Episode X Dark Hunter

Wanderings in the Dark

There was someone in the next room, four in fact, who could barely be seen in the dark twilit room. Their forms were still, and statuesque, as they stood in a circle with their heads down in a trance, each motionless and unliving.

Videsse froze, holding her breath. The acolyte forms stood only ten meters in front of her and did not appear to move, except for the wisps of their cloaks that were probably just the dim light playing tricks on Videsse's already deceitful eyes. The door behind her slid closed with a relatively deafening grind. Videsse raised her shoulders and lowered her head at the sound. Even though it was the same as when the door opened, now it seemed unbearable. The acolytes did not move, as if deaf and blind and rooted to the ground. Without another thought, the cloaked Videsse leapt to her right into a recess where there was a curving stairway climbing upward in the mountain rock.

Videsse peeked beyond the corner wall of the stairway, still holding her breath and clenching her fists. She pinched her hands between her knees in case her tremors inadvertently made audible scratches against the grey stone wall. She exhaled slowly and tremorously as she attempted another controlled breath.

The persons were gathered in the center of an expansive room that was fifteen meters tall with a distant and darkened ceiling that flickered with studded, punctate crystals. These crystals that glowed like stars, made it appear like staring into the sky on a clear night.

At another time, we might lie on our backs and chase the crystalline stars with our eyes, wondering why they had come to be, and why we naturally compared them to the cosmos. Now, however, these acolytes did not look at them. The crystals were not Arkanian diamonds, though they could have been confused for them easily to an untrained eye. They actually glowed on their own, not simply refracting light as diamonds do. This gave the room a natural, and yet eerie atmosphere, with fluxes of black specters seeming to fly about the room. As I had stated earlier in this account, this was a simple trick of the mind on the eyes common in dim light, of course; the same trick we had seen at the grave of Boba and Terrah, we can assume.

The four people, two men and two women were clothed in black robes and their heads were hooded. Their sexes could only be determined due to the more feminine style of the two robes, which were shaped with a high galactic waistline typical for females. They stood facing each other on the edges of another black circle. As their faces were directed downward at the center they mumbled in accord a repeated Arkanian phrase, harsh and yet melodic. They were real, and they were alive.

Videsse's entry did not seem to disturb them in the slightest, but she was not going to test it. After one last observation--she saw another mirrored stairway and door on the opposite wall beyond the acolytes--she then ascended. The acolytes were oblivious.

Videsse took each step with extreme attention. Her left leg spasmed in pain, but she braced it with a tight grip. She lurched to look behind multiple times, thinking that she had heard one of the acolytes ascending the black stairway behind her, but there was nothing, nothing evident for our eyes to see. Nothing corporeal, I should say.

With labor, she eventually climbed the twenty steps to the next level's door. Before opening the door, she fell back against the wall and disabled the cloak so she could check her power cell reserves. They were low, ten percent. The power cell was removed and placed in her waist pouch, and a new one replaced it. Four were left. She reactivated the cloak, and opened the door, more cautiously this time.

If only she could find a display console where she could search for droid power docks, she hoped. It was half of a hope, for she knew it would be programmed in the Arkanian language, and she was prepared for it to be unfruitful.

The current level looked, to her, as if it was a library. It consisted of a long hallway that was cut deep into the heart of the mountain, with at least thirty large round rooms on either side. Each recess was lined with books and scrolls, ancient and frail. Like the lower level, it was oddly dim, the acolytes apparently preferring the darkness. For this reason, Videsse's cloak worked well, her vapor lines barely visible. Although, that was no excuse for indiscretion.

This level, like the previous one, was occupied with undistracted acolytes. They walked like ghosts, among the archives, some reading, others associating in their unrecognizable language, and others strangely standing still and staring blankly in the darkness as if waiting to catch a glimpse of someone or something. These people were supremely odd to our heroine. Videsse slipped into recesses to let some pass occasionally.

Nevertheless, she continued down the hall cautiously and irregularly. To her satisfaction, halfway down the hall, a semi-circular display console rested with no one occupying it. She could see acolytes in the distance on either side, black shadows gliding in the icteric light. Her hands quickly moved through the digital display, trying icons that were labeled with unfamiliar Arkanian glyphs. It took her a minute or two, but eventually, a schematic of the compound lit the screen. The architecture implied their functions since the labels did not help. Levels above her, it appeared, were more archives and then living quarters. Above that, she located what she was looking for ship docks, generators, storages, and then droid docks.

"Scoundrel's luck," Videsse said to herself, then checked herself, shaking her head at the accidental slip. However, the accident was understandable. She had seen something on the schematics, something that watered a seed of hope within her, a seed that had seemed to die months ago. Did the dark brown seed crack just a hair? Or has it already been cracking; a cotyledon of hope just learning to stretch its delicate stem toward the light? What water dripped on the scorched ground feeding the dead seed? What did she see?

One of the droid docks was a picture of a PZ droid