Greetings everyone, and welcome to chapter 15 of Star Wars: Twilight Blade!

Creativity: It's been a minute, hasn't it?

Author: A bit, but I don't think it's been that bad. Besides, we've been working on a bunch of shit in the interim. Now, if only I could remember what all of it was...

Well, enough of that, let's check out the reviews for Chapter 14:

And there's no reviews! Well, I guess I saw that coming.

Not much to say for the opening notes right now. That, or I'm just tired. Or one of a million other things, really. Guess there's nothing else to do but promote the Discord Server: xtydzBf

And with that out of the way, without further ado, allow us to proudly present chapter 15 of Star Wars: Twilight Blade!

Arvos shoulder ached.

It had ached when he'd applied the bacta patch to it, it had ached when he departed the ship and set about collecting all the fallen branches from the trees as he could find, and it ached when he constructed a pyre from those branches. However, the aches in his head and chest made his shoulder feel numb in comparison.

Arvos didn't know how long it had taken to assemble the pyre, but it had undoubtedly been a few standard hours. It could have gone quicker, but Arvos had made a point of not using the Force for this. Every branch had been collected and painstakingly assembled into a pyre with his bare hands. By the time he was satisfied with the construction, the sun was beginning to dip low in the sky. Despite his physical, mental and emotional weariness, he pressed onward. All that was left was...

Arvos closed his eyes, willing away the itchiness that was creeping into them as he stiffly marched back into the crashed starship and up to the seat where Marahl was still slumped. From the back, one would simply think she was asleep. If only that were true.

Summoning all of his strength, and even drawing on the Force to assist him, Arvos lifted Master Marahl Corvis from her resting place and carried her out of the ship and over to the unlit pyre, with R4 trailing behind with a low whistle. After gently laying her body atop it, he positioned her arms to be laid across her body, hands clasped together before he stepped back. With a shaky breath, he ignited his lightsaber and slowly plunged it into the base of the pyre and starting the blaze.

Arvos stepped back as the heat radiating from the pyre slowly built. In a matter of minutes, the flames had climbed the wood and reached his master's body. Minutes more went by, and now the body was well into immolation. Every instinct in Arvos body compelled him to turn away and go back to the ship. He did not. No matter how tired, how hungry, how spent and how much he wished to turn away, he would see this through to the end. R4 sat next to him, dome occasionally swiveling a few degrees one way or the other and letting out more tones. Much as Arvos didn't want to hear them, he let the droid talk away. There was at least some comfort in sharing the pain between the two of them.

Soon the sun was gone and a harsh cold wind rushed over the planet's surface. The pyre was mostly burned to embers now and would offer no reprieve from the chill. Arvos took one last look at the smoldering remains before he and R4 finally turned and made his way back inside the ship. As he closed the ramp, Arvos felt a new wave of exhaustion rush over him, threatening to send him crumbling to the floor. Still, he kept himself on his feet and made his back to one of the ship's cots and crawled stiffly inside. As he drew the covers over him shakily, he could hear R4 rolling to the Astromech recharge station. As he lay his head down, exhaustion overtook him finally, but his sleep was a fitful one; fraught with nightmares and restlessness.

After a few hours, Arvos rose from his cot in a cold sweat and let out a frustrated growl before he rose to his feet and began angrily searching through the ship for a towel to dry himself off, meeting with no success and growing more and more frustrated.

"Where are the damn things..." He hissed as he searched through yet another cabinet for towels, meeting with no success and rising a bit too quickly, bumping his head on the cabinet frame, prompting a grunt of anger as he kicked the cabinet shut, doing his best to ignore the stinging that suddenly blossomed in his foot as he stomped off to search for the towels. He eventually found them near the head and set about drying himself off with concerning force, then returned to his quarters and sat down on the edge of his cot. He knew he should be trying to sleep, but he was too wired for it. He tried meditation, reciting the code, going through his lightsaber knowledge, fidgeting with some odds and ends he'd found around the ship, none of it helped.

In the space of a few hours, his whole world had come crashing down around him.

He'd been an apprentice for all of a few days, for crying out loud! Now he was marooned who-knows-where with a wounded shoulder, what supplies were available on the shuttle, and one astromech whose power supply would be dwindling until it was dead forever. What's more, he couldn't hope for rescue as he could assume that he'd be gunned down the moment they realized that he was a Jedi!

What was he supposed to do now?!

He felt his knuckles ache well before he realized his arm was outstretched; his closed fist was pressed to the durasteel walls, shuddering in the dark.

He had no idea what to do; how to survive; how to go on!

Maybe he couldn't go on… Maybe this was where it ended for him…

He dismissed that thought immediately. Master Marahl had gone through hell to keep him alive and if nothing else, he owed it to her to make sure her sacrifice meant something.

Arvos felt a new wave of exhaustion wash over him, threatening to send him to the floor. He managed to get back to his cot before he collapsed, briefly grateful that rest was coming to him.

…

…

…

"The time has come…"

Arvos' eyes snapped open. He could have sworn…

"Time is short… Darkness encroaches…"

Arvos rose to his feet cautiously. He knew he'd heard something that time.

"Time is short…"

Arvos peered out the door of his quarters and felt his heart jump as he could have sworn he saw something vanishing through the doorway to the boarding ramp. After retrieving one of his lightsabers, Arvos slowly ventured out into the ship, peering around the corner, only to be met with nothing.

"What did I…" He muttered before he turned and jumped again, sparking his lightsaber to life as he saw what looked like a figure in a dark gray cloak pass past the viewport of the marooned shuttle!

Arvos rushed into the cockpit and frantically looked out of the viewport for any sign of the cloaked stranger, only to be met with naught but empty plains. Well, at least until his gaze turned to the nearby temple. It was for a few moments, but he could see the dark gray cloak stepping into the old building.

"Okay, I'm not just seeing things…" Arvos muttered aloud, mostly trying to convince himself that he wasn't going mad already. He spun around and marched back to his quarters and dragged his clothes and retrieving his second lightsaber, then hesitating as he noticed a faint glowing coming from under his bunk. It was the small chest he kept that sphere master Yoda had given him after the Gathering.

"That can't be a coincidence…" Arvos thought as he opened it, finding source of the glow was the sphere itself; the carvings that marked the sphere were faintly pulsing with a silvery light. No way was he not taking it now.

Unfortunately, that still left the newest occupant of the box; Master Marahl's lightsaber sat within. Arvos had initially intended to lay it to rest with his master, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. R4 and this weapon were all he had left of her now. Besides, he didn't want to leave the kyber crystal to be found by some random looter.

Still, looking at it now, it was still too raw. It hadn't even been a whole day yet, and yet he was now faced with a choice to bring his master's weapon with him, or leave it behind as he ventured into a seemingly abandoned temple after a figure in a cloak.

After a few moments, Arvos let out a shaky breath as he lifted the lightsaber from the box with both hands, as though it was a precious and fragile thing and clipped it to his belt, shifting his off-hand lightsaber to rest next to its twin.

"Alright, let's see who's skulking around out there…" He muttered to himself as he turned around to leave, only to see R4 positioned in front of him. It was impressive how emotive astromechs could be, considering they had no particularly emotive features; If the droid had arms, Arvos was sure they'd be crossed in front of its torso.

"Something fishy is going on out there. I'm going to check it out." He told the droid before trying to walk past it, only to get a BLATT in response as the droid moved to cut him off. Arvos huffed.

"Alright, you can come with. It's not like we have anything that needs fixing or monitoring at the moment." Arvos conceded. R4 seemed satisfied with this and spun around to roll towards the boarding ramp while Arvos followed along behind.

As they descended the ramp, Arvos cast a wary eye towards the temple. He had no idea how old it was, but it could date back as far as the temples on Tython. They certainly weren't of Jedi origin; The architecture didn't line up. It was entirely possible that the cloaked figure he'd seen was some sort of Force specter that still lingered in this temple, and that it wasn't friendly. A trap could very well be waiting for them.

Arvos unclipped his lightsabers and connected them together before igniting one end. R4 lit up its flashlight and trundled along beside him as they crossed the threshold of the ruined walls, then slowly descended a set of stairs into the dark.

Light swiftly became scarce, though that was hardly a problem between Ryo's lightsaber and R4's light. As they continued their tread down the stairs (or hovered, in R4's case), Ryo examined the walls of the cavern. There were carvings all over the walls, though they were weathered away to near illegibility. Having no door for ages upon ages would do that, and layers of sand and dust that caked the stairs.

"This is definitely pre-republic. Maybe even older…" Ryo muttered. Historic architecture wasn't exactly his strong suit, but he knew a thing or two. It didn't look like Jedi design that he'd ever seen, but it definitely wasn't Sith either. Sith had a very… distinct aesthetic, and this didn't line up at all.

The only thing that left was one of the many, many lost denominations of Force cults that had come and gone over the millennia. While the Jedi and Sith had the most widely-known histories, and probably the furthest along the extremes of alignment with the Force, more than a handful of old temples to dead Force religions were known to exist. Unfortunately, many of them had been lost, replaced or repurposed by new civilizations in general and the Jedi and Sith in particular. Were he in a better mood, Arvos might have been shaking with excitement at having made this discovery.

Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot he could discern from the artwork to figure out what sect may have constructed this temple. It wasn't a subject that was taught to Younglings at the Jedi Temple and it wasn't a subject of much scholarly interest to most Jedi, especially now. What little Arvos did know was material that had caught his interest while he was wrapped up in his lightsaber research.

"BLATT!"

Arvos paused to look back at R4, who was in turn looking at Arvos.

"I'm fine, R4. I'm just examining the carvings." He told the droid, who chittered and whirred before it went back to scanning the passageway. Then, Arvos had a thought.

"Hey R4, this is probably a long-shot, but have you seen anything like this before?"

A low whir from the droid told Arvos no.

"I thought that would be the case, but I figured I'd check anyways."

Eventually, they reached the bottom of the staircase, endless as it had felt, and Arvos saw no evidence that someone had been through here at all. A cloak as large as what he'd seen would have dragged one heck of a trail through the dust that caked the floor, and such a trail was absent, as were footprints or any hint of the dust being disturbed recently.

"Well, this is just great. I haven't even been on this rock for a cycle, and I'm already starting to go crazy." Arvos grumbled, though he still kept a wary eye out as he stepped forward, slowly touching a hand to the left wall. While smooth at a glance, he could feel tiny notes of unevenness in the rock, indicating the tools used to excavate it were on the primitive side. However, what really stuck out to Arvos was that the wall felt oddly warm. It was subtle, but it was definitely there. What's more, he could feel a faint tug within the Force, so faint that he easily could have missed it if he hadn't already been examining the wall.

Reaching out with the Force, he slowly dragged his hand along the wall until he felt a change in texture. There was a narrow strip carved lengthwise into the rock, about an inch wide and seemingly stretching the length of the corridor. The interior of the strip was filled to bursting with very small and very rough crystals, which were the source of the tug he'd felt in the Force.

Then, as he continued to probe the crystals with the Force, they suddenly began to glow! It was weak at first, but it quickly grew into a soft, pale blue light that illuminated much of Arvos' immediate surroundings! R4 let out a few exclamations as it spun in place, dome also spinning rapidly, though it quickly calmed when it realized that there was no immediate danger.

"What are these…?" Arvos wondered as he peered at the crystals. "They're not kyber crystals, but they aren't powerful enough to be useful for lightsabers…"

As he looked, he could see the carved strip extended further down the corridor, with the crystals growing fainter the further they were from him.

"They respond to the Force…" Arvos realized, and decided to try something. Reaching out with both hands, he sent a light Force push down the hallway, clearing the dust from the air and floor. Following the movement, the illumination quickly spread down the hallway, about twenty or so yards until it reached an open chamber.

"Well, it looks like that's where we're going, R4."

After deactivating his lightsaber, Arvos continued down the corridor with caution. Whether or not the cloaked figure was real of just a figment of his imagination after a lot of trying events one after another, he didn't want to be caught off-guard. Fortunately, he and R4 made it to the chamber without incident.

The chamber was circular and domed, with the crystal cutouts forming four strips climbing up the top before meeting a circle of about a foot in diameter. The rest of the domed ceiling was covered in carvings (again, like the corridor), though these ones actually seemed to be depicting something. As to what that something was, Arvos was having trouble figuring out. That was, until he took another look around the room and his eyes settled on what appeared to be some sort of shrine set in the back.

The shrine was simple in design, carved from the same stone as the rest of this underground temple, with several large crystals embedded into the back of it. The crystals were glowing faintly, indicating that they were the same as the ones embedded in the wall. However, Arvos' attention was entirely fixed on the last feature of the shrine.

Resting on the shrine was the blade. The blade; The same weapon he had seen before the Gathering and the night before the Clones had turned on them.

And that's chapter 15! I'd say we're about five chapters away from wrapping this whole story up at this pace, and that's got me very excited.

Creativity: Things have been a bit slower lately though.

Author: Yeah, but that just happens. We'll get our groove back.

Anyway, it has been a while since our last upload! I don't have the numbers, but I'm pretty sure Kenobi has come and gone since chapter 14 was uploaded. I can't say when the next chapter will be ready (I'm putting more attention into my KH rewrite at the moment), but I don't anticipate that it will take too long. Relatively speaking. This is me we're talking about, after all.

Well, there isn't much else to talk about, so I'll call it here for now.

Thank you for reading, please review, hope to see you on discord and we'll see you next time!