We move from room to room, him chattering while I just sort of half-listen. That is, until we enter the library. His entire demeanour changes yet again, eyes darting about, growing wide and honest in their excitement. He just takes it all in for a moment. The half-filled bookshelves holding weird transparent blue tablets, shiny as if made by crystal.

And then before he can say anything, I notice a sound. Like a kind of beeping. It’s not that loud, but it’s there.

“...Jedi archives. Holding the secrets of the Jedi. With this, the Empire can-… Mort, can you hear that incessant beeping as well?” Typhin says, face flashing between awe and irritation.

“Yup, I hear it!”

He scratches his chin a few moments before continuing his trek through the library, going straight ahead, towards the source of the beeping. “I can’t focus with that thing blaring.” And, of course, I follow him. The beeping quickly grows louder until it’s more like a blaring horn, and at this point, we’re standing right in front of the source. It’s that vault again. The thick door, torn and mauled, lies battered to the side while the hallway inside flashes in bright red to the beat of the beeping. Huh. It’s really an alarm, huh?

“...This must have been the cause of the distress signal. There must have been no present Jedi to protect the important contents of the inner sanctum, forcing the emission of a distress signal in order to keep the contents safe.” He crouches down beside the door I destroyed, gloved fingers sliding over the thick grooves in the even thicker metal. “Whatever did this must have either been a master wielder of the force, or stronger than any Wookie.” He turns to look at me. “We must be careful, Mort. It may still be lurking about.”

Uh. Um. Right, that’s…

“Sir, I’m…” He affixes me with a hard gaze. “That was me, sir. Sorry.”

He squints. Stands up. “I am neither angry nor surprised, though I feel like I should be. Had you never done this, the distress beacon would have never sounded and I would never have come here. You have, through the act of indiscriminate and stupid violence, done the Empire a great service.” I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult?... “Either way, more importantly,” his eyes shine up in that childlike way again, “let’s take a look at what secrets the Jedi hold, shall we?”

Uh-, yeah! Sure!

He grins to himself and steps into the little corridor, the heels of his leather boots clacking hollowly against the metal. I follow.

The crystal-filled chamber is the same as it was last time I saw it, with a bunch of large crystals and things all in rows and stacked here and there. Safe and secure, until I broke in and ate one. I hope it was nothing valua-,

“By the Emperor, holocrons!” Oh no. “A true treasure trove of important and invaluable Jedi information!” He picks up a Holocron at random. “This could hold the identities of all former known Jedi!” Another one slips into his hands. “And this, the location of any Jedi temple!” A grin blossoms happily on his face. “This information may lead to the extermination of all Jedi, the complete and full reign of the Empire! The true salvation of the galaxy!”

Uh-, uhuh? Is that so? I kind of don’t like the use of the word “extermination”, but otherwise, it sounds like a very good thing! “That’s great, sir!”

At my voice, he flinches slightly, turning to me like a misbehaving puppy. Like I caught him doing something wrong. And then, upon seeing me, his disposition changes slightly, losing a little hope. “...You didn’t eat any of these, did you?” Uh-oh. “Any one of these are invaluable.” Uh-oh. “You-, -You mindless glutton! Why, sometime you’ll tell me you decided to eat a lightsaber and a whole Jedi, too!”

“S-, sorry sir, but, I didn’t eat all of them, see? I only had one! To see what it’d taste like!”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“I hope you had your curiosity and hunger satisfied, runt.”

I decide not to tell him my hunger can never be satisfied. Not as far as I can tell, at least.

Once Typhin lets his eyes leave me and turn back to the holocrons, he regains that serene joy, like he can’t wait for the galaxy to just shift into place. It’s a bit inspiring, but then he snaps out of it and turns back to the flashing red lights and the blaring alarm. “-Right. Personally, I am no technician, and I doubt you hold any such talents either. We have no way of slicing this system to override it, however, there is no way that this location is where the signal was emitted from.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean that there has to be some centre of communications from where the signal was sent.” He speaks slowly like he’s talking to a child. “From there, I could contact my superior and inform him of my position and finds. I doubt he’d send out a ship to save one measly Commander, but with what I’ve found here, for him not to send anyone would be criminal.” He pauses for a moment, turning to me. “You told me there was a large kyber crystal in a mountain, surrounded by technology?” I nod. “Assuming this is the only form of civilization on this planet, that must be where I’ll find any semblance of communications.”

Huh? Uhhh… Yeah! “I can bring you there easy as pie, sir!”

“Love to hear it, Mort. By all means, lead the way.”

(https://imgur.com/gallery/4Eyd2qd here's the second one!)

I scramble out of the Holocron vault, feeling like a dwarf guiding a very tall elf. For some reason, even though I’m the one leading him outside, it still feels like he’s the one in charge. It was the same when I was walking behind him. He didn’t even glance back to see if I was following, just walking with his back and head straight, arms behind his back, with all the proper authority of a military man.

Whether I’m walking in front of him or behind him, I still feel so much smaller. My feet have to move so fast compared to his long strides. It’s not fair.

Still… This temple is really pretty. I’m sure it was maybe made as propaganda or something, I’m not entirely sure, but the statues look awesome and the sculpting on everything is just plain impressive. It feels like how even in a church you disagree with, the stained glass is still pretty and the priests are still kind, y’know? Though, again, Jedi aren’t kind. Meanies. Maybe. I’ve never met any myself, though. For now, I’ll trust Typhin. Not like there’s anyone else to trust.

We enter the grand hall, walk through it while the both of us ogle the cool statues, and then move through the massive doors heading outside. Cool air whisks past my face, light blinding me.

Ah, there I stand.

I arch my neck so far it’d probably hurt if I had a spine.

My body, still standing upright in this sloping, robe-like manner, stands taller than any building I’ve ever seen before, at about the same height as the mountain scaling high behind us. Between four or five times the size of the temple, which would make me, all calculations considered… Around 1,2 kilometres high. Huh. That’s. Pretty tall, I think?

My body stands solemnly and unmovingly before the temple, covering the whole of the temple in its massive shade, each of its hundreds of mouths, unclosing, opening and moving slowly. Eyes staring blankly in every direction. Like a massive tumour sprouting from the ground. The top of it so high up you can barely discern it. Massive. Looming. Slightly ominous.

It’s not silent though. Much like the last time I was close to my body, there’s this loud, quiet hum about it, a constant movement in the air close to it. Like a rumbling locomotive in the distance that never seems to get any closer.

Worst of all, at the same time as I’m looking up at it, I’m looking down at me, as well. I’m tiny! Just a little thing right down there, an ant or something, its tail connected to the rest of me by a grabby tentacle.

Wait, there’s not just me! Standing right behind my tiny body, there’s a slightly bigger creature. But he’s also very small. From way up here, I can barely see his face.

So I lean down. My massive tentacles move and rise and take a posture, allowing my heavy body to move without falling, to bring my primary eyes closer to the ground, and from my smaller body I see how my large body heaves and lowers itself, the rumble growing nearer, the air quivering with it all, my large body taking up more and more space, choking the ground as it nears, blotting out the sun fully, endless eyes rolling and moving to see closer and nearer.

...Ah, here we are! Now I can see Typhin properly. He is very small.

-Though, has he always been that pale? And sweaty, too. He’s actually sweating quite a lot behind his helmet, which I don’t really think is a very good thing, considering that it’s very cold around here. Sweating in the cold is no good, it’ll cool you down quicker, make hypothermia set in faster. Very bad.

I shift my consciousness down to my small body.

Oh, heck, I just put my primary mouth like five meters from the ground, huh? It’s like I’m breathing down my own neck! But that isn’t important right now, so I turn to Typhin. “Sir?” From below, I can’t really make out his expression, but since I now have a bunch of eyes above (even though my mouth is covering a hundred-meter diameter around us) that can see how his eyes hesitantly flicker to look at me. “Are you alright?”

“...If you do not move,” he says with the gravitas of a man facing death, “it may not attack.”

I glance around. Maybe he saw a white monkey that I did not? Hm. No, not so. I turn back to him. “What do you mean, sir?”

The only real way to explain Typhin’s facial expression in this very moment would be the face of a man who was just told by another man that the world was an octopus and we were mere grains of sand inside it. “You have got to be kidding. Are you blind? Can you not see the creature towering before u-,” and I guess, at this point, he might have noticed how my tail was connected to one of the spire-like tentacles erupting from the body looming over us. “...Impossible.”