Mithras

[Kyrie Eleison]

Mithras.

 

Emerald eyes stared at the resource package that was spread across the flight controls, pages of hastily scribbled flimsiplast describing to the Jedi Master a mission issued by Order Intelligence. An evacuation mission of an archaeological team who seemed to be working on pre-Republic history. The threat, a star going supernova. It confused the Jedi Sentinel as she read, her scarred fingers braiding her obsidian hair into multiple braids that hung behind her right ear.

 

…Why was this supernova unnoticed? Aren’t scientists and naturalists supposed to know the signs of impending star death?

 

The hyperspace departure alarm began to chirrup and the Jedi slipped a flight mask onto her face, taking a deep breath of the concentrated oxygen to steady her mind as The White Death, her stealth-modified YG-4210 exited hyperspace.

 

Kyrie was immediately hit by the brilliance of the deep crimson light of Mithras Prime, her pale skin taking on the reddish hue as she sent the light freighter into a spiral towards the planet of Mithras, a cloud-streaked ball of crimson and green below.

 

The Jedi took another breath of the flight-blend of oxygen and nitrogen and let her mind slip into the song, taking in the rhythm of this new star-system. She concentrated initially on her own self, letting each breath expand her locus of control. There was the dark heartbeat of Ysgithyrwyn Mwynfawr, predatory in its nature, adding its instincts to her own. She keyed in an autopilot route towards the dig, as she breathed in again.

 

The former Imperial Knight reached out, expanding her control throughout her ship, feeling the sterile rhythm of machinery, before expanding it out towards the shifting light of the falling star and the planet below. The White Death spiraled towards Mithras, following its master's erratic rhythm, shaking and diving to an invisible and unpredictable song. 

 

What is your song?

[Kyrie Eleison]

Hunger.

 

Ravenous Desire. Something approximating a natural intelligence, warped towards evil.

 

The Sentinel slipped The White Death out of autopilot, curving the control-yoke into a tight turn away from the tempestuous star, narrowly avoiding a gravimetric burst. The only warning had been a slight shift in the rhythm, a far quieter change than what she would have expected from the Force.

 

Had it been natural coincidence, or was this star reacting to me?

 

A voice echoed over the commlink, marked with static and harsh piques that made it almost impossible to listen to.

 

"White Death Actual. Be careful up there…."

 

In response, Kyrie angled the ship towards the source of the signal, what she could only guess to be the sight of the first dig. With a scarred and nail-bitten hand, she opened her scanner, but just as quickly closed it as she saw the static-filled screen. The gravimetric radiation from Mithras-Prime was far too great for the delicate scanners. She stacked her shielding at double port, a precaution in case she missed another clue towards a heavenly attack.

 

As The White Death began its landing sequence, Kyrie pulled the remainder of her hair into a band, letting it fall across her lightly armored shoulders, leaving the braids separate, tucked behind a pale, unpierced ear. The Sentinel strapped on a tank of the premixed battle-blend, selecting a high-oxygen content, cut with 2-percent amphoric-xeroxic to help her with concentration and pain, should the need arise. She hooked the intake mask onto her pauldron, leaving it loose as needed.

 

The Jedi Master slung her saber-spear across a shoulder along with her longbow, checking her knives and quiver as she ducked down the yawning landing ramp, stepping into the crimson light of Mithras. She let Ysgithyrwyn Mwynfawr’s rhythm come to the forefront of her song, allowing her predatory nature taste the world and prepare should there be need of a hunt.

[Kyrie Eleison]

Pride and Hunger. Two of the Seven, eternally at war for the souls of men.

 

Probisci flicked at the crimson light, tasting the sins of the world as the Krayt moved as a shadow behind the emerald eyes of the Jedi Master. She breathed in, the probiscis wavering as they highlighted her pale, freckled face. The stains of the past were heavy here, to leave such a lasting presence on this unfortunate planet. She spoke under her breath, the shade dissipating from her visage, passing onto the earth at her feet. The Jedi’s shadow was that of a Krayt, outlined in the glow of Mithras-Prime like a wine-dark sea.

 

Kyrie bowed back to the Twi’lek, letting the man pass into her locus of control. She could taste his feel, a palpable and invigorating thing upon her tongue. The Jedi winced at her own revelations, rejecting her inner nature. She brought him into her rhythm, passing into her strength and resolution, drawing from him his terror like one would suck poison from the bite of a Kast-Viper. She plucked the map from his grasp and smiled an acknowledgment.

 

Basic was never an easy language for her understanding, or for her speaking, but when she spoke it was with the voice of a calming teacher, acknowledging the fears of his team but bidding them to be stronger.

 

“Well... gather all your collections and yourselves into the cargo pods… I’ll magnetize them to my freighter and we will move to the next site, leap-frogging until our main fleet arrives.”

 

She paused a moment as the scientists began to scurry to obey.

 

“Researcher… What was it you were studying here? In brief, we have little time.”

 

Kyrie transmitted an approach corridor for the fleet of rescue ships, instructing them to maintain a route that would place the planet before them as a shield against the assaults of the failing star.

[Kyrie Eleison]

The emerald-eyed Jedi smiled at the scientist, listening to his explanation of their work, listening to his rhythm though the Force. She felt she was missing a piece to the puzzle of this expedition, but they were running too low on time to delay. She reached out a steadying hand on the man, and with the other she drew upon the Song as an extension of herself.

 

“Worry not, you and your belongings will be as safe as possible, we will keep to low altitudes on our approach to the next location.”

 

She beckoned him to the insides of The White Death, she would need him for possible direction and consultation.

 

“Now for your people…”

 

Kyrie replaced the Krayt’s nature with a steadier rhythm, letting her power flow into the assembled cargo-containers. One by one, she brought them to adjoin with the ship through magnetic locking. Perspiration dripped down her face from the strain of keeping everything steady. It would have been far easier to work with speed, but this required precision.

 

Her datapad chirruped to update her on the progress of the cargo ships, now redirecting to the second dig-site, and one of the containers skidded slightly on the harsh gravel before she adjoined it to the others.

 

Spast.

 

The White Death’s computer recalculated thrust capabilities and load distributions as she leapt onto the hovering ship’s landing ramp. Slowly, and carefully, the freighter began to skim over the landscape towards the next dig-site. The Jedi Master drank from her canteen as she watched the lifeform readouts on her screen. She had no intention of losing anyone

[Kyrie Eleison]

A mountain of weathered obsidian, crags of blackened glass jutting towards the unforgiving heavens, all spoke to Mithras’ volcanic history. Kyrie marveled at the sparkling mass of stoic stone and glass, her eyes reflecting the light as she brought the freighter into a pass of the mountain. There was a whole range of the obsidian peaks, interspersed with snow-dazzled dormant volcanoes and cinder-cones.

 

The Jedi Sentinel could see it now, a magnificent façade of hand-hewn stone set into the ebony curves of the mountain. An ancient citadel, a cathedral to ancient humanity. Kyrie reached out with a hand, extending the rhythm of her song to interact with the approaching mountain, melding her song into its natural cadence. The White Death began its approach, and the Jedi’s mind began to alight with the echoes of history. Stains of the past.

 

It was nearly overwhelming, the vehemence that the Force returned to her. A shocking rejection of her resounded within the mountain’s song.

 

You are not worthy of us.

 

Behind the Jedi’s ship, the transport fleet of the Rebel Alliance dove through the atmosphere, angling to join The White Death at the second dig, mimicking her approach vectors.

 

Kyrie jumped from the cockpit, stepping swiftly to the yawning landing ramp and leapt towards the citadel. She beckoned the scientists to board the ships as she landed upon the hewn stone pathway, dazzled by the reflected light from the obsidian mountainside. The fine hairs on her arms and back of her neck warned her of a danger she could feel within the Force. The Malevolence was stronger here.

[Kyrie Eleison]

The Jedi Master hit the ground running, her soft leather boots scraping on the volcanic scree as she scrambled towards the stranded research team. The air was filled with caustic dust and even more was kicked up as the rescue ships began touching down. The song was growing more chaotic, its rhythm confusing and disjointed.

 

“Bring your people and your equipment to the ships. Leave what you cannot carry and do not value.”

 

Dark braids whipped through the air and the dust-filtered daylight gave her features a yellowish and sickly appearance as she dashed through the skull-decorated entrance. The song continued to fracture and so the Master of the Sentinels drew her locus into herself, steadying her body as she skidded across the porous floor, pocked and marked by time.

 

Kyrie could hear it now, echoed in the song, the cries of trapped. The song was saturated with fear, and she could feel it crawl down her spine in an echo of the terror. She saw it then, a fallen obelisk of obsidian stone and from behind it came a cacophony of screaming.

 

The Jedi Master stepped to the fallen stone, letting her breathing calm pulling from herself her own strong rhythm, growing it with her heartbeat. It was as a lullaby, and she poured her soul into it letting it drown out the terror. She touched the stone, imbuing it with her song.

 

The Sentinel brought the obelisk into her locus, feeling the stone stretch before her. For millennia it had stood, destined to fall into ruin as the world faded into death. She hear its own, steadfast song, so recently corrupted. She breathed out, feeling the rhythm of the stone change, accepting her song as its own. It had been of ruined pride, and onto it she brought acceptance

 

You were never in ruin, to dust you will be, but never broken in your beauty.

 

Into a thousand pieces fell the obelisk, its shatterpoint reached. Lustrous shards of obsidian played into the fading light, reflecting the Sentinel’s pale light. Her skin glowed like the clouds wreathed in the light of a storm. She beckoned to the shocked scientists

 

“Come, now it is time to go. You are not destined to be of the stone or bound to the death of this world.”

[Kyrie Eleison]

Probisci flicked and darted in the falling darkness of the excavation site, The Jedi Sentinel ensuring the safe transfer of distraught scientists and wild-eyed students. The Jedi’s jaw was set, her teeth grinding behind a wry smile as she looked at her datapad to find the next site’s coordinates.

 

Only a few miles away…

 

Her voice echoed across the loading scientists and busy Rebel Alliance rescue personnel, stoic and grave, whipped by the growing wind. She could feel the rhythm changing, growing ever darker. Ever more chaotic.

 

“Proceed to the last site when ready, I will go ahead on foot and secure the area. If you do not find me, you have full permission to leave me behind on this…”

 

A pale, scarred hand gestured to the craggy peaks of iron-stone, her sad voice lilting with her Thenressian accent. 

 

“Dying world.”

 

With a last smile, the Revanchist ran towards the last site. She took a breath, binding it to her own inner rhythm, letting it fill her, speed her. She could the oxygen fueling her body. A tingling light began to wreath her flesh and speed increased monumentally. It was a mad dash, her soft boots gliding over broken obsidian, each footfall shattering the world and sending sparks towards the horizon.

[Kyrie Eleison]

Kyrie Eleison winced, dark blood welling up upon her pale, freckled cheek as she bent around the main attack of shattered stone. She contorted her body, letting herself flow about the attack with the rhythm of war. Dark shapes smeared the edges of her sight as she tore on, and a part of her began to sing the songs of the hunt, a predatory song of her own nature and that of the Krayt within.

 

The Jedi Sentinel ran into the wind, her rhythm unchanging in the face of the dark spirits that surrounded her. She was no stranger to the ghosts of the past. She had walked with spirits on Tython, and they had been her first friends within the Jedi Order. The rosary weighted heavy upon her wrist, the Obsidian beads dragging towards the earth beneath her feet, straining against the leather cording. The calm voice of Il-Andon Rorik passed into her rhythm, and she could feel history unfold upon the sloped stone before her.

 

…I came with the Revanchists to this dying world after the fall of Azure and Duro. Even in all our power, we could not stop the rainfall of wardroids upon the orbital cities… It drove him mad. We could not let our Republic fall to them...

 

The Jedi Sentinel flipped her body over the sudden jutting of a pillar of stone that tore the rocks at her feet to shards. The world of spirits showed a dark column of Jedi, marching onwards to their fall.

 

…We thought here… Would be power that we could… use to stop them.

 

The Rhythm became even darker, the Jedi’s breathing more ragged, but onwards she pressed

[Kyrie Eleison]

The Jedi Master’s footsteps, so rushed in their previous steps, began to falter as the rhythm began to change. A darker, deeper song. Ancient and foreboding. She took in several deep breaths, staring about her in bewilderment. Even the Rosary was silent now, hushed by the overwhelming rhythm of that place in its impenetrable darkness.

 

She noticed first the golden appearance of the durasteel, as if it had been cast of bronzium in an ancient age and the hue of redness that highlighted the stonework. The walls rose like the crags from which she had came, and within them were set windows without glass. Over her head great pillared arches stretched into yawning darkness like the jaws of a Kariff. Beneath her boots, great cracks ran in hatched patterns across crumbling pavingstones. All the sharp edges of the stone had been worn away as if a great windstorm of sand had blown them all smooth across millennia.

 

It was then the light that caught her eyes, spilling across her body and painting her as if she had bathed in rosewine. It was neither of starlight or glowlamps, nor of a waxane candle or a fire, or any other light she had ever seen. It was a dull, flaming light like those stars made before their deaths. It was steady and did not flicker.

 

Kyrie saw them then, at the table of stone. Figures clad in robes of garish crimson, or silvered grey, of the deepest lavender, or verdant green. Such lively colors, a façade upon frozen death. Their faces were strong and happy, yet cruel and further down the table crueler still. She felt it in the rhythm, the echoes of those who had done dreadful things in life, and had suffered much in return.

 

The Jedi spurned the table and its feast. Her soul hungered for other things then the flesh of beast or the fruits of the vine. She longed to touch them, but drew back, letting her own words tumble in a rush of broken basic as she stepped towards the head of the table. She breathed in another breath

 

…That borne of goodliest trees, laden with the fairest of fruits, oh blossoms of golden hue alight with beams of starlight…

 

The Jedi stopped before the woman at the table’s head, staring into the red light that crept from behind her eyes. Her beauty was a terrible thing. Her crown a burden of excess and destruction. Probisci tasted the air, tasting the utter quietness of the place. All she could hear was the echo of her poetry upon the stones and the beating of her heart in her ears. It was no warm silence in which life grew, but that of a cold, empty death. She longed for the sword, but there was warning within her.

 

The Sentinel reached out with her quiet rhythm, bringing with it the warm touch of her own vibrancy to cut into the cruel silence of it all. She whispered into the ears of that stoic, silent queen.

 

Oh air of life, you vernal delight and joy, drive before you all sadness and despair and bring forth the breath of life

[Kyrie Eleison]

There was a hint of burning in the air, that ever-faint scent of a fire long since diminished and turned sour. A bitter reflection of that fire the Jedi Master had once held within her. The woman before Kyrie had been through the purification of an Exorcist and had withstood it.

 

All about her, the spirits came to life with her exhalation, tied to her rhythm. There was fear here, ancient, but still pungeunt in its reflection in the Force. Revan had stepped here and had been repulsed. Il-Andon had looked here for power, as had Malak and Surik, all on their path to Malachor. On their path to destruction. Kyrie’s soul told her to step back, but she did not.

 

Far distant, the star was dying. She could hear its distant song faltering and its death was tethered here. The woman’s words were of pride, and Kyrie did not fully understand their context, but spoke softly.

 

“I know you not, nor will I worship mortal or immortal beings, but from this place we must go.”

 

The Jedi reached out a hand, not to gain power or as an answer to lust or pride. The hand was scarred, nail-bitten, pale. Kyrie touched the woman then, and her emerald eyes were full of pity and kindness. The distant song faltered further. She spoke then to both herself and the woman before her, and to the scared spirits of the past. 

 

“No one is beyond redemption."

 

She reached ever further, ignoring the threat of a sword or of a curse. It was with mercy she extended her trust. 

 

"Come, for this trap is closing about us both.”

[Kyrie Eleison]

The Jedi Sentinel felt adrift in the power of the place. The vastness of power contorted by Jedi long dead. She breathed in a sharp breath, tasting the dying air with both her tongue and the probiscis of her species. It filled her lungs like molten lead, scalding and burning her insides, touching her heart with fire. She sighed out the breath, white flame twisting about her, curling around her skin.

 

Kyrie slipped a hand into the sifting world as the feasting hall fell into ash and sand, the final death of time’s march. A warm metallic touch came across her hand, and she brought it up, a circlet of silvered metal adorned with a sunstone of crystalline yellow. She placed it across her brow, letting it press into her braided hair and freckled skin. It carried a warmth within it which spread to her heart. A smile formed across her face as she ushered the remaining research teams onto the shuttles and leapt onto her own ship.

 

The White Death was empty now of visitors and researchers, and she preferred it that way. The Imperial Knight settled into the pilot’s seat, taking over for the autopilot and brought the YG-4210 to parallel with the rescue fleet. She kept her flight path between the fading star and the fleet, protecting them with herself as they all leapt into hyperspace.

 

A partially decoded message scrolled onto her screen, a feed from the Alliance’s intelligence grouping, a leftover of the ISB

 

“Felucia under Sith Attack.”

 

She let out a sigh and changed the flight pathing, bidding the dying world goodbye.