Turning back to climbing up the ledges and getting to the surface Jaslyn pulls herself up to standing. The wind whipped her hair back like a flag as Jaslyn planted her feet and looked over at the shuttle. The lights on the shuttle are on and they weren’t on when Jaslyn had passed it last. Breaking into a run Jaslyn makes for the shuttle to stop the survivor from leaving the rest of them stranded.
“NOOOO!!!! STOP!!!!” Amazingly keeping her feet under her Jaslyn makes it to the shuttle. Diving for the door she manages to get inside just before it closes and the locks are engaged. Pushing up off the floor of the shuttle Jaslyn scrambles to her feet.
The shuttle tilts and Jaslyn braces her feet and manages to stay on them. Getting to the cockpit Jaslyn opens the door. She sees the dark haired person and tries to appeal to their compassion.
“Wait!! There are others!! One of them is hurt!! We have to wait for them!!” Jaslyn’s face is utterly truthful and not malicious in anyway. Her large gray eyes are fanned with thick long eyelashes and are pleading. The dusting of freckles across her face are as numerous as the stars in the heavens. Her mouth slightly open so you can just see her straight white teeth. Her hair is a coppery-red and still mostly in a high ponytail. She looks a little wild and wind-blown but unharmed.
“Look, I know that you want to get out of here, so do we. It’s just three more people. Just three.”Selene barely spared a side glance to the Jedi. She was preoccupied; with having to get there before the wyrm did. She had to be ready. Even if she wasn't exactly sure how that was going to happen. None of it made sense, but then, she had chased Tython on a dream. A literal dream of Ramal speaking to her, seated side by side next to the fireplace in the King's Bed Chambers, the very chambers that later became the Queen's Bed chambers. The very chambers her sister wouldn't let anyone enter when Selene wasn't home.
Sela. When Sela wasn't home.The name made her twitch, even echoed as it was within the walls of her own locked room of a mind. A mind that wandered and weaved, even as her body all but flew up the Rift, energized with a power she had never felt before. She leapt over the last fifty feet cliff, like it was a hop, a cascade of blue lightning illuminating the windy darkness just in time for her to spot the shuttle. The shuttle was Republic based, Jedi model; she knew the type. In preparation for Tython Selene had purchased just that type of shuttle and personally modified it to be as close to a Jedi shuttle as it could get. She did the same with the overly numerous Defenders; it was easy to buy one that had been battle damaged and patch it up enough to learn it's systems.
When you were alone in the Galaxy and hunted, you either stayed prepared or got lucky. Selene liked to think it was all the former, but Tython was quickly turning her to the idea of the latter as she stepped into the shuttle the Jedi literally left wide open for her. She was in the pilot seat and cross-bleeding the engines with fuel when she felt and heard the uninvited passenger. Selene visibly winced when the Jedi started blathering about others, someone hurt...whatever.
The Dark Sider hit the auto-pilot, and stood from the pilot seat, turning as she stood to face the Jedi. Her face was still, flat, and seemingly unimpressed. "Where this shuttle is going isn't any safer for them. Tython wasn't meant for one side of the Force to dominate. It has two moons, not one, each aligned to their side of the Force and that isn't an accident if you've read the early Je'daii surveys. All I did was remind the planet of that."
Selene looked for the first time at the creature in front of her. Not the red hair, not the robes, not the distress...but deeper. Down past skin and bone and ligament, past heart and straight to spirit and soul. What she saw made her smile the smallest smile, a mere twist at the corner of her lips. She could use a Jedi. The Light was awash in the woman, but there was a shadow under that Light. Not darkness, but shadow. Grey shadow. What the crystal had given her, whatever it was, had made seeing such a thing simply a matter of looking.
"The Kwa didn't bring the Force Sensitives of the Galaxy here and divide them into Light or Dark. It was only after the weakness of those Force Sensitives, their greed, their fears, their desire to be comforted by the idea of righteousness that your 'Jedi' and their 'Sith' came about. It had nothing to do with Tython, and it had NOTHING to do with the Force," her voice picked up steam, as irritation began to bleed into her tone, "so sit down, strap in, or I'll throw you out of this shuttle myself."
Jaslyn off handedly noticed the blue eyes, high cheekbones and realized the “person” hijacking the shuttle was a woman. A lone woman who freely admitted to being a Dark Side user.
I am missing something here. Why is she freely admitting to the use of the Darkside? I recall seeing something in the sky that seemed to draw the eye. What is going on here?Jaslyn didn’t see the deeper observation that the woman gave her as she was to busy wrapping her head around the minuscule amount of knowledge that she was just given and how it just tilted her world. Jaslyn narrowed her eyes at the woman.
“Just how do you know this information?” The truth of it rang true in the hearing it. Not to mention the fact that the outside forces were literally bearing down on them.
Jaslyn wondered if they truly left the area if the weather would calm down.
Can I risk putting myself in a situation where I might not be able to get away? The lives of the many outweigh the few. I really have no choice. Jaslyn sat down in the copilot chair and started to strap in.
“Good girl.”
The comment was accompanied by a supremely confident, even smug, tone. There was absolute confidence in everything she did...mostly anyway. It wasn’t by accident; she had been tutored and trained in most fields as a child. When she grew into adolescence her interests just rocketed it off in so many varying directions.
She learned to lie and spy because of the intrigues of court.
She learned to fight and to kill because of the results of courtly intrigue.
She learned how to repair and fly speeders and shuttles and starships because it interested her, and because of the self-reliance it allowed. She hated people. She hated dealing with courtiers and the academics and the pushy Republic envoys. She hated people because her own family tried to kill her and her sister. Not once, but nearly twenty times over the course of their childhoods.
She learned to command because she was not just a royal, but THE sovereign. She WAS the state. No one could understand, not even her sister, not even the Republic’s politicians and generals. And certainly not the Imperials with their Sith and their extremes. The Emperor? Possibly.
Probably.
“How? Because I’ve broken into and searched more vaults and crypts than you can imagine. Because I spent my entire life training for the life I live now. Because I spent my entire lifetime up to now studying and ready everything I could find. And when I couldn’t find it or buy it with a very impressive banking account then I just stole it.”
Selene had the largest collection of artifacts and knowledge relating to the very early periods, when Tython was most active and the system around it, populated by non-Force Sensitives in the area so various histories told her, because they were tired of the wars, some said (though the timeline didn’t seem to match in her opinion), or because Tython didn’t like so many on it’s surface.
THAT even Selene could see as wisdom before today. Now? She knew it was true. She absolutely knew it was true. Selene didn’t sit back down, instead she took the Jedi by the chin using the Force with a twist of outstretched fingers and stared her in the eyes. “What’s your name? Do you like the Jedi Order?”
Jaslyn looked out the cockpit window as the woman listed admitted to pretty much being a criminal. She could only hope that Kyla would understand her reasons. Assuming that is if Kyla remembered Merrian was Jaslyn’s Master. Merrian was formidable in the setting of debate and discussion. Being a sought after mediator had it’s benefits, especially to one’s Padawan. Jaslyn had been a fly on the wall for more than one discourse. Jaslyn wasn’t stupid she was rather bright and learned quickly.
Jaslyn jerked her head around at the comment that was on the patronizing side.
“Takes one to know one.” First step unbalance your opponent. The statement was thrown out with a mocking humor and stated quickly.
Jaslyn gripped the harness as she felt the Force move her chin towards the woman who asked her name and if she liked the Jedi Order. Jaslyn didn’t appreciate the use of the Force on her person. She didn’t fight it but her grey eyes flashed with annoyance for a moment.
Burying the anger Jaslyn smirked at Selene, but without real humor. She’d been manhandled with the Force before, normally it was to teach a lesson. Block here not there, kind of thing. Selene was getting under her skin. Quickly at that.
The woman is smart, I’ll give her that. Smug on top of all that knowledge. Brat, spoiled one too, possibly. Something tells me there is a story there. If her wealth is to be believed. Freely admits to stealing artifacts, or suspected artifacts.Jaslyn looked at the sky then back at Selene.
“So where are we headed?” Jaslyn hadn’t actually moved her head she had used her eyes. One corner of her mouth pulled up in a smug smirk.
“And my name is Dayne. Jaslyn Dayne. Do I like the Jedi Order? When it’s all I’ve ever known? All I remember? How can one say that they like or dislike something when they have nothing to compare with? That’s like asking a blind person what their favorite color is. Odd question, and to what end I wonder? And what’s your name and problem with the Jedi?”Selene was left smiling--and rolling her eyes as she moved to the opposite side of the cockpit and looked down. There her smile only grew, as the ground below rumbled and shook, the very top of the giant wyrm breaking the surface like a whale breaking the surface of the waves before rolling under the surface again and continuing on.
The wyrm was following Selene. “Our friend is finding it’s way nicely. Was a little worried the Jedi would try to stop it, but I suppose that’s hard to do when a thing is that size, moving that fast...how does it make sense the Jedi would never twist or use life?” It was random, but only in how she approached it. The Jedi would damn the wyrm, but it wasn’t the wyrm’s fault some Dark Sider had twisted it eons ago. That was the Dark Sider, true enough, but she wasn’t about to allow the Jedi to present themselves as innocent. “What else do you call stealing babes from their mothers?”
She sighed, speaking to herself, not so much to the Jedi present. Of the Jedi’s answers...she all but ignored. They weren’t useful. The girl was playing at some game, and Selene had more important things on her mind. Her words were genuinely felt, and went far deeper than indoctrination. “You were stolen. Your life, your fate, your dreams...gone. Replaced with whatever the Jedi Order deemed necessary. I would never say the Sith were any better, but even you have to admit: taking a young child from their mother is unnatural and violates the natural flow of life in the Galaxy. This is the planet the first of the wars between Light and Dark were fought. You know who got caught in the middle? Those in the middle. The gray and those not attuned to the Force. History tells us those not attuned to the Force were simply kicked off the planet and sent to the surrounding systems to make do, many and more dying from trying to start new lives on new planets. What about the gray?”
Selene snorted, hard. “History says shit all about them, because they were lost in the fanaticism of Light and Dark, between extremes. Except today, down in that Rift...I learned what happened to them. They hid. They fled. They were left for dead by their own kind and they STARVED or were hunted down by the Light too afraid of a Dark Side shadow. And now their spirits will haunt this planet for as long as there is a Tython. So EXCUSE ME if I dare have issue with the Jedi Order. Come on. We’re leaving, or you can stay and follow this shuttle’s programmed flight path right into the side of a mountain. Doesn’t matter to me.”
She shrugged, lying, and left the cockpit to make her way to the back of the shuttle, so the ramp could be lowered once more. So she could prepare to jump down over what appeared from the view provided by the quickly lowering ramp at the aft of the shuttle to be an endless desert. Noise seemed quiet even high in the air on the shuttle. Below was only silence. The air mixed from desert and shuttle, making sounds loud and quiet at odd intervals with no explanation, making the mind question the ear.
A perfect time and place to introduce herself, her head turning to see the ginger Jedi follow, “My name is Selene. Let me show you the real history,” she said, offering her right black gloved hand out to the Jedi.
Jaslyn looked over and saw the wyrm breaking the surface and paled.
By the Light I pray that thing doesn’t turn around! It seemed her prayer was answered as it went back under.
Jaslyn blinked in surprise as much for the wyrm as for the next words that the woman said and in response Jaslyn couldn’t help but speak.
“I never thought of it that way. I don’t remember my parents. There were other Younglings at the Academy that did, but I never understood why. I suppose that’s why they had a harder time of it. And why I felt drawn to comfort them. I was always told that it was a blessing for the family if a child was chosen. I took comfort in that, after a while.”Jaslyn was floored by the accusations that she was stolen and that her ancestors and the ancestors of those who raised her continued to have blood on their hands. Even if it for lack of doing anything. She was an extraordinarily compassionate person and the thought of her being lied to did not sit well with her. Nor did not helping others in need, regardless of what side of the Force they claimed.
All of this introspection distracted Jaslyn from the changes in her surroundings. Unbuckling from the seat she followed the woman who introduced herself and volunteered to show her the real history. Determination to seek the truth made Jaslyn’s choice unhesitatingly easy as she took Selene’s hand.
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