We get along quite well."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Chey-Linn mumbled, beginning to move forward again at a walking pace. Nerim followed after her.

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean that it is painfully obvious your thoughts linger on your attachments more than your duties as a Jedi," she said in an icy tone. "In the time we spent in the Temple, I often felt your mind center on...unhealthy fixations."

Nerim's frustration dropped out from him for a moment, replaced with sudden fear. He knew there had to have been plenty of times he inadvertently thought of Tetha; she frequently appeared in his mind unbidden. "You what?"

Chey-Linn noticed his sudden apprehension, and restrained a smirk. "Yes, I imagine it was much more obvious to Arwain and Haaka Mahn."

He grit his teeth, feeling his face begin to flush. He didn't respond immediately, quietly becoming angry with himself for letting his thoughts slip. Becoming even angrier at the invasion of his privacy, of his own mind.

Chey-Linn pressed the attack. "Is that why you're so keen on protecting the Cathar princess?"

She had misstepped with that provocation, and Nerim ever-so-slightly relaxed, feeling some relief that she hadn't caught on to Tetha's identity even remotely. "You spend a lot of time thinking about me, don't you?" Nerim asked in a tone as acidic as hers was icy. "It would be kind of flattering, if it weren't coming from a mynock like you."

"You just make yourself hard to ignore," she grumbled.

"Not helping your case."

"The last thing I need is whatever you would define as help."

"And how else can I interpret this constant obsessive need you have to get into my head, huh?" Nerim prodded her in the shoulder, causing her to jump and step away. "Fixating on my fixations. Makes you sound like some sort of weird voyeur when you think about it."

Chey-Linn showed some sort of disgust and horror at the thought. "No! There's nothing in your head that I want to see!"

"It seems almost as if you are jealous," Nerim continued, feeling a sort of malicious satisfaction from how visibly uncomfortable he was making her. "Are you searching for yourself in my thoughts? Because I hate to disappoint you, but I didn't even remember your name until a couple of hours ago!"

"Ugh! It is not of the least interest to me personally!" She grimaced. "I only wish that there was a button to turn your brain off!"

"You're really gross, you know that?! I don't even want to imagine what you'd do if you could—" Nerim suddenly stopped. He felt some sort of strange sensation, like a tugging string tied to the back of his neck, urging him to redirect his attention. "—Wait, personally? Are you reading my thoughts on behalf of someone?"

He saw her eyes momentarily widen, but before she could reply, a familiar figure opened a door and walked out in front of them.

"Why are you shouting...?" Aesha asked, rubbing her eyes. She was visibly sleepy, given that it was still early morning. Somehow the two of them had unconsciously wandered directly outside her room.

The two Padawans replied simultaneously. "I'm not shouting!" and "Because she's always angry!" they both cried.

Aesha stared at them uncomfortably. "...Okay. I will not interrupt your mission—" She said, beginning to turn around and walk back the way she came.

"Wait!" They both shouted.

Aesha froze in place and then slowly turned around, sighing. "Am I to play mediator?"

Nerim and Chey-Linn shared a nervous glance, and then Nerim spoke up. "Uh, actually I was intending to ask you some questions. She just tagged along because she's jealous—"

"Liar!" Chey-Linn said venomously. "I was on my way before your lunatic Master even let you—" She suddenly stopped herself, realizing she was letting too much information slip.

Aesha blinked. "Jealous...? You were searching for me?" Her eyes narrowed slowly, as if she recognized something about this behavior. "Lady Jedi...I am flattered, but..."

"For the love of—" Chey-Linn tugged on her hair. "What is wrong with you imbeciles?!"

Nerim put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, Chey-Linn. It can't always work out," he said, as seriously as he could manage.

He had never seen a Jedi more visibly restraining themselves from getting violent.

Aesha crossed her arms with slight discomfort. "Err, you should know that Nerim and I aren't—"

"From the bottom of my heart I beg you," Chey-Linn said through grit teeth, "Please just stop talking."

"I just want to be clear that I am not arm candy!" Aesha replied indignantly. "I am so tired of people acting as though the most interesting facet of me is my marriageability!"

"I am entirely uninterested in every facet about you, least of all your marriageability!" Chey-Linn said in a tone that was somehow both pleading and furious at the same time.

"Hm," Nerim hummed thoughtfully, placing a hand to his chin and trying his best to keep a straight face. "Then the common denominator is that you're interested in my relationships. I wonder why."

Chey-Linn's face began to take a red hue out of anger, which only made the scene more suspect to Aesha, who was feeling more and more awkward. "Err," The Cathar princess started, "My knowledge of the Jedi Order is quite lacking, but is not that kind of affection forbidden, Lady Jedi?"

Chey-Linn took a sudden deep breath. "This must be a Trial of Flesh," she said, referring to the feared test of a Padawan's tolerance to pain and loss. It was not unheard of for Padawans seeking to become knights to suffer lifelong injuries from the test. Some even died.

Aesha's eyes widened. She crossed her arms over her chest as if covering herself from lecherous stares. "F-flesh?! Calm yourself, Lady Jedi! We are in public!"

Chey-Linn screamed, her voice briefly cracking. "Aah! Just shut up! Just shut the hell up, you cretins!"

Nerim doubled over laughing in sadistic glee. Even compared to his use of telekinesis earlier, he had never felt so powerful. He wasn't quite able to read her thoughts, but he took a greatly un-Jedilike pleasure in scrambling them up. It was almost intoxicating; once he started, it was very difficult to stop.

Fully losing her temper, Chey-Linn pointed at Aesha. "Look, you will escort me to your room and—"

Aesha grimaced and reared back.

"—AND REFRAIN FROM INTERFERING in our SEARCH for CONTRABAND!" Chey-Linn loudly added.

Nerim stopped laughing, and raised his head up in surprise. After all that, she gave the game away?

Aesha seemed similarly surprised. "Excuse me, contraband? What could you possibly—"

"Under article five section A of the Sith Containment Act, you are being detained!" Chey-Linn said forcefully, drawing her lightsaber hilt.

"Whoa!" Nerim raised his hands. He was shocked by the speed of escalation. That sludgy, crawling sensation only grew stronger. There was something thick in the air.

"Move!" Chey-Linn said to Aesha, gesturing her to move back into her room. Aesha kept her hands up and nervously walked backwards.

Nerim quickly fished his communicator out of his utility belt and pressed down on the button. "Master...?" He began, before realizing it wasn't on. He cursed. The battery had run out abnormally quickly while they were trapped in the Temple, and he hadn't had the time to recharge it since they returned. The others might have in the airspeeder ride back, but he passed out before he could plug anything in.

He was faced with the decision to run and inform the senior Jedi and leave Aesha alone with an angry Chey-Linn, and quickly realized it was no decision at all. He swiftly followed the two. "Calm yourself down, Chey-Linn!"

"Quiet!" She barked at him. "And stay back! You're obviously no help at all, at best! Do not interfere!"

He bit the inside of his cheek. He had really pushed her too far this time. "This is even against Haaka Mahn's orders!"

"Those orders were given before you were sent to sabotage me!" She replied. She stepped into Aesha's room, and Nerim swiftly followed before she could shut the door on him. Chey-Linn closed her eyes for a moment. "I sense something Dark in this room."

Nerim tried his best to reach out, and was surprised to find he felt something too—albeit not what he would describe as Dark in nature. It was a small trickle of that same waterfall-like feeling he had in the Revanchist Temple. Aesha nervously swallowed, but did not respond.

Chey-Linn's eyes moved towards Aesha's desk, a large, opulent workspace set next to a tall stained glass window which streamed with early morning light. She moved forward and began ransacking the drawers in Aesha's desk, keeping one eye on the Cathar.

"Hold on, be reasonable," Nerim said as he attempted to remember back to his studies, to pinpoint what law she was referring to. He was made to study it prior to the mission as well. "You don't need to toss all of her belongings. I'm not sure that's even legal!" He objected, desperately trying to buy time to just think.

Chey-Linn pulled out a book and slammed it on the desk with triumphant glee. It was obviously ancient, made of some sort of heavily treated material that gleamed as if dipped in resin. The text on the front was archaic, but Galactic Basic was a highly standardized language, and even four thousand years would not render it unreadable. Even if it did, though, the indented picture on the front would leave little to the imagination. It was, without a doubt, a manuscript of the lightsaber Forms.

Nerim balked, staring blankly at it and then raising his gaze to Aesha. "You...took a manuscript from the Temple?"

Aesha frowned with desperation. "Nerim, it is as I said on Raxus! I...I wish to be in tune with the Force! To be a Knight, like you!"

"Finally," Chey-Linn said with pleasure, smirking confidently and keeping her hilt raised towards Aesha. "We have everything we need. We have the contraband, the genetic evidence at the Temple, and we have a confession. Just think about how much easier this all could have been if you weren't actively sabotaging me."

"Nerim..." Aesha pleaded.

"Hold on!" Nerim said, pushing Chey-Linn to the side to get a better look at the book. His mind was racing for the memorized information he was seeking. "This is...This isn't a Sith text! The Sith Containment Act only allows us to detain or penalize citizens for holding specifically Sith texts, not just any alternative view of the Force!"

Chey-Linn looked at him, clearly unimpressed, still riding high off of her vindication. The morning light streamed through the glass over her face, covering it in a cascade of bright colors that almost hid her facial features, as if she were a floating pair of eyes in a sea of stained glass, marred by dark rings of fatigue. "It's from a Sith Temple! It is obviously a Sith text."

"It is NOT!" Aesha loudly objected. "It is from a Revanchist Temple! Revan was a Jedi!"

"Darth Revan was a Sith Lord!"

"You watch your tongue!" Aesha hissed. "Revan is a hero to my people!"

"Your primitive superstitions are not my concern!"

Aesha's pupils narrowed into menacing slits. "You get one more chance, offworlder."

Nerim felt that electric sensation stronger than he ever had, like a lightning bolt striking his spine. Aesha began to growl, and Nerim jumped into the conversation again. "Just wait a moment! Master Arwain has repeatedly told us that they were not Sith at the time of the Temple's founding!"

"Arwain's insanity is of even less value to me!" Chey-Linn sneered at him.

"She's a Master!" He tried to reason. "Can you recall if there is any case law of artifacts of a pre-Sith people falling under this restriction? Because I have no idea if this is legal or not! Just call Haa—"

"Why are you defending her?!" Chey-Linn said, her triumph transmuting back into fury at his obstruction. "Re-examine your priorities! This is a matter of existential importance! Our utmost priority is to prevent the return of the Sith!"

Nerim stared her down. "That is where we disagree."

"Then you are lost! Just as lost as these Sith-worshipping cat—"

Aesha broke into a sprint, running the short distance between herself and Chey-Linn, jumping in the air, and then kicking both of her heels into the Padawan's chest. With a great shattering, Chey-Linn was sent flying through the tall window beside the desk, and disappeared below the edge of it, while Aesha dropped to the floor.

Nerim ran to the window and looked down in horror, to see Chey-Linn tumble to a stop on an airspeeder landing pad two stories down. The fall looked harsh, but not fatal—especially not for someone as acrobatic as her. After a moment, she got up and ran into the hangar out of sight. "Aesha, you madwoman!" He sighed in, well, not relief, but at least a release of the immediate panic of death. "I mean, I understand, but that was nearly a murder!"

He turned to see Aesha already standing again, holding a short tube of metal. It was polished to a sheen with new parts, and had a button on the handle. No matter how he looked at it, it was definitely a lightsaber.

"Aww, that is illegal!" Nerim whined. "Why can't you just make things easy on me?"

"It's a replica!" She quickly explained. "I made it. It is nonfunctional."

He breathed a sigh of actual relief this time. Replicas were legal, as long as they didn't produce a blade. "Okay, good. So—" She tossed him the hilt, and he grabbed it, immediately feeling a calming rumble from the inside, that rightness and balance he would expect from a lightsaber, only, just slightly off. Like his before he could use the Force to align it. He blinked. "You made it with real parts?! Is there a crystal in here?"

"I have tried many times to make it a real lightsaber," She admitted to him, with both desperation and resolve. "I give it to you as a sign of trust. And also as a plea. I am...I am not a real Jedi. If she tries to kill us, I cannot protect us. You are my only hope."

"That's ridiculous. She won't try to kill us."

"What would you do if you were convinced beyond reason I was a Sith?"

He thought for a moment, and decided not to answer it honestly. He grabbed her wrist. "Come on, we need to get to my Master."

 

[aedrik_doubletree]

This is Cathar!

 

[chiefnewo]

Nerim has too much rizz, one week with him and the ladies want to be Jedi!

 

[Hyenanon]

Nerim has too much rizz, one week with him and the ladies want to be Jedi!

Click to shrink...

Arwain has taught him the rizz well...Although this is probably a persistent fantasy of many children and young adults in the Galaxy.

 

[NotIntoFeet]

Aw yeah, double foot kick.

 

[Hyenanon]

Chapter 31: Could Use A Little More Training​

Nerim rushed out of the room with Aesha in tow. A concerned maid stuck her head out from a doorway, and Nerim pointed at her. "Call the guards!" He shouted, then ran down the hall back towards where he had come from. He only vaguely remembered the twists and turns they had taken to get here, and even then he realized after a few moments of running that the Jedi wouldn't even be where they had left them.

"Damn," he said sharply, turning to Aesha as they ran. "Where's your father?"

She thought for a moment. "He should be two levels up from here, in his study! He always—"

They slid to a stop as two guards rounded the corner, saw them, and drew their blasters. "There he is!" One said, leveling his pistol at Nerim. "Step away from the princess!"

"Whoa, whoa!" He raised his hands.

Aesha stepped in front of him. "Hold your fire!"

The guards, one a younger man and one quite a bit older, glanced at each other. "Excuse me, your highness, we were alerted to a kidnapping by a Dark Jedi—"

"Wait! I'm not the Dark Jedi!" Nerim whined. "I don't even think she is!"

"He's helping me, not kidnapping me!" Aesha spoke over him. "Arrest the Human Lady Jedi!"

The younger one had an expression of utter confusion on his face, but the older one kept it together. "That's quite the conflicting report with what the Lady Jedi said. If you are what you say you are, relinquish her to our custody—"

"Okay!" Nerim said happily, while simultaneously Aesha glared at the guard and shouted "I am not a thing to be relinquished!"

"Priorities, Aesha!" Nerim snapped at her, as they heard another pair of footsteps rush up a set of stairs.

Chey-Linn, with impressive alacrity—especially given her bruises—bounded to the top of the stairs at the end of the hallway. The two guards stood between the Jedi, and while the younger one was skittish and jumped to point his blaster at Chey-Linn, the older one kept steadily pointed towards Nerim.

Chey-Linn limped forward, defiant of the silent threat pointed at her. "Stand down. In the name of the Republic, the princess is under arrest."

The young guard blinked. "Under arrest?" He turned his head slightly, keeping his eyes on Chey-Linn, and spoke to the older guard. "I thought it was—"

She drew her lightsaber hilt and pointed it at Nerim. "That one is also defying the law. Who knows where he's taking her."

Nerim frowned. "From my point of view—"

Aesha stamped her foot. "Stop gawking and arrest her!"

The younger guard nervously began to lower his gun, and then raise it again, unsure of his next action. "W-what do we do? She's a Jedi. They have the right to..."

The older one spoke in a level voice. "We're loyal to the chieftain. Both of you, drop your swords. We'll handle this like civilized people when order is restored."

"Okay," Nerim said as Chey-Linn simultaneously said "No."

Chey-Linn continued. "You have no authority to demand that. I am acting as a representative of the central body of the Republic, and you must yield."

Nerim began to sense something, a rumbling in the room, a great anger emanating from Chey-Linn. A deep, roiling disquiet that was beginning to boil over. He felt flashes of rage and resentment, words rising to the back of his head unbidden, as if from another mental voice. Unfair, it growled. A quick mental checklist flashed in his mind, a list of laws and procedures, checked boxes. No, worse. Insubordinate. Illegal.

He placed a hand to the side of his head at the sudden shock of the alien thoughts. It's crystal clear, the voice snarled, Done everything right. Savages. He felt the pain of joints and bruises. Even attacked me. Cannot happen. Cannot be allowed. Cannot stand. Can't. Can't. Can't.

It was all too much. There was something else, too, some sort of...writhing. Retching, even. Something was deeply wrong in a way he couldn't account for, even beyond the energy she was putting off. Nerim cast his eyes down for a moment, and then raised them. "I can't give you my lightsaber if she gets to keep hers."

Chey-Linn ignited her lightsaber, a cold blue glow engulfing the hallway. "This will be settled in a high court, not in this tree by a bunch of palace guards in the Outer Rim. I will consider any further resistance a form of insurrection."

"Sir..." The young guard said nervously.

The older one flicked a switch on his blaster. "Set to stun. We have to ensure Aesha's safety."

He felt it again, that sudden flicker of vindication turning into rage at being denied. That sensation of victory being snatched out from under you, that burning fury of deserving something and having that thing taken away. Chey-Linn began running forwards.

Nerim suddenly felt a sensation actually meant for him, that electric tugging, and ignited his lightsaber just in time to see the stun ring flying towards him. He deflected it sideways, searing a circle into the wall next to him. A split second later the younger one fired at Chey-Linn, who deflected it directly back at him. The guard was tossed into the back of his older companion, sending them both to the floor.

Aesha grabbed the back of Nerim's collar and pulled. "Follow me!"

Nerim began to run with her towards the edge of the tree's structure, throwing a quick glance behind to see Chey-Linn momentarily distracted by dealing with the guards, swinging her lightsaber down and cutting the younger's blaster in half. He then looked back to Aesha and kept running with her. "Where are we going?!"

"High gardens! We'll climb up the branches to the next floor!"

He stayed a step behind her until they ran right through a pair of glass doors that were, mercifully, already open. The exterior platform was almost like the gigantic half-circle balconies on Utapau, and were absolutely covered in flowers and vegetation of all sorts. A series of strong branches, varying in width from about that of his leg to about that of their airspeeder snaked through the gardens and above them, where he could see another smaller balcony that, hopefully, would lead to his Master.

Aesha wasted no time jumping from one branch to another, clearly already practiced in this shortcut. He scrambled after her, wasting precious seconds having to either strain himself to follow her steps or plan out alternative routes more suited to his skill set. He tried to focus on Chey-Linn's energy, sense where she was in relation to him, but distance and distraction made it grow faint. He cycled his mind through every different facet, hoping to lock on to her anger, or her train of thought, but each individual attempt failed.

Except...he still felt that retching. Now that he focused on it, he felt it all around him, in every direction. It was ill and draining, repulsive and enervating. It made him want to stop reaching out with the Force, it made using it feel as if he were trying to climb a ladder with a pair of broken arms. Could...everyone feel that? Is that why, he wondered, neither Haaka Mahn or Arwain had sensed this turmoil?

They had only managed to make it about a third of the way there when Chey-Linn ran into the gardens with them. She began climbing after them with great alacrity, and Nerim immediately realized he wouldn't be able to make it before she caught up. She was just faster than the two of them. He landed on a relatively wide and flat branch, and ignited his lightsaber.

Chey-Linn jumped up and landed to his left, about a dozen feet away, and ignited her own blade. The branch was wide enough to properly stand on, but not enough for two people to walk by one another. It was perpendicular to the City-Tree, and Chey-Linn stood between him and the tree. Behind him was only Aesha and a couple dozen more feet of branch before it widdled away to a few twigs hanging over the edge. Below him were a tangle of brambles that would drop him back down into the garden, if only just barely.

He felt that rage flowing through Chey-Linn again, like rapids pulling her forward. She pointed her blade at him. "I'm giving you one last chance to return to your duty!"

Nerim nervously raised his blade in front of himself. He really wasn't sure he could beat her if he had to. He agreed with almost everything that frustrated her; she was better than him. Stronger in the Force. Even when he could only intuit that fact from context clues he knew it, but now as they stood apart from each other, he could feel it, he could feel the difference in pressure. He considered surrender.

Refuse, he heard her echo. I have the advantage. The skill, the environment, the law, the Force. Refuse, and let me prove it.

Aesha shuddered behind him. "Nerim...?"

Her lightsaber was most certainly not set to training mode. Neither was Nerim's. He swallowed. "You've already assaulted multiple people. I can't let you hurt her. We need—"

Heat. He felt burning heat across his face, like he just looked in a furnace. "She attacked me!" Chey-Linn yelled.

"We need to contact our—"

She stepped forward, and Nerim stepped back in fear. "No more stalling, not after what you did the last time!" She shouted. "Drop it or I will make you!"

Nerim took a deep breath. He stood there, still for a moment, letting the wind pass over him. The words 'I surrender' hung in his throat, but then, between the anger and retching and fear, he felt something from behind him. Aesha's nervous energy, the shivering of her muscles, tenseness of her core. The same exact thing he felt from her in the freezer on Raxus Secundus. She needed him then, and she needed him now. He hadn't thought he could help her then, but he did. He wasn't sure he could help her now, but...

He kept his blade raised. There was nothing else to say.

Chey-Linn's face darkened. "Haaka was right about you. You were always a time bomb waiting to go off."

Nerim's eyes widened, but he didn't have time to respond in any way before she stepped forward and swung at him. He deflected the attack, careful not to let the momentum carry him to the side where he might fall. She was highly trained in Shii-Cho, the most fundamental form of lightsaber combat, well-suited to this clash on a limited tree branch. Meanwhile, Juyo was absurdly risky in this circumstance; Nerim thought that it was at best a coinflip—and worse, it would almost certainly end in a lethal blow.

He defaulted to the basics of Makashi, making quick swipes and jabs in response, shuffling backwards and forwards on their limited axis of movement. He did not know his style as well as she knew hers. Each clash favored her, leaving him primarily on the defensive. Her superior speed let her swing from a multitude of angles, and he had to keep his hands close to his core to make up for it, limiting his offensive options.

He immediately felt that oppressive anticipation of failure, that knowing that he was going to lose. There was nothing to exploit here, no environment, no time to pull any tricks, no distractions. The time it would take him to draw his blaster would be suicide, and all of his other gimmicks were either something she knew about, or something that required lateral movement that was impossible on the narrow branch.

Nerim felt the crawling of electricity on his back, a tug towards Aesha. He somehow knew she was about to try something. "No!" He called back to her, a mere moment before she attempted to jump to another branch to circle around. "Don't fight her! You'll only get hurt! Even if she defeats me," he huffed, batting the blue lightsaber away with a clash of yellow sparks, "Even if she kills me, surrender immediately!"

Aesha hesitated, as Chey-Linn moved in and chopped her lightsaber down towards Nerim's waiting guard. He intercepted it, clashing with her blade. They moved and shifted in the bind, pulling and pushing each other, trying to get to some sort of advantageous position as the plasma fields of their blades slid in jumps and starts, intertwining and sticking together.

Nerim leveraged his strength and pushed, trying to get their bind in a position where he could safely deliver a kick to his opponent, but Chey-Linn pushed back with surprising strength, empowered by the Force. Nerim grit his teeth. "Are you really...trying to kill me?"

Chey-Linn looked him in the eye, her face alternating in color rapidly as their blades discharged golden light against one another. "I will do what I must."

"Mar'e," Nerim grimaced. They broke from the bind, and three short clashes followed. Nerim knocked their blades off of the center of battle, and attempted to use the opportunity to ram into Chey-Linn with his shoulder, hoping to begin the process of knocking her off the branch. He miscalculated, as she used her lower center of gravity to duck underneath him, causing him to stumble over her and nearly fall himself.

He twisted his body to stay on the branch as they nearly traded places. His desperate attempts at balancing were brought short when Chey-Linn slashed at him. His awkward positioning made him rely solely on his left hand to defend, and it wasn't enough. She broke right through his guard and cut into his bicep, and Nerim felt the searing blade pass through his flesh as if it wasn't even there—and then he realized, it wasn't, not anymore. A deep, primal animal panic took hold of him as he recognized the inch-deep gash in his flesh, almost to the bone. The edges of the tunic it had cut through were burning, and he involuntarily let loose a scream of pain and terror. He vaguely recognized that, at the same time, Aesha screamed out his name.

Chey-Linn took the space in the center of the branch he had been standing on, and planted her heel in his stomach, kicking him off. He felt smaller branches batter his body as he fell between them, some snapping around him and others buffeting him off in another direction. He attempted to reach out with his left hand and grab a passing branch to stop his fall, only to realize his arm didn't respond properly, half of the muscles he was attempting to use were simply not there.

He tumbled to a stop in a net of vines, hanging precariously over the long drop to ground level, and looked back up. His lightsaber had slid to a stop on the branch they were fighting on, precariously balanced, and Chey-Linn looked down at him, an expression of relief and triumph on her face. He could feel, she was not only glad that she won, she was relieved that it was easy.

His heart jumped to his throat as he saw Aesha bend down to pick up his lightsaber and ignite it, taking a battle stance. Chey-Linn's smile dropped and her eyes widened, her pupils shrunk to a pinprick, and she slowly turned her head to the Cathar princess. "So...You are training in the Sith arts. You are a meager, savage imitation of their evil."

Aesha held up Nerim's lightsaber, bathing her face in its yellow-green glow. "I may be just a fake," she said with a wavering voice, "But I am a fake Jedi."

Chey-Linn sneered at her. "We are NOT the same," she said, and then began to march towards Aesha.

Nerim's heart pounded faster and faster as he scrambled amid the branches, grappling for anything he could get a hold of and scrambling upwards as fast as he physically could with his left arm only partially functional. Maybe even faster. "No, no, no, no, no..." he muttered to himself, feeling a pit in his stomach, as if the sludge in his soul had coalesced into a black hole. Fatigue, searing pain, and most of all panic swirled and crashed in his mind, his weary limbs dragging himself up bit by bit, as he heard the first clashes.

Chey-Linn engaged Aesha cautiously, attempting to tease out any hidden tricks or skill she had. Aesha engaged heartily and bravely, casting her fear aside and pressing the attack. She was almost as fast as Chey-Linn, and even though her movements were stiff and she overcommitted to her swings more often than not, she was much stronger, and her range was much greater. Even with her nearly-nonexistent skills at lightsaber combat, she was dangerous.

Nerim was still desperately climbing as he felt as sudden foreign pang of fear. He glanced up to see Aesha bring down a formidable diagonal swipe, which Chey-Linn only barely leaned back and dodged in time. The Padawan's breath caught as she realized the sudden danger, her mind focused on what she perceived to be a threat—a Dark Sider in training, what she was sworn to destroy. In her mind, there was no room to hold back.

Aesha tried to catch her on the backswing, pulling the blade in a horizontal slash at Chey-Linn's shoulder height. It was a terrible mistake, made only more terrible by the fact Nerim could see exactly where it would lead a moment before it did. Chey-Linn quickly dodged underneath it, dropping to one knee while rushing forward and letting loose her own horizontal slash.

Chey-Linn's blue blade sliced directly through Aesha's legs, just above the knee, burning through her flesh with an electric hum and a hiss. He could almost swear he heard the bubbling and popping of her flesh at the point of contact, as the Cathar Princess let out a silent, shocked breath and fell to the branch beneath her with a sickening thud. Nerim's lightsaber slipped out of her hands and deactivated, beginning a long fall down the hundreds of stories to the savanna floor.

"NO!" Nerim screamed. He summoned all the strength he was capable of and made the final jump, soaring onto the branch a small distance from the two of them. Aesha was silent in shock, her eyes aimlessly staring forward at the branch beneath her as she struggled to breathe and Chey-Linn slowly turned to face him.

He pulled Aesha's uncompleted lightsaber from his belt and sent a surge of power down his arm, through his hand and into the hilt. He heard several sharp clicks, and then pressed the button, igniting a blade just as brilliantly blue as Chey-Linn's was cold. He glared forward at her, feeling a swirling in the air, an upwelling of power from somewhere within him. All of his fear had transformed into fury.

 

[Goudeauboywade]

Hmmmm I get the strangest feeling that they haven't left the cave yet or whatever force nexus they were in is really warping Chey perspective.

 

[Hyenanon]

Hmmmm I get the strangest feeling that they haven't left the cave yet or whatever force nexus they were in is really warping Chey perspective.

Click to shrink...

From a certain point of view, nobody has really moved on from the Jedi Civil War...

 

[chiefnewo]

Hmmmm I get the strangest feeling that they haven't left the cave yet or whatever force nexus they were in is really warping Chey perspective.

Click to shrink...

It feels like either they haven't left the cave or the cave hasn't left them.

 

[HoldMyFOOF]

Well, this is going to be a bigger shitshow than anticipated.

Goddamn teenagers.

 

[Hyenanon]

Chapter 32: Going To Get Us Both Killed​

Nerim stepped backwards, inviting Chey-Linn to step forwards and away from Aesha as she silently writhed on the branch, trying to move legs that were no longer connected to her. Chey-Linn took the opportunity, swiftly advancing, raising her lightsaber with a short flourish.

"Are you looking for a repeat?" She said, without a hint of mirth or a smile. Whatever ability he had to read her mind was gone now, drowned out by the thumping of his heart in his ears, the clench of his teeth and the speed of his breath.

Nerim pointed his blade at her, his left hand noticeably shaky in its grip, mostly relying on his right. "Are you?"

He saw her tense up, and then rush forward with the intent to attack. Nerim decided he was ready for a coinflip. He ran directly at her, surprising her with his aggressiveness, and put his momentum into a vicious slash from below to cut diagonally across her body upwards. She blocked it without much effort, but the inertia carried their blades upwards, giving him a clear shot to kick her directly in the gut.

Her center of gravity tilted backwards, making her have to pull one foot behind herself to stop from falling on her rear. He was ready for it, and slashed at the leg that remained forward, catching her in an awkward position where she couldn't move her leg out of the way without falling forward. She relied on her strength to block his blow, turning her wide stance into an advantage, evenly distributing the force across her entire body in a way that was almost impossible to overpower.

However, Nerim could easily improvise with that. The horse stance, though it has powerful benefits when blocking, effectively cripples your range—somewhere she already suffered compared to him. He was safe from any counter-attack, and let his blade deactivate, swapping the hilt to his crippled left hand. Chey-Linn's lightsaber wildly swung to the side and she leaned forward off-balance, surprised by the sudden move.

Nerim grabbed her sword-hand with his right arm and pushed it outwards away from him, and moved in. He placed Aesha's lightsaber hilt under Chey-Linn's chin, and pressed the button. In the minuscule delay between pressing the button and the blade extending, he saw her eyes turn wild with fear, and in an incredible burst of speed she threw herself backwards. The blue blade singed her bangs as she fell back, tossing herself off the branch entirely at the mercy of gravity.

Nerim was unable to keep hold of her with his other hand, but any attempt she could have made at a counterattack was rendered moot as she fell. They broke apart, and found that luck was on her side; a quite small branch had found itself directly below her, and she landed on it unsteadily with both of her feet, rapidly attempting to regain her balance. She looked up at him, her expression having entirely changed to one of shock. The ease at which she was fighting earlier had entirely disappeared, replaced with the horrible realization; she could die here.

He paced impatiently, swapping Aesha's lightsaber back to his right hand and letting it trail along side him, humming as it cut the air. It briefly occurred to him, too, that he had just tried to kill her. The thought trembled in his head, as if it were a nervous child raising its hand in question. Something else in his brain, a snarling creature, snapped back at it, and it quietly retracted its objection. The lightsaber buzzed in his hand, eager to return to battle.

From below on the garden floor, a group of palace guards arrived, pointing their blasters upwards and squinting through the occluding sunlight to make out the two Jedi. From their position, Aesha wasn't visible, and so they confusedly began speaking into their communicators asking for instruction. He realized that at this rate, Jarroa either was or would quickly be informed, and by extension, so would their Masters. It wouldn't take them more than a minute or two to arrive.

Suddenly, he realized something poking at the edge of his consciousness, a brief glimpse into Chey-Linn's mind. In her, he found the exact opposite thought; her hands trembled as she came to the conclusion that she was truly, deeply alone. He felt...a flicker of what he had experienced in his nightmare, somewhere within her.

It was entirely irrational, but she was somehow convinced that she was never going to see Haaka Mahn again. Her senses had fooled her in some way, as if she had vertigo, like her inner ear was convinced she was spinning and falling even though she was still, and she could not help but heed the visceral sensation over cold rationalism.

Chey-Linn steeled herself, and crouched onto the branch, letting it drop with her weight and then spring back up with her leap. She soared through the air and flipped above him, landing on her feet on the side farther from the City-Tree. He moved forward and swung his saber with both arms, clashing with her. She breathed in sharply as she mustered her strength, attempting to push his blade back into himself.

He stared her in the eye, trying his best not to lose control, when he suddenly saw over her shoulder; Aesha's body, now unconscious—or worse—limp on the tree branch. Both of her legs scattered behind her. Suddenly, he felt that waterfall sensation from the Temple again, that white-water current now pushing him forwards. He didn't shy away from the conflict, putting his full weight into it. Chey-Linn's eyes widened as she felt him begin to overpower her in the bind, and she broke out of it, stepping backwards and then forward again for a quick counterattack.

She slashed at him several times in rapid succession, pushing him backwards, utilizing every ounce of her strength and speed. In one last maneuver, quicker than the eye could see in a well-practiced motion, she moved to one side and then the other, spinning to slash at him. It was faster than he could possibly respond, faster than Arwain had ever gone against him. And her slash went completely wide, as she over stepped and her foot slid halfway off the branch, throwing her balance off completely. He didn't even have to defend against it. For a brief moment, suspended in motion, he saw her eyes flatten with recognition, and her confidence leave her.

With half as much supernatural speed, Nerim responded by lunging forward, keeping his blade between himself and hers, and stomping on her foot. She grit her teeth in pain, but maintained control, readjusting her footing and trying to wind her lightsaber behind his defenses. He took advantage of his closeness and stepped in between her feet, twisting to place his back to her as he did so. He blocked her lightsaber with the blade in his right hand, and then used his left hand to grab the hilt of her lightsaber between her own two hands. He then began to push with both arms, away from the both of them.

Somehow, his crippled arm was outputting just as much—no, more force than he normally could muster with either arm in perfect health. Chey-Linn began to panic, attempting to knee or kick him, but his closeness ensured she couldn't get any proper leverage. Both of her hands were firmly trying to hold the lightsaber hilt, and she was unable to circle around due to the narrow branch. If he were in her position, he would've bit his crippled arm at the lightsaber wound, but the thought apparently either didn't occur or didn't appeal to her.

Instead, Chey-Linn suddenly let go of her lightsaber, and kicked him forward. Before he could turn around, he felt a familiar wave of strong pressure, and slid even further forwards, threatening to fall over entirely. He whipped around to see her thrusting both her hands out, and the air rumbled around him in a way that he felt more than heard. Suddenly it reversed, and Chey-Linn's lightsaber writhed out of his hand, beginning to fly back towards her.

"No." He reached his arm out, and the lightsaber froze in mid-air, shuddering back and forth. He realized a moment later that the voice had come from him. That sensation was growing stronger, and stronger still. He realized what it was, what his Master had described in the Temple: Righteous fury.

Chey-Linn was obviously surprised by the resistance, and the lightsaber slid in the air towards Nerim, before she regained her form and redoubled her efforts. Nerim stepped forward, pulling harder. Chey-Linn's voice escaped her throat in a strained groan as she used every last drop of her strength, but perhaps she was fatigued from overuse of the Force, or perhaps that righteous fury was stronger than either of them had realized. He stepped forward again, and it jiggled yet closer, until it was close enough.

Nerim slashed the hilt in half, splitting Chey-Linn's lightsaber down the middle. There was a brief explosion of blue energy as Aesha's blade passed through Chey-Linn's crystal, small arcs of azure plasma jetting in opposite directions out the top and bottom of it like a quasar, thoroughly melting all the components. The crystal fell to the branch superheated but unharmed, bouncing off and somewhere into the garden below. Nerim huffed in exertion, deactivating Aesha's saber and continuing to move forwards.

Chey-Linn's face paled. "My bla—"

She was cut off as Nerim's fist found its way into her jaw. He heard a crack as she dropped to her back on the branch. "We are not even CLOSE to done, chakaar!" He shouted, sitting with one knee on either side of her, his fist raised threateningly.

She coughed, sputtering and choking until a tooth was expelled from her throat and drooled out onto the tree in a mix of saliva and blood. His left hand shot out and wrapped around her throat, his right fist, still holding the deactivated hilt of Aesha's blade, ready to punch her directly into the branch below. That animal in his head snarled again. Cripple her, it growled. She deserves to lose something too.

His left arm, still shivering with pain and alien in its operation to him, missing some of its structure and relying on the Force to remain functional, pressed into her throat, cutting off her air. It squeezed as tight as it could, and her face began to turn red from the pressure.

But somehow, his right hand hesitated. He realized something felt wrong in his palm. The crystal of Aesha's blade was humming dissonantly. It...disapproved. Somehow, as he focused on it, he heard it speak in Aesha's voice in his head. Not me. Don't use me for this. I am a tool of a Jedi.

Nerim's mind snapped back into place, and he broke out of the stream. The righteous fury still swarmed around him, pouring down from the sky directly onto Chey-Linn, as if the world itself were trying to pummel her. But it broke around him, splashing off of his skin instead of flowing through him.

His left arm relaxed, at first voluntarily, and then very much not as whatever vitality he had been pressing into it left him. It hung limply at his side, throbbing with pain exceeding almost anything he had felt before. He leaned back on his heels and exhaled sharply at the sensation, while Chey-Linn warily looked up at him.

Suddenly, he felt a flare of anxiety behind and above him. "Chey-Linn!" He heard Haaka Mahn's gurgling voice shout, and then a series of flexing branches as the Knight jumped through the foliage down towards them. It was followed by a series of steps that were lighter, but no less quick.

Nerim climbed off of Chey-Linn and then fell backwards, his weary knees giving out and rolling him onto his back, his legs still resting on top of hers. He clenched his teeth in pain and closed his eyes, and when they opened, the blurry image of Haaka Mahn stood above him, the Knight's blue lightsaber active and pointed downwards.

"Get...Aesha...bacta," Nerim huffed.

"What did you do?!" The Knight asked, his tone clearly accusatory.

Arwain rushed up behind him, poking her head over his shoulder like a curious parrot that just so happened to have a sword at the ready. "This is rather bad. All three of them need medical—Nerim, whose lightsaber is that?"

"Arwain. Priorities." Nerim said through grit teeth.

"Right," she said. "Haaka, you grab Aesha. I'll—"

Nerim didn't hear the rest, as he was suddenly preoccupied with a ringing in his ears and a feeling of his peripheral vision blurring and then turning black. For a moment he felt like he was falling, and then he was unconscious.


--------------


Nerim had awoken from his dreamless sleep with his left arm in a hefty, bacta-packed cast, and immediately stood up and got out of bed before he had even realized he was in a bed. Arwain, who had been sitting on a chair next to him, immediately shoved him back down into the bed.

"Whoa there. You need to take it easy," Arwain said cautiously. She looked him over while he twisted his head to try and get an impression of where they were. It was a hospital room of some sort, small but private. It was afternoon outside. He must've been out for at least several hours.

"Huh," he said. "I'm not in jail. Or..." He glanced to Arwain. "You're in jail with me."

She lightly exhaled in amusement, but didn't smile. "Good instinct, but no. We're...I hesitate to say 'okay', but we're not in immediate danger right now. The—"

Nerim bolted upright in the bed again, his heart racing. "Where's Aesha? Is she okay?"

His Master stared at him for a moment. "I...hesitate to say 'okay.' But she's stable. She actually woke up a few moments after you passed out. Thanks to her swift testimony, you're not currently under arrest. I'm not sure if she's awake right now, she may still be suspended in a bacta tank. I don't think they'll be able to reattach her legs."

Nerim took a deep breath, and tried to relax again. His left arm was entirely numb, so the pain was mostly gone from his body. He stared at the ceiling, not sure what to make of it all.

Arwain continued. "Aesha said that Chey-Linn went crazy and attacked the two of you. Is that true?"

He uncomfortably shifted position. "It's...Not exactly. Aesha threw the first blow. The first physical one, anyways."

Arwain looked at him, her expression neutral, examining him closely as he continued the story from the beginning. He told her how they had argued on the way, admitted he was needling her as best he could. He explained their difference in legal opinion, to which Arwain offered no commentary even when Nerim prompted her with a short silence. Then he continued, describing how Aesha lost patience with the insults, and a fight broke out.

His hands—or well, his one hand that was free—trembled as he finished the description of the fight. "I disarmed her using the Force, and pinned her to the ground. Master, I...I wanted to cripple her. I think I wanted to kill her."

His Master slowly blinked, leaned forward and studying his expression. "And?"

"I—I don't think I would've stopped myself," he admitted weakly. "I didn't stop because I wanted to. I stopped because...Something like a voice told me to. If Aesha's crystal wasn't there, I don't know if..."

He trailed off. For the first time in seemingly so long, Arwain smiled, and placed her hand on his head comfortingly. "Nerim. Remember what I told you, on Raxus Secundus? A Jedi draws strength from the world around him. Don't think yourself deficient because you regained control of yourself from listening to an outside source. Take confidence in the fact that you can listen, even when you don't want to."

Nerim looked up at her, feeling his throat contract. Tears started falling from his eyes, and he tried not to sob. "Master, what's happening?" He asked, not even entirely sure what he was referring to.

She gently rubbed the top of his head. "I don't know, my Apprentice. There is something...wrong in the Force. Not just here, but everywhere. It is as if..." she trailed off, and then shook her head. "I have become aware of a great Darkness, somewhere. But I cannot pinpoint it. I will have to bring this to the attention of the Council."

Arwain's expression suddenly became pained. "Ugh," she sighed, "The Council. Master Fae is going to kill both of us."