Chương 7: Kyber Visions

62 BBY – 938 ARR – Ilum Visions on Ilum show truth, and truth cuts deeper than any blade. – Attributed to Master Sinube ~*~*~*~ The trip to Ilum was excruciating. Upon entering The Crucible, the ancient Jedi training vessel that ferried younglings to Ilum for the Gathering, he was singled out by Master Braylon for "remedial meditation." Yet even before that, an imposing bronze-plated droid had greeted them at the boarding ramp. He leaned on a cane-like armature, his photoreceptors glowing with calm dignity.

"Welcome, Initiates. I am Professor Huyang. For over twenty millennia I have instructed Jedi in the forging of their lightsabers. During this journey, I shall guide you in preparation for the Gathering." Whispers of awe rippled through the younglings. Rann noted every word. This was no ordinary instructor; this was living Jedi history. In his databanks rested more knowledge about the Jedi than any barring and possibly including Yoda.

But before he could ask any number of questions, he had been called away by Master Braylon. Six hours into Braylon's so-called "guided meditation," nausea churned through him, vision splitting in two as he fought just to stay upright. Deep meditation during hyperspace was a discipline reserved for Knights – dangerous even for them – yet she had forced him to attempt it again and again. A sudden warmth touched his lip. He brushed it with his hand and stared at the smear of red on his fingers.

When he lifted his gaze, Master Braylon was already watching, her expression unreadable, as though she had been waiting for the crack to show.

"I suppose we can stop here," she sighed.

"If you're tired, Master." She tried to hide the flash of anger, but their meditative connection bared all, including his smugness. Nothing else was said as they fell back into meditation. Two more hours passed, with more falling, wrenching and nosebleeds. He wouldn't give in. Eventually that was all he could think. Don't give in, don't give up… He woke up on a cot in a different compartment. Groaning, he sat up as a small series of explosions went off in his head.

A medical droid rolled into view, its servos whining softly as it adjusted the IV line in his arm. It offered him a glass of water, photoreceptors blank, but spoke no words. Instead, a tall bronze figure leaned forward from the shadows of the chamber.

"Awake at last," intoned Master Huyang, his voice calm, resonant, and oddly reassuring.

"Force exhaustion. Severe. Roughly two-thirds of initiates return from Ilum in such a state, though few collapse so completely during the voyage." Rann croaked, "How long was I out?"

"Twelve point five hours," Huyang said precisely.

"But that is not my chief concern." His photoreceptors flared faintly.

"Tell me, Initiate – how did this happen?" Rann managed a weak grin.

"Proving a point."

"Not satisfactory," Huyang replied without hesitation.

"Try again."

"Training," Rann said quickly, eyes dropping to the cup in his hands. Huyang's head tilted, studying him for a long moment. Then he gave a metallic sigh.

"You dodge as deftly as you spar, Initiate Crys. But know this: deep meditation in hyperspace is a feat reserved for seasoned Knights. Attempting it at your age is less a demonstration of discipline than of recklessness. Points and pride may wound you more deeply than any enemy." Rann swallowed the water, refusing to meet the ancient droid's gaze.

"Do not attempt to touch the Force again until you are cleared," Huyang finished. His voice softened slightly.

"Your crystal will not judge you for caution. You will remain in the medical wing for monitoring." ~*~*~ After the mandatory two hours of monitoring, Rann was released just in time for lunch. Grabbing the bland grub that looked somehow less appealing than the refectory's legendarily bland meals, he made his way to Mace and sat down.

"Are you okay?" Mace looked at him with concern.

"I'm feeling better," he dodged the question.

"What happened." Mace turned to face him fully.

"Meditating with Master Braylon." Mace's face darkened. He knew Rann already suffered from particularly intense Visions regularly. He knew what it meant for him to have been rendered unconscious after a meditation session in hyperspace.

"She can't do that." Rann took a bite of his unappealing, Refectory-approved space slop.

"How'd you do on your Philosophy section?" He didn't look at Mace. They sat in silence for a couple seconds.

"I did…" Rann looked at him.

"Look." Mace pulled a flimsiplast out of his robes and passed it to him. Force Abilities Telekinesis Superior (5) Physical Enhancement Outstanding (6) Sense Superior (5) Saber Abilities Shi Cho Outstanding (6) Additional Form (Juyo) Outstanding (6) Philosophy Mathematics Superior (5) History Superior (5) Jedi Code Pass (3) The pass on Jedi Code stuck like a sore thumb compared to all of Mace's other insanely good scores.

"Let me guess. Your Jedi Code subsection was graded by Master Braylon." Mace nodded.

"Well, that makes two of us. Got a low pass though." Mace gave him an incredulous look at that.

"I made a formal request to have it re-evaluated by someone else to Master Zucul. Master Braylon overheard and tried to get me to back down. She's not a big fan of mine right now." Mace just stared at him. Rann knew that if he could touch the Force right now, he would be feeling Mace's conflicting sentiments as they struggled within him. While injustices like receiving bad grades they knew they didn't deserve might disturb him, so too did the idea of disregarding a Master's proclamations.

So Rann was a little surprised when Mace eventually nodded his head slowly.

"Just make sure you actually make it back to the Temple." ~*~*~ Thankfully, the rest of the journey was spent in a sort of awkward silence between him and Master Braylon. They did their best to ignore each other's presence and largely succeeded. When Master Braylon led classes on what to expect on Ilum or went through katas because the Mighty Bear Clan of younglings grew too rowdy, he would place himself in the back and not draw attention to himself.

By the third and final day of the journey, he largely felt better. Just in time for the anxiousness about the Gathering, which he had largely evaded, to catch up to him. One thing about being in a reality that he had a window into by watching movies, tv shows, and reading books, was that it couldn't really communicate sensations. Now that he was living that reality, many, many things had changed.

Being able to sense and feel the Force was the most obvious, of course, but there were plenty of other, novel sensations that he had never experienced. Ilum's biting, freezing, miserable cold was one of them. The entire planet was essentially a ball of ice battered by howling wind that for some Force-forsaken reason, kyber crystals seemed to like. Rann tried to find the humor that it took two lifetimes for him to really experience the cold.

He had grown up and largely lived around the equator growing up, spending the vast majority of his life in tropical or subtropical zones. None of that experience prepared him for Ilum. Due to the relatively thin atmosphere, it felt like being at around 5, 000m above sea level and was well below zero. The entire gaggle of Initiates, which had been incredibly eager to arrive, were now huddled just outside the ship's hangar doors.

They hadn't been given permission to leave the area while Master Braylon went into the Crystal Cave, the ancient Jedi temple where they would soon enter and harvest their kyber. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Rann had of course done a lot of research on the planet and its Jedi temple before arriving.

It was ninety percent covered in ice, but had a core composed almost entirely of kyber, which meant that standing on the planet's surface, you could still Feel the entire planet. Having lived most of his entire second life inside of a Force Vergence, where the Force was exceptionally strong, this wasn't exactly an unfamiliar sensation. It did, however, sing in a very different tone from the Temple on Coruscant.

Ilum spoke of millennia, patience, and a slow surety of being that Rann couldn't really compare to any other sensation. Coruscant's Vergence, on the other hand, had a very… complicated flavor. On the surface, it was incredibly Light, and was home to most of the galaxy's Jedi. There was hope, warmth, and joy.

But if you listened a little closer, you could also sense the struggle of everyday life, the people in the midlevels making by, and an especially deep meditation session could have you brushing up against the horrors of the lower levels, which housed creatures that hadn't seen the light of a sun in thousands of years. Ilum was not concerned about these things. It was uninhabited, with its only sentients being visitors who were aligned with the Light.

It wasn't that Ilum was care-free, it just had the same surety of self that one could ascribe to a redwood that had been growing for over three thousand years. The seasons would come, the seasons would go, and it would remain. Life was both as simple, and as complicated, as that. All of this failed to distract Rann from just how miserably cold he was. Somehow, it felt like the cold only served to reinforce his fears. As the fingers of wind traced down his neck, so too did his anxieties crawl over him.

Ilum had been the site of generations of Gatherings, and it had been the most popular source of kyber for generations. Part of it was, of course, cultural. As the Jedi fell under the High Council's rule, the Coruscanti Jedi's favorite site became the de facto site for kyber collection. The other part was practical, as other sites where appropriate focus crystals for lightsabers had been exhausted, exceptionally difficult to reach, or too dangerous.

Instead, an ice ball in the Unknown Regions of the galaxy was somehow the best place. Braylon returned, robes snapping in the wind.

"You will enter the Crystal Caves one by one. Prove yourselves worthy, and a kyber crystal will answer your call." Huyang stepped forward, optics glowing warmly.

"Remember, children – a crystal does not merely power a lightsaber. It reflects the Jedi who carries it. Listen closely. The Gathering is not a contest of strength, but of truth." The words steadied some of the initiates; even Mace seemed to breathe easier. Braylon's lips thinned.

"Do not coddle them, droid. They will learn discipline only through hardship." Huyang inclined his head with infinite patience.

"Discipline without understanding is brittle, Master Braylon. And brittle things break." She turned sharply, cutting the exchange short. Master Huyang watched from The Crucible as the younglings were led deeper into Ilum's deep snows. The ornately carved entry into the Crystal Cave spoke to a different era, as the aesthetic didn't fit in with the current minimalistic style of the Jedi Order. High Aurebesh was entwined throughout the entryway, and Rann wondered if it was the old Jedi Code or the new one.

Moving a little closer to the walls, he could see faint discolorations surrounding some of the characters. He took that to mean there was a high likelihood of the Aurebesh having been recarved to fit into modern Jedi doctrine. Not overly surprising.

"You will undergo a Vision," announced Master Braylon formally, "in which you will be challenged. If you are worthy, you will overcome and leave with a kyber crystal." She left unmentioned what would happen if they didn't succeed. The grand halls of the Crystal Cave were wondrous, filled with the soft glow of Kyber singing in the Force. This calm, beautiful setting contrasted with the increasingly nervous younglings.

"Disperse yourselves. Delaying the inevitable does nothing." With Master Braylon's harsh but true words, the younglings began to separate. He and Mace nodded at each other before walking in opposite directions. Mace walked further up the impossibly thin spiraling stone staircase that led to further up the mountain. Rann felt the Force calling him to go deeper into the caverns underneath Ilum. Slowly, his clanmates and Master Braylon fell behind him as he followed the Force's whispers.

At last, he found himself in a small cavern with kyber crystals glowing a faint white which was reflected off a glass-like floor of smooth ice. He could hear nothing of the other younglings, nor could he feel them in the Force. Closing his eyes, he listened to the Force.

"Look at you, acting like a Jedi," said a voice he knew.

"It's what I am, this time around." He opened his eyes and saw… his previous self. Evan Warbler.

"I'm not a previous you, Rann." Evan looked around the cavern in something approaching wonder.

"I am you, and you know it."

"Okay," he answered calmly, "you're me."

"Yeah. And you know that you're not really worthy of being here, don't you?" Evan looked at Rann with something approaching pity. It would have been a lot easier to reject a sneering, cruel visage. He had been a lot of things, but he had never really been a cruel person.

"Not cruel, not a Sith. But not a Jedi. Just a coward."

"That's not true," his voice trembled.

"You know it is, Warbler. We never had the guts to do anything in our old life. We read books about great people but were too afraid to write our own story, to make a mark on history. You think being born again with magical powers changes that, changes us?" Evan was marching towards him now, and he couldn't think straight.

"No-" Rann slipped on the ice.

"-Exactly. You're still me, we're still us. You've been here for what, ten years? What have you done besides your usual, reading books? Made friends with Mace Windu? Congrats! At this rate, he, and everyone else are still going to die and you're too much of a coward to do anything about it!" Evan loomed over him, panting from the passion of his speech. Rann scrambled on the ice but couldn't seem to get to his feet.

"I can't just march into Palpatine's office and kill him! You know we're not the Chosen One-""-We've never cared about that though, have we? Never felt the need to be the leading man, just so long as we were the best guy on screen. You never wanted to be Anakin or Luke, you always wanted to be Obi-Wan, the noble hero, the wise old man. Hell, you even chose Soresu because of-""-No!" Rann was much more forceful this time. He had managed to rise to his knees but could go no further.

"I chose Soresu because of it's defensive-""-You can lie to everyone else in this universe, Rann, but you can't lie to yourself. You can't lie to me. You can make up a thousand reasons, but at the end of the day, you chose Soresu because your favorite hero uses it and its passive. You can let others slip up, let others make decisions. You'll just 'hold back until it's the right time,' even if that right time passed by ten years ago. You might have been reborn, but we haven't changed." Rann trembled.

The caverns were dead silent except for his own breathing. He looked down at the glass-like ice and saw only himself, pale and sweaty. I've not done anything, just made up plans that I know wouldn't work and discarded them just as easily. Too cowardly to do anything about it but too stubborn to just accept my fate and die.

"You're right. I haven't done enough, not in a targeted way. I've been training and developing skills but haven't figured out how to use them. That will change. I will be worthy of becoming a Jedi Knight, and eventually, a Master."

"Good luck." The voice sounded further away. Rann looked up to see Evan walking away, a hand casually thrown up to say goodbye.

"Hopefully you'll do better than I ever did." Rann stood up fully, taking deep breaths to fill his lungs with the icy-cold air of Ilum. Then he started to look around. Wasn't getting a crystal the whole point of this thing?

"Not quite," answered another, feminine, voice to his unvoiced question. Rann turned and simultaneously felt a new presence in the Force.

"But I think you know that." Before him stood the Sister, the embodiment of the Light Side of the Force. He tried to speak but found he couldn't.

"You, Rann, are not my champion," she said with a faint smile to soften the blow.

"But I think you knew that as well. In spite of this, I can feel your desire to be good in the galaxy. And today you have affirmed that you will act on that desire. You have completed your Gathering and passed a trial, young one." Rann felt a bit of strength enter him at that.

"Thank you. But… why are you here?"

"I have someone for you to meet." With that, she raised her right hand. In it, sat a deep green crystal. It called to him, eager and ready.

"This little one is also willing to resist the coming darkness." The stone floated out of her hand and into his. When they met, the Force sang. ~*~*~ Rann woke up on his back in the middle of the cavern with the glowing kyber and the smooth-as-glass ice floor. He was frigid and felt like his whole backside was frozen. As he struggled to his feet, however, he couldn't stop marveling at the crystal in his hands.

Rann had interacted with kyber crystals before and while they were certainly notable in the Force, they didn't seem as opinionated as the crystal before him. He didn't quite know what he had been handed by the Sister, but it constantly seemed to be urging him onward, calling on him to do his best, to do good things, to do something. It was not the crystal of a contemplative Master who pondered the Force endlessly.

In other words, it was a crystal that would challenge him and remind him of the burdens he had put on himself. Now all I need is the Force-ghost of Christmas Future to tell me how I screwed up, he grumbled. In spite of these grumblings, he really did feel like the Gathering had given him something. A clarity of purpose, if he had to put words to it. He wasn't just here to hang out with his favorite characters or learn cool new things, he was here to try and do some good in the galaxy.

That's my Jedi way, he joked privately to himself. Making his way back to the group, he saw that Mace hadn't arrived yet, but almost everyone else had. He walked over to the rest of them and joined them in their silent huddle. No one seemed to have the energy left to complain about their hands being frozen to ice blocks or the sleet that collected on their eyelashes. As more people trickled in, Rann grew a little nervous. Mace was now officially the last person to rejoin the group.

As they continued to wait, another Initiate voiced, "what's taking so long?"

"You know Mace, probably had to pick the perfect crystal," said another.

"No," Rann said. He had felt the Force moving oddly on the upper levels and could sense Mace's turbulence.

"His Gathering is just… taking a bit more time." The rest of the clan gave him a speculative look before accepting his explanation and moving on to other topics of conversation. At just that moment, Rann felt the disturbance in the Force and Mace cease. He turned his head to the spiral that Mace had left from, noticing Master Braylon do the same. A few minutes later, a clearly exhausted Mace descended and joined them. He was tempted to ask what Mace had seen but knew better.

Not only were Force Visions normally intensely personal, but there was also an incredibly strong taboo amongst the Jedi against asking. Many Jedi went their entire lives without telling another person what they had seen on Ilum. Instead, he leaned on Mace's shoulder. Mace shifted his weight onto him gratefully. The group shuffled back into The Crucible, frost clinging to their robes and lashes. Most of the Initiates were too numb to talk, content to collapse into silence and nurse their frozen hands.

"Present your crystals," Braylon ordered, voice as clipped as the wind outside. One by one, the Initiates held out their prizes. When the faint green glow of Rann's Pontite crystal spilled through his fingers, Braylon's eyes hardened.

"Open your hand." Rann obeyed. The crystal thrummed proudly in the Force.

"A Pontite," she whispered.

"Far too rare for an Initiate. You are not ready for its burden."

"It didn't seem to think so," Rann muttered. Her hand cut the air; the crystal flew from his palm into hers. The emptiness struck like a blade. A faint whir of servos interrupted the silence. Huyang stepped forward, his long arms folding across his frame.

"Pardon my interruption, Master Braylon, but that crystal bonded willingly to Initiate Crys. My databanks hold over twenty millennia of records on the Gathering, and in that span I have rarely witnessed an Initiate receive an Adegan Ponthite. To sever such a connection is… unorthodox." Braylon's eyes flashed.

"You presume to lecture me, droid? You are a tool of instruction, nothing more. The authority to judge Initiates rests with Masters, not relics." Huyang's head tilted, his photoreceptors steady.

"Even relics preserve truth, Master Braylon. And truth, when ignored, tends to outlive those who deny it." Her robes swirled.

"Enough. You will record only what I instruct. Nothing more." The droid bowed stiffly, optics dimming, yet lingered on Rann for a heartbeat longer. He searched for meaning in that silent pause but could not think past the cold gnawing at his bones.