Private Bleedin' Kyber

[Ishani Dinn]

“Y’know, I think we may have picked a bad time to visit Coruscant,” Ishani muttered dryly. Sitting in the driver’s seat of an airspeeder, she gazed out the window at skylanes that were nearly devoid of traffic—unheard of on a major ecumenopolis, let alone the “heart of the galaxy”.

The famous Coruscanti skyline was dotted with wreckage. Most of the destruction centered around recognizable landmarks, like the Senate Building and the Jedi Temple, both of which were now in ruins following a surprise attack by the Brotherhood of the Maw.

“Damn,” Ishani spoke to Gwyn as they passed. “I hope the place we’re going to wasn’t hit...”

The building, an older apartment complex from a different era of architecture than its neighbors, looked relatively intact. Situated in the lower levels, it had been spared the Sith barrage simply by virtue of its location. Not a bad spot for a safehouse.

Ishani led the way inside, hopefully with Gwyn sticking close, until they reached a particular door. She raised a hand and slapped her palm against it three times—knocking on hard metal with your bare knuckles is ill-advised—then stood by, idly sniffing the perfume on her wrist. Today it was something minty and clean-smelling.

Hopefully Dag was already in there, or else they’d be stuck outside waiting for him to show up. Ishani hadn’t said a word to Gwyn about how she knew this Jedi guy, but her stiff posture and fidgeting movements had less to do with impatience and more to do with trepidation, uncertainty... and a vague sense of hope.

Gwyneira Vizsla Dagon Kaze​

 

[Gwyneira Vizsla]

Gwyn kept her hood up as she slipped through the building behind Ishani. Her eyes darted from left to right, from to to fro. She remembered war zones perfectly from home.

He homeworld had been decimated in war. Not a war it waged, but a war forced upon it by the Jedi and Sith. She bit her lip. She was about to meet a Jedi today. A Jedi. Karabasting Jedi...
She reached down to her waistline and placed a hand on her lightsaber. She could feel the kyber crystal screaming inside. She could sense the agony. She promised it she would help, and that promise brought her to something way outside her comfort zone.

Karabast!...

The only way to help was through a Jedi.

Gwyn fidgeted with her hands as she waited with Ishani.

Ishani Dinn Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

The door would open a few seconds later, leading the two guests into a room. There was nothing particularly of note inside other than the large computer terminal over which Dag leaned on, fixated on its readings - intel concerning the New Sith Order. Its blue projections were shut the moment the two walked inside and he turned to face them.

The Dagon Kaze she had met some time ago looked different - fresh wounds dotted his face and a dozen bandages were wrapped around his forearms and all over his chest beneath the simple, black t-shirt he wore. At the corner of the room, his ragged and iconic New Jedi leather jacked was hung along with other parts of gear and outfit for vigilante business.

"Took you long enough." the remark was in regards to when Dag had last given her his coordinates - a long time ago by now. For what's worth, the taint of the dark side seemed to pervade her. Crossing his arms, he glanced at her unknown companion, "So what's so urgent?"

Despite everything, you could always trust Dagon to lend a helping hand.

Ishani Dinn | Gwyneira Vizsla

 

[Ishani Dinn]

Ishani blinked upon seeing Dagon for the first time in… well, at least a couple years. He had changed quite a bit, the last traces of youth disappearing from what had once been a much more boyish face. He also looked like he’d been run over by a tank and tried to walk it off, but that was nothing unusual—on Chaldea he’d bled all over the passenger seat of her airspeeder without even noticing his wounds. Too busy enjoying his Huttaburger.

“I got busy,” Ishani said with a small smile, though she had already broken eye contact and was currently staring somewhere off to the side, too embarrassed to look straight at him. They had parted on... weird terms last time. “And I’m sure you did too.”

She didn’t look all that different, apart from the way she was dressed. Decked out in the long flowing robes of a Mystic, a veil covered her head where there had once been a mane of blonde hair, leaving only her face visible. “I hate to bother you at a time like this, but hopefully it won’t take too long.”

Pointing to the Arkanian hybrid girl beside her, she explained, “This is Gwyn. She took a lightsaber from a dead Sith, and apparently there’s something wrong with the kyber crystal inside it. It gives off waves of suffering, like there’s a living entity inside it that’s in terrible pain. Or maybe it’s the crystal itself. Either way, I figured it would be best if a Jedi looked at it.

“Oh, and uhhh…” She paused, then reached inside her robes, retrieving a familiar looking jar. “I still have some of that healing powder left. You look like you could use it, Dag.”

Gwyneira Vizsla Dagon Kaze​

 

[Gwyneira Vizsla]

Gwyn glanced between the Jedi and the priestess. She was trying to maintain a casual, open stance. Her anxiety made it hard, however. Despite keeping her feet open and having no weapons aside her lightsaber on her, she had been fiddling with her hands and was sweating. A Jedi. She was facing a Jedi. She had met former Sith, including Ishani herself as well as the bounty hunter Dired Mieflow. Yet, she had not a for real current member of either side. She bit her lip. Common sense told her to be sensible and to not cause trouble. That was the best survival strategy, in the heart of the conflict's space region.

Stifling a sigh, she pulled her lightsaber off the belt. The sympathetic pain could be heard in her voice as she addressed the reason she was here at all. "It's in agony, it's begging for relief. It's begging me." She was weary of approaching this Jedi, but she placed the lightsaber on the floor and rolled it towards him, "I promised I would make it stop. But I...

She gritted her teeth. Even here, she would not verbally admit to needing the help of a Jedi. Instead, she more discretely stated, "I don't have the means or knowledge to do it. But I was told you can."

Ishani Dinn Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

With the wild, golden locks concealed beneath a veil - one he noted as typical to the Force sect of Chaldea - Dagon would've probably not recognized her in a busy street, even if once he'd been really close up to her. That moment of time seemed a life time ago, with all the war and whatnot, despite both still being considered young by galactic human standards. For what it's worth, she seemed to have left the teachings of the Sith behind.

Good. He'd hate to be the one to lock her up in Azrael Asylum with the rest of the dark side looneys.

Ishani pointed at the Arkanian hybrid girl beside her, explaining the reason what brought her to his door. Clearly, it wasn't to continue their last episode together - it had to be, of course, something bad.

"Huh?" he blinked, averting his eyes away from Gwyn, then shaking his head, "No, I'm fine. Thanks."

Looking back at the Arkanian girl, he noticed the anxiety pouring from her posture. Hard not to. The raven-haired Jedi Knight had never been one excelling in the school of Sense, not even close, but he didn't need to. A decade of crime fighting and investigating taught him to read people through a different spectrum than the ethereal. And Gwyn here was no hardened killer with an unreadable face.

The lightsaber clipped on her, though, could potentially mean something worse.

Taking the hilt from her hand, a spike of malice and pain rushed through his hand up to the back of his head. A thousand screams wailed in the darkest pits of his mind and the Jedi's face hardened into a frown.

"Bleedin' kyber." he stated coolly, "A Sith - or a Dark Jedi's - crystal."

"Where'd you get this?"

Ishani Dinn Gwyneira Vizsla

 

[Gwyneira Vizsla]

Gwyneira took a step back from the Jedi when he got too close, eyes narrowing. Of course his first reactions to her were accusational. Still, she was forced to once again look back on the war that ravaged her homeworld. Had this particular Jedi been there? Had he too taken part in the war against the Sith, filled with air headed philosophy and hypocrisy?

She sighed, "My home world was caught up in y-the Sith's stupid wars. The Sith were swarming everywhere. I watched one kill my mother."

She grimaced. Her mother had never been there for her, but she was still her mother. She could never get that dying scream out of her head.

"A Sith was chasing me through a wrecked shipyard. I managed to lure him into a conduit for electrical currents and fry him to death. Karabasting kriffing chiter deserved it. His lightsaber rolled to my feet as it happened, so I kept it."

Her distaste for the Sith were broad as daylight. Hopefully, she could hide her grudge against the Jedi as well. At least until her lightsaber was cured...

Ishani Dinn Dagon Kaze

 

[Ishani Dinn]

Looking a little disappointed, Ishani put her jar of magical healing powder away and wandered around the apartment while Gwyn and Dag discussed the bleedin’ kyber.

She located a half-full bag of chips on a table, tasted one, and quickly realized they were stale. Her expression soured and she set the chips down. Taking a seat on a worn old sofa, she laid back and listened. Gwyn’s story about the death of the Sith checked out; it was the same tale she’d told Ishani when they had first met, minus the part about the dead mother.

“I, uh, figured some kind of cleansing was in order,” Ishani said once Gwyn was finished. “And if you know how to do that, great. If not, just point us in the direction of someone who can.”

Well, that sounded kind of abrupt, in a thanks for nothing, bye sort of way. Smiling awkwardly, she tried to come up with something less dismissive to say. “So… how have you been? Are you still single?”

Her smile turned into a wince almost immediately after the words left her mouth. His planet is on fire, and you ask him if he’s still single? She was actually hoping his response would be something like ‘no, I found someone and she makes me very happy’. An answer that would prove something worthwhile remained amidst the rubble and the blood. But if that wasn't the answer, Ishani may have just made things ten times worse, and it was too late to take it back now.

Gwyneira Vizsla Dagon Kaze​

 

[Dagon Kaze]

The story sounded genuine to his ears and eyes. Surely there were details Gwyn was most likely keeping to herself but that was normal. Everyone had their secrets. If there was any malice lacing her thoughts, he couldn't find it. Not yet, at least.

"I'm sorry." said Dagon, his features softening into gloom. Losing a parent was an immeasurable pain. Double each of his hundreds of wounds accumulated across his body and it's still a mosquito's bite compared to the death of a father or a mother. His mom had taken her life under the spell of Force psychosis. The blood smearing the walls of the kitchen was a sight that'd haunt him even in the afterlife.

Tilting his head back at Ishani who made herself feel at home, he nodded, then she suddenly asked an unexpected question and he blinked and huffed a laugh in response.

"I'm not, no. Guess you missed your shot, Ishani." the smirk lingered for a bit before he turned his attention back to the matter at hand. "I'll cleanse the kyber but I'll keep the saber. It's a rare and very dangerous weapon."

Ishani Dinn Gwyneira Vizsla

 

[Gwyneira Vizsla]

Gwyneira was a bit surprised that she had been told sorry for her mother's death. The worst part had been her mother not ever being a mother growing up, and the opportunity for any redemption being lost to her death. She had always been smoking death sticks, drinking, or gorging herself with food. The end was marred with no closure, only sorrow.

However, her thoughts were shaken when the Jedi casually announced he was keeping her lightsaber.

No. Gwyn was not happy about that.

She gritted her teeth, clenching her fists. She defied the Jedi. That blasted Jedi scum! "Thief!" She accused him, throwing her arm, "It's mine! It came to me! I earned it, and it's my property! You have no right!"

She was sick and tired of being pushed around. By her father, by her pure blooded Arkanian peers, by her academy, and especially by some karabasting Jedi thinking he could flaunt his power and steal her stuff!

Dagon Kaze Ishani Dinn

 

[Ishani Dinn]

“Good!” Ishani replied, her nervousness dispelling at his smile. She didn’t even have the heart to be disappointed. Beneath his chiseled exterior, Dag had seemed rather sad to her. She didn’t know why, but she was glad to see a spark of happiness in the gloom. “That’s great, really…”

But then Dag announced he was keeping the lightsaber. Ishani’s calm was disrupted once again as her gaze darted from him to the enraged Gwyn.

“Whoa… uh, hang on a minute.” She looked to Dag, wondering what was going on in his head. “Why confiscate it? She’s not a child treating it like a toy. Unless you think the entire thing is tainted just because it belonged to a Sith. And what are you planning on doing with that lightsaber once you’ve cleansed the crystal? Add it to your collection? Take it apart for scrap? Put it in a vault somewhere to gather dust? Destroy it?”

Gwyneira Vizsla Dagon Kaze​

 

[Dagon Kaze]

"Takes one to know one, huh?" he narrowed his eyes in a smirk at the raging Arkanian, then Ishani interjected into the seething conversation.

"I'll take it to the Tem--" that was all but in ruins, "--to the Order. It's a dangerous weapon, Ishani. It shouldn't be in the hands of someone not trained to wield it even if the kyber inside is purified—it still is a lightsaber."

Gwyneira Vizsla Ishani Dinn

 

[Gwyneira Vizsla]

Gwyneira hissed. The audacity! The arrogance! The sense of superiority! She loathed the Jedi!

She clenched her fists, eyeing her lightsaber in someone else's hand. She gritted her teeth and looked up at this blasted Jedi scum. Either she was getting her lightsaber back, or he would have to force it from her kicking and screaming.

"Blasted Jedi! You karabasting scum! You're all the same! Oh so grand and better than everyone else while worlds burn and you still fight in some endless, stupid war! You can't be trusted! You egotistical, pompous, insufferable little kriffers!"

She pointed at her lightsaber. Her lightsaber, and glared, "That's mine! Aknowledge that, Jedi! I can learn to use it! I learned how to do everything else on my own! And I don't need some oh so heroic Jedi telling me what to do! I'm not letting others make decisions based on my inferiority anymore!"

Dagon Kaze Ishani Dinn

 

[Ishani Dinn]

Before Ishani could get another word out, her Arkanian companion resorted to shrieking and cussing Dag out. Ishani groaned. She was trying to be reasonable, but Gwyn was only making this harder.

What was she going to do, anyway? Try to fight for the lightsaber? That would be a sight to see. It might also get the Arkanian teen maimed or killed. If Ishani helped her, they’d stand a marginally better chance, but it was a bad idea all around and more risk than Ishani was willing to take for any material object. Not to mention that Ishani, y’know, didn’t want to hurt Dag.

“It’s just a lightsaber,” she muttered, as if stating the obvious would forfeit the argument entirely. “At the end of the day, it’s just an exotic cutting tool. You can get another one. You can make another one.”

But she knew that wasn’t strictly true. Lightsabers had been elevated to the mythic. They were symbols of power, coveted even by those who didn’t know how to wield them properly. If Gwyn was upset about anything, it was because he was taking away that symbol of power, of how she had overcome the acolyte who tried to kill her. That personal significance counted for something, didn’t it?

Ugh. Ugh. Fething offworlders and their materialism...

“Do you really absolutely have to take it from her?” Ishani tried to bargain with Dag. “She’s clearly attached to the thing. Don’t the Jedi develop bonds to their lightsabers too? Bonds that aren’t meant to be broken?”

Gwyneira Vizsla Dagon Kaze​

 

[Dagon Kaze]

Gwyn hissed and spat out venom in the shape of a rhetoric Dag had heard a thousand and one times before. Years ago - especially with the contempt held over the Sacking of Coruscant - he would've reacted, retorted following his impulses. But those days were behind, the knee-jerk reactions have declined over time. The rhetoric Gwyn fired was one you commonly find in the underlevels of Coruscant and as a matter of act across the galaxy. It was why he didn't share Aeris Lashiec 's sentiment of 'enlightening' the masses with texts of the Jedi. The masses lived day by day, struggled to meet ends meet. Dag's best work was done from the shadows. As a silent guardian, as a watchful protector.

People like Gwyn were the same people he believed they needed to protect the most. The same people he had most sympathy for after being also a survivor of the brutal battle of his homeworld of Ruusan between the Silver Jedi Order and the Sith ages ago.

Gratitude was never something he sought. Hell, a large number of their older Jedi peers were quick to criticize the New Jedi in their role in the war against the Sith Empire. A role that had come to define victory over a genocidal regime under which trillions had suffered.

All that mattered to Dagon Kaze was doing what's right.

Ishani slid in the one-sided conversation, bringing up her own thoughts on the matter to which Dagon did not respond verbally, at least not immediately. Instead, he silently turned, approached a cupboard next to the holoprojector, picked a broken shoulderpad which had once been an evidence taken from Mandalorian mercenary Sal Moxla. A head of muscle in the Maw's intricate web of deception weaved across the Core. A man his old friend Djonas Val and Dag had arrested on Ordo some time ago.

"This is made of pure Mandalorian iron. A highly resistant to lightsabers alloy." he said, tweaked a few intensity settings on the red lightsaber and then the blade snap hissed to crimson life. The reflection in the mirror on the wall nearly startled him. As if his twin - Aeric Kaze - had materialized in the flesh.

With his free hand Dag lifted telekinetically the pad in the air and then sliced right through it like hot knife through butter. The smoldering pad dropped to the ground cut in two clean pieces.

"It's just an exotic cutting tool." he remarked dryly as he extinguished the red blade. "You're right - we do develop bonds with our blades. Constructing a lightsaber is a long and arduous trial, believe or not. To learn to wield it is a whole new ballgame only Force sensitives can learn." a weightless sword, it couldn't get less comprehensible than that, could it.

"I'm sorry, Gwyn, I'm not telling you what to do but this weapon--" Dag said, his tone and expression softening, "--I can't let you have it. You'll get yourself or someone else killed by accident."

"At best, I can pay you the sum you'd get selling it on the black market and whatever expense you two incurred coming here."

Ishani Dinn Gwyneira Vizsla

 

[Gwyneira Vizsla]

Gwyneira struggled with her intensity, fists clenched as Dagon cut up some alloy and explained his logic.

Wait.

He could not tell that she too had the Force?

Gwyn was equally shocked at his lack of anger. She had just verbally beat him, and he was... softer. She knew fully well how deeply words could cut. If all her emotional wounds from words were visibly on her skin, she would be bleeding from cuts and slices from head to toe. She then heard the promise of payment for the lightsaber. Credits were nice, sure, but were meaningless compared to that lightsaber.

Her lightsaber. It was a symbol of her survival in a brutal war. It was a weapon she felt calling to her. The crystal inside called to her. She closed her eyes, sighing. No, as kriffed off as she was, she had to cool her jets. And explain.

"I don't care about credits." She started, voice strained from her previous shouting, "You can get credits anywhere, but that lightsaber I earned is a rare gem. I felt that crystal the moment I picked the weapon up. The crystal. I had no idea what it was, but I kept hearing it, feeling it. And I still feel it right now."

Gwyn narrowed her eyes, "Only a Force Sensitive can use these things? Well, I am Force Sensitive. And I can sense the crystal."

She sighed, gazing at the lightsaber in the Jedi's hand, "If you're not going to give me the lightsaber, at least give me the purified crystal. If I'm truly meant to have a lightsaber, I can just make one myself, right?" She was an Engineer, and she was Force Sensitive. Of course she could.

Dagon Kaze Ishani Dinn

 

[Ishani Dinn]

“Thanks for the demonstration,” Ishani murmured with equal dryness. Maybe it was the Mystic in her rolling her eyes at the mythologizing of what was, admittedly, a very cool and useful weapon, but she knew the meaning of it was imbued, not innate. Jedi made lightsabers special, not the other way around.

Much to her relief, Gwyn seemed to have calmed down. Ishani was certainly surprised that the girl who had seemed so scared of being taken by the Jedi Order was now freely admitting her Force sensitivity to a Jedi. But they seemed to have reached the bargaining stage, and her potential with the Force was one of the items on the table. Now she was saying she just wanted the purified crystal.

Ishani stayed quiet, waiting for Dag’s response to the offer. Man, did he look like he needed a nap. Or maybe a medically induced coma. She hoped he wouldn't pass out on them.

Gwyneira Vizsla Dagon Kaze​

 

[Dagon Kaze]

Somehow, Gwyn calmed down, and the crystal inside the foreign hilt he held screamed only louder. It fed on the rage, the anger, the suffering; without them - it wailed like a ravenous beast. Her admission on being a Force sensitive briefly widened his eyes, then they reverted back to their usual, tired expression. Exhausted from almost a week gone with no sleep.

The raven-haired Jedi Knight remained silent for a long moment, contemplating over her request.

"Hmm." lifting the hilt in the air with telekinesis, he tore it apart into its singular components which hovered around the bleeding kyber. It pulsated insatiably, hungry for fury and hate. Shutting his eyes, Dag tapped into the currents of the ethereal and his fist clenched the air tightly until the crimson of the crystal was gone. The tempest raging within it had been purified, and the lightsaber components were hurled over the table in the room before he physically took the crystal in his hands and offered it to the Arkanian.

"The doors to the New Jedi are always open, you know; we can teach you the ways of the Force." the proposition was clear. It was an offer he had once extended to Ishani, too.

Ishani Dinn Gwyneira Vizsla

 

[Gwyneira Vizsla]

Gwyneira had paid close attention to the taking apart of the lightsaber with an engineer's mind. She took in every mechanical detail she could, sealing the layout of the weapon in her mind. She was going to make herself a lightsaber.

As she was offered the crystal, however, she was stunned at the offer to join the Jedi. Had she not just established that she loathed them, their methods, and their beliefs? Still, she looked down to the white kyber crystal. No longer was it crying out in agony. It was at peace, resting and serene. It was a beautiful feeling, and she was too happy to have come here for this. Her promise to the crystal was fulfilled. It was free of pain.

Gwyn took the crystal, placing it inside a pocket. She looked up to the Jedi, visibly relieved at the crystal's relief. She smiled. "Thank you for cleansing the crystal."

But then, she stepped back. A small frown and the shake of her head, she continued, "But I have several disagreements with how the Jedi do things. I can't join you, I'll find my own way. I hope you can understand."

Dagon Kaze Ishani Dinn

 

[Gwyneira Vizsla]

Epilogue.

~ ~ ~​

After leaving those two behind, Gwyneira stalked to her ship. She clenched the crystal in her hand, still fuming. She felt great relief over the crystal's purification, but she felt betrayed. She had been unable to fight for what was properly her's. She had been too scared to. She deserved her lightsaber, and it had been stolen from her.

She climbed into her ship and entered the cockpit. Her astremech beeped in confusion as she angrily plopped into her seat.

"I'm getting out of here before that kriffing thief steals my crystal too! I hate Jedi!"

She scowled, tears wetting the corners of her eyes, as she hastily flew off Coruscant.

~ ~ ~​

She opened her eyes, allowing the weapon to fall into her hand. She gazed down at the weapon in her hand, a lightsaber. A lightsaber she had forged. She activated the blade. The white glow of the crystal was mesmerizing. The pure blade was beautiful. Yet, she looked down to the lightsaber. The weapon was her creation, forged with her own hands and crafted with skill. Yet, bitterness still stung her. For once, one of her pieces of art, and this was fine art, did not bring her joy.

She only felt cheated and wronged.

She should be holding the exact lightsaber earned long ago. But that had been robbed from her. She deactivated the lightsaber blade, hostile and ever angry for what had happened.

"Jedi scum..."

She had found one more reason to hate the Jedi and their Order. A petty reason, perhaps. But to her, she had been robbed of something significant and sacred. She was ever happy that her crystal was free, but it had come at a terrible price. She felt no forgiveness for this. She would never trust a Jedi again.

~ ~ ~

Finish.​