//------------------------------//
// Chapter I - Dreams and Omens 
// Story: Harmony in Force 
// by Khandnalie 
//------------------------------//

There is no emotion, there is peace;

A swirl of fog raced past him, the cool misty wind teasing at his face as he fell. The clouds parted into the endless void, and he was alone, falling into the abyss. A frozen sun shone above him as he fell, casting the nothingness and the clouds in a harsh white glare. He could no longer feel the fog against him as hot winds rushed past his face, tangling his beard and hair. He was falling, that he knew, but to where he did not know. It seemed as if an eternity were passing, and all he could feel was the sun beating against his skin with a chilling heat, and scorched winds running through his hair. All he could see was sun and cloud and void. 

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge;

Below him, an end to the limbo through which he passed was coming into view. It looked to him like another sun, with billowing puffs all about it, identical to the ones above him. He calmly pondered why he was falling towards yet more clouds as they grew closer and closer. Amid the field of white below him, a figure appeared. It started as a minuscule speck among the clouds, but grew quickly as he approached it. He nodded to himself serenely with the realization that he was not going towards another eternal field of fog, but towards a mirrored surface. He looked up towards the horizon, eyes scanning for any break in the reflection. He could see none.

There is no passion, there is serenity;

His reflection grew larger and larger as his descent brought him closer to the vast mirror. He was calm, and knew that the fall would bring him no harm - yet still, as he approached the impact, he could not help but brace himself. His arms and legs spread out wide as far as he could make them stretch. Wisps of hot air ran through his fingers like a lover's hair. There was no forward momentum, so attempting a roll was not an option. All he could do was prepare for the impact. After a few moments, he could see the details of his own reflection, easily making out his individual fingers. He closed his eyes, and relaxed every muscle in his body, exhaling as much as he could, so that his lungs did not burst with the impact. He cleared his mind, and his soul was at peace, as the threshold between worlds met him at long last.

There is no death, there is the Force.





As Spike walked into the room, he could practically smell an aura of “Twilight at work”. Books were strewn everywhere, fresh ink spots seemed to have sprouted from the wood of the work desk, and page after page of scrawled shorthand notes lazed around on every surface. He walked over to the desk and picked up a random page, squinting at the illegible chicken scratch. The page was crossed with a series of hastily doodled swirls and seemingly random dashes. Spike examined the mad writing for a moment, before nodding with satisfaction. The notes were entirely illegible and no longer distinguishable from somepony writing with their mouth while having a seizure. This clearly meant that Twilight was already at the experimental phase of whatever project she was working on. A very expensive sounding crash from the basement soon confirmed this theory.

Slowly, carefully, Twilight lowered the mirror into its slot on the array. Her magic aura shimmered around the reflective surface as she ground her teeth in concentration. Sweat rolled from her brow as the last few centimeters between the mirror and its final resting place disappeared. As soon as the mirror touched down, the purple aura vanished. The mirror did not move from its position, opting to remain stable, and Twilight let out a sigh of relief. As that breath left her lungs, so did all the strength seem to leave her limbs. A rushing sound filled her ears, and beneath her, her legs turned to jelly. The last sounds she heard as her body rushed to meet the floor was the meaty ‘floomp’ of a grown mare hitting a wooden surface, and her own confused murmurs as to why the table was so high above her.

“Twilight..... Twilight are you okay? Can you hear me?”

Twilight groaned weakly as she opened her eyes, blinking at the bright light above her head. She frowned in confusion as a purple splotch appeared in her vision. The splotch was talking at her.

“Twilight, what happened? Are you okay? Oh geez.... I’ll go get the bandages.” Spike the dragon muttered with concern for his friend and mentor. He waddled his way over to the thankfully nearby medical cabinet. He looked back over his shoulder as Twilight wobbled into an upright sitting position. He hissed with sympathy and retrieved the thickest roll of gauze he could find, as he surveyed her wounds, and noticed the disturbing amount of blood. 
Twilight for her part sat there, nursing her aching horn with a hoof. A weak moan escaped her lips as she mentally berated herself for her over-exertion. She pulled her hoof back from her head and frowned, examining it. Why was there blood? There shouldn’t be any blood. Magical exhaustion doesn’t cause bleeding. Her mind vaulted itself into its default mode of thinking, examining the problem with objective interest. She looked down at her side, and noticed the sticky red shards on the floor beside her. She nodded her head serenely at the discovery. The three mirrors she had broken trying to set up her array, of course. She had passed out and fallen on a pile of broken mirrors. As the back of her mind began piecing together the pieces of what just happened, and making mental notes to properly dispose of broken mirrors in the future, the front of her mind began screaming, as Spike applied iodine to one of her many lacerations.
“Aaaah! Geez, Spike, warn me next time before you do that!” She frowned rebukingly at the little dragon, before grudgingly extending her fetlock to him once more, to let him continue dressing her wounds. 
“Ummm, Twilight, I did warn you.... you were a bit zoned out. Uhhh... what made you pass out?” He asked, a twinge of concern in his voice. He daubed the brown soaked cotton ball against the cut on her fetlock, and wiped away the blood with a damp cloth, quickly applying an adhesive bandage to the wound before it could continue its business of helping Twilight lose more blood.
Twilight sighed, blowing a lock of hair out of her face, before wincing once more at the burning sensation ripping its way up her leg, scouring away the possibility of infection. “It was just a bit of magical exhaustion. I overextended myself again - it just so happens, there was a pile of broken glass beneath me at the time. Unfortunate circumstance, that.” She tried on a smile, attempting to choke down the hisses of pain that were working themselves involuntarily up from her gut as Spike moved on to the next cut. 
Spike frowned at her excuse and looked back up at her. He raised a brow as he rolled a strip of thick cotton bandage over one of the deeper wounds in her back leg. “Magical exhaustion? What the hay were you doing that would exhaust you? You single handedly defeated that Ursa Minor without even breaking a sweat!” His eyes darted out about the room, now a little more concerned for his own safety. Any experiment that required that much magic had lethal potential. 
Twilight chuckled at her assistant's anxiousness “Silly dragon. Nothing, I was just moving mirrors.” She smiles at him as if that one sentence would explain everything. 
Spikes head cocked to the side in a way Twilight had seen Pinkie Pie do on more than one occasion. “Huh?” Was all Spike offered in way of questioning as he continued to tend her wounds.
Twilight sighed, before wincing in pain as the dragon continued his efforts to tend to her wounds. “Mirrors are very difficult to move with telekinesis. At least plain mirrors, without a handle or nonreflective surface, are. The reflective surface bounces back magical energy the same way it does light, so theres not really anything to magically grab hold of.” She frowned as she tried to come up with a sufficient analogy “It’s kind of like trying to grab a wet tomato seed, if the tomato seed weighed several kilograms. In order to pick it up, you have to hold it really tight, using a lot of magical pressure, and so the magical exertion of moving twenty seven of them kind of got to me.” She grinned sheepishly at Spikes recriminating look. He went back to tending her wounds, but the next daub of disinfectant said all he needed to say about her not pushing herself too far.
Several moments passed before Spike finally, mercifully, screwed the cap back onto the bottle of disinfectant and stowed away all the bandages. Twilight stood shakily, hissing just slightly at the still-sore wounds, testing her weight on all four legs. Satisfied with her response, she walked over to her chair, and set herself down in it, examining the array of mirrors to make double sure everything was correct for the next phase of her experiment. As Spike began to walk over to the broom closet to clean up the literal bloody mess on the floor, a sharp wrenching sensation in his gut stopped him. The next thing he and Twilight saw was a bright green burst of flame from Spikes muzzle, accompanied by a loud belching sound. With that, a scroll materialized in front of him, and with the practiced motion of a thousand letters back and forth, his paw reached out to snatch it from the air. He turned to Twilight, offering it to her. “Uhh... a letter for you.”

Twilight reached out with her magic, the slowly returning force feeling like mush in her minds grasp, and took the letter. It unscrolled before her, revealing the unmistakable flourishes and sweeps of Princess Celestia's writing.


Dear Twilight Sparkle,
A terrible threat has emerged from me and my sister's past, and promises to ruin Equestria. This is a situation of greater importance than I can convey in this letter. I can reveal no detail here, lest this letter find its way into unfriendly hooves.
Gather your friends and come to Canterlot immediately. A royal escort has been dispatched to collect you.
I would not normally be so imposing as to demand your presence in this manner, but recent events have forced my hoof. Make all possible haste in your arrival.

-Your Friend and Mentor,
Princess Celestia

Twilight frowned as she reread the letter to verify its contents. What could have Celestia so bothered as to insist that she come immediately? A single moment passed during which she pondered the letter before she heard a loud knock from upstairs, the unmistakable sound of a hoof beating upon her door.
She trotted quickly upstairs, and pulled the door open, revealing a pair of grey pegasus guards. She smiled at them welcomingly “Solemn Watch, Light Vigil! I didn't expect Celestia to send you two!” She chuckled as she stepped out the door “What are two of the best guardponies in Canterlot doing running a routine pickup?” She teased gently. She had known these two from her days of study at Canterlot Castle. The stray memory of her fillyhood crush on Solemn Watch forced the tiniest of blushes to her cheek. She was serious though in her question - these two were outranked only by her brother in the Canterlot guard. 
Solemn Watch shook his head “This is anything but routine, ma’am. We are under explicit orders to gather you and the other Elements without any delay.” His face was dead serious, showing no sign of amusement or joy - even more serious than Twilight remembered from her fillyhood in Canterlot. 
She tried to force a smile, the gravity of this unknown situation starting to unnerve her a bit, before she turned back to go inside “Well then, in that case, let me just go get Spike, and pack a few things, and then-”
She was interrupted by Light placing a hoof on her door, preventing her from going back inside “No, ma’am. We were also told to bring you six, and only you six, and no personal items of any kind. Please, ma’am. This is very urgent.” His expression remained stoic and placid, but in his eyes, Twilight could swear she almost saw..... fear?
Twilight gulped and, with one last look back at her library, nodded her consent. “I suppose Spike can... clean up by himself....” And with that, she followed the guards back to their chariot to gather the rest of the Elements.





There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

All around him, cool water enveloped his body, cushioning him as he slowed from his descent. His eyes shot open at the realization that he was not injured, and beheld the new landscape into which he was deposited. All around him, beneath him, stretched a gentle grassland. He was still falling, but his descent was greatly slowed by the water. It was still several hundred meters to the ground, and he could see for what seemed like miles around him. Everywhere he looked, he saw gently waving blades of grass. They rolled beneath him, shimmering with an invisible wind, yet when he held out his hand, the water was as placid and undisturbed as if he had dipped his hand into a still pool. The moments passed in silent wonder as the ground gently came up to meet him. At long last, he found himself standing amidst the grass in this fresh wonderland.

There is no fear, there is power.

The grass came up to his waist, and seemed to radiate a dim glow, as if the summer had gone too long, and the growth and warmth must the spill out of each blade. He looked up from the grass to scan the endless horizon. All about him, the grass stretched on into untold infinites. Above it was the gently deepening dark of endless water. There was no longer a sun that he could see. All the horizon looked exactly the same. He frowned slightly, wondering how he was to find his way about in this strange place. Yet even as he was about to pick a random direction to wander, his eye was caught by the slightest glimmer. Off in the distance, he saw the tiniest break in the horizon. It was small, certainly miles off, but it was the only landmark in this sea under the sea. He nodded to himself with satisfaction at the discovery, and set himself towards the faint spot in the distance. 

I am the heart of the Force.

The moments passed on as he walked steadily towards his goal: the tiny speck in the distance. Time seemed not to matter in this odd place. Whenever he set his eyes upon his goal in the distance, it always seemed to be closer, yet as he watched it, it never moved or appeared to grow to him. As he walked through the grassy sea, he let his hand brush against the tall blades that bent and bowed out his way. Despite the water all around him, they felt dry, like grass that was upon land instead of under water. His fingers tightened around a blade in passing, and as he moved, he plucked it from its roots. As soon as the piece of grass left the soil in which it was planted, it disintegrated in his hand, blowing away into the invisible wind, which he could neither hear nor see nor feel. He looked up from the vanishing grass, and saw that at last his destination was within reasonable distance. It was a massive tree, which radiated a spectral glow. He could not see much detail, but he could tell from the distance remaining, that the tree was huge. Its trunk was squat, in so much as it was almost as wide as it was tall. It seemed to bulge slightly in the middle, as many ancient trees can do, and an enormous knot decorated the side facing him. Its leaves were an intense yellow color, and pulsed and glittered with the same ripe summer radiance that the grass beneath him did. The bark on the other hand, seemed to absorb the light around it, and slowly let it seep back out into the world. It was a soft velvety shade of blue, and it quietly emitted its much calmer glow to complement the leaves above and around it. 

I am the revealing fire of light.

As he walked the final stretch towards the giant tree, the grass around him grew shorter. The blades appeared no less healthy, nor any less proud of their growth and roots. As he saw them thin the closer he came to the tree, and eventually fade into a clearing surrounding the natural monument, he felt that they stayed back out of respect. He once more looked up to the tree, as it was now close enough to tower above him. He had not until recently been able to grasp the scale of this verdant sage. The roots, as they extended from the trunk and dove into the black earth, easily dwarfed him, forming arches above him taller than any grand entrance in any temple he had ever visited. The trunk bulged and towered above him, supporting the web of branches and leaves that covered the sky. For a long moment, he stood below the grand living citadel, exulting in the silky light that flowed gently from the cool blue trunk, and basking in the cheerful twinkles of the leaves up above. 

I am the mystery of darkness.

As he looked up and peacefully admired the scene before him, a splash of color caught his attention. He looked down towards the base of the tree, to see that near where the bark of the tree merged into the roots and the ground, a small knot of the tree had bulged out, and was shaded a peculiar color. The soft blue of the trunk seemed to flow like water into the hole formed by the knot, yet as it did so, the color transformed, from dark blue to the pink-orange color of a star shining through the sleepy cover of atmosphere that was either bidding its daily goodbye, or wishing its daily welcome to the sun. He smiled to himself, thinking of the sweet tastes of fall fruits and spring breezes as he set to walking again, this time towards the welcoming warmth of the knot. 

In balance with chaos and harmony.

It was not long before he was close to the sunset-colored hole, and saw that it did indeed appear to be an entrance. The knot of wood was curled into a round portal into the inside of the tree, and what were very clearly steps were growing from the wood down into the ground, providing an easy access to the entrance. Without hesitation, he began to climb the steps. In short order, the portal was before him, and he stepped inside. Even in this still place, he gasped at the wonder that surrounded him. The walls of the chamber he found himself in seemed to contain the very wealth of the whole galaxy. He could see through crystal panes and faceted jeweled surfaces, the whole infinite depth of all the stars and nebulae that the universe contained. He could not free his eyes from the brilliance surrounding him. The walls were cut from a hundred different shards of cosmos. Within each, he could peer as far into the infinite as he could strain his eyes to see. Yet all of these wonders, could not forever distract him from what this room was obviously built to house. In the very back of this wondrous chamber was a single massive crystal, thrust up out of the floor of the chamber. Two smaller crystals joined it at its base, with six smaller still encircling those two, jutting out from its monolithic structure like guardians. But they did not concern him as he approached the massive jewel. His eyes remained locked onto its mesmerizing depths, for within it swirled a primal whorl of energy. Fiery billows within the crystal intermeshed with silky tendrils of dark void, playing within each other, shooting strands of cosmic essence back and forth. With concentration, he noticed that to the right side of the crystal, the flames seemed to coalesce, and shone like the surface of a star. Over on the left side of the crystal, the shadows won out, the flaming wreaths from the right side slowly fading into the impenetrable void that consumed light with vigor to equal its counterpart's radiance. He stood in awe for a long, silent moment, before slowly, reverently putting his hand up to the crystal. His palm rested against the hard surface, and his mind was filled with an intense rush of knowledge. For one single glorious microsecond, he could see all of the galaxy. All things were made clear in the Force. He could see every life form throughout the galaxy, and could see every strand of light and shadow connecting them all. The Force rushed through him, and made him whole in a way he had never been. Yet the very second it began to flow through him, he felt it abate. He felt no loss, no sadness. The Force had brought him peace, and so he was content. As he could feel himself being pulled away from the holy place and all the world fading and melting away around him, the only thought in his mind was that he wished to return here someday.

Immortal in the Force.





Uldir Atoka opened his eyes, to look up at the young officer now standing over him. The officers face was contorted in the odd mix of worry and mild fear that most people seemed to express when meeting a Jedi for the first time. Uldir blinked a few times and slowly pulled himself up into a sitting position upon his cot. He allowed himself a small yawn before showing the younger man a comforting smile. “Yes, how may I help you?” His voice was warm and deep, the kind of voice that most people associate with their grandfather or a favorite uncle. He looked up at the officer with polite patience.

The officer raised his brows at the wakening Jedi and cleared his throat with a small cough, “I, ahhh.... I am Ensign Ulgo, sir. I was asked by Captain Telsh to escort you to the bridge and fill you in on a few details. There has been a bit of a mix up with the hyperdrive.Your trip to Coruscant will be unfortunately delayed, sir.” He stood before the Jedi, at attention, seeming unsure of how to show proper respect, and settling on the standard attention stance. 

Uldir chuckled and stood up, lifting himself effortlessly off of his cot. “Well, the rebuilding efforts can wait a while, I suppose.” He offered the officer another warm smile and reached over to grab his outer robe, slinging it over his shoulders, his arms finding their way into the long billowy sleeves. “Don’t worry, I don’t bite. No need to be so formal.” He took a moment to adjust his robe and pressed a button on the panel next to his door, the metal frame sliding away to reveal one of the many corridors running along the inside of the ship. He turned back to the ensign and raised a brow “Coming?” Ensign Ulgo gave a start, and jumped to follow the Jedi outside, the door closing behind them, and they began towards the bridge.