You bolt around the corner, boots skittering over the slick marble floor. You fling your right hand out for balance. In your left you clutch your trophy: blued metal laced with high-polish silver. You didn't design it; you didn't build it. But it's yours, now. Stophe placed it in your hand with her own trembling fingers, as all of her people, all of your people, looked on.
The arched door to the inner chamber is blocked. You cut your blind dash short, tipping forward on your toes for one precarious moment before gravity remembers that you belong to this world and yanks you back down.
He fills the doorway, barring the entrance to the Hall with shoulders draped in a cloak dark as dried blood. As your planet's destiny is negotiated inside, he holds your people out. It is not his task to argue laws. He is neutral as the earth underfoot. It is written in the folds of his coarse brown clothes, inscribed in the curves of the hands resting against his thighs: I am Jedi, I am absolute. None shall pass.
He is also the keystone, and your lone opposition. Without him, the arch breaks into rubble.
The Atlas takes in your awkward stance. You drop to a poised crouch, weight balanced on the balls of your feet. Light refracts off the blue jewels at your ears, staining his robes with dabs of color.
He speaks in a low rumble. "You are not Jedi."
It is a statement of fact, without censure or criticism. You don't expect anger; you have read of the Jedi Code during your preparation for this battle. You know the laws of his kind. But surely his disapproval isn't too much to ask? If he would only frown, you could hold your forbidden weapon high and crow your victory.
He refuses to oblige. His own saber hangs quiescent at his hip.
"And you are not Korrenian," you say. Your thumb flickers over the trigger and the blade sighs to life, indigo as grief. "Let me enter."
"I can not allow that." His fingers brush dismissal into the air. "You will turn around and leave."
The air hums. The reedy pitch winds into your ear, twists through your brain. The fine hairs on the nape of your neck rise, and a shadow quivers at the edge of your sight. Maybe you should turn and find this threat. Chase it through the corridors, end its humming with a diagonal slice across the carotid. Maybe you should leave...
"No." You say it aloud, and it echoes in your mind. Not you. You won't leave. That's why old Stophe chose you for this mission, and not your brother. Reck's blows are a breath swifter, his wristwork dazzling. But you are devoted to the cause, and stubborn as a toranno root in hard-packed ground. The Jedi can shift thoughts one at a time, but they can not sway a hundred parallel thoughts spun together. You raise your indigo blade to your shoulder, positioned for a classic opening strike.
Now the Jedi frowns. Your heart sings the songs of your ancestors, with Reck's tenor in harmony, and Stophe's wavering alto crowning all. "You will leave," he repeats, fingers flickering, but the wriggling hum is drowned in your song.
You wonder why these Jedi need their gestures at all. As if the words were not enough and the elegant turn of a wrist was required to change thoughts, and to alter feelings. To mar the weight of a tossed die, turning possibilities to reality.
What would you do, if you had the talent? Would you change your world? You might start with a little nudge. A tap to the chin, and your opponents would stop their arguing. Begin to see things from your position. You would be the Jedi, calming the chaos. Because calm is always preferred to chaos.
Maybe the second time you wouldn't tap with the pad of a finger, but strike with the jagged knuckle-line of a closed fist. Maybe your enemy's nose would crunch, shatter. A shard could enter his brain. Snip those spiderweb neurons in half. Useless, then. And electrical impulses would bounce impulsively, striking where they shouldn't, and his arms would stiffen and his left ring finger would twitch, and he would die. Burned from the inside out. Blackened like the inner rim of a frying pan.
But if you were a Jedi, your calm would be absolute.
Your eyes narrow. He can't countermand your convictions. So you take one step forward. The sole of your boot rubs a high whine from the polished floor.
Perhaps your hesitant advance gives you away. It tells him that you aren't a born warrior, thrilling hot at the impact of blade on blade. Tells him you would be happier recording the heroic battles of others, those you witness first-hand and those fought solely on the inner lids of your eyes. He speaks, and his third order is different.
"You don't want to fight."
The lightsaber vibrates viciously in your hands, a slumbering snake's head waking to strike. The pulse shivers up your arm, jarring your shoulder, shaking your brain around your skull. "I... don't want to fight." Not with this alien weapon, smuggled through a dozen gloved hands. How can you trust this bit of wire and glass? This object belongs to your world no more than the Jedi.
You thumb the trigger and the indigo light dies.
Unprompted, you add your own orders. "I will enter the Hall."
Your hand falls open, and the lightsaber clatters to the marble. He doesn't spare it a glance. His eyes are focused on you. On the words that dropped from your lips to hang in the air.
He unclasps his own lightsaber from his belt, and it flares to green awareness. "You will enter the Hall."
He echoes the words, you echo their intent. Your step is loose, your heels striking solid on the floor as you approach the Jedi who stands like a welded gate. The only key to your passage shimmers in his hands, the cool green insignia of his station. The scepter of his office. Green as life, green as the churra stalks in the fields you raced down as a child, arms whipped by leaves and toes bruised by half-buried rocks. It whirs a note higher than yours. Whistles sweet and sharp. Come, touch. You want to touch him, don't you? A green even and calm, like water tainted with swirling algae. A million tiny sparks of life metabolizing, respirating oxygen. Making the air for you to breathe. The cool, biting air of a mountain too proud to bend, its peak piercing the heavens, the air swirling thin, honed, and pure. Breathe this. Breath from his mouth; yes, come closer, you can see him better, hard clear crystal on his tongue if you only come closer...
The cold shaft lowers, retreats. Plunges forward.
Oh, God, God you wanted it to be cold. You thought it would be gentle, soothing. You expected cold, and so cold is what you feel. For a moment. For that moment your mind has steel-strong power, and it forces your body to believe the opposite of truth. Your mind turns a scalding burn into the numb run of an icicle over your breast.
An icicle melts when it touches your flesh. The lightsaber slips in, slicing your skin into clean, distinct edges. Fires them black, chars them to carbon. And then comes the doubt. Nerves report to brain, spreading uncertainty thick like unrefined molasses, too viscous to wipe away. This is not chill. This is heat. Calm heat, unflinching. Not like a crude fire that might lick out, taste your flesh, then retreat and savor the caramelized sugar of your skin. This burns constant. Forever. Or, at the very least, for the rest of your life. Which won't be very long now. Because pure oxygen is being birthed and fed directly into your lungs, right at the interface of saber blade and tissue. No need to travel through your nose, down your throat. No pollution of time. This is instantaneous, a direct intravenous injection of life to your body. Life that you can't hold.
You stare at the blade, where it melted through your chest. No, not melted. No more denial, remember? It burned. Now lift your head and look at him. Yes, girl. You can see now, can't you?
Then you can't see anymore. Your world fades to black, and you fall away from the blade. Your hand falls onto the carpet of the Inner Hall, numb and tingling from your cooling blood. He is a Jedi, and he did not lie. You made it through the arch. He let you enter. He killed you in cold blood.
Because a Jedi's blood runs hot for nothing.