WriteHaven

The time came and passed as it so often does, without warning, without sympathy, and without consideration for those that it effected. Time was an unforgiving, uncaring, and almost evil companion that accompanied all throughout the brief walk through life, it sat waiting like a vulture to extinguish the very gift that one cherished above all.

After several hours there was a metallic knock rapping at Erril's door, followed quickly by another, wheels and an electric motor could be heard screeching around in an impatient circle. Outside was one of the most spectacularly flamboyant servant droids that one could possibly imagine, in his arms were Jedi appropriate clothes, almost as if they had been handpicked for both of them. It would almost have looked as if someone raided their closets back at the Jedi temple, which may or may not have actually been the case.

"Master Li, Master Winterhold! If you're decent, I've come to ensure you are ready for your meeting with the, oh to hell with it, I'm not supposed to tell you his title for some silly reason, he wishes to introduce himself to you both personally. Still he's a great man! A great man indeed whose only wish is to bring peace to the galaxy."

All of this was of course spoken in an incredibly high pitched voice, with the door still shut as neither Jedi had come out to greet him as of yet.

"Lets go Master Jedi, wakey wakey. Is there anything I can assist with? Makeup hair? Heaven forbid bathing? It's a dirty job, but someone must do it. I understand you are both sick, so I have brought your an assortment of caffeinated beverages and vitamins for energy and vitality. Really now, we really must hurry."

The second request to hurry came as the hyper servant droid wheeled quickly around in his impatient circle for the tenth time in a matter of about thirty seconds. In fact, all of this transpired in barely over a minute, likely not giving the two occupants any real time to grasp exactly what was going on if they had been asleep, but this was G4-H7, he was always a bit eccentric, and some might say, annoying as hell.

The morning had been a peaceful and relatively laid back situation for the two recovering Jedi, especially in comparison to the sterilized atmosphere of the medical lab in which they’d been revived. The quarters were very bare, but not uncomfortable, and had leant themselves well to Erril and Ashlin finding some more productive and personally reorienting time away from the prying or even well-meaning eyes of others – though Erril had no misgivings about whether or not they were being observed.

The two part-sephi talked a bit as morning turned to noon, and then noon to afternoon. They talked of what might be awaiting them at the dinner “party” to which they’d been invited, they talked about what they might do once free of the Sith vessel and more in control of their own lives, and that discussion led to a little bit of uncomfortable guestimation about what the year might be. They got off the subject before it could turn into ruminating. They’d know that particular detail soon enough. From there, their calm conversations turned back to practicalities of the situation, and the subject of their small bundled belongings came to the fore.

Erril sat across from Ashlin on the single cot adorning the room and unwrapped his folded cloth as did she. There were a few other odds and ends they’d each brought along, but the main point of interest was the lightsabers. A cursory inspection of Erril’s revealed that the hilt he’d constructed of dura-carbide had survived the freezing process in good order. Nomi’s saber, which had been imparted in exchange to Ashlin out of concerns expressed by the latter, seemed to have faired well too, apart from a minor offset in the tuning of the focusing lens mechanism.

When the source of the problem was identified, Ashlin began the delicate process of disassembling the lightsaber to adjust the small part. Erril, observing with interest, commented casually that he’d long since given up the traditional style of lightsaber construction in favor of the so-called “trigger-saber” design, partly for the very reason that the lens mechanism was not a moving part, and therefore much harder to knock out of tune, even by lightsaber standards. It was an innocent enough comment, but when it was followed up a few minutes later by a couple more comments of similarly tutorial value, a look and a small mental nudge from Ashlin reminded Erril that he wasn’t the only Jedi capable of building and repairing lightsabers.

Taking his cue, the elder Jedi removed himself from the cot while Ashlin continued her delicate work, and began to do some of the stretching his body had been craving for the last several hours. It seemed a good time for such an activity. He started with some simple ones just to loosen up, and then tried some of his more advanced ones. Those seemed attainable as well until he finally raised his left foot up over his head, placed it against the wall, and tried to touch his forehead to his knee. The long tendons in his upward-stretched left leg suddenly screamed their protest, and he found himself leaning back with a pained grunt to get away from the burning feeling. When he glanced back, he found the younger Jedi watching him with an amused smile.

“I might have to work my way into that set.” He admitted.

Ashlin joined Erril once the recalibration of her sister’s lightsaber was complete, and the two of them went through a set of meditative stretches in companionable silence for a while – as Ashlin pointed out, there was no sense having their weapons in working order if their bodies weren’t.

There had been a good deal of community that had built up while the Jedi had been stranded on the Force nexus world, even compared to their normal way of life, and one of the many things that it had fostered among them was a sharing of meditation time and habits. Among those which Erril had enjoyed sharing in company with Ashlin and several others had been the stretching meditations, the motions of which they were now moving through. It was very much what they needed right then, soothing to both the body and the soul once they found their routine. It was something they hadn’t had time to enjoy during their time of preparation on the carbonite world, and practicing it now together, even in the heart of a Sith-controlled ship, felt like a statement that they’d overcome profound obstacles already.

They were still stretching, and still chuckling at the occasional discovery of a limitation compared to their former flexibilities when the erratic droid began hammering on their door. Erril’s saber rolled halfway across the floor toward him at the moment the sound rang out, but the droid began babbling and he realized their dinner call had come. The two Jedi shared a moment of confused concern as the droid blathered on about getting ready and drinking caffeine. They both retrieved their personal effects, slipped into their grey deck shoes, and then Erril approached at opened the door.

“Stop talking.” He said, calm but insistent. He eyed the clothes the droid had brought them for a moment, seeing a few things that might be beneficial upgrades to their current attire. None of it was worth indulging in the theatrics of their “host”, however, and he knew Ashlin would agree. Still, compared to the suede deck shoes he and Ashlin wore, the boots in the droid’s possession were…

Erril scooped the entire bundle of attire out of the droid’s arms and tossed them across the room onto the cot. No need to waste an opportunity. With a sideways glance at Ashlin, he turned back to the droid and nodded.

“We’re ready now. Please, lead the way.”

The darker-haired of the two peckishly thin, apparently quite unimpressive and disappointing, Jedi guests glanced briefly at her snow-headed counterpart and then back at the prattling droid. She slowly arched an eyebrow in an incredibly "Li" mannerism, that was more subconscious than anything, and let the being ramble off to a stopping point.

"We're ready now," she repeated.

Ashlin absently brushed away a light sheen of perspiration from her forehead, from the stretching meditations they'd just stopped, and then motioned for the droid to carry on. Her braid was neat enough. They had all they needed. Erril was fine.

"You can go ahead and lead."

Again G4-H7 let out and exasperated sigh, he motioned elaborately with his arm as he circled around the Jedi again and headed down the hall.

"Right this way my darlings! Sometimes I forget that Jedi are more modest creatures and do not always worry themselves with vanity and silliness of that nature. Perhaps it is something that all creatures could learn from. I mean honestly, the sheer amount of time I spend with the guests of my Master, tending to their every whim, well it's exhausting! I know I am a servant by design, but I doubt the maker had any idea what I would be in store for dealing with dignitaries, politicians and celebrities all day and night long...."

He continued to ramble on about this and that, the terrors of some of the more famous people in the galaxy and the horrific things he had seen. All the while staying close to the Jedi as they neared the entrance to the dining hall which for the Jedi must have seemed like an eternity as G4-H7 did not have much of a filter and spoke at length about the design of the history of the ship, leaving out critical and classified details. As they approached the dinning hall, two Storm Troopers in black armor snapped to attention at the sight of the Jedi and opened the doors to the dining room.

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Continued in the Dining Hall.
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(OOC: After Leaving the Dining Hall)
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Leave her be! Do not look. Do not touch. Do not interrupt her after this burning day of baldly disguised imprisonment, bribery, and offenses. That evil joke of a dinner, with its psychotic captors' threats to her loved ones, her person, her way of life. There'd been enough. Nothing good could come from adding even a glance! Just leave her be.

The thin Jedi woman with the chestnut braid in her hair swept from the dining hall, through the anteroom, into the corridor. Ashlin’s mind, so impenetrably locked-tight a moment ago, now radiated a swirl of mortifyingly private emotions for the sum of every offense that had been done or revealed to her since she woke up restrained and suffocating on this forsaken ship. Guards tightened jaw muscles and averted their eyes before she passed them. In her wake, more than one soldier wondered if this woman who might have been someone so skillful two decades ago still remained any sort of Jedi at all, until the sharper edges of her passing slipped from memory like a faded dream in the next breath.

Seven paces into the outer hallway, Ashlin turned the corner and dissolved her hot-to-the-senses veil of reactive emotions as if she were letting the hood of a cloak fall back across her shoulders when its shade became unneeded. Erril was only a moment behind her. Ashlin paused to wait for her companion. The Healer’s daughter met Erril’s eyes and couldn't quite think of anything to say. She finally offered him a soft impression of a particular small pond past the Eastern edge of the temple Bakura.

The pond was sheltered beneath a stand of several large trees with their branches grown interwoven around each other. Rainstorm rattled foliage, but the adult trees were more than tempered to it by now. Nothing much fell. The raindrops that filtered through the leaves and branches dropped onto the water, making patterns of expanding rings all across the surface from each impact. Each ring faded with counter-pressure from the deep calm beneath where the roots drank constantly. Stormwater flowed downhill into the edges of the reservoir and kept it full. The force of the storm caused plenty of other issues; but this pond was fine.

Ashlin turned her hand and let it fall again in a slight shrugging motion at Erril, fading the picture as deftly as she’d banished the scandalous tactical tantrum, although without the memory-repressive fog at the end.

She gave the white-haired Jedi a faint smile as she glanced him over, and then looked back to the corridor. "Back to the room, I suppose?"

As the elder Jedi slipped out of the small conference hall into the cold efficiency of the Crusader’s hallway, he could sense the tension starting to grow tight behind him again, but he paid little heed to it. The Sith, for once, weren’t his immediate concern. But as his senses oriented to the hall, Erril found himself in the wake of another, much more particularized sort of turbulence. He knew better than to interact with it too closely, lest he should find himself burned by the same off-putting effect that had befallen several of the individuals who marched down the hall. He pursed his lips to avoid grinning as he witnessed the mingled disconcertion and shock that crossed their faces as they passed by Ashlin.

When he caught up to Ashlin around the corner, he let a bit of the amusement filter through his eyes as they contacted hers. That was a nasty trick, they seemed to say. But there was no judgement there, only a subtle appreciation for her method, and perhaps a hint of desire to ascertain her true state of self at that moment. The pond was his answer.

Erril had always marveled at the acuity of Ashlin’s mental projections. Even as a child they had been vibrant and thoughtful – at this point he could only begin to match her auditory impressions, anything else was a little glimpse into another piece of true reality that he could only marvel at. The pond made perfect sense as it was presented, with all the layers of meaning and care, and the reassurance that it was meant to convey to him. His steel eyes softened, and a smile tugged at the right corner of his mouth. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, Erril also realized that he’d hadn’t enjoyed the pleasure of one of her thoughtful projections since leaving the nexus world. It’s very appearance seemed to speak to the sort of calm it represented in it’s creator, and the circumstance for that matter. Erril nodded his ascent to her comment and swung his head toward to open hall as he began to move in that direction.

“Yeah, come on.” He said gently, nestling the hand-sleighted data pad under his arm. "We've got a lot to catch up on."

The brunette woman fell slowly into step with the elder man, mentally acknowledging his borrowed datapad without glancing at it.

“Aye…” Ashlin replied in a faint murmur as she and Erril made made their way unobstructed past a pair of guards at the next corridor. “We do.”

She carefully reached out to brush past the mental edges of the vessel’s crew members as they walked past… It was diaphanous and tricky to catch the sense of, but there was a subtle haze of influence connecting every individual she’d noticed so far… like spidersilk strings… A cult-like influence… but with disconcerting similarity to a Battle Meditation. Applying even the slightest pressure to any thread in the web was liable to warn the spider. She didn’t want that, and so Ashlin was incredibly careful as she peeked from mind to mind. Behind closed dining room doors several corridors behind them now, she felt a guard watch something light up with pain.

Ashlin breathed out a small audible sigh. She slowed to a halt, fidgeting her fingertips a bit in a nervous or frustrated mannerism. That dinner had slammed them through several different levels of chaos, after all.

In a wordless mental image or two, the Healer’s daughter privately conveyed the notion that Erril was the significantly better slicer between them. She’d do better to measure the ship, its personnel, and Jonathon’s grasp on it with her own eyes (along with the eyes of a few dozen strangers).

“I need to presume on our hosts’s—kindness, for a while, and clear my mind. That meal was draining. But I need to walk, Erril.”

And… there was a madman volcano Sith treading around, whom her conscience was demanding she bear thinking about before she wrote him off as a dead man. Jonathon wanted she and Erril alive for the moment. Ashlin proposed they be cautious, obviously, but should take advantage of the relative safety while the pair of them were both unharmed and well.

“I’ll think about what was said and then reconvene with you in the room if that’s alright.”

A subtle impression of the organized chaos that Ashlin was beginning to perceive trickled through them mental connection to Erril’s own processes. He had been eager for an opportunity to begin plumbing the depths of the mystery surrounding them ever since waking up in the ways that he knew best, and now seeing just a glimpse of things through Ashlin’s eyes only frustrated his curiosity even more. He could hardly blame her for wanting to go and pull on a few threads in the ways that she knew best as well. Her methods were certainly different from his.

Erril nodded in a somewhat overly sage fashion – his typical affectation in such situations of layered communication – and smiled softly. “By all means, presume away. I would of course offer to join you but as you so elegantly didn’t state, I’ve put off indulging my reading appetite for far too long already. If you want to meet me back in the room that’ll be just fine, but I may take a walk myself if my thoughts are provoked.”

At an intersection of corridors, the elder Jedi reached over and caught the arm of his practical niece. “Keep your wits about you. Despite the hospitality we’ve been afforded this is, still, the belly of the beast… I’m never far, if you need me.”

With one last look – a bit of solemn eye contact that was part caution and part encouragement – Erril swayed left and marched down the hall back in the direction of their quarters. Certain fibers strained against him as he moved away from Ashlin, especially given recent experiences, but their divergence was a matter of purpose this time, not misunderstanding. She needed to know things, and he needed to know things.

Back in the quarters some five minutes later, Erril sat on his cot and simply breathed for a moment. It was the first moment of genuinely afforded silence he’d enjoyed in too long. Turning on the data pad in his arm, Erril stared at the face that gazed back, her eyes following some point of interest just beyond his left shoulder by perspective.

I’ll find you soon enough

Reaching into his bag of items, Erril retrieved a small data spike and slotted it into the side of the data pad. It immediately bypassed the device’s paltry security without even making its presence known, and generated a master directory of files. It was very short.

“That’s alright my dear, let me introduce you to the wide world of wireless access.” Erril crooned, taking out another data spike and slotting it beside the first. This was one he’d prototyped many years ago, and it was completely unique to his own skillset. After all, there weren’t many slicers in the galaxy that could use the Force to generate a substatic EM antenna. With both spikes active, and the air humming softly around him, Erril tapped into the ship’s systems through a tertiary data management system and helped himself to several programmer backdoors. They were sloppily concealed, but in all fairness they were also hidden behind heavy layers of encryption that he’d bypassed simply because of his point of access.

With his invisible probe waltzing through the Crusader’s various data systems and adding them to its master directory, Erril picked a file or two with interesting names and began perusing them. There was no reason not to multitask.

Erril’s verbal acknowledgment and the understanding they parted on resonated in her mind as Ashlin walked down a seemingly arbitrary corridor. She paused to stretch from time to time, perhaps still easing her muscles back into motion. In the eyes of the Crusader’s crew, the Jedi woman was apparently calm enough. Rumor said that Master Li had left the private conference room in a fluster. However, none of the guards who’d seen her pass by seemed to actually remember anything unexpected.

She was a very slight figure in slip-on shoes and the drab grey ship’s attire that seemed typically intended for sleeping or possibly worn by a few of the civilian staff. Her dark chestnut hair was in an intricate four-stranded braid, like the old holovids of Kaytren Li. The lightsaber hilt worn openly at her side, on a fabric strip tied like an obi, seemed to put to rest any questions about whether she was or wasn't Jedi. Of course she was. And she was a rather peaceable guest.

The mesh of telepathic influence woven across and between the vast majority of minds on this vessel was very much like a Battle Meditation. Ashlin confirmed her assessment with an inward grimace that she took great care to allow no trace of in her mannerisms. The Jedi woman had been hoping she and Erril might simply 'liberate' the crew. But... despite the shades of fear she'd felt in the infirmary staff… This ship felt fully as much like a cult as it did a crew.

Ashlin weighed a myriad of thoughts as she eventually turned her steps toward the medical wing. There were enough pretenses for her to walk that way, and the most reasons to chat with their hosts.

For the first several minutes of slicing, the Crusader’s info systems were a disappointing revelation in the relative stagnancy of base code. Now that he knew he’d skipped something like 20 years of technological advancement, the voice of Erril’s curious inner child had spurred him on in the hopes of finding newer and better technologies waiting for him, but they were more or less the same. Even so, he found himself running into more robust security systems the further into the mainframe he delved, and the entrances to secure stores of data were more carefully protected – it was a more enjoyable challenge. But despite enjoying himself, Erril knew he had things to do, and would have more time to indulge in safer climes later. He pressed on.

While he sifted through data filing in through his algorithm, he let a few reels of news play on a side panel. They portrayed the heroic Naom Samja – Senator and Savior; Chancellor and Champion – endearing himself to the people. His pension for publicity was far more distinguished than some of his dark predecessors. Holonet news captured scenes of him sympathizing with those victimized by the villains against whom he had striven. At one point Erril’s eye was caught by a particular reel of him embracing a woman whose son had been slain by an outer rim cartel he’d taken apart. It stood out to Erril because of the name of the cartel – it was one he had been preparing to organize and investigation on before the disappearance – so he paused his data sifting and looked into it further. The news reported only the glories of Samja’s victories over the criminals, but related reports on file recorded joint Mandalorian operations on several of the largest busts related to that particular cartel. He was pleased to see that the Mandalorians had continued to distinguish themselves as a force for good in the absence of the Jedi. Thinking of Mandalorians caused his thoughts to stray away from task again for a moment.

Leyana…

He glanced up at the picture of Mission in the corner of the screen, shrunk down but still present. Almost entirely on impulse, the Jedi ran a probe to a routine server outside the protected regions of the mainframe and collected an image of his wife from a news report on the holonet. He saved it to the local drive and slipped it up into the corner next to his daughter.

With his work surface appropriately amended, Erril continued sifting data amidst the faces of his family and got back on track to priorities.
Within the ship, there were a few things that were very easy to locate. The ship’s registry noted a standard compliment of TIE fighters, bombers, interceptors, and an assortment of other models. He noted the presence of a Defender and committed it’s physical location to memory, just in case things progressed to the worst possible conclusion and he were forced to escape with Ashlin and no one else. But he also, in a slightly more optimistic vane of thought, noted the locations of several intermediate transports and one small freighter. If he could find a way to acquire whatever others Johnathon was hiding, he hoped he could fit them all on one vessel and slip it off the ship.

He found other useful things including the location of the quartermaster’s office that managed uniform cleaning and distribution for The Crusader – it would be a useful piece of knowledge if he decided that he needed a uniform at any point. Deck 9, Subsection 4, Corridor 3. When he noted that there was actually a quartermaster on duty, Erril’s thought process spun forward to personnel investigations and he pressed on.
There was a record of the crew compliment, including every name from the lowest to the highest ranking members of the ship’s rank-and-file, and subsystems which included the rosters for the command crew, registered guest assignments aboard the vessel – of which there were very few, unsurprisingly. He also noticed a covered data channel locked for special clearance – which he bypassed using a diagnostic handshake probe – that led him to a different registry. This one was a piece of bookkeeping most higher-ups would rather not have, but coordination of “staff” demanded they keep on hand. There were 12 names on this registry, and then of them were marked as a unit. He checked their service numbers and quickly recognized the codes – codes he’d seen before. The Chancellor’s whole color-guard was on The Crusader with him.

There were certain people Erril knew he was simply going to need to avoid during his coming reconnaissance venture, and while most of them were obvious – high ranking command staff and soforth – the presence of the entire color guard intrigued him as much as it put him off. Especially in Kaini’s company, Erril would have expected the chancellor to travel with four of his color guard at most – all ten of them being present was cause for curiosity.

There was a special classification of registry that was used to log passengers whose presence wasn’t supposed to be logged, and Erril had used it many times while under cover. It was uniquely coded to exist in this specific registry, and even then it wouldn’t appear except by intentional prompting with the right command key. Fortunately, the seasoned Shadow knew where that command key was stored in the system, so he copied it out of its file in the ghost index, along with several other codes and pieces of information, then sliced a minor stint in the system disguised as a defragmenting diagnostic tool with a routine error. It would act as a stint for about five minutes before a higher priority diagnostic routine came along and corrected it, but it would let him back into the ghost index easily if he needed it again before he headed out. There was one more piece of info he needed to check there, but not yet.

Returning to the back office registry, Erril used the stolen command key to reverse engineer a new entry in the system, and code an alias, rank, and clearance priority into the system. He also attached the stolen codes from the ghost index to the credential so that he could move through doors without the system logging their activity – in terms of all electronic records apart from physical cameras, he could now move invisibly through the ship.

Before leaving the back office registry, he glanced across the color guard’s service log since departing their home port. There was one incident, with an attached report connecting to another lab on the vessel, but the color guard’s presence had otherwise been a formality. He pulled the file locations for both and dumped them onto his datapad, the retracted his probe and returned to the ghost index stint. The image of Mission was prompted up from the corner of the screen, and Erril pulled it’s file location, cross-referencing it with anything hidden under the heavier layers of security. Three reports came up, so he pulled their file locations and dumped them into his pad as well before leaving the ghost index be – even routine activity in such data stores could attract attention if it was bunched up too much. He wasn’t the only skilled slicer in the galaxy, and plenty of the others were software developers for the military.

With all probes pulled out of the deepest recesses of the Crusader’s mainframe, Erril took a moment to examine the information he had. The first thing he checked was the color guard incident report. The attached lab report was encrypted, and he didn’t have a decryption suite on his data pad, but Erril knew the language well enough to make out the basic details in code, so he read on at a slower pace. What he deciphered both pleased and concerned him. Another Jedi had been revived before he and Ashlin, and this unnamed male had attacked Johnathon soon after being discharged from the lab.

I guess he didn’t like the dear chancellor’s sales pitch either.

Either way, there were two useful pieces of information for Erril to glean between the lab report and the incident report: There was a record of whatever serial number they had used to catalog the carbon slab they’d thawed the first Jedi out of, which meant a base registry, and there was also a record of the cell number where they had placed the Jedi after his failed attempt on the chancellor. He checked the cell first, and found that two guards were stationed in the block, guarding something like four prisoners. When he tabbed through the cell cameras, he saw three individuals he didn’t recognize – and one he did. Erril let out an audible sigh.

“Must you always?” he whispered to the silent image on his screen.

Moving on from the discovery that was truly unsurprising in hindsight, Erril cross-referenced the serial number on the first slab to the ship’s cold stores. Several smaller carbon storage facilities came up under the general heading, but two locations caught his eye. They were under the carbon storage heading, but the locations suggested by their location tags were different than the rest, and when he probed deeper, he also found a duty assignment. A cold knot twisted in Erril’s stomach as he selected the first of the two locations and checked the duty assignment. Color Guard. He checked the second as well just to confirm his suspicions. Color guard.

It had, by the calendar, been some thirty plus years since Erril had been approached by the chancellor’s office to train the color guard that served during Chancellor D’Sabre’s final years before retirement. He had been otherwise occupied at the time, but he had provided them with a list of alternatives whom he felt confident would offer roughly equivalent training. They had taken his highest recommendation and paid one of his old Echani contacts a princely sum to spend two years with the color guard teaching them everything he was willing to impart. He doubted these guards had been trained by the same man, but he knew well the standards of their training. He was in no condition to deal with the entire color guard by himself, just then.

Erril’s mind spun backward to the live image that had presented on his screen from the cell block a few moments ago. The Jedi who had been tossed in holding there.

Alright then… you first.

Before tucking the datapad away, Erril indulged for just a moment and opened the newest of the three files he’d pulled from the ghost index related to Mission. His practiced eye weeded out all the pandering over efforts made and protocol observed, and got to the crux of the report.

Location Unknown

A bare hint of a lefthanded smile tugged at the old Jedi’s lips, and he closed down the datapad. That was enough for the moment. He’d read the rest when there was time.

Slipping off the cot, Erril traded his plain clothes for the finer boots and attire they had been offered for the dinner. If he was going to play the special agent, he needed to look the part. Before stepping out the door, Erril paused and glanced at the mirror. His appearance attracted attention as it was. There was nothing he could do about his hair, but his eyes… Focusing his awareness for a moment, the Jedi sank into the barest edge of what might be considered a healing trance. There in his irises, right where they had been the last time he’d touched them as little more than a party trick four years ago by his reconning – sixteen, he corrected – were the tiny particles that composed the prismatic ink that had been tattooed there decades ago. Erril touched them with the barest combination of telekinetic and bio-responsive pressures. His eyes tingled for a moment like the first signs of a headache, but when he opened them, the steel grey had been replaced by a mundane hazel-brown shade.

There was no more preparation he could make. This was as close to ready as he could be until he got moving and found answers elsewhere. Tucking the datapad under his arm, the Jedi Shadow stepped out of the room using his ghost credential on the reader, and slipped into relative anonymity in the halls of the Crusader.

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Continued in the Brig
(Link)