e2 | UN: SKYWALKER

Like

A rash??
[li...ches...? itches??]

Yes. As the old adage goes: "Liches get itches."

Did the sarcasm come through? It's so difficult with written word.

Well excuse me for asking for clarification.

I'm not sure what you were expecting but fair enough let's start again.

I meant the undead. Zombies. Wrathes. Creatures that die don't typically come back fully unchanged.

I've never heard of anything like that.

Not that I don't believe you. It's just a little hard to imagine.

[And then there's a delay. Because Anakin has stopped thinking about feigning his own death and instead, finds a new, strange, and horrifying comfort in her message. He thinks it's possible. And his heart squeezes in his chest. It's possible to stop someone from dying. To bring them back. It raises the hair on the nape of his neck, brings the whole of his attention around to this one point of focus.]

Do you know this power?

Not personally, though I have seen it done before.

That is, I wasn’t present for the ceremony but I am familiar with a pair who did it themselves.

[If only she knew what sort of hope she was inspiring. Alas, she’s just answering as honestly as she can think to do.]

It isn’t a decision to take lightly. Certainly not just to find where they're taking the bodies.

I'm not thinking about using it to figure out the bodies.

I've just never heard of something like that before

There was a ceremony?

There was but, as I mentioned, I wasn't present.
I barely knew it was happening until after it was over.

I know it had something to do with forging powerful bonds in life. I'm not sure how other undead work, but for a Lich, it's important for them to have something that tethers them to the world.

[excuse him, he's furiously taking notes]

[It isn't so strange. Anakin has never heard of a Jedi with the power to reverse death, but powerful bonds are part of what makes them who they are. It's the way they create a lineage. Even the crystals that power their lightsabers share a bond with the Jedi who retrieves it.

Surely it isn't impossible to imagine a bond that could outlast death.]

How did you come to know these things? Are they common in your world?

[There's a pause, because it's not something she talks about much but. Well, she's a long way from home here, there's no harm in being honest.]

I know people that did it. Mind you that my experiences are extraordinary, and I don't say that lightly.

[My experiences are extraordinary, she says. Not like she's trying to pull rank or stretch out a whole world between them, just like it's fact. In this moment, the strangeness in Anakin recognizes the strangeness in another. It lives in his lungs like relief.]

What happened afterwards?

What happens to the Lich?

From what I understand, they either lose their mind to the immense amounts of magic that was required to create them. Or they have bonds close enough to keep them tethered to their former selves.

Interested in becoming a lich? Or is it just curiosity?

[The concept of undeath is a pretty interesting one, from a purely scientific standpoint.]

[This isn't the same world that he came from and maybe he has less to fear in the way of consequences. But Anakin hasn't been honest for a very long time- and he knows that just because he's here doesn't mean the truth is safe.

So he lies. Or as Obi-Wan might say, he tells the truth. From a certain point of view.]

Where I'm from when people die they're just gone.

But one man, who we'd long known to be dead, has returned. Still don't know how he did it.

That's typically how it works, although some people have found loopholes.

Putting souls inside of robots, turning into the undead. There are a lot of options, but it doesn't make the grim reaper very happy.

UN: SKYWALKER | TEXT

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