Chapter Five: Where Energy Swords Which Go Vroom Are the Coolest Thing

Kaleth was somewhat confusingly both the name of the vast plateau and the temple located on it. It towered over the green fields and the forests—four massive buildings: each devoted to one major discipline.

The archives sprawled all over the lowest levels with vast libraries of paper books and beneath them, data rooms with serves that were kept cool by mammoth machines endlessly pumping coolant and water. Study rooms were spread around the whole area, with work stations that were occupied for most of the day.

Kora was inspecting the catalogue and making notes of titles that appeared as if they may be relevant to her current research. She had not been a Temple Master for long. It was only the third year, and while the novelty had worn off long ago by then, she still sometimes felt wrong-footed and uneasy. And now, the first true Council that she had attended to, one with all the members, turned out to be a prelude to war.

Not to mention, that had been probably the least disturbing thing they had found out from the survivor. She had offered to take him in, but Calleh and Naro backed Quan-Jang's apprentice as their current best option to help the young man.

So there she was in the archives and searching for any relevant data. There had been mentions of a "shadow in the Force", or "darkness" or "oil-spill", or "sickness" in sources dating back to the times before all the temples had been finished. The exact words varied, depending on the species and profession of the source, but they were almost always related to something that would cause fear and obscure visibility.

It seemed that the lack of visibility effect was not caused by a single person, as far as she could tell. Or perhaps it was an individual talent specific to the rakata, and one that humans trained in their ways of the Force simply didn't possess?

But perhaps there was something she could start with. At least a few of the sources had mentioned the region of the galaxy where they had sensed what they knew was the Infinite Empire. And that meant it might be possible to chart the rate of growth of the Empire.

That in turn would give them an answer: Was the Infinite Empire at its apex, or was its growth slowing—or speeding up?

The air smelled of metal in Vur Tepe, even in the demonstration and testing areas away from the forges and manufactories and despite the complex air-scrubbing mechanisms spread all over it. It also seemed to be slightly hotter than it should be, but that might just have been Sek'nos's imagination—his mind convincing his body because of a connection it had made between the purpose of the Forge and what he knew of forges.

And he wasn't in one of them, after all. The test room was mostly empty, with mats on the floor and a few tables by the wall. A cluster of apprentices had formed near them—Sek'nos could recognize Tasha and a few others. Master Tem Madog was pacing across the length of the mat on which Sek'nos was standing, while the large togruta tested the balance and weight of the light-sword. He swung the weapon experimentally. It moved differently than a metal sword, and the low buzzing it kept emitting changed pitch. Regardless, it was still setting his teeth on edge.

"We're going to have to start building these en masse," Master Madog said and tossed a ball at the young togruta.

He sliced cleanly through it, and it smoked as it fell to the ground in singed halves.

Sek'nos inspected it with his foot, letting the cathar master talk with the other smith—a stout devronian woman by the name of Sanya.

"The design appears to be almost uncannily similar," she said, gesticulating with the energy blade taken from the crash survivor. Just like the weapon made by Master Madog, in its deactivated state, the weapon was a slender rod, although longer than the one that was practically disappearing in Sek'nos's hand. In contrast, the one the survivor had carried could easily have doubled as a baton.

"Yes," the cathar said. "I think I might steal a few solutions—but in essence, this is a weapon that any Force sensitive can assemble, if they have the right focus crystal."

"And make us obsolete, Master?" Sanya asked.

"We do not primarily craft weapons," Master Madog chided in a tone that made Sek'nos think of his grandmother at her most long-suffering. "How does it handle?"

"Wonderful, except for that weird whine," Sek'nos answers truthfully. "Although it gets easier to tune it out the longer I'm holding it."

"How about a practice fight then?" Master Madog asked, and without waiting bellowed towards a cluster of apprentices of all genders. "Volunteer, now!"

There was a brief commotion, before a slender orange twi'lek emerged from the group followed by a few disappointed looks. Sek'nos grinned at her, and she grinned back.

Sanya offered her the other energy blade, and they took positions opposite to one another. The blades buzzed to life—a yellow one in Sek'nos's hand and the blue one that technically belonged to the survivor.

The young togruta let the twi'lek take a few practice swings to get the feel of the weapon, before starting their duel. The blades sparked whenever they met, and both of them moved with much more caution then they would have with a metal blade, simply because of the sheer unfamiliarity of the weapons.

Yet for all the newness, there was a sort of a resonance between him and the blade, one that he had never reached when holding a metal sword. It was almost as if the crystal within was responding to him in the Force, making it easier to predict how his opponent would move and how to best parry her strikes.

"Enough!" Master Madog bellowed, and both Sek'nos and his opponent jumped back.

"They were catching on much quicker than I expected," Sanya said.

The cathar bared his teeth in a wide grin. "Then we move on to the next part of the experiment. You lot will each get yourself a crystal and build a blade like that."

Getting himself a crystal was not nearly as easy as master Madog had made it sound. They had been all pointed in the direction of the right cave, and given appropriate information. Which boiled down to a crash course on spelunking for dummies and 'you will know which crystal is yours'.

The latter part did turn out to be true, so there was that.

Unfortunately, Sek'nos's crystal was behind a passage into which he'd absolutely not fit: he'd have to bend to fit height-wise, but he was already too broad, so he'd also have to walk side-ways.

Well, there was more than one way to skin a manka cat. Theoretically. He never had actually tried to verify that because it seemed needlessly cruel, and Shae would skin him. Probably metaphorically, but he was not going to risk that only to test if a stupid saying was true.

Because he was irritated because yet again, he could not fit somewhere. As if ducking under every door hadn't been enough.

With a sigh, he sat down on the ground. It was somewhat damp—which was why he had made the effort of putting on a shirt—but nothing he wouldn't be able to survive. He could sense the crystal. It wasn't as good as seeing it, but it was good enough.

He extended his hand and closed his eyes. He could still hear things— under the right circumstances he could navigate by sound, but the crystal was somewhat too far away for that trick to give him anything but a rudimentary idea of the cave's layout.

The only thing he could do was to try sense the crystal in the Force as best as he could and then pull it to himself. Carefully at first, until the rock let go, until there was something cool and smooth in his hand.

He opened his eyes and watched the transparent facets catch light.

Tasha looked at the assorted metal parts, as she toyed with a blue crystal absentmindedly. She had never been drawn to weapons—be it creating them or wielding them. Yet now, she had no choice. She would need to build one and someday, in the near future, she would have to wield one.

Methodically, she started assembling the weapon, despite the foreboding it filled her with. She was not so naive as to believe weapons could be completely forgone—if anything, they still needed a means of defending themselves from hostile animals. No, it was the fact that they would all have to take one up, whether they liked it or not.

The alternative was being snuffed out like candles. Fear eating them until nothing else was left.

She could not summon the enthusiasm some of the others were showing. Even the grin that she saw on the face of Sek'nos—the one that was normally so infectious—could not bring a smile to her face.

In her memory, the scene from her vision played once more. It had been weeks since she had seen it in her mind's eye for the first time, but it remained as fresh as it had been then—a ship burning in the atmosphere, the lone escape pod landing roughly in the canyon, and finally a black-clad figure emerging from it.

Would she had reacted differently, had she known what they'd learn? Perhaps, if she had acted sooner, they could have sent a ship and prevented the crash altogether. With both Xesh and his master, they could have learned so much more.

But was it worth learning? Was going to your death prepared so much better than dying unaware? They would have to fight, knowing that if they lost, they'd become like Xesh. Little more than feral creatures lashing out in fear and pain.

She did not envy Shae Koda. As terrible as whatever had been done to Xesh had been, Tasha did not want to have to deal with him. Did not want to be reminded of what was coming.

With a steady hand, blue eyes half-closed, she held out the finished blade and ignited it. It hummed softly, blazing with a cold blue light.

She would fight. After all, what other choice did she have?

Eille drummed her fingers against her desk. She had been cooped up in her work room for a while now, hidden from the rest of the Temple of Science. Occasionally, she'd hear noise outside as people passed her door by, but mostly she ignored it. She had a task to finish, after all.

The orange spider-like equivalent of a black box sat in front of her, hooked to her own computer. She had it running decryption software ever since Master Quan-Jang had given her the thing, but so far she had found no way to understand the programming or decrypt the thing.

She was fairly sure that part of the problem was that it wasn't just the programming language that was alien to her—it was meant to respond in a language that was not spoken on Tython. Logically, the survivor of the crash ought to be able to understand it, but it seemed that he wasn't going to be an option in the nearest future.

So, back to square one. Eille sighed and took a sip of tea from the mug that had been faithfully sitting by her side for hours now. It tasted like drinking cold tar, to be truthful, but she had been letting her tea cool down to undrinkability for years now.

She didn't want to give up, but there was simply no progress. Unless she had some sort of an epiphany or the Force dropped a book describing the code in her lap, she would have to run decryption software day and night in hopes of stumbling on a solution.

She pushed herself away from her computer and slid off her chair. There was a point where determination became stupid stubbornness and one gained nothing but frustration. It seemed she had reached it.

And yet, she left the decryption software running when she marched out of the room.

Noortje had been ten when she first had held a blade. It had been a training sword, made of light wood and dulled, so the worse one could get from it were bruises. Later, she had to relearn the balance of a sword, once her teachers trusted her with a metal one.

And while the change to an energy blade came several decades after the last time, she was aware it was perfectly doable. Besides, she had not spent hours in a damp cold cave digging out a crystal only to give up.

She tuned out the others practicing. The training room was a large one, with mats on the floor and weapons on the walls—similar to so many others spread around the Temple of Martial Arts. A group of Pages was training under the watch of another Knight on the other side of the room.

Noortje ignited the blade and started her usual exercise routine, but slower than normally. The blade was so much lighter, and the crystal was almost a part of her. It was almost impossible to resist the urge to test her blade further, but Noortje was not going to hurry things.

The green blade hummed as she swung it in practiced arcs, changing pitch ever so slightly depending on the angle and speed. That would also take getting used to.

And then, just as she was starting to feel really confident someone on the opposite side of the training hall cried out in pain. Noortje whirled around, turning off the blade at the same time to see one of the Pages clutching a stump of an arm. A hand was lying a few steps away.

Well. That was fast, she thought, as she rushed towards the young wookiee.

Notes:

Changes so far:

- Given that so far Tython has no Dark Side-users, I decided that making Forcesabers activated by the Dark Side would make the whole thing too complicated. Plus, I'm not sure it'd work with how kyber crystals seem to work in new canon.

- Since I still don't know why Mace's lightsaber is purple, I decided to stick blue, green and yellow for the possible colours for lightsabers.

- Given what I've read in Ahsoka, I'm going to assume that bleeding kyber crystals had not been invented yet. It seems more like a Sith thing than a rakata thing anyway, since it's very much focused on corrupting something which belonged to your enemy and showing your dominance over them that way. So, no one gets a red crystal yet.

Temples:

- Kaleth = Temple of Knowledge

- Vur Tepe = The Forge