Warmth filled me as Cin vehti dropped from hyperspace, adjusted her accoutrements, and took off along another vector. I knew what was waiting for me at the end of the roadway she was traveling along, and for the first time actually felt in my heart of hearts that I was doing the right thing.

And Khaandon help us all.

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"Vor entye. Elek ni kar'tayli gar darasuum ad'ika.”

The Voice brought me halfway to wakefulness; with a dream-induced alacrity I realized The Voice wasn't anything I had imagined, but which came to me all the same.

I knew what he said.
"i kar'taylir darasuum gar ratiin, ner buir," I drowsed as peace once more unfolded it's protective wings about me, and let me sink back into deep slumber once more.

--------------------

And boring. Sure as Khaandon made lil' green worrts space travel for the most part was boring! Which more than likely accounted for the myriad Blue Asteroids I'd come across in my own journeys hither and yon across the Big Cold.

This trip was certainly no exception.

Life quickly turned into something of a routine. I slept. I awoke; I puttered about the ship, discovering a small gym of sorts where at least I could keep my body somewhat honed by practicing the marshal arts that I know. I found a rec area, complete with a small collection of holovids, which to be honest I found fascinating as hell as they were, of course, of Mandalorian origins.

Dad would have flipped his lid over these! I thought as I watched one vid after another, being thus marginally indoctrinated into the culture of Mandalore, and gradually learned at least hints of who they were as a people. And the most interesting wasn't simply the information I gleaned about their fighting prowess, their stealth abilities... but was rather in learning to understand how they think.

Such a noble people... to have had to disappear as they did...

I found a galley, from which I kept myself fed and hydrated.

And then I slept again.

But even as boring as life had reduced itself to, I still wouldn't trade this for the entire universe itself. I loved the feel of the Big Cold, loved the knowledge that centimeters beyond the bulkheads about me ravened a death most foul, a death in which I took delight after delight in evading time and time again.

Don't get cocky, I'd berate myself when such flippancy would raise its head.

Some day the time will come when you won't be that lucky.

But not today.

The end of the fourth cycle of shipboard routines announced itself with a genteel bleep coming from the cockpit. There a sigil announce a destination had been reached. Easily enough, I reached forth and enticed C'in vehti from hyperspace, where upon I immediately throttled down and brought him--

For some reason, this ship struck me as being male instead of the more usual female

--to a halt. I flipped on all viewscreens, forward, aft, port, starboard.

All they showed me was the brilliant light of the dancing stars, which burned with so great an intensity that for a small moment I thought they were actually trying to tell me something.

I blinked, unconsciously struggling to listen, to heed them; then the stars reduced to normalcy, and I shrugged off the odd feeling that had, if only for a moment, overwhelmed me, and focused on my position.

Here I was. At a Nexus, of sorts.

The Sith Worlds thisaway. The Inner Core and Coruscant thataway. Two other destinations I'd considered brancing off tangentially.

I sank back in the pilot's chair, drew up my foot, rested my arm upon my knee and placed the back of my hand against my mouth. I sat there for a long, long time.

At length I sighed, unraveled myself from the odd position I'd held for who knew how long, and wincing at the cramps the movement created in my back slipped the pretty little Mandalorian ship back into hyperspace again, following my original course.

In for a credit, as I was always wont to say.

[ 12-06-2015 05:38 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Galen ]

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Already? I couldn't help but think as I departed from the little booth and re-clothed myself, donning first a simple black one-piece undergarment and then the armor Kyan had so generously bestowed upon me. I couldn't help but wince a bit at the guilt flooding up in response to the sultry feel of armor against bare arms...

He made me his daughter, and I do this to him...

I shook it off, finished dressing and headed forward. Sure as Khaandon made little green worrts, we'd dropped out of hyperdrive and were fast approaching a dreary little planet I had seriously hoped to never lay eyes on again.

Or find them, really...

Dagobah. It hung there in space, growing larger as we approached, from a small green pea to suddenly swamp covered world, dank and shrouded in cloud cover, hanging like a ball of mildew against the diamond sparkled night about it.

I sighed, sat down in the pilot's seat, adjusted a few controls, and headed in.

I didn't see much during the quick journey down. Mostly clouds, occasionally sparked by distant lightning flashes, here and there spotted with browns and greens of the surface below as we ourselves flashed, Cin vehti and I, through openings in the cloud cover. I didn't have anything much in the way of a destination, and so let him take me down, almost of his own accord, just lending him a hand to adjust our trim as turbulence reached out every now and then to give us a gentle reminder that yes indeed there does exist something called gravity, my friend.

I refused to let the gravity of my situation bother me. I was operating mostly on a wing and a prayer, something I'd gotten rather good at in the wild years of late; thus I just let the ship gentle it's steep descent into a long, low and spiraling orbit of sorts until we finally broke through the clouds and I could see the face of my destiny below.

As I may have mentioned, it was mostly green. Water and trees everywhere. Pond and shoreline and swamp and marsh, all passed beneath us as I tried to just find a place to land, somewhere that perhaps wasn't too distant from where I'd last been.

But then I realized that it wasn't really necessary at all, that I could land anywhere. Hell, I could have picked an asteroid out in the Kessel Field for all I knew; there was just some sort of poetic justice about coming here.

My thoughts drifted, I found myself becoming strangely relaxed. I wondered if a condemned man felt this way as he climbed the gallow's steps; shaking this thought away with a grunt I sat up quickly, dismayed to have found I was slouching, my mind wandering, the ground blasting away only several hundred meters beneath me now.

This would never do.

Especially since directly ahead was the suddenly steep slope of a huge, sedimentary mesa. It reared up out of nowhere; reflexively I pulled back on the yoke and Cin vehti took me away, away and upward, up and up and impossibly up even more... until we'd breached the top.

Here. Here I will land.

There was no reason to choose this place over any other. It just seemed to be the right thing to do.

Drawing in a deep breath, I brought the beautiful little Mandalorian ship to rest on a flat and grassy plain. Powering him down, I let him click and tinker to himself as he outgassed and cooled and generally put himself on standby until called upon to take wing again. As for me...

I stood up, reached for the helm... and let it pass. I fingered the lightsaber given to me, one I'd already sworn to honor... and removed it from my belt, laying it gently on the chair I'd just vacated.

Well I remembered the strange tinkerings with Time itself, the loss apparently galaxy-wide of any lick of metaphysical or supernatural power, magick, or force. That saber was linked hand in hand with the same; no need to wave a red cloak before an angry bull.

Keeping only a standard blaster and vibroblade against any possible predators, I quickly exited Cin vehti and let the hatch close behind me. For a moment I just stood there at the foot of the ship, now resting my hand on his sleek hull, not in farewell but in drawing strength and calm and the assurance that I was doing the right thing.

Great Khaandon, but I hoped I was doing the right thing. It felt right...

I cast a look about, caught the silhouettes of distant trees, and headed off at a pace intended to bring me to them in less than the passage of a standard hour's time.

[ 12-24-2015 12:07 AM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Galen ]

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I pressed onward, ducking under branches heavy with mosses which reached with insistent green fingers to entangle themselves with the wet strands of my hair. Annoyed at both the innate fear that I simply could not keep at bay as well as the fingers that swiped my head and face like soggy arboreal ghosts, I tossed my head, wiped my face, and plunged onward. The forest only thickened, not merely with understory and duff but with wildlife as well; pausing to rest for one moment only served to enhance the hoots and howls and screams and burbles which came at me from all angles, sending the marching geese into overtime.

I found my blaster materialized in my hand, surprised at the alacrity with which it had gotten there.

For a moment I simply stood, staring at the blaster, until a little niggle grew into full-fledged hunch. Carefully holstering it, I choked back the urge to fight, to protect and relinquished to All that existed around me, now allowing myself to simply take in the sounds...

Feel...

...letting my shoulders drop, letting my neck relax, ignoring now the dripping wetness of my hair, hearing now the tinier voices of heavy mist that impacted the armor protecting me, now closing my eyes, and breathing deeply, and just in general being with All there was on this magickal planet so prevalent with The Force.

Among other things.

The Vision came back to me again, that of the Sith standing with Sissypoops, and the one who so utterly dominated the ship of yorik coral. It floated upon my inner lids, suddenly diminished somehow.

They were not the ends. They were the Means to...

To what end?

My eyes popped open at that, for after all wasn't that why I had come here? I thought back to the flow walk, to my utter terror concerning it, to Master Jetii'sad's later seeming nonchalance about it.

I could only do this alone. Hadn't Kyan himself allowed this? Didn't I feel that to be true?

Feel.

I let myself go even further, quieting my mind, opening it even as the sounds in my ears and the moisture on my face receded beneath the sheer joy of feeling, of being...

And nothing happened.

My eyes popped open with a start.

Dammit, I had been so sure! So certain!

Now anger's heat began to rise within me: anger at this great and frightening whatever-it-was thing that had the nerve to play with us as if we were but motes in Khaandon's eyes, angry that he/she/it had the absolute unmitigated gall to contact me, ME of all people! and now was forcing me to play a new kind of guessing game with him/her/it.

But most of all I was not merely angry, but absolutely furious with myself for actually entertaining the misguided belief that I, yes I, could really be the Knight in Shining Armor to save the day.

How could I have had the temerity? The audacity to think that lil ol me was that important? Who the hell had I been kidding?

Did I really think that I would traipse here and TA-DAA!! Ol' Googly would obligingly pop up and just hand me the answers the moment I stepped foot into the green?

Galen, where the hell are you going? Why are you really here?

The last thought rose uncomfortably from nowhere, but with enough substance to send a shiver through my body. Out of the blue, I thought of Father, of Jharmeen, of a long-ago day on an uncharted planet, one that will forevermore be named "Nexus" in my mind, for indeed it encompassed the major crossroad in my life, and was the crux from which my new one had sprung.

Another feeling rose unbidden.

My eyes widened in recognition.

No! No... I am not like her, I would never be like her...!

My hands flew to my face, covered my eyes, tears mingling with the sweat upon my skin until I felt a river of anguish flowing out from my very soul.

What was happening to me?

In response, something somewhere... breathed.

And I simply collapsed onto the swampy ground, and into darkness.

[ 12-28-2015 10:35 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Galen ]

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Groaning, I sat up, one hand providing a steadying prop on the litter-covered ground behind me, while the other flew to my pounding eyes. I winced; and blearily tried to blink my surroundings back into focus.

I was still just inside the perimeter of the dank forest I had entered, for a painful turn of my head revealed through the treeline the stately image of grasses swaying to and fro on the flat plain just behind and beyond. All around me otherwise was nothing more than absolute wilderness, dripping with mosses and vines and moisture, replete with yowls and yammers and screams, and filled with mystery and danger and death, I was sure.

Shakily, I hauled my sorry carcass to my feet, swayed in tandem for a moment with the grasses, and finally found myself. My head still felt as though a ronto had decided to give birth within it; damn but what I wouldn't give for a plain and simple lil ol medkit right about now. A quick search of my armor turned up something which looked very much as though it might be one; however, being totally ignorant as to which little pill was for what, I wisely decided that discretion was the better part of valor and put it away. I'd have to alleviate my pounding head with pounding feet; maybe just moving along might help some.

Running fingers through my hair to squeeze out some of the moisture and remove what stubborn bits of detritus it had picked up from my forest floor "pillow," I then paused a moment to take another look around. There was no direction in particular which called more strongly to me than any other; the only niggle or hunch I felt was that for some reason, when I turned in the direction of my ship I was filled with a slowly spreading niggle of "No." Something or someone didn't want me to return to Cin vehti.

Now granted, that may have been a form of hubris on my part, but I didn't think so.

Dammit, it told me to Feel!

That alone prompted me to continue, to heed the little niggle of negativity, knowing my steps would be taking me into who knew how much forest, swamp or bayou the trees ahead of me may be hiding. To just where, exactly, not to mention to find what, yet remained to be seen.

Heaving a sigh, I picked a direction at random, wished like all the Treasure on Roon that I had my helmet, which held such handy dandy little items as the onboard tracking system, which would have not only kept me solidly linked to Cin vehti at all times but would have provided me with a return route to him...

And headed out into the unknown.

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My reality tunneled, segueing from alert and constant appraisal of my surroundings to a blur of dark and light to an even more fuzzy comprehension of what could only be one enormous Now that encompassed me, encompassed my reality, encompassed the very core being I held so tightly hidden in my psyche.

Now. It was simply now.

And in that "now" I was briefly reminded, here and there, of the constraints sentient beings must place upon it, that their own personal realities become sane and sensible, as they, perhaps, are allowed-

But by WHO?

To grow.

Thus my suddenly eternal "now" became interrupted by strange moments of pause, in which food was somehow procured, by me, to sustain me; by times of dark in which my body received the rest it needed, but was for the most part simply a "now" full of green, verdant green, shadowed green, moisture and buzzings and the sensation of movement. I continued on in this near-fugue state, until suddenly the fog lifted from me with an almost physical jolt.

I had come up to a most particularly swampy area of this boggy world, and found myself facing foggy water and dripping vines and mucky soil...

And a small, decaying hut-like object sitting a bit away from said water.

Blinking, I swiped the tendrils of wet hair from my face, did my best to smear off as much mud as I could that I'd managed to accumulate on my person during my oddly timeless travels, and approached the hut-thing.

I circled it; it appeared to have been incorporated into the trunk of a great, moss-laden tree. I circled it, coming at length to mats of algae and moss which seemed to take on patterns of sorts; with a start, I realized I was looking at an ancient door and two somewhat small paned windows. They had been nearly, but not entirely, mastered by the Living Green of this Swamp world; another jolt shot through me as I realized what it was that I was looking at.

"It- it is the home of Master Yoda..."

The words escaped my lips in a reverent whisper, flowing out into the moist air and hovering there. I reached a tentative hand to the door, seeking to find entrance when the odd little niggle of "no" suddenly interceded.

I froze, my hand inches from the moss.

"Feel...

The words flowed back in response to my hesitation, coming lightly and ephemerally not into my ears or my mind or even my heart.

But into my soul.

Letting the odd sensation guide me, I turned from the Ancient Jedi Master's home, and closed my eyes. My feet moved of their own accord; suddenly I was once more in that strange state of fugue, not knowing, not thinking, just moving without real awareness of the fact and almost-feeling that something tremendous was about to happen.

That near-awareness didn't so much as raise my heart rate. I was at peace.

That peace held me until the shadowy disconnection suddenly dropped, letting the reality of this world spring back into being, presenting me with the rather disconcerting fact that I hadn't the slightest clue in the entire universe of where I now was.

Rising consternation was immediately squelched by what my eyes were viewing, mere meters in front of me. It was a weird sort of grove of intertangled trees, all gnarled and bent, their roots digging deeply into the bank of a somewhat narrow but fairly deep and amazingly dry ravine, their green canopies likewise intermingling with one another to form a nearly solid roof overhead. I inched to the edge and peered downward into the shadow.

From out of nowhere, ice chilled my veins. The niggle breathed.

Yes. Then, with greater insistency...

YES.

Oh Hell's Seven Circles, Galen, what ARE you doing?

In for a credit...

Taking a deep breath, I began working my way through the knotted roots, climbing over and through, pushing away smaller over-hanging branches with their dripping vines and greenery, as bit by bit I made my way downward into what was beginning to look like a cave formed entirely from living trees.

[ 01-16-2017 03:38 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Galen ]

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Forgive me, Kyan; I will yet make you proud of me!

With that, and having recovered, I turned about to check my surroundings. Through the knotted roots and snarl of other plant life and brush that grew amidst it, I could barely make out the ravine disappearing around a curve, blackening into the distance. To my right, the other side of the strange ravine glistened with crystalline rocks and sediments, it's dank wall curving inward upon itself and up to the top of what I assumed to be this, a dry streambed that I was standing in. Thataway, and the streambed meandered off, interspersed with an occasional tree eroded from its bank, or boulder washing down from who knows where, at a time when this place held gushing water.

But this way...

I peered into the very roots down which I had scrambled. Suddenly a small light popped on; a small cover had slid back into the armor of my upper right chest, revealing a small but powerful lens through which light, ignited by some hidden sensor, now flowed. It illuminated the roots and brightened the shadowy places between them, revealing that behind them was indeed an opening in the bank.

I drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly.

Feel...

With no further ado, I began inching my way through the tangle of rough bark and dirt and stone, once more sending thanks winging out to Master Kyan for providing me with this wonderful Mandalorian armor. It, along with little more than dogged determination from me, managed to actually move some of the more tightly entangled ones, creating, if only for the moment, larger holes and nooks into which I could squeeze, as I made my way into what turned out, yes, to be...

A boulder-and-cobble-and-mud-and-dirt hollow, hidden behind the soil of the ravine bank, a hollow filled with dark that was more than shadows, a hollow which beckoned me to take just a few steps more into its unknown and mysterious depths.

I took a step... something niggled yet again.

No. NO!

Nothing more than that, but those two sensations brought with it a veritable flood of understanding. I drew in another deep breath, slowly let it out...

And bit by bit, piece by shining piece, I removed the Mandalorian armor from my body. Carefully I made reverent pile of the pieces, arranging them just so. Then I raised upright, and for a moment just stood there in my black one-piece, shivering a little against the Night.

Then I ventured more deeply into the cave.

[ 01-16-2017 04:10 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Galen ]

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Naturally, that is.

But there was something other which brought into this mysterious place another shade of black, another brand of darkness. I stopped in my tracks, my ever-present gaggle of geese buddies suddenly making themselves known yet again, trying to sense but not knowing how, trying to feel again but not having one whit of success.

One solitary goose honked in dismay, and fell silent, his icy little feet sending shards of ice coursing through my veins. I could feel my body tensing, muscle by muscle; squinting, I strained to peer through the velvety, seductive black, holding my breath I tried to will my pounding heart into silence that I might hear.

Only it was my sense of sight that took the upper hand.

There, a shift. Shadow-on-shadow, a small, almost sibilant movement.

Wha-?

He came out of nowhere, as Dark a personage as ever I'd want to meet again. Tall, muscled, resplendent in robes of violet burgundy shot through with gold, valuable gems and embroidered sigils, his red skin bearing sigils as well, his great horns giving him greater, and yet more frightening a mein...

But his eyes. HIS EYES...

Brilliant turquoise no longer, they glistened chrome and violet, shining out with energies almost too great to gaze upon, pinning me in place like a hapless moth before a roaring bonfire.

I fell to my knees, my arms limp at my sides, terror coursing in tandem with the stamp of gooseflesh, my very blood threatening to coagulate into solid ice, frozen to the spot. All I could do was blink frantically, trying to keep my last bits of humanity from washing away before the onrush of sheer, animalistic terror which was coming closer and closer to claiming me as its own. A terror that some tiny part deep down inside of me somehow realized would bring nothing with it but permanent madness.

Another part of me actually managed to snort at that. I gulped air, swallowed, and got mad myself.

"What do you want!"

The words lashed out from me almost as if they were a death scream, although truth be told they were barely breathed scarcely above a whisper. Dark Lord Ankrist Roan, or that which at least appeared to be Dark Lord Ankrist Roan, merely smiled the smile of a sandcat with womprat, a smile promising this or that, leave it up to one's imagination, thank you very much, but with the knowledge that said imagination would but herald the approach of hard, cold fact.

That made me madder yet.

"Just who in Hell's Seven Circles are you?!"

The form of the horrific Sith Dark Lord of the Warriors merely nodded his head once, and slowly turned his back to me...

[ 01-16-2017 04:33 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Galen ]

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"F-father?"

I don't know if I'd actually spoken the words or if they had been but another lightning thought momentarily taking up residence in my head. But whether actually verbalized or not, they carried with them truth. For the backside of the frightening Dark Lord was not his back at all, but rather...

"Father!"

Not only my father, but as I'd last seen him, horribly enough. His face, battered and ripped and bruised, his skull caved in, dried blood caking his loving, simple features, all remnants of the brutal death he had suffered at the hands of his own daughter, my very own sister, Jharmeen Jhin'Darr. The hands he spread out to either side of himself were likewise battered, some fingers broken, splaying off into odd angles, the nails ripped from their beds.

I wanted to shut my eyes, bury my face in my own hands, to rid myself of this terrible sight. But I could not. I could only, slowly, as if in a dream, fall to my knees and stare up into the destroyed face of the father I loved and missed so terribly, terribly much.

His loving voice came into my being, wafting there on a breath of life and warmth.

"Who am I? What do I want?"

Now a chuckle wafted about, an honest to Khaandon chuckle that I actually heard with my own ears.

"I am more than what I appear. WE are more than we appear. YOU are more than what you appear too, Ga'lika. What do I want--"

The words dwindled off into the depths of blackness, a blackness which somehow was showing me this fantastically frightening revelation. For other than the brilliance shining out from the backside of the form of my father, there wasn't one lick of light in this place to actually show me what I was seeing.

My brief reverie was truncated abruptly as his face zoomed up to me, intimately close, his dear, brown eyes now widening, enlarging, erupting in to chrome and violet and energies found only in nuclear furnaces or...

"You must help I, I cannot. An ending I know becomes no-ending. The book before I, the final chapter suddenly blank.

"I seek I in all, G'alika. A final chapter must be composed again.

"Without knowing the end, it cannot be written.

"You are more than you know, G'alika. You are ALL more than you know."

Those eyes widened, flared, became more brilliant, the violet lashing into white-hot chrome, that chrome coursing upward until I had to close my eyes against the onslaught of it. A momentary lessening of the light; I peeped one eye open to see the form of my father turning back, and while in mid turn, when the light emanating from both sides or parts of his strange apparition weren't directed specifically upon me I saw it.

There. Again. Shadow-on-shadow. Black-on-black. Something strangely... muffled.

And something I immediately knew to be the most dangerous thing to exist anywhere in the entire known universe, or even beyond it, for that matter.

An anathema to life itself...

The image of my father now presented it's Roan/back to me. The horrible, frightening Dark Lord curled his lip in a smile of derision...

...and winked.

Then my reality flashed into nuclear fires, a blinding brilliance of unknown magnitude, a white so bright it could do nothing but fade into total black...

...which slowly moved up into a soft shade of gray.

I blinked against the grayness, my ears ringing from that stupendous blast, shook my head, and finally managed to bring my surroundings into focus.

I was back in Cin vehti, heaped on the floor. Beside me lay my armor in a tidy pile. Emergency lighting was on, my nav-board glared a terrible darkness of it's own, sparked only by one tiny, insistently blinking red light.

Universal SOS.

I sighed and clambered shakily to my feet, one hand reaching out to grasp the back of my nav-chair as my reeling body tried to give into the vagaries of gravity and dump me unceremoniously back onto the deck. Waiting for dizziness to depart, I shook my head to relieve the ringing still occupying my ears. In that I was marginally successful, for that ringing slowly disappeared.

Only to be replace with a final taunting word:

Entropy.

That brought me down to the floor with a thump. I could only sit, wondering at the strangeness of it all, wondering if indeed I had experienced what I thought I just had...

And wondering if anyone was going to ever find me, stranded wherever in Hell's Seven Circles I was, all by myself in a mysteriously crippled ship.

All I knew, for I could feel it, was that there was nothing more to surround me than space, deep and cold.

But strangely enough, it somehow seemed no longer quite as lonely.

[ 01-16-2017 05:33 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Galen ]

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It/He/She/They merely sighed in exasperation at It/Him/Her/Themselves, and slowly let the bubble of non-ness pop into the obscurity of all eternity.

[ 01-16-2017 05:59 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by The All ]

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