Cambiare

[Ashin Varanin]

Caution: Major spoilers for Clone Wars Season Six.​

Phu​

Fringe Confederation​

For this mission, she had not chosen one of the many powerful starships at her command. Not the Chimaera, not the Coldharbor, not even the little vessel she and Spencer had called home for years - the Peregrine. No, Ashin had left those vessels behind, and her uniform.

And her weapons. The great sword Winterlight was back on Annaj, and her lightsabre with it. She would regret that in time, she knew, but it felt appropriate, and for once she cared about that.

Clad in a desert wrap, her face veiled against windblown grit from the podrace tracks, Ashin boarded the least official ship possible. No, this ship was the Sojourn, the ancient, refitted Consular-class vessel that had visited the Aing-Tii and a dozen other Force sects long before it had entered her care. She and Spencer had run the Empire from this battered old ship.

The hatch sealed behind her, closing off the howl of races and the susurrations of ten thousand slot machines. The Sojourn clawed for orbit.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The world in her navicomputer was quieter and more civilized than Phu, but not far away, as such things were reckoned. Its people were the same, though which one was the ancient colony of the other, not even Fringe's analysts could say. The Sojourn broke the high cirrus clouds and settled toward a denser, puffy cumulus layer that spanned much of the globe. Nodular spires ascended into her sightline, natural formations wreathed in cloud wisps whose name eluded her.

Shedding forward momentum, the ancient Consular-class slewed sideways to fit into a half-shrouded hangar, a clean-cut and formal affair. Gentle curves and pastel hues set her mind at ease, in background terms. Long-necked Phuii, goose-lipped creatures of sinew and bone, worked the open, tidy hangar. A couple of them waved hello. When had been the last time she'd been waved in as a friend? When was the last time someone outside her inner circle had been glad to see her?

She powered down laboriously.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Bored? Good. A tale like this starts out boring, and uses dullness as a shroud, to guard the truth from those who would misuse it. As they say, he who hath ears to hear, let him hear. Or, on a less scriptural note, intelligence officers will tell you that the key to their work is learning how to do nothing, convincingly. They would put it more colorfully, I think. Intelligence officers tend to feel they've done enough service to professionalism and that their understanding of how the world really is gives them the right to deliberately break social norms with precise amounts of carelessness.

Though Ashin was not an intelligence officer by any stretch of the imagination, that particular outlook had characterized her for years. Public service, of a sort, combined with clarity of vision -- that was how she would interpret and rate herself, at least. And thus, when the happily waving Bardottan turned out to be a moderately well-armed 'honor guard and personal attache' (real-world speak for 'babysitter and watchdog'), Ashin was forced to bite her tongue.

Because carelessness with social norms, like profanity and acceptable quantity of straight talk, had to be applied precisely. She didn't remember being the kind of Jedi who functioned like an uncaring, uncompassionate, detached steamroller -- the 'O'reen mentality.' That had been her attitude as Sith Empress. She didn't consider it befitting of a Jedi, so she got past her irritation without a sharp or superior word.

There was a reason she had nothing to do with the Council. Well, several. But mostly it just had to do with the bulk of them being bad people, in her experience. Wrongs committed while serene were still the Dark Side, in her estimation, and all the more evil for it.

"Pardon, ma'am?"

Ashin blinked and looked up at the Bardottan Phuii beside her. "I'm sorry?"

"You said something I didn't quite catch." Long, narrow face, tiny mouth, long curved neck, avian in many ways. Phuii had incredible reflexes, she'd heard. Good in a fight.

"I'm sorry. I was a little lost in thought, must have mumbled." She chuckled. "The inner workings of a Grand Admiral's mind, or detritus? Flights of fancy?"

"Perhaps the Masters can help you find clarity. I know they've helped me in times of confusion."

"It's been a long time since I trusted anyone to lead me, friend. Hubris? Probably. But from what I'm told, if there are any spiritual leaders worth following, they're here. Force knows the Jedi lost the right to call themselves spiritual leaders a long, long time ago."

The Phuii blinked, walking alongside her. "I am surprised to hear you say it, ma'am. I was told you identify as a Jedi."

"Sure. I just never claimed to be a spiritual leader, or to fight for the destruction of everything with a color scheme I dislike-" She waved dismissively. "Eh, don't mind me. Alignment dysfunction. Apparently it's contagious -- the heroes turn villains, everyone else has to adapt."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"So you made yourself, what, a hero?"

"I am a hero."

The Phuii made an unintelligible sound. "So be it."

"I mean in terms of job description."

"I don't see much difference."

She grimaced. "And how would you describe your job, hm? Friend?"

"Clahdio."

"Here you are, Clahdio, tasked with escorting one of the galaxy's most beloved citizens before a group of quasi-pacifist sages, armed with a shockprod and a pistol, and you don't think most people would describe your job that way?"

He shrugged. "I am a Dagoyan Adept."

"Really?"

"Is that...contempt?"

"I see diplomacy isn't your strong suit, Clahdio. But no. I'm just surprised because I didn't sense the Force in you." They had come, now, to a large public market. Color, scent, motion. Ashin's focus remained on her escort.

"A Dagoyan Master once told me that the heart of the forge cannot see the candleflame to light the way."

"Biting, but accurate. You're talking about the tradeoff, yes? Between power and sensitivity? There's no question I chose the former, you're right. That's why I'm here. So I can learn to read the ripples instead of just throwing stones into the water."

Clahdio nodded, taking it all in stride. The market split to let them pass. "Long ago, Luke Skywalker came to this world. He told an ancestor of mine that it was hard to hear a whisper when you're shouting all the time. Like you, he came here to understand the distinction between strength and clarity. The dichotomy."

"And you turned him away?"

"No, why?"

"I'd been told the Bardottan people and the Dagoyan Masters had old grievances against the Jedi Order. As a matter of fact, I'd thought I was only getting this meeting because of my position."

"No, that was long before Skywalker's time," said Clahdio. "Jedi came, took younglings to train. They were dubbed kidnappers. They protested, unsuccessfully, that they were not taking the children against their will. The Bardottan people, you see, take degrees of accountability very seriously. As a Dagoyan Adept and a Jedi Master, you and I are very accountable for our choices. A child is not capable of making that choice. It was kidnap, and with one or two exceptions the Jedi were not allowed to act on this world until the time of Skywalker, when the practice of isolating very young students from their families was discontinued by the institution of the new Jedi Order. So the records say, in any case. Our language's word for 'kidnap' is, as it happens, yongphiru - 'youngling-taker.' Suffice it to say, we take the Jedi Order very seriously around here, because we take our children very seriously around here. And yes. This audience is because of your position, and would not have been granted otherwise. Not to a Jedi. That much, for certain, survived the long night."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"Sounds like my kind of place."

"Not really," said the Phuii. "Under your rule, worse things have happened. I have friends on Javin, and on Lujo. Wholesale regime change by force-"

"Those were exceptions, not the rule."

"The Ssi-Ruuvi Imperium might disagree."

Ashin snorted. "You'd castigate me for repelling and pacifying a regime built on entechment and slavery?"

"You would castigate the Republic for attempting to pacify a regime built on Shinju Ayasha and RC two-twelve."

She grimaced. "The Fringe Confederation has brought peace and safety to the Unknown Regions. That's never been done before."

"The Ssi-ruuvi, for all their sins, did the same thing. A peaceful, stable regime for a thousand years, Varanin. You broke it, imposed democracy-"

"You're trying to needle me, aren't you. Trying to establish whether my conversion to the Jedi was sincere."

"Yes, and no. A Jedi would argue with me too. I'm trying to establish whether you are -- how did you put it? -- a bad person."

They walked the rest of the way in silence.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

It had been a long time since anyone had really, solidly won an argument against Ashin, and the Phuii's lack of tangible or visible satisfaction made it just a little bit worse. If she was to be honest with herself, she'd admit that her shield of densely woven justifications, carefully chosen positions, and certain points of view was military grade, double-redundant, capable of deflecting any bombardment. But the Phuii, the Dagoyan Adept, knew too much for her comfort, or at least understood too much. And the conclusions he'd drawn led her to a conclusion of her own.

Coming here, to a place where Masters of the Force had traded all power for insight, might not have been her wisest move. She'd travelled to Bardotta on the assumption that she understood what would be required on her part. That assumption had lacked...insight.

"You're a Dagoyan Master, aren't you."

"No. My job is to bring them caf and the morning news while they are in session, and run such errands as are necessary."

Feth.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The hall of the Dagoyan Masters was, in proportion if nothing else, reminiscent of the chamber of the Bosses in Otoh Gunga. Four Masters, the king, five guards and the ringer of the gong, arrayed in two concentric semicircles around the candlelit rondel mosaic where she would find audience. Without hesitation or hurry, her Force presence guarded against betrayal of her inner discomfort, Ashin walked to the center of the circle. The scented candles and the vaguely avian aroma of the Bardottans combined in an oddly tranquilizing way.

The wiry king leaned forward. Candlesmoke ruffled the fringe of lone feathers beneath his eyes. Perhaps it was some kind of mask or headdress; Ashin tried and failed to recall if Phuii/Bardottans were avian in origin. "Ashin Varanin, Grand Admiral Shira Karrde, Ori'vod of the Vagrant Fleet, Empress Darth Desmius the First...am I pronouncing those correctly?"

"Not many know those names."

The king tweetled. "Oh, many know those names, speak them with fear and contempt and awe and disinterested recognition. You have left a dubious legacy to every name you ever took. What you mean to say is that not many know they are all the same person. Did you come here seeking to add our arts to your collection of toys, Admiral Varanin?"

She bowed, not low, but enough. "Your Majesty, my hope is that you'll help me understand the Force how you understand it."

"Fair words, Admiral, but a 'yes' would have sufficed. Clahdio?"

Her escort came to attention beside her. "Your Majesty?"

"You have walked from the starport to this chamber with Admiral Varanin, yes? And in that time I'm certain you had much to discuss. Tell me, Clahdio, what is your impression of our guest?"

And just like that, she'd been neatly sidelined. The focus of the room now rested on the unprepossessing Phuii, not on the woman who could do, and had done, terrible and extraordinary things. If necessary, she knew that she could kill everyone in this room in moments, but that was a jarring thought, a poor fit. And so she just listened. Clahdio shot her a glance that might have been evaluation or apology. "Your Majesty," he said with a bow somewhat lower than the one she'd offered, "I did indeed speak with Admiral Varanin on our walk, as you suggested. I found her..." The Dagoyan Adept hooted gently, a bemused sound. "May I speak figuratively, Your Majesty?"

"Speak as you see fit, Clahdio."

"She is a dark-blinded shriekhawk diving at a mouse to guard her nest, thinking it is a nightprowler; she cannot separate rage from necessity. She is a nightprowler guarding a pile of hay against a herd of jakobeasts. She is a forge's heart and cannot see daylight or candleflame, no matter how hard she seeks. She duels a mirror, unknowing; she sees only others there, and when she looks for herself, there is but emptiness." His eyes flicked to her again, and his long snout dipped in acknowledgement. "She cannot keep herself from skipping stones on the water, even though she wishes she could read the ripples. She wears new plumage but guards the same nest. Searching for pearls, she picks up bright rocks and saves them in her pocket, and knows not when she truly finds the pearl, because to her all stones are for throwing and admiring and keeping. Her pockets grow heavy but she saves every rock, except the ones she puts in her sling. And she would put a pearl in the sling and wonder why it bounces off her enemy."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The room fell silent; the Dagoyan Masters nodded, as did the king. With another, deeper bow, Clahdio stepped back, leaving Ashin front and centre once more. The king stood, descended the steps of his throne, gripped the railing to look down at her. "Admiral Varanin, are you a slinger of pearls? Or to put a related concern in less eloquent terms -- as a hammer, do you see every situation as a nail? Is power in the Force your first solution to your obstacles? Do you find solutions through listening, or through talking? When your force of personality, your strength in the Force, your weapons, your many connections are all removed from-"

Something broke inside her; it sounded like inhibition.

"I buried my son last week Two days before that, I killed him." In the silence, she closed her eyes. She had no wish to see them. "He was not of my blood, but was everything a son should be, and I brought him up in the way of power used responsibly, but a way of power nonetheless. That way destroyed him. The lessons I gave him...destroyed him. Clahdio has told me how you treasure your children, how you feel about accountability. In part, I am accountable for the sins of my son. I came here to understand your ways, your techniques, to incorporate them into my understanding of how to use and feel the Force -- but I no longer wish to control the Force. I'm here to learn to listen. If your castigation is necessary, I'll listen to it and learn from it as best I can, but I come to you in good faith. Don't waste this time by exercising your chance to safely talk down to me, Your Majesty."

"Is that a threat?"

"An old habit of speech, poorly thought out but motivated by as much sincerity as I can offer. I killed my son. Help me find the way forward, or the only way to go is back."

One of the Dagoyan Masters hooted softly. "Why do you not go to the Jedi?"

About to mention something about trust and hypocrisy, she paused, and realized -- probably after the Dagoyan did -- that the true answer was somewhat different. "Because they live in the moment, like me. They live for victory, for mortal success. When my son died to help my blow succeed in breaking the evil he'd created, I tasted a reality I had never considered in any depth. I seek a victory for all time, and I don't know what I'm looking for."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The king and the Dagoyan Masters -- the other Dagoyan Masters, she realized; he was one of them, perhaps first among them -- exchanged long inscrutable looks. Their Bardottan Phuii faces had no meaning for her. "Two months ago, Admiral Varanin," said the king, "you were ranked among the most feared and lethal Masters of the Dark Side. I am not unsympathetic to your loss, but you must understand -- with change so recent in your past, if we knew of an answer to your question, would we give it to you?"

"I will earn it, however you require."

The king shook his head. "We do not have this knowledge, Admiral. What you seek is power, of a kind. You are too used to treating the Force as a means rather than an end. You could become as one of us, learn our way, walk in our footsteps, but you would destroy all for which you have fought and suffered."

He offered no explanation, and the enigmatic prophecy hit her like a thunderclap. "Then where am I to go? What am I to do?"

"There is a place of testing," said the rightmost Dagoyan Master. "Outside our understanding, outside our influence. Even its location is outside our knowledge. A few of us have voyaged to find it; none have ever returned."

"How do you know it exists? How do you know they found it?"

The Dagoyan Master blinked slowly. "We know they found it." But he didn't explain.

The king hooted in a susurrating way. "Admiral Varanin, there is only one way to find the world, the place of testing. The Force must guide you."

"Just like that? The Force guides me out into the galaxy somewhere, and leads me to a random planet, just based on...what, instinct?"

"Based on learning to listen, Admiral. I thought you understood that." The king let go of the railing, stepped back, folded his hands behind him.

"I don't know how. I could rip a gap into hyperspace, give Force-sensitivity to those without it, save people from death -- I had power. And even though so much of my skillset is off limits now, my connection to the Force is only growing. I just...don't know how to make something like this happen, to do what you suggest. That's why I came here. It simply won't work for me."

"Admiral Varanin," said the king, "you need to learn to get out of your own way. You may have the power to help and protect those who count on you, but any virtue taken to an extreme becomes a vice, and power is a dubious virtue indeed. You need to learn to be weak." Without visible signal, he and the Dagoyan Masters left their thrones and filed out of the back of the chamber. The guards and the apparently unnecessary gong-ringer left as well, leaving Ashin alone with Clahdio.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"What happens now?" she said at last.

Clahdio stirred himself from some reverie with a shrug. "Now I go bring the Dagoyan Masters their lunch, and you...find your way. The direction they offered-"

"That was direction?" Her laugh came across as hollow, to her ears. "When I came here I at least had the name of a world."

"The planet where you're going has no name. I should also point out that they gave you a reliable way to find it."

"Reliable for a Dagoyan."

"Or for a Jedi. We should each seek to attain the full measure of our limits and possibilities, become the best version of what we are fitted and suited to be. For you, as with most Jedi, that involves learning to be a Jedi in more than name. For me, it involves serving the Dagoyan Masters their caf and Karkan ribenes." He bowed gently. "Clear skies, Ashin Varanin."

She put aside her pique and frustration, and returned the bow. "Clear skies, Clahdio."

"I doubt we'll meet again," he said as he turned to leave, "not if you respect the king's prediction. But if you choose to send some of your wiser associates here -- I have heard good things of @[member="Sargon Vynea"], for one -- we will treat them with respect."

"Will you teach them?"

"I have no idea." He vanished through a side door, leaving Ashin alone with scented tallow and soft echoes. The smell of tomo-spiced Karkan ribenes wafted out of the side passage, and her stomach growled. She turned and headed back to her ship.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

If this was the hero's journey, the protagonist having just stepped off the first of many cliffs, a guide would have appeared by now. It was too soon for the hero to step into the darkness alone, wasn't it? Too soon to face the metaphorical death from which only the hero returned, armed with new and forbidden knowledge? She refused to accept that the Bardottans were the guide, as they had refused to guide her. As she made her way back through the city and the square toward the starport, she weighed her refusal with theirs and found satisfaction in symmetry.

But symmetry had been her guiding star as a Dark Lord, cover life or no cover life. Was a useful principle worth discarding simply because of its associations? Did repentance and conversion require tacking an 'everything must go' sign to her identity? What of herself could she safely keep?

A question to ask the Dagoyan Masters, and for a silly moment she thought of turning around to ask them. But no, they'd already seen enough of her weaknesses for one day. For a lifetime, even.

Once back aboard ship, she couldn't remember the walk. The Sojourn was silent, empty save for a lonely astromech. It tootled at her like a Dagoyan, neutral and straightforward. Businesslike. The droid's operating number escaped her; this ship carried several. "Don't suppose you know the way to the nameless planet of nameless trials, do you?"

"Dwooowoooo."

She paused. "Say that again."

"Dwooowooo?"

Something to do with fuel supplies and satisfaction, but the sound- "Dagobah. It could be Dagobah, couldn't it. Let's try that. Let's...try Dagobah."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Let us do evil that good may come...

...that perfect world isn't for me, Captain, I'm a monster...

...not publicly or even historically vindicated, but I'll have been right and it'll have been worth it...

...he did justice to the people, but not unto himself because of his many whoredoms, wherefore...

...my words fly up, my thoughts remain below...words without thoughts...

...nobody ELSE was stepping up...

...the few worthwhile things clawed out of a thousand impossible situations...

Suffice it to say that Ashin Varanin did not sleep well as the Sojourn made its slow and lonely way through Omega Protectorate space to Dagobah. She woke up in a cold sweat looking for Spencer, or Winterlight, but she was unarmed and alone. She gargled mouthwash and made herself hot meals at odd hours, watched snippets of holovids to dull her mind and kill the hours she couldn't sleep away. And when she did sleep, only snippets of words remained in the morning, no context, not even the faces of the speakers, be they her or others.

At last the Sojourn touched down on Dagobah, Ashin hoped she'd picked a landing site with true instinct, because it felt random. She could be anywhere.

"The Force better have a will," she said to the droid as mist curled up the ramp, "because I'm sure not capable of leading us here."

A snatch of half-remembered dream whispered that is why you fail.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"Stay with the ship," she said absently, and closed the hatch with a gesture, leaving her to stand alone in the Dagobah swamp.

Moment of truth. If the Force had guided her down from orbit, whether or not she had felt anything, there would be something here to find. And if that was the case, maybe the Dagoyan Masters had known what they were talking about after all-

The ground broke under her, and she fell. The Force surrounded her, as it had when she'd been here once before, hiding in the aftermath of a duel with Moridin -- broken, missing her arm, she'd found Menoetius here and saved his life, then begun his training. That spot wasn't far away, she realized as she stared up at the ceiling of a cave. But somehow, in the intervening years, she'd gained so much power that apparently she could walk across a Force nexus without sensing it. There was something fundamentally wrong about that. And if she couldn't sense the cave until she found herself inside it, until the Dark Side of the Force surrounded her...

She picked herself up and told herself not to fear, that fearlessness was the point. She'd passed through the cave twice before, once as a young Jedi Knight, once as the crippled, fugitive savior of Mandalore. If this was the grand test, whether or not she could sense it-

The cave looked...bigger than it once had. Eyes, dozens or hundreds of eyes, blinked at her from the dark. When she raised her hand and called fire for light, she saw people of every species, dressed every which way. Citizens of the ten thousand worlds she'd dragged kicking and screaming out of the Dark Age. Their voices came out soft, muffled by mist.

"We didn't need you."

"You didn't need to do it."

"Your sacrifices were pointless. Excuses."

The voices came faster and faster as they advanced, and her flame sputtered out. But mist-light had no mercy, and she saw their faces anyway.

"All you did was damn yourself."

"We didn't need you, we didn't want you, we are not better off."

"You helped us for a moment and left us to rot."

"Like you gave a beggar a decicred and patted yourself on the back."

"All you did was damn yourself."

"You accomplished nothing of worth."

"Saved nothing."

"Fixed nothing."

"Failed."

"You felt justified by your sacrifices."

"You thought you were the only one who could fix it."

"Make the changes you wanted to see."

"All in the name of the greater good."

"All in the name of necessity."

"All because of the poison."

"We didn't need you."

"We didn't want you."

"We didn't need you to do it."

"Go away."

Silence fell as Ashin reached the mouth of the cave -- she hadn't meant to shove her way through the crowd, hadn't meant to find herself in retreat. A hoarse little voice broke the quiet.

"Walk through hell, you did as a girl. Lost friends, lost family, tortured you were, starve you did. Set your pain on a throne, you do, for other pains to respect. The way of many who suffer, it is, to feel like no other pain can understand. Make you evil this has, not the Sith poison. If gone the poison is, why...is it still in your heart?"

There was nothing to see.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Her knees hit the soggy ground. She'd always been told that one should leave one's weapons before entering the cave. She'd always thought it was about crutches and reliance, but the more her conscious mind looped through the last five minutes or five hours or however long the multitude had spoken, the more Ashin realized that her first instinct had been to cut them down. Anything to get out of there.

She'd walked the accretion disc of a black hole, faced cancer twice, challenged Darth Moridin for the Empire, opposed the combined strength of Apparatus and Voracitos, then Apparatus and Omni, faced Moridin again at Keldabe wracked with cancer and missing an arm, taken a swan dive off a twenty thousand kilometre fall, stormed the hearts of two planet-sized Abominor -- she had thought she understood courage. She had thought she understood fear.

But then again, there was a tale, an old one, of a heretical Yuuzhan Vong. The story went that the Vong had asked if a mortal could have greater courage than a god, since a god could never die. The story went downhill from there.

You must unlearn what you have learned came to mind, though whether it was a voice of the Force or of her inner self, she couldn't say. Then again, she supposed, the one could speak through the other. Inspiration, some had called it, in the Jedi group which had trained her long before Watts and Teferi consolidated the modern Order. The will of the Force, or senses. In theory it split into two groups, two subcategories. Being mindful of the living Force, the moment, the significance of people. Sensing the broader picture of the cosmic Force, the unifying Force -- the large scale, the currents of destiny.

You must unlearn what you have learned said that little voice again, and she couldn't say whether it came from her awareness of the living Force or the unifying Force. As a rule she wasn't much good at sensing patterns or significance from either direction.

Maybe that was why the little voice sounded like her own voice. Who else, after all, would she listen to, with her heart hurting from the cave? Everything about her wanted to pull inward, to hunker down, to tank it out even though this was nothing that tutaminis or full-body Force Weapon could handle. Her hands tightened by her sides, her eyes squeezed shut, mist chilled her face where tears dampened it.

You must unlearn what you have learned.

"But I've learned so much!" she said, and in her heart she knew she was giving up. For a moment her words sounded odd, like the voice of a pleading, desperate, naive young man was overlaid atop her own. She remained on her knees, swamp soaking into her trousers. Far off through the mist, a flock of birds or mynocks took flight. "I can be a Jedi. I can be ready. I found this place, didn't I? Isn't that what the Dagoyan wanted?"

The voice changed subtly, just beyond the registers of her mind to differentiate. Relied on yourself, you did, to find this world. Relied on the Force, you should have. The world you seek, the world the Dagoyan Masters meant, this is not.

She was on her feet before she caught herself, looking around the misty swamp at nothing. "No. To find a landing site from orbit by instinct, that's one thing, but to find a planet that could be anywhere in the galaxy, a planet with no name -- that's impossible. Or at least a very, very different story."

No, no different. Only different in your mind. And that is why you fail.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

@[member="Spencer Jacobs"]


Spence-

Dagobah didn't have what I was looking for, but it might have had what I needed, like cauterizing a wound. I don't know what to say about it. It was bad. Remember the test of the cave? I failed, just like Skywalker in the story. I failed hard.

I'm feeling a quiet little voice. I don't know if it's just me learning to listen to myself, or the voice of the Force, or something else. Sometimes it sounds like Teferi or how they say Yoda talked, sometimes it sounds like me. It tells me things nobody else will, and that alone makes it worth listening to.

Well, that's not entirely true. Seroth Ur-Rahn told me similar things once. But I've never had anyone talk like this who wasn't an enemy.

No, that's not me declaring the spirit of Yoda an enemy. But now, when I think of the old line 'Am I become your enemy because I tell you the truth?' I wonder whether the causality doesn't run the other way. I've certainly been more direct, softened less blows, tackled the truth more accurately, when I'm busy kicking the legs out from under someone who claims moral high ground over me.

In terms of how long I'll be gone, Spence, I'm going to try it. I'm going to try finding this planet with no name and no coordinates. I don't even know whether it's Deep Core or Wild Space, let alone what sector it's in. This is the kind of thing Jorus Merrill could do, if he knew about this world. It's the kind of thing that you could probably do. You always had the balance. I know I could call in a marker and have him find this world for me, or come pick you up and we could find it together.

I'm not wild about the idea of changing. I've worked hard to be what I am. But not all change is bad, and I have to be open to the possibility, so I think I have to do this myself.

I'll try not to be gone too long, but who knows how long it'll take me to find this planet, or to find whatever part of me will lead me there. And once I get there, who knows whether I'll be able to contact you until I'm done with...whatever this place turns out to be.

Be safe. I love you.

Ashin

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The message sent, Ashin put down her datapad on the deck of the Sojourn beside her and rested her elbows on her knees. Farther down the ramp from where she sat, mist swirled around hydraulics, and a nudj lizard ambled by. Dagobah's perpetual twilight kept her from guessing local time, and she'd lost track of ship time already. She regularly kept the datapad hooked to the comms array, and keyed to whatever the local time might be in any given location of Spencer. This might be nightfall.

Her right knee ached abominably, more so as she stood. Darron Wraith had given her that limp at Roche, and Josiah Denko had reapplied it on Barab One. Now she'd fallen through the roof of a cave, and that hadn't done her knee much good. She descended the ramp in pain.

Five minutes' walk, about all she could take, found her one of her favorite treats from her last sojourn on Dagobah -- a gimer tree. Without a lightsabre, she resorted to a sharp rock, and cut herself a knotted, curve-ended length of gimer stick for a cane. She chewed it with some relish, then headed back to the ship. Each step was a minor agony. Perhaps this was self-flagellation, in a minor way. Perhaps her unconscious still required penance of her.

Penance for the many, many dead.

She paused then, gimer-stick cane arresting her forward momentum, and looked off in another direction. No whisper came, no inspiration or guild-spurred imagination. But it would be the right thing to do.

She changed course, despite the ache in her knee. Broken ground marked the place where she had fallen in, but she bent her path around slim, parallel trees and shoots, and there was the entrance. The Dark Side whispered out of the cave. Setting her gimer stick by the cave mouth, she squared her shoulders and began her descent. Her own footprints had torn up the ground on her way out, zigzagging to evade visions of those passed on. This time she walked straight, apart from the limp. Half-buried roots caught her boot-heels and kept her from sliding into the main chamber.

The chamber came soon enough anyway. Ignoring the pain, she knelt and closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, she was at the edge of a familiar precipice. Bluespire, largest of the Spires of Hell, extending up as far as the eye could see, extending down twenty thousand kilometres to the Strigari nomad where the Celestial construct and its brethren had taken root. This was where she trained others, over this infinite fall. And the huge, rimless, semicircular balcony held students, to be sure. Bodies, all face down, all heartstoppingly familiar but not enough to know if they were-

The vision faded and was gone.

"No. No, show me more. I have to-"

But there was nothing. She remained there, trying to meditate, for what felt like several hours, until the faint light from the entrance dimmed further. As she stalked limping from the cave, she snatched up her gimer stick, her mind on fire.

Clarity. There was only one place to find it, if the Dagoyan Masters had been right. Dagobah had nothing more to offer her today.

Word Count: 6010

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The Sojourn hung over Dagobah in high orbit. The pilot droid stared straight ahead, infinitely patient, while the astromech rummaged behind her somewhere. Ashin closed her eyes and rested her hands on the hyperspace controls.

Instinct defined her life, at short range. Knowing just where to put a sabre, just when to shift her weight, how to send out slow, powerful strikes and blocks that just happened to be where she needed them to be. But beyond short range -- well, that was why she'd gone to Bardotta in the first place. There had been a time when Force visions had been within her purview, or Aing-Tii flow-walking. Now she didn't even want to try.

Fear of failure, of uselessness. When had her life become about fear? Not fear of harm or physical pain -- she could make herself functionally immune to both -- and not just fear for those she loved and the territory she protected. But fear of failing. Perhaps that was what drove her to jump off the Spires of Hell, steel her heart against terminal velocity and endless vertigo, fall thousands of kilometres with only instinct between her and an impact with some balcony or outcropping.

Instinct. If urgency, necessity, unlocked the solution of the moment-

She slammed down her hands on the hyperspace controls and jumped off a cliff.

***​

Spoiler

The star system, when she found it at last in the Deep Core, was utterly filled with curving, swirling tendrils of light radiating out from the system primary. Impossible. Absolutely impossible. Her sensors spat stray light and conceded nothing but the general location of a planet, for which she set course. A huge tendril whipped through the space where she flew, overlapped with the ship; her sensors fuzzed, her cockpit glowed, she tensed, but nothing happened. Not to her, anyway. Unsure whether to count that as a near miss or a sign of her own nerves, she moved to alter course slightly and found that the ship was not responding. She removed her hands from the controls and sat back, deciding to take a gamble on the will of the Force, as she had when picking a landing site on Dagobah. Skeins of light parted, revealing a world that both gleamed with starlight and gave off light of its own, from great vertical streamers that looked to pierce the crust. Sensors were useless. The planet was, up until now, hidden in the Force entirely, also impossibly. But now she began to sense it like distant music.

She approached the base of one of the columns of light, and found it to be like the sun, streamers of energy intertwined harmoniously with each other. Sensors gave nothing. "I'm not going to risk the ship," she said to the slightly twitchy pilot droid, and set the Sojourn down in one of the barren planet's innumerable craters, adjoining a world-scale pattern of lines that might have come from impact or orbital bombardment. The vertical streamers of light, tendrils of infinite length, reached up to a glowing golden sky. Breathable air and normal gravity registered, and no environmental toxins. She powered down the Sojourn and took her gimer stick from beside the pilot's chair, then limped down the ramp to the base of the column of light.

The Force surrounded and permeated her, as was her specialty, enhancing the durability and, to a lesser extent, strength of her body. The effect covered her gimer stick cane as well. Standing on the edge, leaning on the cane, she placed her hand in the streamer. Nothing crucial happened -- no harm, no erosion of the Force Weapon effect that formed the heart of her skillset.

"Just like the Temple of Pomojema back home," she murmured to herself, and stepped off the edge to begin the long fall through the living Force.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Rocky walls and golden light blurred past her as she fell. She'd jumped off the Spires of Hell, a distance whole orders of magnitude greater, but had never felt her heart in her throat like this. The Force was stronger here, tugged at her feelings, amplified them.

The brilliant strands bent away, the tunnel ended, and she found herself falling into an immense cavern, its distant walls and floor -- Force, what if there was no floor at all? -- hidden by endless depths of soft yellow-gold clouds. Floating islands sailed the clouds, some jellyfish-like spores as big as her body or her ship, some larger and seemingly made of rock, redolent with greenery. No, with life, some green, some purplish like a dull ripe grape, some burnt orange. Things that blurred the boundaries of plants, fungi, even animals. Long living tendrils fell away from the base of the living islands; the rocky ones had no such indication of living buoyancy, merely sat there in midair, unconcerned. One was directly beneath her.

All this she took in as she fell. Closing her eyes, she gathered her strength to slow her fall and resist the coming impact with one of those rocky, life-choked islands in the cloud sea.

She hit the ground, and fell to one knee, the force of her impact rippling out through ground and jungle. Her Force Weapon protection failed. It was a long moment before she could stand again and lean on the gimer stick.

A flicker of light reflected off a glossy fruit or pod, and she turned to see a faintly androgynous woman, robed and masked with an expression of serenity or ambivalence, floating perhaps half a metre above the ground. She dipped as she approached, and one two-toed foot planted on the ground before she floated up again. A patch of riotous plant life sprang up where that alien foot had touched the ground.

Spoiler

The woman said nothing.

Ashin cleared her throat and stilled her racing heart as best she could, rising from the disturbed ground. "Where are we?"

"The cradle of life, Ashin Cardé Varanin. This is one of the places where life began in this galaxy. The homeworld of the seeds of life -- in times ancient beyond ages. When life dies and becomes one with the Force, the Living Force is returned to the Cosmic Force, and this world plays a part in that return. This is the way of things -- the way of the Force."

Through amazement she found the strength to chuckle. "I can think of a hundred Jedi and Sith who would die or kill to taste the power of this place."

"This is not a place of power. It is a place of function -- the highest and purest function. It is a place of balance." The masked woman turned and floated away. "Follow me, please, Master Varanin."

Their course wound its way through the riot of pastel jungle, to the very edge of the floating island. The path curved back to find a door, which irised open seamlessly, perhaps technology, perhaps life, perhaps the Force. The masked woman led her into the heart of the island, into a chamber of organic lines and small apertures to the outside light. "Is this planet hollow?"

"No. Life resides here in large and interlinked cavities." The masked woman turned to face her when they both reached the centre of the chamber. In a heartbeat the chamber turned black, save for glowing lines in patterns that burned themselves into Ashin's mind. Globes of light came in, and twisted with an effect like space warping, to become four other masked women. Their faces reflected anger, confusion, happiness, sadness. They formed a circle around her, rotating slowly. Ashin rested her weight on the gimer stick cane and waited.

Spoiler

"What have you come here to learn?" said Confusion.

"I thought I was traveling to learn to feel the Force, not just control it. I thought I was traveling to find a way forward from my sins. I thought I was traveling to learn to be a Jedi again. I thought I was traveling to overcome what held me back as a person, what bound me to selfishness. But now, seeing this place, feeling this place, all I want to know is this. How can I become a new me, become selfless, when I love?"

"You must learn to let go," said Serenity.

"I won't. Not for my sake, but for hers."

"You misunderstand," said Anger. "You will never find a way forward without learning to let go. Cling to life by power, and you will always lose what you try to hold."

"There are ways."

"But none of them," said Serenity, "are the way of the Force."

"What, to let go, to become nothing, to lose consciousness and individuality after death? What are you, then?"

"We," said Joy, "are the priestesses who keep the balance, and when balance requires-"

Something clicked in Ashin's mind. Maybe inspiration. "Kenobi. Yoda."

Serenity nodded. "Yes."

"Holy feth."

Word count: 7,490

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"So when people come here, when they're told this world exists and the Force leads them here, you...what? Test their readiness?"

They rotated around her, and she couldn't tell which answered each question.

"Yes."

"Do you teach things apart from immortality?"

"To ask that question is to be swayed by power. But I think you can learn what you will, or will learn what you can."

"How often do people come here, and how many of them do you end up training?"

"Do the achievements of others matter? The question is whether or not you are capable of learning what the Dagoyan sent you here to learn."

Ashin snorted. "I still can't believe they thought enough of me to send me here. They struck me as unimpressed."

"As you said, Master Varanin, learning is about change. They hoped you would learn something that would change you. You spoke of the same hope."

"I suppose I did. Well, if this will get me closer to some kind of an answer for my life-"

The circle of priestesses stopped rotating, and Confusion came in close to stare her in the face. "Master Varanin, listening is the key to growth." With that dispassionate, bemused rebuke, light flared all around Ashin, and she lost consciousness.

She woke flat on her back, gimer stick in hand, surrounded by the local jungle's diversity of greens, oranges, purples and yellows. Humming insects raced by, and Serenity stood over her. Ashin clambered upright and leaned on her cane. Without a word, Serenity turned and floated away. Ashin limped after the masked priestess. "Where are we going?"

At Serenity's gesture, an immense front bent away to reveal a distant sky-island, its tall jagged peak wreathed with dark clouds and occasional sparks of lightning. A trail of smaller islands and floating sky-jellyfish analogues angled up from here to there, and Serenity floated out over them, uncaring of what looked like an infinite fall. Stilling herself, Ashin jumped for the first, then from one to the next to the next. Serenity spoke as she floated ahead, leading the way. "That storm is unconquered fear."

"I already know what I'm afraid of." Feth, that was a long fall, and she knew long falls.

"As you say. In order to learn what we have to teach you, you must truly know yourself and then let go of that identity. You will find that some portions have a tighter grip on you than others." Serenity drew up alongside the edge of the storm-shrouded island, and Ashin made the final leap to solid ground. A rough staircase led into the heart of the island, as if the whole thing was some kind of stone thicket of malevolent growth. Serenity gestured inside.

"What will I find in there?"

"Only what you take with you."

Spoiler

 

[Ashin Varanin]

A dozen stone spires leaned against each other, crosshatched, surrounded by half-unseen growth. Vines in riotous tangles advanced and retreated from asymmetric bars of light. Beautiful, said half of her. The other half whispered of tactical uncertainty and home field advantage. Her eyes flicked into the shadows, chasing motion. Her breath slowed.

Every fight, at her level, came down to breathing. Every motion took place in the context of degrees of tension, low in the belly. In classical velocity training, each exhalation split into an average of four movements.

In through the nose as a tall, broad-shouldered shadow coalesced and lunged out of the dark.

Out through the mouth, one. A step with the left leg toward the barely-seen attacker, settling into the beginning of a forward-heavy stance.

Out, two. Left arm high to catch a right hook.

Out, three. Reverse punch to the half-corporeal gut.

Out, four-

-exploded from her lungs as a shadowed hammerfist crashed down on her collarbone. And the shadow had one move left, continuing forward momentum to move in right side to right side. The shadow's knee crashed into her gut, and she went flying.

Her Force Weapon pulsed an instant later, by instinct, just in time to leave an Ashin-shaped impression in a cluster of vines and stone. The shadow darted away, leaving only the afterimage of red eyes.