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The morning sun shines bright through the spring green of the interwoven branches overhead, scattering down through the leaves to the pavement below. Yezsic shields his eyes as he glances up to the high canopy and then down the parade of trees for as far as he can see.
He’d been told about this, of course, in the descriptions provided to him of the aloriya, known to expect it. This was the Eastern Walk, where each deliberately spaced tree had once been carefully planted by the Mand’alor himself along the length of the wide boulevard-- beginning here at the top level access to the main entry port, and stretching all the way to the distant eastern gate of Peace Park-- and then just as carefully bowed toward its neighbour across the way, until, over time, their boughs had grown and woven together into one long arch.
He’d just never imagined that the trees would each be far, far bigger around than even three of him could reach, or so tall that he would be barely able to distinguish the leaves on the lower branches, or that the Walk would stretch so much wider across than his Clan’s home, or that the distance would extend so much farther along than he can see. He’d just never imagined ever seeing so many trees.
A man steps in beside him and doesn’t squint as he glances up, following Yez’s eyeline along the Walk. “A reminder, from our Mand’alor,” he says, “in case we would forget. That we live under the dome of this city even if it cannot be seen from within.” And then, head bowed to speak softly into Yez’s ear alone: “As we live, trapped, under his corrupt and unending reign, even if some refuse to see it. Welcome to Sundari, vod.”
He claps Yez’s shoulder, using the motion to tug free the scarlet ribbon wrapped loosely at Yez’s spaulder, his own matching ribbon pulled away and disappeared under his kama, and steers them toward the hover trolley platform to the north. “But enough of that for now. I am Pyic Rhaeg. Come, you have had a long trip. This way.”
Rhaeg is silent on the hover trolley journey, his hands and helmet held loosely over his knees, his gaze down while the transport stops and starts and other travellers board and alight and talk around them. Yezsic tries not to stare at the travellers and the glimpses of the city as they speed by-- streets and alleyways, clustered buildings and the hints and whispers of levels upon levels of more city nested below, the green spaces and plazas and market streets, and all the hundreds of Mandalorians and aruetiise without armour mixing freely. And among it all the markers-- in the architecture, in the murals and mosaics, on the pennants and flags-- of the False Mand’alor, every stone of the restored aloriya stained with his touch.
Yezsic stares instead at the gold and black of Rhaeg’s armour, reciting the Resol'nare in his mind to the time of the hover-engine thrum. He’s so focused on the coils of black painted along the sides of Rhaeg’s helmet that it takes him a moment to realise Rhaeg has risen, and he starts to his feet a few seconds behind as the trolley slows at the next station.
Rhaeg leads him out to a square, open and bright and larger than Yez’s entire settlement. It’s alive with people, with scents and voices and a thousand bright colours, crossed this way and that by vehicles and foot, lined with buildings and stalls, and all are curved toward a centre monument, a garden of fountains and plant-life and memorial markers. It’s so much all at once, more even than arriving at the port and all the chaos there, that at first he doesn’t even see the white temple that towers at the northern end of the square, and then he does, and that’s so, so much more by itself that his breath freezes in his lungs.
“Yes,” Rhaeg says, and catches him by the arm to lead him away from the square-- down the street and then sideways along another, narrow and diagonal. “The great Jetii Temple of Mandalore. The second temple. Not as great as the first, they say, but an imposing sight nonetheless. You had heard of it, of course.”
“...Yes,” says Yezsic, “yes, of course. I had heard. But--”
“It is different, when you see it. I understand. He has much to answer for.” A new street, narrower still, and an entryway, and then they descend a staircase, short, and then another, much longer. “For all their evil ways, they are useful, some of the jetii. And some have been more useful than others. Willing to share-- their knowledge, their concerns. Not all of his transgressions have escaped their notice.”
They stop, finally, at a cantina, after they have spiralled another two levels down and then pressed farther in more directions that Yez has managed to keep track of, the sky through the transparent biodome encasing the city only just visible through the crisscrossing levels of life above them. Inside, the cantina is dim and quiet, a lone twi’lek at the bar and three other patrons sat at two tables. Rhaeg takes them to the far corner, sits facing the entry and leaves Yez the other wall to put at his back. He holds up two fingers to the twi’lek, then turns to Yez with the two scarlet ribbons dangling from his fingers.
“So, vod. You have my name. Who has my cousin sent to me?”
“I am Yezsic Vur,” says Yez, “of New Cordia.”
“And are you a good fighter, Yezsic?”
“Yes.”
“A good shot?”
“The best in our settlement.”
Rhaeg smiles, letting the ribbons drop down to the table. “You know why you are here?”
“Yes.”
“Jate. Stay here.”
Rhaeg returns a moment later with two servings of ne'tra gal and an easy smile. “Drink, vod. And tell me what you know of the Mand’alor.”
Yezsic takes a careful sip. It’s good enough, sweet and spicy, but he hasn’t eaten since the night before, and has been tasked with something far too important to risk on too much ale. “The False Mand’alor. He is called the Prince King, by some. The Eternal King by others.”
Rhaeg nods, so Yez continues, trying to slot the stories his Clan has repeated his whole life into a whole, each whisper worn and polished from retelling to shine like pure beskar. “They say he is a powerful sorcerer. They say he is a member of an ancient race of enemies, a jetii-- and he has let the jetii settle here, and build their temple where they remove the souls of children.” He looks down at the table, rests his hands on his helmet in his lap while he collects his thoughts and tries not to think of the great white temple looming at the end of the busy square.
“It is said that he has ruled for centuries. It is said that, when Manda’yaim was reclaimed, and the Clans and the Houses were at war to choose a Mand’alor, that he appeared with the Darksaber. It is said when they asked what right he had to claim the throne, that he did not use his fiendish powers or unsheathe the Darksaber at his side, but that he said: ‘my father was a Mandalorian and he knew my name as his child’.”
“Mm,” says Rhaeg, nodding. “Meaning, of course--”
“That he was a foundling, once. As many are. But it is said that his father had no clan. His father was a foundling who was never ru kir'mani, never offered the gai bal manda. He was raised in the fighting corps and no family knew him as their own. The Death Watch raised a child without a soul and he brought this curse on us all.”
He takes another sip of the black ale and raises his gaze to meet Rhaeg’s, who is not shocked, and does not smirk or call him crazy or rise to attack, but instead says “Gar serim” with a nod to go on.
Yez’s heart settles. It’s different here, and he was warned-- warned that the city was full of people who did not know of the horror rotting inside the Royal Palace, that people not from the settlement lived in fear but did not know its name, that he must not speak the truth where it could be heard by those that didn’t already know it, or they would strike out in defense of their fear and their false, ancient king-- but Rhaeg knows, and this is not so different after all.
“They say that he is taking the soul from Manda’yaim, that where he touches with his powers, the curse spreads, and now he has poisoned the core of our world. They say that all Mando'ade are cursed, and we will be cursed until he has been defeated. They say that the curse will spread to the manda and when it does, what is left of us will crumble and be forgotten. It is said that he has sold us all to aruetiise, the planet and its people, and they have stripped away what remains of our beskar and our history and with that they will strip away all that remains of us.”
This they may say, but also this Yezsic knows: he has heard his Clan’s alor rage at the missives sent from Sundari that seek to refuse them their history; he has seen the hulking, beskaryc machinery assembled overnight at the only source of water near his settlement to drain away the lifesource of his yaim; he recites the list of dead in his remembrances.
“And,” he continues, and takes the ribbons from the table in a fist to firm his nerve and his heart. “It is said, too, that the False Mand’alor is guarded by a monster, a damned, living beskar'ad that some call the Mudhorn Alor. It is said that it is an abomination of beskar that the False Mand’alor forged of the bones and beskar'gam of his father and animates with his unholy powers. It is said that the False Mand’alor feeds the demon with the souls of true Mando'ade, but that it will always be empty because it never had a soul of its own in life and in death its hunger can only grow. They say it cannot be matched in battle, that it moves with the speed and strength of every soul it has consumed. And it is said that if you see under its helmet, your mind and soul will be lost, and your body will join its dar'manda army.”
“Yet despite this, you still defy the ancient pretender and his corruption.” Rhaeg holds Yez’s gaze while he takes a long drink of his ale. “True mandokar.”
Yez pulls the ribbons through his fingers, weaves them around and around his knuckles. “Because of this, I defy the False Mand’alor. He is not Mandalorian. No true Mandalorian would raise such a creature. No true Mand’alor would poison Manda’yaim. Our people are cursed-- my people are cursed, but we will not ceta to a false king. We do not have a biodome to protect our settlement: we see the remains of Manda’yaim every day, and we have lost countless to the evils of the False Mand’alor over generations. I have heard the screams of his experiments in the desert wastes. I have seen the ships and the shadows of the creatures he has sold us to. But we are Mandalorian. We keep the Resol'nare. I am not afraid.”
“Only a fool is not afraid of the Mudhorn.”
“I will not fight the abomination.”
“Jate. There would be no point to this, if you tried.”
“...Have you ever seen it?”
“Yes.” Rhaeg looks down at his ale and then back up to Yez, and his tone is firm when he says: “Only from afar, and the destruction it has left in its wake. That is all I ever wish to see.” He shrugs, his mouth twisting sideways into a smile. “You will see it tomorrow, from a safe distance-- or at least pray you do. It looks like any Mandalorian, any Royal aran at the Mand’alor’s side. You do not want to see it any closer than that. And you do not want to see the Mand’alor without it beside him.”
Yez hands Rhaeg back one of the ribbons. “I am a very good shot.” He tucks his own into a pouch at his belt. “My uncle said you would be able to arrange a location for me, with sight to the False Mand’alor, and that you have a special cartridge. A bullet he cannot see with his second sense. ...And it is said that once a jetii is dead, its monsters crumble with it.”
“It is said.” Rhaeg raises his drink, and Yezsic his. “Oya Manda!”
The day has warmed when they leave the cantina, not yet midday but bright with the spring and the promise of summer, even as deep into the Undercity as they are.
Rhaeg leads them confidently through a maze of tight, shadowed alleyways and narrow streets that are distinguishable from each other only by their manner of pavement, and sometimes not even that. Yezsic does his best to remember the sequence of turns, even though they have crossed the length of his settlement and back three times since the cantina. His heart is light and strong with purpose.
“I am taking you somewhere to rest from your journey,” says Rhaeg. “There will be food and water. Tomorrow, there is to be a Royal address from the palace. Tonight, I will show you the Palace plaza, and the city around it, and from where you will watch the Mand’alor speak in the morning. It is not far.”
They pass through a small, jumbled market, the stalls and buildings so close together that it’s almost like being back at the Eastern Walk, the awnings and canvas roofs nearly touching overhead. Rhaeg weaves them around the milled Mandalorians and aruetiise, and then slips them through a gap between two buildings and down another long, narrow alley.
There is someone blocking the way: a Mandalorian in the shadows beside a haphazard pile of waste bags and old crates and building scrap, with no room left for them to pass. Yez almost doesn’t see him at first and stops only because Rhaeg does, pulling up short and fast.
“Clear the way, vod,” Rhaeg says cheerily. “There’s only so much space down here!”
This is not the first Mandalorian in the capital that Yezsic has seen who has chosen to wear their helmet, although most have carried theirs, like Yez and Rhaeg do, or had them strapped to their side or back. When he feels the gaze behind the visor pass over him, Yez wishes-- suddenly, sharply-- that he was wearing his too.
The stranger stays where he is and Rhaeg’s hand hovers at his thigh; Yez angles himself slowly, slides out of Rhaeg’s way in case he goes to pull whatever weapon he must have there, and keeps himself as much to the helmeted Mandalorian’s peripheral as he can in the tight alleyway.
Even in the shadows, the stranger’s armour has an oily gleam as he moves. It has the gleam of pure beskar. So much pure beskar.
“I’ve asked once,” Rhaeg says, easy and calm, even as his fingers tap at his thigh. “I’m not in the habit of asking twice, so please, consider this an expression of my good will. Clear the way.”
“Pyic Rhaeg,” says the stranger, and Rhaeg’s back stiffens.
“So you know me then-- I can’t say I recognize you, burc'ya. Do me the courtesy of your name and your purpose here.”
“Member of the Tome Cur'eta.”
Yez jerks his gaze to the stranger’s shoulders, his wrists, his belt-- he does not wear a scarlet ribbon, there is no decoration on his armour at all, except for-- there, on one pauldron, something silver on silver, obscured by shadow and indistinguishable. What does he know of the Tome Cur'eta?
“Yezsic Vur. Member of the Tome Cur'eta.”
The stranger steps forward-- Rhaeg draws in a breath and Yez’s eyes fix on the insignia burned into his armour.
Clan Mudhorn. Founded by the boy who was never given a soul. Clan of demons.
“Ne shab'rud'ni, shabuir,” Rhaeg spits, and the knife he pulls comes from behind his back and not his thigh, which might have been a better ploy if the alleyway were big enough for it to matter. If they weren’t staring at a monster.
The Mandalorian reaches to the side, and by the time Yez realizes that the metal rod half-camouflaged by the crates is not a piece of building scrap it is buried in Rhaeg’s throat, pinning him to the wall behind him like some kind of medical specimen.
Rhaeg’s knife falls from his dead fingers, and Yez’s training acts before his numb brain can-- he whirls, kicking the blade toward the Mudhorn, it will be a diversion at least even if he can’t--
He swears the knife finds the joint between the greaves but it still bounces away with a resonant clang, but no matter, he’s got his blaster out of the hidden hip-sheathe and he’s firing, trained precise shots for the joins of the armour, the vulnerable hinges and slivers of unshielded circuitry, and the Mudhorn keeps coming.
He springs backward, and the Mudhorn reaches out. Yez hears the pneumatic hiss of a grapple firing and instinctively parries-- with his blaster hand. As the carbon cording tightens around his fingers he knows he’s made a mistake, and he’s still firing as he’s jerked forward, still firing when the Mudhorn grabs his hand and wrenches it up under his chin--
He thinks he sees everything, suddenly, the furious and ageless eyes behind the blank helmet, and then he sees nothing.
In a rare half hour between meetings-- a clash between rival biology schools before, another conference with the re-established Jedi Council after-- the Mand’alor retreats to his shielded chambers to meditate, opening himself to the Force.
There is an infinite universe beyond his re-growing planet and its semi-habitable moons; he finds calmness in the hibernation-like emptiness of sleeping space, the vastness between solid worlds and all the little points of life clustered on them.
He finds calmness, too, in the clamour of that life swirling around him. A hundred-thousand minds bend toward him at any moment, chanting their half-thought pleadings, laments, and threats. The threads of suspicion and hope and hatred weave together into an unseen mantle on his shoulders, one made comfortable by five centuries of familiarity.
This is the song, this is the tapestry of his people. Without hatred it would be hollow; without defiance it would be threadbare. They are Mandalorian, and unquestioning obedience is no part of them. The day he becomes too comfortable on the throne is the day he’s cut out of it.
The low susurrus of whispers, poisonous with his death, rises and falls. Closer some day than others, but always present. A dozen schemers within the Royal Palace itself; hundreds within the nearest neighbourhoods of the city. He will not allow them their success but when he protects his throne it will not be with fear in his heart. When he wields the Darksaber against his challengers it will be with balance in him.
Fear leads to anger; anger to hate; hate to the darkness. It was among his first lessons in the Jedi creche.
His second, most lasting lesson in the creche: there is no safety. There is always someone who wishes you dead.
He survived two Jedi massacres in his infancy; these centuries later he has outlived more purges than he can count on his hands. A less impressive tally, granted, than it might be for a race endowed with more fingers, but he would not wish his legacy cemented with more unnecessary death.
He feels the strike when it happens; a blade through the tapestry, two crimson threads cut. Two voices whispering his death interrupted by the shriek of their own.
Haar'chak.
They were nearby; the Mudhorn Alor will return to the palace soon. The Mand’alor can feel the Force bend around him in that singular way it does.
Soon enough there’s the ring of beskar gauntlets knocking-- unnecessarily-- at the door, and the Mand’alor gestures without opening his eyes to open it.
“Busy?” the Mudhorn asks, modulator making his hesitancy into gruffness.
“As much as usual.” He opens his eyes, blinking up at the gleaming beskar in the directed solar light of his chambers.
The Mudhorn is an ancient, unyielding figure, an anomaly in the Force that unnerves even the least sensitive. A dauntless guardian. A faceless figure of hope or evil, depending on where the viewer stood.
His body language is unmistakably hangdog, even fully helmeted.
“Baba,” says the Mand’alor, very gently. “I’m seven hundred years old. I can handle my own insurgencies.”
His father grunts and leans his spear against the wall by the door, in the space left clear for that purpose. It’s been cleaned on the walk back; not a smudge of visible blood although he knows it was used. “These ones had a plan.”
“They’re Mandalorian. Of course they did. I’d have been disappointed if they didn’t.” The pride that warms his chest may be unfathomable to some, but not to him. Not to any Mand’alor who loved his people. “...Buir, it wouldn’t have worked. I might not even have had to kill them.”
He lives in hope that the little sects that grow up in the outer wards might some day see reason. Understand that ‘cursed’ is an imprecise word for ‘irradiated’ and that once you correct the deficiency you can take precautions. Accept that chemical treatment for groundwater poisoned by ancient civil wars is not an attempt to control their minds. Accept that ecosystem regrowth is slow and unpredictable on a world that was already a wasteland when the first Empire bombed it to glass.
Rarely in five centuries has his hope been rewarded, but he keeps it nevertheless.
“You can show your mercy to the ones without sniper rifles.”
“I do.” He softens it with a smile-- and would know even without the bright warmth of the Force and the wave of love it crashes over him that his father is smiling back, just from the angle of his helmet and the whisper of gentleness in his stance.
There have always been those who struggle to read the Mudhorn’s intentions from his body language, who see their own fear reflected in the gleam of his beskar and not the open heart it is wrapped around. He has never understood this. His father is the most expressive person he knows.
“There was something different about these ones. I think they had a Jedi working with them.”
“...I will keep that in mind.” It is not unexpected-- suspicion led to fear, as well-- but it was not one of the whispers he’d recognized. “Thank you, Buir. It has been some time since any in the Order struck out that way. Perhaps this is something to raise with the Council... in a few minutes, when I am expected.” This sigh, he has learned from his father.
He slides down from his seat, leaving meditation behind and smooths his gambeson. His father hands him his helmet, and warmth blooms in his heart, as it always does.
“Hnn. I still don’t like them.”
He slides the helmet over his head, angling his ears through the slits and behind the protective wings with careful practice. “They don’t like you either. Thus the Force balances itself.”
His father knows it’s a joke; gives a soft little grunt of laughter. “See you at dinner, kiddo.” He has to stoop to bump their helmets, but the motion is so worn into both of them that it doesn’t break his stride.
He lets himself imagine bringing his father to the Council meeting: it would be useful to see who flinches at this Force spectre. And the disquiet and posturing that ripples through the Council when in the presence of the Mudhorn is always good-- for a reminder of the things even they cannot explain, and for a laugh.
...No. He’ll save that for when he has more intelligence on this new alliance against him.
“K'oyacyi, Buir.”
Now to the Jedi Council. Who do not like his father.
...The third painful lesson of the Jedi came from Master Skywalker, merciless truth in a kindly voice. "Your father is human. He does not age like you age. He will be gone sooner than you understand."
Humans live bright and fast. Friendly old Greef was first to rejoin the universe, before he was even talking, and then loud, fond Peli. Marshal Dune and Marshal Vanth were gone before he was out of childhood, as were patient, fierce Fennec and Boba.
And yet… nearly seven hundred years later, Din Djarin is still standing, still suspicious of the Jedi, still determined to protect his son and, somehow, still carrying out his duty whether the Jedi wish it or not. That’s why they don’t like him. Nobody knows precisely what he is, in all the records the closest things to him are Sith Lords, but even Darth Sion wasn’t quite the same as this Mandalorian spirit clinging to…
Not flesh, exactly.
He promised he’d be there for his son, and the promise hardened in him, and hardened him, metal revealed where flesh failed year by year, decade by decade by century.
Grogu Djarin, eternal Mand’alor (an exaggeration he’s given up correcting), doesn’t know how to undo his father’s transformation, and might not if he did. He cheerfully accepts the suspicion of the Council and his people. It’s healthy. Keeps the Jedi on their toes, gives the Mandalorians something to begrudge-- and that is nearly their fondest cultural past-time.
He spares a last second of connection to the Force, feeling his people’s will winding around him like his armour, and his father’s strange, beloved echo standing guard.
He goes on about the business of ruling.