Jedi Adept: A Path In The Dark ch 4

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Noelani glumly stared at the monitor screen. Two messages were displayed there, floating side by side.

The words flickered on the screen before her, but they refused to make sense. She was finding it hard to relate the symbols on the screen into actual concepts.

She read the words once again. The first she had expected and knew about, as it was the official notification from the Council that she had been transferred from being Tahiri's apprentice to being Master Solusar's. That one was fine. She understood it, though she hated the Council for it.

It was the second one that was giving her trouble. It was the second one which she could not gleam meaning from.

She read the words again.

Noelani, By the time you read this, I'll have left the Temple and the Jedi. I'm sorry. I know that we had just found one another, but I can't suffer under Luke any longer. I know that you'll become a wonderful Jedi one day, and know this; I am proud of you and love you. And I will always be there for you.

Love, Tahiri.

She rubbed the back of her hand against her eye. There it was. Tahiri had willingly left her. She had run from her, abandoned her and Noelani felt the shattered remnants of her heart crumble and break.

Her body hitched as she fought against a sob.

Noelani felt tears burning at her eyes, fighting to fall. In the 14 years that she had been alive, she had never felt so alone, so rejected, as she did at that exact moment.

In all the years she had spent wondering who her real parents were, she had never felt so abandoned.

I wonder if this is how Chase felt. A tear sliced down her cheek, even as a pained smile formed on her face. Conflicting emotions battered at her, brought to life from thinking about Chase for the first time in weeks. His face quickly flashed through her mind's eyes, the wry tilt of his lips, the friendly eyes, and short cropped brown hair.

With the suddenness of a summer rainstorm, she was missing him; missing his easy smile, and his simple goodness. A shiver traced its way down her spine, and she sat up suddenly. I'm not going to do this anymore. If Chase can survive out there on his own, then so can I.

She grinned, as she grabbed up the small travel satchel which she used on missions. Then she gathered a couple of changes of clothes, and shoved them into the bag. Finally, she stripped out of her Jedi robes, and quickly dressed in the Corellian style of clothing which Tahiri would often wear.

She shrugged into her jacket, and snapped her belt around her waist, her lightsaber weighing comfortably at her side. She gathered a few more weapons, placing them on different parts of her outfit and into her bag.

She glanced into the mirror, noting that the only visible weapon was her lightsaber, and nodded her head quickly at herself. Then, snatching up her pack, she opened her door, and stepped out into the hallway.

A quick glance left and then right revealed no one around, so she turned left, heading towards the bank of turbolifts.

She got on one of them, and told the machine to take her to the subbasement. She frowned for a moment when the machine didn't move. Realizing that there was probably some sort of restriction about going to the subbasements, she thought back to how Ben had snuck out of the Temple recently.

She starting grinning, as she remembered that he had gone up to one of the upper floors. Ordering the machine upwards, she suppressed a yip of delight when it jerked into motion.

Within a few moments, she was in one of the locker rooms, pulling open the laundry dump chute. She knew that this led to the depths of the Temple. She also knew that all those who had tried sneaking out this way had failed. Everyone that is, but Ben.

She frowned, and looked around. There was something she was forgetting. Then she remembered, her quarters were watched. If she didn't return soon, then the Temple would be alerted. She lifted her head, and noticed an unmarked door on the far wall. Her eyes lighting up, she rushed to the door and pulled it open. Standing there were four inactive dueling droids. She pushed open the maintenance panel of the first one, and quickly began entering a new set of commands, bypassing the droid's ethical routines.

After a few minutes, the droid came to life, its eyes glowing brightly in the dim lighting of the closet, and Noelani snapped the panel close.

"I want you to go to room 54Z, lie down on the bed, cover yourself with the blanket and then shut off."

"Acknowledged," the droid replied and then trotted off.

Noelani grinned as she watched the droid leave the room, and then turned and ran back to the chute. She clambered into it, lodging herself into the air using her back and legs and she used the Force to brace herself, to ensure that she did not fall. The panel snapped shut behind her plunging the chute into darkness. She gasped in surprise. A moment later, a sigh of relief escaped her lips as dim, green emergency lighting turned on.

Slowly, she lowered herself, keeping tight control of her movements, inching her way down the chute.

Before long, she came to the first ring of sensors, and reached out with the Force, feeling the sensors and how they related to the machinery around them.

Then with a flicker of the Force, she fudged the sensors, disrupting them, the way Tahiri had taught her to scramble other monitoring and tracking devices.

At that moment, she allowed herself to drop, flashing through the ring of sensors before they could reset themselves.

She fell further, and reached for the Force, trying to stop her movement.

She jerked to a stop, friction burning her back, the pain slicing through her concentration so fast that she had lost control before she realized it.

And she was falling once again.

Pain ripped through her as she slammed against the edges of a y-junction in the chute. She clung to it, pushing and pulling with the Force trying to cement her hold.

Then as suddenly as her fall had started she was once again anchored. She let out a sight of breath, her body trembling with adrenaline and fear.

She closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply, slowly exhaling the breath out.

She opened her eyes, and looked around her. The dim, green light revealed the same featureless chutes. She looked down, where her feet hung out over the emptiness, and stretched out with the Force, trying to figure out which direction she should go.

At the Force's prompting, she climbed up over the metal lip she held onto, and began crawling down that path.

Before long it began to angle downwards at a steeper angle, one just shy of a sheer drop, and she once more wedged herself into the opening, using the Force to keep from falling.

She crawled through the chutes for what felt like hours, her back, neck and legs bristled with pain.

Then she fell through an opening, slamming hard into a pile of trash.

"Eww!" she screamed out as something squished beneath her.

She looked around, and saw that she was in a refuse recycling center. A large square room filled knee deep with water, sludge and all sorts of vile and disgusting things. A foul stench came from the water and burned at her nose, making her eyes water.

Standing up, her feet slashed through the top layer of filth, and splashed into the tepid water beneath. She winced as the freezing sludge filled her boots, cold slime slipping between her toes, chilling her.

Fighting a shiver, she looked around once again, this time finding the door on the far side of the room. She stumbled and splashed through the sludge until she came to the door, and then pressed the activation plate, sighing in relief as it slid open.

She stepped through the doorway, and looked around at the underbelly of Coruscant.

Quickly she sat down, and pulled off her boots, emptying them of the water. She pulled them back on, wincing at the feeling of wet socks and then stood up.

A frown flickered across her face at the dimness of the corridor she was in. Walking forward, she instinctively stepped around the puddles of some unidentifiable liquid, one even more foul smelling than the sludge that still clung to her boots.

She rubbed her shoulders, chewing her lip as she wondered if this was the best idea she could have had.

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Ulya Tu walked into the chamber that she had claimed for her own. Stone walls, covered by local ivy were surprisingly soothing to her. A bubble-like plant, she knew it was part fungus, was in the center of the room, waiting for her to sit down. Surrounding the cushion-biot were a dozen box plants.

On each of the box plants was a holocron. Some where triangles, others octagons; each hideous in their perfect symmetry. Strange glyphs adorned the side; glyphs that Ulya Tu knew from her training under Lumiya to be ancient Sith markings. Sigils of power which told those that could read them which ancient Master had created the holocron.

Her hands reached up, and tickled her helmet just below the ear canals. With a hiss, the jaw joint released, and a seam appeared. Ulya Tu lifted the helmet off her head, and set it to the side.

She went further into the room, and sat onto the cushion, folding her legs into a standard meditation pose. Her gaze flicked from one holocron to the next as she read the sigils: Nadd, Razzamka, Zannah, Eire, Martal, Parlta, Osar, Xerx, a'Skry, Bik'rya, Venerius, and Thanatos. She despised the evil devices; hated the blasphemy which they represented, but she knew that they were the path to her rise. She had to use them in order to become a Dark Lady of the Sith. To become THE Dark Lady of the Sith.

Then she would be able to destroy the Infidels.

Then she would be able to destroy the accursed Jeedai.

Then she would be able to cast She-Who-Was-Shaped into unending despair, before Ulya Tu took her life as a sacrifice to the True Way.

Her lips pulled apart into a ghastly grin, as she reached out towards the holocron in front of her. She noted that it was Martal's holocron, and she ran her finger down its side. The Dark Side of the Force flared through her and into the holocron. Deep within the triangular crystal, lights came on, an ethereal red glow which shone through the hooks and barbs of the Sith writing on the crystal's side.

An image began to form above the holocron. It flickered for a moment, before resolving into a half-meter high image of one of the Infidels. Its lower body was attached to the apex of the pyramid by a strand of smoke, and slowly the humanoid blinked its eyes, as it appeared to study her.

The hologram stared at her for what seemed an eternity, and then nodded. "I am Martel, the Gatekeeper of this Holocron. What do you want Dark One?"

Ulya Tu's grin grew larger as she replied, "I want the power to destroy the Jeedai."

"That has long been a goal of the Sith," the hologram said, its head shifting to the side slightly.

Ulya frowned, and stood up to begin pacing around the small room. "I care not what your long-dead goals are. All I care about is my own power and revenge."

"Revenge is good. But power… power is merely a means unto an end. Not the end itself. What do you seek?" the hologram replied.

Ulya Tu paused in her pacing and stared at the hologram. The words of her former Mistress flowed through her head, a code that she had been forced to memorize and then recite hundreds of times.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.

"Freedom," she finally snarled at the hologram. "I seek freedom; freedom from my fears; freedom from those who would subjugate me and my race. I seek the freedom to destroy those who oppose me."

Then she turned away from the accursed device, and clenched her fists.

A few moments later, Martel's voice sounded behind her. "I see… Fine. Here is your first lesson then."

When Ulya turned back towards the hologram, a red beam of lightning jumped out from the device, striking her in the chest. She screamed in surprise, as the lightning frayed her nerves.

She snarled, and turned inwards, focusing on the pain and the anger it caused to well up within her.

She felt the Dark Side of the Force flare to life around her, the power flooding her senses and awareness. She gasped as the lightning grew stronger; as her anger, pain and hate grew stronger.

And then she began to smile.

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