Saurron's shuttle lands...

[SAURRON]

The shuttle glides to a smooth halt. Moments later the ramp slowly lets down revealing only the blood red interior lights, enough for the pilot to see, just enough.

Striding down the platform Saurron's pale eyes survey his surrounding environment as he makes his way inside...

[Delirion]

Slightly annoyed at the child for bringing her precious books in disorder, Delirion told her to run to the kitchens and fetch a glass of nerf-milk. She hoped fervently that the girl would remember correctly this time, and not walk in on a meeting between the others, or distrub them in their private meditations.

She silently cursed the moment she had agreed to take the child in. But now it was a situation she could not get out off. For there was no way to get rid of that child other than let her walk into one of the fiery pits around the castle's ruins. In retrospect, she wished she could lay her hands on the child's parents - she would have a few choice words to say to them... but now that was not possible anymore.

It made her angrier than she had felt for a long time. Misery, and desperation - yes, those were the familiar feelings that made up the landscape of her inner turmoil, but anger shone through her emotional walls only rarely in such pure quality.

It was when she sat down upon her bed to look over her books again, when she heard a faint humming in the air that did not seem to mingle naturally with the sounds the planet made around them.

Someone was coming, and she was alone. Shw would once again have to meet another stranger, and she fervently hoped that it would be less disastrous than the last meeting.

In her door, she nearly walked into the child who was carefully and intently bearing a glass of milk. The milk spilled on the tattered end of Delirion's cloak.

"Halle metes chun, petchuk!"

The curse rang loud and clear, and the girl stepped back in fright, her large brown eyes wide open. Delirion had no patience for her now, and grabbed her by the string that held her cloak together at the throat, and held her up, her eyes glittering madly with anger.

"You will stay in this room and not venture one step out of it, do you hear? If I see only as much as your shadow around me, I will take you outside and leave you there for the rain to eat up your flesh. Do you understand me?"

She shook the child by the throat, as the little girl started trembling like a reed in the wind. Delirion let go, and the child fell to the floor, but quickly crawled out of her range.

The Dark Jedi once more turned and addressed her.

"Stay here, and don't move. We might well have one of those pathetic fools visiting us, trying to gain knowlegde, but it could be more. Do not move, therefore. Do not blink."

As an afterthought, she added:

"You might want to think of a name for yourself, child. Just calling you girl forever would be ridiculous."

Then she swept out of her own room, closed the old oaken door behind her, and silently walked down the hall to receive the visitor.

[SAURRON]

The old castle had reminded him of his own citadel in many ways as his shuttle made it's approach.

The smell of the fire pits wreaked, an aroma that would make a humans eyes water...but he was no human. Smirking to himself at pondering this fact he proceeded to make his way inside, immediately he could feel the presence of another coming to meet him in the vestibule where he stood.

Saurron stood stoically, once again taking in his surroundings, and searching this place through the tendrils in the Force...the Dark Side. The Force was strong here, he sensed users of it, he sensed those who have embraced it then turned half away from it as if wanting what the Darkside had but not letting it take them as had been done so many times with many a Sith. For him the magic and power of the Dark Side consumed him, almost without struggle...after all, his race seemingly demanded it to a certain extent.

Although many meters away he could hear her footsteps fall, one after the other in a rapid procession coming to him.

A female to be sure. He thought to himself as he pulled the hood of his cloak from about his head.

Turning to face out one of the windows he sensed a storm moving in. Not that it was in sight, but coming nevertheless. Storms here were not to be trifled with their acidic rains spewing forth burning liquid eating away at the very planet itself.

Smoothly releasing the comlink from his belt he spoke...
Remove yourself from the planets surface and return to the Sanguine...I will send for you.

No reply came, none had to...the red light that once poured forth from the pilots area slowly became not existent as the large ramp to the Lambda class shuttle began to raise...moments later the blue light of the engines is all that could be seen of the craft as the pilots obeyed Saurron's very order.

Before she can speak, Saurron addresses her while still gazing out of the window into the dark horizon. With his hands folded in front of him, fingers interlaced, he speaks to her in a low monotone voice, his back being all she can see as he does.

If I have questions does that make me a fool?

[Delirion]

As she entered the hall, the Sith - so much she had discerned - stood there with his back turned to her.

There was something entirely peculiar to the texture and feel of his thoughts, however. Trying to read his mind, trying to read him, trying to get a sense of him, she failed. This was no simple Sith - this was something else. Something she had never come across. He felt... dead. Completely lifeless. What was this?

He did not leave her time to think, when his first question was one that set her fears in motion.

"If I have questions does that make me a fool?"

Her first reaction, in sheer panic, was to pull up her own mental walls. Nothing of her fear and momentary panic must reach him. It was a clumsy attempt, and she knew that he must think her weak and unexperienced for it, but yet she did not care. It was more important to hide her thoughts and emotions from him than to hide the fear she felt at the possibility of his discovery of any of her thoughts and emotions swirling through her mind and heart.

Her second reaction, her mind feeling already weakened, was to consider this case. Could he have heard her from so far away? Had he the ability to hear through stone, hear even the slightest whisper? Or was this nothing but a chance coincidence, and she had just proved to him that she had indeed something to hide?

Carefully keeping up her mental barriers, at the same time probing with her own thoughts for any senses she could pick up from him, she re-assessed the conversation she had had with the child. But there was nothing but that one remark that fed her worst suspicions.

Trying to appear as calm as she could, she finally spoke up, but as he had, she did not address him directly, but the empty air surrounding her.

"What is a fool, but a wise one hiding his wisdom with words that we cannot understand?"

[Evil Hobgoblin]

"Delirion within and without your head,
whose thoughts fill your foes and yourself with dread,
Get thee gone! go back to bed."

A strange, small creature stumps out of the darkness and peers intently at her. "If you insist on this,
this rampant, silly, foolishness,
Hob will drag you off, young Miss!"

Delirion turns around, overcome with surprise at the rhyming dwarf, and looks at him with fury in her eyes at his interruption.

"Aliha sel valle volgoth?"

Hob stomps one foot furiously. "Delirion, the business of greeting is not yours,
Nor is welcoming those from out of doors,
It is Hob's job, while Rane snores, or over tomes pours.
Now must you leave this business of learning the new to me
Or fear and Hob will stalk your sleep- you'll see."

Made even more furious by his insufferable rhyming, she shouts at him. "Koccic suing! is it my fault if you sleep too deep to know when a stranger arrives?"

Raising her hand as if to strike at him, she bends down, and suddnely grabs the little fellow by his collar, drawing him close.
"And do not presume to threaten me, ugly one. My dreams are filled with creatures far worse than your pathetic face!"

Hob brushes away Delirion's hand with unbelievable strength. He stumps around Delirion, grunting out in rhyme. "Hob had business to which he needed to attend,
his mind tasks to which it must bend
soothe yourself; such as friend is to you, Hob is a friend."

The misshapen dwarf stops to gaze keenly at the deluded Dark Jedi, reaching out an abnormally long arm and pointing it at her. "You simply know not the best way
To determine who approaches us this day.
And as for fear, you yourself make enough
Without Hob drumming up other stuff.
'Twas this which Hob referred to in voices gruff
And Hob would still send you back to your room with bed of fluff."

"But, if you insist on thinking of questions to ask
It is time for us to take on the task
Together we determine who approaches with seeker's mask."

Hob suddenly slams a fist onto the floor and turns to Saurron, leaning towards the undead one on his massive knuckles. "And you, dead one, who are now here.
Listen well to Hob- lend him your ear.
This is a place even you should fear.
The Black Hand can kill you, if your flesh does not sear
from the lava, and the darkness, and Delirion's tear
And Hob is no slouch with the Force- he is a seer."

The dwarf abruptly becomes silent and cranes his neck out to inspect Saurron. "So what do you want?" he asks calmly.

[SAURRON]

Watching the lava pits glow in the night and bubbling over now and again Saurron pays no heed to the grandstanding dwarf's idle threats. Turning his head slowly his ice blue eyes address the two without word or rhyme. In a fluid motion Saurron turns from the window leaving the scene of the acidic rain now striking the fresh lava sending it's putrid scent into the nights winds.

Saurron, his cloak and robes flowing behind him approaches Hob, the speed of his approach is distorted somewhat as Saurron seems to arrive sooner that expected. His steps barely audible to the normal ear he ends in a kneeling crouch bringing his eyes down to meet with Hob's on the same level.

Answers to simple questions. was Saurron's reply to Hob's query coming in a low smooth voice that felt like velvet to the senses. A voice not indicative of a Sith who had just been advised of a possible demise unto himself. Peering into Hob's eyes ever still he searches noticing a wall building in his mind. Smirking he rises to full height stepping to Delirion.

Yes, the Dark Side is powerful here. Saurron notes as he flashes her with his pale eyes. Clasping his hands inside his sleeves he stands there tall causing the two to note his physical presence as well as mental...

I search out the different factions of Dark Force users for each faction does the Dark Side command only in different ways each presumably reaching for a common end... he looks down and smiles as a thought races across his mind then continues looking back into their eyes....or beginning.

The master Sith's presence suddenly turned leaving the calm cool soothing voice they had just heard moments ago. Circling them slowly while speaking they feel the chill of his words as he begins to speak of the light...

The Jedi, will fall the question is where will the Dark Jedi be when this happens for there will be no proverbial fence to sit on.Spoke Saurron with a cynical undertone...

Saurron completes his circle around them under watchful eyes as his questions fade to stand in front of them once more in the middle of the foyer.

[Delirion]

She was glowering at the hunchbacked creature next to her. He had no business to come and meddle with the affairs of the Dark Brothers. His station was as gatekeeper, and no else.

But this was not for now.

The Sith was sly. She did not know what he had done to the hunchback's mind to silence him, but something had been done. As he was trying to do to her.

His voice was soft as velvet and hard as rock. Even if, in theory, he had not spoken his words out aloud, she had yet heard the texture of his voice out of the words flowing into her mind.

It seemed to her as if he had come to quench his curiosity about the Dark Jedi alone. It was a dangerous game he played, and one she was singularly well suited to play. Yes, she could play this game as much as he.

Gathering her thoughts before the wall of her mind, she slowly edged a thin tendril of her power into his own mind, careful to leave it vague and weak, so she would be able to break off the feeble contact at a second's warning.

"Yke hyon fhars oblivyn cnous oblivyn. Min fhar oblivyn, tefor dan tye macn min fhar. Uhl Djada re ke'dem. Uhl Sij re ke'dem. Oblivyn ka shan uht."

She did not expect him to understand. But the meaning of her words were carried along in the sound of her thought.

She would make him understand.

[SAURRON]

Just as the grunting Dwarf had been silenced he felt her edging...creeping in through the forbidden walls of his mind. As her smallest of Force tendrils slithered inward the castle foyer in which they stood shimmered around her...

Now standing in a blackened void the large decrepped wall stood before her divided only by the huge black iron gates that reached upward toward the voidance.


A blood red lightning strike illuminated the void if only to outline the charcoal gray cloud formations moving quickly across the expanse. Driven not by the wind but by something else intangible...unseen. The booming thunder shook the very fabric of her being. Vibrating her mental and physical self blurring her vision temporarily. The crackling of burnt gravel is heard beneath her feat as a light gust, in contrast with the fast paced clouds, takes hold of a minute amount of dust lifting it ever higher. The rotten scent of decaying bodies is omnipresent making even her...a Dark Jedi wince from the overpowering smell.

With a sigh and a groan the giant gates, emanating with a cold known only to a few humans to be so cold they burn flesh leaving festering wounds, slowly and methodically swing open, their hinges sending a deafening cry to her ears echoing in her mind.

This massive assault on her senses leaves her before the blackened iron wondering if she had indeed made the right decision in touching his mind through the force.


edit= Made adj to post deleting indications that del was in to look around, or to fully enter.

[Delirion]

Trembling inwardly, Delirion paled visibly under the exertion of keeping her mind's touch on his. Yet, she felt awed at the glimpse into his mind, into his thoughts, that he opened up for her, even if he only intended to frighten her with it. But Delirion was not to be so easily impressed, so easily scared off.

With almost unbearable agony, she forced herself to leave, to retract the soft touch she had kept. It was temptation he had placed before her - temptation to search out his mind, to enter deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of his thoughts.

The gates, the lightning, the thunder - all the imagery of his gloomy and dark past, of the nightmares of a life stretching back for generations. All that, and so much more. Did he know what he had shown her? Did he know that he had given her a glimpse into his mind deeper than he had intended?

Did he know how much she longed to let herself fall deeper and deeper into his mind, search out every thought? Know how she felt his thoughts echo hers?

All the imagery of his mind seemed so familiar. Almost too familiar.

It was with a deep regret almost that she returned her thoughts to the here and now. She longed to swim in that stream of his consciousness, but she had other duties.

Her voice came out in an almost whisper.

"Thou hast an unusual mind. I wished to tell thou in better words than this crude language we call Basic, that all is as it shall be. Jedi and Dark Jedi are doomed, and a dying race is that of the Sith. For we shall not always be here - even not thou, Immortal that thou might'st be."

[SAURRON]

Perhaps it was in her best interest that she did not give in to his temptable offer of the gates opening and entering the dark expanse that was his mind. The thousands of souls that existed there, their life force drained from them unwillingly, longed to escape through those very gates, but were forever embedded within.

Delirion's former master Dara Shadowtide found this out the hard way and has not returned to those gates since that time. A dangerous place indeed to walk, willingly...or unwillingly. Though the gates swung wide for her to allow her in would they have opened again? A query she would undoubtedly ask herself on the morrow.

Her words, even though whispered fell hard on his ears. They carried with them the foretelling of days numbered. Something one of his race did not particularly enjoy hearing. For the end of his kind was never a meager death or destruction as it were, for how can the dead truly die?

The sly grin that crossed his lips as she withdrew her light touch only seemed to further her agony at her leaving such a place suitable for her. It indeed did call to her, the lightning, the thunder, the burnt gravel beneath her feet, all enticements. But that was soon set aside as he addressed her thoughts on the matters of longevity.

Time is the only foe that I am able to outlast or defeat. Though it tears at mountains and kills kings, I am able to escape its hands of death.

His grin melds into a stoic face as he continues...

However, we can be destroyed in much the same fashion as what you call mortal, it just...

Saurron looks down for a moment recalling attempts from the past then returns his ice blue eyes to sink into hers.

...is not as easy.

Saurron took a step in her direction and she soon found herself holding his cold hand in her own. He seemed to move so slow yet blindingly fast it seemed almost impossible to judge his movement rate. Before she could step backward out of reaction to his sudden proximity to her he leaned foreword placing his lips along side her ear as he gazed ahead.

His voice returned to it's velveteen smoothness yet there was no heat from his breath as he whispered a message of his own unto to her...

We will...meet again...I have foreseen it.