Out In The Cold

[Rose Kuhn]

[member="Lily Kirsche Kuhn"]

As they moved deeper and deeper into the tomb Rose began to stretch out what meager senses she had. That odd etching feeling in the back of her mind. It felt like a consciousness, and odd sort of oppressive thought that reached out towards her mind and tried to grasp at her, push at her and draw her closer.

Her lips thinned, and the steady thrum of her lightsaber droned in her ears.

The gently tone of Lily's voice snapped her out of the strange hypnosis that she had been put under, her head shaking from side to side as if she were wiping away an odd feeling. She frowned slightly, then answered her sister In truth.

“They have knowledge.” She explained simply. “Mother is no longer here to teach me. The Jedi would be more controlling, and I doubt any independent person could afford the same knowledge base or consistency. I play along with what they want, and they teach me.”

For a second she stopped, holding herself as they came upon another door. She looked to her sister and shrugged. “I doubt half of them believe in the things they say.”

Her free hand touched the closed stoned door, darkness lurking behind it.

 

[Ellie Mors]

Part of her understood what her sister meant, the other part was absolutely disgusted by how easily she made the decision to do things like become a puppet for some man with all this supposed power, yet never actually shows himself. She'd had the argument with her mother once, a hurtful one that ended with a slap across her face when she retorted with an insult to her mother's own explanation, and she had heard all about how all-powerful he was, even how there were those select few who were dedicated solely to his own goals over the One Sith's directive by its members - a group she had apparently once been a part of - but all of it had seemed too fake to her then, and now she understood why. There was no doubt in her mind that the era of Sith actually meaning anything to the One Sith as a whole was entirely over, and in the literal sense at that.

The Sith Lords that had built the group up under the Dark Lord's rule as those who answered directly to him were either dead or gone, irrelevant in the extreme, and everyone who was slowly rising up in their ranks did not know the purpose behind the group - did not understand that the betterment of Sith, the 'good' they did, was all a lie. They were just brainwashed pawns now led by a string by their Dark Lord. And here her sister was, openly admitting to it. She scowled. "If they didn't believe a word that was said, why in the karking hell would they do what they're told?"

But she didn't press the issue, nor did she stop as her sister did. No hand moved to touch or push against the door, simply the sudden vibrant light of her lightsaber chopping right through the portion of the door that met the wall while her left boot kicked out to shove it open slightly, at least enough to let her through. "I don't even understand how the One Sith exists internally at this point, but I'm not going to bother you about it anymore today. Let's just get a move on, I want to get out of here and the sooner the better." Lily said, trying to muscle her way through the uneasy feeling that lurked beyond the door.

[member="Rose Kuhn"]

 

[Rose Kuhn]

[member="Lily Kirsche Kuhn"]

“The same reason everyone does.” Her lightsaber swung forward again as she took a few steps back. There was probably an easy way to unlock this door, some hidden switch or perhaps a counterweight located somewhere along the walls, but Rose had no time for that. She was here to get the holocron, and then get out, not for anything else. Her lightsaber blade flicked forward, and then sank into the stone. “Power.”

It really was the simplest explanation.

They followed the Dark Lord for one simple reason, he was the strongest of them all. It didn't matter what their goal was. It didn't matter who they were or what they did. The Dark Lord could bend them to their knees with only a flick of his wrist. He had escaped death, and would do so again and again. It was that simple.

He had survived where others had not.

Rose smiled at that thought, survival.

The red hue of her lightsaber began to eat away at the solid stone, slag began to drip onto the floor in front of her, and slowly she began to carve her lightsaber through the thick rock. Inch by inch her lightsaber slid its way through the door, splitting apart beautiful mosaics and destroying a masterpiece that had lasted more than a dozen ages.

 

[Ellie Mors]

With a sigh, she shrugged. Perhaps she was different that way. Sure, she was self centered, greedy - in her own way - but she never saw the point in putting other people into the ground for the sake of getting anywhere. Maybe it was because she hadn't been absorbed in the Sith lifestyle - if you could even call it that - but it always seemed so... barbaric. She had learned from history that absolute power corrupted absolutely.. but for some reason she always wondered if that was truly the case, imagining herself in their positions - those that had fallen from grace. Of course now she was here, with her sister, and not even a hint of doubt remained that she might have killed someone, either in cold blood or not, for this 'power'. It didn't disgust her, she accepted her twin for everything she was, but it was a disappointment.

"Yeah, power. The only Sith Lord I have ever admired was Vitiate, and it wasn't for his power." She mumbled, part of her always rushing to have the last word - not that she intended to instigate another argument, she just wanted to get a move on. Seeing as how the two sisters had managed to cut their way through the door, Lily went ahead and took the liberty of making her way in - ominously relating herself, internally, to the subject of a horror flick, the dumb blonde Hapan that always ended up dead first. "Do you see anything that might point us to what we're looking for?" Lily asked, not quite able to make out much of anything in the room, besides the dim glow of her and her sibling's lightsabers.

[member="Rose Kuhn"]

 

[Rose Kuhn]

[member="Lily Kirsche Kuhn"]

Rose eyed everything.

Her sister had walked into the room first. It was bare, empty. There was nothing. She frowned. A dead end? That didn't make any sense. They had missed no turns, had found no other rooms. Her lips thinned, worry began to gnaw at her heart. Vrag would not be pleased if she came back empty handed, not pleased at all.

She took a step forward, walking into the room after Lily. Her eyes watched carefully as her sister wandered about the room, observing, watching. Her red hair flicked back as she tried to get some out of her eyes, her saber coming up to hopefully illuminate more of the room in front of her.

Something above her caught her eye. It was a portrait.

Rose looked up, catching her sisters attention with a wave of her hand. The image appeared to be a star, a bright burning sun that poured black light down upon the worlds painted around the ceiling. She frowned slightly, her lips thinning as she looked up. There seemed to be an odd slot at the center of the sun, a thin circular opening.

Her gaze wandered. “Lily...How small are your hands again?”

Same size as hers, but it was meant to be a joke.

Before her sister could answer however Rose got an idea. Her shoulders rolled in a shrug, her eyes wandered to her lightsaber, and then back to the sun. Sun, heat, lightsaber, heat, it made sense in a stupid way. She spun the blade once in an artful way, then stabbed its glowing red center directly into the slot.

For a brief second, nothing happened.

Then the room began to shake. The floor stirred, the sun painted across the ceiling began to tremble, and light began to break through the cracks of the walls. Rose closed her eyes, a great mechanical whirring resounded, and almost instinctively she let go of her lightsaber to cover her ears.

The blade did not go out and it did not fall. Instead the glow became brighter, the whirr became louder, and slowly the walls around them tore away into the ground, falling to pieces to reveal a grand chamber illuminated with a bright red hue.

Rose' lightsaber blade thrummed loudly overhead as the final piece of stone fell away, its thin glow projected all around the room through a thin white crystal.

 

[Ellie Mors]

For a moment she thought her sister was making another jab at her small hands - which had remained slender and soft with lack of physical labor, her sister's looking much larger in comparison if only from calloused palms and dry skin - until she turned around to watch her sister do something remarkably...Stupid? Well she, for one, was stuck staring at Rose with perhaps the most confused expression she could muster. But then the ground began to shake, and the room itself seemed to give way. For a moment she wondered if her sister had somehow stumbled across a shatterpoint and dumbly stabbed at it - bringing the whole place down - but the sudden bright light, which shocked her eyes, and the loud roaring, which prompted the shutting off of her lightsaber and its subsequent fall from her hand as she reach up for her head and covered her ears, just as receptive to the sound as her sister was. "What is going on?!" She screamed, though her voice was lost to the whirring that deafened her ears.

When she finally managed to open her eyes, glancing up where her sister had decided to plant her lightsaber, she wondered, firstly, what in the world the crystal was - and how the lightsaber hadn't simply cut through it - and secondly what this room really was. A while back she'd felt a sense of doom just being near the door, and while that hadn't necessarily gone away, she was quite occupied taking in the change of pace and surroundings, first and foremost staring at her twin's saber and the crystal above them. Tilting her head she uncovered her ears and looked to her sister in, again, some confusion. "What is that?" Lily asked, never having really paid much attention to lightsaber crystals - or rock formations in general - besides the sort that were in her own lightsaber. She didn't really expect her sister to know, but the question needed to be asked. Or at least she hoped she'd find out the answer in some way.

[member="Rose Kuhn"]

 

[Rose Kuhn]

[member="Lily Kirsche Kuhn"]

Rose wasn't looking at the crystal anymore. “I...”

Her eyes bugged out of her head.

Lily and She were rich. They were vastly wealthy in only a way that a Kuhn could be. They combined had more money than several star systems and the sum total of their bank accounts could likely fluster someone with the amount of zeros they presented. Yet that wealth had never really taken a visible form. Rose knew she had money, but what lay before her now was a vast physical display of wealth.

Gold, platinum, silver, every rare galactic metal that she could identify could be seen before her. There were statues, necklaces, busts, swords. Everything seemed to glitter and shine with that red hued light, everything seemed to give off a remarkable glow.

It was piled nearly as high as the ceiling, placed into neat stacks with rivers of pure blue water cutting through the stone masonry floor. Rose was transfixed, and at the center of it all, upon a pillar within the middle of the room was a small four sided pyramid, its walls giving off a strange red glow that seemed to pulse as Rose caught her eyes upon it.

“Have no earthly idea.” She finally finished as she stepped off the dias and slowly walked towards the holocron, her fingers running across some of the artifacts as she moved.

Something caught her finger, a spike or an edge, it sliced her, blood spurting forth and running down the edge of what had caught her. Rose made no noise, nor did she flinch, she moved transfixed towards the ancient artifact, moving her finger to her lips to stall the slight pain that touched the pad of her index.

 

[Ellie Mors]

Where her sister had been enthralled by her immediate noticing of the holocron, which surprisingly grabbed her attention, Lily was transfixed on something less valuable - or at least less valuable to her growing library that she planned to house in the small little cottage-like attache that she intended to have built out behind the house, a place for her alchemy. Right in front of the teenager were hundreds of millions of credits worth in gold, platinum, perhaps even rarer metals still, but what caught her eye with the faintest of glimmers were small smooth crystals that she could feel almost radiate the force, or at least amplify her sensations through it. A focusing crystal - or a handful of them anyways - and even more gems. Rose might have been interested in tools or weapons, and perhaps Lily would have too, but it was Lily's passion to make things, trinkets usually, through the application of alchemy, and what laid in front of her were extremely expensive jewelry pieces she could use for exactly that. A handful of small gems here, a flower petal-like golden pendant there, and then she stumbled across the most beautiful teal-colored jewel, clearly cut from a larger crystal, that fit almost perfectly in the middle of her palm. "If we didn't already have all of that money.. just imagine.." She mumbled, stuffing much of the materials into the little pouch-like purse that was resting against the left side of her hip.

Although just moments ago the room had seemed so dangerous, all of that worry had melted away. Perhaps it was the crumbling of the walls around them before, or maybe it was the mental trick played on them with all of these priceless artifacts to distract them. But when she looked towards her sister, watching her reach for the holocron, she stared transfixed at something other than the artifact that Rose was after - the blood that ran down the edge of the pedestal that had seated the artifact. Trying to think back, perhaps to something she read or saw in the past, she wondered why it grabbed her attention, perhaps a suspicion. She didn't want to freak out over nothing, so she simply let it go. "Well, that wasn't so bad, huh?" Lily mused, leaning over to lift up what looked like a bracelet. It had several runes around the edges, the sort her mother had placed on objects of power that she had created, and she quietly stuffed it, too, into the purse. She was ready to go, but seeing as how her sense of urgency to leave had left her, it was only fair that she let her sister linger.

[member="Rose Kuhn"]

 

[Rose Kuhn]

[member="Lily Kirsche Kuhn"]

She didn't even hear her sister speak.

Of course Lily was right. The money in this room, or rather the treasure, would have been worth a fortune. The two of them likely could have placed it in a pool and swam around for an exuberant amount of time, yet Rose didn't care. She had money, she had treasures, what she really wanted was the only thing in this room that was on a pedestal.

The holocron would grant her access to what she needed. With it Vrag would teach her the last of what she wanted to know, and with that, she could forge her own path in the galaxy. Slowly Rose wandered over to the pedestal, blood still dripping from her finger.

She slowly made her way up the steps, each foot landing cautiously.

Her bright blue eyes looked down upon the small outcropping that the holocron sat upon. Rose looked for traps, watching, carefully assessing. She was transfixed, but not stupid. When she found nothing, she let her hand slowly lift towards the small pyramid. She began to shake as her fingers closed around it, and then...

It turned to dust.

 

[Ellie Mors]

Being the newly-bored and rather unoccupied sister she was, Lily had watched her sister essentially destroy the holocron - how, the amateur alchemist had no idea, it even baffled her. She'd been in possession of two holocrons during her short life, and neither had seemed even remotely as fragile as they looked. She did, of course, understand the ramifications of what would happen if this were to be reported back to the One Sith, and Vrag in particular. While Rose was probably all kinds of enraged and confused right now, Lily was slowly stepping back and preparing for the sister that had cut a couch in half and sent a desk through a window - or some combination of those events, her sister always insisted it was the opposite of however she had told the story whenever it was brought up. "Rose, uhm.. Maybe it's a fake?" Lily hazarded quietly, turning to seek refuge behind a small stone statue.

Her sister most certainly had temper tantrums that more than rivaled her own in terms of physical mayhem that ensued, recalling the time her sister had nearly broken her nose when she made fun of her awkward shoes when they were children - and that was just shoes! Sure, Lily was a brat and loved to be the best dressed in the room, but this was far more of an issue to both Rose and Lily - she was cut out of her side of the bargain! - and thus meant a bigger chance for a far more volatile reaction to a perceived failure. Rose's failure. For some reason, that actually tasted good on the tip of her tongue. Lily might have been gifted, but Rose always seemed to work hard enough that tests and other measures of skill were easily overcame by the teen. A cold chill ran through her spine for a moment, realizing she'd began to resent her sibling for her ethic and success. Where her sister was now superior in both physical combat and potentially the force, Lily was still just a pretty face with a niche hobby of making protective, and flattering, clothing. She had a lot to catch up in. This might be a small setback and a failure to her sister, but til now Lily's entire life seemed to have been a massive one. There was a reason she took a cocktail of drugs every night, her cheerfully condescending face always hiding that one urge.

Maybe one day she wouldn't wake up.

[member="Rose Kuhn"]

 

[Rose Kuhn]

[member="Lily Kirsche Kuhn"]

She shook, and the room shook with her.

Anger, indignation, but most of all fear tore through her entire body. She had come so far. She had traveled across the galaxy to this little ball of ice, she had searched and wandered through a tomb. She had done everything right, and this? This was her reward? Her hand closed around the dust that had found its way into her palm. She lifted the sand and slowly let it fall back down into a small pile. She was so angry, so afraid. Could she go back? Was this her failure? Would Vrag end her for this.

She shook, but it wasn't the cold, it wasn't her emotions.

Rose's finger throbbed slightly, the pain.

She winced and looked to her sister, there was a look of despair, of fear, and hurt that had struck at her very soul. She hadn't expected to fail, she had expected everything to go her way. Her eyes passed over her sister, towards the room filled with treasure, then she turned back towards the pedestal. Almost frantically she began to look at it, claw at it almost. She desperately searched for something, anything.

A hidden switch, a button, a small alcove in which to hide another holocron. Yet all she found was nothing. Her face sank, and she sat down on the ground. What was she going to do? She couldn't go back empty handed, she couldn't go back with nothing. The red pulsing light of the crystal seemed to wash over her as her mind began to desperately search for an answer.