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