The Avalan Crisis: The Thirteenth Battle of Onderon
Posted on Tue Nov 13th, 2018 @ 12:21am by Thane & Bomoor Thort
Edited on on Wed Jun 8th, 2022 @ 2:00pm
2,972 words; about a 15 minute read
Chapter:
Additional Stories
Location: Outside Unifar Temple, Iziz, Onderon
Timeline: After "Traitor-in-Waiting"
OLD
Flicking through a few communiques, which had no information as to the identity of her mysterious contact, there was one short message that stood out, “Here,” Bomoor pointed to the screen, “This is a reference to a public comstation: ‘C-STN SKY/027’. Perhaps where she has been receiving important details that cannot be relayed here? She may attempt to make contact again now you have seen her.”
A wicked smile threatened to play across Thane's features at hearing of his friend's agreement to help, although he tried to keep that controlled. He knew his outburst was childish and idealistic, and the not the image he wanted to show his older friend. Even so, the trepidation and enthusiasm had caused a buzz to stir within him, and he felt ready to face the threat directly.
"Then," he declared, "let's find this traitor, save the masters, and end a civil war. Simple!"
NEW
Another instalment of The Avalan Crisis posts, chronicling the young Padawans, Thane and Bomoor Thort.
OOC: Ambient war sounds: The Thirteenth Battle of Onderon
In just a very short space of time, the situation on Onderon had grown ever more dire. Where there had simply been rallies, revolts and the occasional display of force from each opposing faction, blasters now rang out freely in the near-distance of the city of Iziz, the sound of warfare echoing about the sandstone buildings of the ancient country.
The gun emplacements that decorated the spires along the city's walls were firing out into the wilderness beyond and the skies above, where faint figures atop great winged beasts could be seen darting this way and that, swooping both down at unseen enemies and at each other, the fabled Beast Riders of Onderon, long past their glory though they may be, enlisted to both sides of the growing conflict.
By Unifar Temple, GalactaWerks marines and Royalist soldiers were mobilising, scurrying and scrambling in all directions to form their units and find their weaponry. Many civilians, some covered in the dirt and grime of debris that had been flung into the sky, were now running through the far gates to find sanctuary with the Royalist company, whilst the screams and crying wails of others could be heard throughout the city beyond.
Although the soldiers seemed to pay the Jedi no mind, Thane and Bomoor now understood why the warriors within the palace had been rushing as they had when they last approached Queen Omina. Clearly, some new offensive was taking place, although it remained unclear who the initial aggressor was, if it even truly mattered at this stage.
For the padawans, it was their first real taste of anything close to a war, even if it was merely a microcosm - a leftover - of the galactic Second Outer Rim Conflict. For months (or years, dependent on whom you asked), the situation on Onderon had been in a spiralling decline, with numerous factions vying for the authority to blame another for the world's woes.
Whilst it had yet to explode into a civil war in its own right, it was evident to the Jedi pair that it was very nearly there, and was in fact that in all but name. In what would eventually be known as the Thirteenth Battle of Onderon (although that perhaps-arbitrary number would also vary, dependent on whom you asked), there was very little to keep the capital city from finally teetering into true chaos.
"They're losing control," Thane said, eyes wide at the mania gripping Iziz before them, the Royalists and GW Marines thankfully picking up stun rifles to use against the rioters and rebel Avalans.
Whilst the sight of the battle was enough to stall the young Jedi Guardian, the panic and pain that was flowing forth from the Force clutched at his heart with an icy grip, and he almost felt as though his legs were melting into the stone below, entirely immovable. Although the young Caanan would go on to see and even participate in many battles and wars of its kind, both larger and more terrible in the far-flung future, this was his first. And it scared him, deeply.
His older companion was similarly worried, finding the trail they were following harder and harder to stay on as the medley of anger, fear and confusion exploded around them. His composure as the older, more experienced padawan was becoming harder to hold together as all fell apart around them.
“It’s all happening faster than we thought,” Bomoor looked back at his friend, “I wish Master Thurius would just appear with his confidence… and my foresight is not as advanced as Master Sotah. He would find a way through this madness.”
The pair had now firmly stopped, paralysed by all that was going on about them. Bomoor brought the datapad they had discovered in Octavia’s room and examined their clue once again, “Where is com station ‘SKY/027’? We could be heading completely the wrong way and I would have no idea?”
Thane tried to think as quickly as he could, but was finding the pressure of their situation troubling. With the chaos unfolding all around them, along with the auditory din of the combat and shuttles overhead, alongside the terrible panic flowing in all directions within the Force, it was becoming increasingly difficult to parse his thoughts against the overwhelming white noise.
The Human's mind rushed through all of the sights they had seen since their arrival on Onderon, as well as all of the background information he had ever collected on the venerable monarchic world, either from before or for the mission itself. Thane thought of Beast Riders, ancient Sith kings, crypts, wars and of Dxun, looming large and imposing overhead.
Glancing the great lunar globe above, mighty and terrible, Thane's mind was briefly distracted by its imposing majesty. As integral to Onderon's history as its own kings and queens of old, the moon seemed now to appear larger more obviously present, almost like a herald of the carnage consuming the city beneath its unblinking gaze.
It was then, as Thane considered Dxun's part in Onderon's history throughout its storied past, that it struck the Jedi-in-training. "The Sky Ramp!" He exclaimed, unable to raise a hand in celebration of his realisation. "Or rather, perhaps along the path where it used to be, long before the Clone Wars." He looked to Bomoor with a hint of pleading hope in his blue eyes. "I mean, I can't think of what else SKY might mean around here."
“Yes…” Bomoor said slowly, thinking about it, “Yes! I recall there is a section of the city named after the Sky Ramps. I remember thinking about how different the city once must have looked.”
He curved his long neck this way and that, “When we arrived at the spaceport, it was in the other direction from where we headed; mostly residential. I think that might be over there.”
The Ithorian gestured away from the epicentre of the violence and towards a cluster of tarnished off-white buildings, which at some point must have been a sparkling new housing district after the deconstruction of the great Sky Ramp in that area.
“Nice work, my little friend,” Bomoor attempted to inject some humour into the situation before continuing, “Now, let us get over there before chaos engulfs the streets.
After a short burst of Force-assisted sprinting, the pair found themselves within the Sky District. Many buildings here were still intact, but more than a few were in dire need of repair, with chipped, exposed brickwork and shattered window-frames seen on many of the houses. As the din of a brewing-war began to abate ever so slightly, the two young Jedi found themselves more in sync and weaved throughout the buildings with more purpose, sensing the path their quarry had left for them unconsciously in the web of the Force.
“She is… close,” Bomoor huffed, finding his stamina failing him, even with his Jedi abilities.
Thane said nothing immediately, catching his own breath as he halted alongside the Ithorian. He had not sensed anything immediately; Bomoor's own talents in detecting the subtle nuances of the Force around them was in excess of his.
At least for the moment, he assured himself, the thought brief and quickly swept aside by the matter at hand. Even so, he tried seeking out their quarry within the currents streaming about all around them, closing his eyes as he did so. He struggled, however, to truly lock down on a likely target, for there was so much conflict and pain overwhelming the poor denizens of the city, making it difficult to isolate one individual.
With a gentle nudge from Bomoor, Thane was able to touch upon that which the Ithorian had. Amidst the chaos, pain and panic, there was one - a notably female Onderonian mind - concerned with being found, her aura flecked with the obvious stain of dishonesty and fear. It was a cocktail common to the GalactaWerks officers, Thane had previously noted, but none of those had been female Onderonians, at least to his knowledge.
Just as he opened his mouth to encourage them forwards, Thane was cut short by the scream of one of the Beast Riders winged creatures spiralling out of the sky overhead. The drexl's rider, garbed in the colours of the rebels, was hanging limp from the intricate straddle strapped around the beast, whilst the drexl itself was wailing in agony. Its left wing, Thane could just see, had a jagged hole splitting it in the centre, small orange embers smoking at its edges from the blaster shot that had presumably pierced it.
Even as it flapped in vain, struggling to manage its descent towards certain death, several other gun emplacements dotted about Iziz continued to fire at the drexl, although none managed to find their mark this second time.
"We're close enough!" Thane said to Bomoor, his blue eyes not wavering from the drexl, his hands already rising up towards the flying creature. "We could halt its fall; we could stop it from dying or crushing more people below!"
"Agreed," Bomoor nodded, his mind jumping into action alongside Thane's own with the impending danger to life, "I'll boost you up to the rooftop."
Thane felt a sighing grumble grow in his throat, loathe to enact the manoeuvre, as important as it might be. Rather than challenge it, time not being on their side, the young Human took a few steps back and angled himself towards the target. With a quick shared nod to one another, he began running towards the chosen building, his teeth clenched and his channelled as much power and energy as he could into his legs.
As before, but even less perceptibly so, Thane's limbs became a blur to the outside world, whilst his surroundings appeared to slow for him - a sensation which grew even more pronounced as he felt Bomoor's own influence seep into his own Force ability.
The Ithorian reached his hands outwards in the air towards his fellow padawan, providing extra momentum through the Force to allow Thane to shoot upwards with inhuman speed as he finally jumped, allowing him to land safely atop one of the crumbling buildings. From there, Thane would have the perfect view of the falling drexl.
Initially, as it always did, it felt to Thane as though he were losing control of the launch, the powers exerting their control over him only partly being his own. The sinking feeling in his stomach, although technically only fleeting, felt like it lasted far longer, especially as the sandstone surface of the building's roof rapidly grew closer to his flailing legs.
However, as promised, Thane landed without incident (aside from a little nervous Human stumbling of his own). Grateful no one likely saw that, he raised his own hands up to the sky.
The pair turned their powers on the flying beast together, Bomoor slowing its descent from where he stood on the ground and Thane manoeuvring its path to avoid further loss of life. The creature writhed and streaked, unaware of the guiding hands upon it; only knowing the pain of its injury and the terror of losing its ability to stay aloft.
"I am feeling a lot of resistance!" Bomoor shouted to the rooftop, "Can you hold it steady?"
Sweat was already forming on Thane's brow. "I'm... trying..." he said through gritted teeth. As best he could, he was attempting to follow Master Sotah's instructions of clearing his mind and not considering the actual size of the object they were attempting to manipulate.
This was all good and well, Thane decided, when the object was static - like one of those infernal set-of-five boulders, large though they may be - but not so much when it was oversized, flailing in all directions, and (most importantly) alive and semi-sentient. It was also quite difficult to clear one's mind, he also considered, when the crashing of said object could result in the deaths of numerous people below, especially when the drexl itself seemed to determined to resist their efforts to save it.
"We need to calm the beast!" He shouted to Bomoor, actually clenching his eyes with the current exertion, even as the battle raged on around Iziz, entirely unaware of the little conflict two Jedi padawans were still engaged in.
Although the Jedi Guardian was no longer watching the drexl, he could feel his effects upon his winged body and that its descent had somewhat slowed, even if control had not yet been exerted. Thane's own hand felt as though it were ready to cramp and it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to call upon the Force to calm his own ails as he focused on the creature.
Even so, he pushed further into the beast, tendrils of his own Force being slithering across the monstrous mind of the Dxun reptavian. Immediately, as soon as the drexl detected the alien presence, its panic magnified further and its flailing grew more manic, disrupting Thane's hold on it momentarily, and a freefall took hold for just a few seconds before the Jedi reclaimed it.
From the ground, Bomoor could not clearly see the falling drexl but he could feel it radiating distress through the Force as Thane fought to hold it in place. He called on an ancient power of the Jedi to connect to animals through the Living Force and convey to them in seconds the feelings of trust that would normally take years of taming and rearing to accomplish. The power was often simplified as the power to tame beasts, but it was truly the power to bridge minds and bring the animal in synchrony with one’s own mind. It could never work on an animal if your intentions were to harm them in any way as they would sense this in your mind.
With the sudden warmth and calm of the Ithorian's presence joining with his own, Thane felt the beast's panic subside marginally, no longer crazed by the two invading Jedi mind. Even to Thane, Bomoor's power felt like a cool autumn breeze brushing over fevered skin, soothing and protective. Claiming that, Thane pushed forward with the Force probe, letting his own desire to see the creature saved and Iziz protected ward off the drexl's own fear and misgivings, calming the beast within the net of the pair's compassion.
As their power seeped further into the drexl's simple mind, the two Jedi were treated to glimpses of its memories and feelings. For a moment, Thane and Bomoor knew what it meant to crawl across the wet grasses of Dxun, calling upwards at the awesome omnipresent globe of Onderon above in the hopes of discovering a mate. There was a glance of terrible nets and sticks, and an oddly-garbed upright figure that at once was horrific and hateful, but that soon revealed itself to be a figure of great affection and companionship - which in turn shifted to great anguish, knowing that once-hated, now-loved man was now dead, hanging limp from the drexl bull's saddle.
For those brief moments, it was hard for Thane to disentangle himself from the drexl's emotions, sharing in the beast's pain. As simple and base as the creature's emotions and memories were by comparison to his own sentient ones, they still carried a power and ferocity that could overwhelm the uninitiated. Thane very much considered himself somewhat uninitiated.
The calming of the beast had worked but the telekinetic force from Thane had started to falter as Bomoor’s mind-link spread from its intended target, “He’s calmed down, but still falling!” Bomoor communicated, his voice distorted as it reached Thane’s ears by flashes of the wild creature’s memories, “Thane! I cannot hold him!”
There was a moment of terrifying helplessness as the now-trusting creature seemed to be inevitably plummeting towards the busy streets. Bomoor felt sick as it now felt as though they were almost guiding this innocent creature to its death and possibly the deaths of the unaware people below. The din of shouting and warfare seemed to disappear as that fate seemed inevitable.
But then, they felt the influence of another upon the drexl; the creature had stopped falling and was held there as though an invisible hand had caught it at the last moment. It was enough to allow Thane and Bomoor to regain some of strength and begin moving the creature away from the busy street and slowly towards and empty rooftop.
Bomoor looked around and saw another human standing on a platform a little further down the road: it was Rift Knight Theon!
TBC
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