Chapter 27
Milaea
The swirl of energies beneath the temple never sat right with her. Soryu had often brought her and Sofa down here, to teach them how the living force could flow in different ways to what they might typically expect. Still it felt unnerving…but perhaps that was actual nerves given this was her final trial.
There were five trials, skill, courage, spirit, flesh and insight. On Sofas advice, her battle on Cygrat had been permitted to count for her test of skill, on Valens the events on Vyth had counted for her test of courage and flesh, the Grand Master had personally congratulated her on being an “example of firmness and commitment to the Code for all Jedi to aspire to” - because, in his words she was “ridding the galaxy of a dangerous and malign cult”.
She wasn’t sure she liked that, in spite of Valens and Sofa’s effort she still felt that what had happened on Vyth had been…not very Jedi like…but if it was Jedi like...she wasn’t sure she wanted anything more to do with them. She would wonder about that another time.
Here beneath the temple she was to face her test of Insight and Spirit, the first tested her ability to evaluate the truth of a situation through the deceptions of your own bias and point of view, the second tested you against the darkness within yourself, to look into the mirror of your own spirit.
The second part scared her…her dreams were becoming more and more real, like memories, her panic at the things she could do without even thinking about it, at the power she could wield…was growing. Twice she had almost torn a room apart without conscious effort….
She feared what she would find in too precise a mirror.
She put those thoughts aside as she crawled through a narrow rocky opening deeper into the caverns, she had to step up to being a Jedi. She followed the threads of the shatter point deep into the caverns, past ancient shrines, covered in old runes and hieroglyphs...
It seemed an endless collection of the dust of ages…manifestations of an endless cycles of construction and destruction….
“For what” asked herself as she past a mummified corpse surrounded by archaic symbols…no one now remembered who this was, why they had died, what they had believed….what had it all achieved?
After what seemed like days…perhaps it was…she found a line…the thinnest of shatter point threads leading her to the small altar, upon it a partially fractured glowing red pyramid the size of her hand. A Sith holocron.
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She could feel the dark power seething off of it, she felt like she was walking straight into a plasma leak. This had to be it. As she stepped beside it she gazed down and caught her reflection on two sides of the red pyramid.
Her face worried, apprehensive, began to shift…she touched her face to see if it was really happening - the mirror image of her hand didn’t appear on the holocron, on the right reflection her face became more confident, determined….sensual… on the left more grave, serious, older…wise.
“Quite a sight isn’t it,” the voice startled her, she flicked on her lightsabre and entered into a defensive stance without even thinking, searching for the speaker.
“That won’t do you much good,” a red glow suffused above the holocron showing the aged face of a long dead Sith Lord, pale red skin, face tendrils typical of the sith species itself.,
“Not much use at all Little Jedi,”
“Who are you,” she asked as she switched off the amethyst blade.
The holocron phantom chuckled…
“A shade, a memory of a man long dead…nothing more than this… Lord Yncrara…in the Service of the Sith Emperor…Vitiate you’d know him as if you need a name”
Now she knew this was her test…to be tempted by this Sith, to confront the desires of her spirit, to see through the lies of the Sith.
“So…” she relaxed a little now she knew what this was all about, “Are you going to try and tempt me with more visions of power and dark glory?”
“I didn’t create that vision…but you’re right that is the typical thing to do isn’t it,” he said somehow sensing her thoughts, she didn’t fully understand how holocrons worked, but knew they were more than just a virtual interface, they were a living part of their creator, imbued with consciousness and powers.
“offer you some kind of dark power, we chat a little, you see through my lies, face your desires and so forth…and go back a good well tested Little Jedi” he sighed,
“I’ve done it a hundred times…and I’m tired of it…all the Jedi they send down here the same…except for that man…he was something else…” his dead transparent eyes looked her over,
“He was like you…or you’re like him perhaps…interesting…but he didn’t pretend to be a Jedi…you seem to believe you are one…”
“You won’t make me doubt myself,” she replied,
“No…you do enough of that yourself,”
She felt a sudden stab of fear, that hit too close to the mark for her liking
He smiled at her sensing her emotion…but it wasn’t a manipulative smile…it was wise and sympathetic, like a grandparent might smile as they encouraged a child before a speech or exam.
“Are you going to be afraid of yourself your whole life Little Jedi?” he asked
“I’m not afraid,” she replied
“No…then why do you hold yourself back?”
“I…” she struggled to answer, then it struck her, “I refuse to use my powers to dominate and control others like the Sith do,” she replied
“That wasn’t what I asked and you know it….”
“You’re not a typical Sith are you,” she tried to change the subject
“What is a typical Sith…ah Little Jedi all you know of Sith is what the Jedi have taught you…more’s the pity you might all learn something…but back to the topic, do you intend to live afraid of your own potential?”
“You want me to use my power for selfishness, power,”
“No Little Jedi I never asked what to use your power toward, I only ask why you fear your own potential,”
Her face wrinkled with annoyance and confusion…what was the right answer to this…
“It’s your life Little Jedi, you tell me the answer…” again he could read her thoughts as easily as a datapad…”I can sense the surface, but not what lies below it…” he added to her thoughts…
“I guess…” she began, “because it frightens me, the things I can do…the dreams…its…not what I’m meant to be…and I’m afraid…I’m afraid I’ll go too far…hurt someone I care about…do something terrible…”
He smiled at her again
“And you think you’re less likely to do these things by ignoring it, by letting it come out unbidden when you’re emotional rather than learning the source, the truth of your power and how to control it,”
“ha, sounds pretty silly doesn’t it,” she laughed, it was just what Soryu had told her, what Odjina had told her, what Sofa had told her…all the advice she had never followed…but none of them…none of them had truly understood the depth of her power like she did.
“It does…but you’re…well the current you….is young…don’t be afraid of yourself Little Jedi…explore what you can do…and then…then choose how you want to use that power…”
“You’re not going to tell me to use it to conquer the universe?”
“No Little Jedi, I’ve…I’ve had a long time to think…to reflect on many things…glory, conquest, charity, self-sacrifice, justice…they don’t mean much when you’re dead…they just take from you when you’re alive…life…life is all we have…” he looked down at the fractures along his holocron
“even if it’s just a shadow…”
She had almost forgotten she was talking to a Sith Lord for a moment…
“Then why do you want to die?” she picked up on some of his thoughts this time
“I died a long time ago in truth…the last flickering ember of what was a blazing inferno of life…it’s my time, the other one like you, he knew…but he saw I’d be needed once more…now I can see that too,”
She knew what the holocron would ask of her,
“I…I can’t…I don’t want to…” she couldn’t kill…even this shade…she had made enough mistakes on Vyth…mistakes that could never be taken back…she didn’t need any more on her consciousness.
“You made the wrong choice Little Jedi…”
She nodded and sat cross legged in front of the shrine.
“I knew it was wrong…but I couldn’t see any way out…I thought I was doing the right thing by the Jedi…but then…both sides were wrong…I shouldn’t have chosen…I should’ve just…” she felt selfish, treasonous saying this…yet it was true,
“I should’ve just left them all to their own…space the Jedi…space the Mak’Tor…” her eyes began to tremble with tears,
“I don’t want a part of any of it…they’re both as bad as each other, both trying to fix a galaxy that couldn’t care less…both killing and fighting to realise…some Greater Good no one can agree on…”
The Sith spectre smiled, “It took my fleshy self-dying and several hundred years for me to realise that same thing…just swap Sith For Jedi and Power for Greater Good…Take comfort in the fact you are still young enough to do something with this knowledge…to be free of the cycle before it consumes you.”
She remained seated beneath the holocron for a little while considering what he had just said. All her life she had been raised to fight for others, for Peace and Justice…but once you knew that Peace and Justice were a matter of opinion, concepts that existed only in the minds of the sentients who wanted them to be real…what was left for her to do…
When ideologies are not worth living or dying for, philosophies a waste of time against brute reality, Religion a series of numbing lies…what did someone trained to fight battle for? Perhaps all that was left was simple biology…the true goal of Life, to survive to reproduce…
“I think you’ve seen what you needed to Little Jedi…you can go back now…become a knight…but please two things I ask of you,”
She felt compassion for the old Sith, trapped down here, he wasn’t a bad person…or ghost…she nodded,
“First…let an old man rest at last…” if a holocron could cry he would be now,
“Must it always end in death?” she asked sadly thinking on what had happened with the Mak’Tor.
He smiled, the smile of a man facing his end and contended with it,
“Death is always the end Little Jedi…some few of us at least get to choose when, don’t deny anyone that when they ask….”
She nodded, “the second thing,”
He closed his hollow eyes, “Let the last thing I see…feel…be you, finally free of your doubts…your true self…not a Little Jedi…just a woman who is now her own.”
She let herself see the flaws of the holocron, every line and thread…already on the verge of cracking…that part of her that told her this was wrong briefly flickered, but she left it go by like an errant petal upon the breeze.
She reach to the force, without and within, not worrying about whether it was dark or deathly from the echoes of the secrets buried here, just letting it all infuse her. She opened her eyes, the old man’s face was tired but contented, her own reflection in the holocron was clearer, confident, strong…no longer a ‘Little Jedi’, no longer ‘Mili’…but Milaea.
The holocron shattered.
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She was halfway back to the temple proper when she felt it…a dark, hate filled energy…but it wasn’t here…no it wasn’t NOW….it was somewhere else…somewhere in the future….
Before she might’ve been afraid of plunging into the future for what she might see, for the power it might unleash within her…no more…if she had held back the Sith on Cygrat would’ve killed her, if she had held back Sofa would be dead, if she had held back on Vyth….now she should’ve held back then…been truer to herself.
She stepped forward confidently as the world shimmered and shifted into the future around her, walls and tunnels built and collapsed, men and women came and went, builders, thieves, Jedi, till she finally reached the place that had called her.
The room was different, much had been removed to create a large empty space with queer symbols similar to those she had seen on Korriban. In the centre of the room the old rotten man she had seen before…his black robe’s hood was down and she saw the fullness of his deformity…power without beauty what use was that…
“Beauty without power, what use is that my dear,” The old man was staring up at the ceiling, arms outreached in some kind of meditative trance….
“I had not anticipated to find one so young…but age is no arbiter of power,” he cackled
She looked directly at him and stepped forward, he was a cauldron of pure hate and disdain, his voice as sickening as his features.
“Where are your friends?” she asked,
“Friends?”
“The machine man and the red headed girl,”
He lowered his gaze but kept in the same odd position…he was obviously thinking…he seemed to need to maintain the ritual to keep the connection to the past…her now…that alone told her he was weaker than her.
“The machine man as you call it, is not here…the red headed girl I do not know of any…but I will be expecting her now….” His arms twitched with the strain of keeping them stretched.
“But I did not call you here for that…You Sith of the past, here and now I have the galaxy in my hands, the Jedi are all but gone…show me the location of the Balance Crystal”
She laughed at his presumption!
“What makes you think I’m a Sith?”
“Can one who wields such power across time be anything but…certainly no Jedi would perform such an unnatural rite?”
She narrowed her eyes at him…she didn’t know what this Balance Crystal was…and she wouldn’t be used by the likes of him…so why come here…
He looked at her demandingly, his sloughed skin drooping horribly over his neck, eyes blazing yellow,
“I’m not afraid of myself anymore,” she said,
He looked confused, his presence was annoyed, this was a man unaccustomed to being refused anything,
“And what do I care about that,” he spat angrily,
She regarded him coolly,
“You care because you’re a weak old man afraid of death,” she replied in measured tones,
“And I’m a strong young woman with everything to live for,”
His majesty…yes there was something Imperial about his bearing…looked less than amused.
“You want advice from the past, that’s all you’re getting, that there is someone out there that’s not afraid of her own power, and not afraid of you,”
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