"Okay…" Chloe said, in the annoyed voice someone might use, when they found out they'd been given bad directions. "Does anyone have a theory as to why the Force, instead of leading us to a cavern full of crystals, led us to a creature that will, if we let it, digest us for a thousand years!?"
"I don't understand, I can sense the crystals, they're here…" Alyssa insisted, to no one's disagreement.
The six of them stood at the lip of the crater, staring at the beak-like mouth in the center. It was incredible, feeling the lifeforce of just one creature, spread out over such a large area. The width of its mouth was nothing, compared to the depth of its body, hidden deep beneath the planet's surface. It wouldn't be a surprise if it had to carefully position itself to avoid searing its lower roots on veins of magma.
After a moment of silent appreciation, the six younglings span around in alarm. There was something new. They'd felt a powerful surge in the Force. It was similar to the sensation they felt, when standing near one of the Jedi Masters, only different. Like the difference between the Force on Felucia and Coruscant, it felt like there was someone powerful in the Force nearby, who wasn't a Jedi…
"Hello?" Warren called out, with no need to confirm that his friends had felt the same thing.
"Show yourself!" Chloe ordered.
From the dense canopy behind them, three figures dropped to the ground. Although they stood on two legs, they were about as human-looking as the Sarlacc behind the children. Their skin was black, while streaked with light blue (or vice versa), their muscular arms ended with flat suction cups, and branched off into a second pair of more slender, three-fingered arms. Their entire heads were obscured by rigid tentacles, pointing upwards, almost resembling jagged crystals. While all three of them towered over the younglings, the one in the middle hunched over, putting its weight on a gnarled tree branch, it used as a cane, after it dropped from the trees.
"Welcome… Jedi…" An echoing voice seemed to come from everywhere, while at the same time, from within the padawan's own heads.
"H… hello?" Max was the first to overcome the shock of the strange means of communication. "We're here for…"
"Kyber crystals…! Kyber crystals…! Kyber crystals…!" The phrase echoed several times, before fading away.
"You've seen padawans come here before." Rachel deduced. "Glad we're in the right place…"
"We guard the ancient one… protect her from desecration… Jedi come, seeking the crystals she guards…"
"Is… that allowed?" Brooke asked, nervously.
"The crystals are for the worthy, she yields to the worthy… and devours the rest…"
The three Felucians raised their right arms, pointing the suction cups on the end at the children. Feeling a surge in the Force, the younglings quickly mirrored the action, in an attempt to defend themselves, but it was like a puff of wind, versus a hurricane. The six of them were blasted clean off their feet, and into the deadly pit behind them. Rachel twisted upright in the air, fanned out her wings and floated in place, then watched, in horror, as her friends hit the dirt, which shifted like fine sand, sending the children sliding rapidly towards an agonizing death.
Rachel swept to the front of the team, like a majestic bird of prey, and grabbed Chloe and Max's hands, gritting her teeth as she strained to pull them both into the air and, with a strenuous swing of her arms, threw them both to the nearest tooth, towering out of the dirt, which they clung to, for dear life.
"Come on! We have to help the others!" Rachel urged.
While Rachel hovered, Chloe and Max reached out with the arms that weren't clinging to the giant tooth, and Warren, Alyssa and Brooke lifted from the shifting dirt, and over to more secure, giant teeth of their own.
"Stay off the dirt, everyone." Rachel instructed, unnecessarily.
"Just like playing The Floor is Lava, in the dining hall." Max compared fondly, but with fear in her voice.
"Okay, I'm gonna climb back up there, and make myself a tentacle necklace…" Chloe spat, looking up to the lip of the crater, where the Felucians had been watching them, since they threw them in.
"Babe, no." Rachel said, calmingly. "They were right. Like it or not, this is where we need to be…"
It was true. Any doubt that they had been in the right place, had vanished, the second they were thrown into the pit. The call of the Kyber crystals was so loud, the padawans felt as though they could simply reach out and pick them up.
"So… where are the crystals, then?" Warren pointed out, confused.
Before they could ponder the puzzle any further, there was a mighty groan from deep within the pit. It rattled the padawans' eardrums and shook the very air. As if prompted by the sound, the monolithic tendrils in the center of the pit began to slowly fold down, towards the children, like tongues, intent on picking food remnants out of teeth, which of course, they were.
With a few cries of alarm, the padawans scattered. Leaping from tooth to tooth, remembering the obstacle courses they'd run at the temple, while training their agility. Of course, falling from them would mean hitting a soft mat, not an agonizing death. Brooke and Warren stayed close to Alyssa, knowing that, if she were to suffer one of her infamous trips now, it would be significantly less funny than normal. Rachel flew after Chloe and Max, as they ran the other way.
"Rachel! Chloe!" Max called out, breathlessly. "I'm about to jump straight up, give me a boost!"
Not knowing what she was planning, but trusting her judgement, Rachel and Chloe focused their power on their friend. Max performed a Force Jump, off one of the sarlacc's teeth, flying upwards, and gathering speed, with her friends' help. By the time she slowed down, Max was almost as high as the towering forest canopy, around the crater. Before gravity claimed her, Max quickly took her data pad from where it was secured to her belt, beneath her robe, and snapped a picture of the beast beneath her.
Guiding her descent with the Force, Max slid along one of the sarlacc's vertical tentacles, and flipped onto another one, which was chasing Chloe along its mouth, and sprinted along its length, to join her friend.
"MAXINE CELESTE!" Rachel shouted angrily. "Did you just risk your life for a photo!?"
Max leapt from the tentacle, swung off Rachel's outstretched hand, and joined Chloe in racing across the row of giant teeth. "A really good one…" She replied, defensively.
"I'm deleting it…" Chloe promised. "Bad Max!"
"Okay guys, focus." Rachel pulled them back on track. "How can a sarlacc be a crystal cavern?"
Chloe squinted her eyes in concentration, before gasping, all the while, continuing the flee from the pursuing tendrils. "Wait! What if that's it? What if the sarlacc swallowed the crystals, and we have to let it eat us!?"
Rachel swept beneath a tooth and over a tentacle that had attempted to cut her off. "Seriously…?" She asked, condescendingly.
"Well what's your genius idea?" Chloe retorted, the stress seeming to be getting to her.
"Those Felucians said that getting devoured was what happened to the unworthy." Max pointed out. "We want it to yield to us, whatever that means."
"Well… maybe the sarlacc has two throats, and the unworthy…" Chloe began.
"It doesn't." Max interrupted.
Chloe pouted angrily. "Seriously, I would love a better plan than getting eaten! Anyone?"
Max ran along an incoming tentacle, before flipping onto another, and leaping back onto the row of teeth, all the while sporting a thoughtful expression.
"I think a look into the sarlacc's past might be helpful." She proposed. "Can you guys keep these tentacles off me for a bit?"
"Might be a five padawan job…" Rachel said, cringing at the monstrous leviathan, doubtfully.
The trio circled the crater, towards Alyssa, Brooke and Warren, and caught them up on the plan. While Max sat cross legged on one of the larger teeth, the other five formed a protective circle around her, nervously targeting the palms of their hands on the approaching tendrils.
Max closed her eyes, and felt the creature's energy, getting a renewed appreciation for its massive size. Beneath the soil, it was almost half as tall as the Jedi Temple. Trying not to waste time, being impressed, Max reached out, through time. The sarlacc shrank before her mind's eye. It's tendrils slowly lowering towards the sand, and the pit shallowing as it de-aged. One by one, the rows of teeth lowered into the sand from the outside, going inwards.
Soon, Max found the answer she sought. To her surprise, the pit stopped shrinking, before the sarlacc did. Like water down a drain, the last few tentacles shrivelled into a spacious cavern, full of glittering light, and a moment later, a tiny creature, the size of a training drone, and covered in tentacles, came slithering out, backwards.
"I've got it!"
Max opened her eyes, to see, to her horror, that the sun was being blotted out. The sarlacc tentacles surrounded them from all angles, pressing against an invisible barrier, being strenuously projected by Max's friends. While Chloe, Brooke, Alyssa and Warren surrounded her defensively, Rachel hovered over them all like an angel, her arms and wings outstretched, and her face contorted in painful exertion.
"Guys, the sarlacc isn't the crystal cavern, the sarlacc made its home in the crystal cavern!" Max informed them.
"That's great…" Chloe grunted through her teeth. "But you missed the part where it's too late and now we're all gonna die!"
Max loaned her power to maintaining the shield, as she elaborated. "No, those Felucians said the sarlacc would yield to us! I bet that means we can control it, for a little bit! It must be susceptible to Jedi mind tricks!"
"We only have a theoretical understanding of mind tricks…" Alyssa nervously pointed out.
"Plus, we'd have to divert our energies from the shield. We'd have less than four seconds before it kills us!" Brooke added.
"Well, we'd better give it our all then!" Rachel said, assertively, slowly lowering, and landing on the tooth with her friends. "Everyone ready?"
After some unconvincing murmurs, The six of them redirected their hands to the center of the pit, on the other side of the wall of tentacles, which quickly began to constrict. The children felt out for the underwhelming sarlacc equivalent of a mind.
The tentacles had made contact and began to force the padawans closer together, and were probably an instant away from crushing the life out of them, when Max cried, "STOOOP!"
The following millisecond seemed to last an eternity, but eventually, a collective sigh was let out, as the children realised the tentacles had stopped. Slowly, the sarlacc's limbs unwound, and returned to their position, pointing upright, high into the air. Then, the children felt the ground begin to tremble. In the center of the pit, the tip of the sarlacc's head began to emerge, an enormous, bulging mass, covered in grotesque, rounded lumps. Eventually, the head narrowed, leaving a gap between the beast's neck, and the rim of the pit. Sand began to pour into the open space.
"I think that's our cavern." Rachel guessed.
"Everyone ready?" Max asked, offering out her hands.
Chloe took Max's right hand, and Brooke took her left. Joined into a chain, the six padawans leapt into the sand, and slid towards the towering beast, before plunging into the inky, black cave, beneath it.
