Private Art of Survival

[Vesta]

A R T · O F · S U R V I V A L​

There was nothing here for them now, or so it seemed.

Darkness had crept over the dunes of the red planet, a dull blue light illuminating the grains of sand in an eerie violet hue with the mixing of colors in the night. The surface of the world had been marred by recent battle, a siege on the burial world, but far beneath the shifting sands and the pleasant light of the planet's moon was where its true beauty lied. Lost tombs of forgotten Sith lords and troves of treasures that seemed to increase in value the further down one dug. Before the collapse of the Eternals and the Empire one such dig had been on the verge of reaching something promising, the crypt of some ancient Sith forgotten to the annals of history from a time before the great purge of the purebloods at the hand of the Republic, but all had been abandoned with the scourging of the planet's surface by the Ashlan Crusade and the Maw in their fight against each other.

Here, down in the deepest reaches, far from any light that could have reached in from the cracks in the crust above, was where the Sith that had been digging stopped. A dim glow illuminated bits and pieces of the cavernous depths by virtue of bioluminescent algae that were cultivated by alchemists as they painstakingly lined the path they made on their way down in an effort to make a theoretical return all the easier - a return that never happened, all of their number killed in the attack on the Sith world. The archeologists and their alchemist partners were not the only ones that had pushed this far down, however; Terentateks, predators that thrived on worlds saturated in the dark side of the force, had found these depths first as they pushed, and clawed, their way forever closer to their natural food source - the dark side of the force itself.

Here, at the end of the dig, marked by a ring-like platform with an empty oubliette at its center, was the last place the mighty beasts had been pushed from. There was no telling if, or how many, more lurked just beyond this limit - only that to find anything of true value would require traversing along the path carved out by these ferocious beasts, a path that, presumably, no other sentient life had ever ventured down. How far down one could go from here wasn't known, but it was clear that simply crossing to the other side of the platform and into the tunnels that spiraled down from there was the only way forward.

Aliris Tremiru

 

[Aliris Tremiru]

Find the source.

It was the only words the First had given her in some time. An ancient tomb, another ancient tomb. But this one was on Korriban. That alone stood out. The First had never truly cared about the tombs of Korriban. Pillaged and looted beyond all belief from Sith and their enemies for thousands of years. No stone left unturned, some would say. But this, this was beyond what she expected.

What anyone expected.

Isari stepped onto the platform, her still extinguished lightsaber in her palm. The red glow of the runes provided enough light with these bioluminescent algae that covered the area. The light that stopped just beyond this platform. So this was the limit of those who came before her? Perhaps they wanted to avoid the threat deeper within. She could feel it. Them. Monsters that ate the dark.

Horrifying creatures, really. Her grip tightened on the ancient hilt of her weapon. No, the acolyte didn't want to go deeper. But the promise of her future. To reclaim what was lost. She'd need to press on. The young woman took a breath and closed her eyes before taking the first step. She had a bad feeling about this.

Darth Mori

 

[Vesta]

Even they, the Sith, feared it.

Where the pale light faded into obscurity there was only darkness, an absolute pitch black that enveloped everything and everyone. Long ago ancient Sith and those that came before and after had abandoned these depths and the deep had reclaimed them, creatures that fed on the remaining force lingering here like carrion fowl that were far more deadly than anything above the ground. Terentateks, wyrms, and everything that ranged in between dug deep as civilization spread over the world above, just as things were wont to do when intelligent life pushed deep into the wilds. There was only one thing which lurked here that remained above even now - death. Like a shadow it followed wherever life went, watching and waiting for it to stagger and fall so it, like a predator of opportunity, could lunge and kill. As Aliris Tremiru ventured deep she, too, was followed - a shadow here, a whisper of sand there, but followed all the same. Was it, like the Terentateks that dug deeper still, the shadow of something quite so profound?

Postulating that question to herself, having happened to arrive only shortly after the woman lingering so close to the shadow's edge, Vesta felt her lips curl into a featureless grin. She wasn't quite nearly as unnerved by the lack of light that loomed ahead, nor by the creatures that lurked beyond, for whatever terrors that there might be beneath the soil she walked there was little that could match the evils of human and sentient nature at large - and there was a yearning in her to discover something quite so primordial to prove herself wrong that what should have inspired fear instead invited curiosity instead.

So she quietly followed, curiously.

Delighted at the chance to discover what made her unwitting entertainment afraid.