Private Softly Sings the Soil of Harvest

[Ives]

Hezal Prime
Outskirts of the fortress village

Ives settled against a stack of grain bags with a bowl of gruel. Work in the fields had been more difficult than usual. The sun had shone all day without a cloud in sight and the resulting heat had been torturous. No one had come by the main road to visit, either, affording him and his crew no tiny break from the toil to chat and catch their breaths.

The grey goo with protein cubes in it did little to lift his spirits. Still, somehow the others in his shift crew always found the energy to chat despite the hardships. It reminded Ives a lot of previous jobs, back in the mines on Telos. Except the farmers here on Hetzal always shared their meals after a shift, and they expected him to stick around for it, too.

"Hey, new kid. How're you settling in? Handling the work alright?" Kell, the Rattataki big brother of the crew, asked.

"Not much different to mine work. Less dust," Ives muttered between spoonfuls of the gruel.

"That so? Where'd you say you worked at again?"

"Tingel Arm," Ives met the other man's eyes for a moment.

Kell wanted to hear more. He had that expectant gleam in his eyes.

Ives had deliberately tried to avoid spending time with the people in his crew. They enjoyed small talk, banter, and they did their best to pry into his past. They didn't do so out of malice, Ives was simply a mystery for them to be solved. They showed genuine care, were unexpectedly friendly, even.

The type of people Ives had difficulty lowering his guard around.

Over the years, he'd picked up a thing or two about talking with people like that. He'd found abrupt changes in topic quite effective in getting interest off his back. Questions about the work, their families, their hopes and dreams. More often than not they ended up talking all about themselves, forgetting their attempt to find out more about their new crew worker.

And there had been a topic Ives had been wondering about for quite some time. Might as well broach it now.

"Say, Kell, what's up with the big castle in town? Why does no one ever go there? It doesn't look abandoned, but I've never heard anyone talk about actually going inside," he asked.

Kell met him with a look. For a long moment the Rattataki said nothing, and the rest of the crew remained similarly quiet, each suddenly less interested in Kell's grilling of the new guy and instead enamored with the grey slop in their bowls.

The sudden shift in mood left Ives with a distinct sense of unease. Had he transgressed somehow? He hadn't intended to poke some kind of sore spot for them, but curiosity had been gnawing at him for a while now.

Finally, Kell shrugged.

"Stick to the fields, kid. That place isn't meant for us," Kell said. He turned away from Ives, finally digging into his own bowl.

Ives watched the man for a moment. The uncertainty about where he now stood with him, with the crew, gnawed at him. An uneasy sensation in his gut that spread outward as though it was twisting his insides. He focused on the bowl and the small amount of grey still inside it. He fought through the last spoonfuls, setting the bowl down, and quietly left for the main road.

 

[Niysha]

That big castle in town was just too much. She had to go inside.

Niysha hadn't found as many Nihil pieces as she'd wanted to on Hezal. There were plenty of reasons that might have been the case, but the most likely one was probably that a farm world full of honest workers wasn't the sort of place that kept track of its ancient relics. There weren't a lot of museums on Hezal Prime. In fact, the whole planet seemed largely made up of the manual labor required to pull in crops and ship them off-world. That many workers in one place tended not to have history, but "legends." No relics, just "curses."

It hadn't taken Niysha long since she set her shuttle down to run afoul of local custom. Frankly, she did that on her own just by being slightly off-putting to look at. Normal spacers came here with their trucks, but wild spacers with an eye for exploration and hijinx? Never. Within minutes of landing, she'd asked maybe two questions too many, and ever since she'd been damned as a pariah. That wasn't objectionable; if she'd wanted to stay here any longer, she might even grow attached to being the local witch. Might get herself a hut and a reputation for eating children.

While she wasn't here for the companionship, and had come here with a goal in mind, Niysha didn't mind the minor shift in objective that the big, spooky castle presented. A castle was just a dungeon on the opposite Z-axis, and Niysha adored a good dungeon. The locals were scared enough of it that not a single one of them was considering approaching. And if all of that wasn't enough, the fact that every yokel in this backwater was giving her the exact same looks they gave the most foreboding building in town was absolutely plenty of encouragement.

For the monent, Niysha had found a space by the gate to take in the sight of it all. She was too far away to make out any particular aura, though the whole thing had a malaise of dark energy choking the air around it. It wasn't quite "ground's haunted" evil, but it was close enough that she probably knew a few Sith Lords who might want to make it their summer home.

Alone and unbothered, Niysha honestly seemed to be the sole sentient willing to get within twenty meters. She double-checked her bag for essentials - medpac, lightsaber, change of clothes, datapad, rubbing and material testing kits, spare power packs, communicator - and then triple-checked her blaster to make sure it was ready to go the second she needed it. As always, she was entirely prepared to handle this one alone.

Not that she would be, this time.

Ives

 

[Ives]

The first expression that Ives received from one of the locals as he entered the village immediately made him want to walk out again.

These people did not trust outsiders. Practically every person still out on the streets paused what they were doing to watch him as he passed by. They didn't move to stop him, they seemed tolerant enough of outsiders to not kick him out immediately, but he had the distinct sensation he walked on thin ice with them. One wrong word, even a wrong gesture or look might get him thrown out. He was beginning to miss Kell's overbearingly friendly demeanour.

He didn't dare light a cigarette as he wandered, though.

After his shift, he'd needed some time to cool off from the awkward moment at the crew meal. The nervous tension in his system needed an outlet, and he'd found walks to be a good way to get rid of it. He'd never actually been to the village, and after hesitating at a crossroads for long enough that even he realized he was being pathetically indecisive, he'd taken the long route through the village to get home.

Beside the villagers' suspicion, he'd also noted how the castle turned out to be a lot more imposing the closer one got to it. The walls around it were decrepit and old, but still held up. They seemed a patchwork of durasteel plates from more spaceships than he could count, but he didn't recognize the models.

Ives rounded one corner, hands tucked into his vest pockets, and stopped. He'd found the gates, and an offworlder lingering next to them. And she looked to be carrying an awful lot of gear, right next to an old castle gate. His eyes lingered on the bag.

He hesitated, mulling over what to say and discarding half-formed sentences and replies.

What did one say after running into a stranger about to spelunk in an ancient castle of which the locals did not speak? Ives wasn't exactly sure.

Niysha

 

[Niysha]

Hmm. The whole building seemed to be thoroughly infested with negative energy. While that didn't necessarily mean it was actively dangerous, it would certainly be at least mildly hostile. Maybe spirits, maybe monsters, maybe traps... if she was particularly unlucky, there might be a living revenant of some kind still inside. Niysha took her time to consider her options and approaches.

Her contemplation was only momentarily interrupted when she noticed someone approaching from behind her. They hesitated for a long moment, well outside what anyone would assume to be a human's line of sight, so Niysha took her time to judge what she could from a decent distance. Without moving her head - or at all, really - the Miraluka concentrated slightly more intently on the figure behind her.

In Rhan was blessed by the Force in a powerful way. If she'd been born on a planet with a tradition, she would've easily been scouted and picked up before she was old enough to manage basic math. Her aura was wild and untamed, weeping off of her in incredible, smoky waves. It was rare that Niysha found a greater untapped potential... but she absolutely had today. Like In, the raw, unutilized power in the person walking up behind her was noteworthy; unlike In, it was colored by much darker experiences. Caution, paranoia, no small bit of pain, fatigue... whoever this poor creature was, he'd certainly had a time of it.

It took Niysha more than a couple of seconds to process her deep, thorough examination of her rubbernecker before she turned her head over one shoulder with a casual smile. "Hey there," she offered quietly in a warm, welcoming voice that was as incongruous with their surroundings as her expression. "Come on up, I don't bite."

She waited, arms crossed, for her guest to either approach or run full-tilt away like she'd just shot him. Judging by the will of the Force it'd be the former; the strong were tested until they met a challenge that they had to become stronger to overcome.

Ives

 

[Ives]

After several minutes of silent glares from every living soul he'd passed in the village a verbal acknowledgement—sans glare—got the smallest flinch out of Ives. He looked away. He straightened his arms, pushing down his vest through its pockets. The strained fabric made him look like a piece of string pulled taut.

"It's not your teeth I worry about," he said.

A deep-set feeling of unease had begun to shadow him after he set foot into the village. He'd been preoccupied with gauging the villagers' reaction to him to really dig into exactly what made him feel so uneasy. Now that he stood around long enough for the impressions to really settle, he noted the sensation stemming from the soil beneath his boots. It felt like it squirmed under his soles, though it was nothing more than inert dirt.

He looked back to the stranger, a side glance. He wasn't aware of it but he was leaning, body angled away from her.

"Are you here because of the castle?"

Niysha