Mithras

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Oh ye wild storm. 

 

A thunderous blow was struck against the hull of the IDS Conveyor, refugee transport, one of the old Orion boats from the Old Republic. The gravitational distortion tore the back out of the old vessel, and the transport shuddered in the upper atmosphere before coming apart at the welded seams. A thousand lives were snuffed out as the old ship broke apart and fell in ruins among the old city. 

 

No great fires burned from the fall of the Conveyor. Save what fuel remained to burn. For the city had long ago been ravaged by fire, and all that remained were the bleached marble skeletons of great buildings and statues. \

 

But for those on the surface of the damned world, they knew that the escape corridor had shrunk again.

 

Oh ye thunderous storm. 

 

And below, in the old diggings, Doctor Etralian worked away. 

 

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Static burst from the comm panel of the hired vessel. Waves and pulses of static that the computer struggled to process into any intelligible sound. Eventually, ten or so seconds late, a lonely voice could be distantly heard through the mass of static. 

 

“Republic...Expeditionary....Arch...Land.”

 

One of the three evacuation transports punched through the static with the clear voice of its own captain.

 

“Jedi! Finally, we were sent to evacuate this archaeological site, but the pulses from the star are cutting us off. Conveyor tried and well not even her escape pods made it. Ripped to shreds and dashed on the surface of the planet. We need to go as soon as possible.”

 

Could the Jedi guide the transports in? Would they go in one at a time or all at once? 

 

___________

 

We are nearly to the Antichamber. Gods preserve us, we need to hurry. 

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“Watch-” 

 

The rest of the communication faded into static that blasted through the cockpit’s speaker system. That singular star, once a small pale and shaded thing, now bloated to a hundred times its old size and a deep ruby crimson, began to tremble visibly along its outer edges. It had happened a hundred times before, but those staring through telescopic lenses from the surface knew it all too well. A mass coronal ejection was going to take place, and Gods alone could save those about to make the corridor. Unless they could harness the force itself, their ships would be heavily damaged. It was a small ejection, and the crimson fire it spat out towards the ships was almost malicious. As was everything about Mithras.

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

 

The comm cut out into distant static as another gravimetric wave blasted out from the dying star. Leaving the radio operator at the first archeological site cursing his luck. He turned back to the supervisor and informed him that another Galactic Alliance ship had appeared. 

 

“Gods preserve us, we might actually make it out of this damned place.” He turned back to the comm operator. “Anyone hear back from doctor Etrailen?” 

 

“Nothing doctor. Nothing since his team made entry into the vault.” 

 

Far above them another gravimetric wave blasted its way across the evacuation corridor. The Evacuation transports looked for a path and prayed they were not too late. But in the system there existed a hunger. Deep hunger. Dark hunger and malice. 

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Hunger purveyed the planet, filtering and spreading in the crimson light of the dying star. In every shadow there was a relief from this starvation, but in those shadows Pride stood like an alabaster statue, a memorial to the planet that once carried its will to the heavens. In every battered brick of Mithras those two emotions fought a war that had persisted for eons. This was an old world, one of the planets Humanity had called home when the galaxy was young. And it carried their spiritual war still within its very soil. 

 

It was a glad thing that almost all of the archaeologists were insensitive to the force, or they would have long ago followed the desires of the passions. 

 

“Master Jedi.” The lead archaeologist bowed low, the twin tails of his Lekku nearly touching the ancient bricks of his excavation. “I praise the force that you have come, we are in desperate straights here.” He held up a flimsiplast map. “We have two other active dig sites, one at Corum Deo and the other at the Vault of Eternity.” He looked again at the Anzati and shivered as the light wavered above them. 

 

“How can we best begin, we have a hundred souls here and our collections, a hundred at Corum Deo, and half that at the vault.”

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The archeologist let his eyes focus off the Jedi’s emerald eyes and onto some of the well worn brickwork behind her. There had once been heavy rain here, but the eons had not been kind on the old stones. Most of the archeology could not be discerned from the rough and broken mountains that jutted from the underbrush. But this was an old world, and time was not a kind mistress to archeological sites. 

 

“We were investigating some claims from the Galactic Alliance Archives that the world had been largely unexplored, human history untouched for ten millenia. It seems after we arrived and began our dig that the star began its final dance through the heavens. It was unexpected for sure Mistress, but not an impossibility. Many of the stars in the deep core are quite old.” 

 

He grimaced and gestured to the long containers filled with priceless artifacts. 

 

“Will the journey be turbulent? I would hate that we loose anything!”

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Well jedi could be just as clumsy as anyone, if only they didn’t decide to get clumsy on the box containing the statue shards! The Archaeological leader kept calm through it all, even if his face did turn a little pale.  He was grateful for the rescue no matter what, even if he did lose some of the priceless artifacts. It had been nailed into his brain at university after all that no artifact was worth the lives of your fellow researchers. But he did find himself wishing it had been one of the labourers that had been so rudely scraped up instead of the crates, but he kept his cool. It would do no one any good to blow up like that again! 

 

Corum Deo

 

The oldest church of man that they had found in their surface scans loomed before the forward transparisteel windows of the shuttlecraft. Carved into the face of a great mountain, it had been mostly spared from the erosion of the surface, the great entrance still showing some paint and surrounded by statues whose faces had long ago melted away by the fierce summer rains. 

 

Archaeological students could be seen waving furiously towards the shuttlecraft from the entrance. They looked desperate.  

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“Master jedi!” 

 

Cried one of the students, his face flushed and his breath coming in the stuttering gasps typical of someone out of shape sprinting. 

 

“The alter-” He broke into a stream of coughs. “The alter collapsed and half the class is trapped under there!” He breathed heavily, breaking out in a stream of coughs that made his already ruddy face more purple than red. His hand pointed towards the looming and cavernous entrance, whose mantle was covered in long defiled skulls of porous stone. Most had not survived the long centuries of wear and erosion. But their eyes stared back at the Jedi knight. 

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 Archaeologists screamed in a mix of outrage and relief.  How could this jedi not know how priceless these sculptures were? But the younger students masked their elders outrage wit the pure joy of being freed. One of the young men even dreamed that perhaps the dour looking Jedi may have fancied him particularly, boasting to his friends later that perhaps she had even given him a wry smile. He would tell that story until he died, he never married, thinking that perhaps she would some day come from him. As for the Jedi Herself, she would feel a sense of evil foreboding, the last vault was miles away and the darkside stirred. 

 

It was time to go. If there were to be survivors, they could be found after the next solar cycle.  

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The force moved again, a cruel movement, striking at the face of the Jedi Master with flecks of shattered and blackened stone. All around her the world was cast in dark scenes as she dipped into a canyon, and the statues that were carved into its walls were shapeless masses of agonizing cruelty and pride. Humanity trampling the undesirable alien underfoot. Their faces long worn away by millenia of rain, but everywhere the motif repeated, and the Jedi found herself amongst an orgy of violence, recorded into the stone itself.

 

Before her opened perhaps the largest of the digsites, a deep pit followed by a deeper shaft, all dug into what looked like the remains of a palace that had been turned to slag by turbolaser fire or nuclear combustion. The lava like rock sprawled out for a mile in every direction, but had been kept localized to this one area. 

 

But there was no sign of the archaeology team. But the force was strong here. 

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Power, pride, duty. 

 

The air around the jedi knight became thick with dark memories. Blasting into life around her then dissipating as the Jedi passed them bye. A great fight, or perhaps a feast, then nothing but the dark void of the tunnel. A scream echoed through the Jedi’s eardrums, an inhuman scream, a scream of pure terror that finished in a long and drawn out sob. Then nothing.

 

The shaft came to a dead end, bottoming out against a thick durasteel wall, pitted and burned from the bombardment of an eon ago. But it had held. Perhaps some secret magic or the force itself had kept the door intact. That is until the archaeologists had spent the better half of a month fusion cutting a person sized hole into the three meter thick durasteel. Stepping through the melted doorway the Jedi would find herself in a large and cavernous room. Centered with a long stone table, thickly laden with a feast that was preserved in time. Fruit still clung to the vine, glasses still glistened with emerald wine, and the meat still glistened with a honeylike sauce. 

 

The guests that surrounded the table were likewise frozen, some with mirth across their faces, some with lust. But none compared to the central figure, a lone woman standing at the dais beside the table. Her hand still grasping an emerald cup. And the doom of the world was written in her face.

 

The red of the dying star reflected in her eyes, casting their grey into a deep and unbecoming crimson. Her cheekbones were high and regal, her skin as pale as milkglass. She was a queen, magnificent as she was beautiful, as terrible as the sun that died above them. For she was the jewel of humanity in the ancient galaxy, and her regal brow carried the crown of pride with endless grace. 

 

The crown itself was a thing of beauty, though pale compared to that of its queen. Delicate gold wrought work, in the design of a series of trees, each leaf painfully sculpted, each branch hand cast. But the fruit of the tree were all of crimson ruby. The jewels did not fit the crown, for they were rough hewn, crudely carved and shaped, and hung from the branches of the crown like heavy muja. But it was clear that the crown had been designed around the cruelly cut gems, as if hoping the beauty of the crown would somehow offset the jarring ugliness that it held.  

 

In front of the woman sat a long silver sword its long blade covered in garish runes. 

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The pale and reflective eyes blinked once, their grey-red corneas flexing in focus as the woman blinked. Then blinked again, her pale lips opened and she brought in a halting rush of air. One breath, then two, then three. Her whole body seemed to shiver as if there was a cold breeze that had blown through the banquet table. Her pale eyes glanced to the Jedi Master and narrowed before they glanced across the rest of the assembled banquet. She let the goblet fall to the table, where it shattered, the sound of it a tyranny against the stillness. 

 

Instantly her hand dropped to the silver sword, stopping a millimeter above it as her glance came back to the Jedi. Her voice was like a whisper, but carried the dread of a fell lord. 

 

“Are you here to end this once and for all Tubal-Cad?” 

 

Her face betrayed her feelings, but something stopped her hand.

 

“Did you come to rescue me my Love?”

 

She laughed then, her voice almost mimicking the sound of the shattered glass. 

 

“Did you come to worship your queen again? Did you come to beg recompense of your betters?” 

 

The face moved heavily now, the wickedness of that planet embodied in its fell queen. Beautiful but terrible. 

 

"But see the trap you set has been sprung?"

 

And the world shook

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Red-grey eyes widened with shock. They focused on the outstretched hand and then a smile ripped across the regal face. All teeth, gums as black as night. With an agility unseen in modern humans, the sword came up, fast as lightning and stabbed deeply into Kyrie’s chest. Or it would have, if another scarred and nail bitten hand had not caught it. The hand was soaked with black blood and around the hall there came the sound of cracking stone. The ceiling split back in a rush of eerie red light. All around them the visions became a stark reality. 

 

The world had died, and with it the curse had finally come to its precipice. 

 

Redemption finally came, but you did not take it. 

 

Came the halting voice of a woman, dressed in pale grey robes, face horribly scarred. Three braids woven intricately behind her ears. 

 

You were given one last chance at redemption, as we all are. 

 

This voice was deep and inhuman. Echoing from behind a facemask of tapered bronzium. 

 

For the force willed it.

 

Another voice, this coming from a soot blackened face.. 

 

Who were we to deny the Force?

 

Came the voice of a Togorian, whose fur was tinged a deep shade of black. 

 

You were once one of us. But you did not learn.

 

Another masked face. This of hammered copper.

 

So many have sought your power. Your Pride.

 

A Red cloaked early humanoid. Bearing the ritual scarring of a follower of Na’Din. 

 

And the screams of countless thousands will finally be silenced.

 

A sightless Miraluka, face partially eaten away by an ancient consumption. 

 

The crown cracked. Its rough cut jewels shattering into into stardust. Below the crown, flesh began to peel and fade, as beauty and pride became bleached bones and frayed cloth. A mausoleum of Humanity.

 

You have freed us Jedi.

 

Finally the eyes in the room turned to Kyrie as the star above began to rapidly shrink. Its core finally eating the last of its iron heart. Red rays turned to gold, then to utter darkness. The only light coming from the burning mountaintops those these too faded.

 

Forgive us, for it was necessary. 

 

The haunted eyes of a thousand souls stared past the ruins of the high banquet. Past the ruins of the world itself. Into the heart of darkness. 

 

But you kept heart. 

 

The scarred girl spoke again, her halting tones carrying the old language of humanity with little grace. Her hand bloody touching the face of the Imperial Knight and Revanchist. The fingers rough but warm. 

 

For you are good.

 

The world flared bright white as the engine wash of the last transport filled the banquet hall. Its ramp lowered and its crew signally wildly. The warmth disappeared in that bright light, as did the thousand faces.