Moraband

Her pace brisk and with purpose, Darth Judecca walked through the halls of the Imperial Citadel, her gaze focused straight ahead, forcing her fellow Imperials, Sith or otherwise, to move out of her way.

She'd only been awake for less than three hours, her morning turned upside down from an emergency transmission from Lord Tadras, one of her master's subordinates. She initially didn't know what to make of the message. On one hand, she was almost certain that news of the map's loss would incur her master, Phagos's wrath. So she leaned on the second half of the message—the revelation of the artifact's location—to hopefully temper that wrath, if not dowse it completely.

Seeing the lift ahead open, Judecca rushed forward through the doors before they closed. As the lift ascended, she found herself barely able to contain herself. Despite the obvious setback of Tadras's death, she couldn't deny that events were fully in motion. Her gambit was paying off. What had started as a desperate bid to both prove her worth and immediately establish her position within the grand order of things now promised to come to fruition beyond her initial expectations. But first, she had to be sure to say and do exactly the right things to push everything along.

The lift opened, and Judecca made her way through the corridor, to her master's chambers. Entering, she approached his personal assistant droid.

"I need to speak to Master Phagos," she began, "I bring word from Lord Tadras. We know where it is."

Obroa-skai

Bringing her hand up to her forehead in a vain attempt to filter the light around her, Adrielle Lunan sat up, as slowly as possible to keep her disorientation to a minimum. Cursing silently at her foolishness, she made her way to the bathroom, each step a repeated promise to herself to swear off Pamarthean wine for life.

Stripping away her soiled clothes from the previous night, she made her way into the shower, letting the steaming cascade wash over her. Finally, after what felt like hours before she was anywhere close to being refreshed, she stepped out and got dressed. She glanced at her chrono: if she hurried now, she'd be right in time to catch… the last ten minutes of her first class.

Groaning, she gathered her things and made her way to where her second class would be.

. . .

"Damn, Elle, I'm just shocked you're even walking around after last night!" Adrielle's dorm mate, Nari, said almost admiringly. "How many shots of Port in a Storm did you even end up ta—"

"Ugh, shut up! Never mention that crap again!" Adrielle exclaimed dramatically, "You know I hadn't even planned to go there, but someone…" She glanced-glared at Nari, "needed a wingman, only to go home emptyhanded."

"Can't be helped if he has bad taste," Nari replied dismissively. "Anyway, I think I might have the perfect opportunity for redemption, for both of us. Turns out, Sidrona house is having a little thing tonight, my friend Kass—"

"Thanks, but I'm good for now." And forever, Adrielle added mentally. "Anyway, I have a bit of makeup work I have to do for my first class, seeing as how I missed like ninety percent of it today."

"Well, the invite's always open if you want to change your mind," Nari as their paths diverged.

Adrielle decided to take a slightly longer route back to her dorm building, hoping the additional time and exercise would help her organize her thoughts. The fact she could even begin thinking about getting her thoughts together boded well for her regarding her recovery. Gliding her hand along the guardrail as she walked, she chose to take solace in the fact that the thought of food no longer made her violently ill.

Hopefully the caf won't be packed by the time I get back.

So lost was she in her thoughts, she only just stopped in her tracks, as a red ball sailed past her, over the guardrail. She followed its path with her eyes, as the ball bounced down the rocky slope, and into the drainage tunnel across the trench.

"Oh no!" she heard a voice whine from her left. She turned to see two small Nautolan boys running to the guardrail. One of them stopped and fixed his gaze on the tunnel, while the other began climbing the guardrail.

"Whoa these, easy!" Adrielle called out as she grabbed the excessively courageous child and set him down next to his friend. "Don't think you want to risk that. You might just hurt yourself on the climb down, and even if you don't, good luck climbing back up."

"But our ball!" Brave Kid insisted. Adrielle squatted down next to them so she could be on eye level to them.

"Look, how about I go down there, get your ball, and toss it back up? At least with my longer arms and legs I'll be able to climb both down and up, no problem!" She gave the boys an over the top smile in hopes of lifting their spirits.

"No, that's okay," Caution Kid answered, "We don't wanna put you through too much trouble."

"Nah, no trouble at all," Adrielle assured him, "Shouldn't take more than five minutes tops. No worries."

The two boys looked at each other then back at her, the worry still not entirely erased, but nodded all the same.

"Great. Just sit tight and I'll be back in a flash!"

Adrielle swung one leg over the guardrail, then the other. She began her attempted climb down the slope, before giving up and just letting herself slide down to the bottom.

"You okay?" one of the boys called. Adrielle just gave a thumbs up and made her way across, to the drainage tunnel.

The tunnel was much deeper than she'd initially suspected. She thought she'd find the ball just lying near the entrance, but it obviously had rolled a pretty good ways in. Squinting her eyes as though it would somehow speed up their ability to acclimate to the dark inside, Adrielle slowly ventured in. Several feet in, and still no sign of the boys' ball.

With each step she took, she was finding it increasingly difficult to shake the sense that some…thing, else, was down there, though she had no rational basis for this.

At a branching path in the tunnel, she finally found her goal. "Wow, that's… that's a good ball to roll all the way here." She bent down to pick the ball up, but saw a hole in the path to her left at the corner of her eye. Turning her gaze, she noticed a ladder built in to the side of the shaft going down.

She also noticed that uncanny feeling in her increase substantially when she'd turned in that direction. Almost instinctively, Adrielle placed the ball back down, gently so as to not have it roll any further, and turned to the hole and began cautiously climbing down the ladder.

She followed the path into a circular chamber with four new tunnel entrances. She focused on each entrance starting from the left, but noticed that feeling increase once more when she turned her attention to the third from the left. She started down that path. She almost didn't notice the path sloping down until it had become too steep, but fortunately there were grooves on either side of the tunnel wall for her to use to control her descent. Finally she made it out the other side, and suppressed a gasp.

This new area was not sewer. No tunnels, no metal walling. Just pure, seemingly untampered cavern. And in the middle of the cavern, on a tall but slender flat-topped rock, was what looked like a three-pronged star, jet black except for the tips: one blue, one red (which seemed less faded than the other two), and one violet.

She approached the rock, and, gazing almost entranced at the object, she reached out and grabbed it by the red prong which had been pointing upward.

Suddenly, a great many things happened: In her eyes, blinding flashes, interrupted by two environments Adrielle had never seen before—one an island in an ocean, the other a vast frozen wasteland; in her ears, the sounds of waves crashing and storms billowing; on her skin, the light tickle of water spray on her, which just made the cold breezes on her even more excruciating; in her nose and mouth the scent of the ocean and taste of saltwater, followed by an overpowering chill enveloping her face, bombarding her throat and sinuses as she made an involuntary sharp inhale.

Overwhelmed, Adrielle let out a scream as the object crumbled to dust in her grip, and she collapsed on the hard rocky ground.

Moraband

The boulder shattered into countless pieces. Darth Phagos inhaled deeply, reinvigorated. He didn't quite know what exactly had just transpired within the Force, but hhe had instincts enough to know that his time had come.

Making his way to his personal quarters, he activated his holocomm.

The image of Darth Judecca appeared on the comm. She immediately went on one knee.

"Master. What do you wish?"

The Dark Lord looked down at his apprentice. "Something has changed. Be ready to move out."

Alderaan

Orrickos snapped his eyes open, suddenly aware of the sweat on his brow and the increased rate of his breathing.

As if on cue, Uriel Baylan burst into the room, likewise out of breath. "Master! Did you—"

"I did," Orrickos answered, looking up at Uriel. "Contact Captain Jysed. We may need to accelerate our plans." He stood up. "We must get to Obroa-skai in time, or else I fear all may be lost."