CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE ALCHEMY OF FLESH
A Je’daii needs darkness and light, shadow and illumination, because without the two there can be no balance. Veer to Bogan, and Ashla feels too constraining, too pure; edge toward Ashla, and Bogan becomes a monstrous myth. A Je’daii without balance between both is no Je’daii at all. He, or she, is simply lost.
—Master Shall Mar, “A Life in Balance,” 7,537 TYA
The blood spite is a shadow with teeth. It trails long tendrils around her that, though thin and easy to break, constrain her. She plucks and kicks at them, and the smell and taste when they snap reminds her of the grassy plains at Bodhi Temple, long summer afternoons, evenings of music and talk with her family. The thing’s body darts in again and again, carried on feathery wings that make no noise at all as they beat at the dusky air. Lanoree sends a clumsy Force punch and the spite reels. Its tendrils flail and teeth clack at nothing.
Its teeth are its hardest point. Wings, tendrils, body, all are light and airy, giving it the feel of a fancy or memory more than a living thing. Its teeth give it form.
The spite attacks again. Lanoree feels warm fluid spatter across her neck, and she’s not sure whether it’s the spite’s sap or her own blood. Her moment of panic abates. She is without weapons, but never without the Force. And while this being’s strange nature might make it immune to any mental assault, Lanoree has studied at Stav Kesh.
She clenches her fist, gathers a Force punch, and heaves it toward the spite.
It is flung back with such speed and power that many of its fine limbs are torn off, drifting to the ground and catching the setting sun. The body drops and squirms for a moment before growing still. Lanoree examines her wounds. The bleeding is not too bad.
Having no wish to wait for more blood spites, she hurries toward the pyramid.
And there is a power here. She is awed by the city, and aware of its deep history, but what she starts to feel is something beyond or apart from that. It is nothing physical—no throbbing in the ground, no charge to the air—but still she is flooded with a feeling of such coiled potential that her teeth grind, her heart thuds. It is the most delicious fear.
Nothing will deter her. She follows Dal’s trail, the only human prints visible on the wind-driven sand and dust. And when his trail disappears for a time she continues anyway, instinct guiding her onward. She has entered something of a dream zone. This is Tython, but she no longer knows when. This is home, but she has never felt so far away. The power she feels below and around her is divorced from the Force; and though she asks that strong, protective energy that is always within her, she finds no answers.
I’m being repulsed by this place, she thinks. Sadly, she is not surprised that Dal is drawn here.
The ruins are so ancient that most of them are long buried by the effects of time or worn down by wind and sand, rain and sun. But here and there among these small hills and shallow valleys are the tips of pyramids, the slouch of fallen walls, or the deep hollows of openings into the ground.
These dark pits yawn and seem to exhale the strange energy she feels. And it is into one of these pits that Dal’s footprints lead.
Before she can consider the folly of her actions, Lanoree goes down.
The small glow rod she always carries gives a gentle but consistent light, but in a way she wishes she could not see.
The alienness of this place strikes at her. Everywhere else she has been on Tython has been created by and for those sentients who inhabit the planet now—humans and Wookiee, Twi’lek and Cathar, many others. Their appearances might be different, but their basic physiologies are the same. The Cathars are relatively short and the Wookiees usually taller than most, but there is a similarity to their features that makes the places they live and work comfortable for all.
These ruins are different. Lanoree drops several levels that she eventually realizes are huge steps, as though built for giants. A passageway she moves along is tall and wide. The very air she breathes—still and stale, old and loaded with the dust of ages—seems suited more to something else. She shivers as if watched, but knows that it is only the depth of history that observes.
But she is not the first to come down here.
Dal’s footprints draw her onward, pressed into the dust. They are far apart and deep, as if he is running, and she wonders how he can find his way down here and what light illuminates his path.
That crushing energy seems to throb through the passageways like a pulse through the veins of a giant, sleeping creature. It is a discomforting image that Lanoree cannot shake, yet she knows it is foolish. The Old City is just that … an old city. Archaeologists have been here. Historians. Some have been, seen, and left again, intrigued but not possessed. Others have spent their lives researching this place. A few have never been seen again, and there are stories of such depths …
But she wonders whether any of them have ever felt this terrible, pulsing potential, and what they thought of it.
“Dal!” she calls, surprising herself. Her voice echoes from walls and ceiling, fading into the distance yet seeming to persist far longer than she could have believed. Later, descending another giant staircase, she thinks she can still hear her brother’s name traveling through the darkness. Or perhaps it is simply a memory.
Deeper. She starts to wonder what walked these passageways millennia before, and tries not to. So little is known of the Gree, if indeed this was originally a Gree structure. Legend has it that they possessed amazing, arcane technologies that allowed travel among the stars. That they were a nomadic species, exploring the galaxy for unknown ends. There were rumors of Gree sculptures somewhere in the Old City. But some believe the expedition that supposedly found them fabricated them.
Sometimes Dal’s footprints fade in areas where the floor has seemingly been blown free of dust, perhaps by underground storms. Power surges as that incredible energy breaks free, maybe once each year, or once in a lifetime. So much is unknown, but Lanoree’s attention is fixed. Her intention is known. Dal needs saving from himself, and she will strive for this as long as she can.
Lanoree loses track of time. She thinks perhaps a day has passed since she left the surface and ventured down here. She is worried about finding her way back out, but there are footprints—both hers and Dal’s now—and there is the Force. It is a comfort to her, and the only reason she can stay her course.
She’s hungry and thirsty. Water runs down the walls in places, but she cannot bring herself to touch or drink it. She has no idea where it has come from or what, over many centuries, it has been filtered through. There must be countless places that time has forever hidden from view, and countless things that will never be known.
She starts calling after Dal more and more. The echoes of her shouts seem to argue, and sometimes she thinks she can hear choirs of Lanorees imploring her brother to return, to turn around, to come to her and home. Lanoree thinks she is hallucinating but can’t be sure.
The ruins are so old that nowhere is untouched by time’s finger—sometimes they are ravaged, sometimes merely stroked by a reminder that entropy cannot be denied. She passes along large passageways with smaller tunnels leading off, and sometimes by alcoves in the walls that might once have been doorways but that have long since been closed off. These smaller tunnels offer tantalizing and terrifying possibilities, but Lanoree will not be shaken from her course. This is not an exploration, it is a rescue. There are much larger caverns—almost hallways—with strangely shaped pits in the floor that might once have held water, and upright structures with the remains of metal shapes. Perhaps this is technology, rotted away over time.
She feels she is closing on Dal.
A metal bridge spans a deep, dark ravine, from the depths of which flows a warm breath. The bridge groans as she crosses it. The darkness beckons. It smells of dusty bone and wet fur, and Lanoree crosses the last third of the bridge at a run.
Beyond is another large cavern where ranked levels all around look much like seating areas, and a central dais bears the remains of several upright mechanical objects. Lanoree pauses to catch her breath.
In the distance she hears a scream.
Lanoree was being dragged. Voices sounded, urgent and angry, making no effort to hide. She felt heat on her body as they threw her down. She rolled onto her side, feeling for wounds. But there were only the bumps and bruises she was already familiar with, and a few more besides. She still wore her weapons and wrist unit. They hadn’t even bothered disarming her. Either they were clumsy, or they no longer viewed her as a threat.
Hit on the head again, she thought. Master Kin’ade would be disgusted. She tried to see away some of the pain, losing it to the Force, and a calm numbness descended.
“I’m almost done. I’ll let you watch.”
Dal! But he was dead, wasn’t he? She’d come down here looking for him and found—
But, no, that was another place, another time. That was in the past.
Lanoree opened her eyes and gathered herself, sitting up, hugging her knees to her chest.
The air in the mine shivered with heat. Several humans, growth stunted and dressed in reflective clothing and visored helmets, fussed around some mining equipment. Dal stood close to her, blaster in his hand aimed in her direction, and five Stargazers accompanied him. They were faceless to her, followers of his madness. It was Dal who held her attention.
“You left me for dead,” she croaked. Her throat felt dry and swollen, her tongue like a rock in her mouth.
“Yes, left you. I can’t make that mistake again.”
Woozy, weak, Lanoree tried to touch his mind.
Dal pointed the blaster at her face, his lips pressed tight, whole body tensed. She could Force-shove him aside, and perhaps she’d be able to get to her feet before the other Stargazers shot her. Maybe, somehow, she could distract them all. Perhaps, like Master Tave, she could lose herself in the Force, become unseen by them for long enough to disarm and defeat them.
But she thought not.
“So shoot me,” she said to her brother. As she spoke her mind was deluged with a flood of memories of their childhood, their dear mother and father, and the good times that were all now past. She was sad but incredibly angry as well.
“You and your Force—”
“Enough with the talk, Dal! Just shoot me and get it over with!”
“You’ve come this far,” he said, smiling. “Don’t you want to see my second-greatest moment?”
“Second?”
“The greatest is yet to come.” He nodded past the mining equipment at where the device rested on the ground, exposed now, the Stargazers standing at a respectful distance. It was surprisingly plain: a round metal shell, several connecting ports around its circumference. It did not look amazing.
The miners were checking display screens and working the machinery, and though it ran with barely a whisper, Lanoree wondered whether the deep rumbling she felt was caused by what they did here.
“No,” she said. “I’m bored. You’re going to kill me, so why not now instead of later? Brother.” She spat the last word, hoping for a reaction. But his gentle smile remained. She was trying to goad him into action, hoping that before he pulled the trigger there would be a moment of hesitation, an instant of regret and doubt of which she could take advantage.
But Dal was in charge here. Lanoree felt the flow of the Force and knew that she was just as powerful and rich in it as ever, but her sick, mad bother was still in control.
“There,” a miner said. The machinery before him vibrated slightly and then grew still, and a square metal box rose from a hole in the floor of the mine. Lanoree had seen this before in holos and knew what it was—a marionium cube, bearing one of the most unstable yet desirable elements found in Sunspot’s mine.
But what of the dark matter? Was everything she had seen, heard, learned wrong?
“In the device,” Dal said. “You know what to do.”
Three Stargazers stepped forward and lifted the cube, moving it toward the device.
Lanoree thought of Force-shoving them against it, but she didn’t know what effect that might have. They were dealing with arcane, ancient technology, and she remembered her journey down into the Old City nine years before, the power she had sensed there, the fear it had instilled.
I have to stop them! she thought. But I can’t risk triggering the device. Stuck between the two, she felt the gravity of both possibilities tearing at her.
“No,” she said as the Stargazers slid aside a panel. The insertion was simple. The marionium glowed softly as they tipped it into Dal’s device, and then they closed the panel and stood back.
“So what will it—?” one of the miners asked. He did not finish his question.
The device finished it for him. It started to turn.
Dal gasped, and Lanoree realized with dreadful certainty that he really had very little idea what he was doing. He was following old plans, chasing a childhood dream. He was running blind.
She tensed, readying to act whether it meant her death or not. Because this could not happen.
There was a soft grinding noise as the device turned on the gravelly ground. Then it rose and hung in midair, spinning faster and faster until it seemed to fade from view, return, fade again. Lanoree felt suddenly sick. It was a physiological reaction to something very wrong.
“Oh, Dal, you don’t know what you’re—”
The Force itself recoiled. Lanoree fell onto all fours and vomited, and she felt a flexing of the Force, like the natural reaction of a person wincing away from fire. For a flicker, the Force was absent from that mine, and in its place was only the device, still spinning and fading in and out of existence.
And then the thing slowed to a halt in midair, exuding such a sense of malignant power and unfathomable energy that Lanoree vomited again.
Weak, head spinning, she looked up at the others around her. The miners were on the ground, holding their heads. But the Stargazers were jubilant, and Dal was the happiest of all.
“It worked,” he breathed, awed and delighted. “It worked! We’ve done it! It’s ready, now. It’s made its own dark matter and it’s ready—and, oh, Lanoree, I so wish you could travel with me.”
She wasn’t certain whether that was a veiled plea, and she did not try to see. She didn’t care. “You’ve become a madman and a monster, Dal. My only aim is to bring you down.”
“Then this is the end for you,” he said softly. Elation quickly fading, he aimed the blaster at Lanoree’s chest and pulled the trigger.
Lanoree runs, drawn by the cries, knowing she should be running from them because they are so terrible. But she has come down into the Old City to save her brother, and now she fears she is too late.
She finds his clothes close to an underground lake. They are shredded and wet. She sniffs the blood. It smells like family.
The surface of the lake shimmers as ripples calm to nothing.
Without caring what might hear, Lanoree screams her grief at the darkness. She sinks to her knees and gathers the clothes to her chest, and even while Dal’s spilled blood is still warm, his sister starts to mourn.