For an instant, I'd thought the explosions were meant to bring the chamber's roof down on our heads. The deafening roars and swirling gray dust created by pulverized stone which blinded me even as it obstructed my already abused airway did nothing to immediately disabuse me of this notion.
Not in those first two or three seconds after Ventress's escape and the subsequent detonations, anyways. It wasn't until I felt Yaddle's tiny three-fingered hand on the side of my neck as I stood bent over with hands on knees while hacking up dampened dust that it really registered we hadn't been buried by tons of duracrete ceiling.
The unbroken ringing whine in my ears kept me from hearing anything else, but the still-worsening ache in my throat, and a throbbing "blade-burn" across the ball of my right shoulder felt like plenty to focus on in that instant.
The very tip of one of Asajj's sabers had been drawn across the skin there for a couple of inches. A continuing reminder of just how dangerous Bulq's new apprentice was, I supposed.
Hearing returned to me in a wash of sudden yet gentle warmth which suffused first the sides of my head, then the interior of my throat.
It wasn't a particularly pronounced sensation, but the immediate cessation of my coughing, and the fact I could truthfully respond in the affirmative when Yaddle asked whether I could hear her told me the Jedi Master was exercising her considerable talent for Force Healing.
With a final cough precipitated by a last gob of spit-soaked stone dust, I straightened then expressed my thanks and respect to the little green Jedi.
My shoulder still burned, a little, but after a moment's consideration, I decided I deserved the uncomfortable calling-card the Sith's minion had left me. Clearly, I'd underestimated Asajj, and not done much better with my initial assessment of her now-dead comrades.
If I'd come down here in the company of Ferus or one of the other Knights rather than with Yaddle, I would likely be dead now.
"Mites in the tunnels beyond this chamber, I sense. Collapses in the mouths of those tunnels, barring our way, they are. The southern collapse, you should assess. Assess the northern and eastern collapses, I will"
Yaddle directed in about as concise a manner as I'd ever heard her speak. I'd seen her glance more than once at the ruin I'd made of Karoc's body at least twice now.
A reaction which left me feeling the need to explain myself to this Jedi whose good opinion of me I valued so much. Unfortunately, after bowing and acknowledging her directive, that explanation came out sounding much more defensive than I would have liked.
"He was choking me with the Force, Master. I couldn't breathe, and the pressure was still increasing. I clearly remember thinking He's going to crush my windpipe, then I simply, reacted.
It all happened so very, very fast. I don't remember being afraid, but I probably was."
It was the truth, and I damned well knew that never in any reality had there been a more clear-cut case of self-defense. Which did nothing to explain why I suddenly felt so self-conscious and shitty about Karoc's death, when beheading Vinoc didn't trouble me one little bit.
Yaddle looked up at me, frowned, then answered in a grave tone which nevertheless seemed to me free of any condemnation.
"Using the Force to kill. A terrible thing, this is. Yet terrible and wrong, the same, these are not. For knowledge and defense, the Force a Jedi uses. Defend yourself, you did, Padawan. The southern tunnel collapse, now you should search."
It was a clear dismissal. One emphasized by her turning away from me and beginning to walk over to where the northernmost tunnel was choked with rubble. Why, then, could I not simply leave it at that?
"If what I did wasn't wrong, then why did you keep looking at the remains of the two Dark Siders, Master Yaddle?" I called out as if seeking absolution.
Without turning in my direction, the Jedi Master responded in a colder manner than I'd ever heard from her before. "The end of their Dark Path, I was considering. About you, not all things are."
I considered disagreeing with Yaddle as to my outlook, but ultimately decided to simply accept the implicit criticism.
She'd often spoken up for me against Councilor Even Piell/Legends , and refuted Cin Drallig/Legends omnipresent "concerns" about me. (Having outdone the favored Padawans of both men had apparently been cause enough to make both develop an intense dislike for me.
My Master had even said Piell considered me an "Arrogant, prideful, grasping fighter. One that anyone free of bias should be able to see is a likely candidate to turn.)
Antagonizing the normally understanding and easygoing Jedi Master was most definitely not in my best interests. Not when Mace Windu allowed any disciplinary action Piell or Drallig wanted to levy against me on the thinnest, most ridiculous of pretexts.
Anything that wasn't spoken against by another Councilor, basically.
Sometimes newly re-appointed High Councilor Micah Giiett (Who I still had no damned idea how I'd accidentally saved from dying during the Yinchorri Uprising, because I wasn't even five at the time and hadn't made any deliberate timeline changes by that point) would speak up for me if Piell and his bottom-bitch Oppo Rancisis were being blatantly unfair to me, but Yaddle had always been my chief proponent on the High Council.
Turning away from the Jedi Master's steady gaze, I went to do as I was told. What else was there to say, after all? It wasn't as if I were filled with remorse about killing either Dark Sider. Maybe that was the problem, as far as the venerable Jedi was concerned?
My half of the room was riddled with mature stone mites. Approaching the walls they even now tunneled through was like being confronted with sheets of dry-rotted wood completely crawling with termites.
The second I drew near to the blocked tunnel, I could feel the things chewing their irregular little pathways through the duracrete.
When I'd volunteered to use my rare Force-talent against this bizarre example of biological warfare, I'd retained an unspoken reservation about creating one Force Breach after another inside of living things.
Now, I realized that had been wasted moralizing on my part. Stone mites felt just as unnatural as the macro-virus like creations actually were.
They were so vividly abnormal, the things actually left faint pathways of wrongness behind as they moved and consumed. Sensing them as they did their thing set my teeth on edge. Spurring me to reach out, and "How do I, ahh, there!"
One hundred and four of the three part, vaguely triangular little eating machines suddenly died. Their most integral inner connections simply severed, as my will flicked out and sent a disruptive shock through a pattern so simple it made lichen and paramecia seem complex.
The madwoman who'd created the stone mites couldn't possibly know this as someone with no idea how the Shatterpoints of living things worked, but making it so every last stone mite was identical to every other stone mite down to the atomic level apparently meant once you'd grasped how to cause mite to come apart, it became nothing but a lather-rinse-repeat phenomena.
A profound weakness in these horrific macro-virii, albeit one only a tiny handful of individuals in the entire galaxy could ever leverage.
A brief wave of fatigue caused me to stumble as another one hundred and one mites in the ceiling, then a hundred and seven more in the floor throughout my half of the chamber perished.
I caught myself before I could bump into the beginning of the pile of broken duracrete piled to the top of this southern passageway, then my breath hitched in surprise as the awareness I was extending into and beyond the stone collapse in search of stone mites detected something else.
It was faint enough I'd have missed it if I weren't straining my Force Sense, or the ability wasn't one I'd spent a great deal of time honing as a foundational Sense ability. The tangibility of this life-presence, this Force-presence was so slight, so ephemeral, that-
"MASTER YADDLE! Over here! I think I've found Knight Swan or Tassu, but they're on the other side of this collapse and must be badly hurt!" I cried out with urgency.
Totally lacking the calm self-control I was supposed to be exhibiting in my desperation to get to one of our own.
A desperation made worse by the fact that Jedi Knight Bultar Swan was Knight Tutso Mara's very-against-the-Jedi Code lover.
Tutso had been my first, and remained my best friend in the Temple. If there was anything I could do to prevent his and Bultar's story from ending in tears, I was going to do it, period.
...
Hey guys can you throw some power stones to Elevate the ranking.
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