#Dialantis Dontorii | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

theworstjedi · 6 years

Text

The Kyber Lining

The funny thing about confronting the Force in a cave was that the aftermath was disconcertingly calm when one walked out of the Nexus. Friyr had always wondered what would happen if he let the Force pour in to the brink of surreality again, to feel that painfully close to something both greater than the sum of the galaxy and pitched to a feverish omniscience. The answer seemed to be nothing more than an experience that had left him when he had left the cave.

Though of course, She hadn’t. She was here in the lake, lapping at shore, and at the same time the creature shuffling through the sand. Friyr pulled off his boots and dug his toes in. It was the time of day when the coarse warmth was pleasant instead of scorching. It was solid, real, and he needed that more than he needed anything else.

NM was nowhere to be found; the return of the small party had likely interrupted the boredom shutdown he’d been trying to sneak all afternoon, which left Friyr to navigate the beach alone. It was cursory at this point in his life to just grab a practice blade, branch, discarded metal, whatever was near and probe the with the tip as he walked.

There was a light in the distance, and people. Tired muscles carried him there, following the suggestion in the grounded advice of the sand to seek warmth in the only unparched place in this heatstroke of a desert. The voices told Friyr that they belonged to Dontorii and the mirialan master. As’traa.

“Kayin got a meal, and now he’s resting,” she was saying. The statement was punctuated by a sigh. “That was… taxing to say the least.”

The least. Yes, that would’ve been the least. Friyr half wanted to discard the voices into the general ambiance of the oasis and let the Force take him through the repetitive motions of running his tongue over the pulpy edges of false memories imbued by the cave. But Friyr had never been one to nurse bruises, especially his own. He twisted his head toward the pair standing off the side; their silhouettes licked by the glow of fire in the night.

“You seem to be doing okay Friyr,” Dontorii said at the same time Friyr unstuck his throat enough to say, “How’s he?”

Their words ran together, but Friyr’s brain was working quickly, far too quickly. It grasped Dia’s statement and had formulated a tree of answers, all of which were deflective.

“Throat’s killing me, yah. Wha’bout you guys?” he settled on. His already thick Core accent somehow reaching the consistency of disingenuous molasses.

“He’s exhausted,” As’traa responded first. Her tone sounding like the verbal equivalent of an eyeroll. “I’ve no idea how long he was in that desert with only Rejjaet to care for him. “As for me…” The irritation left her tone. Everything left her tone including her voice – which was lost somewhere in the waves. Friyr understood the feeling more than he sometimes cared to.

“I’ll be fine,” Dontorii said in As’traa’s silence. Always diplomatic. Always level-headed, but the twist of the Force around him suggested the answer was more apprehensive than truthful. “Since that cave was such a… trial for all of us. I think it was the equivalent of the crystal caves on Illum. Master Tabris, do you think Friyr and Ylri deserve their lightsaber crystals?”

Brought back to the conversation by her name, the normally firm direct master hummed absently. “Oh, yes. If their visions were anything like mine, they more than earned them.”

Dontorii had steered the conversation in directions faster than Friyr had anticipated, which sent his overdriven mind reeling. It was a skill of the older Jedi and one that Friyr recognized as the a hallmark of an experienced leader type. Not always the easiest people to navigate, but with a little investment and time, it was easy to leverage.

“You don’t gotta give us story time,” Friyr cleared some husk from his throat, then plastered a polite smile on his face. “But nah, I didn’t do anything. I can wait ‘til Illum. Really.”

“It may not be traditional, but the Force works in mysterious ways. There is little point in sending you to Illum after what happened in that cave.” Friyr heard the crunch of the sand and the vague shape of Dontorii sharpened as he closed the small gap between them. “Stand up padawan.”

Friyr’s eyebrows popped. “Wait—wha—I—" The surprise on his face looked a little wild against the shell-shock. Friyr stood, beating sand from the soft leather of his pants.

Dontorii pulled something from the inside of his plain brown robes, and although Friyr couldn’t see it, he could feel it. Smooth and empty but the only ultimate purity in the galaxy and perhaps the next dimension over, if Kayin was to be believed. “This is the Kyber crystal; the heart of the blade;”

Friyr knew relatively little about the gathering, besides what Dontorii had told them. He had listened but the topic interested him little; the glamor of a lightsaber wore after the first wide eyed trial of endurance he’d come back half dead and all sorts of bloody from eleven years ago. The Jedi ritual of building a lightsaber presenting a different challenge than wresting it from the hands of your dead and yet undead betters, but the ends were ultimately the same. A weapon.

“The heart is the crystal of the Jedi;”

And a fragment of soul. Living Force. The Jedi is the crystal of the Force. Friyr had fought for the right to such a privileged weapon - something that many would and did kill for. The Force is the blade of the heart. His mark as a Force User. All are intertwined. To be handed the very heart of a blade he hadn’t held in quite some time and would one day hold again forged by his own hand, felt too easy. The crystal, the blade, the Jedi. His time with the Jedi had emphasized an unforgivable forgiveness the Sith dogmatically purged from their apprentices, lest weakness be their undoing. We are one.

As Friyr thumbed over a smooth facet of Kyber handed to him, unable to deny that the Jedi built themselves from the weakest emotion that a Sith could perhaps offer and found enough fortitude not to give. If he’d seen an example of tenacity, it was what they had all endured in that Force haunted cave gaping, like a wound, from Ambria’s bedrock.

“Here is your homework: I want you to figure out what those words mean. When you do, go to your crystal and meditate on it. You’ll know the true meaning of that poem once the crystal gains a color. Then come back to me for the next step.”

Friyr swallowed the urge to say What’s a color? And instead, the strangest smile on his face and the feeling that he might understand an inkling of the words already, threw his arms around Dontorii and all his composure – who chuckled but took it well in stride. The hug was the most honest expression Friyr knew of.

“Thank you. I mean that. More than anything I’ve said tonight,” Friyr paused, “Or the last two days.”

#IC #Friyr Illustratum #Dialantis Dontorii #As'traa Tabris

1 note · View note