Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [215]
He flew at Jacen with hands upraised and mouth ajar. Jacen lifted his hands in defense and he and Onimi met with blinding discharges of electrical energy that entangled both of them in a flashing web. Their hands interlocked, they whirled from one side of the bridge to the other in a kind of mad pirouette, caroming off the coarse bulkheads and smooth instrumentation. Jaina sent her twin what reinforcement she could summon, but he told her to conserve her strength.
The transmutated secretions from Onimi’s palms and fingertips sent hallucinogens through Jacen’s skin and capillaries, and coursing through his bloodstream. Onimi’s paralyzing fang struck repeatedly for Jacen’s temples and neck. Poison wafted on his forced sighs and rode within the droplets of his frothing saliva.
But the Jacen that the Supreme Overlord had in his taloned grip was not there. Where once Jacen had been unable to find Onimi through the Force, now it was Onimi who couldn’t find Jacen. What he found instead was formless, supple, and fathomless—an infinite emptiness, but as serene as a wind toppling trees to encourage new growth.
A being of light, Jacen was drawing into himself all of Onimi’s lethal compounds, neutralizing them and casting them out as sweat, tears, and exhalations.
He understood at last why he had failed to catch Anakin’s lightsaber when Luke had tossed it to him: he was never meant to catch it, because he had become the lightsaber.
He had attained the ability to cut through any resistance in himself; to sever the bonds of preconception; to open a gaping hole into a reality more expansive than any he had ever dared imagine; to heal. As his grandfather had done, he had broken through the apparent opposites that concealed the absolute nature of the Force, and found his way into an unseen unity that existed beyond the seeming separateness of the world. For a moment all the cosmic tumblers had clicked into place, and light and dark sides became something he could balance within himself, without having to remain on one side or the other. The consciousness that was Jacen Solo was strewn across the vast spectrum of life energy. He had passed beyond choice and consequence, good and evil, light and dark, life and death.
All that had been required of Jacen was complete surrender—a technique once mastered by the Jedi Order but at some point misplaced; transposed to an emphasis on individual achievement, which had opened a way to arrogance.
In that the path was available to any who chose to seek and follow it, Jacen understood that the discovery was really a rediscovery. Indeed, the ur-Yuuzhan Vong had adhered to it when they had lived in symbiosis with Yuuzhan’tar. In that dim protohistorical time, they had been group-minded, living in a world where the boundaries between self and other were permeable. By cutting that bond they had isolated themselves from the Force. They had deluded themselves into thinking that they were worshiping life, when in fact they were worshiping the only route to symbiosis left open to them, which was death.
Jacen realized that, in a sense, he had paraphrased Onimi. He had passed beyond the tradition of the Jedi Order into a more embracing reality. But instead of attempting to steal the authority of the gods, or to become a god, he had finally allowed himself to merge with the Force in its entirety and become a conduit for its raw power, which flowed through him like the thundering headwaters of a great river. The conjoining of the Force and his Vongsense enabled him to render himself small enough to follow Onimi wherever he went or attempted to hide; to counter Onimi’s every action, and merge with his