I didn’t want to open my eyes, I wanted this dream to last just a little while longer. In the dream all of this had been over, I had been freed by millenia old ghosts, healed myself and even seen Luna again.
((Shira, stop it))
Great. The other fragments were waking up. Couldn’t one at least have the comfort of waking up without torment?
I decided to open my eyes, I had been woken up completely no sense in trying to delay it, the pain would come regardless whether I faked sleep or not.
But when I opened my eyes I saw something I didn’t expect: the colour white.
The past … how long had it been? I had woken up to always the same almost pitch black darkness and if by some coincidence ther was a little light in the room I would always see the same crumbling walls.
Maybe they had come up with a new way to torture me? What would it be this time?
„Good morning Shira“
This voice wasn’t something they could replicate. The most beautiful sound in existence, something they had no idea about, something that could not be faked.
I looked up to see Luna’s divine face with a gorgeous smile lightening her features.
It hadn’t been a dream.
All of that had really happened.
I felt relief growing in me as my eyes began to sting again. I grabbed her tighter and buried my face in her thighs which I had used as a pillow, where I continued to cry. This time I didn’t cry because of the bottled up suffering releasing in one go, this time I cried out of pure relief, almost happiness that it was finally over, that I could live again.
After a while, I had stopped crying and was at the moment only hugging her tightly, Luna spoke: „It is time for you to wake up.“
„Do I have to?“
„Yes you do, but don’t worry. Just one day and you can come here again. Now you have to wake up and get back home.“
I opened my eyes to a black ceiling, feeling very comfortable on what I assumed was the next available bed. Thankfully the room around me didn’t look used which means the force carried me to something akin to a guestroom in wherever the two sith had lived.
The room was relatively small, without windows, one side occupied by the bed I was lying on, one by a big closet, one by a desk with a comfortable looking spinning chair in front of it and the last one blank, with only a door.
((Good morning Shira, how was your night?))
To my left stood Midome with a small, friendly smile on her face.
„Pretty good I think, comforting to finally sleep in a bed again.“ I didn’t smile. To be honest I think I didn’t have any expression on my face. Now that I had dropped the mask I wore the day before, I didn’t think I would be able to become that expressive girl I was before again.
There was this emptiness inside me, seperating my bodies behaviour and my innermost thoughts and emotions from one another, I knew it would take something extraordinarily strong to break the indifferent face and posture of my body, like the breakdown I had the night before at Luna’s house.
I could have tried to pull up a mask again, I had a high acting skill after all, but I didn’t quite see the point in the effort.
((That’s good to hear. So tell me, what are we going to do now?))
„Two objectives at the moment: Seek and recover any information regarding these two sith and their circumstances and return to the jedi temple on whatever vessel they have here to deliver the information to the council and the chancellor.“
I went out of the room and the first thing I did…was search for a shower. It wasn’t that far away, just beside the room I had occupied actually, in typical sith fashion everything was kept in dark grey and black colours, and there I was, in heaven.
The bathroom wasn’t really luxurious, A simple toilet seat, a simple sink, a small cupboard and a standard shower, but since this was quite the advanced civilization even a standard shower was far more high tech than anything in my old life, though I doubted that I would have complained about a barrel with a bit heated water in it.
I wasn’t dirty, I could banish all dirt away from my body with the force and had done so before I healed myself the day before, but as a spoiled modern person it was simply horrifying for me not to be able to get my daily shower, to miss the comfort of the hot water running down my body, sweetly luring me to completely wake up after still moving about in a dazed state of half-sleepng. Without showering or bathing, staying for who knows how long in that crumbling ancient sith tomb, I felt dirty.
As I stood there in the hot shower I could feel a little sense of normalcy returning to my life, forcing my eyes to sting a little.
I wasn’t crying of course, the drops trickling down my cheeks were just water from the shower.
I had a long, long relaxing shower.
When I stepped out I let out a sigh. Pity I couldn’t shower the whole day, but at least now I felt clean.
I dressed myself in a simple white T-Shirt and jeans-shorts, leaving my feet bare, with my lightsaber on my left hip. This inventory sure was convenient, I had packed everything needed to survive in any environment for at least ten years in there, including all kinds of styles of clothing in my size and all sizes up to the approximate size I would need as an adult, best to be prepared.
I wasn’t in the mood for company and luckily the ghosts left me alone after each of them greeted me for the morning.
After a hearty breakfast (finally something to eat after who knows how long) in the room I had slept in I decided to get to work. First I determined in what kind of structure I was and was unsurprised to discover it to be a starship, though not a very new one, at least nothing was wrong with it and it didn’t look like a pile of scrap.
Throughout the ship were posters and holo-sculptures, but all of them wandered into the cells. Yes they had cells on a ship of light freighter class.
The reason? All of them were depictions of one of the two sith or ugly images of war and suffering. Some of them showed disgusting pictures of non-human races in humiliating positions, always with a slave collar around their neck and horrifying wounds marring their bodies. No wonder sith were insane. I would lose my sanity again if I had such a bad taste in art.
I would have destroyed them all, but they may have had secret information hidden inside them, so I did the next best thing: Put them were they couldn’t torture me with the memories that welled up everytime I looked into one of my captors hideous mugs, or saw others with the wounds that less than a day before covered me too.
The ship had big and luxurious quarters for the captain and three smaller and simpler ones for other crew members and guests, I had slept in one of those. There was a room with a big holotransmitter and a few terminals on the walls, a room with a big table and a few chairs around it, a small kitchen, as well as a few different entertainment products: gaming consoles, a few shelves with ancient books, etc., one storage room, bare of anything but basic supplies, one bathroom and a room with three very small cells for prisoners.
All in all acceptable, but nothing special.
The ship was landed about three hundred meters away from the temple of the dark side, on a artificially made clearing with pulse emitters around it to ward off wild beasts.
I searched the surroundings for anything else of use (since I had just showered and was to lazy to slip on some shoes I floated the whole time, a marvelous thing the force), but there wasn’t anything but jungle and ruins. I even went back into the temple (very reluctantly) to search the bodies of the two sith for anything I could need, in the end I decided to take everything they had on them, besides their underwear, in order to not miss anything.
After the work was done I finally was able to leave this wretched planet, hoping I would never have to return again.
The lights streaked by as I made the transition back from hyperspace to regular space and I could lay my eyes on Coruscant again. My home. Way too crowded after my long isolation.
After checking on the holonet I was able to determine that I had been away for almost two years and my eighth birthday was approaching. I was relieved to find out that there hadn’t been any big changes in the galaxy, no big crisis or difficulties, chancellor Thorn was still chancellor and the peace hadn’t been disturbed. Yet.
I also found out that some people had tried to learn playing the few music instruments left in the galaxy after the stream of ancient music I fed the holonet companies from the storage in the archives had died down. But that wasn’t important at the moment.
First of all I had to get back to the jedi temple.
As I approached it, the small holotransmitter in the cockpit flared to life and the figure of a Mon Calamari appeared: „Unidentified vessel, please state your purpose in the restricted airspace of the jedi temple.“
With a small voice, even with my new difficulty of showing emotions looking obviously anxious I answered: „I am Padawan Shira Drayen, I have been away for two years. I’m here to come home.“
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The man looked shocked at me for a few seconds before turning around and shouting to somebody I couldn’t see: „Call master Yoghurt and tell him to come to hangar bay 195 ASAP, he won’t believe this!“
He turned to me again: „Please follow the directions on your nav-screen to hangar bay 195, Padawan.“
„Thank you“
I did as he told me and half a minute later I had safely landed in one of the smaller bays of the temple.
Just as I was stepping out of the ship the door leading into the temple slid open and the small stature of master Yoda, heavily leaning on his gnarled and absolutely unnecessary walking stick, I had asked him once why he carried it around even though he didn’t need it, he had answered that it was funny to watch the reactions of people who saw him shedding his fragile old man farce for the first time.
I slowly walked towards him, when we stood just about two meters apart, he spoke: „Welcome back, little Shira.“
Tears welled up in my eyes and without me being able to do something about it, my body flung itself forward to tightly hug the old master as I began to sob heavily again.
„I’m back … Grandpa“
It was the first time I had called him Grandpa, but it just felt right. The ancient master had been far more than just a teacher to me in this life, he had more or less raised me like his own, good thing the order had given up the old ‚no attachment‘ thing they had before their almost destruction during the rule of the galactic empire.
He didn’t say anything, just hugged me back and patted my back a little, but I could feel him exuding a sense of joy at my return.
This time I didn’t cry for long, I had done that enough after my escape. Soon I let him go and the smile that had appeared on my face vanished again.
„Master Yoghurt, I must speak to the high council and the supreme chancellor immediately, there is a war coming.“
He looked into my eyes and the smile that had graced his face until then was replaced by a very serious expression.
„Yes, the coming darkness we have sensed, already informed of your return the council has been, call the chancellor immediately I will.“
About half an hour later I sat on a chair in front of the supreme chancellors desk, opposite of me the supreme chancellor Rr’brrlthornk, to his side a few senators he especially trusted, as well as Felicity Dimaen, who still was the senator of Dubrillion and had as soon as she had seen me began to fuss over me like I had been missing and possibly dead for years…wait that had happened, hadn’t it?
Kind of hard to think about how those close to you feel when you yourself are going through something like that.
To my side and behind me sat all masters of the council and Yoda, who was directly at my side.
I had just finished with the short version of what happened to me, getting shocked and horrified reactions from everyone and was now at the part of where those sith had come from and what their goal was: „Apparently they were scouts of a new Sith Empire, though it is in reality really old, about five thousand years old to be exact.
One of the members of the dark council of the Sith Empire at that time had been arrested for life, the reason is a little complicated. This sith, Darth Baras, had escaped his prison and fled far into deep space, where he came across a rather peculiar thing: The great magellanic cloud had come close enough to our galaxy to travel to it.
He decided to begin anew another galaxy. The population there was similar to ours, but had one big difference: They didn’t have trained force users. Anyone with the ability to use the force was being hunted and executed for ‚witchcraft‘.
Long story short, Baras found a few force sensitives who had succeeded to flee from the government and took them as apprentices. After a few years he had build up enough support to begin his conquest of the other galaxy and ruled as the sith emperor over the realm he established.
After a few years he had united that galaxy under the rule oft he sith and since thousands of years the empire he founded has waited and prepared to take our galaxy. The reason they aren’t here yet is, that the two galaxies have drifted (Not really drifted they ‚fluttered apart‘, but drifting apart sounds more fluid) apart and a travel between them isn’t yet possible, but in about six years they will drift close together again and then there will be war, a war we won’t be able to win with the current strength of the Republic.
One of the sith succeeded in travelling here by accident, because his ship was swallowed by a wormhole that suddenly opened in front of him and transported him into the far outer rim of our galaxy. Since messages can be sent to the other galaxy he has been reporting to the empire about the Republic’s strength and infrastructure, as well as any changes in it’s politics. He even fabricated the rebellion of Dubrillion in order to study the response of the Republic’s military.
There he also took an apprentice, who’s strength in the force had never been noticed: The former second prince to the Dubrillion throne, Martin Drayen.“
After I had finished I looked into the chancellor’s eyes and waited. Had I still been my old self I would have fidgeted a little under the unmoving gaze of the Ithorian, which looked more stoic than any gaze a human could ever produce, or maybe that was just my perception, I hadn’t spoken to many Ithorians so I was unfamilliar with the way they behaved.
He just looked at me, nobody else in the room seemed to say something first and slowly, deliberately asked me a question: „You are absolutely sure about this, Padawan?“
„One hundred percent, chancellor. If you want to check, there is a massive amount of data in the ship I arrived in.“
„Unsettling this is. Baras‘ death our records state.“ A lolipop for the one who first guesses who said that.
At his words my figure brightly glowed, causing everybody to shield their eyes, and Midone’s spirit floated out of my body.
„It’s true. The prison Baras was in was destroyed in a big explosion strong enough to vaporize those close to it’s center. It would certainly be possible for his remaining spy network to sneak into the prison, get Baras out and blow it up in the process. The reason the dark council declared him as dead and not missing, as I suggested, is because we were too busy with the eternal empire at that time and since my sister and I, the ones who wanted to bring Baras back in, were betrayed right after that crisis and the rest of the council apparently was okay with him being exiled from the empire.“
The senators looked at the apparition in shock. They had never seen a force ghost before and most of them probably hadn‘t believed that they had bound themselves to me either, it was something really abstract to them and even after living their whole lives in a nation who’s protectors were known users of supernatural powers they couldn’t simply believe something like the return of ancient force users to life, well half life.
Master Skywalker opened his mouth for the first time during this meeting: „So you are one of the sith lords who helped Padawan Shira? You do not feel like any other sith or sith spirit I have ever met. Can you tell me your name?“
„Of course, your looking at the mighty and beautiful Darth Midone, the elder of the two sisters who founded the splinter group ‚the order of true sith‘ in the empire!!“
Of course she couldn’t have stayed serious for more than a minute.
„All that doesn’t matter, what we are here to decide is how to react to this new threat. Padawan Shira, tell me: Is the current jedi order able to handle the coming sith? If they aren’t I fear that the Republic won’t be able to hold against this Empire.“
The chancellor didn’t speak loudly, yet all the hushed whispers between the people in he room immediately stopped.
„The current order? No. Those sith have trained in order to beat us for their whole lives. But that doesn’t mean that the order in six years will be unable to deal with them. Compared to the sith we have two large advantages: The jedi stand together and even people with the least talent can achieve much, the sith are divided in petty rivalry and kill those they deem weak without second thought.
This causes the average sith to be stronger than the average jedi, but the jedi have even more strong members than there are members in the sith order, because even the strongest sith kill each other.
At the moment they have the advantage because they have been trained to fight against jedi, while we jedi focus more on the mastery of the force, inner peace and personal knowledge, as well as acting as diplomats, teachers and peacekeepers.
If we concentrate the training in the next years on combat we should be able to handle the sith.
The question I have is: How will you handle the preperations for the war?“
„We have two ways to handle this: Prepare in secret and prepare in the open. Do you know if there are other spies of the empire in our galaxy?“
„As far as I know there aren’t, but that doesn’t tell us anything. All I have to go on are the records that have been kept by the sith, it is possible that these two didn’t know of other spies in order to secure the different teams should one be discovered, but I have taken the liberty to continue the reports made by the sith in the same style, luckily the messages are sent in the form of text.“
One of the senators, I think the one from Corellia, spoke up at that pont: „Then we should prepare in secrecy, that way we could surprise our enemy with our opposition.“
Master Yoda scoffed at that: „Naiv that thought is. Prepare a great army in secrecy you can? Make great funds disappear you can? Find enough soldiers without alerting others you can? Use all our resources we must if in this war a chance we want to have. Panic there will be, but worse it would be if the war, sudden it would come. Trust from the people we will lose, if hide such things from them we would.“
„On that I agree, we are a democracy. It is our duty to share information such as this with our people. We have six long years to prepare, if everything is done right, the war will be short. How short would be determined by the length of the time period the other galaxy is in travelling range. Do you perhaps know this, Padawan Shira?“
„Yes Grandmaster. The records in the sith’s ship state an approximate period of ten years, though that information could have been falsified, as could the time of our enemies arrival. I suggest being prepared for the war as soon as possible.“
The chancellor sighed: „To think I would have to worry about a war…well, let’s get this over with the sooner the people know, the sooner we can begin our preperations. Activate emergency protocol 11, I need to address the people of the Republic.“
He stood up and walked towards a big holotransmitter on one side of his office. One of the chancellor’s personal guards had immediately begun fiddling with a console and a few moments later the terminal activated.
The chancellor took a deep breath, stepped forward and spoke passionately with his deep, majestic voice: „People of the Republic, today I have recieved a very distressing piece of information. It came from a source I would trust with my own life: The order of the jedi.
Sometime during the next seven years an outside force will attack us, a force that doesn’t understand the meaning of peace and doesn’t negotiate with diplomats. Their goal is the destruction of our Republic. On their campaign through our galaxy they will destroy and conquer thousands of worlds, rip trillions of families apart and erase countless innocent lives.
Unless we stop them.
Citizens of the Republic, I hereby ask of you to help me protect our galaxy from this carnage, to save our society from destruction, to drive away those who want to take away our freedom, our morals, our very existence!
I beg you to aid me in keeping these tyrants away from what is ours!
I, Rr’brrlthornk, the current supreme chancellor, ask you to support the Republic, as after over a thousand years of peace we will go to war!“
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Here's the next chapter, later than I originally wanted to post it, but whatever.
IMPORTANT
The chapters title is a little symbolic this time: The symbol of the rebellion in star wars is inspired by a creature known as starbird. This bird is similar to a phoenix, everytime it dies it's reborn in a supernova. I decided to make it a symbolic animal for the republic in my story.
I struggled with the name of the galaxy. I was on the verge of calling it the milky way, because the galaxy of star wars is really similar to the milky way, the same kind of galaxy, about the same size... in the end I decided to call the second galaxy 'great magellanic cloud' after the second nearest galaxy to the milky way, roughly a fourth in size.
Did you know that our galaxy 'flutters' because of the influence of smaller galaxies? Now you know.
Yes I brushed up a little on my astronomic knowledge for this chapter.
NOT IMPORTANT
This is basically going to be me explaining why this chapter came so late:
Originally I wanted to upload a new chapter last friday, but things happened. Every docent decided to catch up on lessons lost during the semester on wednesday, thursday and friday last week, so I was in the university a lot...and I forgot to bring my Netbook on Wednesday, so I decided to write a short story on paper in the breaks that day. I kind of got hooked and contined to do that the next two days. Over the weekend my sister came to visit (She lives away from home), so I spent almost the entire weekend with my family.
The first three days this week I didn't have much time for writing and yesterday was the first free day in the week, even though semester break was supposed to start this monday, so I decided to relax. That is the reason why the chapter is so late.
Did you know that this story has already more than 49,000 words? Not bad for my first story right?
I...have nothing else to say today, except that I just had the most awesome Mettbrötchen known to mankind.
See you in the comments.
Bye