10

DAGOBAH

“That lightsaber,” Yoda said. “Wondering, am I. How did you come by it?”

Ageless glanced down at his waist, where the lightsaber hung from his belt. Presently he was hunched inside a one-room, dome-shaped, adobe hovel. The doorway itself had necessitated he get down on his hands and knees and crawl through, but there was no opening large enough to allow R4 into the hovel, so the astromech waited outside, itsscanners on high alert as Ageless had commanded. Ageless sat cross-legged beside a malodorous stew that was boiling over a crackling fire, which provided the only heat in the hovel. Yoda stood with his back to his guest, pottering around with something beside his bed, hobbling on his cane and occasionally muttering. The question about the lightsaber was the first thing he had said in over an hour. It seemed the small green figure preferred long, uncomfortable silences.

“The saber?” Ageless said.

“Yes. A very particular saber, it is.”

Ageless cocked his head to one side. “You’ve seen its like before?”

“Seen many lightsabers, I have.”

Ageless noticed he hadn’t answered the question, but he let it go. He had other questions he wanted answered. “How do you know my grandmother?”

“Powerful sorceress, was she,” Yoda said, turning to face him. He had a small box in his hand. He set it on a small table and opened it and Ageless stiffened, preparing himself for an attack. For anything. But Yoda merely pulled out a few bottles filled with what looked like spices, and he limped over beside Ageless and began sprinkling the savory flecks into the stew. “Difficult, it would be, to be as powerful as she and not become detectable?”

“Detectable how?”

“Too young to remember, you probably were. The Witches of Dathomir have a strange power, an interesting interpretation of the Force, quite beyond me. Met her two years before the Clone Wars, I did. Her and her Sisters.”

“The Nightsisters?"

Yoda’s ears twitched, and he smiled. “Ooooh. So you do remember some of it. So young, were you. Often, the tricks of a Witch are dismissed by their offspring when they get older. Imagine that it was all just a grandparent’s simple tricks and illusions, they do.” He stirred his stew in silence for several moments, and Ageless watched him carefully. Yoda spoke in weird anastrophe, unlike anything Ageless had ever heard before. The small being was an enigma that plagued him, now forcing him to reevaluate so much he had seen in his youth. The dream he had had of his grandmother performing the trick with the flames, conjuring up green light from her fingertips…it no longer seemed like a dream. Now it seemed like a memory.

His commlink tweeted, and Ageless responded, “Yeah, Threepio?”

“Just checking in, sir.”

“I’m fine. How’s things there?”

“Everything is clear, sir. I’m shutting myself down for the night and plugging myself in for some power, but I will leave the exterior lights on—those seem to keep most of the local fauna at bay.”

“No,” Yoda said, still stirring. “Tell him to turn the lights off.”

“Hang on a second, Threepio.” To Yoda, he said, “What did you say?”

“Lucky, your droid is, if it has lasted this long keeping your ship’s exterior lights on. The lights do deter the smaller predators, but they sometimes attract the much larger ones.”

Ageless shrugged. “I doubt anything here is large enough to swallow a YT shuttle.”

“Surprised, you would be,” said Yoda, eyeing him critically. “Tell your droid to turn off the lights. Trust me, you must.”

Ageless mulled it over, but ultimately relayed the command to R-3PO. The droid argued about it for a moment, but eventually accepted the order. Ageless replaced the commlink in his pocket and looked over at his host. “Are you the Jedi Master they were all looking for?”

“They?” said Yoda. He now lifted a ladle and filled a bowl full of his sludgy, steaming porridge, which he handed to Ageless.

Ageless had a taste, winced at the spiciness, and cleared his throat. “The guys who left the warning beacon in orbit? The crew of the Farseer? Vader and his people?”

“Vader was here,” Yoda said. “Left, he did, when I managed to frustrate his efforts. But never knew for sure, did he, that I was here.”

“How did you do that? Frustrate his efforts, I mean.”

Yoda smiled at him. “Trade secrets,” he said, and took a slurp of his stew. He eased himself slowly into a rickety wooden chair that looked to have been made from some twisted and knotted wood. He set his cane to one side and let out a long, beleaguered sigh. It was the sigh of a soul so weary it was only living by force of habit. Ageless could tell this being was old, but since he did not recognize the species, he could not say just how old.

“When Vader left, he sent some more people here, to do a more thorough sweep, didn’t he?” Ageless asked. “That was what the Farseer was doing here.”

Yoda took another slurp. “I believe so.”

“But…how did you manage to get the drop on them? How did you—”

“How did an old invalid like me manage to destroy a team of mercenaries, you mean to ask?”

“Yes.” No need to beat around the bush. Old people tend to hate when someone doesn’t get to the point. Ageless’s grandmother had taught him that.

Yoda scratched his knee and looked out the window with tired narrow eyes. “Came in the night, they did. All of them were very clever, and very well coordinated. Sensed them as soon as they landed, I did. And then I stalked them. But, in truth, it was not I who defeated them. In the end, it was Dagobah, and no one else, that destroyed them.”

“What do you mean, Dagobah?”

“This world…a dangerous sort of creature, it is. An ally, if you know how to navigate it properly. How to communicate with it. A friend, if you can do that. An enemy, if you don't come at it without reverence or respect. True of the whole planet, it is, but never more so than in these territories where you have landed. Where they landed.” He took another slurp, coughed for a long time, and then caught his breath. “Saw things out there, did you not? Heard things? Perhaps you saw old friends long gone, or saw glimpses of your worst fears.”

Ageless only barely recalled it all. It had been like walking in a dream, and he had not known whether he was awake or dreaming. It was perhaps the most unsettling experience of his life. He started to tell Yoda what he had seen.

“No, it is all right, you do not have to share those with me. Belong to you, those visions do. But your mind is perhaps more able to cope with the Dark Side’s influence, considering who your grandmother is. But…the Farseer crew…not ready for Dagobah, were they." Yoda developed a thousand-meter stare, then finally blinked and said, “Not hungry, are you?”

Ageless took a few more bites of the spicy stew, having to muscle it down. But he had to admit that with each bite he felt more invigorated, like he was shaking off the effects of a sleeping serum. During his training with the Nest, he had been injected with all sorts of drugs meant to mess with his mind, making him give in to pain, making him susceptible to interrogation. He'd had to focus intensely to survive, not only using the mental exercises the Nest taught him, but also the breathing exercises his grandmother taught him by the fire. But when the torture was over he had been injected with drugs that neutralized the chemicals in his system, and it had felt like stepping out from a dark tunnel and into daylight. That was what it was like eating Yoda’s stew.

Usually, he would never eat a stranger’s food. The Nest had taught him to be paranoid of all new acquaintances. But something told him he could trust this small being, an instinct that had always been there, an instinct that had allowed him to know which people were more susceptible to bribery, to being turned into a street informant. Whatever that power was within him, it hadn’t steered him wrong yet.

“On the Farseer’s flight recorder, they seemed to think that whatever went wrong with their ship, it was you that did it.”

Yoda picked up his cane, hobbled over to his pot, and refilled his bowl. He seemed in absolutely no hurry to do anything, and he would answer Ageless’s questions in his own good time. When Yoda sat back down, Ageless heard bones popping. “Managed to sneak aboard their ship while they were out hunting, did I. Destroyed their comms, sabotaged their hyperdrive, I did. They couldn’t call for help or leave, not without lots of repairs. Only wanted to delay them, did I, so that I could have time to destroy my campsite here and move to another part of the planet. Only wanted to buy some time, I did. But, unbeknownst to me, these swamps had already driven them mad. Turned on each other, did they. Saw their own fears manifested. Their captain shot all of them. Killed them. Seemed to think one of them had done the sabotaging. Saw me, he did, just before he got aboard the Farseer and left. Convinced him to put down his blaster, I did.”

“What do you mean, convinced him to put it down? How did you do that?”

“Told him to do it, I did. And he did it.”

Ageless decided to let that go. He'd heard stories of "Jedi mind tricks" and assumed Yoda was referencing that, however apocryphal those stories might be. “And what happened next? Why did the Farseer get destroyed in orbit?”

Yoda hove a weary sigh. “The Dark Side here…it provides a blind spot, inside of which a being strong in the Force may hide their presence from others strong in the Force. It is why I chose to come here. But Dagobah’s power…” He shook his head. “Extends farther than just these caves and swamps, it does. I believe it drove the Farseer’s captain mad. I do not know what he did, but he somehow destroyed the ship himself while in orbit.”

Ageless wasn’t sure he believed that, but he could not get a better read on the fellow, so he let it go. After a few more bites of his stew, he reopened a previous subject. “You keep mentioning the ‘Dark Side.’ Is that the Dark Side of the Force?”

“Yes.”

Like many beings, Ageless had heard some of the mumblings of mysticism that were spoken about the Jedi and their ancient religion. At their peak, there had been thousands of them, but the galaxy was unimaginably big, and many planets were barely more than backwater worlds with hardly any HoloNet access, so the average citizen had never seen a Jedi, nor knew anybody who had. And after the Jedi Purge, the Emperor had demanded the HoloNet scrubbed of any holovids that demonstrated the Jedi’s powers and feats, lest it inspire anyone to think the Jedi had been heroic in any way. Propaganda, plain and simple.

But those people who had heard of the Force had often heard reference to the Dark Side. For instance, the old saying that said, Speak of the Dark Side and it will manifest itself in the room. Some folk did not even know what the “Dark Side” in that proverb was referring to, they only got the gist of the statement itself. It meant some vague, nebulous "evil." But Ageless had been raised by a woman steeped in mysticism. He remembered that much clearly. And he recalled her discussing the Jedi and what the Dark Side had meant to them, but he had only been a boy and half listening. He usually fell asleep to her telling stories of magical knights, guardians of peace and justice across the galaxy.

It had seemed absurd, especially the older he got.

Because Ageless Void was a man now, he believed in concrete things. Things he could see and touch and test. And so, he stared at the frail old creature, and said, “You said I could probably handle the Dark Side’s presence here on the planet better than most because of who my grandmother is.”

“Yes,” Yoda said, in a way that sounded like he sensed what was coming.

“The Dark Side of the Force.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re telling me that all those tricks I saw my grandmother doing by the campfire weren’t just tricks at all, but manifestations of the Force?”

“Yes.” The frail old creature took another slurp, burped, and coughed. "Or her 'magick,' as she and her Sisters called it, which is just another manifestation of the Force."

“And Vader believed you to be a Jedi Master. Are you?”

“Up for interpretation, that is.”

“Is that modesty? Are you a Jedi or not? Or are you ashamed to say?”

Yoda looked up at him. “A Jedi, I am. Proud of my heritage, am I. Ashamed, I would never be."

“Then prove it.” He held out his bowl. “Take this bowl out of my—”

The bowl shot out of Ageless’s hand and hovered over the pot and the fire. It then tipped itself over and poured its contents back into the pot. Then, before Ageless could say anything, the bowl hovered slowly back over to him, floating in front of his face. Ageless slowly reached up and took it, checking for strings or hidden magnets or any other trickery. The thing felt weightless until Yoda released whatever grip he had on it, and then Ageless held it out in front of him and let it go. The bowl dropped to the ground and shattered.

Yoda paused halfway through another slurp. “Owe me for that, you do.”

Ageless said, “Pick the pieces up. All of them.”

“For parlor tricks and entertainment, the Force is not.”

“If you expect me to believe any of this, to believe you knew my grandmother, and that she wasn’t just fooling me with parlor tricks, then pick up the pieces from where you’re sitting.”

Yoda sighed.

A dozen shards from the broken bowl shot up from the floor and swirled in front Ageless’s face in a slow spiral. They came together slowly, fitting together like a puzzle, but without glue they could no longer form a bowl. The pieces hovered as one, once again in front of Ageless’s face. He reached out to touch them, and when Yoda released his hold, the pieces collapsed in his palms. Ageless held onto the pieces in wide-eyed astonishment. He looked over at Yoda.

“Can you…?”

“Can I what?"

“Can you teach that?”

Yoda blinked. “Told you I would complete your training, did I not? Were you not listening?” He shook his head. “Two new students, I have received, in these last two years, and both of you are stupid. Tall people can be so stupid.” He coughed, and set his bowl aside. This cough was far more violent than the others, and Ageless thought Yoda might keel over right then and there. When he finally got it under control, Yoda said, “Your grandmother…instrumental in helping to hide a number of Jedi during the Purge, she was. Never repay her for what she did, can I. But I can keep my word. That, I can do.”

“Your word?”

“Told her I would train you if you ever showed up on my doorstep, did I. And so I shall. Though, the training she gave you, I suspect you forgot most of it, and it is not the same interpretation of the Force that I was taught. But do the best I can, I will, with the information she taught me about Attuning.”

“Attuning? What’s that?”

“A method for channeling the Force the way the Witches do on Dathomir. Mind you, you will never be as powerful as you could have been if you had been trained continuously since childhood, but you can perhaps discover a greater path than the one you're now on, and realize the legacy of your bloodline. And perhaps…perhaps live through another generation, the Force will. Perhaps a rebirth, it can have.”

Ageless pointed to the shattered bowl. “You can teach me how to do what you can?”

“No. Too late for that, it is. Too late for you. But learn to interpret the Force in others way, you can. And though I am tired, and sick, I will do what I can for you. And for Shreya.” Yoda sighed again and leaned back in his chair. “Now, answered many of your questions, have I. And now you must answer mine. What name do you go by now?”

For a moment, he almost decided not to answer. Then he said, “Ageless Void.”

“Ageless. Void.” Yoda said the words separately, as their own sentence. He nodded as though it portended something, or proved something he had predicted. “And now, the other thing. How come you by that lightsaber?”

"I saw a young Human male wielding it, named Luke Skywalker."

Yoda leaned forward, eyes becoming intense. "You were there? You were there when he lost his hand?"

Ageless nodded. "Yes. At nearly the same time I heard Darth Vader claim to be his father. Know anything about that?"

Yoda's gaze remained honed on him. "Tell me everything, you must."

* * *

The next morning, Ageless awoke to a single golden shaft of light coming through the slit in the tent’s front flap. There was no room in Yoda’s hut for him, so Ageless and R4 had set up camp twenty meters away. After a quick check-in with R-3PO, Ageless began his morning routine of stretching, then jogged around the area to secure the perimeter, using R4’s scanners to ensure there were no major threats in the area, sentient or otherwise.

Then he returned to his camp and began exercising. Exercise was mandatory for him. If he went a day without it he would feel languid, leaden and subpar. This habit had been instilled by the Nest, and like all of their teachings, it would always be a part of him, no matter how far he ran.

The Nest. It had been a while since he sat and thought about his time there, and what all they had done to him.

The Nest had been more than an experimental training ground for future Kingdom operatives. They used innovative pedagogical methods, mind-altering spices from the mines on Kessel, all sorts of chemicals to change the way Nest candidates processed information. Their training methods were deep and thorough, inculcating both the physical and mental discipline it required to be a lone operative in the galaxy, working without any backup or aid from anyone. These training methods reached their apogee while Ageless was at the Nest training facility. Perfectly honed minds and bodies were then stripped of their real names and given only codenames, and set loose on the galaxy.

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Push-ups and squat-jumps got his heartrate up, then he followed up with his regular routine of stretching. Then the real workout was ready to begin. Ageless had found two rocks that weighed twenty-three kilograms apiece (according to R4, whose pincer including a digital scale) and used spare rope from the climbing gear in his travel kit to tie around each stone. He performed weighted carries, just lifting each rock by the rope and letting them dangle at his side as he walked twenty meters back and forth.

When he was finished with that, he found a sturdy, low-hanging tree branch to do pull-ups on. He was on his twentieth rep when he sensed Yoda approaching from behind.

“Determined to keep your body in shape, are you?”

Ageless dropped down, panting and shaking off the muck from his hands. “It’s become a habit.”

“That is good. A good antenna for receiving the Force’s signal, a honed body is. A honed body equals a honed mind. Help you to Attune, it will. Did Shreya teach you to be this physically disciplined?”

“Sort of,” he said, and took a seat on a log. R4 trundled over and handed Ageless a canteen with his pincers. He took a sip and looked at Yoda. The Jedi Master was seated on a small rock, piddling with something on the ground with his cane. “My grandmother taught me a few tricks to keep my temper—it used to flare up over the simplest thing. And she showed me how to meditate. Or tried to, at least. My mind was always so busy, so unfocused.”

“So, how come you by such ardent physical discipline?”

Ageless had been sort of dreading this. The Empire had purged the Jedi from the galaxy, and were technically still looking for any stragglers, even after decades of hunting them down. What would Yoda think of his background with the Empire? He decided to bite down on the blaster. “I was trained by the Imperial Intelligence Service.”

Yoda’s cane froze, and the little fellow looked up at him slowly.

“I was a stormtrooper at first, but made my way up through the ranks.”

“Still with the Empire, are you?”

“Technically, yes. But we had a…falling out, I guess you could say. About this time last year. A few people in the Service turned their backs on me and I ended up on the side of some of your friends.”

“My friends?”

“The Rebel Alliance.”

“Mistaken, you are. A part of the Rebellion, I am not.”

“Perhaps not formerly, but I think you know one or two of them, at least.” Ageless unclipped the lightsaber from his belt and held it up. “You kept asking about this. I told you where I got it. You seemed very interested in it. You’ve seen it before, haven’t you?” Yoda did not reply, he went back to piddling in the dirt. “I told you what I saw. Vader shouted at Skywalker, ‘If you only knew the power of the Dark Side.’ That day, Skywalker entered the Bespin system on a direct trajectory from Dagobah. He was coming from here. And now here you are, an old Jedi Master, rotting away in some bog, and it’s all just a coincidence I have a lightsaber you’ve seen before? I’m not stupid, Yoda. You said that I am your second new student. Skywalker’s the first, isn’t he?”

Yoda said nothing.

“Where is he?”

Yoda said nothing.

“Listen, I don’t need to know where he is. I mean, it would be nice to meet him, maybe he could explain a few things for me, but it’s not necessary. So if this is your lightsaber, if you loaned it to him and want it back, all you gotta do is ask. You can have—”

“The lightsaber is not mine,” Yoda said abruptly, and glared at Ageless. “But the one that it belongs to is on a different journey now, on a quest far from here. Help him, I cannot.”

“You mean Skywalker.”

Yoda scratched in the dirt with his cane. “Keep the weapon. You will need it for your training.”

Ageless turned the lightsaber over in his hand. He pulled the two release switches that popped it open, and stared inside at the crystal. He had opened it before, wondering about its strange inner workings. His Nest training had taught him a lot about mechanics, repairs, slicing, but never about any mechanisms like this.

“On the platform at Cloud City,” Yoda said. “Certain, are you, that Vader told Skywalker that he was his father?”

Ageless closed the lightsaber and set it down on a tree stump beside him. “Pretty sure. It was chaotic in there, though, to say the least. I was fighting for my own life while Skywalker was fighting for his.”

Yoda nodded morosely. Etched in his face was extreme worry.

“He made it out, though. The Empire hasn’t got him.”

“Yet,” Yoda sighed.

Ageless let the old guy stew for a while in his concern for Skywalker, then he stood up and towered over Yoda. “Listen, we’ve been exchanging information here at a pretty friendly pace. You told me about my grandmother—well, sort of—and I told you how I got the lightsaber. But I’ve got a few more questions, chiefly about—”

“Vader,” Yoda said. “Yes. You want to know about him.”

“Him. And someone named Obi-Wan.”

Yoda scratched the back of his head. “Why do you want to know about the Dark Lord?”

“Because twenty years ago he came out of nowhere, just some mystery man in black garb and a mask, who was suddenly the Emperor’s right-hand man and telling everyone in the Empire what to do. He has no official military rank but he acts like a boss. I never questioned it, we’re all basically encouraged not to, but now that the Service and I are on uncertain terms, I’d like to know whom I serve. What else are they hiding?”

He waited a beat, letting Yoda soak that in before he hit him with the rest.

“And I have information from a former IIS department director that says Vader came here searching for you, a supposedly dead Jedi Master. And I know Vader carries around a lightsaber, and that he uses the name Darth, which a lot of ancient Sith used to do. And I know the stories of him choking people from across a room. Sounds awfully similar to that trick you did with the bowl.”

“Ask the question you came to ask, you should.”

“Is it all just for show—the cloak, the name, the saber—or is it for real? Is Vader a Sith?”

Yoda slid off the rock and waddled around the swamp floor. He seemed to be looking for something. For a moment it looked like he would walk off, and leave the question forever unanswered. Then he paused, his back still turned to Ageless, and said, “Not only a Sith, is he, but one of the last two in the galaxy. At least, as far as I can tell. The Obi-Wan you asked about, a friend of Vader’s, he was. Vader’s teacher.”

Even upon the moment of revelation, Ageless was stunned. He had theorized and hypothesized and mulled this over, but to have it confirmed…The moment of revelation will strike you harder than any enemy’s blow, his grandmother once said to him. Ageless could not remember exactly when she said it, but these moments were coming back to him, old memories resurfacing like a doshi squid from the depths of the Fargoner Sea. He could practically feel his grandmother’s hand in his, guiding him up the stone mountain path through cold winter winds—

He stepped in front of Yoda, and said, “You say there are two. Who is the other?”

“The other is Vader’s Master. Darth Sidious, he calls himself. Emperor, the rest of the galaxy calls him.”

Ageless stared in mystified astonishment for several moments.

Yoda waddled a few more feet, then gestured to a small, muddy patch of ground, surrounded by trees that loomed over them like foreboding parents. “Sit here,” he said.

Ageless was still coping with this new knowledge. “What?”

“Sit here, I said. It is time to begin.”

Ageless did as the Jedi said, and as soon as he sat his pants were instantly soaked by the mud. “How did the Sith do it?” he asked. “And who is Vader? Where did he come from? Is he actually Skywalker’s father?”

“No more questions. Close your eyes now. It is time to begin the small orbit exercise.”

“What’s that?”

* * *

Small orbit was a breathing exercise that required the practitioner to inhale deeply through their nose, imagining that the breath was a light they were taking in, kindling a fire in their chest, and when they exhaled, they were supposed to imagine that fire growing in intensity as it slid down to their stomach. They repeated this process, moving this “imagined flame” to the back of their spine, up to the crown of their head, over the top of their skull to the space between their eyes, then down through their tongue, and, finally, back into their chest, completing the orbit. A relatively simple visualization exercise.

“That ‘flame’ you imagine is nothing,” Yoda said. “Not yet. But in time, you will learn to imagine it as the Force itself. You will learn to move your breath into your palms, into your fingertips, to the backs of your eyes and your feet. Feel it flow, you must. Without flow, completely useless, the Force will be to you.”

Yoda repeated this lesson for five days, for six hours each day. Ageless was meant to experience thirst, anxiety and hunger throughout. The rains came and soaked him. Hands on his knees, Ageless felt the water pour down from his head and trickle down his neck and chest, and all the while he kept breathing. He imagined the light moving in a continuous orbit throughout his body, and emptied his mind as Yoda kept telling him.

And he felt nothing.

Yoda noticed he was getting nowhere, and like a patient teacher he simply augmented the training, having Ageless break into a familiar routine of exercise every hour before returning to small-orbit breathing.

This…seemed to help?

Yoda told him he would feel his body temperature changing, sometimes going to extremes, and at one point Ageless was sweating profusely while the swamp’s temperature dropped and cold rains drenched him.

On the seventh night, Yoda took Ageless into his small hut and prepared something in a pot. “It is not a stew,” Yoda told him, handing him a bowl filled with cold, clear liquid. Despite the fact that it was near freezing, the liquid gave off hot steam. It was a contradiction Ageless had never seen before. He started to drink it. “No. Do not drink. Inhale. Made from glitterstim spice, it is. Called ik’tra’zihm. A concoction known only to the Witches of Dathomir.”

“Then how do you know how to make it?”

“I don’t. It is from one of two bottles of ik’tra’zihm Shreya left me when last we saw one another. Wasn’t sure what she did it, was I. But now I know. Inhale.”

When Ageless took his first whiff, he felt like acid was being poured into his nostrils. The taste was like zinc and charcoal and something else vaguely minty. He felt like he had to sneeze. Three breaths later, he felt himself relax.

“Close your eyes,” Yoda said.

Ageless closed them.

And there, projected against the back of his eyelids, was a strange vista of black flowers and a black sun, all framed within a golden sky. He felt himself pulled forward. And then came the sensation of falling. He was sweating and he wanted to scream because he sensed danger all around. He was a boy again, afraid of what was in his closet or dresser. Afraid of his own shadow and angry at the whole galaxy. And then he was back in Yoda’s hut, but his eyes were still closed. It was as though he could see through his eyelids, and he saw that everything was staticky and with white and green hues. Yoda appeared as a shimmering ghost, then solidified into his normal self.

“Open your eyes,” he heard Yoda said.

At first, Ageless couldn’t open them. It took great effort to force his eyelids open, and when he did he saw that the sun’s pale rays were coming through the window. The whole night had passed. Ageless felt an itchiness around his neck, and he reached up to touch a scraggly beard. Several nights. He looked at his hands, and saw his fingernails had grown. And I’m not even hungry. Or thirsty. It might have astounded him, had he not seen and experienced so many odd things here on Dagobah in just the last week. It also helped allay the weirdness that he felt he was still in a dream.

“Now,” Yoda said, stoking a fire in the corner. He glanced over his shoulder at his student. “Let’s try it again.”

* * *

Small orbit had definitely changed. Whatever was in that ik’tra’zihm had permeated him, it felt like the very pores in his skin had been opened and he was able to almost breathe through them. This feeling increased each morning after he soaked his hands in the same ik’tra’zihm, and held his palms a few inches above flames and repeated small orbit. But he wasn’t breathing in air through his pores, no. Instead, it was something more akin to what he felt by the snapping flames of his grandmother’s campfire, something he had not known he was receiving at the time, but now knew better. When he made mention of this to Yoda, the Jedi Master said, “The stoic flame, it is called. Not only demonstrating the power of her gift, was Shreya, but also sharing it with you. The power of the Dathomiri Witches can only be transmitted by touch and sharing. It must be passed on. Another way, there is not.”

“You’re saying she was teaching me all along how to conduct her power?”

“Yes.”

“Why can’t I remember?”

“You were a child. Plus, the Dathomiri interpretation of the Force can impel the mind to be in a trance-like existence. You will feel like everything is a dream. In time, you may even come to believe your time here with me was nothing more than a dream. But forever keep your knowledge of the stoic flame regardless, you will.”

“The stoic flame,” Ageless said. Closing his eyes, he sought the past, trying to feel again what he felt by his grandmother’s fire. Doing this while performing small orbit, he was able to conjure old feelings, old emotions, old fears. At times, he was the boy by the campfire, never knowing his future as an assassin for the Galactic Empire, and he saw his own dreams as they had been distilled then, his desire to become nothing more than a husband to a good woman on Dathomir, perhaps even to raise children.

And then he saw other things. The faces of the people he had killed. Felt their fear just before their final moment. He ingested all of this and felt almost to the point of weeping. But then he saw himself on Hoth and at the mercy of the frigid elements. And he saw two people emerge to aid him. Their faces appeared from the dark, cold depths: a Human, and a Duros.

Namyr.

Kevv.

Apparently he said their names out loud, because as Yoda paced around Ageless in the mud, he made a grunting noise and said, “Friends of yours?”

Ageless opened his eyes. He stood up, walked over to the campfire beside R4, and stared into the flames. Just as his grandmother had taught him to do when seeking the stars. As he drank his water, he reflected on everything he had just seen. He checked his chrono: thirteen days had passed since he met Yoda and began his training, and he still felt as though he was taking part in someone else’s dream. “They’re just people I knew.”

“More than just people, they are.” Yoda limped over to him, grunting with each step. “You saw them in your vision just now?”

“Is that what you call it? A vision?”

“What would you call it?”

Ageless thought about it a moment, and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Why do you deny some of the power of what you have already seen, in both your grandmother and in my demonstration with the bowl?”

“The Empire promised me great power over my destiny if I joined the Kingdom. Perhaps I’m just tired of having all the answers dangled in front of me and then having them prove to be nothing more than illusions.”

“Nothing wrong with disillusionment, there is,” Yoda told him, and sat down beside him. “A powerful Jedi once taught me that. Disillusionment brings power.”

“How?”

“Disillusionment brought you up of out childhood, raised you up out of the ditch of despair by being a paid assassin. Enlighten you beyond your years, disillusionment can. But wallow it for too long, you must not, for eventually self-pity will follow, and then self-pity’s cousin, self-hate, will be right behind. Come to rest in your heart, it does. Lure you to the Dark Side, it will. And most terrifying of all—be glad of it, you will be. You will rejoice in disillusionment’s gift of enlightenment, certainly. And forever will you walk faithlessly into all new endeavors in life. Indeed, you will seek out uncertainty, seek out lies you were told, and tell yourself, ‘Superior, am I, to those beings still foolishly clinging to the lies I have washed off.’ Pity for them, you will not have, for they will be weak in your eyes.

“And when no more pity, you have, you will find only pride. Pride that you have ascended above pity, and pride that you are above all others and their weak emotions. You will think yourself the only person with the true overview. And then you will find absolutes to define your new reality. Absolute justice, absolute knowledge, absolute authority. Never will your mind be more shut to new thoughts, never will your heart be more open to the Dark Side.”

Yoda nodded sagely.

“Broaden your horizons, disillusionment can. Awaken the stoic flame, it will.”

Ageless sat in silence for a time, contemplating that. Contemplating this Dark Side that Yoda kept warning against. He sipped from his canteen, checked in with R-3PO over his commlink, then looked over at the Jedi Master. “What is the Dark Side? Where does it come from?”

“From you,” said Yoda, looking directly at him.

“You talk about it like it’s some kind of poison.”

“A poison, it is.”

“But is it possible to study both the Light and the Dark? Is it possible to walk between these two worlds?”

Yoda looked away. “Possible, it may be. But…virtually impossible for all organic beings, it is. Seen it only twice in my life, have I, and even then the results were…mixed. The Dark Side has its own goals, of sorts, and it will strive to influence the user. Those who fail to see the Dark Side’s influence invite their own downfall.” The little creature paused to cough into his hand. It was a hard, aggravated cough, and Yoda wiped his mouth. “A good heart is not enough to ward against the Dark Side. You must be ever vigilant, created a ward against the Dark Side, so that it may never enter your heart.”

Ageless nodded. “I had heard that Jedi often close off their emotions. Their hearts, you might say. Does an open heart invite the Dark Side in?”

“An open heart does not necessarily lead to the Dark Side, but not capable of enjoying both power and love, are organic beings. It is the power, Ageless. It is the power that corrupts. An intelligent mind—” He broke off in another fit of coughing before recomposing himself. “An intelligent mind acknowledges that the power is seductive, sees it for what it is. And then, cut itself off from the supply of that power, a wise creature does. Because the Dark Side of the Force is a path that leads to many…unnatural abilities.”

Ageless wrestled with that. “You…refuse this power?”

“Every day.”

“But how do you deal with the temptation?”

“Slowly. As a Jedi’s power grows, so too does the call to the Dark Side. Tantamount to a Jedi’s power, the call is. At times, more so,” he said lamentingly. “Accepts this, a Jedi does. A lifelong struggle ahead of them, a Jedi has. The Dark Side’s song grows more sonorous with each passing year. Learn to deny it, a Jedi must.”

Ageless tried to wrap his head around that. “So then, the entire life of a Force-user is not just one of training, but also an ongoing battle against the Dark, an exercise in increasing one’s discipline, creating a bulwark against the Dark Side, so that the Dark Side itself, whose reach is increased commensurate to the student’s power, never takes hold?”

Yoda’s eyes widened fractionally. “Yes!” he said, jabbing his cane into Ageless’s leg. “Yes! Said it perfectly, you have.”

Ageless nodded. The words hadn’t been his, exactly. They came floating up to him from out of the depths of memory, the overall sentiment seeming like something his grandmother had imparted in one of her stories. He remembered her singing the song by the campfire, sometimes glancing across at him, weaving her story in and out of the song as she summoned green lights out of her palms and conjured flames. The story was of an aged sorceress that climbed a mountain, pursued the whole way by some dark creature made out of smoke, and which knew the sorceress’s greatest fears and darkest desires.

This smoke creature’s power grew commensurate with the sorceress’s power. The angrier she became, the more it fed off of her anger, and it was very giving. It lent her the power of its own rage, which was magic incarnate, and at first the sorceress took it…

But Ageless could not recall how the rest of the story went. That had never bothered him before, but it did now.

Yoda coughed again, much more harshly than ever before, and it lasted a long time. Ageless handed him his canteen, and the Jedi nodded a curt thanks and drank. After Yoda had regained his breath, Ageless said, “How long do you have?”

The Jedi’s laugh rattled in his lungs. “Blunt, you are. So much like your grandmother. Except she was more playful. Serious, you are. Without humor.” He sighed, coughed again, and cleared his throat. “Not long. Twilight is upon me, and soon night must fall. But we all must die. That is the way of the Force, and so I do not fear it.” He scratched the back of his head. “I’ve done all that I can.” That last part was said in a whisper, as if to himself, or even to someone Ageless couldn’t see.

“What did my grandmother do for you that makes you so eager to train me? How exactly did you two know each other?”

The Jedi prodded at something on the ground, then skewered it with his cane. Yoda bent down to eat the insect he had just killed. He always appeared to be in no hurry. Ageless wondered if he had always been this way, if all Jedi were like this, or if it was just the natural creature a person turned into when they reached advanced age.

“Have you heard a strange voice calling to you?” Yoda said.

Ageless was shocked. Not by the question, but by the sudden realization that he had been here on Dagobah for weeks and had all but forgotten about the Dark Voice. “Yes,” he said.

Yoda nodded as though he had known all along. “Heard it also, your grandmother did. Sought me out, she did, just before the Clone Wars. Attuned to me and summoned me to Dathomir, she did. A most unheard-of thing. Jedi were forbidden by the Nightsisters to ever approach them or their ilk. But I had questions, too. Questions about their Sisterhood and their interpretations of the Force. We exchanged much knowledge.”

Ageless leaned towards him. “But what about the Dark Voice that I’m hearing? What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Yoda said. “Neither did she. Not yet, anyway. But told me, she did, that she would never stop searching for answers. Have you ever asked her?”

This was the first time the Jedi had asked about Ageless’s grandmother in any direct manner, and Ageless had been happy to avoid letting anyone know whether or not his grandmother was still alive. He did not want her used as a weapon against him. “She’s gone,” he said. Which was half true.

Yoda nodded. “But inherited her connection to what you call the Dark Voice, you have. Your burden now, it is.” He sighed. “But there is one other I feel has a connection to it. Vader.”

“Vader? How can you tell?”

The Jedi Master shrugged. “Sense these things, I can.”

Ageless looked away from Yoda, his mind racing with the ramifications of it all. He was just about to press Yoda once again on Vader’s true identity, when the small creature waddled away a few feet, then looked back and pointed at Ageless’s belt. “Yours, the lightsaber is,” he said. “It may as well be. It has passed hands many times already, it seems its destiny to pass on to several more. And on the path you are on, you will make more enemies. Great enemies. Know how to use it, you must.”

“I already know how to fight.”

“Not with a lightsaber, you don’t.”

“I’ve had the best combat training credits can buy. And I’ve analyzed a few holovids of old Jedi duels and demonstrations that pop up on the HoloNet, before the Empire can take them down. The Jedi style is too flowery, too many wasted movements.”

“A lightsaber is a delicate thing. Preferred amongst Jedi, they are, because they are excellent weapons both for and against Force proficients. Those ‘flowery’ movements, as you call them, are the result of Force-sensitive beings prodding at one another’s invisible defenses amid the Force. Know, you must, how the flow of lightsaber combat works, in order to penetrate such invisible defenses.”

Ageless looked Yoda up and down. “No offense, old man, but how are you going to teach me anything about combat? You look barely healthy enough to stand. You should be in bed.”

Yoda nodded at him. “Know a few things, I still do. Promised Shreya I would give you all the tools you need to survive, I did. Keep my promise, I shall.” With his cane, Yoda pointed deeper into the swamp. “Come.”