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A Shift in the Force: Chapter Twenty-Five: Sinking into the Swamp
AN: So ASITF has gotten a lot of attention recently and I had originally planned to hash out the next chapter on Sunday, but then the internet went out on Saturday, so that screwed over my plans (this was last Saturday, mind you, and I've only just now gotten around to this chapter)
I'd originally planned to have the three month training mission in one whole chapter, but now it's looking like it might take about two, but don't quote me on that. If I plan to switch back and forth between what's going on at the Temple and Dagobah, the number of chapters Sabé and Talik are on Dagobah might increase.
I probably would have posted this chapter sooner, but then I was posting the last of Looking Beyond's chapters, and I'm still not sure when this will be updated again, it could be soon, it could be after awhile, but I have a moderate plan for the next few chapters, so that should help things.
The flight to Dagobah was long, but that was to be expected with how Dagobah was located in one of the outer rim territories and Coruscant was far closer to the center. Talik had fallen asleep around half-way through, and Sabé couldn't blame her, there wasn't much to see and there wasn't much space to move around in the Starfighter's cockpit (it made her recall the space on the Millennium Falcon with distinct fondness).
Unfortunately, in her haste to meet Sabé, Talik hadn't thought to bring along any datapads or datachips to keep her entertained, but Sabé was well prepared.
The datapad on her lap held the details concerning an ancient Sith artifact known as the Gauntlet of Kressh the Younger. It was the image she had seen in her dream, (or was it better to term it as a vision?), what had been wrapped around the arm of the woman that was not Sabé.
Sabé had always had an uncommon knowledge of items associated with the Dark Side, one could even say she might have an unsavory interest in what was related to the Dark Side of the Force, but that knowledge had saved her ass more than a few times, so Sabé was prone to ignoring those choice few others.
She had seen an image of the gauntlet's likeness, but she had never really researched it before, and after seeing it in her dream, she didn't have any excuse not to.
The Gauntlet of Kressh the Younger, the datapad told her, was a Sith artifact created during the time of the old Sith Empire by the Sith Lord Ludo Kressh to make his son, Elcho, invulnerable to external harm. The Gauntlet's power lay in protection of the one who wore it by preventing others from touching the wearer against his permission, blasting back any attempt with a surge of Dark Side energy, allowing the wearer to rebound his opponents' attacks back on themselves with a single thought. However, the Gauntlet can only protect the wearer against attacks lack the wearer's consent, all other anticipated attacks cannot be prevented by the Gauntlet.
Sabé frowned as she read through the history of the artifact, dictating how it had fallen into the hands of the Jedi Covenant and gaining the interest of their leader Haazen, who used its destructive powers to kill many Council Jedi, after his death, though, the Gauntlet had vanished from record.
She would have reflected more on that matter but Arthree gave a sudden questioning beep, low enough not to awaken Talik where she was still fast asleep.
"It's not exactly solid footing, Arthree," Sabé remarked, sliding the datapad back into the bag close to her feet. "I told you that you didn't have to come."
Arthree gave an equivalent of an annoyed huff and Sabé couldn't help but smirk. Arthree had nothing if not his own personality, he was practically sentient as it was.
She checked the readings on the screen; they were due to come out of hyperspace in little over twenty standard minutes, and when that happened, she would be manually guiding the Starfighter down to the planet's surface; the swampy forest terrain would make it too difficult to maneuver via astromech autopilot (unless one was crashing, it was hardly the better option).
Arthree hooted dolefully.
"Just don't fall into the swamp and you'll be fine," Sabé told him shortly, rolling her eyes for good measure, "honestly, Arthree, you worry far too much."
The silent treatment the droid gave her was just this side of amusing, and she settled back into silence again, pondering the Gauntlet of Kressh the Younger once more. There were a large number of Sith artifacts scattered through the various planetary systems, many of them still not located, despite the millennia that had passed since their creation, but even Jedi Shadows had difficulty finding them…still, the Gauntlet had been in her dream, so perhaps it could be found…
Sabé pursed her lips thoughtfully, before stuffing the datapad back where it belonged, waiting for their Starfighter to come out of hyperspace, listening to the lull of Talik's deep breathing as she slept on, oblivious, even as the twenty minutes passed on and the Starfighter finally drifted out of hyperspace.
"Arthree, switch to manual control," Sabé said, keeping her voice mild and light so as not to awaken her slumbering padawan, and the red glow on the consol switched to green as Sabé gripped it lightly, directing it towards the mossy-green planet below.
It was easier to fly above the branching foliage that made up the plant-life on Dagobah, landing was much harder and Sabé distinctly remembered how much difficulty Yoda had back when he'd taken her with him to train.
She circled when felt like a good hour or so, searching for a good place to land before she found a gaping area almost completely overtaken by a murky swamp, but the swamp would have to do.
Sabé tilted the consol forward, maneuvering the Starfighter bit by bit towards the thick and muddy shoreline, as far from the swamp as she could manage, but it was difficult work.
Then Sabé moved them down little by little before cutting the engine and allowing the metal to sink down into the mud. Sabé muffled her annoyance as she opened her side of the cockpit and pulled herself out to breathe the muggy air.
It took some time before Talik finally roused herself, and it was only then that she was made startlingly aware of her current situation. The first thing she noticed was that her master was gone –the small holocamera view next to her screen afforded her an empty seat–, her seat vacated as though she had never been there in the first place. The second thing she noticed was that they had landed on a planet so very unfamiliar to her –though Talik's knowledge of planets was rather limited and she'd never heard of Dagobah before, let alone been able to find it on a star-chart– and along with her master being gone, so was Arthree.
Talik frowned, pushing the cockpit cover back so that she could climb out to stand on the Starfighter's wing, looking out upon Dagobah.
The sounds of wildlife rang in her ears and the Force hummed around her. It was…odd, but not entirely unpleasant. It was the kind of presence that Sabé probably preferred.
Talik hopped down from wing of the Starfighter, landing in a slosh of muck that painted her boots and made her ankles sink into the water and mud.
"A mud-hole," Talik grumbled, kicking some mud off her boot, "somehow I get the feeling that Master Yoda would have felt right at home here." She could just imagine Sabé in her youth climbing up the vines with Yoda latched onto her back to make it more difficult for her, citing beliefs of the Jedi in her ear.
Talik took a few wide steps in order to reach the shoreline before dropping her eyes to search for any tracks in the ground that might lead her to her master.
Luckily, there was only one such type of marks in the mud that allowed to her follow behind easily. The only problem was…Talik had never been to Dagobah before, and the first plant she touched tried to eat her.
Talik leapt back, startled by the petals that had razor-sharp fibers rising from the petals which had clamped shut like an oyster from a water-planet.
This was not a place she'd like to vacation at, she decided vehemently, as she picked her way through the somewhat deadly foliage with care, being wary of any more murder attempts but also making sure to follow her master's tracks and the slide of what could have only been Arthree.
It took her a surprising amount of time to find Sabé, but that might have had something to do with just how slow she was moving to make sure the plant life didn't instigate another attack. But when she did find her, it was clear that Sabé had been at work for some time.
She'd dragged some moss into a small cave to soften the ground before binding some branches together to brace it against the cave's top to ensure that any rain that fell would run-off away from the cave's opening.
"Have a nice rest?" Sabé remarked in amusement, leaping from the top of the cave to land on her feet with a lightness that Talik could only marvel at.
"You could have woken me up, Master," Talik grumbled, feeling heat rising in her cheeks that turned them mauve.
"You were pretty out of it when we landed, I figured it was just better to leave you be," Sabé said, wiping her hands on her pants as she straightened up again. "Having trouble sleeping?"
Talik blinked.
Darkness, screaming, a bond breaking with a sharp snap.
"Something like that," Talik said, rubbing her fingers along the leather strap around her lekku that held her silka beads in the place of a Padawan braid made of human hair.
"Well, it's pretty late, you might want to get some more shut eye," Sabé said, tilting her head back to look up into the sky, but she must have seen something that Talik couldn't see.
"Is it?" Talik asked, faintly surprised. It wasn't really that dark, she would have thought it was midday.
"This system has a sun but it takes at least fifty years to do a rotation," Sabé mentioned, pointing at the sky, "and only one moon. There aren't too many systems like it and usually their planets are rather desolate."
"So how can there be plant life here, thriving?" Talik asked, eyeing the trees and the winding vines with interest.
"They absorb heat from the planet's core," Sabé explained, "it's why the planet's so damp and warm despite it lacking a sun for half a century."
"Come on," Sabé added, resting a hand on Talik's shoulder, "get some sleep, we'll be starting early tomorrow."
So Talik trudged back to get her pack while Sabé had Arthree use him boosters in order to maneuver himself inside.
Padmé–
Master Sabé and Talik left the temple today for a three month long training mission, which seems like a pretty long time to be gone, but Master Obi-Wan says that Master Yoda did the same thing with Master Sabé when she was still his padawan, even though Master Yoda and Master Sabé don't even come close to using the same lightsaber style.
Talik's been getting into the healing arts a lot recently and Master Vokara Che –who's in charge of the Healing Halls– is supposedly grooming her to succeed her, apparently Talik is that good, and she wasn't too pleased about Master Sabé taking her away for three months, but Master Sabé is her master so she gets final say.
And they took Arthree with them! And I was really looking forward to opening him up and getting a good look inside him!
It's boring now that Talik's gone, there's no one who wants to try their techniques against mine. And Ferus Olin always gets all the attention and I feel like I'm falling behind, but Master Obi-Wan never says anything…
How are things on Naboo?
-Anakin
The rain had started to fall thickly deep into the night and even though Talik had long since fallen asleep, Sabé remained awake, though deep in meditation.
No one had ever said that making a holocron was easy but Sabé hadn't expected it to be nearly so difficult. The materials used to make the outside of the holocron were quite rare, but she'd been sitting on them for a few weeks now since Silon had managed to get the last of tem to her, mostly because Sabé hadn't thought that trying to make a holocron so close to the Jedi Temple was a great idea. Yoda was very skilled, and there was no doubt in her mind that he would have been able to sense what she was trying to do and stop her.
Of course, there was nothing really overly bad about making a holocron, only that it required a certain level of skill and Sabé wanted a secure place to put her beliefs on the Force and its Light and Dark Sides, because Sabé was almost completely certain that someone was keeping an eye on her, why, she had yet to ascertain.
The materials had long since melded together, changing their shape before Sabé, becoming solid and then twisting into liquid. But the process to make a holocron could sometimes take weeks or months, and no matter how much Sabé meditated that night, she knew just how much time it would take, but if there was something that Sabé possessed, it was patience.
"Rise and shine, training starts in an hour!"
Talik groaned, rolling over on her patch of moss. "Five more minutes," she complained.
"Five minutes becomes five more minutes and then suddenly an hour has passed," Sabé said dryly. "Your ability to manage your time is astounding."
Talik gave a loud groan of complaint before hoisting herself out of the cave towards where Sabé was, sitting beside a fire and roasting what appeared to be a piece of volatile plant life. She tried not to gag when her master took a large bite out of it.
"That looks really disgusting," Talik said, her nose wrinkling as she did so.
"It's actually not really that bad," Sabé had to concede before lifting a small bottle from beside her, holding it out to Talik. "though I'm sure that the spice does help. I remember last time how bad the food was because Master Yoda didn't have anything to add to the flavor."
Talik examined the bottle, reading the name in surprise. "This is Raxon," she read, startled, "it's one of the most expensive spices in the galaxy!"
"You're not wrong," Sabé agreed, faintly amused by her response.
"Where did you get it?"
"Now that, my young padawan, would be telling." Sabé's eyes glittered as she smirked.
There were so many things about her master that Talik knew she'd never understand, like how easily she could move through the Coruscant underworld, how she could swindle with smugglers, and how mercenaries could take her as one their own. If there was one thing Sabé Amidala was known for, it was being a rather successful Jedi Shadow.
So Talik, with a huff of exasperation, took a piece of roasted plant that her master extended to her and took a generous bite, perhaps trusting her master's judgment a little too much, as she regretted it a moment later. She nearly spat out of the bite of plant onto the ground, barely managing to swallow it properly.
"I think there's something wrong with your taste-buds, Master," she gasped once she'd managed it.
Sabé arched an eyebrow in clear amusement. "I've learned that there are some luxuries in life that we take for granted; good food just happens to be one of them."
Talik hated it when Sabé gave her sage advice like that, mostly because Sabé was more likely to be in those situations that Talik. Talik had never been much of fan of undercover work, maybe it was just because she wasn't nearly as skilled at becoming someone else as Sabé so clearly was.
"You could try some rations," Sabé suggested, still amused, "but I'm pretty sure that the plant still tastes better."
"Are you sure this isn't poisoned?" Talik asked her dubiously and Sabé laughed.
"Only a few things on this planet are poisonous…and only a few more are venomous. You're far more likely to fall to your death, if I'm being perfectly honest."
"That's such a comfort, thank you," Talik retorted dryly, chewing thoughtfully on what was probably very close to being a vine. "Master," she said after a few moments, "would you ever consider being a master on the High Council?"
Both of Sabé's eyebrows rose and she couldn't have made it plainer that that question was the last one she had been expecting to be asked, even by Talik. She set down her own piece of plant, her brow creasing in contemplation.
"I'd never really thought about it," she admitted, "to be elected to the Council of First Knowledge was an honor enough, but I doubt I'd be at the top of the list of people to be elected to the High Council."
"Because your views?" Talik asked.
"Well, I always thought it would be more of my lack of experience," Sabé countered shrewdly. "Besides someone is typically only considered a master once they've trained a padawan, completely trained them, so I'll only be considered a master once you've completed the trials…but my beliefs could factor into as well, I have no doubt."
"Though," Sabé added, "I am still far closer to being a Light Jedi than a Dark one or even a Grey Jedi, but the High Council has always hated when others do not conform to the Code, and I have always been rather clear on my differences of opinion on it."
"That's why Pablo Jill doesn't like you," Talik agreed.
"Pablo Jill has never liked me," Sabé laughed, "even when I was a youngling, he had his doubts about my strength in the Force, he's the one that insisted I be routinely tested for changes in my Midi-clorian count, which happened once a week for about three months until Master Yoda put his foot down…a lot of the more traditional older Jedi don't like Jedi Shadows all that much, mostly because they don't approve of how we do our missions."
"That's stupid," Talik frowned. "All the Jedi Shadows are really good at finding Sith artifacts, and I bet they couldn't handle a several months long undercover mission like you can."
Sabé gave her a wry smile. "Of course, not all of the older Jedi are like that, I know Master Plo Koon always delights in hearing my views. He likes to play the devil's advocate against me, so to speak."
"Master Plo's nice to everyone, though."
Sabé smirked, but said nothing more on the subject. It was true that Plo Koon was a very kindly Jedi, yes, but his use of witty sarcasm had surprised Sabé more times than she could count. The Kel Dorian Jedi may have been more than three hundred Kel Dorian years of age, but it was always clear that he was not to be mistaken as old. Wizened, perhaps, experienced, yes, but never old.
In truth, Sabé had found him far easier to speak to than her own master, particularly in her youth, and even though she'd been trained by the Grandmaster, a part of her had wished Plo would have taken her on as his padawan learner. Maybe it was just because she had a bond with him, seeing as he was the one that had brought her to the Temple, or maybe it was something else.
"Eat your breakfast," Sabé said instead, "training starts in half an hour and you will be exhausted by lunch, I guarantee it."
Talik groaned into her piece of plant, but that only made Sabé grin.
Ani–
Naboo is the same as its always been, but it seems like a new problem arises with each day. Currently I am at odds with our most recently elected senator who doesn't appear to have my people's interest in hand. I believe him to be in someone's pocket, but I can't prove it, at least not yet, but I won't rest until there is no corruption in the senate on Naboo's part, at the very least.
Sabé and Talik sound like they're going to be very busy for the next three months with training, how exciting! Sabé warned me she would be difficult to reach during that time, so it seems like all her time is going to be taken up by Talik. She said something about Talik's Jar'Kai form needing work, which I was barely able to understand.
I remember you telling me about Talik training to become a Jedi Healer, she must be very gifted if another master has taken an interest in her, but I can hardly imagine anyone but Sabé as her master; hardly out of one another's presence those two, from what I can remember. And I'm pretty sure that Arthree wouldn't appreciate being opened up and Sabé would appreciate it even less.
Personally, I've always found that comparing myself against others has never helped very much, but it is always good to have a rival, a rival could send you to new heights, and sometimes what you need is a challenge. Talik may be talented, and the same for Sabé and Obi-Wan, but you've trained with them for awhile, you know all their moves. Perhaps you need to find someone who you've never trained with before.
But I'm no Jedi.
How are things at the Temple, apart from Sabé and Talik leaving for three months? There must be other exciting things happening.
-Padmé
AN: Spices in Star Wars usually refers to drugs, or narco-spices, but I'm pretty sure that food additives exist in every universe so in this fic there will be spices (regular stuff to sprinkle onto food) and narco-spices (drugs), the two are very very different.
The importance of the holocron that Sabé is trying to build won't be of integral importance until around book four (yes, I've planned that far ahead), but you will see Sabé adding information to it throughout the fic.
The datamessages between Anakin and Padmé are going to be seen in the background, but I knew it was important to keep their relationship if I want it to develop a bit more naturally than it did in canon (let's be real, that roundabout that Padmé did didn't made a whole lot of sense in canon), I'm actually considering Obi-Wan and Anakin going back to Naboo for a mission or two before the events of Episode II, so that'll be fun.
I'm looking forward to when Talik and Sabé get back to the Temple, though, so more Jedi that were present in the Clone Wars can be introduced.
As always: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!
