To Swift's surprise, it was less than a week after he had returned to the Temple when he was called into Master Xan's room to meet with him… and with two other Jedi, both human, with one male and one female.
"You were not joking," the woman said. "He's huge."
"Initiate Swift, welcome," Master Xan said. "Do you know who these two are?"
Swift frowned, but had to shake his head.
"Sorry," he added. "I don't think I've ever met either of you."
"Well, you knew you hadn't met me," the young woman said. "Because otherwise I wouldn't have been as surprised at seeing you."
"A fine point, knight Junda," the older man said, and Junda smiled with a mixture of pride and uncertain surprise.
"Cere Junda recently passed her Trials and became a Jedi Knight," Master Xan explained. "Her Master, Eno Cordova, has expressed to me an interest in becoming your Master."
It was Swift's turn to feel a mixture of pride and surprise, and he swallowed slightly. "So soon, Master?"
"If you feel you are ready, Initiate Swift," Master Xan replied. "But if you feel you are not, then nobody here will hold it against you."
Swift took a deep breath, and let it hiss out to calm his nerves as he thought.
This could be a test, but then again, one of the things Master Yoda had said once was that everything was a test – it was just a question of who was doing the marking.
He hadn't said it quite like that, though.
"Why do you think that you would like to be my Master?" Swift asked.
"That is a good question," Master Cordova said. "And I think that to answer, I would say… you are an unusual Initiate, and not just in how you are shaped. And my focus as a Jedi Master is on the intellectual side of Jedi pursuits."
He folded his hands together. "I would value having your perspective on things, because I think it likely that you will notice things which I – or other Jedi, Knights and Masters and Padawans alike – would miss."
That made a great deal of sense, to Swift, at least the way that Master Cordova had said it.
"I don't know if I'm ready to be a Padawan," he said. "But I don't mean that I'm not ready. I mean that… I feel like I am ready, but I don't know if that's eagerness or honesty. And I feel like I'm not ready, but I don't know if that's honesty or nervousness. So… it's up to you, Master Cordova, Master Xan."
"Well, he's certainly going to be different from me, Master," Knight Junda chuckled. "In more ways than, you know, the obvious."
The two Masters exchanged a look, and Swift's ears twitched – wondering if there was some kind of Force communication going on that he simply couldn't pick up on, because it wasn't directed at him.
"Very well," Master Cordova said. "Since you left it up to me… Initiate Swift, I claim you as my Padawan Learner, and we'll do the proper rituals tomorrow morning."
He paused, looking at Swift again.
"You're probably going to need help doing your braid," he decided.
That had been one of the things Swift wondered about sometimes, but then again Master Fisto and Master Poof had no hair and no indication of ever having had it.
So it was probably something they could be flexible about.
While Swift was a little unclear on what being a Padawan was like, he'd certainly formed an expectation, and the first part of that expectation was that being a Padawan meant accompanying your Master on missions (as well as learning from them, in all the ways of the Force).
Master Cordova had started out by explaining a little about the Padawan Bond, which was the same kind of mental connection Swift was used to from his homeworld but which could be extended between Master and Padawan over longer distances. It was of varying strength, depending on everything from the nature of the relationship between Master and Padawan and something as fickle as the mood both halves of the bond were currently in, but it seemed important no matter how strong it was and Swift paid careful attention.
The matter of lightsaber combat was another one entirely, because Master Cordova somewhat apologetically said that he had never been much of a duellist. He had actually specialized in Shii-Cho, if that was the right word, because his focus had been so enough on the intellectual side of being a Jedi that he hadn't really done much to develop his skills in combat.
"Still," he added, somewhat thoughtfully. "Shii-Cho will serve well enough, and has on more than one occasion. And in truth there's a lesson to be learned in the form itself, about history."
He drew his 'saber, and held it ready. "You see, Shii-Cho is much alike to various styles of sword fighting, involving weapons that are not lightsabers. And we know that it is the oldest surviving form. But is it simply a label given to the default style after the early development of the lightsaber, only truly recognized as a style when the second Form was invented thousands of years later?"
The Master smiled. "I'm sure you can see the other possibilities, if you think about it a little."
Swift did his best, his tail flicking absently.
"So if one option is that it's the only form that existed then…" he said, slowly. "Is another option that it's the only surviving form, because all the other ones stopped being used?"
"Bright pup," Master Cordova said, approvingly. "Is pup a good term to use? I'm after a word you see as endearing."
Swift indicated that it was fine, with a pulse of acceptance down the Padawan bond, and Master Cordova nodded.
"Pup it is, then," he said. "Now, something that is a mystery to me – I confess – is where you are from, Padawan."
"I-" Swift began, but Master Cordova held up his hand.
"I was not expecting an answer," he said. "I was hoping for a puzzle, and it is quite charming to me to consider that there is a puzzle here which I could solve at will simply by asking – it's an almost unique experience for a researcher such as myself. I intend to work away at it little by little, until either the answer becomes clear or I have exhausted my options… unless, that is, you feel your home should remain secret?"
"I don't think it should become widely known," Swift told him. "But I don't think I'd have a problem if you worked out the answer."
"A key distinction," Cordova said. "And, in case you were wondering, another possibility about Shii-Cho is that it is the result of refinement, and all the styles of lightsaber combat then in use were condensed and refined down to a single style which incorporated the best parts of all of them."
Swift took that in, and nodded.
"Now," his Master added. "I have been researching the Zeffo species, recently, and I was hoping to focus on them – but we have received a request to investigate certain ruins on the planet Tython, which should be a fairly easy beginning to your career as a Padawan… though we will need to watch out for certain hostile wildlife. A common hazard on an archaeological dig."
Getting to Tython meant Swift's second off-planet trip, this time in a HWK-290 light freighter called the Debitage which Master Cordova often used as an expedition headquarters.
Built for two crew and two passengers, and with the scope to handle over a hundred tons of cargo, it was modular enough that with a little work they were able to set up a sleeping place for Swift without fully compromising the cargo bays or other accommodation and (to Master Cordova's relief) without impinging on his workshop.
The journey to Tython took only a little over three days, thanks to an effective Class 2 Hyperdrive, and then when they arrived in the Tython System Swift hurried up to the cockpit to get his first sight of the world.
It was different again from cold Ilum and built-up Coruscant, a truly wild world, and it reminded him powerfully of Lothal to the point that Swift wondered if that was what his home looked like from space.
The next thing he noticed was the Force. It felt quite different from anywhere else he'd been – Coruscant had the beacon that was the Jedi Temple and the pressure of the billions of sentients in the vast city it was, and Ilum had been like a perfect inanimate jewel that shone in a quiet, stable way, but even though Tython was nothing like as populated as Coruscant it was like it was lit even more brightly in the Force.
And at the same time, whispering through the passages of the World Between Worlds, there were tiny hints that once Tython had been a place of truly titanic significance. One so important in so many ways that hints had echoed through time, leaving their mark even today.
"What do you think, pup?" Master Cordova asked.
"It's… so alive," Swift admitted. "I don't know if I'm remembering Coruscant wrong, but… Coruscant seems muted compared to this."
"That's an observation many have made about Coruscant," his Master said. "It's not really understood why, but it's been suggested that the planet's history of continuous occupation has made it a little calmer in the Force – while Tython is quite a wild place."
He manipulated the controls, and Debitage began to fly towards Tython. "We'll be landing within a few minutes, I think, and then we'll just have to set up before you can get started on learning how to be an archaeological assistant."
Half an hour later, Swift had concluded that being an archaeological assistant mostly involved getting in lightsaber fights with wildlife.
It was certainly an experience to go straight from examining the door to an ancient temple, standing a respectful distance away while the local dig team explained what they'd already tried, to fighting off a pride of four fire-breathing flame-tailed six-legged oily-skinned Flame Tygahs.
"Good work, Padawan!" Master Cordova called. "Watch out for the tails!"
Swift flicked his 'saber from one side of his muzzle to the other, turning it off and then on again with the tongue switch, and there was a hiss and a yowl as he caught the flaming tail of one Tygah on his blade. It cut it off, leaving that Tygah whimpering for a moment before it snarled and swiped at him, but Swift had already had to duck underneath another tail swipe and knock a third Tygah away with a burst of Force Push.
At the same time, there was a little part of his mind thinking about a comment Master Xan had made years ago about having a saber on his tail. These creatures seemed to have something similar…
"Behind you!" one of the locals called, and Swift leaped twenty feet straight up.
The Tygah trying to ambush him found him to not be there any more, then Swift came right back again and landed on top of the feline creature. His 'saber flashed, and the Tygah yowled once before dropping limply to the ground.
"Watch out, pup," Master Cordova warned. "They sometimes explode."
Though that had been fire and light and motion, there was just as much about the study of archaeology on Tython that was cool and dark and still. That was about not hunting for knowledge, but investigating – finding clues of the world that was in the shape of the world that now is.
"This should do," Master Cordova said, after effort and the Force shifted aside the entrance to a chamber. "Pup, it's your turn. See what this room tells you about the people who lived here."
Swift stepped inside, drawing his Lightsaber and turning it on for illumination rather than battle, and half-closed his eyes.
His muzzle twitched as he scented the air, his ears flicked up for attention, and the faintest touch of the World Between Worlds sang in the back of his mind.
"This was a living space," he said. "Not somewhere for meetings, or for practice, but where people slept and spent their free time."
"And what tells you that?" his Master asked.
"The shape of the room, a little," Swift said, stepping carefully through the dust and debris on the floor. "It's connected to other rooms, and the height of those doors is less than the main one, but I can see from here that the room over to the left is small. A meeting room would have one entrance to it, the main one – possibly more than one if there were offices, but that isn't how this looks. And the smells in here… I wouldn't be able to understand how they've lasted so long, but I can smell food and drink and the sense of the same people over and over for years."
He pointed with a paw. "And there's some bits of a lounger over there which haven't finished decaying."
"A good eye," Master Cordova said, stepping into the room himself, then picked up some bit of detritus – it didn't look different to anything else, to Swift – and put it into a sealed bag.
"This is most likely an accommodation room, as you suspect," he went on. "And that means there will – almost certainly – be more on the same corridor we were already following. But there is an interesting question, pup."
He spread his hands. "If this was once where people lived, why did they leave?"
"I don't think they had a choice about it," Swift replied, frowning, and paced the room – taking care not to step on anything. "We had to dig through rubble to get down this far… I think it was attacked, back when Tython was important to the Republic and the Jedi."
He paused, then leaned forwards – looking through one of the doors as something caught his eye in the blue light from his saber. "And… I think we agreed that this was a Jedi temple, didn't we?"
"Unless you've seen something that would suggest otherwise," Master Cordova said inquiringly.
"Well… look," Swift explained, pointing. "I've only seen pictures, but isn't that a crib?"
Ten minutes later, Master Cordova had a holorecorder out, and they'd finished setting up lights in the side room to take the place of Swift's 'saber.
It was indeed a crib – built of durable material, it had survived the ravages of time – and there were a few fragments of what had probably been toys, scattered about the room.
"Hmm," Master Cordova said, looking at the ceiling, then crouching down. He lifted a dead holobook with a whisper of the Force, and nodded.
"What is it, Master?" Swift asked, not sure what had caught his attention.
"The ceiling was damaged in the catastrophe," Master Cordova explained, pointing up. "That's the cause of the grit all over the room – the room didn't collapse, but it was close. And the holobook ended up here after some of the damage to the ceiling, but not all of it… so it ended up this way during the catastrophe. But there are no bodies in the room. So…?"
"So they evacuated," Swift guessed. "And they had a reason to evacuate something – no, someone – in this room, before it came down."
He bent low to the floor himself. "There's something here… I have a scent, Master."
"Well, by all means, pup," Master Cordova said, standing back. "Follow your nose. We're taking recordings, so you don't need to be too careful with the site if there's something you think is urgent."
In reply, Swift reached out under the crib.
"Well, well," his Master breathed, as a green crystal cube slid out into the light. "Your nose, pup, is remarkable."
He cleared his throat. "Master Eno Cordova, fourteen hundred and thirty-two hours. I'm about to try accessing the Holocron my Padawan has found, to see what it contains… I haven't asked Padawan Swift yet, but I'm puzzled as to why it's in a room which must belong to temple servants of some sort."
The Human Jedi sat cross-legged on the clearest – and, presumably, least historically significant – part of the bedroom, then lifted the Holocron in both hands and focused.
An image appeared, swimming together out of blue light, and a Kel Dor bowed to him.
"Master," he said. "I assume that there are new songs to be added?"
"New songs?" Master Cordova repeated, confused.
"I do not see any other reason why this Holocron would be accessed by a trained Jedi," the Kel Dor explained. "It is routine, after all."
He frowned, slightly. "Is it no longer routine? My last accessor was around eighteen months old."
"This Holocron was found in the ruins of a child's bedroom," Master Cordova said. "Was that your accessor?"
"Yes," the Holocron interface confirmed. "Ulma Tyrees, daughter of Master Galvan Tyrees."
He looked worried. "Is she all right?"
"Since she would now be around four thousand years old, I suspect not," Master Cordova said, his voice sounding slightly brittle. "You are a Holocron for entertaining children with songs?"
"That is a function of this Holocron," the Kel Dor answered. "Along with monitoring development, playing games, and other general education. The songs however are the factor which requires updating most often."
After that, there was no chance of Master Cordova ever going back to his old project of seeking out the Zeffo species.
Swift was there when Master Cordova reported the discovery to the Jedi Council via a long-range communications link, keeping it confidential for now because of the sheer magnitude of the discovery, and some members of the Council reacted with outright shock.
"This is impossible, surely," Master Poof said, once the hubbub had died down – slightly. "A Master of the Order with a known daughter?"
"Oh?" Master Yoda replied, tapping his gimmer stick on the floor of the council chamber. "Aware I was not, that older than I you are. Hm?"
Master Poof looked a little embarrassed, but folded his arms.
"My apologies, Master Yoda," he said. "But you must realize… this is hard to believe."
"I believe the Holocron to have not been used in around four thousand years," Master Cordova said. "Radio-isotopic dating is difficult without a useful baseline, though, and Tython has been… through a lot."
"The Jedi Order has been around in some form for around twenty-five thousand years," Swift contributed. "It would be surprising if everything had stayed the same for all that time. And…"
He stopped, but Master Yaddle leaned forwards. "Padawan Swift, more to say, have you?"
"I was just thinking," Swift explained. "Even if we hadn't found this evidence, maybe we should be willing to change rules if they aren't doing what they're supposed to. A rule that we follow because we've always followed it… if it's not helping, then it's not really doing anything useful."
"Then your mission, that should be," Master Yoda suggested. "Master Cordova. To find why the rules of our Order changed, yes?"
Master Mundi raised a finger. "And more about the history of the Jedi that has been lost," he amended. "Old rules are not immutable, but the more we know then the better off we will be when we make a decision."
That garnered general approval and nods.
Days slipped into months, and months into years, as Swift and Master Cordova did everything short of turning the planet upside down and shaking it to see what fell out.
The temple which had held the Holocron also contained more hints and clues of the past, buried in odd places (like, Master Cordova said, most archaeological sites – it was rare indeed for someone to plan to leave far enough in advance to organize everything neatly).
There was only one more Holocron (this time a tutorial on the lightsaber forms, which contained all seven from Shii-Cho to Junyo and incidentally proved the longevity of the Seventh Form), but there were also three ancient lightsabers and a single lightwhip, buried in a storehouse right near the bottom of the temple and close to the structural damage caused by whatever had forced the building's abandonment. And a thousand other things, smaller relics of the Jedi who had lived in this comparatively small temple or outpost thousands of years ago.
After that, Master Cordova began searching for other temples, and one by one the planet of Tython began to yield up its secrets.
Swift battled Flesh Raiders, Silik Lizards, a gigantic Saarl in the deserts, four-legged Horranth, a population of Manka cats which were from Alderaan of all places, and even some giant sea serpents – the latter experience being his first time battling while wearing a rebreather, which he had to do because Master Cordova was working on making his way into a temple that had either been built underwater or had ended up underwater.
Since his muzzle was occupied with the rebreather, Swift had been forced to battle with his saber either held in his paw or whipping around through his telekinetic abilities – a talent with which he made quite rapid progress, mostly in the name of self-preservation.
They went through deserts, jungles, journeyed deep into the cold around the poles, and climbed the highest mountains on the planet. They even journeyed close to a mysterious cavern which seemed to be almost completely full of odd monsters, based on how many of them were in the surrounding canyon, but ultimately even Master Cordova decided that it would be too dangerous since the whole place seemed to be simmering with the Dark Side. And he let Swift take the lead on many of the negotiations around access to potential dig sites, to let him gain experience in the diplomatic side of being a Jedi.
It was exhausting work, and exhilarating, and though they hadn't truly puzzled out why the Jedi Order had abandoned marriage and children – abandoned so fully that they'd forgotten it had ever happened – Swift had been having the time of his life. He was even putting together a Lightwhip of his own, after one of his Ilum crystals seemed to react positively to the idea, though the unusual weapon was one which took a lot more work than a basic lightsaber. There were far more choices to make.
Then, one day, just as Swift was tinkering with the field light on his harness, there was a ripple of pain and death in the Force.
He braced himself, wondering if this was the overwhelming tidal wave of loss that had sparked his original journey, but it didn't quite crest so high – and yet it was far worse than anything he'd felt since coming to the Jedi Order.
"Did you feel that, Padawan?" Master Cordova asked, looking up from his own side of the workbench.
He sounded in shock.
Then the comm system let out an alert, and the human Master almost knocked his chair over in his haste.
It was still just as unbelievable the third time Swift read it.
There was a battle on the planet of Geonosis, still going on as the signal went out. Dozens of Jedi – hundreds – were dead or believed dead, including at least one Council member, and to save the rest Master Yoda and Master Gallia had gone to the rescue with an army of clones from Kamino.
"This is…" Master Cordova began, voice soft. "Pup?"
Swift looked up, ears flat.
"This is the kind of disaster that I don't think I've ever witnessed," he told his Padawan. "It's hard to get my head around… there are so many Jedi dead. And now there's a war, of the sort the galaxy has not seen in generations."
He sighed. "And I know how terrible wars can be. All these lost temples we have seen, some of them I think over twenty thousand years old… I can't help but see the Temple on Coruscant in the same state."
Swift wanted to reassure his Master, but he couldn't. This felt too much like a beginning, while what had sent him off was an ending.
Possibly the only ending.
The news they got over the next few hours got more and more dire, and without truly discussing it – even over their Master-Padawan bond – Swift and his Master began packing up, bringing to an end their time on the wild, mysterious world of Tython.
Neither of them thought it likely that the Jedi Order would be able to afford having Jedi on a mission like this, even with the revelations about their past, during a time when the Republic itself was under clear, present and dire threat.
The Debitage's cargo bays were full of half-categorized archaeological finds, ranging from ancient lightsaber designs to a few surviving documents to Jedi artefacts and half-a-dozen precious Holocrons which were all to go into the Temple archives. Then there were the notes they had both been taking, which were full of speculations about what the Order had been, and about the evolution of the organization which had clearly not remained static over the time or times it had been on Tython… the single reverent mention in one of the surviving documents about a Great Journey was as fine a demonstration of that as any.
Swift's projects went into his own possessions as well, along with the notes, because while a Jedi was not supposed to have attachments to objects they were definitely meant to help him fulfil his role.
Master Tinn commed with their recall orders, not long after the duo had finished packing, and Swift watched Tython recede below him until it vanished in the flash of light-speed.
The Temple was a hive of activity, returning Jedi being debriefed and then rushed through an assessment on the situation, and the two archaeologists had barely touched down before being whisked through the same process.
There was a Confederacy of Independent Systems, which wanted to leave the Republic, and had built a massive army of battle droids to ensure that they would be able to do so – and, it seemed, to ensure that they would be able to force other systems to join them. They were led by a Jedi who had left the Order, Yan Dooku, and who it seemed was actually one of the Sith.
That – and the escalation of a rescue mission for Knight Kenobi and Padawan Skywalker – formed the main cause for why there was now a war going on and why the Jedi were so tightly involved, as far as Swift understood it. The Republic military was barely enough to defeat pirates, and the various system fleets were deeply disorganized, but the Jedi were recognized as the guardians of the Republic and a clone army from Kamino was being used to provide the military strength they needed.
And the Jedi had always been associated with fighting the Sith. Even thousands of years ago, on Tython, Jedi against Sith had been one of those things nobody had to explain in documents because everyone already knew it.
"So… what will we be doing?" Swift asked, once Master Tinn had finished explaining.
"The two of you will be in command of a Republic Army contingent," Master Tinn said. "Probably. I don't think Swift would fit in a fighter and frankly… I've only seen a little of the fighting on the ground, I was flying fighter cover for most of the battle, but already I can tell that the clones work extremely well in combination with a Jedi field commander. And we need as much fighting strength out there as possible – there are already battles breaking out as systems are attacked."
"The Army of Light rises again," Master Cordova murmured. "Or so I gather… our records of what we had thought to be the end of the Sith, before Naboo, are – fragmentary."
In that case, Swift sent, his thoughts tinged with a sort of peculiar irony, we should make sure to properly document this war. Make it easier on future archaeologists.
It certainly would have helped him when he arrived on Coruscant if he'd had some idea what was going to happen.
AN:
This story continues.