CHAPTER 8: MORAI
Coruscant, the Jedi Temple
Despite being a mere Convor, Morai had been gifted by the Daughter with a greater understanding of things than should be possible for such a small avian. Not a perfect one, but one easily that of an intelligent sentient being.
With her essence empowering her and linking her to the Force, Morai felt a great darkness lurking at the heart of this bastion of the light, smothering it and afflicting the Daughter's champions.
Curious as to how this linked with Ahsoka's concerns and affected her mission to the past, the Convor flapped her wings and silently flew towards the wall of the Togruta's room, vanishing without a trace just as she would've impacted the plasteel wall-panels.
o.o.o.o.o
The moment Morai arrived in the Vergence Scatter, she squawked in surprise, colliding with a solid wall of fluffy white fur. Falling to the floor of the transparent pathway, Morai looked up, regarding the familiar face of Vitnir, Guardian of the Loth Wolves on the Council of the Cosmic Force.
"Doom," snarled Vitnir ominously, then shook her body vigorously as if the collision with Morai had made her fur wet.
Unable to speak herself, the Convor reached out to Vitnir, communicating her thoughts telepathically. {"Dume? What is the matter with Caleb?"}
"No, not Caleb Dume," Vitnir growled audibly. "Well, Caleb Dume too. His presence has left us, but his absence is merely a symptom of the larger problem. We are all in grave danger."
Caleb Dume was a Jedi Knight who, like the Daughter, had perished and become one with the Force—in this case a time-travelling Loth-Wolf. The Loth-Wolves had accepted him as one of their own and incorporated him into their pack.
Morai pushed off from the ground, hovering up in the darkness before Vitnir's snout. {"Caleb Dume's presence has left you? What does that mean?"}
Vitnir looked to the right, down the pathway to the past. "Guardian Bendu has summoned an emergency meeting of the Council, come."
{"This sounds ominous,"} Morai replied worriedly as she hovered alongside the Loth-Wolf.
"Indeed," Vitnir agreed. Her padded feet tapped softly on the ground as she jogged along, Morai swooping over her.
After more than ten minutes of running past-wards, the pair arrived at a portal that opened to a flowery meadow on Naboo, more than sixty years in the past from the point Morai had entered.
o.o.o.o.o.o
Naboo
47:8:11 BrS (84.7 BBY)
On this sunny day, if a passerby were to stumble upon this section of the Great Grass Plains, they would have observed a most peculiar gathering of creatures—and probably thought most were members of invasive species, whose presence threatened Naboo's fragile ecosystem.
Forming a large semi-circle were a variety of critters: a Convor (Morai herself of course), a Loth-Wolf, a Web Weaver Spider, a Vornskyr, a Corosian Phoenix, a bright green Mythosaur, a red-eyed Katarn, and, on the opposite end of the semi-circle from Morai, a type of Viverrid called a Bothawui Savrit Cat. This one in particular had purple fur and went by the name Veryk.
At the middle of all this madness, representing the center of the cosmic Force, was a three-meter tall ruminant creature with a humanoid face. Distinguishing his form was a shaggy red mane, brown and white fur, and pale dead eyes. This was the being known only as Bendu and Morai knew he was older and more experienced with the Force than the Celestials.
A fact Bendu liked to point out quite often.
"Young Morai, might I ask, what is the most important rule we have established as an organization?"
Morai spun her head around nearly 180º and faced him. {"Never allow the Jedi or Sith to know of our existence."}
"Yes," Bendu agreed solemnly. "Vitnir, your people allowed Caleb Dume and Ezra Bridger—"
"—Caleb Dume is one of us," Vitnir growled cautiously. "You allowed him to become one of us."
"Yes, I did," Bendu said with a dismissive hand wave. "More than that, I revealed myself to Caleb Dume. We made some exceptions for those two which were all agreed upon. Ahsoka on the other hand..."
{"I have been investigating the Ahsoka matter myself,"} Morai explained. {"But I have only just begun my observations, cautiously and from a distance. While Ahsoka knows of some of us individually, she does not know of the collective existence of our group, nor do the Jedi."}
"Do you really think allowing Ahsoka to make such a drastic change to the timeline is wise?" hissed Mirkgol, Guardian of the Web Weaver Spiders.
Veryk, the purple Savrit Cat, reached out to the council and broadcast his thoughts telepathically in a posh Core World accent. {"I believe Morai has been negligent in her handling of this entire situation. Balance in the Force depends partly on our ability to predict events. By throwing the timeline into chaos, whether or not Ahsoka is successful, she has disrupted the ability of this council to govern. I say we go to Krant and terminate Ahsoka's consciousness mid-transfer. Perhaps I could teach young Ahsoka how to resist the transfer. Her younger self should be more than capable of fighting the transfer as it happens, ending Ahsoka Tano's poorly-executed plan."}
"That's always your suggestion," screeched Taciform, the Council's resident Phoenix.
{"Are you listening to yourselves?"} Morai asked as calmly as she could.
A cacophony of howls, snarls, roars, squawks and angry chittering erupted as the Guardians of the Cosmic Force hurled accusations, insinuations, and thinly-veiled threats at each other. In the midst of their arguing, a dark circular hole with starry scenes of the Vergence Scatter formed beside the cluster of critters.
Out stepped what appeared to be a droid, Kohlen. In reality, the droid, a Kellenech Sentinel model from the Old Republic, was a puppet for a sentient Kyber crystal in the center of his chassis.
The group of organics stopped arguing for a moment and turned to the droid.
"I bear terrible news," Kohlen exclaimed in a monotone. He held up a sack, and gently set in on the ground. "While I searched through the centuries for Dume, I found Morai."
{"But I am right here!"} Morai replied, hooting indignantly at being accused of impersonation. She hovered up to the bag, opening it with her beak, then squawked in terror.
Within the bag was the body of a green Convor, hacked across the chest with a dark burn wound. Vitnir howled solemnly.
A wound caused by a lightsaber blade, Morai realized. It was the worst possible out-of-body experience.
"If Morai is in there, then who is she!" hissed Losko, the Mythosaur guardian of the Manda, the Mandalorian collective unconsciousness.
Bendu stepped up to Morai and looked down. "They are one in the same. At some point Morai will undoubtedly… Kohlen, when and where did you find her?"
"13 hours 54 minutes and 19 seconds, 13:4:17 GrS."
"Months before the Clone Wars began!" Vitnir gasped. "Who would want to kill Morai?"
"Palpatine," Bendu muttered, staring off into space in a trance. His dead white eyes suddenly became animated with the swirls of hyperspace. "Palpatine will kill you. But…"
Veryk's posh accent echoed around in the minds of the Guardians. {"An obvious solution occurs to me. It was evident to me that Palpatine is the one who becomes aware of us and had something to do with Dume's disappearance—"}
"—You little weasel," Vitnir snarled, flashing her teeth. "You picked Naboo. You picked this day…"
{"To make the decision all the easier,"} Veryk admitted, walking daintily around Vitnir's legs. He waved his long fluffy tail into the sky and bopped the Loth-Wolf on the nose. {"We are on Naboo, on the day Palpatine was born. If none of you are willing, I can sneak into Theed General hospital myself and smother baby Sheev under my furry belly."}
"That's not a bad idea," Mikgol admitted.
"A dishonorable idea…" Losko snarled. "Not to mention that the Nabooians will attempt to stop you, with lethal force if necessary."
Morai squawked angrily. {"Not a bad idea?! You will take the life of a still innocent child to save yourself?"}
{"His own father tried, did he not? And it's not myself I am worried about."} Veryk stepped playfully over Morai's body.
"THAT'S ENOUGH!" Bendu roared in a thunderous echo, clearly bothered by something beyond the petty argument over murdering Sidious in the cradle. "The more time we waste without knowing the full ramifications of Tano's actions and rambling on about the past, the more time there is for those changes to disrupt the cosmic balance of the Force. Let's move!"
Once again, a starry portal appeared in the middle of the bright blue Naboo day. Veryk and Vitnir stepped in, disappearing into the darkness.
Taking a deep hesitant breath, Morai fluttered her wings, flying towards the portal. Time travel is certainly going to kill me if I am not careful. Perhaps it will even if I am.
