It is almost never a rapid transition to full wakefulness. You balance upon that knife edge of slumber, in the peculiar state of near-dreaming consciousness that allows the creative mind to wander afar. For as long as you can remember, your mind has conjured up innocent and silly figments during this state, often immediately forgotten (but still leaving a fading imprint) upon waking. The Masters have always dismissed it easily, childish and harmless as it is.

The hum of indistinct conversion, white-noise in the sea of harsh reality, is just loud enough to drive you from slumber. You struggle into consciousness, pushing past a near tangible wall of sleepiness. You’d like to stay in bed, but years of regimented schedule has ingrained the habit of quick-waking into you.

You ro—

You try to roll off your bed, but find your arms locked in place. They feel… wet? Wet up to the bicep, where the sensation of a hard metal clamp is only slightly cushioned by some sort of plastic. You open your eyes, but it seems the lights are still out, for you can’t see anything—

That’s not right. Your eyes are akin to those found on a nocturnal creature, able to see in levels of light far lower than those of most sentients can. There has never been a time where you can’t see at all, for your eyes give off their own light — just enough for you to see by.

Something is incredibly wrong. Have you been blindfolded? Kidnapped? You seem to be locked down for some reason. But… that doesn’t seem right. This still feels like the Temple. The Force resonates here just like always.

You look out with your witchsight, but see nobody nearby. The Force tells you the same. Nobody is in your near vicinity, and that means it should be safe to open your warp-eye.

This is… the medical ward.

Oh.

That’s right. That’s why you cannot see.

The daemon.

It actually hurt you, physically, despite it literally being held inside yourself.

This is going to be a mess to explain. Hopefully Master Masbau has done most of the legwork for you. And, hopefully he’s not too angry.

After all, he told you to be careful. And then you went and ticked off a monster living in your psyche. A literal inner demon. Ha!

…

That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all. You got hurt! Again! And now that you think about it, it still hurts! Your eyes, your arms… everything. You messed up and you lost your eyes and you have nothing to show for it. You’re now stuck here, your arms encased in what appear to be tanks filled with bacta. And your eyes are gone. They’re gone! You don’t even see the darkness. You see nothing at all. It’s like closing your left eye and looking out the right. Except, with both your eyes. Your normal eyes that is. And everything still hurts and hurts and hurts!

You close your eyes again. All three of them.

That’s strange… You can feel your eyelids. You’d have thought those would have gone with eyeballs, but no. At least you won’t have to let your friends see your empty sockets.

Actually, you can kind of feel something. Some things still sitting in your eye-sockets. Probably just the charred remains of your beloved optics. But, why do they feel warm? You’re not supposed to be able to feel your eyes, right? Well, it’s not like you have eyes anymore. Other than your warp-eye that is.

You open it again, staring at the ceiling.

The bed’s actually rather comfortable. And, the more the pain goes on, the more it starts to fade into your subconscious. Ignorable.

Now, just don’t think about anything itching. With your arms now useless, that would be true torture.

To distract yourself, you strain your ears in the hopes of listening in on those conversations. But, that’s yet another odd thing. You don’t seem to actually be hearing anything, at least not traditionally.

It’s almost like the empathetic sense you have — the one tied into your witchsight. Which, isn’t really “sight” at all, is it? After all, you can still use it without your eyes, just able to make out the dim glow of emotions in the distance. Closing your warp-eye makes no difference, for it seems to work at will, almost as if it were another sense.

And what you’re “hearing” now, may be yet another one. Those conversations you hear seem to be tapping just on the edge of your mind. You can clearly “hear” the noise of it all, but it’s just impossible to make any out clearly. It’s as if you were just out of vocal range of a sea of people, trying to listen in to a dozen discussions at once, each one in a foreign language. You can make out words here or there, but you cannot track any conversation on its own.

Hmm. Maybe that description isn’t entirely apt. Most of these conversations are less “conversation” and more like one person yelling out their ideas into the open air, with no regard for an audience. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a good idea to try to get close enough to listen in properly. After all, that would probably leave you deafened. It’s not like you want to lose your ears too…

…

Itch— No! Need something else to think about!

The daemon! Oh, this isn’t a great topic. You don’t want to think about this. It was terrifying. It hurt you! It tortured you, just so it could drink your tears? What kind of perverse groxshit is that?

…What’s a grox?

Anyway— Argh! You didn’t want to think about the damnable daemon, and you ended up thinking about it anyway. It’s like being told not to think about a pink… demon.

And then you do it anyway.

Still, better than itching! Ahh! Your nose itches so bad now.

Focus! Daemon! Why’s it got an ‘a’ in the word? That’s just weird. Is it pronounced “ay” now instead of “ee?”

Confusing. Anyways, it cooked up some warp-fire in its hands and lit you on fire! And now, you’re bedridden, arms probably charbroiled, unable to even wave goodbye to your dearly departed eyes. You should have dodged better. Or something. Or, maybe just banished it in its sleep.

Wait, it is gone, right? It’s not like you saw it go. It certainly sounded like it was going, but how can you confirm it?

What if it’s still in you? Awake and angry and ready for round two? Or even worse, now outside the ship and running around in your memories? Maybe that’s what you’re hearing — the crazed jabber of the creature?

You need to check… But…

But—

You’d have to go back in.

…

No. No can do. No way. It’s impossible. You really really really don’t want to do it.

But you do it anyway, for it would be folly not to be sure.

Breathe in.

And out.

And in.

And out.

The constant noise is an irritant, but one easily ignored. You’ve had to deal with worse, having grown up with seven other noisy brats like yourself. Studying is always a challenge when someone always wants to play or chat, but you’ve made do for years. You push it to the back of your mind and focus on the task at hand. Warp-eye open, you go searching inward.

The ship is almost as you left it. Now though, both the aura of fear and the threads of tainted warp-stuff are gone. The daemon is clearly no longer here. You do a quick check using your enhanced warp-sight and only confirm your feelings. No daemon. No source of droid-phobia. Nothing.

It’s clear.

But, you must still check through the rest of your true-self, and probably your inner-self as well. If the daemon were to have escaped… Well, that would certainly not be good.

And so you search. Up and down. Everywhere. Every corner, every angle, every pool of Force and warp-stuff.

You lie there for hours, searching. And, again, you find nothing. You’re clear. Fully clear of the daemon, and hopefully of your droid-phobia. With a sigh of relief, you relax. Now, all that’s left to do is deal with the Bloodlust and explore that ship.

That…

That was terrible. But, you’ve had enough of bemoaning your fate. Ever since you had that warp-dream you’ve been dealing with all sorts of warp-damned groxshit! You’re sick of it! But, you’re even more sick of feeling sorry for yourself. This stuff is going to keep on happening, but you’ll handle it. You will handle it.

You’re not dead. You survived your eyes literally being burned out of your skull. Your arms may be toasted, but you still have the Force, the warp, and a third eye. You’ve heard that the Miraluka use the Force to see, having been born with no eyes at all! If they can survive, then you can too, especially when you still have one working eye. Of course, you won’t be able to use it around other people, but you still have sight.

And, you have other senses. You can sense other people with the Force and your witchsight. Maybe you can eventually learn to be like the Miraluka and sense objects and obstacles with the Force. Maybe even with your warp-senses too! That would certainly be helpful to have, especially now, for you are startled when the door suddenly clicks open and a medical droid floats in.

You watch it with your warp-eye as it flies over to you, marveling at the way you don’t start trembling in fear. When you think about that, you realize that’s honestly a bit of a silly thing to be so amazed about, but honestly, you don’t really care. You’ve been through enough lately.

“You… are awake!” it declares, spinning in faux happiness.

You watch it, warily. Just because it no longer frightens you doesn’t mean you trust it. It’s still a soulless machine. It’s only mimicking the actions of sentients, unthinking and unreliable.

At your lack of response, it swoops in closer, causing you to shift away. Surprisingly, it seems to recognize your unease and backs off just a bit. It’s a short, squat thing. A large, cylindrical head on top of a bulbous body, with two manipulator limbs and a set of repulsorlifts for movement. Ugly thing, but you can begrudgingly admit that it’s unthreatening enough to appeal to most patients. And, considering how considerate it is, perhaps it’s also competent.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Hello, Initiate Xena. Would you like me to alert the healer on duty?” it asks.

“Um. Who is it?”

“That would be…” it pauses for a moment, likely querying a database, “Master Alba Corr! Hmm. That’s an odd name…”

“Oh! Uh, yes! Please call for her.”

“She will be here in just a moment.”

“Thank you.”

≡][≡ ⬦⬦⬦ ≡][≡

You can feel her coming down the corridor. A familiar presence in the Force. A cloud of almost pure joy and excitement. A roving, chattering mind. So that’s what it is — this new sense of yours.

“Good morning, Xena! Finally decided to rejoin us in the land of the living, have you?” Master Corr bursts into the room, a wide smile on her face.

You can hear it, the background noise of her mind. The babble of constant, indecipherable thought ricochets of your soul, almost drowning out her spoken words. However, despite her proximity, it’s still unintelligible. You can make out some sounds almost in Basic and many others in the language of the Mon Calamari. But, the sounds are incessant. Constant. A continuous stream with no sign of letting up. They flow over one another, tripping about, and go around again. It is a constant parade of abstraction, impossibly complex, yet at the cusp of understanding.

It is an incredibly arduous process to parse out her greeting from the deluge of mind-sprung gibberish, but you make do. It is good to see a friendly face, so you hurriedly shut your warp-eye to avoid changing that.

“Hello, Master Corr.”

“How’ve you been! Ha! Don’t answer that. I know exactly how you’ve been.”

It’s odd. Her speech is preceded by a string of murmuring thoughts. Still unintelligible, but almost rhyming with the spoken words that follow.

“I—”

“Absolutely terrible! Youngling, I don’t know how you ended up this way, but you’ve certainly been having a rough time. Arms are burned to hell and back. Force healing does almost nothing, which is why they’re in a bacta bath right now. It’ll take a long while for you to fully convalesce. And your eyes! Gone and replaced!”

“Replaced?”

“Right, right. Not like you can see your own eyes. Here, let me get you a mirror. Geh, it’s like I’m some sort of barber or something. Not like either of us have ever been to one, that is!”

She walks out of the room, leaving you to contemplate what she just said. Replaced? But, you can’t see, so what does she mean? You raise your eyelids and reach—

Ah, right. You close your eyes again and resign yourself to waiting. No ocular exploration for you. Not yet.

Master Corr returns just a minute later, bursting into the room with the same energy as before. “And I’m back! Miss me?”

“Er. Yes?”

“Good! Now then, I’ll hold the mirror so you can see yourself. Go ahead.”

“Master, I can’t see with these, uh, ‘replacements.’”

“Oh, I know. We did some quick tests earlier. You can see with your third eye, correct? I’ve heard the stories. I’ll keep my eyes closed. Just tell me where you need the mirror positioned.”

You hear her shifting around slightly. After a moment, she taps you on the head and you open your eyes.

And gasp.

You see a child with three blazing orbs. One, deep like an ocean: azure and littered with stars. The other two are miniature suns. Imperfect spheres, burning blue and almost screaming with the anger of unjust division.

And the rest of you…

Just a girl. Smaller than average, despite your well-nourished childhood. You’re dwarfed by the size of the bed, meant for adult patients. The injuries you’ve sustained make you look positively pathetic. The tanks of bacta sink into the bed, heavy with the weight of the miracle liquid. They’re chained to the railings in order to keep them from rolling off when you shift around.

“Um. I think I’m going to need a blindfold or an eyepatch. Or a mask. Where’s my headband, by the way?”

“We can get you what you need. Don’t you worry. Your headband’s in the cabinet over there. Oh, right. Masbau left some other things for you when he was banished."

"Sorry, what? Banished?"

"Ach, probably shouldn't have broken that to you like that. He was put on trial for letting you get hurt so grievously and was found to be at fault. He's been gone for about a week now."

What! Why? That wasn't his fault at all! You were the one messing around with things unknown; something he'd cautioned you against. How could he be blamed for that? And, did she just say a week?

You state at her in disbelief before swallowing your trepidation and asking, "How long have I been out? And why was Master Masbau banished? It's not his fault I was being stupid!"

"It's been about a month. We had to keep you under for a while with anesthetics. Every time you woke up you kept screaming and were unresponsive. As for that fool Master of yours, he told the Council most of what's been happening with you. Jocasta backed up some of his statements. And, you’re a Youngling. You’re expected to do stupid things. As for him, he’s a Master. He’s expected to stop you from doing those stupid things, which he failed to do."

"But, he warned me! And then I kept going anyway!”

“He shouldn’t have warned you. He should have stopped you.”

“But…” you trail off, unsure of what to say. She’s right. But, it feels wrong! You’re not a child! You’re almost a Padawan! You can take responsibility for yourself!

But, somehow you don’t think she’ll accept that argument, so you focus on the other part of what she said.

“I’ve been asleep for a month? You’re joking, right?”

“No. I’m serious about that. I don’t lie to my patients.”

“Oh.” For some reason, you don’t doubt that. Master Corr, despite her attitude, is still a Master healer. And, all your senses, even the new one, seem to say that she can be trusted on that.

“... Okay. So, you heard from him about what’s been happening with me?”

"Yes. I wasn't exactly party to that round of questioning, but I pulled him aside and interrogated him later. He told me it all. Your dreams. Your past. It’s stranger than fiction, really. But, I believe it, especially after what I saw when he brought you here. But, what he couldn't say was why you've been screaming your lungs out, why your eyes are gone, and why your arms are like that. Ah! Right! That’s another thing. When he dragged you in here, your arms were burning for no reason. No fire. Nothing in the Force. It's like your cells just spontaneously combusted themselves. And now, your arms are also… changed."

You close your eyes as she pulls the mirror away. She moves to your side, and with a few clicks, she unlatches the bacta tanks from your arms. Carefully, she maneuvers your arms one at a time from the containers, scraping off and saving as much of the precious liquid as possible.

You can feel your arms! You’d been afraid that they were truly gone or that they were nonfunctional. You lift them up, eyes still closed, trying to get a feel for what has changed.

Well, they definitely still hurt. They sting like nothing else you’ve felt before now that they’re exposed to the cool air, but it’s almost welcome considering the alternative. They also feel weak. But, you suppose that’s what happens when they go up in flames and then sit in a vat of bacta for a month.

“You can open your eye again. But, I recommend you brace yourself. It’s not exactly pretty.”

And so you do. But, it is for nought. Nothing could truly prepare you for what you see. Your arms are certainly different. Warped, you could say. One arm is almost the same as before, not even marred by burn scars. But, when you look closer, you see a web of glowing strings. Your veins shine with golden light beneath your skin. And, betwixt the vessels is revealed a strange, wriggling shadow, occasionally silhouetted by the light. Its shape constantly changes making it impossible to tell what it truly is. In your warp-sight, your arm is completely changed. Despite appearing almost normal with your mundane vision, it appears to be almost a hollow container made of crystalized warp-stuff, inside which you cannot see.

And, the other arm is just as strange.

What greets your sight is a hodge-podge assemblage of metal, wood, and glass. It’s shaped just like a normal limb and seems to work exactly the same way. However, it appears almost like a magnificent prosthetic. A metal shell with occasional randomly placed windows of glass, giving a look at interlocking gears in the interior. Weaving in between and beneath is wood, as if it had grown naturally from the remains of your arm. From certain angles it can be rather beautiful, almost like art. From others, it’s an ugly mess that just happens to function for manipulation. Strangest of all, to your warp-sight, this arm is somehow completely “natural.” That’s real metal, real glass, real wood! Unlike the other arm, there is no warp-stuff making it tick. You have no idea how this could possibly work, yet it does.

You stare at your arms for a minute longer, just thinking. What are you going to do with these? They’re… different. They will set you apart from everyone else. But then again, so do your horns, tail, and eye. The problem is that these are even more clearly different than any of the other features of yours.

For a brief moment you contemplate asking to have them amputated and replaced by conventional prosthetics, but you reject the thought a second later. After all, though these limbs appear foreign, they don’t feel like it. They feel just as before. You can feel the bacta dripping off them. You can feel the texture and softness of the bed. You can feel the raw pain they exude.

No. You’ll keep them. It’ll take some getting used to, but you’ll make do. You’ve already resolved yourself after all. This is just another thing to handle.

“Master Corr, I’m done. Do they need to go back into the bacta now?”

“Eye closed? Okay, good. How do they feel?”

“It hurts.”

“Then, yes, back into the bacta they go. Let me help you with that. Just relax.”

“Thank you, Master.”

“You’re welcome, Xena.”

“How did this happen?”

“That’s what you should be telling me! All I saw was your skin shriveling up and then sloughing off like you were shedding. And then all this just grew! Is this an indicator of puberty in your species?”

“Uh, I don’t think so, Master. I hope not.”

“Me too. Wouldn’t want anything else coming off, would we?”

With a clank and a hiss, your arms are now locked in once again. Ahhh, the feeling of being completely helpless. Wonderful.

“How long will it take?”

“Until you’re good to go? I don’t know. I don’t know how fast you can recover, and I’ve never seen anything like this before. For now, I think we’ll keep your arms in there for another month or so. And then, you’ll need to do some physical therapy.”

“Another month? But, that’s so long! The Trials are coming up soon. I need to get ready!”

“Xena…” She trails off, then huffs in annoyance. “The Council members will be here soon. You can ask them about that later. But, on my orders — as your doctor! — you will wait until you’re fully healed before you do anything. I’ve never seen any of this before. Your arms, your eyes, everything! I have absolutely no reference for when or if you’ll be healed. Now, just rest. There’s much to be done. Many things to be arranged.”

“I’m sorry, Master. I’m just worried, I guess.”

She gives you a soft smile, her joyful aura darkening slightly as concern flits across it. Her thoughts somehow feel melancholy too and you feel a twinge of guilt. After all, she’s been caring for you for a while. Making her worry so is rather ungrateful of you.

“Master, you haven’t actually asked me what happened. Why not?”

She blinks in surprise. “Hmm. Well, I have no wish to make you tell the tale until you’re good and ready. But, the Council has no compunctions about that. They’ll want answers, so I might as well sit in on that. I’ll keep them from going overboard if it comes to it.”

So she’s just being sneaky about it, is she? Just waiting for someone else to do the interrogation while she listens in, huh? Oh well. You probably would have told her if she asked. But, would you have told her everything?

The other Masters are coming. Maybe even Grandmaster Yoda is coming! And they’ll be asking rather uncomfortable questions.

How much are you willing to tell them? There’s no way they won’t be able to tell if you lie, but maybe you can leave some things out… But, is there really a good reason to do so? After all, maybe they could have helped you in the first place. Or, maybe not. After all, Master Masbau couldn’t really do anything. And then they went and banished him! Actually, what did Master Corr mean by that?

“Master, what exactly did you mean by ‘banished’ earlier? What actually happened to Master Masbau? Is he no longer a Jedi?”

“Hm? Oh. No, he’s still a Jedi. He’s just placed on permanent assignment to a different temple now. Don’t ask me which one. He didn’t say.”

“Oh. I guess that’s not too bad… What’s he going to do there?”

“I don’t know. Again, he didn’t say. But, he’ll no longer be a Guard, apparently. One of the things he left for you is his mask.”

“... Can I wear it?”

“What? Oh. Maybe? Do you mean to hide your eyes?”

“Yes.”

“It’d take some modification to fit it to your face, but I don’t see why not. You’d have to repaint it though so others don’t think you’re a Guard. Maybe there’s some other concerns I’m not thinking of, but you can probably ask the Guard office later.”

“Okay! Thanks, Master.”

“You’re welcome, Xena. Now then, do you have any more questions for me? We have time for a couple more questions before the Council arrives.”