Battles Leave Scars

Chapter 3 : The Path

                  Ezra flickered his eyes open to see the night sky displayed below him. Thoughtlessly, he threw his hands down, preparing to launch himself upward. Ezra assumed that he must have landed on ice, or a mirror—stranger things had happened. But as he reclaimed his footing, he saw that he stood on a glowing pathway encompassed by the night sky. A glowing arch, larger than life, blocked Ezra's way backward. Ezra pressed his hand against it and peered inside, once more observing the drawing of Morai that Kanan had sketched in the book from the Phantom, though it was partially obscured by a trail of cyan smoke that danced over the picture. Ezra carefully stepped away from the arch, an echo of ripples proceeding from where he had placed his feet.

                 "Sabine, this is incredible!" Ezra cried. When she didn't reply he added, "Sabine?"

                  Sabine groaned in response and slowly rose to her feet. She shook her bangs from her eyes and surveyed her surroundings. She stumbled backward, gasped, and pointed.

                "Ezra! What—what is that!?" Sabine shouted.

                "I know it's inc-" Ezra replied.

                "No!" Sabine interrupted, grabbing Ezra's shoulder, and spun him around. "That!"

               Ezra's eyes widened as he stared at what was displayed in front of them. A narrow, straight path ran into the distance and Ezra estimated at least three dozen more of the illustrated arches before the path stretched from his view. After a moment of careful reflection, a thought occurred to him. Ezra recalled a legendary place, known as The World Between Worlds, that had been described to near perfection in the Jedi archives stored on the Jedi Holocron. Ezra distinctly remembered Kanan telling him that it "didn't exist" when the boy had brought it up to his master. Another lie? —or just an inaccurate truth? The holocron's description, though, wasn't entirely accurate. It had described a maze of interlaced paths by the hundreds. As far as Ezra could tell, the path he was on was the only one. That was when an even more startling idea blossomed in his mind; they weren't in Kanan's book—right?

           Sabine shook Ezra's shoulder jostling him from his thoughts "This is the last time I go with you on a crazy journey to who-knows-where and, honestly, who-knows-when! Because if that kid was Kanan..."

          The thought that Caleb and Kanan might be one in the same had, admittedly, not occurred to Ezra. He looked up at Sabine, and while a half-a-dozen conflicting emotions fought over her features, Ezra could tell that she hadn't really meant her words. She knew he would never leave her behind and she would never let herself be left behind. Ezra though, decided to play with her anyway. "Fine, maybe this isn't how I wanted to learn about Kanan, or Caleb, or—whatever. But I'm going on, with or without you." Ezra walked up to the next arch, trying very hard to keep his trademark smirk from spreading over his face. The scale of what was going to happen had not yet settled in.

        "You are the most impossible boy I've ever met!" Sabine stepped forward, grabbed Ezra's hand, and whispered forlornly, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

A/N: Man, this one is short, that's alright though! Because after the next chapter the rest are nice and long. 

God Bless :) 

-O.R./S.F.