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The lights of store fronts on either side of him illuminated his path. Couples young and old roamed the plaza, and laughter and conversation could be heard all around the marketplace.
The brown jacket, grey cap, and scarf he wore offered little protection against the night's chilly breeze. Going armor-less on this trip was a precaution that he had deemed necessary. Glacies Domum was his true home, but under Clan Vaun's current leadership, it was hostile territory. While he had etched all discernible markings off of his armor long ago, any Mandalorian in armor out here would raise suspicion.
His first order of business was to buy a bigger coat, then he would head over to a speeder dealer.
- - - - Twelve Minutes Later, in an Eiyldn City clothing store.
Buying a coat had proved to be far more difficult a task than it should have been. The Chiss cashier he had bought his new garment from only knew how to speak Sy Bisti, and they had to call over another sales assistant to finish the transaction.
Mereel put his new black coat on over his jacket and walked out of the shopping outlet and back into the cold embrace of the night. His next objective was to find a speeder dealership still open at this time of the night.
If he had been wearing his helmet, navigating the city would have been much easier. Thankfully, Eiyldn City was no Coruscant. The city was the planet's only major population center, and the city itself only had a population of over 537,000.
After finding two closed dealerships, he got lucky. A little hole in a wall of a speeder dealership had an 'Open' sign still flashing. Mereel walked in and was instantly greeted by a disheveled looking male Twilek, wearing some torn up trousers and a white shirt drenched in oil. "Good evening sir! Are you looking to buy a used speeder? I just got a slightly used T-ser -"
Mereel looked into the dealer's eyes and held up a hand, "Just show me your enclosed speeders. "
"Uh, sure. Right this way sir. So are you new to the area or is it just time for a new vehicle?"
He followed the dealer as he lead him further into the store. The dealership was much larger than it looked on the outside. He counted at least 12 speeders of various sizes haphazardly scattered around the showroom floor.
"Something like that.."
He looked around the showroom floor, most of the speeders were enclosed, but a lot of them looked beat up. He needed something that could get him to his location without breaking down, but he also needed it to be fast so that he could cut and run at a moment's notice. He started counting vessels that looked fast until he saw something promising looking out of the corner of his eye.
It was an air-speeder that had a transparisteel shield enclosing the pilot cabin, and more importantly it looked to be fast, and in good shape. He pointed at the speeder, "I'll take that one."
"Are you sure? I think you would love to see the T-ser -"
"No, what's the price of that specific speeder?"
The Twilek finally looked at the speeder he had been pointing at, "That's a BARS air-speeder, and it's normal selling price is 8,600 credits. But you'll be pleased to know that at this dealership we sell it for only 8,000. Now, you can take it for a quick te -
"I'll take it." Mereel had a lot of experience in dealing with old kit, and that BARS speeder was certainly not that old. There was almost zero doubt in his mind that the speeder would accomplish his goal.
He handed the salesman nine high denomination credit chips and walked away from the salesman's side and toward the air-speeder's cockpit. He popped open the cabin hatch and yelled across the showfloor to the salesman, who now had his jaw dropped, "9,000 credits. That should cover whatever osik fees you tack on to make this cost 8,600. Pleasure doing business with you."
He activated the speeder's repulsorlifts and it rose from the ground without a hitch. He stomped down the accelerator and sped off into the night.
He had brought enough foodstuffs to last him two weeks, but he hadn't brought any firewood. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but since he didn't have his armor, starting a fire was the most realistic way to get warm for the night.
As he finished chopping off a log from the trunk of a pine he had toppled, he thought he heard a faint rustling noise nearby. Must be the pines waving in the wind.
He grabbed the log and carefully leaned it against two other logs he had previously positioned in a makeshift fire pit. He walked over to his speeder and swapped out his axe for the one piece of armor he had brought down to the planet: his beskar'gam's right gauntlet. He wasn't very good at starting fires, but as long as his flame projector had fuel, he didn't have to be.
Trying to conserve the fuel, he only ignited the projector for half of a second. It was enough to get a respectable fire going. Mereel smiled as he lay down on a blanket he had brought. The light of the stars illuminated rolling mountains for countless miles all around him. Despite being a little too cold for his liking, the snowy Ymatti Mountain Range was truly a breathtaking sight under the night sky.
He fell asleep with the assistance of the warmth of the fire and the dim light of the stars.
His sleep was interrupted by a vicious roar. A white, furry beast over three meters tall charged out of the tree line on all fours. It was heading right for him.
As Mereel sprang up from his position and drew his DL-18 blaster pistol, the beast struck him across the head with a savage blow from its clawed hand.
- - - - ?? Later
He tasted iron faintly in the back of his mouth. I'm not dead.
He slowly opened his eyes. The world is upside down.. no wait.. I'm upside down?
In front of him was a hulking beast that was chewing on the leg of some poor creature that had been reduced to a bloody pulp. He realized that what he was looking at must have been the creature he had heard about in his youth. When he was young he had always thought Wampas were just creatures invented by old women to scare their children into doing their chores.
As the wampa chewed on the leg, he tried to draw his DL-18 once more, but it wasn't on his hip. He looked directly under him, and found his missing weapon lying in a snow drift. Osik..
He looked to his arm, and much to his disappointment, discovered that his gauntlet wasn't equipped. It must have still been back at camp. He looked back to the wampa, it looked like it was almost done eating its current meal.
Osik. Osik. Osik. I knew I should have asked Auri to come with me.
Think Vaun.. you're a Mandalorian and a Jedi.. you can take out a mindless beast.
What would Viszla do?
No wait, I don't have my beskar..
What would a Jedi do?
He closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, and emptied his thoughts.
He felt the force around him, and drew on its presence. He slowly inhaled, and slowly pulled his blaster pistol up and out of the snowdrift. He opened his eyes and saw the DL-18 levitating before his face. He snatched up the weapon and aimed it at the back of the massive Wampa's skull.
It had heard the commotion too late. As it got up and brandished its gnarly fangs at Mereel, he fired five bolts in rapid succession directly between its eyes.
Roughly 9 Kilometers North of the Clan Vaun Estate
As he piloted his speeder throughout the day, he noticed that the number of pine trees around him had been gradually decreasing, and more and more rock formations were now visible. He was about a kilometer away from his destination: a lone mountain that towered above the planet's geyser plains, and more importantly, above the Clan Vaun Estate located amidst the geysers.
V97 Minor - the planet's sun, was beginning to set in the east. He floored the speeder's accelerator and smiled as he heard it kick into higher gear while zipping past pine trees at ludicrous speeds. He was going to miss using the speeder after this mission, he found it incredibly fun to ride.
When he was about 800 feet away from the mountain's base, he stomped down on the decelerator. The air-speeder slowed down until it finally halted only 3 meters away from a wall of solid rock.
Despite having nearly died because of his own recklessness, he felt surprisingly calm. Normally he would be cursing at himself in a situation like this.
This isn't how I normally respond to osik like this. Why am I in so calm?
Whatever, that's not important. Set up camp.
He popped the cockpit of his speeder and grabbed the bedroll and one of the fruit-flavored grain bars and a water bottle from his supply of foodstuffs in the trunk. As he laid out the bedroll, he noticed a little hill that rose up against the rock face. The hill had a few pine trees growing on it, but most noticeably the top of the hill lead to a two meter tall and three meter wide opening in the mountain's rock face.
He paid it no mind. The opening only looked like a small breach in the mountain. It was probably just a small crevice, eroded by water and time. He sat down in his bedroll while he ate. There would be no making of any fires tonight. He was far too close to enemy territory. Any smoke might alert his clan of his presence, and he wasn't ready to face them. Not yet, anyway.
----------------------------- 3 Hours Later -----------------------------
The feeling of a wetness on his face woke him from his sleep. Rain drops.
He picked himself up off of the ground and rolled up his bedroll. Looks like I'm sleeping in the speeder tonight. He walked over to the airspeeder and threw the sleeping bag in the trunk. As he was about to get in the speeder's cockpit to go back to sleep, he found his eyes looking to the crevice in the rock wall.
If he tried to sleep now, he knew his curiosity would keep him awake until he investigated it. Normally he would have been slightly irritated, but he still felt oddly calm. He shut the speeder's cockpit and unholstered his DL-18 blaster pistol.
As he drew closer to the hole in the rock, he felt a strange, subtle sense of familiarity and a wave of calmness washed over him. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had never been here before. During his childhood, he rarely ventured beyond the walls of the clan’s castle. Exploring the surroundings of his childhood home was simply too dangerous, beyond the towering stone walls that protected clan Vaun there were geothermal geysers in all directions waiting for careless or unlucky wanderers to fall into them and be burned alive.
No, this place was new to him, but for some reason he felt right here. He reached the top of the hill and from his new position he saw further into the opening in the rock. To his surprise, the opening was actually a tunnel that extended further in a straight line for a few meters before taking a sharp turn to the left, and he was able to see all of this because there was a blue glow rod leaning against the wall where the tunnel turned.
Despite this new revelation, he did not feel afraid. Even though he was without his armor and there was undeniable proof in front of him that someone had been here recently – or was still here – he didn’t automatically tense up like he normally did before a fight. He reached out into the force to try to sense if there were still lifeforms nearby somewhere in the cave.
He could sense life coming from somewhere deeper in the tunnel. The presences he sensed didn’t feel the same way that Sith felt in the force, but that didn’t mean much. People mysteriously hanging out in a cave this close to Vaun Castle likely meant trouble. Without his armor, even a farmer armed with an old blaster rifle could cause him trouble.
As he worried about fighting in an unknown, close-quarters environment without armor, he felt as if something in the cave was reaching out to him in the force, trying to calm his mind once more. And with that his mind was settled. He tightened his grip on his blaster pistol and marched into the tunnel.
Mereel reached the corner of the tunnel, taking note that there were no additional light sources that he could see deeper in the tunnel. He reached out into the force again in another attempt to sense his surroundings for danger. He could sense a life form close by.
It feels . . . familiar?
He picked up the glow rod. His mind was racing through all the people he had met over the years. Who could have possibly been exploring this cave on this planet at the same time as him? Auri? Yuuni? Siridio? Cato? Remnant contacts? Mando contacts? None of those choices make any kriffing sense.
A dim azure light shone out from the glow rod in his left hand as he walked forward, his pistol's ammunition display shining an even dimmer scarlet light against the stone walls of the tunnel. On both sides of him, in the shades of the blue light and the red light, he noticed strange symbols carved into the walls.
While he never considered himself much of an art critic or an archaeologist, Mereel found himself being extremely interested in the carvings on both sides of the corridor he was walking down. He stopped walking so that he could examine each individual mark on the wall illuminated by the glow rod.
The petroglyphs were far more detailed than he thought they would be, in fact, calling them petroglyphs was a major disservice. What he was looking at was more similar to a painting or a black-and-white holo-image. The soft blue light of his glow rod illuminated a painting on the wall that depicted a man standing in the middle of a grand hallway that had massive columns on both sides.
Mereel legs carried him further until he could see the next image on the left wall. This image depicted a man with a woman standing next to a starship in the middle of a grassy field. In the image, the man was leaning over a third person who was laying on the ground.
Mereel felt a gust of wind blow through the tunnel. A chill tingled down his spine. The hairs on the back of his neck stood.
He was almost certain that he had not moved his feet, but another painting was now directly in front of his eyes. This time the cave showed him a man walking into the middle of a small village. There were others in the painting, some conversing with others, some standing off by themselves.
He couldn't pretend that he didn't know what this was any longer. These were all things which he had participated in, starting with his entrance into the Republic's Jedi Order on Coruscant all those years ago.
How can any of this be on this cave's wall?
Before Mereel could turn his head to the right side of the tunnel wall to see what was illuminated by the glow of his pistol ammunition display, he bumped into something hard, and fell on his back.
When he looked to see what had gotten in his way, he saw the thing he wanted to avoid most in the galaxy right now. A Mandalorian clad in sand-gold armor was looking down at him. Without his armor or even his primary weapon, he was at a severe disadvantage.
He knew that his best option at this point was to talk it out. I'm going to need a really good excuse for this one.."Hey buddy, I got a little lost from my tour group. I don't suppose you coul -"
The mando popped off his helmet with one hand as another hand pulled a flask toward his mouth. "Cut the crap. I know what you are. Pacifistic scum. Killing you will bring Mandalore one step closer to where it belongs in the galaxy."
Mereel could smell the alcohol from the floor. It was oddly sweet. Tihaar probably.
As the Mandalorian standing over him reached for a verpine shattergun at his side, Mereel aimed a kick at the man's armored leg with his right foot. The kick landed hard, and he saw the man's knee buckle in. Before Mereel could aim his pistol at the man's head, the man fell backwards and activated his jetpack. Fire lit up the chamber and smoke billowed into Mereel's face driving him into a coughing fit. When he looked up, the mando was out of sight.
Several minutes had passed since his run in with the Mandalorian. There were no further signs of the man as Mereel pressed on through the tunnels, but he wasn't worried. As he walked, he tried to sense where the man had gone with the force but all he could feel was the calm aura of the cave. Maybe that's why I'm not scared senseless.
Pacifistic scum. Killing you will bring Mandalore one step closer to where it belongs in the galaxy.
Something was off about that statement. The Mandalorian Empire was definitely not pacifistic. It was as if the mando was talking about a Mandalorian government belonging to the past.
He stopped in his tracks as a glint of light flickered in the darkness ahead. Mereel cautiously paced forward until he could clearly make out a large rock formation blocking the tunnel ahead.
That's no rock formation.
The rock was really a door, or perhaps it would be better to call it a gate. The tunnel walls had opened up on the sides, creating a chamber about four meters long leading up to the door, which was easily four meters wide itself, and three meters tall. On the door there were carvings that looked like words written in Aurebesh.
Mereel muttered the words to himself, "Life is a like a current. The tide pushes at the beginning and pulls at the end."
He hated riddles but the mystery of this place alone encouraged him to think through the puzzle. He examined the door from top to bottom. Besides the Aurebesh words, the only other thing on the door were some decorative blocks that looked like they were obsidian sticking out at various places.
Those have to be involved with opening the door right? But which block is the beginning? Left to right would be normal.. but push and pull?
The decorative blocks he needed to move were about 2.5 meters off of the ground. Too high for him to reach without his jetpack. He emptied his thoughts and calmed his mind. He stared at the leftmost block and extended his palm. With less effort than it normally took him, the block moved deeper into the door until it no longer protruded from its surface.
You've got to be kidding me. Well, now at least I know what to do with the other side.
He adjusted his focus to the rightmost block. He extended his palm once more, this time using the force to slowly pull the block from its housing. As the block freely fell to the floor, the large stone gate lifted slowly until it stopped two meters off of the ground. Beyond the raised door there was a light source. A beam of light shone down on the top of a small pyramidal structure in the middle of a chamber larger than the one he was currently in. Along the edges of each side of the chamber there were four columns made of various construction materials, all equally distanced from the chamber's central pyramid.
Mereel clipped the glow rod to his belt and stepped into the chamber. As soon as he crossed the chamber's threshold, the Mandalorian from earlier strutted out from behind the pyramid. "Welcome, ner vod. Took you long enough."
Mereel sized the man up. He guessed that if he was wearing his own armor, they would be roughly the same height. "How'd you get in here?"
The Mandalorian didn’t answer his question. Instead, the man hit his gauntlets together and started walking toward where Mereel was standing at the entrance of the chamber. “Listen pal, this isn’t personal. I’m just doing what’s best for Manda’yaim - for Death Watch. Although, I am going to enjoy busting your shebs.”
There was something unsettling about the man’s voice, and it wasn’t what the man was saying that was unnerving to him. A calm focus settled over his mind, and he dropped to a crouch. He aimed his blaster pistol past a marble column and at the man’s chest. He let his finger ease back the trigger twice, firing two rounds into the man’s breastplate and burning two black marks into the otherwise unblemished sand-colored armor. The man slowed his walk for a second, but other than that Mereel’s action only evoked a low, sadistic laugh.
“Come on. This is grade-A beskar’gam.” The man slammed an armored gauntlet into his chest plate where he had been shot. “All you’ve managed to do is piss me off.” The man began circling around the column that Mereel was kneeling behind when Mereel noticed something peaking over the top of the mando’s shoulder.
Jackpot.
He had seen the tip of a jetpack. If it was an older or cheap model, he would have a way to kill the Mandalorian, he just had to time things right. As Mereel began to get up from his crouch, an armored shoulder jutted into his face. The blow caused him to reel off to the right and stumble to the ground. He could taste iron in his mouth. Blood had leaked from his nose and into his mouth.
“So, that’s how that feels. Fierfek."
Before he could get to his feet, the Mandalorian was already standing behind him. The Mandalorian gripped the back of his coat with both arms and threw him a foot between the marble column and a column made of brass.
His enemy was already marching towards his new position closer to the center of the chamber.
I still have a chance. I still have my pistol.
Mereel sprang clumsily to his feet, pistol held tight in his right hand he ran for the bottom of the pyramid-like structure in the center of the room. He climbed the first step, and the second step, and the next and the next. He would keep going until he felt like he had enough distance needed for his one hope at stopping the man.
“Running away? You used to fight ‘till the bitter end for what you believed in. Risking it all for Death Watch to the point of being captured for years.”
Mereel stopped dead in his tracks, “Who are you?”
Mereel turned and saw that the man was standing still at the bottom of the pyramid, looking up at him with hands on his hips. “Who are you?”
The man’s response would have made him furious in the past. Few people alive in the galaxy knew of his time with the Death Watch, and even fewer knew of his years of captivity that resulted from their attempted invasion of Mustafar. Looking down at the man, he could see the jetpack on his back more clearly.
It’s the same model that I use. This is my best chance.
He raised his blaster pistol and took aim at the top of the figures jetpack. The man sighed loudly and began striding up the steps of the pyramid. Mereel’s hand was shaking.
I have to stay calm. Empty my mind.
Mereel reached out into the force. The calm aura of the chamber was still there. In fact, it felt stronger than he had ever felt it before. He looked at his target without seeing. He pulled the trigger without feeling. In what felt like slow motion, a single red streak soared through the air and connected with his foe’s jetpack. Flames burst out of the top of the pack, and his opponent shot up into the ceiling. He heard the man’s helmet make a heavy thud as it impacted the stone roof, and he watched as the man fell back down, landing on a pyramid stair below him and sliding the rest of the way down until he reached the floor.
Mereel turned to continue climbing the pyramid, but the sound of a popping seal halted him. He turned to confirm his worst fear. He stared at the Mandalorian, who was sitting on his back with his helmet lying of the floor next to him. A dazed, scarred, and bloody face stared back at him. It was his own face. The man opened his mouth and blood came dribbling out at the corners of his lips, “You used to fight so that Mandalore could become a powerful, independent empire of warriors.”
Mereel aimed his pistol at his double’s head, “What do you think it is now? Aren’t you satisfied?” The man spit out the last word as if it were a curse.
“I used to want that above all else. Now, I just want to stop senseless killings wherever I see them, and I see our people doing a lot of that.”
The fallen soldier let out a cold, dry chuckle. “Say whatever osik you want. I know that you’re just a washed up cutthroat. It’s the nature of the galaxy to fight –“
The man let out a series of rasping coughs, “And besides, you know as well as I do that what you want Is unobtainable. Why not just fight whenever it’s profitable for you to fight? Thyferra isn't the first planet that has been burnt to the ground, and it won’t be the last.”
“Unlike you, I’m going to try to prevent what happened to Thyferra from ever happening again for as long as I live. Even if a single person can't stop a planet from being desolated, it's worth trying isn't it?”
The Mandalorian let out a long sigh, and Mereel watched on in horror as the man and his armor dissolved particle by particle in a fiery display of light until there was nothing on the floor but a solid pillar of pure white light.
The pillar lifted upright and moved away from the pyramid. The light moved closer to the edge of the room, positioning itself between and in front of the marble and the brass column. The beam of light expanded and stretched until it was as large as the other columns, and before he realized it he was staring at a solid column of azurite that looked exactly like the rest of the columns surrounding the room.
After staring at the column for what felt like an hour, he turned around, holstered his pistol, and slowly walked up the rest of the pyramid. When he reached the top, he fell onto his knees and rolled over onto his back. He knew what was inscribed on the tunnels leading up to this chamber, he had known all along. And he knew what was on the side of the tunnel that he didn’t look at – the side he didn’t want to look at.
He wiped some blood away from his nose and thought about everything that had happened since he had landed on the planet.
He was almost too caught up in thinking to notice the cube-shaped object descending from the center of the ceiling. He clambered to his feet just in time to see the object set down on a pedestal illuminated by the chamber’s central overhead light, which looked to be constructed entirely out of some gem-like materials.
Mereel slowly made his way over to the cube and examined it. The thing itself looked archaic, but its shape made the device seem simple enough. The object was mostly gold in color, but it had some glowing blue components along its exterior. He had no doubt in his mind that it was a Jedi artifact of some kind. He carefully placed a hand on the artifact. It felt cold to the touch, but more importantly it felt light. He picked the device up with a single hand and the pedestal sunk down an inch.
[SIZE=11pt]Oddly enough, he didn’t feel threatened by the pedestal sinking. He held his ground, holding the artifact firmly in his right hand. In front of him, between a pillar of obsidian and granite, he saw a piece of stone wall move backwards and then off to the side, revealing a new path. [/SIZE]
The path behind the new door deposited him at the bottom of a long, dark, winding stairwell. After walking up what must have been fifteen stories worth of stairs, he reached a dead end. His right hand still held the artifact, in his left hand was the dying glow rod.
It had to run out eventually I guess.
He dropped the dim glow rod on the staircase with a sigh. Why didn’t whoever it was that built this place put lights in this stairwell. One of those gem-things would have worked perfectly fine here.
He looked around the dim glow studying his surroundings. He was searching for a clue telling him what he needed to do next, but all he saw was stone stairs, a stone wall, his glow rod, and a long-burnt out torch on the wall.
Wait a second, I haven’t seen any torch mounts before this point. Maybe..
Mereel put his hand around the torch mount and pulled towards himself. As he pulled the torch, the undoubtedly ancient lever locked in place in a new position and moonlight shone down on the landing he was standing on. Roughly ten feet above him, a horizontal slab of stone had retracted.
Thankfully, it was no longer raining, but now he had to deal with a new problem: he still didn’t have his jetpack, and he needed to get up there somehow. The climb was a sheer ninety-degree angle, and the rock walls that he could climb were all smoothly cut, giving him nowhere to place his hands or feet if he wanted to try climbing the wall.
Well, I guess now is as good of a time as any to try it.
Mereel had seen Jedi Knights and Masters use the force to increase the height that they could jump exponentially, and when he had been in the temple on Coruscant he had even heard of some people using the force to levitate. However, he had never learned how to do it himself, and frankly he had never had the need to learn how to do it. He had always had his armor’s jetpack to get around vertically, but now he would have to make the ascent without it.
Clear your mind. Focus on where you are and where you need to be. Jump, and feel the force lifting you. Jump and make the force lift you.
He called on the force within himself and from the air around him. Something about this place was strange. It felt like nothing he had ever felt before, it was as if the air was drenched in force energy, and it wasn’t the sickening power that he felt from the force surrounding powerful Dark Jedi. The force energy here felt tranquil, it reminded him of a familiar place, it even made him feel like he belonged here. The calming aura made him forget the trial he had just faced with his double in the chamber below, it put him at ease. He made this aura part of himself, and with the assistance of the force he kicked his legs off of the ground. With one movement he launched himself eight feet vertically into the air.
Still two feet short.
Mereel threw up both of his arms in an attempt to grab the topmost part of the stone shaft. To his surprise, his fingers clutched at grass as his body slammed into one of the vertical shaft’s stone wall. After a few seconds of struggling, he pulled himself up and over until he was standing on a patch of grass ten feet above the opening in the ground.
Mereel listened to the sounds of the night. He heard wind rustling through the leaves of the pines, frogs croaking in the pond nearby, and crickets chirping. A small voice joined the chorus of midnight sounds. “Hello, traveler. I’ve been waiting for you.”
He turned to face the voice. At this point he wasn’t surprised that something else had confronted him, but when he saw what was talking to him he couldn’t stop an eyebrow from raising in surprise. A partially transparent, blue hooded figure was standing in the middle of some old, dilapidated bricks that had ivy and moss growing on them.
“I’ve watched you during your trial, am I correct in guessing that you are a Jedi?”
He wanted to move closer to the apparition to see if it was real, but he was dumbfounded and his feet refused to move. It took him a few seconds to get his tongue to speak the words he was thinking, “Yes, I am a Jedi, although I am only a Padawan.. by my ‘trial’, you mean what happened in the chamber with the pyramid don’t you?”
The apparition appeared to sit down on one of the old bricks, “Yes, a trial of the spirit. The praxeum’s catacombs were always a testing ground for that trial. Considering that you lack the weapon of the Jedi, I am surprised that you even know of the trials, but that is not what I wanted to discuss with you.”
Mereel felt the feeling in his legs return to him, and he slowly moved to sit on a block across from the figure. It was a surreal experience to say the least. “I’m listening.”
“This place is a Jedi praxeum, you know what that is don’t you?”
Mereel shook his head in acknowledgement.
“Excellent, well, you are holding this praxeum’s only surviving holocron. That item contains a wealth of knowledge, which you are free to take it if you like. However, if you choose to do so, I would like to ask a few favors of you.”
Mereel swallowed, making deals with a ghost sounded like a bad idea, but perhaps all ghosts weren’t vengeful spirits. “I understand. Tell me what you would have me do, and I’ll see if I can agree with what you want."
“I see, then I will start with my largest request. I would like for you to protect this place. Look around you. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel?”
He scanned his surroundings. It was hard to see with only the pale light of the night, but he could sense the animals, the life, in the force better than he could see it. This place was a refuge for life on the edge of a geothermal basin that offered nothing but death. “I feel life.”
“Good, good you understand part of my request, but there is more to this place than that. Beneath us, in an offshoot of the central chamber that you did not enter, are the tombs of several of the praxeum’s Jedi Masters. For centuries, there has always been at least one living Jedi who has acted as the praxeum’s protector. A groundskeeper, if you will”
Mereel snorted, “Surely you don’t need me to protect these foundation blocks, and if I have the holocron I doubt you need me coming around here.”
The apparition lowered his hooded head, “Yes, the main building itself has been destroyed for thousands of years. What you are sitting on is merely what is left of the original structure’s foundation. However, the underground training chambers and tombs have been constantly maintained by a guardian throughout the centuries. Until about a hundred years ago that is. Our last groundskeeper died before we could find his successor. Anyhow, if you accept the role of groundskeeper, you do not have to live here, I only ask that you check the tombs to make sure they have not been disturbed whenever you find a reprieve from your travels.”
Mereel considered the apparition’s proposition. He thought he had learned a lot about the galaxy during his days as a mercenary and soldier, but this was an entirely new world to him. “Okay, I accept, I’ll become the praxeum’s groundskeeper.”
“Excellent. My second and final request is that you put some of your own knowledge into the holocron.”
Mereel stood abruptly, “What? I’m hardly a Padawan! I don’t even know how to use this thing!”
The phantom laughed. “You do not have to do it now. Once you understand the holocron though, you should add something to it. The holocron you hold is a collaboration of information from many Jedi Masters and Knights, each and every one of them leaving a mark on the galaxy through the information they left on that artifact.”
Mereel pondered the object, twisting it around in his hands. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”
“Then, I will leave you to the company of the animals. This is the last you will see of me until it is time to look for the next groundskeeper. May the force be with you.”
Before he could respond, the phantom faded out of existence – if it ever really existed at all. In the end it didn’t really matter whether the ghost was real or whether he had a hallucination. If the apparition was truthful, he now had a Jedi holocron to bring back to the Remnant. Before he could do that though, he had to finish scoping out Castle Vaun, and he could think of no better place to do it from than the top of this mountain overlooking the geysers.
