"Yeah, I think I learned my lesson about obvious moves in the last room" I silently considered. Reaching out with the Force to carefully sense the cylinders themselves.
Closing my eyes, I allowed myself to sink deeper into the steady beat of the Force's song. Letting my expectations and desires be washed away by the movement of the song's low individual notes.
...
There were bundles containing a dozen devices looking a great deal like sonic grenades attached to the bottom of cylinder #3 and #5. They were smaller than standard grenades, and I was betting scaled down to the point where their sonic pulses would only knock me out wherever I was in the room.
I couldn't get a sense for any trigger-mechanisms, but guessed they were related to lifting the cylinders. Especially since I'd detected a hole beneath Cylinder #2 large enough for me to fit through.
Touching each of the cylinders in their turn, I was suddenly certain of two things. One, that this was a matter of lifting the cylinders in the correct order.
Two, the squares throughout the room like the one I presently stood on were somehow linked to the cylinders.
I didn't second-guess these revelations, and further guessed the link would cause the stone squares to fall. I didn't know if that meant all at once or in some specific pattern, and that made this conundrum all the more dangerous.
It did occur to me to wonder how an aspiring Knight not fortunate enough to have chanced upon such a revelation in the Force was to have any chance of solving this morass, but soon went back to trying to determine what order I'd need to lift the cylinders in.
Frowning, I realized I might well have hit upon a flaw in the puzzle. Perhaps I was simply overthinking things, and this was simply a test of determining the way out and subsequently accessing it, but it had come to me I could simply crush the grenade-bundle beneath Cylinder #2, then lift it enough to slip through before the floor could drop out beneath me.
I considered the problem awhile longer, and still didn't see a flaw in my logic. Perhaps it was due to most Padawans needing longer between two uses of telekinesis than I did, but now that I'd thought of doing this, I didn't see the actual challenge here.
I'd gathered my will, and was on point to telekinetically grasp and begin lifting the cylinder when the Force keened a sharp, shrill note of warning to me.
Suddenly extremely wary, I immediately reconsidered my decision. Of course there wouldn't be any free lunches in the Jedi Trials. Going to my knees before Cylinder #2, I closed my eyes and listened to the Force's song more completely.
Searching with all of my focus and attention for anything which didn't feel right, and slowly reaching out first to what was closest to me, before expanding my ring of awareness ever so slowly.
My breathing and heart-rate slowed as I blotted out even thoughts of the puzzle's solution. Giving no thought to anything except the Force, as I found myself on the verge of a deeper meditative state than I'd ever experienced before.
With my eyes closed, I didn't exactly realize when my slow expansion of my awareness began to exceed the dimensions of the chamber.
I was too intently focused on nuances in the Force within my locale I rarely troubled myself with. That was how I abruptly came to realize why the Force sounded so peaceful and serene to me despite this entire Trials setup posing a sort of peril for me.
Somehow, a second "counterfeit" song was overlaying the deeper and more excited, rapid beat with spiking trills and bass-valleys which was the Force beneath the first.
Standing as I slowly sussed out the meaning behind what I was feeling, I began walking straight ahead. Keeping my eyes closed as I did so, because they could only confuse and deceive me at the moment. Make it more difficult to stay in tune with the Force as I moved. Angling a little to the left while crossing the room.
Walking through a doorway I couldn't yet see, I opened my eyes and looked back the way I'd come with them closed.
There, where I'd been so completely convinced there had been a stone cylinder in need of lifting to expose the way out, stood a single turret similar in height and width to the illusory cylinder.
Alone in an otherwise empty room, even from here I could see the turret was covered with sensor-pads similar to those you'd apply from a med-kit to do a diagnostic scan in the field.
"Those sensors are undoubtedly pressure-sensitive. If I'd tried to lift it; thinking it was a cylinder covering the way out, the turret would have stunned me" I thought to myself.
Needing to suppress a shiver when I considered the near-perfectly convincing nature of the Force Illusion, and how close I'd come to failing.
"Two challenges, and two near-misses. I have to do better, if I'm going to show them my Master's methods are superior" I murmured in a low tone. One which was nevertheless filled with all the passion and conviction I allowed myself to feel for a moment.
Thoughts of my desire to vindicate my teacher and make her proud of me swirled in my mind, before I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then released all those many-layered emotions into the Force as I strode into darkness once more.
Next, I free-climbed an ever changing rock wall which kept rising out of the floor of the chamber's left wall, before disappearing into the ceiling.
Illuminated spots would appear somewhere on the wall's face, and it was my job to reach them before they were carried into the ceiling.
The hand-holds were more like finger-holds, and many times as the challenge advanced, I was required to jump from hold to hold if I wished to reach a light-spot in time.
Yet this was one exercise for which the Matukai teachings I'd continued to develop all these years had perfectly prepared me. I put a giant tree-frog to shame, as I climbed and leaped upward or laterally. Easily touching any and all lights to appear.
Even when they began arriving two and three at a time. I wasn't the least bit winded when a door finally rolled up out of the wall as it finally came to a stop.
"There might not be any free lunches, but everyone has their particular strengths, and physical Force-augmentation is definitely one of mine" I quietly reflected to myself. Feeling a surge of pride when I considered my Master's expression at seeing that.
Stepping into the next room, I discovered I was standing on one of eight circular stone platforms. Each about two meters in diameter, and set some five or six meters apart.
A seemingly bottomless blackness awaited below, but in the exact center of each platform was a perfectly circular hole about the size of a grapefruit.
I didn't understand the purpose of this set-up immediately, then an apple-sized remote dropped out of the ceiling and began flying quickly and erratically about the room.
The remote was presently covered in rows of green lights, but after a few seconds, those lights turned yellow, and it began flying even more quickly. Starting to change direction, and altering it's present velocity seemingly at random.
A clock with a ten minute countdown appeared on each of the room's far walls, as a voice spoke to me in a neutral tone from a source I couldn't discern.
"You may catch and deposit the remotes into one of the holes in each platform by any means at your disposal, but five seconds after a given remote's release, it's lighting will change from green to yellow. This will reduce it's capture value from three to two, while simultaneously increasing it's ability to evade you.
After an additional five seconds, the remote's color will change from yellow to red. Again reducing it's capture value by a point, as it's speed and capacity for evasion increases once more. Fifteen seconds after a remote has been released, it will drop into the darkness.
If or when this happens, your present score displayed beneath the time-count remaining will be penalized by three points. You must accrue a score of one hundred and fifty to pass this challenge. Begin!"
I leaped for the remote as it passed in front of me and snagged it with my left hand. Slamming it down into the hole at my feet before it could turn red on me.
A white "2" appeared beneath the timer reading 9:55. Noting with some annoyance the speaker having said nothing about how many remotes would appear at once, as three green-limned orbs shot out of the ceiling to replace the one I'd just grabbed. A Force-Leap carried me to the furthest right corner platform.
Snagging the sphere with telekinesis as I landed, and thrusting it into the waiting aperture before it could turn yellow. Turning, I saw both of the other remotes were now yellow and sighed under my breath. Reeling one of them in as it began to struggle, and pushing it through the hole at my feet.
The last of the three was red now, and had just begun to drop when I caught it with TK, dragged it to me, and slotted it. The score now read "8", with 9: 32 on the clock.
Soon, as the number of remotes increased first to five, and then to eight, I realized this was a test of endurance.
I jumped and caught those I could with my hands while they were green, because my Matukai training meant this conserved the most energy, but catching the yellow orbs by hand was extremely difficult given the footing. Catching the red ones manually required precognition.
I jumped and Force-pulled, as I recognized some would invariably fall into the dark below. I had to move as fast as possible, because I needed a green just to cancel out each drop.
Once I had a good sense of the distances involved, I countered with touches of Force Speed, but it was still a mad dash and bound about.
Sweating, my limbs quivering, I drove home a green-lit ball I'd caught with the Force atop a barely green remote I'd just fortuitously snagged with my left-hand. Driving the counter to "151" as the time-counter read 0:13.
I tried not to take that as a sign of things to come, as I jumped to the far left platform and out another doorway into blackness.
...
Hey guys can you throw some power stones to Elevate the ranking.
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