The Cruel Void

[xfiend1013]

[Ossus]

"No... no.. Master Naton... this cannot be."

Garrett was dragging Disaara Lon as she ranted and apologized.

"So how does this thing work?" He asked, lifting her hand to the strange terminal.

"I don't really know. But, it uses the force to search... impressions. You give it a thought, like we were trying to do, and it... checks for it."

A green cube projected itself around Disaara's hand.

CONFIRMED came up in bright yellow letters.

Cameo added his hand. CONFIRMED.

"Snap out of it, Lon." Cameo said, hauling her up off the floor, supporting her with his shoulder. "This is it, you know what we're looking for."

Disaara shook her head, forehead in her hands. "Nothing like that is here. Nothing like that exists."

"It exists." Garrett said. "We have to know what it is."

The cube twisted and whirled, turned red, purple, extended on both ends. A highlight was drawn, runes crawled out of memory and into the holograph.

"No." Lon said, though she wasn't even looking. "Not that. Not him."

Cameo paled, despite his cave-fish complexion.

"No."

"What the frell should I be soiling myself over, Masters Jedi?" Garrett asked.

"The Immortal Emperor." Cameo said, whispering in reverent tones.

"Killed him, didn't we?" Garrett asked.

"Not Palpatine. Not Damascus. The one before."

"Well if we took out two, they're not that frelling Immortal, are they?"

"I've brought blasphemy to the archive." Disaara moaned. "And doom. Doom to us all."

"Oh for frack's sake, Lon, snap out of it." Garrett was sweating.

A cube displayed itself, runes from their visions matched the ones on the screen, then a number appeared.

"The Blissful Icon." Lon said.

"What's that?" Cameo asked, and the idea that he did not know the answer made Garrett ill at ease more than anything that had so far occurred.

"We locked it away, back on Tython, before the migrations. It was a holocron unlike any other. The legends say that it was an artifact of seemingly pure light side energy, it radiated bliss, contentment, joy - all the benefit of a lifetime of meditation and sacrifice, by merely concentrating on it's surface. A quick and easy path to something that is neither."

They were walking through the artifacts, all of which seemed alive in a way they had not before. Runes were dancing, weird light illuminated the floors, books were open. Even Garrett felt the Dark Side vibrating within.

"So why'd you lock it up?" Garrett asked. "Peace and bantha grease in a box? Drop it in on Coruscant and the Senate's all kittens and rainbows, right?"

"Apathy." Cameo said. Disaara nodded.

"It brought joy, contentment, without action. The adepts wasted away, addicted, they wanted nothing but to glance upon it. They were useless, drained..."

"And here it is." Cameo said, motioning to a cube, suspended in a pillar of nullification resin, surrounded by forcefields.

"The Love Bomb." Garrett said.

"All we know is that there were three, three artifacts of the Immortal Emperor, that, somehow, could bring about his rebirth."

"So he's dead but also immortal. And I thought I did all the drugs." Garrett sighed.

"The cubes must be destroyed." Cameo and Disaara said in unison.

"Well what about the third?"