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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ankh-Morpork Guard" data-source="post: 3340783" data-attributes="member: 10079">Chapter 435: Downward and ForwardMarix sighed and tightened the heavy coat that was wrapped around her. Doing her best to ignore the white puff of frigid air that escaped with the sigh, she decided to kill Loki when she got back. If she got back.    No...no, she’d kill him anyway.    Mygeeto had just been a name to her a few hours earlier. She knew of the general direction where it supposedly was, but nothing else save for a faint remembrance of battles that were fought there years ago...the last had to be during the Galactic Civil War that she had mostly blanked out of her memory mainly due to the fact that, during the time, well..thoughts of the clones the Empire created of her surfaced and, thankfully, froze with the rest of her to die quickly.    The planet, she quickly learned, was colder than Hoth on a bad day. Since Loki had entered the atmosphere, all Marix could see were giant crystals jutting out in all directions from the surface down there...somewhere. Everyone so often, pockets of smoke from cities could be seen, but the Vong were dealing with the metal buildings that were constructed into the giant ice-crystals. They had set down about ten kilometers north of what Loki identified as a settlement that wasn’t burning. Considering the amount that he had identified that were burning, both of them deduced it was the one to inspect first.    On the trip through hyperspace, Loki had managed to figure out what kind of ship they had been chasing. It wasn’t Vong. It was an old model transport about half Loki’s size and twice his age that Marix had already forgotten the name of. They had, at a distance, followed it into the Mygeetan system and then hung back upon seeing a Vong fleet orbiting the planet. Thankfully, Loki didn’t have much trouble sneaking down to the surface without them getting noticed, and that had simply left them to figure out where the ship had gone to. It said a lot that the Vong hadn’t fired on it...    But, upon reaching the surface, other problems had come up. Most of them centered around the cold. For a while, Marix convinced herself that it wasn’t, in fact, snowing, but it was just ash. It was when Loki set down in a relatively slat spot between two huge crystal spikes that went hundreds of meters into the air that Marix was forced to accept the truth...and forced to morph to a body that wouldn’t die a quick death in the cold.    The smaller human woman that she now was stood a against one of the impossible cold crystal spires as she looked down into a huge valley where she could see unique looking structures. It would have been hard to identify her as human, though, as Marix was in three layers of clothes...four if the morphsuit underneath it all counted and five if the second jacket, which was Jyren’s old one, also counted. Her face was wrapped up so only two violet eyes shown through, and they were doing their best to ignore the sight of both the snowflakes falling around her and her own breath. She was also currently a master of thinking warm thoughts.    From what she could tell, there were a good six starships of various makes and sizes lined up on the far side of the encampment below. Despite the great distance between herself and what might have been the ground below, she could identify a good thirty small buildings that looked nothing like she’d seen before. Between them, various dots and other shapes moved around, with a larger clump of them between the ships and the encampment. The large group contained at least fifty individuals, but probably more.    The cold was bad enough...as were the giant crystals that made moving anywhere on the planet near-impossible...but the idea of that many down there was not a good thing. It didn’t help that they were probably Yuuzhan Vong.     Her black-gloved hands moved from hugging herself to keep warm to the next task. Another of Jyren’s old pieces of clothing, the gloves didn’t fit perfectly, and were probably a size too big, but they were from his old flightsuit and strong enough to help with the next task without freezing Marix’s hands. Eyes shifting to the other edge of the cliff she was on, Marix decided that it was definitely out of sight of the encampment below. It also looked to be climbable...at least, more so than most of the crystals that covered the planet. And so, focusing her mind and trying to ignore her body, Marix put herself to the task of the long climb down. She shifted over the edge, found a good foothold, and started the descent.* * * *Tobias looked across the shimmering blue lake that was to his right. The forest of Yavin IV surrounded it, and directly in front of Tobias, at the edge of the water, was a smaller version of the Great Temple that was used as the Academy’s main building. It had taken two hours to walk this far, and while he was fairly sure it was an eastward trip, Tobias had gotten lost in the navigating of the jungle that Master Ral had lead.    “Thousands of years ago, this was one of the temples that the Sith, Exar Kun, had his Massassi slaves craft for him,” Master Ral said in a voice that was as haunting as the temple that was sitting at the lake’s edge, “He sealed himself in there when the ancient Jedi came with the Republic army to end the war he had started...about ten years ago, he returned, his spirit coming out of hiding to attempt to retake this place. The first group of Master Skywalker’s new apprentices defeated Kun, ending the threat he presented. Despite that, though...” the Jedi Master extended a blue arm to the Temple, “...a dark presence remains within this place. It is an echo of the powerful Sith Master that was sealed here for so long.”    Tobias was a bit taken aback by all of this information. He knew very little about the Sith beyond the stories of their involvement with the early Alraxians. Seeing that such a place existed so close to the Jedi Temple was a bit...unnerving. Vague knowledge of Yavin IV’s history was one thing, but knowing it in more detail just had a way of getting him more worried than he probably should have been.    “I want you to go inside the Temple,” the Omwati Jedi said calmly, “Follow the main corridor straight until you reach a large, octagonal room. There should be seven pedestals within it. Bring me the object that rests on the fourth.”    A few moments passed as Tobias tried to put all this together. He wasn’t sure what to say, as he’d pretty much asked for this...turning back now wasn’t really an option anymore. So, instead, he just managed a slight nod before taking the first steps towards what was probably the entrance to the Temple.    “Wait,” the voice of Master Ral stopped him only a few steps later. Tobias turned around to see the Jedi Master’s hand extended and his palm open, “Give me your lightsaber.”    That caused a few different reactions within Tobias, none of them any more comfortable than what had been evoked from the story of that Temple. He reached for the weapon, Jyren’s weapon, at his belt, but hesitated and said quietly, “You said to be careful in the deep jungle...to keep a blaster or something with me at all times...isn’t it going to be dangerous in there?”    The Omwati Master’s pale coloured eyes looked down to Tobias in a hauntingly piercing way, “The only danger that is in there is the danger you take with you. You will not need your lightsaber.”    “But its not mine...” he mumbled in a whisper towards the ground, trying to find some excuse now and clinging to the one at the forefront of his mind.    As Master Ral knew enough of the occurrences prior to Tobias’ arrival on Yavin IV, it was not a mystery to him who’s weapon it was. Despite this, his hand remained outstretched, waiting, “I understand that your father entrusted you with that weapon, Tobias. However, you will not need it within those walls.”    “But...”    “The only reason you would require that weapon is to fend yourself off,” this time, the Jedi Master’s voice was much more forceful, “You wish to be a Jedi, Tobias. A Jedi is still a Jedi without his lightsaber. If you cannot leave your weapon behind, then you will never understand what it is to be a Jedi and to serve the Force.”    For a moment, Tobias simply stared at his Master, almost shocked at what was being implied. He’d yet to hear Master Ral speak in anything beyond a calm, serene voice...and now he sounded angry. There was something terrifying there, and he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was because Tobias knew he was right, he just didn’t like it.    And so, slowly, Tobias removed the lightsaber from his belt and placed the metal hilt in his Master’s hand. It took a few seconds for him to let go of it, but when he did, Tobias turned and started towards the Temple in front of him.    To his credit, he didn’t look back.</blockquote>

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