Chapter Nine: Darklight
"To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night, Padawan: but choose!"
- Grand Master Yoda to Padawan Whie Malreux
Later…
Breathe in…..
The crystal is the heart of the blade.
Breathe out….
The heart is the crystal of the Jedi.
Ro's crystals - her two halves of one heart - were twin shards of purple, veined with darkest blue, like a bruised dawn after a cleansing rain.
The Jedi is the crystal of the Force.
And she could feel the Force. It was a song - a symphony of instruments and harmonies that surpassed description and all definitions of beauty - and it shivered through her blood, inviting her to dance to its melody.
The Force is the blade of the heart.
All are intertwined.
She could see that. Not with her physical eyes, but with a dreamer's internal sight. The Force; the lightsabers; the Jedi. Golden threads - the Force, manifest - stretched from her, to her sabers and back in an endless loop.
The crystal, the blade, the Jedi.
Steeped within the meditative trance, Ro's breathing did not alter from its steady rhythm. The Force breathed with her, its song gentling to match the beating of her heart; the pulse of her twin lightsabers' crystals. Or did they adjust their rhythm to that of the Force? It was impossible to tell.
We are one.
She could see them in her mind, those golden threads twining around her lightsabers and into their crystalline heart. Slowly, ever so slowly, Ro pictured the golden threads tightening, shortening, as if being taken up by a spool, with her at its center. In her mind's eye, she could see the threads wind themselves tighter around her heart; her sabers would follow, drawn by the connection, hovering a few inches above the deck plates of her cabin.
Her lightsabers would come to her, because - the crystal, the blade, the Jedi - they were one and breathed to the sound of the same song.
She could see it.
The Force shivered; the sensation was no more than a feather ghosting past her cheek, its edges barely brushing the skin.
She didn't reach out to capture the sensation as she'd done as an Initiate in the Temple, impatient and confused with herself and the exercise.
Ro waited and listened to the Force sing; the sight of her sabers floating to her running through her mind like a holovid on repeat.
Breathe in…..
For one brief moment, she was part of a glorious perfection: her blood replaced by golden fire; her heartbeat the baseline to the Force's song.
It was over with the next exhale. As if her breath were an autumnal wind, the harmonies vibrating her bones were blown apart, taking with them the ghostly touch of distant feathers and leaving her...bereft.
Ro gasped, jolted out of her meditation, one hand flying to cover her suddenly pounding heart.
The lumen globes in her cabin were too bright - and altogether too dim - and she bent double over her crossed legs, eyes squeezed tightly shut against that travesty of light….when just seconds before she'd bathed in a glory that would have put a super nova to shame.
Bent over double, with her loose hair falling around her like a blanket, Ro grit her teeth and bit back the tears lurking in the corners of her eyes, the sob working its way up her throat.
She didn't even have to look up to know that her lightsabers were still an arms length away from her - exactly where she'd left them at the start of the exercise.
It wasn't fair!
Why did the Force have to...to tease her with these glimpses of beauty and power, only to snatch it all away again? Why had she been made Force-sensitive at all, when the Force wouldn't even allow her to succeed in the most basic, simplest of exercises? Sweet gooey crumblebuns, crèchelings could manage a simple levitation!
And for one petulant moment, Ro was overcome with the urge to throw herself on the floor and pound her fists and feet against the deck plates and scream out her frustrations.
The face of her former créche-instructor, Jedi Master Du Mahn, round and kind, flashed before her eyes and with it came a memory, as vivid as it was distant:
Ro was three and she was screaming for all she was worth, face gone crimson with the effort. While the rest of her year-mates huddled in one corner of the créche, Ro was trying to pound the floor beneath her into dust with the power of her chubby fists and bare feet alone.
Blue and white skirts swirled into her bleary field of vision and a cowled face peered down at the yowling child from a towering height.
The sight of an adult only galvanized her growing fury and Ro threw herself with everything she had into what was a tantrum of truly epic proportions.
It wasn't until she'd screamed herself hoarse and exhausted that Master Du Mahn calmly knelt before her charge, meeting watery teal eyes with her own stern blue ones. Archly, the Jedi instructor said, "Have you finished venting steam like a ruptured starship, Roweena? You've achieved an astounding resemblance to an over-boiled topato, but that is quite all."
Over seventeen years later, Ro could no longer remember just what had sparked that towering fit of rage, but she could still vividly recall her younger self, sprawled, sweaty and slackjawed on the créche floor, gaping up at a remarkably composed Master Du Mahn in her best impression of a hooked gooberfish.
Ro's body uncoiled and she threw her head back and laughed, her pique evaporating in an instant.
At the sound of her bright, ringing laughter, Poorsa wiggled out from beneath the mess of blankets and pillows that was Ro's bunk, where the strill had taken a nap. Recognizing that the boring sitting-thing was over, the pup gave a sharp yip and leapt from the bunk, but its long tail caught on the edge of the frame and sent it tumbling to the deck plates off-balance.
Seeing her pet reduced to a flailing mass of legs and tail, Ro fell over backwards, frantically clutching her belly as she howled with laughter.
Obviously sensing that this latest bout of ridicule was directed its way, Poorsa flopped onto its hindquarters to give its mistress a look out of reproachful golden eyes. This only spurred Ro on even more, and the pup gave a disgusted snort before turning away, catching sight of the clawmouse-shaped incense holder instead. Instantly, the strill's grey rump came up, its long tail lashed the air once, before the animal pounced….Only to cleanly miss its target.
The pup gave a startled yip as its claws nicked the incense holder, before crashing into the lightsabers laid out neatly next to it.
"Poorsa!" Ro leapt forward, legs still awkwardly crossed from her meditation, and managed to catch the incense holder before it could shatter. There was no saving her lightsabers, though and the Jedi winced as the hilts screeched against the deck plates, clattering and tumbling under the strill's weight.
Still stretched out on her belly, Ro made a grab for the strill's wriggling tail, earning herself a startled yip and snapping teeth as soon as the pup felt the tug on the appendage.
Having the little animal about certainly kept her limber, Ro thought, wryly amused as her quick fingers evaded fangs, sharp despite their youth. She got a grip on the loose folds of skin at Poorsa's neck, turning onto her back and sitting back up as she hauled the struggling strill pup onto her lap, all in a single, fluid motion.
"No," she told the pup sternly as Poorsa made another attempt on her fingers. It didn't matter that the strill was still the size of a tooka cat - a scrawny tooka cat, at that - those jaws were powerful enough to snap her fingers clean off. She repeated the order in Dantari, "tak," underlining her displeasure with a quick smack to the strill's snout. The blow was loud, rather than hard, but coupled with a quick, disapproving blast from the Force, it was enough to cow the animal.
Giving a low whine, Poorsa cringed; tail tucked between its hindquarters, it tried to burrow into Ro's lap.
Her annoyance with the strill pup instantly vanished. With a soft smile, Ro gently patted Poorsa, paying extra careful attention to the wiggling, wet nose.
"There's a good little fluffball," she crooned. "Only naughty wee bits of fluffy snap and you're not naughty, are you, Poorsa?"
The strill whined again and pushed its nose into her palm, the ridiculously long tail giving a tentative wag.
Ro's smile brightened as she cuddled her pet reassuringly. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Poorsa gave her face a good, long lick, causing Ro to shriek with surprised laughter. The last of the gloom that had weighed her down, and which had driven her to her cabin and meditation in the first place, dispelled itself.
All that remained now was the lingering sting of Zey's doubts.
Scratching behind Poorsa's ears, Ro looked about for her lightsabers, finding them pushed to the edge of her bunk.
The sight of them caused her smile to waver slightly, but not to disappear.
She so desperately wanted to prove to Zey, to the whole Order, that she was a Jedi; lock, stock and emitter shroud. But she wasn't going to do it with her levitation skills.
Ro'd made her peace with her limitations in the Jedi arts years ago - more or less - and had carefully shaped and cultivated her Force-empathy into a powerful and useful tool. But that didn't keep her from trying to hone what simply wasn't there, and she kept prodding at the wound with the persistence of a child tonguing the freshly vacated space of a baby tooth, just to see if the unnatural emptiness had yet been filled.
Eyes still on her twin lightsabers, Ro pressed Poorsa close to her chest, inhaling the sharp musk of the strill's short fur. Every failure hurt - but it was starting to hurt a little less with every passing year.
"Guess that means I'm growing up," she mused.
Poorsa, uninterested in any philosophy but that which bestowed treats upon small animals, capitalized on her distraction and squirmed out of her grip to flounder onto the deck plates.
With its characteristic sharp yips, the pup bounded across the cabin, scratching plaintively at the closed door. The strill had had more than enough of containment for this day.
"Alright, alright," she said with a laugh, raising her hands in surrender. "Point taken in and awarded. Enough backside-sitting." She rose with unconscious grace from her cross-legged pose on the floor, stretching luxuriously, before shaking out her long mass of platinum blond hair.
Ignoring Poorsa's impatient whine, Ro idly fingered her emerald-colored bangs.
"Hmmmm. Bouts time and oodles tickies past for a redecorative change. Green's so last mission, whatcha think, Poorsa?"
The pup yipped and continued its assault on her door, uncaring of matters of hair or style.
Ro grinned, scooping up her lightsabers, before pushing the strill out of her way with one bare foot.
New mission; new hair. She was going to invade Garqi with style.
Aboard the Invisible Hand
Breathe out….
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Breathe in…..
Through passion, I gain strength.
The words held the sweet clarity of truth.
In the darkness of his cabin, Savage Opress breathed in the heavy air, his nostril flaring and his upper lip slightly curling; tasting the validity of the Sith's mantra.
Passion was a force he was intimately familiar with; a fire he recognized from the past that lingered beneath the shrouding green mist of Mother Talzin's magick.
Passion burned within his veins and warmed his bones and sinew even on the coldest Dathomir night. And it had been that fire - that passion - that had made him stand tall and proud over the wounded body of his brother…..
The green mist thickened, coiled and Savage instinctively shied away from the memory.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Despite his name, Feral had never been possessed of a warrior's fire and as a consequence, he'd been weak. Not so his brother. Savage burned, his every breath stoking the flames. Even sitting cross-legged on the cold floor of his cabin, the powerful muscles of his body flexed beneath the heavy armor. The hands that were loosely folded on his knees could snap a man's neck; crush the life out of him - as they'd done with that weakling, Feral.
Through strength, I gain power.
He breathed in, his chest straining against the dark armor as he did so. Slowly, with a barely perceptible tremble, the double-bladed lightsaber rose from the floor. He kept his eyes closed, but could feel the weapon's deep hum resonate in his mind as it came to stop level with his face.
Deep in concentration, Savage growled. The twin ends of the lightsaber ignited and bathed his face in their red light. He could see it even behind his closed lids; feel the heat tighten the skin over his skull.
He breathed in deeply, the air hot and heavy with ozone as the weapon thrummed, the deadly blades mere inches from his skin.
The power was a raging inferno deep in his belly - demanding freedom; promising destruction. His Master spoke of control - of binding that power to will and discipline. But how could he be expected to be satisfied with a single drink of that power, with the smoke of a scorched landscape searing his nostrils and the screams of his enemies ringing in his ears?
In answer to his thoughts, the lightsaber's pitch intensified.
Slowly, almost reverently, Savage opened his eyes to let himself bask in the weapon's red glow - the single bloody point of illumination in the entire cabin. In the darkness, the twin beams of plasma seemed to stretch infinitely, to thrust and disappear into the shadows.
He could feel - taste - the power of the lightsaber's twin crystal heart.
Through power, I gain victory.
He'd yet to test that theory.
On Devaron, he'd had no lightsaber, but killed a Jedi Knight and his Padawan with nothing but his pike and strength.
But what else could he have done - what heights could he have achieved - if he'd been armed with a lightsaber at the Temple of Eedit? The dark side had been there, his for the taking, but he'd been without a focus that day.
He had his focus now. Nothing could stand in his way.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
His gaze dropped from the lightsaber to his hands. As if from a great distance, he watched his fingers curl...curl….until they were tight fists, the nails digging into the flesh of his palms. His breathing hitched, the rhythm broke and the lightsaber abruptly shut off. Savage was once more left in total darkness. But behind his hooded gaze, the green mists of dark side magick swirled and tightened in their endless spirals.
Absently, his voice nothing but a deep rumble, Savage spoke the last line of the mantra aloud: "The Force shall free me."
He had the Force; with every breath he was scorched with its cold fury.
But he was an instrument - a weapon as much as the lightsaber - serving two masters; destined to betray one to precipitate the revenge of the other.
And that was….not freedom.
The coils of green mist abruptly lashed out, stinging his thoughts and the Zabrak flinched. The lightsaber dropped and thudded heavily into his waiting hands. It never ceased to surprise him, just how heavy the weapon was.
"Lord Opress." A droid's tinny voice broke through the darkness, accompanied by a rush of static from the ship's internal speakers. "We are approaching Garqi. ETA five minutes, mark. Prepare for jump to realspace."
The Zabrak shook his head to dispel the last lingering flashes of pain. One hand came up to rub at his eyes. What had he been thinking of before the droid's squawk had interrupted him?
Power. Victory. The Force. He needed to succeed on his mission to Garqi in order to remain in Count Dooku's services, so he would be in place when his true Master decided to take her vengeance.
It was time he proved himself worthy.
Despite his bulk, the Zabrak rose gracefully to his feet, clipping the lightsaber to the heavy sash of his armor.
Shadows playing over his black and gold face, Savage Opress left for the bridge.
