Like Shadows On The Night Sky
On Dantooine, all things sleep. The kinrath return to their troglodytic homes as the kath hounds lie down to rest under the twin lights of Magras and Faugras. Bubbling brooks carry lesser eels on the last leg of their spawning journey.
But in the Praxeum of the Jedi, something stirs. A dark cloaked figure wreathed in the Force makes their way over quarried stone floors, past the bronzium pillars and the security holos, the flickering lights dying as they twitch their hand. Just long enough for the figure to pass. Their bare feet lightly slap against the rock and the metal. Finally they come to the first door.
The dark figure pulls a long, thin probe from their belt. They slide it into the first lockpad, and with three bursts the door opens in a cloud of steam and a deep, percussive thud. Using the Force they reach out, out deeper and deeper into the halls; and then with a twitch of the mind they lift up the dummy stones that would activate every alarm in this place, this vault of dark secrets.
They race like a shot from the dark through that layer of defenses, and leap through the rapidly closing doors that will not open again until the crack of dawn restores power to their photovoltaic panels.
Finally there is one, last, layer of defenses to break through. One last test for them. A single, mechanical keypad, wired to the inner chambers and the prize therein.
They close their eyes. And open their mind.
The Force flows through them like a mighty river, a storming deluge of thought and numbers and desires. Button after button after button, pushed in a long alphanumeric string. "Randomized." Except that there is nothing random in this world of thought and desire and echoes. Nothing, but the Force and its will.
A second check. Predictably, the coordinates of Malachor V.
Third. Her service number.
Finally the door hisses open, and there it sits. A Holocron unlike any other in the facility. Shaped like a simple diamond, forged of iron.
They reach out. The diamond floats to hand. A spark powers it, gives it life, makes it speak once more.
"Yes? Have you come with questions?"
Arren Kae, doomed to bear the title of Traya, speaks from beyond the dead. Her voice silenced by the wisdom of the Council but for the gravest emergencies.
"Yes."
And until the sun comes up, they learn.
