Thandon Star Cluster
Brosi System
Objective III
The seed was gone from his hands, claimed now by the soils of Brosi; yet the work was far from over. The ritual's accumulated power roiled through the Force, its power curling around him and buffeting him like storm winds; writhing from within his belly like slippery eels to make him nauseous. The Dark Side surged through him, an ocean at high tide, immense, filling him near to bursting, pressing up and pouring itself into him, thrumming at the edges of his vision. Like this, he felt as a Celestial must, unstoppable, immovable. With his will, and this
much power, he could raise mountains or drain oceans with a thought. He felt the very secrets of creation threading through him, whispering, pulling at him from every direction and tempting him to veer from his intended path. They told him grand lies and made him promises he knew concealed hooks—
beseeching that he never give this up—not now, not for
anyone! This power was the smell of smoke and liquor to an addict, of food to the starved, the sound of trickling water to the exhausted and the parched. He felt drunk on it. Felt the insides of his mouth turn sour. He could imagine all of the thousands upon thousands of reasons to seize this all, to take it and never yield it back again. To starve the others gathered here, bound by the ritual, wrench the Force from them like kicking wind from their lungs, to take it all. Take it all and...
... the others...
He looked around, blinking slowly. Nearby,
Gerwald Lechner
pressed
The Lord of Hunger
in defense of the ritual, outnumbered and undaunted. Closer still,
Srina Talon
wove between the site's glowing runes, sewing filaments of the Force back into place. She met his gaze as if she knew he'd be looking. Her eyes were like anchors.
The others. He was not alone here. Beside him, another current bled into the Force. Powerful, though unsteady. Freezing cold, coating the ground around her in black
rime frost.
Revna.
He sucked in a breath, dilated slit-serpent pupils contracting into thin vertical fangs. Her impression in the Force felt wrong to him. The hunger was fraying, tearing at the seems. It pulled outward with a wild and aimless desperation. He felt the edges of it licking against him, the chill worming into his bones. It pulled heat from his body, made him feel gaunt, weak, like he was malnourished and corpse-thin. Almost, he could hear the musical thrum of her power in the air, could taste it as distinct from the foul bitterness of the Dark Side of the Force, and knew what it would consume
first if left unchecked.
Srina's voice cut through the chaos.
"She needs you," it said.
"I know," he agreed, defensively.
"Go," she commanded.
Caedes bowed his head in acknowledgment, a single sharp nod, before rising from his place at the scar upon the ground.
"Now!"
He turned and closed the distance between himself and Revna. He pressed into the torrent of her hunger, its power clawing at him barely restrained, trying to strip him to the marrow. He slid his arms beneath hers, pulling her upright, deliberately, the press of his body steady against her trembling. He leaned in, craning his neck forward. His lips brushed the tip of her ear.
"Revna, my love," he whispered with a voice like dry leaves being crushed.
"I'm here with you."
Caedes closed his eyes and let the world fall away, reaching out with his senses. His consciousness unfurled into hers, stretching through the storm of her emotions until the battlefield felt far away, the ritual, the fighting and the explosions quieting as if gone to some great distance—all of it replaced by the familiar silence of her inner sanctuary. The garden where she felt safest, serene and beautiful, a gurgling fountain at its center. A manifestation of where her psyche came to hide. However, it was not as it should be. The greenery sagged, having become brown and greasy looking, petals slick with creeping rot, the fountain's water soiled to an oil-slick sheen. At the edges of his vision, the shadows seemed to move; concealing a presence, sinister and watching, lurking yet never fully visible. A predator's patience lived in those shadows. Jealous and irritated with his presence here. Hungry though forced to wait, not daring to step forward before the King.
There, at the center of it all, knelt Revna, draped in the shadows of the fountain. She looked pale and small, with dark eyes from which sickly veins spread. He went to her without hesitation. He put his arms around her, holding her with the same certainty as when they danced that first night. His love for her churned up and knotted in his throat. It spilled out from him and into this place like a light, banishing shadow and washing the garden in bright shades of
Horuset red. Like ash being blown from one's palm, the light seemed to expel any trace of rot. Plants rose up and became full again. The fountain sputtered, its waters' slick sheen burning away to sparkle clear. Something hissed out of sight, directionless, made to reel in the presence of such power.
He kissed her nose, fingers pressing up beneath her chin to take hold of her jaw. Kissed her again, then pressed his forehead against her own.
"Hey," he greeted, smiling.
"We need you out there," he said.
"I need you."
His voice rolled like distant thunder.
"Take my hand, Lady Revna."
And in perfect concert with his Empress, as if both had read from the same prophetic script beforehand, he spoke the words with her.
"It begins."
"It begins."
Caedes opened his eyes again. The garden was gone. The battlefield roared back into existence. The ritual was near its peak now. He could feel it in the seed below, in its terror, its anger, and in its dawning sense of grim self awareness. The mycorrhizal network of
Madrona A’Mia
cradled it within a covetous embrace, shaping its reach and showing it where to grow. Darth Caedes dug back into the ritual's fabric, offering his power to a growing
Psilofyr.
Without wasting a moment, Caedes extended a hand toward Srina. The ritual knife whipped from her grasp and into his palm, sharp blade whispering high pitched through the air. He turned the blade and drew it across the flesh of his spidery hand. Thick blood welled up slow like syrup, darker than a human's. He held the knife out to Revna without a word.
"To you…I give the gift of memory. You will remember every death, every drop of blood spilled, and every secret buried on this planet. This pattern of decay ends, with you."
His offering came next, carried in the blood which pattered down atop glowing runes at his feet. The ritual demanded its price. To the seed he gave
"Resilience," born of a life shaped by trial and cruelty.
Taken as a boy, forged in the Jedi's wars, then broken and reforged again beneath the crucible of the Sith. Feed on the sickness of this world, urged the King. He filled his lungs with Brosi's blighted air, felt its decay sink into him, and showed the seed how to reject it. To twist it, to make it fuel instead of poison.
The seed burst open and Psilofyr rrR
Rrrreeeeaaachhed. The earth groaned beneath Darth Caedes. Shoots broke up through the dirt, pale and odd to behold, twining upward into the air. Vines and roots burgeoned up to shatter the duracrete thoroughfare and slither up the broken walls of nearby buildings. They curled in through windows and wrapped round the husks of long abandoned landspeeders. Alarms blared out like scared animals, then fell silent beneath the rapidly growing crush of Psilofyr's grasp. For miles, abruptly, life erupted across Brosi's surface, in its city streets and rural outskirts. Towers and superstructures bloomed with alien carpets of rapidly growing flowers and brightly colored fungi. Residential homes cracked and fell away beneath the succession of powerfully constricting root systems. Some were heaved into the air entirely, raised beneath growing trees like Psilofyr's fingertips pressing up and out of the soil below to hold them aloft.
Directly beneath their feet, the sapling of Psilofyr's main body stirred. It reached out from the pit they'd dug with wooden roots, growing, thickening, climbing toward the sky. Caedes craned his neck back to behold the massive plant's growth, observing as its bark shivered and mutated, not yet the titan it would become yet more already than any tree native to Brosi. Reverent, he turned to his Lady Revna. Psilofyr required
more...!
Aerik Lechner
| [OPEN]
