Redemption – A Jedi’s Trial

Redemption – A Jedi’s Trial

Bodega IV, some 3000 years BBY...

Was I going to die now? I wasn’t sure. But knew I would face the challenge of my life today and only the Force would decide if I lived through it.

The air was unusually cold, odd for a world whose landmasses were dominated by humid swamps, marshes and jungles. Stripped to the waist, I sat under the tree I had known much of my life and waited. An uncommon storm had torn the leaves from its branches but the old tree stood defiant as ever. A small winged swamp-lizard chirped and hopped urgently from one perch to another.

I gazed across at the bridge that spanned the river I once played in as a boy. The stretch of dry land beyond was where I once called home. The village was gone now, reclaimed by the natural order of things. Despite my training attachments of my former life were still firmly etched into my mind.

The swamp-lizard whistled a long shrill note.

“The storm has taken your nest, my friend,” I said as I watched it. “Go and build a new life.”

It looked at me for a moment and then flew away.

After a time I stood. Taking the spade that leaned against the tree I continued the task at hand. I had only just finished when I saw him. Across the river he was still some distance away but I knew it was him. His stride was unmistakable. He moved like the tide, powerful and relentless. Deadly.

Leaving my robes, I took my lightsaber and walked down to meet him. Tension crept into my body like a thief as I approached the bridge and I fought for calm. Halfway across, I waited. He stopped two strides from me and took a devil-lotus flower from the sleeve of his robe. It was the same flower I had sent to him days before. Cut by my own hand, and with my own blade.

“I knew it was you,” he said. He rolled the stem between his fingers studying it with an expert eye. “Still trying to be one with the Force, eh Rajen? The cut has power and intelligence. But it lacks passion.” The disdain in his voice was obvious as he casually tossed the flower to my feet. “Passion comes first. Had you mastered that the cut would have been perfect. You have forgotten what you learned as a Sith. Passion, strength, power. Then you will have victory. You will break your chains and you will be unstoppable!” His eyes narrowed and he smiled a carnivore’s smile. “Like me.”

He looked me in the eye, testing me. Not many could hold his stare. The intensity of his amber gaze was physically painful. But although my eyes burned, I drew on the Force and held my centre. I did not flinch.

To my surprise it was he who broke contact. “Well,” he said with an irritated jerk of his bull-neck. “Have you nothing to say to your own brother after all these years?”

At the memories of the tortures I suffered at his hands anger and fear threatened to flood through me and I could feel my face contort with the effort to maintain my control. “I’m here to help you, Rade. Come back with me. Turn away from the Dark Side.”

My voice was little more than a whisper but my words were deafening to me. His contemptuous laughter was louder still.

“Help me? You fool. Open your eyes. You’re being manipulated. The Jedi Order has sent you here to kill me.” He sneered. “Hah! They sent a Padawan to kill me.” He shook his head in disbelief. “What have they offered you? Is this to be your trial to Knighthood?”

Slowly I shook my head. “This is for you, Rade. And for me.” My face was passive now, my eyes locked onto his. “I have come to save you.”

He nodded slowly, weighing my words. “Very well. I understand now. You've come here to die.”

We stood, outwardly calm and motionless, each taking the measure of the other. I could feel the power of his will channelling the Force like an unseen storm as he sought to dominate my spirit. And like a storm, his power was almost irresistible. But, though he showed no reaction, I knew he was surprised to find my own connection and knowledge of the Force was almost as strong as his.

Minutes passed as we each sought the advantage in our invisible duel. With systematic precision he shut down each of my psychic attacks but likewise I blocked his every riposte. I could feel the anger that fuelled his power like waves of heat. I gave myself up to the Force. My mental fortress held strong.

Abruptly it ended. My eyes opened and I caught a glimpse of his furious aura. It shimmed around his form, covering him like demonic armour. The wooden planks where he stood were burnt and smouldering. We were too evenly matched in the psychic arena and now he knew what I had anticipated; this fight would be concluded with blades.

Rade smiled like a vornskr as he removed his cloak revealing the garb of a Sith warrior beneath. It was scarred and fire blackened. The sight of it on him sickened me and he took full advantage of my reaction. His lightsaber was flashing toward me before I had even drawn my blade. But somehow it was deflected away as I drew, parried and counter-attacked in one fluid movement; a perfect demonstration of Form V; Djem So.

I was good. In fact, I was a master of Djem So.

But he was better.

He spun in a full circle blocking my counter-strike, twisting around my blade and using my momentum against me. A solid wall of Force energy smashed into my jaw like a mace, destroying my stance. I staggered back shaking the stars from my vision as blood filled my mouth.

“Pathetic!” he yelled tossing his cloak aside. “You move like a pregnant bantha. Never turn your back on your opponent unless you know where he will be.” Again, he was the teacher and I was the student.

He lowered his weapon and paced in front of me. In stark contrast to my own sun-yellow blade, his once pure crimson lightsaber was now shrouded in an oily film of darkness. Only the edges shed light, glowing red like a bloody eclipse. The blade hissed and spat like a barely controlled volcano.

“You’re a fool, brother,” he raged. “You think you can defeat me? I have mastered the forms and I can sense your movements before you make them.”

My next attack was better. Though my strongest form, I knew I couldn’t defeat him with Djem So. He was just too powerful. Instead, I flowed into Form VI; Niman. I feinted left, then right, then left again before slashing diagonally upward from hip to collar bone. But he swayed back and my blade whispered across his jacket with less effect than a summer breeze.

His response was Teras Kasi, brutal and effective. His heel thundered into me with a perfect side-kick that lifted me from my feet and broke precisely the three ribs that he intended. I rolled and his blade followed, sweeping down in a lethal crimson arc. The corrupt blade cut a trail of black ash and red sparks through the air like a burning brand. I barely evaded one strike which cut through a length of railing timber as thick as my leg, leaving the severed ends scorched and smoking.

I channelled the Force deep into my core to limit the pain and damage to my ribs, and suddenly it was all I could do to block and evade blow after blow as he shifted into the ultra-aggressive Form VII; Juyo.

Our blades met, each time with the thunderous crack of a lightning bolt. Again and again. My life now hinged on my knowledge of Form III; Soresu, as I retreated into the most defensive of all the lightsaber forms. And as the seconds stretched into minutes I felt I was being swallowed whole by the Dark Side he emanated like a furnace. Unable to breathe, I was suffocating but at last, I managed to back away from him. Exhausted, I was bleeding and burned from a score of shallow cuts.

But he too paused for breath and did not press his advantage. “They taught you well, I’ll give you that. But you still stink of Jedi naivety.” The air around his lightsaber shimmered as if straining to avoid contact with the poisonous blade.

My brain was racing to establish an effective strategy. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

He ignored my words. “Your mind is strong but your weaknesses are displayed for all to see. You’ve spent too much time in meditation and not enough with your blade.” He considered for a moment, regarding me as I stood panting for breath. “Even mother would have given me more sport…”

At the thought of my mother my control snapped and I attacked again. I knew he was manipulating me but I didn’t care. “You abandoned her and she died when they came!”

Cutting, slashing, stabbing, I was a whirlwind of destruction, my body acting of its own accord. My movements improvised from pure instinct, I was in the heart of Niman, the so-called ‘Diplomat’s Form’. Sometimes thought to be a weaker form, its true power lay in its unpredictability. Limited only by the imagination and innate ability of the practitioner, it was free from any preconceived routes of movement. A true master of Niman knew its potential power was virtually infinite.

But I had made a grave error. With every strike my sun-yellow blade crackled and flared in conflict with the energy of the Dark Side that I was drawing in. The solari crystals that powered my weapon were said to only respond to the Light Side of the Force. My lightsaber was failing. I had to draw back from my aggression at the risk of losing my only hope of standing against him.

The ferocity of my attack had taken him by surprise, though. And yet, he had still parried my every effort to break through his defences. “I read your rage like a scholar reads a parchment,” he hissed as he ducked under a wild slash. His blade flicked out and cut my leg above the knee before I could retreat. “Use it, brother. It can save you. It is your only hope of defeating me.”

“I didn’t come here to defeat you,” I yelled. “I came to help you!” I struck out at his throat. A feint. I spun low into a sweeping kick clipping his feet from under him. Yet even as he fell I was pulled down with him as he used the Force to ruin my backward leap. Instantly, he locked my arm and I felt a lightning pain as he dislocated my shoulder with an audible crack.

“I made you strong!” he roared as I shrieked in pain. I lurched into the air as he used the Force to push me away only to be slammed down again into the bridge as he reversed the manoeuvre. “But even when they brought me in to supervise your training you failed to fully grasp the power of the Dark Side. You have potential but you are weak. You could be powerful but still you resist.” His look was one of utter contempt. “And your resistance cost me. That I could not even turn my own brother to the Dark was a weakness in me. It is a failure I have waited a long time to correct.”

I rolled painfully over and tried to stand. “I don’t care, Rade. You’ll never make me turn,” I wheezed. “Mother would have hated what you have become. She died defending the Light.” I was weeping now.

“Our mother was nothing, Rajen,” he growled, a feverish glint in his eye. “She was weak. She was a traitor and didn’t deserve to live.”

I must have looked a pathetic figure as I stared up at him. “A traitor? You’re insane...”

His slap almost rendered me unconscious. “You idiot. You’re not hearing me. Our mother was no Jedi, Rajen. She was Sith!”

“No! That’s not true...” I stammered.

“Yes, it is! You know it is. But in the end she was too weak. She murdered our father and fled the Sith because of that weakness. That is why we were always running. That is why I left and returned to the Empire claiming my birthright as a Sith warrior.” His aura blazed with that terrifying demonic fury and he hauled me upright. “That is why she had to die, Rajen.”

He pulled me closer, his lips to my ear, and he whispered the words he knew would break me. “That is why I killed her.”

My world spun. “What? No! That’s impossible. You couldn’t have. I was there. I saw it. It was a Sith commander who...” He shoved me back and I struggled to stay standing.

“It was I who commanded the raid against our village. And I was that warrior who took her head from her shoulders. I did it gladly. And I revelled in it, Rajen. I drank that moment for the power it gave me!” He raised his black-red blade. “And now, I drink in this moment.”

A blurring rush of images clashed in my mind. My mother’s face. Our home on Bodega IV. My brother and I in happier times hunting frog-slugs together in the marshes. My sister, Heresy, who later died in a Sith training camp soon after we were both captured. All these images, and the headless body of my mother, lying at the feet of the helmeted Sith who took her from me. Lying at the feet of my brother.

My pain and sorrow were overwhelming and I hated with a power I had never experienced. The energy of a star was nothing to the power of the rage I felt at that moment, and I knew then I was staring into the abyss of the Dark Side. Balanced on the very edge of reason, the Light Side seemed very cold and so very far away. The Dark Side beckoned like a lover’s caress.

I was tempted. Oh, but I was tempted.

I can’t say what ultimately guided me away from the darkness but I like to believe it was my mother watching over me. In that instant, in a state of perfect balance between Light and Dark, all the pain and sorrow that had been a part of me from the day I saw my mother die was gone. It shed itself from me like an old skin. I realised then, it was all wasted emotion.

I breathed the simple truth of this knowledge.

My mother and sister were one with the Force now so I mourned only for myself. My brother’s choices were his to make, not mine, and yet I had cried selfish and childish tears for his loss. It was self-pity I had dragged with me from the swamps of my homeworld. It was useless and self-destructive emotion. It was not the way of a Jedi. And I would have no part of it any longer.

For that instant, I stood in perfect accord with the universe. For me there was no emotion, only peace. No longer was I ignorant, for I had gained in knowledge. I felt no passion but a transcending serenity. I understood the chaos now as harmony. Because there simply was no death, there was truly, only the Force.

In that perfect state I was one with the Force. And then without anger, without doubt, without fear, I struck.

An instant later, my brother lay on the decking of the bridge. The corrupted red blade of his lightsaber sputtered and died, his dismembered hand still curled around its hilt. His legs were cut out from under him at mid-thigh and a smoking two inch hole was burned through his sternum.

His face still registered the shock of what was an impossible manoeuvre. I knelt and lifted him slightly, resting his head on my lap. Only his tremendous will and knowledge of the Force was keeping him alive now.

“I’m sorry, Rade,” I said, simply. “This was not what I wanted.”

He blinked and the darkness behind his eyes was replaced by light. “Nothing... to be sorry for, little brother. Forgive me...” He smiled with blood on his lips. “Should have known... you’re no Padawan.” He breathed in sharply and his face creased with pain. “You always were... the strong one. May the... Force...” He coughed, then. And he died.

For some time, I sat with him and breathed in time to the life-pulse of the jungle as I felt his spirit leave. Gradually, the incredible union I felt with the Force faded. But not entirely. I was changed now, and forever would I feel this connection. I knew it would be there when I needed to call on it again. I felt reborn.

I found the devil-lotus on the bridge decking, miraculously still intact, and tucked the stem into my belt. A wave of dizziness almost overcame me when I realigned my dislocated shoulder. With effort I gathered Rade’s body and carried him back to the old tree. By the time I reached it the pain from my shattered ribs was mind numbing. I lowered him into the hole I had prepared and filled it. Pulling the flower from my belt, I placed it on my brother’s unmarked grave.

“May the Force be with you, brother. Always.”

I settled down to meditate for a time, to heal and diffuse the pain. A high-pitched trilling brought my head up and I realised hours must have passed. It was dark and raining, and I was soaked. I looked up to see the winged swamp-lizard had returned. Tilting its head, it watched me curiously. Chirping one final time it hopped off the branch, spreading its wings and speeding off in search of a new home.

I watched it disappear into the jungle. “You’re right my friend,” I said to the creature. “It’s time for me to do the same.”

Epilogue

“You found what you were seeking.” It was not a question. Master Girus’ words were simply noting a fact. But I nodded anyway.

“I did. I am changed.”

“You have grown, Rajen. You have touched the Force as few ever will. And now that you have, does the mantle of ‘Knight’ still sit awkwardly on your shoulders?”

Again I nodded. “Even more so than before, Master. Now I feel I have only just begun to understand the Force.”

“Excellent, Jedi Rajen.” A rare smile found its way to Girus’ lips. “Now, you truly understand what it is to be a Jedi; we have all only just begun.”

There is no emotion, there is peace
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge
The is no passion, there is serenity
There is no chaos, there is harmony
There is no death, there is the Force