5.01

The massive manacles chafe as I am dragged through the gloom by two faceless strangers. They are not iron; there is not a hint of rust on their rough surface despite the humidity and rot of the underground complex and they're too heavy by half. Besides, I've long since been capable of crushing common alloys with the Force but these will not budge. The too tight, too sharp metal against my wrists still smells of rust though, if only due to my own dried blood; both the smell and chafing are annoying, though not as much as my "escorts". I can hardly see anything clearly in the near-darkness but them least of all, my stares seemingly sliding off their forms and - especially - their faces like oil across glass.

The stone floor is almost painfully cold to my bare feet, the persistent aches across my limbs seemingly getting worse with every step. The robed strangers lead me down the tunnel at a punishingly fast pace and I let them. Even bound I might be able to beat them and escape, but the futility of such an act pressing down through the Force stays my hand. Leaving with no idea of my current location or destination, no equipment or supplies, and no way to escape my bonds does not seem like a good idea. In the end, I am led to a low-ceilinged, circular chamber with two pillars of the same material as my manacles standing in the center. As we pass between them, the manacles uncouple with an ominous click then are drawn by an invisible yet immense force to the pillars at either side. Perhaps magnetism, perhaps the Force; my awareness is curiously veiled, smothered enough that I cannot tell the difference. As I am trapped between the pillars, my escorts turn around and disappear in the darkness.

I have no idea how many hours pass. Counting heartbeats begins to grate by the time I hit twenty thousand, so I settle to meditate. In the semi-trance neither exhaustion nor hunger nor thirst matter, and the pain of bruises past fades away. Time flows and flows, until suddenly the dry emptiness of the surrounding room is no more. That ominous feeling most people get when watched becomes far more in any Force-Sensitive. Each breath of the unseen observers echoes through the air, their every step vibrates through the ground, their presence shines in the Force even when they can walk unseen. At this distance their attempts to veil themselves are rather threadbare to one who sees the web of connections between all things that is the Cosmic Force.

"I do not need my eyes to see you, Jedi," I quote with a small smile. A minute of silence, two, and then...

"The prisoner will remain silent!" an unseen speaker demands harshly and I laugh.

"Why?" I retort. "Will you lock me up in a dungeon if I don't?"

"You are hardly improving your situation, darksider," a different voice hisses. "It would be wise to ask for clemency, given your position."

"An interesting lie," I counter. "And not just this farce of an interrogation."

"The madness of the dark side, I see in the prisoner," the third voice muses. "A trial is useless. Send her to the Prism and be done."

"Agreed on the first part," I quip. I concentrate on the manacles for a few seconds, then pull. The heretofore unbreakable Mandalorian alloy cracks like cheap clay and falls to the ground in pieces. "You made quite a few mistakes, but the darkness? That was pretty damn obvious."

The three Jedi drop their cloak of invisibility and draw their light sabers. Two orange glows cast the stone chamber in an eerie light. The third is purple.

"Shadows, Jedi, do you really think they frighten me in this place?" When the purple saber comes at my face in a blur, my left hand is there to snatch at the blade. Instead of burning through, the lightsaber is stopped cold. "I have lived as a human for the majority of my life, and humans cannot see in the dark. They shiver at the biting chill of a bare stone room underground. Arkanians though?" The lightsaber whines as it gets brighter and brighter, the energy of its plasma blade absorbed like Satele Shan or Corran Horn could have done, then forced back into its crystal like Vader did in Coruscant Nights. Not a combination I'd attempt any time soon in an actual fight but here? The saber explodes from the overload, hurling its wielder through the unnatural gloom minus his hands.

"A sub-par performance," I comment. "I give it three out of ten."

"It was worth a shot," the remaining Jedi Shadows say in unison with a shrug. The effect concealing them fades away revealing two copies of my face. "Are you sure you're not frightened or angry at all of this? Not even a little bit?"

"I'm not some gullible teen kept in the dark by those who are supposed to train me," I shoot back dryly. "Besides, some caricature of a Jedi court might be a threat I'll have to face in the future but it's hardly worth fearing."

"Oh really?" my doubles mocked. "What makes you so fearless, oh Jedi paragon?"

"This," I retort. The double on the left stumbles back, its limbs thinning out, skin like dried parchment hanging loosely from bone as lustrous black hair fade to a dull grey and fall off, one eye becoming bloodshot and milky white, the other bursting as rancid liquid drips down a face twisted by decrepitude. "And this." The double on the right coughs, bloody spit marring its lips as its stature dwindles, muscles thin out and vanish, skin yellows and hair fall off in clumps until only a sick, cancerous caricature remains. "If there was one truth in my universe it was death. No matter our effort, wealth, luck, technology, morality, or religion, one day it would be over. The sun would rise, the world would turn, humanity would go on, but we'd be still, we'd be gone." The two doubles crack, their dry skin flaking away as brittle bones break against the cold floor.

"Before the fate of becoming dust with nothing in anyone's future, what does this galaxy have to truly fear?" I shrug. "After all, barring certain extremes, death yet the Force. Before oblivion all other fears are just shadows. And if shadows is all you have left, you will never control me."

"Are you sure?" the third shadow said, walking out of the gloom, severed arms dripping blood as Mace Windu's head smirked far too widely. "Are you absolutely certain?" That smile stretched from ear to ear revealing row after row of shark-like teeth, even as his stumps split and dwindled, becoming tiny useless limbs ending high above the elbow only for a pair of tentacles to grow out of each one...

xxxx xxxx xxxx

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I stumbled out of my bed panting, sheets torn either through frantic strength or unconscious use of the Force. Cracks spiderwebbed through the durasteel walls of my cabin, and at least half the furniture had been reduced to shattered pieces of wood and stone or crumpled lumps of metal. The other half fell from where they were hovering in mid-air with dull thuds. All in all, the cabin looked as if it had gone through an earthquake, followed by several concussion grenades going off... again.

That had not been a pleasant vision, especially since it had been far from the first. Ever since my messy obliteration of Jorus C'Baoth, similar nightmares have plagued me every time I slept. Force Visions were not an ability I'd displayed before my encounter with the crazy Jedi. Unfortunately, though it had been one of his absorbing it had not come with a user's manual. And unless I wanted to keep arguing with the dark side every night and trashing a new cabin each time as a result, I really needed to find a way to control them...