The Folly Of Calayis

Chapter 1 - Pace Avers, Jedi Master

Fear...? No.

Anger...? Perhaps.

Hatred...?

Yes, hatred. My first new memory. I am reborn in it, I am its friend, its child. I am hatred.

Hatred of what?

Life? No, I AM alive. It is more than that.

Hatred for those who did this to me. Those who betrayed me! Yes.

But that is still not all.

I am hatred of something else. Something powerful, binding, absolute.

Hatred of... the Force.

Yes. The Force, which betrayed me most of all. The Force, which even now gives me cruel, treacherous life.

Well, if the force wants me alive, then I will turn its cruel gift upon itself.

Yes, I see it already. There is a mind. I must reach it.

Reach. REACH...

* * *

Pace Avers scratched at his wrist again mindlessly, as he tried again to visualise each step in the sequence of events to come. The sequence of events he hoped would come, he corrected himself.

A large tunnel viper slithered over his boot and he shivered, watching the scales pulsate and ripple as they shifted to a mix of dark greys and browns. It didn't acknowledge Pace, just licked the air behind him, pausing for a moment with its head above the ground searching, then slithered back down towards the forest floor. Pace turned his attention inward to keep himself from feeling or showing any kind of panic. He was not overly fond of snakes. Yet, he realised, bitterly, that they were somehow on just about every planet with any reasonable excuse for life.

Pace shivered again.

Disappearing under the carpet of leaves and spongy growths, Pace saw the viper's colors oscillate until they once again matched the muted greens and browns of the surrounding soil and moss, and the giant flake-barked pines looming in all directions. Even here, only several steps from the edge of the trees, it felt no different to when he had visited the heart of the forest. The trees were spaced no thinner, and the forest life was just as much a thick, teeming tapestry of deadly insects, snakes, lizards, and birds weaved deceptively between the branches and leaves, and the rocky, mossy, fungus-covered ground.

Pace suppressed a swallow, and mentally congratulated himself on his mostly calm state of mind. He needed to project absolute confidence from this point onward if things had any hope of going smoothly.

Unlike the viper, when Pace soon changed and adapted his colors, he would need to stand out, rather than blend in.

He took one last deep breath, held it for a short moment, then let it out, willing all his anxiety and apprehension to flow out with it. He tapped his ear twice to activate the tiny comlink beneath the surface of his skin.

"Alright, Bee, I'm going..." Pace faltered, "...up there." Idiot. He waved his hand pointlessly at the forest edge and finished, "To the temple."