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He nodded absentmindedly at her comment. He knew that the crystals would need to be cut and polished.
"What?" Morgan mumbled as his mind moved away from the mental engineering required for the crystals. He slipped the crystals into a zippered pocket, and closed it. His mind processed her words a moment later.
"It is." he agreed.
She smiled absently, and nodded to him. "If you would create the light for the way out? It is good practice at holding your concentration while being able to do other tasks at the same time."
Serena slowly picked up her pack, feeling a bit mentally exhausted.
"I can manage that." Morgan said with conviction, but not total confidence. If it had to be done, he could find a way to do it. He reached out with the Force, not to manipulate, but to examine his surroundings. The walls responded in kind, with splashes of color that shifted as they moved through the area. They carefully worked their way back out of the cave, although a little faster than when they had come in. Morgan's strong spacial sense and memory was an able guide.
Once outside Serena turned to say something to Morgan, but was suddenly struck blind. She froze in place, one hand outstretched for balance, as the Force opened her eyes to another place. Darkness was within it, a place of metal and transparisteel. The hum of engines bent to their work filled her ears, but it was the two cloaked figures before her that held her transfixed. They did not see her, their backs were turned, and she could tell nothing about them except that they were bathed in the Dark side.
She managed to wrench her eyes upward and a large Alliance logo was painted on the bulkhead with indecipherable words beside it. A Rebel ship. With a gasp, as though she had been holding her breath under water, Serena stumbled, going to a knee and finding herself in the sunlight on the mountainside.
Morgan's oversized hands were on Serena before she toppled over completely, although she had managed to catch herself before landing on her face. She had been with him, and then, for a flash, her presence had been somewhere else.
"Are you alright?" He asked. Her face was a mix of confusion and concern. Serena had not processed the event yet.
She shook her head gently, stray hairs from her braid loosening and tickling her face. "I... I had a vision." Serena frowned, troubled. "I cannot say if it was the future or the past I saw."
Dark siders in the Alliance is not the past. She looked up at her padawan, and her lips curled in a soft smile. "I will meditate on it later. Sometimes these things do not make sense at first."
He saw that she did not wish to speak on it further, and simply helped her up to her feet. Some of the excitement of finding the gems had disappeared, but as they returned to the tree line she prompted him to bring them out and view the crystals in the sunlight before it set for the night.
"They are beautiful," she pronounced. "You will craft a fine lightsaber, I am sure of it."
Morgan frowned. Something in the vision had bothered her enough that she needed time to sort it, or it had been bad enough that...
...well, that would be bad. Her words brought Morgan back into the present, though, and he contemplated their physical structures. He lifted them up to the rays on sunshine that flitted through the trees, and noted how they condensed and focused normal sunlight alone. His brain had already figured out where they should be located in the handle he had made, how the focusing was going to work, how they would need to be cut and polished.
"Speaking as someone without any experience, I think these are near perfect." There was a hint of surprise in his voice, but part of him knew it was time he had a lightsaber.
"And then we can start your combat training. Though Sol would be a better teacher than I," she said with a soft smile. "I am adequate, but he is a master of the lightsaber."
Serena picked her way down the slope, feeling more sure footed the farther in the past her vision became. Still, it troubled her - but it was not today's trouble, of that she was sure. Tomorrow, perhaps, or even yesterday, but today they were not going to be affected by what she'd seen.
"We'll have to talk to him about it." He agreed.
Morgan smiled a little. It would be good to add another tool to the chest. He used to rely on his speed and strength while fighting, probably more than he should. Adia had taught him more. Like her, he had excellent muscle memory and picked it up quickly. Adia was terrific with a blaster, though. She'd achieved a oneness with the weapon that he doubted he could ever match.
Aided with gravity and improved knowledge of the terrain, they picked their way back down the mountain much faster than up it. When they stopped again for snacks, Morgan spoke.
"I know you're still making sense of that vision, but I know that look you got. It wasn't good news." Morgan said after a swallow and before another bite.
She was nibbling halfheartedly at some nuts, and almost gratefully stopped when her padawan asked his question. Serena looked upward, and took a deep breath. "I saw two dark figures on the bridge of an Alliance vessel. Dark with a capital D, that is. They seemed to be black holes - drinking in any light source and swallowing it."
She met Morgan's eyes, and hers were worried. "Since my time with the Empire I do not know if I can trust the visions that come to me. I feel that this was the Force, showing me this, but perhaps it was not. Maybe it is a residual nightmare from the drugs that were being used on me..."
Morgan paused in though, his jaws closed with the ration bar between his teeth. He resumed a slow chew. He mulled through the best way to put it.
"I sensed that you were not here for a moment. Not that I know why, but I don't think it was drug induced."
Serena stared off into the trees silently, a ration bar half eaten in her hand. "I think you are right, Morgan. Though it would make me feel better to think that it was, if that makes any sense."
Darkness in the Alliance was not good. Not good for the Rebels and certainly not good for the Jedi. She would need to talk to the Council about this vision when they returned to the Wheel.
"Well, one is fiction, the other is real. Fiction's easier." Morgan said.
They were wordless for the rest of the journey, their spirits dampened somewhat by Serena's vision. Even Morgan noted the distant dread. When they arrived at the village, they were greeted.
Morgan was glad the village was still there.
Their reception was much the same as the day before, and Serena allowed herself to be distracted by a horde of children while Morgan and Sol made preparations for their departure. The youngsters' happy faces and cheerful spirits helped clear the trouble from her mind.
After an hour of play she visited the house where Sol had set up the medical supplies they had brought. A handful of women were there whom he had obviously trained on the use of the equipment, and Serena set about working with them. Writing labels for the various medicines and supplies in the native language took a lot of time - she had completed some on the trip to the planet, but she sat down now to write more detailed instructions.
Before she knew it darkness had fallen.
Morgan had helped Serena with the labeling, since he was familiar enough with the language, but he left the instructions to her. He knew the spoken language far better than the written one.
The evening meal that they had upon returning was much more sedate than the one the first night, with simpler fare and quieter conversations. Morgan excused himself after people had started to trickle away, and managed to sneak back to the ship for some equipment to polish the crystals. Sleep wasn't an option at this point, not when he was so close to completing his saber.
In a mountainous landscape, the morning sun came in fits and starts, building up like water behind a dam until it was high enough to spill over the mountaintops and into the sculpted valleys below. When Solomon woke up, the village was still in shadow, and there was still a chill in the air that made him reach for his nerfhide coat as he rose from his bed. The woman of the family he was staying with was already up and offered him a cup of something spiced and steaming; he drank it, thanked her warmly, and then ventured out into the cool of the morning to find a place to meditate on the Book of the Faith.
He hadn't gone far when he heard Morgan's voice biting off a Nar Shaddan curse from a nearby shed followed by something small and metallic skittering away over a hardened clay floor. The preacher stepped inside and found a tiny capacitor rolling to a stop under the toe of his boot. He called the little component into his hand with the Force and met Morgan's eyes.
"Now, you're either up very early or very late," he said, offering the capacitor back to the padawan.
"Late." Morgan said, and sounded a little grumpier than intended. He shook his head and gave Sol an apologetic smile. The older Jedi nodded and handed the tiny capacitor back to him.
"Thanks. I ran into some problems with energy regulation. The handle was going to end up mostly hollow but the charge this pair of crystals hold it'll take double the capacitors. They're each about 3/4 of the size of a regular crystal, well, compared to the sabers I've had a chance to look at. I found the things about a quarter meter apart but they're a matched pair." Morgan shrugged. Sol knew better than he did on how strangely the Force worked its ways. Morgan's fingers began to work again, the smooth practiced movements of an experienced technician that flowed from tool and component to an assembly state and back again. It was very meditative, if not conventionally.
"If you can feed them enough power fast enough in that first millisecond the whole lights up like a tibanna refinery fire. First time I tried it the initial capacitors were so drained it would take a week of trickle-charging for them to chemically stabilize again. Thing is, they're really efficient once you get that jolt in." Morgan stated as he soldered the last capacitor to the power regulation line, soundly part of a sub-assembly that would go into the base of the handle and could be easily removed if something went wrong. Each subsection of the saber neatly snapped into the next one like CEC parts into a YT series freighter. It slid into Morgan's slightly oversized handle, well suited to his oversized hands. Morgan pointed the end away from harm, and flipped the switch. Nothing happened.
"Hahahah. I forgot the power cell." He removed a screw, unscrewed the bottom and slid the power cell home and reassembled it.
"Now that I've made a suitable ass of myself..." Morgan pressed the activation switch. A brilliant golden blade with a tinge of orange lept from the hilt and hummed quietly as the plasma and containment field interacted with the air.
Solomon watched in fascination as Morgan threaded the pieces of his new weapon together. As a rule, he wasn't the most technically inclined, but every Jedi knew how to appreciate the craft and dedication that went into a lightsaber. It was a unique expression of its creator's mind and soul and will. Morgan's was - as could be expected - more ingenuity than art, fashioned with scavenged components and second-hand tools, and yet, like the paired crystals in the focusing chamber, it was so much more than the sum of its parts, a perfect unity of form and function.
"It looks to me like you did just fine," Solomon said with a smile of admiration. "A lot of Padawans would never have attempted a twin-crystal configuration on their first saber. I think you'll find the blade more stable, a little more solid, with a little less spring."
Good for Djem So, was his next thought, but he didn't want to prejudice Morgan away from his master's style.
"It's a beautiful blade. Have you had a chance to test it?"
"No, this the first time it worked. I had to redesign the power system last night because of the added start-up draw." Morgan gave the blade an experimental wiggle. Wom wom wom. With the limited space, Morgan gave a careful chop, a careful swing, and then turned the saber off.
"It feels..." Morgan paused, searching for the right word. "...solid." He said, after recalling his brief experiences with other lightsabers.
He offered the deactivated weapon to Sol.
Solomon took the weight of the finished saber in his hand with all the respect it deserved. The scaled-up handle was roughly the same size as his own, but it was lighter without the shockstick attachment Solomon had added to his own saber for the sake of plausible deniability. The balance point was farther forward, too, a better fit for two-handed wielding, and there was plenty of room on the long handle for Morgan to take his choice of grips.
He checked his clearance at the emitter nozzle and ignited the blade. The surge of power was palpable the moment the golden-orange plasma beam hissed to life; he felt it through the palm of his hand and up into his arm to the shoulder. A little too live for his liking, but then for Morgan that kind of feedback could only cement the connection between weapon and wielder.
Solomon extinguished the blade and handed it back to the padawan. "You've done good work," the preacher said. "I'd help you put it through its paces, but I'm sure you're dead on your feet."