The Last Defender
By Lyda Mae (RavenDove) Huff
Chapter Eleven: Tomb of Memory
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Gen met the Markiea as she landed gracefully in Santik'sa's small port. Taking Fenice in his arms as she disembarked, he spoke. "Master Skywalker returned from Tealro a few hours ago. He said you would be close behind." Gen let her go, "He waits with Terick and your sisters."
"Then that is where we go Gen." she nodded.
Kyp handed her the scroll and a small cloth rapped bundle. "I hope he had as much success with the test on Tealro as Fenice had with the Matriarch's quest on Hapha."
"He brought back the scroll and Martina's medallion in one piece." Gen replied as he led them to his speeder.
"Oh that is good to hear." Threepio replied eagerly. "Do I have a story for Artoo."
"I'm sure you do Threepio." Kyp said, truly beginning to see why Han was often tempted to reprogram if not dismantle the protocol droid.
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Luke sat silently in the stone chamber with only the deathsleeping Healers to keep him company since sending Terick to get some rest. The man's near constant vigil was beginning to take it's toll. Luke could hardly blame Terick. The triplets were his sisters adopted or otherwise. And aside from Fenice they were the only family he had.
The Jedi knew Gen had returned with Fenice, Kyp and Threepio long before the Defender and young Jedi entered the chamber. He took notice of the medallion around Fenice's neck immediately. "What is this?" he asked lifting it up to the light from across the room.
"Kayan's Tein'kal medallion, though it has been modified." she answered pointing to the jewel. "The Matriarch said I would need it."
"We also learned why Gam'nead went after Ambassador Kiben." Kyp stated from behind Fenice.
"Really?" Luke asked with renewed interest.
They sat and told their story for Luke, Gen and Fenice's silent sisters to hear. The three spectral forms listened with great intent.
"Do
you think the quest really served it's purpose?" Onaia
asked the only two that could hear her.
"Only
time and Fenice will tell I think." Martina answered.
"Perhaps
only time alone." a male voice the trio had never heard before
answered. They looked toward it's origin to find a Tall Aran
with chartreuse hair in several braids that started at the brow and
gathered as they went. He had an aura of strength and wore an older
form of Defender's dress with a frilless
shirt tucked in at the waist befitting a man; he had black ankle
boots and white stockings covering his caves and the shoulders of his
gabardine were white beneath the silver and
gold lines depicting Force ties. An apparition just like them.
"Your
lavender eyes look familiar stranger, but could you give a name?"
Martina asked thinking of only one such figure that might appear.
"I'm
no one of importance, and only a spectator like the three of you."
the strange answered.
"Of
no importance is a claim I doubt." Enora
half mocked.
The figure shrugged, "Doubt what you will, but if you must give me a name call me Tander."
"Not
yours but a name that will do." Martina nodded accepting.
They watched silently as Fenice came to the cloth bundle. She unwrapped it with reverence revealing a form of lightsaber. She stood flicking the switch to reveal a greenish-white blade. Then ignited a second blade from the other end. Fenice them pulled the handle extending the grip and shortening the blades of the double lightsaber. Then holding it with both hands she separated the handle into two and lengthened the blades again. Finally she put the handles back together in their original form and extinguished the blades.
"Kayan's double lightsaber, a masterpiece." Fenice commented handing it to Luke for inspection.
"Four millennia and it still works." Luke could not keep the awe from his voice. "It's something to be guarded." Luke said as Fenice returned it to it's swathing.
Fenice nodded, "now to the business at hand." she held up the scroll case. "This one's encoded, I think the key is either in the one from Tealro or the finale scroll. I'll need to translate the one you brought back before we can go any further."
Luke handed her the scroll from the monastery. "The Abbess was quiet helpful about giving me this." Luke related Tobin's minor deception.
"Sounds interesting." Fenice said making a data scan of the scroll. She input the data chip of the puzzle into a reader adding the new piece. "One who is Two, Of Two worlds, And Not. The Last, Of her Kind, Who Would," She looked up from the reader. "One piece missing and I still wouldn't dare say what I think the answer is."
"It's not my place to guess at it." Luke said with a shrug.
"I think we all no the answer, it's just not the time to for it to be said." Kyp said with a protective look at Fenice.
"You may be right Kyp." Luke concluded. "For now we need rest if we are to finish what has been started." At this they left the chamber.
"I
bet you know the answer to the riddle Tandar."
Enora said to the mysterious figure.
"Perhaps I do, but only time can tell." Tandar answered.
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Luke zipped through the binkoni trees on Terick's speeder bike. Fenice led the way with Kyp on her bike. His mind drifted slightly thinking of where they were headed. Tan'ki was the village of Gam'nead's birth. The place where this adventure had started long before any of the three had been born. Tan'ki also apparently held the key to the end.
Fenice slowed as they entered an area of stone ruins. She parked her speeder in the shade of a half-toppled parapet and she and Kyp practically leaped off. Luke pulled up beside them and followed suit.
"People have avoided this place since the time of the tare." Fenice admitted. "No one wanted to remember Gam'nead or what she had done."
"Stealing of souls is not something I wouldn't care to remember either." Kyp commented wryly.
"We're not here to debate why this place was deserted." Luke chided.
"What's to debate?" Fenice asked surveying the town. "She destroyed her place of birth. A very cold act to live with."
"Now we seek the Tomb of Memory." Luke reminded them of their task.
"A monument build to honer the souls stolen to make the Gamronel and block the tare." Fenice continued. She pointed toward what must have been the village market, "That is where we should begin looking."
It did not take them long to find the stone marker at the center of the ruins. It was a simple stone nearly as tall as Fenice without the pedestal. It had once been polished white now yellow-gray with age and half covered with moss and lichens.
Fenice cleared away some debris that had accumulated over the inscription. "May those lost needlessly in Cursed Tan'ki one day know peace." she translated knowing the standard Aran with greater ease than she had at the beginning of this quest.
"Then this is what we were looking for." Luke said resolutely.
"It is indeed." Fenice said solemnly as she found the skewed balance symbol in the decorative carvings at the top of the stone. The base began to slide away from the ground on which it had sat for so many generations revealing a stairway. "The finale scroll is to be found below." she said taking a torch from the small pack she carried and leading the way.
The stairway angled straight down for some time, then suddenly turned and halted as it came to a narrow passage. The passage began to broaden after twenty meters leading into a small perfectly square chamber. To one side of the room was another passage leading to another chamber directly below the monument.
Kyp tried to enter the passage but was cut off by a force-field of blue-green energy.
A kind voice that was somehow the mixture of many voice spoke softly and resonantly. "Only one may enter The Tomb of The Memory. One whose destiny was foretold millennia before her birth, and perhaps in that foreordained."
"Am I the one of whom you speak?" Fenice asked shakily.
"Only you may decide that Defender." The voice responded. "You have come thus far with aide of kind souls, but from this point you must go alone. Their presence may be near but their help may not be had."
"Then so it must be." Fenice set down her pack and removed her cloak. Then made her way across the room and passed through the force-field as if it were not even there.
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Fenice had gathered her courage as she made her way to the place where the finale scroll had rested for so long the place itself was forgotten. She entered a chamber that at first seamed dark, but slowly it filled with a blue-white glow. Images took shape around her of people and places she did not know.
"So this is our savior, this child." a man with blue hair half boomed.
"I'm not a child." Fenice defended.
"SILENCE!" the collective apparitions boomed. "You will speak only when spoken to."
Fenice bowed her head. So this was the finale test, judgment.
"What was a child in your day is not a child now." Fenice recognized the voice of her mother. "Four-thousand years of shadow will more than shorten the life of a world." Markiea continued.
"This is true." a man that looked much like Uben admitted.
"Many things have truth, but is it relative?" a purple haired crone asked.
"She is the truest heir to the murdered sister."
"Yes a twin that stands alone." Markiea interjected.
A collective murmuring echoed through the chamber.
"Before you can judge, you must know why she seeks." A chartreuse haired figure came forward, and though she could not be certain Fenice did not believe he had been there before.
"Why do you seek?" the blue haired man asked.
"Because I must." Fenice answered honestly.
"Because you must." the old man mocked.
"Because if I don't my sisters will lie forever between sleep and death." Fenice stated calmly. "Because if I don't then there will be no Tein'kal. Because I look at Ansath now and see no future for any of her children but death without passage. I see something that has gone on for so long and I cannot turn and pretend it did not happen."
The apparitions grew silent and one by one began to fade away. Fenice found herself standing alone in the chamber face to face with Eamar. He was still only fourteen, his blond hair still mussed as if he'd been wrestling with Terick. She looked into his green eyes that were identical to hers. He smiled then took on a serious tone. "You seek for all the right reasons." he pointed toward a panel in the wall and faded away like the others.
Fenice stood there for a time staring at where Eamar had been. Half her life since she had seen her twin smile. When she could stand there no longer Fenice went to the wall panel her brother had indicated. Behind it in a marble box like all the rest was what she sought.
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