Chapter Text
The Crucible drops out of hyperspace over Ilum, nearly a week after leaving Coruscant. They spend another day in low orbit, waiting for the weather on the surface of the frozen planet to abate. Above the glaciated temple, a storm is raging: surface monitoring stations are recording winds up to two hundred klicks an hour, temperatures seventy degrees below freezing.
“You’d freeze solid in like, two seconds,” says Micah, trying on a pair of gloves that come nearly all the way up his arms and snapping the elastic against his bare skin. “Ow.”
“Not me,” laughs Lubas, hunting through the pile of cold-weather gear in the Initiates’ cabin. She’s a bothan, one of the long-furred polar subspecies sometimes mistaken for wookiees. She pauses for effect, her long yellow whiskers twitching. “Ten seconds, maybe.”
“A windchill like that would go straight through you,” Plo says, with the certainty of experience. Ilum’s powerful magnetic field prickles a little in his sensory horns. It’s been a long time since he last visited (or maybe will be a long time into the future?) but the experience is not one easily forgotten.
He pats the small pile of clothes in his lap. So far he’s got thermal underlayers, thick socks and gloves with room and reinforcing for his claws, and a little detachable hood that buttons closed at the neck. The first time he had visited Ilum, he had worn only the usual winter jacket with its puffy hood, and the cold had gotten into his sensory horns and made him thoroughly miserable after a while. This one ought to provide a little extra protection. Layering, that’s the key.
Micah snorts. “I hope we don’t have to wait too long. I can’t decide if I’m terrified or excited and either way I want to get this whole thing over with.”
“Same,” says Veeda on the other side of the pile, with feeling. She’s a rodian, not a species known for their cold-tolerance. “You know what the first thing I’m going to do with my saber is?”
“We know!” The fifth member of their group dumps a basket full of long knit scarves onto Veeda’s head, grinning without malice. Lucca is human, like Micah, though his skin is much darker and his coiled hair puffs out from his head like a black cloud. He, Veeda, and Lubas are Clan Massiff, Heliost’s next-door neighbours. “You’re gonna beat up Qui-Gon Jinn, right?”
“Right!” The pile of scarves avalanches down onto the cabin floor.
Micah, Plo and Lubas share a knowing look. Veeda and Qui have nursed a rivalry in lightsaber classes ever since it turned out they were both natural talents at Ataru. Qui-Gon has had the slightest edge in their matches ever since he came back from his own Ilum trip with a green kyber crystal thrumming in his hand. This is normal and expected; fighting with one’s own saber tends to… make physical sense, in a way that’s rare with the younglings’ practice blades. Everyone else in the Massiff and Heliost Clans has been looking forward to watching the fireworks once the field is finally equalized.
Veeda extricates herself from the scarves. “I’m gonna,” she insists. “Laserbrain thinks he’s so cool with his green saber ‘cause he’s like half a year older. I’m gonna make him cry.”
“Good luck with that,” Plo says dryly.
Veeda jabs a finger at him. “I don’t need luck from a dropout,” she sniffs, and turns dramatically away; once they had been allies in keeping Qui-Gon humble and she hasn’t quite forgiven him for switching to Soresu. “But… maybe you could help me with some defensive moves instead.”
Plo pretends to think about it for a moment. “All right,” he says, playing reluctant, “but in return, maybe you can help me with some research I’ve been doing.”
“Don’t do it,” Micah says immediately, “save yourself!” He’s joking; the cloudy wisps of his presence in the Force have gone all sunny.
Veeda rolls her starry indigo eyes at Micah, then turns back to Plo, suspicious nevertheless. “What sort of research?”
Plo makes a point of picking out an insulated jacket from the pile before he answers. “It’s a… personal project of mine,” he says, carefully. “You know my vision?”
The three Massiff Clan lean in; Lubas’ ears literally perk up. “Yeah?” Veeda asks. “What about it?”
Plo has told them the barest dribs and drabs of information, enough to satisfy their curiosity without sending them off into potentially dangerous rabbitholes. It’s not that he’s forbidden from speaking of the future—more that if he succeeds in changing the things he’s set his sights on, the future he knows will never come to pass. Thus far, even the most persistent curious Initiate has lost interest after a twenty-minute ramble on the structural inequities he’s identified as the root cause of the civil war.
He leans in toward Veeda. “You know how I said there was a lot in it that I didn’t understand? I’m making progress on that, but there’s so much background to it I’m never going to be able to read it all myself.”
Micah interjects with a lopsided smile. “So I’ve been helping him look at things like tax records and two hundred-year-old laws, and that sort of thing. It’s mostly pretty boring stuff.”
“He volunteered,” Plo informs the others, “so I’m testing how long he can put up with it before he quits.”
Laughter drowns out Micah’s scandalized response.
“So if you have a lot of questions, does that mean they’re on all different topics?” Lubas asks. “Like… old mission records, or local laws versus Republic, that sort of thing?”
“Exactly.” Plo slips his arms into the jacket sleeves. A little bit long, but the extra length probably won’t hurt on Ilum. “Not mission records—I don’t think we have clearance yet for the things I probably need to look at—but there’s a lot of general history, trade and exploration. I would do it myself, or with Master Nawut, but there’s just so much.”
The plaintive note in his voice isn’t even an act. There really is so damn much he needs to know, and so few hours in the day.
Master Yoda helps, sometimes. He’s useful for bouncing ideas off, and working through potential threads of investigation, but the Grandmaster of the Order has his own duties to see to. Master Nawut, Ang, and Jumikel have joined in from time to time—Plo always gives Master Jumikel topics that link into Micah’s, and more than once he’s seen the two of them with their heads bent over datapads together. Tahl and Qui-Gon are less useful co-researchers (less tolerant of boredom, mainly), but even they’ve offered their time.
Veeda narrows her eyes, thoughtful. “Can I pick my own topic?”
Plo nods—he’ll have to strip some of the more incriminating questions out of his list, but there’s a reason he keeps three different versions of the thing. “Sure. I’ll show you when we get back to the Temple.”
“Oh, she gets to pick a topic, huh?” Micah tries valiantly to make huge pleading tooka eyes at Plo. Unfortunately, Micah’s face is made for mischief, so the expression comes out almost mocking. “Why are you punishing your very best friend, Plo? Why must I suffer?”
“Your crimes are numerous,” Plo tells him, straight-faced.
“Numerous?” Micah scoffs. He peels those long gloves off his arms and tosses one at Plo. “Name one, then.”
Lucca spots an opportunity for mischief, scooting over and looping an arm around Micah’s shoulders. “Well,” he begins, drawling out the word, “you put Dantooine pepper in a stew the other week and fed it to us. Nothing tasted right for like three days after.”
“What’s wrong with Dantooine pepper?” Micah asks, scowling. “Plo ate it.”
“I wish I hadn’t,” Plo says quietly.
“What’s wrong with Dantooine pepper?” Lubas repeats, incredulous. “It’s so stupid spicy even Sullust cooking won’t use more than like a pinch. You could kill a Hutt with it.”
"That's salt," Micah mutters, mulishly. "Well I thought it was good."
“Something’s just wrong with your tastebuds, man.” Lucca snickers, takes a deep breath. “Also, Tahl told me you and Qui got extra homework for passing notes with the Force in Master Kouro’s class. That’s a crime against intelligence, I think.”
“It is,” Veeda agrees.
Micah sighs, unrepentant. “It was Qui-Gon’s idea, so I can’t argue with that.”
“The third crime is going along with anything Qui-Gon Jinn comes up with.” Lucca pats his shoulder, sympathetic. “Want me to keep going?”
“Please don’t.” Micah ducks out from under his arm, scooting away across the floor. He opens his mouth—and the swish of the door opening forestalls his retort.
The senior Padawan in charge of this trip—a cerean, fresh-faced and beardless—pokes his head in out of the dark hallway. “Have you all found fitting clothing?”
Plo had never had much to do with Ki-Adi-Mundi before their shared Council tenures. It’s strange to recognise him now—not for any familiar personal quality but because there is currently a grand total of one cerean in the entire Order. It feels like talking to an entirely different person.
He glances away, at Micah—who is looking at Lucca, who is looking bashfully down at the clothes piled high on the floor.
“Not yet,” Lubas admits for all of them. “Sorry.”
“I see.” Ki-Adi-Mundi’s expression turns resigned. Reddish-brown hair with the oil-slick sheen peculiar to cereans escapes his tightly-bound ponytail. “There’s no rush, I suppose. But may I suggest, you should save the gossip until after you have your things sorted.”
Plo nods along with his chastened crechemates. This sort of thing has become darkly funny over the last few months.
“Remember, Ilum is an ice world. It’s better to have layers of clothing than one or two bulky things on the outside.” Ki-Adi-Mundi glances down at their pile. “Personally, I recommend the brown thermals.”
Micah lifts one up to the light. It’s nearly translucent and covered in bobbles. “Really?”
“As I said, layers are the key.” Ki-Adi-Mundi raises a thin eyebrow, and he smiles just faintly. “But it’s up to you. We’ll have latemeal in an hour, in the galley. Don’t be late.”
The storm dies down, eventually. Plo and the younglings watch from the windows as the Crucible comes in to land.
The Force moves slowly around Ilum. It had been a shock the first time he visited—a true Initiate then, whose only frame of reference had been Coruscant. Everything is still and quiet, as if all their senses had been muffled at once, a blanket thrown over their heads. Ilum is a snowball world, glaciated down to the tropics. The Temple lies at the 38th parallel, built into the icy flanks of one of the few mountain belts that rise above the ice caps. There’s very little of the Living Force here.
The Crucible thrums, drifting sideways in a high-altitude gust. The ship lurches beneath their feet. Cloud surrounds them, racing past the windows in wisps. Then the ship descends a little more, and it vanishes all at once.
“Wow,” Micah whispers. He leans forward, his face nearly pressed flat against the transparisteel. “That’s amazing.”
Even having seen it before, Plo is inclined to agree. The valley beneath the Temple is broad and flat, deep enough to swallow a Venator whole. Its walls are steep, bare dark rock carved out by glaciers and fractured into sharp-edged peaks by the freeze-thaw action of ice. The Crucible skims low over the valley floor, bleeding off speed, and eventually the three knife-edge horn peaks that mark the Temple entrance come into view.
They land without ceremony. There’s a brief judder as the Crucible’s landing gear breaks through the thick crust of ice laid down by the storm, but the bedrock is close to the surface here.
Ki-Adi-Mundi takes charge. “Jackets on, Initiates. Has everyone got their survival packs?”
There’s a chorus of yeses. Ki-Adi-Mundi had made them redo the packs twice, explaining every part of them in detail. There are reusable thermopacks, a portable water distiller, and dense ration bars to last two weeks. It’s unlikely they’ll need to use any of these—but better safe than sorry, Plo thinks.
Master Yoda joins them in the hold, nodding to his padawan. Ki-Adi-Mundi checks everyone over one last time, then takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. “All right—door, please.”
The door cracks open. The frozen atmosphere of Ilum rushes in, so cold it burns.
The Initiates file out of the ship in silence. That had happened last time, too; all of them so shocked by the feeling of Ilum in the Force and then by the intense cold that no-one had spoken at all until they reached the Temple.
Plo takes advantage of the moment to observe. The sky is dark and mostly clear, a layer of cloud in the south where they’d come down. More mountains rise across the valley, silhouetted against the pale glow of the rising sun in the east. The snow beneath his feet is crusted hard on top, firm enough to walk on. He reaches out through the Force—it’s about a metre deep, which is shallow for Ilum. Beneath the snow is bedrock, greywacke fractured and scraped raw.
Yoda hikes past them, smiling—his gaze lingers on Plo—and takes his usual position at the head of the line.
It takes fifteen minutes’ walk to reach the frozen Temple doors. There’s a shift among the younglings as they take in the sheer ice wall, confusion flickering through the air. Ki-Adi-Mundi instructs them to reach out through the Force, together.
That ice wall is not altogether natural. It’s an icefall of sorts, fed by snow and ice gathering in the high wall of the valley above the Temple, but the flow can’t be called a glacier, and the speed at which it reforms is nothing Plo has ever seen in the natural world. The ice glimmers in his mind’s eye, parting like a curtain and flowing to the sides. The Temple doors emerge.
Yoda leads the way inside. The Gathering begins.