Beneath the Ways

[Aela Talith]

Krayiss II
[member="Jacen Voidstalker"]

Aela retched up a cough, her lungs constricting within the tight dust filled air of the catacombs.

She fumbled around her belt for a few seconds, lips thin until she plucked a small device from one of the pockets. She practically threw the rebreather in her mouth, taking a deep gust of filtered air that her body was desperate for. Her chest heaved for just half a second, then she slowly managed to calm herself down, her eyes opening to be met with complete and utter pitch black.

The Jedi Master closed her eyes a moment later, waving her hand to press some of the debris away from herself.

She heard the slight rumble of shifting rocks and moving stone, though not enough to be of any concern. A few seconds passed, and slowly Aela drew the rebreather away from her lips. She took small, shallow breaths at first, ensuring that none of the dust still hung around her. She frowned for a moment, glancing around the pitch black to see if she could actually make out anything beyond her own hands.

When she found nothing she called out. "Jacen?"

The two of them had fallen into the catacombs together, he couldn't have been too far from her.

Her hand raised once again, a pulse of the force running through her for just a moment. Though Aela had learned from many people, there was really only one person that had taught her the 'little' tricks of the force. Everyone else had always focused upon combat, fighting, and victory, but her mother had tried to show her the small things. At first there was a small spark in her hand, and then suddenly a bright blue light erupted within her palm.

"Don't tell me you died." She said with a frown. "We just beat the Dark Lord of the Sith."

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

[member="Aela Talith"]

A cough was the first sign. The blue light turned in his direction would illuminate a cloud of dust. It had settled upon him in a thick layer and was now churned back up into the air as he disturbed it rolling over.

"The same thought..." He started, before trying to clear his throat. His voice was raspy. "...ran through my head as we started to fall."

Jacen stayed in his hands and knees for another second. Then he planted his left foot and pushed himself back to his full height. A grimace twisted his features. His hand came up to the angry gouge in his armour, but in truth the pain wasn't confined to one area. Jacen was getting old now, even with bacta he'd be a living bruise for a week after that fall.

"That way," he said. He brought up one arm and pointed towards...more shadows. Hopefully the Force was on his side and he wasn't being tricked by the influence of the dark side on this place. Regardless of the risk, they needed to move.

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jacen Voidstalker"]

She frowned for a moment, peering down the darkened tunnel as she tried to make out any sort of shape. The bright glow in her palm shifted ever so lightly, illuminating the path ahead of them for just a few meters before dying out.

Aela saw nothing in the distance, no sign of movement, no statues, nothing. Briefly she wondered just what the hell had been down here, or where it lead to, but then she realized it didn't really matter. Above them a war was still raging and either the Sith or the Dominion was winning. She didn't really think it mattered which side won, neither faction was really a favorite of the Galactic Alliance. A loud sigh escaped her throat, and slowly she stepped forward.

"Stay behind me." Aela commanded, practically lunging over a fallen piece of the still crumbling ceiling above them.

The Jedi Master didn't want to run the risk of igniting one of their lightsabers for illumination and the light within the palm of her hand used such a insignificant amount of the force that it would be mostly impossible for anyone above to sense.

Still, she couldn't help but wonder who was winning.

"I'm getting a Star Dragon." She told Jacen as they began to walk. "Sentient creatures don't get shot down as often as Shuttles."

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

[member="Aela Talith"]

Jacen followed along in the wake of shadows behind Aela. This close to the enemy he allowed as much of his focus as he dared to spare turn towards the wound and try to promote some healing. It was cauterised at least. Another horrendous scar ahead, but at least he wasn't about to bleed out.

He stopped abruptly. His hand hovered over his saber. The human mind was well programmed to look for faces, even in the deep shadow. This one was made of stone. He wished he'd brought a light of some kind beyond his saber.

"Tombs," he murmured, seeing that the statue was set upon a sarcophagus. He resumed his pace. "Now do you want a star dragon because of the curse, or are you jealous that the Dark Lord rode in on a dragon and you didn't have your drexl about?"

"Damnit," he muttered. "The new Dark Lord and I couldn't even get a proper monologue out of him."

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jacen Voidstalker"]

"Star Dragons are capable of flying through vacuum and traveling through hyperspace." That was how the myth went anyway, Aela had never actually met one of the creatures. Supposedly they were extremely intelligent, friendly, and wise. She frowned for a few seconds as the light from her palm grew a bit brighter, illuminating the statues that lined the right side of the corridor. Her head shook and she turned back towards Jacen. "Drexl can't."

She was really starting to hate flying. Aela had no idea on the actual numbers but it seemed lately that every time she boarded a transport or shuttle she ended up crashing somewhere. This time it was in the middle of a planetary invasion, something she hadn't the least bit wanted to be a part of.

"At least we know he's not as tough as the old one." Aela commented, remembering the stories that had been told about the previous Dark Lord of the Sith. The man, whom no Jedi had ever actually encountered, had been said to cause people to bleed from their eyes just by standing in his presence. Aela wasn't sure if she could lend any credence to those stories, but at least this one hadn't made Aela or Jacen break down form simply being around him.

Just the opposite in fact.

"We almost killed him." Aela pointed out. A second later she frowned, stopping suddenly in front of what appeared to be a massive pit with a missing bridge to the other side. "We'll need to jump."

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

[member="Aela Talith"]

Jacen had been elsewhere on Lujo when Aela had apparently crashed through the library wall with her drexl. He had a mental picture of Aela landing in battle astride what he imagined a star dragon to look like, flaxen hair flying wildly about her and eyes burning fire as she ignited her saber. Aela might have sensed a swell of amusement from the marshal. He hadn't fully fallen back within his own mind after they had shared a limited form of coordination through the Force in their battle.

"I would say he also lacked the raw cunning to avoid his spine being full of knives by this time next month," Jacen mused with a sharp can't of his head to one side.

Jacen stepped forwards and appraised the distance. It wasn't too far, but the landing was going to be uncomfortable after their fall.

"I'll go over first, keep the light on the far side please."

He started to back up down the path they'd followed. The Force would guide him to the other side, but he still trusted his eyes. Especially when it came to potentially crumbling masonry.

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jacen Voidstalker"]

Aela slowly moved to the side, allowing Jacen enough room to pass.

"Backstabbing is in their nature." She stated simply. It was something that they were both well aware of when it came to Sith. Even the One Sith, who had claimed to be above such things had turned against one another in the end. She wondered if that was because of their philosophy or simply because there were too many big egos in the room at all times. Aela had no idea, though mostly because the only Sith she'd ever spoken with was her uncle.

"Someone is already plotting." She could almost guarantee it. "Likely whomever was in that tower."

Aela was rather happy that those particular Sith had ran away. Fighting one Dark Lord had been easy, but three or four Sith piled on top of that? That would have actually presented an issue even for her and Jacen. She sighed slightly and then cast the illumination of the canyon.

The jump was far, though manageable. "Go on."

She motioned to Jacen.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

[member="Aela Talith"]

"Maybe we should suggest a 'Dark Lord of the week' scheme. Every ego gets its chance to sit on a really big throne and monologue and the more devious ones get on with the scheming."

Jacen knew that it wasn't the time for humour. Or even talking unnecessarily. However, he was on edge and hurting. Jacen was tenacious. He could be the calm in the worst storm. But they were trapped in the catacombs of an old sith temple whilst a new army wiped what whatever resistance the Dominion had mustered above them. It was a good job Aela was here or he would have been talking to gravestones whilst he tried to pretend to himself landing on the other side wasn't going to hurt a great deal. That would have just been weird.

Gathering the Force around him, he ran and leapt. The Force drew him upwards and maintained his momentum through the air before he picked his landing. Wounds old and new, but mostly new, all protested as he hit the ground. Yet he turned to Aela with no sign of that on his face and waved for her to follow.

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jacen Voidstalker"]

Aela took a few short breaths, backing up from the edge of the cliff before she gathered the force within her.

She had always been one of the more agile Jedi within the Order, but jumping over massive pits of nothingness didn't exactly come naturally to her. She glanced down one time, cast the light from within her palm, and then burst forward. She rushed towards the edge and placed her foot directly over the end of the cliff, pressing off and bounding forward with a slight grunt.

Half a second later she landed on the compacted earth with a muted 'oof', her shoulder digging into the ground as she rolled and came back to a standing position.

"I don't think they'd listen." She said as she expelled a deep breath.

The Sith weren't exactly great fans of Jedi.

"Though." Her hand came up once more, the light erupting into life once more. "I wonder where this ones Empire sits."

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

[member="Aela Talith"]

"That," Jacen said as he brushed some of the dust from his armour, "is a very good question. If there is any resistance left we should try and find out as a priority. Alignment of the fleets we saw won't meant a thing. It's easy enough to drop out in empty space around a system and choose your direction of attack."

Jacen had been on board a ship when the First Order had invaded Skor. He'd learned a little about naval strategy during his time there. It was fascinating to watch a naval strategist at work. It wasn't easy to visualise such vast distances and a three dimensional theatre.

"This seems to be going downwards," he observed. There was a chance he was being misled by the remnant of the dark side in this place.

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jacen Voidstalker"]

She frowned for a few moments, considering where they were at and wondering just where the catacombs would take then.

Going deeper into the earth didn't seem like a particularly horrible idea, mostly because on the surface a war was still being waged. There was no telling just what would be waiting for the two Jedi up above when they surfaced. For all they knew the Sith had already won and were now running search parties to try and find where she and Jacen had run off to.

An unpleasant thought. ”Its best to get as far away from the Sith before we surface anyway.”

She pointed out.

The last thing they wanted to do was get caught by Sith. Though she had no idea what Jacen had in his kind Aela was still privy to the location of various black sites controlled and operated by the SIS. She really didn't want to get tortured for that information.

”Plus.” She began quietly. ”We’ll have to start thinking of how to get off world.”

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

[member="Aela Talith"]

"I know you want a dragon, but we're not going back for the Dark Lord's," he muttered. The walls of the corridor were gradually becoming more smooth. The stones looked brighter. Perhaps the Sith had run out of room and these tunnels were more recent expansions. Hopefully they just had more deserted crypts ahead of them and nothing mote nefarious.

Thinking he'd caught an odd glance from Aela he added an apology under his breath. "Sometimes I just say things at the worst of times. Comes from being a soldier for so long. There were times when humour was all we had to keep us lifted." Sometimes that had been in lieu of munitions, food and genuine hope.

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jacen Voidstalker"]

Humor had never really been Aela’s strong point at any time in her life. It wasn't that she didn't understand jokes or try to make them, she just found difficulty in the fact. She frowned for a moment, seeing that Jacen was rather uncomfortable.

Most of the time jokes slid right off her, either because she didn't understand them or because she knew it was simply the best course of action not to acknowledge them. It was a trait that had always worked rather well against her siblings. ”It's fine.”

She told Jacen.

”Everyone copes in their own way.” Aela had been around enough soldiers to understand that. ”Members of the Legion used to talk about the most vile things one could imagine when we were behind enemy lines.”

She shrugged. ”Everyone needs a distraction.”

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

[member="Aela Talith"]

In the low light the floor seemed to drop away suddenly. A closer inspection revealed a spiral staircase winding down away from them. It was a very peculiar thing to find at the end of the corridor. Jacen turned his head to one side and concentrated. He could hear a faint roar. Was that air moving or rushing water?

"Odd." He took a tentative step into the gloom. Jacen wasn't claustrophobic but a part of his mind didn't like the notion of getting deeper and deeper.

"Like I said," he replied in reference to her comment on the Legion, "I was a soldier for ten years. So how do you cope?"

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jacen Voidstalker"]

So they would go even further beneath the surface of Kraysis. The idea was making her somewhat nervous, mostly because there was no telling if they'd eventually find another way out or if they'd stumble into some deep forgotten tomb meant to house long dead Sith Lords. The idea practically made her stomach churn, though thankfully she had emptied most of it when they had crash landed on the surface. She frowned for a moment then followed along with Jacen.

"Me?" She thought for a moment. "I don't need to do such silly things."

That wasn't actually true of course. Aela had started fighting Sith from a very young age and in all honesty her 'coping' mechanism was simply looking back on all the good she had done. In a weird way Aela was at peace. She had saved millions of lives indirectly and thousands directly with her own hand. When she got into trouble or stressful situations it was the memories of smiling faces and those liberated that got her through it.

The idea that she had already done good enough in this galaxy, that was what kept her calm even in the most stressful situation. "You see Jacen, I'm a higher sort of being."

Amusement played through her tone.

"Unlike you lesser Jedi..." She trailed off slightly as they reached the bottom step, a massive stone door sitting just in front of them. "I've transcended stress."

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

[member="Aela Talith"]

"Ah I see." Jacen replied. A smile threatened to break out on his face. "I will watch closely for this transcendence when we leave this rock. You know, when we have to fly a shuttle through a Sith blockade to safety?"

He placed his shoulder against the doors and gave a shove. The doors didn't give an inch. He placed his hands on his hips and looked the barrier up and down.

"Borrow the torch?" he asked before appropriating it. He placed his hand against her elbow and lifted it up gently such that her light illuminated the upper edges of the door. Jacen stepped away and closed his eyes. He walked parallel to the doors with his hand brushing against them. The pair if them could brute force this, but he stretched out his senses to try and find what held it firm so they could try and make as little noise as possible.

"Huh," he said, pausing. "You just used humour and it didn't even catch me you. Should do that more often."

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jacen Voidstalker"]

"I've been trying stand up comedy." Aela said dryly, secretly rather pleased with herself.

Humor, jokes, and everything on that spectrum of conversation had always been something Aela hadn't really done well with. She had always been a serious person even when she was a child, something that had concerned her parents more than a little bit. It was a trait that had stuck with her for most of her life, only really breaking open recently. She couldn't have said what it was or why it happened, perhaps the children on Wroosti, perhaps her closer bond with Jamie, Aela didn't know.

But she was enjoying it.

"Look." She pointed towards the corner of the door. "That symbol."

A frown pulled at her lips for a few moments as she took a step to the right, her eyes focusing on a small etched carving. She frowned for a moment, holding up the light within her palm and giving the wall a closer inspection. An expression of shock dawned over her features. "That's the symbol of the Jedi Covenant."

The Covenant had been a shadow faction of the Jedi Order thousands of years ago. They had hated Sith with a passion, thinking themselves the last line of defense against the rise of the Jedi's hated foe. Ultimately the Council had become so broken and overzealous they'd conducted a massacre of Padawans, their reason being that one of the Covenant had foreseen the Padawans rise as a Sith Lord.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

[member="Aela Talith"]

Jacen had come to assume that if Aela had remained a stoic creature all this time that she would remain so indefinitely. He might have thought that perhaps she just didn't like him, but Micah also described her this way. He quite liked seeing Aela act this way. Especially right now; the time when he needed a dose of humour the most.

He finished his inspection of the wall, pulling his attention back to his physical senses. There were four cylindrical bolts binding the two doors together. It was a tight fit, a well constructed barrier designed to take some punishment, whilst still a long way from an overlapping military grade blast door.

He looked at what Aela was highlighting. It stirred a memory, but unlike Aela he had flagged in his formal studies of the Jedi history. Trextan probably would have found that amusing if he knew.

"What was the Covenant?"

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jacen Voidstalker"]

"They were a Council." She said quietly. "Of sorts."

That wasn't really the whole story. Aela knew the story rather well given that she had always been keen on history. She remembered first reading about the Covenant in her fathers library. They were a black mark in the history of the Jedi that most people wanted to ignore. Her father of course had done no such thing and like always gathered every scrap of data that he could. It was something that she was now thankful for, especially here in the abyss.

"Sort of like the Jedi Shadows. They took it upon themselves to be the last line against the Sith." That was a twisted purpose however.

"They hated the Sith." A fact that went against the very Jedi Code the Covenant had sworn to uphold. "One of them had a vision."

She sounded desperately sad as she gently reached up and touched the symbol, tracing her fingers over its small lines as she glanced down at Jacen with a frown. There was something disturbing to her about that group, especially now that she was conducting her work on Wroosti. "They saw one of their apprentices turn...but they couldn't tell who."

The idea of that alone was disgusting to her, but..."So they slaughtered them all."

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

[member="Aela Talith"]

[member="Aela Talith"]

As Aela explained Jacen returned to the far wall. The locking bolts ran deep into the stone, but that was no barrier to the Force. It was a matter of discovering where the weakest component lay. Jacen had heard rumours of a similar group being formed within the Alliance some time ago. Many had been concerned at the vehemence with which the NJO targeted the One Sith whilst also seeking to redeem those who were captured. Whispers had gone silent which either meant they were more careful in their activities and we're still observing the NJO closely or they had given up.

Jacen had been motionless when Aela had mentioned the padawans, yet he still managed to convey coming to a sudden halt with body language. It was a subtle shift in his stance as he became tense.
“Lovely,” he remarked. “I swear if this is where they left their suspects to rot in chains it might just be the one thing that could have made this day worse.

“Ah...there we go…”

Jacen closed his eyes. A soft metallic noise came through the door, then another and another. There was a loud creak that made Jacen wince as old bolt were slid back out of the way. He set one hand against the doors and they started to swing open.