What Lies Beneath The Ice

[Graf's Archive Account]

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I L U M​

8 5 1 A B Y​

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Why did it have to be so damned cold on one of the only planets with kyber crystals located on it?

Nadia wondered this as she trudged through the mixture of ice and snow, combined with a rather heavy blizzard and it was very uncomfortable, on the verge of life threatening.

The Sith woman was very glad that she was not one of those dark siders that insisted on donning such revealing clothing, the type that showed as much skin as possible while maintaining some sort of decency.

Instead opting for comfortable, dark robing, she was very warm indeed, containing her heat with the Force, it would allow her to reach the crystal caverns without freezing to death en route.

She was a mere student in the Sith Ascendancy, an aspiring force sensitive determined to make her way into the Circle of Lords. None of the others among her echelon would have dared to travel to Ilum, to the heart of the Iron Empire, her colleagues, or what passed as them, would've just sat and waited to be given a crystal by their superiors.

'Asskissers, the lot of them.' Nadia though, stepping into the shadow of a massive cliff face. A two hour trek was just now starting to bear fruits.

Beginning her ascent, the Sith Aspirant approached the mouth of the cave and was engulfed in darkness before her red, like her skin, eyes adjusted. There were white radiant lights peppering the walls of the cavern, the kyber crystals.

And one of them was hers.

 

[Graf's Archive Account]

With every step she took deeper into the cave, the crystals of kyber individually darkened, which signalled that they were not hers to take.

If Nadia was any other sith she would not have cared and would've just grabbed the first one, darkened or not, within her reach as her saber crystal. But unlike the others she had a respect for the Force and all things, save the sentients that wronged her, bound to it.

Growing increasingly tired of the darkness, with the white radiance just a few meters away at with every one of her movements, she raised both of her red hands and cupped them together.

 

[Graf's Archive Account]

The Sith acolyte focused as much power as she mentally could into her cupped hands, attempting to generate a small flame inbetween her hands. Pyrokinesis was not a common ability that many Force users knew, it was not a testament to its difficulty but more due to the fact that Jedi and Sith found it to be useless in the War.

Nadia had thought otherwise, pouring through various Sith manuscripts and holocrons until she had reached the consensus that she had learned the technique proficiently enough. She could almost feel herself straining during her attempt, until finally a flame erupted to life, garnering her a significant amount of light in the dark cave.

It also acted as to warm her, as even inside it was still colder than a lot of planets in the Galaxy. The Sith Pureblood held up the flame and looked around, continuing her search despite the small lapse in her search.

 

[Graf's Archive Account]

Even with the flame lighting the path in front of her, Nadia still had a hard time of maker her way through the caverns. She put her foot down and had to quickly grab a rock on the side to prevent her from falling forward into a massive chasm of ice and rock, hundreds of crystal lighting up the darkness.

She secured her foot back on the safe ground beneath her, looking around for a way across to the corridor she could just make out before her. "Damnit..." the Sith cursed to herself, gently stroking her chin as she attempted to devise a method of passing the chasm. After a minute of deliberation, she accepted that the only viable means of doing so involved using the Force to enhance a jump.

Nadia turned and began walking, hoping to give her a few meters away from the edge for a running start.

 

[Graf's Archive Account]

She ran.

She ran as hard as she could, building up a tremendous amount of speed, her cloak whipping around her in the generated wind. Nadia reached the edge and jumped, concentrating hard enough that the Force assisted her jump, causing her to leap at incomparable heights for a regular Sith Pureblood.

The woman was approaching the other side of the chasm, but had a sudden realization that her strife was no over yet;

As the entrance to the corridor was coated in a layer of hardened ice.

Nadia hit the ice wall with an unsatisfying thud, before beginning her rapid descent into the chasm.

 

[Graf's Archive Account]

Nadia awoke with her entire body feeling as if it had been frozen, in fact it probably had been. Coming to her senses she quickly realized that she was floating freely in a small lake of icy water.

Thrashing madly, she scrambled to the shore and dragged herself onto the ice, shivering uncontrollably as her core body temperature plummeted even further. She made a bid for the knapsack that she had brought along with her, using the Force out of pure necessity to yank it out of the water and into her hands.

She fumbled with the latch and opened it, luckily its contents had not been soaked by the water as it had not gotten through the sack itself. The Sith grabbed the portable heat stick from the sack and quickly activated it, the warmth enveloping her in its embrace.

 

[Graf's Archive Account]

After being thoroughly heated by the portable device, Nadia could almost cry tears of joy that he had survived the ordeal. She deactivated the heat stick and replaced it in the knapsack before strapping it back under her cloak, determined to get back on track on her search for her kyber crystal.

She almost didn't see it among the hundreds of other crystals at the bottom of the chasm, but it was as if it was resonating to her specifically. The woman approached quickly, the other crystals darkening quickly as she did so, and finally as she reached the one, the special one, she realized that it didn't darken.

The pureblood pried it from the ice with her hands, and feeling a warmth, even stronger than that of the heat stick, emanating from the crystal as she held it.

 

[Graf's Archive Account]

She examined the crystal for a handful of minutes before carefully wrapping it in a piece of cloth and placing it in her knapsack. Nadia turned on the spot and began to leave until she stumbled onto something that was neither ice nor rock.

Bending down, she retrieved another sack that was even more worn than her own by what looked to be atleast a few centuries. Opening it, she found out that there was only one item inside; a surprisingly unrusted droid head. Nadia grabbed it, folding the older sack and putting it away.

The head was weirdly shaped and had what looked like gold photoreceptors with a thick antenna sticking up on the right ear.

 

[Graf's Archive Account]

Grabbing a charged power cell from her satchel, the Sith connected a wire protruding from the droid's neck. She looked around, searching for a switch to see if the head could be activated without the rest of the body.

Finally did she discover a small grouping of switches on the back of the neck, but she made sure to be as cautious as possible with the head, unsure if it would explode violently should she turn it on. After deciphering which switch did what, she pressed down on one and almost immediately did the gold photoreceptors of the droid light up.

"Qiksdaocibagamkkmakmsmeatjajkjnasndj" The head stuttered rapidly in a varying degree of tones, until finally it situated itself.

"Grateful Exclamation: Thank the Maker! Power after eight hundred years of darkness!"

 

[Graf's Archive Account]

"What are you?" Nadia uttered, moving the head around, examining everything over again to see if anything other than the 'eyes' and the vocoder. The droid, even though it was an inanimate object, seemed to give off the vibe that it was truly offended by the question, as confirmed by its response;

"Correction: Who am I. Continuation: I am HK-47, Hunter-Killer assassination droid, constructed in..." The masculine voice of the droid took a moment to cross-check his chronometer "3,960 years before the Battle of Yavin, approximately 4,811 years before now."

The Sith acolyte's eyes widened in wonder as she discovered she had found a millennia-old relic.

 

[Graf's Archive Account]

"Hunter-Killer? Battle of Yavin? W-wha?" The young woman stuttered, confused by this sudden divulging of information from the droid. "Demand: Now that I have revealed who I am, I believe you should return the favor." The droid head commanded calmly, a small hint of sass prevalent in its voice.

The acolyte pondered for a moment, before moving her lips in speech. "I am Nadia Vytuia, Aspirant of the Sith Ascendancy." She informed, looking at the cold eyes of the droid, it was almost as if it was calculating every word, every motion that she made.

"Befuddled Expression: Sith Ascendancy? You do not look like a Sith, where is your weapon?" It queried.

 

[Graf's Archive Account]

Nadia frowned after the droid asked its question about her weapon. "I don't have one, not yet atleast. I came here for a crystal so that I could construct one." She mumbled, somewhat uncomfortable about her unseasoned entry into the Sith way.

"Proposition: I may be able to remedy that, by providing you with a saber hilt. Granted, I have only one condition..." The head trailed off, waiting for the woman's response.

"And what is this condition?" She asked, skeptical of what this mysterious droid head that she found at the bottom of a chasm located in a massive cave system on the ice planet of Ilum in the Unknown Regions of the galaxy could possibly want.

"Proclamation: Find me a body."

"Of course you'd say that..."

 

[Graf's Archive Account]

"Sarcastic Remark: You act surprised that I, an assassination droid, do not require a body to carry out my primary programming!" It quipped, annoyed at the woman currently cradling his head.

"That's it, into the bag with you. I'll talk to you when I'm back on a ship." Nadia sighed, moving to disconnect the nearly-drained power cell that she had wired to the droid's head.

"Forced Acknowledgement: Very well, Master, I will speak with you at a later date." It gritted, imitating the sigh through its vocabulator as the young Sith removed the power source and, with caution, place both next to the wrapped kyber crystal that she had collected before, she looked up at the ceiling and huffed.

"Master...I like the sound of that..."

Soon enough, she would find her way back to the mouth of the cave, where she would signal for a pick-up...