1.3 An Inauspicious Beginning P4
Somewhere Deep
I am a great friend to chooks of all kinds, particularly this little chicken in my hands. Aren't I chookie.
*Bwark*
Coruscant Game fowl are the most adorable animals, finely bred specimens of a venerable species prized for their fine taste and gorgeous plumage.
*Bok Bok*
So little chookie you are going to do me a favour and afterwards there'll be all kinds of treats.
I place the gorgeous, fantastic, wonderful bird down in the recessed place where all good birds sit. It being a wonderful marvellous bird sits there happily on the beautifully died crimson surface.
My hand comes down and chookie's head leaves it's body.
The Howl of the soul leaving it's body through the ornate amulet of durasteel sitting half the room away echos in the cavernous room. The building used to be a school gymnasium several centuries back but now it's a hall forgotten to all but an adventurous few. Something for which I'm eternally thankful.
I wait as the commotion dies down and the last of the bird's soul leaves it's body before I move to inspect the item.
The Runic array I built around it has burnt out as I expected, there's lines of carbonization in the dried blood I'm using as a transmission medium. This is really enchanting with scotch tape and rubber bands here but as a rule carving magic in blood has good results.
Carving it in your own blood has better results if you feel up to practising your restoration.
I hold the small piece of durasteel and I can feel the power within it. Recall and enough power for a single cast of the spell between recharges.
Fuckin' A.
"That was deeply disturbing on just about all of the levels." Chanim says from behind her bike.
"Good grief yes. On the other hand, Catch." I fling the amulet to the small teen and she snags it out of the air easily.
"I... Ummmm." she blinks at the item, turning it over in her hand. The amulet is just a simple tube of durasteel, a piece of debris from on of thousands of spacecraft crashes which I felt looked nice. It also has a decent enchanting capacity, A bit of carefull disintegration and application of gold, silver and aluminium foils saw to that
"Meditate on it and tell me what you can figure out about it." I say, Disintegrating the enchantment matrix I used for the small item.
I reach with my mind to find the paces where this world connects to another where the rules are.. different? Different is the correct world. I force the connection open and pull something insubstantial through a few moments of mental browbeating later the thing I brought through is a knife of sorts.
I'm not particularly good at this whole shaping business but the knife I slip into the vein on my wrist is a jagged angry thing made of a pitch black metal with dark red streaks. It has no crosspiece and the blade isn't straight, but it is sharp as anything and it is tougher than durasteel. I don't know how well a bound item like this will hold against a lightsaber but if it can take even one hit that's a big step up from most things.
I tap the little holo emitter near my foot and it projects the next matrix on the ground.
Blood runs slowly down my hand and the paintbrush I hold in it as I draw the new spell matrix onto the hard metal floor.
I feel a bit faint as I paint the last curve of the pattern carefully. With a rub of my hand the cut disappears and I mutter the minor healers chant under my breath as I place my next item in the centre of the fresh matrix.
"So what's it do?" I ask as I deposit the original bird into the eski and convince the next fantastic, wonderful and obedient chookie to jump into my arms so it can has treats.
"It's an escape." She says.
"Damn straight. It was actually designed for miners if my reading is correct, A miner could load up with almost a tonne of ore and then they'd cast that spell and poof back at the head of the mine will all of the loot. People like us are the main ones which use it in the most recent books I have. Spellswords, military runners and scouts would have amulets just like that one and go off and do their thing then use the magic to report back to base or to escape if they got outmatched or flanked. maximum range is near on five hundred miles, I haven't found any references of someone travelling further than that and that particular amulet fires on a command word so it can be used without hands.
Keep looking while I give chookie here his treats then you're going to have to make your own."
"I'm not sure if I want to." She says worriedly.
"Fair enough. Want to talk about it?" I ask, sitting beside her on the cold metal floor, chookie Bok-ing in my arms.
"No not really." She sulks.
"Really? Because if the Edgelords rock up and you don't have one of those amulets it's going to be real hard to escape."
"Why do you call them Edgelords anyway? The Imperial Inquistion."
"Ha haaaa. I'll tell you that and then we are going to talk about why you should reconsider your opinion on soul abusing ritual sacrifice. 'K?"
"Ok." She mutters.
"Right. I call 'em Edgelords because while their official title is 'The Imperial Inquisitors' what they actually are is 'mid level Sith Goombahs'."
"Alright, just another one of those crazy things you say."
"Not this time, listen. once upon a time there was a mighty republic, kingdom, nation etcetra etcetra. Big nation, lots of people, Light side force sensitives either in charge or very nearly in charge. Then through trick or trial a fall happens. Sometimes it's only half a fall, half the kingdom getting cut off sometimes its a full on fall from the top. Anyway big kingdom, big fall. the resulting empire or adversaries is Always, each and every time, a dark side force user. Some times it's a council of powerful darksiders but more often its a single warlord of unfathomable power. Said council then brings their territory under their tight personal control, typically with a strong conventional military and heavy spy service, occasionally by churning out low level force sensitives into lightsabering death squads."
"Yeah okey, that sounds a little bit believable what now?"
"Yeah well these conventional forces are utterly pants at taking on enemy force users, light side or dark side, doesn't matter. The force guidance thing that powerful sensitives can use in addition to their other tricks make mean that the dark side bigwigs need specialists in order to handle the more potent force users. As with all things there's more than one way to skin this cat, when there's two sides normal Assassins trained to fuck with force users are popular but in every case they always create a cadre of well, but not properly trained mid power expandable force sensitives specifically to use as Jedi hunters. Those are our Edgelords.
Fortunately they're pretty easy to spot, look out for the snappy uniforms, condescending sneer, the red lightsabers and the way that thy're always always utter utter cunts."
"Really? that's how I keep an eye out for Edgelords, look for the evil arsehole." She scoffs.
"Yeah, well that's the thing. They're evil arseholes with backup, plenty of legal powers and an antagonistic streak a mile wide. That's actually their main tactic, aside from all else the Edgelords do know what makes a Jedi tick and have actually figured out how to look for a Jedi in the force. Their favourite trick is to set a trap specifically to target a Jedi's heartstrings, Set fire to an orphanage, torture a love interest, kill a mentor, generally being an irredeemable dickweasel. The kind of tactic is meant to bring a Jedi down to their level and then they'll beat you with experience."
"So that's it you call them Edgelords because they keep on doing evil things?"
"I call them Edgelords because A): they consciously choose to do the evilest thing which pops into their head at any given moment, usually it's to keep the Jedi off balance but it is habit forming. Most of them with any kind of experience would kick puppies for the shiggles. B): Each regime gives them a different name, sometimes they're inquisitors, sometimes they're knights sometimes they're apprentices. The name change but the role remains. C): Edgelord is a derogatory term referring people who are visibly pricks for the sake of being pricks, they lie, they cheat, they steal and they're all around bastards. But at the same time they're pathetic, they have no path for advancement and their entire purpose it to die in the service of their master, their training is flawed on a fundamental level so that they can never challenge said master and they aren't powerful force sensitives like you, they're mid rank at best specifically so they can't challenge their leaders. They Will try to hunt and kill the both of us once they realise that we exist. It's better that we identify them and the threat they represent right off the bat and have an action plan in place if we ever encounter one."
"So murder then." She says with disdain, feet curled up underneath herself.
"Sweet fuck yes. Fastest and easiest way to deal with the fuckers. I have a thermal detonator and a recall amulet. It's a two step plan."
"That seems drastic." She says sizing me up.
"Yeah, well if an inquisitor gets involved then we're already well up shit creek. The rest of my plan is to burn my books immediately and book the next flight off planet, paying cash. Nuking the fuck is just my was of saying 'thanks' for making me the most wanted man in the galaxy"
"Hmmm." she grumbles, not quite knowing what to say. "I think you're being paranoid. I mean they are out to get you but murder? Really?" The small teen looks up at me as I pat chookie.
"Yeah really. Totes really. with dark side wankers it's best if you don't fuck around, decide beforehand if you can deal with them without killing them but if they insist on forcingthe point then it's best if you don't fuck around. Besides, can you imagine what the empire would be like if it got it's hands on my library." I shudder at the thought. Chanim does as well.
"I... Um... yeah. I hadn't thought of that." She says introspectively.
"Nah, it's cool. You want to talk about the whole ritual sacrifice thingy?"
"Not particularly." She sulks.
"Well it's still an important lesson."
"Yeah, I know." She sulks.
"Why don't you tell me why it's an important lesson? The thing which gets most Jedi killed is not knowing why they're doing, the morale failure which happens afterwards makes em loose their groove which typically doesn't end well. Talk to me about it."
"Really?" she scowls.
"Yeah really, you may not have notice but I cannot into force. I don't know how to train you, all I can do is teach you what I know and prepare you so that when things get bad you are prepared. So we talk about what I'm having you do so that when things go downhill we don't have to ask ourselves what we should be doing here, how we should be behaving because we've already talked about it."
"Fuck you." She mutters spitefully.
I shrug and she sighs with resignation.
"You want me to do this because Illusion will help me hid from Inquisitors. You are making me bleed myself because I don't know I'm going to get hurt. You are making me kill the birds because... fuck. Because I will kill people, I'm going to be a killer so I might as well get used to it."
"Hey. Hey." I pull her into a hug. "That last one isn't accurate, you don't need to kill, you don't need to pull the trigger or swing the sword. But... People die all the time from all kinds of things, this is the problem. We can do things other people can't but whatever choice we end up making is probably mean that someone is going to die and someone else is going to live. That's just life, if two people are hurt in a car crash and you've only got enough magika to stabilise one of them it's not your fault the other dies. If the Death Star is about to pop Alderaan would you destroy it if you could? Personally murdering a few million imps to save a planet."
"Fuck you." She mutters angrily.
"Yeah it's heavy shit... Sorry.... The universe is a pretty fucked up place, just gotta make your own decisions and be at peace with them. Talking it over with your Poppop probably wouldn't be a bad idea. Also the bleeding thing, that's because using your own blood makes the enchantment much easier for some reason. Fuckin magic."
"Fuckin Magic." she mutters grumpily.
We sit there for a while while the blood dries and the chicken coos in my arms.
"Wookie cookie?" I offer her a baked good.
"Thanks... That Alderaan thing. That's a thing?"
"Yeah, it's a thing."
"How do you know?"
"I'm from another universe, a place where this entire place is just some books and movies. Plot of the movies is that The empire has built a giant planet destroying space station and the journey of Lord Vader's son, Luke Skywalker, as he learns to trust in the force and make the one impossible shot to destroy the hyperspace deathmoon. The magic is from a series of video games, fairly good ones too."
"Does he save Alderaan?"
"Nope. Alderaan dies in act one. Six billion people." I click my fingers "Just like that, used to establish dramatic tension."
She goes quiet for a moment eyes half lidded, I hold the cookie bag over to her and she takes another wordlessly.
"Alright let's do this thing."
"You aren't going to question the 'from another universe' thing."
"No. You're telling the truth, it feels true."
Well that was easy.
"Alright. lets do this thing then."