The Sorcerers

[Seydon of Arda]

The Sorcerers​

​

Opening Theme​

He dreamt of passageways swept with snow and the frozen strands of cobwebs wreathed thick with hoarfrost.

The sky was blanked dark, a pitch roil of overcast thunderheads flashing soundlessly. Night seemed infinite and young, that it’d just arrived but likewise had always been present. Seydon of Arda could see faint shadowed outlines of the far city spires glowering high, high overhead. In the dream, he wandered the bleak metropolis, seemingly constructed out of vicing labyrinthine halls connected and entwining with little infrastructural logic. The walls were greyed out bricks, ferrocrete, iron buttresses and steely webs of wind-scoured scaffolding. Light came from an incessant fog that shadowed ahead, which his hawk-vision couldn’t pierce through. The passages wove on; soon, Seydon gave up making sense of their layout and followed his instinct.

One side-road transitioned into a low walled courtyard, surrounded by empty faced shop fronts, hostels, barricaded cafes and bistros and hollowed business. Lean doorways screamed like toothless, boxy maws, broken window jambs eyeless portals into blood-warm, curtained hell’s. A flight of formless shadelings scattered from the courtyard centre: a bronze-cast equine mounted on a base of fluted stone. Snow cloaked its withers and croup. And blood, cold and sticky as spent candy, stained round the fetlock joints and black-cast hooves. Seydon spied a broken shape cracked across the flagstones.

Razorlight was suddenly in his hands. Now dressed in war gear, Dunaan kit of the Dark Wolf school, feeling tall and monstrous in leather and chainmail casement. Seydon prowled forward, with care and pace. The body took on detail as he closed up: thickset, dirty coveralls embroidered with a forgotten warband shield, steep-capped boots muddy with gore, bone, and hair. He was man and Seydon knew him. Knew him by the ancient exo-skeleton screwed directly to his skeletal frame through agitated and blackened induction ports.

Stenwulf laid propped up against the feet of the statue, holding his head on his lap, grinning in death. The sheared neck looked clotted with ice.

A sudden feeling of presence spun Seydon around.

Now a woman, standing across the courtyard. The flagstones were now sectioned and ordered with gravemarkers, broad tomb stones left empty. Dreamlogic unfurled snowfall and storming wind. Seydon felt snowflakes and wet frost cling at his armour and bare face. He trudged away from Stenwulf’s sinking corpse, slipping through the naked graves. Thick ice crunched under his boots. Seydon paused, imagined he’d remembered to strap in those repaired cleats; sure enough, they were belted to his boot soles, digging against the glacially rising ice devouring its way up through the ground. The feeling that had guided him to Stenwulf’s memory now urged him to put away his blade. He sheathed Razorlight over his shoulder, and trudged up to the woman.

She was Guenyvhar Gunn, and she looked beautiful. Ghostly shawls blanked her face from sight, except for a telling smile and the narrow, sharp lines of her neck and jaw. He remembered her constant, toothy smirk. She looked elegiac, seemingly at peace and embracing the trappings of the afterlife, dressed in a belted white gown that flickered odd, indescribable colour. Something little whined in her arms. Seydon drew closer, mystified why he should dream of his mother, or Stenwulf, or any of this haunting metropolis. The shop faces swirled into oblivion, replaced by the high crag of Contruum’s lonely Fang peak.

The closer he came, the fierce the winter gale grew. Soon Guen was vanished. Replaced by a babe’s pitiful wails. The snow flecks dyed into crimson. The wailing harmonized with the wind into a hurricane scream. Shapes and phantoms and leaping, snarling visages danced round him in the bloodstorm, the flagstones cracking, hurling the dead from their rest. The iron city rose about; daemonic spires and spiked crenellations, fortresses built on foundations of scoured bones, the sky looking like the lining of a bloodshot eyelid, with a parched sun bloated with death convulsing like a spasming heartbeat. The dream crescendoed into scarlet.

-

Seydon broke out of sleep and sat up from the bed. The coverlets clung to his drenched skin. Behind, he felt his pillow case, now warm and heavily damp. His bangs clung over his brow, wiping away a few clumped hairs out of his eyelashes, slowing his breathing and heart rate. Physical and emotional controls snapped back into place at his willing. Dream fears, the horror of it all, left him. All that could be remembered was Stenwulf’s lolling head, Guenyvhar smirking, the maelstrom of crimson.

...And an unseen babe crying out in fear.

The Dunaan peeled the covers off his body. Out of comfort, he slept naked, usually. Seydon rose and plodded into the bedchamber bathroom, closing the door behind then lighting a ceiling lamp. The mirror above the cracked, then repaired sink described his visage back at him. He was scruff, needing a shave. A haircut too. Needed more sleep from the dark rings under his eyes, but damn it, everything was busy. Rebuilding the Silent Temple floor by floor, helping the volunteer hands replace damaged architecture or erecting new stanchions and pillaring as required. Installing modern facilities to help with refugee traffic, living quarters, medical facilities, a galley and foodstuff kitchen. Then there was the light rigging required on the outer faces of the Temple, along with the ferrocrete pouring now drying overnight, in what would become the newest secondary landing pad.

Of course, he mustered to get what hours he could bargain for in building Jagdhund & Jaeger. His answer to the Path: a solitary workshop up in the Teth forest highlands. Seydon designed it to personal and Dunaan specifications. Inviting no help or workforce, insisting his hands alone would raise its flooring, walls, and roof. The workshop had to be just so. It was inexplicable and no one seemed to understand. Seydon ran the tap and proceeded to dunk his head into a sink-full of cold water. There was a feeling of tightening skin; sweat, sleep flotsam, sloughed off and oiled the water. After a long moment trapped holding his breath, counting to the third minute, he rose free and dried on a rough towel rack.

He doused the bathroom light and returned to bed. A soft shape turned in her sleep, mumbled an incoherent string. The Dunaan silenced thoughts about dreams and nightmares, rolling onto his hip, sliding both arms around the warm body sharing the mattress and tugging her in against his waist and stomach. Rough hands kneaded her lithe belly. A thought of babes, wailing, and children came unbidden.

“Mmmnn...” Seydon whispered groggily. “Back to sleep...”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Seemingly oblivious to her husband's troubled dreams, Rosa instinctively leaned in as Seydon pulled her in closer. She wanted desperately to drag herself out of her slumber and investigate what had taken him from her side in the first place but her own exhaustion was unwilling to relent. Keeping her on the verge of the blissful dark that was her dreams. "Love you." The two words seemed to cost her a great deal of effort before she slipped back into her own sleep.

Between, overseeing renovations and brining in supplies, Rosa had been across the galaxy, drawing up contrasts and gathering sponsors. Her biggest show peice being the sizeable fleet of around forty ships that hung in Teth's orbit. All waiting to be distributed and directed. What hours weren't spent on the temple or in travel, she was pouring over datapad, keeping up to date wth holonews and trying desperately too establish some sort of plan. Sleep was rare, and enforced by the man holding her now. Too many times he'd woken too find her out of bed and at the desk again and had to drag her away.

Beyond the shutters and their terrace, the forests of Teth were alive with life, chirps croaks and whistles of the nightlife carried through to the embraced pair, unceasing even as dawn began to climb across it, bathing the world in golden hues that eased through the gaps in the shutters and gave life to dust motes in the room. Rosa was awake before the beams of light touched the foot of the bed, she didn't stir, listening instead to the steady breathing of Seydon and relishing in this small moment of peace.

After a little while, she eased herself out of his embrace, trying desperately not to wake him and padded over to the desk. Already, there were several messages waiting for her, blinking angrily from the scene of her dataslate. "And they say there's no rest for the wicked." She murmured.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

A pale, thick finger tapped the datapad back onto its flimsiplast paperweight.

“Later,” Seydon said, rubbing a knuckle across his eyes. He kissed the little tender line behind her ear, sidling past into the kitchen. He buttoned and tied an apron over his waist, still half-awake, selecting a skillet pan from memory off a chrome hook mounted into the brickwork beside the spice cupboard. Still undressed save for the apron, with his long backside turned at Rosa while he gauged the gas stove. What to have?

“Gotta eat before we get buried under holo-mail.” Their routine, when both we’re home, which was more frequent than not, always began with breakfast at Seydon’s insistence. Once, they had raised a fierce row: Rosa was due for a shuttle launch and could eat a bland foodstuff in orbit, it didn’t matter! A foodstuff was degrading mineral pastes sprinkled with flavour crystals, she’d catch ill before long from malnutrition and be of no use to anyone! She only gave in one he hovered his prepared plate under her nose. When she returned, two weeks later, Seydon was ejected into the main hall below for a handful of nights. Until he heard her approach in the dead of midnight, dressed only in a blanket, whispering so low only he could pick up her words.

Seydon recalled still having to work for her good graces. He smiled at the memory, faintly recalling something about a dream in the same vein. What dream? Nothing, the Dunaan decided, and readied their breakfast spread. Eggs according to her whim, lengths of back-bacon, ham if she so desired with an added side of Teth bee honey, hash-potatoes layered under chives and mushrooms, white-sugar frosted toast, a sweet fruit salad with picked ingredients delivered from the hydroponic cells down in the Temple’s foundation.

“Oh!” He slid over a quilted mug steaming with black caff. “Sorry, forgot. Head’s not in the game yet. Don’t know if I slept right or not...”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa smirked, casting a lance at Seydon's retreating backside through ribbons of her raven hair as he moved sleepily towards the kitchen. she let her eyes slide to the dataslate again and sighed as another message came in. She took his advice and left it where it lay, perhaps today, or at the very least this morning, they could enjoy some normality. Besides which, judging by the autmoated way Seydon was moving about the kitchen, he needed her attention more than these people.

She slid obediently into one of the seats at their small table. If obedient was something Rosa could have ever been where Seydon was concerned. Her lavender eyes tracked his every move across the kitchen, and she rested her chin on her hand to enjoy the scene. Muscles rippled with movement, scars shimmered as the light caught them at different angles. Even as he slid the plate of food in front of her and bumbled about forgetting her coffee, she didn't take her eyes off him.

"Something troubling you?" She asked. Yes, a hundred things, the works in the temple, the work on his workshop, concern about whether the business would work. Worry about the future. All things Rosa knew about, but there was something else, something blurred at the back of Seydon's mind. "Did you dream?"

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“...I did.” Seydon remembered.

Vibrant snowbound holocaust, flecks of carmine and ash whipping in typhoon gales. Standing in courtyards of unmarked graves, a woman in white, babe crying in her arms, Stenwulf laughing from somewhere beyond the ken of hell. Looking up to glaring towers built out of scorched iron and blackened ferrocrete. That bloodwarm sky with skeins of throbbing blood vessels, connecting to a sun aching and shuddering with heartbeat.

“...Just old memories,” He tried convincing her, and himself, readying his own breakfast platter. He couldn’t acquire Rosa’s taste in her exotic caffeine, opting instead for a pair of juice glasses topped in ice shavings and slices of a local strawberry plant genus. The Dunaan sipped, and rubbed his foot up Rosa’s calve and knee of out of habit. The contact reassured him of her presence; just across their little table he’d fashioned from a spare round tree ring, bolted on stout, bevelled legs. Though she couldn’t see it, he’d carved their initials just under the table lip. Seydon ran his hand over it whenever she was absent.

Finishing, he took their plates and washed them in the basin tub. The day’s weight began settling over them. Chores, the mounting upkeep, her incessantly clanging datapad alarm, the workshop, his private business in ‘monstrous’ consultation, the inflicted burden of helping manage their finances, expenses, and...

Seydon bashed his fist on the counter and spun away. Enough. He snapped the apron off and let it flap onto the high back of a leaning kitchen chair. The Dunaan was around the spare counter space, arresting Rosa from ruminating over the lengthy h-mail listing glaring up through the ‘pad screen, tossing her over his shoulder despite surprise and mounting protest. Bee-lined for the bathroom with her weight kicking at his kidney. Gods-damnit and feth everything else in creation, they’d not yet begun the day and already some element was beginning to sour the good weather and their warm breakfast. He snagged the halogen bulb string and pulled, plunging them under speckled light. Then propped his wife on the edge of the lonely sink.

“Never mind the mail,” Seydon growled. “We’re gonna start today on our terms. Everyone and everything else is just gonna wait until we’re ready.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

She’d drawn away after breakfast, setting her caff cup down on the writing desk and resigning herself to another long day. It was expected. In the early days of establishing anything, you spent most of your time running from place to place. Only with time and the right planning did things begin to run smoothly of their own accord. She began to read the first message:

Dear Master Gunn,

I’ve completed the stock take on our medical supplies and foresee that we will need more -


BANG

Rosa jumped head swinging round to see Seydon advancing on her with a look in his eyes that she had no time to decipher before she was up and over his shoulder, her protests unanswered until he’d set her upon the sink in the bathroom. There was something in that growl that stirred something primal in Rosa, it flashed across her lilac eyes as surprise at his actions turned to something hungry. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

“Was there something you had in mind for our morning?"

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“Let’s clean up,” Seydon said. “And then we’ll tackle things.”

There was appetite rousing itself up through his wife’s belly, reddening across her collarbone and along her throat, finding Rosa’s lilac hues and dyeing them a shade of sunrise light. Marital hunger edged her smirk, showing a slip of canine over the lip. Not for the first time, Seydon thought his wife was very beautiful, young in her evening grey chemise of Atrisian japanagar silk he’d bought for her birthday. The Dunaan rearranged her chemise, lingerie, and garter on the bathroom floor.

They stood as skin and heat, wrapped in a sultry embrace, drinking one another’s physicality and presence. Seydon with his hard lines and stout body, Rosa in her supple litheness and generous femininity, hands searching each other until touch excited a frenzy. He grasped for the shower door blindly, occupied by kisses and knots of erogenous heat, hauling them inside. Brass fittings in the spout head rattled and a rush of hot water poured down vehemently. Seydon tried to find the soap shelf, the porous scrubbing stones, Rosa’s favourite brush that was looking crazed and needing replacement (not until her say so, she insisted). Gave up when Rosa held him back against the stall door, tearing his attentions back to her and only her.

Say you’re mine, her eyes glared through rinsing heat. And so he did. In the greatest way possible.

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

There was nothing else but them, the water and echoing cried of ecstasy as husband and wife sought to drive troubles away with the ferocity and passion of a young couple still entangled in their honeymoon period. After they’d cleaned up, Rosa padded with still damp feet across the tiled floor towards the desk and paused feet from it.

To hell with them all.

She undid the dressing Seydon had managed to get in that time with eager hands, soft giggles and whispers of devotion. Hot kisses took them back to bed for the remainder of the morning.

“I feel like I’ve neglected you these past weeks.” she spoke, with her head resting on his chest, his heartbeat strong and loud in her ear. One of her favourite sounds. “I’ve been so busy with the Foundation, and so soon after you vowed to stay off the Path for a while.” as if to reiterate the amount of work that she’d taken on, her dataslate chimed from the writing desk.

Rosa pointedly ignored it, lifting her head up to look at Seydon’s grey eyes, contentment spread over her features. “We’ve had the morning, we might as well take the day to ourselves, don’t you think?”

Another chime. A muscle in Rosa’s jaw twitched.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

She unlocked an elixir of potent vigor in his blood, loosening knots down his spine, easing tensions from his joints he wasn’t aware were there at all, calling on him to see to her every need. He chased her through to the noon-hour, bowed with fresh sweat, panting and cooling, the balcony doorways opened to admit a cool autumn air through. Both giggled at their goosebumps and gathered in under the quilts, locked at knee, ankle, and heel, joining just once more before the aged bell-clock mounted by her work station chimed six bells and they would have to decide how to divide the coming afternoon.

He laid below her comforting weight, aching appreciably, spent for the moment. Adjusting the blanket up over her shoulder, Seydon regarded Rosa in the wan noon light. Her mien was irrevocably a part of the antique stonework, cast in the heavy cedar beams crossing the wedged ceiling, in the fur throw rugs dotting the bare plank flooring, in the plank-shutter windows chipped into the south wall. The overcast sun touched the elegance in her face, that only served to hide a ferocious beauty and raw exuberance that alighted her like a child of amazons. You are beautiful, Seydon thought, tucking his arms under her rump. You are beautiful and you are everything, I swear, I’ll do right and possess you with such happiness and the means to live as you please.

The datapad chimed again on the workstation. Seydon’s teeth bared out of reflex. Three quarters of her message envelopes were haggling conversations pertaining to whether or not Boolon Foundation could be squeezed under their thumbs, Rosa battling tooth, nail, lightsaber, and more every day to bat away their interests. The Foundation would secure its total political neutrality and philanthropic independence. Already, it was bucking notions of charity work, turning old hide-bound attitudes stitched thickly into most galactic institutions. The onslaught of insistent manoeuvring, bartering, offers and counter offers trying to placate his wife’s legendary ire were constant. Ultimately, Seydon thought, counterproductive.

“Let’s go out to the house,” Seydon whispered, nudging her cheek with kisses. The ‘house’ was the workshop. Jagdhund & Jaeger. “Take a basket with us, I’ll show you my ideas, we’ll picnic after. Go for a walk later? We could camp out all night if you want. You need fresh air, love.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

“Hmmm,” she nuzzled into his neck, drinking in his scent relishing in the warmth of him. She’d spend an eternity in bed with him if the world permitted it. She wanted to doze, just for a few minutes. Another chime, this one of a different tone, telling her it was holomessage rather than a simple written one, and there was only one of her sponsor that stretched to do such a thing.

“I swear, if that is another one of HK-36’s videos, I’m going to shove my lightsaber through his photoreceptor next time I see him.” She growled from her hiding place, before forcing herself up with great effort and moving to their shared wardrobe, a silent agreement that getting out was far better than staying here. “You know the last thing he sent me was a compilation video of all the sith that he’s made wet themselves. Half an hour long. He has no concept of the term ‘I do not have time for this’.”

The rant continued as they dressed and packed up the picnic basket. Covering everything from HK’s eccentricities to the continuing demanded for updates from the Edorai captains of the ships she’d acquired from firemane and the never ending battle with weapon producers that she wasn’t interested in anything unless it was non lethal and their completely savage attitudes.

She only fell quiet once they’d stepped into the lift and she rested her head against the lift walls. “Do you think we’ll ever mange to do something that is easy, simple and doesn’t add to our stress levels?” She asked him.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“Honestly, no,” Seydon chortled, rubbing his thumb along her nape. She was dressed per usual standards: fashionable but with an underlying utility. He visually checked over her thin waist belt, at the small pouches, always noting with a sense of envy how the leather never seemed cracked or faded. His wife could never wear a hair out of place, he decided. They continued riding down in the caged lift, listening to its frame scrape and bounce off the stone shaft.

They arrived in a ground level garage. Tarped land-speeders idled in their maintenance bays, away from the long entry lane poised before a long set of heavy rail-doors. Hoist chains clattered, rustled by currents shearing in through cracks and parts in the walling. They were alone save for a few powered down mechanic-droids recharging in their battery scaffolds. Seydon recalled one day, after spending it underneath the carriage of a ground car, he discovered Rosa brusquely approaching, hot supper in her hands. Something about a minister from the Core, their terse conversation, her stress and she was sick and lonely in her office and damn him for being stuck in his automotive chores. They feasted and talked, opened the far entry doors to watch the stars come out, then made love on the hood of the ground-car.

That same ground-car, a RWD model consisting of a grey fiberglass frame mounted around a stocky chemical engine bolted in the back, drove them out to the country. Seydon fiddled with coughing AC, cursing under his breath. The car wasn’t his favourite, it lacked in handling and speed, but it was the only vehicle waiting in the garage not fettered by tarpaulin or requiring refuelling. The Dunaan felt embarrassed chauffeuring his wife out in a ‘piece of shit Porcsht’. Feeling the camshaft timing vibrated through the axles, into his steering column.

His mood elated when they road up the narrow dirt road, to a small knoll beside a dark treeline, and overlooking an open steppe of emerald grass sloshing in the constant Teth breeze. Seydon rolled his window down, pressing his hand against the air. “There we go. Wind’s warm today, for once. ...Doesn’t look like much but when it’s finished, you’ll be proud of my little shack out here.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa turned her smile torward the window as Seydon cursed the ground car as it protested in the only way a car could, with coughing engine and grinding gears. It was all noise to Rosa, but it irritated her husband. she wound down the window, a far easier way to deal with the AC and closed her eyes as the wind brushed across her face, her raven locks dancing in the breeze.

With every meter kilometre that the moved away from the Temple and Rosa's mountain of work, she felt her spirit ease. The wind blew it all away, all the stress and worry for placing a foot over then line she'd drawn for herself. To remain totally neutral without causing upset to the powers that be was her greatest battle, the rest were just start up problems. finding the right level of medical supplies and food stuffs.Planning the next location, deciding on the where to put the next sanctuary and negotiating ith the relevant governments to achieve this. All of it slid away with the wind.

She looked round at Seydon's word, face visibly brighter as she followed his direction the the knoll and smiled. "It's a wonderful spot." She leaned across to kiss his cheek before they rolled to a stop and Rosa climbed out of the car. the warm winds brought the scent of late summer flowers that were still clinging to life from the sea of grass. She turned back the way they had come, The cliffs that the Silent Temple was set in did well to camouflage it, even at this distance. For that she was grateful.

"It's far enough away from the Temple." She commented, "your visitors shouldn't see it, unless their looking for it." She looked back at him. "I assume thats how this is going to work?"

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“Mmn,” Seydon hummed, surveying the foundation grounds. “Better that way. I don’t want any affairs the Shop draws inviting trouble onto the Foundation. Bad enough we’ve got weapon manufacturers chomping at the bit to supply your goodwill convoys.”

He’d cemented the foundation wall a good three feet below the frost line, notching through packed earth, stone, and layers of dark clay he saved in a pile behind the construction material piles. It was a lot of cut stone, settled into position rock by rock, laying and squaring off the binding cement mixture with just his hands and a sharp trowel blade. The beginnings of the foundation sill had been settled and bolted down over the foundation cast, and a few readied plank girders cut to shape and wedged lengthwise over ferrocrete piers sunk through the loam.

It only described the shop’s tentative dimensions. He planned to establish the central floor and mount the timber framing, to trace the walls, the ceiling, the attic, and a single top spire. A moment’s doubt called into question whether he left enough providing floor space; he required room for his tools and additional space to house basic smithing and machining, alongside his growing library, a section to bring in specimens for anatomical dissection and forensic study. Seydon thought of Rave Merrill, her dark laboratories, and knew he’d likewise require a chemistry desk. Maybe even an alchemy plinth. I haven’t yet erected a single wall, Seydon thought.

“Of course,” He said, returning to Rosa’s side, linking his arms round her waist. “There’s gonna be a spare cot, on the in case. You know: work related emergencies~ ...Hmn?”

Laid over one of the foundation girders, was a plain, wrapped parcel. Seydon let go of his wife, strode to the RWD, pulled Razorlight free and tugged on an armoured glove. “Hang on a tic.”

The parcel appeared ordinary, a brown-paper weight packed in binder string, tied and knotted with a neat, old-fashioned bow. The Dunaan inched over the foundation wall, watching for sorcery. The Korriban compass left in his pants pocket ticked and vibrated minutely. The wolfshead medallion only jittered an occasional tap against his sternum. When in range, he stuck Razorlight’s point under the package and tipped it off the girder brace. The parcel bounced off a paper corner, cartwheeled once, and came to rest in the dark earth.

“...Dramatic,” Seydon grouched, nonplussed. “...Rose, any of your crew complain about misplaced mail?”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa smirked at his idea of 'work related emergencies' and leaned to rest her forehead against is, but no sooner had she begun to enjoy his warm embrace then he pulled away from her, concern etched in his features. She watched intrigued as he collected one of his swords and rather cautiously flipped it from the foundation girders. She might have laughed at her husband's over cautious reaction to such a tiny package had she not had a wave of foreboding wash over her.

"Not if they know what's good for them." She answered stepping over to it. Her crew complained of many things, but mail was not one of them. She looked down at the package head tilted. It hadn't exploded and although it had a dark aura about it, Rosa didn't feel necessarily threatened by it. She stooped, halting the sudden protest from Seydon with a look, before picking it up and standing.


Slender fingers undid the neat bow with care, unfolding one edge of the package and drawing out its contents.She handed what looked like images and a handwritten note to Seydon and inspected the small holo-projector. She activated it, breath catching in her throats as a holo-image of a babe rose from it, large eyes glaring up at the taker who, one could only assume from its expression had disturbed it’s turned its slumber. Slender elongated ears sprouted from the child's head. A slight smile tugged at the corners of her lips. Whoever’s child it was, it was beautiful.

“It might belong to one of the Eldorai.” She commented, not taking her eyes from the image. “Seems unlikely that it would end up out here, no one really knows of your workshop yet, do they?”

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“Haven’t even advertised yet,” Seydon said.

He slid the emulsion picts of the closed-circuit surveillance system out from behind Rosa’s grasp on the central portrait holo, glancing between them and the irritated, sleepy, woefully cute baby-chub caught in a partial blink staring back at the camera source. A boy, maybe? His pallor looked fatigued and stressed, lathed in a crystalline sheen of clinging moisture, wrapped in sterile hospital packing then laid on a chilled surgical instrument tub. Rosa wasn’t wrong: through a bit of baby fat, were hints of a sharp face, elegant, elvish ears, and bright eyes coloured a shade of blue Seydon hadn’t encountered before.

“Where is he...?” He turned through the picts. It was a low ceiling facility, poorly lit, and not unlike one of Silent Temple’s myriad stone-and-mortar chambers. Power lines in rubber-sheathe jacketing ran and spooled along the angled walls, beside naked plumbing, rows of locked steel cabinetry, surgical or dissection tables bolted to a tiled floor dipped round grilled drain plugs. There were preserved, blurry anatomical selections cased in plasteel vats along one quarter of the wall. He thought he could spy grainy meat hooks hanging from chain-links off the unseen ceiling. Each detail screwed and twisted his gut.

“...This is some trouble,” Seydon said, rubbing his chin. He took the paper note, at the scrawled coordinates writ in an unfamiliar cursive. He paused, just to scan the black treeline, mists furling about the ancient, leaf-less oaks crowing tall just behind the workshop’s yard. They were alone. Wet autumnal leaves stirred in the wind about their boots. “...What was that you said, ‘can’t we do something not complicated and stressful’?”

He noted her eyes hadn’t yet left the child. There was a quality to her face; faint glow just across the cheekbones, a shade of rose. Seydon came around, looking over her through the subtle part in her raven locks. “...What are you thinking? About the child?”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa's eyes fluttered closed as she allowed her pschometry to try and glean something from the device in her hands as Seydon flitter through the images. All the images that flowed were blurred, incomprehensible but she felt emotion. Pain, fear and sorrow dug claws into her heart, she opened her eyes. There was a hint of something else, a touch of malicious intent. To think that the child was suffering...

She looked round slowly, as if coming out of a dream as Seydon asked her a question, blinking away empathetic tears. "That he's beautiful. And that whoever or whatever has him has no good intentions." She paused, plucking the scrawled note from Seydon's hand. "Coordinates..." she mused, before loooking back up at her husband. A fiery look in her eyes.

"Someone wants us to find this child." She turned on her heel and headed back towards the car. "We need to go back. The conference room has a full map of the Galaxy and I want too where he is."

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

He packed their picnic straw-basket back into the RWD’s forward trunk and settled into the driver’s seat, deftly reversing them off the shallow driveway and turned back towards the narrow dirt road snaking through the Tethan woodland. Despite the season chill, the cold seats and the condensation wetting the dashboard and raking down the windshield, neither bothered with the AC. Seydon glanced over, at Rosa bent over the picts and the small holo. The RWD galloped over a stretch of rough potholes sunk in from rain a week prior. The shocks held but just and he could feel something rattling in the aft quarters. Minute, but enough for his hyper-sensitive skin hairs to detect even through boot soles and wool socks. He eased off the throttle, focused between steering and wondering at the trouble all but delivered to their door.

They parked into the garage. He stowed the rear-wheel-drive into a spare bay and was activating the service droids to crane the ground-car up into the hanger-docks; Rosa was already out her seat, calling for him to pick up the pace. The Dunaan faithfully retrieved their basket, all its cold food. Followed her into the waiting lift, caged them behind the folding iron gate, and road it up through the echoing elevator shaft.

Who was the child? Their nameless benefactor, the deliverer? Why leave a matter with such potent gravity to a chance discovery, unless they were privy to the notion they would come out that afternoon, arrive that hour, stumble across their package before exposure or animal curiosity destroyed it? Fate he trusted to be fickle, and destiny an illusion of grandeur. If it were a matter for the Foundation’s sentient aid services, they’d have contacted representatives, Rosa’s trusted field lieutenants, for help. He sensed an unspoken plea. Nothing of the affair tasted like Dunaan work either. Something far more delicate and precarious was at stake. Fighting hackles rising, Seydon followed Rosa into the conference chamber.

A central crystal-glass holo-projection table doubled as image emitter and seating forum. They laid out the grainy emulsion-picts, the still hovering portrait-holo, and the hand-writ note across the polished table top. He opened a recessed lid, powering up the interface docket. A hum spread through the glass, motes of light in a slow waltz nano-meters beneath.

“Let’s see those numbers...” Seydon looked over the note. His fingers tapped at the command board. “Where is our little boy...? What do they want us to know...?”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa spent the entire journey back fixated by those big eyes, trying to understand, trying to see how or why a child so beautiful would be separated from his parents. That was an assumption she made based on the fact that they had, albeit without words, very clearly been asked to find him. She rifled through the pictures in her lap, stomach twisting with each image. Was he being experimented on? eyes lifted back to the child, drinking in every detail she could.

Who are you, little one?

The conference chamber was a large sunken circular room with rows of raised benches lining the walls. Rosa descended ahead of her husband and set the tiny holoprojector on the table as he powered up the device and began entering the coordinates. She looked round at him as the phrase 'our little boy' struck her ears, a pang of something crossing her features. Sorrow perhaps? Desire maybe? It was hard to quantify what Rosa felt at hearing those words, even though Seydon never put any emphasis of ownership when he said 'our' it felt like they should have had theirs.

She exhaled, dropping her eyes to the holo-table as it processed the coordinates and shifted across to the far side of the galaxy. She moved round the table, hands sliding over Seydon's she gave it a small squeeze as the map stopped encircling their little boys location. "Is that...?" She swept her hand over the controls, raising the image to 3D so it hovered over the table.

"Son of a queen. It's Panatha. That's...not good. Right on the edge of First Order territory." She ran her hand through the 3D image, tracing the line that the order's territory ran to. "It's also ruled by the Zambrano's, or rather Darth Vornskr."

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“Kaine,” Seydon said. “The ‘little god’.”

He touched the board controls and manipulated the crystal screen-matrix, dragging the holo-image closer, increasing and adjusting image size and resolution. Panatha rose from a marble orb aglow under the First Order’s pall, into a realized three-dimensional reconstruction the size of a Spira seed-melon, rotating benignly on its unseen axis. Its surface imagery was patched from a dozen pirated satellite broadcasts and subsequently knitted together. Soot stains were granulated metro-centres, dusted across immense swathes of equatorial jungle, and the dry, deadened pebble tundras hemming several mountain ridges. The Pacanth Reach had been sealed off since Seydon could recall. Maybe when Desmius took the black throne on Korriban, and every lord rushed to kowtow, Kaine would have thrown his weight in behind whatever power gave him remit to kill, Seydon thought. Varanin had never managed to curtail the Zambrano’s legendary bloodthirst.

Now out of a million taken slaves and hostages, Seydon thought, holding the little child’s holo upright in his craggy palm, someone wants us to find just this child. A weight suddenly hung. He turned toward his wife; the Dunaan hadn’t missed her soft broadcasted hurt at his saying ‘our’. After Roche, after Dromund Kaas, neither of them wanted to discuss the barren luck afflicting them. Wordlessly, he drew Rosa in and hugged tightly, propping the holo portrait between them. The feisty childling casted its glow and balefully woke stare. Seydon looked between babe, Rosa, and Panatha gently spinning above the crystal-glass table.

“You know what this is asking us,” He said gravely. The muscle in his touch tightened lightly. Cats-eyes, slitted in the halogen light, peered down at her. “And you know what I already think. ...So I just want to hear you, what you think we ought to do. In case I’m wrong and I don’t know it...”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Lilac hues flashed as they tilted away from the holo-table an the child, meeting her husbands amber gaze. "Millions of slaves are traded on and off Panatha, a good forty percent of them are refugees. Kaine is literally profiting off the back of the galaxies wars and I cannot get anywhere close to him to stop it." He was not alone in this, the slave trade was rampant across the galaxy and while many governments banned it, it was hard to police so many worlds and eradicate it completely. Refugees made good slaves for they were already broken, some saw it as a chance to start a new with food and a roof and some were lucky enough to find good masters, if there was such a word, the majority though...

"If I was to take all emotion out of this, look at it from a broader perspective, then I would be suspicious of what we're walking into. But I would still walk into it all the same. Because, feth," she nodded towards the babe scowling up in his hands. "That child needs our help, those people," a finger jabbed towards the planet not looking at it. "Need our help. Now, add the emotion back..."

She trailed off looking down, trying to find words to explain. There was something about this child that had struck a chord in her, it wasn't an uncommon reaction for Rosa, she adored all children, but the fact that this one had been dropped in their laps, perhaps as a silent plea...or perhaps for something far more sinister...she could not, would not, lose another child to the greed and fury of a sith.

She looked up, face set. "We're going."

[member="Seydon"]