Lineage III

Part 1: Seeker

An unexpected blast of scouring wind rattled hail pellets against the cave's far wall, and nearly extinguished the guttering sentinel fire. Jedi master Qui Gon Jinn breathed renewed life into the expiring circle of flame, and angled his broad back toward the arched entrance, sheltering the slow-kindling tongues of heat and light from the onslaught of the storm outside.

It was a bad storm – an angry and unseasonable tempest, one suggesting the wrathful disapproval of all Dark things, of cold and emptiness and violence. They laid siege to this cave together, as though they understood what transpired within, what dread conspiracy against their sovereignty was here conceived by the Force. Let them storm and gnash icy teeth together in vain. Qui Gon was participant, privy to the stirrings of Light's rebellion, its unquenchable defiance in the face of defeat, of chaos, of despair. He smiled grimly.

And the storm howled, and his infant fire burned in the protective grace of the master's shadow, and deep in the hidden bowels of the caves, Light called to Light, the sought to the seeker, the eternal to its youngest scion.

Know thyself.

The first threshold had been an easy one, for he had stepped from the barren peaks outside into the eerie shelter of the vestibule with Qui Gon by his side. The hollowed dome of the cave roof was fretted with silver light. Naively, he had asked whether these were the crystals of which tradition spoke.

They were not. Those above had been nothing but pretty rocks. So said the Jedi master. What he sought lay deep within.

The second threshold had also been easy to cross. The anterior cave appeared whole, seamless, a womb of encasing ice, perfectly still and sonorous in the Force, a chiming and unwavering note. Told to find his own entrance to the mysteries beyond, he had closed his eyes, denying the testimony of mere flesh. And in the realm of the unseen, he perceived the door straight ahead, the tunnel opening disguised by illusion, by the weaving of visions even here, in the outermost chamber. Mirages and charades sustained by nothing but the Caves themselves, by the dictate of the Force. He had parted ways with his master then, for this was a quest undertaken alone.

The third threshold had been less simple. But he did not come here unprepared, untutored. The narrow gateway to the realm beyond was blocked by a figure in a mantle of white shadow, cowled in blinding light. "Who is it that trespasses upon the caves of seeking?" the voice demanded, whether in speech or thought he could not say.

"No one."

The figure's robes wafted in an invisible breeze, the solar wind off some hidden star. "Have you no name, seeker?"

"Let a Jedi have no name, no place, no history, no self."

"You are impudent to quote one wiser than yourself."

"I have no wisdom of my own; I must borrow that which others have left behind."

Laughter blurred the figure's corona to striating color. "You were left a name, as well. Will you not lay claim to it?"

"I will grow into it first."

The speaker's coruscating robes fell from his body, leaving nothing behind. And when he looked down to where the brilliant white garment had fallen, there was nothing but fresh snow, and a trickling cascade of icy dust from the roof above. The doorway stood open before him, and he crossed over it, into the unknown.

The sun disappeared on the far horizon, and the storm withdrew, slinking back into the dark fastness of night to skulk and plot the terms of its next assault. Qui Gon rose, leaving the fire to tend itself, and stood in the arched portal of the ice cave. A scar across the cloud-smeared sky revealed stars beyond, their clarity startling at this high altitude, as though no soft veils remained between the beholder and their merciless truths.

He recalled a conversation, only a few months ago.

"If it is as difficult and perilous as you describe, master, then why…?"

"Why is it traditional to face the caves at such a young age?" Qui Gon finished, looking down into an earnest, and slightly anxious face. "Because it is far easier for one your age than for one of my years. Think of what you know already, and you will see why."

His Padawan dutifully contemplated the question for a minute. Then, "Because the visions are drawn from what is within us."

"Indeed. The more nightmare we have lived through, the more temptation we have seen, the more evil we have struggled to uproot, the more fodder do we thereby provide for illusion and regret. Your inexperience protects you, in a degree."

"In a degree."

"Yes."

"I have visions anyway. All the time. Do you think…?"

"I don't know, young one." He still didn't. Outside, a looming moon curled silver fingers over the mountainside's snow-flecked clefts, caressed pristine heights, brushed over piled drifts, forests of ice spears. The cold was absolute, and soon the Jedi was driven back within the shelter of the cave, crouched once again over the fire, calling upon the Force to warm the shallow depression in the frozen stone, to preserve the fragile sanctuary of life.

He fanned the flames, and knelt. Waiting.

It had been mere hours – a long time, but not alarmingly long, he remembered. And yet, the nine months of painstaking preparation, of study and meditation antecedent to this task, now seemed insufficient. In the face of stark reality, all theory and speculation faded to inconsequential wraiths, a pallid convocation of platitudes and empty assurances. In the end, there could be no true preparation. There was not a Jedi alive who had not been taken … off guard… by the caves of Ilum.

Know thyself.

And what darkness is harbored therein. The next crossing, a narrow cleft in the sheer walls of ice-slicked rock, a dark mouth guarded by rows of gleaming stalactites, blue-white teeth pendant from the shadowed roof, gaped before him, the dim phosphorescence of the cave walls penetrating no further than its threshold.

He stopped, chest constricting. A sigh escaped the narrow mouth, a moaning imprecation, a warning to any who dared trespass. Cold nothingness oozed from the aperture, coiled slowly at his feet, clawed its way up his legs, spine, wrapping cloying fingers of ice about nerve and bone. He shuddered violently. Focus. The river stone in his right hand warmed a little, obedient to his will, but not enough to drive back the chill embrace of unseen fingers.

The Dark took on a shape, another figure, this one cowled in shifting void. He could not see its form; but it cast a shadow at the periphery of vision, flickered dark against dark ,suggesting an outline here, a body there. Eyes burned within the smoke, pits of laughing hollow gold. "Whose folly has sent you hither?" the thing demanded.

"My own," he replied, boldly, voice cracking in the frigid air.

"What do you seek herein?"

Focus. The words saber crystal formed on his lips, but he swallowed them down again. Know thyself. "I seek my truth."

The concatenation of shadows, the puppet woven of forgetfulness and doubt, shimmered in a black wind, the eddying grip of some imploded star. It chuckled nastily. "You have not the strength to bear it."

The stone was warm against his skin. His fingers tightened about it, mooring his awareness in the pinprick of heat, the solitary island of vibrancy in this tomb of ice and shadows. "The Force is strength beyond reckoning; wisdom beyond measure."

"You parrot your teachers well, little fool. Come hither and find your truth."

The invitation was more dreadful than a denial; the hiss of the shadow's dissolution more cutting than a blade's sudden slashing strike. He stumbled on nothing as he moved, as though dreaming, toward the door, feeling himself sink deeper into the Force with each step, reality sliding beneath his feet, slick as the shining ice, thawing into a murky slush of vision and memory, and budding premonition. The rock in his fist was hot, a tiny coal burning into his numbed flesh. But he did not let go.

He pressed onward.

Close to midnight, a predator poked its nose into the cave.

Qui Gon's blade growled a low and reverberating warning; but the hungry young gundark would not be put off. Its gaunt head and jaws thrust through the cave entrance, bones protruding beneath the ice-crusted scales of its hide. Gangly, half-grown, vital need shining in its murderous eyes, the Jedi master could not suppress the pang of empathy writhing in his gut, even as he swept his weapon up in guard position.

The yearling male filled the ice cavern with its hot breath, stood glaring at the tiny fire. A tongue lolled over curved ranks of teeth; paws too large for the monster's body clutched at the gritty ice beneath them. Desperate, starving, likely orphaned yet not quite old enough to fend for itself, the creature had been consigned to the cruelest of fates: slow starvation in the merciless ice-mountains, ultimately ending as the feast of another gundark. Had the hatchling been younger, it would perhaps have been adopted by a female; had it been older, it would have had strength and skill to compete for territory and food with the other bachelor males. But this adolescent specimen was doomed, thrust into the cruel world too soon, without protection or guidance.

It was a pathetic life form, even if it did firmly intend to eat him. Qui Gon wondered momentarily whether it would be more merciful to cut the famished creature down, and so end its suffering; but something deep within him stayed his hand, tugging at buried heartstrings. Tentatively, he reached out through the Force, attempting to touch its bleary, food-starved mind…

But the young gundark was past salvation. It roared, a broken and anger-fraught thunder, and lunged upon him, jaws wide and eyes burning with madness born of the instinct to kill, to consume life and thus prolong its own.

The Jedi master's blade struck true and straight, separating head from body. Hot blood spilled upon the ice, but not much. A 'saber's blade cauterized where it touched, and the temperature was very low.

Qui Gon used the Force to push the carcass out the door and over the narrow cliff's edge. A fresh corpse would attract other predators, and a horde of scavenging beasts; he wished for no other intruders tonight. He watched the dark mass of the gundark's body fall, impact upon stone and ice, and settle in a distant ravine, its young life prematurely cut short, by the will of the Force.

He exhaled, slowly, and returned to his vigil.

The cavern was vast, and locked in labyrinthine shadow and ice. For aeons he wandered the twisting halls of its inner sanctum, until he had wandered to a deathly stalemate in the center of the maze, a knot of wrong turnings and confusion from which his trembling, weary legs would not carry him away. His breath came harsh, and escaped the laboring bellows of his lungs in great clouds of white vapor. His fingers felt nothing, his ears rang with excruciating pain, the cold penetrating inward like a spike driven through his brain.

He knelt upon trampled ice, locked in walls of ice, of mirrored corridors stretching endless, meaningless, unto a vast inviting eternity. The Force drew nigh, expectant.

"What are you doing, young one?" a voice chided him – a tad impatient, almost mocking, but not unkind. Promising wisdom.

He looked up, squinted through the condensing clouds of his own breath. A Jedi, robed in brown. An illusion, of course. But still, it had spoken to him.

"I'm…I'm looking for the way through. I'm lost."

The Jedi sighed, a release of many things: irritation, sorrow, memory. "Yes, you are rather accomplished at that, aren't you?" he said, wryly.

It hurt; and yet, it didn't hurt at all. There was no real venom in the statement. He peered up and up, but he could not see beneath the deep hood. "Can you – how do I get through? I have to get through. I can't fail."

"Well," his new friend – illusion – softly snorted. "In that case, I suggest you get off your pathetic rump and find a way out, before you expire here. Qui Gon is waiting for you, you know."

Qui Gon! How could he have forgotten? The tall man must be cold, and lonely, waiting outside the caverns for him to re-emerge. He could not let his master down. They had worked too hard in preparation for this test… they had staked too much on its completion.

He wobbled to his feet, dizzy. It was cold here, cold as death. His eyes traveled up the shimmering form of his interlocutor. A saber hung by the Jedi's side – a beautiful weapon, elegant and understated, perfectly balanced, traditional yet simple. He looked further, and as he watched, the Jedi's hands came up and gently lowered his cowl.

His heart hammered once, and that gong note shattered the vision like a broken mirror.

Gasping, he staggered backward two paces, back against the constricting walls of the ice maze. But now something new quickened within him, a newborn fire of resolution, the bright ember of a truth revealed. The stone in his left hand flared hot, and he extended his right, fingers splayed, a sign of opposition thrust in the face of the labyrinth.

The Force surged, around him, through him, and the vast architecture of delusion crumbled, dissolving into floating white dust, icy mist. And he stepped forward, pressing onward.

Know thyself.

Qui Gon watched the sunrise, as he always did.

Here, solitary witness to the pale star's ascent, he looked out upon the fleeing shadows, the purple and blue dusk retreating beneath the daytime glare. Light pierced the heavy clouds, bled in splendor over virgin snow, filled the air with such a blinding legion of white that the Jedi master veiled his eyes, squinting hard against the influx, the brightness to great to bear. Winged things rose and called to the sun, dipping and soaring before its throne, obeisant to the source of life. The sky burned to a peerless blue, an edged intensity worthy of a saber blade.

And the world was quiet.

He returned to the cave and the fire, a weak echo of the celestial flame without. Dawn had come, and yet he still waited. Ilum's cold day began its song, and yet he still waited. The star rose to its meridian, and anxiety settled leaden, immovable, within his breast. The Force was heavy, and the air weighted with cold, with foreboding. It had been a full cycle of the planet, a full circle about the star. It had been too long – far, far too long. The caves were dangerous, and deadly.

Outside, light reigned in undisputed glory. Inside, it was still Dark.

By the time he reached the final threshold, he was half-dead of cold. And the stone in his left hand was nothing but endless pain, searing heat. But his nerves were so numb, so deadened, that he had forgotten how to loose his grip. He carried the thing with him, a candle flame without a candle, a tiny spark sheltered in his palm.

The last guardian was transparent, not even there. Nothing but a voice, a smell. Chimes cascading in a warm breeze.

You are here, latecomer.

"I… I…" His teeth chattered abominably. The rock burned through his flesh, doing no harm. "I come as a seeker."

And what do you come seeking?

"The ….I seek the… heart of a … blade." He really mustn't fall down. Even if this presence was nothing but illusion. He would not disgrace the Order, himself, Qui Gon.

A fair exchange. The price of understanding is innocence..

He sucked in a piercing breath. The stone burned, the ice thickened his blood into a sluggish trickle of life, a fading thread of warmth. "I… I… accept the exchange."

Enter, then, Jedi.

He entered, clutching the burning stone in his left hand.

In the inmost cave, snow fell. And each flake was unique, a subtle variation on every other, like individual lives expressed within the Force's ever changing pattern, the boundless fountain of existence. And the flakes were lives, they were men… men falling like snowflakes, clad in white, softly falling in thousands, hundreds of thousands, until the cave was piled knee deep with their twisted corpses, their white and faceless bodies, this hecatomb of sacrifice, offered to some strange deity.

He stood amidst this white avalanche of death, and his tunics were stained, and his hands were stained, and he too was garbed in white, a sacrifice ready to be laid down on this dark altar of war. He wiped the streaming tears from his cheeks with bloody hands, and smeared crimson across his eyes, too… until the white drifts of hollow men had become scarlet lakes, rivers of fire slithering between jagged black banks, rough cliffs of hewn obsidian. The snow was white ash, then, and leaping fire. And the heat of it burned worse than the ice of the cave, burned so hot that it was ice, the obscene wedding of heat and cold, dark and light, an eruption of chaos that threatened to overwhelm the entire universe.

He cried out over the roar of the magmaic river, cried out to some unknown power, for some unknown mercy. And he tore his horrified gaze upward, toward the roof above –

Only there was no roof, no ceiling but the infinite firmament. And in that bottomless sky there loomed a moon, a bastion of dark, a thing too large and too cold to be a moon, a disgorged eye hanging impossibly in the heavens, blocking out the stars, annihilating the constellations, staring pitiless at him. Its monolithic curve bore down, looming nearer and nearer, until he understood that this was his death, and that this perverse god, this Dark un-Temple in which the million white men had been offered up as incense, this vast idol forged in the rivers of fire, would either consume him, or else consume the ten thousand worlds, crush them in its pitiless maw. And he understood, and he knelt for the death blow, eyes closed, face turned inward toward the Light.

The black moon swallowed him whole, and the snow and fire were extinguished, and the heavens collapsed in ruin, reverting to a glittering cave roof, and the universe fragmented into ice and stunning blue luminescence and chiming, lovely sweet chiming. He was alone in the deepest of the caverns, panting on hands and knees, the sweat slicking his face already freezing to bitter ice-dust. the stone had fallen from his slack fingers. He picked it up - feeling its surface as cold as the ice - and shoved it back in his inner pocket. His head throbbed... it was so heavy... and yet, he found the strength to drag his gaze upward one last time.

Directly ahead, set in the cave wall like the rarest of flowers, gleamed the object of his seeking, the pure crystalline distillation of the cavern's ordeals.

Brief antarctic day faded again into a despondent night; the storm, patiently biding its time and licking its wounds through the short marches of daylight, now rose again in strength and laid new siege upon the mountains. Hail and swirling snow broke through the cave's defenses and nearly extinguished Qui Gon's beacon flame, sending up a white smoke column to the glistening crystal-fretted roof.

The Jedi master stood, listening to the hollow laughter of the wind, its scathing taunt. He had waited, under the banner of day, for a hero's return. And yet he was still alone. And now the Dark gloated, confident of its victory. The feeble scheme of Light had been crushed in its inception, stamped out before its seedling fire could bloom.

The storm howled the victory of negation, of chill nothingness, its voice a gutted lament echoing among the jagged peaks. Qui Gon listened, and was silent. The stars peered down, without compassion or hatred. Somewhere far distant, a hunting gundark yowled and roared, heralding the death of some other ice-dwelling creature. The moons silvered all in funerary magnificence.

And a footfall stumbled, softly, in the tunnel beyond.

He wheeled, crossed the flickering fire-lit vestibule, stood disbelieving, utterly believing, at the threshold.

His Padawan staggered out of primordial darkness, into the pool of welcoming light, ice crusted on clothing, hair, hanging in delicate crystals from the braid's twisted length. The boy looked up at him, skin a lifeless shade of white, lips a frozen blue-grey, eyes limpid with painful triumph. He extended his shaking right hand and uncurled trembling fingers. Upon his open palm lay a single, cerulean blue crystal, a thing so pure it sang in the Force, chorused joyfully in praise of its finding.

"Well done," the tall man breathed, a warmth of pride thawing the Force between them, radiant with relief and gladness.

Obi Wan closed his hand around the peerless treasure, offered Qui Gon a melting smile of happiness, and then promptly fainted into the Jedi master's strong and steady arms.