[ Back ] [ Episode 08 ]
I see Savn concentrating, levitating a speeder. It is something I've seen him do before with other objects.
He sets it down again. My focus shifts to the speeder. I see my own hand, and the speeder lifts once more. The scene fades out.
I see Turret and Savn near me in a large hangar bay. We are in the middle of combat. Turret is firing blasts from his disruptor rifle. I fire my pistol. I see Savn blast a load of ugly, purple sith lightning at one of our adversaries. It incapacitates them, causing their body to shake uncontrollably as acrid smoke begins to fill the space between us. It smells like the stink of burning skin. A moment later the lightning stops, and the body falls lifelessly to the ground.
Then my view shifts again suddenly as a trandoshan with an electrified techblade is nearly upon me. My hand comes up and he goes flying back away from me and into the wall across the room. His body falls limply to the ground. The scene fades out.
I see Bow-lurr Zhant and a few of his associates standing across from myself, Savn and Turret. He shakes his head sadly at me. They have their blasters and vibroswords out and at the ready, trained on us. I lift my hand up toward him and unleash a load of the purple lightning at him. My hand, I see, has a black veininess to it. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a humanoid in black, purple and silver robes with geometrical designs around the hems. The hood is pulled up and the face is shadowed. I can't tell if this is a male or female, nor their race. As Bow-lurr goes to one knee before me, attempting to resist, the person in the hood nods to me. I cannot see their face, but I know they smile.
The inky darkness of dreamlessness clears. I am standing inside of a building on a planet that seems largely a desert landscape with scrubby plants. The technology here old; a mishmash of thrown-together parts. I stand before an electronic display of sorts where some parts of the screen are distorted and damaged. I stare up at the most intact section of the display and see my own face staring back at me. It is a bounty board. An armored hand clamps down on my shoulder from behind. I turn and see the scarred and dented helmet of a tall Mandalorian looking down at me. My heart drops into my feet, and my dream goes dark, with only the sound of gear being rustled around fading to quietude as the blackness envelops me.
I am standing in a cloud of white. The clouds clear to reveal myself hanging from a cliff by one arm. My other hand, dangling to my side grips a green light saber. It is extremely difficult to maintain my grip on this root outcropping. It hurts so much. My grip is slipping. A figure stands above me in robes, face shadowed. For some reason, I cannot see the color of the robes or any designs in the dream fog. The person is holding no weapons of any sort. One arm is to his side, the other reaches for me, to help me. I have mixed feelings about accepting this assistance.
But it doesn't matter; I can't hold on any longer. It hurts too much. In slow motion I watch as my fingers slip from their grip on the root. I fall away from the cliff and a silence descends as blood rushes in my ears. My stomach is in my throat as I think, “this is it.” I close my eyes and suddenly my fall is cut short. I open my eyes and look down. I see another robed individual far below, arms up toward me, using some sort of force power to slow my descent. A few moments later I reach ground level. The person who saved me holds me up as my legs wobble beneath me. From above, the person unleashes a torrent of purple lightning down at the person next to me. They shift their stance and swing me around behind them. They raise their free hand back up and unleash a torrent of force lightning back up in defense.
I raise my green light saber up in front of me to deflect some of the electricity. I notice my hand does not have any black veininess to it. I then look at the back of the individual standing with me. I feel similarly unsure about accepting the aid of this individual. Who are these people? Neither of them feel as if they might be Savn. And why do I hold a light saber? Where are Turret and Savn?
Later that evening after our (spiritual?) test with Yasha, I sat down alone in the tent assigned to the boys and I, thinking.
I stared down at my hand and flexed it open and closed. Did we really die when we had those trippy dreams? Did the experience awaken something inside of me? This space-magic Savn uses, the force. What is it really? I mean, I know it must exist. I have seen many people use it. But it is so intangible and abstract… my parents never had anything to do with it, couldn't manipulate it, so why me?
I have always felt the same way as Bow-lurr about it and the people who use it. I don't understand it well, and I would rather not have to be around people who purport to, ever. When I hired Savn, I didn't know he was a practitioner. Now I'm kind of stuck with him, and am forced to constantly endure its use. But, to some degree, I realize Savn has made me increasingly desensitized to its use. I can feel that my discomfort with it has been neutralized into near nothingness. People mention the force now, or I see someone use it, and I just shrug like it's no big deal. How much I have changed already on this adventure away from my home. Who have I become? Am I becoming?
Maybe that is the point of my dreams. An illustration of the choices of who I can become now that I can touch the force. That passion is not always bad, dispassion is not always good, and those who wield force lightning are not always Sith, and not always bad people.
I shudder as I think about it. I want to suppress it, to hide it, don't want to deal with the responsibility of wielding it. But I know Savn will notice. He uses the damn force just to look at things. There is no way he won't “see” it.
As I sat there thinking about it, a feeling of inevitability weighed down upon me. It ran through me now, and this was a fact that could not be changed. But, what I can choose is what I do with it.
I shook my head. Too much philosophical brain-fog. I couldn't really analyze my dreams when they are of something on which I am not well versed. I suppose I should probably talk to Savn about it later. When I get up the nerve to ask him about it. Assuming he doesn't bring it up on his own beforehand.
Oh, but, what about the second dream? Absolutely nothing related to crazy space-magic. Was the Mandalorian there to take me down for the bounty or to help me? The former seems more likely, but, well, the dream didn't show him attacking me. I suppose all people have a few unexpected alliances. Perhaps he was that Revanite that wanted to get into my pants a couple days before. Damn, I should've taken him up on his implied offer. Maybe I still will if he's still in town.
Yeah, that should get my mind off things. I hope. Fucking dreams. Fucking space magic. Fucking.