Private The Shiraya Temple

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

Wearing: High Republic Robes

Armed With: High Republic Lightsaber

Location: Naboo (Mountain Range)

Arrived in: Super Heavy Interceptor

Earlier, aboard the Atrisian Pathfinder

Nathan sparred with his wife, Vera Mina , in the private training chamber aboard the vessel.

His wife's ability to rapidly learn lightsaber combat had astounded. To paraphrase Zhar Lestin: She had learned to do in weeks what many could not learn in years.

Currently, he was schooling her in Makashi. Her tactics were growing more complex by the minute they dueled with their training sabers. Ordinary masters would have feared her learning that much. Nathan, however...

... Nathan wanted to train her to her maximum potential at the blade and beyond.

Vera spun and stabbed with her curved hilt white training blade against his own. Moments like this were the closest Nathan ever got to feeling true, genuine peace.

Their blade's locked, and Nathan couldn't stop himself from grinning a little at her smirking face, her lose training robes not able to hide her voluptuous figure.

"Am I going too fast?" She wondered.

"If anything you should speed up..." Nathan encouraged.

Vera's smile grew wider.

"Alright..."

She twisted her blade out of the lock, spinning and stabbing at him from all angles. Only Nathan's own Makashi training allowed him to fully meet each of the extremely complex, dance like sequences she employed in her attacks. It took all his training just to be able to counter attack her and once again their blades locked.

Then an alert from the comm system interrupted their duel and the pair had to leave.

"Always at the worst possible moment..." Vera complained. "One of these days we're going to have to put that thing on mute..."

"Can't control when duty calls, Vera. And we all have our duties."

"Whatever it is try to make it back before nightfall, I'm making Nerf Meatballs with Rice..." Vera advised as they headed to the shower stalls adjacent to the chamber.

"Would you add more pepper this time when you cook it, please?" Nathan asked as he bathed in a separate stall

"Because you asked nicely." Vera replied, her hair, which was actually super thin strands of tissue already covered in soap.

"Heh." he chuckled. "Hey, Vera...I'm sorry Thel didn't want to meet with... Arianna..."

"You tried..." Arianna's voice replied from Vera's mouth, a crisper accent than Vera's. "It's my own fault, in the end...not his, and certainly not yours."

Nathan could still feel the unsettled sadness that gripped her since that day.

"Will it hurt you, always having to be Vera around him?" he asked.

Vera turned to him.

"Immeasurably..." she answered with both Vera and Arianna's voice in unison.

"I'm sorry..." he said. "I wish I could help..."

"We're all learning to be parents..." She replied completely in Vera's voice, washing her hair clean of soap. "Mistakes are inevitable. Neither one of us is going to be the perfect parent to Thel Bloodscrawl ...all we can do is try to be a good one...and hope he forgives us both later..."

"Yeah..." Nathan agreed. "How goes the hunt for the Cult?"

"We purged another nest last week. I do believe we were about to clear the core before The Empire took it. Now we just have to figure out where they are in the mid rim before they can flee into the Galactic Core where we won't be able to touch them as easily."

"We were so close. This war...it has to be ended as soon as possible. We can't let the Cult go to ground for another century. I am going to see them go within my life time. I have to do it. Not just for me, but for Percival...for Thel..."

The old pain welled up in him over Percival. The Cult continued to inflict loss on him. First his wife, then his daughter. Then his Grandson.

And...if all the minds in Vera were correct...Moya Virtu also.

True to what he promised, he was taking no chances...

"We'll get them all. I sense it. But it will...cost us..." Vera said.

"When doesn't it?" he wondered.

They were both soon dressed and Nathan headed to the terminal on the bridge.

High Republic Jedi Council had just sent his shuttle a transmission. Strange Interlopers had been spotted in a recently discovered temple to Shiraya and he had been asked to go investigate it along with Aiden Porte

"Vera, I may be gone a while longer than I thought. I got a feeling about this one..." Nathan said as he looked it over.

"Be careful..." Vera said as she entered the automated bridge, in a gown of red Naboo silks.

Nathan turned and pulled her close to him very gently by the waist. She stroked his cheek just as softly.

"I always am..." he promised, kissing her.

Present...


Nathan's Super Heavy Interceptor landed at the sight he was supposed to meet Aiden at, a long abandoned landing pad that connected to the mountain trail leading up to the newly discovered temple. The archeologists had gone silent, and it wasn't certain where they were. Nathan stepped off in his red and gold Robes, his High Republic Lightsaber dangling from his belt. He spotted Porte. They had worked together in passing during a recent mission at Chandrila. It was near sunset, when the activity had been spotted. The sun's rays cast long shadows in certain spots of the mountainside.

"Master Porte..." Nathan said formally walking up to Aiden. "I am fortunate to be paired with you for this assignment. My sensations of this place bode ill...yet I do not sense the Dark Side is present. Curious."

 

[Aiden Porte]

Their task was straightforward and easy to understand. The Jedi Knight was to be paired with a fellow Jedi Nathan Bloodscrawl

Aiden had briefly met him during their venture on Chandrila as they aided in the distraction to allow the evacuation of thousands of citizens. From what he saw and what he knew of him in battle and in their brief talks in between the battle. He would be a welcome sight on this mission and a valuably ally to have on his side.

Aiden had made the trip earlier in the day as he wanted to scout out the area but he couldn't pick up or note anything worth during his look around. There was something here though, elusive and those were always the best or could be the worst things in the world. They could have uncovered a room full of crystals or something else lurking in the shadows of a dark and sinister nature.

"Master Porte..."

"I am fortunate to be paired with you for this assignment. My sensations of this place bode ill...yet I do not sense the Dark Side is present. Curious."

"It's good to see you again Nathan, I would hope our meeting would be on better terms, yet here we are." Aiden said with a small chuckle as he extended his hand towards him. "After this we should sit down and enjoy a good lunch."

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

Nathan took the hand offered by Aiden Porte and shook it.

"As did I. But the Force always determines the circumstances. Normally I would accept your offer, but I already have a dinner arrangement after this, Master Porte. But perhaps I might tempt you to join me for dinner with my family, provided we resolve this issue of the temple in a timely enough manner?" Nathan offered before he and Aiden started off on the mountain trail...

Nathan was constantly scanning the mountain trail for threats as he walked, and he made note of anything that looked out of place.

"I am glad to have been of assistance at Chandrila. I only wish I could have helped more evacuate..." he said.

"I am not all that certain the NJO appreciates the necessity of taking direct action. I was knighted in the Alliance, and I have encountered many who believe that we should simply stay the course and that the Lightsworn's activities are counterproductive..." he confessed as he walked.

 

[Aiden Porte]

"As did I. But the Force always determines the circumstances. Normally I would accept your offer, but I already have a dinner arrangement after this, Master Porte. But perhaps I might tempt you to join me for dinner with my family, provided we resolve this issue of the temple in a timely enough manner?"

"That would be greatly appreciated." He said with a smile and small nod as he looked on towards their location through the mountain trail. He hoped this wouldn't be anything but just some random act, yet something tugged at him through the force. There was something else at work here. They would need to get to the bottom of it.

"Shall we my friend?" Aiden spoke as he led the way.

"I am glad to have been of assistance at Chandrila. I only wish I could have helped more evacuate...

"I am not all that certain the NJO appreciates the necessity of taking direct action. I was knighted in the Alliance, and I have encountered many who believe that we should simply stay the course and that the Lightsworn's activities are counterproductive..."

"I was a member of the Galactic Alliance for a period of time when I was a Padawan. Their orders ways were indeed, off. I became disillusioned with them and I returned to Naboo. It was then that the Royal Naboo Republic, which we now know as the High Republic was formed."

It was the will of the force, this was his path forward. Standing with Jedi Order under Briana Sal-Soren and the High Republic. "But yet, I too wish we could've saved more. In time we will honor those and what they died for."

Nathan Bloodscrawl

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

"You can say that again..." Nathan muttered at Aiden Porte ... "When you're so out of touch that the Sith can form in the heart of your territory and seize control of the core, something that should have been impossible... there's something you're doing wrong. What's worse, is that a lot of them don't like being told that their ways are off, as you say..."

He sighed at how close minded many of the survivors were, even now. Trying to get through to them was like trying to argue with a brick wall. It was why he didn't bother most times. They refused to acknowledge the depth of the disaster, hiding behind the Force's will as a convenient cop-out.

Nathan scanned the mountain trails above them as The Temple loomed in the distance. At this range, he felt how the Force hummed through its walls. It was crumbling in certain parts at the exterior.

"You ever get that feeling where you would have been less concerned if you had already been attacked?" Nathan mused as he cautiously approached the entrance.

He saw signs of excavation in an ancient marble walled and floored interior, Naboo Architecture Style evident, beautiful even in its obvious ruin. He sensed something strange in a dug open pit where the floor had been torn open.

Nathan pulled out his lightsaber, it's ultramarine blue blade sliding out (Both the blade core and aura was a solid dark blue) and cautiously approached the pit.

He saw a long, black sword with engravings embedded in a pedestal in the remains of a blasted open chamber, green arcs of lightning like light side energy dancing off its surface. No traces of anyone.

Nathan blinked. He turned to Aiden.

"That sword...it feels...strange...where are the archeologists?" Nathan wondered.

 

[Aiden Porte]

Aiden had felt the unease long before Nathan spoke it aloud. The Temple breathed a tension that pressed against his chest like a heavy weight, every step deeper into its hollow corridors setting his teeth further on edge. When Nathan voiced his musings about being less worried if they'd already been attacked, Aiden almost agreed. The silence here was not natural.

And then came the sword.

The sight of it sent a ripple through him. That black blade—it did not belong here. Not on Naboo, not in any Temple. It hummed in a way that tugged at his thoughts, threads of the Force running through it like veins of poison. Yet the arcs of green light that danced along its surface carried something familiar, even comforting, and that was what unsettled him most.

His instinct was to step back, but instead he drew closer to Nathan, his eyes fixed on the weapon in its pedestal.


"It feels… wrong to you because it is wrong," Aiden said, his voice low, as though the Temple itself might overhear. "That thing is no relic of the Jedi. But it doesn't feel Sith either. It's caught between the void like the blade itself hasn't decided."


He scanned the chamber quickly, walls torn open, marble fractured, excavation tools scattered and abandoned. Dust still clung to them, as though whoever had been working here had left in a hurry. Or worse.

"The archaeologists didn't leave on their own," Aiden murmured. His hand drifted unconsciously toward his saber hilt, though he did not ignite it yet. His instincts screamed that drawing a weapon would only make the silence heavier. "They found this thing… and then something else found them."


He finally tore his gaze away from the blade and looked at Nathan. "If you're thinking about touching it, don't. Whatever that sword is, it's not sleeping. It's waiting."

Nathan Bloodscrawl