The Last Jedi

Forty


Jax sat cross-legged beneath the apex of the cairn, eyes open, hand and mind cradling the planes and vertices of the Sith Holocron. He felt the Force rise up within him, quivering in the twilight that wrapped around him like a soft cloak. With questing tendrils of sense he prodded at the artifact’s locks—following the sigils on the incised planes.

He trembled as the liquid warmth of blood ran from the Holocron to pool in the palm of his hand before cascading to the rock on which he sat.

The Holocron responded just as he had suspected it would—as he followed the tracery of arcane symbols with his senses, the caps on the vertices turned, one after the other, the one at the apex last of all.

The Holocron opened like a blossom and revealed the data crystal within.

The soft, musical chanting that had filled the ruined chamber ceased. Jax lowered his left hand, looking up to meet the gazes of the three women who knelt with him, their hands joined above the Holocron, their blood mingled with his on its etched surfaces.

They withdrew their hands and Duala made quick work of binding first Augwynne Djo’s wounds, then Magash’s. Magash returned the favor, wrapping her sister’s hand before turning her attention to Jax.

Jax barely felt her ministrations. His entire focus was on the open fountain of knowledge in his hand; he couldn’t have looked away if he’d tried. The Holocron had him, and was pouring its Force-sealed contents into his mind. A thousand lights pulsed; a thousand voices whispered, a thousand tendrils of the Force attached themselves to his spirit—to his mind.

He was drowning in the flood of knowledge, and he could not look away.

“Is it readable, Jedi?”

Duala Aidu’s voice came to him as if from a great distance.

Readable? He almost laughed. The physical crystal, he had no doubt, could be inserted into a holoreader, granting the user access to some of the more mundane information it contained. But this river of knowledge was meant only for the Force-user who had opened it—a Force-user Darth Ramage would have assumed must be aligned with the dark side to even contemplate the act he believed necessary to open his cache.

Jax doubted Ramage could have imagined that a group of Force-users would freely cooperate and commingle their lifeblood to that end.

“He is reading it, child,” Augwynne Djo murmured. She leaned toward him, staring intently into his face.

Jax saw her through a veil of amber light, her own Force energies seeming to form a bright halo around her. He wanted to thank her, but he could neither speak nor move. He concentrated on the flow of images, ideas, experiments. Surely there must be a way of choosing the sort of information that might be of benefit to him. Or at least of sorting through it to winnow it out.

Fear niggled at him. What if he couldn’t understand what he was being fed? What if there was too much? What if there was, after all, nothing of use to him?

Pain shot through his head.

Breathe!

The command seemed to come from within and without simultaneously.

No fear. No ignorance. No chaos. Only the Force. Breathe.

He breathed, opening himself to the knowledge, letting it flow through him, over him, into him, without attempting to sort it or filter it or impede it. He was a bottomless pool being filled with water. He offered no resistance to the flood.

With the suddenness of a door slamming shut, the flow of information ceased. Jax knew a moment of silent, dark stillness before he lost consciousness.