Callista trudged through the Jedi refuge on Mon Cala, gold-bladed saber lit. The tip periodically brushed and sizzled against the floor, leaving burn trails every few meters along her path. She stops at the central mat of Tara’s rhythmic saber-training holo setup, and snaps on a second, bright blue saber in her off hand.
“System Failure,” she says aloud, staring ahead with intense focus. “Maximum difficulty. Engage.”
Blinding, head-spinning swirls of grief and rage, worried fear, self-admonishing guilt and anguished, shadowy… helplessness.
“The way of the Vornskr, the Ferocity form, and some Sith study a variant they’ve dubbed Vaapad. But I prefer an older name…”
“The Healer’s Stance.”
As music started, blasting at full volume and hurling holographic targets towards her at breakneck speed, Callista focused herself, and her eyes shot wide open with a level of determined concentration she’d almost never reached before… and then she threw herself into a dashing, lashing blur of blades.
Fan the flames, strengthen the Forge.
“HE WAS ONE GUY! We couldn’t stop O̢NE G̶U̕Y͜!”
While words from earlier that day swam in her head, the song’s thrashing beat fizzled and slowed to a halt. An early failure. Callista frowned and readied herself in the center once more. “Again.”
Fan the flames, they grow higher.
I am the Forge, the Forge is me…
“Jace! I said I’d ķ́í̛͡l͠͏l̴ y̴̡o̧u҉ if you died!”
The choking fog of roiling emotion and the pounding noise of the music coated the world in an all-encompassing kaleidoscope of flashes and swells of color. She could hardly see, but gradually, the turmoil in her aura was beginning to come under control as she sliced and ducked and whirled at the targets on pure, Force-guided instinct. With every strike and every line of the mantra she recited to her head, things became slightly clearer.
Cast my doubt into the fire.
Cast my fear into the fire.
“Ş͏҉̵T̶͘͠Ó̢͞P̛҉!͡͏ YOU MADE YOUR P̸̥̝̮͠O͏̗̘͘Į̛͓͔͜N̶͍̝̟̺̗̖̤͞T͚͖̟̠̻͔̘̲̻̀!̢̮̤̳̭̀”
Cast my hate into the fire.
“I̡̢̖̖͎ͅr̤͉̦̪̰̦͇̜͘a̢̰͔̬͡dt͗̌̆͊̑oͬ̍ͭͧ̅҉ǩ̃ͨ́ͬi… come on, Irad, stay with me!”
“You have to see Lenny again, you can’t leave him a͇͇̻̝̹lͧ̔́̎ͫo͇͆ͤ̓n͕̫̤̑ͣ͊̚eͯ͒̉̍͠…!”
She was most of the way through the track now on her next mistake, and it all halted with her miss. “Again!” she called and it restarted, and she carried on from the beginning again. Hard and fast and relentlessly she fought the imagined foe that the holographic targets represented. They may as well not have even been there.
Every swing of her sabers cut a swath through the painful waves of her own soul-crushing pain. She sliced away at the nibbling tendrils of darkness eating at her, urging her to just give in, to relent to the tide of anguish – to break.
“Again!” she called out as attempt after attempt failed and failed again. She’d make it halfway, then a quarter, then two thirds, then not even a tenth. “Again! Again! Again!!”
Sandra just stood there, all her energy vanished. She looked like… l͡o̵̵̷̸s̛̛̕͟͝s̢͟. All the deep blue sorrow and pain gone, replaced by deathly g̢͡r̡̕͏e̢y̢̢.
“Mana?.. MANA! Say something, damnit! Ḿ̀A͟͡҉N̵̛͠A̸͏̡͏!!”
Burn away the Dark within. Reforge the Blade of the Heart.
The fires within Callista burned hotter and hotter, a boiling core of determination bubbling brighter by the moment as she fed her emotions to the Forge. All this anger, all this guilt and shame, all this fear and suffering and grief…
“It’s sickening. It is the bile of the Dark Side. It is noxious but sweet, like the nectar of a rotting fruit. Do not drink it in.” Beryn had said in the first demonstration of Juyo he gave to Callista.
“…So that’s what Juyo is all about?” she asked, watching him move. The dizzying dance was beautiful but frightful, unpredictable, flashing between serenity and aggression. “Feeling all the terrible things you take from your opponent, but discarding them?”
The power of the Dark Side that always thrums with the heartbeat of Viscara rose in the room, as if in response to some blasphemy, but Beryn remained untouched by it. “You at last see.”
…She saw it all. She understood it all. She felt it all.
And then, letting it pass into something new and bright… she poured it all into the crucible.
It is Light. It is Balance. I am one with it.
Her hand pressed to the glass of Iradtoki’s kolto tank. The Twi’lek floated loosely inside and matched her palm to Callista’s. She was fading away. Despite the blood darkening the kolto, and the glimmers of yellow fear surrounding her as her aura dimmed, moreover she emanated… love. Gratitude. Acceptance. A peaceful halo of springtime pinks and greens.
“G̶͘o̡o̷̕db͟͠ỳ̸e͟͡, Iradtoki… I’ll… -we’ll- carry your love and empathy forward.
…Watch over us, okay…?”
Darian was locked away for his mistakes. Iradtoki was gone. Even Jacen had given his life against the Sith. Sandra… was 𝕓𝕣𝕠𝕜𝕖𝕟. She couldn’t lead the mission anymore, not in her state.
Someone would need to step up. So Callista would do it. She could do it. She had to do it.
The galaxy of overwhelming feelings spiraling around Callista flooded with morose, mourning blue, darkening everything. Shadows flitted through like billowing, misty wraiths, taunting and pulling at her very core. Callista clenched her teeth and whirled her sabers around herself. She carved the shades away one by one, hurling them and the feelings they sought to taint into the fire to be purged like cacodemons born of nightmares.
Their sacrifices… their lives… would not be wasted!
I am one with it!
The tsunami of emotion whipped and spiraled into a veritable vortex as Callista carried on and on and on, attempt after attempt at the song all while battling the true challenge that was mastery of herself. All of it was drawn in, more and more, to the Forge. Her fire burned brighter and brighter, her focus and resolve hardening like durasteel as it all coalesced into a central, white-hot point, and then…
An explosion of pure light, determination… and love.
The final targets fell, and for the first time in over an hour straight of attempting this, the holo-display read in rotating, congratulatory text: [STAGE COMPLETE].
Her body screamed at her in protest. Her lungs burned. Her legs shook. She felt ready to vomit. But as she watched the vibrant color of her newfound certainty, Beryn’s words echoed to her again.
“Compassion is what keeps the walls of the Forge strong,” Beryn told her, the first day of teaching her the Form.
Callista’s eyes wandered a moment, taking in Beryn’s words and considering them. “People keep telling me ‘compassion’ is my strong suit…”
“Others have described you as compassionate to a fault, in fact. But if you wish to learn the Healer’s Stance…”
“…you will find that there is no such thing.”
