Inheritance


29.

This inner cave is Dark, in more than one sense. No sooner did I set foot into it than I felt the oppressive stillness of this chamber – and behind me, where Master Windu waits, the arrival of something else. A presence.

And with that presence there comes a change; the furled shadows within this vault stir, and rise in response, thunder brewing invisibly in the Force. I stumble as the Balance shifts, as the crystal fretted walls seem to melt into diaphanous curtains, the puppet-theater of dark vision.

Suddenly, I am both here and – impossibly, horribly – there.

The shallow film of water splashing beneath my feet reflects the dim light of the crystals embedded above, and yet it is also polished black plasteel, reflecting artificial constellations.

This cavern is a hollowed dome beneath Outer Gola's frigid wastes, and yet it is also the sculptured architecture of a generator core, another black cathedral, a different set of walls and buttresses.

The glint of mineral facets here and there, the drip of water from dangling stalactites is the solemn whisper of nature's edifice - and yet it is also the gleam of hatred in jaundiced eyes, the ragged pant of breath and pulse as the pitched battle unfolds.

My footsteps are my own, and also those of two others. The roar of silence in my ears is the warning thrum of four saber blades, a discordant chorus.

And the Dark… that is here and there at once, everywhere and nowhere, a nauseating chant drumming in soundless cacophony. I seem to make out the syllables, each one shaped by the heavy plop of a chill droplet into the puddle beneath: Kor-ah. Mah-tah. Kor -ah. Rah-tah-mah. The voice seems to well up from a bottomless pit, a shaft descending to the planet's mantle – but that pit is also a tiny nexus of malice in the cave's center, a group of misshapen, cancerous crystals standing like a forbidden isle amid the largest of the murky pools. This is the source of Darkness.

This is a thing I have not yet seen, nor felt, though I know what it is: a vergence in the Force, centered about a place. Here the Dark coils like a serpent about a warm stone, multiplying in every mirrored surface of the ithyll, insinuating itself beneath my skin, into thought and feeling. There is no Light…. And the suffocating absence is palpable, a vortex drawing all things toward a singularity. To think that a chunk of mineral – that maimed twist of crystal, looking like a goiter, its pale milky luminance a poisonous lantern, a false beacon – could be the locus of such power, such undiluted despair.

I cannot approach it. I cannot.

Nor can I tell where here ends and there begins, where now bleeds into then, into nightmare without waking. Sensation can be a liar, a deceiver: and yet the Force itself in this warped here, this twisted now, is also a liar. The Dark is a weaver of illusion, of falsehood, and here it has wrought a tapestry as complex and knotty as the blanket the Feorian crones bequeathed to me. I can feel my very breath and life compounded into its sinuous pattern, warp against weft, regret lashed to grief, memory to the weight of promise. It is a braid, too…a chain… a noose.

There is no emotion; there is peace. There is no passion; there is serenity. There is no ignorance; there is knowledge. There is no –

Kor-ah. Rah-tah-mah. Yood-ah. Kor -ah.

The laughter of the Dark takes on a shape and a place… without. In the chamber I have left behind. I struggle back, through the shallow gleaming water, across the slippery stretch of black floor. There – beyond the narrow barrier – it coalesces. A thing. A nothing. A gathering of shadows into substance, a nameless presence. A purple saber flashes into life before it, the violet flame forbidding further egress. And yet it does not stop, nor does it falter. And I know that this is the enemy, the jabuur-weki, the thing which is mere legend from another age.

As the Sith are mere legend from another age, tales told to make younglings shiver, a haunting echo of some horror long ago vanquished. The Sith are unreal, as the jabuur-weki is unreal, as fear and passion and death are unreal. The Dark laughs, mocking all such fragile boundaries, laying siege to the thin barrier between waking present and primordial nightmare. The jabuur-weki looms, awful, pitted against Light. Yet all I see is the Sith surging forward, leering, hungry for the kill.

And I am caught- behind the barrier – separated off – trapped.

The narrow gap through which I passed taunts me, its width seeming to shrink before my eyes to a razor's edge of red light, a pulsating veil of crimson. My breath ratchets into battle rhythm, memory flooding molten over the brink of awareness, an eruption of forgotten dread. On the other side of the gap, a violet saber spins, defiant. Or is it a green blade twisting and parrying, desperate? The Sith's murderous stave cuts a blinding swath of fire…the jabuur-weki bristles with blue lightning, a wrathful storm of clawing fingers reaching for its prey.

Kor-ah. Syahd-ho. Rah-tah-mah. Daan-yah.

The green blade blocks, feints, lunges, strikes. The purple 'saber sweeps, arcs, defends. Lightning spatters upon the walls and ceiling. The jabuur-weki shrieks in rage, its voice without place, without body, boiling in our blood, setting the Light afire with its outrage.

Kor-ah. Kee-lah. Daan-yah.

No. No. No. It will not be – not again. I stand transfixed when I must act. When I must banish the past and its visions, the Dark's tempting illusion, the hallucinations of despair.

Nyo-Hah, Kee-lah, Kor-ah, Rah-tah-mah.

There is no can or cannot, no try. There is only do. There is only what must be done.

I turn, away from the battle, away from the barrier, away from memory and present horror, away from the piercing howls of the formless monster.. There, behind me– the center, the source. I face it, though I cannot. My own blade leaps into life, and it is not mine. It is the emerald fire of that place, that time. It is defeat and victory, joy and sorrow, memory and promise. And its song rivals the wicked canticle of the Dark.

Syahd-ho. Honor. Kee-lah. Truth. Kor-ah. Peace. Rah-Tah-Mah. Light.

The clot of malformed crystals is a putrescence rotting in the bowels of this cave, of this world. Evil clings to it, turgid, viscous. One strike. One strike at the center, the source. The Dark pushes back, resistant, fearful, enraged – telling me that I cannot, that I should let go and fall into oblivion.

Kor-ah, Daan-yah, Rah-tah-mah, Kor-ah!

A soaring leap over the stretch of opaque water, the shallow lake. A single turn in midair, the turn of Fate's wheel complete on the downswing – there! The blade lands true and straight, driving through the center of the wretched mass, cleaving sickly pale rock to splintering shards, ending the chant, silencing the Dark.

It is not the first time I have done what I cannot do.

The jabbuur-weki wails; the saber screams; the cave explodes with light and obliterating fire; and I am slammed backward against unyielding stone, pierced by that merciless fleet lightning, crying out in my turn with pain - and there is no here or there, no present or past… only the Force.