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Erestor tugged his hood forward, covering the bottom half of his face with part of his cloak as the bleak north wind whipped past him on the flat wastes. Sand bit into his exposed skin, making him wish he had not shattered the eye coverings he'd first brought with him to Ard-Galen. The sun was setting low on the western horizon, turning the rim of the world blood red. The strange atmosphere on the planet caused such sunsets of vivid color, streaking crimson and gold and violet lines across the whole sky.
Erestor had exited the tunnels of the mountains that ringed the space port several hours before. He had pressed on through the entire night and through the next day, making his way far to the north of the planet. He had no idea if the Dark Guard would be able to track him so far but he had to err on the side of caution. His head was spinning and black dots were blooming at the edges of his vision but still he pushed on. He'd tripped and fallen a few times, scraping his palms and knees against the rough stone. Even then he could not stop and spare the time to bandage the wounds. He had to keep moving.
There had been a small settlement outside the tunnels that snaked through the mountains. The whole planet had once been a mining outpost for some civilization that had left no records. Later the strange atmosphere became the best place to grow the plants that created the largest drug that the black markets dealt in some centuries back. Erestor had spent all the credits he had left to buy one of the rough, beaten up hoverbikes from a squinty-eyed fellow named Bill Ferny. The bike, called Bill for reasons passing Erestor's understanding, had been a dependable thing, getting Erestor through the twisting paths and onto the wastes of Ard-Galen's northernmost region. Far ahead he could see the slag mountains jutting up like jagged teeth against the colorful horizon. That was his destination. The forgotten Temple of Ard-Galen.
The first time he had come here his heart had been beating high in his throat for a far different reason. Now, though, he did not falter as he pushed Bill-the-hoverbike all the faster towards that dark jutting of rock.
At first Erestor had thought it was a natural rock formation. Ard-Galen was an old world, full of relics from different civilizations that had come and gone from its rocky surface. There were petrified forests near the equator that reached hundreds of feet into the air, seemingly all frozen into place at the same time though no one could figure out how. Vast seas once covered one side of the planet, with trenches several miles deep. Where the water had gone, no one knew, but those old sea beds were once fertile plains that grew a variety of crops many thousands of years before. That civilization too was gone, though some bits and pieces of them remained. Old buildings, worn down to nubs, once industrial hubs near the farms and the fields, had been picked over for centuries by the curious and the bold for fortunes and failures that often took the lives of those not prepared.
Erestor had read all he could on Ard-Galen, long before this second war with Morgoth had ever begun. Many had thought Morgoth had been defeated for good during the last War of Wrath, when the Armies of Beleriand had trapped him in the Dark Nebula and had been bound there by the Council of the Valar. It was rumored by the Republic at large that their Order came from that very same council but Erestor and his people knew the truth.
The Order of Eru had grown up outside of that Council's influence, during the long years of peace in the galaxy at large and when that very same Council had faded away into myth. Their Order had been born on the planet Cuiviénen, where there was no sun, only stars to light the sky. It was said that only one of the Valar had ever interacted with their Order, the one called Varda Elentári, Queen of the Valar and Manwë's wife. Varda was claimed to have been the Lady of the Stars in the old tales of the Republic, a wise Queen and beloved by the elves of the Beleriand sector. In the ancient texts Erestor had read, deep in the Imladris Temple, there was an even older myth of their people, claiming that all the elves in the Republic, even the ones of the Beleriand sector, had once come from Cuiviénen, as they did. That their Order was the last of the elves that had escaped this Council of the Valar's grip and extraction from their homeland. That this Varda Elentári had been the lone voice on that Council that had argued against moving the elves from their homeland. (Though there had been one other text claiming that it was not Varda alone that argued against the move, that one Ulmo, Lord of Waters, had stood by her side but both of them had been overruled by Manwë's order.)
Records varied on just when their Order had drifted inward to the Core worlds of the Republic. It had been sometime after the War of Wrath and the Beleriand Armies had been sealed away by this Council of the Valar. Temple after Temple had been built on worlds, closer and closer to the Deep Core, until their Order slotted into the same place that this Council of the Valar once held. And, much like the Council of the Valar, their Order of Eru had grown in myth and legend, with tales being told about them that were wildly exaggerated. Their Order had stood for thousands of years, opposing the creep of the Dark that Sauron had brought, fighting against that would-be Lord of Darkness that culminated in the brutal Eriador Wars. That had been the height of their power, when their Temples had stood full of Order members, ready to fight for the freedom of the Republic and all her worlds.
The resulting fear of their Order had taken a toll on their numbers. As had their vow of service, forced upon them by a frightened Republic Senate, eager to hobble the ones that had saved them but who also reminded the Senate and the various Republic words of the Council of the Valar and what kind of power they had once held. And so their Order had taken that vow of service, not ever thinking that it would ever be used against them. That the Senate had long lost all knowledge of the Council of the Valar and the powers they had used and the armies that had been at their command.
Ah, what fools they'd been.
It was here, in this old Temple, that Erestor had several of his theories proved right. Mostly about Cuiviénen but also about how their Order had originated and why. The old Master of the Order that had branded Erestor's tongue to silence, one Rúmil of Kôr, had sat with Erestor for an entire day and night, telling him old tales of their people and the knowledge of their history from Rúmil's time. There were so many more Temples in Wild Space than Erestor had even thought. Plenty for their entire Order to inhabit with room left over. Perhaps even space for...
Erestor shook that thought off. Once he would have embraced the idea of bringing the entire Beleriand Armies into the fold of the Order. Not anymore. And, as the jagged teeth of the old temple grew closer and closer, Erestor knew that he could not chance Commander Glorfindel and Commander Ecthelion finding out anything about Cuiviénen or the Order's history as a whole. There was no knowing what they would do with that knowledge. Their commanders were already hunting down the members of Erestor's Order, collecting them for something none of them could understand. No, Erestor had to get to this ancient Temple, had to find someway to plead with the spirits of his Order that lingered there, to get them to help him get off this planet, to somewhere, anywhere, beyond Glorfindel and Ecthelion's reach.
Erestor just had survive the gauntlet of the dark spirits that lingered in that Temple and get past the vile traps Sauron and his legion of Nazgûl had laid down in it, first.