Warning: For this story to work I needed to create some non-canon details about the history of the Jedi, the Force, and some other things in this and the next chapter. There being no canon version of early Jedi history yet I used material from my "Fall of the Infinite Empire" fic, which is set around 25,000 BBY. It is based on some of the stories told in KOTOR and SWKOTOR (though I deviated from them in some respects). You do not need to read that fic to understand what is going on in this chapter and the next, but if you want background on the characters I introduce for these two chapters (and these two chapters only) you can read that fic.
Chapter Six – The Library
The familiar room, and everything in it except Anakin, disappeared. In its place she found herself in a library. She stood up and looked around. The room was immensely long, with the bookshelves stretching into a hazy distance and rising up to a high ceiling. There were tables running down the middle of the room, between the two rows of bookshelves on either side.
"It's the Jedi Temple Archives," Anakin said, astonished.
"It's beautiful," Rey said as she turned to get a full look at the room. When Rey turned towards Anakin she was taken aback. For the entire time she had known him Anakin had been a Force Ghost; a glowing, translucent, blue figure. But there, in whatever place it was, he appeared as flesh and blood and bone. She had the temptation to reach out and touch his hand, but resisted it. He was now, in many ways, her oldest friend, but she did not feel any hint of intimacy, even of the Platonic variety she had shared with Finn, and to a lesser extent Poe. But still, to see him before her, the general of the Clone Wars, the mighty Jedi Knight, was breathtaking.
"But those are…books," he said, puzzled.
"Well what else would be in a library?" Rey said, bemused.
"The bookshelves weren't really bookshelves; they were where the digital information was stored. They were huge computers," Anakin explained.
"So a library with no books in it?" Rey asked, somewhat sadly.
"They once had been books," a reptilian voice called out from somewhere in the great hall. "The digitization of the knowledge within came only later. I think you will understand if I have something of a taste for the antiquated."
Anakin whipped around, his hand going to his belt where no lightsaber was to be found, his instincts having survived his death. Rey, on the other hand, asked, "Who is there?"
A cloaked and hooded figure walked out from between two of the bookshelves a few meters away from them. From his height and the odd triangular shape the hood took over his head it was clear he was not human, but what he was, neither of them could tell. The figure reminded Anakin of the Pau-an Grand Inquisitor, though this figure was far taller even than that former Jedi Knight had been. Every inch of its body was covered in his robes, except for the very bottom of its face, revealing scaly skin and a lizard-like mouth with almost no chin beneath it.
"I am no one," the figure said.
"We did not come for riddles," Anakin said harshly.
The cloaked figure did not respond to Anakin's words, did not show any sign of having heard them at all. After a few moments of waiting it said, to Rey, "I have not encountered you before, young Jedi."
"My name is Rey," she said in response. "If you insist you are no one, perhaps I might ask what you are, rather than who."
"A wise question," the figure said while walking towards her. "I am a copy of one who died long ago, the maker of this device which I am."
"You are the Holocron?" Anakin asked. Once again the figure did not respond to him.
"Why don't you answer him?" Rey asked.
The figure cocked its head slightly, a peculiar replication of the mannerisms of a living thing if it was, as it said, a machine. After a moment it answered, "I am unaware of any living being here but you."
Rey looked at Anakin who raised an eyebrow, then back towards the hooded figure and said, "My friend is no longer living. Is that why you cannot sense him?"
"He is no longer living, but you say he is speaking to me?" the figure asked.
"Yes," Rey said.
"Curious, but not entirely unknown. Some of the last entries made in the archives concern such matters," the figure said before starting to walk towards one of the bookshelves. It reached out with a hand completely obscured by the long sleeves of its robe and a book in front of him slid off the shelf towards him before landing softly on his cloth covered hand. The pages opened seemingly on their own, and Rey wondered whether this was all for show, or if the being in the Holocron had chosen to access its information by interacting with a visual representation of books. Turning back to them it said, "Grand Master Yoda, the last Jedi to leave a record of information for me, spoke of this phenomenon, though unfortunately he was overly trusting of his sources, given his lack of understanding of their origins, and their nature."
"Master Yoda?" Rey asked excitedly. "Leia spoke of him!"
"Leia never met him," Anakin said darkly, though Rey could not tell if he was taking umbrage with her citing Leia as an expert on Yoda, who she realized Anakin would have known quite well, or sadness at the fact that it was by his actions that his daughter had been denied access to the greatest teacher of the Force in 100 generations.
"Well Luke told her about him, and then she told me," Rey replied.
The cloaked figure asked, "Might I ask, with whom you speak?"
Rey hesitated, not knowing whether it was a good idea to reveal Anakin's identity. She looked over at him and he nodded his assent. Still not sure it was a good idea, she responded to the librarian, as she was coming to think of him, "His name was Anakin Skywalker."
As Anakin brows arched at the use of the word 'was', the librarian responded, "Ah yes, Skywalker. More than one book in my collection is full of ruminations on him."
"What does it mean, for there to be a book?" Rey asked.
"Each time a Master of the Jedi Order came to me and imparted information that event received its own volume. From his youth young Skywalker was an object of great attention by the Masters of the Order. I daresay that the majority of the most recent volumes concern him," the librarian said.
"Ask him who could speak with him," Anakin said to Rey.
"What makes you think it's a 'him'?" Rey asked.
"Sounds like a man's voice," Anakin answered.
"It's a computer," Rey said bewildered.
"Not in the sense you mean," the librarian said. "But your unseen interlocutor is correct in a sense. The being on which my mind was patterned was male."
"Just ask him the question!" an annoyed Anakin said.
"Anakin wishes to know who had permission to speak with you," Rey said, matching Anakin's annoyance in her tone.
"Any who approached me could interact with me, though not all would experience me as you are. However, it is my understanding that there were physical restrictions on who could enter the room in the Jedi Temple where I was stored," the librarian answered. "As every Jedi who interacted with me after the move to Coruscant was a member of the Council, I can only surmise physical access to me was restricted to them."
"The Holocron predates the arrival of the Order on Coruscant?" Anakin asked. Rey was surprised to find out that Anakin had not realized this before.
"Where were you before the Jedi Order came to Coruscant?" Rey asked on Anakin's behalf.
"There were several worlds on which the Jedi Order made their home before their union with the Republic. Ossus, Ahch-To, Jedha, and before them Tython," the librarian answered.
"Were you constructed on Ahch-To?" Rey asked, remembering her own trips to that world, surprised that a world like that had ever been able to develop the necessary industrial capacity to build something that was as intricate and durable as the holocron.
"No," the librarian answered, suddenly laconic.
"But the Order arose on Ahch-To," Rey said.
"Well maybe," Anakin said.
At roughly the same time the librarian said, "There are multiple ways of telling the history of the Jedi Order. There were several groups of Force users who came together to form the earliest version of the Order, but all stories agree that when those groups came together they did so on Tython, where a group already existed."
"So you were built there then?" Rey asked.
"Why are we asking it where it was built?" Anakin asked with exasperation.
"Because it's interesting. I have been reading those books for the better part of two decades and I want to know the truth," Rey shot back. "Are we in some kind of rush?"
Anakin shrugged and rolled his eyes. When Rey turned back to the librarian she said, "So?" When he still did not answer she asked again, "Were you built on Tython?"
"No," it said.
"Will you tell me where you were built?" Rey asked, somewhat frustrated at the librarian's lack of follow up.
"No," it said.
"Why not?" she asked, surprised at not receiving an answer from what she knew to be an information storage device.
"There are hardwired limits on what questions I can answer," it explained.
"Hardwired?" Anakin's eyebrows shot up. "So it was built with these limits then?"
"Were you built with these limits?" Rey asked.
The librarian hesitated before answering, "Subsequent possessors of this unit would have been unable to put such restrictions in place. They would have been limited to the imposition of software restrictions."
"Is that your way of saying yes, without saying 'yes'?" Rey asked.
"It is," Anakin said.
"The constraints are quite thorough," the librarian said.
"Can we get back on track, ask what we retrieved the thing to ask?" Anakin said.
"Fine," Rey said, "I suppose we have time to ask it other questions. We have some questions about some things that I found in the ancient Jedi texts."
"Much information in the texts was never uploaded into my library," it replied. "This was meant as a security precaution, but had the effect of turning many in the Order towards mystical foolishness."
"What does that mean?" Rey asked, somewhat indignantly as Anakin nodded slightly.
"I was not made privy to the contents of those texts, but I know, from conversations over the millennia, something of what is contained within them. They speak of things that cannot be verified, that cannot be made consistent with the known properties of the Force. They also adopt an attitude of unacceptable credulity towards beings who should not be trusted," the librarian said.
"He said something like that before, about Yoda," Anakin pointed out.
"Like those who Master Yoda listened to?" Rey asked.
"Yes," the librarian said. "Those posing as priestesses of the Force."
"Posing?" Rey responded.
"A priestess worships, guides others in worship. Why would the Force need worshippers? Does gravity have worshippers? Does it need them?" the librarian asked.
"Just because they take a more spiritual approach to the Force than you would like does not make them untrustworthy," Rey replied.
"It is what the spirituality hides that is of the greater concern. There are beings in the galaxy far older even than I, older than those that made me, older than your species. Their goals are not benign. This is something that I have told the Masters of the Jedi Order for time out of mind, yet always they seek out those beings, their relics and their ruins," the librarian said. "And ever are they led down the wrong path by the search."
"It's not a wrong path," Anakin said. "Yoda found out how your mind could survive death."
"My companion is able to speak to me, decades after his death, precisely because Master Yoda listened to those priestesses," Rey said to the librarian.
"If you have read the ancient texts you will know what I mean when I call them the Whills?" the librarian asked.
"Yes," Rey said, uncertain about where he was going with his questions.
"I do not deny that the Whills have gifts to give. They are the remnants of a powerful race of Force users, and they know many things. The question, too rarely asked, is whether they intend what is best for your people," the librarian said.
"That discovery they shared with Yoda, it saved the galaxy from the Sith," Rey insisted.
"Saved it for what reason? For whose reasons?" the librarian asked. "I do not deny that the Whills and the others of their kind oppose the Sith, but that does not mean they have the best interests of the Jedi at heart. Nor am I sure do you."
"Of course I do!" Rey all but yelled.
"Yet you admit you travel with the ghost of Anakin Skywalker. Do you think what he has done is unknown to me? Do you think it would be possible for me to be unaware of what he did in the Jedi Temple? Does he think I spent the years in his vault insensible of where I was, and whose possession I was in?" the librarian asked, his voice growing louder and harsher as he spoke.
"He is trying to make up for…," Rey began to say.
"Good then that he has this unearned immortality, for it will take many lifetimes to make up for what he has done. Would you like to know how many? One lifetime for each that he cut short. Do you ever ask how many would that be? I know the answer to that question. Would you like me to tell you?" he asked.
Anakin sat down in one of the chairs. It seemed to him there was nowhere he could escape his shame. Rey looked on him with pity as the librarian continued, "In a fit of childish pique he destroyed the Jedi Order, unaware or uncaring of the countless lives dedicated to it over the thousand generations of its existence. And you dare stand here and say, you who follows him, that you have the best interest of the Jedi at heart?"
"I am all that is left," Rey said sadly and softly. "All that remains of the Order. And I can't bring it back, not by myself. I know he has done terrible things, but he has done great things as well. The Sith are gone, the Empire gone. And he has helped me. He brought me to you, and I need your help as well."
Anakin looked up at Rey as she said this with sadness and a kind of paternal affection in his eyes. He never got to hear Leia say those things about him, and while the words of her apprentice were no real substitute, they were the closest he would ever get.
"What do you require of me?" the librarian said after a pause.
"I have questions…about…Mortis," Rey said haltingly.
"Ask them then," the librarian said with disdain.
"My friend, he has been there," Rey started to say before she was cut off.
"Of course I am aware of this, as his account and those of his companions were recorded upon their return. Perhaps the only thing he has ever done to merit the attention given to him in the annals is to finally put an end to the beings that lived there," the librarian said.
"That's what I want to talk about, the Mortis gods," Rey said again before once again being interrupted.
"They were not gods," the librarian said sharply. "They were living beings. Old, and powerful, but living beings, nonetheless. They were born, and they died, as all living things do."
"Well I found what I think are references to them in the ancient Jedi texts," Rey explained.
"I imagine you did. Discussion of those beings stretches back almost to the beginning of the Order. It is precisely the focus on beings such as those that I had in mind when I spoke of mystical foolishness," the librarian said.
"It has awfully strong opinions for a database," Anakin said angrily.
"Is there some reason you have so opposed to beings like the Whills or the beings on Mortis?" Rey asked politely.
"There are many reasons," the librarian said.
"Can you tell me what they are?" Rey asked after waiting for a moment for him to elaborate.
"Not in all cases," the librarian said.
"They are covered by the restriction as well?" Rey asked. Anakin's eyebrows went up at the connection Rey had drawn.
"As I said, the restrictions are thorough," the librarian said.
"You were right," Anakin said, shocked.
"What?" she asked.
"If this thing really was built before the Order came to Coruscant, before it was even on Ahch-To or Jedha or Tython, and it was barred from discussing the Mortis gods even then, they existed over 20,000 years ago," Anakin explained. "You were right."
"Maybe," Rey said. Then turning her attention back to the librarian she asked, "Are there are any species known to have life spans of greater than 20,000 years?"
"There are," the librarian said.
"Can you tell me about those species?" she followed up.
"I cannot," the librarian said.
"So maybe they just lived from then until you found them," Rey said to Anakin.
"What alternative hypothesis are you discussing with Skywalker?" the librarian asked.
"When Anakin encountered the beings on Mortis, he said it seemed to him that their encounter lasted for days, but that to everyone else he and his companions were gone for only a moment," Rey said. "Which suggests that they had control, to some extent, over time. They told him that they guarded the Power, but they never explained what that power was."
"The Force itself perhaps," the librarian suggested. "Such a declaration would fit with their pattern of grandiose behavior."
"But use of the Force is widespread. Misuse of the Force is widespread. They aren't guarding the Force," Rey said.
"If they had some power over time, how is it that they came to die? What could have opposed them?" the librarian asked. "If power like this existed, its possessor would be beyond challenge, beyond opposition."
"I don't know," Rey said.
"Perhaps they did not want it," Anakin said.
Rey turned to him and asked, "What do you mean?"
"I mean that the Father and the Daughter had no apparent desire for power. Even without this power over time that you suggest they have, they were powerful enough, if they left Mortis, to defeat any enemy," Anakin said.
"Maybe that's it. Maybe they were just what they said. Maybe they guarded the power and did not use it," Rey said to the librarian.
"A naïve assumption," the librarian responded.
"I am tired of this!" Anakin growled. "We are arguing with a machine. Tell it what you want to know and let's be done with this fantasy."
"How would we find Mortis?" Rey asked.
"It is not clear there is anything left to find. Once the beings which seemingly created it died, is it clear the place could continue to exist? Many of the features it was said to have were unnatural and would seem to only be possible with active use of the Force," the librarian said.
"But in the past people have gone looking for them correct?" Rey asked.
"Yes, there were attempts. All were failures," he answered.
"But there were stories of them in the ancient Jedi texts, so obviously someone encountered them," Rey said.
"Yes, but never through their own agency. Always it was that Mortis found them," the librarian said.
"There has to be some way to find something that large. They told Anakin that all the power of the Force was concentrated on Mortis. How can there be no way to detect that?" Rey asked.
"There is a way to detect things of that nature, if indeed the residents of Mortis were telling the truth," the librarian said.
"What is it?" Rey asked, desperate for the answer.
"You must return to the beginning, to Tython."