Even when hurtling away from Naboo, tearing across the galaxy at breakneck speeds. Nox couldn't shake the feeling of insignificance that blistered his soul.
The feeling in the back of his mind that he was being watched even now as he rushed back towards Iokath with haste befit someone fleeing a parents wrath.
With Scyva at the command of the vessel, Nox settled down at the head of the table within the conference room aboard his ship. Thumbs pressed against his brow, his deep breaths were the only noise to her than the hum of the hyperdrive that echoed throughout the ship.
The sheer presence of that woman and that sludge far outstripped anything he had ever experienced to date, Vitiate at the heights of his power didn't radiate such oppressive energy, Nor did any creature he had ever encountered even come close to anything he experienced from but a fleeting memory.
' And I thought I was the pinnacle of what was' He lamented, cursing his own hubris and naivete, there was no doubt in his mind that should the being that had glimpsed him through memory, that if they wanted him to perish at that very moment standing over Balam, he would have.
But the veil had shifted, no longer was he shrouded by the lies he fed himself in comfort. She had seen him, interacted with him through time and space without any apparent external means, it was her own power that allowed her to do so, something that had he not seen her personally, would have laughed at the absurdity of the claim.
' But who ... what is she' Any knowledge the Gungan's could have spoken would be conjecture at best, he listened none the less, finding their speeches about half truth's passed as fact both intriguing and confusing.
With half complete knowledge rotted by millenia of being passed down through speech, and so he took a step back mentally, sifting through the information he had discovered over the last days.
' This oma-oma is a dead end until I find further records of her' But he had another path to follow, the Rakata seemed to have their own creator deity.
' What was the name, Ah yes ... Onrai' Perhaps for the first time, in a long time. Nox closed his eyes, and sought communion with the force, a whisper a vision, he sought just the tiniest hint to begin his path.
In his minds eye, as he reached out into the depths of the force, past the web that connected every little thing through time and space, he sought deeper, he didn't know what he was seeking, but he tried none the less.
But after several long minutes of nothing but meditating only to recieve nothing of what he saught, Nox let out an agitated hiss as he opened his eyes and stood up, lips cursing in distaste.
He stormed from the conference room, Moving through the vessel toward the bridge to ask for Scyva's attention.
But the moment he stepped into the bridge, the entire ship suddenly and without warning, dropped out of hyperspace against their will.
" Milord we appear to be experiencing instrumental errors" Scyva turned to the navigational charts, which seemed to be inputting its own codes at random. The ship, despite her urging of the yoke, turned into the unknown regions away from their origional destination.
" Well this is alarming" However Nox didn't bother disengaging the ship, visible before his minds eye were several jagged strands of cosmic manifested energy connecting to the ship itself, contorting and twisting, the force was guiding them.
" Let it be...let's enjoy the show" Perhaps it was because he sought guidance for the first time in millenia, or because the force itself willed it, this ship was now on a one way course to the unknown regions whether they liked it or not.
' Atleast I hope it's the force behind this' The alternative was that something else had sniffed them out, he'd rather the former despite how sickening the thought was.
...
They dropped out of hyperspace over a orange and yellow tinted planet, no signs of life on world, but signs of what possibly could have been after several scans.
" There appears to be several large metallic structures on the world's surface" Scyva finished a thorough scan of the planets surface" The largest appears to be located here in the southern hemisphere"
Then that is where we're going " And so the X-70 b entered the planets atmosphere, whilst nox took the opportunity to analyse what was visible through the bridge viewport.
The cities that spanned the planets surface were riddled with overgrown vegetation, reaching up and into the skies as they traced the buildings abandoned by time.
' These cities are in remarkably good condition' Nox mused as Scyva informed him of several strange readings.
" Milord I'm detecting strange energy readings from below the cities surface, It appears to be connecting to our ship and refilling our reactor" Nox blinked at the information.
' That could be useful' He mused as they touched down on a courtyard infront of a large skyscraper .
" Locate the source of the strange energy readings, I'll investigate the city "
....
Whilst Scyva used the ships scamners to perform an indepth scan of the cities layout and readings, Nox found himself following one of the only remaining shatterpoints remaining on world.
It lead him through abandoned plazas, overgrown courtyards and through residential areas. Until he spotted what seemed to be a silver statue coincidentally located at the dead centre of the city.
A feminine figure carved out of glistening silver crystal, an empty hood of pitch black wreathed with a single vine of green life winning around its torso, the statue was entrancing.
The shatterpoint encapsulated the statue as a whole, Radiating brightly through the force as the inscribed plate at the base of the statue seemed to beckon his gaze downward.
Kneeling down, Nox wiped the overgrown weeds covering the plate, his brow furrowing as he read the inscription.
" This is the mother goddess Onrai, she who gives and never receives, mistress of the planet Notron, cradle of all Humans in the galaxy. If you would learn more, touch Onrai, and doors will open."His hand lowered as he finished reading the inscription. And his gaze strayed up to state into the empty silver hood of the statue that had stood since the civilisations founding.
" notron..." A flicker of a memory that refused to surface danced just beyond his grasp, as the silver hood of the statue seemed to draw his attention in, beckoning him forward like a silent whisper.
" Strange... I'll have to look into the name when I return" He rose from his kneeling position, turning away from the statues gaze as his eyes danced across the great ghost city.
The lights still powered within the city caused nox to ponder just how advanced they truly were. To have power even after their city was long dead spoke volumes of whatever they were using to power the city.
A chime drew Nox's attention to his comm link , His hand raising as Scyva's voice echoed from the speaker.
" Milord I believe I've narrowed down the location of the cities power source, sending you the coordinates now" Scyva informed him before the ling went dead, receiving a set of coordinates not two seconds later.
About to step away, Nox froze as he peripheral vision caught the slightest faint of movement out of the corner of his eye... Fluttering silver sheets passed by his vision for but a moment before he wound around.
His head snapped back to the statue, which hadn't moved at all but he was sure, positive even he hadn't imagined the robes to have been billowing in his peripheral vision.
He stated once more, up into the empty hood of thise statue, eyes squinting as his hands tightened to fists.
He raised his hand, risking looking away from the statue to check the coordinates compared to his own.
' That can't be right' According to the coordinates cross referenced with his own current location, he should be standing dead centre of whatever was powering this city.
His eyes turned to the statue again, eyes narrowing in suspicion not of the statue itself anymore, but the compiling mysteries laying apon it and the surroundings.
' What are you hiding' Nox stared at the statue again with the force , the statue was still wrapped snugly in the shatterpoints he had previously seen wound tightly around it.
' That settles it' Even if the statue wasn't as insidious as he believed it could be, whatever it was involved in warranted investigation.
Tantively, carefully, Nox's hand reached out and laid gently on the statues surface, touching both the statue and one of the larger shatterpoints embedded in the statues existence.
A violent crack rung out as the statue split cleanly in half down the middle all the way to the base, before the two halves fell away to reveal a winding staircase that lead under the city.
Raising his comms to his mouth, Nox at Scyva.
" I've located a staircase leading under the city, I'll wait here for your arrival"
And so he sat and stared at the cleanly split statue, finger tapping against his knee whilst he waited for Scyva to make her way to his side.
....
Waiting no less than five minutes for her arrival, Scyva joined Nox just as he stepped down into the staircase that lead under the city.
Now that he spiralled downwards, A sort of mental pressure was softly leaking from down below.
' This is ... empty thought' He tuned into the mental force gently rising from the bottom of the stairs.
At the base of the stairs, they entered what appeared to be both a control room and storage room at the same time. A stockpile of strange crystals which pulse with silent mental energy, which seemed to interact with several receivers embedded in the room, generating power from these leaking mental energies and using that to power what they discovered to be not only the city they were in, but every single city across the planet.
Feeling the crystals responding to something, Nox turned towards a secondary series of mental waves.
At the centre of the chamber was what appeared to be a control board, with a forearm sized silver coloured rod sitting at the centre of the console.
' What is this' He approached and rounded the console, reaching towards the silver rod which seemed to reach out much the same way he did to it.
As soon as his hand wrapped around the crystal, the chamber seemed to rumble in response, the silver rods mental waves synchronising with his own mental energies.
Blending with his own energies, the crystals around the room seemed to respond to the smallest thought, and began to immediately produce and project several thousand times more energy in one instance than when they had been idling releasing energy.
Feeling the near overload of energy, the silver crystals throughout the room begin to violently hum and rattle, Nox quickly handed the silver rod to Scyva's cold dead hands.
As soon as this silver rod left his hands, its mental projection causing the crystals stored around to begin overloading, immediately returned to its previous state, a gentle hum once more gifting power to the city.
" Milord, It is of my judgement it would be prudent to take this stockpile of crystals back to iokath for further study" The strange interaction between the crystals had piqued her interest.
" Agreed, Though unfortunately I will need you to handle that ... control rod, atleast until we understand how it functions" Nox turned away, casting one last glance at the control rod and the stored crystals, before turning and marching back out of the control room back the way they had come.
Back on the surface, Nox gave the statue a long stare, seemingly searching for something before continuing on back to the X-70 b.
For the next couple of hours, Scyva proceeded to make several trips to and from the control room, moving the crystals into the storage room alongside the rod that controlled them.
With every trip she made, carrying these large crystals large bundles at a time, the city around them began to visibly dim as more and more crystals were removed.
And by the time the last crystal was placed alongside the others in the cargo hold, every city on Seoul 5 was completely dead, with the crystals that had fed power to the world removed, the cities were finally allowed to rest, turning the world into a silent ghost world to once more be forgotten as soon as they left the world.
As the departed the atmosphere of the yellow planet which seemed somewhat more shadowed than before, Nox pondered as he sat beside Scyva whom controlled the ship and input iolaths coordinates in preparation for their jump to hyperspace.
' Notron ... Notron ' The name kept bouncing around his skull, his face scrunched up, no matter how much he pondered, the name just remained elusive, refusing to reveal its origin to him despite the fact he knew he had heard it somewhere.
" Skyva, Do your databanks hold any data on the name Notron" What dropped out of Scyva's mouth made Nox's brow raise, opening a whole new box of worms for him to sift through.
....
CORUSCANT
....
' Notron huh ... now it makes sense ' The origional name for the very planet he was staring at.
As the ship, hidden amongst the other traffic coming and going from the surface, dove to the world below, Nox pondered the data held within Scyvas repetoir of galactic data taken from iokaths interactions with the galaxy since its inception.
Whilst somewhat scarce, since iokath and its founding species were located in the unknown regions, their interactions with the core worlds were limited, however they did have data taken from monitoring systems and surveillance equipment they had deployed.
Iokath had kept a rather indepth analysis of the movements of the others races in the galaxy, Whilst only dating back to the manderon period, their recordings did show that humanity had spread far and wide at a very, very alarming rate.
And while they old had data pertaining to notron long after humanity had already spread amongst the stars. Appearing on worlds far and wide across the galaxy. Most curious however was that these humans didn't have ships, weren't space faring until long after their presence was already found almost across the entire galaxy.
' How did they spread throughout the galaxy so quickly and such numbers ' Nox pondered, he hadn't considered it before, hadn't bothered even looking into it. But now here he was, and he found himself confused at the strangeness of their spread.
His curiosity spurred him forward, as the ship landed on coruscant, he knew where he had to go to search for answers.
...
He spent some time apon coruscants upper service, Enjoying surface life for some time before beginning the long treck from the surface to the sublevels.
They rejoined the X-70b and began their descent through the access shafts that dove deeply into coruscants surface.
What was the bustling surface life quickly gave way to scarcely populated levels. And the deeper they went, the fewer they ran into, the deeper they weren't, the older everything became, as of descending through time, they could track in real time the growth and expansion of this world the deeper they dove.
Until finally light vanished, with no need for the surface to provide light down in the depths, the expanses they dove through were bathed in complete and utter darkness.
Pungent stench rose up from the depths, as shifted plates of sublevels quickly made it impossible to take the ship any deeper into coruscants surface.
" Looks like we're on foot for the rest of the way down" Nox grumbled, but it was to be expected. As he and Scyva disembarked from the vessel apon finding sound place to land.
" Ugh " He plugged his nose, the little air found so deep was pungent and acrid, disgusting to breath in.
And so he stopped breathing for the moment, as a being more entity than flesh, he breathed out of familiarity for the action. It was alien to him to cut himself from breathing, but he weathered it in place of breathing in the disgusting air around.
" Let's go " His mouth remained shut but his voice echoed none the less, striding through the shadows as he sued the force to see in place of his eyes.
" Of course milord' She trailed behind as they approached a portion of the ground.
' Here seems stable enough' He reached his hands forward, gripping them into fist ad he made a spreading gesture.
A hole screeched open before them, as panels ripped open and shook the ground, a gapon pit opened up with a blackened maw.
Instead of jumping into the hole in the floor, nox reached down to the other levels deep down below, he made a punching gesture.
A force push dove down into the pit, and a rending screech followed as hole after hole was punch through the levels below.
" Let's go " And so they dropped into the pit he had created in the levels below, with his fall he occasionally released more force pushes , tearing a gaping pit into the levels, creating one deep pit all the way to level without steel, the level of stone... level 0.
....
They punched through the final layered sheet of level 1, As they fell like two pincprics into the expanse of darkness around.
Yet he could see, the pylons that stretched far and wide that held the entirety of coruscant apon their shoulders. Thicker than cities, reaching out over abandoned and destroyed cities of it's first peoples.
He landed on stone with a soft hiss, the force cushioning his force as skyva dropped down at his side with a crack in the stone.
" I believe we're surrounded" He could feel it, hear their silent movements amidst shadow, the force spoke of their desires to eat, to devour and consume.
He withdrew one of the two sabres on his person, his ancestors blade, the blade of Tulak Hord, snapped out with a hiss as bright orange yellow light illuminated the shadow, and in that darkness, hundreds of twinkling eyes glistened blinked back, screeches echoing amidst the pitch black as the humanoid creatures scattered under the bright light projected from the lightsaber.
" As I thought" His hand pointed to the skies, and a torrential thunderclap escaped his fingers, as light bright enough to forever blond these creatures burst forth, lightning spreading not just near his person but far and wide throughout the sublevel of coruscant.
Their screeches echoed as they burst into flames or outright burnt away to ash, as the troglodytes fled across the cities they once dwelled, the survivors hiding away from the light giving invader.
' Better ' Thunder rolled before the lightning fizzled away, with he and Scyva left with the sweeping silence occasionally broken by the groan of the ceiling high in the skies.
" Stupid little creatures" He leant over one of their corpses, sneering as he prodded it with his foot. " Moving on, what are your sensors picking up "
" Plenty milord" Scyva surveiled the land around them, scanners passing over the cities left to rot.
" Then we'll start with the closest!" He followed Scyva's lead, ready to learn what he could about this rarely touched place.
....
They search far and wide, through the city that spanned the world, yet for all they scavenged there was little to nothing to make use of.
" Milord I believe there appear to be several formations below this foundation we stand on" She projected a display of the city plates they stood on, and a scan showed what appeared to be several valleys and mountains below the plate they stood.
" Oh ... " He studied these valleys and crevasses, his eyes straying downward.
' Perhaps that is where answers lay' And so he grabbed Scyva, folding space around them as they descended past what was thought to be the surface of coruscant, into a level nobody thought to exist, the true surface of coruscant.
Far different was where they landed, no cities, no creations, instead they stepped onto what appeared to be an expanse covered in solid stone, long dried volcanic ash turned the floor grey.
" Seventy percent of this surface appears to he covered in volcanic ash milord, however I believe there appears to be pockets of surviving ground" Mountains of dried lava rose, ashen fields spread far and wide, there was nothing to find on these planes.
" Lead the way"
...
' These deposits predate the city above by some time' They crossed the ashen plateau towards the grounds Scyva scanned, valleys buried Instone , Mountains submerged to create an almost flat expanse.
" We're approaching the deposit milord" Scyva informed him, and what he saw gave hum pause. A lone surviving valley and mounting almost completely untouched by the surrounding destruction. Like the rampant destruction around seemed unallowed to touch this specific valley.
And so they leapt down into the valleys floor, and found more questions than answers.
Bodies littered the ground, untouched by time except for the Decay that beheld them.
Weapons spread far and wide as pieces of preserved armour and corpses lay stacked atop eachother.
' Mass graves, everyone died where they stood' It was a miracle these bodies remained, as if these piles of dead weren't allowed to be disturbed, instead made to remain forever here within this valley.
Though remarkable, it gave nothing but basic knowledge of battles fought and ended in losses for both sides. Little else could be gleamed from these hallowed grounds to which he stood.
" Master, according to my calculations these volcanic eruptions occurred in tandem across the planets surface, current reasons unknown" An old helmet Nox was studying was placed onto the ground as he processed the information.
'Now That ... isn't so easily explained' His eyes scanned the surface, what little remained of the surface after these volcanic eruptions, was what the survivors of these events built their city world atop of.
" How much of the surface was buried " Nox asked, From what he saw they made efforts to remove a large amount of the destruction, leaving sights untainted, for what purpose alluded him.
" geological markings indicate nintey nine percent of the planets surface was destroyed by volcanic residue, though twenty percent was restored, it appears early coruscant residents wished to build their city over the catastrophe rather than fix it" Scyva projected a holomap, showing several simulations of the civilation being buried that she hypothesised.
' If the surface was destroyed, chances of survival would have been astronomically low ... how did they survive this' He watched the simulated eruptions spread across the hologram at once, brow furrowed.
Turning away from the projection, he looked over the untouched battlefield, how had this come plateau survived when a wall of ash surrounded it, it should have been buried as well, and yet here it was.
' I won't gleam any further knowledge from simply staring and conjecture, i need a more personal view of what happened' And so he approached one of the corpses turned dust, echoes of what was radiating through the force.
It was this echo that Nox reached out and touched. And as he stood with eyes closed, that he sought answers through the ability known as psychometry.
....
The stench of death marred the battlefield, his spear wet woth the icor of fallen zhell, ragged breaths.
They were few in number compared to the zhell, the last survivors of their revenge against these wagers of war.
His gaze turned to their leader as another fell at his spear, planting the body of this flat faced skewered to the ground.
His brothers all turned, many had already fallen to the enemies numbers, yet their hearts never wavered, never did they faulter.
" The wave has ended" They spoke in their alien tongues" Gather our fallen, they must be returned to the stars"
Rexutu, their unconquerable leader looked apon them solemnly with his command, turning and picking up a fallen of their kin, and so they followed his lead.
The smell of death persisted, made worse by the gathering of their fallen brothers, piling them apon a pile of placed sticks and bodies.
They watched him pray, longer and far greater than any funeral rights, they watched as he prayed to the gods that precided over them, plead to the stars for survival, plead his soul for his kin. He begged to the aeons of old to watch over them in their final hours and guide their blades true.
This rite continued for hours, long into the night as the rising sun peeked the far horizon.
And so did their final battle approach with the sun's crest.
They formed their scattered zigzagging lines once more, fewer in number than ever, but they never faltered.
They watched the rising sun glisten the hozion bathing it in gold, as their enemy returned with their armies from their bustling cities.
They prepared for death, for a funeral they would never experience, knowing nobody would return them to the stars like they had done so.
They watched their room approach with hardened faces.
Rexutu stood at the head of their army, his spear levelled and face stone.
It was his cry that ignited their charge, as a thousand voices united in one, they charged towards an army tenthousand stronger than their own, toward their death with nothing but fierce, yet grim determination.
" WATCH OVER US BROTHERS... GUIDE OUR PATHS INTO YOUR OPEN ARMS" Rexutu's voice carried as they charged the honour less zhell.
Their armies were to meet atop the arid plateau stained red with blood.
And yet, just as they were about to be slaughtered to their last, divinity shon down apon them in favour.
As the ground quaked across notron, the armies jostled and ceasing in their charge.
Bright light and heat exploded from the ground infront of their kin, as waves of heat and molten stone spewed into the skies.
Clouds of grey turned the sun black, as a cloud of grey moved away from their army, crawling down mountains in all directions and sweeping over everything in sight.
The wall of liquid stone spewing infront of them never faltered in intensity, nor did a single one of their brethren fall in this divine event. For the flute of lava spilling into the higher place surged away from them, falling apon their sinful enemies in one wave, crushing not only their enemy but blanketing the glistening city beyond under s million tones of liquid stone.
The sight had he and his brothers fall to the ground in awe of the divine event, their weapons falling to the side as the lava dried fae quicker than natural, their enemies cries silent as nothing but rumbling echoed around the silent army.
" THE DIVINE FAVOUR US ... WE THE WARRIORS OF SHADOW STAND WITH THE DIVINE AT OUR BACKS" As his voice echoed, they watched as the lava seemed to open up, crags of now cold stone making bridges for them to cross, their path clear.
" COME BROTHERS, OUR WAR WAGES ANOTHER DAY " And so he charged across the divine given land bridge, incensed by their unexpected support, they took up their weapons once more, and charged with their leader.
He made to follow, grasping his spear as the last of his kin rushed ahead, his fate was to differ.
As behind the army of the righteous tuang, a woman draped in green glistening stat's descended in their wake, his eyes widening in terror as she stopped down and grasped him by the neck.
The woman, of whose identity he knew througjt religious text passed down through their kin... raged, whose green hands clasped at his face, her face a mask of fury and anger befitting a God, lifting him off the ground and staring in the direction of his brothers with silence.
She turned back to look at him, her eyes a dazzling emerald, and with the ease of crushing and ant, snapped his neck with a simply flex of her hand. And then she vanished as quickomg as she came, falling to the ground as the world continued to rumble .
Yet even as the divine that slayed him moved elsewhere, his snapped neck tilted to allow him to watch the backs of his brothers as they crossed stone bridges , his smile never faltered.
" Demons may guide your people oh honourless zhell, but divinity guides us to victory... and in the face of that, your treachery is unmade" He prayed for his brothers as his vision faded and life fled him, and as his final breath left, he knew he was to meet his brothers in the stars with open arms.
...
Nox fell back from the corpse, head thumping with a migraine as the memories he had transferred to himself embedded them into his mind.
' The Zhell ... and the Tuang ... both warring for dominion over Notron' What troubled him was the apparent divine intervention and subsequent appearance once more of the woman Onrai. Though rather than the benevolent smile she housed in the Gungan's memories, the look she held was anything but. Only adding more fuel to the mystery that burnt in his head.
" Let's pick up the scattered weapons... and relocate some of these corpses to the ship, I wish to study them further" Growing weary of having to connect with memories so far in the past in such a dark and cold place, and so they did, with scyva leaving and returning with bundles of scattered weapons and moving the corpses with great care, Nox moved around performing psychometry on everything he could, piecing together the mystery one scrap of broken memory at a time.
...
Their return to the surface was met by an interesting sight, emergency crews rushing across coruscant's surface as an entire district seemed to have shifted, spilling untold thousands into the depths and destroying several hundred layers of residents and businesses. The agent seeping into the air and reaching into the force drew the attention of the jedi moving through the levels of wreckages.
" Our distubrnace of the base levels has caused the upper residential levels to shift dramatically" Nox leant forward over Scyva's shoulder to surveil the destruction.
" If something as little as opening a new path downwards is enough to cause structural instability, they should have designed it better..." Nox shrugged and sat back." Find a place to land "
....
The destruction wraught apon the surface was a cataclysmic as it was beautiful. Towers that stood for a thousand years lay as rubble, streets that had seen the galactic civil war had been turned to warped steep and splattered remains.
A fissure had appeared where the levels had shifted, leaving a deep crevasse straight into the abyss down below.
Relief services flooded these levels, droids rushing in and out as they scanned the dead and rescued the trapped amd maimed.
" OVERHERE" The jedi had descended from their ivory tower, working to dislodge rubble and free those underneath." MOVE THIS ONE"
Nox arrived to see several jedi masters and padawans shifting rubble as droids crawled under and unlodhed those trapped.
With a mask of false light in place, Nox walked right up to their sides, standing no less than two metres away without them so much as sensing anything wrong with his presence.
" What happened here " He approached one such ignorant jedi, his presence in the force as radiant as it was warm, their demeanour shifted to one of relief at his arrival.
" Master there was an incident with the structural supports of the lower levels, maintenance crews have departed but we are in dire need of assistance" He almost cringed at the familiarity the young alien addressed him with, feeling sick to his stomach that this creature thought he was one of them.
' I should've stayed on the ship' He grunted in thought, the young man mistaking the sound for sorrow of the event.
Right at his side, appearing from the crowd of jedi, a small unassuming creature radiating light came to stand beside him, looking up at him with curious eyes.
" Grand master, praise the force you've arrived, with you both here things will go much smoother"
' Grand master ... ' Nox turned his gaze toward the small creature in curiosity.
" Hm... here to help we are... to the scene we must go" Nox followed as the small creature moved, not out of duty but out of a desire to witness the grandmaster come to help.
He watched as Yoda moved about, alleviating the struggles of many jedi, whilst he himself begrudgingly helped to shed any suspicion.
A flicker of his wrist raised and deposited entire swathes of stone to the side, allowing droids to move in and work, whilst he kept a keen eye on the small jedi, studying him closely.
' Perhaps not every jedi is as disappointing as I assumed' Stronger in the force than satele, he was amused, wandering just how old this small creature was to radiate such worn yet potent energy into the force.
And in turn, Yoda studied him back. Not out of any form of negative suspicion, But out of confusion. He had interacted, at some point, with every jedi that had come from the order for the last nine hundred years. Yet try as much as he might, he couldn't quite place the face of this young man amongst his children.
' Strong this young man is in the force' He watched as more often than not, Nox moved steel without even moving any hands nor movements, simply an expression of his will.
As intriguing as it was, Yoda kept his focus on those in need of help, they moved through streets, for hours on end.
In that time, through observation, Nox formed form of neutral impression of the grand master.
He wasn't strong enough to to be of any form of equal or threat in Nox's eyes, yet strong enough to outshine many jedi Nox had encountered throughout his impressive lifespan.
He learned of the grandmasters age through conversation amidst his one times enemies, of his teachings and unending service to the jedi order.
There was no doubt in his mind that if this Yoda were to discard the limitations on himself and pursue power, he would have had few if any rivals apart from thise who stood at the pinnacle of what he knew to be power.
" Recognise that young man, I do not" Mace and Yoda stared at Nox's back as he stepped through the destroyed streets, stepping out of sight and vanishing from their senses.
" Truly ... " Mace stared, contrary to what he thought Yoda would do, the grand master turned away from where the young man dissapeared and went back to assisting those in need.
Mace however, was deeply troubled even as Yoda departed. Gifted the ability to discern shatterpoints. As he beheld the young man who had vanished, he saw nothing. No connection to the galaxies fate, no relation to anything or any events at all. A void in the flow of time and the currents of the force.
" Master Yoda, did you catch his name by any chance" Yoda turned back to him for a moment before shaking his head.
" Afraid not I am "