Naril — Roleplayer Guild

The Outer Rim

Negotiations hadn’t been going well. By some miracle, every faction in the planet’s global civil war had agreed to allow a member of the Order to mediate, but even then, representatives of each clan could barely stand to be near one another, let alone have a civil conversation. Every concession brought only further demands, each voice trying to raise itself above the rest. A day spent in a sweltering room, simmering with the threat of violence, boiling with the candescent emotions of a dozen people filled with fear, distrust, dislike, and hatred. Hours of that fierce emotion scraping her patience and senses raw, leaving her tired, worn, and drained. All for the opportunity to do all of this again tomorrow. Still, that meant another day the cease-fires would hold, another day where bombs didn’t fall and no blasters screamed. That would have to be enough.

Keran rubbed her temples while she made her way to her rooms, her robes stuck to her skin by steaming, jungle heat. She needed to get into a place with temperature regulation, somewhere she could stop sweating and let her pulse stop pounding in her ears. Decades of training - and a certain natural inclination - had gifted her with an iron will and a sense of deep, cool serenity, but even for a member of the Order, there were limits. She keyed in the unlock code for her room and when the dry, cool air kissed her skin, Keran let out a deep, heartfelt sigh. She couldn’t help herself. She peeled her sweat-soaked clothing off, her skin prickling in the cool air, and a feeling she had been ignoring all day slipped back into her mind.

Something, even more than the tempestuous negotiations, had left her uneasy all day, a feeling distant and unpleasant, like the smell of burning carried in the wind. Now, with time and energy to focus, that feeling became sharper, more insistent, but still far away, faint but piercing. Keran drew her will in, concentrated, sent questing fragments of her mind into the vast fabric of the Force. A galaxy of thought and will and life rang in her mind, surrounded her, filled her perceptions, and in a distant, uncomfortable way, that tone had soured. She thought she could feel pain, loss, rage, those things her Order were most sensitive to, and with those feelings came a foreboding like a lance to her heart.

She kept her awareness focused on those distant tremors, making her way to the small room’s comm console with quick steps. Her delicate fingers danced over the controls, and she swallowed when she saw a message from her sister, dated less than an hour ago. She heard the uncertainty in Seris’ voice, and her younger sister’s confusion, her fear, made Keran’s throat tighten. Her fingers tensed on the edge of her comm console, but Seris was right. If something were happening, if the Temple were in danger, she couldn’t come help. Even if her ship were considerably faster than it was, there would be no sense in putting both sisters in harm’s way. 

Still, Keran had to take several long, slow, breaths, guided by a lifetime of training, meditation, and belief, before she could accept that decision, even for herself. She wondered how Seris could-

Keran gasped, her knees gone suddenly weak, a numbness flashing over her body. She grunted, fell to the floor, her arms barely able to keep her from collapsing entirely. Her throat felt dry, and she felt…almost a pressure, a rolling wave of emptiness, wrongness, of lives cut short. She pulled in a choked breath and she felt currents in the Force shift, buckle, bend, strain, like a structure suddenly cut loose from ancient anchors. She clenched her teeth, squeezed her eyes shut, her hands gripped with bloodless tightness on the comm console, and felt the universe change.

But even in the storm of turmoil, Keran’s mind moved through patterns of centering and recall so ingrained they very nearly became instinct. Her breathing leveled out, her hands relaxed. She rode that tide of change and, by degrees, let the currents flow through her, past her, no longer threatening to carry her along with them. A few minutes later, she stood, her legs still shaking, sweat standing out on her skin. Her hands still gripped her console as she swallowed hard, and once again sent her will out into the Force, questing, probing, seeking. 

Where there should have been stability, order, brilliant points of strength, she felt only chaos, nothing but vast, sucking emptiness. 

———

 Coruscant 

Seris had already pulled in a breath to reply when the first blaster bolts exploded against the Temple’s walls, the first screams drifted on air dirty with smoke. She turned, her body tensing, her feet moving her through a sudden crowd of initiates and Younglings streaming into the Archives, flowing away from some danger. All at once, the dread Seris had been feeling coalesced into a furious splinter of writhing agony, a presence of terrible power, filled with dark, vicious, remorseless fury, almost as though the Force itself had been torn apart and woven into something perverse. She stumbled, her feet catching on one another, and Seris barely caught herself on the edge of a metal table, her hands holding the sides with white-knuckled strength.

The Force burned, as though the very fabric of reality rebelled against what was happening. Pain, almost like electrical shocks, crackled across her mind as Seris felt some of the wisest, most powerful members of the Order…end. All that made them, their thoughts and wills flew apart, carried on cords of fear, undone by that fierce, furious presence. As the Masters fell, Seris felt the psychic concussion of their deaths, felt the Force twist and bend, breaking free from the patterns it had flowed in for millennia. She felt the ancient roots of serenity tear free from the world, felt them spiral around this new presence, felt that power flow and become fuel for an ever-growing engine of terror and destruction.

She pulled in a breath, her throat tight, her eyes wide, overwhelmed. She felt herself no longer an observer of the Force, but carried along with those currents, her mind starting to break apart. There was too much, and all at once, an eruption of power and purpose and terrible will, and even as she pulled another breath in, Seris felt more deaths, more wills flickering, falling, flying apart. Not only Masters now, but Archivists, Knights, even the children. With an effort, Seris raised her head, tried to look around her, but all she felt, all she saw, was a terrible, violent, sucking void. 

And even as she did, a small splinter of her mind worked, refusing to be overawed, refusing to be beaten. She was Miraluka, what one Jedi philosopher had said were avatars of the pure power of the Force. She had lived her entire life around the Jedi and despite not being a member of their Order, had learned some of their deepest and most guarded secrets. She was a sister and daughter, from a family with roots old as the hills they cultivated. She would not make a member of the Order deliver that kind of news to her parents. 

Then Worror held a lightsaber out to her. A training saber, but still, the Order’s most visible symbol. She was no Jedi, and Worror knew that - but the trust in that small gesture flickered through Seris’ mind, a thousand paths of forking lightning. Like a growing crystal, that bright splinter of Seris’ mind spread, supporting the rest of her, holding her together, shielding her from the invisible storm all around. She felt her mind start to move in ways she had learned at the hands of Jedi, remembered the words of a teacher, felt that she fought for her life even now, two levels below.

“Be the centre of the storm,” the older woman had said, “And when you know those clouds are distant and do not touch you, you will also know there is no storm.” 

Seris pulled a deep, slow breath in, tears drying on her cheeks and she felt her mind lower into a quieter place. Not a detached one, not a position of uncaring distance; more a bastion, a fortress where she could still function despite her growing sense of bone-deep terror. She was no Jedi; their arts of centering, mediation, and serenity were not hers, and there would be a price to pay later. Half a year’s instruction couldn’t take the place of a lifetime of discipline, but perhaps it could help her survive whatever was coming.

She straightened, her hands more steady, her breathing shaky but even. She reached over, wrapped her long, strong fighters around the training saber, the handle slightly awkward in her grip. The fact that Worror knew that Seris had any training at all worried her slightly, but there would, with luck, be time to discuss that later. Still, right now, Seris did not need to look like a target, and she slipped the hilt into a pocket, out of sight. Blaster fire came closer, the sounds of war making the Archives seem surreal and even more nightmarish than the afternoon had already become. 

The world, the Force, and all its flows and power came back to her, and Seris felt other minds, other wills in the Force, a swarm of perfect, ordered, nearly-inscrutable minds. They pulled the Force in straight lines, each one burning with conviction. A shiver went up her spine - she knew these. Clones. The Republic’s first and last line of defence, the strong right hand of the Grand Army. Thousands and thousands of perfect soldiers, who followed orders with every fiber of their being. The clones moved in even ranks and Seris saw death ahead of them - members of the Explorer Corps, librarians, Knights, children, all falling before the tide of clone troopers. Clearly, they had been given orders, and were doing what they had been made to.

She saw another Youngling, a straggler from the rest, running toward the Archives. A girl, barely into her teens, the bright blade of a lightsaber in her hand. She turned a corner, ducked, rolled, a clone trooper hard on her heels. With no time to tell Worror what she saw, Seris darted forward, her hand reaching into her jacket for the training saber - for what good it might do her - heading for the entrance the girl would pass through. Blaster bolts split the air, and Seris saw the girl turn, bat one away, slide past another like a fish dodging grasping fingers, her run barely interrupted by the deflections. The Force swirled around her, dancing, darting, guiding her legs, supporting her frame, her very being extended into the flow of energy around her.

Seris planted one hand on a table, swung herself parallel to the surface, over, down, her legs coming down already pushing her forward. The Jedi girl rolled under another blaster bolt, came up, stumbled, pivoted out of the way of another bolt. Seris could see the girl and her pursuer would come through the Archives door a few moments before she could get there, but she ran for all she was worth. For Seris, the choice between standing idle and trying to help was no choice at all.

In the space of a few frantic heartbeats, the Jedi girl came around the corner. She looked past Seris, saw Worror, but managed only a few words of warning. As she turned to look behind her, the clone dove, ducked, rolled, came up into a firing position, pulled the trigger on his rifle, every movement perfect grace and purpose. A bright blue bolt lanced out, pulled the Force with it as it traveled, smashed into the girl’s chest, hammered her to the ground, her small form crumpling, her saber hilt bouncing away in a small shower of sparks.

And that’s when everything went wrong for the clone trooper. 

Seris felt the girl die. She saw the threads of the Force the Jedi girl had woven around her unravel, spiral away into the tumultuous sea of energy that surrounded her. She saw the fire, the brilliant, blazing jewel of her soul, flicker and fade. She saw the way her small hand clenched, twitched, relaxed, stopped. She also saw how the clone adjusted his aim, drawing a bead on Seris, who was still a couple of dozen meters away. Her boots thumped against the Archives’ floor, her arms pumped, her gaze locked on the clone’s impassive helmet, marked with soot and splashed with blood.

All at once, everything seemed so simple. Still running, Seris flung her free hand out to one side, felt her will gather around her shoulder, her arm, her wrist, almost as if the Force itself had anticipated this. She flung that power out to one side, felt the threads of her will wrap around one of the Archives’ smaller tables, felt energy and power surge through those threads, making her desires real. Her skin tingled as she swept her arm toward the clone, her fingers bent like she held a large ball, the air ripping behind her hand. The table shot across the Archives’ floor and lifted a few centimeters into the air, hurtling across Seris’ path as though it had been swatted by a giant hand.

The clone trooper’s rifle screamed again and a blue bolt flew through space toward Seris, intercepted neatly by the flying table. Metal tore and spattered, but by then Seris had nearly covered the distance between her and the clone, and she leapt. The Force coiled beneath her, around her legs, up past her waist, propelled her with impossible grace, impossible speed. As she fell, the clone raised his rifle, but only got partway through his motion before an invisible cannonball of telekinetic force tore the weapon out of his hands, knocked him whirling off balance with a cry of pain, sent the rifle clattering down the hallway and bent as though struck by a speeder bike.

Seris landed a meter past the dead girl, caught up with the trooper as he tried to regain his balance. She caught his wrist, planted her feet, twisted her body, felt his shoulder joint wrench out of its socket beneath his armor. The clone let out a cry of pain, scrabbled at her hand, but she had already let go, spun past him, gotten her arm around his neck, her fingers under the rim of his helmet. She kicked the back of the clone’s knee, felt something crunch, gave him a shove forward and his head came out of the helmet, suit connections crackling as they broke away.

This clone looked a little different from normal. Scar on his head, cutting through the short, dark hair. One socket marked with a mass of scar tissue, but still with a bright, intelligent eye beneath. As before, the Force moved around him in straight lines, even as he looked up at Seris, pain pulling his features taught. She felt no conviction from the man, no real will. Only duty, only orders, never questions, no sense of right and wrong. The clones were vibrant, vital - but ultimately only the tools for someone else. They knew nothing else.

And this one had killed a Jedi. He had stolen that girl’s whole story in the blink of an eye, and without a second thought. Seris reached down, grabbed the clone by the collar of his armor, bent him forward onto his bad knee, raised the lightsaber hilt above her. She knew the training saber couldn’t cut flesh, but Seris was strong, and she knew exactly how use a long stick to break someone’s neck. She wanted to make this man pay for what he’d done, what he’d stolen, what his companions were destroying all around them, one life, one artifact, one square meter at a time. Seris looked over at the girl again, and she wanted that vengeance, that retribution more than anything in her life, and her hand tightened around the hilt.

“What do you mean, free from desire?” Seris had said. The sisters sat at a table, on a balcony overlooking the endless lights and the surging, roiling life of Coruscant, the day after Keran’s Knighting Ceremony.

“A Jedi relies only on themselves,” Keran had replied, her voice reasonable and gentle, “And we act for the good of all. Our personal desires are irrelevant, so we strive not to have them.” 

“But you all aspire to be Masters, right?” Seris asked.

“Some do,” Keran replied, “Others are content to be Knights. Or teachers, or librarians. A Jedi should have a purpose in seeking to become a Master - simply desiring the title is not the way of our Order.”

“And those on the Council?” Seris pressed.

“Are offered the honor of serving the Order,” Keran said, “To act as teachers and guides for all Jedi, not from a drive to impose their will.”

Seris grinned, “But what if - what if you’re on a street in Eavesdown, and you smell something delicious? Is it okay if you want to know what that tastes like?”

“That depends,” Keran said, smiling back, “On if I have a credit chip in my pocket. Which I expect is the principle difference between you and I in this scenario.” Keran arched an eyebrow, and Seris laughed.

“You’ll understand, someday,” Keran said, her mouth pulling into a small grin, “When you’re ready.”

The memory exploded behind Seris’ eyes in the skin of a second, and she blinked. She looked down at the clone trooper, his head still rammed forward, his breath coming in sharp, hard puffs from the pain in his broken knee. The desires still surged inside her, pounded in her ears, tore at her arm to light the saber, bring it down, end the man’s life. Take from him what he had taken from so many others that day. But now, another voice whispered in her mind, and she knew that of all the things she could do, killing this man would be the one thing she couldn’t. He was a tool in someone else’s scheme, incapable of countermanding his orders. Seris’ breathing slowed slightly, and she lowered the arm holding the training saber. 

Then the clone trooper reached for his ankle, pulled out a tiny, palm-sized blaster pistol, twisted to bring it around toward Seris. Her free hand moved in a small, hard arc, pressed the emitter of the saber against the back of the clone trooper’s neck, and her thumb jammed down on the activation stud. The hilt crackled and spat as the saber tried to ignite its blade, the heavy-duty electromagnetic containment field emitters rammed firmly into the clone trooper’s sweat-soaked, conductive skin. Seris felt a buzz like she’d brought her hand too close to a faulty power cell, and felt the saber handle vibrate in her grip. The clone trooper, still with Seris’ hand on the back of his armored collar, jerked and twitched, the tiny blaster falling out of his suddenly nerveless fingers. She held the saber hilt to the man’s skin for several moments, until his eyes rolled up into his head, and his muscles went limp. Only then did she lift her thumb off the activation stud, and let the man fall. His chest still rose and fell, somewhat unevenly, and he had a large burn mark where the saber hilt pressed into his skin, but Seris suspected he might live. He would certainly have more of a chance than he’d given anyone else that day.

Seris stood, turned, and looked back into the Archives. She walked back in, toward Worror, her steps even and calm. The training saber let out a soft series of chirps - the sound of an internal error - and Seris set the saber hilt on a table as she walked by. There were voices further in the Archives, other Jedi running for the relative safety of the vaults and tunnels, and she recognized a few of them. If there were others coming, then some of the Order might survive this catastrophe - and Seris would have to help them.

“Master Worror,” Seris said, as she came back within speaking distance, “We need to get out of here. I found some maps, ancient maps, in the Archives a few months ago that suggest there are some hangars beneath the Archives. They were forgotten about after the last Sith war, but there could be ships down there. We can’t risk going to the main hangars, but if we can find something down there, we might be able to get somewhere else on Coruscant - or even get off the planet entirely. We should get everyone we can to…” She cocked her head to one side, turned, the familiar voices getting closer.

“T’ish? Jasma? Is that you?” Can you hear me?” Seris called, cupping her voice to shout deeper into the Archives, “Master Worror is with me, can you get to us?”

The Archives had not been designed for running. Tables, chairs, staff, visitors, and cases of priceless artifacts stood irregularly across acres of ancient stone and metal floor, with few long, straight pathways. Seris’ steps thumped, slid and clicked as she darted past a group of Knights, pirouetted to avoid hitting an ancient display of religious totems, ducked under the outstretched arms of an Archivist pointing further into the huge building. The movements and purpose cleared her mind, let her focus more on the now rather than her sense of ever-growing dread. She vaulted over a long, narrow table without her feet touching the data pads still scattered on top, landed again, and as her feet hit the ground she felt her own thoughts start to slide more smoothly.

Ahead and behind, the Archives blazed with the bright fires of Jedi, each person pulling the Force into whirling, candescent patterns around themselves. Serenity, power, and righteousness radiated from them like heat from a thousand fires, lending the very air a sense of comfort, warmth, safety. Still, Seris could not deny the rising dread she felt in her heart, that she felt creeping over every part of the Archives like a layer of clinging fog. She saw how members of the Order reacted, felt the way their minds sharpened, their wills readied, power kept coiled inside them. She hadn’t been going mad, then. Still, her feelings were…formless, frustrating and vague, without direction. A foreboding, but nothing more concrete. She had heard stories of Jedi who could see into the future and pluck images from an endlessly churning chaos, but if those stories were true, Seris certainly didn’t know the trick.

She left one large study-room and turned down a corridor, her strides evening out, lengthening with a comparative lack of obstacles. She raced past a surprised Archivist, but elicited much less of a reaction from a Knight further down, her hand already on her weapon. Seris brushed past, turned another corner, and brought herself to a stop. She turned to her left, a familiar presence pulling the Force around themselves nearby, the feeling like old, strong trees. She would have smiled to herself, perhaps she should have - but something inside her couldn’t quite make her. Few Masters at the Temple seems to know what to make of Seris, and this one seemed to be no exception - but the Ithorian’s clear head and good nature certainly would hurt nothing, given the tension rippling through the Temple. Seris pushed off the wall, turned down another set of corridors, her pace slowing from a run to a job, finally to a walk.

“Master Worror,” Seris said in reply to his greeting, a little winded from her run, “I’m glad to see you.” She swallowed, her blind gaze apparently off to one side, her expression concerned, “The samples I wanted to show you are on my ship but…I think there’s something more important right now. I feel…I feel like there’s something coming. Something…creeping, sickly, coming up all around, like…like fog from cold ground. I don’t know what to make of it.” Seris shook her head.

“I think there are others feeling the same thing,” Seris continued, her voice steady but concerned, “I…I feel the…dread, I suppose, sinking into them. I certainly feel it happening to me.” She swallowed again, cleared her throat, “I’m…sure you’ve felt what I’m talking about, this…tension. Can you tell me what this is? What’s going on?”

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