Getting from the Kathol sector to Tython was no easy task, and when Mynock exited hyperspace to find the planet sitting dead ahead, lonely among the Deep Core's tight-packed stars and swirling stellar gasses, Jariah Syn felt anything but satisfied. A quick swing around the planet and sensor sweep showed absolutely nothing of note: no spacecraft in orbit, no activity on the surface. It was a dead and ancient world, but there was something hiding here that Jariah could never understand, and that was enough for him to hate it.
The entire team was packed into the cockpit this time, and Jariah watching over Cade's shoulder as his friend guided Mynock into lower orbit and performed another sweep. Deliah paid close attention to the feed coming through the sensors, and everyone else waited with shallow breath for her to report some revelation.
It took a while- so long Jariah was starting to hope they'd find nothing and hightail it back to civilization- but eventually she said, "I think we've got something."
"What kind of something?" asked Cade.
"There's a big object on the northern continent. It looks like a pyramid, a couple hundred meters on either side. Way more intact than any of the other ruins we've picked up."
"Okay. Send me coordinates and we'll take a look. Any sign of current activity?"
"Not that I can see. Bring us closer."
"We should prep shields and weapons just in case," Jao said.
After the fight at Sebiris, nobody blamed him for being skittish. Deliah complied while Cade pushed them into the atmosphere. The group waited in silent anticipation as Mynock soared low over an expanse of plains and ridges lightly dusted white and shining bright under a clear sky. The black pyramid on the horizon was hard to miss, and Cade decelerated as they approached the site.
He swung Mynock around to get them a better view. The pyramid was set in the center of a broad circular pit, its edges piled high with mounds of dirt and sediment. Jariah realized it was an excavation pit, the kind archaeologists dug up, and as the ship dropped altitude he saw the pyramid wasn't a pyramid at all, but some eight-sided monolith still stuck halfway into the ground. The artificial construct, made from a black stone-like substance, was massive, the size of a medium star cruiser, and while Jariah couldn't see any visible means of propulsion, its dual-pyramid shape suggested that it might be a mobile structure rather than one built on foundations.
While all the ex-Force-users stared at the monolith in quiet awe, Jariah's attention went elsewhere. He didn't see any excavation tools in the pit itself; Khat Lah and his people must have been thorough cleaning up. He did spot a large patch of visible soil, just beyond the rim, where brown showed through the white. He didn't know what that meant, but it stood out against an otherwise snow-draped landscape and needed investigating.
Cade set Mynock down about twenty meters away, on another spot outside the rim. "Okay, everybody out," he said. "Bundle up first. It's cold outside."
That was it; he said nothing on the monolith, even though Jao, Kyra, and Lowbacca were all staring at him, wordlessly asking if he'd picked up anything with his Force-powers. Cade's silence was the only answer they got. The three of them left the cockpit first to go get their coats, followed by a shuffling C-3PO. R2-D2, who'd been plugged into Mynock's nav computer to help them through the Deep Core, removed himself from the access socket and hooted a question.
Cade patted the droid's dome. "Yeah, you should come too. We're gonna need all the tools we've got, I figure."
The droid whistled appreciatively and followed Cade out of the cockpit, leaving Jariah and Deliah behind. They were two of the kind on this trip, here because of Cade and nothing else. Jariah asked her, "Well, what do you think?"
She gave him a weird look. "I think it's big and old and probably full of grancha Force power or something. Don't know how that's gonna help them, though. Khat Lah's not here."
"No, but he put in a lot of work into digging up this thing." Jariah glanced out the viewport at that black artificial mountain. He usually wasn't big on reverence or awe, but there was something in that ancient construct that compelled, at least, respect. "This is way bigger than us, isn't it?"
"Always had been, pateesa. I'm just in it to watch Cade's back while he does his Jedi stuff." She shrugged and moved out of the cockpit.
As he followed, Jariah asked, "Hey, you notice that dry patch coming in?"
"You mean the spot cleared of snow?" Deliah glanced over her shoulder as they walked to the crew longue. "Yeah, I don't think anybody else did though. Not even Cade. He was all about that… thing."
"You think he felt anything through the Force?"
"I'm an empath, Jariah, not a mind-reader. You'll have to ask him."
"Yeah, well, Cade's playing it close nowadays."
He tried not to sound sour. Cade didn't have that sullen anger he'd had in the bad old days, before he'd revealed his full past, but he was pulling in on himself again. Losing his mother and becoming overnight the last Jedi in the galaxy had piled on new burdens, and Cade had never been good at sharing those.
Jariah ducked into his cabin to grab his coat and, just to be safe, a pair of blasters. By the time he got down to the hold the broad loading doors were open and cold breeze was swirling in. He joined Deliah at the back of the group as they stepped out onto Tython's surface. Cade took the lead, R2-D2 rolling with him and the group of Force-users clustered behind them. They marched over the pit's rim toward the monolith as though entranced.
Rather than follow their footprints through the snow, Jariah tugged Deliah's. "Hey, let's take a look at that patch. They can handle…. whatever that thing is."
Deliah looked reluctant- she wanted to keep an eye on Cade, of course- but she nodded and joined Jariah. They took long steps across the bright sunny snowfield until they reached the spot where dirt showed through.
As he stepped into the center of the patch, Jariah got a bad feeling. This was a space big enough to fit a small spacecraft in, and one kicking off on repulsors could definitely push out enough hot air to melt the thin layer of snow. Deliah had the same idea; she dropped to her knees and began searching the cold packed dirt for impact marks.
Jariah found one first. It was a big rectangular indention, maybe a meter long and a half-meter wide, just the right size for a starship landing strut. As he called out what he'd found to Deliah, she said she'd found another.
"Any idea how long ago these were made?" Jariah asked, stamping a foot atop one indentation.
"Who knows?" Deliah looked up at the clear sky. "No idea how often it snows here."
"Best we knew, Khat Lah was on this planet… what, over a year ago? These marks've gotta be fresher than that."
"Maybe he came back. Maybe he saw us coming, collapsed his tent, and ran to hide somewhere."
"Could be. Or these could be from somebody else's ship."
There was no way to know for sure. After Sebiris he couldn't shake the idea that the attack had been more than a random raid. He had absolutely no proof this was connected; all Jariah knew was that he definitely had a bad feeling about this.
-{}-
The low ridges that rippled the plain near the monolith provided a few places to hide.
Eli and Darth Talon hadn't been given much warning; when their relay satellite in orbit informed them that a ship had entered the system, they'd scrambled to pick up their own shuttle and fly it into a crevasse some fifty kilometers away, where it would be shielded from orbital eyes. After that they'd hurriedly back-tracked using on their speeder bike, not knowing but assuming the newcomer was coming for the black monolith.
They now lay flat on the crest of one hill nearly a kilometer from the site, but the air was clear and they watched with macrobinoculars as the familiar red freighter descended from the sky and came down to land. Eli had been worried that they'd be spotted from above, even though Talon had draped their bodies and the speeder bike under white blankets to match the snow. Once Skywalker and his companions began stepping out, he wondered whether the Jedi might be able to sense them in the Force, distant as they were. Thankfully, his attention seemed to be focused entirely on the black pyramid.
Eli counted Skywalker's party carefully. He recognized almost all of them from the hunt for Darth Maladi last year: Skywalker himself, his human and Zeltron friends, the Imperial Knight Jao Assam, tall and ginger-furred Lowbacca. He even recognized the two droids rocking across the uneven terrain: one pale astromech and one golden protocol droid. There was a single unfamiliar figure.
"Do you recognize the woman?" he asked as he peered at the tiny form, marked by long dark hair twirling in the wind.
"I do not," Talon said as she looked through her own binoculars. "The rest…. Are familiar."
She sounded far from pleased to see Skywalker, which wasn't surprising, given how thoroughly the Jedi had humiliated them on their last encounter. For his part, Eli was almost glad Skywalker had come. For days he and Talon had examined the thing to no avail. They'd scoured the entire monolith exterior for a point of entry but found none. They'd tried to carve through the black stone surface and found their lightsabers totally ineffective. They certainly didn't have the equipment to further dig this giant construct out of the earth. The monolith was giant and unyielding, and Eli had become steadily convinced that only one who wielded the Force could command a response from it.
He kept his focus on Skywalker. The blond-haired man led his group to the monolith, and for a long minute he simply craned his neck back and looked at its peak. Eli felt a stab of envy to think how he might be communicating with this ancient device through the Force, but after the minute ended Skywalker looked back to his colleagues and shrugged, as though he knew no more than they.
The group spread out slightly. The young woman and Lowbacca went up to touch the device with bare hands; perhaps they'd been expecting revelation just like Eli. As they stepped away, disappointed, the astromech surprised by shooting upward on small rocket-jets in its dual legs. The droid flew over the monolith's midsection and onto its top half, but stopped before ascending the pyramid's upward slant.
Skywalker flew into the air as well, jumping with an invisible push from the Force. The others stepped back to watch as he moved carefully toward his droid, arms slightly spread to keep balance on the stone slope. He crouched next to the astromech and stayed there, as though conversing with it, before straightening.
Skywalker turned his attention upslope, perhaps toward the peak or perhaps toward the eight-spoked wheel that had been carved into the monolith's side. Eli had no idea what sort of blade could have made those indentations; whoever or whatever had created this structure possessed tools beyond either Jedi or Sith.
It took Skywalker several minutes to climb up to the eight-spoked wheel. He moved carefully, sometimes bending to hands and knees to ascend the slope on four limbs. All the others stayed behind to watch him as he got higher and further away. Finally he reached the carved wheel and came to rest inside the bottom spoke. He turned around and seemed to call something down to the others, but it was lost in distance and wind.
Then a light seemed to crack out of the stone behind him. Eli watched as the light grew from the bottom edge of the spoke, filling the space until it became a human-sized portal of glowing white directly in front of Skywalker.
The man turned and stared into the light, lifting one hand over his eyes to block some of the glate. The ones on the ground were calling to him, maybe telling him to come back. Skywalker didn't seem to notice. His body tipped forward, then fell through the portal and disappeared into the light.
And then, as suddenly as it had come, the portal shrunk, the black stone door closed, and the light was gone, leaving no trace of the Jedi who'd been pulled inside.
-{}-
Cade Skywalker fell into eternity.
Planets and moons, stars and stardust, the vastness of galaxy whipped past him, too fast to understand. He plunged through interstellar void but he felt neither vacuum cold nor inertial rush. He seemed to have no body at all, only awareness overloaded by a torrent of time and space, and he somehow understood that he was not dropping into the cosmos but the cosmos was gushing into him, overwhelming his consciousness with knowledge no human mind could grasp.
He would have screamed, but he had no mouth. He had nothing to grab onto and no hands to arrest his fall. Cade tried to huddle against the torrent and focus on himself alone. He tried to recall Deliah's touch and smell, his father's gentle smile, guarded concern in his mother's eye. He could focus on them for an instant but then they slipped away. He was fraying apart, pulled in too many directions by the infinite rush of the universe.
And then, suddenly, the universe stopped.
Cade found himself again and took a timeless moment to cling to all the things and people who had made him. Then he dared focus on the things without. He felt all the endless stars and planets moving around him still, but he could no longer see them in his mind's eye. Instead he was surrounded by white. The white had no beginning and no end. It was as deep as interstellar black and he was suspended in it, helpless and motionless.
Then a voice that was not a voice spoke to him without speech. It said, What is your name?
He remembered himself and all that had made him. He found himself speaking without words. I'm Cade Skywalker.
And in that voiceless voice he sensed understanding. You are the Chosen One, it said. There was a person behind the voice; gentle, curious. Female, he thought, but couldn't know why. All around him was white.
I'm not the Chosen One, he said. That was Anakin Skywalker. My ancestor.
To be a Skywalker is to shift the balance of the Force. Therefore, you are still the Chosen One.
I'm really not. I'm just a guy, he insisted, though it had never really been true, not in all his life. Because he needed to understand he asked, Who are you?
For another timeless moment his response was only the white. Then form merged from void and a vision appeared before him: a body with shape hidden by loose green cloak, exposing only a smooth young female's face and twin grey Twi'lek lekku. In her black-gloved hands she clutched an eight-sided object shaped like two pyramids joined at the base. Like the monolith on Tython. Like, he realized, the bigger monolith around Mortis he'd seen in file holos from the Jedi archives.
Who are you? Cade repeated.
I was Tasha Ryo, the Twi'lek spoke to him, though her mouth did not move. Her head was lifted, blue eyes staring past him into the white.
Are you a Jedi?
I am Je'daii, she replied, and somehow he sensed the difference. Before the Jedi ever were.
When? he asked. When were you from?
Time has no meaning in the Force, she said, and none in the Tho Yor.
He recalled the great black pyramid islanded in a snowfield and the bright portal that had opened before him. It felt a galaxy away. Tho Yor? Is that what this place is? What does that mean?
Let me show you, Tasha Ryo said.
Cade felt the white begin the fade and the cosmos rush in on him again.
Wait, he cried, Hold up, not again!
Let me show you the dawn of the Je'daii.
The white disappeared. Time and space attacked him. Images swirled around, each one stamping itself on his awareness. A great black monolith shaped like joined pyramids, a Tho Yor, rose above a world of lush jungles. Another sunk into bottomless depths. Another rested amidst icy mountains and another on barren plain. Cade understood instantly and without reason that there were all different monoliths on different worlds.
He saw white doors open in each Tho Yor. He saw living beings file inside: humans, Twi'leks, Wookiees, Zabraks, Noghri, Cathar, and more. He saw the Tho Yor lift off from their planetbound resting places and soar swiftly through the cosmos, gathering more and more beings as they went.
It was a time before hyperspace, when the young civilizations were scattered in isolation across the galaxy, Tasha Ryo told him as more imaged swarmed by. Different Tho Yor converged and joined together above a familiar world circled by twin moons, one light, the other dark.
You brought them here, Cade said. You gathered them all to train in the Force.
I did nothing, she replied. The Tho Yor collected those who could touch the Force and brought them together here, on Tython, so the Je'daii order could be born.
Then who created the Tho Yor? Who created the Jedi?
Patience, Tasha gently chided. Watch.
More images filled his awareness. He saw life on Tython in the ancient days, where beings of so many races trained together in the ways of the Force. They built great temples all across the planet. He saw one made of eight cyclopean rectangular stones arranged around a blue pool. Another looked like three-armed spider suspended by curved metal legs over a great black-bottomed chasm. In all these placed the Je'daii studied and trained beneath the Tho Yor. Generations lived and died, lived and died. They created a civilization that lasted in isolation for millennia, so long that they forgot their own origins.
And then: devastation. Cade didn't just see flashes of fire and destruction, he felt the pain of thousands dying and the dark, angry desperation of those who fought to survive.
What is this? he asked. What are you showing me?
Suddenly the images shuddered to a halt. He saw a gray-skinned Twi'lek in green robes: the Tasha Ryo who communicated with him now. She stood on a promontory, overlooking a field of battle. Beings of many species fought below, wielding lightsabers against an army of larger aliens with broad fierce mouths lined by pointed teeth and eyes jetting out on stalks from either side of their heads. These were invaders, come from across the galaxy to conquer secluded Tython.
I was a Je'daii seer when the Rakata came to Tython, she told him. I was no warrior. There was little I could do except watch those stronger than me hold back their tide. Or so I thought.
Another image: Tasha Ryo stood beside another Je'daii, this one a Zabrak. She clutched the eight-sided object in both hands and Cade realized it was a holocron when he saw an image of a cloaked figure appear before it. He couldn't tell what it was saying, but as it spoke to Tasha he could feel the Twi'lek woman fill with bleak determination.
He saw the woman jump into a shaft of light. He saw the light consume her and saw her soft, wise smile as her physical body dissolved and what was left of her joined the Force and became one with the Tho Yor, timeless and eternal, connected to the cosmic Force and every corner of the universe.
It was knowledge no mortal mind could handle. Cade felt himself fraying apart again, but the torrent stopped and he was back amidst the white, without form or substance, seemingly floating before the lingering image of Tasha Ryo as she'd been in death, Tasha Ryo as she'd been preserved in the Force these many millennia.
I gave myself to the Tho Yor and became the Tho Yor, she said.
Why? he asked.
Because the Tho Yor needed to awaken to save Tython.
More images flashed on him. Black double-pyramids rose into the air and spewed destructive energy, but it was not the hungry chaos of the dark side. Rather it was the Force in its purest form, strong and bright, and it blasted away the Rakata and their warships. With her sacrifice and a flash of light, the Je'daii had been saved from the invaders' galaxy-spanning empire.
Is that what these Tho Yor are? Cade asked, A weapon?
They are so much more. We must go back.
And they went back. Everything he'd seen played out before him in reverse. The Rakata retreated, the Je'daii trained, the Tho Yor scattered across the galaxy. And, eons before that, the Tho Yor converged on the place from which they'd been born. The black-stone double pyramids, each the size of a small mountain, were dwarfed by the giant monolith around which they gathered. Its shape was the same but its sides were smooth, devoid of the eight-spoked wheel stamped on each Tho Yor, but marked by red lines, faintly glowing.
I've seen this before, Cade said. This is Mortis.
Mortis was where it began, Tasha said.
More images, flashing fast. He saw a landscape of mountains and ridges and barren trees that seemed to glow with inner life. He saw a dark chasm around a lake of fire through which virulent darkness surged. He saw a great castle rising from a mountain peak. Three figures stood at a balcony, looking out at Tho Yor half-faded in the sky. One was a young woman, ethereal and light. Another was a young man, dark and brooding. The third was an old bearded man, and though they said no words Cade knew the old man thought on his children behind him with foreboding and the Tho Yor in the sky with pride. He knew the old man had created them all.
The Father prized balance, Tasha Ryo told him. He knew the Rakata were marshalling darkness across the galaxy, and he knew something was needed to counter them. Everyone else of his kind had abandoned the physical plane to become wills within the Living Force. Thus he created the Tho Yor, spread them across the galaxy, and gathered those who could feel the Force to Tython, where they honed themselves into a new order that would keep the scales between light and dark even.
The Father, the Son, and the Daughter, Cade said. I heard about this from my dad. I thought it was just a myth. A metaphor.
A powerful enough metaphor is its own truth.
But they're gone. Mortis is a dead world now, and the Ones-
Are destroyed, Tasha said.
Another torrent came. He saw the Father, Son, and Daughter endure for many eons, timeless with the Force within the isolating shell of the Mortis monolith. Sometimes they received mortal visitors, ones Cade could not recognize, until finally the rush came to a shuddering halt at the sight of man he'd seen in his own Force-visions. Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One, stood before the Ones, facing their judgement.
Even they were not timeless, Tasha Ryo said. They beseeched the Chosen One to intervene and keep the balance. He refused.
The Daughter fell to the Son's blade. The Father and the Son, together, stood impaled on Anakin's saber. The light of Mortis dimmed and died, but in the gloom one image remained: a stone throne, sitting empty on an empty dais.
Then the white returned, and Tasha Ryo.
Even now, she said, Skywalkers retain the balance.
It was the weight of destiny again, and Cade instinctively revolted. I just did what I had to, lady. I've never cared about balance.
But you keep it nonetheless, as all Skywalkers have. It's what you were made for.
He remembered Maladi's rambling speech on Te Hasa, minutes before her death. She'd told him that Anakin, and thus all Skywalkers, had been born of the Force itself to act as the Force's agent in response to the dark manipulations of the Sith. The idea repulsed him; even after all Cade had been through he wanted to believe his will and choices were his own.
These Ones, did they create the Skywalkers? Did the Father make us to create balance?
A timeless moment drew on with no reply. Then she said, No. The Force has deeper roots.
Even now, in whatever formless timeless state he was in, things refused to make themselves clear. What are you talking about? What roots? These Ones, I thought they controlled the Force, kept the balance…
They tried. Since their death, the galaxy has become wracked by war and imbalance. Some Skywalkers have tipped it to the dark. Others have corrected it. It's a role you have all played. Don't you agree?
He couldn't argue. But what created Anakin? If it wasn't the Ones that pushed back against the Sith then who? What?
Another white moment, and then she said, The Ones stayed behind to watch over the galaxy. The others went ahead.
Went ahead to where?
Into the Force. They surrendered their crude bodies and became one with it, as did I. Even now they guide it. It was from these wills that Skywalkers were born.
What assailed him next wasn't images. It was knowledge. Without a mouth he couldn't scream; he could only take in the agonizing rush of space and time, backwards from this galaxy now soaked in silence to a distant era where beings he could never comprehend strode like gods across the galaxy, arranging star systems like children's toys and wielding the Force as pure extension of will. Though he couldn't wrap his mind around their physical or mental forms he knew these were the Celestials of legends. More knowledge came of the races they'd enslaved: warlike Rakata, wise Sharu, industrious Killiks, peaceful Kwa and artful Gree. As with the Celestials, the Force was a natural part of them, and all were linked together in it. They travelled the galaxy on great portals that leaped across lightyears and there was nothing they could not do.
And then the gods departed. Dissolving into the Force, they left the physical galaxy behind save for the three who'd lingered within the Mortis monolith, guiding the new civilizations after the old ones fell, creating the Tho Yor and gathering the Je'daii on Tython to create a new order that would bring down the Rakata, and all other who waged darkness. At the same time, the Force powers that had once been spread across every living being in the galaxy withered and died, leaving individuals isolated in themselves. Without the Force, the civilizations of the Celestials' slaves began to die, leaving a great gap into which humans and other species would spring out and populate the stars.
But something of the ones who'd gone ahead remained. Cade received another vision of a planet glowing bright as any star, walled on all sides by the stellar gasses and tight-packed suns of the Deep Core. The world was a beacon of life; it sang in the Force and emanated raw power. On its barren surface he saw one ancient arch that recalled the ruined hypergate he'd seen on Sebiris.
The Rakata came to Tython seeking something to restore their failing grasp of the Force, said Tasha Ryo. They saw the ruins of the ancient Kwa infinity gate beneath the Je'daii's old city and thought this was the planet their prophecies claimed could restore their power. They were wrong.
What is this place you're showing me? Where is it?
Locked away at the heart of the galaxy. Many thousands of years ago, before the stars constricted, it was passable, but not longer. This was a place from which the wills departed.
Whose wills? I don't understand.
They are the Whills, she told him, stressing the word clearly. Those who surrendered space and time and voluntarily merged their life-essence with the Cosmic Force. In ascending they guide and direct it, now and ever and always.
Cade strove for something he could comprehend. The gate, why are you showing me the gate? Is that what you showed him?
Tasha understood. What I show you now, I showed the one called Khat Lah.
Finally, something made sense. Then he's trying to rebuild a hypergate so he can get to this planet. I get that, I understand, but where did you send him?
She said, He is already there.
Before Cade could ask anything, Tasha disappeared and so did the visions. He plunged into infinity once more. His awareness was overwhelmed by planets and moons, stars and singularities, pulsars and quasars and stellar dust. He felt himself fraying again; even the wisdom Tasha had just imparted seemed to slip away like sand through fingers. He was being pulled apart by too much truth.
When the rush receded his awareness focused on a single solar system. It seemed walled by darkness and he knew it was at the very edge of the galactic rim. At its heart he saw two stars swirling around each other, one white, the other blue. Bodiless and timeless, he travelled through its void, passing three lifeless planets- a blue gas giant, a red one, a single dead gray rock- before finding a small planet draped in forests. It was strange and ghostly in the blue-white light of its dual suns.
Vision fell toward the planet, faster and faster. Continents rushed up to meet him. Suddenly he saw it: the empty arch of an ancient hypergate, relic of departed gods, forgotten at the galaxy's edge for too many eons to count. Vision rushed toward the arch's center. A grid of light appeared and the vision rushed into it, no matter how hard Cade tried to stop it. He plunged into light beyond understanding and finally, at last, the fraying edges of himself tore free, twirled away, and dissolved in white.
-{}-
When the portal in the monolith opened and Cade fell inside, Jariah didn't move, didn't speak. He watched it like it was a dream, unreal, but when the door slammed shut and Cade disappeared, the enormity of what happened staggered him like a blow.
Everyone else was shocked too, but Deliah was the first to move. She sprinted to the base of the monolith and called, "Artoo, get up there! See what happened to him! Now!"
The droid whistled and rose up on his leg-jets. Jariah joined Deliah and the others as they stared up, helpless and silent. Even C-3PO seemed stunned beyond words. R2-D2 set himself to hover at the bottom of the eight-spoked wheel, and Jariah squinted to see the droid extend an instrument one of its arms and examine the monolith's surface. After a moment the droid whistled something else, half-lost in the wind.
C-3PO understood perfectly. "Artoo says that the surface of the monolith is completely fused. That is to say, he can find no seam and no door."
"What do you mean no door?" Jariah snapped. "We just saw him go through!"
"I understand, Master Jariah. Artoo's sensors must be malfunctioning. I can think of no other explanation."
"We need to get up there, now." Deliah glared at the overhang. It loomed almost ten meters above their heads, unreachable to anyone without the Force or jet boosters.
"I'll go back to the ship," Jao offered. "There's got to be a grappling hook somewhere, of a fiberchord gun."
"I know where it is," Jariah said, and he started for Mynock in a sprint.
He barely got five steps before Deliah called at his back. He stopped, spun around, and saw the white portal had re-opened. R2-D2 hovered to one side as Cade's familiar form appeared, silhouetted against the monolith's inner light. He seemed to stand there, arms outstretched, and Jariah thought he was trying to tell them something.
Then the wind blew and Cade pitched forward like a tipped mannequin. He hit the black slope and began rolling down. The portal closed behind him and R2-D2 tweeted frantically as he shot down after Cade. Still powered by his leg-jets, the astromech shot a mechanical claw out from his barreled body and grabbed hold of Cade's trailing jacket. That stopped his tumble but not his fall, and R2 wailed as he was dragged after Cade, further downslope.
Cade finally stopped tumbling when he reached the bottom of the pyramid. The droid nudged him carefully over the edge and Lowbacca was there to catch the smaller human in both arms. The Wookiee lowered him the ground as everyone else gathered around. Deliah dropped to her knees, gathered her head in his lap and stroked his face.
"C'mon, Cade, baby, wake up," she muttered. "Come back to us, come on."
Jariah bent closer and stared into his friend's face. His eyes were closed but his eyelids twitched, as though he was lost in dream. His limbs stirred too, very slightly. Jariah bent low and gave him one light slap on the face, then a harder one, but he remained limp in Deliah's arms, lost behind closed eyes.
Wherever Cade was now, he was far, far away.