EAST OF EDEN ( anakin s. ) ✔️

028 | The Red Death..

━━━━━━ ༻ 🌄 ༺ ━━━━━━
" the red death "
...
━━━ ༻ CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT ༺ ━━━

          A WOOKIEE'S GROANED SPEECH roared above Master Yoda's head, dictating the sound of the background noise by which the exploration was doomed to proceed. Lines constrained within squared shapes peppered the entirety of the temple in a mosaic only scarcely interrupted by large murals still fragrant in their stain of blood. The Force lingered in the air, ancient and whispering in a language from a time well beyond its temporary visitors, one that murmured regardless of the noise disruption with a luring tranquility, as if the blanket of writings on the walls was memorized in a song threading and enduring for eternity in its unspoken thrill. 

It was no mystery who the author of this small temple was, for the minuscular cave beneath the wroshyr tree had become their tomb before the last sentence could even be completed. Thus, right behind the collapsed door still fuming from the lightning strike that took it down at the price of killing the tree it was hidden under, the bones of a Zeffonian watched gapingly the product of his madness-struck labor. 

"There's no light source remnant in here," Commander Gree pointed out, still pacing around pointing his blaster rifle's flashlight around the temple oddly lacking the fragrance of a place that had been sealed off for too many years. Had he been a gullible believer in fantasies, he would have said it felt like the temple's writings had been completed mere minutes ago or rather that its presence never existed in the correct flow of time until the lightning struck, unlike its unfortunate creator, who withered to bones.

"How did they," he pointed the flashlight over the skeleton, then back across the word littered walls, "write all of this in the dark?" he inquired quietly, so as not to disturb Master Yoda. He wasn't exactly expecting an answer, but he enjoyed asking nonetheless, questioning what his eyes were witnessing rather unexpectedly in the first hour since their return on Kashyyyk. Not a single corner of the temple was left unscratched by the carvings in Zeffo, Gree noticed. The murals painted told of such a mastery that the lack of a light source seemed unfathomable. "The door was melted shut and written all over...," he turned to look back at the entrance, just three steps behind him. The temple was undeniably small, almost suffocating in its existence, and Gree could not imagine how close it must have felt to a coffin with that entrance sealed shut too.

"Died for the Force's will they have," Yoda mumbled to himself, his slow pace otherwise rather unbothered by his loud company, nor the inquiries of his legion's Clone Commander. Before they could ever see the product of their labor, his thoughts continued in a silent pity for some of the fates woven by the all knowing stir of life.

Three different sets of eyes looked upon this temple perhaps hues away from how the author of it all could have appreciated the letters and the drawings, had they been granted the chance to see the light of Kashyyyk's sun shine upon it through the fuming edges of a tree and the falling ashes of its splinters.

The first eyes were those of Kizzahr, a Wookiee with a chin of white hair who had discovered the cave and now groaned without break for breath. In his gaze endured the chokehold of dread, of incomprehensible mistrust and atheistic terror, while his lips parted in rapid patterns to bring voice to all his fears thundering in his chest and strangling his lungs from the relief of air. Someone so strong their hands could rip apart its foe was trembling before something as harmless as a memory; Kizzahr recalled seeing from the control tower, during the arrival of Master Yoda and his envoy, as from a cloudless sky lightning fell down and set that very tree on fire, cracking it open. 

With a venomous pathos, Kizzahr made sure to remind Yoda that they were in a side of the forest where no one sane had strayed into for ages; a side where all Wookiee homes had been abandoned at least for a hundred years and where not even the most dangerous fauna of the planet dared get lost into. There were rumors of ghosts floating around the trees and now, Kizzahr was petrified at the idea that there were spirits guarding the entrance to this temple.