Trial of a Lorrd: Consternation

Posted on Fri Aug 17th, 2018 @ 7:55pm by Thane & Bomoor Thort & Amare
Edited on on Wed Jun 8th, 2022 @ 2:01pm

1,473 words; about a 7 minute read

Chapter: Additional Stories
Location: Black Rock Desert, Lorrd
Timeline: Day 1

"Now, be brave and don't look back. Don't look back." -- Shmi Skywalker, 32 BBY

Coda’s gaze of fear and betrayal was piercing as Bomoor watched the ramp slowly close on the arid landscape of Lorrd and the chilly regulated air of the ship begin to cool his body. Thane had already returned to the cockpit to start up the engines and prepare for take-off but Bomoor had stayed for a moment to give a final farewell to their worried apprentice.

Bomoor had been sure to give her a few basic supplies for the road but the challenge of this mission was for her to learn to be self-sustaining: to rely on nothing but herself and her connection to the Force. It was troubling, however, having seen her struggle to focus even her most basic of powers on the journey here. She gave in so easily to her emotions as she reached out in the Force. Her power was undeniable, but not all were destined to use those powers in the way Thane and Bomoor did.

With the final hiss of pressurisation, the Ithorian walked around to where Thane now sat at the controls and took the co-pilot’s seat, “So, this will be quite a trial” he spoke, while taking a look at the dials Thane was adjusting, “There is a good chance we have left her to die out here.”

Since arriving at Lorrd, the aspiring young Sith had been largely silent on the matter of Coda, offering little to no comment to either her or to his friend. Instead, he had been vaguely present as she prepared and Bomoor guided her, curious as to how much assistance his friend would offer his chosen apprentice for the impending ordeal she would experience, as he knew some of their beliefs and approaches had understandable variances on one another.

After explaining to Coda what would be happening, and his expectations, he had been largely unimpressed with her reaction. Admittedly, she was young, and had proven herself both a capable warrior and potentially good friend. Neither of these things were necessarily what he needed for the trials to come, and would be luxuries they could indulge later.

First, he needed her to be a survivor, pure and unadulterated. He needed her to learn of herself, and how what she had been learning could aid her without the presence of him or Bomoor.

"She won't die," the pale Human said simply, admittedly irked at this belief both the Ithorian and Nautolan seemed to share. "Lorrd is not so inhospitable as all that, and she is not entirely clueless or without defence." Thane instinctively reached out within the Force to touch Coda, but tried to bring the link back quickly. "But she is too emotional, and far too drawn to attachments and distractions." He turned his head to look at his friend, his face solemn. "We may not be Jedi, my friend, but we can't hide her from the truths of the galaxy - or herself."

As the Raptor finally grumbled into motion, lifting itself lazily from the dusty terrain of Lorrd, Thane found himself trying to peer for the young woman beyond the viewscreen. He wondered if, when they next they met, Lord Serus would have truly found his Sith apprentice.

Coda tried to resist looking back at the ship, but she gave in to temptation. She kept her eyes up on the Red Raptor for as long as she could see it, shielding her eyes from the glaring sun and the dusty gusts kicked up by the engines until the ship was no more than an imperceptible dot that quickly vanished beyond the atmospheric veil.

She felt her knees buckle under the psychic mist of her consternation and the crushing weight of her despair. Her knees fell and ground into the desert grains of Lorrd, and she slumped forward and pressed her hands on the sand. She closed her eyes attempting in desperation to ignore reality, to deny herself the pain, to resist the irrational feeling that she was just someone's discarded trash.

Of course she was weak; she always was, giving in to her feelings. The tears, as always, came easily to her, each wasted droplet evaporating almost on contact with the unquenchable barren expanse. She was mocked for her cries in her childhood, punished for it as a slave, and scorned most intensely of all by herself as a free woman. She shed tears when she failed with manipulating the parts of the practice remote in front of Bomoor, and she cried even more in silence in her quarters when she felt his anger and resentment.

Still, seeing past her weakness, she was, in fact, free. Yes, she was indeed granted freedom of a different sort. She had been cast out, but without chains. No...it was more lies, she realized. There still existed chains shackling her mind that she clung to with such craven dependency. They were such delicate things, not so much steel links and manacles as they were silken spider's webs to deceive and entrap her mind. There was something about that cave on Vaa that snapped one of those chains, and revealed the truth that she was the slayer of her father, not the pirates that captured her, and did so willfully. What more could there be, she wondered, that lied beneath the webs that shrouded her past?

Coda sobbed quietly, lifted her hands from the sands that represented the aeons of nature's neglect on this land, and gazed through eyes bleary with excess tears upon the grains that covered her sky blue fingers and palms. Her mind wound back to Glee Anselm when she first touched land as a little girl. She felt herself on that cool wet beach again on a little tropical island somewhere in the area of Sabilon. She looked up, and instead of a desert, there was an archipelago of islands, an inactive volcano in the distance, fresh air, and...it all melted and faded away as fleetingly as it appeared.

The truth would not be denied on Lorrd, and the desert would not spare excess pleasantries to its potential victims for long. It controlled the narrative of what little life that crept upon it, and arbitrarily passed its sentences of death without fairness or justice. The scant few visions of hope it permitted were fed in small doses, just enough to tease and motivate with the desired outcome to inspire misery and torment before the end. The desert was alive, it was cruel, and it hungered for weak fleshy wanderers.

As an opening pitch to start the agony off, there was a small errant breeze, and a bit of desert dust slapped into her eyes. She squinted them shut and tried to rub at them, but the sand on her hands introduced even more irritation. She was already disliking sand. It was coarse, rough, stuck to her skin, and was getting everywhere. "Uggahh!" she pouted in anger whilst shaking and twisting her body rapidly, her numerous head tendrils comically whipping about around her head.

When that wasn't working, she lost her patience, stood still, balled her hands tight into fists at her sides, and focused her mind into pushing everything around her away. The result was the rekindling of the Tapas technique Thane taught her on Irrikut, and it caused all the sand on her person to burst off in a cloud that was carried off by the air current. The field seemed to help block the sand, but it took some concentration to maintain, and it didn't seem to do anything to stop the sunlight from reaching her.

She took a moment to check what little supplies she had: an old leather utility belt with a small waistpack which contained a diminutive pouch of water that was no more than half a cup, and a little bit of medicated salve to handle simple cuts and scrapes. She figured the salve was there because Thane didn't want her to die of wound infections, but it was okay to die by any other means. Stuffed into a cloth bag tightly bound to the belt at her side were the parts of Thane's old lightsaber and the same spare brown cloak she borrowed from Bomoor for her Irrikut sojourn.

She didn't know which direction to follow, or what the cardinal directions were. She assumed it was Glee Anselm standard sun rising in the east heading westward. A crazy old Nautolan sage who ran a vacation island gift shop once told her, Go west, young lady. Always go west.

And so it began for the marooned wanderer, the wayward vagrant, the apprentice of darkness. Her trial was now in session...

TBC

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