Three hours later the autonav pinged. Lyra disengaged it as they approached the point indicated on the map. Taz opened his eyes and sat up, readjusting the seat.
"You snore when you sleep."
She's still annoyed. Great. "Everybody does."
"Not everybody. Can't believe you slept the whole way," she muttered.
Better to sleep than spend another three hours arguing. He stretched and covered a yawn. He felt more rested, but still mired in his dark mood.
Just coming into view, a jumble of light gray rocks, moss-spotted and crumbled, stuck out of the tall grass. Lyra banked the Skywagon in a lazy sweep around the ruins. "Are you sure this is the place? It doesn't look like much of a ruin to me."
Taz was no archeologist despite his cover story, but there were clear indications of a regular pattern, to say nothing of the fact that many of the stones were cut, and the remains of a large column sat nearly in the center of the rubble field. For some reason it seemed really familiar, as if he'd been there before. It took a few seconds for him to realize that the column looked very much like the one in the temple he'd seen in his dreams. "This is it," he said with certainty.
"Alright, I'll set her down," she said and entered a landing cycle. She backed off the throttle and cut in the repulsors as the craft settled, hovering a quarter of a meter over the ground. Lyra powered down the Skywagon and set the repulsors to idle.
Taz was more certain than ever about the dream he'd had last night. Both Master Jorun's journal and Nanvarr mentioned that the Force would sometimes manifest visions of the past or the future. He was pretty sure he'd seen a vision on Narendri Prime when he found his lightsaber. "It looked a lot different in my head."
She wasn't quite sure what to make of that. "You sure this is the place?" she repeated with more emphasis.
He gave her a distracted nod and climbed out of the speeder. They were on a broad savanna. Meter-high tufts of hardy, straw-colored vegetation punctuated the red grassland, millions of blades swaying in the currents that swept across the open landscape. Here and there a rugged tree with rough black bark had sunk powerful roots into the soil.
"Why would anyone put a temple in such a remote place?"
A corner of Taz's mouth twitched. "It was a lot different when the temple was built. More lush." He strapped on his gun belt, set his pack over his shoulder, then started toward the ruins.
"Still remote though," she groused, taking her gear and following after him.
The ruins marked out a round foundation of craggy stones, perhaps twenty meters across, though it was hard to see just how big the place had been from the jumble of blocks. She walked by one, worn by the wind, but still showing the marks from the chisels and hammers its builders had used. She brushed her hand over it and was surprised at how warm the rock felt, given the cloudy sky and the cool air. Another lay in her path, longer than the others and broken in three pieces. Maybe a lintel? She thought she could discern a symbol carved at its midpoint; a disk with eight spokes radiating outward. It bore a vague similarity to the Imperial Crest, but Lyra couldn't imagine how the two could be connected.
Taz wound a path between the fallen blocks, angling toward the remains of the column they'd seen from the air. As they approached Lyra could just make out weathered carvings and inscriptions. She recognized neither the language nor most of the shapes, although some of them appeared to be people, or at least bipedal beings of some sort. Flecks of colors—russet, a drab blue, dark brown—made her think the stonework must have been painted when it was new.
Taz moved here and there among the rubble for another five minutes, not really seeming to look at anything as far as Lyra could see. He finally stopped in a spot toward the western end of the place. He let his pack and utility bag slip from his shoulders while he made a slow turn, arms outstretched, like he was feeling for something. Then he sat on the ground, legs crossed, and opened his eyes. "This feels like the place I'm supposed to be."
"What does that mean?"
"I think I saw this place last night in a dream."
"A dream?"
"A very vivid, unpleasant one. It's why I couldn't sleep," he admitted. "Like I said, I think the Force was showing me this place, like I'm supposed to be here."
She crinkled her brow. "Are you sure you aren't just making all of this up, Oktos?"
"If I'm being honest, no." He shook his head and got that frustrated look that she'd seen on Allegra when Nanvarr was trying to train him. "I really don't know what I'm doing. I wish I did, but..." He trailed off for a minute, looking unsure and conflicted. "Everything about the Force is hard for me. I feel like—like something important is out there, and if I could only grasp it, everything would make sense." He looked desperate.
"Hey." She knelt next to him. "Stop being impatient."
"What?"
"You get impatient. You try to push everything. Piloting Allegra, that training or whatever it was you were doing with Nanvarr, being angry at Tess and Numarkos."
"You don't know anything about that," he snapped.
Lyra held up her hands. "Hey, don't get defensive. If Rendix told you that you'd listen to her wouldn't you?"
"You're not Sera."
"No. I'm just the Imp you took pity on, right?" she shot back. She got up, brushing dirt from her knees and wondering why she'd even tried.
"That's not what happened."
She pursed her lips. Maybe I went too far. "All I'm saying is that you don't have to push so hard all the time." The barest hint of a grin showed on her face. "Back at the Alui Sector Academy, hyperspatial mechanics used to always kick my ass. I dreaded the nav practicals because they made us plot a route through the Keovarin Expanse."
"The what?"
"It's a stellar graveyard. Anyway, there was a set of formulas that I just couldn't get my head around, but I knew if I did I'd be able to plot around the Keovarin's gravitic instabilities."
"Were you able to figure it out? The route, I mean."
"Never did, even though I studied for weeks. Got enough partial credit to squeak out a passing grade, though. Now I just leave the tricky route calculations to the navcomp."
"That… doesn't help much," he said, but his frustrated expression faded into a small grin.
"What I'm saying is, just do what you can do, and don't let the frustration eat you up inside."
Taz nodded, looking thoughtful. "That makes sense. Thanks."
She shrugged. "Whatever."
Why can't she just take the compliment? Taz uttered a sigh and tried not to look annoyed. "Guess I'll just try meditating, and see what happens. It, uh, might take a while, so..."
Lyra retreated, leaning against one of the warm, flat blocks a few meters away. She took the pad from her pocket and waggled it at him. "No problem, Oktos. I've got plenty of reading to catch up on." She thumbed the pad's security sensor and it blinked to life. She opened the reader and scrolled through the library of titles.
Taz began whispering a meditative chant. Lyra couldn't hear the words but she could tell he was repeating the same phrase over and over again. His eyes closed and he fell into a relaxed cadence. She turned her attention to the article on the decline of the arts in the Age of Empire and began reading.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
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Taz had nearly always perceived the Force like a gray haze. His only other connection to it seemed to be the nasty shocking sensation behind his eyes or at the back of his neck when danger was near. Over the eleven years he'd been aware of it, through the meditations and practicing what he read in Master Jorun's writings, the haze remained. Even as he gained those tiny increments of understanding, learned greater control of the healing trance and how to augment his physical abilities to jump higher or run faster, the gray remained. When Master Jorun spoke of sensing things through the Force Taz had tried that, but he could never seem to find anything. Well, except on Narendri Prime. He'd begun to suspect that he simply had a weak connection to it and this ashen fog might be as much clarity as he would ever have.
Nanvarr and Jurun both stressed the need for calm when accessing the Force. Taz's own experience had borne that out; he did his best with it when his mind was still. But he couldn't help letting frustration turn to desperation as he realized that a much greater understanding of the Force lay so tantalizingly close, yet just beyond his reach.
Just do what you can do, Lyra advised him. She wasn't normally so understanding. It was a nice change from her usual attitude that hovered somewhere between annoyance and hostility. Plus, it made good sense. He settled into a comfortable position, arms resting on his knees. He started the Dahann meditation, just to clear his mind, then began Master Jorun's chant in a whisper, his lips barely moving.
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
After some minutes he felt the familiar and oddly comforting stress that came with maintaining the trance. Careful to keep his breathing deep and slow, he continued the mantra, sliding deeper into the connection.
The gray mist of the Force surrounded him, pressing close all around. But as he chanted, something else entered his perception, an eddy first, then currents in the haze. He waited, willing patience as never before and more eddies formed, little swirls and lines, even ripples. They intersected, changing each other as they met and passed, combined and diverged. In time it seemed to Taz that a kind of pattern emerged, imprinted on the gauzy fabric he was caught in. At first he didn't comprehend it but gradually he realized he was looking at the very ruined temple in which he sat.
Turning his mind's eye the tapestry changed, time slid backward until the tumbled walls rebuilt themselves. The ancient place hosted dozens of beings who came and went in what must have been the daily flow of life for the adherents of the faith that had led them to construct the Dai Bendu temple. At least, that's the name that resolved in his mind.
The vision, millennia old, shifted and faded as his perception returned to the present. Taz was fascinated by the things he was able to see. He found that the more he relaxed and let the Force flow instead of trying to coerce a response, the more he could stretch out his perceptions and feel other presences. Sera and Reiko glowed, points of brightness in the gray. Others too—Tess, strong and confident, elated at having been reunited with her parents after so many years apart, but troubled by their seeming embrace of their Imperial captors. Varun, whose presence was guarded, except his feelings for Tess.
Taz keenly felt their love for each other, the potent connection their injuries and mutual convalescence had sparked. He envied that connection; he'd had it with her once, or thought he had. The vision grew darker when he dwelled on how he'd lost her to Numarkos. It started to twist and take an ugly cast. Alarmed, Taz pushed them out of his perception and spent some effort calming his mind.
After minutes of the calming Dahannist recitations, he reached out again tentatively. He could sense Tess's parents and as he relaxed fully, felt others at the Imperial installation, their presences impressed in shades of light and dark. He found Tillisk Tafo, felt the sharp dagger edge of his being, the sense of supremacy that the Imperial Will imparted. His affection for the miners, if it could be called that, was tainted by sinister intellect and a certitude that the Empire's recent reversals would be swiftly rectified by his hand.
Vaniel Ruatha was there. Hers was as sharp a presence as Tafo's, but cold and unyielding. She had the same kind of guardedness as Varun, exacerbated to the point of paranoia. Taz wanted to shrink from the powerful, dangerous convictions that Ruatha and Tafo shared. The future they planned could doom the galaxy to more decades of destruction. He felt now, more than ever the urgency of getting information about this place back to the New Republic.
Relaxing into the Force even more, he felt the stirring of everyone on the mining base, their individual essences tiny droplets in the mist. And he kept going, encouraged by what he felt, expanding his perception even wider, feeling fainter impressions of life on the planet and even across the vastness of space to quadrillions of other lives. It dawned on him then that the haze wasn't simply a medium for the Force to show him these things; It was an expression of the universe itself. Over what seemed like long minutes (though his perception of time had ceased to mean anything to him) he could even narrow his sense to an individual particle within the mist and examine the essence of the lifeform it represented.
The shades of the Force he felt as well. Anger, hate, envy, even passion and desire caused a darkening in the fog. He felt power there and the same temptation to embrace it that he'd experienced aboard Allegra when he'd fought with Tess. But there was also light, compassion, serenity, curiosity, and an abiding sense of life that made it grow. It had a power too, not harsh and strong like the darkness but just as potent.
And as the dark and light mixed together throughout the universe they produced the gray of balance. If he was still, very still and very focused, he could feel the pull of light and dark within him. He reached out to the warmth of the light. He could feel nearly limitless potential in its bright glow but he also felt something unexpected, like lethargy. The light was warm and good, but static. He reached for the dark, felt its sensuousness, its allure, the offer of power that could be wielded in the service of justice and righteousness. Power to conquer and dominate those who challenged him. It felt good, vital but in a frenzied way. He had to struggle with every passing instant to avoid the temptation of his darker urges; the jealousy he felt when he touched the connection between Tess and Varun, the despair of seeing so many friends die on Jakku, the impotent rage that accompanied his memory of the Pride of Olminar's return to Vrast, too late to save his family or the other millions who died there. The Force promised him the power to right all those wrongs if only he'd give himself over to it, body and soul.
It clung to him like an oily skin and it took some strength of will to drag himself back from those dark currents. He pushed the vengeful feelings aside and concentrated on finding peace and a center in the tension of the Force. The dark and light stirred together once more and he relaxed in that balance.
Taz drew his senses back in and he suddenly recognized Lyra. He opened himself to the Force even more. She was ablaze in his perception, blotting out everything else. The ferocity of her life force and its every nuance flooded his senses—deep pain at the death of her family, the love she had for them, most especially Allegra, and the harsh wariness she wrapped around herself to keep from having to experience anything that wretched again.
There was something else in the brilliant point within the Force she occupied; conflict and guilt. The guilt of a survivor, the conflict of someone whose deepest beliefs had been challenged and then crumbled away. She was uncertain about her years in Imperial service and her place among the ex-Rebels she'd joined. It frightened her, made her retreat even further inside her layers of emotional armor.
Even deep in his meditative state he felt a twinge of shame at the intimacies he was experiencing. He felt like he should reach out to her through the Force, reassure her somehow. He wasn't sure how to do that despite his lessons with Nanvarr, but finally he settled on projecting some of the calm he felt, hoping it might reach her.
Lyra's presence in his perception suddenly receded, pushed back by new eddies that flowed and resolved into form. A figure emerged out of the past, commanding all of his attention. At first no more than a gray silhouette, it grew in detail with every passing instant until finally a girl stood before him. He recognized her instantly—the bright yellow eyes, each with their two distinct pupils, the tan cast of her skin, braids pinned in loops on either side of her head, the cream and brown robes. And the gold lacquered lightsaber with an exquisitely tooled maroon leather grip that hung from her broad belt. He'd seen her five years ago on Narendri Prime, the day he'd turned twenty, found her lightsaber, and nearly died.
Sha'ila Kal'ii.
Her name came to him unbidden. She said nothing but she took the saber from her belt and balanced it on her upturned palms. Polished and gleaming, Taz could see what an elegant weapon it was, perfectly suited to the more civilized age in which the girl had existed. It rose from her hand, floating between the two of them in Force-space. She smiled and he felt something guiding him—it could only be her—urging him to delve deeply into the ancient Jedi weapon.
He felt its presence, its weight and power. He poured his senses into it, past the leather and brass grips and the dark golden phrik alloy of its emitter housing. The internal workings spread themselves before him as all of its parts disassociated and hung, suspended. The pale blue kyber crystal that formed the saber's potent blade spun lazily. Taz could see deep inclusions in the rough mineral splinter, the web of fissures and fractures within its structure. It was just as Nanvarr had said.
Kal'ii prompted him with her alien eyes and he sought with his perception, until quite nearby he felt something new, a vibration within the Force. Turning more of his attention to it he began to perceive not just vibration, but sound. A pale glow began, like a dormant ember reignited by fresh air. At first diffuse, it came into focus as the sound changed pitch, tone, timbre. Finally in sharp relief he saw it—a crystal, like the blue one in Sha'ila's saber, but with a deep amber hue. And to his unexpected delight, it was singing.
Singing to him.
Taz listened, enraptured. Its song went far beyond melodies, harmonies, and counterpoints. Fragments of wisdom, secrets as old as space-time and a streak of playfulness, all cascaded into him. He answered, surprised to hear a song of his own, though he made no sound. He sang to the crystal with his heart more than his head, and it sang back. Each note was a new, fundamental revelation that left his consciousness as soon as the next was sung. He was filled with elation and a feeling that he could grasp all of the secrets of the universe.
The song faded eventually until it was a mere murmur at the farthest reaches of his mind. The amber crystal hung in the air, perfectly aligned with the other components of the lightsaber. Sha'ila nodded, a deep serene gesture, and smiled once again. With a push here, a turn there, he choreographed the multitude of parts into a swirling ballet. As they coalesced Sha'ila grew further away, her presence muted but kind and reassuring, until only his lightsaber remained, aged and worn, but whole once more.
Taz felt great contentment and exhaustion. He opened his eyes, panting from exertion and covered in sweat. The sun had fallen below the horizon and the sky was quickly darkening. At his feet lay the lightsaber, the gift of Jedi knight Sha'ila Kal'ii, two centuries gone.