Chapter 8
Milaea
She was on her knees. Her master’s body was still and silent as the cavernous hangar around them.
She was shaking, uncontrollably…a part of her mind told her it was just stress hormones pumping through her, told her to enter a calming trance…only then could she help her master….but her heart told her she needed that strength.
Her skin was tingling. The lightning had burnt off much of her clothes, they were tattered and still smoking…her skin was unblemished but there were small flickers of purple lightning arcing off it…a part of her mind told her it was the residue of the attack, that is was a manifestation of the dark side….but her heart told her that energy was coming from within her.
Her master was all but dead, burning tears slid across her sweat stained cheeks…Sofa’s chest was crushed, her face shattered…a part of her mind told her now was the time to comfort her in the force, to let her slip back away, to rejoice as she re-joined the source of all life…but her heart knew this wasn’t what she wanted to happen
It told her she could stop this.
She stared at the body before her…she could see the broken lines, twisted and jagged through the shatter-point, where they were cut her masters life energy, her very soul, was leaking out into the force. A part of her mind told her to let it go…let nature its course…
Her heart didn’t care.
She touched the force gently, lightly, her sorrow, her hope, her fear all taking up different strands of the force like threads of a tattered cloth. So different from how she had just pulled the force to her whilst fighting, she poured the energy back into the frayed lines of her master’s body, she righted the crooked and cracked lines, filling them, mending them. The out flow stopped, the internal flows resumed, skin healed, muscles re-knit, bones set as she delicately yet forcefully rebuilt the intricate pattern of lines that made up a living being.
They were set back the way they were meant to be…a part of her mind told her stop, she had already gone too far in what she had done…but her heart told her to go on, to fix natures errors and imprecisions, to correct, to perfect.
She started changing the lines, smoothing the corners into elegant curves, streamlining the disparate veins of life force into simpler, stronger and more efficient patterns.
A part of her mind told her this was wrong, unnatural, an abomination….her heart didn’t care anymore.
Sofa gasped, her breast heaving upwards as she came back to life.
Milaea lay down holding her master as she fell into sleep.
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Sofa floated gently in the bacta tank opposite her. The hum of the hyperdrive and occasional metallic clank the only sound.
Leaving Cygrat had been a blur, she had simply gone through the motions of debriefing the local authorities and arranging the transport back. She could barely remember arranging for the bacta tank and leaving the planet.
She wished she could say the same about the fight. The memories were all too vivid…every step, every movement replayed in her mind…
She had done things…things she didn’t even know she could do till her body had done them,
She had known things she hadn’t known she knew till she thought them
She had power, power she didn’t even know she had till she used it.
It scared her.
She didn’t know who her enemy even was…she had sensed her master in trouble after arresting the group she had tailed and raced to the scene. The opponent she had faced was stronger than anyone …stronger than Sofa, than Soryu, Master Kimar…possibly even Yoda…
Yet she had matched him at every turn…it was like…a feedback loop, as much as he pulled on the force she could pull on more…she worried about just how much further it would’ve gone had he not threatened Sofa.
Then there was Sofa. Floating…unconscious still…oblivious to the world…would she know what Milaea had done to her…did Milaea even know what she had done to her?
She caught her reflection in the bacta tanks glass, not a scar, not a cut…someone had poured sith lightning all over her multiple times and the worst she had experienced was some burnt off clothes.
In her dreams she fought like that…no not like that…even more powerfully…it wasn’t just what she had just done that scared her…it was what she might be capable of doing….
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By the time she reached Coruscant she had calmed down, Soryu and Kougal the chief doctor were waiting in the hangar to take Sofa to the infirmary. She had debriefed the Masters on the events on Cygrat, the arrests she had made before rescuing Sofa had yielded valuable information, they were working through a group called the Sons of Kessel, violent abolitionists operating in Hutt Space.
“Sith Lightning” Kimar asked incredulous, “You are certain,”
“Completely,” she said confidently
“This is very troubling” the Gado Master Gurrlum noted looking across to Kimar, “But not inconsistent with other reports we have had about this group…”
“Possibly a Dathomiri” proposed the Cerean Master Ha’Siri’Kum
“Or worse,” noted the only other human master apart from Soryu, Keishar Yoren.
“I doubt that a Sith would be running guns for anti-slavers,” Kimar noted, “Well done Padawan Milaea…” She could never tell if Kimar was sincere or not, but then she didn’t often speak before the council.
“For now you may remain here to recover, you are relieved from this mission,” Soryu coughed and glanced at him, Kimar rolled his eyes a little,
“with this development, and your master injured, the council feels this needs to be escalated and dealt with immediately, Master Gurrlum and Soryu will take over the investigation into this ‘Sith of Cygrat’.” He said with a tone that left no doubts as to the finality of the meeting
“Congratulations Padawan, you are well on your way to being ready for the Trials “ Soryu added to affirmative gestures from all the other masters but Kimar.
“Thank you masters,” she bowed and left.
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Soryu placed his hand on her shoulder, “Rest up try to meditate a bit, reflection can bring clarity,”
“Thank you Soryu,” She said, he smiled warmly and left her as she entered her room.
She locked the door and went about her normal rituals, undressing, showering, brushing her hair…it helped restore the normalcy after such a disruption…still she could feel the emptiness of the next room where Sofa would usually be….where in years past she would run in when she had a nightmare…where they would play games, and Sofa would sneak her treats….
She sat on the floor by her bed and cleared her mind by focusing on the clean sparse walls around her, she felt the flow of the force in the tower, the echoes of a hundred Jedi thoughts melding into the ocean of the force…
She let her mind just drift along the currents, back and forth like she was floating on in an anti-gravity spa, one of the luxuries Sofa snuck her out to enjoy now and then.
Time flowed back as she remembered those times, then flowed forward again as it followed he anxiousness at what would happen to her master…a strong tide of force swept her mind, her vision forward…and forward and forward…
Was it getting darker in here…the flow was becoming black and murky…figures came and went, drifting in and out of life…a room, a large chair solidified in her mind’s eye…
On the chair…a throne, was an old, gnarled man a yellow green tinge to his skin standing in stark contrast to his black robe….he reeked of decay and hatred….she disliked it but didn’t feel repelled by it as she thought she should’ve….
Beside him loomed a huge figure in grim black…a hissing sound for his breath…hatred…hatred of self…burned in this one…more machine now than man…twisted and evil...he waited on the man on the throne…
And in front of them a teenager, kneeling, her hair, long, red much like her own…tight black clothing, fear in hear heart, fear of the man before her…grief that she had no other choice.
The figures became clearer and clearer, she could feel their presence more and more…her heart started to pound in her chest. Their voices became audible, the crackling of the old man, the resonance and hiss of the machine-man, the affected accents of the girl….yet she couldn’t make out their words.
The darkness became ever more real it dripped from them….it closed at the edges of her vision…she could see the threads that bound them….the blood…the legacy that stretched through the generations…just a shred, a sequence or two of their gene’s…but it was there…a thread that bound them all to her…
In the old man a legacy of black hatred, burning spite at those beneath him frustrating his designs,
In the Machine man the frustration, the red anger, a legacy of being enslaved to another’s will, the pain of trashing against chains that bound your neck
The girl the fear, the dark green nauseating feel of serving another’s desires, of selling your body and soul to survive…the legacy of being orphaned, beaten down, without a parent or guide, without a choice….
Their lines mingled and stretched back across the centuries to her, the black, the red, the green…mingling, twisting in the darkness of time...her breathing became short and rapid, her heart pounding, she burnt and froze all at once….
The old man stopped speaking, his eyes moved about the room…the machine man’s followed, the girl turned….
Their eyes fixed on her.
She screamed
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