Across the Stars (Reylo fanfiction)

Lava and Shadow

Kylo's breathing schwooshed in and out through his mask's filter. He stepped off his ship's gangplank and onto the crinkly earth. Dust swirled around his boots as he walked towards the mountain, and then settled again in the windless landscape. As the ground sloped upwards, he saw the door cut into the side of the hill -- it was filled with rocks. He stretched out his hand and the debris began to float away. A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. Of course he would find himself lifting rocks as he embarked upon the most important quest of his life. Damn you, Luke. Though, he supposed he should be thanking his former instructor for this most rudimentary of lessons. Once he had cleared the way, he lit his lightsabre and held it in front of him as a torch while walking down the dark tunnel. Beneath his robes the hairs on his skin prickled. He stopped. Blocking his way stood a slab of stone across the width and height of the tunnel. He touched a gloved hand to it and brushed dust out of the groves of twisting inscriptions seared into its warm surface. In the centre of the smooth blockade, someone had carved five concentric circles. The dark knight outstretched his hand towards these. He grimaced. The dust on the tunnel's floor began to stir. The rock shuddered. Ever so slowly, the disks began to rotate around each other. He tensed his muscles tighter. The circles began to blur as they spun faster and faster. Then a snapping and popping sound echoed around him, like a knee being dislocated from the joint, as a crack split the centremost ring in half and slid up and down the stone.

It did not, however, stop at the bottom of the blockade, but kept slithering apart the stone along the length of the tunnel floor. He crouched, energy coiled within him like a cobra. With a rumble, the stone creaked apart to reveal a doorway. As it did though, it took with it the ground beneath him. Looking down, he saw that lava bubbled twenty metres below him as his feet were spread further and further apart from each other on two now separate, ever shrinking, lengths of rock. He sprang forward, leaping between the sides of the cave floor. As he burst through the now open doorway, he pushed himself as high into the air as he could and summersaulted. Coming back down, his feet touched solid ground again. Glancing two feet behind him, he saw an open expanse dropping down to, yup, more lava. Man, these sith lords really had a thing for the dramatics! Pot calling the helmet black ... he thought he heard a voice whisper in his mind. He shook his head. Holding up his sabre, he glanced around the chamber.

Hmm ... he walked over to a brazier filled with black coals. He touched his sabre to them. They caught alight and suddenly the room was bathed in a red glow. He looked up. The flame-cradle was positioned so that it sat directly below a formation of crimson crystal stabbed into the roof, which reflected the firelight and bled its hue across the entire cavern.

Glancing around he saw statues cut directly into the walls lining the edges of the chamber. Each figure was depicted with a lightsabre in their hands. Their grave faces stared at him. Kylo swallowed and clutched his own weapon closer to his body. Between the statues, someone had opened little nooks in the stone and filled these with scrolls. Paper scrolls. His mind flicked to his charcoal drawings. Inhaling, he forced his mind on the task at hand. Other artefacts sat on podiums dotted around the room. He scanned them briefly, before his eyes were drawn to a raised platform, upon which someone had placed a glass chest. He unlit his weapon and placed it on the ground beside him as he knelt in front of the transparent box. On the lower shelf someone had placed more scrolls. These were bound with metal rings, engraved with the five concentric circle seal that had been on the door. On the upper shelf, someone had laid out atop a silver piece of fabric three daggers. The weapons were entirely metallic, with hilts of shimmering silver and blades black as the expanse of space. Like the scroll bindings, their hilts were also marked with the five ring seal, although the blacksmith had formed the circles out of alternating rings of red and white gems. The way that they were laid out and the indents on the material showed that two daggers of the set seemed to be missing. He blew dust off the top of the glass case and placed his hands on either side. Breathing out evenly, he drew up in his mind's eye the image of Rey's face as his former master tortured her. His fingers clenched into claws as he pulsed the energy that the image summoned within him into their tips. A hiss echoed through the cavern as the clear sides shattered of the box.

Suddenly, Kylo felt himself gripped in the force -- another's frostbitten fury slicing through his veins.

"What have we here, Theif?" a shivering voice ricocheted off the walls.

Jaw tensing as he fought the hold on him, the Knight of Ren pushed his head to the side. One of the statues, a human male with a high brow and long beard, seemed to glow red -- even more so than what the strange chandelier already bathed it in. Then out of the stone slid a figure. It shifted between solid and translucent and bore the exact likeness of the statue through which it had entered the chamber. He held a long staff in his hands, which had a curving end that nested a flickering ball of energy. The apparition flicked his wrist. Kylo heard his mask decompress before it was ripped from his face and thrown across the room.

The ghostly man scowled, "Why have you come to my temple, Theif?"

"If you keep calling me that then you must already know," Kylo spat.

The ghost walked towards him. "You come to steal one of my masterpieces."

"Your powers of deduction have seemingly diminished, Old Man," a different voice spoke. Kylo felt the force ripple beside him. His eyes widened as there appeared a spectral figure of woman with a wrinkle-less face. Her cheekbones and lips seemed to be a direct copy of the bearded fellow. Like him she also held a staff (though the end of hers containing the energy sphere was fashioned in the shape of some kind of big cat with spines). Her aura shimmered a bright violet. Kylo noticed a slash through the skin and robes across her chest as if someone had stabbed her.

"Cayel!" the bearded ghost flustered, "How did you get into my temple, you treacherous witch!?" He glared at her and thrust the end of his staff in her direction. She was flung back, though she caught herself mid-air and spun, pushing the energised end of her own staff back at him. He growled as she sent him twirling away. Were he solid there would have been an almighty crash as he hit the cavern wall.

Kylo felt himself released from the force hold. He grabbed his sabre and lit it in the direction of the man.

"Halt there, youngling!" she said through gritted teeth, her eyes still trained on the red rimmed figure. Lifting her hand she switched off his blade, "You cannot fight a force ghost with a mortal lightsabre, even if he is a sith lord! What do they teach them in these schools," she muttered, waving her hand and clipping the weapon back to his belt. She put a hand on his shoulder. "You must leave this fool to me." The ghostly lady flicked her fingers and one of the scrolls from the lower shelf that had been encased in glass flew up into Kylo's hands. He saw that in the innermost circle of red gems on the metal band, someone had imbedded a small blue stone. He gripped the paper and placed it inside the inner pocket of his cloak.

The bearded man ripped himself from the woman's force hold and dropped to the ground.

The woman snarled, stood in front of Kylo and bent her knees in a fighting stance. She snapped her wrist behind her and a section of the far wall crumbled, revealing a staircase on the other side of a chasm. "Go!" she said to the Knight of Ren force pushing him towards the stair. Then she turned her full gaze to the crimson ghost. "This is between you and me, Grandfather."

Kylo glanced over his shoulder as he reached the hole in the wall. The older ghost shot crackling lightning at the one whom he had called Cayel. She absorbed it with her staff and shot it back at him; he spun his staff, but wasn't quick enough as her electricity caught him in the shoulder. He grunted and reached out a hand. "You are no granddaughter of mine!"

She screamed as he levitated her off the ground and brought her towards him. Wincing, she snapped up her forearms and smacked him in the jaw with the butt end of her staff. White light exploded from their impact. The walls began to shake as the two dropped to the ground on opposite sides of the cavern. She turned around. "Are you seeking to join the afterlife before your time?!" she yelled at Kylo. "The scroll will give you further instructions. Now go -- save your Rey! And for Force's sake, stop blocking Anakin!"

Blocking Anakin? What the -- but he had no time to ponder her words as dust and rock started to fall from the ceiling. Kylo gathered his concentration and propelled himself with the force across the chasm to the stairs.

"Up or down?" he asked.

"Down!" his strange guardian yelled back, "And beware the leviathan!" These were her last words to him before she flung her hand back and sealed the impromptu door that she had created.

Kylo was in the dark again. He could still feel the temple chamber rumbling. Shaking his head, he lit his sabre and ran down the stairs.

***