Chronicles of the Shadow Phoenix: Heart of the Force, Pt I

Gavin wouldn't have to wait long before Mariah woke from her unconsciousness. He had turned to his pack and crouched down in the nearby shadows. The crimson-haired woman's eyes fluttered open. Any movement still sent electricity through her limbs—like tiny knives cutting through every nerve, but still, she struggled to her feet. She groaned, dazed.

"Put it away, Phoenix. Now."

Her words came slurred and groggy before she could even register her surroundings. The only sign of that remnant excruciating pain was in her final hiss as she outstretched her hand and backed her saber back within her grasp. She gripped the hilt with both hands, poising her blade in a defensive stance of Djem So. Mariah still had no answers to her questions; she still didn't know Gavin's fate.

On all that was holy, Mariah swore to whatever forces kept her alive. That brief bout of darkness should have been the death of her, whether from the light shard itself or from Gavin. Any person with a shred of sanity would have panicked and consequently made matters even worse—losing control over its power, further checking on her with its power still coursing through them. As was being proven to Mariah over and over and over again, Gavin was far from ordinary—or sane, for that matter.

To further prove her point, her earlier command was unnecessary. Her world still spun, her vision blurred, but Mariah could still make out Gavin as he crouched down and returned the crystal to its chest. Even if she couldn't see it clearly within the shadows he crouched within, she could feel that swell of power suddenly snuffed out as the box latched shut. Voluntarily, he abandoned that power and willingly released the relic. Only then did she seem to huff, a sigh of exasperation or maybe even relief, and allowed her blade to retract into its hilt with a hiss.

Mariah breathed as she slid her sack off her shoulders and let it hit the ground with a faint thud. With her back pressed against the wall, she slid down to sit, to rest for a moment. Even now, every movement sent fire and ice throughout her body, but Mariah refused to show Gavin even an ounce of the pain that coursed through her veins, the agony he caused. Instead, she rummaged through her pack and drew out water skin. In this much-needed break, in this much-needed silence, she drank. If one good thing came from all this, it was that the crystal's light shunned away those dark voices in her head for at least a few quiet moments.

Again, Mariah sighed and weighed the happenings of only the last few moments before she spoke.

"Give yourself a few moments," she demanded, although she reigned in the intensity of her harsh tones this time. Whether it was from the suffering, the dizziness of unconsciousness, or something else entirely, she didn't explain. Perhaps she was just grateful that that damned relic was put away for now. "If you remember from last time, it'll take some time before its power fully leaves you. Once its influence starts to wane, you should still be able to use that remnant, lingering power to decipher our final path. It shouldn't be much further now, anyway."

Gavin offered only a tiny acknowledgment of hearing her. Mariah didn't know whether to be relieved or irked. Relieved that he remained where he was and hadn't tried to dote on her, or that he didn't cast unnecessary pity on her state, or that he had remained in complete control somehow, or that he was so much quieter this time than all the times past. Irked that he couldn't even bother with a proper response, or...

Relieved it was.

Mariah breathed in another steady breath before she took another deep drink from her skin. Even though she gazed off at nothing in front of her but rock and dust, she had kept a mental eye locked upon Gavin. She recognized his restlessness; Mariah passed it off as the lingering power that could defeat the mightiest beasts by the hundreds, now slowly expelling itself and lulling Gavin back to whatever normal was.

Normal. There was no way it existed for him. Not in the way most others knew it. Not when he was already handling this relic much better than the first time. It was almost as if his being built a tolerance to it, grew accustomed to it. Even if he hadn't realized it yet, Mariah could sense it. The Light settled and dissipated much more quickly, and the air around Gavin quickly found equilibrium, especially within the Nexus. Nothing in this galaxy frightened her, but another living being, creature, or monster that could handle these relics—could be sufficiently trained to handle them—was something to be wary of.

She hadn't realized she started staring, watching Gavin like a hawk. The shuffle of his movements had instinctively drawn her eye as if waiting for the monster to rear its ugly head. Yet Gavin only paced, not pounced, but something far more intriguing caught the crimson-haired woman's gaze as his hand brushed against the wall.

Runes. Not in any known language of High Sith or otherwise. They shimmered, reacting to the relic's power that still coursed through Gavin's veins and flickered out of sight as he moved forward, utterly ignorant of the magic's reaction. Mariah tilted her head back and took another deep breath. They had made it, even with the tunnels stretching several klicks further, just a planned ruse by her Ancestors however many decades, if not centuries, ago.

The biting electricity through her body finally subsided enough that Mariah could risk moving without showing pain, and she promptly packed her skin and stood back to her feet. Every movement still sent pinging needles through her nerves, like she was half frozen, but she could weather it better now. Without speaking to Gavin, Mariah approached the wall and rested her palm against it with unusual softness, where she saw the runes shimmer.

"Good work, Phoenix."

It was far from a compliment; it was more of a way to pull him from his anxiety and return to the mission. They were still a ways from the end of it. The spell she would have to incant would cause a wave within the Force, and her authentic signature would be unleashed from her eternal shackles. Their intensities, woven together like a tsunami of dark-side energy, would easily be swallowed and hidden within the Nexus, yet...

Her crimson gaze snapped over Gavin, and Mariah arched an eyebrow, watching him as if gauging how long it would take before he was entirely himself. She wouldn't risk turning him feral, overwhelmed by the Light's need to conquer the Darkness, not when they were this close to their journey's destination.

"Think you can brace yourself without trying to kill me again?"

Mariah couldn't help but flash Gavin the remnants of a wicked grin. He managed to snap back with some sense of sarcasm, so he wasn't completely gone from that shard of unholy light or stripped bare from the severity of their earlier circumstances and current happenings. She supposed it meant good fortune. With his confirmation, though, she was ready to rid herself of this whole scavenger hunt—and him, for that matter.

So after sucking in a long breath and expelling it with a deeper sigh, Mariah brought her hands to her sides, balanced her weight evenly between her feet, and lowered her head. She knew the words well, the exact ones that revealed the path to the chamber within the Meditative Canyon. However, it felt too intimate to recite the incantation with Gavin standing... right there. The block in her mind was as firm as phrik and as black as empty space. He had no business to peek into the ways of her people.

Mariah felt a gentle nudge in her mind, the calmness of a gentle breeze under the night sky, to which light, familiar laughter followed.

Another beat. Another breath.

Mariah's murmurs at first sounded like gibberish, nothing close to the Sith Sorcery incantations. However, as she persisted, her low and steady voice carried its continual strength. A powerful darkness seeped from her like smoke rising from Chaos's hellfire. She continued, unwavering, her voice holding a depth far more influential than a single voice. The incantation commanded and demanded as if even the air would flee with one spoken word from her. However, she struggled, her hands clenched at her sides. The power of this darkness poked holes in whatever barrier she held tight around herself, holding her Force Signature in. What was once a tiny lingering ember gradually became an all-consuming pyre.

Yet Mariah continued, learning in the moment to let the power of this incantation chip away at her, as steady as the crashing waves over rock for decades—for centuries. The air around them turned thick and heavy like a swamp's sludge, and even time seemed to hitch and lag in answer to her words and presence. Mariah finally relaxed as if even she had given in and accepted the power demanding to be set free. Her power, an uncontrollable roiling inferno bursting forth to consume everything in its wake, a demon unleashed to feast upon the mortal realm.

Mariah reached the incantation's finale with a sharp and twisted tone, not her own. In answer, hissing, whispering, and moaning filled the deadened air as if the forgotten departed had risen from their slumber to answer her summons. Yet after Mariah snarled that final syllable, echoing off the tunnel walls into infinity, everything fell oh so eerily silent.

Nothing happened.

Mariah paused, waiting. She breathed in a shuddered breath.

Still, nothing happened.

Mariah frantically reined back her Force Signature to its meager, unsuspecting spark.

Another beat and still... nothing.

"You've got to be kriffing kidding me..."

Mariah uttered a string of curses in that oddity of a language before surrendering to her failure. She staggered back and sunk back to the floor, but not before forcing Gavin back within her gaze to ensure he wasn't at risk of causing another debacle. She missed something; she had to have missed something. She just needed a moment to think. There was no way in hell she would turn around while she was this close. She'd spend the next decade clawing out the stone with her bare hands if she had to.

Crouched down within the rocky tunnels, Mariah growled softly. She mentally scanned those sacred pages again and again and scoured through each piece of the holocrons left to her. There was so much pointless information she had to sift through, none of which aided her in this singular task. Still, Mariah memorized everything she could that might be necessary for this mission. None of it explained why the runes wouldn't answer her command, surged with every ounce of the Force she could summon.

The flicker of burning white fire crackling within the walls drew Mariah from her mind's depths. The runes responded, stretching forth and spreading like fire from... where Gavin's hand rested. The realization hit, and Mariah's eyes narrowed upon those runes like glowing suns that answered to Gavin's touch.


Translating that passage was mind-numbing. At the time, it didn't seem to carry any weight. It was just a reiteration of what had happened all those decades, if not centuries, ago. But now she realized how wrong she was. It wasn't just a retelling of what her people chose to do but how they decided to protect them. Only those who walked in the Light could access that their hearts abhorred; likewise, only those of the Shadows could access the stones that burned their souls to ash. It was genius and yet so inconvenient. Mariah could throttle her Ancestors when it was time to join them. The thought resonated and was answered by an amused laugh from another within the Force.

<< You know, you were never meant to walk this path alone. It would have been impossible from the beginning. >>

You've known this from the start and didn't think to mention anything about it?

<< Of course not, silly girl. It's more satisfying to watch you realize these things and make decisions of your own free will. >>

Is it really a decision of free will when you're constantly meddling like this?

<< Oh, I'll always try to nudge you down the correct path, but you're the one who chooses to walk it. Time and time again. >>

Mariah inhaled deeply, refusing to quip back at this eternal fight with no victor. She had already succumbed and summoned Gavin out here, meddling or free will be damned. If she wanted to win this mental war, she would need to find a loophole to keep him further out of this. Mariah tried to remember any other text near that one—anything else that would solve her newest dilemma. It couldn't be impossible to walk this path alone. There had to be a method that was written down and logged somewhere within those ancient texts.

Yet the longer she waited, the more power Gavin wasted on nothing—power that was clearly a key to opening this Force-damned lock. If she waited too long, he'd have to risk the relic again. For now, the crimson-haired woman growled again as she unwillingly accepted her fate. Tilting her head back, Mariah closed her eyes and spoke, her words slow, deliberate, and commanding.

"Whatever you're doing, Phoenix, keep at it and repeat after me. And for the love of whatever you hold sacred, don't ask questions."

She thought for a moment to warn him, too, to brace himself for the surge within the Force, but if he managed to handle a shard of this relic, this would be child's play. So, Mariah started the incantation again—slowly, syllable by syllable, enunciating everything with as much crystal clarity as she could muster. Force forbid he mess it up and force them to start over. At least there was no way in hell he'd remember it all. And if he did? If worse came to worse, Gavin would double-cross her later, and she could finally have a happy excuse to remove his head from his shoulders, which currently wasn't such a bad thought anyway.

Mariah heard a hissing sigh in her mind, followed by a muffled quip, but she only smiled dryly and kept incanting.

But it was more than just a tiny crack in the wall, more than just a faint rumbling that answered Gavin's summons. Mariah looked down wide-eyed in rare but genuine shock as Gavin completed that final syllable to the incantation.

The runes had splintered into more glowing symbols, stretching from character to character until they covered a section of the wall that could comfortably allow a rancor passage. The tiny crack had cut down the middle as if creating the sealed door that shut them out. Framing it with elegant perfection were tiny suns of a stunning and familiar motif: chaotic sweeping vines, without coherent patterns the mortal eye could discern, braided and weaved through each other while sharp, distinct lines cut through them with unforgiving severity.

As she expected, the remnant power of the relic's light seeped from Gavin and into the runes, and the very transferrence of that power rang with a dissonance that made her limbs numb. Even braced for the impact, deep in her soul, a tug urged Mariah to draw her blade. Perhaps if she hadn't had her heart of steel, she very well may have fallen victim to those demands. Even she couldn't fight the hand that fell to her saber's hilt, though, as she stood slowly back to her feet.

Gavin stepped back, and a path opened up before them, but differently than it had on Ambria. Where the rock had physically fallen to her command, the wall here seemed to flicker with the very vibrations under their feet. Stone appeared to tumble, yet when it hit the ground, it simply... disappeared, dissipating like fog, as incorporeal as the air. As if in disbelief, Mariah approached the encompassing glowing runes and tried to press a gloved hand against it, yet it burned through the leather like the suns it mimicked, singeing her skin before she could even get close.

But the wall was utterly gone, the open doorway encased by those glowing white vines. A powerful illusion, expertly weaved by the light side of the Force.

"Let's go then..."

The orders Gavin was hanging on for came quiet, although the jerk of her chin indicated the way was sharp. With or without him now, it wouldn't matter, though. Gavin had fulfilled his duty as the tool he was to get her this far. He was nothing more. He'd be waiting for the rest of his long lifetime if he hung on for her acknowledgment or thanks.

Carefully, Mariah pushed onward, although wary to take the first step through the gate, as if the door of light would reject her and send her flying back. There was discomfort, a pressure within the Force, as it did, in fact, try to keep her out. But Mariah pushed through the veil, and she heard a CRAAAAAACKKKKK! as she pierced through the barrier, now torn open for her to enter.

The pressure resolved into silence.

Silence turned into hissing.

Hissing turned into the whispers of a thousand souls long laid to rest, all beckoning to her, warning her, begging her.

Gavin's utterance of the spell had done more than open the way; it had illuminated the chamber with such brilliance that one might have thought that Hoth's Brand had been carved into the cavernous ceiling overhead. Twisted columns of light and stone held the chamber together at the non-cardinal points. And at the very center of the chamber...


Mariah breathed as her eyes found the source of the pleading death rattles, cut into the central spire. Just as Gavin had described.

Yet for a moment, she couldn't move, couldn't summon the strength to make her legs work. It had been so long since she had felt this sensation, this weight in her gut, this poison seeping through her bloodstream. Absolute fearful reverence. Yet she refused to show it or any resemblance of weakness. Not while he was around. So instead, Mariah upheld that mask of absolute control and power and called over her shoulder to Gavin, a sharp command yet again leaving no room for negotiations.

"You're to keep that half sealed away until we're back at the ship. Do I make myself absolutely clear?"

Although Mariah's eyes remained forward, her crimson eyes locked upon the stone of a thousand whispers embedded within the spire, she kept mental watch of her light-harboring shadow behind her. Gavin had remained quieter than she expected throughout this whole expedition. Finally, a small piece of himself slipped through. Mariah couldn't help but smile dryly, and her expression showed she was close to teetering over the edge. What little patience she still had was swiftly vanishing.

Maybe she would 'lose control' once bathed within the relic's power, and a fortunate accident might happen.

<< Ah, but then you'd have some explaining to do. The Sith who love him oh so dearly won't be pleased with his disappearance under your watch. >>

A fair point. Even if she was reasonably sure the Blackguard's Sithari would wave off such a disappearance, Mariah kept contact with them as minimal as possible for a reason.

"At least now you can't play stupid."

Only then did Mariah shift to turn her gaze over her shoulder towards him. Her eyes told him what she left unsaid—this time. She would cut him down without a second thought if he tried anything funny. It was already bad enough that he was a mystery wrapped in an enigma, a lone wanderer among the stars without any driving force that made sense. Mariah still wasn't convinced that Gavin wasn't planning to capitalize on all of this some way, somehow.

The whispers had wrapped themselves all around Mariah's senses, though, pulling her attention back. The chamber's light felt sharp against her skin, cutting through her vision with crystalline clarity that she could have sworn she could read every sun-touched rune that glimmered throughout the furthest corners of the stone. Every breath felt like an ice storm raged within her chest, her throat like she had swallowed sand.

Yet she stepped forward into the chamber, and she could hear the whispers from the relic squeal in absolute delight. Another step, and she could faintly hear what it said to her—'Claim me, Mother, and raise Chaos into the mortal realm.' Maddening giggles and shrieks of ecstasy filled her ears, heard by none other than her, as she finally reached the spire and reached out a hand to seize the relic's shard.

Her fingers graced the jagged surface, and for the briefest moment, Mariah remembered. She had aided her grandmother's ritual when she was still so young. Even diluted through another, the sheer power of the shard had put her down for days afterward, weary and spent.

<< Ah, but you were just a tiny little thing then, my dear. You have grown so much since. >>

So close to the shard, she was hearing things. She could banish the hallucinations, even if she could not stop the betrayal they caused to her mortal body. It felt like her heart stopped beating in her chest as Mariah took hold of the relic and pried it from its pedestal.

Power rushed through her, and a black hole within the Force seemed to form where she stood, sucking in and devouring all. And if Gavin could bear to look towards her, her figure had disappeared. No, it had shifted. In her place, a twelve-foot shadow of the blackest night lurked in the form of a great winged beast with talons the size of Gavin's torso. The light around them seemed to answer to its appearance and shone even brighter, piercing off pieces of her shadowy form, which dissipated like smoke. Yet the figure neither flinched nor howled as if hardly registering the flurry of attacks upon it.

Mariah's senses wracked and splintered. She became nothing, yet she became everything. She could smell it, the blood spilled from every innocent soul, from the decomposition within the swamps of Dagobah, the melted decay within the sands of Tattooine, within the sulfuric volcanoes of Mustafar, to the absolute nothingness of empty space. She hears the sobs and screams of tormented souls lost beyond the veil. She could hear the fearful first cries of every newborn that was and is to come, the last death rattles of every soul who met their end.

And she felt cold, as though stranded naked on Ilum or Hoth, but death would not greet her.

<< This power is ours to control. Do not let it consume you, Mazzikin. >>

Yet Mariah could feel it like a war drum beating deep into her chest. The power urged her to become the reckoning of the galaxy, to tear down Jedi and Sith alike, Imperial or rebels, from great cities to the smallest civilizations. She could devour it all. And she gladly would. She had nothing to lose but her life and a farcical fate that should die with her.

<< It is not your time to join us yet, you foolish girl. Open your eyes. >>

The shadow demon turned, and within its horned head, glowing crimson slits like a horrific blend of blood and fire looked down upon Gavin. Through him. As if he, like the light, was not important enough to notice. But whatever it did see was enough to force the beast away, a lurking spirit within the small five-foot woman. The shadows swirled, retracting inward like spiraling waves of nothingness until the final wave crashed against the porcelain skin of her cheek. But where those haunting eyes of blood-ruby once more, the glowing slits of the beast remained.

Forced and focused, Mariah saw a thousand people standing in the chamber with her, their faces masked by shadows. Yet she could tell they watched her with varied expressions, from pride to maddened glee. Most of those presences felt like strangers in the Force, while others...

<< Good. Now seize full control of it. Claim it. Devour it. >>

The voice was both young and old, gentle yet sharp, commanding yet fearful. She was not a stranger to Mariah. She knew the voice of this Ancestor well. The only other one she had witnessed holding these relics before, a quick tick in time for the decades they had remained locked up. Even now, within the swirling abyss of darkness, Mariah felt a moment of lucidity, a burning question that cut through this beast that overwhelmed her. How? How had they achieved the feat of freeing the relic those decades ago? Who? ...When? What pointless thought had just been dwelling on?

That heavy fog overwhelmed her again as the feeling of billions upon billions of heartbeats cut through the quiet, a network of life that needed to be snuffed out.

<< Claim it, Mazzikin. This power belongs to you. >>

Again, that familiar voice drew her back, wrapped with a thousand other voices speaking alongside  her. Her Ancestors... her grandmother. She knew better than anyone the power Mariah held in her hand. And she would listen.

Mariah splintered her being within the Force, her soul cracking and splitting like a massive canyon. A void that now needed to be filled, she growled, straining, as she gulped down that power as if she would allow herself to become a living Nexus. The power drew inward as though Mariah were a black hole until it suddenly flickered out with a HISSSS, that dormant energy sleeping deeply within her.

Mariah breathed a hushed exhale and closed her eyes as she mentally scanned every part of herself, mentally or otherwise. She could still feel the pacing beast within, but it lay quiet for now. Controlled. Leashed. When she finally opened her eyes and looked up at Gavin once more, the monster's eerie red glow subsided and her familiar crimson gaze returned.

Perhaps even more unsettling, her Force signature had returned to normal. That unsuspecting spark. So simply, so quickly, so effortlessly. Yet she felt like she could tear down planets with a single word. A sensation, a mindset, a piece of her being nearly lost to time.

Mariah tossed the shard into the air like a plaything within her grasp, catching it nimbly in her left hand. She grinned at Gavin, regardless of his mind's state, with unapologetic and unrestrained wickedness.