Out of her pocket bounced the ice-cold Sith translation ring she'd scooped out earlier, travelling across the floor toward Tydeus.
The floor tilted at a wild angle as the vessel listed and Tydeus began to slide across the floor. As he slid, he caught sight of the ring tumbling from Tansu’s pocket. It bounced once, started a perilous roll, then he caught it. He clicked his heels, activating the magboots, and clamped himself to the floor at an awkward angle. He could use the Force to do as much, perhaps, but that seemed an overextension given whatever else they might have to face in the vault beyond.
He steadied himself and glanced over at Tansu. The girl seemed far more powerful than when they first met. The way she’d carved through those droids… and just a moment ago when she had drawn upon the memories of the ship itself to punch in the door code, it made him wonder. Did he simply underestimated her so severely on Denon, or had something happened to drive her forward like this? There was a tenacity to her actions now.
Being Force Drained half to death can have that effect on people, said a voice in his head. Eerily similar to the Invigilator. Tydeus grimaced and frowned under his helmet, recalling how he watched her from the cockpit of his starfighter as she leaped from TIE fighter to TIE fighter, carving them apart with her lightsaber. Making it all look so easy.
Almost, he might have thought her a different person from the girl he met. But no.
A Hoth popsicle. This was most certainly still Tansu. His mouth twitched upward.
He looked at the ring in his gloved hand. "You dropped this," he said, then looked ahead at the sealed vault door, the "real" one, as she said. Th entrance to a throne room of some sort or another. Even with the ship canted to the left and viewing everything at a steep angle, Tydeus could feel a power humming from the door itself. He needed to get closer.
The mag boots clicked against the deck as he lurched his way forward until he stood before the looming door.
And there, waiting in the dark, was the true vault door. A massive circular slab of phrik, runes crawling across its face in a dull red glow.
The runes etched all across the door mocked Tydeus. He could feel them now. A power in them. Some form of Force imbuing. And yet, he could not read them. The harshly spiking lettering looked as foreign to him as a page of musical notes. He knew what they were, that ancient Ur-Kittat tongue of the Sith, but he had no idea what they meant.
"I think that's High Sith," Tydeus said to Tansu,
"But I can't read it. And I think there's some sort of Sith spell on the door. I can feel the power."
The snide words of the Invigilator came from his pocket. "Put on the ring, you idiot."
Dark brows drew together sharply, but as he quested out with his senses in the Force at the ring in his palm, he could feel its power too. This was no ordinary ring. Breaking the seal of his glove with a twist, he pulled it free of his right hand. The air was cruel and frigid and biting, so cold that it was painful. He stuck the glove under an armpit, then jammed the ring onto a swiftly-numbing index finger.
When he looked back up at the vault door, gray eyes flared wide with amazement.
"I can read them."
Incredible. Tydeus studied the words etched into the door of the vault and felt a coldness seep into him that had nothing to do with the room's temperature.
Aloud, for Tansu's benefit, he spoke them, his words halting as he struggled to decrypt the words even with this ring's strange power.
"Corruption. Ink. Shadow. Many poisons, one body. Broken chains."
At those last words a mental spike drove into his consciousness with all the force of a pickaxe.
His head throbbed with a savage pounding.
What is this? He held up his bare hand to the frosted glasteel visor of the helmet and would have fallen if not for the boots' magnetic seal upon the ground. More, he felt a weariness seeping into him.
What is happening?
"Keep reading, you fool," chirped the invisible Ughnaught.
Against the splitting headache and the strange words in his mind and the wash of fear, Tydeus drew his eyes back to the next line of the Ur-Kittat symbols.
"You must know," or was that understand?
"To sit the throne. To wear the Crown. Drink... from me, as I drank from... her."
Again the spike drilling into his mind and a sudden rush of energy
out of him.
"That's it. That's all there is," Tydeus looked behind them, at the walls which too were carved with the runes. He shook his head, hand sliding from his visor.
"These don't make sense. Velok. Akain Karda. Kishkumen."
The letters on the walls to either side of the door scrawled on and on. Nothing sensical, just names or places. He didn't understand.
"It has to be some kind of riddle."
And still he felt the power of the door, malevolent and reeking of the Dark Side. He would ask Tansu to use her psychometry again, but if she touched that door... It would what? And then it clicked.
"It's a test," he whispered, "This must be some sort of test, for a successor."
What sort of barrier would an Empress set for those who would claim a legacy? Yet he did not come here seeking to rule. He came with single-minded purpose, to find a weapon with which to strike down a god-king. No matter what barrier or test she set, whatever lay beyond this door must be of great value.
Tydeus took in a breath.
Drink from me, as I drank from her.
It could not be so simple. And yet... the Wound within him hungered.
So Tydeus fed it.
He reached out and he drew upon the power dwelling within the door, pulling it into him. A thread of glowing citrine flared to life, a bright tendril binding him to the door as he used Force Drain to suck the energy into himself. Every last drop.
Then the door hissed and with a groan of metal slid aside.
"Yes," snickered the Invigilator, "Good."
The boy cast a glance at Tansu, his moment of triumph ruined by shame.
"It was the only way."
Tansu Treicolt
Ashin Cardé Varanin
Darth Adekos
