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

 

[Niysha]

A normal person could've seen that the poor man was so nervous he could barely move; to Niysha, he was a Life Day tree of glaring, kaleidoscopic anxieties. She'd need to be very careful with him if she wanted to have anyone who'd even speak to her while she was on this nowhere planet. For now, that meant not making any particular movements and respecting the distance he'd decided to keep.

"I can't imagine any other reason to be here," she answered simply. Slowly, gently, she moved her bag from her far side to the side facing the local, then slowly unzipped it in full view and pulled out her datapad. Tapping her finger twice on its screen to wake it up and bring up the relevant page, Niysha gave it one more tap in the corner of the screen to turn off the neon glare of Miraluka mode, then offered it with an outstretched hand. "I've done a bit of reading, and the lack of answers is fascinating."

She made sure to wait a moment for any physical response before resting her hands on both hips, chin raised to "gaze" up at the big metal monster in front of them. "Even a junker castle like that on a frontier world like this should have a recorded history of some kind. The materials it's made with are much older than what these buildings are made of, and the plant growth towards the base strongly implies that it wasn't just moved here out of nowhere."

Niysha took a break only long enough to turn physically towards the young man she was talking with. "This village itself doesn't have a lot of information, either. That might be another frontier world quirk, but I've found entire collegiate essays on singular rock spires on worlds that didn't even have names. Hezal has been populated for centuries; every centimeter of its surface has been explored. But for some reason, no one knows much about this town, or this tower."

She tapped the side of her nose with one finger in a general, silent proclamation of "sus."

Ives

 

[Ives]

Ives hesitated a moment, or perhaps a few—he could rarely tell for how long he tended to dither—before he finally approached the stranger. Once he began to close the distance, however, he did so with quick steps. Like the transition between the states from hesitantly observing to hesitantly participating had somehow been even more uncomfortable than awkwardly standing around was.

Ives didn't read the full document, instead he skimmed the parts that seemed most important. Which wasn't a lot. An observation the stranger further developed with her explanation, which held Ives' interest a better than the holo-documents.

The castle loomed before them with its jagged architecture and disjointed look. The darkness of it, silhouetted against the evening sky, made Ives want to turn around and walk away. But something deeper within him urged him forward. He couldn't place the exact nature of what, why, or even how, but he felt it like an extension of his sense of touch. A tether that wanted him to go inside.

"The locals have been tight-lipped about it, too. I tried to ask but it seemed to broach a taboo," he caught himself still staring at the castle grounds. He tore his gaze away.

"It would be best to avoid this place," he gave the Miraluka a deliberate glance as he held out the datapad to return it.

He seemed almost to assess her, though his thoughts were by no means that scrutinizing. He was preoccupied with the metaphorical coin spinning between caution and curiosity. Part of him hoped this stranger would make it fall, one way or another.

Niysha

 

[Niysha]

Ah-haaaah, he had taken the bait. Niysha did her best not to visibly smile to herself when the young man approached, handed over her datapad without complaint, and returned her attention to the big, scary mound of metal in front of the two of them. It was, of course, a daunting prospect to try to take on something that was that mysterious, that sealed, and that intimidating to the locals. She didn't blame him for his hesitation.

Arms crossed, Niysha stood with uncommon confidence before the jagged, uneven shadow of a scrap-hewn den of darkness. "It might," she agreed quietly, "but that nagging voice in the back of my mind won't be satisfied unless I know what this is, and why no one seems to know anything about it." Curiosity was a deadly poison, the most dangerous predator of the galaxy's brightest mind. More visionary scientists had met their ends pursuing That Which Shouldn't Have Been Known than ever died comfortably in their sleep.

When the young man was done with her datapad, the Miraluka took it back and returned it to her bag, zipping it up securely. In the same motion, she offered a hand for a casual shake. "Niysha," she introduced herself simply, keeping that gentle grin on her lips. "Would you like to come make a very interesting mistake with me?"

Ives

 

[Ives]

Several heartbeats passed during which Ives watched the extended hand. It became difficult to shake the feeling of living earth.

"Ives," he gave his name in turn, shaking her hand quickly.

A brief glance found tattoos on the back of his hand. Studious eyes would recognize them as a distant dialect of ur-Kittat, upside down and skewed to be most legible for the hand's owner. Ives pulled his hand back, hiding it inside his pockets again.

"Are you in the habit of making interesting mistakes?" He shifted uncomfortably, glancing at the castle.

He had work in the morning. The people here liked to keep their secrets. He'd been directly told by his boss not to come here. He had no reason to trust the stranger--Niysha. He didn't have any equipment to do this with. The castle didn't exactly seem abandoned. Trespassing could get him fired if someone reported him, and he needed that money. More reasons not to do it crossed his mind.

And yet he felt it here. That squirming beneath his boots. A feeling that became stronger the closer he'd gotten to this place. Something was wrong. He sensed it like a whisper behind closed doors. Barely audible, and if one really focused the sounds almost became intelligible words.

That metaphorical coin landed on a side. Ives turned to Niysha.

"I've come this far. I can't go back. Not without knowing why the earth is restless here."

Niysha

 

[Niysha]

"It's wonderful to meet you, Ives," Niysha replied with an easy smile in the warmest affect she could manage. She had exactly one potential research partner on this backwater wheat-ball, and she wasn't going to drive him off by being rude. "I'm in the habit of not letting good sense get in the way of good science. I find the two are often at odds with each other, and while there are times when sense needs to win out, there are likewise times when the rewards are simply too great to pass up." Of all of her Sithly vices, greed was probably her favorite after sloth.

Unfortunately, being colorblind, she was completely unaware of tattoos. This was particularly tragic, as Niysha could absolutely read ur-Kittât.

Thankfully, she managed to pick up plenty from her perspective. Ives was fearful and anxious. His emotions ruled him with an iron grip, and his innate understanding of the "restless earth" around them would've spoken to his spark to a sighted practitioner... even if Niysha had already made him through aura alone. Any dungeon dive was far more dangerous than she'd normally want to inflict on a normal person, but Force-sensitives were built for this sort of thing. The raw, unbridled Destiny about them was too stubborn to let them die alone and forgotten in old, dank caves surrounded by mold and spiders.

When Ives half-agreed, Niysha hefted her bag off of her shoulder and unzipped the main pouch, pulling out her backup utility belt to offer it to her partner in crime with one hand. "I've got a blaster in here if it'd make you feel safer." The implication, obviously, was that it clearly made her feel safer; why else would she keep it on-hand if she didn't get something from its presence?

Zipping her pack back up, Niysha threw it over one shoulder and took a couple of steps towards the foreboding iron gate in the shadow of the metal monument. There were no automated defenses as far as she could tell - she would've easily noticed if the fence was electrified - so she lifted the latch and pushed it open. The old, wrought iron swung far too slowly, and didn't so much squeak as it shrieked quietly with every millimeter it was coerced out of the grave it'd been resting in for who knew how long.

Yeah, that was a little unnerving, but considering the last tomb she'd broken into had had two dozen zombies rigged up like batteries to an obelisk-bomb to prevent a spirit from escaping its sarcophagus, this was probably only in her top... ten or twelve creepiest scenarios. She walked up to the gate, stopped inside for a moment, then turned back to "look" at Ives and cocked her head to one side at a "c'mere" angle.

Ives

 

[Ives]

Ives hesitated a moment. The blaster's presence had him split between two emotions.

He had, personally, never actually used one. Postured with a holdout blaster, once, maybe, when a particularly stubborn spice-head had tried to interfere with an emergency street-side medical procedure.But he'd never shot one. His familiarity with blasters extended mainly to the psychological safety-net of having a blaster on hand as a fallback. It was a valuable tool for protection, but in this scenario he was left wondering. Protection for who?

She gave off the impression she'd used blasters before. That made her the more qualified one to carry it on grounds of competence alone. But...Ives remained convinced that no one this cheerful could ever hold pure intentions. The over-under on her leaving a scorch mark in his back later down the line came up decidedly on the side of paranoia.

He opened his mouth. The desire to say something, to somehow voice his apprehension, seemed important. Like an immediate need he had to address. But the words didn't form. His thoughts remained scrambled, jumping between emotions, and soon the entire matter seemed absurb.

It would be fine.

Instead, he took some time to check the contents of the utility belt while Niysha got the gate. He grimaced through the metal's screeching.

Ives strapped the belt around his waist despite his anxiety's objections. Paradoxically, he did draw some comfort from the familiarity of wearing one again. The farmhands on this world weren't given belts like this. He'd always worn one as a medic. The smallest edge of confidence returned to his gait as he stepped across the barrier to follow Niysha.

A stabbing pain coursed through the root of his neck, up into his temples.

The world around him gave way to what felt like a deeper truth. An image floated in his mind, indistinct and out of focus. Black earth, dotted with shapes. Any detail he tried to focus on slipped away like fine sand through the gaps between his fingers. The more he tried to concentrate on it, the less clear it became.

"Ksh," he hissed out a breath.

The pain faded a moment later, leaving only a vague tension. He pushed his palm against the side of his head. The pressure helped relieve some of it.

He'd never experienced anything like that before. Occasionally, he'd heard spice-heads talk about visions and experiences like it, but he'd never touched the stuff in his life. The alternative train of thought, that he might be going stir-crazy on this planet, was too unpleasant to entertain for now.

"I'm good," he mumbled. "Happens sometimes. Tension from working the fields."

He continued into the courtyard, taking a look around while he rubbed his temple.

Nothing in the courtyard seemed out of the ordinary either. It had been picked clean long ago, going seemingly untouched for quite a while. Some rusted-over plates of durasteel were laid against the wall where a small hut might have once stood, now barely more than scrap. Grass grew only in patches. The earth here was dark, and loose. Most likely from all the rain around this season.

The last few months of tending Hetzal Prime's soil for twelve hours a day had given him some measure of appreciation for that sort of thing.

"What sort of rewards are you after in this place?"

Niysha

 

[Niysha]

As Niysha entered the junk-castle's grounds, she felt an ominous presence, but that was very normal. It was less ominous than the sealed Force entity she and Serina Calis had found on Korriban, less ominous than any Sith Lord she'd been in the presence of... but still, markedly dark and appropriately foreboding. That sort of atmosphere was always a welcome sight for Niysha; it generally meant she was on the right track, and it rarely went any further than "menacing amounts of foreboding."

That was, until Ives joined her. The moment he stepped into the trashy, desh-plating-and-weeds courtyard, the shift in energy hit her like she ran face-first into a wall. The presence was specific and distinct, more of a mantra than anything visible or resonant. Dark earth, dotted with shapes. It was even more curious - almost provably sentient - because of the telepathic disconnect; her initial reflex was to translate it as "dark" earth... but it wasn't "dark." It was "black."

Color didn't exist to the blind. Niysha would never have known to think anything about "black," didn't know how to quantify it. It meant nothing to her and couldn't mean anything to her. "Black earth, dotted with shapes" would never have been what she saw or felt. It was a mantra, pure and simple. Something here was sending a message.

The corner of her mouth turned up in a slow, dawning grin.

Ives seemed alright, though rattled. "Well, I came here wanting to know why no one knew about this place. I had some theories. There was an anarchist anti-Jedi cult that sprung up around twenty-five hundred years ago. This planet was one of their main waystations, maybe a capital. The information's a bit fuzzy, which always means that it's worth de-fuzzing it." An extremely technical anthropological term. De-fuzzing information was a crucial part of the scientific process.

When Ives caught up to her at the proper front door - dark iron, welded shut, with no obvious way in if she didn't want to pull her lightsaber and start a huge fuss - Niysha's smirk had consumed her whole face. "But when we walked through that gate... well, let's just say that I know exactly what I'm here for now."

Black earth. Colors weren't real. Only living things with eyes saw them, and not every living thing even had eyes. Plant monsters, deep-sea fish, some kinds of insects, and anything that navigated by echolocation. None of them was able to parse what a color was. They were dealing with a ghost.

Ives