The Unchronicled Adventures Of Ahsoka Tano, Book Ten

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Concerns For The Future

AHSOKA TANO

The Jedi Temple was burning.

Ahsoka could taste the ash on her tongue. She could hear the hum of lightsabers and the echo of blaster fire against the grey stone that the years had begun to weather down. She could see the smoke that curled off into the cool night air high above her, forming wreaths around the spires of the colossal Temple she had always found as a child looked like four stone guardians and their leader, keeping a watchful eye over the bustling cityscape below.

Absentmindedly, the part of her that was still that same Jedi youngling wondered if they could see the destruction the Jedi Order at the hands of those they had once called allies through all that smoke.

It was then that she realized that, slowly but surely, she was moving forward; up the scorched steps and through the enormous corridor into the Great Hall.

It felt like stepping into a war zone.

There were so many dead. It felt like every step she took brought her past the face of someone else she knew. Not well enough that she had known them by name – but for the most part enough to justify nodding hello in the hallways as their paths had crossed on the way to training.

And what hurt her the most was that it was likely none of them would receive proper burials. There were too many dead for that. Their bodies would be left there to rot, or thrown into mass graves and burned without any respect.

They would be nameless faces with blank, lifeless stares forever.

Ahsoka's gaze was drawn towards a familiar shape, wielding a green lightsaber and a shorter greenish-yellow shoto. As the figure turned towards her, it was suddenly beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was her younger self.

She turned to speak to another Padawan – Ahsoka realized after a moment that it was Zaydn Kyrulo – and then took off running down the hallway.

How is that possible? Ahsoka wondered. I wasn't here when all of this happened. Zaydn told me how he and a group of younglings managed to escape by themselves, where they later ran into Lux and me on Alderaan. What is this, some kind of alternate past?

That was when the darkness hit, pushing down on her with a power that was as suffocating as the acrid smell of fear and death on the breeze. Ahsoka turned towards it, hoping to see through it to its source, and a moment later, she found herself standing in middle of the Council Chamber.

Someone came through the door and looked around the room. As they did, six younglings came out of hiding. They seemed to trust the stranger implicitly, but for some reason, Ahsoka couldn't recognize them.

The boy opened his mouth to speak, but Ahsoka didn't catch the first few words he said. "There are too many of them. What are we going to do?"

For a moment, it was silent. Then, everything froze, and the room exploded in a chorus of voices. She clapped her hands over her lekku, hoping to filter them out. They were so loud and so overbearing that she could only make a few of them out at a time.

"I know there's still good in you," a younger Ahsoka said. "But I don't have the power to help you see it. I just hope that someday, someone else will."

Padme was in tears somewhere nearby, and Ahsoka longed to comfort her, although she couldn't see what was wrong. "You're going down a path I can't follow!"

"If I have to die, then I will!"

A sob. A shudder. Tears streaming down her face.