The air was stagnant. Dust particles drifted about lazily, catching the light of standing glowlamps erected randomly across the crumbling ruins of the vast underground citadel.
In the deepest, darkest, most obscure depths of the ruins was a cave carved through sheer bedrock. Upon passing through the cavemouth, one would enter its throat: a tunnel that snaked down even deeper into the planet, twisting and turning, dropping and rising for miles.
Anyone mad enough, or anyone working for someone mad enough to push on to the end of the tunnel; across wide chasms, through subterranean flooding and up sheer cliffsides would find it ended in a large, domed chamber. Within this chamber stood a rectangular monolith. Constructed from a material that in one moment would shine like smooth brass, and in the next, appear rough and cracked, it was an inspiring sight that almost made the trip worth it. Almost.
Two imperial stormtroopers stood below a stone archway that marked the entrance—and exit, presumably, to the chamber. The two guards silently peered over the many flights of finely sculpted stairs leading all the way down to the foot of the monolith. Their white armor plating, the emblem of the imperial military, was currently anything but; caked with dust, grime, soot, and an as-of-yet unidentified mystery fluid that upon closer inspection, appeared to be breathing.
A handful of fingernail-sized rocks trickled down from somewhere up above the archway, breaking the silence as they bounced along the mosaic flooring and settled at their feet.
“Hey, Reese.” The shorter of the two suddenly whispered.
“Yeah?”
“What do you… think they’re doing down there?” He asked, gesturing with the lower lip of his helmet down into the depths of the large chamber.
“The Inquisitor? Haah. Honestly—I don’t want to know.” Reese said, keeping his head locked straight at the wall opposite him. If the teeming monolith interested him at all, his body did not betray that fact.
The shorter of the two stormtroopers edged closer to the stairway as he ran his gaze up and down the face of the monolith. He had to crane his neck to fully grasp the sheer size of the thing. “Something about binding a force-whatsit or other…” He muttered.
“…And what does that mean, Jest?” Reese said. He gave a tired scoff as he watched his squad mate stare spellbound at the monolith out the corner of his eye. Turning his attention to the blaster rifle in his hands, he ran a routine check of his E-11; he remembered how much he hated doing this back in the academy but now it was all that kept him sane on these long missions. Relishing in the familiar contours and scratches of his weapon, he spooned out a glob of alien gunk with his index finger from the mag well. “Hurhk.” He gagged, wiping it off on one of the two finely sculpted columns supporting the archway. “Damn. This is gonna’ take days to clean...” He groaned.
[Bzzt. TK-902—zzzztt…-127. Both of you cut the chatter or bzzt—you’ll be in for a reprimand] Their helmet-mounted comms fizzled to life for a moment before dying back down just as suddenly.
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““Yessir!”” The pair saluted. Despite not being in the physical presence of their superior, they subconsciously stood at attention. Such was the extent of their training; obedience was ingrained deep in their bones.
This far down beneath the surface, it was quiet like the dead of space. It was in this utter silence, broken up by the occasional falling pebble and flicker of the nearby glowlamp, that the minutes ticked by.
The silence broke. Both troopers sprang to attention as a loud droning reverberated throughout the chamber. It was like the bellow of a star-destroyer throttling it at max sub-lightspeed: the ground shook and the walls creaked. The two stormtroopers reeled from a sudden tremor, wavering unsteadily on their feet.
“H, hey! Uh, this is bad, right—woaah?!” Jest lost his balance towards the end of his words and toppled over awkwardly onto his hands.
Reese braced himself against the pillar he had vandalized with finger scrapings of alien gunk sourced from his weapon. The two rode the tremor out.
Filtered through the visor embedded in his helmet, all Jest could make out from his position was the ground beneath him; the bouncing rock particles and dust whipping across its cragged face. The noise was overwhelming, so great that it dwarfed the rest of the world. The comms could have been ablaze with chatter, and he wouldn’t even know it. They probably were. The thought caused him to try and raise his head, but a sudden spike in the tremor’s ferocity kept him down.
It lasted for what felt like hours. In these moments, Jest lived entirely within the present; no thought of the future entered his mind. There was no question of what he would be doing after this mission wrapped up, which cantina he would visit, what color twi’lek he preferred—his entire being focused on the quake; the noise, the feverish pandemonium. In that moment, he was nothing but a speck of dust in a vast, chaotic galaxy; a grain of sand resting atop the surface of a god’s pounding drum.
Eventually, it tapered off, and his mind returned to him. He gasped as a sudden rush of air entered his lungs and negotiated with his body armor into allowing him to stand up. His body was already sore as it was; the Stormtrooper Corps had not prepared him for the treacherous descent this expedition had entailed. Tack onto that the stiff ridges and flats of his armor that only further restricted his movement, and the task of climbing back up to his feet was no longer a trivial one.
“Ugh… Do we need to call that in? Preeetty sure everyone felt—.” He said, finally managing to lift his pounding head.
“—What the?” He lurched backwards, miraculously avoiding a flash of… he wasn’t sure what—Whatever it was, it had missed the soft flesh of his jugular by mere centimeters. Despite the thermal insulation provided by his body-glove, the heat generated from that thing seared through to his neck. He paid the pain no heed, however, focusing instead on the humming sword of blue and white before him. His eyes couldn’t leave it; they followed along its every movement, entranced, barely registering that it was attached to a human’s form. He could hear the familiar buzz of a communicator, but it was too faint to be his.
“—Yeah. No problem. Just a couple of bucketheads guarding the entrance. I’m almost there.”
A woman’s voice. Not one he could place. He looked up. Her eyes, dyed deep azure by the lightsaber in her hand, fixed on him. Behind her, a trail of blood splatter tracked across a pillar ending at Reese’s headless corpse. His eyes refocused on the woman’s lightsaber—he recognized it now. Jedi. His training activated and he reached for his fallen blaster.
“So long. Buckethead.” She lunged towards him.
Grasping it, Jest raised the weapon and pivoted his torso to face his attacker. There was no time to aim, there was never time to aim. He got a shot off, but it went wide.
And that was it. The world spun as his head went flying.