(no subject)

[munnin]

Title: Act 1, Scene 2 - D'rue. We go from where we stand.
Fandom: Star Wars.
Disclaimer: No ownership, no profit and no offence meant. Everyone is of the age of consent in their country and period of history
Author’s notes: This ‘verse started as a first anniversary gift for the members of the Canberra Star Wars Collectors Club. That story didn’t go very far but the idea stuck.

Summary: Order 66 begins and Master D’rue must face it without his crew.


The ancient holocrons, those rare survivors of the Great Sith Wars spoke of a level of enlightenment called the Crystal Pool. An intense oneness with the force in which a Jedi is part of all things; of future, past and present; of matter and transcendence. It was said to be achievable only through purification of the mind and body. It was said that of all the Jedi living, only Master Yoda had archived the Crystal Pool, and even then only after a month of fasting and deep meditation.

Jedi Commander D’rue Norseman referred to it as the moment of clarity, a feeling he experienced three times; something he never told another member of the Order. Some things were best left unsaid.

In that perfect moment, the past, present and future flowed together as one. Like a slow moving stream, it banked and eddied around him as he moved. Bright bolts of light danced past him like lazy, droning insects; as easily swatted as they were avoided. Sounds came in echoes, softened and reflected. Each step forward seemed as natural as a stroll through the temple gardens, his gait sure despite the uneven ground. His senses sung, taking in everything but troubled by nothing. All was as it was and he was a part of all things. Right and wrong, fairness and injustice did not exist. There was just the living force, luminescent and all encompassing.

Blood flowed down the handle, pooling behind the shroud and finally dripped onto the orange blade of his lightsaber. It burnt there, the smell of iron and ozone added to the acrid air, shattering the crystal calm.

Past and future stretched away from him, as unreachable now as ships in hyperspace as the present slammed against him again and again. The dead weight of the clone trooper he held in front of him like a shield wrenched his shoulder, the plastoid armour melting as blast after blast widened the hole that had once been the trooper’s chest. He grunted as he dropped the mangled remains, stepping forward to carve a path through the vestiges of the dead man’s squad. Each arch of the sabre adding a dull ache to the litany of pain he could not allow himself to feel.

The Arguments End was on the starboard side of the squat space station, as far from D’rue’s location as it was possible to be. And yet he knew he had no choice but to fight his way towards it. It was not a question of survival or strategy; it was instinct, perhaps the will of the force itself. The End was his ship and where, in this moment off Order 66’s execution, he needed to be.