ED : Chapter 46: The Trials Continued II
Releasing the building anxieties and fear into the Force as I listened to it's steady song. They'd just conned me with a damned near perfect Force Illusion yesterday.
Why was I shocked a group of Jedi Masters could manage something like Force Persuasion strong enough a Force-sensitive might prove susceptible to it?
...
New fears and scenarios began trying to find purchase in my mind, but I was sinking deeper and deeper into the Force now. Steadily working my way toward becoming each of the channels by which water was entering the box-like chamber I was in.
Water was up to my abdomen now, but as it reached my lowest ribs another concerning thought occurred to me.
"Fending off injected terrors is (reasonably) easy while I'm otherwise calm. How sanguine am I going to be when I can't breathe?" I silently considered as water rose over my pectoral muscles.
Finally, the exact nature of the Trial had come into view. Distantly, I felt alarm trying to find purchase in my consciousness. Where it could fuel the sparks of thoughts shooting through my mind's eye rapidly now.
All of it passed through my mind like light passing through a pane of glass, but a shadow of "What's it going to be like when the air is gone?" kept recurring again and again.
Passivity wasn't going to be sufficient. This is a matter of commitment. What can I take for the chance to save my heroes and prevent the galaxy from burning?
Water's up to my neck now, but it's only one of the factors in my awareness. I'm each of the two thousand one hundred channels through which water flows, the four hole-riddled walls, and the featureless floor, as well as the ceiling all this water is creeping upward towards.
The water feels colder than it has all along, but I'm calm despite the swirl of doubtful and increasingly grim eventualities trailing through the forefront of my mind like the cold fingers you sometimes fancy reaching for the back of your neck in a dark and empty room late at night.
When the water rises up to just beneath my lower lip, I manage to push my heart-rate as low as it will go without my being in a light trance-state and thus cheating. The water feels like ice now, but I furrow my brow as I perceive something isn't right.
The feeling of wrongness as I tilt my head back to keep my nostrils above the water level is becoming overpowering. It's worse than the Dark Side contamination within the Temple of Pomojema.
Worse even than being in close proximity to the Force-presences of three Dark Side adepts all freely using the corruption. It's an outright violation of everything right, good, and natural.
Clashing with, crashing into, and screeching across my awareness like a half-dozen rusty and broken razor-blades being dragged back and forth over a steel plate with great pressure, then pulled across my brain.
I was treading water because it was higher than my nose even with my head tilted back, but the pure wrongness is slicing divots from my calm and connection to my surroundings with effortless ease.
The panic is trying to rise in my head like a flock of formless terror-horrors all with buffeting black wings. The water's maybe an inch from the ceiling, so I take one last deep breath and reach for a thought which served as a buttress of will in one life, as it will again.
There are people counting on me. People I admire, people I care about, people I love. People who are going to be killed in the destruction, misery, and privation the Sith intensify the spread of wherever they go.
I can do nothing to protect them. Not if I crack here.
The reality corroding sense of contamination tries to infect my train of thought, but I've always been stronger on behalf of others than for my own sake. My lungs have just begun to burn a little bit, and I can feel the corruption-wrongness trying to rouse and inflame the fears of my deepest mind like a hunting dog trying to flush quail.
Palpatine just freed a hundred Dark Side adepts. Any of whom could be sent to murder Dark Woman, Yaddle, Qui Gon, Master Vilbum, Tutso, Bultar, or Obi-Wan. An apprentice can do nothing to stop that from happening. A Padawan can do nothing to address the source of the evil threatening those loved by everyone else.
My chest is a burning vise, and the black wings of panic are doing all in their power to convince me those testing me might drown me on accident if they won't do it on purpose.
I want to fly to pieces, circle round, and begin pounding on where I knew the door was. A tiny splinter of me wants me to take my lightsaber and cut my way out of this death-trap.
The black wings of panic are stronger and more numerous without air in my lungs, but I hurt worse when my Master taught me to make agonies most people can't remain conscious through, let alone functional, go away. I can handle this awful burning.
Can't I?
Can't I?
Can't...
C...
No, I can't. I'm sucking in water now, as I'm gagging and trying to hack it up. My chest is a convulsing mess, but I can't help my body's reaction to my dying. Can't help the despair creeping in as my body almost reflexively spins. My lightsaber's suddenly in my hand, and...
Blackness.
I come awake with someone holding something over my face, and self-preservation instincts make me try to buck my body to get away from whoever is trying to smother me to finish the job the drowning-room apparently didn't. Far more slowly than I'm accustomed to moving, my form twitches feebly.
"The Force Stun was too strong with him in such great distress!" A familiar voice is chastising someone, but that isn't right. I'm the one that voice criticizes.
"It wasn't readily apparent how bad off the Aspirant was. His composure was total until well after the completion-mark. It seemed like he'd simply exceeded his ability to suppress the impulse to breathe.
No one could have anticipated him causing this degree of psychic shock by taking his resistance to such an extreme!" This was a more defensive sounding, masculine voice.
"I told you, I trained him to ignore pain and physical privation many Jedi Masters couldn't remain conscious, let alone composed through. That's why I pushed so hard for the placement of a medical sensor on him!" Dark Woman, that was my Master giving someone hell.
"You mean the reason he stayed so calm is because you've progressively stressed him until you normalized this kind of acute distress in your apprentice's mind? That's barbaric!" Depa Billaba exclaimed in a voice equal parts scandalized and horrified.
"I offered to teach my apprentice everything I'd learned about controlling pain and maintaining his composure under any amount of pressure. After first making it abundantly clear it was completely elective beyond the basics required to gain a proficiency with the Control Pain technique.
Anakin made the decision after his eighteenth life-day to proceed with acquiring the highest degree of control over the skill possible. I don't know how you train an apprentice, but I provide my Padawans with my very best.
When they outgrow me and pass the Trials, I want to know I've given them their very, very best chance of survival in an exceptionally dangerous vocation.
If someone thinks ramming a couple of stun-batons or agony-rods into Anakin is going to render him helpless due to the pain they're inflicting, they'll learn otherwise to their cost" Dark Woman coolly responded.
Her voice had taken on the detached, clinical manner which told anyone who knew her she was working extremely hard to remain calm.
Weakly, I batted at the arm holding the unknown thing over my face.
The blackness was creeping back until I could see what was directly above me, but the sucking at my mouth, and the pinching-pulling sensation in my chest was so strange I tried to sit up in the hopes it would go away.
Strong hands were suddenly gripping both of my shoulders, as an unfamiliar woman spoke to me in low, comforting tones. "Hey, none of that now.
You're breathing a mist containing a bacta derivative to make sure you don't come down with a respiratory infection a couple of days from now. Even hard-light "water" can cause complications if we're not careful.
Just lay there and keep breathing evenly. There's an anti-inflammatory in the mist too, so your throat won't feel like you've been vomiting up glass later."
I wanted to know what had happened, but the pretty blonde Jedi Knight leaning over me seemed insensitive to my wishes. Fortunately, my Master either knew me well enough to know what would be on my mind, or she picked the burning question out of the forefront of my thoughts.
"Of course you passed the Trial of Flesh, Anakin. You just took things about ninety seconds further than what our ... more civilized comrades consider a sufficient amount of self-control in the face of one's unpleasantly imminent demise." Dark Woman reported with comforting surety. There was a definite tint of pride in her voice, which went a long way toward making up for being drowned.
"He's actually recovered enough to already be conscious and following all of this?" Another masculine voice asked. I was still more than a little fuzzy, and this one wasn't so familiar as to be immediately obvious, but I sensed more than heard others agreeing with him and moving off some distance.
"It would probably be better if he got several hours rest," said the blond Knight tending me. She was talking to someone out of my field of vision.
Someone who didn't answer her verbally, but must have nodded or something, because faster than I could object, something was hissing against my neck. Blackness found me again, but it was a warmer, more comfortable darkness this time.
...
Hey guys can you throw some power stones to Elevate the ranking.
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