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He totally blanked. The words to describe his ability were right there, but they kept dancing away when he tried to speak them. Cailen knew what Psychometry was, but explaining it to someone who didn’t proved much more difficult than he thought.
“I can sense echoes in the Force, like memories from before. When I touch different things and think really deeply about it, I can feel the history it has.”
It sounded far fetched, but Cailen knew from experience that it worked. It may not always yield the results you expect, if the past is too thin or particularly difficult to see, but it works. He stepped closer to the motifs, keeping a careful eye on the Bardottan and his troop of Padawans as he inched along. Quietly, he looked back to Jorah zos Darnus.
“I touch it with my hand,” he said, sliding a fingerless glove off, “close my eyes, and feel the Force flowing through the wall and into me.”
A final glance towards the distant Jedi group, and then he did it. Cailen laid his bare hand against the chalky stone, flattening his palm over the cuboid shape the boys had noticed before. He closed his eyes, took a breath, and waited. Patiently, he tapped into the energy that resonated in the stone. It was feeble, weakened by age, but it was there.
The corner of Cailen’s mouth twitched into what looked like a smile, but he straightened himself and pushed harder to follow the faint glimmer that swirled around behind his eyelids. It was like watching the hazy glow of a firefly dancing through the marsh on a warm Dagobah night; Ghostly but beautiful.
“I see something,” Cailen said. Slowly, the little light began to take form, bubbling into a misshapen image that he strained to understand.
“It might be…”
He saw silhouettes, blurry like watercolor paint, exchanging a small object of some kind. Cailen tried to focus on it, but he had to keep his emotions in check; Sometimes, if you wanted to see something badly enough, you could distort the psychometric link. Especially with such an ancient, fragile memory like this.
“I think I see the cube,” he said aloud after several moments of concentrated silence.
He totally blanked. The words to describe his ability were right there, but they kept dancing away when he tried to speak them. Cailen knew what Psychometry was, but explaining it to someone who didn’t proved much more difficult than he thought.
“I can sense echoes in the Force, like memories from before. When I touch different things and think really deeply about it, I can feel the history it has.”
As Cailen was speaking, the squat krayt dragon had brushed up against the Dathomiri's leg. Dropping into a crouch, the Nightbrother stooped down to pet the familiar. As he did, the small krayt dragon rolled onto it's side, as if beckoning belly rubs which the Mistwalker was obliged to deliver.
"That's... actually the first thing a Jedi's ever said that made sense," Jorah noted with a smile, turning his head to glance back up at Cailen. A Jedi spell that required a foci.
Indeed, when Cailen pulled off his glove to demonstrate, it felt a lot like watching a witch spellweaving. The ritual element was there in the need for physical contact. The concentration was the same. The only thing absent was the actual invoking or incantation. The combination of the Spirit and the word.
Was he making a connection with the spirit of the ruins?
...wait, if he was, then what kind of spirit was it? Some were quite benevolent. Others were not.
Before he could utter a word in warning, Cailen spoke of seeing a cube.
Well, that didn't sound terrible. With a sigh of quiet relief that it hadn't been a malicious spirit, the Dathomiri's hand moved away from the krayt dragon. The familiar pawed at the boy's leg in protest, prompting him to resume rubbing its belly as his amber eyes glanced around the rubble.
Perhaps this wasn't just a graveyard. Or maybe it was. The Mistwalkers kept mausoleums they referred to as Halls of the Dead, in which many sacred objects were interred alongside the heroes and honored bones of their people. If the Jedi descended from the Je'daii, and the Witches of Dathomir from the Jedi, then it stood to reason that some of the Allyan customs could have also been Je'daii, or similar to them. "Maybe the Je'daii kept a relic here?" he posed aloud.
He'd offer to ask the grass and trees about a cube, but Jedi didn't always react well to the idea of talking to plants. Plus, he wasn't sure what Cailen would think if he saw the boy spellcasting.
Rising back to his feet, the Dathomiri had a thought. "I kind of feel like there's a violence here, in this place, but I just assumed that was because it was a graveyard." Death was rarely peaceful. Some spirits were quite restless or angry about it. Dathomiri could tell a difference between a graveyard that cared for its dead from one that was not. And, clearly, no one had cared for this one in a long time.
But if there had been a relic here at one time, perhaps graverobbers had disturbed the rest of the dead?
Nathan had cleared out the initial area and determined it was free of traps or active security systems, and had even marked out locations where the vantage points could be covered by sharpshooters. Then he had begun more active scouting of surrounding avenues, noting the Kyber Crystals embedded in the very buildings. Nathan didn't know what to make of this strange place. It was certainly from no conflict he had ever been involved in.
The whole necropolis was silent and empty save for the wind blowing through it.
At least, it was, until while walking through the empty, crumbling streets, Nathan heard the sound of a flute playing and he followed it, all the way into the remains of an absolutely gigantic library, cracked frescos of the ancient Jedi still visible on the ruined walls. But he noticed the flute player atop a pile of ruined books. He sensed the Light Side around her. She had long black hair, and fair skin, face obscured by her hair length. The tune was very beautiful. She wore a ble kimono with black trim.
"Hello?" Nathan called out, approaching. "You with the recent arrivals?"
The only answer he received was more flute playing.
Sensing a boss fight the way a lot of us would have, Nathan tried to give the benefit of the doubt, but kept his shotgun ready to fire.
"Excuse me? I spoke to you." he called out, stepping closer.
The woman raised her eyes to him and Nathan went on guard as he beheld what he was certain was some sort of Force based eye corruption. What should have been the whites of her eyes were a bronze color instead, both irises an incredibly dark green.
He barely saw the shiny wire that cut his shotgun in half and he teleported back before a second flick could open his torso.
His Saberstaff went active and he spent the blue blades around him as she rose.
"Darth Themis welcomes you back to the war, Morris Crownwraithe..." The woman said.
"What does the Whisperer of The Thirty-fifth Heresy want with me?" Nathan asked.
"Let's not worry about that now, Jedi..." The woman said, the shaft of her flute extending until was the length of a spear. A short Purple Lightsaber blade sprang from a hidden emitter near the mouth piece.
"I merely wish the honor of dueling one of the Gulag Plague's greatest Warriors."
She was on him in the blink of an eye, her Lightsaber Spear flicking this way and that for his face. He rapidly spun his staff to parry her shockingly fast thrusts, and it took all his strength to successfully do so, being driven backward as each strike rattled his arms.
Sparks flew as his blades glanced off her spear shaft.
"Got a name?" he asked.
"Darth Yobitsune." The woman answered, taking a bow. "I once studied at the foot of your Daughter, when she was still called Darth Xiphos."
"My sympathies." Nathan replied acidly, backing away from the ghostly quick woman. He got between the shelves, shut off one of his blades. She shortened the shaft of her spear, extending the length of her blade.
"The sympathy is all mine I assure you, Mister Crownwraithe. How are you enjoying this era, if I might ask.
"It's not a shooting gallery every three steps. Now it's a shooting gallery every 14 steps, and you can eat food in the open air without worrying about snipers...most days. The differences, I say, are delightful." he replied coldly.
"Heh." she chuckled, dashing towards him.
The blades flashed light against shelves as they collided with each other.
Nathan dodged a powerful bolt of dark green lightning. Electric Judgement.
"An actual Light Sith..." Nathan muttered in surprise, retreating. "Your use of the Light in such a manner is bankrupt morally."
"Less lecturing. More skill..." Darth Yobitsune replied, slicing for his neck. Nathan barely caught it, arms rattling...
Mig nodded a bit, while Leddie seemed slightly bummed out. She was hoping there'd be excitement and danger, but based on what Elias Edo
said, it'd already been checked a bit before anyone was making a serious trip in. He just gave her a pat before speaking up and looking at the others.
"Honestly something where I'm not shot at sounds great for a change. Hopefully it stays mostly quiet." Mig knew these things almost never turned out that way, but.... This was an archive from what was being explained. So it'd hopefully be relatively quiet. Leddie seemed to immediately get more curious at the note that they were going into an archive of sorts.
Nathan didn't dare slip out of his Soresu as Darth Yobitsune attacked him so rapidly he knew to Counter Attack was potentially suicide.
He sank into the form, not listening to anything but the Force's guidance. Not afraid of death. He moved his feet where it told him, shifted his weight and the position of his body and blade in a vicious back and forth between their weapons. She was an excellent spear user. Nathan had mainly used Lightsaber Spears and Pikes in his first go round as a Jedi.
Further and further he was driven backward, their blades accidentally scorching the shelves in their sides.
"Why do you seek my life?" he asked coldly as their blades went into lock. "What's Themis's interest?"
Yobitsune smirked. "You shall see, Morris Crownwraithe. Provided you survive."
Nathan teleported out of her reach as she managed to break the lock. Highly experienced. He wouldn't try that again if he could help it.
Nathan ran. The first rule of Jedi Combat was to survive. She had exhausted him, and he was cut off. Running was pretty much his only option at this point.
Besides, Nathan was nothing if not a pragmatist. There had to be something in a place like this that could help him defeat Yobitsune.
Nathan concentrated, reducing his presence in the Force to that of a gnat as he ducked in between seemingly endless isles of Jedi Datatapes, Yobitsune using Force Speed as she sought him out. Nathan now in hiding.
"You cannot hide forever, Morris." Yobitsune called out.
Nathan didn't answer, only creeping towards a staircase leading to a lower level. If she was as good as he expected, sneaking down here would likely buy him only a few minutes.
Statues of Jedi Knight's lined the initial passageway and Nathan spotted doors ahead, one slightly ajar. He recognized the material. Turadium. Like what they used in the main doors of the Coruscant Temple.
He crept to it, and then slowly shut the door behind him, sliding the solid Turadium bar lock in place, and turned around to face whatever was down here.
He was greeted by a massive chamber full of great pillars and rooms leading to multiple doors.
Suspecting he was in a training area of some kind, he proceeded cautiously and cautiously crept into one room.
There were murals of three Knights, the air around them shimmering. One held his hand out to deflect a blaster bolt, another stretched out her hand to cast out air currents, and the third stretched out their hand to absorb energy from a generator. The air shimmered around the murals.
Nathan, on an impulse he didn't understand, reached out to the mural of the Jedi absorbing energy into himself and touched the mural.
His surroundings changed to a gray void of swirling clouds and floating rocks, a massive one he himself was on.
He saw a torch, hovering at the center of the rock.
Nathan walked towards the torch, and it suddenly turned into a blazing red fireball that began to chase him. He could feel it's extreme heat even af this distance and began to run as fast as he could away from it but it was gaining speed, and he wasn't able to teleport in this realm. Worse, he was already exhausted from his fight with Yobitsune.
If--when--it caught him, he would be burnt to a crisp.
As he ran he was finding this current deadly situation a terrible reminder if his previous life. Certain death chasing him. A losing battle against a Sith Lord.
Dying alone. Isolated.
He had ran from Phyre until he couldn't. The question taunted him sometimes...what if he had thrown caution to the wind and gone on the offense? Would his fate have changed? Had he put too much faith in Moya's visions? They had never let him down before: He had had no reason to disbelieve her prophecy of his and his wife's death.
He always questioned it now, especially in light of recent events.
What was the point of running. Why not just turn and face his destiny, and accept the results?
Nathan, who had been running as fast as possible, slowed down, turned around, and went on his knees, hands out stretched, breathing hard as the fireball drew closer. He closed his eyes, prepared to accept the Force's will of the inexorable doom falling upon him.
The heat reached his skin and he didn't move, didn't flinch. He would face the Force's will. He would not die like a rat fleeing the flood of the cave it lurked in.
The heat grew in intensity, and he opened his eyes, skin starting to heat up as the fireball grew closer and closer.
A whisper in his head told him to stretch out his hand. It sounded like his father.
As the fireball approached he closed his eyes, keeping his hand out.
The flames hit, and he took their wrath into his body...
Nathan snapped out of the hallucination, stumbling back from the mural, clutching his head, the mural of the Jedi he had touched no longer shimmering.
(Fallen Order Upgrade Sound Plays)
(Nathan has increased the strength of his Force Connection. He has re-learned an old Force Power and learned 2 new Force Powers!)
Power: TUTAMINIS
Force Power that allows user to drain energy from electrically powered machines to restore the user's health and stamina. Can be used at a distance or on touch. As skill grows, greater energy can be drained to heal more severe injuries and stamina depletion.
Power: FORCE ARMOR
User can wrap their bodies in Force Energy, allowing their bodies to resist large amounts of Conventional Damage from energy and kinetic weapons for a short time. As skill grows, the armor lasts longer
Power: PYROKINESIS
Hyper Dangerous Force Power, involving the control of temperature, creation and direction of flames. Devastating against most opponents. Mastery can make one a terrible threat, but can be a powerful tool as well. As skill grows, intensity of flames increase and more impressive acts can be achieved
Nathan clutched his head, the perverse irony of what had just happened not lost on him. He summoned a flicker of flame on instinct between two fingers, grimacing. It sickened him. Sure, his ability had increased, but he didn't understand the logic of giving him the preferred Force Power of his and his wife's murderer.
He stretched out his hand to a nearby light fixture, drawing a stream of white energy into himself and instantly losing his fatigue. Some of his more mild injuries healed as well.
He barely heard the hiss of the door opening behind him, and barely managed to cover his body in the Force as the spear of Yobitsune lanced towards his chest and he dodged, the blade skittering off his chest but not piercing it, and he retaliated by grabbing the spear shaft and yanking the deadly weapon towards him, and his face connected with her jaw, staggering her backward.
Nathan had her Spear.
He tossed it back to her.
Yobitsune caught it, her Light-mutated eyes fixed on him in delight. Her dark blue kimono disguised her foot movements, as she dashed towards him, and he attacked her with everything he had, going full tilt into Ataru, a frenzy of strikes against each other growing more fast and violent. Yobitsube was caught off guard by the sudden change in tactics, now relentlessly hammering her from every angle with Force Assisted Speed, making her go on the defensive. He managed a glancing blow against her shoulder. That was when she decided to stop screwing around.
Powerful telekinetic tendrils wrapped around his limbs, restraining him in mid-air.
"Still weak. But with potential..." Yobitsune remarked, approaching him.
"If you're gonna kill me, get it over with. I fething despise the chatty types." Nathan growled.
"Rejoice then! For I am a woman of few words." Yobitsune replied.
"Themis does not wish you dead. She knows and despises the Cult. And wishes you to know something. There is a spy in the Rimward Jedi Coalition. One of its members has been killed and turned into a False Persona by a Brain Demon Cultist. We do not know who."
"Why should I believe you?"
"You know what they are capable of. Do you really put it beyond them?" Yobitsune asked with a smirk, stroking his chin.
She turned around.
"Farewell, Morris Crownwraithe. We shall meet again."
"Why are you sparing me?" He asked.
"Because Themis sees potential in you."
"I will never bow to that fethin' snake." Nathan hissed.
Yobitsune, back still turned, offered only a smile.
"Of course you won't."
Only when she was out of his sight did her hold over him drop, and he was dusting himself off, irritated...
Cailen chewed his bottom lip as his mind explored the memories. They didn’t feel as negative as he’d expect were thievery involved, but that didn’t necessarily mean an artifact hadn’t been stolen from the city.
There may have been frustration, however, at least on part of the smaller figure who appeared to be handing off the cube. It didn’t feel like they were taking it, though… more like… angrily giving it back?
“I think it was a gift,” Cailen said, his eyes studying the vision beneath closed eyelids.
"Miles and centuries," Elias answered with cheeky honesty. Truthfully, neither he nor the Jedi scouts knew just how much there was to this ancient world. The necropolis on the surface could very well be exactly what it appears to be, just as it could be the tip of the proverbial iceberg. That's part of what made Elias so fond of exploring the Outer Rim.
"I suspect there's much yet to discover here," he said, leading the group nearer the entrance. Even from outside the arched doorway, the cool, damp scent of unbothered earth reached them.
"We should break into teams, to cover more ground for this initial excursion." He pointed a finger to Valery Noble
and Mig Gred
first, smiling at his friends both new and old.
"We'll move together," he said, adding with a nod to Leddie, "and I'd like for you to run point on any data caches we find."
Elias looked to the remaining Forcers: Mishel
and her partner Kurayami Bloodborn
, as well as Knight Alana Sunrider
. They'd make a strong team. Once that was settled, the dreadlocked Jedi turned and descended into the darkened stone chalet.
Nathan exited the ancient Library and was greatly shaken by his duel with Yobitsune.
Was it misinformation, a deliberate ploy to create paranoia? He couldn't be certain.
The Necropolis, his daughter, the duel. It all mixed in his head as he walked the empty streets.
Was this what he had been brought back to life for? More of the same? Fighting psychos who perceived him as peers. Was that what he was gonna go back to after he destroyed the Cult? Just mindlessly fighting people he didn't give a chit about, protecting those he felt nothing towards, for a feeling of contentment he was no longer capable of feeling, to possibly receive a reward that no longer held any value.
Where, exactly, was the victory in any of that? Did he even want a victory beyond having the last word over the Cult.
Nathan wasn't sure, and his duel with Yobitsune introduced new complications. What if he remained silent and disaster occured?
After a while of wandering he came to the very entrance Elias Edo
had descended into with his team. Sensing Jedi and for once, not wanting to be alone, he headed in, hoping to catch up with Elias, maybe do some scavving...He would tell him about the Light Sith attack when he got an opportunity...
The exterior of the necropolis was a sight to behold, but the interior was just as beautiful. Entire corridors and chambers were carved from elegant stone. They were covered with earthen debris, cracked and worn by time, but Elias could still imagine just how majestic the ancient Jedi structures were at the height of their existence. His boots thudded along in the dim light. There was no need for lamps or torches under the cool glow of the crystalline outcroppings held by brass sconces and hanging chandeliers.
Elias ran his fingers lightly over the vertex of one, sensing the latent energies within. “Fascinating,” he said to himself. He reached a hand down to his datapad and jotted a few notes.
‘Crystalline structures used for light, still active, powered by Light Side energies?’ It warranted deeper research for sure. Elias couldn’t help but notice the leafy ferns and vines that had overtaken parts of the deeper interior, and he presumed it was the gentle light of the crystals that kept them alive.
He was prepared to move forward, but when he looked back to his surroundings he noticed Nathan Bloodscrawl
emerging from a nearby corridor. The man looked a bit worse for wear, but Elias figured his friend had been off spelunking in the dark. As Nathan does, naturally. He offered the man a big grin and a hand to shake.
“Good to see you, my friend!” Elias nodded down the hall, curiously.
“Find anything interesting yet? I know you’ve seen them around, I’ve got some interesting theories about the light-crystals.”
