Ask The Grave of Monsters and Innocents

[Malou D'Amaris]

Not even three hours later, Malou woke up to the sound of rustling in her room. Shapes began to form the moment her brain was raised from sleep, and she saw the familiar figure of her father. He held what seemed to be a pile of fabrics in his hand, and was headed for the door of her room.

“Wait!” Malou bolted straight up out of bed and struggled to shove her feet into slippers as she stumbled towards her door. A head rush slowed her down, likely a result of her skipping dinner for nothing but cheese and bread the night before. When she finally cleared her head, she ran after her father. Frantically she searched for him, her vision through the Force pouring out into the halls of the castle. She finally found him in the living room, standing before the fireplace. In disbelief, she watched as he dropped a match down onto the logs. They came to life, a bright white in her vision, and danced even more frantically as one by one he dropped the pieces of fabric into the flames. Immediately, a mix of betrayal, fury, and grief filled her. She had not even taken three steps from her room. There was nothing she could have done to stop it.

Malou slammed the door back behind her and screamed out in frustration. In moments her room became a mess as she tore various things from the shelves and dressers via the Force, sending them haphazardly into the suitcase she’d just unpacked the night before. She felt so betrayed by him. Why would he do that? Why was it so important to him that she saw with her eyes and not the Force? What did he gain from it? What compelled him to go so far as to destroy her belongings? Did he want nothing to control her? To get back at her for defying him?

“Something loved is never lost,” she scoffed out loud as she forced her suitcase shut with a firm shove of her two hands. It trailed behind her as she walked from her room and headed straight for her ship. When she reached the exit, one of the castle’s few guards approached her, asking her to wait. He barely got two words in before he was thrown to the side and out of Malou’s way. She knew exactly where she was going, and no one was going to stop her. She would head straight to Alpheridies, find the Tomb of Timos, get that lightsaber, and return. Her father would know pain like she had for years of her life. If he hated her defiance, he would hate her even more one day.

‘Something loved can certainly be lost.’ Only as Malou entered hyperspace did she finally feel reality. She was an acolyte, and though angry and determined, was perhaps aiming a bit out of her league. The Miralukan teen sent out a request for someone to join her on Alpheridies. If she knew Artorgias wasn’t busy, she might have just waited to contact him, but she was impatient. The request briefly detailed the tomb, as well as included the location in which they would meet.

-----

Whoever answered, they would meet the acolyte at a spaceport on Alpheridies, slumped against a wall, half asleep in the chilly mountain air. She was dressed plainly, in a black set of clothes which blurred the line between poncho, hoodie, and cloak. A cloth piece had been tied around her head to hide her eyes instead of the usual satin or silk pieces she preferred. The spaceport was remote, so other than the one or two workers maintaining it, the platform was empty other than her ship. The only indication of her affiliation were the two sabers clipped to her belt, and the heavy feeling of deep-seeded anger which polluted the area around her.

tag: @Mr. Teatime

 

[Darth Stolas]

Morgan increasingly found himself in an utterly terrible mood no matter how often he tried to keep himself busy and unthinking. Brutal training with droids on his ship or going out at night to random places for reasons he didn't entirely understand, handling the work of keeping up and expanding an intelligence network, the tedious efforts of drafting out the official laws of an empire. He threw himself into it with every ounce of energy he had in him.

Any spare time was spent doing something. The only time he let himself process his feelings at all was when he played the hallikset to keep his promises and each time he questioned why he'd done it or even felt a sense of regret. He wondered, as his ship set down on a planet of blind Force-seers, if this was going to be another one of those times that were beginning to weigh on his mind.

Why had he shown up at all? Certainly he'd chosen to accompany an acolyte's efforts before solely for his own entertainment. Morgan could be doing anything else in the galaxy, something he'd told himself at least a hundred times after Firrerre, but here he was anyway. He'd almost dressed in something fancy but memories attached to it pissed him right off. So he went with something more generic.

A black tunic with white fur-rimmed collar, black boots, white undertunic, leather gloves, and utility belt. Overtop a thick, sleeveless cloak and hood gave off "don't bother me" vibes if the quick-stepped and authoritative way he walked didn't already. That and the practical pair of lightsabers on his belt.

In this time of turmoil he found himself defaulting to his teacher's standards instead of his family's. He decided not to dwell on it or his thoughts about people being blind.

Malou would be greeted by the distinctive scent of sour-sweet citrus and herbs like mint and lemongrass, high quality cigarra smoke, and a touch of whiskey as leather scuffed against the cold ground in front of her.

Golden eyes stared down for a moment at the acolyte Morgan recognized. His presence in the Force was at once stormy and fiery, as of intense sunlight peeking through blackened clouds that could unleash bolts of lightning at a moment's notice.

"Having a bad day, little acolyte?" he asked in a tone of dry amusement. Morgan didn't need his hyper-perceptive eyes to read anger she was bleeding into the Force like a stuck bantha.

"Might help if you weren't sitting on the floor."

@lizziie

 

[Malou D'Amaris]

To say Malou was surprised that he was the one to answer her request was an understatement. What reason did a member of the Council have to join her on her little adventure?

"I'm fine," Malou lied as she stood up. Should her mood not have been so sour, she might have been more intimidated by Stolas than she would've been normally. Instead she was trying to decide if she was irritated or grateful that he had been the one to show up. On one hand, she would have less to worry about if things went south once she found the tomb, but on the other hand, she always felt like she was walking on eggshells around the Sith lords. After all, everyone knew what could happen if you happened to insult one...

That being said, it could be worse. 'Raze could've shown up.' Stolas just seemed to like to mess with people. She recalled specifically his questions of her on Sembla, which didn't seem to have much purpose. Of course, she could be gravely wrong, but she'd never heard of him defenestrating someone for some petty reason.

The wind suddenly picked up, blowing across the platform with significant speed. The icy cool fingers of the mountain air sliced across her exposed skin and sent chills down her spine. Malou shivered as she pulled her wool poncho-thing tighter to her skin, then began to walk towards the edge of the platform. As her fingers grazed her skin, she pulled the Force into them to warm her skin. Artorgias had really pushed her to learn to create fire through the Force, but she'd found she could use an eighth of the effort to heart objects--or warm herself.

"I'm not entirely sure where the tomb is," Malou began as she descended down the steps into the snowy mountain soil below. Two speeders were off to the side, so she diverted to head towards them. "I think I can find it though. I'll just need..." Malou swung her leg up onto the speeder and relaxed her body. She'd never really used the Force Sight to this extent, but it couldn't hurt to try. In the quiet mountain air, with clear weather and a clear mind, she should be able to search without getting overloaded. "...a moment."

This, of course, depended on her being able to dispel the hot anger which festered under her skin long enough to look.

tag: @Mr. Teatime

 

[Darth Stolas]

Morgan understood well enough that people trying to lie when they were upset meant they were uncomfortable. He seemed entirely unbothered by her tone or, really, anything at all about the situation. Malou couldn't see the Firrerreo's actual face of course which he was mildly thankful for in that moment.

What started as amusement about an acolyte stewing in the cold turned into thinking about great mountains he always dearly missed when a chill set it and how cooler weather wasn't common where he was from. Out of some habit he checked his datapad and immediately put it back.

"Every 'fine' person likes to sit in the cold," he commented mildly, although it was a little forced since he tried to shift his thoughts from somewhere other than where they'd been heading. Morgan kept his cloak in place by gripping where the two sides met in one hand and followed along, quite relaxed about this whole thing. Golden eyes gazed around at the sights to see, moving swiftly from one to the next as if staring too long was somehow bothersome.

Malou said something about not knowing where the actual tomb was, at which point Morgan returned his direction attention to her. He hopped onto his speeder without thinking- and then paused, realizing he was sitting on the rear side as if a phantom pilot was sitting in front of him. Without a word he pulled himself properly forward to fly it himself.

He was quiet for a little while as Malou tried to concentrate. Here that meant all of ten seconds.

"You're doing it wrong," the Sith Lord stated in a rare show of bluntless that clashed slightly with his clipped accent, going off the impressions he was getting through the Force. "Focus on why you want what you're looking for. You'll find it."

@lizziie

 

[Malou D'Amaris]

Malou was interrupted from trying to concentrate by the sound of Morgan chiming in. Though she wasn't pleased at first, and irritation began to swim it's way back to pool in her chest, she quickly realized she could have a lot to learn from the man. Why was irritation the first emotion which sprung to life? What he said made sense, and Malou knew the man knew what he was talking about. Before, in the awful, terrifying cave, he advised her to draw on her anger to fight whatever might come. While she had been mostly unsuccessful, in the grand scheme of things she had fared much better with that advice than she might have without it.

'Why do I want to find this tomb?' Malou furrowed her brows, squeezed her eyes shut as much as she could, and felt the rough fabric run against her chilled skin as she did so. She wanted to find this tomb because she’d found this woman deep, far down her mother’s family tree. She wanted to see this final resting place of this Timos Dovok--this Darth Izicinat. And maybe, just maybe, if she had something which wholelly belonged to an ancestor and her and her mother, she would not feel so powerless under her father’s thumb.

Gradually but with increasing speed, Malou looked beyond what she usually did and rolled her mind's eye through the snowy mountain valley. The leftover anger from the day before burned away any outside senses, allowing her to concentrate only on searching for what she knew was out there. Ten more minutes passed before she found a depression in the snow, diagonal between the ground of the valley and the sheer rising of a cliff. ‘There.’

Malou suddenly sat upright, and though her face was covered by fabric, her quick adjustment of posture would reveal she’d found it before she even opened her mouth to say so.

“I found it,” she declared with a whisper. Though her voice remained as the same quiet, low tone, there was an undercurrent of excitement within it. She leaned forward, placed her hands on the handles of the speeder, and wrapped her fingers around them. Without another word she sped off into the snow, following the curves of the mountain paths towards where she’d seen the entrance to the tomb.

tag: @Mr. Teatime

 

[Darth Stolas]

Morgan for once didn't ask some other sort of leading question, letting the acolyte process what it was he'd said. Malou could either figure it out they'd just sit here for a while until either she did or the Firrerreo got bored. The reasons why were irrelevant. Rather what mattered was directionless anger, while traditional, was in Stolas' opinion terrible for focusing on delicate tasks.

Personal experience and experimentation taught him as much.

He lit a cigarra for the wait, idly spreading his own senses out into the environment, exploring them without the use of his eyes although not so far as Malou was trying to go. It was just practice, another way to occupy his mind without defaulting to the very tempting datapad clipped to his belt.

The cigarra had just finished when the acolyte spoke up and Morgan's eyes opened again. "Well done," Morgan answered back, sounding pleased. His speeder rumbled as it flew after the acolyte's, slightly behind and to the left, nictitating membranes snicting over golden eyes to ward off dust and other debris.

In spite of himself Morgan enjoyed flying dangerously along the winding mountain roads, his lips curling upward as the sensation replaced others. Gathered snowflakes whipped up in their wake across the terrain, roaring wind and engines drowning out most everything else.

He was almost disappointed when a sheer cliff appeared up ahead. Morgan didn't need concentration to sense the general aura this eldritch place they approached. His speeder slowed on the approach, habitually cautious.

"Do you have a plan?" he asked conversationally like they were weren't going after an ancient Sith tomb.

@lizziie

 

[Malou D'Amaris]

They would arrive after fifteen minutes or so. Malou drifted to a stop several meters out from the location, taking in the sight of the recess in the snow as she did so. She swung off her speeder and sank into the snow, which was about a foot and a half deep. The acolyte started to head towards the location, but hesitated when Stolas spoke.

'Do I have a plan?' Honestly, he was the last person she thought might've shown up. She had an idea of a plan, but nothing concrete. Was she a bit nervous to admit she was going tomb raiding with with a vague history of the cave, and no real plan? Yeah, maybe a bit. If she dwelled on it too long, everything about this made her nervous, but she had been burying it under the rolling thunder of spite she carried with her.

"No," Malou responded after a short pause, then continued to walk towards the recess. She extended out a hand and, through the Force, caused the snow covering the door to fall away in a flurry of powder. Underneath the ice and snow was a door engraved with various carvings, but most notable was a low-relief sculpture of a weeping woman with six wings which was carved in the dead center of the entrance. As Malou approached it, she began to study the engraving just underneath. In Miralukan, it read: "Here lies the Mother of Consumption in the Grave of the Restless."

'The Mother of Consumption...' If this wasn't the Tomb of Timos, nothing was. Malou grew silent after she finished reading the inscription out loud. While Stolas would know that she intended to visit a tomb, the request Malou sent out did not go into detail about the tomb itself.

"This is the Tomb of Timos," Malou said aloud as she continued forward towards the door. "the final resting place of Darth Izicinat." The acolyte pressed her palm firmly against the door of the tomb. "She murdered thousands of Miralukans to consume-" The acolyte made air quotes with her fingers. She still wasn't quite sure what that meant. "-their...Force essence, or whatever. She is buried here with some of the thousands she killed. It's said they keep her contained here."

Maybe Malou was glad Stolas had showed up. As her palm pressed against the cold stone, a shiver ran down her spine.

tag: @Mr. Teatime

 

[Darth Stolas]

Morgan rolled his eyes- not that Malou could see the gesture, but it was the thought that counts. At least the acolyte about the lack of plan. He'd be far more irritated if she'd lied to him. Lack of plan wasn't going to stop him, however. It's not as if they had a map of the interior or similar.

Miralukan was not one of the languages the Firrerreo could read, on top of being a curious concept. How did they read it, Force inscription? Goldens stared at the engravings that Malou was also clearly reading despite her covered eyes and blinked.

"She had a fitting name, then," he commented dryly. Draining things through the Force regularly had a bad habit of escalating over time. The word 'contained' worried him a little. Old Sith spirits liked to stick around if they could, bound to a place or thing.

He examined the door itself, head tilted slightly to the left with open curiosity. A new cigarra was lit with a flick of the Force making a flash of fire at the end. A boot twice tapped the ancient stone. His face abruptly fell, both angry and melancholy, as he imagined silver eyes lighting up from all the history here. Morgan sighed with frustration and shook his head.

"Prepared to enter?"

@lizziie

 

[Malou D'Amaris]

'Am I prepared to enter?' Short answer: yes. Long answer: she had no idea, because she'd never done anything like this before. Sure, she'd felt her way through the hallways of Exegol. That was, to a degree, spooky, but less so because it wasn't a tomb. Artorgias had been with her nearly the entire time as well, and all she really had to do was follow his lead and keep up. This was different; this was her idea. She was leading this.

Despite some amount of reservation, Malou nodded as she removed the palm of her hand from the cold stone. Now she needed to figure out how to get this thing open. The stone seemed to be too thick to cut through, which meant they would either need to find an already existing way in, or attempt to move the door via the Force.

'I doubt they would create an easy way to enter,' Malou thought to herself as she examined the carved stone through the lens of the Force. There was no indication of any buttons or secret entrances, but down the dead center of the wall was a thin line where the stone curved inwards just the slightest. 'The door probably opens outwards.'

Malou took a couple steps back and reached both of her hands out towards the massive stone door, eyebrows furrowed in concentration as she focused on the Force around the object.

"I think the door opened outwards."

She began to pull on it, trying to open it, but she struggled. Never before had she attempted to manipulate an object of this mass; she was a bit out-classed it seemed. If Stolas did not help within a handful of seconds of her trying (and not doing so well), she would say:

"I don't think I can do this without your help."

He was a councilor, after all.

tag: @Mr. Teatime

 

[Darth Stolas]

He wasn't in the mood to process every minute detail and potential outcome of Malou's hesitation before the nod, deciding to just assume she meant "maybe", and moved on with his life. The acolyte's own examination seemed to reveal something, specifically that it was "pull, not push" kind of tomb. Power and will focused around it, the Miraluka girl trying her very hardest to move it.

Morgan was no help at all, watching with a look of mild amusement, but also curiosity. He wasn't going to move a muscle until she asked. Luckily, she did, or he'd have sat there for at least fifteen minutes.

"Don't bother with the entire mass," he instructed in firm tones. "Use proper leverage. What is Artorigas even teaching you?" Slender fingers raised. Morgan's will extended, intentionally low, toward where the two halves of the heavy door met in the middle. It sunk into the stone, pulling around the center line like handles. Not anywhere near full strength, naturally. Just enough to lighten Malou's load if she adjusted her focus.

Once she did the doors would drag open, dust from countless years of disuse crumbling in clouds to the ground. Beyond lay a hallway no larger than the doors itself, quite out of character for the typical Sith. Immediately Morgan was suspicious of the sight. Ancient lords adored their grandoise hallways.

Along the sides, dim, red-orange flames flickered to life atop metal candelabra embedded in the walls.

@lizziie

 

[Malou D'Amaris]

Thankfully Stolas did chose to help her, but he did not just do so. He provided some context for what he went on to do, which was quickly noticed and appreciated. When he asked, perhaps just rhetorically, what her master was teaching her, the acolyte answered in a murmur under her breath. "How to set things on fire." It was a whisper--barely enunciated-- though perhaps just loud enough that Stolas might have caught it in the dead quiet of the snowy mountains.

Malou, with direction and help from the man, was able to drag open the stone doors. As a crack in the door appeared, her vision was able to flood through to allow her take in the appearance of the tomb. The hallway which led deeper into the mountain was carved from the mountain stone but had been polished smooth. It was decorated with the metal candelabra which had been embedded in the walls every so often, but was otherwise empty of carvings or inscriptions. While Stolas might have found this suspicious, Malou was none the wiser. She had never ventured into the tomb of a Sith.

The first thing Malou did was pull a scarf up from her neck and over her nose a mouth. The dust which billowed out had gone unnoticed by her sight through the Force, but not by her lungs. The acolyte let out a small but forceful cough, then after a moment of hesitation, stepped foot into the tomb.

As soon as she crossed the threshold between the open air and the smoothed stone floor of the crypt, a familiar sensation ran over her. It raised the hair on the back of her neck and sent a chill down her spine just as the cave on that unknown planet had. There was a noticeable difference in strength; it was subtle here and nothing like what she'd experienced before. Still, it was not a welcome feeling.

"Have you explored a Sith tomb before?" Her words echoed in the quiet hall, bouncing down and off the walls further down and returning to them a few seconds later. Malou felt as if the question would be in the affirmative, but if anything she was hoping for a reason to break the silence. She continued forward as she spoke, moving at a cautious pace down the smooth stone hall way. Her boots, which had been muted in the snow, made quiet taps as the rubber base lifted and pressed down on the floor again and again.

They would not walk for long before the hallway ended with another door. By now the light of day had been replaced entirely by the lit candelabra on the walls, and the fresh mountain air gave way to the stale, untouched oxygen that had been left here for millennia. The door itself was smaller than the hallway, about five feet wide on each door panel and nine feet tall overall. It was made of a dark metal material which had been carved and chipped away at to depict what appeared to be countless nondescript, humanoid figures. Some were lying down, others slumped over, but none stood still and all were facing a single figure in the near center of the door. Below that central figure was another inscription, written in Miralukan within a rectangular box.

Here lie the dead.
Those who did not fall, but were taken,
Thrown into the restive space between worlds,
And damned to non-life and death in spirit.

Here lie the lost.
They found resolution in protection,
Strength in numbers and unity of cause;
A seal to keep unbroken.

Here they lie in the Grave of the Restless.
Bled corpses under cold stone,
May the Light of Trishula guide them,
And may the Dark never pierce their shield.​

As she read the script, Malou would translate to the best of her ability, though it was clear she wasn't entirely sure the meaning behind every word. Language was a funny little thing that liked to change, and whatever was inscribed here was not the same Miralukan she had studied at home.

"Must everything be so cryptic all the time?" Malou groaned after she finished reading. Should her eyes not have been closed behind a blindfold, she might've rolled them to the back of her head in annoyance. 'Maybe one day I'll find something that doesn't insist on being flowery and shit. It could very well just say "people were buried here." '

After a moment Malou would reach forward and push on the door, attempting to open it. It didn't budge.

tag: @Mr. Teatime

 

[Darth Stolas]

Morgan stared for a few seconds at the young acolyte, dark brows furrowing. He didn't see how setting things on fire was the most important thing to teach an up-and-coming Sith over the foundation of their entire Force-using career, but he also wasn't the girl's teacher and didn't comment. If only she could actually see the Firrerreon's face, that would be comment enough.

"Once or twice," Morgan answered, deciding to include the gauntlet for the gauntlet on Korriban. As much as he enjoyed studying old things to varying degrees based on subject, dungeon-delving had rarely been the focus of his attention. Frankly, he'd read more about such things than done them himself. Suddenly this seemed like a worrying gap in his experiences.

He cleared his throat, waving a hand before himself to clear the dust with a brush of the Force, sending the cloud somewhere off to the side instead. Keen sense of smell picked up long untouched things that scented the air from soaking in it. Long sealed, and being a tomb, there was no real source of airflow from the outside. Morgan moved behind and to Malou's left, black boots still managing to be relatively quiet on the stone purely by force of habit, each step light and easy.

Golden eyes stared at the inscription before them before passing over it to the designs upon the doorway, since he couldn't read Miralukan. Malou translated it aloud in somewhat halting tones while Morgan listened, head tilting ever so slightly to the left in consideration of the mural. Without thinking his datapad came off his belt and he took several pictures of the door, frowned, and put the datapad back.

"The inscription is a warning," Morgan said with a fair degree of confidence. Or at least it sounded as much to someone with skill in doublespeak and innuendo. "This place wasn't meant to be breached." Then he shrugged. "Nor was any Sith tomb, for that matter. Yet Korriban is covered in empty catacombs."

Slender fingers came forward when Malou failed to open this new door, pressing against the stone. With his inhuman and adult strength, perhaps- nope, not an inch. The door gave no indication it was even meant to move at all. Morgan glared at the door as if it'd done him a great personal wrong.

"Try the Force."

@lizziie

 

[Malou D'Amaris]

‘Try the Force.’ That would make sense, wouldn’t it? The Miralukan teen acknowledged his suggestion by taking a few steps back and raising her palms parallel to the engraved surface of the stone door. She pushed on the door as a whole, but focused most of her energy on the bottom where the weight would be concentrated. Malou did not wish to make the same mistake twice in front of the same person.

For a second it did not budge, but this door was not nearly as big as the last. It only took a moment of extra effort from the acolyte before the sound of stone scraping against stone filled the air. Slowly a gap opened between the two frames of the door, revealing the beginnings of another room. Though Malou could begin to observe the inside, the only light in the room came from the lit flames behind them. And when the doors became stuck on something, a gap of only a foot and a half was left for them to squeeze through.

"Something's blocking the other side," Malou explained as she dropped her arms and approached the opening. When she reached it, her vision spilled around the corner and suddenly she could see the rubble which blocked the doors from opening any further. The room itself was mostly empty, but there were about three doors on each wall that she could see. She was hesitant, but regardless, Malou slipped through the gap.

"The room is empty," she added once inside. Her voice did not echo in the slightest in the empty room; in fact, the sound disappeared into the dead air nearly as quickly as it arrived. The Miralukan acolyte stood facing the central door on the wall directly in front of the door she'd just entered from. It was about thirty feet away, and on either side of it, was another door ten feet from that one. "There are a lot of doors in here."

tag: @Mr. Teatime

 

[Darth Stolas]

Morgan watched Malou push open the doors, grimacing a little at the unpleasant stone-on-stone grinding that resulted. His tongue clicked with annoyance when the doors got stuck on something. Typical, really.

The Firrerreo carefully went through the crack of an opening behind Malou, brushing dust off his clothes afterward where they'd touched the door. A boot lightly tapped a bit of the rubble and looked around to find the source. It turned out to be a chunk of the ceiling that looked vaguely like it'd been gouged out and thrown. His brow raised a little before golden eyes turned to fully take in the rest of the chamber.

As Malou pointed out, there were many doors, some on each wall except the one they'd come from. After the acolyte spoke Morgan hummed for a moment, listening to the strange acoustics of the room with a small frown. It was like the stone absorbed sound the moment it was touched. Definitely not normal, but at least there wasn't some kind of animated burning skeleton or something this time.

"They all look the same," he grumbled about the doors. There weren't even symbols or sigils to differentiate them from one another. Every slab of stone had the exact same cut and dimensions and a truly impressive layer of dust. "Rule of go left?" Morgan suggested, waving his fingers toward the leftmost door. It shook but didn't move in any direction. Morgan frowned harder.

"Or not." He tried the rightmost door and it ground to the side, thumping into place. The brief entryway beyond curved to the right before opening up in a broad, round chamber with high ceilings and no sources of light whatsoever. Etched into the floor was a round series of tiles, each with a symbol in the Miraluka language on it. Morgan could see well enough in the dark but he still couldn't read that language.

@lizziie

 

[Malou D'Amaris]

'Rule of go left?' Malou had never heard of such a "rule," but they had to pick a door anyway. Unfortunately, it seemed that the leftmost door would not be theirs to explore at the moment. The rightmost one slid to the side with ease, releasing the rough sound of stone grinding into stone into the dead air. Again, it disappeared within the moment it appeared. There was something incredibly uneasy about sound acting the way it was acting in a room that should echo with every movement.

"Well, ladies first." Malou marched straight for the open doorway, feeling her way through the vision given by the Force. When they entered the chamber and the symbols came into view, Malou was able to begin to decipher them. It didn't take her long though. The symbols, of which there were seven, read the numbers one through seven. There was nothing else in the room but these series of tiles.

"It's just the numbers one through seven," said Malou. It appeared that the tiles could be pushed down, so the Miralukan assumed that there was a specific order in which they would need to be pushed. Her first thought was to push them in numerical order, but a part of her was suspicious that such an idea would be much too easy.

"We could try pushing them down in order but I have a suspicion that is far too obvious."

tag: @Mr. Teatime

 

[Darth Stolas]

Morgan scowled at the floor tiles as Malou explained the symbols etched into them were numbers. He squinted around the rest of the room. Nothing to be seen or sensed, just the tiles. Morgan decided, very arbitrarily, that he didn't like the tiles.

They looked to move downward, not around like a children's puzzle. Morgan stared at them for a few seconds, very still. "What do you know about who was entombed here?" the Firrerreon asked Malou, still looking at the tiles. His assumption was this lock-thing was meant to be triggered correctly by someone with knowledge of the tomb. Given Morgan was here out of curiosity to support Malou, that wasn't him.

Given there were seven sins, that could provide some clue. Otherwise, his closest guess was just to press down whichever number corresponded to whoever was buried in this tomb.

@lizziie

 

[Malou D'Amaris]

What did she know about Darth Izicinat? Well, not a lot, considered the acolyte to herself. She was one of the founding council members... She was killed by her own daughter... She's the "sin of gluttony..." Cross-referencing her own sparse knowledge on this woman with what she was seeing here with the tiles only seemed to connect with the number seven. Seven sins, seven tiles, and pressing the tiles in order would be way too simple.

"Izicinat was one of the three founding members of the Consiliul de Sapte, along with Krol and Myslec," Malou began. The Miralukan girl approached the circle and stopped by the tile numbered "3" in Miralukan. "She was the third council member to either die or leave, right after Senteur's murder and Roem's exile." Malou paused there for a second, indecision plaguing her as she debated whether or not she wanted to press the third tile. She could see Stolas standing there, waiting. What if I'm wrong? There was a lot of pressure on her at that moment, but she couldn't tell if she was just materializing it out of nowhere or what. Whatever. Weaponized apathy would serve her again today. The girl stepped forward and placed her foot firmly on the third tile, pushing it down into the ground as she did. The stone sank slowly for a few seconds before settling into place with a loud click!

Several moments passed and nothing happened. It was only after the girl tentatively removed her foot from the tile that the ground of grinding stone began to grate against her ears. The circle of stone in the middle of the tiles began to pull to one side, revealing a staircase leading down further into the depths of the tomb. Malou took a long, deep breath then began to descend down them.

As they were walking, Malou couldn't contain her curiosity any longer. "May I ask you why you wanted to come here?" There was a dull indifference in her voice at first, but the tail end of the question raised in intonation and betrayed her interest. Surely he has many more important things to do? He's a council member! Now that her anger had worn off in the cold, the "little acolyte" certainly felt out of place walking next to someone who could probably flick her across the room with ease. I hope he's nothing like Raze... She was still discontent with the events that had gone down at Artorgias' castle that day. Though it gave her a purpose, she was worried she might be the next victim of a tyrant's tantrum if she mispoke.

tag: @Mr. Teatime