Chapter 15: 15. Chapter

We played one game of battle chess. It was only enough to get a taste of it and to get used to the game somewhat. To control the figurines with your voice, giving them orders as to where exactly should they move or which enemy unit should they attack. Ahsoka got the hang of it fast after that first game, which we didn't even finish; we walked to the cantina picking up Rika on the way. When I saw that there was a special twi'lek traditional food on the menu. I immediately decided to choose that. It was Gruuvan Shaal Kebab, I loved it. Ahsoka was looking at me strangely. She said that it was basically grilled lizard meat and vegetables on wooden sticks. She was right, but then, what of it? It was a dish from home, and I was delighted, and it was pretty good too. She was most likely just annoyed that it was something she couldn't eat as a togruta. Then again, there are things I couldn't eat, but togruta could, so that is fair play as I see it. 

After we finished the food, the girls finally took me to the sewing droid that was responsible for the padawans clothes. It was a slight surprise, that there was not really a need to create new clothes. I could choose from hundreds of already existing ones, although the droid said, that it would be delighted from a new more sophisticated challenge instead of the usual boring stuff. I told it that, if possible I would come back later and ask her for a more special design. It said that I could come by whenever I wanted, since droids never sleep. 

After we dropped my new clothes in my room, we realized that there was not much else to do. A little aimless wandering later, the three of us ended up in the room of thousand fountains, since we didn't have much else to do, and Ahsoka was still forbidden to duel or practice lightsaber forms because of her concussion. I asked Rika, but the temple's rumormill had already reached her. She heard that I put up a good fight against Anakin Skywalker, and when I asked her she paled and squeaked out an immediate no. I was joking in the first place, so I only smiled at her reaction. 

When we arrived at the room, we decided to do a proper jedi thing, even if I wasn't one actually. We sat down in a triangular formation while lightly touching our hands. 

It was a basic form of team meditation practice. Ahsoka as the oldest of our little group, took the opportunity to play the boss and decided to be the one who led the meditation. I had no problem with it, so I silently accepted while Rika seemed to be happy that nobody wanted her to lead it, so she also accepted. 

Our first team meditation has officially begun. For me, the true effects of this meditation room only began to show up after about ten minutes into the process of silencing and slowing my constantly flowing thoughts. In my case, it was usually about an hour of time to enter into the level of calm consciousness or even more. In this room, I have already begun to slip into a hyperaware state of calmness in barely ten minutes.  To know and understand what I am speaking of, you should at least once experience it yourself; but to someone, who never meditated, I can only describe the feeling, as being on the brink of falling asleep, as an unnatural calmness and peace took over your body. The only difference is that your mind is completely awake, in this state, you are able to sense the world around you, just like normally; but your ego is very weak. You see things in different colors since your past experiences with them are not that vivid anymore. Every emotion you feel is dull, less frightening, less exciting, and much closer to reality.  The reason for this is a bit complicated. Essentially, as our minds see and understand the pictures, or more like the information that the eyes receive from the outside world, then the eyes send the information to the brain for further processing through our nerve system. 

Our brain processes the information, that clean information is what reality is. A person, it doesn't matter if it is human or twi'lek, never really sees that information, maybe when he or she is born and for the first time opens his or her eyes. Adult's, or anyone who has a small segment of personality, are unable to clearly see this raw information anymore. Because our mind already has enough experience to create a personality. Therefore, if we have a personality, we also have a lot of experience from the world. Positive and negative experiences, even neutral ones. Those experiences are very powerful, especially the negative ones. Our experiences immediately rewrite or update the raw information that the brain processes. That is why, if someone once heavily burned his arm by splashing soup, or cafe on it. For his or her entire life that memory will immediately appear when she or he smells or sees a cafe or soup, especially if it is the same type. This means that person cannot enjoy the soup or cafe anymore, not without the sense of fear and a reminder of the pain that was caused when you burned your arm. 

This was why I actually liked to meditate sometimes. If you have about five thousand years of memories you will have so much personal experience with the world around you, that you will become tired from only looking at the things and remembering them. With an average lifespam you can accumulate so much memories that you have thousands of stories with almost any item around you. It is much more severe in my case, when I look around in the world I constantly feel a giant tsunami of memories pressuring my mind. I have to always repress them, if I didn't do it, I would freeze up time and time again, literally drowning in the endless waves of memories. 

I needed these breathers, to refresh my mind; this is the only time when the weight of so many years of memories lessens. 

I was thinking and enjoying the freeing experience of deep meditation, when a light brush of force energy reached my mind. It was coming from Ahsoka, ah. I see, she also entered deep meditation. We were only waiting for Rika now. 

This room was fantastic. I was mostly skipping on meditation because it took me more then an hour of time entering into it. In this room, it was much faster. Ten minutes maybe twelve; Ahsoka took about thirty minutes, and in the end Rika joined us at forty-five minutes. Ahsoka then gave us a request through the force, we were meant to rely on her in the meditation session. I reinforced the barriers around the memories that I inherited from my master when I was sure that nothing could leak out that I hadn't experienced or seen with this body; I finally relaxed. If something that was secretive came up, I could simply banish it with my will. It would ignite Ahsoka's anger, and she would rant for a few minutes, but I could say that I am not allowed to disclose certain things from my order, that will make her eventually calm down. 

I finally joined into the continuous force flow, that the other girls were carefully creating. My entrance gave a slight jolt through the force; since I was the only missing part, now, as we all were holding each others hands in a continuous circle, the flow began to stabilize. Ahsoka gave us another force jolt. She was getting irritated with our hesitation.  Okay, fine, I relaxed my control over my force presence, and memories even more and let Ahsoka handle it. We waited for Rika to do the same, then I felt as our force presences began to turn into a vortex. We felt as our astral bodies slowly began to sink into the bottom of this roaring whirlpool. When the bellowing storm dulled to a whispering background noise, I opened my eyes. 

We were at the bottom of a dark vortex, still holding hands; I looked upwards; the storm from this dept only seemed as a slowly turning black painting. When Rika opened her eyes, I could sense her panic, but Ahsoka quickly sent her a bunch of reassuring feelings through our meditative bond. I was very surprised, from the outcome of this meditation. This force maelstrom was far from normal, especially not in a jedi temple. I felt this yesterday already, this thick suffocating darkness reaching out and engulfing the whole temple. I sensed that Ahsoka herself wasn't really relaxed by the outcome of our meditation. Therefore I decided to take over the lead, asking her through the force, if she would let me get us out of this situation. She only hesitated for a few seconds, suppressing her control over the force flow, while I slowly took over it.

There was a sudden change in the flow when I took over the reins; not for the good by far, sadly. The storm suddenly intensified, than it stopped completely and just as suddenly. We were looking around in the thick silent darkness. Something was very wrong. I just knew. I felt the force trying to warn me for something, but it was constantly silenced by another outside interference. Only the years of experience that I gained from the ritual allowed me to still understand the small, weak warnings. I peered into the suffocating darkness; wait, it hadn't really felt suffocating until now. Not for me at least, the girls were not that lucky. What changed? 

On a whim, I reached out with my force presence, than a terrifying chill ran through my body, almost phisically shaking me. There was a presence; an aura so dark that it was almost entirely invisible in the middle of this darkness. I wouldn't sense it if I myself wasn't a knowledgable practicioner of the dark side. This dark, almost empty presence was so dense that it left an empty vacuum behind the much thinner dark energies of this place. That's why I found it, but it also realized this... 

- Ohhh... what an unfortunate... surprise... he-he-he... 

I heard a sadistic voice coming from the dark mist around us. It was an always-changing voice; there was no way to identify it, not even it's gender. 

- But, who? I wonder, who could have possibly found me? 

I saw a hooded black-robed figure materializing in the darkness before us. All of us sensed the thick musky presence radiating from it. I felt as the girls hands began to tremble while they were about to claw through mine with their iron like grip. 

The dark robed figure suddenly stopped moving, and it's head whipped towards us. Before he could completely turn his face, I blasted apart our meditative connection by suddenly letting out a big chunk of the darkside energy that I had gathered from the temple in these few days. I could only hope, that I was quick enough. As I awoke from the meditation, I realized that my body was visibly trembling. The room of the fountains, around us was engulfed in a blackish cloud; there were even weak electrical discharges in it. I hastily began to disperse the technique, siphoning and cleaning most of it out. 

I couldn't think entirely straight at that moment, since I knew, I clearly knew what I saw. The deep golden radiating glint was a clear and unmistakable sign of a true Darth Lord. The jedi never bothered to realize this detail, but the shade and richness of yellow or gold in this case can be a very good indication of the level of dark side energies contained by someone. For example, my eyes were only yellow when I reached deep into the dark side, like now, as I tried to clean up this mess as fast as possible. Far from the level of sun-like golden radiation of that guy... Wa-wait...

As I realized my grave mistake, I looked to my left. Ahsoka was watching me with wide betrayed eyes. The moment I saw her guarded form; I realized that there was no going back. She saw it. I turned to Rika, with a slight hope, but she was actually knocked out from the sheer terror of sensing a Darth unmasked presence. 

I tried to reach towards her and help her with my force abilities. A suddenly appearing new presence stopped me; a screaming force warning later, I was jumping backwards from my crouching position as fast as possible. Just a second later a blue blade cut through the floor where I was a mere second ago. I looked at the attacker, a masked jedi, with an actually practical battle armor... A jedi shadow... Damn it! I may be able to speak this out with Ahsoka, but these guys were tipical fanatics of the jedi order. No going back, it seems. 

He practically hissed at me. 

- Drop your weapon Sith, and may the council judge you for your sins, for deceiving us and betraying our hospitality. 

- You are mistaken. I am not a Sith. 

- Your lies have no more power here. Drop your weapon, or die holding onto it. 

- You just tried to kill me a few seconds ago. Now you talk about hospitality, do you even realize the hypocrisy of your own words, Jedi. 

- Drop your weapon, and raise your arms. This is your last warning. 

I looked at Ahsoka. She was hesitating and her expression was pained; she was looking at me with this hurt expression, pleading through her eyes, asking me to follow the shadow's instructions. She at least didn't want to see me slaughtered, not yet anyway. That will change soon. I am afraid... I can't let the jedi probe into my mind, and that is the only way I could ever convince them. They are too good with mind manipulation; we already learned this the hard way, right Master Revan. 

I sighed heavily while I stood there, unmoving and pretty dejected. My eyes were closed, thinking over my chances... Even if they changed their methods, through the years, which I hardly doubt, seeing the shadow before me. With one Darth Lord, this powerful hiding so close to the jedi temple as if he usually walked the corridors of it. I had no wish to risk being captured and then assassinated. While I am helpless and bound, most likely even stripped from the living force, as one of the favorite sadistic pleasures of the old jedi council. I wasn't eager to figure out if this changed over time. 

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I slowly raised up my face, and opened my eyes, looking at the form of the jedi shadow before me. Than I said with clear acceptance in my voice. 

- So be it. 

He momentarily lowered his guard, seemingly surprised by this development. 

My eyes turned bright yellow at that second, followed by a flick of my left hand and an ear splitting crackling thunder. Soon a painful scream joined in the chorus as a heavy body flew through the room, crashing into a particularly big fountain. The ozone and the burned hair smell immediately filled the room. My dejected face, from the sudden and explicit use of dark side energy began to turn paler and the shade of my blood veins also turned a bit darker. I immediately started to channel some healing powers through my body to counter the negative effects. My left arm which was the medium for my attack, began to violently twitch. What a mess... What is more sad, that I have to cast ever more darkside spells to even attampt an excape from this cursed temple. I began to do just that, erased my presence, and cast a dark miasma in the form of a storm that centered around me. I smirked at myself. It was the same spell that the Darth used, only unmasked and in a much more powerful and concentrated form. This will counter the jedi's senses both visually and in the force. 

The last thing I had to do, was to run. I didn't hesitate, and began to run towards the closest temple gate I knew of. It was the seventeenth landing pad. I hoped to reach it, then simply jump off the edge of it, with the force I could slow my descent to a level that would seem like levitation. Let's hope I will make it in one piece. 

__________

Obi-Wan Kenobi was walking through the corridors of the temple. He sensed a strange disturbance in the force not long ago, but it was over too fast. Therefore, he couldn't effectively pinpoint the location. What he knew clearly was that it originated from the inside of the temple. As he walked relying on his intuition, a black cloud of force energy appeared and practically crashed into him; they both fell on the ground thumbling all over each other.  

- What in a blazes is happening here?! 

He shouted surprised and annoyed by this development; how did he not sense this? The force didn't warn him of an incoming danger, but how? He was partially lying on someone,  more likely on the one who had just crashed into him. Who evers padawan is this he will give the rant of his life to her or his master. I only need to copy Master Windu's ranting skilles to achive that. That wouldn't even be hard; he has seen him raging so many times since he joined the council. 

Suddenly a series of footsteps appeared surrounding him. He looked around, still clutching his head from the newly received injury; a lump had already begun to form on his head. When he looked up, the annoyance in his eyes immediately changed into surprise and confusion. There was three different jedi shadows standing around him with activated lightsabers. One of them was very grumpy, and agitated; small smoke clouds were continuously billowing from his clothes, not even speaking of the fact that he was entirely drenched in water. 

Obi-Wan Kenobi the legendary jedi diplomat probably for the first time in his life since he could remember, couldn't find his words. After about half a minute of this awkward silence, he finally ran out of patience and shouted.

- What the hell is happening here?! Are you going to attack me in the middle of the jedi temple or what? Is this an insurrection against a council member? Answer me! 

The other three jedi, were completely shocked by the unforeseen change of events. Obi-Wan, the calmest member of the jedi council, the model jedi, was currently sitting on the back of the suspected sith apprentice, who was obviously unconscious and sprawled out on the ground, while he was shouting at them with utter rage accusing them of insurrection. 

One of the Jedi shadows turned towards the other two with a most likely buffled expression, that was hidden behind her mask. Than she asked hesitantly... 

- ... Is this some sort of Sith witchery? 

- ... 

- ...

- ...

- Urgh... 

Hearing that sudden moan, Obi-Wan finally remembered that he was lying on someone and jumped up from the ground as if it threatened to burn him alive. 

What he saw, only raised more questions. 

_____________

Not far from the jedi temple, a finely robed figure was walking in his richly designed appartment with a troubled expression. He was surprised that someone had found his presence from the halfwit jedi temple, but that was not a reason for his worrying. On the other hand, the real problem was the fact that he was unable to find out the identity of this person. That was much more troublesome. This meant one thing, that the person was able to cloud it's presence with the use of the dark side. To that realization a sadistic half-smile appeared on his wrinkled face. 

- A rival, it seems. 

His sickening smile only widened. 

- I will teach, you to never play with forces far beyond your narrow-minded understanding. 

He walked out of his room, while his bloodthirsty expression slowly formed into a warm grandfatherly smile. There was not even a drop of that sickening malice he showed a few seconds ago.

In a much calmer, even warm voice, he said. 

- You will soon realize the full potential of the dark side, with your own pitiful body, and soul. 

The voice and the expressions he weared while saying such threats were entirely different, almost succeeding in making his threats seem like a simple joke. Only a seasoned politician could have realized the real meaning of those threats. 

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