Qui-Gon's arms shuddered and shook on their own from the strain of holding all of his muscled weight in the chains. He believed that he had now been in this featureless, windowless chamber for more than a day. His body ached but his mind was now active from the contact with his apprentice, though he was worried with the strangeness of Obi-Wan's wakeful mind. He could only hope that the sight of his Padawan would quench his fears.
Unfortunately, it did not.
Obi-Wan came in, supported by the slender representative. Obi-Wan's eyes were closed shut against the offending and confusing blurred images that he was receiving so he did not see Qui-Gon's intake of breath at his condition. Blood covered one foot with more blood oozing from over half a dozen deep slashes on his chest. Someone, the representative more than likely, Qui-Gon thought, probably cleaned up the dried blood that would have been all over Obi-Wan's chest. In only his loose-fitting sand-colored pants, Obi-Wan looked as bad as Qui-Gon felt and suddenly Qui-Gon didn't want to know what he looked like.
"Master?" Obi-Wan asked as Representative Lamkptu led him over to where Qui-Gon dangled, his chest a tattered mess and his back on fire. "What do your chains look like? Can I pick them, or simply use the Force on them to open?"
Qui-Gon's heart twisted with how exhausted Obi-Wan sounded. Craning his neck upward, ignoring how the movement of his neck muscles pulled at some of the upper chest muscles that had been flayed, he got his first good look at the chains above him that held his wrists locked together. "There's no place for a key, Padawan. He must have used the Force to lock them there. Do you have enough strength to do this, Obi-Wan? If we join together…"
Obi-Wan shook his head. "You need to concentrate on healing yourself, Master," he replied, his boyish eagerness shining through his voice. "I'll focus on freeing you."
The lavender representative finally let go of Obi-Wan's arm and stood back against the wall, looking down the hall to watch for their captor so the Jedi could do what was needed in their chamber.
Qui-Gon closed his eyes, feeling the Force flowing around him from Obi-Wan's probing of the chains that had held him helpless for so long. He wanted to be able to feel when he was released so he could try to soften his body's impact with the ground when he fell.
Even focusing as much as the pain would let him focus into the Force, Qui-Gon almost missed the subtle change when Obi-Wan finally caused the complicated hooks and latches inside the chains and binders to release. Dropping like a stone, Qui-Gon was working on taking the majority of the impact on his legs, since those were basically the only pieces of working flesh that didn't flare in hot protests of pain whenever he tried to use them.
Landing on his feet in his boots, he suddenly felt little hot stabs of needle-like pain all over his feet. Yelling involuntarily, he found himself rolling on to his side on the floor to try to avoid getting any more dirt in his slashed chest and back.
"Master!"
Dimly, he was aware of Obi-Wan kneeling awkwardly beside him but Qui-Gon was merely trying to focus on breathing normally. After a moment, he choked out, "Can you get my boots off of my feet, Obi-Wan? They have to come off."
Fingers fumbling down the length of his legs to feel where his feet were, Obi-Wan obediently started pulling off Qui-Gon's boots. In Qui-Gon's condition, there was no way that he could ever reach down to pull off his own boots.
Silence greeted him when he felt both boots had been slipped off.
"What is it, Obi-Wan?"
The reply was quiet. "There's glass shards in your boots, Master. Like the ones that were in the dirt in my cell. He must have put them in there at some point when you were unconscious…or in your healing trance."
Qui-Gon nodded, forgetting for a moment that his apprentice couldn't see him. Sighing, knowing that he couldn't stay on the ground forever, he pushed himself off the ground and grit his teeth when he put his weight on his feet. "Come on, Obi-Wan, we have to get out of here while we can. Representative Lamkptu, is the way clear?"
The purple being nodded, her big blues eyes even bigger than usual. "Yes, Master Jedi. But I do not know the way out to safety."
Gently, Qui-Gon guided Obi-Wan's hand to his arm so that his apprentice could keep in touch with him physically and be guided simultaneously. Bracing himself, he slowly started walking on his tattered feet toward the door to his cell, Obi-Wan following alongside him.
The hallway was covered with stones only in places directly across from cell doors and was a regular up-to-date corridor with shining transparisteel everywhere else. Clearly, the entire rustic feel to the chambers was faked, as Qui-Gon had already suspected. He even believed that they were still on Coruscant, but had nothing at the moment in which to prove or disprove his theory.
Gesturing with a wide hand motion, Representative Lamkptu waved the Jedi to follow her as she glanced both ways and began to turn toward the left.
Qui-Gon frowned and felt a vague pulling from the Force, though he could not figure out what it was trying to tell him. "No," he said slowly as he faced the opposite direction. "I think we should go in this direction."
Lamkptu tilted her head quizzically. "But, Master Jedi, the ground slopes upward in this direction. Is it not logical that we should head for above ground?"
"Yes, Representative," he answered politely. "But I believe nothing should be taken for granted when dealing with our foe."
"There's a trap in that direction, Master," Obi-Wan piped up suddenly, his hand pointing in the direction that the representative had wanted to go in. After a brief, tense silence, he pointed at the direction that Qui-Gon wanted to go in and said, "And another in that direction."
Qui-Gon and Lamkptu stared at the apprentice's furrowed brows and tightly closed eyes. "Padawan, are you sure?"
Obi-Wan nodded quickly with no hesitations. "Yes, Master. I can feel it."
"Which trap is more likely to prove harmful, young Kenobi?" Lamkptu inquired as she rejoined the Jedi in front of the chamber door.
Obi-Wan stretched outward with his feelings for a moment to feel the pulsing of the Force around him. Finally, he pointed to the left. "This way, Representative, is the most harmful. We should go right."
Although a frown marred her intense beauty and showed that she clearly did not understand, Lamkptu silently followed the two injured Jedi as they gingerly made their way down the corridor broken by irregular intervals of rock.