Dramatis Personae
- Jysella Horn, Jedi Trainee (human)
- Corran Horn, Jedi Master (human)
- Mirax Horn, Smuggler (human)
- Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master (human)
- Mara Jade Skywalker, Jedi Master (human)
- Jacen Solo, Jedi Knight (human)
- Jaina Solo, Jedi Knight (human)
- Ben Skywalker, Jedi Trainee (human)
- Kai Andur, Jedi Trainee (human)
- Merida Tool, Jedi Trainee (arconian)
- Keira Mirand, Jedi Trainee (human)
Prologue
There are no happy endings, because nothing ends.500 years before the battle of Yavin.
A thirteen year old girl lies sleeping soundly upon her bed. She has luxurious, shiny black hair, which spills around her as she sleeps. The shadows of moonlight, cross her features, giving her skin an ethereal glow, and a small pout graces her adolescent features.
The young girl sits up suddenly in her bed, that slight tingle in the back of her head, the one that always tells her when there is danger near, running like crazy. She scratches the back of her neck, as she slowly looks around the room. Her clear blue eyes, ones that her mom-mom always said reminded her of the first day of spring, flicker from her datapads to her stuffed animals over to some of the antique books that she has started collecting. Frowning as no one is there, she turns to the small puzzle box that she received as a gift earlier that day.
She reaches out and picks up the box, rubbing its sides, and with a start notices that some of the engravings have begun to glow with a reddish hue, as if something inside the box has awakened.
As she watches, the air above the box flickers, and a red-tinged hologram appears in the air above it. The girl laughs with glee, and then quickly lowers her voice not wanting to awaken her father, not wanting to face his wrath due to the duel transgressions of being awake at this hour and awakening him.
After a few moments, the hologram speaks its voice low and gravelly. “Do you have a question for me?”
Her young voice is filled with wonder. “You can speak?”
“Of course, I am the Custodian, and am here to answer your questions and deliver knowledge to you.”
She looks around the room, making sure no one is around to hear her. She had spoken once of the feelings and urges she gets, and had been punished for her imaginative lies. She looks directly into the small eyes of the hologram. “Can you tell me why I get this tingly feeling in the back of my head whenever something bad is about to happen?”
The hologram smiles, and for a second the girl is scared, but that quickly passes as it begins talking. “You are a Force-Sensitive, what you are feeling is the Force warning you of potentials, that potential can be either good or bad, what matters is that the Force is telling you of it, and that you should react.”
“The Force? What is that?”
“It is an energy field, which binds all things together, this box, you, your stuffed toys in the corner, all are a part of the web of life, which generates and sustains the Force. There are a chosen few, who can manipulate and use the Force, gather it to them, and make it do their bidding. You, my child, are one of those chosen few.”
The girl’s smile has enough wattage to light Coruscant, just the concept of being special appeals to her, for she is often the target of jokes and mockery, of cruelty from both her peers and her father. Yet here the hologram is telling her that she is special, one of a chosen few.
“Can you teach me how to use it?”
Again that smile, which almost makes the girl scared. “But of course child, that is why I’m here.”
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Two Months Later
The girl is bent, hunched over the circuit card, making minute changes to the circuit array. Her stringy black hair is pulled into a severe pony tail, keeping all the various wisps from her face. Her cracked nails shake slightly and she touches the Force once more, drawing the energy to her, using it to calm her overly tired muscles, and banishing the fatigue from not sleeping in four days.
She glances in the mirror, her eyes a pale sickly yellow and smiles at herself as she picks up the circuit card and slides it into place in the cylinder she picks up with her other hand. Then she picks up a family heirloom, one that has been passed down from mother to daughter for hundreds of years, it is a broach with a large blue adegan crystal adorning it. Kneeling on the floor, she takes a hammer and shatters the broach, extracting the crystal from the pieces.
Snapping the crystal into place, she looks towards the hologram, and the Custodian nods his head. “Try it.”
She presses the activator and a meter length blade of coherent light shoots from the cylinder. The grin she gives it is cold and malicious, as she basks in the warm red glow of the lightsaber.
Extinguishing the blade, she laughs aloud, intent upon drawing her father to her room. Doing something that two months ago would have been received with her being beaten and left bloody on the floor.
Her father stumbles through her doorway, an angry sneer on his face, the smell of alcohol trailing after him. “What are you doing up girlie? Do you need to be reminded of your lessons?”
“No more lessons.”
His hands clench into fists at her tone and posture. “Are you sassing me girl?”
Then he starts towards her. She smiles at him, a smile so cold and mean that it cuts through the haze of alcohol which clouds his mind and he has a moment to fear her. Then in a flash she has lifted the saber, activated it and is slicing it upwards, taking off first one of those fists which have so often been used against her, then as the blade reaches the top of its swing, she reverses the direction the blade travels, even as she steps forward, sending the blade cutting down through his body vertically.
She stands over the corpse of her father, panting, a wild glee filling her, and hears a clapping from behind her. She turns and sees the Custodian. A slight giggle escapes her lips, as the Custodian speaks. “Good, good, now my child let us quickly go over Force Lightning, and then using that skill, you can release yourself from the final shackle of this pathetic excuse for existence that you call a life.”
She kneels down in front of the hologram, ready and eager to absorb the knowledge being offered.
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