Private Where the Light Doesn't Reach

[Nysa Veilwalker]

Loren Ardemark

Ralltiir Jungles

The jungle had long since forgotten who built the temple. Vines draped themselves over weathered stone as though they had always belonged there, roots splitting ancient masonry with patient determination. Moss softened sharp edges that had once inspired reverence—or fear. Time had made little distinction between the two.

Nysa paused at the foot of the worn stairway.

The air was heavy with the scent of wet earth and growing things, each breath carrying the lingering promise of rain. Somewhere beyond the canopy, unseen creatures called to one another before falling abruptly silent. The quiet that followed seemed to gather around the temple itself.

She tilted her head, listening.

Not with her ears.

The Force settled against her thoughts like still water disturbed by a pebble. It did not reach for her. It waited.

Curiosity drew her forward where caution might have turned another away.

Her fingertips brushed the side of the entrance as she passed beneath the fractured lintel. The stone was cool despite the warmth pressing in from the jungle beyond. Beneath layers of moss, shallow grooves caught her touch—old carvings nearly consumed by the forest's patient embrace. Symbols worn thin enough that meaning had yielded to memory.

She wondered whether that had been mercy.

Inside, the light dimmed to scattered shafts that slipped through cracks high overhead, illuminating drifting motes of dust. Water echoed somewhere deeper within the structure, each drop measuring the passage of years more faithfully than any chronometer.

The darkness did not feel empty.

It observed.

Nysa remained still, allowing her breathing to settle into the rhythm of the temple around her. There were places where the Force rushed like a river, eager to be understood. This was not one of them. Here it lingered in whispers.

She took another careful step, boots scarcely disturbing the blanket of fallen leaves that had found their way inside. The silence welcomed neither friend nor trespasser.

It simply endured.

And somewhere beyond the fractured halls, beneath stone and root alike, something old remembered that it had once been found.

She took another light breath when -

THUMP

"Watch it Veilwalker," a growled menace from the sith initiate in their small party. "The trophy for the Empress will be mine and MINE alone. Get in my way again and I'll slit that pretty neck of yours." His smile was like a nexu's though lacking any threat Nysa would've felt. Even though he would likely slit her neck for any other excuse. Elegant fingers twitched at her sides as she stared him down. Refusing to look away until he finally sneered and stalked ahead. His lackey made a 'slitting throat gesture' as he followed behind his blood brother.

Nysa was...outnumbered.

And a part of her pondered if this mission had another objective. To prove who would come back as a survivor.

 

[Loren Ardemark]

A bar of sky blue ignited in the darkness beneath the jungle canopy, illuminating the fine features of a young Jedi. Sweat made his tousled blonde hair cling to his features and his eyes, the same blue as his lightsaber, flicked toward the sound of movement.

Loren heard them crashing through the jungle before he felt them in the Force. His senses needed work.

After the massacre of the nobility in Tapani and the butchery that followed, Loren had difficulty focusing on the Force the way he used to before. Every time he tried to immerse himself in the flow of serenity he found he just could not let go of the anger and the pain.

Loren adjusted his grip on his lightsaber. The finely wrought hilt, fashioned from aurodium, had a hand guard which curved down from the emitter to near the pommel - reminiscent of Tapani lightfoils.

Growing up, Loren learned the lightfoil before he even joined the Jedi Order. But he wondered what all those light fencing lessons would get him now that he was in the middle of a sweltering, marshy jungle with some sort of Dark Siders hunting him down.

This had been a reconnaissance mission to see about a secret Sith base when they spotted him. From there it all went downhill.

Loren felt two presences closing in on him and turned to face them.

Blue and red blades crackled beneath the trees in a blindingly swift exchange, then Loren felt the tip of his lightsaber push in and heard his foe give a sharp cry, toppling backward.

The second figure tried to join in, but Loren started running again. His boots crushed through the leafy floor and twice he nearly tripped over enormous ferns. His breath sawed in and out of his lungs and he tried to gain ground.

Suddenly, he stepped out onto what looked like grass and felt his foot sink up all the way to his calf in bog water. Loren gasped at the cold and the sensation of water filling up his boots. He tried to pull his leg back, but the mud clung to it and he heard a squelch as he sought to stand up.

“Misfortune at every turn, I swear,” he muttered.

Nysa Veilwalker

 

[Nysa Veilwalker]

The ruins of the temple had a stone stairwell that lead downward. Ancient stone crumbling away. The steps looked cautionary at best. She could see Xander's torn expression as he paused. A glare over his shoulder at Nysa. The internal debate she no doubt knew raged in his head. Risk his prize being taken by allowing Nysa to go first. Or save himself pain?

Must've chosen the the latter.

Because he grabbed his chiss counterpart and shoved him forward. To take those stairs first. Nysa casually leaned her shoulder against one of the moss covered walls, arms crossing beneath her chest as she waited for the 'boys' to go downard. There were whispers down there. Something powerful called to her. She took a steadying breath before she pushed off the wall. Her boots lightly clicking on the stone floors to follow after the others.

The sounds of a skirmish going on beyond those ruin walls lost to her ears.

Loren Ardemark

 

[Loren Ardemark]

Shoes covered in mud and another dead cultist in his wake, Loren sought refuge in a set of ruins. He frowned into the dark depths and took a steadying breath at the mouth of an entrance, then squared his shoulders and stepped into the ruins.

The light from his blade cast a blue glow before and around him, its quiet hum the sole sound besides his breathing and the squelch, squelch of his muddy footsteps.

Loren pushed deeper inside, hoping this place would prove a temporary refuge. But the air here was damp and cold, unlike the muggy air on the surface.

His lungs burned from his sprint through the jungle and he wiped sweat away from his brow with a sleeve.

Ruins on Raltiir. Strange, he’d never heard of them.

Is this what the cultists were looking for, he wondered.

Then Loren felt presences ahead and his heart drummed faster once more.

Nysa Veilwalker

 

[Nysa Veilwalker]

The voices grew in volume the further down she went. Shafts of sunlight still managed to pierce through the crumbled ceiling high above. But it was much darker down here. Cooler but still stagnant.

The voices of the living finally broke through those of the dead. Xander and his counterpart arguing in one of the crypt rooms off to her right. “Nysaaaaaa. Come here.” Xander called. His voice saccharine. With a brush of her fingers against one of her dagger’s hilts, she slowly joined them in the crypt.

With a snap hiss, Xander ignited his blood red saber. It’s glow providing much of the light in here. Xander pointed the tip from her face to the locked crypt in the corner. “Open it.” The order was barked out. Nysa winced. It was not wise to disturb the dead so loudly in a place like this. The chiss saw her hestation and mistook it for disobedience. He shoved her in the back, hard.

Loren Ardemark

 

[Loren Ardemark]

Voices ahead.

Loren frowned, gripping his lightsaber hilt tighter. Sith?

He reached out with his senses. They felt… dark, but so did these ruins. They clouded his senses and sent shivers of dread through him. Perhaps retreating down here had been a mistake.

Still, Loren approached cautiously, deactivating his lightsaber as he did so so that it might not give him away. The blade shrank to nothing, leaving him in darkness. His eyes adjusted, aided by holes in the ceiling through which shot beams of sunlight.

Drawing nearer to the voices, he heard the sound of a lightsaber’s lit hum and as he finally came into view saw a Chiss with a blood red lightsaber shove a dark haired woman.

Loren’s jaw set. It would have been wiser to remain close to the shadows and allow the scene to play out, but Loren could not abide such injustice.

“Leave her be,“ he said, his clipped Core accent ringing out clearly in the musty confines of the ruins. Loren activated his blade once more and it sprang to life, sky blue. “Leave. Her. Be.”

The Jedi pointed the tip of his lightsaber at the Chiss.

Nysa Veilwalker

 

[Nysa Veilwalker]

The shove carried Nysa forward a single step, her shoulder striking ancient stone with a dull thud. Dust drifted lazily from the weathered wall, disturbed more by the centuries than by the blow itself. She steadied herself without complaint, fingers brushing the rough surface as she drew a slow breath.

“You don’t need to prove your strength to me…,” voice surprisingly gentle to her brethren. It only made him madder.

Then came another voice.

Firm. Young. Resolute.

Blue light cut through the gloom, bathing fractured pillars in a calm radiance that stood in stark contrast to the crimson glow before her.

A Jedi...

Dark mossy eyes flickered to the newcomer. There was conviction in him. Compassion. The kind that often arrived hand in hand with recklessness.

"You shouldn't have come," she said quietly, though there was no anger in her words. Her gaze drifted between the two ignited blades before returning to the Jedi. A lightsaber drawn was a promise. She wondered if it was one this newcomer surely wished to keep.

The Force churned uneasily through the forgotten temple, old hatred clinging to every stone like a lingering echo.

Xander didn’t hesitate. He lunged forward with his crimson blade. A curse on his lips. “Die Jedi!”

@loren

 

[Loren Ardemark]

The lunge nearly spit Loren on the tip of the blood-red blade save for a last second parry, but his returning riposte came just as fast and the Dark Sider barely managed to turn it aside.

The following exchange came in a blur, the bars of azure and crimson moving too fast for the eye to follow, the bodies of their wielders enhanced by the Force to lend them supernatural speed. The blades crackled and spat against one another over and over again, hissing hate and implacability as neither yielded.

But all Loren’s training with a lightfoil since he could walk proved to, at last, come to good use. The tip of his lightsaber nicked the inside of the Dark Sider’s arm. That was all it took. Loren would have preferred to take him alive, but this Dark Sider was too skilled and Loren could not risk waiting for an opening to land a dismembering strike. Instead he thrust his lightsaber home into the Dark Sider’s chest, the tip punching through his heart.

Loren’s blue eyes shone as he watched the body fall. His own heart pounded in his chest. Loren looked up to the woman, then to the other one - the Chiss.

“Don’t try it,” he warned.

Nysa Veilwalker

 

[Nysa Veilwalker]

The smell reached her before the body settled. Burnt cloth. Burnt flesh. She watched Xander collapse without satisfaction. Without relief. Death had long ago stopped being remarkable. It simply... arrived.

Her eyes lifted to the Jedi.

Don't try it.

Her sith brethren gave a guttural yell and flung his hand forward, sending a force blast that managed to catch Nysa within its peripheral. Her waif of a body snapped to the side and into the dusty crypt they'd wanted her to open. Bones jarred and her teeth chattered in her skull as she toppled to the ground like a discarded doll. She heard the snap-hiss of the Chiss' lightsaber. His a burnt orange.

He was a fool like Xander.

She saw the glowing clash of blades even beyond her closed lids. With a shuddering breath, she opened her eyes and dragged herself back to her feet, ignoring the blood dripping down her arm. Whether the sith or jedi won, she didn't have much time. Her attentions turned toward the crypt, all while keeping the fight in her peripheral. The last thing she needed was to be stabbed by happy coincidence.

Muttered whispers beneath her breath yielded a small chamber within the door with a lever. With a twist of her fingers, the stone moved, revealing a relic inside.

 

[Loren Ardemark]

Loren set his jaw and met the chiss blade for blade. But the earlier exchange had drained him and he wondered if the Chiss had simply stood by while his companion set on Loren in order to both weaken Mecetti and eliminate a rival. For while Loren suspected he might have been a match for the Chiss when well rested, he was not well rested. Nothing of the sort.

Haggard and worn from the chase through the jungle and the two lightsaber duels since, Loren had to focus everything on just holding his own amid the collision of blades again and again until they broke apart and measured each other.

They both struck simultaneously.

Loren gasped as the thrust took him low in the outside of his torso, burning through the flesh just under his ribs.

The Chiss stood there as well, then slid into two diagonal pieces.

Dead.

Panting and struggling to control the pain, Loren made his way toward the woman.

“They’re gone.”

Was she with them? But no, they’d pushed her. Still, she felt of the Dark Side. Or perhaps it was merely these ruins. His head swam with pain.

Nysa Veilwalker

 

[Nysa Veilwalker]

Nysa worked quickly, she swiped the relic and placed it within the confines of a hidden pocket. There was a final blade sound as she turned. The silence that followed was heavier than the clash of blades.

For a long moment Nysa simply stood there, her gaze resting upon the fallen Chiss. The orange glow had vanished, leaving only the blue light of the Jedi's weapon to dance across ancient stone and still forms alike.

"So much death..." she murmured, more to the ruins than to anyone present. Her eyes closed briefly.

The darkness that saturated this place pressed at the edges of her thoughts, eager to claim another tragedy as its own. It whispered that this was inevitable.

She refused to listen.

When the Jedi staggered toward her, Nysa’s attention shifted immediately to the wound beneath his ribs. She could feel the pain radiating from him through the Force, his exhaustion no less apparent than the cauterized blood on his robes.

'They're gone.'

"Yes," she answered, her expression touched with something unreadable "you've paid a price for it."

Without hesitation she stepped closer, extending a hand—not to seize him, but to offer support should he need it. The blue of his still ignighted blade separated them. It's glow threatening to be swallowed up by her dark green eyes

"I know what you feel," Nysa said quietly. "The darkness here is ancient. It lingers in these stones, in the air... in every memory this temple refuses to surrender."

The temple groaned softly around them, settling once more into uneasy silence. "We should go." He was blocking her from the passageway. She didn't know if he meant to or not.

Loren Ardemark

 

[Loren Ardemark]

The Jedi's lightsaber shrank into nothing and he smiled a tight, pain-filled grimace.

A price. Yes. He had paid a price. Loren clipped his lightsaber back to his belt.

This woman did not seem a threat to him now though. She suggested they leave and Loren nodded, wavy locks plastered to his forehead with sweat.

"Let's... Pardon my manners, I could not stand idly by while they attacked you," he inclined his head in a stiff bow, "I am Loren Mecetti, Jedi."

He needed to report this encounter with Sith to the Order as soon as possible.

The Force kept Loren upright as he gestured toward the exit and made to walk with her out of the ruins.

Nysa Veilwalker

 

[Nysa Veilwalker]

Nysa watched him return the lightsaber to his belt, the movement practiced despite the strain she could still see lingering in the set of his shoulders. Whatever strength he had drawn upon had not come freely. The Force had a way of demanding payment from those who asked too much of it.

Jedi.

The word lingered in the air between them. It was a curious thing, she thought, to speak it aloud with such ease. Once, it had been a title offered with quiet pride. Now it was an invitation for hunters.

"Nysa," she answered after a moment. Nothing more. Her gaze drifted toward the mouth of the ruins where pale daylight spilled across broken stone. The darkness behind them had gone still, but stillness had never been synonymous with safety. She stepped forward, her boots carrying her back up those stairs where she'd just come with two others. She offered no glance back at their bodies.

"I would be more careful introducing yourself so freely."

There was no rebuke in her voice. Only observation.

"The Sith have long memories."

A brief silence followed before she looked toward him again.

"And they are rarely alone."

As soon as they stepped back outside, the heat around them intensified with that sun. Her pale skin glistened with new sweat, dark wavy hair remained down and free and she made no move to tie it up. "Did you come with others?"

Loren Ardemark

 

[Loren Ardemark]

"No," Loren replied softly, glancing up to the sky at the source of the cruel heat emanating from the system's star.

He clutched a hand to his side and focused on the Force once more, trying to channel it into the wound the way he had been taught. It would not dampen the pain enough to make it negligible, but it could heal the wound over time.

Bacta was usually better.

"I am alone."

His brow creased as he said the words, memories drifting back to what happened in Tapani and all the countless lives lost. Noble bloodlines ended. Houses thrown to disarray. Massacres across the stars. All because of the Sith. Loren swallowed. It was hard not to hate them. But hate was against the Code. Hate led to the Dark Side.

"I have a ship on the other side of the river."

The fingers of his left hand curled into a fist, then eased open again.

"Are you from here, Nysa? How did you come to be with those Sith?"

Nysa Veilwalker

 

[Nysa Veilwalker]

The answer was quieter than she expected. Not the words themselves. Those were simple enough.

I am alone.

It was the way he said them.

Nysa had heard those words before, spoken by people who wished to be pitied and by people who wished to convince themselves they did not need anyone. Loren did not sound like either. There was something heavier beneath them, something worn thin by too many things left unsaid.

Her gaze drifted briefly to the hand pressed against his side.

"You still try to mend what hurts you," she murmured.

It was not a question.

Her earthy-green eyes returned to his, studying him for a moment longer than courtesy required. The name Sith carried weight. Even she knew that much. It was spoken with fear, with hatred, with the kind of certainty that made people stop seeing the person beneath the title. She understood that better than she wanted to.

"No," she finally answered. "I am not from here."

Her attention moved toward the distant horizon, toward the place where the river disappeared beyond the heat and the light.

"They found me before I knew what I was looking for."

A pause.

"They offered answers."

The corner of her gaze returned to him. "I learned later that answers can be just as dangerous as lies." She motioned to his wound. "I could take a look?" She stepped forward, a light touch to his arm. Her long fingers caught the first of his hand that had just been curled. Her fingers offering a ghost-like touch. Like a whisper of wind against the bare skin. The kind that left goosebumps.

 

[Loren Ardemark]

A shudder wracked through Loren and he grit his teeth, trying to maintain a stoic facade. Muscles in his jaw ticced. Her long fingers whispered against the bare skin of his hand. A chill ran up his arm and passed along his spine at her touch. A flash of pain and fear went through eyes the pallor of a summer sky, then he just nodded silently and turned so she could examine the wound.

"Kind of you," he said, trying to maintain his concentration in the Force so that the pain from the wound did not cause him to break down. Yet it seared deeply. The urge to cry out and collapse to the floor of this marshy wilderness was nearly overwhelming. But he could not. Duty demanded that he not.

"Thank you..." wincing, he glanced briefly at her then pretended to survey their surroundings, "I've seen what the Sith offer... in Tapani."

The young man licked his lips, mouth dry despite the sweltering humidity around them. Sweat trickled down his brow and stung his eyes. His blonde hair lay plastered against his forehead, the waves utterly awry in the damp heat of this planet.

"What kind of answers did you get, Nysa?"

Nysa Veilwalker

 

[Nysa Veilwalker]

Fingers brushed around the edges of his burned wound. Feather-light. Somehow cold in the stifling heat of the humid jungle. The strange girl made no comment on Tapani. She held space for what was left unsaid. There was something bitter and deeper to his words. A ravenous kind of hurt and loss.

"They reminded me that death rarely concerns itself with fairness. My grandmother said that we spend much of our lives believing we are owed explanations. That if we suffer enough, the galaxy must eventually reveal its purpose. But purpose is something we choose. Not something tragedy gives us."

He wouldn't like what came next.

Her fingers suddenly tightened on his side. Dark green eyes turned almost black as a series of quick chants left her lips. If he moved in time, one of her obsidian daggers was already in her hand and would nick his skin with the eerie blade as the darkside of the nightsister surged around them. She drew upon his feelings of pain and loss - they would be heightened momentarily as the wound began to heal. Those curling Nightsister tattoos along the back of her neck began to glow a sickly shade of green.

If the dagger hit, it would potentially plant a link between them. A small seed of Nightsister magic. The healing would go faster. If it didn't hit, the healing would still occur but would be much slower and much more painful.

 

[Loren Ardemark]

“What-“ Loren’s gasped as she nicked him with her knife. Blood beaded up from the separated skin of the shallow cut, a crimson drop glistened on the tip of the glossy, black dagger.

Then his eyes widened in alarm as tattoos on her skin glowed an eerie green and when he met her eyes they seemed to be an impossible shade of viridian, deeper and darker than a jungle’s depths. Swallowing him.

Turmoil roiled within him and he felt the emptiness of loss and the pain of the nick as well as the wound in his side seemed to be far more intense than before. Loren’s chest heaved as he fought to regain control.

The Force was at work, but in no way he recognized. This was nothing he’d ever felt before.

“Nysa, what,” he gasped, salt stinging his eyes, “what are you doing?”

Nysa Veilwalker

 

[Nysa Veilwalker]

Loren Ardemark

The glow along the curling tattoos at the nape of her neck pulsed once, then again, before slowly beginning to dim. Wisps of viridian ichor-like mist coiled from the shallow cut she'd made, threading toward the ragged burn at his side as the ancient magicks sought what was broken. The jungle seemed to grow quieter around them. Even the insects hesitated.

"Saving your life." And other things left unspoken.

Her voice was calm, almost matter-of-fact, despite the strain beginning to show beneath it. The Nightsister took a slow breath, refusing to release the connection she'd forged. Pain was a language the magick understood. It demanded a price before it offered a gift. Loren's grief. His wound. The lingering ache he'd carried long before she'd ever met him—they all became currents for her to guide rather than resist.

Another string of soft chants rolled from her tongue, old Dathomiri syllables swallowed by the humid air. The green glow deepened briefly before flowing beneath his skin in faint, branching veins around the burn, knitting healing flesh together little by little. A faint tremor finally found her own hand. Healing was never free. The wound on Loren's side looked less angry now, the charred flesh slowly giving way to healthier skin, but the color had begun to drain from Nysa's face instead.

As if her dagger had never been there, it seemed to disappear in the shadow the branch above them cast. Her frigid touch against his skin suddenly withdrew, as did she. One step back and then another. Wary eyes of a Nightsister looking into those of a jedi.

 

[Loren Ardemark]

Strange words rolled from her lips, the syllables foreign to his ear though he thought he knew many tongues of the galaxy. Loren inhaled sharply as he felt the burnt and sundered flesh of the wound knit back together, woven once more into a whole. Painfully. Achingly. Not with the pleasant warmth of the Light, but something cold. Something that left him hollow when those fingers left his skin.

The Jedi glanced down at his wound and his eyes widened at the new scar tissue stretched over the wound, though when he looked back up he saw that Nysa had grown paler too. This healing had not been without a price.

"You healed me... thank you. Are you alright?" he asked, voice shaky with the ordeal. A bead of sweat dripped from his nose and more matted his golden locks to his forehead from the heat of this swamp and all he had just endured.

"What was that, that language? I have not heard it before."

He straightened his spine and tried to stand more sturdily on his feet, though the pain was still evident, churning on the surface of his bright blue eyes. Loren looked at her anew. This was no helpless woman trapped by Sith. But she regarded him warily, like a cornered vornskr.

Nysa Veilwalker