Ana Rix
Aya looked at her as they were moving and the open waters started to shift. Seastone bringing them around as she moved and they were adjusting the domed shielding for water around the boats deck. The boat heading towards the island as Mistral was looking at it and the trees were thick, dark with shadow... and he could almost swear he saw things moving or eyes for a moment but then there was nothing as he blinked. Aya looking at him. "It isn't a trick, the islands haave eyes and old things that see far more." The repulsor boat slid upriver with a whispering hum, its anti‑grav field stirring the water into long, glassy ripples that reflected a sky the color of tarnished durasteel.
Jungle growth pressed inward from both banks, towering fronds and black‑barked trees leaning close as if drawn by curiosity or hunger. Vines hung in slow, tangled curtains, some thick enough to resemble dormant serpents, their tips brushing the mist that hovered over the river like a half‑remembered dream. Beneath the surface, something vast shifted long, sinuous shapes gliding parallel to the hull, their silhouettes thicker than hutt bodies and stretching for dozens of meters before vanishing into deeper shadow. The air was heavy, dense with rot and blooming life, carrying the metallic tang of old stone and stagnant water.
Sensors flickered intermittently, confused by mineral interference and ancient debris from crashed ships, boats and pieces of armor that could be seen buried deep beneath the silt. Far above, reptilian birds circled in slow spirals, their wings leathery and broad, swooping low to claw at carrion snagged on branches. The boat's lights carved pale corridors through the haze, illuminating drifting pollen, spores, and flecks of ash that suggested a fire no one had seen but the jungle still remembered. As the vessel pressed deeper inland, the ruins began to reveal themselves not all at once, but reluctantly, as though resenting the intrusion.
Cyclopean stone blocks rose from the riverbanks at crooked angles, their surfaces worn smooth by centuries of flood and neglect. Carvings still clung to them, eroded figures of beings no longer found in any archive, their elongated forms and hollow eyes staring eternally toward the water. Some structures leaned into the river, half‑submerged domes and fractured causeways vanishing beneath the slow current. Others loomed farther back, swallowed by vegetation, their once‑proud spires now wrapped in roots thick as starship cabling. Massive serpents coiled among those roots, their scales patterned like cracked obsidian, their movements slow and deliberate as they tasted the air with tongues the length of a man's arm.
Faint lights flickered within the stone at irregular intervals not active systems, but lingering echoes of forgotten technology, like embers refusing to die. The Force felt different here, heavy and layered, pressed flat by time rather than absent. It was watchful, patient, carrying the weight of rituals performed and promises broken. Even the boat's engines seemed to lower their tone, as if instinctively acknowledging that they were trespassing in a place that had never truly surrendered to decay. The canopy thickened as the river narrowed, branches interlocking overhead until the sky vanished entirely, replaced by a dim, green‑black twilight that pressed down like a physical weight.
The air grew colder, the mist thicker, and the water darker, its surface broken only by the slow rise of bubbles from unseen depths. Occasionally, a massive shape rolled just beneath the surface scaled, ridged, and impossibly long sending a tremor through the hull. Reptile‑birds dove between the branches, their talons snapping at smaller creatures that fled in frantic bursts of color. The jungle's earlier silence gave way to a low, continuous murmur: the rustle of unseen bodies moving through undergrowth, the distant splash of something heavy entering the river, the grinding of stone as roots shifted against ancient masonry.
The boat's lights struggled to penetrate the gloom, illuminating only fragments of the world ahead slick stone, coiled vines, the glint of predatory eyes watching from the dark. Every meter forward felt like a negotiation with the river itself, as though the water weighed their presence and had not yet decided whether to allow passage. The ruins grew denser still, rising from the riverbanks in jagged formations that resembled the vertebrae of some colossal beast. Black stone jutted upward in broken spires, their surfaces etched with glyphs that pulsed faintly when the boat drifted near. Some structures appeared melted, as though subjected to unimaginable heat.
Others were split cleanly down the middle, revealing hollow interiors filled with tangled roots and the skeletal remains of long‑dead fauna. A toppled archway lay half‑submerged, its keystone carved with a symbol that glimmered like wet obsidian. As the boat passed beneath it, the Force stirred slow, heavy, like a breath drawn after centuries of stillness. The sensation of being observed intensified, not by eyes but by presence, by memory, by the accumulated weight of a civilization that had risen, ruled, and vanished without witness. The river bent sharply, funneled between two towering monoliths whose surfaces were so dark they seemed to swallow the light.
Beyond them, the water widened into a basin choked with floating debris broken statues, shattered tablets, and the bleached bones of creatures too large to name. The central complex rose ahead like a mountain of black stone, its silhouette jagged against the faint glow of bioluminescent moss clinging to its flanks. Broken stairways spiraled upward, disappearing into the canopy, while others plunged directly into the river, their steps worn into shallow bowls by countless feet long turned to dust. Water dripped from unseen heights, echoing through hollow corridors in a rhythm that mimicked a heartbeat. The jungle had retreated entirely here, leaving only bare stone and black soil, as though the land itself refused to claim this place.
Symbols carved along the walls glimmered faintly as the boat approached, reacting to movement or perhaps to intent. The air grew colder still, and the mist thickened until it clung to skin like damp cloth. Something vast moved in the water behind them, sending a slow wave that rocked the hull. Ahead, the river disappeared into a cavernous opening at the base of the ruins, a mouth of darkness framed by fanged stone. The certainty that anything beyond this point still belonged to the living faaded from Mistrals mind as he had been watching all of his corners throughout the trip. The sides showed areas where boats could rest as Aya was bringing it in and close but she motioned as the large shark was grabbing a plank to move on.
