Bankor

Sister Mazakin had said any who sought the Way were welcome, so Garth headed back to the Dark Sky Shrine, back to the waterfall under which he was meditating the previous day, and sought his centre again.

D8 MM Discipline fluff: 2eA+1eP+2eD 1 success, 1 threat

He'd been at it for about half an hour when something shook him out of his trance...something big.

Looking around, Garth wondered if the monks had felt it too or just him?

"What the...."

There appeared to be no monks around. Much worse, there was nobody around, nobody that the man was able to sense. Was he alone now? Did everyone fade away?

---

GM Destiny Flip!

Make a Discipline (Willpower) Check again at Daunting Difficulty.

Garth started to panic, he felt suddenly very alone, and abandoned. He;d never had a big support network, and he'd always been very self reliant and independent.

It started to raise the hairs on the back of his neck and he felt...nothing.

D8 MM Daunting Discipline: 2eA+1eP+4eD 3 failures, 1 advantage

A creeping darkness seemed to envelop everything around him. At the very least, he was able to sense it was not real, at least not physically. "Nobody has taught you true strength. Alone, you learned trivial tricks, but you could be stronger."

And nothing was very, very scary.

"We could all be stronger." Garth replies, hoping his voice was stronger than his will. "We could all be weaker, until our path is done, we could all be many things."

"You could even be dead." A hideous laugh reverberated through the chamber, through the man's ears. "Weakness begets more weakness. Come." Part of the darkness moved away, indicating the path forward.

"Dead would def'nitely be th' end of a path." Garth mumbles out loud, determined not to follow the creepy voice. "But ah ain't weak." He spoke a little louder against the darkness.

But despite his best intentions his feet refused to follow his commands and they stepped along the newly revealed path.

"No one accepts they are weak, not until they are at the brink. Beaten." The darkness led him to the edge of the shrine, overlooking the edge, another abyss. "What do you see out there?"

"Beaten? Ah ain't never been beaten." Garth grins at the darkness, a moment of hope amid the swirling sea of despair.

Against his better judgment, Garth peers into the emptiness, temporarily buoyed by his stand against the darkness. But maybe that's what it wanted all along, to instill him with that false sense of bravado, to encourage his vanity and pride to guide his decisions.

"Ah see...emptiness, darkness, nothing."

The darkness abated for a few moments from his remark. But it lingered back to him, as if he looking over his shoulder. "Should it not be more than nothing, then?"

Garth was getting sick of these word games. "Y' ask wut ah see, an' ah tell ya." He growls at the disembodied voice as the tattoo he bears seemed to heat up slightly.

"Y' wanna play riddle games, then find someone with more patience then me. What SHOULD ah be seein' out thar?"

"It is nothing. But you can make it more."

"Can't make somethin' outta nothin'. Even ah know that." Garth sighs as he shakes his head.

"Maybe their way ain't mah way either."

"What has your way earned you? You are subservient. Why are you not in charge?"

Garth laughs, loudly seeming to draw strength from the simple act.

"Ah ain't in charge cos ah dun wanna be." He rebukes the spirit. "There's some meant t' lead an' some meant t' follow. Ah'm in charge o' me an that's enough for this little black duck."

"Disappointing. You think of yourself as mere cattle to be herded." The darkness crept out over the edge, seemingly leaving the man to his own devices.

"Nah," Garth speaks softly as he sits at the edge. "Is just th' opposite, ah don' think of anyone as cattle."

The young pilot gazes out into the expanse and feels, perhaps strangely, more at peace with himself at thst realization than he had been before.

The life around him seemed to come back into focus. The tremor still lingered in the distance but the strike force was still there. The monks were still about.

Garth tried hard to slow his breathing, but the thin sheen of sweat over his near naked body betrayed the intensity of the encounter.

Sitting back under the waterfall, he let the waters soothe his flesh as he considered why him, why, with so many Jedi around, the darkness sought his soul. Maybe it would be something to ask Tethys about later.