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 4
That night Obi Wan had one of the nightmares the Temple Master had told them about. As he lay sleeping he saw himself crouching helplessly on the floor of Master Yoda's cluttered cell, screaming as Yoda blasted him with bolt after bolt of darkside lightning and cackled madly. He woke up frozen, paralyzed by the strangeness of dreaming at all and the wrongness of the images in the dreams, but Qui Gon had trained him well. He had long known that the Force could be used to deceive his senses. What he has seen was an illusion. He lay still, holding on to that knowledge like it was a talisman and then his fear fled. Qui Gon was not asleep on the pallet next to him, but that didn't worry Obi Wan at all. His Master was such a light and wakeful sleeper. He spent as much as half of each night prowling around like a cat in the dark, reading, meditating, visiting anyone else in the temple who was nocturnal, or simply sitting up. On the rare occasions Obi Wan was awake to see him come back from these nightly walks, Qui Gon seemed his normal serene self, but Obi Wan wondered at such apparent restlessness in someone so centered. Qui Gon could happily repeat an easy three-stage kata that seemed hopelessly below him hundreds of times until it was simple perfection; why couldn't he find the patience to sleep through the night? But after those dreams, Obi Wan thought, I could use a walk myself. He bundled himself up in his robe, days in this part of Ferria were warm, but nights were cold, and padded out into the hall. As he walked he felt the presence of another Jedi moving towards him, not Qui Gon . . . . There was a flash of amber-green eyeshine in the darkness at the end of the hall, like two floating marbles of Alderainian flame opal. Seconds later the Temple Master stepped into the light of the lone glow crystal mounted on the wall, her eyes holding a phosphorescent glow for a second after she did. If her eyes glowed like that, her night vision must be much keener than his. "Is there something wrong, Temple Master?" She shook her head. "No. This is parole against the demon." She seemed to muse. "This destructive thing has nothing to do with lack of light. Yet we name it darkness, so its power grows at night. Have you been dreaming, Learner?" Obi Wan nodded. "Yes, but dreams fade." Her eyes narrowed. "And return. And will return as long as long as the vergence dwells here." She was silent but kept watching him. Her silent, piercing stare, and the feeling that she could see his thoughts themselves made Obi Wan feel awkward enough to ask a question that had been in his mind all night. "This evening while you were talking to my Master in the courtyard, you . . . did something to him." Obi Wan wished that hadn't come out quiet so accusing. He gave a barely perceptible sigh of frustration at himself. "What was it?" If she was offended by his tone she didn't show it. "Your Teacher was wounded by the demon. Not much, but more than he guessed. More than you knew. I helped him heal. He is of the light, but receptive to the whole Force. Easy prey to the darkness in that way." She paused again, her eyes distant and unreadable. "Yet that will help him stand against it, when the time comes. That is why I am glad our Council sent the two of you to me." She clasped Obi Wan's hand in hers, and lifted it to chest level between them in a Ferrio gesture of solidarity. She smiled a small, hard, but friendly smile. "I think the three of us will stand well together, Learner. Know what your Master already knows. My name is Jang." Obi Wan was oddly comforted by her show of trust and respect. An enlightened Jedi mind knew that a name had no power over its owner, but the Temple Master had chosen to keep the Ferrio tradition and culture could run very deep. Then she released his hand and slipped away like a ghost into the darkness, with no sound but the soft beat of her staff on the floor. * * * * * They rode out from the safety of the temple at first light, their breath white in the morning chill. A distance from the cave they all dismounted and tethered the Kybus to a tree as Qui Gon and Obi Wan had when they first saw the vergence, and continued on foot. They headed down the trail in solemn single file, like pilgrims or an honor guard. The morning light was fragile and pale, and there was no sound except the rough-voiced whistling of the wind and the dull gruff thunder of the river rapids echoing up through the canyon. Not a word was spoken as the three Jedi made their way to the wide ledge where the cave lay. They stood at the edge of the rock shelf for a moment in silence. The silence was broken by a stealthy sound, a soft but blade sharp ominous whisper. A deathly coldness that touched the Jedi deep in their bones and deeper than that filled the air. The cave gaped in the stone like a pool of oil. And then the vergence, given not only a crude predatory sentience but also a physical form by its age and power, rose up out of it. It was dark but it glowed. That was all Obi Wan could ever remember, and even while he was looking at it, that was all he really understood. That didn't matter though. What he saw was deceptive, a mask, or at best an inexact translation of its true nature, and although he was not yet a full Jedi he knew the true nature of the dark side all too well. It hovered for a second, and then rushed from the cave in a high attacking ark to fall upon the Jedi who had come to destroy it. To his horror Obi Wan found himself petrified by the sheer malevolence of it. How are we supposed to fight something like this? His panicked mind demanded. Beside him the Temple Master raised a howling animal battle cry that lifted every hair on Obi Wan's body. She jumped, defying gravity, like a raptor taking off from the ground. Her wiry robe-wrapped body twisted and writhed as she flung herself somersaulting through the air, then opened herself to strike the dark thing in mid air, and spun her staff to shred the darkness into fragments like black ash. She landed on the other side of the thing, on her feet, facing Qui Gon and Obi Wan. She stood, unharmed, her whole being pulsed with power and light. Her black eyes were like balls of fire. But up in the air above them the darkness was already beginning to reform itself. . . . "Feel the power of your names, Jedi," She called up to them. "or die where you stand!" Belief, Padawan. Obi Wan heard Qui Gon's wise, serene voice whispering to him in the back of his mind. Belief is powerful. Your focus determines your reality. Believe our weapons can defend against it and they will. In synchronization they ignited their lightsabers. The incandescent blue and green glow seemed to flicker on the dark thing floating high above them. Then it struck. Qui Gon charged in front of Obi Wan and attacked the darkness with a roundhouse swing of his saber just as he would have a physical opponent. The fiery green energy blade burned through it as if it were only a cluster of shadows, and the darkness jumped away from Qui Gon as if it had in fact been wounded. Obi Wan saw it hovering against the cliff wall, hanging back for a second, as if angered by the Jedi's ability to fight back, and, even more frightening, as if devising a strategy to counter this new development. Once again Obi Wan was entranced and terrified by the sense of insidious inhuman intelligence. His mind insisted that such a thing should not be. And yet as the thing spun around and swooped back towards him he moved to attack almost in spite of himself. He had Qui Gon's strength and guidance to draw on. If they were bound at no other time they were bound in battle. For that second they were in perfect sync and there was no resource one had that the other didn't have. Obi Wan slashed it through. The thing struck back instantly, sensing him to be the weakest of the three, but again he met it with his blade. His eyes never left it and as he stared into its pulsing heart he felt a coldness that went to the depths of his soul. He thought of Qui Gon, who was sometimes physically pained by the dark side, who the temple master had said was hurt by just being near the cave, wondering what he might be suffering. But Qui Gon had risen above any affect the dark side had on him, his awareness was a raw edge cutting through anything that might obscure it. He sent a wordless warning to Obi Wan, and Obi Wan acted on it before his mind translated it to thought, but he was still too slow. The vergence had had enough, at least for the time being, of Jedi that knew how to fight it. The thing dodged past him, escaping up the trail. Towards the temple. Obi Wan turned quickly and ran ahead of the two older Jedi. He could feel the intensity of the Temple Master's urge to protect radiating from her. She was outraged that her clan was threatened. He could feel Qui Gon's equally strong determination and suddenly realized that it wasn't just him and Qui Gon, that at lease for this battle, they were all moving and thinking as one to some extent. The three of us will stand well together, the Temple Master had said. They were more than the sum of their parts, and if they were going to win, going to survive, they would have to find their victory in the flow of the battle. It was coming together like a pattern he couldn't quite see the end of yet, like an analog of the vision he had earlier. He began to see that these two opposites would cancel each other out. He pushed himself as fast as he could go, his braid streaming back over his shoulder, the rock wall flashing by, the Kybus snarling and gnashing its teeth at him as he ran past. Qui Gon and the Temple Master were close behind him. Obi was rushing towards the end of the end of the trail, the Force driving him. He was ready to leap off the edge of the cliff after the dark thing if he needed to. But then right at the end of the path it turned on him. Perhaps it got weaker the farther it got from the cave. Perhaps it had only tricked them into thinking it was fleeing. Either way it was suddenly burning black in Obi Wan's face. It was too late, he was doomed, he was sure, his Master would bring him home dead, ruined as a Jedi, or worse, but even so he hurled himself away in revulsion. And suddenly he was backed up flat against the cliff face, chest pounding, watching a flicker of twisting shadow roar past him and slip between Qui Gon and the Temple Master. He had been faster than the darkness. It came down the narrow trail moving like lightning, flashing through the air towards where the Kybus was tethered. It had refused to go anywhere near the cave before, even resisting gentle Force suggestion that there was nothing to be afraid of, but now that it was trapped, backed into a crevice in the rock, it turned to fight like the predator it was. Over twelve feet high on all fours the lanky beast reared up on its hind legs, tail whipping back and forth, retractable claws bared and shredding the air. Its massive head swung forward on its sinewy curving neck, tufted ears flared forward like battle flags, saber fanged jaws open wide and snarling. The dark thing slashed through it like a blade. The Kybus convulsed in mid lunge and then fell like a rag doll. As it fell it screamed, a frosty sound with the strength of a roar that seemed to shiver the air. Obi Wan forced himself to breath deeply running through a calming exercise. How can something not sentient make a sound so full of misery? Obi Wan though, in disbelief. He didn't share Qui Gon's need to reach out to all life, but compassion was the soul of the light side and that sound had impaled his heart. After it struck the dark thing was gone, back towards the cave that had once confined it. They hurried to where the Kybus lay. Qui Gon crouched down near its head for a second, resting one hand on its muzzle, looking at the animal almost as if the two of them were talking together. Its red-gold eyes were rolled back in its skull and it trembled a little, craned its neck back over its shoulders, and then it was stone dead. Obi Wan had just caught up with him when Qui Gon drew himself up to his full height and was running again, plunging down the trail with careless quickness over jagged spurs of rock and uneven ground. His shape blurred and he actual outran the thing. Then he stopped short and stood in front of the cave the dark thing had come from. It came at Qui Gon like a hurricane, hypnotic and hungry. Its dark bright surface writhed as it charged. Qui Gon spun to face it, lightsaber raised to strike . . . and then extinguished his blade, letting his hands fall to his sides. He dropped out of battle stance, raised his head, and faced the avatar of darkness bearing down on him. Obi Wan hurled himself forward with all his strength, desperate to protect his Master, only to be jerked back as the Temple Master grabbed him. He slammed into her crossed arms, nearly knocking the wind out of himself. Her grip locked around him like an X of steel bars. Let me go! He screamed mentally. It's going to kill him! "Be still, Obi Wan." She hissed, holding him back effortlessly. "Open your mind and see what is before you." The thing struck Qui Gon full in the chest, seeming to sink into him. Helplessly watching from ten yards up the trail, all Obi Wan could think of was how the Kybus had screamed.
Chapter 4
That night Obi Wan had one of the nightmares the Temple Master had told them about. As he lay sleeping he saw himself crouching helplessly on the floor of Master Yoda's cluttered cell, screaming as Yoda blasted him with bolt after bolt of darkside lightning and cackled madly. He woke up frozen, paralyzed by the strangeness of dreaming at all and the wrongness of the images in the dreams, but Qui Gon had trained him well. He had long known that the Force could be used to deceive his senses. What he has seen was an illusion. He lay still, holding on to that knowledge like it was a talisman and then his fear fled. Qui Gon was not asleep on the pallet next to him, but that didn't worry Obi Wan at all. His Master was such a light and wakeful sleeper. He spent as much as half of each night prowling around like a cat in the dark, reading, meditating, visiting anyone else in the temple who was nocturnal, or simply sitting up. On the rare occasions Obi Wan was awake to see him come back from these nightly walks, Qui Gon seemed his normal serene self, but Obi Wan wondered at such apparent restlessness in someone so centered. Qui Gon could happily repeat an easy three-stage kata that seemed hopelessly below him hundreds of times until it was simple perfection; why couldn't he find the patience to sleep through the night? But after those dreams, Obi Wan thought, I could use a walk myself. He bundled himself up in his robe, days in this part of Ferria were warm, but nights were cold, and padded out into the hall. As he walked he felt the presence of another Jedi moving towards him, not Qui Gon . . . . There was a flash of amber-green eyeshine in the darkness at the end of the hall, like two floating marbles of Alderainian flame opal. Seconds later the Temple Master stepped into the light of the lone glow crystal mounted on the wall, her eyes holding a phosphorescent glow for a second after she did. If her eyes glowed like that, her night vision must be much keener than his. "Is there something wrong, Temple Master?" She shook her head. "No. This is parole against the demon." She seemed to muse. "This destructive thing has nothing to do with lack of light. Yet we name it darkness, so its power grows at night. Have you been dreaming, Learner?" Obi Wan nodded. "Yes, but dreams fade." Her eyes narrowed. "And return. And will return as long as long as the vergence dwells here." She was silent but kept watching him. Her silent, piercing stare, and the feeling that she could see his thoughts themselves made Obi Wan feel awkward enough to ask a question that had been in his mind all night. "This evening while you were talking to my Master in the courtyard, you . . . did something to him." Obi Wan wished that hadn't come out quiet so accusing. He gave a barely perceptible sigh of frustration at himself. "What was it?" If she was offended by his tone she didn't show it. "Your Teacher was wounded by the demon. Not much, but more than he guessed. More than you knew. I helped him heal. He is of the light, but receptive to the whole Force. Easy prey to the darkness in that way." She paused again, her eyes distant and unreadable. "Yet that will help him stand against it, when the time comes. That is why I am glad our Council sent the two of you to me." She clasped Obi Wan's hand in hers, and lifted it to chest level between them in a Ferrio gesture of solidarity. She smiled a small, hard, but friendly smile. "I think the three of us will stand well together, Learner. Know what your Master already knows. My name is Jang." Obi Wan was oddly comforted by her show of trust and respect. An enlightened Jedi mind knew that a name had no power over its owner, but the Temple Master had chosen to keep the Ferrio tradition and culture could run very deep. Then she released his hand and slipped away like a ghost into the darkness, with no sound but the soft beat of her staff on the floor. * * * * * They rode out from the safety of the temple at first light, their breath white in the morning chill. A distance from the cave they all dismounted and tethered the Kybus to a tree as Qui Gon and Obi Wan had when they first saw the vergence, and continued on foot. They headed down the trail in solemn single file, like pilgrims or an honor guard. The morning light was fragile and pale, and there was no sound except the rough-voiced whistling of the wind and the dull gruff thunder of the river rapids echoing up through the canyon. Not a word was spoken as the three Jedi made their way to the wide ledge where the cave lay. They stood at the edge of the rock shelf for a moment in silence. The silence was broken by a stealthy sound, a soft but blade sharp ominous whisper. A deathly coldness that touched the Jedi deep in their bones and deeper than that filled the air. The cave gaped in the stone like a pool of oil. And then the vergence, given not only a crude predatory sentience but also a physical form by its age and power, rose up out of it. It was dark but it glowed. That was all Obi Wan could ever remember, and even while he was looking at it, that was all he really understood. That didn't matter though. What he saw was deceptive, a mask, or at best an inexact translation of its true nature, and although he was not yet a full Jedi he knew the true nature of the dark side all too well. It hovered for a second, and then rushed from the cave in a high attacking ark to fall upon the Jedi who had come to destroy it. To his horror Obi Wan found himself petrified by the sheer malevolence of it. How are we supposed to fight something like this? His panicked mind demanded. Beside him the Temple Master raised a howling animal battle cry that lifted every hair on Obi Wan's body. She jumped, defying gravity, like a raptor taking off from the ground. Her wiry robe-wrapped body twisted and writhed as she flung herself somersaulting through the air, then opened herself to strike the dark thing in mid air, and spun her staff to shred the darkness into fragments like black ash. She landed on the other side of the thing, on her feet, facing Qui Gon and Obi Wan. She stood, unharmed, her whole being pulsed with power and light. Her black eyes were like balls of fire. But up in the air above them the darkness was already beginning to reform itself. . . . "Feel the power of your names, Jedi," She called up to them. "or die where you stand!" Belief, Padawan. Obi Wan heard Qui Gon's wise, serene voice whispering to him in the back of his mind. Belief is powerful. Your focus determines your reality. Believe our weapons can defend against it and they will. In synchronization they ignited their lightsabers. The incandescent blue and green glow seemed to flicker on the dark thing floating high above them. Then it struck. Qui Gon charged in front of Obi Wan and attacked the darkness with a roundhouse swing of his saber just as he would have a physical opponent. The fiery green energy blade burned through it as if it were only a cluster of shadows, and the darkness jumped away from Qui Gon as if it had in fact been wounded. Obi Wan saw it hovering against the cliff wall, hanging back for a second, as if angered by the Jedi's ability to fight back, and, even more frightening, as if devising a strategy to counter this new development. Once again Obi Wan was entranced and terrified by the sense of insidious inhuman intelligence. His mind insisted that such a thing should not be. And yet as the thing spun around and swooped back towards him he moved to attack almost in spite of himself. He had Qui Gon's strength and guidance to draw on. If they were bound at no other time they were bound in battle. For that second they were in perfect sync and there was no resource one had that the other didn't have. Obi Wan slashed it through. The thing struck back instantly, sensing him to be the weakest of the three, but again he met it with his blade. His eyes never left it and as he stared into its pulsing heart he felt a coldness that went to the depths of his soul. He thought of Qui Gon, who was sometimes physically pained by the dark side, who the temple master had said was hurt by just being near the cave, wondering what he might be suffering. But Qui Gon had risen above any affect the dark side had on him, his awareness was a raw edge cutting through anything that might obscure it. He sent a wordless warning to Obi Wan, and Obi Wan acted on it before his mind translated it to thought, but he was still too slow. The vergence had had enough, at least for the time being, of Jedi that knew how to fight it. The thing dodged past him, escaping up the trail. Towards the temple. Obi Wan turned quickly and ran ahead of the two older Jedi. He could feel the intensity of the Temple Master's urge to protect radiating from her. She was outraged that her clan was threatened. He could feel Qui Gon's equally strong determination and suddenly realized that it wasn't just him and Qui Gon, that at lease for this battle, they were all moving and thinking as one to some extent. The three of us will stand well together, the Temple Master had said. They were more than the sum of their parts, and if they were going to win, going to survive, they would have to find their victory in the flow of the battle. It was coming together like a pattern he couldn't quite see the end of yet, like an analog of the vision he had earlier. He began to see that these two opposites would cancel each other out. He pushed himself as fast as he could go, his braid streaming back over his shoulder, the rock wall flashing by, the Kybus snarling and gnashing its teeth at him as he ran past. Qui Gon and the Temple Master were close behind him. Obi was rushing towards the end of the end of the trail, the Force driving him. He was ready to leap off the edge of the cliff after the dark thing if he needed to. But then right at the end of the path it turned on him. Perhaps it got weaker the farther it got from the cave. Perhaps it had only tricked them into thinking it was fleeing. Either way it was suddenly burning black in Obi Wan's face. It was too late, he was doomed, he was sure, his Master would bring him home dead, ruined as a Jedi, or worse, but even so he hurled himself away in revulsion. And suddenly he was backed up flat against the cliff face, chest pounding, watching a flicker of twisting shadow roar past him and slip between Qui Gon and the Temple Master. He had been faster than the darkness. It came down the narrow trail moving like lightning, flashing through the air towards where the Kybus was tethered. It had refused to go anywhere near the cave before, even resisting gentle Force suggestion that there was nothing to be afraid of, but now that it was trapped, backed into a crevice in the rock, it turned to fight like the predator it was. Over twelve feet high on all fours the lanky beast reared up on its hind legs, tail whipping back and forth, retractable claws bared and shredding the air. Its massive head swung forward on its sinewy curving neck, tufted ears flared forward like battle flags, saber fanged jaws open wide and snarling. The dark thing slashed through it like a blade. The Kybus convulsed in mid lunge and then fell like a rag doll. As it fell it screamed, a frosty sound with the strength of a roar that seemed to shiver the air. Obi Wan forced himself to breath deeply running through a calming exercise. How can something not sentient make a sound so full of misery? Obi Wan though, in disbelief. He didn't share Qui Gon's need to reach out to all life, but compassion was the soul of the light side and that sound had impaled his heart. After it struck the dark thing was gone, back towards the cave that had once confined it. They hurried to where the Kybus lay. Qui Gon crouched down near its head for a second, resting one hand on its muzzle, looking at the animal almost as if the two of them were talking together. Its red-gold eyes were rolled back in its skull and it trembled a little, craned its neck back over its shoulders, and then it was stone dead. Obi Wan had just caught up with him when Qui Gon drew himself up to his full height and was running again, plunging down the trail with careless quickness over jagged spurs of rock and uneven ground. His shape blurred and he actual outran the thing. Then he stopped short and stood in front of the cave the dark thing had come from. It came at Qui Gon like a hurricane, hypnotic and hungry. Its dark bright surface writhed as it charged. Qui Gon spun to face it, lightsaber raised to strike . . . and then extinguished his blade, letting his hands fall to his sides. He dropped out of battle stance, raised his head, and faced the avatar of darkness bearing down on him. Obi Wan hurled himself forward with all his strength, desperate to protect his Master, only to be jerked back as the Temple Master grabbed him. He slammed into her crossed arms, nearly knocking the wind out of himself. Her grip locked around him like an X of steel bars. Let me go! He screamed mentally. It's going to kill him! "Be still, Obi Wan." She hissed, holding him back effortlessly. "Open your mind and see what is before you." The thing struck Qui Gon full in the chest, seeming to sink into him. Helplessly watching from ten yards up the trail, all Obi Wan could think of was how the Kybus had screamed.