Raey couldn't concentrate.

He kept one hand against the stone wall to keep himself heading straight because, more often then not, his gaze was drawn back to the stone arch that served as the entrance of the temple, and the lawn beyond. There was something wrong with LN and his gut twisted in sympathy, but he couldn't disobey Leia.

Besides, he told himself, what could he do to help that the Princess of Alderaan wouldn't do better? He didn't know how to comfort suddenly-distressed women... and when he thought about it, he didn't really want to, either. It would have been nice to be able to pat her on the shoulder, let her know he cared, but then he'd have no idea what to say or do afterward.

"I am thinking about this way too much," he muttered, dragging his gaze back where it belonged. "Ar'tak, Ar'tak... why in the galaxy did she want me to find Ar'tak?"

The temple entrance led straight into a long corridor, wide enough for five or six people shoulder to shoulder and the ceiling rose a couple yards above head-height. Lower openings, stone doorways without doors, led off to one side or another, but when Raey peeked inside he saw they were mostly storage rooms. Or, at least, rooms being used for storage. In one, he noticed with amusement, there was a large stack of doors yet to be installed. Twice, he passed intersections in the corridor; other, more narrow halls leading off to the left and the right. He did not go down any of them.

The light changed quickly. The sunlight faded behind him and was replaced by the glow of little white lamps hanging from the ceiling. It was nice light, Raey thought; just bright enough that it felt cozy, but not too bright.

The hall, which seemed to go on for far too long, finally ended, spilling out into a large, almost cavernous room. Raey realized it probably was a cavern, or at least an artificial one, dug into the mountain. The air was much cooler in here then outside, and it was laid out and decorated like some kind of underground courtyard. There was a large fountain in the middle of the room, benches against the walls at discreet intervals, a couple small statues, and many doors and halls that led off in every direction. Raey even saw an upper level, an in-set balcony that wrapped all the way around the cavern halfway to the ceiling with curtain-obscured doorways and multiple staircases down to the ground.

He would have whistled appreciatively if it wouldn't've felt so disruptive. As it was, this place wasn't abandoned like the lawn had been, and he didn't have any desire to draw the attention of the half a dozen white-robed men and women sitting or standing around the chamber, talking either in low voices or not at all.

Ar'tak, a blue-skinned alien, would have been easy to spot among all the humans, so Raey quickly realized his target wasn't in the room. He shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortable, and glanced back down the main corridor towards the entrance.

"No, I have a job to do. Don't know why or what for, but... Leia Organa gave me a job to do."

That bolstered his determination. He took a breath and cautiously approached the nearest man.

"Excuse me," he said, keeping his voice down to minimize the chance of upsetting people. "I was told to find Ar'tak. Do you know where he is?"

The older man nodded, pointing helpfully up towards the second level. "Do you see that door there? That leads to his room. You shouldn't disturb him unless it is for a good reason, though – he will be meditating for hours."

Raey hesitated. "Princess Leia told me to find him..." he ventured.

"That's a good reason."

"Oh. Okay."

He climbed the stairs to the upper level, hoping the door that had been pointed out was the right one. He didn't like the idea of interrupting anyone here, much less someone who he wasn't supposed to interrupt. There was no real door to knock on, so he just rapped on the stone doorway and hoped the muffled thump would be loud enough.

Perhaps it somehow was, or perhaps the Jedi apprentice had sensed him outside the door, because Ar'tak's voice called out a mild "Enter," while Raey's knuckles were still against the stone. Raey hesitantly pulled the heavy curtain aside and ducked inside the room.

Ar'tak was sitting on the bare stone floor, his silver lightsaber hilt set to one side. He looked at Raey curiously, not quite smiling but also clearly more intrigued by the interruption then annoyed. "What can I do for you?"

"I don't really know," Raey confessed, feeling that uncomfortable itch down his back that interacting with people sometimes gave him. "Princess Leia was telling us about morning meditation, then LN freaked out and Leia told me to find you."

Ar'tak's mouth formed a silent ooh. "In that case, would you like to finish afternoon meditation with me? Then I could show you around the temple, if you want."

Raey shrugged helplessly. "If that's what you think Leia had in mind."

"I can't read minds, so we'll just have to wing it. It's not hard, though. I'll just be trying to make a conscious connection with the Force, and you can..." Ar'tak trailed off. His brow furrowed. "I don't actually know what non-Jedi meditate about."

"Leia said something about contemplating how much we all matter to the universe?"

"Yeah, but that only takes a few minutes." Ar'tak scratched his weird head-tail spike. "Maybe we should just talk. I'm thoroughly distracted now, anyway."

Raey sat down, then reached for Ar'tak's lightsaber. "Mind answering some questions, then?" he asked, ignoring the apprentice's wordless exclamation to be careful. He turned the hilt over in his hands, impressed by the surprising weight of the thing.

"Don't turn it on," warned Ar'tak. "But... okay, sure. Ask away."

There were visible welding lines, and the grip was tight, unworn leather. Raey figured the lightsaber had been made fairly recently, and without much polish. "What are you guys going to do about that acolyte who tried to kill us?"

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"I don't know. Leia sensed them coming, you and the dark ones, and told us to bring you safely here. That was all. The dark apprentices might still be out there, but we will stop them if they attempt to take you while you're in Brehalda City."

"Them?"

"Leia said there may be two."

Raey ran a finger around the rim of the lightsaber, where the blade would come out. A lens for focus... where did the energy come from?

"Shouldn't you be hunting them down? What if they send a message to the rest of the First Order? You could have an enemy fleet on the way here right now."

"Ah, we have defences in place to prevent that. There are jammer stations throughout the system, blocking any communication in or out without a special authorization code. The dark apprentices could attempt to take off, at which point we would send fighters after them, but they haven't tried it yet. I imagine they are laying low for now, formulating a plan of attack."

Raey felt the lightsaber tug in his hand. He looked up to see Ar'tak holding out one hand, and the lightsaber pulled itself out of his grip to answer the silent summons.

"Sorry, but I really don't feel comfortable letting other people fiddle with my lightsaber," Ar'tak explained, taking the hilt out of midair as though it was perfectly normal and clipping it to his belt. "You looked like you were about to try and pry it apart."

"I would love to see how these things work," Raey confessed, "but I won't break it." He would have said more, but Ar'tak slid in between the sentence beats.

"No, you won't."

Raey tore his gaze away from the mysterious hilt and forced himself to look elsewhere, but there was really nothing interesting in the room to hold his attention. A bed, a light orb, a chest, and that was it. It could have easily been a cell if not for the complete lack of door.

"So, ah... you are Leia's apprentice, then? Who are all these other Jedi-people?"

Ar'tak lifted his shoulders, smiling a little self-consciously. "I am, technically, one of Master Leia's apprentices. She teaches all of us, though not all in the Jedi ways. Most of the people here are more historians, healers, or teachers then classic Jedi, and only three of us have built our lightsabers."

Raey looked back at Ar'tak in surprise. "Three?"

"Four, counting Master Leia."

"Then... this isn't a temple academy?"

"No. That's one of the reasons we rely so heavily on secrecy – we don't actually have the strength of numbers to defend against the Jedi Hunters right now. And the Skywalker Academy can't come to our aid if the worst was to happen..."

The mere words acted like a wind across coals, stirring up fire in Raey's chest. "The Skywalker Academy?" he repeated intently. "So it is real."

Ar'tak bit his lip guiltily. "I can't actually tell you. It's not my business to talk about."

"But it absolutely is real."

"Ask Master Leia sometime. She will know what to say."

Raey took a deep, frustrated breath, but let the topic drop. So close. "What do you want to talk about, then?"

"Perhaps that is enough questions for now," Ar'tak suggested, a little feebly. "I really should be meditating..."

Raey scowled.

"You are, of course, free to join me," the apprentice offered. "Leia has told you about the Force as connector, right? Even if you aren't particularly Force-sensitive, you might still benefit from trying to strengthen that connection. Just... stretch your thoughts. Towards me, if you need a target, or just outward."

"That is as vague and unhelpful as sand-lines in the desert the day after they were drawn."

"Shush. I'm meditating now."

Raey rubbed a hand over his face, then gave in. These people were significantly nicer then the other scavengers on Jakku, but they were just as difficult to talk to. He found himself missing his droid.

Dameron's droid.

He wondered if the First Order still had his nonsensical translator. They had probably trashed it soon after confiscating it. It hadn't been terribly helpful, but he didn't like the idea of it being thrown in a recycler or incinerator. There were good parts in there somewhere, at least, that should have been salvaged.

The thought of all his stuff in the hands of the First Order was depressing, so Raey followed Ar'tak's example and closed his eyes, shoving the gloomy notions out one at a time as they presented themselves.

My stuff is gone.

My ship crashed.

My droid was captured.

Dameron is imprisoned...

He concentrated on himself, trying to put himself in the mindset of a Jedi. Calm, unconcerned, in control. He brought up the memory of Ar'tak's lightsaber, the unfinished mental diagram he had begun to create.

How would I construct a lightsaber?

It was a game he had played before, with ship parts. Take incomplete schematics and fill in the blanks, working from every direction to try and figure out the missing components. It often relied on significant guesswork, but even inaccurate assumptions could occasionally lead to a successful outcome.

The diagram this time was very incomplete. Raey had worked on blasters a few times, so weapon technology wasn't completely foreign to him, but it wasn't his specialty and the lightsaber was far more mysterious then a blaster.

A controlled laser beam, constantly focused to a specific length and power...

He couldn't wrap his mind around it. There had to be some secret techniques or technologies that only Jedi knew about, or maybe it was the Jedi themselves who made creating lightsabers possible. Some kind of Force trick to manipulate energy, shape it in this particular way...

Ar'tak's breathing was the only other sound in the room. Slow and deep, almost like he was sleeping. Raey considered this fact, but did not stir from his place on the alien's floor. If he wanted to get a closer look at a Jedi's weapon, he would just have to find someone willing to share. Antagonizing a Jedi could only end badly.

And he didn't really want to move.

The inside of the temple was surprisingly cool, but not cold. There was something close and comfortable about the place, as if the mere knowledge of where he was made it feel safe. Raey could easily imagine the atmosphere lulling him to sleep, but he was too awake to let it. There was energy running through the stones of the floor that made his skin tingle.

Now... where does it come from?

He had followed the paths of energy before. Cold wires in walls led to dead generators, and dead generators could make a week's rations. He didn't even always need to tear out the walls to see where the wires went. There was a learned instinct to it, a kind of deductive visualization like the diagram game.

This was a temple, not a ship. Raey couldn't follow physical miles of wire, so he just let his imagination run with it. Down, into the mountain. Into the darkness.

And then out into the stars.

"You will not kill them all."

He could not breath. The air was gone. His heart was beating too slowly...

"I will kill whoever we want. What are you going to do to stop me?"

Raey could not open his eyes. His eyelids were too heavy. And now, something was beginning to crush him.

"You will have your Knights, Kylo, but I shall have my heir. And you will OBEY."

.

Ar'tak opened his eyes when he felt the jolt. He lunged forward to catch Raey a heartbeat before the scavenger slumped to the floor.