The Rebel Faction

For a moment, even the spirit seemed lost for words. After a few long seconds he laughed long and hard, although perhaps not quite so sharply as before. As the echoes died down, he said "You're much more clever than I gave a would-be Jedi credit. Have you considered you might be too clever to be one of those boring Jedi? All faux-humility and bland asceticism."

The ghost shook his head, looking away as if in contemplation before turning back. "You may be right that by enabling your continued training, I would ultimately inflict the greater misery on you. Allowing you to get much further into your training only to fail later, having invested even more of yourself into the process, would be a true agony.

"Despite this, I cannot change my ways. I wish to deny you even a temporary victory, and it is my conclusion that even should you fail, Dolash will retain you as a student - if he even sees you as such yet. Giving you the crystal will give you something to trumpet before your master, and if he is unthankful then it will give you something to feel aggrieved about. Better that it be so close at hand and so unjustly kept from you, so that you might feel maximized frustration."

The ghost began to dissipate once more, green tendrils breaking off in every direction. "Of course I am still listening, but unless you have any other pearls of wisdom to offer I hardly believe you have the means within you to pry the knowledge of the crystal's location from me. Go, admit your failure, and haunt my chamber no more."

Aleister received no reply. Long minutes dragged on without voice or sound, without even the faintest whisp of a spirit. When at last one might have begun to wonder if the ghost had ever even been there, his green visage reformed along the stone ceiling and looked down at his lone guest.

"That was just a small taste of how easy it is to ignore you. I could disappear into the stone, slumber for a thousand years so that you would be nothing but dust by the time I awoke! I have watched years pass like minutes, you pose no nuisance to me."

He slunk back into the stalactites, as if to prove his point. "No weapon to threaten me with, no chip to bargain with, no argument to persuade me with, you truly are without hope. I wonder if you fail so badly in your other pursuits?"

The ghost let out a strangled yelp of panic before swirling up into the ceiling. "Flee!" It howled. "Flee and scatter! You bear a tainted soul!"

With that, he burst into a puffy green cloud. No trace was left of his passing, and this time the long silence bore no pithy remark or comeback. He was truly gone.

The chamber seemed no different except for the certain sense of the haunting spirit's departure, but nor did it reveal any new secrets. If the crystal did indeed still lay within, hidden somewhere, it did not make itself known.

What Aleister's ghostly companion came to discover - as it tracked the wayward spirit through planes unknown - was that the route of his quarry was spiralling closer and closer to the central chamber of the temple.

When it manifested again, it was in the shadows of the great basin of the temple itself, its green glow illuminating the dark places where no torch burned. As Han watched he ran over the uneven ground towards the stone altar where Dolash patiently meditated. The old Jedi master had not moved a muscle since Aleister's departure, but at the approach of the ghost he stirred. Once the spirit stood before Dolash he seemed to try and say something, but just what was shielded from view through the Force. Whatever it was, it was enough to cause Dolash to open his eyes and survey the room, his vision passing briefly without comment past the ghost of Han Skywalker.

Then the spirit faded with some degree of finality, as if returning to whence he had come. Dolash was very much awake now but he made no great move, merely watching the distant tunnel entrance expectantly.

For a short time the two simply meditated in peace and quiet. When at last it began to appear that perhaps Dolash had forgotten his request, or had not noticed his company, he stirred. A single eyelid creaked open, and a single black eye rolled towards Aleister, fixing him with a gaze that was more attentive, judgemental, and simply more there than any Aleister had previously seen.

I see that you do not have the crystal, yet I saw you enter the tunnel leading to the crystal's chamber. I take it you have failed to retrieve it - perhaps you could not find it? Or you simply did not wish to return it? He gave Aleister a harder look still, adding Maybe you have thought to hide it, to later retrieve it? The crystal is of no use to you, I cannot imagine you would make the same mistake twice.

So perhaps you have failed to find it? Why is that? Very faintly, the heartbeat of the mountain began to creep back into Aleister's senses, as though the rock were straining to catch his answer.