Star Wars - Lost Tribe of the Sith 02 - Skyborn

loneliness as desperate and profound as his own. It wanted to draw him close and keep him safe, to take the place of his parents and never let him be alone again.
    Terrified and confused, young Ben pulled away, simultaneously drawing in on himself and yanking his hand from the grasp of the silver-haired lady who was holding it.
    Then suddenly he was back in the cockpit of the
Jade Shadow
, staring into the fire-rimmed voids ahead. Scattered around their perimeter were the smaller whorls of half a dozen more distant rings, their fiery light burning bright and steady against the starless murk of the deep Maw.
    “Well?” his father asked. “Anything feel familiar?”
    Ben swallowed. He wasn’t sure why, but he found himself wanting to withdraw from the Force all over again. “Are we sure we need to find these guys?”
    Luke raised a brow. “So it
is
familiar.”
    “Maybe.” Ben couldn’t say whether the two feelings were related, and at the moment he didn’t care. There was something hungry in the Maw, something that would still be there waiting for him. “I mean, the Aing-Tii call them Mind Drinkers. That can’t be good.”
    “Ben, you’re changing the subject.” Luke’s tone was more interested than disapproving, as though Ben’s behavior were only one part of a much larger puzzle. “Is there something you don’t want to talk about?”
    “I wish.” Ben told his father about the dark tentacle that had reached out to him after the
Shadow
departed Shelter so many years ago. “I guess what we’re feeling now might be related. There was definitely some …
thing
keeping tabs on me at Shelter.”
    Luke considered this for a moment, then shook his head. “You were pretty attached to your mother. Maybe you were just feeling abandoned and made up a ‘friend’ to take her place.”
    “A
tentacle
friend?”
    “You said it was a
dark
tentacle,” Luke continued thoughtfully, “and guilt is a dark emotion. Maybe you were feeling guilty about replacing us with an imaginary friend.”
    “And maybe
you
don’t want to believe the tentacle was real because it would mean you left your two-year-old son someplace really dangerous,” Ben countered. He caught his father’s eye in the mirrored section again. “I hope you’re not going to try to psychoanalyze this away, because there’s a big hole in your theory.”
    Luke frowned. “And that would be?”
    “I was
two
,” Ben reminded him. “And by all accounts, I didn’t feel guilty about
anything
at that age.”
    Luke grinned. “Good point, but I still don’t think we should worry too much about this tentacle monster of yours.”
    “It’s not
my
tentacle monster,” Ben retorted, miffed at having his concerns mocked. “You’re the one who made me dredge it up.”
    Luke’s expression hardened into admonishment. “But
you’re
the one who’s still afraid of it.”
    The observation struck home. Whether or not the dark presence he remembered was real, he had emerged from Shelter wary of abandonment and frightened of the Force. And it had been those fears that had allowed Jacen to lead him into darkness.
    Ben sighed. “Right. Whatever this thing is, I’ve got to face it.” After a moment, he asked, “So how do we find these Mind Drinkers?”
    “‘The Path of True Enlightenment runs through the Chasm of Perfect Darkness.’” Luke was quoting Tadar’Ro, the Aing-Tii monk who had told them that Jacen had left the Kathol Rift to search out the Mind Drinkers. “‘The way is narrow and treacherous, but if you can follow it, you will find what you seek.’”
    Ben swung his gaze toward the black holes ahead. The brilliant whorls of their accretion disks were burning hottest and brightest along their inner rims, where a mixture of in-falling gas and dust was being compressed to unimaginable densities as it vanished into the sharp-edged darkness of twin event horizons.
    “Wait. Tadar’Ro said
perfect
darkness, right?” Ben started to have a bad feeling about the monk’s instructions. “Like, beyond an event horizon?”
    “Actually, it’s probably very bright on the way down a black hole,” Luke pointed out. “Just because gravity is too strong for light to escape doesn’t mean it can’t exist, and there’s all that gas compressing and glowing as it’s sucked deeper and deeper.”
    “Yeah, but you’re
dead
,” Ben said, “and everything is dark when you’re dead. Still, I see what you mean. I doubt Tadar’Ro expects us to fly