Meav walked quickly beside and a little behind Rel, just back enough to be able to observe him discreetly. Taller than herself, his step was solid and determined, as he strode into, what for him, was a completely unknown place. The man did not seem to be much older than herself, perhaps her senior by a few years, yet she marveled at his temperament. It was so different, nearly opposite her own. Of course, he probably had not been kidnapped and probably had not watched his people fade into myth, either, as Meav was quick to remind herself. She briefly wondered what his thoughts on the topic would be if he had.

Meav’s mind presently turned toward her childhood and Donovon’s facility, as the ground suddenly grew rocky and crumbly. Meav began picking her way across the rocks, slowly winding across the dry land. How quickly it had changed from the dark coolness of her hideout to the dry, hot, desolate land that Donovon had chosen! Somewhere in here was an entrance. She knew it deep within her. The Jedi had never discovered it. It was not on Riley’s map—the entrances Riley had marked were either closed or so heavily marked over that Meav guessed that a guard had been placed. Meav, herself, had never seen it. She had merely made an educated guess as to where it was located. She knew it existed. But where? Meav sighed.

“We’ll have to go to the front entrance and walk it,” she said, quickening her pace to cut across the plain. “That entrance is blocked, but it will lead us to the others.”

It took only a handful of minutes to reach the entrance, but to Meav it felt like years. There was only one place in the universe that she did not wish to be, and that was exactly where she was. The minutes dragged on, and finally they reached a ledge.

“This is it,” Meav said quietly. “Everything originated from here, or was supposed to anyway. Whether it did or not, I can’t say.”

Her eyes began to wearily sweep the dusty land, then her lids slowly closed, her mind playing back the one scene she never wished to see again. The door, the one the Jedi had entered at. The small, terrified figure of little Emily, half hidden in the shadows, afraid of any and all force users. The soothing words of the Jedi and the trembling voice of Emily as Kostya gently, ever so gently comforted her and asked her to lead them in. Meav slowly walked forward, matching her steps with that long walk from so many years before. Emily had taken them in, into the darkness of Donovon’s underground world. Shafts of light drifted down. Meav carefully stepped around them. Then, the two tunnels. Meav hesitated. Which way had they gone?

“Clara! Rel!” Kel’s high voice broke into Meav’s mind. Her eyes flew open and she turned around.

“What is it?”

“Thar ann. There is a camp of men. They have seen us.”

Meav turned around and quickly walked back to the edge of the small cliff, her eyes following Kel’s outstretched hand.

“Ní maith. They’re releasing a bird of some type.”

“It’s not any bird, it’s a messenger bird.”

Meav groaned and turned back to her over-ground attempts at reconstructing the underground. Suddenly, she stopped and turned toward Kel.

“You have the gift of earth and air. And máthair's ring.”

“Doesn’t do much good.”

“Yes, it does a lot of good. How long until the bird gets back to the town?”

Kel closed her eyes and frowned. Suddenly she smiled.

“Thirty-four minutes. Road closed for construction.”

Meav laughed.

TWBTS

"So, a group of men will be here in force in about an hour" Rel said, looking around them. "We'll have to go quickly. Which passage do we take?" He paused and reached out with the force, feeling the worried, frightened minds of the men nearby. "Why do they fear us so much?" He asked.

"Simple," Meav said softly. "The saw Donovon's work. They knew only a tiny bit of what was living under their feet, but they could feel it. And they don't want it back."

She closed her eyes and began walking again. They had turned left, she remembered. Then the steps. Then she saw Emily again....Meav's steps quickened. There was Donovon--she swirled to get around him, wishing past that memory. Then Emily arrived. Donovon fell. And Emily had slunk away, disappearing into the shadows. Meav opened her eyes, and looked around.

"Somewhere, nearby, there's got to be a small door, or crevice, or window, or something. Some sort of opening. Has to be at least large enough for Kel to get through, although I would bet it is bigger than that. We need to find it. That's our way in."

TWBTS

Rel reached out with his senses, feeling the molecules of air, the wind, the breeze, tasting the dust on his lips. The air current was regular, warm from the sun high up, and cold down below. Except for a few places. Colder, like from below the ground.

Rel moved to one of the places and crouched down, moving the dust and gravel. Yes, and there a little breeze came up and touched his face. It smelled musty and old. "Meav," He called.

TWBTS

Meav turned, then quickly moved to his side and knelt down, her hand resting on the edge of the small hole. Small, but the loose earth indicated that it could be enlarged very easily.

"Okay," she murmured. "I guess that's it. We'll have to get down in there, I suppose."

"Sooo..." Kel leaned forward and rested her chin on Meav's shoulder. "How we gonna get down there? I thought you said there was a door or a window or something."

"Skylight, probably," Meav replied, pulling on the ground a bit. "All of us should be able to get though, once we clear it out."

Kel kicked a bit at the dirt, then dug the toe of her shoe into the whole, pushing the dirt around.

"Kel be carefu----"

TWBTS

WHOOSH! The ground gave way and all three of them fell through the earth, down, down into the ground. Rocks and dirt poured down around them and covered their heads long after they'd hit bottom, and even after most of the loose debris had fallen, streams of dirt still slid down.

Rel did his best to create a force shield around the three of them. He felt someone else--probably Meav--trying to do the same, to keep them from being crushed. He felt when the movement stopped and used the Force to push away the worst of it. The air was thick with dust, and he coughed as he got up. "Is everyone all right?" He called.

TWBTS

Meav coughed and shook her head, spitting out dirt.

"I'm fine. Where's Kel?" She looked around, struggling to get completely free of the debris and desperately trying to find any sign of her golden-haired sister. A few moments later she was scraping through the dirt, searching.

"She's an Earth elemental, she'll be fine. Besides, she always wears my mother's ring, my mother's spirit will protect her," Meav said, her intense searching belaying the fact that she didn't believe what she was saying.

If they had all fallen straight, then Kel shouldn't be too far away, but she still wasn't surfacing. What if Meav had overestimated her skills? Kel hadn't been trained in the elemental powers at all. Perhaps she was unconscious and suffocating, caught in the rocky mess that surrounded them. Meav didn't normally believe in hauntings, but she was ready to blame Donovon for this one last spite against her. Finally, Meav looked up at Rel, trying not to cry.

"Help me, please."

TWBTS

Rel blinked, trying to get the dust off of his lids. A brown haze surrounded them. At Meav's plea, he began searching for Kel-- with the force as well as physically. "You do not always use the Force when you act. Why?" He thought he could sense Kel's presence. He moved a little further into the area. What was it? A cave? She might have fallen in further.

TWBTS

"I'm an elemental," Meav replied breathlessly. "I was not born to be a Force user, and I've found that the one tends to make me misinterpret the other. If I had no training as an elemental, like Kel, I probably would use the Force more. Still, it is not in my nature, so to speak. It is a learned characteristic."

"Meav?" Kel's wavering voice came from a dark corner across the room. Both of the adults were at her side in seconds.

"Hey, honey, it's okay, we're here," Meav said softly, leaning down next to her sister, who was relatively clean for her fall. Kel was sitting and rubbing her head.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to move that much," Kel said. "I just wanted to move it a little so I could see. And then I bumped my head."

Meav smiled and gave her a hug.

"Bumps can go away. Were you trying to make the ground move?"

Kel nodded. Meav straightened up then pulled Kel up.

"Well, everything takes practice. Just...please don't scare me like that next time."

TWBTS

Rel brushed a bit of dirt off Kel's head, not thinking about it, and then his heart ached for Myra. Then he pushed it aside. There was a time and a place to grieve. This was not it.

He looked around the dusty room. Light streamed in from far above-- it was hard to tell how far they had fallen. It was an open room, old equipment scattered here and there on the floor. He thanked the Force that they hadn't fallen on any of it. He felt conflict in this place, in the Force. Anxiety; pain; betrayal; even death. He frowned as he looked around, saw the discolored floor. "This place holds many memories."

TWBTS

Meav looked down and kicked at a rock.

"Yeah. And none of them very good. Can we just, like, do your walkabout to prove no one is here and just leave? I'd rather not spend much time here."

TWBTS

Rel hesitated, and then nodded. The memories she had of this place seemed to hurt. Should he ask about them? Unsure, he began walking, extending his senses and opening himself to the Force. So far, dead.

Clack, clack, his boots sounded on the rock floor. He felt Kel and Meav following him, and, reassured of their safety, he turned his focus ahead. Nothing yet. "What happened back there?" He asked.

TWBTS

Meav sighed.

"A lot," she said softly. "It is a long story."

Rel waited, looking at her.

Meav said nothing.

"Do tell, Meav," Kel begged. "I've never heard it. And you know I don't remember that much."

"Long before I ever came here, Donovon picked up a stray orphan that he adopted as his own--Emily. She was always his favorite, and she in turn adored him. Or not, since she's a capricious thing that can get away with anything and make anyone and everyone fall in love with her. When Donovon started collecting kids for his Academy, she was always his little assistant. It was actually Emily who called the Jedi here. The Jedi fell in with Emma, Emily's twin, and other runaways or loose affiliates of Donovon's. It took them a while, but eventually they came there, and ran into Emily. Kostya and Kara had enough pity to get drawn in and preoccupied with her. It didn't take long for them to find the Cube--the big glass enclosure that Donovon made most everyone live in. Kel wasn't there, though, and Emily left, so I followed her--and then Donovon started fighting and I won. Emily lets other people do her dirty work for her, but she can't stand when someone doesn't die, so she'll stoop to that level occasionally. Kostya and Kara and their crew showed up, and started arguing, since Kara is such a hothead, and then, suddenly, Donovon was dead and Emily had disappeared. That's why I knew there had to be another entrance somewhere attached to this room."

Meav stopped talking. Kel looked up at her.

"Did you kill Donovon?" she asked.

"No! And yet, in so many ways, yes...."

TWBTS

"Emily killed him because you wouldn't." Rel said. "You wanted to kill him?" As much as he wished he did not, he knew that feeling. Knew it in regards to Meav, which was worse.

TWBTS

"I had already tried to kill him once. Why would a second time be any different? I wanted the right thing to happen, whatever that happened to be. I didn't know, and none the goody-two-shoes seemed to either. But life never works that way. So I left it behind and moved on. And I never came back. I've never stopped moving. I've never needed to. I don't have any where to go back to. They've all been destroyed."