Private Idlewild

[LE-03 (Leigh)]

Her partner was in one of her moods again.

The droid known as LE-03 was collating encrypted cell communications, applying her own random-variable algorithm before relaying them through the Abbaji network, when Na'an came into their shared quarters and slammed her palm against the closure pad.
Since the Eclipse Rebellion's failed attack on what she had believed was a Sith Lab, Leigh had taken over more than her fair share of the space given she did not even have a bed. Her workshop, previously cleared by a careless signature of the Empress, masked servers and storage and any extra processors her agents could smuggle into her partner's hands on the odd mission out. The droid was spending more and more time at the workshop, seemingly tinkering with the faulty balance on an experimental leg or calibrating the auditory circuits on a replacement ear.
In reality, she would be plugged in to more machinery than she had ever interfaced with before, her mind rocketing through space, bouncing from planet to planet and from cell to cell, constantly leaving layer after layer of security behind her. With the Empire suspicious that the Rebellion had a mole in their ranks, the Voice of Abbaji now had to be more active--and more cautious--than ever.

Hence all the active equipment.

Her partner, however, did not seem to mind the junk slowly filling their quarters. Leigh watched her cross the narrow path left to her bunk and flop face-first into the pillow, the soft fabric muffling her frustrated screams. The frustration was not new--the droid had been watching it build for a long time now--and most of its sources were things she could understand. The Empress bringing them to Kalidan, her subsequent marriage and near-total silence...the constant awareness that they could be caught and killed at any moment...the departure of Adelle Bastiel from their company...the constant one-step-forward, two-steps-back nature of Rebellion operations...any of these would be enough to drive any normal organic to distraction. Not that it had not affected Leigh, too. Na'an had had to stop her from overclocking almost as often as Leigh had had to force Na'an to sleep.

Those stressors were bad enough. It was becoming increasingly probable that living under all those stressors simultaneously was unsustainable.

However, Na'an had developed one other source of stress since their arrival on Kalidan. One that, to be honest, the droid struggled to understand. One that she had always struggled to understand.

She was, at least, smart enough to suspect that that was the subject that needed addressing right now. Leigh engaged a momentary logoff, disconnecting herself from the system and turning to Na'an.

"Another failure?"

Adelle Bastiel Roman Calipso Vidalu Na'an Sakri​

 

[Vidalu Na'an]

Na'an made a strangled noise into the pillow at the question.

"I don't get what I'm doing wrong!" she said, flipping onto her back. She rubbed furiously at her eyes with the heels of her palms, as if trying to dig through the sockets into her skull. "I'm Force Sensitive, right," she said, sounding furious. "Moreso now than I think I've ever been. I'm trained, I only try when I'm calm, I'm running marathons around the palace to keep myself focused, but it's not what it's supposed to be." Her palms curled up into fists, grinding against the skin in a way now definitely meant to be punishing. "I know it's not, and I'm driving myself up the wall."

Leigh made a small sympathetic noise, but didn't respond. That was fine. Sad, but fine. Na'an had tried to explain what she was doing to her before, but the droid only had an academic understanding of the Force. She sighed, dropping her hands to look up at the top of the bunk. "I wish you could have felt what it was like to be on that planet, Leigh," she said, her voice wistful. "It was..."
Na'an had only ever been to the unnamed world that was the Enclave's heart only once, entirely by accident. Even then, the visit had been short; there had barely been time for a single lesson from the old man that was the planet's only inhabitant. But the call..the feeling of the Force pulsing through every inch of the planet...it was so easy to conjure. The way it seemed to fold around you, warm and wild and breathing, the flowers whispering, the greenery yielding at a touch...the way even the Jedi ruins seemed to thrum with their own heartbeat...
"It's the most beautiful thing," she said helplessly. She was so bad at words when it came to the green planet. "It's what I believed the Force was, once, only real. And it gets inside you before you even know what you're feeling." She reached up over her head, watching her fingers flex as if reaching for some green vine that wasn't actually there. "It's like pure life seeping right into your blood. You're singing with it."

It was the closest she could come, but the word seemed appropriate. Ever since she had come back from the green planet, it felt like Na'an's body was singing with the Force in a way she'd rarely felt before coming to the Unknown Regions. Her mind seemed to jump ahead of her, making intuitive leaps and sudden choices she only dimly recognized as her own. Her body moved more easily than ever during the missions Leigh sent her on for the Eclipse, with barely any thought, as if the being wearing the mask were a Master rather than a failed Padawan. And always, on the edges, there was the sense of being barely separated from something massive, infinitely large, and if Na'an could only reach out and--and understand it--in a way more concrete than the blinding flash of Babylon, in a way that was real--

"I keep going back there in my dreams," she said suddenly, and chuckled. Without even looking, she knew what face Leigh would be making. Her droid partner had made no secret that she found the whole idea--of the green dreams, the green planet that never seemed to leave her--a little insane. "I know, I know, but think I am. I mean, I even see the old man there. I can't talk to him, but I can see him. But it's not enough. There's something I'm supposed to do with all this, something to do with the Empire, and I can't figure out what until I know what it is, but..."

And now they were back to the frustrating part. Na'an suddenly thrashed around to bury her face back into the pillow, her voice furiously muffled.
"Damn it, he told me I'd been called. He told me what to do. So why is this so hard??" She paused for a second before the other thought sprung unbidden to her lips.

"I bet it's not hard for Doc."

LE-03 (Leigh) Adelle Bastiel Roman Calipso Sakri​

 

[Adelle Bastiel]

Adelle felt the ache in her spine before the numbness and tingling in her legs. She sat up with a wince and stretched out, using the cropping of stalagmites nearby to help. She'd fallen asleep. Again. Somewhere in the darkness in front of her, she could hear the maddening drip of water falling from a stalactite into a spring-fed pool: the physical manifestation of the Force nexus here. Adelle had stumbled across it during one of her runs and tried to connect with it. Meditation, trances, anything she could think of but--

Drip.

--still nothing.

She stood and stretched, nearly falling over as the blood slowly returned to her legs. Roman had suggested meditation when she had mentioned trying to connect with the Force on this planet. Standing, sitting still, it didn't matter. There was a reason she had thought to teach Na'an how to meditate while running a long time ago. There just wasn't room to run in a small cavern.

Drip.

"Shut up," she snapped at the water. Her voice echoed around the cave and faded into silence.

Drip.

With a growl, she kicked a small stone into the water and paced alongside the pool's unseen edge. Her steps turned into footwork, and she started going through lightsaber katas to try and calm her mind. Getting frustrated certainly wasn't going to help things. Emotion, yet peace. This was a temporary feeling about a temporary situation. It would seem better with proper sleep and food. Fresh air, sunlight, and a nap would most certainly help. Fruit trees were in fair abundance near here. She could forage, nap outside, and come back refreshed. Frustration was not needed.

Drip.

Gradually, her movements and breathing slowed. The rock felt cold but sure under her feet. The air in the cave seemed to breathe with her. She could feel more, sense more through the Force. It seemed lighter in the cave. Adelle caught a whiff of rain, wet earth, grain fields glistening in the evening sun after the rainstorm has passed . . .

A room crowded with equipment. Wires. Leigh. Na'an, face first in her pillow. "I bet it's not hard for Doc."

It felt like a slap of cold water on her face. Adelle blinked but darkness replaced the vision she had just seen. She couldn't remember ever seeing Na'an and Leigh like that. Their room in Kalidan's spartan palace hadn't nearly been so cramped when she'd been there last. Had that been recent?

Drip.

"Oh kriff off," she grumbled. So close and yet so far away from what she wanted to achieve.



Vidalu Na'an

 

[LE-03 (Leigh)]

"Miss Bastiel does not have a tantrum when she has difficulty in her training. Unlike someone I could mention."

Despite the chiding words, the droid could not help leaving a measure of warmth in her voice. She turned to face Na'an on the bed, her elbows on her knees as she watched the human wriggle unhappily.
It was true that this particular stressor, was one she had trouble understanding. Every time Na'an spoke of the green planet, of breathing plants and singing blood, Leigh always could not help but feel horribly out of depth. The closest comparison she could make would be when she switched from a passive to an active Holonet connection, but that could not be right. Skimming the Holonet never made her feel the way her human looked when she spoke of the Force.

"Although I am not personally surprised you are struggling," she mused. "The way you speak of this planet, it sounds full of living things that you can connect to. Kalidan is a dead world in comparison."

 

[Vidalu Na'an]

Na'an snorted into the pillow at the comment, before turning her head to look at her friend. Leigh would never admit to it, but the droid did know how to be funny. "Just about. Suits them, doesn't it? Burning worlds from their home on a big dead radioactive ice ball. Not a plant in sight, and the only wildlife I've ever seen are giant kriff-off monsters--"

And that was that. The sound of the word monsters died in Na'an's throat, and she suddenly pushed herself up on her elbows, thinking hard.

"...Oh."

It couldn't be as easy as that, could it? Na'an let herself think back to that day, only a few months after her arrival on Kalidan, when in a fit of pique she'd run off to hunt the Tyrant dragons plaguing the ruins out in the wilds. The beasts were massive, viciously angry animals that ate metal and breathed fire. The largest of them had only gone down in the end to a combination of airships and other Tyrant dragons, and had left miles of scorched land in its wake in the process. Adelle and Leigh had chewed her out for days for the stunts she'd pulled to stay alive, even as they'd invested the bounty and used it to start a Rebellion. The dragons were monsters, wild and savage and true to the word in every way.

But...Na'an had faced those dragons eye to eye. She had felt the warmth of them, burning deeper than the cold could touch, under her hand. She'd even come to an understanding of sorts with one of them, in order to survive the largest's attacks. She hadn't tamed the thing, but it had let her ride it as it flew.

And she knew where that one was--right now.

"Leigh." As soon as the thought had crystallized, she was out of bed and on her feet, reaching for a pair of gloves. "Could you come with me for a few minutes? I need to get down to the bestiary. Bottom level. If I'm right, I'll need you once we get there."

As she pulled them on, she felt an odd, familiar warmth, deep in her chest.

Why it was familiar, it was hard to say.

Roman Calipso | Adelle Bastiel | Sakri​

 

[LE-03 (Leigh)]

The Kalidan Imperial Bestiary was a strange sort of hell. As the lift opened to release LE-03 and her human partner onto the main floor, she automatically dialed down her olfactory sensors and recalibrated her audio feed to a smaller radius of sensitivity. Many of the upper-level droids were not commonly found in this area, being too fragile to operate around the constant stink and violence of these rooms. It was in the Bestiary where Imperial mounts were kept and broken and trained, where they were operated and experimented on and horribly augmented to improve their capacity for war. Even if she were not a droid, Leigh would have found the mingled cries of human and beast, the crack of whips and squeal of gears, the smears of old blood and feces and musk in the cages and on the floors, utterly inhumane. Even her creator would have found this distasteful--bad science at its most unnecessary. She led Na'an past the first few rows of cages, casting a look back at the human with some concern.

"According to the map, larger mounts are kept in the back of the facility," she said evenly. Na'an's face was a barely-held mask as they walked past beast after beast, the horror underneath easy for the droid to spot. Neither of them had ever come down to the Bestiary, even after Na'an had sent her own contributions down here; the treatment of these animals would come as a nasty shock to the softer parts of her nature. "We have to keep moving." The human only nodded, and let herself be led farther in.

All the same, the droid's eyes, too, lingered on the cages, and she made a mental note. Someday, when the time came, the Voice of Abbaji would be particularly adamant on burning this part of the Palace to the ground.

The last wing of the Bestiary was dedicated to the largest and most violent mounts--the Tyrant dragons the former Emperor had prized. The dragons had proved largely untamable to all but the most dedicated of the Imperial military, those strong in the Force to impose their will on the intelligent beasts; after the wedding, even the attempts to break the dragons seemed to have subsided. Leigh had timed this visit to be between feeding times because of this; they would be alone in the wing for several hours, with no chance of anyone coming to shoo them away. She entered the access code into the wing's door panel, stepped inside...

And found herself face-to-face with a demon.

The first dragon must have heard them even behind the door; even as it closed behind them, sealing them into the room, its massive head had already swung around to face them. The head alone was easily the size of a landspeeder, blocky and crested with sharp spines to protect the neck. Its teeth were visible through the half-open mouth, each one wickedly curved inwards to better trap prey inside; they seemed to gleam against the dim light of the ward. The neck, long and sinuous, lowered the head down to be level with Leigh's dome, and she almost moved to shove Na'an back through the door before she realized that it could not touch them from this distance. The dragon's scales, largely black with strange gleaming ridges of orange and red and gold, masked the chains around that massive neck, around each of its claws, pinning tightly its folded wings and snakelike tail.

And, it was clear from the fury in its eyes, this beast was not pleased with being chained.

"Na'an." Leigh did not take her visual sensors off the dragon, which was still staring her down as if deciding whether droids were tasty. She half-raised her cannon in response, knowing her shot would only serve to help them escape rather than kill it. "I was aware of the size of these beings from their data, but it is...entirely different facing one directly. Are you sure you were able to tether this creature?"

That was when she felt Na'an's hand on her arm, gently pushing her cannon down.

Roman Calipso | Adelle Bastiel | Sakri
​

 

[Vidalu Na'an]

"Not this one. The one I tied down was bigger."

Na'an stepped around the droid as if sleepwalking. The dragon's attention had turned to her in the moment she touched Leigh's arm, pinning her down with a strange heat. "I do..." she continued, "know you, though, don't I? We had an understanding."

And she found, with the kind of clarity that only comes in the strangest of dreams, that she did. The dragon was bigger now, than it was when they had met on the wilds of Kalidan, and its coloring had yet to take on that gold, silicate glisten. But those eyes.

Vidalu Na'an knew those eyes.

She stepped away from Leigh, towards the dragon, which was still watching her with one sharp, burning black-and-gold eye. When Na'an passed under a light, and its beam passed over her face, suddenly the heat flared, bright and rageful with recognition. The dragon knew this human, all right. He had deigned to let this human live, let her ride him like a common beast of burden against a common enemy. This human had offered him life, him, as if life were hers to give, and had never deigned to say it would be like this, a life underground, a life in chains, a life devoid of sky--

She stopped, bent double, bit her tongue against the pain and fury, never looking away. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know. I didn't think it'd be like this."

She forced herself upright with great effort, forced another step forward, even as the dragon's teeth snapped at the air between them. The air vibrated against her skin with the growls deep in its belly. Ignorance was no excuse for betrayal, he knew. Small creatures were murdered by their ignorance in every cycle, eaten by the strong, their blood and bone nourishing wiser and stronger beings than themselves. By rights he would feast on this tiny fool--by rights he would feed on them both, set them to burning, set everything in here to burning, if only it could reach. Na'an had come so close to the dragon now, Leigh's terrified protestations a faint peripheral buzz. If she reached out her arm she could touch the dragon's face, be within reach of his mouth, his tongue and teeth, the great muscle of his jaws--one taste of living flesh as payback for his capture--

"But we're the same, aren't we? Exactly the same."
She reached for him. The dragon, jaws half-open, strained for her. In the moment her fingertips made contact, she thought, inexplicably, of Vyra. Of her time on Kalidan courtesty of Vyra, perpetually unwanted, perpetually unprotected. She'd been trapped here on this world, as surely as the dragon had been trapped in this hole, with sweet words and chains no less real for being made of those words. Nothing was safe. Nothing was free. Running the fields of Dantooine with the sun in her hair and wings on her feet felt like a distant memory, and it had been traded for...what? For war following war following war. For the smell of burning children and burning worlds, and the knowledge that nobody seemed to care.
The dragon knew no pain from burning, from war, from words, but the agony of chains it knew. Restlessness it knew. Betrayal and rage and indignity and the overwhelming hunger over all else for freedom, it knew. This child was small, but she, too, he knew, at this touch. Na'an's palm spread across his snout, feeling the smooth-yet-rough reptilian skin, and his breath blew up her arm in gusts. First fast, still angry, still bitter, still even considering taking its pound of flesh, but breath by breath it slowed. The warmth dulled, too, with its breaths--never comfortable, for this human had not earned comfort, but no longer burning.

Na'an let out a breath of her own, that she had not realized she was holding. "I have somewhere I need to be," she said steadily, looking into that now-dilated eye. She could see herself reflected in its pupils; her own face, trapped in dark amber. "It's important. And think you can take me there, if I tell you the way."
She let her mind return to that place for a moment, to the green planet, to tangles of jungle, vast cliffs and veins of rivers and wildflowers that watched like eyes themselves. The dragon stilled, fascinated. For many years, all his life, he was a Kalidan creature; he had never seen green, not the growing kind, and all the water he had ever known was frozen. The dragon had never seen a planet that breathed.

But he was in chains. He strained his wings against them, tried and failed to lash his tail. He was eager to go, if only to be anywhere else, but how to fly without wings? How to traverse space, the great starry cold deeper than even the cold of Kalidan, without his freedom? This human wanted to borrow the Force in him, to wrap herself in his power--he could taste her wanting like blood on his teeth. And she was, if not fully trained, touched by the old ways. If she could find the will, she could merely take it from him, fly away and leave him empty here under the earth.

And yet she asked permission. This small, weak thing touched him with gentleness, and asked for permission. Would the thing on this green world, the thing she wanted so badly, give him back his wings too?

"Yes. I think it will, eventually. "

Na'an waited. Her heart felt like a live coal in her chest, turning and twisting in every direction it could find to twist. The dragon moved under her hand, and she could feel his massive pulse just under his skin. "So, beastie," she whispered. "Whaddya say? One more truce?"

And the dragon snorted--annoyed, but for the moment no longer hostile. Willing to travel, if only for its own sake. Na'an nodded, then returned to Leigh, who looked terrified even without her hologram. Which, Na'an knew, was not unreasonable from her perspective. It had only just been seconds away from eating her anyway.
"I'll need you to keep watch over us for a bit," she said gently, resting a hand on her friend's cannon arm. "Just until I get back. I don't think it'll take long this time, and since we'll be going together, I don't think anyone will notice us leaving, so...please don't worry, okay?"

She could practically see the questions queueing up in Leigh's processes: Why would she need to keep watch if she was going somewhere? How could she be going and staying at the same time? How was a chained animal supposed to help her get to the green planet without anyone noticing? But the answers would take too much time to get into now. They had a limited window of time, Leigh was a droid, and Na'an probably couldn't quickly explain what had just happened even if she fully understood it.
So, instead, she just said again, "Please don't worry. Just trust me."

And with another embrace, she returned to the waiting dragon and folded herself into a seated position before its waiting jaws. She rested her palm against its pebbled skin, feeling the sound of its breathing wrap around her senses like a cloak. Its heartbeat throbbed against her fingertips, a mirror to her own, and for a second she wondered how long it would take--if she should take charge, somehow, meditate on coordinates or reach out for the old man or something--
And then it happened. Na'an felt a tug, like a thin rope tied just behind her navel, and another just behind her eyes. Something wrenched her forward, farther forward than she could have been able to go, and she was falling, falling, falling, and everything was darkness speckled with stars--her mind writhed, searching for something to grasp, but there was nothing, she was alone, hurtling through space--she wrenched her eyes back closed, fighting animal terror, fighting for breath--

And then--

They burst through the trees into bright sunlight and open skies. They spread their wings, relishing the warmth on thinnest membranes, and flew over a green world.

Adelle Bastiel | Sakri | Roman Calipso​

 

[Sakri]

Though she spent the majority of her time traveling alone, Sakri spent her life doing just that: traveling. Moving. Surviving. There was always something else to forage; something new to seek out; somewhere else that called her forth. She was not accustomed to moments of idle, isolated introspection; moments of true peace were so few and far between as to be forgotten, forsaken in favour of freedom and flight. So when the Speaker had mentioned such a concept as a first step to her -- their -- journey, Sakri had had to repress her reflexive repulsion. It rang true for what she had expected from the Jedi, but.. perhaps she had been looking at it wrong. There was more that could be done to meditate...

So it was that the Firrerreo woman found herself sitting cross-legged atop a rocky outcropping, the wind at her back carrying the sound of gently fluttering foliage. Her senses were outstretched, pushing beyond the physical into the chaotic swirls of the current. Behind her she could feel dozens, hundreds, thousands of individual lives carrying on, looping and linking and swirling together in an elaborate, wonderful, natural dance; but it was not just the abundance of life that had pulled her to this location. Below, above, and interspersed with the cries of nature was the low rumbling and steady creaking of settling metal: before her lay the vast expanse of the planet's ship graveyard, a cursed area filled with nothing.. yet so, so much. How many had died here? How many lives had met their final end in this place?

Screaming. Klaxons blaring. A language she didn't know, panic, confusion..
A glance outside. A horrified stare. A world, growing larger. Realization. Panic. Impact-..

"Rest now."

How many more would come?

Their quarry was theirs to rights. They fled, limping. Nothing could stop them now-..
Confusion. Alarms. The smell of fear. Sudden hissing, the sound of claws running on metal, a world outside the viewport, rushing up-..

"Rest now."

How many more would fall?

Confusion. Fear. A desire for home. Fire.

Confusion. A sickening feeling, a sinking sensation, a freezing in her gut-..

Fear. Anger. Betrayal. How could this be happening? This couldn't be real, couldn't be-..

"Rest now."

How many more would be forgotten?

She could feel scraps among the current, pieces of memories that weren't hers, emotional impressions that had established a foothold in this world, dying breaths longing to be heard. She would find them. She would hear them. She would put them to rest.

Confusion. Panic. Where was her mommy? Where was her daddy?

Sakri flinched, a small motion that none would see, but did not stray from her task. These memories would be painful, each and every one; but she would see them all, to put the dead to rest.

Fear. Anger.

A flash of light.

An unfamiliar presence. A-..

A-..

"Rest-.."

Slowly, she opened her eyes, looking out at the macabre metallic expanse with some confusion. Something felt.. off. New. Something was.. something was..

She felt an eruption in the current, the sudden appearance of a presence that simply wasn't there before. Where once there were thousands, now there were a thousand and two -- or was that just one? -- but where they had come from was not quite clear. She whirled, her curiosity getting the better of her, eyes scanning the treetops and the distant mountains....

Sakri wasn't quite sure what she was seeing. Certainly nothing she had ever seen before.

So why did it seem familiar..?


Roman Calipso | Adelle Bastiel | Vidalu Na'an

 

[Adelle Bastiel]

The cool darkness of the cave felt welcome after the swampy air of the jungle outside. Adelle made her way blindly through the labyrinthine tunnels with sure footsteps, following the current of the Living Force as it grew steadily stronger. Finally, she was at the edge of the pool again. By the dim light from the glowing phosphorus on the walls and the luminescent fungi living in the cave, what she could see of the pool roughly lay circular in shape, ripples occasionally lapping at the edges. The stone sloped gently from the edge of the water, deeper, until it ended in a sheer drop-off maybe a meter away. Low hanging stalactites and walls blocked the other half so she had to imagine the pool large enough to be classified as a small pond.

Her previous attempt at communing with the nexus having failed, she had gone out to forage and feel a bit more productive. She sat on the ground and clasped her hands in front of her chin, staring at the dark pool in front of her. Meditation had failed her, or she had failed it; moving meditation was impractical in the cramped quarters between the pillars formed by stalactites and stalagmites. But meditation was the key here; she felt it in her gut. Her next idea was crazy, and probably not something any sane Jedi Master would have suggested.

Adelle stripped off her clothes, shivering in the cave's damp chill as she did. She gingerly set one foot in the shallow part of the water and bit down on the instinctive yelp: the water was icy cold. This wouldn't be pleasant. She forced herself to walk to the edge of the drop off, hissing through her teeth as the water climbed up her feet then ankles, and then her shins. If sitting still and meditating would not work for her, perhaps submerging herself in the nexus would. Taking a deep breath, Adelle stepped off the edge and plunged into the water.

The initial shock would have snatched her breath away if she had not been preparing the hibernation trance. Only for an hour, she decided. The water gradually warmed around her and became indistinguishable from her own body temperature. She could not tell when or even if she hit the bottom of the pool. Her heartbeat sounded loud in her ears but she could feel others. The wind in the trees was her breath. The rivers running through the jungle her blood. She felt like she was flying. Sakri sat on an overlook, facing the ship graveyard. She could go further. There was Roman, in the Hidden temple, making a fresh pot of tea. She could go higher. The wind drove the clouds before it like cattle and still she went higher, where the atmosphere thinned around her like so many cobweb strands being torn away. The vastness of space lay before her and life connected all systems into one galaxy.

Something pulled her back to the planet, something familiar and warm and fierce. A ghost of a shadow passed over the treetops as something large and not entirely there flew overhead. It hungered for freedom, for the ability to rend and tear as it used to. Fire burned in its throat and heart. A Tyrant dragon? Here on the green planet? It had something else, something as powerful and nearly intertwined with its own fibers. The source of the warmth, familiarity, and ferocity. Adelle felt her heart leap inside her, in spite of the trance.

Na'an.



Sakri | Vidalu Na'an | Roman Calipso

 

[Vidalu Na'an]

Glorious.

Glorious.

This world was absolutely, blindingly, blazingly glorious!

The wind was warm. It bloomed under their wings like a mother's fire, pushing them up with barely the need to beat. Its warmth carried a hundred scents, a hundred thousand, rich and decadent--the lush odor of a planet covered to the inch with plants and animals and life constantly being born and constantly dying. It sat so differently from the sharp, empty air of Kalidan, and yet their body cut through it just as easily, the wind providing no friction.

And that body! They were strong. Their wings moved without effort. Their crest stood high and proud. They slipped through the sky like a thought, their tail twisting and coiling like a ribbon. They opened their mouth to taste the air, to taste the warmth, and when they roared in pleasure at it all the valley below sung with their music. There was a human below, and they sung to them too, bidding them to join, for just this once they were willing to share the fierceness of their joy.

Glorious. Glorious! This green world was a wonderful world. Life in abundance. Death in equal measure. The Force as thick as blood and as everpresent as the luscious-smelling air. Fresh meat, and clear water, stone from ruins long abandoned, and even the steel from starships, speckled all over a nearby mountain range. A wonderful territory. And it would be their territory, yes.

wait, a voice chimed. But it was a weak voice. A tiny thing.

This world had known nothing like them, not for a long time. This was good, too. They would claim it, as the old ways wished, and rule over it as their kind always should. They would join into the cycle and come out its master, free to feed on such decadence all they wanted. Drink deep of its waters, waters so blue it must never have been ice, coursing through the planet below them, like a vein ready for their teeth to pierce.

wait, no, the chime came again, stronger now. that isn't why I'm here.

But it was why they were here, was it not? Was not such liberty what was promised when this sojourn began? They could even see their first prey in the river, where it fed into the deeper blue of a lake, stark against the green. A silver, wriggly thing, shining in the water and in the sun. Such things did not exist on Kalidan--what better to be a first prey than new meat? They folded their wings, and closed their mouth, and let gravity pull them into a dive, eyes fixed on the wriggly thing.

no, no no. It held an air of urgency now. we can't waste time like this--stop--

It was too late for stopping. Their body sliced through the air like a knife, plunging deep into the lake (for it was deep, so very deep, deeper than anything) on top of the wriggling thing. Their teeth caught it, and it wriggled between them desperate and terrified before they bit down. Then the wriggling stopped, replaced by the salty taste of blood filling their mouth mixed with water. The wriggling thing was meat now, their meat, and they began to eat before they could even surface--ripping it open, barely a mouthful but so strange, so sweet--

damn it, NO!

There was a turn. A struggle. They thrashed against the voice, but it could no longer be shaken loose. The chime of no no no no only grew inside them, louder and louder, and though they screamed against it, a deluge of bubbles rising from their throat, it would not be denied another second.

They had not come to the green planet to feed. Not today. They'd come here for...something else.

When they emerged from the depths of the lake, they were no longer an animal. Instead, what broke the surface was the head and shoulders of something that looked almost human--almost like a woman. They struggled to the shore, pulling themselves up onto the loose-pebbled beach before heaving up a tremendous amount of blood and meat onto the stones.

"Gods," they said between gags, and the voice they used was that of the tiny human thing. "Disgusting."

Disgusting it was. They were vomiting up a perfectly good kill, wasting it.

"Shut up. This isn't permanent, so all that talk of you claiming this world's nonsense. We're barely more than a projection, see?" They held up a clawed hand, unsure whether to marvel more at the strangely human shape or at the fact that it flickered in and out of sight like the sun on the water. "We're here to find whatever this place wants us to know. Not to eat some....gods, I don't even know what kind of fish this was."

But that was foolishness, was it not? Almost as much foolishness as wasted meat. This territory knew what it was doing, showing them the fish at this lake. From here, far behind them along the river, the ridge with the good steel starships were visible, As were the old stones just ahead. If any place were the perfect place to lay claim to the green world, this would be it. It was as if the world wanted them here--

And that, that at last, was what gave them pause. "Wait. Old stones?"

They turned up, over the waterfall, up and up and up until they saw the old stones. Humble-looking things, barely standing in their old positions, and so mossy as to be indistinguishable from the air. The waterfall even emerged from an unknown source underneath them, making it look even from down here like little more than a cave. But those who followed the old ways had arranged the old stones, set them against rain and wind and time, and carved deep into them what secrets they had to tell. And thus they had held, as long as they had to, until someone came back to them.

"That--" they said, and the tiny human thing's voice held a hint of the glory they'd known in the sky. "That's a temple."

And with that, they knew. Dug claw into the stones behind the waterfall, and began to climb. Dimly aware that there were others nearby. Hoping they would come.

Adelle Bastiel | Sakri | Roman Calipso​

 

[Sakri]

Her gaze followed the unfamiliar sight as it soared over the treetops, a strange yet majestic sight in this equally strange world. She heard its roar, felt it more than anything, and the current sang with joy. It called to her, an invitation to join this new, fierce presence, yet still that familiarity lingered. The being dove, slicing downward into the forest below, and that familiarity rose to meet the joy..

Sakri turned herself and stood without looking away from where she had last seen the being. As she rose, so too did the wind; it whistled past her, then seemed to swirl and return from whence it came. The feeling of its push in the direction of her curiosity was enough to elicit a small, private smile from the Firrerreo. This world offered so many mysteries, but so too could it speak plainly to her when it aligned with the current's path -- her path. She could feel the current shift; the dead still cried out, but she knew that she would return here. This new pull called her with urgent curiosity, and she would be remiss if she did not respond in kind. She pulled the tide around her as she walked back toward the foliage, bracing herself for a moment before releasing it and moving..

The growing sound of running water up ahead was Sakri's first clue for what she might find, a clue which was quickly confirmed when she came into view of the waterfall. She slowed her approach before reaching the lakeside, making sure to survey the area before rushing haphazardly into the unknown. Her eyes swept the shore, lingering on the sight of blood and flesh on the shore: it seemed the being had claimed a fresh kill, though why it lay there wasted she did not know. Her attention turned next to the waterfall itself... and what she saw there once more caught her by surprise.

Their form spoke of a draconic humanoid. Their presence spoke of a fearsome might and..

Oh.

Her eyes widened as she recognized the presence as that of one of the Speaker's fellow learners on this world. Her mind filled with questions, curiosity after curiosity, and as the figure climbed higher, Sakri realized that they must be climbing toward something; when she looked upward to follow their path, her curiosities only compounded.

Perhaps the Speaker had known her meditation would lead her here.. perhaps not. She was here now, though, and as she watched their climb, she knew she would have to join them for the answers she sought. Their path would show her the way; her questions would be answered..


Roman Calipso | Vidalu Na'an | Adelle Bastiel

 

[Adelle Bastiel]

She had journeyed with the strange entanglement of the dragon's and Na'an's presences up until the dive. The depth of the lake pulled her in, further from the sunny surface. Green-tinged water gave way to a bottomless black, like the void of space. Except it contained galaxies and clusters of life, microcosms floating down in the dark. Life filled the water between each speck and organism and suddenly Adelle no longer looked at the ecosystem of a deep lake, but the galaxy itself. And in the gaps between each planet, each solar system, she felt life. Trade routes and creatures that could survive the void wove every system together in the galaxy and on uninhabited planets, microorganisms and tardigrades lived. Then the galaxy was inside her, every trade route a vein, every system an organ, every cell a life. Her veins grew outside her skin like roots and branches, crawling across space to connect with every person she'd ever met. Every planet, every cell, every life contributing to the oceanic tides of the Living Force.

Adelle could find Na'an whenever she wanted. All she had to do was follow the branch connecting them.

The pool's surface broke in the dim glow of phosphorescence as her gasp for air echoed in the chamber. Adelle hung onto the side of the drop-off, her mind tumbling over itself. How long had she been in the trance? It felt like seconds and eternities. The Nexus had shown her something down there, vision or dream. What did it mean for her? For the enclave? Did it mean she could find people using its power or on her own? She needed time to think, to process what exactly she had seen.

Splashing on the other side of the hanging cave wall, guarded by stalactites and submerged stalagmites, caught her attention. Alarm briefly filled her before curiosity. Someone had come this close without her notice; even in a trance, she should have been able to tell when anyone was this close to her. Adelle sank below the water's surface and pushed herself to the hanging wall. Stone scraped against skin as she slipped through the hidden teeth. The water here did not sit still. It swirled and eddied before its currents carried itself far toward a hole of blinding daylight. A silhouette emerged and blocked the light's path. Adelle squinted as she tried to make out who it was. She ought to be able to feel a stranger's presence if they were that clos--

Oh.

"Na'an?"



Vidalu Na'an | Sakri

 

[Vidalu Na'an]

They did not respond at first. They only sat, crouched half-submerged in the water, eyes dilated large against the dark of the cave to watch the trembling figure inside. The smell of the figure was strange, old; water and smoke and something underneath that made the end of their tail twitch. Strange. Old. Familiar. Strange.

But they were strange, too, were they not? This shape they had taken, this ephemeral temporary shape, was clearly some kind of mongrel. The wings that had carried the sky in them had dissipated, leaving only thin human limbs--but for the tail, tip still switching back and forth even as it coiled around a stone for balance. But for the claws, black-tipped and sharp. But for the way human skin gave way to scales, glistening black against the water-light. The useless human hair, too, replaced with something almost like a crest, sharp spines swept back from the skull, but then--no teeth. No long sharp-scented nose. And the eyes--

They blinked, startled. The eyes. Eyes. Eyes, plural. "Oh."

Well. This projection was thorough, indeed. The tiny human thing had a forceful will. Whatever they were, the others on this world still seemed to recognize them--both the one behind, following from a distance, and this trembling thing among the old stones. Maybe these other humans would be able to provide some clue to the point of this venture. They turned back towards the waterfall, where the other was already watching from below with wide eyes.

"The other's here too," they said, faintly surprised, before turning back to the other--to Doc, dammit, to Doc. "She'll be up in a bit. I'm sorry I'm late. But this place is...it's a strange sort of temple, isn't it? Old stones, old patterns. All these tiny rivers."

Adelle Bastiel Sakri ​