Chapter 1: Yerdis (Prophecy)


Three times the bells tolled. Three times they rang, resonating in the air like bellowing alarms forewarning doom. She knew what she had to do and even though the air was filled with smoke and sulphurous ash, she pressed on. And though the ground quaked underneath her and threatened to give away with each step she took, she climbed up the steep mountain that towered in front of her. Though it was dark and the heat oppressive, she knew that turning back was not an option. As she scaled the huge rock she bore witness to two brothers, one dressed in black the other in white, both wielding sabres and both wearing the proud scars of warriors upon their bodies. The one in black shed a single tear before striking down the one in white; the one in white shed a single tear, before he, in his last throes, struck down his brother in black. So it had to be; one could not exist without the other.

And so she pressed on and saw powerful men signing papers and shaking hands, preparing for great struggles to come. And she saw them huddled around in corners, conspiring against each other, whispering one lie to some and different lies to others.

Three times they tolled again, this time much louder that before. She had never heard an apocalyptic cacophony of such ear-splitting magnitude before. It was anguish and Armageddon. It was death and disorder. It was pain and pandemonium.

Now she bore witness to a mighty king with long silver hair, dressed in black and wearing a crown of bones upon his head. In his right hand he held a sabre and in the other he held a chain and with those, he would carve out a great empire for himself. A spider crawled out of the King's mouth, weaving a web of deceit that would stretch from one end of the galaxy to the other. A queen, a cleric and a warrior would get caught in the web, fighting a hopeless endeavour to escape its silky threads. It was to no avail. At his sides stood his brothers, one tall and strong, the other small and frail. The king would laugh and his brothers would cry.

Yet again the bells rang. Their harrowing sound made her quiver with fear.

And yet, she could not help but find it beautiful. It compelled her, lured her in with its sweet promises of eternal pain and suffering, songs of lamentation and morose compositions. She resumed her journey up the mountain and before long she could see all the way to the very top. And even though there were smoke and ashes in the air, obscuring her view, she could just barely make out the silhouette of a lonesome tree standing at the summit. Resilient as herself, defiant to the end. She pressed on through the fumes and the intense warmth, paying little mind to the heat that burned her skin and the soot that clogged her nostrils. The old oak called out to her with its screams of anguish. Suddenly she heard a horn klaxon, a horn that could eat stars and destroy planets. The ground quaked and the tree perished before her very eyes as the horn played its macabre melody. She turned her head and saw a great iron eye hanging in the sky, eclipsing the sun and dimming the light even further. She froze as it looked at her and she looked right back at it.

"Jormungand!" she cried at the top of her lungs. "You have awoken!"

Once again the horn bellowed and now 1024 men and women of different shapes and sizes appeared before her. They would whisper and conspire like the men she saw further down, but somehow it was clear to her that these men were different; these men and women were of old blood and old money.

The horn roared once again, this time, she knew, for the last time. The sound of the horn was replaced by that of hooves galloping over rock, slow, deep and devastating like thunder.
"The Last Avatar!" she cried. "Rejoice! Our doom is upon us!"
And so a man approached from the skies, riding his proud white steed. In his right hand he bore a sabre and in the other, a flame. A crown of iron rested upon his head and his cloak was white as ivory. With one swing of his sword he decapitated all the 1024 men and women in front of him. As their blood splashed upon him, it discoloured his robe, which quickly turned black as night.

Another horn bellowed, even deeper than before. A dark void opened in the sky and thousands of twisted creatures of cruelty hitherto unknown emerged. Savages with mutilated bodies and grotesque appearances poured in and cried a warcry so loud and so frightening that she thought that her eardrums had shattered. These beings, these brutish fiends would be the bane of all life, cleaning the slate and making way for new life. The rider and his squire took up their swords and challenged the beings. They rode against them, filled with fury and bloodlust. A dark shadow descended upon her and her ilk. A thousand shadowy appendages grabbed her and pulled her in, consuming her. Making her one with nothingness.

She gasped for air. She was soaked in sweat and so were her sheets. She sat herself up, wiped the sweat from her face and rubbed her eyes. "Gee…" she whispered to herself. It was quite embarrassing, actually, but ever since her blood had begun to come once in a while, she had been having these recurring dreams. She lifted her blanket to check. "Oh no…"

"Another nightmare, Yer?" Ryam asked her, whispering softly. Ryam slept in the bunk bed at the left side of her own, in the second bed from the floor. He was quite the light sleeper, so oftentimes when she had her nightmares she would wake him. He had sworn to her that it was not a problem and that she needed not concern herself, but she could not help but feel bad whenever she robbed him of precious sleep.

"Ryam…" she whispered. "It happened again, Ryam".
Most girls had their blood before they were 13 years of age and had been sent away to be trained as Seydkvinnor, but Yerdis' blood had first come now at the tender age of 16. When she was 15, when they thought that she would never be a fertile woman, the elders at the cloister had told her that she had been blessed with a pure body and that she could train as an initiate with the other boys. Now however, things had changed and her impure flesh had betrayed her. Ryam, however, was always loyal.

"I'll get some towels from the privy" he said in a hushed voice. "You can borrow one of my spare robes for today". She looked at the clock hanging on the plain white wall in the other end of the dormitory.

04:37

It would be another 23 minutes before they were called for breakfast and morning meditation. "Okay" she said. "Please be quick about it, Ry" she said, spying for witnesses. He nodded and sneaked off. Five minutes he came back with the towels. She cleaned up, handed him her sheets and took his spare ones. The towel was used to halt the flow. When the washladies would come by later, he would tell them that the sheets were his, informing them that he had nosebleeds when he slept. 15 minutes later when old Master Leodoth came to wake them there was no trace of the little accident that had happened the night before.

The old master, gout-stricken and toothless as he was would lead the initiates to the meditation court to greet the rising sun. "There is no emotion, there is peace" he would recite as he had thousands of times before as the children would wash their feet, hands and scalps before entering the court. "There is no ignorance, there is knowledge" he would say in his frail, old voice as Yerdis washed her scalp in the waterbowl. She let her fingers run along the tegument where her beautiful flaxen curls used to be. Life in between the walls of the cloister was simple and pleasant, but most of all she missed her golden hair. The golden curls she had been bequeathed.

When Yerdis was a little girl, her mother would always tell her this story of how Yerdis' father had cut off her hair because he loved her so much and wanted to have something to remember her by. Yerdis' mother would smile and stroke Yerdis' hair as she told her that her father had promised to give her and any daughters they had a head of golden hair, if just she would marry him. He had been very poor and this was why they only had one daughter, why he always had to work so much and always was in debt.

Even back then she knew this story not to be true. It was a nice story, but that was all that it was. One day, the debt had become too much for her father to bear. When it turned out that Yerdis was force-sensitive, he had handed her over to the Jedi at the cloister.

Since then she had only left the cloister twice. Once because she snuck out. She had been nine years of age at that point. She had missed her mother ever so dearly and wanted to see her. When she found her old home, she found it to be abandonned. An old man that had moved in next door, told her that the neigboring lady had been claimed by consumption and that the husband had moved on to Tatooine. When she returned in evening as the sun went down, Master Leodoth did not seem angry at all. Rather calmly, he told her that she had acted selfishly and that she would have to conquer such arrogance if she ever wished to be one with the force. The following three days after that she was not permitted to eat or drink. It had been a crushing experience, but it had rid her of her egotism and sent her on her way to enlightenment.

"There is no passion, there's serenity" Master Leodoth uttered as Yerdis found her way to her meditation rug. She sat down in the prescribed way for meditation, the padmāsana.

The second time was when she, Loukás, Andros and Ryam had been sent to Dantooine to be evaluated for their force potential. A little old master with a cane, a long beard and a bald head with liverspots had examined them. All he would do was look them in their eyes for a little while. Then he decided that only Andros had the potential to become a knight, and that the rest of them would remain at the monastery to become monks of the order. Although Ryam had seemed a little disappointed, it was a nice day. Andros had also kissed her cheek, just like her mother used to. When she told old Master Leodoth, he had beaten him with a rod to teach him to conquer his lust and his sinful flesh. That was the last time she saw Andros.

The last couple of years, she had noticed something had changed. There were no other girls in the cloister and all the boys her age were beginning to look at her differently. She didn't know what to think of it and didn't quite understand why they were paying so much more attention to her than before. The boys seemed to want to wrestle more with her than she remembered from her childhood and Leodoth had begun setting up counselling sessions for all the boys - which meant for everyone but her, the younglings and the old monks. When she mediated she sought answers for these changes but found none.

Today, however, it was different. She sought answers for her dreams. She had many different nightmares, but this one was brand new, more vivid than any of the other ones. They made little sense to her, she had only getting them for about eight weeks now and as the Master uttered the words "There is no self – there is the Force" she was already deep within meditation.

She painted a map within her mind, letting the force flow through her. She painted in all the planets and the stars, obliterating her Nu – her ego - and becoming a part of the Qyâsik – The Force.
And as Nu was shattered and abandoned, so was Kesmas. She concentrated on the teachings – the nine te'Saarai of the Jedi.

Kesmasur aker – Xox Ja'vieinn xe Qyâsikinum su evitær

"There is suffering – this creates the self, separate from the force"

Hâskur aker – Xox Naileinn nuo Merai evitær

"There is anguish – this creates the fear of change"

Nailör aker – Xox zo Manyr krevas, kia Mirtisiurinn aker, evitær

"There is fear – this creates the false belief that there is death"

Sethiur aker – Xox zo Manyr krevas, kia kair te'Velör asura geras priaet te'Êmaz aka, evitær

"There is hate – this creates the false belief that some beings are higher than others"

Lausklaukedûmur aker - Xox zo Manyr krevas, kia te'Velör xe te'Êmaz sarysis su aka, evitær

"There is disillusion – this creates the false belief that beings are separate from each other"

Thælisasur aker – Xox Mesinisins geist evitær

"There is attachment – this creates the lust of the flesh"

Azinimaslaukedûmur aker – Xox Midwangeistinn evitær

"There is ignorance – this creates the lust for power"

Atmânur aker – Xox Garsasgeistinn evitær

"There is aversion – this creates the lust for recognition"

Qyâsikurinn aker – Xox Azinimazus'Qoinn auktoier

"There is the force – this provides the path to enlightenment"

And though the universe and the force streamed through her and though she sought, she didn't find she was looking for.
An hour with meditation passed. After that, breakfast was served in the refectory, although the townspeople had not been as charitable with their donations as they once were. The bread was mouldy and the butter-tea was very dilute. Brother Cole the Mole, so called for the giant mole on his philtrum, was talking about a bad "ecunemy", whatever that was. She felt a little stupid when she didn't know what the older brothers were talking about.

Even though initiates did not normally converse the monks, they were the only ones that were ever allowed to leave the compound and therefore the only ones who knew what was going on beyond the monastery walls. She would often spend many hours in the library, reading books to understand what the brothers were talking about whenever she overheard them trading words. She had read The Galactic Republican Federation and Her Territories to understand where the places they were talking about were in relation to each other and what they were, The History and Rites of the Holy Order of the Jedi to understand which kind of happenings they had attended and why they were there and Dark Lords of Korriban to understand when they were speaking upon matters of… dark heresy. This was how she kept up-to-date with the rest of the world around her. This "ecunemy", however, she had never heard of. She would probably be able to find it in some old tome about the many different disturbances in the force.

The world around her fascinated her although she knew she would grow old and become one with the force before she would ever see the red dunes of Geonosis or the vast oceans of Manaan. Yet the idea of seeing the lush environment of Alderaan or the old ruin city of Taris enthralled her. "I wonder if all they have there is stale bread and thin butter tea" she pondered as she sipped upon the latter.

"Have you heard, Brother Avarnosos?" she overheard Brother Karanian say. "The great honoured Lord Palpatinos is trying to pass an amendment to the royal constitution. He's giving the noble gungans right to vote at the royal elections " he continued. "Those savages? What a cretinous idea to give them influence in politics they do not care for nor understand" Brother Avarnosos replied. "Pray, which one of the Palpatinoses would that be? Kaisaros?" he asked while chewing on a nice juicy piece of chicken-leg. "No, I mean Anastasios, the younger brother" Karanian explained. "The older brother is busy with intergalactic politics as a senator these days". "That's what I thought!" Avarnos exclaimed. "Kaisaros would never do something like that. He knew that those savages belong in the swamp" he continued. "I would be more careful before spewing such opinions" Karanian said. "Remember that no being is above another" he explained. "Yes well… I think your interpretation of the old doctrines might be a tad… dogmatic, brother" Avarosos replied. "Perhaps we should just agree to disagree?" Karanian proposed. "Cheers to that" his brother-in-cloth toasted as they lifted cups together and drank.

Next up was the memorisation of the holy texts in the locurtory, something most of the boys found an arduous task. All the old scrolls were written in the ancient Sith'arii, a dead language from an age long since passed. They told of times before the galactic republic – The Khaliur Nwul - in days where the ancient Jedi – the Ye'daii - ruled the galaxy in peace and solidarity. They told tales of dark traitors who betrayed the Ye'daii and created the Dark Side, plunging the world into the age of discord, tainting the minds of people everywhere with the lust of the flesh and the illusion of the self. This was the Khaliur Netvarka, the current age. Yerdis spoke the ancient tongue to a point where she almost spoke it fluently at this point.

They had all been told to practice The 75 vices of Man, which luckily was a newer text and therefore written in the common tongue. Yerdis, however, recited the forty-page long Sith'arii Epiphanies of Master Eklben to perfection, which impressed the Head Librarian Ludderick. "Alright, that will do, children" he said as he polished his spectacles. "Now run along and play. Help some of the laymen with some work if you feel like it" he declared. "Master Leodoth and I will see you for philosophy class in this room in four hours" he said, as all the children rushed out the door.

As Yerdis emerged from the old dusty room and walked out into the warm summer sun, she tripped and fell from the pathway leading from the locurtory to the library, falling down on the soft ground besides her. Ryam towered over her with a cheeky grin upon his lips and a cheerful flare in his eyes, hidden underneath his bushy eyebrows. "You stupid dog!" she laughed as she jumped to her feet, chasing him across the yard. Ryam was quite strong, but Yerdis was much faster and so she caught him before they reached the piggery and wrestled him to the ground. Two laymen shook their heads as they tumbled around on the ground laughing out loud like frolicking little children.

"That'll teach you for being such a little worm!" she teased as she rose from the ground, wiping dirt from her robe. "You are the worm, worm! I am the bird coming to get you!" he responded as he sat himself up. "Go sleep with the pigs!" she said, gently tapping his foot with her own. "I sleep close enough to you as it is" he quipped. "Why, you little!" she laughed as she kicked dirt into his eyes. They laughed for a good while before Ryam rose.

He met her eyes with his own – green as pine. He looked to the ground and then up again. She could tell that he had something upon his mind as they stood there, right next to the old odorous piggery. "Is there something troubling you, Ry?" she asked, rather directly. He looked up at her. "What?" she asked. "Oh no. Nothing at all" he said and looked down at his feet yet again. "Lies" she said and smiled a coy smile. "What is it? It's not the pigscack bothering you, that much I know" she said inquisitively.

She, Ryam, Luke Left-Hand and Olli would always play down at the piggery when they were little. Back in the day, they used to have a huge stag roaming around in the sty that Yerdis was particularly fond of. She would call him 'Mister Squealer'. Not because he squealed much, but rather because he always was calm and collected compared to all the other swine. In time, as they played with him, they taught him to roll around in exchange of treats and even to give them rides around the grazing meadow. If the smell of muck bothered Ryam, it would be something new.

"Well" he said rather hesitantly. "Do you ever wonder…" he said before stalling. She hated when he did that. He would always blush and stall whenever he wanted to ask anything he could get in trouble for asking. He knew, she thought, that he could ask her anything in the world. They had known each other for ages.

"What?" she asked. She could sense that whatever he had on his chest, it was nothing to make light of. Ryam was not a very serious person, but whenever he said something that wasn't said in a jest, you could be sure it was honest.

"Do you ever wonder if this is truly the place for us?" he asked and stared at her intensely.

"Of course it is!" she said with disbelief. Which kind of madness had befallen him? How could he ever suggest anything otherwise? "What do you mean, Ry" she said.

"I mean life here at the cloister"

"This is the path to enlightenment" she followed up.

"I know" he said. "But sometimes… it doesn't feel like it"

"Would you rather be reborn into this world and live through it a thousand times more?" she said, horror-stricken at the fact that her good old Ryam could utter heresies such as these.

"No" he said. "But look at us. All we will ever be in this life are monks" he pleaded. "I'll wind up just like Master Leodoth… and you, Yerdis! Your body bears the taint of fertility! You will not reach Unity in this life either!" he exclaimed.

She was flabbergasted and taken totally aback.

"Yerdis" he said and grabbed her arm, pulling her towards him. "We could escape. Lead a different life" he said and caressed her cheek with his other hand. "Just you and I" he followed up.

"Ryam!" she exclaimed. In a fit of shock she hit him across the face. "How… dare you? This is heresy!"

"Listen, Yerdis" he said as he let go of her. "I…"
Whatever he was trying to say was drowned out by the cloister's alarm bell. And as they looked up in shock and terror, Yerdis recognised a familiar shadow descent upon her. A giant for sounded in the sky. A huge ship of some sort was hovering above her.
Suddenly, bright beams of light emerged from its sides like enormous light-sabres, knocking down the old temple tower, setting the rest of the temple ablaze. Cables were dropped out from its underbelly and dark shadows bearing arms would glide down along them, blasting everyone that came in their way.

Was she dreaming yet again?


Thanks to the guys at .com for providing a Sith'arii dictionary.
The dictionary has been slightly modified and the grammar I made up myself by mixing old Norse, French and bits of Korean.