As the duo traveled deeper into the temple, more and more light became shadow. The essence of the world around them seemed to be diffused into the greater landscape, textures becoming more effervescent as illumination grew dim and dour. But even as they continued along the harrowed path, Onrai stayed resolute. With the object she does desperately sought, she would be able to perform such acts, such feats that it would make anything the many Emperors of the Sith had done look like a child’s party trick.
As they continued to proceed onwards, the sensation Liselle felt deep within her was soon manifested into something that even the Force entity herself could hear. It was a slow, repetitive beat, a recurrent thumping of ever-continuing proportions.
Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump. The continued sound only grew more chokingly extant as what could only be described as a hole of negative light appeared at the end of what had seemed an endless hallway.
The room opened up to a segue of four statues, each in perpetual transformation and outlined by the anti-glimmer of torches that seemed to both emit and swallow the room’s illumination. For brief seconds, forms grew permanent on the statues before immediately shifting to something else. The statues seemed familiar yet strange - one almost saw glimpses of face-tendrils and bone spurs amongst a million other physical permutations from humanoid to alien among all nature. All of the statues, regardless their form, leaned forward in supplication to the grand statue on the far wall.
Cracks ran through every facet of it, and unlike the others its form remained stagnant, seated upon a throne comprised of the same material as though it would yet crumble into shards like its contemporaries outside the building. Its left hand was raised, within which was the only source of true light - a brilliant gem, gleaming with the only trace of “good” in the entire room. Wings curled over the back of the throne and dead eyes gazed back at the duo above long mouth-tendrils, the statue’s right hand lying almost lifelessly down the right side of the throne. Within the breast of the statue, though, was a sealed symbol, a dead sun still gleaming. A symbol very clear to one trained in the Dark Side of the Force, and which Liselle would likely recognize as well.
The symbol of the Sith.
“They worshipped him.” She said. “Whoever they were, they worshipped him, like all the others. This was their temple, before he no longer answered their prayers.” She stepped forward towards the throne, her form swelling until she seemed nearly the same height as the oversized statue itself. A hand came to the seal over its chest, and with a push, it slid within the matter of the construct, feeling inside the stone husk for the solution.
“Yes…”
Her hand withdrew from the statue and the sound had never been louder. It was almost deafening, like a slugthrower or artillery cannon. Her hand gently unclasped, the light in the statue’s open palm dimming until only the anti-light of the torches provided some semblance of illumination over the pernicious relic she had acquired. It was the size of a heart - one could even say its fragmented cut seemed to resemble a heart, but to the untrained eye it was a crystal of the blackest black, which simultaneously absorbed all light and left no reflection while seemingly boiling inside with a darkness even blacker than the perceptions of mortal mind, as though within it was perhaps a drop of the very primordial evil that polluted the galaxy.
“Now we have what we came for. If you wish to know, ask, as we will have to leave soon.”
Liselle Torrez
