This was freaking her the
fuck out.
Master Mala's confirmation that this place was a nexus of the force only put her on edge more. It would've been palpable if Sildarg wasn't good at masking her emotions. When everyone walked to the cave it felt warm but strangely hollow. At the edge of the crystal caverns, Sildarg felt the cold again. Snow fell in through a chasm overhead, and light poured from the darkness. This was a step she knew she had to take, but Sildarg dreaded it all the same. She had to wonder if a crystal even
would call out to her, or that they called out to the Sith. Sildarg was never given the opportunity to build a lightsaber back on Korriban. She was just handed one after killing her fellow apprentices. Not a good memory to look back on by any stretch, but this wasn't any less foreign to her.
She dropped her hood and stepped forward. Looking back to Mala and Airus, her metal hand glittered in the dim lights.
"Well- This is it. If I don't die, I guess I'll have a crystal to work with. I'm going. I'll be back- Probably."She trudged down into the beaten paths, and was gone.
Seconds became minutes in the dim light of the caverns. Minutes stretched to an hour in what felt like no time at all. The only sound Sildarg could hear was the echo of her boots hitting solid rock. The only light to guide her way were the scattered crystals, and those did little to light up the caves. All Sildarg could do was use how close or distant she was to them to determine whether she was walking in a straight line or about to walk into a wall. She didn't understand what to do. The Force wasn't guiding her, it was all around here and flowed through everything like oxygen, but it felt like she was a fish in water. The Force just didn't feel like it was
there. She tried to breathe and reach for it, but all she could hear was a ringing noise when she tried, and it muddled Sildarg's concentration. She shuddered, this was what she had been doing for months now. She studied the texts in
agonizing detail for hours until she couldn't keep her eyes open. Sildarg spent entire days on D'Qar training to wield the force in a way that wasn't built on hate. She wasn't a scholar by any means, but she had the drive to study and learn, and Sildarg applied that without relenting.
And yet Sildarg could barely lift a stone the size of her hand on a good day. So of
course she couldn't find a specific magic rock in an entire cave of them that was supposed to be her lightsaber.
"Where are you?" She whispered, and tried it again. She let the Force flow, feeling it wash over the cavern walls. And the crystals around her all hummed like nails on chalk. It almost hurt to listen to.
"You're down here. I can't just take any piece of rock down here, so let me find you..."The humming only got louder, she could feel all the crystals around her. They all felt the same, like looking for an apple in a sea of red water. But she pressed her thoughts through, to try and will the Force to show her what she wanted to see. Nothing happened. Sildarg grumbled, and almost had to cover her ears because she sound just wouldn't stop. It was so loud that she couldn't hear the faint rumble that sang through the caverns. She was losing her patience. She didn't want to get lost down her, to starve or freeze death.
That faint rumble became stronger.
Stronger.
And stronger still.
"WHERE ARE YOU?!"Cracks split up and down the walls. Crystal rocked in their place, and some fell to her feet. The stone around Sildarg quaked and broke apart, dust fell from the ceiling as a fresh hole fell away. The force of the tremors almost knocked Sildarg to the ground, but when the faint haze of dirt cleared, another cavern opened itself to her. Unlike the usual, milky pale glow of the kyber crystals, Sildarg saw faint glows of something with a green and sickly tint. Something dripped loud enough that it echoed out and past her ears. Water, or perhaps melted snow. Sildarg stepped over loosened rocks and dust, into the dry, frigid air. The strange light was growing dimmer as she approached it. But it glowed brightly enough nonetheless that she could see the ground and her own hands. They were shaking, and it wasn't just from the cold.
Sildarg saw a kyber crystal growing in the wall. It was... Wrong. All across its surface, there was a rocky, yellow-green corrosion that infected it. She touched its surface, and it felt like she was holding sandpaper. When it embraced her fingers, there was no more light to be found. She was now in complete darkness, where a normal kyber crystal would have glowed like a candle. It looked ugly, but what stung even more was that it seemed broken. Kyber crystals were bright and shiny. They gave of the light of the force eternally. They were pure, they were figments of dead stars made whole through the Force. The one that called to her was dead in its own way. Sildarg balled her hands together and buried her face in them. The gesture quelled the urge to shatter this entire pit, but the Force steamed off of Sildarg in a way that she felt ashamed of. If she came back to Mala empty-handed, she would be disappointed. Sildarg could already see the look on her face, that unmet promise not to hold back, the time wasted on her. It bubbled up in Sildarg's chest like acid. She-
The broken crystal began to hum and glow again. Sildarg looked up and saw shadows dancing under its surface, flecks of darkness caught and immortalized by the passage of time. It was close to blinding, but Sildarg saw her reflection. Where her reflection was cast, the dark patches vanished. The humming noise didn't hurt her ears. It was loud, like the rest of the caves, but it didn't bring her discomfort. She felt acclimated to it. But the light died away all the same. Sildarg was confused. Something about this strange kyber crystal was aware of her. She placed both hands in front of it, and willed the Force to pass through her fingers and into the crystal. The light came forth again.
It was sensitive to her use of the Force.
The crystal grew brighter as Sildarg continued to feed it with the energy of the universe around them, like it resonated with her. The doubt and self deprecation faded, and was replaced with awe. Sildarg felt its pull in that moment. The kyber crystal wasn't dead, it was incomplete. It was a broken, unwanted thing that the light of the Force made into something else, but needed someone to guide along that path. Flawed, rough around the edges, and trying its best in spite of everything that holds it back. Just like her. All it needed was direction, and it would find the way forward one way or another. It was then that Sildarg knew why this crystal called out to her, out of all the countless thousands that could've been found. They both needed each other. There was a crystal for every Jedi to ever live, one that was perfect for them and recognized it by virtue of being connected to the Force in ways a Jedi could never aspire to. It was reassuring to think of this. Sildarg reached for the crystal again, and clasped her hands around the poor thing to loose it from the wall. It cracked and splintered as it separated, glassy flakes of the crystal littered her hand and floated around it, animated by the Force.
"They haven't given up on me yet. I won't give up on you."
Nearly an hour passed before Sildarg found her way back to the entrance, where the masters were waiting. Sildarg approached her master and gently showed her the strange crystal. Dark and murky, unlike what the others would surely find.
"I know what it looks like, but there's more to this than what you can see." She put a hand out, and reached for the Force. The crystal began to glow in its own, unusual way. Some of the small splinters started to dance around it like tiny moons around a planet. Most kyber crystals glowed on their own, but hers just needed a push.
"The crystal called out to me for a reason. I won't judge it by the way it looks."There was something uncharacteristically calm about Sildarg right now. Neither Mala nor any of the other masters or a apprentices had seen her this at east since they met her. Normally, she was always defensive in some way, like she expected a blaster was trained on her every moment. Now, though, Korriban didn't exist in this moment. Hadris wasn't on her mind. There was only peace in her accomplishment. Sildarg had just taken one of the foundational steps, and that was enough.
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