Despite Aria's earlier scolding when Kytra had brought it up, the Champion couldn't help but take in the gorgeous landscape with silent appreciation as they made their way up and over the rise. Even the Tuk'ata seemed to be enjoying themselves, trotting ahead of the group with their tails arched high over their backs as they nosed curiously through the detritus that was scattered all about the surface of the pathways. The grisly artefacts didn't bother Aria, of course, she had seen FAR worse in Korriban and in their adventures since then (a brief flash of the disembodied, castrated corpses Illesia had left for them in the sewers on Nar Shaddaa sprang into her mind’s eye).
Kytra, on the other hand, nearly fainted as Chwuq flounced back towards the Qyaari with a humanoid skull clasped in her teeth. Aria abruptly stepped between the hound and her apprentice, perching her hands on her hips as she stared at Chwuq and ordered firmly. “Drop it. NOW.” while Kytra turned her back and hid her face in her paws.
The Tuk'ata needed little encouragement, plopping the skull down at her master’s feet almost as soon as the words had been spoken, as if she were trying to prove a point.
“Others…Come. Here.” she rumbled, struggling to articulate the warning, though she pawed at the skull insistently. “Not safe. Go…home, now?”
That didn't inspire confidence. Even the dogs were nervous of their path. And yet…
“No, we can't go home.” Aria sighed, scratching behind Chwuq’s ears soothingly. “We're so close now, we HAVE to find them.”
Chwuq snorted in distaste, shaking her fur out though she made no further protest as Kytra managed to compose herself and turned back.
“I'm alright, sorry Master, I was just caught off guard, it won't happen again.”
Aria had to give her credit, even if she WAS still the most skittish of the four of them, she hadn't thrown up this time and that was a marked improvement.
Neither of the pair made a protest as Yerbol suggested they kept their guard up on their approach, each drawing a saber as they fell in with the two men. Chwuq and Taral assumed their positions at the front and rear of the group once more, and the Qyaari crept warily towards the temple.
Being met by solid copper doors which were shut fast was certainly very suspicious. However, that didn't draw their immediate attention as the pedestal that was standing in front of it opened up to reveal the contents within.
Aria felt a lump form in her throat as the holocron flickered to life, the tiny, bright points that marked out each planet appearing first, and one by one dotted lines formed to connect them to one another in a confusing jumble.
“What…Is that?” Kytra breathed, the map coordinates mirrored in her irises as she stared at it in awe.
Before Yerbol could finish his answer, however, the Champion’s legs buckled underneath him as, she assumed, another vision overlook him. Thankfully, this time Aria was close enough to catch him and gently lower him onto his knees before he hit his head on the foot of the pedestal. She gently supported her partner through the entirety of the ordeal, her heart clenching uncomfortably as she watched his eyes flickering back and forth at unnatural speed. Was this what she'd looked like when this happened to her? No wonder he'd looked so worried when she came back to.
Words could not describe her relief when Yerbol’s eyes opened once again. Aria had prepared to firmly push him back down and insist that he take a moment to recover, yet the Champion seemed far weaker this time, his body falling forward despite her best efforts to help him stay upright.
“Woah, easy, baby, easy…” Aria frowned worriedly, but stepped back to allow him to rise on his own as he waved them off.
Something was off, she could tell. But was now the time, or the place, to bring it up? Would there EVER be a time or a place? She pushed it aside for now. Figure out where we have to go, then while we're en route maybe you can get him to talk, she decided.
“Alright.” she spoke out loud as Taral whimpered anxiously and shoved his muzzle under Yerbol’s arm, settling into a semi-content purr as the Champion weakly patted his nose to reassure him. “So, we have a Star Map, that's a start.” when she was confident Yerbol wouldn't require her to catch him again, Aria rose to her feet and approached the map, her jaw slackening momentarily as she realised how densely packed the coordinates were. There were so many….
“How are we EVER going to narrow it down from…this?” Kytra gestured helplessly at the map, circling it restlessly as she frowned at it from each new angle, hoping it would somehow grant an epiphany of sorts.
Aria joined the Selonian, her finger pointing out each of the planets as she spoke their names. “Well, we can discard all of these planets on the fringes of the Outer Rim and Hutt Space: Ilum, Makeb, Oricon, Rishi, Yavin Four…they might have gone there once, but I doubt it was before they came to Lehon, which, from the coordinates Vano sent us, would be… Here.”
That only ruled out about seven points however, and still left them with HUNDREDS to sort through. Aria's jaw slackened as she processed this, shaking her head and moving past the pedestal to examine the door behind it.
She could make no more sense of the carvings upon it than her husband, of course, but that didn't mean that the door couldn't, in theory, be opened. After all, the young Champions had once moved an entire stone slab out of the opposite wall in order to form a bridge that they could cross, how was a door any different?
She exhaled softly, closed her eyes, and extended her hands at the same time as she did her senses, and attempted to heave the door open by force. Kytra quickly figured out her Master’s plan and joined her, as did the two Sith Hounds, although it seemed to make no difference.
Karking. Copper. THAT'S how this was different.
Five minutes later, Kytra was leaning heavily against the left hand panel and Aria was breathing heavily as she swiped the sweaty hair out of her eyes.
“Stuck!” both Tuk'ata chittered in unison, the Champion rolling her eyes as she drawled sarcastically.
“How VERY astute of you, I hadn't noticed.” an exasperated huff left her, turning back to Ethan and Yerbol. “Its solid copper, it’s not budging… But there could be clues in there that could help us triangulate some of these coordinates and narrow the list down.” she gestured back to the Star Map, “OOOOOOOR, we can take it back to the ship, see if we can get Vano back on the line and let the archive computers do it for us. But who knows if we can get a signal through to Zinuthra from here, the Elders got cut off right as we landed…”
Truthfully, she had no idea how to open this blasted door and Aria wasn't so sure she wanted to ask Yerbol to help them, he seemed unsettlingly weak all of a sudden and the last thing they needed was the other Champion collapsing on them.
Member
Kaithe Dame
deegee
Vesnic
Tim the Yeti
FulgrimLives
Jengem
OathMaker
Shin Ghost Note
Fetzen
Ti
