Chapter Text
Glowing bugs flashed and fluttered around in the evening light as Obi-wan disembarked from the small shuttle and jumped down to land in soft grass. As he took a look around at the fields of flowers around, he had to wonder. This seemed like far too peaceful a place for Dooku to have been shuffling funds to on a regular basis…
But the records he’d uncovered had been solid intel. Better to investigate and find nothing of importance than to leave them and risk a bigger Separatist problem in the future. He pulled his cloak closer around him and headed towards the town his ship’s sensors had picked up while he’d been searching for a landing place.
The streets were completely empty.
For a moment, that concerned him, until he let his senses unfold further in the Force, and found a town full of life at peaceful rest, just beginning to rouse
It had been a long time since he’d come across a completely nocturnal planet, Obi-Wan mused to himself as he watched street lamps begin to wake in the same manner as their masters, unfurling their lights like leaves.
Not since he’d been a Padawan, at least.
“Well met, stranger,” said a pleasant voice from his left and he turned, finding an older, greenish-skinned man decorated in yellow bioluminescent markings and glowing yellow eyes approaching from a newly lit up building. “What brings you to Merinima? We have an excellent-”
“I am looking for someone, actually,” Obi-Wan interrupted gently, pulling a small holocron out of his robes to activate an image of Dooku. “Does this man come by here at all? Or can you tell me if he’s been spotted in any of the other local towns?”
The man squinted, leaning in to scrutinize it more closely. “Hmm… Oh, you are in luck! He comes every year for our Stagemaster’s birthday.”
That was… not the answer Obi-Wan had been expecting. “A birthday?”
“Yes, sir, many years now. Though I am afraid he won’t have a reason to come this year,” the man said as he straightened, shaking his head a little. “Our dear Erasmus passed two moons past.”
Obi-Wan frowned slightly as he shut off the holo. Something… something was nagging at him about this. “Could you possibly show me this stage?”
“I can send my assistant to take you there. Parnna!” the man called back to the building, and a small girl with purple markings and eyes and pigtails of many braids poked her head out the door. “Take our new friend-”
“Obi-Wan,” he supplied.
“Obi-Wan,” the man said without missing a beat, “-up to Stagemaster Erasmus’ place.”
“Aya, Sir,” Parnna said, pattering out to take hold of Obi-Wan’s hand with no hesitation or fear. “This way, this way.”
He couldn’t help being a little bit charmed by her enthusiasm, and a small smile crossed his face as he let her pull him through a town that was coming to glittering life all around them as they walked. “Do you get many visitors here, Parnna?”
“Not many, Sir. We got a lot more when the Stagemaster was still with us. His shows were so amazing! He could control everything and touch nothing, no matter how many dolls he used!”
That got his attention. “Did he, now? And what about the man who visited him on his birthday? Do you know much about him?”
“Not really. Sometimes he buys little trinkets around the shops or picks up a meal from our place to take with him to the Stage, but he never visits anyone but the Stagemaster. He’s been coming for so long, though. Vulina, that’s my oldest cousin, says he was coming even when she was little.”
Mysteries on mysteries. He was highly doubting now that he was going to find any Separatist ties here, but now he felt he had an even bigger question weighing on his mind.
Just who was this Erasmus, that Dooku would have been taking time even during the war to keep an appointment with him?
The stage hall was a fascinating beast, seeming to almost be growing out of the cliffside they came to at the edge of town. Delicate decorations had been carved and painted with skilled hands around the pillars hewn in the front entryway, and had he not been on a mission, Obi-wan could have lost himself for an hour or two trying to study the story they were clearly meant to tell.
But as he approached the doors, he found he’d lost his talkative little shadow.
Turning, he found Parnna hanging back, her hands twisting nervously in the wide sleeves of her tunic. “What’s wrong, little one? Are you not coming?”
“Ah - ah, no one can get in, anyway. The Stagemaster was the only one who could unseal the entrances,” she said, and though he sensed she truly believed so, it was also clear that she was wanting any reason at all to stay behind.
He decided not to discomfort her further. “You can go back to your employer then, if you like. He only told you to bring me here, and you did so admirably.”
“N-no… Sir Ferranus wouldn’t be very happy if I just left you here to get hurt. I’ll wait. Um, right here, if that’s okay.”
He managed to keep the laugh out of his voice. “That’s perfectly fine, Parnna. I’ll try not to be long; I’m just going to take a little look around.”
“Aya.”
Obi-Wan turned back to the entryway, and as he did so, a soft tug on his senses startled him into pausing. Confused, he sent out a questioning pulse through the Force, but got nothing in return.
Perhaps…?
Shrugging it off, he made his way into the arcade. On either side were more lines of columns decorated with figures, but they were harder to read with no lamps, nor torches.
But when he reached the doors, it was immediately apparent why no one had been able to open them. The smooth, painted stone panels matched together to become almost seamless, with nothing grippable of any kind that he could see anywhere. And the sheer size of them… they would have taken an immense amount of strength to be pushed open.
Or a Force-User, reminded a soft part of his mind, remembering what Parnna had said about dolls that had no controls.
He gave the doors another once-over, then pursed his lips together and reached out to pull.
“Are you well, sir?” Parnna called at the sharp grinding noise.
“I’m fine,” Obi-Wan replied. “I’ll be back shortly.”
And then he slipped inside.
The theatre was silent, save for the soft shifts of air his movements made as he walked deeper into the central hallway. Reaching into his cloak, Obi-Wan produced a small flarestick and lit it, marveling at the sight of stages to his left, right, and front. “An amazing show indeed,” he murmured, unable to even imagine what kind of spectacles must have taken place to fill them all at once.
He reached out to brush a hand against a covered seat, then paused, as that gentle tug brushed his mind again. He frowned, trying to reach back out to it, but once more, it was gone.
No, not gone.
Weak.
A deep frown crossed his face, and he turned in the direction he thought it had come from, up to the left stage and behind the curtains. Stairwells up and down waited for him, and when he searched for the pull, it was out of his grasp.
“Hello?” he called.
After a long silence, he was starting to doubt that the source had been anything living-
“Is... is anyone... up there?”
It was so soft.
A barest rasp, so faint that he almost didn’t hear it. But it was there. A voice from the downward stairwell. Gripping the flarestick tight, Obi-Wan practically leaped down the entire flight in one jump. “I’m here! Keep talking, so I can find you!”
“Left… left door... ” came the weak wheeze.
He shouldered open the closest door in the given direction, then stopped short at what he found. A white-haired elderly man, blue markings almost faded out, lay curled up fetal on his side on the floor.
Obi-Wan swallowed. “Erasmus?” he asked, crouching to set the flarestick upright on the floor before gently pressing his fingers to the man’s neck.
Blazes, his pulse was so slow. One more day, not even that, maybe, and…
“Aya,” Erasmus huffed, trying and failing to raise his head. He did succeed in opening his eyes, and Obi-wan fought down a shiver at how glassy and dim they were as well. “I… I know you… you feel… like Yan. A Jedi.”
“I am,” Obi-Wan said. “But save your strength for now. I’ve got to get you out of here and get you to aid before we can talk in earnest. The whole town thinks you’re already dead.”
“Do they?” the old man asked, and despite his ill health, his eyes held a spark of mirth. “A fine… fine trick… that… would be… were it not… for… for this.”
Forcing back a snort, Obi-Wan swept the blanket off the small bed and gently wrapped Erasmus in it before using a touch of Force energy to help lift him. As he did so, something pushed a sick, black little tendril of cold into the power he was exerting. He shook his head at the sudden intrusion, surprised and suspicious. What in-
Labored, wheezing breathing distracted him from searching it out. Keep Erasmus alive, come back later, Obi-wan reminded himself, holding his patient against his chest. “Try to relax and rest, Stagemaster. I’ll make the journey as smooth as possible.”
Parnna was gaping. He couldn’t blame her. “He- but- but he- we left him in there!”
“It’s not your fault, little one. You couldn’t have gotten in there to get him out,” Obi-Wan said, trying to send out some soothing waves, but the the girl still looked like she was going to burst out crying. “You can help me help him now. Where are your medical centers?”
She quickly sniffed back her tears and squared her shoulders. “This way, sir. I know a shortcut.”
“Good girl.”
Sitting beside the odd little liquid-filled chamber that encased the convalescing Erasmus was a welcome respite to the chaos of the rush through town. Even with Parnna’s shortcut, far too many had seen them, and all had wanted to stop and offer their apologies to their ailing Stagemaster.
Obi-Wan turned and looked at the elderly man, softly breathing medicated gases through tubes. He hoped the delays hadn’t cost them too much precious time.
“Sir Kenobi?”
He raised his head as the healer assigned to their case approached. “Yes?”
“Our scans have been completed. There is an… anomaly.”
His eyebrows raised. “That’s an unusual term in the medical field.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have any better way to explain it,” she said, handing over the datapad she’d been carrying. “It’s as though something is... devouring his health, but nearly all of his vital signs have come back clean. We had to resort to ley mana scans before we could begin treatment.”
“Ley- you mean something is attacking him through the Force,” Obi-Wan said, and in his mind, that pulse of dark energy from the Stagemaster’s home under the theatres flashed again.
“I suppose that is what you call it. We can repair the physical damage, but replenishing the mana he’s lost…”
“I will be able to help him with that. Thank you for showing me this,” he said politely, handing the datapad back. When the healer had gone to attend to other duties, he regarded the Stagemaster with a frown. A Force attack… it would have had to have been Dooku, wouldn’t it?
But how?
Why?
The lamps unfurled for him with the barest touch of Force energy, illuminating Erasmus’ home in soft oranges and yellows. Any other time, it would have been homey, comforting, but at the moment, the fact that it took so little to do only served as a reminder of just how close to death the old man had been when he’d found him lying alone in the darkness. Obi-wan fought down a shiver and let his senses sweep out further into the room, searching for the thing that would bite back-
And ouch, there it was.
A scowl etched on his face, he approached a table of liquor bottles of varying levels of empty, touching each one with a little spark of power. Surely not-
No.
No.
No.
Got you.
Obi-wan picked up the offending culprit, and was mildly surprised to find it was a bottle of spiced wine from Naboo.
A very literal Force poison, it seemed.
He blew out a slow breath. Even more questions that needed answers....
Perhaps he needed to contact the Temple.