Stranger Times

The Burden of Balance

A moment longer spent observing, and Kreia realized she made a mistake. His sneer was a mixture of disappointment and haughty, untested confidence. His stance was too relaxed to defend himself from a sudden attack, he would trip over his own boots if she surprised him. His gaze was unfocused, his mind unengaged, and the surface of his thoughts were entirely too easy to read.

Kreia had misjudged him, by thinking of him as a man. This was a boy.

"You're blind," the tall stranger said, as Kreia stepped off the Ebon Hawk.

"Yet I see more than you," Kreia replied, stepping past him. Whoever the boy was, Kreia suspected he was on an errand for someone else. She took the moment to gaze out at the horizon, at this world that seemed both more and less real than anything she had ever seen.

And permeating all of it, was the Force. So much stronger than anything Kreia had ever seen before, even the heart of places like Malachor, the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, Ossus, or Korriban. To call such places nexuses of power, after looking at this world, was to try and call fog water.

"What do you call this place?" Kreia asked.

"Prison," the boy replied, his glib response failing to mask the bitterness in his voice. He turned away, and started walking. "I suppose I should take you to Father."

"Father?" Kreia asked.

"Yes. I don't think you're the one he's expecting, but in a way, that makes you more interesting," the boy said. He looked her up and down once, and sighed. "Well, a little interesting."

"Perhaps you're here to judge us?" the boy wondered aloud, as he started to walk down a path. "Like you, justice is blind. But I don't know how you'll hold the scales and the sword with only one hand."

Kreia scowled, and her fingers twitched again as she held her hand near her lightsaber. "Is this really all there is to you, boy?" She asked.

The boy flinched as if she had slapped him. Giving him a sneer of her own, Kreia continued. "I see the Force in you. It swirls like the accretion disk of a black hole, hate and rage, passion and fury, and so much raw power that you could humble the greatest Sith, and bring low the mightiest Jedi. Who you are reaches far beyond this world, and this simpering man-child is all you're capable of being?"

Kreia glanced back at him, and pointed her finger at him. "For your sake, hope I am not here to judge you."

The boy sputtered angrily and stalked towards her, pointing his finger inches from her face. "You don't know a thing about me, blind crone!

Kreia stared ahead, at a tall tower beyond the next valley. A single, massive crystal shone from just above it. "If that's where this Father of yours is? If it is, I can make it there on my own."

The boy scowled, and turned away. "Find shelter before nightfall. The storms can be deadly." The boy then took two steps, and in a flash of swirling black mist, turned into a nightmarish winged creature and took to the sky.

Kreia scowled in disgust, and followed the path.

*****

The path down the mountain was steep and treacherous, almost needlessly so. Kreia suspected the trail was a metaphor of some kind, but Kreia suspected this entire world was just a metaphor for the relationship between the various aspects of the Force.

At the bottom of the path, before a clearing, another figure waited. A woman, reserved and patient, she hardly fidgeted as she waited the long minutes it took Kreia to finally descend. As Kreia approached, the woman nodded politely, and said, "Jedi. The Father is curious about how you found your way to this realm, and has asked me to escort you to him."