Unleashing the River

[Ashin Varanin]

One of her old masters had taken her to an isolated part of Varunda IX, fifteen years back. They'd walked ten miles along the kind of country road delineated by two deep parallel ruts. The errands purpose had escaped Ashin's memory, but the road had struck her as a metaphor for the two paths of training. One learned best by studying both alone and with a master. The temptation was to view those as separate paths, and indeed for some partnerships the needed to be. But this time around, her training under Spencer and her self-directed learning had brought her to the same point.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Spencer was waiting on the final test; Ashin understood that. Believed it, anyway, because in her own heart of hearts she considered herself ready. But Spencer knew her better than she knew herself, hubris and all.

Regardless of the appropriateness of Spencer's chosen timing for Ashin's master trial, Ashin was administering her own tests. She'd set herself a task, before her severing but after the decision. The task centered on a certain volcano on Aza'zoth, not far from the ruins of the forge. Within that volcano resided the last teacher to whom she would stand accountable, ultimately. Spencer's would be the voice that proclaimed her a Master again, certainly, but the volcano held another voice, an older voice. In some ways, it was even more familiar to Ashin than Spencer's; she could hear it in her head.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The core of the task lay in reaching her instructor. The path, and there was only one path, wound up through magma-drenched spires, switchback by switchback. Adiabatic shielding kept her safe from volcanic fumes, though not the rotten egg stink that would permeate her skin and hair for days.

Adiabatic shielding, a Padawan technique, was the least of her task's components, but holding a two-pound weight for an hour still bordered on impossible. To that psychic weight she added the tapas-tutaminis necessary to overcome the furious heat. Two powers at once stretched her in disheartening ways. There'd been a time, and not long ago, when she could have blotted out the fumes and the heat, and still kept enough concentration to fight your average Master (not an especially high standard, but still).

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Master standard was three. With grim amusement, she recalled how much her instructor had to offer on the subject. Catch-22 was the term, or near enough, but that term was bound up in the choice of hope or despair in the face of a deeply flawed, absurd universe. Key difference here: all absurdity was of her own invention.

She'd saved her specialty for last. A faint nimbus of greenish distortion oscillated to life around each limb and appendage. As she ascended the volcano, it shuddered its way to malevolent life. Rocks and gobbets of lava rolled down from the sulfurous clouds that wreathed the crown of the mountain. Nature's projectiles - though on this world one could never know - rattled off her shielding.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The tapas form of tutaminis centered on control of one's own body temperature. She'd mastered it in days gone by, to a snowstorm-in-skivvies level, but this time around her skillset was much more focused. Now, it was the best she could do to keep from sweating herself into a dehydrative coma. On the plus side, she could relegate it to the back of her mind same as she had for, oh, a decade now. She'd had the opportunity to really dig deep with tapas on a certain snow moon, where she'd met...

For a long moment, she couldn't even remember his name. He'd been her first rival, her first ally, really her first everything -- yes, including what you're thinking right now. Dax -- no, Jek -- no.

She wracked her brain, maintaining the three variants of shielding, and continued up the switchbacked trail. She'd loved him, eight, ten years ago. She'd sacrificed herself for him, abandoned him to keep him safe, trusted him with her soul when the Sith poison grew too much. And now here she was, almost two Masteries, two bodies and a marriage later, and his name absolutely escaped her.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

He'd been older than her, one of the strong Knights who never accepted Mastery -- a man of balance, carrying one blue lightsabre and one red in a sort of hamfisted symbolism. They'd taken down Kishkumen together on Kothlis. He'd been there when-

When her first Padawan killed Kishkumen and died for it. Temap, that was the name, the Padawan's name anyway, and for a heart-stopping moment she hadn't been able to recall that either. How divorced was she from that past self that-

Tam. Tamzar Ranox. A former colonel in one of the early Imperial foundation factions. Graying hair at the temples, twice her age, widower, children dead. They'd travelled together for a long time before she imposed herself on him, trying to deal with the Shadow Poison in her blood. Old memories, those. Those were the days when she'd taught herself to be steel and stone, and Tam Ranox had helped her as best he could.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

She avoided the sides of the trail almost by instinct, her mind caught between a handful of tasks, all vital in one way or another. Because now she was remembering the teacher who awaited her. She remembered the mobile Sith praxeum called the Storm blessed. She remembered the virtues of public service instilled in Centrality agents, the Sith of their space. She remembered Sannasa Moth and Feak Moral and the first time she'd met Asemir Lor'kora and the first time she'd lied to Velok's face. She remembered bring First Apprentice to Sirella Valkner, even as a Master, while the Second Apprentice slot was filled by a little girl named Rave Merrill.

She remembered radiation poisoning, Garrett G. Granth, the black hole's accretion disc. She remembered Charon, Sivter's mind, the way La-Reia's crystal had been created and the sound it made when it shattered in her hands. She remembered what she'd made it into, and the alleys of Trevel'ka, and the first time she'd walked through a Force Storm.

She remembered things she'd never lived. Eight centuries of Je'gan Olra'rn's memories. A minuye or a month or a year apiece from the billion souls she'd taken from Moridin. She remembered eternity between bodies. She remembered the promise she'd made to the Five.

So much life, and most of it even before Spencer. So many triumphs and so many times failed.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The reverie preserved and entrenched the three powers' patterns in her mind, helped her sustain them, if not quite at the level she'd have preferred. The fumes clogged her sinuses, sweat rolled down even as she drained her water bottle, and the rocks that made it through -- they hurt. The volcano slope was hot to the touch; at this point, it required her to climb with both hands and feet.

With a strangled gasp, she got up over the edge, and there the teacher waited.

The red pyramid flared to life as she knelt before it, at the rim of the volcano. The gatekeeper was a pale human woman, her eyes an unnatural blue-white, missing several fingernails.

"I am Ashin Varanin. Speak."

"I am Ashin Varanin. Darth Ashera, then Darth Desmius. Ori'Vod of the Vagrant Fleet, Grand Admiral Shira Karrde of the Fringe, wife to the Lost Queen of Eshan, Watchman of Korriban. I have walked with the Five. Open to me."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Kneeling by the edge of the caldera, one slip away from incineration, she offered herself a deal.

She gave the holocron a full account of her journeys, reformations, of her visit to the Five Priestesses and what she'd learned there. She gave the holocron a full account of her voluntary Force severing at the great convocation on Sigma Station. She gave the holocron her life as Ibaris' mother - at last - and as Watchman of Korriban. She gave the holocron her fight with Odium, her reawakened addiction, her fury at herself, and the measures that Spencer had taken to help her regain some semblance of control. She gave the holocron the sum of her allegiances, and laid out her reforged skillset.

In return, the holocron gave her what she already knew, but in detail she had forgotten. Her specialty had grown from Force protection to Force Weapon to a full-body variant of the latter, coming full circle to reinforce the first. That was what she sought, the technique that only she had ever mastered. She'd taught Spencer and Alen Na'Varro, but she was its creator, and now, after a long journey living beneath her privileges, she intended to prove to herself that this was in her power again.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

She took a breath and held it...and let the burden off her shoulders. The three protections faded away, leaving her in scorching heat. Aza'zoth lived, and the volcano wanted her. She drained her water bottle, forcing herself to breathe slowly.

Serenity, a cold hard silence, filled her mind in a process of breathtaking familiarity. This was her, not the reaver, not the hesitant, reactionary dogooder with the persecution complex. This was the Ashin Varanin that made no apologies, no excuses, no compromises.

This was the Ashin Varanin who had been master of Force Drain's hunger, not mastered by it.

As the holocron spoke, she got to her feet.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

There was no more need for supplication, for qualification, for hesitance. Nothing stood between her and what was hers -- the power that she had created, that she had perfected not so long ago.

A colorless nimbus of distorted air took form around her, and she stepped out onto the lava.

Each footstep crafted solid, red-hot rock from the glowing surface, with a sound like the stone was cracking. Smoke rose around her in scalding gouts. One step at a time, treasuring the cold in her heart and the shield of calm certainty around her body, she walked to the center of the caldera. Only the exact center would do, thought she couldn't say why. It was much like walking up the infernal pass on Atrisa.

This, she said to herself, looking around the volcano -- this is what I've sacrificed everything for. I am untouchable.

It was a silly thought, in its way; she'd never have voiced it so poorly framed. In polite conversation she'd have added qualifiers, used other words, because she understood that polite conversation did not have to reflect the truth in her heart. The truth comprised her return.

The magma supported her all the way back. At last, Aza'zoth recognized its master.