STAR WARS:: Mauve Under The Bright Jewel. Pt. VI

VI
In to darkness. He could see a hall. A wide and very empty great hall, almost cathedral like, big pillars of stone and metal lined the walls at his left and right and met in dramatic archways dozens of meters above his head. The  stone was polished black. The metal gleamed and threw back reflections of diffuse points of light. As he moved, the metal on the walls reflected the movement of the green bar of energy that hummed at the end of his arm. His light saber was ready. In his head, the girl’s screams had become soft sorrowful cries and sighs.

Oreth stepped further in to the darkness. Ahead, an enormous arched threshold revealed a landing platform under the city might sky. He started towards it fastening his pace. After a step or two, he could hear the familiar sound of twin ion engines revving up. Trough the force, he pierced the darkness and saw shadows within shadows: a flowing black robe that disappeared inside the dreaded shape of an almost mythical ship: A Sith infiltrator.
The greenish light of the twin ion engines flared as the ship gained altitude. Oreth reached the platform on the huge balcony of the building, just as the ship that was there moments  ago got lost among the stars, and had hardly the time to reflect on it when the attack came.

It was as sudden as it was brutal, the only warning the aggressive buzz and hum of a red light saber that illuminated the darkness behind him. The Jedi had barely the time to raise his weapon in defense to block the two handed strike that would have decapitated him. For a split second, the  afterglow of the sightseers collision blinded him. And then, little by little, a face took shape inches away from his own. A girl, olive skin, ivory black hair cascading in silky threads framing her features. Oreth sensed something very wrong with that face but could not put his finger on it until a heartbeat later. “The eyes, the blood, the streaks of blood, and.. The eyes”. The girl would have been quite lovely if there were eyes where they were supposed to be. Instead, only a pair of gaping, enormous black pits on eye sockets stood in their place. From each empty socket, three straight streaks of blood flowed endlessly. He could feel the heat of her raw power, her hatred.

The girl withdrew her blade and moved to strike again, this time in a series of fast jabs and cuts aimed all over his body. Oreth skillfully parried every single thrust and retaliated with a powerful one handed swing aimed at disarming her. With a quick wrist adjustment, the girl avoided his maneuver and danced back in a guarding stance. Her voice was echoing again trough his skull. “You took him and killed her… Jedi did. Corrupt, degenerate Jedi. He took him. He took him!” Her screams were maddening. He was beginning to struggle for every blow she punished him with, and she was only getting faster. Oreeth closed his eyes. He trusted the Force, and eyes could deceive him. Instead he channel trough the energy to let his body do the motions he knew so well, and focused on attacking her mind. With a sigh, he went inside her.

And he knows, instantly, he know. She is standing on a balcony looking down, it is dusk. Training has just finished. It was a good session. Her newly found acquaintance had fount that untapped potential in her. Her newly found guide, her newly found life and master. She assumed he was some sort of dark Jedi. And at first, the red markings and horns on his head had scared her and she had run. She had tried to run and hide. Bt he had been like a bloodhound, sniffing her out of whatever dump and hole whe crawled in to. He had found her, and she had taken her for himself, he had claimed her and she owed him much now. It had been painful, but it had been worthy at last, when he had spoken words that had been engraved in her mind: “At last you will reveal yourself to the Jedi, for he is coming, at last you will have revenge”.

That had been months before, and the Jedi had come. She had learned, she had followed while she was not training with her master. And now time to act is close. She stands on that balcony, waiting on her first move. Below her, among the street urchins, the night strollers and the drunkards coming out of a nearby pub;  a very thin brown eyed boy is speaking to a beautiful creature, an older girl than her, blueish skin, violet eyes. She knows what is being said. He is supposed to put her on alert about a Jedi looking for her, and looking for a pilot to get him to Tansarii point. From her balcony, she could see that the words of the skinny boy cause an impact on the blue skinned hag. Tansarii point must not be reached, or at the least, Black Sun must not get in contact with this Jedi, she is to kill him first. Or else her life is forfeited. Moving away from the balcony, she uncovers her face by pulling back the dark hood she is wearing. Her  very bright blue eyes  smile as she makes her plans. Her eyes, her ice colored eyes, almost like the color of mint liquor…

STAR WARS::: Mauve Under The Bright Jewel. Pt 5

V
He stepped in to the night. The bar had certainly been a step in the right direction. He remembered how he got there, just running trough the streets, scavenging for what ever traces of emotion he felt at different places. Emotions broken, like shards of a mirror. He could feel them before, he could still feel them then. Just stepping in in to The White Pearl had felt good, proper, like another shard of the mirror staring up at him.
Breathing. In and out.
He was losing the battle. Just before, pushing that blue eyed boy in to the wall and smashing his head in had been… rewarding, in its own sense. He started running while recreating the fast and furious battle that had left a bar owner and some patrons dead in the ground. Had not that blue eyed boy deserved to die with his skull in bits and brains leaking out?
The blue eyed boy.
But the eyes were brown just before he died.
He ran, he did not stop. His steps, long furious strides. Brown eyes.
He followed the scent of the broken mirror trough the streets of the spacer’s city. As time went by he could feel the trace getting stronger and stronger. Emotions were taking shape, images were getting clearer. The blue eyes of an olive skinned woman. A boy and a girl with broken bonds. Jealousy and heartache. A dark figure stepping out of the shadows. Death, pain, stronger, getting stronger, until he stopped.
The mirror became clear and almost complete as he stood there, gazing upwards, to a stratospheric tower that almost reminded him of one of the tallest buildings in the abandoned parts of Coruscant. He knew those empty buildings abound in major cities. Normally become strongholds for pirates, smugglers and all assorted criminals. Looking up at the black tower with the orange-pink glow of the bright jewel as a background made him feel a surge of energy, dark energy. Young padawans are taught how to recognize the presence of the dark side, they are taught about the mythical and extinct figure of the Sith, though their more close reference are rogue or fallen Jedi. Dark Jedi.
His mind racing, could not get a grasp on all of it at once. He tried to remember some of Alema´s teachings, another vision of the past to get him trough this and helped him gather the courage to go in to the enormous dark tower, and could not.
Breathe in and out. In and out. Streets around in shadows. Glancing about, he discovered a nearby tree lined park some hundred meters off the enormous dark structure, across a wide gap between different platforms of the city levels. The park offered him a cover point from where to observe the tower, and let in the waves of energy and emotion coming from it.
Without much thought and letting himself go in the force, he cleared the distance with a run and an effortless force jump.
Under the trees, he tried to grasp some of Alema´s teachings, or another vision o the past that she might have had for him, to no avail. Padawans are mostly taught on dark side users as a means to control and bring to justice renegade, rogue or dark Jedi. He had a feeling this was neither.
Padawans were only historically taught about the mythical figure of the Sith and its followers. Not much was known about the extinct order. Only some extracts of their code remained. Oreth was held in awe by part of it…  ¨Trough the force I break my chains…¨ or something near that.
He sat with his back to a cool tree trunk. Knowledge, he was taught also, was the best weapon. And he had knowledge, he had been receiving the waves of emotion that made up the shards of the broken mirror he had been following. A broken mirror of tears, pain and suffering. He embraced it as he reconstructed the shards piece by piece, and the pieces tied up to him in ways that shocked him.

The sun shines. It is morning on the landing platform on which “The Mortician Wife” sits. Clouds are dark and overcast. The captain is not worried, flight conditions are still good, and had stated in several occasions the trust he has in his Dathomiri pilot, Saris. Aeric is telling them that they will depart soon, and the atmosphere will be broken imminently. Oreth, from his seat in the passenger’s hold, watches every facial expression on Daneela as he talks to her. The woman is now more inclined towards believing no foul play or double intentions on the part of the JedI by approaching her to offer his assistance that day at the bar they had first met. And she is now accepting the enormous coincidence of them both looking for Aeric Montaigne in that same place. Though for Oreth, it has never been a coincidence, but that wind that blows and direct its will. The Force.

Oreth feels the ship as it leaves the atmosphere behind. He could always feel life staying behind. The life of a whole planet weighs on him like the presence of  the deep darkness in the abysses of his home. Little by little, the clouds dissipate. The gravitation devices of the ship kick in to maximum. Sublight engines start their characteristic humming and the whole structure shivers at their awakening for a split second. Saris is a good pilot, no passenger experiences any discomfort upon leaving the planet.  Moments go by, moments of reflection and observation. Daneela seems relaxed, his own memory of the dark figure he glimpsed on the platform seem to die away as a mirage. He finds himself chatting endlessly to Daneela. The woman does not talk back all that much, however, her intentions of joining up with black sun are pretty clear. Oreth wonders who would some one as young and capable would want to join the most blatantly open and shameless criminal organization in the galaxy. It does not add up for him at that moment, since he cannot sense any criminal intentions, evil orientations or madness in her while staring at those deep wells of violet eyes. No, only a deep sense of duty and honor, and a sort of grief mingled with love towards… her father?

Daneela stirs in her seat. “I know what you do, jedI, and I would like for you to stop, now. Remove yourself from here” she says as she taps her forehead with her slender blueish fingers. “I do not mean to pry, Daneela. I need to be as helpful as I can with both my assignments and my pledge to you, to help you, won’t you tell me more? I feel you have not been earnest and…” The girl takes her data pad  and starts keying in some information, ignoring the jedI. “look, our deal is simple enough. You help me get in the good side of Black Sun, possibly put in a good word with your ambassadorial rights, then go do whatever it is you need doing and leave me there. Me, from the inside, can help you with whatever it is you must do, which by the sloppy and very infuriatingly transparent way you carry about I’m willing to bet it has something to do with the Bota shipment that Capt. Aeric and the infamous crew of  “The Mortician’s Wife” are carrying right now. The jedI feels at a loss of words. He could love her, from that very moment un until the end of his days, he could love her for that. “Am I that transparent? Look, Bota is very dangerous, and in the wrong hands…” The sound of heavy boots on steel cuts his words short. Daneela, for a moment, seemed actually interested and concerned about what he was going to say before Aeric came in to the passenger’s hold with that bearded big smile of him. “Well, awkward bedmates, we are about to part ways. Have the credit transference ready, Jedi, I am expecting those credits in my account as soon as Estonious and I finish working out the unloading of my shipment up in tansarii station. No delays, period.

He feels the movement of approach and correcting maneuvers the freighter conducts in order to dock at Tansarii point station. If half of the things rumored and whispered in dark corners of dark cantinas on darker cities were true, a new sith empire might spring from there with all manners of horrors as its arsenal.  Leaning in the viewport. The jedI can now see the complete vastness of the metal structure. It could house an entire city and then some. And the council had briefed him thoroughly of its fame and data as main base of operations of the Black Sun in the Ord Mantell Star System. There might even be true that a Viggo is currently there, waiting for him, waiting to negotiate with an ambassador from the republic. Oreth was certain that made the villainous character all the more arrogant and self satisfied.

The ship settles in. The jedI can feel the humming of the engines as he steps down, with Aeric in front of him, and Daneela at his back. The docking bay is dark and silent. Aeric seems relaxed, but ready; he unfastens the brooch on one of his holsters, the left one, Oreth observes, left handed shooter. On the commlink, they can hear Saris´ voice. “Aeric, come back up, there are no docking officials and no one is around, I have a bad feeling about this one”. the captain walks completely off the landing  ramp and turns back towards the ship, looking for the view port of the ship’s cockpit. Sardonically, he makes some hand gestures, “Relax old lady, trust me, these black sun guys are always looking for the dramatic…”
He did not get a chance to finish his sentence. The lights on the hangar went completely dark, and from the back of the docking bay, some forty to fifty meters in front of the ship, a hell of red death  rained upon them.

Oreth got up from his sitting position under the dark trees. The strong emotions he followed to the tower complex were showing him his own memories. E did not want to go there again, not again. But he knew at some point the had to. He had t relive the slaughter, the dark presence, the sacrificial lamb feeling he had been having. “She died up there, why are you reminding me that she died up there, in the cold dark”.
“Because part of you died there too, like part of me died, here, not once but twice. And it was by your hand, Jedi.” That took the air out of him.
The voice.
A woman’s voice. No, not a woman yet, a girl’s voice.
Her voice was a flat kick to the stomach. All the pain, all the emotion. The shattered mirror was hers. The shards of emotions he had been trailing were hers. The pain and suffering was her. And she was here. Oreth stood up. From among and under the trees he tried to glimpse at the top level of the dark tower complex. Up there, at the top, a landing platform, two silhouettes. One is her, the voice. The other, cold and ruthless; a shadow hunter, a demon maybe, and Oreth was sure that demon was the owner a double bladed red light saber. He had seen it before, at Tansarii point, in the cold, in the dark.
Rage fueled him, in two strides and a force jump he was back at the base of the tower. He could hear the girl’s laughter in his head. He smashed trough the front entrance. “I have found you, now you die” he thought with every stride. He came to the turbo lift in the center of the abandoned lobby. The place reminded him of a corporate complex like those found on Coruscant. “ARATECH” read a half torn down sign above the lobby security station. He ran past towards the lift. Energy in the whole building seemed non existent. That would not stop him. Fueled by the shrill laughter of the girl’s voice in his head, he summoned the force to activate circuitry. The lobby rumbled and a deep humming like war drums blasted trough the place. Lights flickered on. The lift’s doors slid open and Oreth stepped inside. Turning his face up, without pressing any button, the lift made its rocket way speeding up, towards the laughter and the girl’s voice.
The girl’s voice spoke to him as he came up to meet her.

I saw you Jedi, first getting off your civilian passenger freight all those weeks ago. You were so pleased with yourself as you thought you had come incognito, as you selected your run down apartment in one of the middleclass places in the city. I was there you know. It  amazed me how a jedI could have only intoxicating beverages in its ice box. I saw you come in and out for some days, strutting the bars and the bad places. Looking for wings that would take you there, to the center of a black sun. but my master had plans before, my master needed the black sun himself, and you would not stand in his path. So very slowly, you destroyed all I love, and I managed to destroy the one thing I foresaw you’ll love.

“No” The Jedi sped up the lift with The Force, he could feel the pressure of G forces pulling him down, if he could not restrain himself he was going to kill himself by launching the lift as a rocket trough the roof. Breathe in, breathe out… No, breathe fire. “Fire breath is what I need now, I will burn you to the ground for this”. The lift sped its way towards the stratospheric top level.


You are weak, Jedi. Two women when you have already taken your vows? Jedii should not expose so many weakness. The jedii order is rotting from the inside. You, are worthless. And in a single stroke I took them both away from you as you took all from me. Do you know of what I speak, yes? I will show you.

The girl´s laughter pierced him as he rocketed his way up. He tried to avoid it, avoid thinking on her voice, on the images of death and carnage she was sending out. Concentrate on energy, The Energy fueling the turbo lift coming straight from The Force, he could feel it, he could take them, both, he could be powerful enough for that. And humble enough to come back to Alema, on his own, and atone what needed be, or not. He could teach her now. Harness the power without the selfish intent, but iwh noble purpose.. It could b…. The images the girl was sending out pierced trough his mind like a lightsaber trough flesh. His flesh.

A woman, holding her two children, a girl and a boy. It is a red sun outside. Fog of War covers the entire city. Fog of war that sand blasts the skin of all who step outside.
The woman cowers in fear. Her house is torn apart. Holes in parts of the walls and ceiling made from turbo laser cannons. From which side? She did not know, she only knew to hide her children. They went to the basement. They could still hear the battle upside and all around in the city.
She was never in to local politics and knew not what was this new excuse for beings to kill each other. Her father had been a faith minister. Some Force based religion. The Force. What use is that of that woman now.
News were An Ambassador was sent to negotiate peace terms between warring colonies of Ord Mantell Star System. A Jedii. Apparently the arrogant monk had decided to take sides and was actually helping them blasting each other apart.
Footsteps outside and avobe. Shouting, violence on the ruins of  her house. blaster bolts, and another sound, a humming and a ripping sound like flesh being seared. Silence. Steps coming in. The basement door opens and there he stands. A Human. His grayish hair and full beard lit up in red and purple tones as his light saber lights up the small underground room. He comes closer. “I need him” the jedii states without so much as looking at the woman who holds close to his chest the two children. “She might be talented, but he is powerful, I can feel it, he must come with me”. The woman screams, pleads, and begs. When that does not stop the gray haired man from taking his son, she strikes him, hard. She is not weak, never have been. Twice she strikes him, and once he even lost some footing. Holding the small boy by the neck in one hand, the jedii ignites his light saber. Red and purplish tones colour the death of her mother. The girl´s mother.
The girls voice, her laughter ar now screams and tears. Oreth knows she is waiting for him, fueled and ready.
He too, is ready.
The lif stops. The doors open…