Title: Kindred Knights: The Foreseen Loss
Summary: Keldu Lujac was given the gift of prophecy, but sometimes it is more of a burden than a gift.
Rating: PG
Length: 740 words
Category: angst
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The Kindred Knights:
The Foreseen Loss
Light and sound exploded furiously in one great flash.
She ran to it with the same immense explosion happening inside of her. But this time, instead of being one of light and sound, the detonation was one of pain and grief, great sorrow that tore her up emotionally. Her cheeks were soaked in her silent tears, but she could not feel it. Her tunic was likewise drenched in the salty tears, and also sweat as the heat intensified the closer she came to the center of the explosion, but she couldn't feel that either. The heat was practically scorching the bared skin on her arms, but that wasn't felt either. Her face and hands were blackened with soot. She couldn't feel it. She couldn't feel the blood that leaked from her mouth and nose. Nor the bruises and cuts that littered her body.
All she could feel was the giant, overwhelming sense of loss and sorrow.
All she felt was that a piece of her was gone forever.
She had lost something so great that she would be marked for eternity. Changed, and not for the better. She would be so different now, she might as well be unrecognizable. Something so important and influential had been snatched away from her that she would never mend.
There would be no escape. Ever.
She came to the immediate area of the explosion. The ground was blackened and small fires still raged in what little grass remained.
The smoke rose and stung her eyes, and burned its way down her throat and into her lungs, but she still couldn't feel it.
She couldn't feel the heat because she was numbed by the cold of grief.
Three figures she knew emerged from the billowing smoke. Each was covered in soot, soaked, bleeding and hurrying to the same place she was, changed almost beyond recognition.
The only way she knew them was by their presences, imprinted on her own mind after so long. And so, in that moment, she bore great gratitude for the Force that allowed her to know they were with her.
They ran as one to the center of the explosion, and crumbled down to their knees in one simultaneous motion. The ground was excruciatingly hot beneath her. The blood from her nose and mouth was now a crimson trail down her tunic. The acrid black smoke rose burned her teary eyes and her throat, causing her to cough violently.
She could feel the despair and the grief, but somewhere beyond it she could feel the anger, betrayal and vengeance that would later eat her from the inside out.
The smoke cleared enough for her to see in front of her. She saw an item of proof to her sorrow. She slowly bent over despite the pain in her ribs, weeping uncontrollably as she buried her face in her hands and then knees. Her torn pants were almost instantaneously drenched. She could barely hear her fellows' weeping over her own.
She forced her eyes open. Staring at the object in front of her brought more tears, which quickly distorted her vision. Thinking of it and its once owner channeled more sorrow into her than she would have ever fathomed possible.
Covering her face with her hands once more, she wished for a time when she could make this pain cease.
But it would never cease!
The raging in her heart would never stop. It would slow with time, but it would never truly end.
She brought her eyes back up to look at the object one more time.
Lone, smoking and charred, lying in the burning grass was the hilt of a very familiar lightsaber.
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With a startled gasp that bordered on desperate for air, Keldu Lujac awoke. Her body instantly tensed so much it was painful and she barely restrained herself from screaming. The darkness of her room seemed to press down on her, and her heart felt like a different darkness was closing in on it, constricting on her happiness.
It took every ounce of her Jedi training to still her heart, an effort that even the greatest Jedi Masters would approve of. She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as she calmed herself, finding the tranquility that she nigh always kept about her.
She did not doubt that the nightmare was actually a vision, and that was what truly scared her.