Moonwalk

Posted on Mon Jun 25th, 2018 @ 6:07pm by Bomoor Thort & Thane & Amare

2,599 words; about a 13 minute read

Chapter: Chapter V: Unbound
Location: Vaa, Thaal system (Moon of Caanus)
Timeline: 1600 hours (Caanan Time (20hr clock)), after "In the Pipe, Five by Five"
Tags: Caanus, Vaarthul, heritur, Archae Wulhart, House Verus, Kaon, Vaa, skaal, Kaon-Thaalda, Vaa-Thaalda

OLD

"Well then," Thane said, rising from his chair as he locked down the main console to face both Bomoor and Coda with a sardonic smile. "Shall we take our magic key and go for an aimless walk on the dead moon?"

NEW

Thane was the first to step foot onto the dusty ground of the dead moon, and he was immediately struck by the stillness of Caanus' execrated satellite. The sensation was not just limited to Vaa's outward appearance, however, but also its presence, or lack thereof, within the Force.

Just as Tython had been a climactic cyclone of clashing Force torrents, a blaring and disastrous culmination of light and dark scars inflicted upon the ancient world through millennia of Jedi-based conflicts, Vaa was the opposite. Nothing stirred about the three figures as they stepped carefully forwards from the safety of the Red Raptor, and even though there had been winds and perceptible weather systems high above, they were now greeted by nothing.

Or almost nothing, for there was still that deep sense of foreboding, not unlike that deepset sensation that one might be prey, or that some terrible cataclysm had befallen this land in years past, like retreading the steps of an ancient fallen army across a millennia-old battlefield, littered with the forgotten remains of nameless infantry.

It was an anomalous feeling, Thane thought to himself, as he tugged the collar of his dark greatcoat closer about his scarved neck, his gold-flecked blue eyes narrowing in suspicious caution as they examined their surroundings.

All about, that impenetrable miasma of thick grey mist stretched out in all directions, obscuring the distance of their vision. At each angle were petrified trees, like lifeless sticks of charcoal that jutted unceremoniously from the cracked and dusty ground up towards a sightless conclusion somewhere high above. They were clustered closely together, an un-vibrant mass of ancient growths, accompanied by little scent but a lingering aroma of scorched bark, even though whatever flames may have once engulfed this land occurred long before any of the trio had been born, had that even been the disaster that claimed the possibly once-verdant moon.

Mercifully, the air was quite breathable, but to Thane it had that quality of a mountain atmosphere, at once both refreshing and thin, leaving one to feel as though they were in a climate entirely unsuited to their physiology. Knowing what he did of Vaa, that seemed fitting, although he made a mental note of the fact they were not in the worst locale the moon had to offer. They were not sequestered in one of its many near-endless gold-grey deserts or gorges.

Thane looked up the sky once more, noting the day was beginning to wane but that what passed for light on Vaa still remained as he searched for where he thought Caanus might hang, far above. Although Vaa was a peculiar sensation for the Force adept, now that he was opening himself up to the Force more once again, there was no denying the trademark aura of home - the closest it had been to him in nearly two decades.

The Sith acolyte ensconced the inevitable feelings that began to crawl within him along with his other concerns about their objective, and instead let his focus drift over the ancient key that now hung from his neck beneath his tunic, its gilt edges scraping gently against his pale skin underneath.

Sensing a direction calling to him, like retreading a path once walked in one's youth, Thane made a note of it before looking back to Bomoor and Coda, who were garbed similarly to him. Each had a sizeable enough pack wrapped around the outer robes they had elected to wear atop their usual attires, containing the various essentials needed to survive the inhospitable terrains of Vaa. Like Thane, they also had scarves and goggles about their necks and other survival and combat tools, although Coda's recent Sheva-bought equipment was noticeably newer than the two former Jedi's.

"What do you sense?" He asked Coda as she sidled over to him, curious as to how her own nascent Force attunements were reacting to their new surroundings, although he had to raise his voice combat the grinding of the Raptor sealing itself, the vessel now at the mercies of G2-07. Despite the cool temperature, Thane was surprised there was no condensation as he spoke.

There was something decidedly and deeply unnatural about Vaa.

The nautolan apprentice took a moment to survey the surroundings and listen for a sign or some kind of message in the wind. There was, however, no wind to speak of. There were no whispered messages from spirits like there were on Irrikut or strange Force entities on fire claiming to follow her wherever she went. Vaa was a void and that emptiness drew her eyes to the ground. She knelt down to one knee, placed a palm on the ground, and dug her fingers into the crisp toasted earth.

"Something is...not right," she said aloud just as the Raptor finished closing itself. Vaa was a blank canvas to her, and as someone with an amateur background in sketching people and still-life, she wanted so much to fill the void with meaning and purpose. Irrikut taught her that in matters of the Force, nothing was entirely as it appeared, and so as she scratched deeper into the earth, thrusting a small Force push to blast a chunk of ashen crust, feeling drawn to it...something tugging her attention to dig.

Wordlessly, Bomoor began to walk forwards, past the Nautolan, his large footsteps crunching in the dry earth but the sound was muted and anechoic. Even the dust on the ground, clung motionless to the floor as he marched towards the edge of the plateau they had set down on. His deep, glassy eyes were glued to the sky.

Behind him, Coda brushed and tore up more earth with heightened fervor until she found the source of her strange new obsession: the open socket and partial forehead of a human skull. "No..." she whispered to herself with dread. Her mind briefly flashed back to the underwater collection of skulls she saw in the Irrikut dungeon, then her thoughts shifted to the lifeless sight of the human woman she drained and suffocated to death on Sheva. Thane and Bomoor had come to Vaa to follow an ancient key; Coda was beginning to feel like she came to follow signs of a path being laid for her...a morbid trail of murder. In spite of the danger, she felt compelled to follow it.

"This place..." she began to say slowly as she stared at the exposed bit of remains, both of her hands now trembling, "...is death. We...we really should go. Follow the path..."

The two former Jedi did not respond immediately; Bomoor was staring deeply at the sky at the mist that hung around them, growing darker as night crept in. He could feel life above them: a world of people, animals and lives, with all the merriment and conflict that came with it. But here, below the thick layers of mist on this moon of the dead, it felt like they were in some sort of underworld, deep below where no life was possible. It was not like on Jericho where the Force did not seem to exist anywhere, but rather that it did exist but it shunned this place, like a curse.

Feeling his eyes begin to weep slightly in the odd air, Bomoor shook his head to clear his thoughts and pushed the small button on his temple that brought the two lenses of his Ithorian-adapted goggles into place over his pupils, "I will be guided by you two on this trip," he spoke, his voice less melodic and not carrying as far as usual, "I am already feeling very lost."

"I appreciate you coming here with us," Thane said earnestly to his friend, sparing the Ithorian a look before turning towards Coda, curious about her previous assessment before Bomoor had spoken. Reaching out with the Force, feeling both of his companions doing the same, he could tell that she was right.

Even at this early stage of her developing her talents, his new (more formal, in his mind) apprentice was proving to not only be adept at growing her powers quickly, but to also have a keen understanding of what it was she was feeling - in spite of the faux-sheltered and restricted existence she had been forced to endure on Nar Shaddaa and before.

"What is the path you sense?" He asked, allowing the directional flow from the key to pass from himself to her, wondering if they were one and the same.

~~I am not the only denizen of the dead that can speak to you, Zara,~~ Shadrak said softly into Coda's mind. ~~The deceased are roused by your presence. They yearn for your attention. You need only listen...~~

She closed her eyes and reached into the shallow hole she dug to touch the skeletal forehead, felt the rough calcified texture and concentrated. She whispered to herself, "Show me the path."

After a quick glance to Bomoor, Thane eyed the Nautolan with an iota of suspicion as she once again physically engaged with the remains, flecked as his sentiment was with some wonderment.

Coda's mind was struck with a split second flash of an image that was blood-soaked red and revealed something powerful and hideous swinging a long sinuous arm at her. The beast had killed the poor soul from right where Thane was now standing.

"Hunter..." she said rising back up to her feet, her voice trailing and wavering between words. "...He was...hunted." She shook her head from its mystical reverie, and she walked up to Thane and held out her hand to him. There was a faint red aura that engulfed her fingers and palm. "Please lend me your hand, master. I can guide us away from the danger. One of us needs to concentrate on the path of the key, or we will join the others that perished here."

Just for the briefest of moments, Thane regarded the offered hand with some suspicion, but then dismissed any such notion from his mind, even though such interaction was not usually his modus operandi. Nodding, he pulled the glove away from his left hand. In the waning grey light of Vaa, his flesh seemed paler, in an almost luminescent way.

As he slipped his hand between Coda's digits and palm, the initial sensation he felt was a reaction to the Force currents working through his apprentice, just as the key dangling about his neck was coursing its twisted power through him. Aside from the electrical-like sensations at their onset of their connection, vibrating as they seemed to be as his flesh touched upon Coda's, he was oddly taken aback by the smooth softness of her skin, as well as a warmth he had not expected. Of course, the actual physical connection with another sentient being, perhaps of the opposite gender who was not resentful or in combat with him, may be the more alien experience to him.

He did not entirely dislike it either, even with the looming sense of dread Vaa was working to instil within him.

Not for the first time, Thane mused on how Coda was already an exceptional student to him since their fortuitous meeting just weeks ago, but also of how he had yet to truly engage with her on a personal level properly, beyond her confessions of familial loss and teenage servitude. Feeling her hand in his, he elected that he would make time to amend that - but when they were much farther from any apparent impending doom.

The feeling of their touch was not quite as pleasant for Coda. At first, she felt a slow, incremental construction of hope surging from Thane's hand, but then, like a bad dream, it changed unexpectedly as she focused away from him and towards the old Caanan artifact. It wasn't resisting her mind reaching out to it. Quite the contrary, its arcane link flowed willing to her, but it came with a burning, itching razor-cutting test.

She winced, and then grunted, and before Thane could pull his hand away, she gripped it tighter. "Don't let go," she begged him, almost on the verge of screaming. "Have to... fight. Aaah!" She fell to one knee, still holding on, and her eyes started burning with the searing of a branding iron on the hide of cattle. "So much...rage!" She put her free to her face, and she began laughing hysterically and weeping at the same time, almost like she had momentarily lost all concept of sanity. Then, seconds later, a kinetic push coiled up from Thane's hand and slapped her grip away and threw her flat on her back, and she fell silent.

Just as she was thrown, there were sounds in the distance cutting through the otherwise heavy stillness all around them, of distant branches snapping and sudden shifts in the thin air.

Thane's lightsaber flew into his hand as he watched Bomoor move to check on Coda, the sheen of its brilliant blade casting a bright violet light to cast across the fog all around them. With his weapon held up high in a one-handed Soresu defensive posture, the former Jedi Knight's eyes searched the supposedly-dead wilderness about them, as well as upwards to the thin petrified trees he had seen in vision from the key, knowing full well what must be approaching.

"How is she?" He asked in a forced, hushed tone, having withdrawn from her within the Force after the sensation that had also briefly been hefted upon him, of a sudden and extreme pain entirely separate from his own sense of being. His concern for Coda, however, was very easily being outweighed by the threat Thane was certain was drawing closer.

"Walk the path--walk the path--walk the path," Coda kept repeating over and over as she stirred where she lay. Upon Bomoor coming close to her, she snapped upright, grabbed at his robed collar with one hand, her eyes luminous and burgundy red, and she cried to him, "He's coming! The dark lord comes this way! RUN!" She pushed away from Bomoor and scrambled northbound towards the dense thicket of forest. "Have to warn the general," she said to herself, a strange echoing male voice interlaced with her own. "Cabal will kill us all!"

Having no time to stop her, Bomoor could only watch as a strangely manic Coda fled from his side. She was clearly experiencing a vision in the Force and her inexperience with such abilities was causing her to confuse her own thoughts with another, perhaps long dead, being. Cursing their foolishness at bringing someone so powerful, yet so inexperienced into this environment, Bomoor flung his head around towards the violet beacon of Thane's weapon, the light rebounding on thousands of water droplets that hung in the mist.

He went to call back to Thane, but then he saw something new: almost indistinguishable from the bright light of the ignited lightsaber were several pairs of shining orbs hanging in the darkness above them. As he focused on them, Bomoor began to sense a masked life-force behind those orbs and a fear set in as he realised they were eyes, trained upon himself and Thane, helpless in the mist.

"The creatures are here!"

TBC

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