Shadows' Hold

[Jan Shadowchild]

"Varunda Nine," Jan said, drumming her fingers on the instrument board. "So this is where you decided to take me."

She gave the treescape ahead a once-over, then settled back in her chair to stare at the ceiling of the transport's cockpit. The memories were vague, but they were still there. Varunda's ninth moon was mostly jungle interspersed with mountains and a bit of desert, all slightly hotter than the norm for inhabited worlds. Her memories contained rough images, as illustrations in hardbound books like the ones that Varunda's school system involved. Je'gan, she reflected, had never really known much about anything other than the Force or combat. Then again, he didn't have to. That was all he did.

She was sure it wasn't good for him. From her faded, tattered memories, that had to be a really boring life.

The Chevalier had been en route from Corellia for ages now. Through it all, her creator had been more communicative than normal. Cheerful and pleasant, he'd asked her advice on dozens of odd sketches, discussed what it felt like to know one wasn't what one appeared to be - a state that they each found themselves in at times, one more than the other - and even carried the odd insubstantial conversation. Most unlike him; most welcome.

"C'est ça," the Sith Knight said absently, fingers flying as he searched for a clearing. She couldn't recall what the place's name was, but unless he'd done some studying on the sly, he didn't remember either. Not that he'd care; he'd just let his ship's Palace registry speak for itself, and avoid contact with the locals as normal. She really wished that he would get out a little more, talk with people, maybe even make friends. It would be healthy. Therapeutic.

Jan narrowed her eyes as the ship tipped up to land - both, now that Je'gan had puzzled out how to give her binocular vision - and squinted against a sudden beam of sunlight. The ship jolted as it touched down.

[Je'gan Olra'en]

Je'gan disembarked after a period of reflection, and of examination of the sketches. Jan followed, cheerful once more. Neither carried anything in terms of supplies; they weren't planning on straying far from the ship.

The Sith Knight turned and looked back at the Chevalier, and at the huge trees that loomed over it. He'd parked close to the edge of the clearing to give plenty of room to work. It was gratifying to see that his piloting had improved to such an extent that he hadn't hit anything on his way down.

Beckoning to Jan, he moved to the centre of the clearing, past shrubs and saplings and rocks of all descriptions. All the while, Je'gan was casting his mind about, searching for predators.

He settled down on a huge boulder and began to slip into the deep focus. Within moments, he'd found the mind he wanted: a carnivore, and one that thought very highly of itself. The downside, though, was that he didn't know what kind of animal it was, or even how big it was - the huge scale of their surroundings made such an estimate nigh impossible. Just to be sure about their new bodyguard's probable effectiveness, he summoned it and watched through its eyes as it neared their location. Bizarrely, he got to watch his own jaw drop.

"Not a word," he said as Jan choked back a chuckle. "Its mind had the right characteristics. Nobody could have known from just that."

[Jan Shadowchild]

Stifling that laugh was becoming harder with every passing moment. Metre-long ears on a somewhat shorter, vertical body were bad enough. Feet that size, though, and a torso of such staggering uselessness...if this was a predator, Jan was a Jedi Master. It looked like every caricature of a jackrabbit that had ever been drawn.

"I'm sure it's plenty fierce, all right, but I'd really suggest trying again."

The Sith Knight grimaced and moved his hand slightly. Within a second, it flopped over, dead. Jan bit her lip.

"Was that really necessary?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Probably not," he conceded. "On the other hand, it's one less complication."

Five minutes of silence later, a vaguely feline animal, taller at the shoulder than either of them, crept out of the treeline. A light danced in its eyes. Jan felt herself draw back just slightly.

"That one is under control, right?"

"'Tis indeed. Full control, annnnnd...full conditioning. Its aggression has peaked, but it won't touch either of us, and it won't wander off."

Even knowing how much time and effort her creator had put into his skills with mentalics, Jan still shivered.

[Je'gan Olra'en]

Deep focus. The innards of his mind were darker than the forest around them, but only barely. Night was falling.

"You ready, Jan?" he asked.

The construct nodded. He reached out and felt her offer her Force connection to him. He needed all the power he could get for this, and her potential, while untrained, was the precise equal of his. When he was controlling the Force for them both, he could match any Knight alive.

He commenced projecting Shadow, a manifestation of his emotions in a half-physical form. Being who and what he was, all the emotion he had on hand was negative, making the construct roil and turn an infinite black. Hatred, jealousy, fear, lust, pain, and a dozen others like them poured through him. The whole thing took a roughly spherical form over twelve feet high, appearing to hover in midair with all of Shadow's characteristic disdain for gravity. It didn't really exist outside of his mind, though.

For now.

The raw feelings were committed as much as he dared. Now he began to put in memories, in a process not dissimilar to using one of the Palace's molecular furnaces to create a lightsaber's focusing crystal - something he'd done not once, but twice. Old training, injury, combat, terror, everything. Even things he'd never confessed to himself. He dug them up anyways.

Pain from experimental subjects. Pain from altering his own mind, not once but twice. The pointless hatred that defined Darth Shule's every waking moment.

Hatred of himself for buckling and killing Ceres. Hatred of himself, from another perspective entirely, for almost failing his task. Disgust for his brother's weaknesses.

The Shadow continued to grow, doubling, tripling. He'd never created anything this big before, not even a test run. Stupid in hindsight. So many things were. He tossed that in, too.

In the end, he had nothing else to give, nothing at all. He set about tying it off, anchoring it to the ambient currents of the Force so he wouldn't have to support it. The rock deep below the forest floor provided a perfect anchor. At last, he came out of the trance and looked about.

Shadow was invisible to the naked eye, but any Forcewielder could 'see' it. Jan looked flatly amazed, and he had to admit that he'd made it bigger than he'd expected. Still not anywhere close to the quantity he needed, but at least it was in the same order of magnitude. Tomorrow, he'd do it all over again. And again, and again, and again, until he had what he required.

[Jan Shadowchild]

I think it's hurting him to channel so much of the Dark Side. He tripped and hit his hand on a rock, and it's bruising far more than it should. Things like this happen, or so I hear. I didn't think he was getting this immersed in the Dark Side. I didn't think it was possible. He's so young, and he's only a Knight.

I can handle the drain through me. What I can't handle is seeing him fall apart. Using these memories and emotions is part of what makes him Shule, but I don't think he's ever channelled this much power since he made himself Shule.

I would have liked to know Je'gan, before the change. Shule's my friend, but he terrifies me. He really does.

He's asleep now, tossing in his bunk. Once in a while he screams. I think it hurts somewhere in there, maybe because he screwed up in making Shule, maybe because changing a mind is inherently painful. I wouldn't know; he may have made my mind, but aside from giving me shields, he's never changed it since then. He treats me, a thing, like a person.

Which is odd, because from what I've seen so far he treats people like things.

[Je'gan Olra'en]

The Shadow was undamaged the next day, having bled off only a tiny fraction of its substance to anything that passed by. Increased aggression had almost broken the conditioning that he had placed upon a variety of local predators. This would continue to be a problem until such time as he turned the construct corporeal and cemented its form.

The process of dumping his full power into that mass of blackness was less draining than it had been the day before. Perhaps he was getting used to it; could be an important step in Shule's evolution. He wasn't able to give it any more power than he had the day before, but at double the size, that huge sphere was becoming genuinely impressive. He had to restrain himself from beginning the molding procedure, and consign himself to taking a nap aboard ship. After the nap, he'd come back and do it all over again.

[Jan Shadowchild]

It's taken nine days, two or three Shadow-projections each day, and a lot of time spent sleeping or meditating. Also a lot of yawning. But he's finally ready to start sculpting the stuff into the proper shape.

The ball of Shadow in the middle of the field is massive, easily three times the size of the Chevalier. Just now, Je'gan is waving his hands madly. Things are swirling in that ball of cloudy darkness. It's drawing up and elongating, becoming a two-hundred-metre spike that seems about to pierce the heavens. The bottom looks wider than the top, or maybe that's just the effect of being so near the base. No; that's how it is. Makes sense. It won't topple easily.

The edges ripple and smooth out, forming a blocky, well, cross-like cross section. Jagged, fluted projections emerge to create a balcony about half way up. He spends a long time on these before moving around to another vantage point and creating another one, then two more, until these balconies protrude approximately equally in the four long, angular depressions that give the tower its cross-section. There's nothing in there but Shadow; no rooms. I wonder what he's going to do with the stuff he takes out.

He moves closer and makes a wide staircase. He's not the greatest sculptor, but Shadow is a forgiving material and the steps turn out pretty much even. A doorway takes shape at the top, arched with fanglike crenellations. Again, there's a solid mass of Shadow in there. He makes a parting motion and a stream of the stuff shoots out through the door. It collects in a single hovering lump. Meanwhile, he directs the flow to siphon from corners, making the entry corridor reasonably precise in its dimensions.

He siphons more out and makes a large room behind the hallway. Then, inexplicably, he lets the ties snap back. Perhaps he's more tired than experience had suggested he'd be. He gives me a distant smile.

We head back to the Chevalier, he to rest, I because I have nothing else to do but watch him work.

[Je'gan Olra'en]

The Sith Knight's shoulders crick-ed with each rotation. He tried to stretch out fully before doing things like this, more to freshen his mind than for any physical advantage. It wasn't his triceps that would be wrestling the Shadow, after all.

He grabbed the connections that kept the tower in its shape and carefully infiltrated them without damage. That was important: if he so much as nicked one, a chunk of the tower would just disappear. Nine days of work meant that he cared a great deal what happened to this thing.

His visibility was limited from the base of the stairs, but he was coming to realize that if it was merely a projection of his mind, he didn't need to see it, he only needed to think it. It was tricky to adjust, but it was worth it.

Shadow, at least this incorporeal, basic stuff, could be teleported. Closing his eyes and opening his mind, he began removing it from throughout the tower, forming floors and stairs. He made sure that the floors were thick, and even if the staircases were lumpy and jagged, he could alter them later. What was important was that there were floors and rudimentary rooms. Shadow would flow together unless properly differentiated, so he could add anything he wanted. All he had now was a crude template...but it was enough.

He opened his eyes and found that the sky was darkening; the sun was setting below the nearby mountains, sending rays of fire across the sky. Good, good. Just as planned. Night offered enough shadows to catapult this tower into physical existence. In all honesty, he didn't know why it worked, merely that it did, a conclusion not helped by the fact that he'd created it. How much of his work was really luck?

At last the shadows were enough. The silhouette of a mountain beckoned. Reaching deeply into the Force and calling on the Dark Side with the power that he'd cultivated inadvertently over the past days, he wrapped the tower in slippery, uncooperative shadow. Getting so much of it was a painfully difficult task: the sun had fallen entirely by the time he was done. The planet's shadow bled into his efforts and plugged the gaps almost of their own volition. With a wrench and a scream, the tower appeared to the naked eye. Black and glossy, it blotted out the stars in a wide, tapering line that terminated in a quartet of spikes. Je'gan released the Force and gulped air. A headache was starting, and a bad one.

[Jan Shadowchild]

It's the middle of the night, we're alone in the jungle, and a small fortress has just been summoned out of my creator's imagination. Tell me something is more terrifying if you will, but be prepared to prove it.

"Let's get back to the ship, Je'gan," Jan said hesitantly. "Really. Finishing this'll wait for tomorrow."

He acquiesced with minimal fuss. Grateful, she led him back to the freighter and locked the ramp after them.

[Je'gan Olra'en]

He had created two disjointed sets of stairs, up one side and down the other. They were blocky and ill-formed, meaning that to refine them he had to ascend and descend them with a firm picture of how they should be. From time to time he pierced a window in the outer edge of the staircase's wall.

Doors were already there, but he found that they needed to be adjusted. Some were level with the adjoining floor, but most tilted drunkenly, and their hinges were uniformly frozen. It required a careful and steady hand to make those solid lumps into workable hinges, and to make the doors such that they wouldn't meld with the substance of the walls and floors. All that took, of course, was the adjustment of the Shadow's inherent 'direction' or 'frequency' - neither term really worked - but the whole process was time-consuming if not overly difficult.

Jan followed behind, for no reason that he'd yet determined. Perhaps she was bored. He couldn't blame her. At least, he supposed, he'd have far greater practical experience with Shadow by the end of this - an unintended side effect. All he'd really wanted was a home and workshop, somewhere he could labour in peace.

To that effect, one floor was transformed into a library, with simple chairs, tables, and empty bookshelves. Another was a bedroom, a third was a sparring room complete with racks for various weapons, and the very top level - the flattened roof, in fact - served as a windy meditation area. He engraved its surface with runnels that would siphon rain into fluting spouts that should carry the flow into a long, airborne arc. The runnels were formed in a half-remembered pattern that helped in meditation. It wasn't precise, but he didn't have the books to complete it - at least, not with him. They were secure in the Palace library for the moment.

Other things, though, he could stock now. After several trips between tower and ship, the bed was stocked with blankets and sheets, the library contained his few books, and the waist-high, flat-topped weapons racks were adorned with parallel depressions that neatly fit an assortment of arms. One, a curved shape capped by a bell, held his first lightsaber Azubah. Beside it, the hiltless Magor, then a long rapier, a shortsword, a dirk, a knife, a mace and chain, nunchaku, an axe, a wrist-mounted lanvarok, caltrops, strap-on retractable claws for both hands, a brace of glop grenades, and ten tiny remotes. His experience was only with lightsabers, rapier, shortsword and dirk - and, of course, remotes - but he had a passing acquaintance with the rest. Practicing with them would be a pleasure. No standard ranged weapons, though, not in his new home. Shadow would grow back - especially at night - from any non-critical damage imposed on it, but he didn't feel it was worth it.

Aside from the remotes, though, he didn't have a training partner...something he could probably rectify with time. A stripped-down version of his own mind, attached to a highly amorphous Shadowworking, could offer the variety he needed, and perhaps even a guard of sorts. Not something he could do just now, but with time to recover from channeling this much Shadow, who knew what could be accomplished.

All at once, the sheer scale of what he'd just accomplished came rushing to the forefront. He took a seat, head spinning. His original intention had just been a house. Just a simple house in the middle of the jungle.

After a time, his head cleared, and he leaned out a window for some fresh air. The training room was at the very top of the tower; the view induced a manageable level of vertigo - and reminded him that he'd forgotten the waste material from what amounted to an excavation. Drawing on the Force, he took the huge lump of solid Shadow that sat beside his ship, drew it out into a simplistic torus, and laid it around the tower; a fence, as if his braintwisted sentries weren't enough security. There was a lot of empty space enclosed in that wall. What could he fill it with?

Then again, did he really need to fill it? Couldn't he just leave it alone, let it grow, and have his own private stretch of jungle? Sure. Why not.