A/N: Chap 25 got a lot of reviews. Thank you. I can't say I responded well since I have a bit of a cold this morning, but if I missed a question, my forum's a good place if you want a response. And now, with this chapter, we have the first overt elements of the crossover itself. This story is not just an alt-power Taylor, it is an actual crossover.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Luminous Beings
Taylor opened her eyes, stretched her arms luxuriously over her head, and curled her legs up behind her as she twisted her back. Within the cocoon of blankets, she felt luxuriously warm and safe. Red sunlight shown through the shades, making the white felt of her clan posters glow.
A quick search of her chrono revealed what the sunlight already proved—that it was seven hours past evening meridian. She just sat up in her bed when the door opened and the family droid rolled in on it's twin tracked wheels. Spindly arms held a tray, upon which she could see a steaming bowl of tikit meal sweetened with honey and cane crystal, a glass of blue milk, and half a jijibulb.
"Happy waking, Young Miss," the droid said. "Your mother desired you to break the evening fast in your room today. She is meeting with an Outworlder."
"Okay, Mufed," Taylor said easily. She sat up and let the droid place the tray across her lap. It then held a thumb-sized data crystal for her to see before placing it on the edge of the tray.
"Today's lessons," the droid continued. "Today you shall be learning about high energy particle physics, the epic Poem Cinnegariade by Endobyss the Lesser, which celebrated and described the Unification of the Empress Teta Star System that helped set the foundation for the first Galactic Republic, and finally you will learn about fall of the Third Republic and the Great Unification. There shall be tests upon all three subjects this afternoon, so I expect you to actually absorb the information."
"The Neuralizer gives me a headache," Taylor wined.
"And you think your head will fare better ignoring mistress's orders?"
Taylor couldn't help but shudder in horror. "The Cinnegariade, though? It has five million lines!"
"And every one is in dactyl hexameter, and considered one the greatest epics in the Tetan language, which as you should know is one of the core founding languages of modern Galactic Basic. Mistress will know if you do not learn it all."
"Fine." She sullenly started to eat her sweet, chewy tikit meal. Mufed, which she'd named from the acronym of Multi-Use Family Education Droid, rolled over to her wardrobe and withdrew her clothes of the day.
When her meal was done, she put the tray to the side and slipped her holo link on to her wrist. "Mufed, why does mother block my holonet access?"
The droid rolled back to her bed. "She worries, Young Mistress. The disturbances on the Eastern Continent have grown worse, and she fears that the clan may be forced to flee the planet."
Taylor couldn't help but stare. "Flee Dathomir? But…but…where would we go?"
The door opened. Taylor watched as her mother walked in, tall and stately and strong as only a Dathomiri clan leader could be. Her pale skin glistened with the various tattoos of her life—there the sigil of her taking a male for bedding the first time; there for her ascension to clan leader. There, to mark Taylor's birth. Her arms bore the history of her life, and she bared them proudly. Her pure white hair was done in a single braid that hung from the back of her otherwise shaven head, where her scalp bore the sigils of the Singing Crystal Cave Clan.
When Taylor reached puberty, she too would take those tattoos.
And yet, as she studied her mother's large, glistening blue eyes, she felt disconcerted. Her mother stood stiffly. "MUFED, leave us."
The droid nodded its head before leaving.
"Mother, are you well?" Taylor asked, fearing that her mother was upset with her for some reason.
"We have a visitor," she said. "Dress, quickly. Your lessons will wait."
Taylor did as she was told; there was no other choice when her mother gave her a command. She slipped out of her sleeping clothes, changed her underthings, and after attending to her morning toilet, pulled on her day dress and shoes. Her mother sat her down in the mirror and began to braid her own long, white hair.
Taylor frowned for a moment.
"What is it, my daughter?"
"I don't know, mother. A feeling. As if my hair were wrong somehow. Perhaps a dream?"
"Perhaps."
When the braid was done, Taylor felt confused by her mother's pensive expression. She remained behind Taylor at the vanity, hands on her shoulders. "Mother?"
"They will not take you," her mother said, as if speaking to another. "They will not."
"Who, mother?"
"Come. The Grand Matriarch has insisted on this foolishness. Let's not prolong it further than necessary."
They left Taylor's room and entered the main dome of their mountain home. Instead of heading to their meeting space, however, her mother led her to the patio. Taylor did not mind, though she was curious why they would not meet guests in the guestroom.
The patio was her favorite part of the house. It thrust out from the rock of the mountainside, with a single arhsir tree rising resplendent from its center. The walls that framed the back of the patio in a circle writhed with blue, wormlike vines, all thriving for every little bit of energy they could get from Dathomir's ancient red sun.
A brisk morning wind blew, making the thick, fleshing blue leaves of the tree rustle even as they unfolded and grasped at the light of the sun. Beyond the balcony, overflowing the Singing Crystal Cave valley, the capital city greeted the sun with the pealing of bells and singing of the Crystal Matins. If she listened hard enough, she could just make out the matrons, calling for all to share in the song.
The peace and beauty of the morning, though, shattered when she felt something to her left, sitting quietly on the very bench Taylor herself loved to sit on to read or listen to music. An ancient woman sat there. She was human, though one as thin as a Dathomiri. It was her skin which marked her apart. The Dathomiri's skin was white, like the salt plains of Ascarta or like bone. This woman's skin was brown, like the thick bark of the Ahrsir tree or the soil around them.
She wore black pants in the human style, but a white blouse that hung loosely on her thin frame. Over all she wore a luxurious gray robe cinched at the waist. Her shaven head gleamed in the morning light. For all her dark skin, though, Taylor could feel something almost like heat coming off the woman. It warmed her more even than their sun, and she found herself drifting to the woman.
Until, that is, she spotted the lightsaber hanging from the woman's waist. This was why they met outside. Her mother would not allow any outworlder into their home, even as a guest, if she could at all control it.
Her unconscious draw toward the woman stalled, while her mother's grip on her shoulders tightened. Her caution seemed to amuse the woman, judging by her dry chuckle.
"What do you fear from me, child?"
Her voice sounded as ancient as the wind through the leaves above their heads. Dry and hollow, but somehow eternal.
"My mother teaches that Outworlders bring trouble from beyond into our home."
"Sometimes that is true," the ancient human said without moving. "But sometimes Outworlders bring gifts, of knowledge or things. Sometimes Outworlders bring opportunity as well as trouble. If you never open the door for fear of the one, you suffer the loss of the other."
"Who are you?"
"You may call me Denaan."
Taylor tried the odd-sounding name on her lips. "You're very old."
"Indeed, I am," Denaan agreed. "I am so old that once upon a time I called myself a Jedi. Do you know how old that would make me?"
It was difficult for Taylor to realize just how ancient the woman was. "The last Jedi was three hundred years ago, before the Great Unification."
The woman nodded. She moved slowly, but she was so small that rather than seem ponderous, Taylor thought the slow movements were merely conservative, in the same way the ahsir tree curled up its leaves and went still at night.
"Three hundred years ago. I was not even your mother's age when the Bendu came and revealed the Journal of the Whills to both Jedi and Sith. I was one who fought against his teachings at first. I have learned much since then, though if I am honest I have forgotten even more. I am quite old, you see."
"I didn't think humans lived so long."
"I am human, that is true, child. But I am also Bendu. So long as I can maintain the balance of the Force within my soul, and the balance of life and death within my body, time touches me gently. Even so, my end will come, just as this world will end, and the galaxy beyond. Before I end, however, I wish to see the vergence which brought me to this world. Come, child, come closer."
Taylor looked up at her mother, who with seeming effort released her shoulders. Hesitantly, Taylor walked toward the ancient Bendu monk.
"Oh, child, I am no monk," the woman said.
"You…I…I only thought that."
"All thoughts are bare in the Force for those who can hear. You think I look like a shriveled old tree. You think I am a monk, never having bedded a mate or delivered a child to the stars. While the former is true enough, the latter is not. The most ancient Dai-Bendu were indeed monks. But those Bendu living today are not. I for one bonded another Bendu, and between us delivered four wonderful children. They in turn bonded, and delivered children, who then bonded and delivered more. After so many centuries my descendants could fill a space cruiser. I know bonding is not your people's way, but rest assured the Bendu love and hate like any other. What makes us unique is that we learn to balance one against the other, so that in time we can find peace with both."
As the woman spoke, her voice growing ever softer, Taylor found herself drifting closer. Before she realized it, she stood mere centimeters from the ancient human. The Bendu lifted one gnarled, deeply-veined hand and simply let it hang by the side of Taylor's face.
"Such lovely eyes you have, my child," the old woman whispered. "I can only imagine what wonders those eyes will behold. I weep at the pain you will feel, and exult in the joys and triumphs you will experience. And I…I am in awe of what you will accomplish before you, too, end."
She let her hand drop. Taylor backed up a step as the old woman seemed almost to flow to her feet, as if the air itself lifted her. "I would speak with your honored mother, child. Will you wait out here for us?"
Taylor could only nod. Despite Denaan's obvious age and seemingly frail form, she glided without effort to her mother. Despite being an Outworlder—despite being human—mother said nothing as the the two said nothing as they walked into the house.
So much for the no Outworlders rule.
Though she knew it would anger her mother immensely, there was not even a second where Taylor contemplated remaining ignorant of what just happened. Instead, she scrambled up the walls out of the patio using the vines as a ladder until she reached the rocky soil of the mountain that held their home. She found the main vent and laid down on the ground to better hear what the two adults were saying.
"…seed of the infected." The ancient woman's voice slithered up the pipe like a serpent. "With sufficient trauma, the seed will activate and she will become another of the invader's agents."
"You think I do not know this, Bendu?" Her mother sounded angry, but also scared. "Why else would I pull her out of her school? It is said those infected can go their whole lives without activating the seeds."
"Dathomir will be dead within the month," Denaan said. "The invader's cycles have accelerated since we began the pogroms. I can sense four on this world alone. I'm sorry, Matriarch, but the Republic cannot allow four invaders to propagate from this world. The leviathans will be destroyed, even if Dathomi is destroyed with it."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because your daughter is a Vergence in the Force. She is a living nexus. Her potential power is beyond measure. Perhaps she alone is why the leviathan invaders came to this world. Regardless, infected or not, the Force tells me she must be trained."
"She is my only daughter. She is to be clan matriarch after I return to the soil! You cannot have her."
"My dearest child, there will be no soil to…no." The ancient Bendu sighed, and with the sound came great sadness. "It has already begun."
Taylor had no idea what they were talking about. Seeds? Infected? But that ceased to matter. She sat up when she could hear the hint of a new song that was not the Crystal Matins. The sun was already too high up for matins regardless. This new song dragged her back down the mountain side, using the many ahrsir trees to control her descent, until she clambered down the fleshy vines to the flagstones of the patio.
She drifted to the rail of the balcony overlooking the valley below. In the distance, a glowing figure hung over the city, a figure that was not there just moments ago. Just as she found herself drawn to the ancient human, Taylor drifted like a banded moth to a flame, her jaws parted as she struggled to hear the song just on the verge of her senses. If she could only hear it, she would know so much!
The air trembled; the wind fell still and silent, as if the whole of Dathomir listened to that brilliant song. Only the rail stopped Taylor from walking off the edge of the patio and the hundred meter drop below to the foothills below their home, where the lesser members of the clan hierarchy lived.
She knew all those below her had to be listening. The need to hear and understand the song overwhelmed every part of her being, until all that was left was Taylor and the need. Around her, the vast valley and the lavender sky and the great daggers that appear like knives in the heavens were lost to her perceptions. Her eyes thrummed and her head ached. Her knees trembled and her breath caught deep in her throat as her childish will screamed out with the need to hear, and to understand.
Her body filled with a terrible, wonderful heat. It felt as if somehow the braziers of the clan cave burned in her chest, the flames licking through her veins to fill every part of her. The agonizing ecstasy of this heat surged up into her mind. She laughed; she screamed. The rush of the heat burned away the barriers of her mind.
Behind her, she could sense her mother's terror. She sensed the ancient Bendu's own alarm, but also a determination. She could sense all the insects and creatures in the mountains around her. She could feel the ecstasy and terror of her sisters below.
With this new understanding—with this knew perception—Taylor turned the whole of her mind toward the floating angel. She could see how parts of the city broke into rubble under the silver glow of its passage. The rubble rose up around it like an asteroid field, somehow blocking the heavy bolts of the various laser cannons that were firing from the dozens of defensive positions that framed the valley.
It was with her mind, though, that she reached out the hardest. Surely now she could hear the song. Surely, now, she would understand…
PROPOSAL.
Intent beyond words, violence made with sound and energy crashes through a dying gray world, a clump of failing matter piercing the dimensions and yet equally empty of everything in each, save for the myriad crystal worms that feed upon it.
EVOLUTION. CONFLICT. VARIATION.
FAILURE. SELF-DESTRUCTION.
She weeps as the worms turn on each other, consuming and feeding and strengthening themselves off the blood of their brethren, until only two remain on a world utterly depleted of all food; all energy.
The two beings defy description; they defy understanding. They are feral, basic; they are advanced to being godlike. They wield divine power and yet have the drive only to live at all cost like the most basic of animals. They shape themselves across dimensions for one task. By the time the world that saw their birth eons ago dies, shattering not just in one dimension, but in every possible permutation like mirrors reflecting Armageddon, over and over again, the two have woven their way through the fabric of reality itself.
With the death of the world their species is reborn. The galaxy around them shudders.
DESTINATION.
VARIATION.
EVOLUTION..
CONFLICT.
VICTORY.
Taylor understood. And the knowledge terrified her into paralysis. She could only stand and watch as a thick beam of green light lanced down through the clouds overhead from one of the daggers she now realized must be Republic cruisers. The beam seared away the clouds themselves, only to stop just above the head of the floating, silver angel.
The valley darkened against the impossible energies unleashed.
A second beam lanced down from a second dagger in the heavens. Combined with the first, it was too much even for the ever-hungering god. The beams lashed through the angel and into the valley floor. Taylor stumbled backward as her world died before her eyes. The explosion was beyond her compression, shattering the crust of the planet and throwing up untold billions of tons of rock in a wall that rolled toward her.
The air in front of her turned an opaque blue as the first shockwaves hit the house shields. Beyond the patio, she witnessed trees burst into flame before slamming flat against the mountain. Every particle of loose sand or vegetation was either burned away or blasted away in streaking clouds, leaving Taylor untouched by the family ahrsir tree.
Suddenly the shields failed.
Taylor tried to scream, but the heat stole her breath from her lungs as it blasted her backward. She could sense her mother at the door, reaching for her in horror, only for the fire to take her too. Abruptly Taylor understood, in that moment, that she was going to die with her planet.
Then she felt a gentle, thin arm around her waist. She felt an ancient mind brush against her own. Your destiny does not end here, my child.
They left the house, emerging in the high mountain courtyard that framed the other houses of the various clan matriarchs. Hovering just over the central fountain was a ship, as large as her house but no larger, with a pair of stabilizing fins horizontal to the ground. To her shock, she and the Bendu both floated toward an open ramp. Despite the fire burning around them, the heat did not touch her while in the Bendu's arms. She blinked teary eyes and saw the fire licking at them only inches away, somehow held back by the Bendu's great power.
Then they were inside the ship. Cool air felt icy against her burns. She wept from the pain, and from the horror and death she felt from her mother below, and the wall of death that even at that moment swept toward them.
The Bendu levitated her through the ship, past startled or terrified men and women of many races, until they reached a small room with a spindly droid that had too many appendages.
"Prepare a Bacta bath, GH-16," the Bendu said firmly.
"Yes, Master."
Taylor closed her eyes as the Bendu lowered her gently into a thick gel that, rather than feel icy cold, instead felt warm and soothing, like her mother's arms. It instantly began easing the agony of her burns.
More than that, she felt a familiar, gentle heat flowing once again through her veins. Where the heat passed, the pain diminished to nothing. She opened her eyes and saw the ancient Bendu master standing over her, her hands hovering just over her chest.
Between the gel and the ancient master, Taylor was healed of her burns in minutes. Invisible hands as gentle as her mother's lifted her from the bath. They gently peeled away the burned, ruined rags of her clothing. A soft, moist towel washed the gel away from her body, and a simple robe was draped over her shoulders.
"Come, child," the Bendu said. She held out an ancient hand. Rather than the tree bark it looked like, her hand felt soft and gentle, save for a ridge of calluses at the base of her wrinkled fingers. Taylor followed on bare feet through the thin carpet of the ship.
The crew, half human and half near-human, rushed about doing their various tasks as she and the old woman reached what looked like the cockpit of the ship.
The Bendu sat in a chair in the back of the six-seat space, and with a gentle motion of her hand floated Taylor to her lap. Thin, strong arms wrapped around her stomach.
"It is a terrible thing we see, child," the Bendu whispered into her ear. "Losses that make your heart ache and eyes weep."
Outside the windows of the ship, Taylor saw the stars growing brighter as the lavender sky grew thinner. Beyond, she saw an angel that defied description. The creature looked Dathomiri, nude and perfect and the size of the mountain she grew up in. But in her mind, she saw more. She saw a mass of shards—tentacles made of millions of thoughts and hopes and dreams—reaching from the core of the exploding planet to the back of this strange apparition's head.
Dozens of massive ships faced the angel, lashing at it with thick beams of green energy that could crack planets in half. Beyond those massive ships, smaller ones pulsed with artificial fields of gravity and other exotic energies that transcended universes and dimensions, penetrating through the very weave of creation to ensure that the entities could not escape.
The ships paid a terrible price. Even as Taylor watched, one of the massive ships crumbled in on itself, as if a moon-sized hand gripped it until it died. She could feel thousands of minds snuffed out in an instant. The other ships continued firing their weapons. They had no choice. Taylor understood now, even if she could never find words to explain it.
The entities had to destroy worlds to live. It was all they were, and all they could do. To not destroy; to not sow their shards among the people of the world to foment conflict and rage and death until they consumed the world entirely, was a violation of everything they were. If they did not kill, they themselves would die.
She glanced to the edge of the view screen and watched as Dathomir died. The great beams of death did not just strike the Crystal Cave valley. The southern continent was a mass of black cloud and fire projecting its entrails out into orbit. Similar plumes shot so high off the world that they too made orbit.
Even as she watched, a new ship emerged from hyperspace to loom over the viewscreen of the Bendu's ship, larger even than those which cracked the planet. Like the others it was dagger shaped—its hull white and blue trimmed and glistening brightly under the red light of the Dathomiri star.
"Mother," Taylor whispered, seconds before a massive, multi-beam pulse of green light lashed out.
All the other ships broke off their attacks and spun to flee the death of the world. The giant Dathomiri avatar struck against the fleeing ships, easily destroying two of the city-sized vessels. But it was too late. The massive, destructive beam obliterated the planet. In her mind, Taylor felt an odd echo, like mirror images, as the graviton generators surrounding the world reflected the destructive energies down through the various dimensional incarnations of the planet, until every last, possible trace of Dathomir, and the four entities which had fed upon its people, were gone.
She squirmed around on the Bendu's lap until she could bury her face in the ancient woman's neck and wept bitter, pained tears.
"In every end, there is a beginning," the Bendu whispered gently into the ear. "This is not your end, child. This is only your beginning."
*A/N-In SW Legends, the Dathomiri were actually humans descended from the crashed ship of former Jedi, so they were all Force-sensitive. The Nightsisters were just one clan of many. In newer cannon, of course, we have Ventress and Dooku's genocide. I've borrowed from both, so in this story, the Nightsisters were just one clan of Dathomiri, while others remained and survived. And don't worry, this is all happening while Taylor's unconscious. I'm not going to have multiple chapters with her in the past. Only just enough to establish why things are the way they are.
This snippet takes place roughly 300+ years after Rise of Skywalker.