DXUN, 40 YEARS ABE:
The shadows within the ancient citadel seemed thicker than they should have been, but perhaps that was merely the dust. Thick as that was, there didn't seem to be nearly as much of it as there should have been after four thousand years. Maybe there had been visitors in more recent centuries who disturbed it.
That was not a comforting thought, and Han stuck close on Leia's heels as they crept deeper into the darkness.
The thin light that streamed in from the still-open door was made weak and sickly by the dustmotes that swirled through it, stirred up by Han and Leia's passage. It did less to illuminate the wide entrance hall than to cast long, eerie shadows across it. The heavy pillars that lined the disquietingly empty chamber-carved with sigils faded into illegibility and, here and there, crude forms and faces that seemed somehow sharp and cruel despite the weathering that softened their edges-faded into heavy darkness near the ceiling. Roots that had wormed their way through the stone from the large tree that had cracked open the upper levels of the structure dangled like long skeletal fingers from the overhead blocks. They were stiff and dead and dry, and they were still the closest thing to a sign of life in the entire hall.
There were no webs or droppings or other evidence of the scavengers and pests that usually made abandoned structures like this their home. The only footsteps that marked the dust coating the flagstone floor were the ones that Han and Leia placed as they crept slowly forward.
They both had their weapons out in one hand and a glowrode in the other, although the slim lights seemed a terribly inadequate defense against such ancient shadows.
"What do you think, sweetheart?" Han asked as they came to a stop at the solid stone wall that marked the end of the grand entrance hall. Centered in front of the wall was a flat, wide table of stone carved with glyphs too worn for their faint shapes to convey more than a general sense of violence and turmoil. There were no bloodstains on the altar-and altar it had to be, although Han had no desire to voice the thought aloud-and, somehow, that was more disquieting than the expected rusty smears of long-dried fluids would have been.
Tunnels branched off to either side of the altar, one sloping up and the other down.
"Left," Leia said firmly, nodding towards the descending ramp.
Han winced. "Are you sure?"
Leia gave him a cool half-smirk. "Would you rather go up?" she asked.
"Yes," Han answered without hesitation.
Leia nodded. "Me, too. So what we want is definitely down."
Han sighed. "I hate when you're right," he said.
Leia's smirk curled. "I know," she said.
Together, they walked down the ramp into the darkness.
The shadows seemed to thicken around them as they descended, but Han told himself that was just his imagination.
Too bad he had never been very good at lying to the people who actually knew him.
"The air feel funny down here to you, too?" he asked.
Leia nodded. "It should be more stale after all this time. Maybe even rancid."
"And the dust should be so thick we're choking on it."
The ex-smuggler and former princess eyed the walls around them balefully. The floor beneath them sloped at a gentle grade, the stone carved smooth and pitted slightly with age and wear. At the end of each section of ramp it leveled-out in a flat landing before the slope began again at a new angle, leading them steadily down beneath the heavy stone edifice. The walls of each landing held a niche that had likely once sported some kind of light source or relic, but whatever treasure they had boasted was long gone. The walls were mostly smooth save for a narrow row of stone into which images had been carved at roughly shoulder height. They seemed to show a story, but the designs were worn too thin for what it told to be clear at a passing glance. There were also small vents built into the walls near the ceiling but no air flowed through them and the dust around their edges was no thicker and no more disturbed than it was anywhere else.
Leia and Han had both been in enough ruins and abandoned places to know that something about this one was very, very wrong.
"Maybe there's not much dust because there was nothing here to make dust," Leia suggested. "Same with the air. You need life to have decay."
Han grimaced. "That's a cheery thought."
"You want optimism, you need to go find Luke," Leia said drily.
Han's frown of unease deepened into one of concern and he pulled his eyes from the half-visible glyphs carved on the walls to look down at Leia instead. "Hey," he said softly, "he's okay. You know he's okay. He'll be back when he's done with-"
"Whatever he's out there doing, I know." Leia's mouth set in a thin, grim line. "I don't want to talk about this again."
"Okay," Han said soothingly, "sure, princess. Let's talk about the creepy Sith temple instead."
"I don't think it's a temple."
"No?" Han glanced over his shoulder, back up the ramp towards the entrance hall full of pillars and statues and what was almost certainly an altar. "What else would you call it?"
"A tomb."
As she spoke, they reached a third landing but this one did not have a ramp branching off from it. Instead there was a heavy stone door in front of them, its style and carvings reminiscent of the larger one outside that Leia had raised to grant them ingress. Unlike that flat monolith of stone, this one had visible handles in its center. They were wide and angled out in sharp spikes like grasping claws.
"This just gets better and better," Han grumbled.
Leia lifted her shoulders in a shrug. "There's one good thing about a tomb."
"What's that?"
"You rarely find living things inside them."
"Huh," Han nodded. "There is that. Well then, lead on."
Leia clipped her lightsaber back to her belt and raised her hands. The glowrod she still held in one made the shadows dance and flicker as she moved, causing the stone around them to seem to dance and shiver too-and then the door ahead really did move, grinding open with a heavy grumble of reluctant stone. Leia pushed forward and the two halves of the thick door swung wide enough to admit a large speederbike-or two small humans hoping desperately that the past held secrets that would save their future.