Chapter 44: ED : Chapter 42: Actual Onscreen I
Coruscant, Jedi Temple [22 BBY]
"Your presence is requested in the Trials Chamber, Padawan Skywalker." Opening my eyes, I saw the high, piping voice which had ended my deep meditative focus belonged to a female Czerialan Initiate perhaps nine or ten years old.
Rising smoothly to my feet from a cross-legged position, I was conscious of her electric blue eyes on me as I focused on gliding to the doorway she stood just to the right of with all the grace I could manage.
This close to what my body very much considered peril, my mind was already in that cold, crystal-clear place, but I could detect a deeper tension already building in my muscles. My body wanted to fight or flee, but unable to yet do either.
"Thank you for delivering the message, Initiate.
" My reply was simple, if not automatic. I sensed the girl's excitement tinged with envy as she considered me. One on the cusp of becoming a Jedi Knight in her eyes, whereas she wasn't very far along the Jedi path in her own mind.
"I promise that the physical exertion will not seem so trying next year, Nithanelle. You're in a transitional period, right now. Come this time next year, and what you strain to do now will seem like last year.
When you were always the one praised by your instructors during physical segments." I quietly yet intently advised the young girl as she padded along gracefully beside me.
Suppressing the urge to smile as I felt her start of surprise. I sensed her speculative deliberation. Silently betting she'd ultimately find the courage to ask the question in her mind, and wishing she wouldn't.
"Did, did you see me doing better next year? I overheard-" The girl's snow white skin flushed a deep pink beneath the thin crest of bone-white hair running from her forehead to the curve of the back of her head as her thin pink-lipped mouth clamped shut.
"-Master Vilbum and Master Koon talking about your having had more accurate visions of the future than any Jedi in living memory!" I heard the thought in her mind almost as clearly as if she'd spoken it aloud.
"This is as far as you go, Initiate, but to answer your question: You'll find the future that you make for yourself. I believe that Nithanelle is well able to meet and overcome any challenge she encounters, but it isn't my belief which is central here, now is it?"
I answered as we came to the nondescript doorway to one of the most important rooms in the heart of the Temple.
The thin Initiate bowed as she turned to take her leave, and once again I had to suppress a smile as her mildly disgruntled thought jumped out at me from the surface of her mind. "Don't know why they need to put this one through the Trials. He already sounds like a Jedi Knight."
Tap-tap-tap. I glanced to my immediate left past the doorway to the Trial Chamber and into the four-way intersection of corridors as a distinctive sound pulled my attention away from the departing Initiate. Slowly turning the corner to head down my hallway was the Grandmaster of the Jedi Order.
Immediately, I suspected something was amiss and reached out with Force Sense to get a feel for the approaching figure's Force-presence. Bumping awareness-first into the high series of sustained wood-flute like notes which had always "sounded like" Master Yoda to me.
Surprise to find him away from the Mimban Enclave at such a tense time for the galaxy must have shown in my face as he approached, but all the great Jedi said by way of either greeting or explanation as I bowed with respect in greeting was "Compelling advice, to the Initiate, you gave. Belief in these words, you possess?"
I could see a parallel with my own situation, so I nodded my agreement. I opened my mouth to provide a more complete and respectful reply, but Yoda surprised me by raising his walking-stick and pointing it's tip at the Trial Chamber's doorway.
I had the sense this meeting was significant, and that it was the fact these were my Trials commencing which prevented him from saying more, but I couldn't be sure of that.
Still, as I opened the door and stepped inside, I was simultaneously reassured and unnerved by the great Jedi's presence.
I couldn't imagine any funny business occurring with my Trials beneath the ancient Jedi Master's gaze, but something about the diminutive green alien's unanticipated presence caused me to suspect things had just grown more difficult for me nevertheless.
I had nothing to base that feeling on, but it persisted as I stepped into inky black darkness.
...
The details of the cavernous chamber became apparent as the illumination level slowly increased until it was what I'd consider an average amount of ambient light.
There was a great abyss stretching out in every direction except the now door-free perfectly smooth off-white wall right behind me. While dozens of tall bamboo-like shafts of varying heights rose up out of these inky depths.
The top of each of these shafts ranged in diameter from about the butt of a pool-cue at the smallest, to the size and general shape of a tea-saucer at their largest.
On the far side of the huge square chamber in it's left-most upper corner was an open doorway with a similar half-circle of stone just before it to the one I was presently standing upon.
A glance upwards revealed still more shafts, but these hung downwards from a ceiling somewhere overhead and out of sight like stalactites.
It seemed rather obvious this was intended to be some sort of leaping and balancing exercise, but that was actually my initial impression.
Seemed. I reached out slowly yet intently with Force Sense. Searching for the hidden x-factor which would make this an actual test, rather than merely an unremarkable but time-consuming feat.
The Force's song was strong and steady, yet lacking the trill or keening I associated with imminent peril. The pit's blackness momentarily lightened and began to suggest depth. Only to immediately darken into impenetrable blackness an instant later.
"Gotcha, they can alter this environment to maintain parameters they wish to persist" I silently considered with interest.
Carefully and incrementally lifting my eyes from the depths to consider the portions of the shafts which rose above the blackness. I still couldn't see anything else, but gradually, I came to "see" levitating gray spheroids hiding behind the thicker poles.
Not simply floating spheres, I realized after a moment, but blast-deflection remotes. Set to what intensity or rate of fire I couldn't yet tell, but I was guessing it would be enough to disrupt my leaping traversal of this room if I got hit.
Worse, I realized after a moment that simply igniting my lightsaber and deflecting any shots taken away randomly wasn't likely to cut it.
Not if all the remotes got a fix on me at once. My defense, especially on the move, would grow saturated and I'd get hit. Causing me to fall, and ending the Trials just that quickly.
I was momentarily tempted to grow disheartened. There were nearly a hundred of the bolt-firing remotes hiding among the foothold-poles.
At my very best and very deepest immersion in Battle Precognition while parrying remote-fire on the move, I might hope to keep pace with twenty-five incoming shots at once for a very brief span.
Thirty for ten seconds, if I experienced a near-mythical moment of complete oneness with the Force. Long enough to cross maybe sixty percent of the room, if everything went absolutely perfectly and the Force smiled as never before.
No good. I knew I needed a better plan, and just like that as I allowed the current of the Force to wash through me, I had one.
Yet instead of beginning to move, I went to my knees, closed my eyes, and pushed out everything except my awareness of the Force. Forcing myself to relax, as I eased deeper and deeper into a meditative state.
Even when the stone beneath me began to vibrate as if warning me it might fall away at any moment, I paid it no mind with my senses. Instead, giving myself over to the Force through my Force Sense.
My lightsaber hissed to life before my first twenty-foot horizontal leap carried me a sixth of the way across the chamber to land with my right foot atop one of the widest pole-tops.
Vrrmm-rmmm!!!!
My saber flashed three times out before me and to my left. The sudden warning trill of the Force urging me into a front somersault for the nearest pole even before my weight had fully come down atop the last one.
That pole had already dropped three feet or more straight down by the time I was arcing forward to land left-footed on top of a pole no thicker than a pool-cue. Two of my three parries with Shien sending reflected bolts to strike another pair of rising remotes as the third bolt narrowly missed another sphere.
The two I'd struck with my parries dropped silently into the blackness, but I was already blocking another half-dozen shots before my five senses even registered more remotes had fired their thing yellowish white beams at me.
Four more remotes dropped into the black as a Force Leap was the only thing that got me moving again from a balance-point so small.
It only carried me twelve to fifteen feet, and now remotes were firing on me from three different directions. My lightsaber was a streak of silver and blue as I made a stand for a couple of moments atop a thickest-width pole which had turned out to be "safe." Above, at my feet, to either side and back again it's humming shroud flashed.
Dropping sphere after sphere into the darkness as my protected zone of reflective parries further thinned the number of attacking remotes. I was noticing a distinct lessening in the rapidity of fire now, but didn't drop my guard as I leaped again.
Finally missing a bolt, as I landed on one of the second-to-thinnest width pole-tops one jump from the ledge. The shot hit me in my off right arm's bicep, and instantly that limb hung as limply beside me as if I'd slept on it for hours. It unbalanced me a little as fear tried to surge past my immersion in the Force, but I was a perfectly struck note in a symphony.
One front-flip lead into another as I parried while descending, and my final front-flip transformed into a rolling passage through the shining doorway as bolts tzz'd-tzz-tzz'd a soft electric staccato beat on the stone behind me. A last great cluster of doubly hidden remotes I'd only sensed three-quarters of the way across.
Coming to my feet in darkness, I could feel the numbness in my right arm already all but gone. Which was extremely encouraging, given how difficult the very first portion of what I thought was probably the Test of Skill had been.
Now, as the lights came up once more, I moved from "thought" to "certain" as I spotted a half-dozen two meter high cylindrical gray stones about as thick around as a big man.
Each one would easily weigh a thousand to twelve hundred pounds, if they were solid, and I suspected they were. The room was otherwise featureless, with no door or anything which could be construed as a portal in need of opening anywhere in sight.
Looking closer, I noticed faint lines running up and down, as well as left and right. Breaking the room up into ten rows of squares each six squares wide.
The cylinders were all in the room's two middle rows and set in pairs at the second, third, and fourth square of those rows. The obvious move would be to levitate the cylinders either individually or (with more difficulty) as a group to check beneath them.
"Yeah, I think I learned my lesson about obvious moves in the last room" I silently considered. Reaching out with the Force to carefully sense the cylinders themselves.
Closing my eyes, I allowed myself to sink deeper into the steady beat of the Force's song. Letting my expectations and desires be washed away by the movement of the song's low individual notes.
...
Hey guys can you throw some power stones to Elevate the ranking.
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