Within The Dark

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

Val scooped up the keys to the mans speeder before following after Ryssa. Once again he knew nothing about how to pilot or fly the damned thing, so that was a task he would be leaving up to her. Still he liked clicking the little button that unlocked the car and alerted everyone to where it was, so he did that several times before they eventually found the sleek, luxury craft.

”This looks more expensive than he could afford.” Val commented, though perhaps he had no idea what he was talking about.

Either way the keys were quickly tossed over to Ryssa, who caught them with a masterful hand as they both stepped in. Val had to squish himself slightly to fit into the seat, his size making the exercise all together rather comical.

”Lets go.” He urged her as the speeder started. ”This thing is a nightmare.”

His shoulders were squished together, his head was bent to the side, and his legs felt like they were curling in on themselves.

Not comfortable.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

Big guy in a little speeder.

He had every appearance of one, crammed into his seat with his knees almost to his chest. In spite of everything the Changling didn't know if she should laugh or just shake her head.

What a day.

Part of her didn't register it all. Likely wouldn't until later. For now she took her seat and reved up the engine. He was right. This speeder was more expensive than he could afford. Things began to click.

"I wouldn't be surprised if whoever was his patron was the one who funded this."

Maybe now it made sense why Tionas had all these contract jobs and information for dig sites.

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

”Probably the Count.” Val pointed out, still squished.

”If the man wants Moridin’s gauntlet, he probably wants other artifacts.” Or so logic stated anyway. ”Sith, from all the stories I’ve read, basically just want two things; Power, and eternal life.”

That may have seemed silly to ordinary folk, but these were Sith. They were something entirely different than ordinary.

”Did you ever get anything else for him? Something similar?” Didn’t have to come from Moridin, but any Sith artifact was valuable in some way.

Val wasn’t a treasure hunter, and he certainly wasn’t a professor or an archaeologist, but he knew a pattern when he saw one. The Sith had money, and rather than hunting artifacts himself he simply sent people like Ryssa to do it for him, using a middleman like Tionas to get the job done was just proper

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

The telltale tightening of her lips answered that before she vocalized it. There had been plenty of contract excavations she'd done in the past for Tionas. The Count hadn't exactly been hurting for credits when it came to offering itbin exchange for a field expert.

"A few." Came the low confirmation, her fingers tightening around the piloting yoke of the speeder. Exiting out of the Academy's parking structure, Ryssa flew into the flow of traffic. They didn't have much time.

"He is- was a broker of sorts." Right, with him being dead now that caused issues.

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

He shrugged.

”Doesn’t matter now.” There were two options left to them, either one of them was perfectly okay with Val, either one of them would present its own kind of difficulty. He supposed that Ryssa likely already knew, but...well there was no way he wasn’t going to talk about it before they did anything.

”We have two options.” He looked at Ryssa, shifting his head slightly. ”We can confront the Count, or we can run.”

Either one worked really. ”Confronting him will be difficult. Perhaps deadly, and running will be the same. He’ll likely come after the gauntlet eventually.”

If not himself, then his goons.

It didn’t matter if it was Sith, Jedi, or some kind of demagogue, they were all the same. They wanted what they saw as theirs.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

"Well that's the point isn't it?" She added back, swerving to turn along the speeder lane towards the spaceport. They had to get out of Lianna fast.

"Figuring out how to tango with Sith wasn't exactly my thesis." She quipped, flexing her hands anew on the yoke. She was nervous. Anxious. This got too complicated too fast. What was the point of dealing with a Sith? Now she could be very well hinted for Tionas death. Maybe not even be able to set foot on Liana again.

Bloody hell.

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

”They die just like anything else.” Val said simply. Sure they were a bit tougher, sure going after one might get them killed, but...well there was still a chance of success. All they would have to do was prepare a little more, think a little better, and gather as much information as much as they possibly could.

”Either way.” Val began. ”We have one big advantage.”

His head shifted slightly as he tried to get himself at least a little bit more comfortable. ”We have something he wants.”

As much as it seemed like a bad thing, Val knew that it was actually plus. The Gauntlet, for whatever reason, was the object of the Sith’s desire. They could play off that, maybe even manipulate the Count to do what they wanted because of it. Simple, in theory.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

"Yeah well, I'm not too inclined to go head to head with a Sith." she cast a distinct expression of 'hell no' over to the large male. That was one thing she could very well go without as a life experience. There were tales of what the One Sith had done. That was just present day. Let's not get into the fact that the Sith Empire was a bit more bloodier than that. Ryssa could tackle an artifact expedition, plot a course through a cave, research an item.

Fight a Sith? Yeah right.

"If you didn't know, they don't take kindly to being messed with." just five more minutes until they reached the spaceport.

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

”I never said we should fight him directly.” Val realized his own limits, and they stopped just about at going toe to toe with a Sith Lord...well, at least so far. Perhaps in the future he would chance it, but right now he wasn’t quite insane enough to try it. Rather, he had another suggestion. ”He’s going to come for the gauntlet eventually.”

That much was obvious. ”We so we can either have it be on our terms...or we can destroy it and simply go on the run for the rest of our lives.”

Neither option really harmed him all that much in the end. He was already ‘on the run’ most of the time anyway, and the outer rim was easy enough to disappear in. He doubted that any Sith could find him even if they searched for half a dozen years. Val knew how to disappear, Ryssa though? She likely didn’t.

”I don’t see what other options we have.” He looked to her. ”Unless you want to just hand it over.”

Val’s tone made it seem like that would not be his preferred choice.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

"Yeah well.." Ryssa's mine would race. There were few options and yes, more than a few did not sit well for the Changling. She bit her lip, sharp teeth nibbling on the soft flesh as she considered their options.

"Maybe their is option Desh." she added, considering how Tionas wasn't the only contact she'd done some searches for. Others had been for neutral parties and even the odd Jedi artifact. Maybe they would know what to do? Tell someone?

Yeah tell someone what, Ryssa? That a random Cult is out to get you for a gauntlet created by Moridin? Oh yeah, let us not forget killing a Tion Nobleman.

She gave a grimace.

"Maybe. I'll have to think on it." the starport was up ahead. They were going to have to ditch the speeder

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

They came to a stop a few minutes away from the starpot, Ryssa pulling into a side street and placing the speeder on the street.

Val gave out a loud sigh of relief as he managed to slip out of the luxury craft, smiling slightly and breathing in the fresh air as though he had just been held inside of the worst prison in the galaxy. He stretched for a moment, and then shifted to look back at Ryssa who was also just stepping out of the speeder. ”I guess we’ll make the decision later.”

He said to her as they began to walk.

”Let’s hurry off world either way.” Val said quietly. ”I have a feeling things will get loud soon.”

Both of them had concluded as much earlier, but Val liked to point out the obvious.

With a quick walk that wasn’t quite a jog, but Val and Ryssa headed into the starport and towards Ryssa’s ship.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

He had a point there. Ryssa hopped out of the speeder, a bit faster than Val, although he had plenty of personal encouragement to get out as fast as possible. Tossing the keys into the front seat, she shut the door. It would be found by security soon - or not. Depends on how soon they found Tionas body.

That still bugged her.

Shaking her head and telling herself to just focus on the present, the Changling caught up to Val. He completely stood out in the spaceport despite the amount of spacers and travelers that surrounded them. Another internal grimace.

The Skygazer wouldn't be too far off, but Ryssa kept an eye out. She was already on high alert. What if there were others of Tionas goons who hadn't shown up yet?

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

Val hardly seemed to care if there were other goons. He didn’t move in any particularly subtle manner, nor did he try to keep himself hidden. He had at least ditched the blast vest back in the parking lot, meaning he only looked like a giant pauper running around with a little blue smurf at his side, but in truth it could have been a lot worse.

”There’s the hangar.” He motioned for the entrance. By now he was used to the odd layout of the starport and could actually find his way. It also helped that the food vendor still sat in the same corner as before.

The man waved to him as they passed him by, Val returning the friendly greeting with a smile.

If all of the death that he had caused today seemed to bother him in the least, Val didn’t show it. It was clear that his mind was more on the future rather than what had happened in the past.

Probably due to knowing what they were up against.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

Then there she was, the Skygazer. Nothing was quite as welcomed as the sight of her ship then. Ryssa picked up herosce and kept her head down- despite the fact that Val was trying to be all cheer and friendliness through all of it.

He was soo strange. There was no real place to or area to put him in. To classify him as. Was he really a backwoods farmer? Was he more than that? He'd mentioned something in passing about having lived over a hundred years. Was that legit?

"Come on." She told him, tapping at her wrist comm to unlock the ramp to the ship. The sound of the hydraulics was lost among the chatter of the spaceport as Ryssa strode in.

Was she going to see dead bodies?

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

She would not.

Val had been careful when stashing the bodies, and chief among his concerns was a security officer or something stepping onto the ship and finding corpses laying around. Thus before he'd left the ship he'd taken careful measure to hide the corpses in places that they wouldn't be seen. He had specifically chosen a stack of crates in the corner of the room. Three bodies were stacked behind it, and the two living ones...though he suspected one had no expired, were placed opposite behind another set of crates.

"Get to the cockpit." Val told her.

He didn't want to assume any control of her ship of course, but it was painfully obvious to him that Ryssa...well Ryssa just wasn't as comfortable around the dead as he was. He supposed that was normal, and thus he wanted to spare her any wrenching of her stomach.

"Get us into space." He continued. "I'll take care of things back here."

Simple.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

Ryssa tried her best to not let her eyes linger, but even she couldn't miss that there had been a commotion on her ship. There were scuff marks here and there along with dark stains smeared across a few panels that made it clear couldn't be anything but blood. There was a distinct skin crawl to that knowledge. That she had who knows how many break into her ship.

A queasy feeling fluttered in her belly, so much that she didn't visibly mind Val's quiet command to go to the cockpit. She did exactly that. A one way path that led her to the familiar black leather chair. Swallowing hard, she slid into the seat. A quick flick of toggles and switches and the engines gaveva rumble.

"Let's get the frak out of here." She muttered, the freighter lifting from the landing pad a few seconds later.

 

[Valkyrien Aurelios]

[member="Ryssa Rourke"]

As Ryssa made her way to the cockpit Val stayed in the cargo hold. He waited for her to close the door, and then quickly set about dragging the bodies from their hiding places. He felt the ship shake slightly as they took off into the air, but he managed to steady himself on one of the crates. The Warrior went about lining the bodies up first, dragging the dead from their place and then setting them in a row so he could easily throw them in the airlock.

It was a dreadful sort of work, the kind an undertaker would have loved. Val took no pleasure from it, but he saw it as something that had to be done, something that needed doing. He frowned slightly as he took one of the living men, noticing that he still had the barest of pulses. A part of him said to save the man...but...his head shook.

The thug had tried to murder him.

"There you go buddy." Val tossed him into the airlock with the others.

Perhaps it was cruel, perhaps the act made him a murderer, but to him...to him saving this man would only create another enemy. No matter what he and Ryssa were about to do, no matter their decision, they would face a Sith Lord. He knew it would happen, whether it was on their terms or his. As far as Val was concerned neither of them could afford another enemy, and in the end that was what this Thug was. That alone justified it for Val.

They passed into space, thrusting through the atmosphere and entering the deep stars.

Val waited a few moments until they were far from the system, then sealed the airlock. His finger pressed the button, jettisoning the garbage into space.

 

[Ryssa Rourke]

[member="Valkyrien Aurelios"]

The yellow indicator light on the right side of her console gave Ryssa the [ Jettison Actived ] beep. There it was. There was no hiding or ignoring what that meant. Floating bodies out in the black. Blinking, Ryssa attempted to shove it out of her mind. It didn't work. Instead she punched new coordinates onto the NavComputer.

It was best they burn lines in the sky.

[ Prepare for hyperspace jump. ]

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

A smooth pull of the lever and the Skygazer disappeared into a white streak.