Arc 2 Chapter 11

Healed, washed, and changed, Anaïs walked into the cafeteria, with a few minutes to spare. Looking around, though, she couldn’t see Jabari and the others, nor sense their Presences in the Force, and wondered if she’d done something wrong.

She’d read that, in some cultures, people said things to be polite, but they didn’t actually mean them. As a Jedi she should be able to read someone’s true meaning, to know that the gift being offered was not actually being offered and that she should ‘humbly’ turn the offer down, for instance, but she was still a Padawan, and had still been reeling from the aftermath of her fight.

Speaking of the aftermath, even now, she could sense the attention of several different groups drawn to her, whispers spreading. Unsure of what else to do, she moved over to the wall that bordered the kitchen. As the native Bhoyarians were either human, or near-human, she didn’t need to worry about eating anything that would be accidentally poisonous, and even if the dishes were, the Force would warn her. The writing on the labels was all in Basic, but as they were almost all named dishes, that didn’t help in the slightest.

Ignoring what she hoped was a loose grain dish, she went with the safer options of what appeared to be some kind of breaded meat with a bright blue sauce of indeterminate origin, along with a roasted root vegetable, and a glass of a murky brown liquid of the same type that the person in front of her had picked up.

Turning around, she still couldn’t spot the people that she was supposed to meet.

Closing her eyes for a moment, she reached out into the Force. With so many Force users in such a small space, especially with how large their Presences were compared to Jedi of similar strength, it was difficult to find what she was looking for. Just think of it as training, she told herself, trying to remember what Jabari and the others had felt like.

And. . . there! Anaïs thought, feeling them walking towards the building, not yet inside. Relieved that she hadn’t made a mistake, that they were merely running late, she found an empty table and sat down, waiting. She waved to group as they entered, looking around themselves, obviously searching for her. Kama, the girl with the Lupine presence, smiled and waved back, tugging Jabari towards the food.

Soon enough, the others joined her, apologizing for Jabari’s healing taking longer than expected. While she had waited for them to get their food, she tried the meat, some kind of bird, the blue sauce almost sickly sweet in a way that complimented the more earthy notes of the fowl. The roots were good as well, if bland, but when she took a sip of the drink she had to repress a gag, as it tasted like something you’d start a fire with instead of something you’d drink for enjoyment, let alone nutrition.

It was as she was staring at the glass, giving the Force a mental look of betrayal for not having warned her that she was about to drink speeder fuel, that the last two of the group arrived. “Oh, getting started early?” Kama smiled, taking a seat next to the Padawan and her eyes gesturing towards the brown liquid.

Jabari glanced at her drink as well, and nodded, sitting on the Jedi’s other side. “I’d need a drink too if I fought my sist-ow!” he yelped when Kama flicked a finger at him, creating small ball of ice from nothing and hitting him between the eyes. “Why’d you do that?”

Itoro, the boy with a Presence like a buffalo, snorted from his seat across from the Jedi, “You were doing it again.”

“I know,” the cat-Presenced boy defended, “It’s just that she foug-fine, I’ll stop!” he added, as a two layered magic circle appeared in front of Kama’s hands, made of a glowing blue fluid.

Unsure, Anaïs held up the drink asking, “So what is this? It said it was ‘Kavala’, but I don’t know what that is.”

“What kind of backwards village did you come from to not know what kavala is?” Chiku asked scornfully, though Anaïs noticed the other girl was sitting the furthest away from her, as the others had moved to take seats on the wooden benches around her.

It was obvious that the bird-Presenced girl didn’t like her, though for reasons that Anaïs couldn’t sense. However, Anaïs had delt with a few girls like this at the Temple, before they either were apprenticed or left prematurely to work in one of the other Jedi Corps, and she knew they only had power as long as you cared about their opinion.

Which, given Anaïs was a Jedi, and this girl was not, meant that Anaïs cared very little.

“I’m from Coruscant,” the Jedi answered with a smile, and was surprised at the blank looks she received. “It’s in the Core.”

“. . . The core of what?” Jabari questioned, confused.

Anaïs hesitated, but her Master hadn’t said to hide her origins, and neither had Headmaster Draconis, so she stated, “The Galaxy,” only for all of the others to suddenly pull back from her. “What?”

The undercurrent of sudden Fear coming off those around her was palpable in the Force, as Chiku turned ashen with terror. Jabari was the first one to speak, but not to the Padawan, looking to Kamaria, “She wouldn’t’ve been allowed in if she was. . . The Headmaster wouldn’t’ve. . .”

The lupine-Presenced girl forced herself to take a deep breath, mastering her emotions, and shaking her head. “N-No. I mean, maybe. There’s stories. But then someone would. . . when she fought your sister. . .”

“I’m sorry?” Anaïs apologized, even more confused, “I, did I do something wrong? I meant no offense.”

Kama shot Jabari a significant look, the boy nodding as he turned to face the Jedi. “If you’re from off-world. Have, have you ever heard of the Seeth?”

The Padawan frowned, “You mean, a sheath, like what you put a blade in?”

“No,” the girl beside her disagreed, relaxing a little more. “The Seeth are a sect of evil wizards that could kill a mage with a thought! That wielded blades that glowed with hatred and malice! That could devour your very life to fuel their dark rituals!”

“Oh!” Anaïs smiled, glad to understand what the others were talking about. “You mean the Sith!” As one, everyone leaned away from her once more, pulling away even further, Chiku going so far as to fall off her seat with a squawk of terror.

“Oh, I’m not one!” the Jedi quickly added, the bird-Presenced girl getting up and glaring at her. “But my Order, my Sect, has been at war with them for millennia! I’ve never actually seen one, and,” she hesitated, the Force, for whatever reason, gently guiding her not to mention that they hadn’t been any in the galaxy for close to a thousand years, her Order having ended the threat they posed at the conclusion of the New Sith Wars.

Unbidden, the red bladed saber that was drenched in the Dark rose to her mind, the one that had been wielded not by a true Sith, but by what her Master had told her the Temple would state was merely a Dark Acolyte. Would these people be able to tell the difference? she wondered.

“And what?” Jabari pressed, leaning forward now, almost uncomfortably close.

“And I’ve held one of the weapons Kama mentioned,” the Padawan disclosed. “My Master killed its wielder, but trained me to resist its. . . its corruptive influence.”

Itoro let out a low ‘Ahh’ of understanding. “Then that’s how you could fight through her Predator’s Gaze.” When Anaïs turned a questioning look his way, he explained. “What Siri inflicts on her opponents. The fear of having an apex predator stare at you, knowing you could be killed with ease.”

Next to Itoro, Ganizani, the girl with the simian Presence quietly remarked, “But she wasn’t.” with a small smile Jabari’s way, she added, “After all, Anaïs fought Jabari’s sister.”

The tense mood that had built broke down, everyone chuckling at the over-repeated phrase, even Jabari, who asked the Padawan, “Do you think I could train with it? I really hate having Siri turn it on me when I don’t know she’s there. And you didn’t even blink.”

The Jedi winced, “That’s up to my Master, and he’s away for a bit. And. . . if you’re having trouble with this ‘Predator’s Gaze’, you really don’t want to be anywhere near a Sith’s saber. If. . .” she searched for an analogy, glancing at her drink. “If her technique is like drinking flavored water, holding that weapon would be this. What is this anyways?”

Thankfully, she was able to divert the conversation for a while. Kavari was something akin to caf, only instead of brewing with the ground beans, it was mixed with several different substances, heated, left to ferment for several weeks, then cooled and served. “So it’s a stimulant, but also a depressant? Why would you drink both?”

“Magic, of course,” Jabari grinned. “Stimulants makes it easier to focus on the runes you need to make a circle. But people can get so caught up in the mechanics, that they don’t let the mana flow. The alcohol makes it easier to relax, and let it function smoothly. It’s actually pretty useful when you’re having trouble getting a spell down the first time. And after you get it the first time, it’s easier to cast again. Just don’t come to class drunk, the teacher’s won’t accept ‘study aids’ during class. Trust me.”

Anaïs stared at him, having to giggle at the thought of her teachers, let alone Grandmaster Yoda, walking around intoxicated. ‘Quite sloshed, I am. Pass out, I may soon!’ She wondered if Master Windu would be a happy drunk, as the holovids Lucian had her watch depicted some people as, or if he’d be aggressive. She could picture it now, the dark-skinned man calling Master Halrol a ‘Mothereffer’ for his abuse of his position. What she’d give to see that happen.

“It was quite funny,” Itoro noted, while Jabari scowled for a second.

“How was I supposed to know?” he shot back, before breaking out into a smile at his friend’s dry look. “Okay, I guess it was funny. I was hiding it well, until I got the spell on my first try. And lost my breakfast on professor Chinelo’s robe midway through his lecture on my ‘disrespectful behavior’. The extra assignments were worth it, just to see his face.”

The Padawan also learned that the meat she was eating was a domesticated version of a large mostly-flightless bird that lived on the plains on the other side of the continent, and could use ‘magic’ to fly in short bursts, either to hunt down the small mammals they preyed upon, or to escape the large mammals that preyed upon them. It was, in fact, the same kind of bird that Chiku used as her magical Foci.

“Wait,” Anaïs interrupted, remembering how the local Force users were supposed to eventually, metaphysically, become the same as their Foci. Looking at Chiku, who was eating the same thing she was going to be, the Jedi asked, “If they’re the same, then why are you eating it? Isn’t that. . . cannibalism?”

The girl just shrugged. “These hens were weak,” she offered. “My family uses a specially bred line for our Foci, instead of just using whatever we pick up off the ground.”

Given Anaïs had been chosen by the Khyber crystal in her saber as much as she chose it, in a place so in tune with the Force that it could be felt as soon as you entered the system, the Padawan just smiled at the other girl’s ill-hidden barb at her ‘Sect’, which just made the dark skinned girl frown and stab her fork into another piece of meat.

Soon enough, though, the discussion once again turned to her fight with the older Mage. However, instead of asking about the fight itself, Kama asked about what came after. “Why did you do that to the training golem?” Kama asked curiously.

“Um, you mean the thing Draconis summoned? The stone person?” Anaïs asked, getting a nod. “Well, I was supposed to stop it, right?” she questioned, once more getting nods from the others. “I stopped it.”

Chiku snorted, “Of course a brute like you would do that.”

Visibly ignoring the antagonistic girl, Kama explained, “We’re trained to disable, Anaïs. With it being stone, especially stone made by the Headmaster, it’d be hard to damage anyways. If that was me, I would’ve trapped it in ice.”

“Same,” Zeeno, Kama’s cousin, who’s Presence was almost identical, agreed.

“Earth,” Itoro added.

“I can’t do fire chains,” Jabari stated, “not without burning someone, yet. But I could wrestle most golems down, or push them away.”

“My wind chains would be enough,” Chiku bragged.

The others looked to Ganizani, who quietly murmured, “Grasping roots.”

Then I wasn’t supposed to kill it? Anaïs wondered, having been fighting training droids by the score, when you ‘disabled’ them by cutting them to pieces. But, the Force had pushed me to do that, she thought, then considered the statement, keeping in mind her Master’s words. According to him, the Force didn’t have some ‘Grand Will’ it wanted everyone to follow, but only served to help you achieve what you wanted.

And, in that moment, she didn’t want to fight.

Given the shocked looks of all present as she’d cut down the obsidian mannequin, now knowing that she had only been supposed to disable it, she had to admit that the Force had guided her to do exactly what she’d wanted. However, in doing so, she’d also shown herself to be. . . bloodthirsty, in a way that apparently didn’t fit into the culture of this place at all.

‘Be careful what you wish for’ indeed, she couldn’t help but think, having gotten what she wanted, but also a good deal that she hadn’t.

Seeing the Padawan’s confusion, but misinterpreting it, Jabari asked, “You’re thinking how come Anamalia Sect students are using rocks and roots, when that seems a Minerali and Plantae thing, right?” She hadn’t been, but that was a good question, so she nodded anyways, and the boy explained, “Our sources all come from animals, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use elements. You’re Minerali, after all, but you used wind on me. What element do you specialize in?”

“I. . . don’t?” Anaïs asked more than stated. “I didn’t use wind, I just pushed. And the others like me doesn’t really use the ‘elements’ either. Some of our Masters do,” she corrected, “But most don’t.”

Chiku, predictably, took the moment to start to say, “Of course you can’t even use the ele-mmmf!”

The Jedi, having had enough of that, and feeling herself start to get annoyed despite her training, held the pinching motion she’d made with one hand, holding the girl’s lips together. It took more effort than pure telekinesis on an unliving object would’ve, but, again, the Wizards and Wizardess’ here didn’t have the innate ‘inertia’ that made it hard to use the Force directly on another Jedi. And compared to the boulders that Lucian had made her lift during training, this was nothing.

“Does she ever stop?” Anaïs asked conversationally, as Chiku pawed at her mouth ineffectually.

Jabari stared at her, before laughing. “You’re a force user!” he stated. “No wonder you don’t use elements!”

“I. . . yes?” the Force user replied, confused. Don’t they call it magic here? she thought.

“Your sect probably thinks using the Elements is more of a trick than a real strategy, don’t they?” Kama asked, and Anaïs, considering that, slowly nodded. She’d heard of a few who used Pyrokinesis, and Plant Surge was a known technique for manipulating flora, and Master Plo Koon could use lightning with his ‘Electric Judgment’, but no one she’d heard of in the Order could just create rocks like she’d seen the Mages here doing. “Around here, pure physical force is an element,” the other girl explained, “just one most don’t use. Because it’s so hard to control.”

“And because it’s invisible. Makes it harder to show off,” Jabari added with a smile, small bits of flame dancing on his fingertips for a moment. “And you can let Chiku go. I’m sure she’ll back off, right?” The girl in questioned nodded emphatically, and the Padawan, feeling a little bad as she could literally feel the other girl’s panic, let the technique go.

“I. . . sorry,” Chiku stated, looking away.

What do I say? Anaïs wondered, looking to the Force for help, going with the vague feeling, having to put it into words. “Some is fine. Some.” The other girl nodded, even as the Padawan tried to figure out what she had just said actually meant. Unsure, and wishing to move the conversation along, the Jedi pulled out her class schedule. “Is there anything you could tell me about these teachers?”

Jabari, Kama, and Otaro all leaned in to read the paper, the lupine girl commenting, “Wow, they’ve got you going everywhere, don’t they?”

The class names, like ‘Basic Runes’ and ‘Practical Applications’ had seemed simple, but the other students quickly told her that the first class was meant for those of the first circle, if that, while the second class was only for those of the fifth circle, at the minimum. It was a class that they couldn’t get into, only being third circle themselves.

Anaïs wasn’t surprised, though, already knowing from this morning’s fights that while she was far behind in some of the Circle of Magic’s subjects, not even knowing what the runes meant, when it came to martial ability, she was already far and above those around her. In fact, she only shared one class with the others, which, ironically, was titled ‘Elementalism’.

“We’ve been in class for a month or so,” Jabari told her, “but we should be able to help you catch up. Especially if you’re using force of all things.”

“But aren’t you all practiced using the elements?” the Padawan asked in turn, looking around the table, sipping her Kavari. She still didn’t like the taste, but, as Master Lucian had instructed her, ‘Never let a training opportunity go to waste, if you aren’t in danger’. As such she was trying to neutralize the debilitating effects of the alcohol with Force Healing as she drank it.

Zeeno was the one who answered. “We each have an element we’re good at. They’re aligned with out Foci. We’re Frostwolf,” he stated, tapping himself and motioning to his cousin. “Ice we get. Wind and earth are manageable. Fire is. . . strange.”

“It’s not strange, you just need to relax!” Jabari teased the other boy, turning to Anaïs. “Each element has an opposite. Something that cancels it out. Ice and fire. Water and lightning. Stone and wind. Steel and wood. Only one that doesn’t is force.”

“The headmaster said her Sect focuses on combat,” Ganizani noted quietly. “Force means no weaknesses in battle. But also no building.”

“Building?” Anaïs echoed, confused, and the monkey-Presenced girl tapped the table significantly. The Padawan looked back down at the furniture, the entire thing made from one piece of large lumber, instead of individual planks. A show of wealth, to be sure, but there were similar things on Coruscant. However, there was obviously something more there, so the Jedi closed here eyes, feeling outwards in the Force.

It was hard to sense anything with the cacophony of Presences pushing in from every direction, but, by running her hands over the surface of the wood, she could catch the barest hints of the Force, still lingering in what should be long-dead lumber.

The Padawan’s eyes snapped open, and she looked at the table, then at the next one over, more specifically the legs of the table, and attached benches, and could spot not a single nail, bracket, or any other means of attachment. It was as if they had grown that way, which was. . . impossible!

Looking around the room with new eyes, she looked past the decorations, and to the walls themselves. She hadn’t noticed it at first, used to the steel structures she’d been living in, and before that the megastructure of the Temple.

However, the Jedi Temple on Coruscant was built at enormous expense, a gift from the Republic to its protectors. The level of technology, and wealth, needed to achieve such a thing for a regional school, even a school of Force adepts, would be ruinous. That said, the walls of the cafeteria were not made of interlocking stones, nor even four enormous slabs, but a single piece of stone, the walls flowing into each other seamlessly.

“Never seen a mage-built structure, have you?” Jabari asked, grinning, reading her expression of amazement easily. “Everybody’s good at an element, Anaïs. Even if your element is force itself. But in that class, we’re learning how to use all of the others.”