The shuttle touched down on Ilum’s pristine white surface. A miniature blizzard erupted on the landing pad like a whirling snow globe as the silver craft’s thrusters whined to a stop, leaving the ancient Jedi temple as quiet as it had been for the past 20 years. Only the [i]ping[/i] of cooling engines and wind running through eternal pines remained. 

The silence was broken again as the shuttle’s hydraulics hissed, sending cautious and wide-eyed wildlife onlookers scrambling back into the protection of tall green trees. The cargo ramp opened and several figures strode forth, looking like shapeless djinn in the snowstorm or wardens of some dim sect with their flowing robes that snapped in the wind like rifle fire, sent forth to proselytize among the beasts of the land. Reni was among the first off the shuttle, ever-eager to escape the metal belly of any spacefaring craft. She carried with her a ragged satchel under one arm and thick boots in the other, her bare feet padding quickly down the metal ramp as if across hot coals before sinking into the snow of Ilum, where she paused for a moment. Her eyes closed. 

It was an eccentricity Reni picked up from a man in the First Recon Battalion. Daranto, a salty, superstitious old smuggler turned rebel warfighter and covered in prison tattoos that wandered like a roadmap across his body, which Reni had always found painfully attractive. It was a grounding technique, he said, picked up from an old Jedi years ago. Every time he landed on a new planet, combat drop or not, Daranto would step onto the grass or the mud or the snow or the rock with his feet bare. It connected him to the Force unique to each planet, he explained, helped him to get a feel for the world and calm his mind before plunging into battle.

Daranto was gone now, like so many others Reni had known, but she carried a little piece of him with her onto this planet as the snow softened underfoot. She wondered with a smile whether or not Daranto had really met a Jedi, or if the “Jedi” had actually been so. Still, there [i]was[/i] something to the ritual for Reni. It gave her a moment to pause after a long, agonizing journey and connect with the world. Feel the snow sting her skin. Hear the birds fluttering in the distance on wings that went [i]whoop whoop whoop[/i] like a children’s toy. Attune her body to a different wavelength of the Force. Having grown up on a similarly frigid planet, Reni could withstand the cold for a few moments without any discomfort. 

Daranto’s trick also gave her an opportunity to try something new. 

[i]Tapas,[/i] the dusty archives called it. The ability to regulate one’s body temperature through the Force. Reni was dressed sparsely compared to her companions, a simple tunic and trousers. Nowhere near enough to ward off the subzero winds that whipped at her exposed flesh and cut through thin fabric.

As a shiver ran through her body, Reni opened herself to the Force. She abandoned all fear, all worry, all hate. She drew in the life around her, and let it flow over her like a rare warm wind on Miral, channeling the energy throughout her body and pushing it to the very edge of her being. After a moment of concentration, the violent shiver stopped. She was… Comfortable. A smile crept across her pale green lips as Reni opened her eyes and caught up with the others, leaving steaming footprints in the snow like a burning phantom. 
[hr]
The temple hadn’t changed much, nor had Reni’s opinion on it. 

It was too big, too arrogant, too unnatural. It felt like a world apart from the rest of Ilum, a safe haven from it rather than part of it. No temple to Remi, but a tomb. 

Still, as she pulled on her boots and heavy winter robes, Reni couldn’t help but appreciate the [i]age[/i] of it all, for it [i]was[/i] ancient. Reni ran a gloved hand along the stone wall as she admired the crystalline chandelier suspended in the middle of the chamber that caught the faintest glimmer of light and sent it shining into the vestibule. She wondered how many generations of Jedi had stood where she did now, and felt an unexpected surge of emotion. Which emotion, she could not say. 

Reni shook the feeling off and scanned the room to find her apprentice, Toryn, who was not hard to find. He was the only one wearing 40 kilos of Beskar steel. 

Many in the Order had been skeptical of training a Mandalorian; the two factions had a long history together, and not one part of it pleasant. There were knights from before the Purge who still held old grudges, and others still who had encountered Mandalorians before and saw them as bloodthirsty mercenaries, not keepers of the peace. “A Jedi stops fighting when everyone is safe,” they would say. “That’s when a Mandalorian starts.”

Still, Reni had taken him on as her apprentice with no apprehension. A lone Mandalorian aligned with the Rebels had saved her life in the backwater swamps of Tagu, and she had seemed just as noble as any Jedi Master to Reni at the time. She’d been intimidated at first by the cold glare of Toryn’s visor and the detached manner he shared with all Mandalorians, but slowly she teased out his true self. It was an ongoing process, true, but Reni felt her apprentice had real potential. Greater than her own, if Toryn could stay on the path. 

[color=9ACD32]“Well, Toryn, what do you think? Is it everything you imagined? Perhaps even more?”[/color] Reni asked her apprentice. The knight stood ramrod straight, each arm slipped into the opposite sleeve and held across her torso like some kind of monastic straitjacket, head fixed straight ahead. An odd posture for the usually relaxed Mirialan to adopt, unless one noticed it was the exact pose of the massive stone statue right behind her. A small smile crept up the corner of her mouth. 

Reni tried to recall her first impression of the temple those five years ago, but failed. She had been a different person then, full of anger and sorrow and grief, and trying to summon those memories from the depths was like trying to recollect a stranger’s private thoughts. Reni vaguely remembered being both awed and disappointed initially though, and wondered if her apprentice felt the same confusing jumble. 

If so, Reni knew Toryn’s thoughts would change when he entered the caves.