Star Wars: Trials of the Jedi (The High Republic)

Chapter One

The Jedi Temple

Bree went down into the dark, to a place she was not supposed to be, as she had been told to do.

She was only nine years old, a member of the Jedi Order, on the older side of the youngest group of students being trained in the Jedi’s great temple on Coruscant—appropriately called younglings.

Bree descended another step, then paused to look back. Behind her, an arch of light awaited—the path back to the main levels of the Temple. She wanted to go back—to her friends, to her studies, to the sun, to the light.

But Bree had a job to do. She sighed, turned her eyes back to the stairs, and continued on her way.

The stairs were old. Everything in the Jedi Temple was old, but it didn’t look like it. Maintenance droids kept everything shining and clean. These steps were different. They were crumbled at their edges, with wisps of dust and dirt, even little dead bugs. Bree didn’t mind bugs. Her friend Toko was a different story, but Bree didn’t care so much. Creatures were creatures, big or small.

The staircase wound down, down, down, light provided by illumination globes strung along the walls. Most of the time, Jedi didn’t need lights for something like this—they carried light with them—but the globes had been installed here when it became clear that this route would need to be used more frequently.

Is it getting hotter? Bree wondered.

She put her hand against the wall. Yes. She wasn’t imagining it. The wall wasn’t hot, not like a flame—more like a sun-warmed patch of stone in one of the Temple’s many terraces high above her. But there was no sun, not down here.

Bree pulled her hand away, frowning.

She continued down, moving faster, wanting to be done with this task.

They shouldn’t have made me do this, she thought. They’re all so much stronger and older than I am. I’m just a kid. They could have found another way.

But there was no other way. Bree was just a kid, that was true, but she had eyes, and she had ears. The grown Jedi were too busy with all the terrible crises that had landed upon their Order, one after the other. Jedi Knights were . . .

Dead, she thought. They’re dead, killed and eaten by the monsters. The Nameless.

Not a good thought while deep beneath the Temple, descending a rapidly narrowing staircase that seemed to be closing in on her, the walls changing now from rough-cut stone blocks to a different kind of surface that looked like the rock had been melted and frozen again, like it had been hurt.

Bree had an important message to deliver, and she had to do it in person. This far down, the communications devices didn’t work to call up to the surface. Droids were too slow, and the Order didn’t have very many. The ones they did have were busy with other important tasks, too.

So who did they send? The Jedi who weren’t good enough yet for anything else—the younglings.

Bree was not afraid. She was brave. The Order had taught her how to be brave. But she saw no harm in hurrying. She saw no harm, in fact, in running.

The young Jedi rushed down the stairs, leaping down two at a time, becoming increasingly certain that something was chasing her, its sharp claws clacking behind her at exactly the same moments as her own footsteps. She would reach the bottom of the stairs and there would be no one to help her—the monster would have gotten there first—nothing but chalky stone statues that used to be Jedi, and then it would get her and . . .

Bree’s foot landed hard on the ground below the last step. She stumbled, fell, skidded along the ground, feeling the skin on her palms and knees scrape.

“Agh!” she cried.

She lay flat on the dirty stone, which was now most definitely not warm but hot. She breathed in and out, in and out, using the techniques she’d been taught to push back the pain, push back the shock and fear. Bree found the Force, which she thought of as a friend that could help her do amazing things if she could only find the right way to ask. Just then, she didn’t think she could find the focus to ask the Force for much of anything, but even knowing it was there helped her feel better.

You are a Jedi, she thought. Get up, girl.

Bree pushed herself up, brushed grit from her palms and knees, and stood. She looked ahead down the dim corridor the stairs opened to and saw that the lights got brighter in the distance.

That’s it. Almost there.

Bree found her way through the corridor, all but running by the time she reached its end. The corridor opened into a larger room carved out of the same raw stone as the rest of the area, now almost seeming to glisten or glow.

The Force was here, too. Bree could sense it strongly. It still felt like a friend, but the kind of friend who always had bad ideas, the kind that was always trying to get you to go along with adventures that would get you in trouble. She didn’t like it.

At the far end of this new room was an open door, tall and wide, the door itself made of rusted metal, as heavy as a starship panel. That was her destination—just what she’d been told to expect.

Through the door would be, at last, other people. Bree realized how alone she had felt on that long, slow descent. She’d hated it, even though she had been taught over and over that she wasn’t supposed to hate anything.

The chamber beyond the door was good-sized. Mostly empty except for Jedi, a lot of Jedi. Most were seated in a circle on the floor, eyes closed, focused-seeming. A sort of hum arose from them, although it wasn’t an actual sound. It was something you could just feel. Bree thought it was her friend that was humming.

Bree couldn’t see what was inside the circle, but she knew. She’d been warned about it. All the younglings were talking about it, though none had seen it. It was called the Blight, and it was a monster, too, as bad as the Nameless but scarier.

Not all the Jedi were meditating in the circle. Others were seated against the wall or stretched out on the ground, asleep, using parts of their white-and-gold temple robes as pillows. It made Bree a little sad to see how dirty the white parts of the robes had gotten down here. Up above, everything was always nice and clean.

She looked down at herself, realizing her own robes were no better. Worse, maybe, after her fall.

A few of the resting Jedi were sitting on supply crates, drinking from bulbs of water or eating nutristicks, chatting quietly to one another. Bree didn’t know their names. Ever since the Council implemented the Guardian Protocols and brought everyone back to the Temple from the Jedi outposts in the Outer Rim, there were too many to keep track of.

They were a human woman with long brown hair and pale skin and a Twi’lek man, the lekku hanging from his head a beautiful blue.

The woman noticed her. “Youngling,” she said, her voice weary but not unwelcoming, “you’re not supposed to be here. This is a dangerous place.”

“I was sent,” Bree said. “They sent me. From . . . upstairs.”

Bree turned and pointed back the way she had come, immediately feeling silly.

“I see,” said the Twi’lek. “You come with a message from the surface world for us underground dwellers, young one?”