Disclaimer: Any recognizable names belong to George Lucas. I have no
special permission to write this story and am not making any money from it.
Chapter 3
The sparing grounds were in a huge flagstone floored hall. The walls were painted with murals, and crystal glow-cells hung from the ceiling on chains. A group of Masters and their students were already there when Obi Wan and Qui Gon arrived, and they had obviously been practicing for a while. The exercise was focused and serious, like almost all of Jedi training, but the energy between the various men, women, and aliens was informal and friendly. Obi Wan felt a little out of place. He looked to Qui Gon for support. Qui Gon had apparently decided at some point in his past that he belonged everywhere.
As they slipped into the hall and joined the group of Jedi, the Temple Master was sparing with a sleek black Berbel, the apprentice of a Shental Master who sat right in the middle of the group. Somehow you could always tell a teacher and student bound with the Force, just by looking.
The duel they were practicing was like no kata Obi Wan had ever seen performed at the temple. Obi Wan had seen a lightsaber hanging from the Temple Masters belt. It was a lean, thin weapon like the longbone of an animal, the handle wrapped in criss-crossed strips of leather worn dark and shiny. She wasn't one of the Jedi who had given up the use of a lightsaber completely. But she fought with only her wooden staff against the fully armed Berble.
It was fascinating to watch. Obi Wan guessed that seeing this would cure almost any over-eager initiate who thought he or she would not be a real Jedi until they had a lightsaber. The lightsaber would have severed the staff like a wire going through soft clay, but somehow the blade and the staff never met, although the Berble wasn't holding back. It was almost as if the Temple Master had created a dynamic force field around herself.
The duel's speed and intensity built. The two combatants blurred, Obi Wan had to drop half into battle sense just to follow what was going on. Suddenly the Temple Master blocked a slash aimed at her head and planted her staff behind one of the Berble's scaly clawed feet. He tripped and went down, flat on his back and defeated on the floor.
Obi Wan felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. If anyone's gaze actually had weight, Qui Gon's did. He was staring at Obi Wan thoughtfully, observing his interest in the unorthodox combat they had just witnessed.
"Why don't you go next?" Qui Gon asked as the Berble apprentice got to his feet, bowed and returned to the sidelines.
Dutifully Obi Wan stood up, beginning to stretch and loosed his muscles even as he did. He didn't particularly want to. The Berble hadn't seemed hurt but Obi Wan still couldn't really see how he could win such a strange duel.
He walked onto the practice floor with a near cocky little stalk in his steps. When you felt as if you where going to lose a fight you had to ignore that feeling, even if it was 100 percent accurate. They met in the middle of the hall and raised their weapons in an en guard salute. Traditionally the more inexperienced fighter made the first move. Obi Wan didn't really know where to start so he just dove in the way he usually did.
It was nothing like what he had expected. The Temple Master's salute had been deceptively formal and stiff, but once the battle began, she moved like a snake. She never actually tried to hit him. She simply moved much faster than he did, tangling or diverting his movements. Every attack he made was twisted and reshaped, almost sculpted into a harmless new form and he was powerless to stop it. Her defense was so seamless that it actually became offence.
His mind raced, trying to absorb the new style but in a few minutes he lost. The Temple Master swung her staff out one handed at a diagonal, pinning his arm against hers in a grip that was soft, but as strong as durasteel. With her free hand she reached out and took his saber from him. She flipped it around so it pointed downward, the ice blue sparking blade trailing into a blurred half circle of light, and then extinguished it. She released Obi Wan and bowed, handing his lightsaber back to him.
"Congratulations, Master," He said, rejoining Qui Gon. "Your Apprentice just lost a duel to an old woman with a stick."
"A weapon and a body have limits, Obi Wan. The Force does not."
Obi Wan sighed. As usual his sense of humor came alive right when his Master was in a serious mood.
Obi Wan would have loved to see Qui Gon fight against the Temple Master, but he seemed to be feeling even more contemplative than Obi Wan had thought. Quietly he lead the way out of the practice hall and through a warren of halls towards their quarters.
"Victory does not always look like victory." He continued. "The second you draw your blade you have lost a part of the battle. If you kill you have been totally defeated because your enemy has taken your will and control from you, caused you to damage your soul. Darksiders see Jedi as weak because of this. They think the dark side is stronger because it is fueled by violent emotions that come easily in battle. If someone hurts you and you hate or fear them for it, and it will only make your attack more powerful." Qui Gon paused and fixed Obi Wan with a calm, fearless to the point of fierce stare. "But a Jedi dying in the light often has more power than one living in darkness."
Obi Wan was so transfixed that he barely heard what his master said. He didn't need to. The look on Qui Gon's face said more than any words could.
Obi Wan had to look away from his Master's sure, dark-bright eyes. "I'm sorry Master." He murmured. "I'd just never seen anything like that before. You trained me to use a quarter staff but . . . ."
"Hardly anyone practices combat like that anymore, but it's an old, old art. It takes great skill, and most Masters think it's jinxed. Not that they'd ever admit that, of course."
"Why?" Obi Wan asked, both relieved and disappointed that the fire seemed to have dulled in Qui Gon, to be replaced with his more familiar, safer, and more comfortable passion for all history and things of the old Jedi.
"Back before the temple was built, a Master often took several students and trained them in a group, like a family. The first Dark Lord of the Sith, Exar Kun, trained in one of these groups, under master Vodo-Siosk Baas, before he fell. First he became arrogant. He thought he was superior to the students he trained with. The Master saw this and decided to take him down a peg by defeating him using only his walking stick."
"But he didn't learn humility from that?"
"No. Master Baas lost the duel. Kun was very skilled. He took a lightsaber from one of the other students and cut Baas's staff in two. The lesson failed, he was more in love with his own power than ever. Not long after that, Kun fell irrevocably and killed his own master on the senate floor."
Obi Wan grew quiet, and a little cold, thinking of the anchient chaos of the Sith Wars. Vengeful spirits and hate and greed for power as old and common as time grown to freakish proportions. It was almost more than he could imagine in the peaceful galxcy that was his home. But this sentient spirit of the dark side, it was like something from a holocron, or one of Master Qui Gon's stories.
* * * * *
After they had finished there evening meal Qui Gon met with the Temple Master again. It was clear to Obi Wan that they weren't going to need him. He watched them go, walking down the corridor close together, speaking quietly about the implications of the thing in the cave, and what might be done about it.
Obi Wan paced their room a few times, wondering what he was going to do until they came back. Qui Gon had left him no specific instructions. After a moment's thought he decided to find some quiet corner of the temple to practice in alone. He headed for the courtyard, immerging from the temple's narrow hallways into the outdoors just as the sun was going down over the cliff's edge. He wasn't the only one. There were a couple other Jedi who had also come to the large sand-floored square for training or a quiet contemplation.
Obi Wan settled himself against the wall and began to meditate, shutting everything else out. Tiny stones in the sand in front of him trembled, turned over, and began to roll, scrawling a spiraling starburst of twisting furrows in the sand. Like legless armored insects they crawled into a cluster in the center of the patch of tracks. One after another the pebbles floated into the air and began to orbit each other like a model solar system.
Obi Wan came out of his trance slowly, in time with the setting sun. As the sky shaded from pale and bright to dark and bright, Obi Wan was aware more and more of normal consciousness. The rocks floated gradually back down to the ground and rolled back to their places. Only a thin bright rim of sun remained on the horizon. Obi Wan was pleased. Moving large objects was difficult, but so was delicate telekinetic control of small objects. Of course the Masters would insist that neither was really difficult, if one took the correct point of view. Feeling still inside and not wanting to break the stillness around him, Obi Wan leaned back and watched night fall.
Ferrio's sun had a faint amethyst cast to it, so as it set, the rocks looming over the tiled roofs that framed the courtyard looked like they were soaked in dark purple Corelian wine. The leathery green and red leaves of the big bloodsap tree in the center of the courtyard whispered in a light breeze as dusk fell.
Qui Gon and the Temple Master came into the clearing, Qui Gon speaking in throaty, growling but somehow soft Ferrio. Obi Wan watched as they drifted across the empty courtyard and sat down on one of the benches that had been arranged in a semi-circle under the tree so that lessons could be taught there. They talked for a long time in the dusky blue shadows that trailed down from the tree's twisting branches. Finally the Temple Master stood as if to leave, but then reached out and pressed one gaunt hand against Qui Gon's forehead. Obi Wan wasn't quite sure what he was seeing, but even in the distance and low light the look of gratitude on his Master's slightly upturned face was unmistakable. It took Obi Wan by surprise. He had been, to tell the truth, a little wary of the Temple Master, a little afraid of her. After all, she looked sterner than Yoda, and carried a much bigger stick. And yet apparently she was not without kindness.
Qui Gon also stood and murmured words of thanks. Then they parted, the Temple Master leaving the courtyard through a stone archway, and Qui Gon pacing over to Obi Wan's side.
"We leave before dawn tomorrow. The Temple Master is coming with us." Qui Gon said. "She tried to restore harmony to the place herself. She gathered the strongest Knights from the temple and spent days meditating there. They hoped that once it was lured into attacking them it would ware out its strength and disappear. It couldn't hurt any of them, but after that it came back even stronger. She couldn't dispel the vergence, but I think she knows it well. Knowledge is one of a Jedi's greatest weapons."
"What can we do that they didn't?"
Qui Gon folded his hands in front of him, staring at the floor in front of his boots as he walked. "It is not enough to simply outlast it. We must force the presence to destroy itself."
They reached their cell and Qui Gon pushed aside the brightly patterned hand woven blanket that hung across the doorway.
"Darksiders, and whatever this vergence has become, are creatures of fear. They feed on it and can take advantage of it in others." Qui Gon turned to face Obi Wan. It was strange, Qui Gon was not only speaking to him as an adult, but as an equal, and that surprised him. Qui Gon had always treated him with respect, but he was not a mature Jedi, and at this stage in his training, the Master still had much more to give than the Apprentice. "You have seen the dark side, my Padawan and you have not chosen that path. But even after all these years, you could still become evil. So could I. So could any jedi. Meditate on that tonight. Meditate on that choice. I know I will."
Chapter 3
The sparing grounds were in a huge flagstone floored hall. The walls were painted with murals, and crystal glow-cells hung from the ceiling on chains. A group of Masters and their students were already there when Obi Wan and Qui Gon arrived, and they had obviously been practicing for a while. The exercise was focused and serious, like almost all of Jedi training, but the energy between the various men, women, and aliens was informal and friendly. Obi Wan felt a little out of place. He looked to Qui Gon for support. Qui Gon had apparently decided at some point in his past that he belonged everywhere.
As they slipped into the hall and joined the group of Jedi, the Temple Master was sparing with a sleek black Berbel, the apprentice of a Shental Master who sat right in the middle of the group. Somehow you could always tell a teacher and student bound with the Force, just by looking.
The duel they were practicing was like no kata Obi Wan had ever seen performed at the temple. Obi Wan had seen a lightsaber hanging from the Temple Masters belt. It was a lean, thin weapon like the longbone of an animal, the handle wrapped in criss-crossed strips of leather worn dark and shiny. She wasn't one of the Jedi who had given up the use of a lightsaber completely. But she fought with only her wooden staff against the fully armed Berble.
It was fascinating to watch. Obi Wan guessed that seeing this would cure almost any over-eager initiate who thought he or she would not be a real Jedi until they had a lightsaber. The lightsaber would have severed the staff like a wire going through soft clay, but somehow the blade and the staff never met, although the Berble wasn't holding back. It was almost as if the Temple Master had created a dynamic force field around herself.
The duel's speed and intensity built. The two combatants blurred, Obi Wan had to drop half into battle sense just to follow what was going on. Suddenly the Temple Master blocked a slash aimed at her head and planted her staff behind one of the Berble's scaly clawed feet. He tripped and went down, flat on his back and defeated on the floor.
Obi Wan felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. If anyone's gaze actually had weight, Qui Gon's did. He was staring at Obi Wan thoughtfully, observing his interest in the unorthodox combat they had just witnessed.
"Why don't you go next?" Qui Gon asked as the Berble apprentice got to his feet, bowed and returned to the sidelines.
Dutifully Obi Wan stood up, beginning to stretch and loosed his muscles even as he did. He didn't particularly want to. The Berble hadn't seemed hurt but Obi Wan still couldn't really see how he could win such a strange duel.
He walked onto the practice floor with a near cocky little stalk in his steps. When you felt as if you where going to lose a fight you had to ignore that feeling, even if it was 100 percent accurate. They met in the middle of the hall and raised their weapons in an en guard salute. Traditionally the more inexperienced fighter made the first move. Obi Wan didn't really know where to start so he just dove in the way he usually did.
It was nothing like what he had expected. The Temple Master's salute had been deceptively formal and stiff, but once the battle began, she moved like a snake. She never actually tried to hit him. She simply moved much faster than he did, tangling or diverting his movements. Every attack he made was twisted and reshaped, almost sculpted into a harmless new form and he was powerless to stop it. Her defense was so seamless that it actually became offence.
His mind raced, trying to absorb the new style but in a few minutes he lost. The Temple Master swung her staff out one handed at a diagonal, pinning his arm against hers in a grip that was soft, but as strong as durasteel. With her free hand she reached out and took his saber from him. She flipped it around so it pointed downward, the ice blue sparking blade trailing into a blurred half circle of light, and then extinguished it. She released Obi Wan and bowed, handing his lightsaber back to him.
"Congratulations, Master," He said, rejoining Qui Gon. "Your Apprentice just lost a duel to an old woman with a stick."
"A weapon and a body have limits, Obi Wan. The Force does not."
Obi Wan sighed. As usual his sense of humor came alive right when his Master was in a serious mood.
Obi Wan would have loved to see Qui Gon fight against the Temple Master, but he seemed to be feeling even more contemplative than Obi Wan had thought. Quietly he lead the way out of the practice hall and through a warren of halls towards their quarters.
"Victory does not always look like victory." He continued. "The second you draw your blade you have lost a part of the battle. If you kill you have been totally defeated because your enemy has taken your will and control from you, caused you to damage your soul. Darksiders see Jedi as weak because of this. They think the dark side is stronger because it is fueled by violent emotions that come easily in battle. If someone hurts you and you hate or fear them for it, and it will only make your attack more powerful." Qui Gon paused and fixed Obi Wan with a calm, fearless to the point of fierce stare. "But a Jedi dying in the light often has more power than one living in darkness."
Obi Wan was so transfixed that he barely heard what his master said. He didn't need to. The look on Qui Gon's face said more than any words could.
Obi Wan had to look away from his Master's sure, dark-bright eyes. "I'm sorry Master." He murmured. "I'd just never seen anything like that before. You trained me to use a quarter staff but . . . ."
"Hardly anyone practices combat like that anymore, but it's an old, old art. It takes great skill, and most Masters think it's jinxed. Not that they'd ever admit that, of course."
"Why?" Obi Wan asked, both relieved and disappointed that the fire seemed to have dulled in Qui Gon, to be replaced with his more familiar, safer, and more comfortable passion for all history and things of the old Jedi.
"Back before the temple was built, a Master often took several students and trained them in a group, like a family. The first Dark Lord of the Sith, Exar Kun, trained in one of these groups, under master Vodo-Siosk Baas, before he fell. First he became arrogant. He thought he was superior to the students he trained with. The Master saw this and decided to take him down a peg by defeating him using only his walking stick."
"But he didn't learn humility from that?"
"No. Master Baas lost the duel. Kun was very skilled. He took a lightsaber from one of the other students and cut Baas's staff in two. The lesson failed, he was more in love with his own power than ever. Not long after that, Kun fell irrevocably and killed his own master on the senate floor."
Obi Wan grew quiet, and a little cold, thinking of the anchient chaos of the Sith Wars. Vengeful spirits and hate and greed for power as old and common as time grown to freakish proportions. It was almost more than he could imagine in the peaceful galxcy that was his home. But this sentient spirit of the dark side, it was like something from a holocron, or one of Master Qui Gon's stories.
* * * * *
After they had finished there evening meal Qui Gon met with the Temple Master again. It was clear to Obi Wan that they weren't going to need him. He watched them go, walking down the corridor close together, speaking quietly about the implications of the thing in the cave, and what might be done about it.
Obi Wan paced their room a few times, wondering what he was going to do until they came back. Qui Gon had left him no specific instructions. After a moment's thought he decided to find some quiet corner of the temple to practice in alone. He headed for the courtyard, immerging from the temple's narrow hallways into the outdoors just as the sun was going down over the cliff's edge. He wasn't the only one. There were a couple other Jedi who had also come to the large sand-floored square for training or a quiet contemplation.
Obi Wan settled himself against the wall and began to meditate, shutting everything else out. Tiny stones in the sand in front of him trembled, turned over, and began to roll, scrawling a spiraling starburst of twisting furrows in the sand. Like legless armored insects they crawled into a cluster in the center of the patch of tracks. One after another the pebbles floated into the air and began to orbit each other like a model solar system.
Obi Wan came out of his trance slowly, in time with the setting sun. As the sky shaded from pale and bright to dark and bright, Obi Wan was aware more and more of normal consciousness. The rocks floated gradually back down to the ground and rolled back to their places. Only a thin bright rim of sun remained on the horizon. Obi Wan was pleased. Moving large objects was difficult, but so was delicate telekinetic control of small objects. Of course the Masters would insist that neither was really difficult, if one took the correct point of view. Feeling still inside and not wanting to break the stillness around him, Obi Wan leaned back and watched night fall.
Ferrio's sun had a faint amethyst cast to it, so as it set, the rocks looming over the tiled roofs that framed the courtyard looked like they were soaked in dark purple Corelian wine. The leathery green and red leaves of the big bloodsap tree in the center of the courtyard whispered in a light breeze as dusk fell.
Qui Gon and the Temple Master came into the clearing, Qui Gon speaking in throaty, growling but somehow soft Ferrio. Obi Wan watched as they drifted across the empty courtyard and sat down on one of the benches that had been arranged in a semi-circle under the tree so that lessons could be taught there. They talked for a long time in the dusky blue shadows that trailed down from the tree's twisting branches. Finally the Temple Master stood as if to leave, but then reached out and pressed one gaunt hand against Qui Gon's forehead. Obi Wan wasn't quite sure what he was seeing, but even in the distance and low light the look of gratitude on his Master's slightly upturned face was unmistakable. It took Obi Wan by surprise. He had been, to tell the truth, a little wary of the Temple Master, a little afraid of her. After all, she looked sterner than Yoda, and carried a much bigger stick. And yet apparently she was not without kindness.
Qui Gon also stood and murmured words of thanks. Then they parted, the Temple Master leaving the courtyard through a stone archway, and Qui Gon pacing over to Obi Wan's side.
"We leave before dawn tomorrow. The Temple Master is coming with us." Qui Gon said. "She tried to restore harmony to the place herself. She gathered the strongest Knights from the temple and spent days meditating there. They hoped that once it was lured into attacking them it would ware out its strength and disappear. It couldn't hurt any of them, but after that it came back even stronger. She couldn't dispel the vergence, but I think she knows it well. Knowledge is one of a Jedi's greatest weapons."
"What can we do that they didn't?"
Qui Gon folded his hands in front of him, staring at the floor in front of his boots as he walked. "It is not enough to simply outlast it. We must force the presence to destroy itself."
They reached their cell and Qui Gon pushed aside the brightly patterned hand woven blanket that hung across the doorway.
"Darksiders, and whatever this vergence has become, are creatures of fear. They feed on it and can take advantage of it in others." Qui Gon turned to face Obi Wan. It was strange, Qui Gon was not only speaking to him as an adult, but as an equal, and that surprised him. Qui Gon had always treated him with respect, but he was not a mature Jedi, and at this stage in his training, the Master still had much more to give than the Apprentice. "You have seen the dark side, my Padawan and you have not chosen that path. But even after all these years, you could still become evil. So could I. So could any jedi. Meditate on that tonight. Meditate on that choice. I know I will."