"Tarys? It's me. How-what's happening?"
Astraia?
"I have no idea, I'm not trying to use telepathy right now, are you?" Tarys asked.
"Not that I know of. This just started on its own."
"Same. Wait, are you getting strange images in your head too?"
"If you mean flashes of something that suspiciously resembles the Jedi Temple on Coruscant but in the middle of a forest - then yes."
Tython. She was seeing images of Tython. Why? She couldn't have ever been here, and he'd never been to whatever place he was seeing pictures of. Tarys's thoughts became more disorganised, his mind was racing to a hundred and one conclusions until it was interrupted by Astraia's welcome voice.
"I can feel you panicking, take a breath. Aren't you Jedi meant to be all about calm? Tell me what you're thinking."
So she could tell what she was feeling, did that mean that those other feelings he had, the other entity's confusion, were Astraia's emotions?
"Well, you basically described Tython to a tee. I'm going to describe what I've been seeing, tell me if it's familiar." Tarys went on to describe the dry and near desolate planet he'd seen only to sense that Astraia was bewildered, to put it mildly.
"And you just told me exactly what Korriban looks like, which is where I am. Let me guess, you're on Tython right now aren't you?"
"I am." Tarys could tell her breathing was quickening, it was like some sort of sixth sense. "Now it's your turn to slow down, I'm aware Sith aren't famous for their calm."
"Shush, I'm perfectly capable of being calm."
To her credit, after a few seconds, Tarys felt her breathing return to normal, or at least as normal as it could be, given the circumstances.
"So what? We can now see where we are? And why now? It's only been almost half a day since we parted ways." She continued her string of thoughts, each and every one of which were relayed to Tarys.
"Not a clue. This seems a little like the Force bond I have with Master Satele. She can tell if I'm feeling any unusually strong emotions and we can communicate telepathically with a longer range than people without bonds, but this? This is extreme, I can't say if it's the same thing. Force bonds are supposed to take time, years, usually, to form and absolute trust to boot. We only met for a few hours."
"Force bonds? I've never heard of them, but you have to admit this is suspiciously similar."
"Really? They're everywhere, don't you have one with your master?"
"You said these bonds need trust to form? There's precious little of that among the Sith, especially between master and apprentice."
"Well… Another one is lightsaber crystals, every Jedi's bonded to their lightsaber's crystal. Have you ever held another lightsaber and felt it isn't right? Like it just doesn't belong in your hand?"
"That I have felt. No one else around me though, I asked around about it. Then again, no one else failed to corrupt their kyber crystal."
"Wait. What do you mean corrupt?"
"Don't you know? Have you never wondered why every real Sith in history has had a red lightsaber? Kyber crystals are naturally attuned to the light side, us Sith aren't too fond of that so we have to corrupt them, make them "bleed" so we can use them in our own sabers - turning them red. Except for me, I ended up with a purple lightsaber for some reason. Halfway between blue and red, I suppose."
"Really? I knew about crystals being naturally leaning towards the light but never about how Sith use them. It makes sense, even if it's cruel. Purple is one of the colours a kyber crystal can adopt though upon bonding. Do you know why there are so many colours?"
"I can't say I do. And I wouldn't say it's cruel, merely adapting them for a different purpose."
"Supposedly kyber crystals respond to their wielder's character and take a certain colour accordingly. It's been a good few years since I've looked at this back at the Academy, but I'm pretty sure purple represents moral ambiguity."
"Ambiguity. Lovely. What about you? Your sabers weren't quite blue were they? They were lighter."
"Yeah, there's only been a few previous recorded cases of cyan lightsabers, so no one's been able to place a personality trait to it yet. I don't know what my crystals say about me."
"Well aren't you the special one." He could feel her mocking smile and he couldn't do a thing about it. "More importantly, is this permanent?"
"Kriff." Tarys usually wasn't one to swear but the situation called for it. "We'd better hope this isn't a Force bond, because if it is-"
"Then I'm saddled with you for life."
"Yeah."
It just dawned on him that it might be a lifelong bond and Tarys did not want to share his mind with anyone for that long.
"Well I'll do what research I can but it'll probably be on you for the most part. I've done my fair share of reading here on Korriban and haven't found one mention of Force bonds."
"Oh, I'll turn the Temple upside down if I have to. You don't seem so bad, but I don't think I want you in my head, thanks."
"Rude. Anyway, while we're talking, I'm curious. What's Tython like? Nevermind, what about the Republic? Tell me about Coruscant. I can't say I've had a conversation with a Jedi before - or anyone from outside the Empire."
"Woah woah, slow down. One question at a time," Tarys chuckled.
For the remainder of the night, the two exchanged stories. first Tarys told Astraia about each of the locations she'd asked about, he had no reason to deny her and he could feel how excited she was about learning all that. Tarys shared her curiosity and similarly demanded stories about Korriban and life in the Empire. Tarys decided he enjoyed her company, ethereal or otherwise. She told a hell of a story, to the point he found it difficult to stay quiet and stop himself from laughing. It was the middle of the night on Tython and everyone else was asleep after all.
It was definitely strange, normally when you talked to someone you had to gauge how they felt from their expressions, or occasionally the Force gave you an insight, but with Astraia Tarys could tell exactly what she was feeling, and he knew she could tell how he felt too. It was hard to remember that this was a Sith Acolyte he was dealing with. She seemed so sincere and nice and funny and the opposite of what he expected a Sith to be.
All of a sudden Astraia stopped speaking in the middle of her sentence. Tarys couldn't even remember what it was about.
"I can still tell what your emotions are you know. I can tell you're conflicted about speaking to me. And guilty about not listening to a word I was saying. Regarding feeling conflicted about talking to me: don't be. I don't mean you any harm. You're a nice change of pace from all the bloodthirsty Acolytes around me. We should definitely use mental shields going forward though, don't know about you but I'll go mad if I have you constantly chatting up there.
"Mental shields, I forgot about those, thanks. And yeah, I know, it's just… I feel like we should be at odds. I'm a Jedi Padawan, is it right for me to be talking to you like this?"
"I don't see why not. I did save your life so I can't be all that bad right? How are the wounds doing by the way?"
"I know that, but the Order doesn't. they won't trust me if they know I have a Sith in my head. And thanks for that again, they're getting better, I should be good as new in a couple of days."
"So don't tell them. We both know I'm not trying to make you "fall" or anything so they don't need to know. Besides, you said you trust your Master. She's the Grand Master right? Everyone has to listen to her anyway."
"The Order isn't like that. Even if she is the Grand Master, the Council still has significant power. But I guess you're right, I won't tell anyone, for now. At least until we figure out exactly what's going on, then I'll talk about it with Master Satele."
"That's fair, but make sure she won't… I don't know, give you up to the Republic so they can interrogate me through you or something."
"The Republic wouldn't do that! That's awful!"
Tarys didn't even try to hide how repulsed he was by the thought.
"Oh? Well, I'm glad to hear that I guess."
"Anyway I'm gonna need some sleep now, it's almost sunrise."
"You let me keep you up that long? Go to sleep you fool, and have a big cup of caf when you wake up, you'll need it."
"What are you, my mother?"
"Just close your bloody eyes."
Tarys tried reaching out to Astraia after he had done that, just to check if she was still there, but was met with silence. She either had put up mental shields or chose to ignore him. Either way, he had plenty to do the following day and thankfully Master Satele assured him he had the day off, both to recover physically and to decompress after a mission like Cademimu.
As usual, Tarys was woken by the bright sunlight crashing in through his window, except this time he was hopelessly tired and he'd only just gotten up. Tarys stood in front of his mirror, his hair always did look strange when the braid was undone, it was very lopsided, with only some of it on one side being significantly longer than the rest. After showering and redoing his Padawan braid, Tarys did his morning meditation, trying to expunge any stress he had about the possibility that his connection to Astraia was permanent, albeit unsuccessfully.
Tarys immediately set off for the Archives afterwards. Thankfully, Master Gnost-Dural had been diligent in leading the reconstruction of the knowledge lost on Coruscant and now, a decade after the Sacking of Coruscant, Jedi on Tython had access to most of the knowledge that was lost. If the Force was with him, Tarys should be able to find what he was looking for.
Tarys approached the librarian's desk and asked if he could be led to entries about Force bonds and moments later he was standing in front of several datapads on the subject. He decided the best method was to see records of known Force bonds in the past and see if any of them matched what he had with Astraia. He read and read and read and nothing, not one mention of a Force bond that caused the transmission of images and clear thoughts over such a long-range so quickly after forming until…
"Did you really just think 'Revan we meet again'?"
His discovery was made all the sourer by his mental companion's mockery.
"Do you or do you not want to know what I've found out?"
"You realise I can read your thoughts right? What did we say about mental shields?"
"If I knew you were going to be this invasive I'd have locked my mind up tighter than a vault."
"Look, I just want to know what's going on, just like you do. But I agree, Revan and Bastila's Force bond sounds familiar doesn't it? Images, ridiculously long-range communication… they had the whole lot… just like us. I guess that makes this a Force bond."
"I guess it does. I did just find something interesting about breaking them though. If someone were to sever the relationship that led to the bond being formed in the first place, then the bond should go too."
"Problem being, we had no relationship until yesterday."
"Exactly."
"There are worse people to be stuck with I guess. promise not to annoy each other too much until we figure out what started this?"
"Deal. Besides, last night was pretty fun even if I still feel dead."
What followed was excruciating silence.
"Wait wait wait, I didn't mean-sorry I just meant-"
"Got it." She interrupted him.
Tarys felt his face flush red and Astraia's own overwhelming embarrassment.
"Anyway, given our new… arrangement, how about we keep mental shields up, really up, from now on? Only contact each other if we need to?" Tarys offered.
"Sounds good, but how would we go about contacting each other though, given the mental shields?"
"Uhh… shout into the Force?"
"Somehow that is less stupid than it sounds. It's as good an idea as any, it works for me."
"Great. I guess this is it then. Till next time."
"Bye, Padawan." She said his rank like it was almost a slur. He knew she was joking but she wasn't getting away with it.
"Hey, you do not get to say that in that tone!" But it was too late, he could no longer feel her presence, and his rebuke fell on deaf ears. By the time he was done with his research, the time had come for his afternoon meditation and he used it as a chance to not only calm down, but to reflect.
So much had changed so quickly. He was sent on his first major mission on his own, well, effectively on his own and became Force bonded to a Sith acolyte. Truth be told, the future scared him. He didn't know what was going to happen, was he prepared? It's okay, he told himself. He'd faced Ortol and many of his soldiers and won, even if he had help. He'd faced him and lived. Tarys had to be ready, he had to, too many people believed in him for him to fail.
No matter how much he tried to reassure himself though, the doubt remained, all of his accomplishments, every single thing he'd achieved as a Padawan, it was only because he had people supporting him, there was nothing he did himself. Alone, he was weak. Then, he felt a hand on his shoulder.
"Hello there, I could feel your frustration from all the way over there, you alright?" It was Ishra's familiar voice.
"I've had enough of people "feeling" my emotions to last me a lifetime, thanks," Tarys snapped.
"That's a new one. Come on, talk to me. Your meditation clearly isn't going great."
Tarys sighed deeply, "I'm sorry." The two left the meditation chamber and walked around the Temple grounds as Tarys told her all about what had happened the past few days. He trusted her completely, she wouldn't tell anyone. By the time he finished his retelling, the two of them sat on a rock, facing a large lake brimming with clear water, revealing the fish that swam in it. If nothing else, Tython did not lack for idyllic views.
"So that's… something. I've got to say Tarys, that is not what I was expecting when I asked you to talk to me but I'm glad you did. So, you have no clue why you have a bond with her?"
"None," Tarys chuckled. He didn't dare tell her, but he was glad he was able to keep in contact with Astraia, something about her just drew him in. In the few conversations they'd had, he came away laughing at a story or grimacing at a cruel jibe. Either way, he always left wanting to know more about her. "What about you though? Master Yuon keeping you busy?"
"Oh there's no end to it," she laughed. "Don't get me wrong, I love every second of learning about our past, Tython is so rich in history. But there's only so much a girl can take before needing a break. I'm jealous, you get to go on missions across the galaxy and come back to rest while I'm here digging through dirt to find ancient artefacts without so much as seeing a spaceship."
"I literally just told you about how I nearly died," Tarys mocked offence. "But I'm glad to hear you're doing something you enjoy. But it does worry me, the Empire getting involved like that. Do you think they'll break the treaty?"
Ishra's brow creased, revealing the cogs turning in her mind. "I can't say. I think the Council thinks so though. Master Yuon told me to prepare to be a Knight soon, I think it's because they want as many fighters on the field if the war starts up again. I can't see why she'd rush my training if that's not it."
"Maybe because the prodigy is another step closer to becoming the 'greatest Jedi of our time'," Tarys mimicked Master Yuon, making air quotes with his fingers.
"Hey, you say that like I'm leaps and bounds ahead of you," She laughed.
"You won the tournament, you know," Tarys said.
"That was six years ago!"
"So?" He grinned and shrugged as if that didn't invalidate his argument.
"So you got better since, remember we had a serious sparring match before… you know. I'm sorry," Her face darkened, he knew what she was talking about.
"It's alright, let's just drop it, okay?" Tarys offered, feigning a sympathetic smile as best he could.
Two years ago. Even thinking about that year made Tarys's hands start quivering. He banished the thought from his head and listened to Ishra when she spoke again.
"Has Master Satele said anything about when you're gonna cut the braid?"
"She has, same as you really, I think she feels it too… there's war in the air. I don't know if I'm ready, I'm not like you, there's still so much I have to learn, I need to get so much better, I'd be more of a liability than an asset on the battlefield," Tarys hated that it was true, but it was. He wasn't good enough, not as good as Ishra.
"Nonsense. You come back from a mission where you fought against dozens of soldiers and a skilled general with only one ally and you say you'd be a liability. I swear Tarys, if I didn't know you I'd say you were delusional," she scoffed, screwing her face into a frown.
"Come on, we've had this conversation before. I think you're wrong, there's just no way I'm a good enough Jedi to be a Knight, and I'm not sure if I ever will be." Part of him wanted words of reassurance, that part wanted Ishra to tell him he was wrong, that he would make a good Knight.
"Stop this ridiculous self-pity. You and I both know you're more capable than you give yourself credit for, whether you see that or not doesn't change the fact that you are, so either stop moping or do something about it, I've missed the competition anyway."
Tarys opened his mouth to retort but closed it again, not being able to find a fault in her reasoning. "Sure," he said after a brief moment of silence. He needed to train harder, if he had any hope of living up to the expectations of everyone around him, from Ishra to Master Satele, they all had such high hopes, but could he meet them? He had to try, even if it seemed a lost cause.
The sombre mood overcast the rest of the conversation until Ishra received a summons from her master. She had a new task to complete - retrieve priceless ancient holoprojectors before they could be taken and presumably destroyed by Flesh Raiders. Tython's natives were as fearsome as the name implied. In his many years living on the planet, he'd heard more than a few stories about Padawans losing themselves in the Gnarls only to be found mauled by the Raiders. Tarys himself had dealt with some before, they weren't too difficult to beat for a more experienced fighter, but he could see why a new Padawan or Initiate would have trouble with them.
War was in the air… And not just between the Republic and the Empire. Between the Jedi and the Flesh Raiders too. The natives had become more and more aggressive in their skirmishes with the Jedi as the years went on. Hopefully, there would be a resolution soon before too many more lives were lost. War is in the air… He repeated his own words to himself in his mind. If the Republic and Empire did break the treaty, did that mean that he would face Sith on the field? That he would face Astraia? The possibility of it wasn't insignificant and he hated the very idea. It had only been two days, but in that short time, he'd come to know a Sith as more than a bloodthirsty monster. He'd come to know a Sith as a person, as someone with faults, yes, but also with great qualities that he'd see in any sentient in the galaxy, Republic or Empire.
Jedi were not supposed to hate, but Tarys allowed himself the small exception of war. He hated the war beings waged between themselves, between their friends, neighbours and even across galaxies. The Empire was cruel, he knew that much and that it needed to change but surely the deaths of billions weren't necessary for that? Tarys clenched his jaw as he realised the futility of his thoughts. His own parents had died in the war - not on the field, no - they were assassinated. The Empire had his parents assassinated so that his father couldn't even begin to fight against them. It wasn't honourable. It was conniving and despicable. The Empire, its government, not its people, Tarys reminded himself, arranged the assassination of a new mother and father and stopped their little boy from ever meeting them, from having a single memory of them.
Tarys couldn't be angry, not truly. He couldn't miss something he never had, but he wished he'd met them. They sounded exactly like the sort of people he wanted to be when he was older. Master Satele was their friend, she had revealed after a year under her wing. She'd known them for years and was even in their home the day before they were killed. Unbeknownst to him, he and his Master had met when he was just an infant sleeping in a cot; he chuckled to himself. His father was a Republic Admiral, a war hero and his mother was a writer and a prolific one at that - especially for someone as young as she was.
His mother wrote mainly about philosophy, it seemed, making it acceptable reading for a Padawan in training. She had a remarkably large body of work, the majority of which he hadn't even seen yet, but Tarys was content in the knowledge that one day, he'd be able to sit down and read his mother's words again. Jedi weren't supposed to have attachments, but it couldn't possibly be wrong to find solace in a lost parent's writings? Part of him wished that his father was a writer too, or at least left something behind, something he could experience, something he could use to learn about him but it seemed there was nothing.
What would they think if they saw him now? Would they be proud? No. No, they couldn't be. He was nothing to be proud of. He still had a long way to go before he became anything his parents would deign to look at - if they were present to begin with. Tarys stared up at the clear blue sky; it is said that anything is possible through the Force. Was it possible that his parents could see him through it?
It didn't matter. Not yet. Not until he was something worth seeing. And what is that? He asked himself, what did he want to be? A good Jedi. He answered. What does that mean?
He had no answer.
Someone who follows the Code, he presumed, but the Code was a puzzle. What did it even mean? Almost a decade of lessons in philosophy and all he'd learned was that it was not to be taken literally. There is no emotion, there is peace. Did emotion and peace truly contradict each other? Could he only have one or the other? Tarys found it hard to believe so, emotion was so ubiquitous in life, yet so was the absence of peace. Perhaps the Code was right, perhaps one needed to purge emotion to feel peace, but what was the value of life without emotion? After all, happiness, the ability to appreciate life and peace was an emotion. Would the Code have him seek a peace he couldn't even feel? That line, that very first line had always troubled him, going back years to when he was an Initiate, it didn't seem right.
Could Tarys truly be a good Jedi even without fully agreeing with his Order's code?
It didn't matter, he supposed, he was bound to it, he'd made a promise when he took his Initiate's Trials, and Jedi didn't break promises.
As always, please leave any feedback you have and let me know what you thought of the chapter.
Hope you enjoyed!
PS. My buffer of chapters is getting worryingly small - I'm gonna need to pump these out a bit faster.