Space Wizard
or
Yer a Space Wizard, Harry!
02
You know when you have a dream and you're half awake, but it's still on the fringe of your brain, then you open your eyes and you're so damn glad it was a dream?
Yeah, this was nothing like that.
When I woke up after passing out, I was still in hell—or whatever hell world I had been transported to. I was still scarred and missing an arm and an eye. I still had no idea where I was, when or if help would ever come, or even if I was the only person on this planet.
The good news was that, despite having been maimed, I felt great. Like, impossibly good. A check of my wounds showed they had gone from new pink skin over the wounds to fully healed, as if I'd had them for a year or more. Then, I remembered the weird revitalizing properties of the light and tacked 'healing' on top of what I had learned of it so far and went about my day.
It took some getting used to, but I eventually adapted to my injuries. My 'Force' senses made up for the missing eye, for the most part—I just had to be careful about things that didn't show up to force senses, or showed up as a void in the Force. I couldn't rely entirely on that sense, as proven by the tiger. Its parts were proof enough of that, really.
After night fell on the second day, I spent all night awake, knife in hand and my crystals illuminating my hut. The next morning, I checked the tiger's fur and found it had the same treated feeling as the deer fur. It also showed up as a complete void in my Force senses—just like its bones and the pearl I'd pulled out of it. It seemed that for some of the predators on this world, I was going to have to trust my eyes more than my new senses.
Eye, singular.
However, with that interesting property confirmed to last even after death, I verified that the acid rain had done the job I'd hoped it would. Finding all the bones stripped clean and bleached white, I collected them up into a pile in my hut. Then, I went down to the river with the litter and began the day by collecting fresh water, the remaining skeleton, and some fresh fruit. After a meal and some actual sleep in the daylight, I settled in as the light began to fade and began to work.
Using my knife and some application of the Force, I made a needle from one of the tiger's smaller bones. The tail, I carefully cut from the rest of the hide and then cut into long strips. I also collected some of my thinner vine to use on the inside of what I was making.
The Force guided me as I set to work making myself some armor and a cloak. The damn cat had been bigger than me, end to end—actually closer to a saber-tooth tiger in size—so there was plenty of material and bone to work with. Actually, the damn thing's rib cage was big enough to fit around me entirely. So, I did just that.
The rib cage and spine, I fashioned into armor that rested over my jacket. It wasn't full protection, but it was better than nothing. The scapula, or shoulders, I used as shoulder guards of my own. I spent most of the night making sure I had full range of motion in it for my arm and… stump. That was a whole other issue, but I had an idea for how to deal with it.
The rest of the hide, I used to make a cloak, cutting it as needed and using strips of the tail and the bone needle to sew it as I wanted it. It wasn't great sewing work, but it held everything in place. When I was done, the result was a hooded cloak that covered me from head to ankles, nearly brushing the ground as I moved. Some leftover material, I used to make a soft, leather eye patch to replace the bandages I'd made of my shirt, using part of those bandages (after cleaning them thoroughly) for the back of the patch just for the smooth feeling against my socket and eyelid.
Finally, I turned my attention to the stump situation.
With a bit of small vines and some application of the Force (and sticks), I was able to correctly tie the right bones together as they should go, then fashion a bone prosthesis for my arm. It didn't really do anything other than give me the sense of weight of having something like my arm back, however, so I set about remedying that.
I settled into a bit of a rhythm after that. For how long, I don't even know. The days passed strangely and the seasons came and went faster than they probably should. Even the geography shifted from time to time between night and day—as I learned the hard way after waking up one morning and finding that everything outside the village had changed. Luckily, I stocked up on water and food, so it wasn't an immediate life threatening problem, but it was something to be aware of.
During the early part of the day, I hunted and fished, using a throwing spear and fishing spear I fashioned out of bamboo and vines to reel it in, and the Force to guide my aim. As I took care of that, I gathered edible plants and fruits, herbs, salt, and whatever else I could find in order to keep up a supply. I gathered firewood from fallen branches on the way back, using the Force to carry them and whatever I'd killed. When I got back, I used the Force to help clean my kills and set out any hides I managed to collect to make blankets, rugs, and thicker clothes since I'd found that when winter came it hit hard.
From midday through to just before night, I slept, resting as much as I could under the light. I woke up at dusk, moved everything inside, and secured the door with a boulder only slightly smaller than the entrance itself I'd pushed inside using the Force. I was damn thankful I had, because I'd had more than one predator actually make an attempt at getting in and, given the way they cleanly shredded my bamboo door, at a guess it was more tigers. Luckily, they couldn't do more than scratch the stone behind the bamboo, and they certainly couldn't move it.
While waiting for night to pass, I practiced my fine control with the Force. I meditated, focusing on my crystals and the tiger pearl that I suspected might be viable for either a lightsaber or some sort of cloaking device—more likely the second. I practiced juggling objects, moving many small things, using varying levels of force, and everything I could think of. Until, one day, I summoned one of my canteens to hand. The tiger skeleton arm clicked against the cap and I had no real sense of pressure feedback directly from the bone, but with the Force I could tell what I was doing. Using the bone fingers, I carefully opened the bamboo canteen and drank.
After that, I began practicing using my new replacement hand for everything, until I was just as proficient with it as I was with my real hand—or at least, as close as I could get without a cybernetic replacement.
Once I was comfortable with my new arm, I slowly allowed myself the luxury of sleeping at night again. But only after finding a second, even larger boulder—one big enough to block the entire doorway. That, I moved into the village and set outside my hut. When I pulled it against the entry, I found that there was enough space at the top for air to circulate naturally. After that, I began sealing the hut from inside and out—big boulder from the outside, bamboo door inside to keep out bugs, snakes, and other things, and the smaller boulder sandwiching the bamboo door against the wall.
Once I could sleep at night again, I changed my daytime routine. Food and gathering came first thing in the morning, but while I did that I also practiced what I considered the sorts of movement techniques usually used by Jedi and Sith. The ridiculously enhanced speed, leaping into trees and jumping from branch to branch silently, and so on. All while shrouded from the Force under my cloak and bone armor, and in an envelope void of the force thanks to the tiger pearl necklace I'd made and fed with a trickle of the Force.
Honestly, hunting for food wasn't even fair when I was hidden that way… but then, I wasn't hunting for sport, I was hunting to survive, so I'd take whatever advantage I could get.
After taking care of those chores, and cleaning up after myself, I spent the rest of the day doing as much 'training' as I could. I made practice weapons for myself and basically ran around the woods hitting things. Moving through the bamboo forests (when they appeared) leaping from bamboo stalk to stalk like something out of some kind of Chinese martial arts flick, trying not to disturb any leaves in my passing. Climbing up and down the mountain either by hand or by leaps.
Then I got into the actually fun stuff. Namely, using the Force to do things—to try and recreate as many of the techniques I remembered as I could.
Telekinesis was easy at this point, but I still worked on my strength, speed, fine control, and ability to control multiple targets at once. When the waterfalls reappeared, I would sit under them and use the Force to make a shield to keep the water off of myself, to catch and move as many floating droplets as I could, all while trying to catch and lift as much water as I could manage.
If it was just the river or a lake with no waterfalls, I used the Force to smash the water's surface as hard as I could—going from as small a target as I could manage to as large as I could—again, while pulling up and holding as much water as I could manage. I even tried to pull a Jesus and walk on water. That last one… didn't go so well. Trying it had felt right, but I felt like I just needed to practice.
Occasionally, it was just a box canyon full of scrub, gnarled old trees, sandy dirt, and lots of rocks and big boulders with a small stream barely an inch deep running through the middle. There, I practiced sprinting across open ground, summoning boulders to pull alongside me to use as shields, and crushing or launching rocks with as much force as I could manage into the canyon walls. That, and pulling boulders apart, twisting them, pinching them, even cutting them with the Force. I even started throwing them into the air and using Force shields to protect either myself or other boulders I'd thrown them at, just so I could practice my shielding. I even started using the Force to move the sand and dirt directly, creating constructs to smack things, moving walls, and so on.
I figured out why Jedi, Sith, and other Force users spent so much time meditating—aside for apparently looking for visions in/from the Force. Spending so much time doing it, I gained a greater awareness and understanding of the Force around me and I always felt more clear-minded after. After being maimed, it helped a lot with the anger, sorrow, and leftover feelings of both being faced with my own mortality and the violation of my body—a violent, non-consensual, permanent change to my body.
I adjusted my schedule to meditate for what felt like at least an hour first thing every morning and right before bed, just for that.
It was when I gave in to the temptation to just hold my crystals and tiger pearl and meditate that things got interesting.
All of them improved my ability to focus on the Force in different ways, ways I was still trying to figure out, but the pearl and the clear crystal were the most unique.
When using the pearl, my presence in the Force was completely cut off from the outside. Experimenting with it taught me how to how to hide my presence in the Force without it, and how to show one presence while hiding another presence. Basically, if I wanted to hit something, I could throw a force push at the same time and hide the intent to strike.
The clear crystal, however… Feeding it Force projected illusions around myself. With no intent behind them, it would generally just duplicate my sitting form. It was great for finally getting a clear look at myself without a mirror. I was right in my first thought—I looked like an idealized version of myself… if I had been maimed by an alien tiger.
When I used the crystal with intent, however, I found I could create illusions of anything I put my mind to. Illusions anywhere in consistency from barely there ghostly afterimages, to holograms so realistic I couldn't tell they weren't real, without my Force sight. Of course, that just meant I had to learn to make them look real in the Force, too—if only because it could be supremely useful to have illusions that felt real to Force sensitives.
I could add sound to any hologram I made, so I quickly took to recreating my favorite things from memory. But human memory is faulty, so I spent more time meditating using my crystals to focus on and sharpen my memory, all so I could listen to music, rewatch old things I'd seen, or even create my own stories using illusions.
When I combined the clear crystal and the pearl, however, I could completely hide my Force presence and project illusions. This, I practiced against the local animals. One of many mental tricks I began experimenting with. Illusions, persuasion by convincing anything with a mind to come to me, I even cracked direct mind control over wild animals—allowing me to see through their eyes and move their bodies. That one was a bit wild, especially when I started collecting birds and using them as living drones—convincing them that they should stay near me, forage for their own food, and using their eyes to track other prey.
It was late one night when I woke to the sound of quiet scratching at my boulder door.
Reaching out with the Force, I found another void in the force outside. Another damn tiger, trying to get in. I studied it as it tried to get in, leaning against the boulder and quietly trying to shove it aside. It didn't seem at all bothered by the acid rain falling outside.
Anger filled me—hate unlike anything I had felt before. These things weren't just predators, given how smart they seemed.
Filled with a need for revenge, I pulled on the tiger pearl necklace, along with my cloak and armor. Then, I grabbed my crystals and slipped them into the leather pouches I'd made on my belt for them—one for each of the crystals. Checking to make sure my knife was in place, and securing a canteen of water just in case, I silently made my way to the entrance just as the tiger had given up.
Silently, I moved the inner boulder, then the bamboo door. Waiting to make sure it was out of hearing range, I cracked open the outer door. I considered the rain falling outside for a moment before looking at the tiger walking away, visible only by the void it left and the way the rain outlined its form. Making a decision, I pulled my cloak tighter and slipped outside, securing the entrance behind me.
Rain pelted down on my cloaked form, but the tiger skin cloak protected me from the acid rain. Grinning, I gave chase, pursuing the retreating form of the tiger from a distance, through the dark, the ghostly trees, and the barren land. Pushing Force into my tiger pearl and my clear crystal, I hid my presence in the Force entirely and silenced my footsteps and the sound of rain hitting me.
I quickly found that the 'barren' landscape wasn't empty.
As I moved, I began seeing signs of life. Animals that had adapted to the dark and made it their home. Insects, birds, reptiles, even other mammals—or alien approximations of all of them. It seemed like everything that came out at night was some kind of predator. But of everything there, it seemed like the cat was some kind of apex predator. It wasn't exactly surprising.
Slipping around animals and trees, I followed the tiger up a mountain, where it slipped into a narrow cave entrance. Moving in behind it, I made my way around a few twists and turns, before coming out in a cave… that seemed almost identical to the one in the floating mountain where I'd gotten my crystals. This one was filled with crystals of darker colors—reds of different shades, oranges, black, violent, indigo.
Reaching out, I felt that every crystal here was steeped in the dark side of the Force. Not the malicious, 'hurt and kill everything indiscriminately' sort of dark side that the canon sometimes portrayed, depending on your source material. No, this was purer—more primal. There was some anger, yes. But it was passion—anger, love, hate, and more. Some of it was more primal urges—the urge to hunt, kill, and eat for instance. Or the urge to claim, mate, fuck.
Steeped in all those emotions, I was briefly overwhelmed.
I let go of the Force I was putting into the pearl. Holding out my clawed, skeletal hand, I roared a challenge and blasted the biggest tiger there—the one I had followed—with a bolt of force lightning, arcs of electricity and Force sending it to the floor with a yowl of pain as I stunned it. The others, which had been laying around, scattered at that. Pulling my knife, I leapt down, bearing the big cat to the ground. Wrapping my skeletal hand around its throat, I dug my claws in and sliced. At the same time, I brought my knife in at the back of the skull, slamming it home and making the big cat fall limp.
Standing up as I pulled my knife and claws out of its body, I met the eyes of every tiger there. Every one of them looking at me warily, with a level of intelligence they shouldn't have. Force lightning sparked between my claws. "Who's next?"
One of the cats took a step towards me. I zapped its ass and ran towards it. The others scattered, running for the entrance. I splashed them with lightning, sending four of the five to the ground before I grabbed my first target around the throat and stabbed it in the neck, like the one before it.
Once it was dead, I zapped the others again and did them the same way, then looked around the cave to make sure I wasn't missing any. Finding it empty, aside from the six corpses and a bunch of crystals, I panted quietly as my heart pounded. I felt… alive. I felt strong. Powerful. Better than I had felt since getting hurt. Like I had finally gotten something back.
Also, a bit annoyingly since I was the only one here, really fucking horny. Like, I could punch a hole through a wall with my dick at the moment.
Sitting down on the biggest corpse, I sighed and reached out with the force, feeling out the crystals around me again. Just like before, several answered my call—another three. Pulling at them, three crystals broke off and floated towards me—each roughly the same size as the ones I had already. Two reds of different shades and a bright orange. Touching each, I realized what each was as I felt it.
Of the reds, one was more of a crimson and the other more a scarlet. The scarlet was all blood, hunting, and conquest. The crimson, on the other hand, was basically concentrated horni energons—lust, greed, possessiveness. The orange was harder to put in simple terms, but it felt like… retribution. Like a desire to see like returned for like. Either way, the emotions attached to these dark-imbued crystals were much, much clearer than what little there was in my light-imbued crystals. And each one of them was deeply connected to some aspect of myself.
Really, it shouldn't surprise me as much as it did. The first thing I did when I showed up in this world was hunt down something to kill and eat. I could have lived off fruits, vegetables, and water but… humans needed meat, protein and all the things that came with it, in order to thrive. It tasted delicious and I wasn't going to give it up. When I was hurt, I wanted nothing more than some damn payback, and killing and scaring off the tigers just now felt like an amazing victory. It felt right. And, of course, I had been here what felt like months and not a woman in sight, aside from the ones I conjured up from illusions. I was so pent up even jerking off didn't help anymore. Something about the light and dark both revitalized me in a way that just left me wanting more, and masturbation was hollow.
Shrugging, I tucked two of them away into one of the bigger pouches on my belt, while holding up the orange crystal to see by in the visible spectrum. Checking the cave one last time, I grabbed the pile of big cats with the Force and pulled them outside. Waste not, want not, after all. And I had a plan.
I hid myself in the Force and made my way back to my hut. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I used the Force and one of the tigers' own claws to skin them and lay the hides out for the rain to deal with, before extracting the tiger pearls. The rest of the carcasses, I left to the rain before heading back inside.
The stones inside smoked briefly as my cloak shed rain onto them, but I got it off quickly and put it up on the coast rack I'd made. Likewise, I removed my bone armor and the coat under it, along with the rest of my gear, before settling down to sleep.
It was strange.
From everything I had seen and played of Star Wars, which admittedly wasn't much (just the canon six movies, SW:ToR, the Mando, and a little extra reading), I knew that using the dark side of the Force should, in theory, be a corruptive act. Even something as simple as feeling love should eventually lead to a 'fall.' The whole Jedi 'love leads to fear, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering' ideology, and the, in my opinion, absolutely idiotic reasons why Jedi were forbidden from loving and why they were taken so young.
And yet… I felt just fine. Just as I always did. No more or less evil or good than before. No sudden urges to run out and conquer the galaxy—because that sounded like work and I had absolutely no desire to get involved in galactic politics. No desperate need to genocide any one race of beings just because they were the wrong color.
Red. I mean red. I had done some supplemental reading as to why there was even a Return of the Sith in the first place—as in, where they went between the time when they were a dime a dozen, and when they started popping up out of the woodwork in Episodes I, II, and III. Apparently, there was some sort of great Sith purge. Except, in this case, the Jedi didn't limit themselves to 'Sith' as defined as being 'anti-Jedi.' They killed everyone aligned with the dark side of the force, including entire races of innocent beings who happened to be born dark aligned—the actual race of red-skinned people known as Sith. Sure, they missed a few spots, but they damn sure tried their hardest.
Meditation upon my new crystals, experimentation with dark-aligned powers, and venturing out into the dark of the night to test myself against the predators there didn't leave me feeling any different, so I cautiously marked that little bit of lore down as either wrong, or as something that didn't apply to me.
After that discovery, and the fight that night, everything changed.
I collected the rest of the bones and fur and improved my armor. I also took the excess hides from the big cats and their longest bones, fashioned them all together, and made myself a portable tent/tepee that should be damn near invisible in the Force. But without the bones holding it up, the stitched together hides made for an excellent tarp to cover and wrap most of my things to protect them from the nights' acid rain.
I discovered that by focusing on my crystals and willing them to split off, I could break off small pieces of them for use in other things. Using some sharpened bone, a limb, and a piece from the orange crystal, I made myself a new spear and light. I improved on my cloak and backpack, redesigning the hard pack, replacing the wood with bone and the bindings with leather, and covering it with tiger fur. I even managed to pry off the end of the knife and shove a small clear crystal into it, then seal the hilt with one of the tiger pearls.
With my newfound confidence in dealing with the threats in the dark, I collected food and water, wrapped everything up in my stitched together leather tarp, and set out to explore this world—leaving the safety of the hut behind. Wandering the dark at night and sleeping part of the day while foraging for food the rest, I made my way across what felt like miles upon miles of land given the speed I traveled at.
As I went, I observed the various species native to the nights and days of this world. As I'd seen before, the creatures of the dark were all much more ferocious and deadly, and either poisonous or toxic. I went out of my way to track down and kill the deadliest of these, especially the poisonous ones, in order to use the Force to mix things to coat my spear with to use in bringing down deadly animals—since anything I wanted to hunt to ear, I could just use the Force on in various ways.
One night, I even came across what I suspected may have been a (small) krayt dragon—small by krayt dragon standards anyway, at about thirty feet long. I got the jump on it, literally, and punched my spear through its eye and into its brain, before leaping off and waiting for it to go down to either the damage or the necrotic poison that coated the bone tip of the spear. When it did finally go down, I spent much of the rest of the night and the next day opening it up and removing parts.
Cutting through it with my knife was a bitch and a half, but I got the job done and set about doing what every adventurer did after killing something strong—I upgraded my gear.
I turned some of its hide into a full set of leather armor to go under my cloak, covering most of my body over my clothes. The bones from the tiger were replaced in places and coated in sewed on krayt dragon leather. Because I had learned that this world had deserts and my three bamboo canteens sometimes just weren't enough, I made big, leather water skins that could be tied off to my backpack and hidden under my fur tarp. I turned as much of the extra leather as I could reasonably carry without it being too bulky into a very large rolled up tarp that I hung off the bottom of my bag, filled with several of the longer bones and enough cordage made from more leather to make an even bigger tent than the one I had been using—but I kept it as a spare, not to replace the one I had, because the ability to sleep in safety out of the perception of the Force was too useful to give up. Some of the rest of the leather was rolled up and carried strapped to the sides of my bag, since when I actually tried to carry it I found it wasn't that heavy with the Force helping me—if I ever got off of this hellhole, maybe I could sell it or something and if not, then I'd have extra.
My weapons got a complete replacement. I replaced my wood and bone spear with one of the long bones from the thing's forelimb, some of its own leather, and a couple of its longer claws (one as long as my arm, the other about half that length) to make a scythe that I transferred the orange crystal to and coated in more deadly poison. I replaced my fishing spear with another of its bones, since it was starting to wear down and didn't like the acid rain, and I was getting tired of having to make new ones. I used some of its smaller claws to painstakingly cut parts of its skull open to use with its leather to make myself a helmet/mask to protect my face and head from further instances of mauling.
Finally, I upgraded the tiger bone prosthesis. None of the bones on the krayt dragon were really small enough to use for much without carving them down, so I took a couple of days going exactly that using the force and its own claws. I left most of the bones there in place and added new ones for additional strength along the forearm, added a fold-out blade made of one of the dragon's teeth, and added a couple of claws for extra oomph if I punched something with that arm. I replaced the vines holding the pieces together which had begun to fail, given constant exposure to the acid rain, with krayt dragon leather. Lastly, I made a new stump cover out of that same leather and some leftover tiger leather, then covered the outside in a layer of leather to protect the inner workings—the effect giving me what looked like a five-fingered reptilian hand.
I even found a small pearl inside the dragon that felt similar to the crystals and pearls I'd collected so far. Into a pouch it went, and I continued on my way.
It was as I was wandering through yet another box canyon, this one a desert with a small river running through its center and lots of scrub and cacti, that I found it. What can only be described as a door. It was, quite literally, a hole in space looking out over another world—one that looked to be covered in sand, as seen at night.
I could think of at least two desert worlds in Star Wars off the top of my head, one of which was probably worse than the other to fine oneself stranded on, but if my options were stay on the hellworld alone forever, or leave and wander a desert, possibly finding civilization…
I chose civilization.
Taking the time to fill my canteens and water skins, and drink my fill, I filled my bag with prickly cactus fruit (it was actually safe to eat and delicious, just a bitch to eat because you had to pick the needles off) and made sure everything was secure. Then, I pulled my hood up and stepped through.
The doorway stayed open behind me as I looked around, taking in the world around me. It felt firmly in the dark side—steeped in all the wrong aspects of it, in fact. Some of the things I felt from the cave of dark side crystals, but a lot of other things that felt just… disgusting and wrong. I briefly considered turning back, but I felt the door behind me waver and fade away almost as soon as I had the thought.
For better or worse, I was stuck here.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire?
Shaking my head, I reached out with the Force, feeling the world around me. Searching for a direction to go to find help.
Almost immediately, I felt a Force presence—several, really. But one was much closer than the rest and perked up immediately in curiosity at my searching.
I started running that direction, scaling the top of a sand dune and leaping to the next, and the next. If I was going to cross a desert, it was better to do it at night, when it was cold and I wouldn't waste as much water.
"I hate deserts."