Morut
- Stronghold
A few days later, the Argyle family was on another trip. They had left in the early morning, hiking down out of the forested highlands to the north. Arminius made sure they would avoid the Fett's old homestead, where he had found the boys when they were still babies. Coming down out of the highlands, they came upon the Dha River, crossing a bridge to get to the other side. The terrain on the other side of the Dha was different from what they had been accustomed to. While they lived in the highlands, often shrouded in mist, or rained upon, and protected by the forest, this side of the river was dry. Dying grass, dust tornadoes, and a generally parched landscape was the norm here.
"Buir, what are we doing here?" Darius asked, as they trudged up another barren hill. Neither boy complained that their legs were tired – already they were showing the endurance and strength all true warriours needed to survive.
"You'll see soon, son." Arminius replied. As they got to the top of the hill, Arminius stopped. Athena, holding her husband's hand, looked at her youngest sons and smiled as she saw them awe struck by the sight in front of them.
Arminius noticed this too, and smiled. Athena set down a blanket, while Arminius took their lunches from his pack. Sucellos joined his mother and father for lunch, while Doug and Darius continued to stare at the great fortress.
"Can we go explore it, can we?" Doug asked his parents.
"No, you need to eat. Come on you two." Athena replied.
"Ah shucks." Darius said with disappointment. As the two boys joined their family and began their lunch, Darius noticed something a little ways down the hill. It looked like a large white bone, but he wasn't sure.
"What's that?" Darius asked, pointing at it. His elder family members looked down the hill to where he was pointing.
"Oh yah…mythosaurs." Sucellos said, taking another bite out of his lunch.
"Mytha what?" Doug asked.
"Mythosaurs, sweetie. Old, old creatures. They're extinct now though." Athena replied to her sons. She eyed her husband, silently asking him to teach them. Arminius set his sandwich down.
"Remember Te Sol'yc Mand'alor?" Arminius asked his two young sons.
"Mandalore…the first?" Doug'ika asked, recalling their earlier lessons.
"Yes. When he and the Taung arrived here, they drove the species into extinction, and used their skeletons to make cities across the planet. We just happened to find a lone piece of one left here." Arminius said, going back to his sandwich. The boys sat and ate, un-phased by the grim nature of the story's reality. The family, after finishing lunch, packed up and continued walking for the fortress.
"Does anybody live here?" Darius asked, as they walked across the stone bridge to the interior of the castle.
"Not anymore. This used to be a residence of the Mandalore Templars." Arminius replied.
"Who?" Darius asked, lifting his head up to look at the towers inside the castle. To a young child, they seemed to go on for miles, up into the sky.
"They're a branch of Mandalorians, formed at the same time the Crusaders were by Te Sol'yc Mand'alor." Arminius replied.
"What do they do?" Darius asked, holding his mother's hand.
"Originally, Mandalore the First gave them the task of setting up fortresses like these, to provide refuge to their fellow Taung who were being beaten by the Mythosaurs. The beasts were as big as cities, after all." Arminius said.
"Then," Arminius continued, "some time after killing off the Mythosaurs, a lot of them went up into the mountains and became shamans, oracles. They claimed they could communicate with our fallen Mandalorian brothers. Then, after that, some more of them claimed they were receiving messages of war. And, to this day, they still make their own wars." Arminius said.
"So…they were…separate from the Crusaders?" Doug asked, confused.
"Yes. They went to war on their own. Their leader, called the 'Grand Master,' was elected because he had received visions from Mandalore the First, who had died sometime after they took the planet and killed off the Mythosaurs." Arminius replied.
"Did he really receive visions from Mandalore?" Darius asked. Arminius stopped and looked at his son. After a few moments of silence, he spoke up.
"I don't know, Darius. I don't know."
Arminius continued walking along in the castle. Darius and Doug were confused; this was the first time their father didn't know. How could that be? Nevertheless, they enjoyed the trip to the Templar castle. Afternoon came and gone, replaced by the evening. Overhead, as they stood on the castle's outer walls and looked out over the landscape, they were witness to the strange phenomena known as na fir-chlis, or "the merry dancers" in archaic Mando'a. Arminius and Athena told young Darius and Doug about the odd lights in the sky, and the translation into their Mandalorian language.
"There's a proverb for this." Sucellos said, turning to his younger brothers. "They say that 'when the merry dancers play, they are like to slay.'"
"What's that mean?" Doug asked.
"It means that when the merry dancers aren't playful anymore, they end up in a very serious akaanir. When you see those lights in the night and find red lichen on the stones the next morning, then you know the once merry dancers probably bled each other. A lot. It also means there's going to be bad weather approaching." Sucellos said. The young boys raised their brows in surprise.
"Which means we should get going. It's getting dark." Athena said. Arminius nodded, and hefted his two youngest sons up onto his broad shoulders playfully, tickling them. Darius and Doug laughed gleefully.
It would be the happiest moment of their young lives, before events, much more complex than they could comprehend at the time, engulfed them in an ocean of war, tragedy, and death.