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A Shift in the Force: Chapter Twenty-Six: Guidance on Dagobah

AN: Wow, it's been awhile since I've updated this fic, but nursing school is way harder than I'd originally thought, so a lot of stuff has been put on hold, including this. In two or so weeks it'll be done so I can get back to writing as much as possible.

Also: I may post a lot of little snippets and thoughts on my fanfic tumblr (greygryffindor) about this and my other fics, but that doesn't mean I have the next chapter planned out. Most of my ideas occur later in book two or in three or four.


The first day was brutal and Talik swore she almost died no less than three times. Anakin would never believe her, of course, Sabé was outwardly very calm and kind, but she didn't joke about training.

"How long am I going to have to keep doing this?" Talik managed to say around gasps for breath.

Her limbs were aching as her master had attached a pack full of rocks to her back and forced her to climb the vines of the area around their campsite. It was more difficult than Talik had first anticipated.

"Until it is no longer needed," Sabé called from the high branch that she was sitting on, glancing over a datapad that she was typing out words onto.

She was working on something, Talik wasn't sure what, but whatever it was had Sabé's complete attention when she wasn't training and Talik wasn't sure if she had the confidence to ask her about it yet.

Talik gritted her teeth together and swung from one vine to the next, only losing her grip for a brief second and a flash of fear rushing through her veins at the very thought of crashing against the muddy ground. Even that wouldn't be a soft landing.

"Five more rotations and you can come down, Talik," Sabé added and Talik almost sobbed with relief. Her arms were shaking enough as it was, but at least she knew how many times more she had to do the exercise before collapsing onto the ground.

If there was one thing that could be said, it was that Sabé at least didn't vary all that much in the day to day training, so Talik knew what to expect. The early morning was spent swinging from vines building up upper body strength, then there was a break before Sabé had her run around, leaping over broken branches and through twisted trunks to build up strength in her legs, then there was another break for lunch and then practicing Jar'Kai and finishing the day with Force training.

There was a lot that Sabé put her through, but Talik could already see improvements in her form, so it wasn't as though her time was being wasted. They were still only three weeks in, and Talik had a long way to go, but Sabé clearly knew what she was doing; the training regime worked, after all.

But that wasn't going to stop her from moaning and complaining.

"Master, I'm suffering," Talik bemoaned, her arms shaking when she came down to join her master who had leapt down from her spot in the tree, dropping the bag of rocks and slumping down against the ground.

"That means its working."

Talik groaned.

"Just imagine, Talik, you could have had Keelyvine for a Jar'Kai instructor," Sabé said lightly, a smirk present on her lips when Talik gave a full-body shudder, because no matter what she might say, she'd rather take Sabé over Keelyvine any day. Keelyvine was more likely to kill Talik than anything else, she honestly didn't know how Sabé had survived training with her.

"I think I'll take my chances with you, Master," she muttered and Sabé gave a laugh.

"I think that would be wise," Sabé agreed, her words tinged with amusement.

Talik glanced towards her master who was using a vibroblade to carve into a frankly dubious piece of vegetable. "Master," she said slowly and Sabé hummed to indicate that she was listening, "did you always know that you were going to study Jar'Kai?"

Surprise colored Sabé's eyes at the question as she lifted them from the oddly shaped vegetable to fix them on Talik.

"When I was ten Master Yoda took me to Ilum alone," Sabé said, after a moment of gathering her thoughts. "All the other Padawans had already been to collect their crystals and no one else in my year had gained a master yet, so I was by myself."

Talik paused in picking at a stray thread on her tunic to give her master her full attention. She'd never heard how Sabé had chosen her crystals, but she had a feeling it had something to do with how she'd ended up studying Jar'Kai.

"Master Yoda wasn't very descriptive about what I could face upon entering the caves," Sabé continued, her tone faintly amused, "I ended up tripping over myself and falling about fifty feet."

Talik winced.

"I managed to break my fall with the Force, but just barely," Sabé conceded a bit sheepishly. "Incidentally, I'd managed to land close to a single violet crystal."

"Only one?" Talik asked in disappointment.

"Just one," Sabé agreed, her lips curling, "but one that was much longer than any other crystal I'd seen before, and one that broke into two pieces the moment I touched it."

Bright eyes became wide saucers. "Wow! So the crystals in your lightsabers were actually the same crystal? That's amazing!"

"Of course, I'd thought that I'd done something wrong," Sabé chuckled sheepishly. "I had to hike all the way back to my master's side, worried that I'd ruined my crystals before I'd gotten a chance to use them in a 'saber, but he assure me that the crystal I'd found was meant to be two…of course, I didn't start training in Jar'Kai right away, since Master Yoda is mostly skilled in the style of Ataru, but when Keelyvine saw me struggling through some Jar'Kai katas, she agreed to teach me."

There weren't that many in the Order that knew Jar'Kai, and Talik was sure that the number who did were in the single digits. Sabé must have been even with Keelyvine by now in skill level, not that either woman would ever admit it.

"Get some rest," Sabé said, swallowing the vegetable, "we'll start again in about half an hour."

Talik groaned loudly.


It wasn't the first time that Talik found herself balancing on her hands against the ground with her master sitting comfortably on the soles of her shoes, her focus on the datapad in her hands while Talik tried to keep herself steady while keeping several heavy stones aloft in the free air.

Unfortunately, it was much harder than it seemed.

"How long do I have to keep this up?" Talik managed to gasp out.

"Until you surpass yesterday," Sabé said as blandly as the second day of training and not for the first time Talik wished she had a different master. She was pretty sure that Anakin didn't have to go through this much with Obi-Wan, but then Anakin wasn't the type to put aside his lightsaber training for training with Master Vokara Che.

Talik glowered at the rock hovering shakily before her eyes.

Manipulation of the Force for anything that wasn't healing had never been Talik's strong suit. She couldn't even shake one of the six Muntuur Stones in the Temple's Kuddaka chamber, but they each weighed a few tons; Talik had seen Sabé lift two once, but only with deep concentration through the Force.

"Five more minutes, Talik, and you can take another break," Sabé's voice came above her and Talik screwed up her face in concentration.

"I can do this," she muttered breathlessly to herself, repeating the mantra over and over again despite how her arms violently trembled.

Sabé arched an eyebrow as another heavy stone rose into the air, impressed by her Padawan's resilience. Five minutes came and went and maybe Sabé should have mentioned that fact to Talik, but she was far more interested in just how long Talik could last, as the time had greatly improved since the first day of training.

It wasn't as thought Talik was a stranger to using the Force, you'd be hard pressed to find a Jedi in the Temple that didn't use the Force very much, though it was a growing problem, Jedi relying on their own strength instead of utilizing the Force, it was probably the reason Sabé had switched to Jedi Shadow instead of staying as a Jedi Guardian, though she still felt like both.

Talik teetered dangerously and Sabé made sure that she had a tight grip on her datapad before her Padawan's arms gave out completely, making the Twi'lek's body crumple to the ground, wheezing as she tried to regain her breath.

"Four minutes past five, well done," Sabé said and Talik groaned where she lay.

"Can we give up?" she garbled.


Pamina Prime hadn't changed much since the day that Taria had arrived, apart from dampening her spirits, and that was both literal and figurative. Personally, Taria thought she was very lucky to not have suffered from pneumonia or any other illness brought on by the wet and the cold.

But Taria had thought it best to stick to the caves, which were damp but nowhere near as soaking wet as the world beyond.

It was an odd place for anyone to hide a Sith artifact, but if she was perfectly sane, which was debatable, given her choice of occupation within the Jedi, she wouldn't have wanted to remain on a planet that rained nearly all days of the year. Maybe that had been part of the Sith's thinking as well.

She hefted her glow rod as she took steps deeper into the cavern. This was the twelfth cave she had investigated since she'd arrived on the planet, and that mostly had to do with the fact that it was nearly impossible to pinpoint the source of the sensation that the Dark Side of the Force brought on, leaving Taria to flounder in her search.

Taria refused to find nothing, she'd had far too many dead-end missions hunting for artifacts…maybe she should start meditating with Sabé.

She shook her head then. No, bad idea. Sabé takes meditating seriously…but maybe then I'd get some solid leads…

Sabé was an exceptional Jedi Shadow and Taria would be the first to admit it, and she had an uncanny ability to sense the Dark Side. The rumor was that it was a familiar feeling after nearly being killed by a Sith when she was younger, an attack that had cost her one of her arms. But it was just a rumor, neither confirmed nor denied and Taria got the feeling that Sabé liked being difficult to pin down.

The gleam from the glow rod illuminated the walls as she descended further, only to pause to stare at the rough carvings on the walls that couldn't have made it clearer just how old they were.

It was in a language she wasn't familiar with, and that was saying something because she was familiar with a large number and a part of her had to wonder if it was the language of the Sith. Taria ran her fingers over the symbols, frowning intently. The Sith dialect wasn't something the Jedi liked to broadcast having, but, if Aayla was to be believed, Sabé had probably read her way through every piece of data concerning the Dark Side of the Force, whether it was forbidden or not (Sabé had a bad habit of doing that).

Taria pursed her lips in thought. Sabé was still on her training mission with her Padawan, though, so maybe it would be better to just sent her a holo-pic and see if she could make heads or tails of it, even one word would be helpful.


Dagobah wasn't necessarily a bad planet, that much Talik had learned during their time on it, of course, it wasn't really on her top ten list of planets she'd like to spend and extended amount of time on. You could feel the thrum of the Force on it, though, not like Naboo which had been rather soothing, more eerie than anything.

It made her nightmares worse and Talik didn't have the heart to tell her master that she dreamed constantly of her death, Sabé would probably get that crease between her eyebrows like she got when she was thinking hard about something she didn't understand, but she'd probably find some symbolism in Talik's nightmares.

Violet blades clashed against her own emerald ones with an ominous crackle and Talik had to brace herself in order to push back against and duck hastily to avoid the horizontal swing that nearly decapitated her. This kind of training was a kind of no-holds-barred and Talik wasn't entirely certain that she shouldn't be fearing for her life. It was hard to tell with Sabé whether or not she wanted you to take her seriously.

Talik doubted her master would actually kill her, but there was still very real fear that had her evading many of the strikes.

Sabé and Talik were both of slight builds and that didn't help when some of the people that the pair found themselves facing off against –because sometimes aggressive negotiations was the way to go– were much stronger than they were that it made it nearly impossible to overpower with brute strength. The two 'sabers certainly helped, as most Jedi weren't known to carry more than one, but if you were a practitioner of Jar'Kai you had to learn to dodge quickly and strike just as fast.

Talik twirled, leaping neatly over another strike from Sabé's blades, breathing hard as she landed, teetering slightly on her feet.

The Jar'Kai katas were difficult because it involved knowing where both your 'sabers were at the same time and Talik still had to go through the motions since she still didn't have them fully memorized.

It was hard to look on Sabé with her skill in the art and not be jealous, but Talik had made leaps and bounds since the day they'd arrived on the planet.

"Good form," Sabé remarked as Talik stepped forward to perfectly execute a Twin Strike attack. "You're adapting it to suit your needs, very good."

Talik could feel a brief bubble of pride within her at the mention of her progress but it crumbled swiftly when her master shot out a leg to knock her own out from under her, sending her tumbling down into the mud with a belated groan.

Really, it wasn't all that surprising, after all, Sabé's skill far surpassed her own, but it was still annoying how easily her master could defeat her.

"Don't worry," Sabé said, and some of what Talik was thinking must have shown on her face, "you've made a lot of progress, and you'll make a great deal more before training is done."

Talik could feel the weight of her pained muscles in her body at the mention of more training, but she didn't mention it out loud, though she didn't really need to, because a few moments later Arthree gave a sharp beep from across the swamp where he'd decided to stay when they'd first arrived, because there was far too much muck and Sabé and Talik moved around too much that it was practically pointless.

Sabé frowned, the binary beeps translating easily in her brain. "An incoming message?" she called back to where he was. "From who?"

Arthree gave an answer and Sabé's eyebrows rose high on her forehead. "Taria?" she repeated.

The last she'd heard from the other Jedi Shadow was that she'd been on her way to Pamina Prime in search of another Sith artifact. She'd had a lot of high hopes for that mission since her previous ones had resulted in dead ends.

Sabé jogged lightly to where Arthree was positioned to answer the incoming call. "Taria? Is something wrong?"

"Well, yes and no," Taria's blue holographic image flickered as she spoke. "The good news is I may have found something on Pamina Prime, something huge."

"That's great!" Sabé grinned. "Congratulations!" She knew that Taria's lack of success had been dragging her down lately, but that hadn't really been her fault. Sometimes the places they were sent merely contained an essence of the Dark Side without an artifact present.

"Yeah, it's great," Taria said and Sabé could just take note of a light smile present on her lips, "only the problem is that the cave-writings here are in complete Sith, I can't make heads or tails of any of it."

"The Sith have a language?" Talik asked breathlessly as she stumbled to collapse beside Sabé who didn't seem very worn out from the spar.

"Hey, Talik," Taria acknowledged the Twi'lek, "how's training going?"

"Terrible," Talik complained, "Master's killing me!"

Taria laughed and Sabé couldn't help but smirk as her Padawan threw a fairly petulant look towards her.

"It's good for the soul, Tali," she said, rolling her eyes before elaborating, "but yes, the Sith have a language that shares the same name, it's also sometimes called the Old Tongue, I believe. It's the native language of the people of Zoist and Korriban, but it's not very easy to translate and the Temple doesn't have many resources focused on that aspect—"

"But Sabé here might be able to make sense of some of the chaos," Taria interjected, her nearly transparent eyes flitting towards her friend while Sabé gave her a sour look.

"I thought it's not easy to translate, though?" Talik questioned with a bit of confusion.

"It's not," Sabé sighed. "The words are complex and some letters in Basic don't even translate into Sith. And the language has a bit of a stigma."

"Stigma?"

"People think the closer you are to the Dark Side the easier it is to read," Taria informed Talik, "so Sabé understanding some of it isn't necessarily a good thing."

Sabé's smile was rather thin. "You've got some images to send me, I presume?"

"Already sent," Taria grinned and Arthree beeped before displaying the image alongside Taria's wavering one.

Talik frowned at the image, interest piquing. It wasn't like any other language she'd seen before, it was more like symbols than actual letters.

"It's a bunch of lines and curls and things," Talik remarked with a bit of disappointment and Sabé actually laughed.

"Well," she said, still chuckling, "you aren't wrong…most of its nonsense to me, Taria, but I can make out one on the hieroglyphics."

"Anything's helpful," Taria very nearly chirped. "Which one is it?"

Sabé lifted her fingers to hover over the marking on the left side of the projection, towards the top. "Left top corner. I'm pretty sure what it says is 'crystal'."

"Like the crystals we use in our lightsabers?" Talik queried.

"Could be," Taria considered thoughtfully, "the Sith have always used synthetic crystals in the past."

"Why?"

"Because there aren't any red crystals in existence and the Sith prefer to differentiate from the Jedi which is why most synthetic crystals end up being the color red," Sabé explained absently, her eyes still focused on the holographic image with interest.

Talik could see the thoughts clouding behind her eyes but when she blinked, they'd gone.

"Let me know if you need anything else translated," Sabé said, "but I've got to get back to beating my Padawan into shape."

Talik groaned and Taria's laugh became static. "Will do," she replied before both holographic projections fizzled out.

"Can't we take a break?" Talik moaned in despair.

"You just took one," Sabé smirked, brushing a few braids out of her face. "Come on, we've got work to do."

And sometimes Talik just wanted to bury herself in the mud and scream incoherently.


Padmé–

Guess what? I had my first hostage crisis today! Master Obi-Wan and I were on a ship heading to Bespin and some bombers tried to take over the ship! Master thought I kept my head on rather well, those were his exact words, by the way, and he's thinking some more challenging missions could come our way in the next few months!

The Temple's really boring without Talik around and some of the other Padawans are starting to notice, I think. There are these twin sisters, Tiplee and Tiplar and Talik's always friendly with them and I don't think I've ever seen Tiplar so bummed when I told her she's off-planet for awhile.

Master Obi-Wan says I shouldn't send her any datamessages because it might distract her from training, and he's not talking to Sabé right now either, so I guess its even, but its still a bore without her around. Especially since no one really wants to be my sparring partner, but the twins said if I don't find anyone by tomorrow they'd be happy to try two-on-one against me, but I think they just want to kick my butt.

Also, I don't know why, but Master has decided to grow a beard and I'm not really sure why…

Talk soon,

Anakin


Obi-Wan wasn't particularly well-known for having odd dreams, he left that to Sabé and Anakin, though it was a habit that neither appeared to enjoy very much.

"One move, Kenobi, I swear," came a voice blaring and clear out of the darkness and the next thing Obi-Wan knew, his dreamself had a vibroblade to his throat and a pair of glaring yellow eyes fixed on him.

He remembered well the yellow eyes of Darth Maul and he wasn't surprised to see them in a dream, they were always part of his nightmares, though never accompanied by such a voice.

"Who are you?" he found himself asking and the speaker, a woman moving on light feet with precise steps that only came from experience, came forward and the blood in Obi-Wan's veins froze like ice.

Because that was Sabé's face, that was the shape of her eyes, the curve of her lips, the rosy hue of her cheeks.

"This is your last warning, Kenobi," Not-Sabé hissed. "Next time it will be your head."

And then Obi-Wan shot awake breathing hard, remembering all the times Sabé had mentioned her nightmares, the visions about her descending into darkness. He had never believed there was a real possibility of it occurring, of course, it wasn't Sabé's nature.

But that dream had deeply unnerved him and he laid back down on the bed, trying to regulate his breathing.

It was just a nightmare, nothing to worry about…or was it?

AN: The Sith language is a real thing and I very much doubt that the Jedi Order would have anything hardly at all concerning it, even if they have data documents on various Sith artifacts and Sabé's used to being at odds with people concerning her skill choice within the Order and knowledge of the Dark Side.

The training mission isn't done yet, but it should be completed by the next chapter. We'll do a lot of delving into the various shades of the Force in this fic and I'm really looking forward to it, especially some events that are a few chapters away, which is when the truth of Sabé and Obi-Wan's dreams will come to light.

Tiplee and Tiplar will become important later, just wait. ;)

In other news, my class is going pretty well and it should be over by the twelfth, which means I can get back to writing various fanfics for about a month before class starts again, so there will be updates in the future.

As always: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!