Risen From the Ashes

[Megaera]

Being a Nightsister shaman, Megaera was no stranger on how the spirits could use a person as an instrument of communication. She had just not yet seen such a thing from Tristan. He had asserted a desire to learn not one, but all aspects of their ways of life. Her fingers squeezed back reassuringly. Telling him without a word that she would follow him into that darkness, no matter where it led.

Forgotten places..

Something about that phrase gave Megaera pause. Not given to silly fears of the dark, the witch knew that sometimes there was a reason behind such trepidation.

The last flickers of the torchlight behind them shone off her green eyes before that too disappeared.

And just who was this spirit...?

[Tristan Alastor]

"Do you know where it could be taking us?" Tristan asked, and for a moment when he looked back to Megaera his eyes were his own, cold water blue, a fraction wider with fear. Yet when he blinked, the fierce white of the spirit had returned and his voice was a chorus, like a dozen of himself, exhaling and inhaling at the same time.

"You must know, you who were born of the mist and shadow. You must know what lies, abandoned, beneath this ancient soil."

[Megaera]

Many things were concealed beneath the soil of Dathomir. Some had been abandoned purposefully as clans moved onto other areas with the natural course of migration. Some simply had been lost to time, remembered only in legend. The legends of her homeworld were not unknown to Megaera. In fact, she was probably one of the last left alive to know many of their oral traditions and stories, passed down from the first of their Mothers.

What they would find beneath this range would be more easily answered if Megaera had any sort of indication where on Dathomir they were?! At her best approximation they had been travelling westward away from the Burning Mists clan grounds for weeks. With Domir's light still obscured by ash, she could not be more precise. She did know a little about the direction she supposed they were heading.. To say the land was ancient was redundant, but there were ruins that dotted this landscape that were just that, ancient. Structures that predated any Nightsister, their purpose forgotten before the first of Allya's daughter's had ever roamed the land. Some such fortifications had been further built upon by the Witches of Dathomir over generations.

Some...leading into great caverns beneath the mountains! Tristan, or at least whoever was wearing her mate's flesh presently, was onto something!

So why did she still have chills running up her arms? Why did the thought of descending deeper into the caverns make the shaman hesitate?

Picking her way behind Tristan carefully, Megaera opened herself up fully to the mountains interior. Sensing. Feeling.

Determination won out over caution. They had to do this, for the survivors. There was no turning back.

"Why do you not speak plainly, spirit. Tell me, what was abandoned here?"

[Tristan Alastor]

“What is not plain cannot be spoken of plainly,” the spirit said, talking through Tristan as it walked him further into the shadows with slow though not fearful steps. The others, Tristan thought, but his impulse to turn and look back to the rest of the clan was snuffed out like flickering candlelight in a storm. The Force moved through Tristan in a way it had never done before, paradoxically both overpowering and empowering, ice-cold and exhilerating.

“Perhaps you do not have the language, the intelligence, to comprehend it,” the spirit added, and though Tristan wasn’t smiling, there was an almost mocking humour in his voice.

[Megaera]

Megaera frowned. The spell had been meant to give her mate the benefits of amplified senses, sight and hearing. It had not been meant to attract a formless specter to take up residence in him. A mocking one at that. For all she knew, it was leading them into danger..

"I have the languages of every Mother who came before me, spirit. And every banishment ritual this world has ever uttered, test me not.", she warned.

Her fingers grasped firmly around Tristan's. He had only to say the word, or give her any sign, and she would send their little haunt into a void it would not return from.

[Tristan Alastor]

Another little shiver prickled over Tristan's skin. At Megaera's touch, the spirit within him flinched for an instant, as if it sensed even a fraction of the power the Nightsister commanded. Pride and love swelled in Tristan, and he squeezed her hand. The smile that curled his lips lingered when the spirit began to speak through him again.

"There are cities beneath the surface of this world. The husks of civilisations. All but abandoned and forgotten, with roads like veins, deep and far-reaching."

[Megaera]

That did sound promising. "Take us there.", she commanded, although it seemed that was already their road.

It was so dark. The deeper they moved, the more oppressive that darkness became. Had they been walking for an hour? Ten hours? Megaera was loosing sense of time, and she was not convinced the spirit did not seek to lead them both over a sudden drop, to join it's endless roaming.

Domir's Ssussun, tlu xuil uns'aa nin. At her words, a small ball of light formed in her right hand. It lifted, and she pushed it outward, where it hovered just before Tristan. One less problem to worry about.

[Tristan Alastor]

As they walked, the ethereal light faded from Tristan’s eyes. When he searched about himself with the Force, he felt an echo of the spirit somewhere near at hand, as if tethered to their shadows.

“Did you know of the existence of these subterranean cities?” he asked in a low whisper, his voice once again his own. “Are they the work of the witches?”

[Megaera]

A grateful breath was released from her lungs when Megaera realized she had Tristan back completely. "Maybe. I don't know. There are many ruins on Dathomir, but not all were made by my people."

Picking her way carefully around a section of collapsed rock from far above them, Megaera wondered just how deep they had traveled.

"I think someone, or something, else lived here before us. Perhaps the ruins, and maybe these cities, were theirs?", she posed.

Either her eyes were beginning to struggle with the constant gloom, or she was beginning to see things. Somewhere in the space ahead of them, Megaera could see something.. blue.

[Tristan Alastor]

The more time Tristan spent on Dathomir, the more he believed it was an unknowable place. Though he had grown up in a star-system of sixty-three worlds, he felt he knew more about the Hapes Cluster than he would ever do about Dathomir, a single planet. So little of the world had been mapped, or else the maps had created in isolation and never shared with the disparate tribes that called the place their home.

He peered ahead at the strange, glowing growths clinging to the walls ahead. When he spoke, his voice was even lower than before, barely audible.

“You don’t think that anyone is still living down here, do you? Is that even possible?”

[Megaera]

The Nightsister almost halted in her tracks at the notion. Were others living down here? "Anything is possible." Who would live in this place though? The Nightspider clans were known to dwell in craggy, cliff sides and some caves, but this went a fair bit beyond that.

They were deep beneath the peaks above them now. The light she had conjured was no longer proving beneficial, so she dispelled it with a dismissive wave. Little by little her eyes adjusted to the sight before her. The tunnel that they had followed was opening up into a massive chamber. For a moment she thought they had emerged on the other side of the mountain, and that it was the night sky she was seeing, but it was not so. Rather, the ceiling far above them was also speckled with luminescence. The Nightsister had to admit it was quite remarkable.

The air smelled strangely fresh for so deep and dark a place, and there seemed to be moisture in it. Meg could see well enough now to make out the band of black across her mate's eyes, through the darkness. This was what the spell had been meant to achieve. Her heart beat a little faster in excitement.

"Is there water?"

[Tristan Alastor]

The artificial sky above them pulled Tristan’s eyes upwards and left him dumbstruck for a moment. To his Hapan eyes, the darkness was more impenetrable than it was to most, but with the magic of Megaera’s spell woven around him and the glow of the strange flora clinging to the cavern roof, he could almost see the height of the massive vault above them. The sheer scale of it… it had to be large enough to dwarf even Star Home.

Forcing himself to look down, Tristan sniffed at the air. His supernaturally enhanced sense were pulling him forward still. “Yes, I can… feel something down here.”

He continued walking without thinking, letting the intuition of Megaera’s gift to him dictate his path while he stared in wonder at the darkness.

“I can’t believe this is down here. It’s incredible.”

[Megaera]

Stepping around the wide base of a stalagmite, Megaera followed Tristan into the eerie glowing space that they had discovered. She would not have bet against the existence of such a place, but neither would she have believed it had she not seen it for herself. There was something magical about it, even by the standards of a Nightsister Shaman.

Impressive as it was, why would it have been abandoned? Megaera had a lot of questions for the spirits regarding this place, but her usual haunts seemed to want them to do this on their own. The sound of her steps changed from the crunch of gravel and rock, to a softer sound as the ground beneath them likewise changed into deliberately placed stones forming a path to follow. Maybe leading them to the cities beneath?

"It is.. There is certainly enough room."

All of the witches, plus a herd of rancor - several herds, could have space to roam down here. As well as the spiders. The only thing that troubled the shaman was the location's state of apparent abandonment.

[Tristan Alastor]

“What could have caused this,” Tristan mused aloud, and found himself imagining - quite unexpectedly - Ta’a Chume’dan as an equally empty shell. His home city was vast, populated with hundreds of thousands of Hapan’s at any one time. There were few things that could have rendered it as empty as this cavern.

“Did they leave of their own free will, or were they driven away?”

[Megaera]

They were good questions. Megaera had no answers for her mate though. She had about as much information on this place as he did. Or did she? Megaera searched her memories for any mention of the places beneath the surface. She could not remember anything specific, but she did have a sense of forboding. Like she should remember. She felt sure there was nothing from her recent memories, from before the fires. If there was anything it had been told to her long ago, perhaps as a cautionary tale to a child. Something teased at her thoughts.

There went the chills again.

Megaera would have been grateful to see any of her spirit guides then, to pry the information she sought from their collective memories, but they were still nowhere to be seen. Not too far ahead of them, shapes rose up in the blue-tinted glow. What she was seeing appeared to be carved arches, and beyond, many other structures. Cities beneath the surface of Dathomir, just as they had been promised. But...why empty?

"Tristan.. I think I do know something about this place, and I'm not sure it's good.", Megaera said, sliding one arm around his waist, as much to comfort her own nerves as anything.

[Tristan Alastor]

The half-light ahead traced strange shapes in the murk. Structures that did not conform to any style of architecture Tristan had ever seen or read about. The damp air felt thick with foreboding. Tristan mirrored Megaera, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, and yet his nose drew him forward, toward the source of water that the clan so dearly needed.

“What is it?”

[Megaera]

"Something very old.."

Megaera knew how unhelpful of an answer it was, but she was trying to pull pieces of memories together. Bits of bedtime stories Matier had told her, to scare her senseless because that's just the sort of adoring Dame, she had been.

"Something big, and old.. and dangerous. An Old One.", she summed it up.

"We should be alright.", she hoped. "I believe you have to awaken them.."

The crunch of her footsteps had never seemed so loud to Megaera as it did in that moment.

[Tristan Alastor]

It was the first time Tristan had heard Meg mention an ‘Old One’. It was not surprising, however, to learn that there was more about Dathomir that he did not understand. He had only scratched the surface of his understanding of his new home, and much of its history and its culture were still shrouded to him, as if by the Mists themselves.

Tristan halted, as something about the cavern seemed to interfere with the sensation leading him onward.

“How does one awaken an… old one?”

[Megaera]

Megaera stopped as Tristan did, her blood feeling suddenly chill in her veins. A tingle of awareness creeping down her neck.

How does one awaken an Old One, Megaera?

"With Ichor.."

Spirit Ichor, such as she had just pulled out from this very mountain to shape her spell. The green fire working it's way up from below them, to flare up through the candles and fuel her will - and something else had come with it.

[Tristan Alastor]

With his arm still around Megaera’s shoulder, Tristan’s grip on her tightened, just a little. At the edge of his mind, he could feel something that he thought might be her… uncertainty or perhaps even apprehension. Yet, something cautioned Tristan against stretching his senses out any further, as he ought to be wary of what his awareness might brush up against.

“It couldn’t happen… by accident could it?”