Private Seek thine enemy

[Isobel Serraris]

SEEK THINE ENEMY​

LOCATION — Ilum, Unknown Regions
TAGS — Lysander von Ascania
PARAPHERNALIA — Armour of the Lost, an old blaster pistol and Vesper et Aurora.

​

Can flowers blossom on blighted soil? Upon miles and miles of ice and snow--where it was not the sun that merely blinded you, but the endless seas of powdery snow. Where the only company one can have is their own perilous thoughts?

In these desolate moments, Isobel longed for the luscious gardens of the Nabooan estate. . . The colourful bushes of Queen's Heart that brought the gardenkeepers a constant headache, and the millaflowers that made the estate's pets act funnily. To hear the reprimanding words of her father for forgetting one of the countless values of her blood. And yet, she felt as lost as in Naboo, when she was among friends and kin.

A soft grunt left her chattering lips as she made another effort to endure the terrain of Ilum. Why had it driven her here? The Force was strong, its calling undeniable, and yet its message was... indecipherable? A cacophony of various words in tunes that she had no knowledge of. Though the [self-imposed] exile must be playing its tunes upon her mind, making her disillusioned to the truth--to the present. Which was precisely why Isobel sought to find the histories of Ancient Jedi, of other presences belonging to Ashla. For their spirit and essence to guide her on this path forward, toward. . . civilisation. In the future. . . possibly?

The previous efforts had reached the same level of success as this attempt; her lightsabers' components were barely remaining in the hilt, and her once 'indestructible' battle armour was but a pile of scraps weaved together by cloth and furs. All had to be exchanged for new wares, which had certainly come at a cost. Whilst that was a slight misfortune--one after the other--she could still count all of her scars on one hand. As well as feel the deathly cold seep through her bones, so life was not yet done with her.

Her steps continued until she found a crevice in the tall wall of ice. One that--upon closer inspection--appeared to be a lot less difficult to traverse than the paths outside of the temple.

Her clawed gloves moved inside the crevices, taking hold of one of the ledges on each side. Seeking to escape the blankets of snow, the Nabooan repeatedly sought to pull herself out of it using the stone. Soft curses escaped her lips as her boot remained stuck in a piece of this godforsaken ground.

Once more. . .

Again?

Then another, and she managed to slip free from the ice, and took a tumble forward into the temple. Landing face-first onto the mosaic floor of the temple, beside a fallen down pillar. "Smooth. . . As always ," left her lips softly.

A quiet moment passed, with only the soft drip of water landing on stone to fill the large ruin. Until the distorted melody begun anew--chattering, chanting or whispering... The Force was a mess here, and though she had had some training, this echo was akin to pure gibberish? A grumble left her once more, as she pushed herself up to her feet again. The sound originated somewhere eastbound, if her senses could be believed after all these tumbles. So, after all this time, Iso continued her search--walking one of the dark hallways, praying it would deliver an answer as to why she was called here. . .

​

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Isobel Serraris​

For multiple days he chased that unending hum that dared to thread through every meditation he attempted; a dissonant chord that would not yield.. even when Lysander sank deeper into the Dark’s currents in search of silence. Perhaps others may have dismissed this as status, he felt its shape as surely as anything else; for him, this disturbance was but a cipher awaiting revelation. The most he listened, the more it unfurled into something almost conscious.. As though the Force itself cracked wide where far to the north.. and bled its song into the void.

The young Sith followed because that was all he had become. An emissary, an instrument of the Covenant, its silent dagger; and because the deeper he penetrated the Dark, the clearer he saw that wounds revealed truths. Those the unbroken surface would forever conceal.

The call was not a voice; no, but a resonance pressing against the inside of his skull like three choirs singing different hymns; each hymn vibrated along his bones. Ancient, intimate, unforgiving. When he closed his eyes, he saw flashes of blue white corridors carved from ice. The floors were like fractured mirrors. This was the vision of a temple with doors that dared to breath, waiting for a pilgrim yet to arrive. Strangely, he remembered a craving much like this once, years ago.. when he was young and ignorant enough to believe the Force spoke only in binaries; before he’d learned that its truest language was contradiction. The harshest truths? Those had always arrived wrapped in discomfort.

Or was the Force mocking him, weaving memory and prophecy into one?

His freighter descended through Ilum’s atmosphere, another wound piercing through something almost tangible; the melody cleaved in two.. one Thread was cold, the other warm. It was one he recognized in the pregnant stillness between breaks, conjuring memories from the Mid Rim. Somewhere in that, was a stubborn warmth that once might’ve irritated him with its earnest glow.

Lysander told him he pursued this wound because the Covenant demanded understanding; because such a disturbance could not fester; because a lone Jedi wandering here was a variable that needed to be contained. But beneath that armor of both duty and doctrine lay another.. a truth, mayhaps, cradled in the space between memory and instinct. The melody entwined around her once registered as a summon.. and now? A snare.

So he descended into the storm; let the icy wind bite through layers of robe and test mental fortitude alike; let the wound guide him across the glittering expanse; let the Dark enfold him like a slave as he approached that breathing temple he had seen in fevered visions. There were two signatures drawn along the same line, and he didn’t believe it was by chance. How could he?

At long last.. he paused before the massive, yawning entrance, and asked himself: What awaits within? Salvation or doom? Even with all the questions echoing in his blood, he finally stepped inside.

 

[Isobel Serraris]

SEEK THINE ENEMY​

LOCATION — Ilum, Unknown Regions
TAGS — Lysander von Ascania
PARAPHERNALIA — Armour of the Lost, an old blaster pistol and Vesper et Aurora.

The repetitive crunch of snow persisted even within the confines of the Ilum temple, as her ronto-hide boots pursued the draining traversal deeper into its heart. If not for the eternal frost, the sweat would have stained her brow and the few curls dangling from her braid--though quite contrary, she did not feel an embrace of warmth neither.

Whereas the Force was fated to permit its wielder a sense of clarity, it was hereby accursed to sparse glimpses with a strenuous noise between its intervals. It clouded the mind and made it arduous to act, whether it was seeking to warn or to lead one to the core disturbance remained but an undefined mystery. A sharpened blade that could slay foes, or be doomed to end its bearer.

When the fractures in the domed ceiling--bridged by thick layers of ice--failed to allow light to pass, the force-user drew upon the red light of Vesper to guide her on this uncertain path. She unlatched the dark-marbled hilt from its place on her belt and activated it through the stud. A bright crackling red left the marble, and lit up the interior of the hilt too, casting a vivid crimson upon the mosaic walls of the forgotten relic.

The tall faded walls depicted scenes of younglings, of all shapes and sizes, obtaining their first kyber crystal, as well as the ancient temple guards warding off against acts of the Sith Empire. It was an echo of day's past, of the acts that shaped Jedi--old and new, for they were still battling the servants of the Dark Side to this day. . . It was a ceaseless cycle--each fall gave rise to another, and so it went, unbroken and unending. Though as sorrowful as it may be, it did bring forth some form of hope to those in need of it.

Vesper's blade spluttered and died as she continued her exploration, earning an irritated grumble from the Jedi. Before the blade appeared once more, its light left more sparks than before, landing in the thin layers of snow, and was noisier than before. Though such was the nature of synthetic crystals. . .

The saber's hum flooded the halls, yet beneath it she heard the deep creak of a massive gate yawning wide open.

Her head perked up toward the noise--it could be the wind, or it could be the very presence in the Force that drew her toward the faded ruins. Isobel contemplated whether it was wise to pursue the clamour--but it was too sudden, too loud, for it to be a mere coincidence. With the shoto-lightsaber in hand, she stalked toward the open gateway, the ever-growing draft slipping between the seams of her chainmail, though before she could fully reach it... she... froze and stared wide-eyed at the figure near the gateway.

Blonde hair and those black robes. . .

"You," was all that slipped from her lips, a condemnation. . . or an acknowledgment?

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Isobel Serraris​

The moment he breached the threshold, the temple inhaled deeply. Unwelcomely. A wound in reality yawned, colder than any starless void pressing into his teeth.. and Lysander tasted ancient frost on his tongue long before sight or thought further awakened. Something older than light recognized him.. before he dared to acknowledge it, unsure whether to return such courtesy.

Ice groaned overhead, a brittle lament indeed. The curved hilt pressed against his hip, a weaker pulse against that lingering hum he thought was finally left behind. Corridors ripped at the edge of the Sith's vison, walls breathing in shadows. There were mosaics flickering with the apricot youth. Some depicted sentinels repelling what he presumed to be Sith invaders.. cycles, inevitability, the same story painted over and over. Each stroke from blind hands just appeared as another false promise. Hope was the lie Jedi art told best, and they'd been telling for thousands of years..

Air pressed in as if the future were congealing around one's lungs. Bones rang with prophecy Lysander never consented to. If he inhaled too quickly, he believed the very moment might fracture, and leave him exposed as the very pilgrim he refused to be.

Could the Force choose its vessel? A bitter question that uncoiled in the recesses of his mind. Too late to refuse.. already Lysander feels that wound, cinching tighter along his spine. Two signatures, two threads preparing to converge. Just as foretold.

A grand gate creaked once more; arches groaned like dying wings. In that lone arc of sound, there was recognition before reason could ever possibly catch up. Her silhouette stands framed by some widening maw.. braids, and backlit by a red glow from deeper halls. His breath caught, disbelief clawed at his calm. Irritation follows, sharp and unwelcome. How dare he be surprised? And then, something warmer, feral, dangerous. A thread believed to be severed unspools in the blonde's chest. Of course.. it's her. Another thought without permission. Who else could the Force have dragged him across this frozen graveyard for? Here, of all the places in this dying galaxy, here.

Anger flared from memory of familiar recklessness. Fascination pulsed beneath. Had it been buried, or simply relocated? Perhaps only misplaced; relief was so raw he could not name it twists through every line of the body. Then there another taste of; that of unfinished words and undone destinies. Or was it a darker page written in blood? He couldn't have said which was which. When she exhaled, some dark harmonic presence bended itself around aura. A hallucination, then. He'd entertained the idea before. Was this treachery of the mind? Or was it revelation?

Rooted where he stood, it was as though boots sealed to frost. Only lips parted, slow as a wound opening. "The melody changes the moment you breathe."

 

[Isobel Serraris]

SEEK THINE ENEMY​

LOCATION — Ilum, Unknown Regions
TAGS — Lysander von Ascania
PARAPHERNALIA — Armour of the Lost, an old blaster pistol and Vesper et Aurora.

Purity and bliss had once cradled her with the gentlest of hands--sworn to shield her from the cruelty and terror of reality. Yet purity would gradually make way for corruption. For life, and its many vessels, were destined to deceive one another; they were destined to harm one another. It was not righteous, no. It did not belong, and yet here it was: the trial of existence. When the light was blinding, a figure would always be summoned to strike it down, for such was the cycle, one rises and the other falls. They could never be aligned.

The softness in her doe-eyes had vanished, cast down by the icy and nigh on feral set of pupils that stared him down. Her heart quickened frantically, a forlorn echo of feelings once felt, now buried in the farthest corners of her soul--of her heart. A weakness that could no longer be exploited, not by this foe.

Her frost-stricken chains snapped as she advanced, her fingers tightening imperceptibly around the hilt of her ignited sabre. The muscles of her jaw twitched, as if seeking to bite down against the spur of feelings this encounter inspired. Isobel sought not to draw closer, and maintained an impersonal distance--yet paced left and right throughout the domed entrance.

Lysander's words tasted of the same venom she had once swallowed on Naboo, once so innocent, once so sweet. . . With a sharp shake of the head--loosening further strands of her braid--she dismissed whatever falsehood he had declared. He was the disruption, it was not she that wielded this burden. She vehemently told herself, and continued to assess this 'surprise of a threat'.

"Lysander," a statement to follow her last, it was soft, dragged-out and nevertheless as hostile as the environment of Ilum. "Come to spill your venom upon my heart once more?" Her head tilted and her brow furrowed as their gazes bridged the abyss between their figures. In a sudden move, the melody flourished around her as the tip of her blade pointed at the familiar man. "You know what you have enacted. . . You are not witless, you never were . You claimed to be pure, whilst veiling that corrupted face behind a mask-- I knew. Ashla spoke the truth, but I refused to believe you were another one of Bogan's vessels. . ." The exiled Jedi spat.

Isobel persisted in her ceaseless patrol, marching the same oval-shaped path over and over again. Her body inclined toward Lysander, and her eyes never departing his darkly-robed figure. The Force withered and blossomed around them, maintaining its fluctuating cacophony for all present to witness.

A breath, too heavy to be called mere air, slipped from her lungs, landing like steel between her ribs. High upon her side the ache lingered, not only its flesh, but the essence of its... origin. Voss. The beginning of this accursed wound, not its end. How blind had she been to the omen threaded through that moment. . . how deaf to the whisper of his presence. He had been there. He had watched. And still--Lys had left her to die.

Where was the justice in that?

The memory sparked an inferno within her volatile soul, and the previous sorrow--regret--evaporated in seconds. "I yearn to drive my blade into your heart, to make you suffer the same aches that I have had to suffer at the hands of you... Sith." Her voice was firm, no longer a coaxing tease, but a blazing judgment etched upon skin. And yet... it was her skin that was being marked by this sin, this verdict, for it was not the Jedi way to seek revenge in such a cruel manner--or at all.

Whether her will aligned with it or not, the Force enforced--no, overruled--her spoken verdict. A violent rattling and groaning tore through the icy ceiling, the friction occurring between the stone and frost above their heads as her free hand lifted, outstretched beyond command.

Then it ensued.

Debris rained down upon them in a merciless cascade, and yet its ferocity dimmed. The fall slipped course, ever-so-slightly, to betray a glimpse of reluctance, or was it hesitation?--Nevertheless, it was a fracture within her control, a weakness she dared not give a voice to.

Instead of enduring the torrent of fragments, Bel turned on her heel and paced down one of the paths leading away from the entrance--unable to entertain what had been unleashed. . .

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Isobel Serraris​

The vaulted crown of Ilum sighed around them. Dragons of regret uncoiled in the hollow of his skull, stung with the remembrance of innocence. A more honest ancestor.. or a boy king crowded by his own ambitions, with too grand a heart that still brought ruin upon all who trusted his star. Was that not the primal sin? His cheekbones tightened; for a moment, he might have been carved from the frost. Before him, each breath she exhaled blazed like embers from a funeral pyre.. every word a burning coal pressed into flesh. And so he stood fast. Why flee? Destiny chooses its sacrificial Shaak.. yet still her echoes struck at his spine, and he wondered: why must she bleed for the wounds he never meant to inflict? If her wrath were physical fire, then he would gladly stride forth into this inferno in penance.

Silence enfolded him until he shook off its thrall with a shudder. “I never professed innocence,” a warning delivered like a prayer as he was haunted by her smile beneath Naboo’s three moons. That lay extinguished now, replaced by a cold light in her eyes. But the darkblood in his veins hungered for truth.

“I found myself drawn to your Light once,” the confession unspooled, and a cold scythe swung in the deep pit of his stomach. “Your warmth drove back the winter in my soul. In your presence I tasted both hope and fear, as if I might break or be reborn.” Tightness climbed his throat. “Yes.. I believed your Light could scour the darkness from me.”

The caverns thundered in reply. Ice and stone tumbled in a cascade of violence. Lysander’s head whipped up, emerald contracting to slits of onyx. For a heartbeat he hesitated.. feeling the Force itself plead.. then extended a hand, fingers unfurling like wings, and the airborne shards stalled mid air, suspended by his will alone. But.. the moment shattered: Isobel’s retreat.. the debris tinkling harmlessly to the ground. That hesitation was but a whisper against his cheek, the first warmth since landing on this frozen rock. And the space went silent.. save for the drum of his blackened heart.

Dust drifts down like gray snowfall. Unmoved, he tipped forward, chest rising beneath starless heights, and let the Force pour through him as a river of lamentation. Lysander saw the tremor in her side, the old wound still singing its ache from Voss. He saw the scar tissue beneath her flesh because his own hands carved it. “I should have been there,” came scarcely more than a breath. “I should have shielded you, but I was blinded by the promise of destiny of my own making.”

Though she faded into the corridor, her presence clung about him.. a glowing ember beneath the frost of her anger. He heard her breath caught in the echoing vault, a tremor of regret she could not quell. Even the dreams.. this cruel inheritance.. quivered at the edge of his consciousness, as though fate itself hesitated, appalled by what he became. Nay, not Fate alone.. but the ghosts of his line. And more.. a litany of broken oaths so deep Lysander should have drowned in their flood.

His cloak swirled around him, sable as unatoned guilt. He steps forward, though he would not pursue her; that was not his way, nor would he raise his voice. Yet now he must. “Bel,” whispered the single syllable, and he waited for that loud echo to die before continuing. “If you would drive your blade into my heart, grant me that blessing. I would see mercy only in your eyes.. and nothing more.”