Find The Broken Trail

Not a one of the crystals would be adequate. The Empire had put training saber crystals in a warehouse. k'Vik wished they had been left in whatever youngling's bin they had been found in. She hurled the latest purple failure into the deck of her Lambda shuttle. The crystal bounced off the floor, off one of her storage lockers and then wedged itself against an air circulation vent.

"Nggggghhhhhhh!" She raged. " Another wondrous instance of the Empire grabbing nearly useless things and proffering them as valuable."

Mili paced the deck.

Ilum? Perhaps? The Jedi Order stated that one "tainted by the Dark Side of The Force" would be rejected, but they had either lied or did not know. She hummed to herself as she attempted to pull up Ilum in the navicomp. No record was found. Mili knew that it had been an icy, cold planet. Even as a youngling she'd been on the slim side, and remembered both the bite of cold and rush of getting her crystal. More, she remember the relief of leaving the cold behind.

What Milivikal needed was a library, with either extensive astrological survey resources or Jedi documents. The Temple on Coruscant had been long sacked and was extensively monitored. No. Dantooine? Too damaged in the Great Sith War. What was left had been relocated to Coruscant. She drummed on the arms of the pilot's chair. The Empire had been effective at removing Jedi history from public access. The problem vexed her for hours. She took a brief nap. She read. She ate an apple and stared into the stars through the transparisteel.

"Corus-cant, Dantooooo-eeen, further Jedi explored,
Yet from history, beeeeen removed and ignored,

All I need is the glow, the hum
All I want is crystalline
All the focus..."

"Ossus."

Mili put the coordinates in for Ossus, and the computer began to calculate a course. It would take a day to get there.

She awoke to the sound of the proximity alarm. The swirling blue of hyperspace broke into star lines, and then realspace. Ossus loomed in the distance, with only Nerit visible. A few minutes passed. k'Vik was enjoying the quiet. She startled when the comm crackled to life.

"Unidentified shuttle, this is Ossus Control. Please transmit ID codes and state your business."

"Oh." She said aloud, to herself. Mili fumbled for another second and opened the comm system.

"I hoped to see the Library. Sending code transmission now." She reached next to the comm controls, and slid open a panel. There was a sequence of switches, all of which were set in the same direction. She toggled the top one, and briefly opened the comm again. It would show as a decommissioned Delta shuttle sold into private hands, rated for cargo use.

"Thank you Delta shuttle. Follow the guide beacons for landing."

Mili was again surprised. Who was here on Ossus? She followed the nav guidance, and it put her in a settlement that had just experienced dusk.

While her blind eyes couldn't tell her the ebbs and flow of day and night, Serah's Force sense, inherited from her Miraluka mother, gave her indications, tremors of the changes in the wind and in the auras she felt from the life around her. She smiled as she smelled the breeze that gently blew through the trees surrounding the path she was walking. There was the faint scent of almonds, promising of a future harvest. She had never smelled almonds that had this particular note of something almost honey-like. It was hard to describe; but it was what she associated with the Enclave when thinking about her new home.

The teenager had now been on Ossus for a couple of months, living at the edge of the Order, finding her place with more difficulty than she had expected; but knowing it was where she was supposed to be nonetheless. She wasn't sure that spending significant time in the hangar, helping with some maintenance work on coming and going ships, was what a padawan was supposed to do; but so be it. She had given her word she'd become a servant of the Light, and live on Ossus. Time would tell how such a journey would continue unfolding.

Humming a tune to herself, the brunette sank her hands in her pockets, for the path was familiar and wide enough that she needed not to be on her guard. She had decided to spend a few hours a week in the library since the previous one; even though not everything was friendly to the visually impaired. She had tinkered with some of her own datapad and some of the workstations of the library, to transcribe free of access matter, so she could listen to the texts. It wasn't that she could do much about them so far, for much was history that went a bit above her head; but she hadn't found some more basic stuff yet. Maybe there was nothing such as basic stuff around here in the first place.

Pursing her lips, she sighed and carried on for a few more meters. Then she felt a disturbance. It was no threat; but something that tugged at her senses right before she climbed up the staircase leading to the main lobby of the library. Stopping on her tracks, she let the Force guide her focus in the near perimeter, wondering what or rather who she had sensed.

k'Vik was surprised at the level of activity near the ancient library. She expected it to be in ruin, but a small community had sprung up near it. A large cargo ship had been converted into a more permanent fixture. Like mushrooms on a log, fabric awnings grew off the ship. Mili could hear them rustle in the breeze. Behind the walls, people of various ages, sizes and pitches went about their evening. Glowglobes had been strategically placed across and between the populated areas, but were just bright enough to illuminate the paths between. Even in the transitioning twilight, the stars had started to twinkle.

The dropping temperature urged Mili to pull her light jacket a little tighter. She picked her way over the hardpan, cautious to not trip in the dim light, but also she was giving herself a chance to examine the Jedi's new circumstance. She neared the Library. It's fascia had been recently repaired. The doors were open. A warm light glowed across the steps up. The Temple on Coruscant had felt clinical and sterile compared to this, she noted when she crossed the threshold. Mili was pulled out of her comparative contemplation by approaching footsteps.

Serah rounded the corner. Mili paused, and noticed the absence of tracking from the girl's eyes. k'Vik concluded that she must be hard of sight, but that mattered little to one gifted in the Force.

"Ah, hello." Milivikal said in a crisp Coruscanti accent, her tone polite. "Is there a catalogue or index?"

The nights on Uyter used to be colder than those on Ossus, at least outside of winter. She had never experienced the cold season on Ossus yet; so she couldn't compare. She liked the atmosphere for the most part though, even though she still felt stuck in the liminal space between outsider and actual member of the Order. She still felt more comfortable like that than trying to push to carve a hole into the Order, so to speak.

She felt the presence draw closer and through her perceptions constructed an image of the other woman in her mind. She never really knew how true those were; but her aura was kind of silvery, an unusual one. It piqued her curiosity, even though she couldn't place the accent. Accents were funny things to the teenager, because of how sensitive she was to voices and sounds generally speaking. Sound and touch were senses that physically heightened since her childhood to make up for her blindness.

Of course her Miraluka heritage helped her navigate around better than other species who were visually impaired; but she still appreciated the way her body had picked things up to adjust, and she had made sure to do her best to be proactive about such things too.

"Hello. Yes there is an index. I can show it to you."

She turned on her heels and carefully made her way towards one of the large study rooms on the main floor. She knew where the terminals were. If the woman had been allowed on Ossus and was roaming freely, she saw no reason to question her presence at the Library.

"I'm Serah by the way," she offered with a polite smile.

She stood by the terminal that had a multitude of holo screens attached to it, visibly helping for individuals looking for various texts and cross-reference.

"This should help you find what you are looking for."

Milivikal smiled politely, but realized that Serah could not see it. She looked the girl over: between 14 and 18, but no older than 21. Her age was clear from her voice, which only had so many hours on it. Her sensitivity in the Force and blindness was likely from Miraluka parentage, based on her skin tone and wandering eyes.

"Thank you. I am Mili." She offered, a bit stiff. k'Vik turned her focus to the catalogue. In her focused state, she hummed the melody and harmony simultaneously while she searched, and drummed the rhythm with her fingers and feet when she wasn't typing or writing. She scrawled titles and locations onto a sheet of flimsi. A pair of treatise about building lightsabers, several Galatic Atlases at various points of time, a selection of encylopedias (under I) rounded out the list.

She focused on finding the atlases first, as they might have the most direct answer.

Serah could pick on the blend of eagerness to find whatever it was the other woman was after, blended with good but curt manners. She didn't mind it. It was difficult to tell how old the other person was; but she knew she was not Hapan based on the unknown accent; and she sounded older, not necessarily in years but in having explored the world likely more than the teenager had, which was not utterly difficult. After all, Serah had mostly lived on a farm exploitation on Uyter, a world easily unknown or forgotten by its few visitors. After all, it was for its remote quality, that she had been sent there to be raised, given the danger coming after her birth parents.

"Well-met, Mili," she replied with a nod.

She didn't know so much about what Mili was looking up, and she didn't want to impose.

"I know my way around here; if you need any help. Or I can leave you to your research."

She was wiling to assist, genuinely curious about the other woman; but she guessed that an awkward semi padawan might not be the greatest help or desired company either.

Mili paused in thought. Her musical musing paused with her. There was a degree of risk involved with any action, but if she could depart sooner than later, well. Serah had a strong connection to the Force, but her efforts outside of navigation seemed unfocused. This was not her Jedi Order, that had hunted her (fair to them, with cause), but Milivikal wanted to keep her encounter with them brief and minimal: she had enough dangerous enemies in the galaxy.

"A knowledgable set of hands would be welcome, Serah. I hoped to find a planet that was not in my navicomputer, and estimated that a Jedi atlas would be a likely means to find it."

The Ex-Pilot was taking a short walk through the library, a normally calming activity for Alliera. The Mandalorian was wearing an outfit that could have her be confused with a smuggler, with the exception of the flight jacket that had numerous Tie and Imperial Sigil shapes that denoted kills. Alliera heard talking, and decided to see if she could help, or at least be some company. Alliera saw a familiar face of a Padawan, and a visitor looking over a few Atlases, and talking about finding a lost planet. "Then if it's anywhere, it's here." Alliera said, idly knocking on one of the shelves "but it may take a bit, even if the Empire didn't torch it, alot of information has been lost or buried."

"Alright," Serah added with a nod.

She put an earpiece in her right ear, and felt for a connective hub to plug her own datapad to the main work station. She had been working on the audio transcription helper for several years; but some of the tech and Jedi around the compound had been able to help her. She couldn't issue voice command; but it had been helping when navigating menus and she could use one of the service droids when on her own.

She began browsing through what Mili had already pulled up, getting an idea of what she was looking through.

"Do you have any specs on the planet that could narrow the search, whether sector, region, or even flora or fauna?"

She paused as she realized she hadn't acknowledged the other voice of whoever had joined them. It was a voice she didn't remember having heard before; but the enclave was fairly large to place everyone, between the Jedi and the Alliance personnel, without counting all the visitors.

"Hello," she offered with a smile in the general direction of the person.

She didn't want the place to get crowded, so she would of course step back in case the other Jedi, based on their particular aura, a mix of earthy deep brown for what her senses indicated, was more helpful, and quicker than she was.

"Ilum. It is somewhere in the unknown regions, on the other side of the galactic core. Or so legends say. I believe it to be an icy planet." Mili remarked. When she recalled these things, her belt felt too light. Her hip nearly ached for the extra weight of the weapon stolen by Esalis.

"I could not find any mention of it on my navicomp, nor in any public Alliance library. If there is any record of Ilum, I hope it would be here." She added, and picked up one of the atlases. k'Vik's humming resumed, and her delicate fingers cautiously plied the pages until she arrived at "Il".

Then you may also want to look for any records from Jedi that traveled a lot or even journals if you or we can find them." Alliera said, walking over to where she could see what Milivikal was doing but not being uncomfortably close.

"Illum was where Jedi got their crystals for their sabers, so a return trip with a padawan or to replace one lost or broken isn't out of the realm of the believable."

Alliera herself thought of whatever she could think of to help the visitor, and was pretty much blank. As far as she knew, the Order hadn't collectively had the ability to make the trek sense...the purge. Alarm bells rang in Alliera's mind; the purge being the cut off point of large scale Order usage of Illum would mean that the Coruscant Temple had the location of the world at some point...which meant the Empire had the location to Illum, and given that Darth Vader and the Inquisitors were/are a thing, at least someone in the Empire knew what they were doing when it came to the force...

"There's also a concern with Illum, if anyone has data on it's location that didn't stumble upon it, it's the Empire." Alliera said, in a tone of concern.

"I don't know if THEY found it, but I doubt they'd be friendly to anyone coming away with souvenir..."

Serah let the other person speak, noticing that the other Jedi hadn't even introduced themselves, despite having joined the conversation. She didn't mind anyone else potentially more helpful than she was at all, but she liked knowing people's names. It was old habits ingrained after her life on Uyter. As much as it was but a blip in the galaxy, she had appreciated how people lived there, even though nobody was perfect and violence occurred at times, like everywhere else.

She listened to what the other Jedi said, nodding as she mused over what was said.

"The borders change a lot over the years," she observed in a neutral tone. And as much as she had no lost love for the Empire, they were far from the only threat in the galaxy.

"Whether the Empire has a hold on it or not, they might not be the only ones with interest there, especially for crystals. Scientists have also used various kinds over the years for research."

She paused for a moment, searching for some more indication through the records, still familiarizing herself with them, and leaving the physical objects to read and look at to Mili and the other Jedi.

"As far as I understand the Order has recovered information from various times, so I agree that looking for journals might be a good thing, though they might be more recent than we expect."

She kept searching and then looked in the direction of the visitor.

"It appears Ilum shows up in at least two journals, and here are the references," she added pointing towards the holo projection.

Mili's nostrils flared a little as she fought her tempestuous emotions about the Empire down. The pair of plasteel daggers in her boots briefly reached a low hum. She closed her icy blue eyes and inhaled deep and slow.

"Hmph. The Empire would not welcome an unepected visitor." She chewed her lower lip, and her eyes went unfocused as her mind wandered in search of a different solution. "Illum was where Jedi got their crystals for their sabers, so a return trip with a padawan or to replace one lost or broken isn't out of the realm of the believable." k'Vik hummed a melody while she considered the flight jacketed Jedi's statement.

"When a Jedi did not go to Ilum, where else would one go?" k'Vik asked aloud.

Alliera watched the Padawan idly as she contributed her own words to the conversation, not interrupting to let the young one use her mind. "Well I don't know off the top of my head, but there should be more sources." Allliera said, grabbing a datapad that had a few transferred journals on it "Illum is in the unknown regions, so it's unlikely that it's discovery predates the invention of the Lightsaber, there had to be a source elsewhere." Alliera started thumbing through the journals, trying to find anything that would help. "The Empire destroyed alot of the Records of the Old Order, so it's going to be a bit of a scavenger hunt..." Alliera said, almos t absentmindedly as she was flipping through the digitized journals. "If you want, we also have an excess of Crystals here, I'm sure you can take one if you don't mind skipping out on the 'Quest'..."

Serah raised a brow when Mili noted that imperials wouldn't be welcoming to a random traveler. That wouldn't be surprising, given how hostile the Empire could be to anyone not in their ranks, for what she had gathered.

She didn't interrupt as the other Jedi answered the following question. She didn't have much to contribute, as she was still learning her way around the Temple in the first place, remaining at the edge of the community despite being a padawan. She had no idea that the Enclave had crystals available here, nor that they were freely offered to new visitors. It was a bit surprising; but she didn't say anything about it. The other Jedi likely knew much better than she did.

Yet she found herself curious one thing, and turned her head towards Mili.

"Is it solely a crystal you are seeking?"

Serah asked the question with the pulsar's gravity. She chewed on it for what seemed to be an eternity before her mind rattled across an old Iridonian proverb: Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

This would be vastly simpiler than finding one. And while the weapon would not be perfectly atuned as her old lightsaber was, it would work as an able substitute. Surely it could not be the that simple.

"Can you do such a thing?" She asked in a curious tone, and kept her suspicion and doubt to herself.

Alliera had been about to say yes, then she realized...this person wasn't a Jedi, meaning that her compatriots in the order may not take kindly to one of the 'Jedi Order's precious Lightsaber Crystals' going to someone they didn't know or trust. Alliera knew this in her bones, but those same bones told her she was tired of all the conflict...tired of all the fighting. The Galaxy already had enough people and groups focused on what was 'theirs', or what they wanted to be so. "Honestly, probably not...but you came peacefully, and the Galaxy has enough people hording shiny things..." Alliera said, levitating her own lightsaber so both the stranger and the Padawan could see. "Take this crystal and find some measure of peace in this galaxy for yourself, there's way too much conflict..." As Alliera spoke, her sturdy but simple lightsaber deconstructed itself with the force, bits and bobs coming off in clearly practiced precision. This continued until the Crystal was released from it's holdings and dropped into the Jedi's hand. "sorry for the theatrics, I wanted to make sure you knew I wasn't trying to trap you or something." Alliera said, as the Lightsaber quickly reconstructed itself and she offered the Crystal to the Stranger.

Serah didn't press further when Mili didn't answer her question. In a way, she hadn't really expected the visitor to. She wasn't even really sure of what help she might be now that a Knight had showed up. She was naturally happy to be of assistance; but she was just a padawan on Ossus. There were days when she had felt way more helpful even on her parents' farm back on Uyter, despite spending a lot of times by herself.

She remained quiet during what unfolded next. She didn't see what the Knight called "theatrics" but she heard the tiny hum of some lightsaber components as the other Jedi took apart and back together her weapon. Her senses had latched onto the crystal and by extension the sounds of the hilt. That was quite a feat and weirdly enough one of the things that caught her interest most about what a trained Jedi could do.

Hands folded before her, she remained several steps aside, not willing to interrupt the exchange between the other women.

Mili stared at the small compressed lump of atoms in her hand.

She had been shocked into silence. A Jedi was surrendering their perfectly good lightsaber crystal to her, a discarded member of the Order. A different Order than this one, but nontheless, the lineage was present.

The universe was a wonderous and weird place.

"There will be something for you, in the field, the morning." She managed, her tone kept even and almost mechanical. Inside, she was at a boil, overwhelmed with her fortune. She turned, and she ran at full sprint out of the library. Milivikal was unwilling to chance her luck to any potential interference. She felt lighter than air. Her footfalls were effortless as she ran.

Back at her shuttle, she located the training crystals that had been angrily discarded. Most were still present in the bag, but the ones she had thrown had to be pried out of the air vent. She laughed, and tied the bag to a stick.

The Lamba shuttle lifted off, it's blue engine emissions left Ossus behind.