Session export: Arx: Under da Sea Adventure

Wham The stamp came down heavily, its wielder red in the face as they marked the document with a large DENY sigil. “Well no wonder Howie likes using these. Theyre strangely cathartic.” A deep breath blown out signalled a return to calm…just in time for the desk mounted datapad to blind the poor administrator with a high priority status screen. “KARK ME, what do they want now!?” the figure swore, scrabbling to turn down the brightness. Blinking the dots out of his eyes, he read what was so important to warrant such a high urgency.

Or he could be greeted by a <Please verify identity> screen. The admin slammed their forehead into the desk…

That had been yesterday. The message had been long and detailed yet Titius still had zero idea why he had been invited to this crew. Or even what the mission was. The only surety was it needed the immense firepower judging by the roster. Pulling a Grandmaster class Force User in could not have been easy. And an Elder class Maurauder… Titius had a tickle of apprehension thinking about what was in the Trench that those two could not handle alone.

<Prepare for docking> scrolled the warning across his visor.

Alex was busy unpacking and sorting his belongings in his newly assigned Captain’s Quarters on the Voidbreaker II. While he was still going to be maintaining his personal “mobile penthouse” residence on the Herald of Entropy, he felt it was important in his new position to have some amount of permanent presence aboard the ship he commanded. As he was pulling a royal blue frock coat from a container to put up in his wardrobe, a chime sounded from his datapad across the room. Curious, he tossed the garment down on his bed and stepped over to his desk. As he thumbed the datapad to life, its screen was dominated by the logo of the Shadow Academy, followed shortly by an encrypted message once his biometrics had been confirmed.

Researcher Alex Draconis, Professor of Field Anthropology, Wayfinder Society. Priority I Mission, report to Arx immediately.

Alex slotted the datapad into a hip pouch, grabbed his twin pistols Honor and Glory from the desktop and gave them a little flourish as he holstered them. As he strode out of the room headed for his personal ship, he called out to his droid butler.

“Steven, do be a good lad and finish getting me unpacked. I have work to do…”

Siky ran around the room with some wires that Aylin had asked it to get for her, but when it neared the table it was about to climb the droid’s antenna went up straight and it let out a warning beep for an incoming message.

Hearing the reaction from the droid, Aylin sat straight up and arched a brow, “What’s so important they message me at this hour?”

The little droid shrugged and climbed up the table as Aylin grabbed her datapad. There she saw the complete message.

“Finally a mission that isn’t dry as hell,” she said with a grin.

Siky beeped a question as it hadn’t been able to read it.

“We are going on an underwater adventure,” Aylin said with a giggle, “grab your things and let’s go.”

He missed Lyspair.

Muz had only been to Eos after the Exodus, and he knew everything that they had moved to Arx, so there wasn’t any mystery there for him anymore. He wondered if it was that he missed Lyspair itself, or the feelings and memories of that place. Muz walked slowly away from the landing pad, his shuttle venting as it prepared to leave. Forge moved behind him deliberately, the droid’s hands holding his helmet and the long mane that swept from it. In another life, the droid would be assisting him between the holocrons and tomes of the academy instead of at his workbenches.

But that was… another life.

Muz hadn’t spent any time to speak of at the new Academy. Then again, he hadn’t really spent much time on Arx at all. There wasn’t much for him there, aside from some of the people. Not in comparison to the ancient and twisted things he chased since. But this? The message swam behind his eyeballs again. This held promise. And ever more beyond that. They were surprised when he said he would be attending in person. Or was that not surprise he saw in their eyes, but something else?

He paused in front of a door, waiting for the servos to recognize him and open. Black eyes stared forward, watching the corridor open before him.

Under the sea.

Under the sea.

Anyone who said it was better down where it was wetter was talking a whole load of bantha crap. Water led to a pruning of the skin in most sentient species. Pruning meant vital layers ripped, teared, and practically gave an open door to any infection, bacteria, or virus to enter the body.

Who knows? Maybe it’d make his day more interesting?

Dr. Laurie Homes of the Shadow Academy walked. Yes, walked, despite what some might call hobbling, towards the meeting point. His wooden cane tapped along the durasteel with a distinct clang that practically announced his arrival everywhere he went. Who designed this place, anyways? It sounded like an annoying ancient clock that wouldn’t shut up.

He was a slender and tall Human male in his early fifties with brown hair that was turning grey, blue eyes with heavy bags under his eyes and a five o'clock shadow hugging his jawline. His grey suit and beige trousers did little to highlight how accomplished he was in the field of medicine, specifically diagnostics with a double major in infectious disease and nephrology.

Apparently, it had to be him that was tasked with keeping a team alive in the case of a sudden viral outbreak. Yay.

The doors open and his eyes clocked on to everyone who was there. He was told to be nice, but unfortunately, the word wasn’t in his vocabulary.

“Ugh… People…” Laurie said, his voice deep and gravelly. He stalked over to a quiet spot where hopefully he’d remain undisturbed.

Adalinde sighed, dragging her feet in the metaphorical sense. As she waited, the human woman felt the lift moving around her despite the dampeners. It was annoying. So was getting voluntold to join people for a mission. She didn’t even like people.

They were the worst.

She clicked her tongue and folded her arms across her chest, wondering just how long she could delay as she tapped the toe of her boot against the panelling. Already, Adalinde had managed to ride the lift between each of the main floors. Her entry had been logged, so they knew she was at least in the Academy. Just not exactly where. Maybe. She hoped.

Fine, she might as well get it over with.

Another sigh escaped her flared nostrils—a habit that had rubbed off on her from Renatus—as she resolved herself and the lift doors hissed open. She strode with confidence and sharp steps that seemed to echo down the corridor. Finally, she came to the assigned meeting room and transferred her weight to one side, staring down the door with an icy gaze. It slid to the side, revealing her standing there tightening the straps on her gloves.

“I ‘ave arrived,” she stated with her breathy, aristocratic accent that seemed to over enunciate some sounds while dropping others entirely.

‘Well done, Captain Obvious. What do you want? A sticker?’

Laurie thought with mock surprise and a roll of his eyes before reaching for a bottle of painkillers in his pocket.

Yep. This was going to be a long trip.

He poured a couple into his hand and took them. Modern science was a miracle and his leg really fracking hurt.

An X-70b Phantom Shuttle touched down amidst a loud hiss of landing gears meeting the ground. Within moments, the ramp came down ominously, and a Sith stepped down. He was wearing rare grafted armour and helmet. Valaeron allowed a moment to himself where he closed his eyes and took in the scent of the environment. Arx. Shadow Academy. Like others, he too began taking his first steps here as an angsty teenager. Today, thanks to his training here, he’s now one of the foremost starfighters of his Clan, besides being a Sith warrior.
Within 20 minutes, he was within the Shadow Academy itself and walked into the meeting room. There was quite a group there. Some he knew personally, some he had heard of, and some he hadn’t. Either way, this was the group he’d be working with shortly and knew his skills as a pilot would come in handy in the oncoming task. He announced his presence by saying “Greetings everyone.”

Laurie gave him a curt nod. At least he didn’t feel the need to announce his arrival like a petulant teenager.

A very irritated Titius wandered in through a rear entrance, escorted by a security droid. “I do have authorization for those labs! I ought to scrap you for doubting my credentials. I’m a Specialist!” Dropping himself into a seat, he pulled out a tube of undulating fluid and poured it into his hand. The stream sprang to life as a suspended silvery cloud wending through fingers.

Muz stepped through the entrance, letting his burnt eyes glide across those already accumulated there. It was an unusual team that had been put together. Nodding once ateach of them in a brief greeting and show of respect, he stepped through them, his droid behind him. Maneuvering to the other end of the hall, he stood in silence as he waited for whomever was about to brief them more fully. Slowly, he let his mind shift back into his more comfortable state, not needing to play political games or worry about socializing appropriately. This was a mission. Words were not necessary here.

Aylin tilted her head slightly as she saw who the rest of the team was and silently hoped that some of the sour looking ones weren’t allergic to her personality. When she saw Muz enter she smiled and waved an hello towards him.

She then plopped down on one of the chairs and waited. Siky looked up from between her tendrils, it’s little antenna’s waving around.

The door slid open once more and armored bootfalls propelled Alex into the briefing room. His helmet was hooked at his belt but otherwise his armor was fully set for action - he wasn’t sure how much time there was going to be between the briefing and getting down to business, after all.

“Apologies for being a bit tardy. I still cannot for the life of me make heads or tails of this damned building,” steady strides carried him to the far wall where he began scrutinizing some of the wall panels. “It is like they intentionally designed this place to make it impossible to get anywhere in a direct and timely manner. Ah, there we are!” A gauntleted fist thumped on one of the wall panels, which slid open and then extended from the wall to reveal a dry bar. Alex grabbed a rocks glass from the upper shelf, eyeballed a triple of Corellian whiskey into it, then delicately placed a single ice cube into it using the metal tongs. He turned back to the assembled team and waved his glass toward them.

“Anyone else want one, as long as I am up?”

“…oh great, we have an addict on the team. This will go phenomenally, Ripley.” Titius’ mocking tone was barely a whisper.

As if on cue, Laurie downed a couple more painkillers. “Sorry, did you say something?”

Turning to face the voice, Titius raised his voice, “I’m not talking to you, cripple, yet I doubt your contribution to this escapade all the same. At least barkeep brought armour.”

Adalinde, having occupied a chair near the back and away from the door, sneered as she overheard the banter. The lack of decorum spoke to the nature of those around her more than anything else could. That was to be expected, however, from the rabble so often found within the Brotherhood. Nobility were few and far between.

“How imaginative. You must the life of every party you attend,” Laurie’s coarse voice deadpanned Titius’ comment.

A change came to Alex’s eyes as things officially kicked off. The same light and joviality was still there, but there was a hardness and directness as he turned to address the Kel Dorian.

“Any information about potential dangerous flora or fauna we may be encountering? It is to my understanding that when you get into the deep ocean like this, that is where the truly nasty stuff likes to reside. I understand if there is not a lot of data available, but I would appreciate anything we have about what we might expect to run in to. I do not enjoy going in to a situation any more blind than I have to.”

Aylin frowned her as she listened to the Kel Dorian, trying her best to follow him.

“So… Don’t you have Space Wizards who could do their wizardy stuff and feel out the cave if the droids get destroyed? I thought that was something they did before throwing us in as bait.”

“And so you zink us disposable assets? To risk us?” Adalinde interjected pointedly. Her eyes narrowed, tugging at the webbed scarring across the right side of her face. “You ‘ave to be joking.”

A roar of laughter exploded from Alex as he finished his drink and set the empty glass down on the bar, pressing the button to send it sliding back into the wall recess.

“Excellent! Amazing! A mysterious cavern, some strange creature or force or…something that doesn’t want to be perceived and rejects all attempts to do so! I was becoming worried that this was going to be some kind of boring exploratory expedition but now,” Alex threw a convivial arm around Ji’ac’s shoulder, “now I. Am. EXCITED!”

“Basically, it means you lot,” Laurie pointed with his came at each person. “Are only slightly less expendable than everyone else. Congratulations. You’re all one step above flaming sithspit.”

“Anything strictly prohibited or are we open to use our judgement?” Titius was having colorful thoughts about what skills he could employ.

Valaeron had just one question and he put it out to Ji'ac, “This sub or ship we’ll be travelling in, will it be an armed one? If whatever is down there is hostile and large enough to destroy probe droids, I’ll be comfortable travelling in a ship with a couple of proton torpedoes. We don’t want to be sitting duck while a deep sea monster attacks, do we? Because…space wizards…as you put it, mercenaries and others, might not be of much help that deep in water.”

The Nautolan let out a soft chuckle, “I don’t have problems being deep underwater, though the thought of becoming fish food isn’t a good one.”

“None of you have permission to die.” The first words Muz spoke amongst them bored into their heads as much as their ears, his voice gravelly and his words direct. He didn’t know any of them but the Nautolan, and she was pivotal in the last mission that she had accomanied them on. All the same, he would not brook the pointless waste of ages past, where bodies would be thrown at objectives as readily as blaster bolts. Each one of them held deep spirals of potential, their futures unfurling along the tapestry. Needlessly cutting them short would be anathema.

He blinked, letting the words settle into their minds. Maybe it would soothe them, knowing that he was there. Maybe not. He had only heard snippets of what they were teaching about him in the Academy these days, and he had found those rather entertaining. Such it was with those sort of things, he guessed. He had just thought that ten years wasn’t enough to justify the amount of inaccuracy.

Muz could feel the doctor’s eyes on him. He turned to look directly at him, inky black pools meeting his. He didn’t owe the cocksure cripple an explanation. Yet, if the man pushed, Muz could show him exactly what the world looked like to his eyes.

Alex turned to regard the man with the impressive presence and aura who had just spoken up - it seemed like maybe both vocally and mentally at the same time? - and the smile remained on his lips though it appeared to fade a bit from his eyes as he walked toward Muz.

“It has been my great misfortune to observe many a time that the reaper does not check for a signed permission slip before he takes his due,” Alex extended a hand toward the other man in the common signal of prompting for a handshake. “I can appreciate the sentiment, though, and will for my own part strive to see that neither myself nor any of the team take that long march this day. Captain Alex Draconis, at your service, sir.” Alex concluded, having made the realization that other than the expedition leader and his subsequent introduction of the doctor, none of them had even taken a moment to introduce themselves to each other.

Adalinde merely relaxed into her seat, though still holding a regal and proper repose. She managed to look like she was grumbling in response to Muz’s intrusion into her chaotic thoughts, but didn’t truly voice anything. She seemed unperturbed otherwise. Again, her long association with Renatus and his lackadaisical (almost flippant) regard for those of power or title had rubbed off on her and there was not even a hint of deference to be found.

Still, she would keep decorum. The woman stared icy daggers towards those that would deign to dictate their mission, but said nothing. She would do as she would, always did. Who knows, maybe she might peel away at their metaphorical masks before the mission was through.

Muz returned the gesture, shaking the man’s hand. “Darth Ashen.” He had so very many names, and as many titles, each having a use case of their own. They were but words, and at the end of the day, words were tools. He never asked for supplication or adulation, although too many were obnoxiously too ready to give it. He chose the name he provided specifically. A Lord of the Star Chamber present would lend gravity to the mission, and might help them understand that the overclan was taking the threat seriously, not just throwing bodies at a problem. Of course, depending on what the individuals knew, or were taught at the academy, that could have had different reactions. After all, there were no Sadowans here.

This was perhaps the greatest motley crew ever assembled for anything ever. In a way, Laurie hoped some kind of unknown pathogen down there would kill them, or at the very least the water pressure would so that he didn’t have to deal with them.

He was finding certain personalities irritating. Laurie took a deep breath and retrieved a syringe from a pouch attached to his hip. It was filled with some sort of liquid.

“Alright. There’s a big, big chance of being immuno-compromised. This will give our bodies a quick boost before we decide to contract whatever unknown disease is down there. Who’s first?”

He gestured for a volunteer.

A single sentence sentence crept into his mind, “None of you have permission to die.” He knew instinctively who spoke that. While there were some Force Users in the group, the authority, calmness and self-assurance behind the voice left no doubt about the speaker’s identity. Only a Dark Lord of the Sith can speak with that kind of power. The Sith Warrior gave Muz a small bow, not out of lowly deference but out of genuine respect.

The Sith glanced at everyone, but without waiting for too long, shrugged and came forward to volunteer. He wasn’t sure what that concoction was, but if it helped, it was good enough for him. If it was something poisonous, the professor with the nasty attitude might not be able to make other experiments either, if he was lucky.

<@284848346672136192> <@837236610684813342>

Titius stood aggressively, staring pure hatred at Muz. “Keep out of my head, you absolute parasite.” he growled, instinctively reaching for where his dioxis usually sat. Grasping thin air, the mercenary gnashed his teeth in blind rage, held back only by his respect for the sheer power of the Dark Lord.

“If I were you…” Laurie stated to Titius. “I would refrain from calling the man who could turn your head into a fine paste a parasite. Besides, I’m sure those voices were lovely. Must have been nice to have someone who wants to talk to you.”

He then addressed Valaeron, clearing a patch on their arm and carefully injecting the needle into it. “Your arm might be a bit sore, but give it a few hours and you’ll forget all about it.”

<@348547724628721695>

Muz turned his head, nightmare eyes sweeping across them toward the mercenary. A footfall, then another. He tilted his head, his weight settling down into his hips, his feet placed squarely beneath his shoulders as he turned slightly sideways. A heartbeat would be all it took.

Parasite? From a mercenary? Mercenaries built nothing, only destroyed. Mercenaries took money, never actually made anything of their own. Mercenaries were parasites, andhad drained the life blood of more than he cared to count. Muz let his mind slip back into zanshin, his palms itching to be filled with the cool metal of his blades. The subtle snap of the holsters behind his back flitted to his ears, the action dictated by rote, and polished by more years of combat than the Mercenary had been alive.

Far better men have called him worse, and their blood painted the soles of his boots. This kind of conflict was usually posturing, but such vitriol in his tone and for nothing? This jeopardized the mission, the fool would be looking for his angle to strike the entire time. Pointless waste, but the cost of a successful outcome for a critical mission. It would be necessary to resolve it here, now. As easily as he drew his next breath, his blades burning bright, separating wrath from flesh.

After all, if one must punish a man, you must always do it in such a way that you need not fear his revenge.

He watched the man’s fingers reach for something that wasn’t there, saw his teeth clench. Muz smiled. A heartbeat would be all that it took.

“Pardon?”

Either oblivious to or intentionally ignoring the tension taking place on the other side of the room, Alex stepped over to Homes. It was not the easiest thing to create an opening in the armor through which the needle could be passed - that would sort of defeat the purpose of it being armor after all - but plates were shifted and parts disconnected with the practiced ease of someone who had spent a great deal of time not just wearing but living in the suit. Offering an arm now exposed from elbow to shoulder to Laurie, Alex smiled.

“Go ahead and poke me, Doc. But this stuff better not turn me green. I have a hot date later!”

“Nah, if anything. It’ll ease your nerves. That’s what being stoned does, after all,” he gave a moment’s pause. “I’m kidding. Or am I?”

He jabbed a seperate needle into Alex’s skin. Of course it was a different needle. Homes might have been an asshole, but he was a damn good doctor.

“Guess we’ll find out in a few minutes, won’t we?”

He gave Alex a coy smile.

Aylin eyed the doctor, she didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, even Force users didn’t creep her out like he did. She moved over towards Muz and stayed besides him. He felt safer then the rest of them.

Siky bobbed it’s little head and let out of slur of beeps.

“Siky says hi,” Aylin said with a smile as she looked up at Muz.

“So…”

Laurie stood with yet another needle in hand.

“Anyone want some?”

“You can stick that syringe the same place you pulled your medical certifications from.” Titius brought up wrist to begin running his own checks, waiting on the group to move.

“Yes,” Adalinde concurred with Titius, a dangerous glint to her eyes as her head tilted forward, looking at Laurie from under her eyebrows. Her blood-red lips spread into a smile that promised nothing good. “If you must insist, zen I can show you all ze best places to avoid sticking it. Painfully.”

“Suit yourselves. Don’t come crying to me if you get sick. Or maybe do. My ego likes to be satiated,” Laurie shrugged. “How about you, Greeny?”

<@417336769181122562>

“Only if you are sure it doesn’t do funny stuff. Cause if I trust the Evil Space Wizard more than a doctor there is something wrong. And my name is Aylin”

Laurie pursed his lips for a moment, humming to himself as if in thought. “I prefer Greeny. Really brings out your features.”

He took a deep sigh. “I’m a doctor, a doctor. I specialise in treating illnesses in species from all across the galaxy and I’m damn good at it. I have the opportunity to prevent something particularly nasty ending up inside your body. It doesn’t matter if you trust me. It matters if you trust yourselves enough to not get sick. Maybe there’ll be nothing down there and you’ll be fine. Up to you. I can’t be bothered wasting my time helping someone who refuses to be helped.”

He let the pause linger for the moment before tapping the side of the syringe with his index finger. “If there were anything wrong with it, those two would have dropped by now,” he gestured to the Sith Warrior and Alex.

Aylin sighed, “Fine… Give me the shot then.”

Silky beeped a warning.

“Don’t worry, Silky, if something happens because of it you can execute plan G on his office.”

Laurie carefully grabbed Aylin’s arm and gently injected the needle. “There. That wasn’t so bad, was it? If anyone needs me, I’ll be on the ship, trying to ignore you all.”

With that, the doctor made his exit.

She rubbed her arm after he was done and frowned slightly, wondering why was this way and also why he became a doctor if he hated people that much

Alex headed for the door, readjusting his arm plates back into position as he went.

“Well, with one hour, I suppose I can probably manage to find how to get to the transport hangar around here,” he turned back to the room as he reached the door, surveying the rest of the ‘team’ he had been put on. Well, at least this should be interesting, he stepped back through the doorway and into the hallway, shaking his head a bit as he went.

Aylin whispered to Siky and send the little droid off following in the shadows of Alex so that he might find the hangar faster if needed.

“Guess we will meet up again at the hangar then?” Aylin asked as she looked at the remaining people.

Anyone familiar with a starfighter entering space would be familiar with the sudden jolt that a ship experienced exiting a planet’s stratosphere. What the team in this particular scenario might not have been prepared for was the sudden noises of rushing water as the Valiant Ray began its descent into the murky depths of Arx’s ocean.

15 feet.

40…

65…

Light became a commodity very quickly. The sound of durasteel bending as water pressure built echoed throughout the submersible, though, thankfully, it maintained its structure.

Fate found Titius standing at the front of the bridge, watching the cavitations dribble along the viewport as the ocean rushed by. Running lights snapped on along the floor to lend the darkening scene an ethereal backglow. Staring intently ahead, the mercenary imagined he could see massive creatures in the depths ahead. The sea was supposedly teeming with life but the imposing black gave the illusion of falling in a lonely void.

Space made sense. It was a void. A vacuum that didn’t care that you were passing within it.

The depths, however, actively pushed against you.

As they traveled, the pressure of consecutive atmospheres squeezed at them. It was the most potentially lethal of bear hugs and one Adalinde had no interest in receiving.

Instead, she focused on the control systems in front of her, doing her best to manage the sensor suite.

At first, nothing made sense. What are those shapes supposed to be? There was just so much noise on the sensors. Adalinde tweaked the dials, trying to filter it all out and start to define some shapes.

Rock. Rocks. More rock. Fish. A smudge that could very well be some eldritch horror beyond comprehension.

Oh? Was that a cave?

She tweaked the dials a few more times just to make sure she wasn’t imagining things. Luck, it would seem, was on her side. Victory for Adalinde.

“I ‘ave located ze opening. Transmitting coordinates to helm.”

The gunner’s chair slowly swiveled back and forth, with the barrels of the ship’s guns following the motion. Alex was splayed out casually in the seat, one boot up on the arm rest while his body nestled in the crook halfway between the actual seat back and the opposite armrest. His other foot was planted on the floor, the smooth motion of his knee bending and extending causing the slow turn. He had linked the gun’s sensors into his helmet’s targeting system so he would be made aware if anything came up that he needed to handle, but for the time being…he was bored.

Alex was now passing the time debating with himself whether or not this was a good thing: on the one hand, it was awful not having anything to do. On the other hand, when your assigned “thing to do” was defending the ship from danger…maybe it was better to be idle? Regardless, as notification was made that they had found the cave entrance, Alex focused his attention a bit more. If what they had been briefed on was true, the closer they got to this cave system the more likely something was going to try to stop them from getting in.

Valaeron Descending down to the cave Piloting a spacecraft may be different, especially since it travels in a vacuum. The whole environment is different from sailing under the ocean. While the Sith never travelled or piloted a ship under the ocean before, he was glad to find out that the controls and systems in the ship were not unfamiliar. He waited until the whole team entered the ship and went to their respective stations. Valaeron thought that while they were just starting to descend, his piloting and radar would be the two important divisions here. He hoped they wouldn’t need to use weapons and find no big threats. They started the descent. Rocks. Debris. Shoals of small fish glide by like a fairy dance. Large aquatic creatures creep by, startled by the ship and running back to the inky depths of the ocean. Then they found the cave. The Sith took the ship on a slow, controlled dive towards the opening. What was he feeling? Nothing maybe. Or maybe that whoever was behind the weapon systems had better have his hand on the trigger. He has no inclination of being gobbled up by a deep-sea horror today. Or any day, for that matter.

Muz stood quietly off to the side of the bustling bridge. Mind racing, he ran his mind through contingencies and possibilities, seeking the way through their current conundrum. Eyes slowly closed as he felt along the fabric of the universe, reaching out to the creature that assailed the side of their craft.

Beneath damp flesh and cold skin, he found the beast’s mind, and found it…obscured. Aboard the craft, Muz’s head tilted. He pulled back his focus, tendrils of mind wrapping around the sides of the creature’s body, smoothed by generations of depth. He had the correct target all right. It was just somehow enhanced, a puppet on strings that he did not yet see. There was more to this than he had expected, at least so soon.

There would be time for that later. Ashen let the coils of will solidify. His mind congealed around the creaure’s flesh, strained against ropey muscle and flailing sinew, wrenching the creature from the side and positioning the squirming mass near the Bow. Near the weapons.

Black eyes opened suddenly, brow furrowed with strain. “Take the shot.”

Valaeron The ship shook, its metal walls protesting against the sudden pressure applied by an unseen threat. The Techweaver grabbed the controls, his palm holding onto it and his eyes widened on seeing the sudden threat. Most things in air and space he can handle, but under the depths of an ocean? That’s a different beast, literally. The threat they were looking at, and the one that was trying to grab the ship was a massive eldritch creature. There was little time. The ship may not be able to take another need for that, and he wasn’t willing to surface after such an ignoble defeat. The best thing to do at this time, thought Valaeron would be to maneuver the craft so that it would be able to escape the creature’s grips. That was the primary objective: keeping the ship safe from the tentacles. The gunner can wait. The ship protested with a mechanical groan at the sudden burst of speed and quick maneuvering, but the effort paid off. In a few moments of hair-pulling, nail-biting tension, they were safe from the beast’s tnetacles. At least for the moment.

Ada hissed through clenched teeth, gripping the panel in front of her. It was all she could do to keep still through the maneuvers. Again, she found herself dialing in the instrumentation.

“It’s readying an attack! Energy spiking!”

Laurie emerged from the bathroom after suddenly feeling a jolt from the ship. “Hey! Who is flying this thing and can they be anymore…”

He stopped talking as he hobbled over to Ji'ac, seeing the full size of the Cephelopod for himself.

“That… doesn’t look good.”

Aylin grabbed hold of the nearest bulkhead and glanced around to see what would need her attention most. For now it seemed the strain would cause more problems later if it wasn’t addressed now.

“Hope you can take care of our watery friend, I’ll make sure the ship stays working.”

With that she hurried off with a box of tools to fix the piloting mechanics

Having not been sitting in the most secure position to begin with, Alex had gone completely ass over tea kettle to the ground when the ship was initially rocked by the physical battering of a slammed pseudopod. Just as he had managed to clamber back up into his seat and secure himself in, a wave of electrical energy caused his weapon’s controls to start throwing sparks. He calmly brought one arm in front of his helmet to lessen the glare as he reached out with his other hand to cut power to his gun and then tamp down on the panel the sparks were coming from behind.

The situation was wild, unexpected, and things were happening rapid-fire and without a chance to find their footing…exactly the situations in which Alex thrived. He took a deep breath, focusing on projecting an image of calm collectedness in the chaos of battle. Just as he began to center himself, another flurry of electricity shot out from the panel catching him off guard and breaking his concentration.

“What in the hell?” Alex shouted as he once again cut the power to his gun and started fiddling again with bringing it back to an operational status.

Muz repressed a chuckle, watching it all unfold. Disposable? Space Wizards? Bait? And then straight up naked excitement at the possibility. It seemed that some things would never change. He let the mirth fade from all but the corners of his lips as he adjusted his weight, waiting for the path forward to be revealed. Ships designed for the void would be ill-suited for the pressures of the depths, after all. They would certainly have come up with a solution to that issue.

Through the sprays of sparks and the ship proclaiming its displeasure at the sudden assault, Titius found his seat. Cramming his helmet on with one hand, he manipulated what was still functional of the controls before him. Multiple warnings displayed a lack of automatic targeting and a possible premature ordinance detonation. “Oh, well. Lets try for some fun anyways” Titius exclaimed. Hammering the launch command, he took manual control.

Several deep thumps reverberated from below followed by a cluster of bubble trails as torpedoes exited their homes. At first, the cylinders seemed incredibly off course until Titius nearly leaned out of his perch from pulling the control stick hard over. Sluggish in their response, the torpedo barrage made a lazy arc into impact. The cephalopod shuddered from the impact, forced to endure the full brunt from its telekinetic prison.

Black eyes split their focus, invisible threads trying to restrain the creature as he turned to the console at his side. Fingers moved slowly as he accessed the station, trying to search for something of use to them. The creatures attack was less like the bolts of hatred he had faced a thousand times before. His mind raced through possibilities, reaching through experiences for a weakness.

There.

It wasn’t force lightning, at all. It felt…too clean… for that. It was more like an ambient enhancement of a native capacity, like the slender fish of Naboo that could shock predators that caught up to them. The capacitive functions of the animals had been meddled with by Sith Alchemists over the years in their pursuits to create a better monster. Muz narrowed his eyes. Was this alchemy? It was too smooth, too pretty. Even for those of the Ethereal realm, it seemed less the result ofactive meddling than it did to be an unintended but not unwelcome consequence. No, this was natural, born out of a thousand generations that adapted to livng here, in this saturated sea.

Which meant it could be defended against. Muz flipped the console to a different command pane, directing the ship’s power couplings to ground the hull against capacitors. He tilted his head, sending the thought process over to Aylin as she worked on the mechanical bits of the ship. The Nautolan was more than capable to help bridge the gaps between what thescience console could manage and what needed a hard intervention. He could almost feel her bubbly response. The power might overload the capacitors, but it would limit future damage to the hull…and with a slight adjustment… Muz smiled, shunting the overload circuits to recharge the weapons systems. Once the beast was dead, they could worry about the rest.

Once the beast was dead.

He idly wondered, as the beast writhed against his mind’s grasp, if there would be enough of the creature left for him to take a sample.

Valaeron The Techweaver maneuvered the ship expertly. With that giant squid behind, he needed all his skills gathered throughout the years. The ship darted through the water deep in the ocean. His skills behind the wheel ensured the ship didn’t crash against any rocks, but he still couldn’t get away from the creature’s reach. That’s when he decided to maneuver enough to give the gunner another good opportunity at a shot. If it’s anything like the last one, it’ll be good. The ship groaned and darted through the water. He maneuvered it enough to help the gunner give it a nice, juicy broadside.

Adalinde was livid. Sure, she always felt alive in combat but not…this kind of combat. She felt useless. There had to be something she could do.

What would she do if she wasn’t a sardine still in the can?

Maybe that was it…

Deftly working over controls that were quickly becoming familiar, Ada found what she was looking for. The creature’s blind spots. With weapon in hand, she would dip ever so briefly into and out of its visual range to disorient and hide her strikes. Why couldn’t they?

With graceful alacrity, Adalinde relayed coordinates and cones of awareness to the helm and targeting stations.

Aylin heard the protest of the hull against the hits the monster made against it. “Good luck here,” she said as she hurried off to do repairs on the hull as best as she could from the inside. If that beast wouldn’t be around she would have gotten outside and do the damage repair from there.

The sparks had finally stopped flying and everything was back in place, powered on, and seemed to be working mostly correctly if still a little banged up. As the ship wheeled around to line up a better position and targeting information was fed to his console, Alex took a deep breath and waited for the perfect shot. Splitting his attention between the viewport and the still somewhat glitching targeting computer, as soon as thing lined up he thumbed the trigger and unleashed everything he had into the beast.

“Take this, you karking calamari!” He shouted as he fully opened up with the guns.

Titius looked out the viewport dumbstruck. An entire barrage of torpedoes and the creature only got angry. “Well I think I found what took out the probes!” The mercenary lurched in his perch, dribbling low curses about accepting useless missions for idiotic scientists again.

The second weapons emplacement seemed to set fire to the ocean around it, the capacitors overdriven beyond their rated capacities. Despite the seawater flowing around the barrels, a dull red began to develop along their length along with rivulets of bubbles.

A long breath hissed past Adalinde’s clenched teeth as chaos reigned. She pushed back at the creature’s scream, refusing to bend.

Not to it. Never.

She quickly tried to isolate the energy readings lighting up the console but found herself failing. There was just too much noise on the system and trying to identify anything was like trying to find the smudge amongst all the noise.

Muz turned to look, dark eyes catching the warning signs of power accumulation again. He let his senses reach out, feeling along the edges of reality for the coils of possibility. Unfurling them into threads that would make the tapestry of the future, he could see them clear. He could all but see the electricity, the impact point, the violence of the power bounding across the hull and frying systems.

And he blinked it away.

The future collapsed into itself as he moved, re-writing destiny with the knowledge gleaned from a mere whisper. Fast hands engaged the science console nearest him, boosting the shields at the spot where the blast would hit, shunting the power off into the weapons systems if Aylin had managed her part already. “Portside, 12 degrees!” His voice boomed across the bridge, the math already done inside his head on how to avoid the creature’s threat. It had already done enough damage. It was their turn now.

Valaeron The Sith had to push the ship to its limits. It showed. The craft groaned under the strain in the effort to gain speed to escape the creature’s clutches. The durasteel walls sounded as if they would cave in. However, the ship did manage to gain speed enough to evade the creature’s attack. He saw one massive tentacle missing them. But he was not sure of the next one.

Laurie felt the shudder of the submersible. His cane, which had been rooted to the floor, slipped, forcing the Doctor to grab hold of Ji'ac, dragging him down along with him to the floor.

In a desperate move, Adalinde tried to trigger a sensor pulse. With a little bit of luck she would be and to disrupt the creature’s oncoming attack.

Luck wasn’t with her.

Try as she might, Adalinde couldn’t get the systems to cede to her demands. At the very least it didn’t cause any harm. Still disappointing, though.

Aylin felt a shiver run down her spine and a slight panic build up as she heard the scream from the monster outside, but despite the distractions she kept working on the hull of the ship so that her comrades wouldn’t end up in a watery grave.

“Please make it stop screaming! It gives me the shivers!”

Alex gritted his teeth as he continued to hold down the firing stud on the gun controls. He was getting real tired of this fight, but it was looking like the beast was on its last legs…tentacles, whatever. Another burst of fire ripped forth and tore into the cephalopod, which issued a low rumbling sound of clear pain and displeasure. Hopefully the next hit would silence it forever.

Titius was lost in a sea of his own. Everything around him faded out as he sent shot after shot towards the squid. Seeing the blood bloom in the water around it gave a roaring rush of euphoria, each rivulet a testament of the creature’s strenght escaping it. In a cruel twist, Titius began piling shots on its center mass, each impact answered with a viceral shudder…until the creature went limp. What remained of its appendages drooped with gravity and its torso merely turning from the continued barrage. An still Titius fired…

The creature burst into many pieces, scattering and turning Arx’s ocean around them a bloodied red. Ji'ac returned to his feet.

“Oh no…” He rushed over to the console, completely ignoring the fallen doctor.

“Hey!” Laurie called out. “A little help?”

“Hush,” Ji'ac said, reaching for the comms. “Stop firing! Stop firing! We must take a sample of the creature back to study for both the Shadow Academy and SISSMA!”

Titius was pulverizing chunks as fast as they peeled from the carcass, driven mad by the cloud of ichor in the water. Tittering giggles came from the mercenary in time with each puff from another chunk disintegrating. Nothing seemed to reach his conscience save his fascination with the massive creature and its death knell.

“I repeat! Stop firing at once! You’re ruining it! Ruining it!” Ji'ac screeched. “Someone do something!”

Laurie had forced himself to his feet and, hearing and seeing the commotion, made his way over to the comms himself.

“Unless you want to be paste under a Grand Master’s boot, I’d highly suggest you stop, you massive jackass!” Laurie’s deep voice echoed into the comms.

Valaeron

The Sith was quite mesmerised at the sight of raw violence in the depths by now. He was relishing the moment of the creature’s last moments, the grand barrage Titus was dishing out and still was, and the overall wave of adrenaline coursing through his blood. So taken he was at the sight of violence that the Sith forgot who was screaming through the coms.

“Stop firing! Stop firing! We must take a sample of the creature back to study for both the Shadow Academy and SISSMA!”

The Sith hollered right back,“Who you calling SISSMA? SISSAMA yourself!” That’s when he remembered whom the voice belonged to and why it sounded frantic.

“Oh…SISSMA. Right…” he grumbled.

Resultantly, he cut power to the weapons. So much for the light show.

Aylin poked a head around the corner with a grin.

“I’ll go get it!”

Without further warning she headed to the airlock and in a few moments she got herself outside.

She glided easily through the water and the muck that was created by the barrage of shots fired at the monster.

Grabbing one of the sinking tentacles and some other parts she swam back towards the ship and popped up in view ‘wearing’ the big tentacle as an extra tendril.

‘Hi! Is this what you need?’ she said, not sure they would even hear her.

More out of habit than necessity, the Lion’s fingers twitched, taking some of the weight off of the Nautolan. Even though she was entirely within her element, easing the strain would make her more nimble in the event of another creature arriving. He watched as she swam closer, approaching the airlock at a rapid pace. He had seen a lot of aquatic species swim, but surprisingly, not any Nautolans.

With the cephalopod finally brought down, Alex unstrapped himself from the gunner’s chair and stood up, stretching a bit.

“Well, nothing quite like a bit of a thrill first thing in the morning to get the blood pumping for the day, eh?” He looked out through the viewport and saw Aylin heading toward the airlock with some bits of the creature. He headed that way himself.

“While I have no doubt our aquatic companion is more than capable of handling those squid bits on her own, I would be remiss to my sensibilities if I did not at least offer to lend a hand. Any particular pace we should take those specimens to be stored, Ji’ac?”

With the defeat of the giant squid, the team are able to navigate through the tunnel!

Aylin arched a brow when she moved more easily through the water then she normally would. When she surfaced from the water, the tentacle still laying over her head she grinned.

“That was fun. Now were do you want your sushi to go?”

Ji'ac responded through the comms. “There’s a freezer to the side of the room. It must be preserved in there for safekeeping. Thank you, Miss. Sajark.”

Thankfully, nothing else seemed to attack them throughout the rest of the journey. They eventually emerged into a cavern with many winding tunnels. One thing was for certain; with a lack of water, they would have to traverse on foot.

Alex casually twirled his twin pistols around his trigger fingers as he stepped foot onto the solid ground of the cavern from the submersible. The telemetry pod mounted on his armor’s shoulder was continually scanning the tunnels, providing feedback as to the layout directly into the heads-up display in his helmet. So far, nothing too worrisome had come out as a result of the data - breathable air, solid ground, long tunnels - but they had only barely made landfall. Still plenty of time for things to go completely sideways and, as such, his pistols were staying loose and free just in case they had to come to bear.

“Does not appear to be anything too great to worry about as of yet,” he called back over his shoulder to the rest of the team as they disembarked. “Unless one of you with some extra senses can get a read on anything, for now the telemetry data comes back clear. We should keep cautious, though. I very seriously doubt our little shocky friend out there is the only thing dangerous in these parts…”

What good was a doctor if they stayed away from their patients? Not that Laurie gave a damn about any of them really. His interests was in curing people from illnesses, but patients were what made most doctors miserable.

Perhaps that was why he preferred to keep to himself in the Shadow Academy working on only the most extreme cases and outbreaks? He was damn good at what he did, though. No-one at the academy could deny that.

The doctor hobbled out of the ship, his leg aching from the tumble whilst they fought what was essentially a giant squid. He reached into his pocket, retrieving the small vial of pills before stuffing a handful of them into his mouth.

“Want some?” He asked to Alex whilst stuffing the vial back into his pocket.

“Hey! Any of you coming? The weather is lovely out here!”

<@348547724628721695> <@185936112441622529> <@284848346672136192> <@417336769181122562> <@864003319584391179>

Titius was beginning to regret his choice in armor as he stomped his way down the boarding ramp. “How is there air down here?! We’re in a sea trench at the bottom of this forsaken fishpond.”

“to dry, if you ask me.”

The Nautolan had followed the doctor out and looked around.

“How is it that the air is ‘fresh’ down here?”

Laurie rolled his eyes. “I’m a doctor of medicine, not physics. Go ask braniac over there and see what he knows.”

Sure enough, Ji'ac was making his dissent down the ramp.

<@206692046424113152>

Adalinde collected herself, running fingers through the sideswept locks of her crimson hair. She really didn’t want to go out there. Not really. But a mission started was a mission to be finished. With a sharp sigh, the Inquisitor extricated herself from the sensor panel and joined the rest of the team.

He paused, his mind feeling around the edges of the tapestry of reality, listening for the song of the Forc to tell him what it knew. Black eyes bolted open after a moment, and they were all already out of the ship. He let out a low sigh, retrieving his helmet from his droid. Focusing a moment longer, invisible threads of will braided his hair into a tight cord, tucking itself into the seal at his neck in the seconds before he lowered the helm over his head.

Tilting his neck a degree to check the flexibility of the kit, he stepped forward, measured steps taking him to the rest of the team. How very typical to rush headlong. Ashen smiled. It didn’t feel that long ago that he was doing the very same.

Valaeron “I’ll just stay inside the ship. You never know if there’s another giant squid around the corner, right? Gotta make a quick getaway if that happens. With you guys, of course!”

“If it is all the same, Doc,” Alex spoke with a mirthful tone, “I will perhaps take you up on that offer on the way home. For now, probably better if I keep my head clear so I can make sure we are both present for that trip.”

He tightened his grip on both pistols and approached the tunnel Ji’ac had indicated. The targeting and telemetry systems in his armor still weren’t reporting anything out of the ordinary, but after the recent experience with the obviously changed cephalopod, Alex wasn’t extremely confident that anything down here may not have some way to baffle sensors.

“If nobody has any objections, I will take point as we proceed on. I am a decent hand at taking a hit and…well, not to put too fine a point on it, but I get the feeling that the rest of you are not the sort to easily trust others to have your back. I, meanwhile, have no doubts in believing that should anything get the best of me, at least half of you will be quite zealously destructive toward it - hopefully without too much collateral damage to myself in the effort.”

Valaeron

Quite reluctantly, the Sith went out with the team to explore the cave. Reluctantly because who knows? There might be another ship-hungry, lightning-spitting sea squid stalking them. He was much better behind the proverbial wheel, but there was an under-ocean cave to explore, so here he was. The only good thing? At least he had his lightsaber with him. Another good thing perhaps? The whole team was down there, a team that had just sunk a sea monster. That’s something.

Laurie decided to march on ahead. His leg, as much of a dud as it might have been whilst under the effect of his painkillers, still hurt like a bitch of he stood still for too long. He went on further ahead into the tunnel…

Aylin quickly followed after the doctor, even if he was cranky he shouldn’t go out alone like that.

She was still sloshing water around in her boots, so she wasn’t really quiet when she caught up to him.

“Are we there yet?” Aylin whined for the hundreds time. She had taken her boots off as they were getting annoying in their wet state and the ground had seemed safe enough to walk on so far

“Im not so sure there is a there to get to.” Titius wasn’t happy as his flippers shredded on the stone floor. “But your blubbering doesn’t make this trek any nicer.” His wetsuit squeaked as he shook his helmet in indignation.

“I would appreciate it if we could keep petty bickering to a minimum,” Alex shot back over his shoulder from his position at the front of the group. The faint glow of the algae was providing enough light to see by, but the shadows were still deep and anything could be hiding in them. “The way these tunnel walls are curved makes everything echo something terrible, and I would prefer to have my best chance to get a first shot in before something jumps me looking for a quick snack.”

Keeping his head on a swivel, Alex continued to lead the way down the tunnel. As they had gone further and further, he couldn’t help but feel the hair on the back of his neck begin to stand and that telltale tingle at the base of his spine that had so often warned him of danger just in time to avoid it. While there didn’t seem to be an imminent threat this time, something just…didn’t feel quite right. He held up one arm back toward the group, indicating for a hold. As they came to a stop, he took a deep, slow breath to center himself. Closing his eyes for but the briefest moment, he felt a pressure lift from his mind and a sense of clarity return that had been slowly being overwhelmed from him. Opening his eyes again, he saw - and telemetry data confirmed - a side passage they somehow had failed to notice.

“Well, come on, then. I would dare say that,” he pointed down the corridor with one pistol, “is likely the way we should go.” He could see that some members of the team remained confused, even as he had clearly pointed toward the offshoot tunnel.

“Oh, for the love of- Are you really going to let some hopped up flatworm or whatever strange beastie it is this time cloud your minds like that? Snap out of it!” The sharp bark of his voice seemed to clear the fog from the vision of those not attuned to the Force, to which he nodded approvingly before resuming his forward guard duty and heading that way.

“*Yipping like a small dog…who put this bucket brain in charge?”, Titius muttered, disturbed by how easily the illusion had taken hold and channelling it back into digust.

Aylin stared at all the pretty crystals and walked over towards one of the clusters. Siky chirped happily as it crawled from between her tendrils and took some recordings of them.

“Do you think we can bring one from each colour?”

Valaeron Something in life comes one, or a few times at best. The sights one comes across during such times are wonderful and remain forever. Valaeron had been on the surface of planets and ships, but certainly not at an undersea cavern. This was new to him. He looked around with wonder. Such stalagmites and stalagcites! Such high a cavern ceiling! It was vast enough to echo their smallest whispers. And on top of that, there the crystals on the floor glistened with a watery light. At the end of the cavern, they saw an archway with ancient carvings. It wasn’t a language he knew, but maybe the scientist had some idea, he thought.

“I don’t think we should touch the crystals just yet. We don’t know much about it.”

Almost as if on cue, Laurie bashed one of the crystals with his cane. He looked at Valaeron, a look of mock surprise on his face.

“Oops,” Laurie said, then carried on walking.

If the doctor could do that so could she. She was more careful though and touched one of the crystals in the same colour of her skin.

Siky tilted its head and traveled down her arm to see what would happen.

Alex kept his eyes and guns fixed firmly on the archway. The crystals might be pretty, and certainly would make for a lovely decoration in the garden of his estate, but right now he was more concerned with the sense of impending danger he had been feeling for a bit now. If anything was going to come at them, it was likely to be from the ancient, clearly in some way mystical archway ahead of them.

“RIGHT… I’m willing to guess that this is the place. Lets place enough ordinance to take down a dreadnaught and make scarce.” Titius’ helmet flitted around rapidly while his hands began counting mindlessly.

Valaeron’s eyes narrowed. Something wasn’t right here. Something was off. He kept his hand right over his lightsaber, ready to activate it and bring it forward at a moment’s notice. A very powerful energy he could sense from beyond the archway. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he wasn’t going to take any chances here, not under the depths of an ocean.

“So, how do we open it? Staring at it isn’t helping.” He said more to Laurie more than anyone else.

Aylin glanced towards the archway and frowned slightly, something seemed to click together.

“Remember they said no explosives. These are Kyber crystals, this is one of the crystal veins…” Aylin said as she looked back at the crystal she touched.

“We are lucky the ‘good’ docotor didn’t blow us up when he bashed it.”

The veins beneath the surface of Arx pulsed with energetic Kyber, one of several reasons that the had chosen Arx as a new capital. They sang to him, power manifesting inside the lattices of Force and aligned minerals in the rare and expensive crystals. Had they been still, he would have taken some time to harvest some of the larger ones, but as charged as they were, it gave him significant pause. The brighter the glow, the more latent energy was imbued. And deep below the oceans, the concussive force in such a pressurized environment, detonation would prove catastrophic.

It was a miraculous find. There was enough here for the Brotherhood to equip a generation of acolytes, a fleet of ships. But what was charging them?

Muz crouched for a moment, finding a smaller shard at his feet. Reaching out, he felt through the stone, letting his senses trace the pattern around it. It seemed dull, somehow, the tapestry feeling more like a weighted blanket than the vast ephemereal substrate he had felt so many times before. He traced it back, an inquisitive mind feeling for the source. It seemed less about the terroir than something more. No, there was a mind behind this. Muz curled a lip beneath his helmet as he handed Forge the crystal.

“Aylin’s right.” He spoke. Stepping forward, he eyed the archway. “Clouded.” He listened for the whispers, the edges of reality folding around him as he moved. Halting tones and quiet caresses, he knew this all too well. Turning his head to look back over his shoulder to look at the assembled team behind him for a brief moment.

And stepped through.

The shimmer in the air more obvious as his warcoat and armor slipped through the barrier, he turned to look back at them. Warbled by the effect, and muted in his senses, he could still feel them, but barely. Behind that? Muz wondered, half closing his eyes and letting his mind slip into familiar patterns yet again. That which the Force could show him, it would in time.

As soon as he saw Muz step through the archway, Alex leapt into action. While he was more than certain the Lord of the Krath could take care of himself, Alex had sworn to keep the team safe during this mission and if anything were likely to be dangerous around here it was going to be on the other side of that arch. He could at least provide backup, assuming anything whatever they were about to deal with was susceptible to blaster fire. He confidently stepped forward toward the archway, blaster pistols held at the ready.

“Well, you only live once,” he joked as he stepped across the threshold of the archway. “At least, that is what they keep telling me.”

Aylin stared at the gate as she saw the people step through it, her mind trying its best to figure out what was happening as they seemed to be turning into foggy persons from her perspective.

“Siky… Did you see them turn into fog too?” She asked her little droid.

It chirped in reply that it didn’t know what happened but that he could still sense them.

“I see… Let’s try out!”

With that she grabbed a handful of the small crystals that were lose on the ground and put them in her pockets before going after them through the gate.

“I don’t like zis,” Adalinde muttered with a gloved palm against her forehead. Something was taxing her mentally, and it wasn’t just having to deal with people.

Either way, staying by herself would be worse. What was it they usually said on game night? Never split the party? Suppose there was wisdom to that.

Adalinde followed the group—begrudgingly—while keeping her eyes moving and muscles tense. She would be ready.

“No…not happening. I fought in that other place and I have ZERO desire to relive those experiences.” Titius recoiled from the group passing through.

Aylin stuck her head back through the gate and frowned at Titius. “Come on! There is nothing else there but more tunnels as far as I can tell. Besides Mister Black Eyes can keep us safe.”

Siky jumped down to the floor and scuttled over towards Titius, going around him and chirping up at him. When little reaction was given, the little droid gave him a zap to make him move towards the portal.

“Come on! We want to travel further,” Aylin told Titius. <@348547724628721695>

“ow, hey, OW! That stings!” Titius wobbled his way through the portal while dodging the droid’s shock prod.

He blinked away the images that filtered through his mind’s eye, fragments of what the future held. Ashen’s eyelids slid open, gliding across the others as they joined him. Words were less useful here, but there was information that could help them somehow. Darkness clawing at them. A man, screaming at the heart of it all. The brilliance of a wounded star. A luminous crystal, hovering midair. On thier own, useless vignettes. Together, more useful, especally with the context of things that will surely come.

He glanced at Aylin, his voice going directly into her mind as the image did. Light. They would need light to combat the coming shadows, to see what would fight them in the dark. The old words of his father filtered through: One cannot fight that which they cannot see. Igniting his own saber as a light source, he held it aloft as he moved forward, his ears tuned to see if any of the others would follow suit.

He took in the drawings, hoping to make some sense of the other visions, trying to glean context from the ancient works. The heart. The crystal? It would not be the first time that had the same connotation. But were the screams to break it or to take it?

Laurie’s cane tapped along the archway as they passed through. He eyed the carvings with a sort of curious amusement. He turned to Ji'ac, pointing at one carving with walking stick.

“Know what any of this is?”

<@206692046424113152>

“What about you, tall, dark, and hungry?”

<@284848346672136192>

“Aw, I was hoping for a buffet and scantily clad Twilek” Titius oozed sarcasm with his statement, focused on anything that would bring clarity.

Valaeron

The passageways and tunnels were now long, dark, and damp. The light from his red lightsaber was one of the few light sources around right then. Valaeron still hadn’t put it off. He had an eerie feeling, like something bad was about to happen. After all, there’s no way the giant squid could have been the last of their worries. Maybe it was guarding something. He heard of monstrous hounds guarding tombs of Sith Lords in Korriban. Who knows? Perhaps this was a tomb too?

As they entered the ancient ruins of a city, Alex focused in on his scan data and did his best to keep watch on everything he possibly could at the same time. Buildings have too many holes and corners for things to hide in, and he knew that every instinct he had was screaming at him that something conscious had been trying to keep them out of here. Now that they had bypassed that attempt, it was likely the next response would be more aggressive.

“Keep an eye out as best you can. This may be pretty, but the most dangerous things often are…”

Aylin was staring around at the ruins and pullout her datapad to see if she could get some kind of recording of it.

“It almost looks like they left in a hurry or something.”

“It’s all in pretty good condition, barring the obvious weathering of Father Time,” Laurie glanced around the ruins. Whilst interesting, these were far from his area of expertise. “We’ve gotta ask ourselves, is what is it that could have driven whoever lived here away?”

“Giant brain eating tentacle slugs? Or was that from a nightmare I had?” Aylin questioned herself as she pressed a finger to her chin. “Either way… We won’t find out if we stay gaping at the stone work here.”

With that she took a step forward into the cave.

Valaeron He pondered a bit and then said to doctor Laurie, “Perhaps they were fleeing from something, meaning that their lives on the surface was full of dangers which forced them to come here. Or it can be that this part of the ocean was once above water, and then sunk down to this level? That can explain why the city came down with it?”

Looking up, Aylin tilted her head.

“Hmm? Did they start a disco?”

Then she saw the ghostly figures and half hid behind Muz.

“Those don’t look like nice ghost thingies…” she whispered softly.

“Are you seriously scared of some wavy lights? Ghosts, pfft.” Titius waved off Aylin, utterly entralled by the lightshow undulating across the matrixed ceiling.

The Nautolan stared at Titus, not believing her ears.

“The disco lights is not what I’m scared off, but those angry looking ghosts don’t look like they are here to party,” she hissed between teeth as she tried to stay quiet.

Words were unnecessary. The malice behind their movement was enough for him.

He stepped forward, the sound of his bootfall masking the snaps opening on the holsters behind his warcoat. The golden hilts drifted out from beneath, spinning in lazy arcs, as if they were awaiting his word. Another bootfall forward, and the darkened chrome hilts flung to his hands with a heartbeat, the bloodshine crimson and darkened amethyst spilling out into the air a moment before the golden blades erupted, the hilts snapping into place obediently in the air beside him.

A bold step sideways gave him reach, the precise strikes of all four of his blades whirling around him as he sought their hearts of darkness. They found purchase within their essence, the snare of energized kyber meeting something solid filling their ears before a dull throb, as if all of the air were sucked out of the room for a heartbeat. The crack of crystal resounded after, shards raining to the floor as the shadows dissipated like a dark fog at sunrise.

Black eyes turned as his foes fell, calculating the others moves, his scope of awareness deepening and enveloping them as he let his mind slip into Zanshin.

Adalinde reacted to her own shadowy assailants. The woman took a step forward, both physically and internally, the latter causing her to plunge into the liquid fire of her power. She embraced the rage and pain even as it scorched her anew, focusing it into her throat.

Then Adalinde screamed.

It was a focused burst of power that blasted outward from her. It reverberated within the cavern only to fade into nothingness—its very essence diffused by the shadowy forms.

She felt a pull alongside it, as if something were trying to grasp at the ethereal strands of her lingering energy and drag it out of her. The woman clamped down and refused to give anything up, glaring at her foes

Valaeron The small group of explorers split into small groups as they were curious to cover more area. That way they had more chances of finding something. Well, they did find something, but it wasn’t what they expected or liked. At first, they could only feel an uncanny presence lurking around, just beyond the range of their vision. Then they came out of the shadows…

To Valaeron, they seemed to be some kind of Force Ghost or some type of spirit anyway. Their group had little time to react before the spirits fell on them. He looked at his teammates to see how they were faring just before a few spirits attacked the Sith. While some were having better luck, others were having a hard time fending them off.

Valaeron’s armor or quick reaction saved him from the initial onslaught, giving him time enough to blast a blinding, cackling flow of Force Lightening. His jaws fell open as he saw it having no effect. They simply absorbed the Lightening! It looked like the spirits, or whatever these were, were trying to drain them all. Was there another way to beat them?

Whatever they were, they had made a point of not targeting the good doctor. Laurie instead hid as best he could out of sight and out of mind. He tried to discern exactly hoe these things behaved, but the combat around him was far too erratic for him to notice anything.

A doctor, he was. A detective, he was not.

Alex didn’t so much as flinch as the spirits appeared and approached, simply breathing evenly as they drifted closer, closer, now next to him. He trusted in his armor as the claws reached toward him and his trust was rewarded as they scraped harmlessly off his shoulder plates. Inside his helmet, Alex grinned as he extended his arms…

“Now it is my turn, I believe,” as he squeezed the triggers on both blasters simultaneously, their barrels pushed directly into the sparkling crystal right at the center of these beings. A flash as the blaster bolts obliterated the spectres, their forms dissipating into nothing but a memory as the tiny fragments of crystal tinkled to the ground.

Titius was drawn back to reality by a flash of piercing fire. He found the group under assault from ethereal beings, one of which had clumsily lodged a claw in his waist seal.

Looking down at the caught appendage then up at the assailant, Titius squawked “OWwww, that kriffin’ hurts you know!” A projected wristblade cleaft the hand from its arm causing the creature to wail in its own agony.

“YEAH, IT HURTS DOESN’T IT?!” Titius wrenched the dead claw from his torso, using it to compress the wound momentarily while glaring indignantly.

Aylin screamed as one of the ghosts came after her and then it’s friend too. Doing her best to evade the attacks she got hit by their painful claws and winced in pain.

“Argh! That hurts!” she shrieked as she tried to get her blaster from it’s holster.

Once it was clear she started shooting at them and hit one of them in it’s crystal center. It shimmered but it didn’t die as the heart didn’t shatter.

“Muz! Help me!” the Nautolan yelled as she ran towards him.

Claws. Shadowy claws rent verdant flesh, leaving a trail of blue Nautolan blood and viscous dark ichor, eyes glowing in malicious glee before coming back for more. He tilted his head down, adjusting his field of view. This was what he was meant for. This was where he lived, in the chaotic space between the blades. Zanshin, the calm of battle. Muz turned as she yelled his name, his foot drawing a wide arc on the stone as he pivoted. With an economy of motion that could only have been learned through a lifetime of war, the Lion’s own claws came to bear.

A crimson snare clipped the creature’s grasp, the clatter of chitin hitting the floor followed by the sound of whirring blades. The golden hilts flanked the monster, shearing into the black shrouds of its undefended back and catching them by surprise. Golden fire erupted from glowing eyes as a blackened blade wreathed in gold flared through its chest, the hard crack and deep pulse of the demon’s heart shattering as he Lion turned nightmare eyes to the next one.

The defensive velocity was merely preamble, catching the villain’s gauntlet and drawing it aside as Ashen stepped close, the steam rising from his blade as he plunged it deep into its heart, then sweeping upward to bisect everything above the point of impact. A heartbeat later and the spirit dissipated, leaving naught but a shower of shards.

“Heartshots.” He allowed his lips and mind to advise the others, his sabers singing a symphony of savagery as he took in the rest of the battlefield, eyes calculating the next seconds.

Adalinde had had enough.

Rage suffused her being but she didn’t lose herself to it as she had so many times before. No, the woman remained firmly in control. She tempered herself instead, finding her alacrity increased by leaps and bounds as flames of power licked through the channels of her limbs.

A crimson glow announced Adalinde’s charge, activating her lightsaber in the same moment. Her two ethereal assailants remained, cleaving at her. She extended her leg forward further, dropping her center lower as a result. This brought her below the line of attack. She ensured the dodge by dipping her head and pivoting into an upward cleave. The thrumming blade arced out and elicited a heated roar as it bisected the first target’s core. Adalinde let the momentum carry her to the second target, thrusting several times through the apparition.

The second thrust found the core, and Adalinde’s rushing assault came to a conclusion. Several kyber crystals fell to the floor of the cavern, their crystalline echo reverberating around them. Already, icy blue eyes searched for the next threat.

Valaeron The Techweaver wasn’t having much luck himself. He was probably having the worst of it. First, his Force Lightening had zero effect. Zilch. Nada. Sure, he didn’t put much trust in the lightning anyway since the spirits seemed to be made of shadows, and lightning has more effect on solid matter. However, he did hope for a little damage. But no. That didn’t happen. But that wasn’t the worst part. Nope, the worst part came right after that.

The spirits came at him howling in rage. The Force power infuriated the group. And why not? If anyone lived in an underwater cave for millennia, they’d be blinded at the tiniest spark of lightning, to say nothing about wizards sprouting lightning and waving laser swords. Valaeron did his best to block the first slew of blows. He did block them, but the spirits were… immaterial. They passed through him, wove in and out, and attacked again. Within a few moments, Valaeron was swooning, his armor rent and skin bruised by two deep, dark scratches.

The one thing that wounds did was to enrage him though, to see his face seethe with the anger of the Dark side, and to drive him to desperation. Maybe that’s what saved him for the moment. He lunged at one of the spirits, the Force fueling his agility, and slashed at it like a wild animal cornered against a wall. There was a wall of ice right behind him, actually. After missing with the Force Lightening, he didn’t have much hope, but he did thing his lightsaber would make short work of the menace. But all his lightsaber did on a successful impact on a spirit’s heart was to make the ghostly heart shimmer.

Half hiding behind Muz she saw a spirit attacking Valaeron. Muz saved her, she would try to do the same for her teammates.

Aiming her blaster at the spirit, she pulled the trigger and by luck she one shot the spirit full in its crystal center.

The spirit faded out of existence and cyber shards fell to the ground.

“Yes!” Aylin cheered and immediately hissed in pain when the sudden movement made her wounds hurt.

Seeing their foes start to dwindle, but not before some of his companions had taken some bad hits, Alex shifted focus and moved to place himself between Valaeron and the spirit assailing him. As he shifted, he continued to rain blaster fire into the two shades taking swings at Titius, the whining crack of the plasma tearing through the air. His body moved with the calm, practiced ease of one who had seen more than their fair share of battlefields in their time - sure, the weird crystal ghosts may be a new twist, but an enemy was an enemy and he knew how to handle that.

“Somebody get an eye on these injuries before they start to get bad!” He called out as he shoulder-shoved the figure that was still left attacking Valaeron just enough to get between the two. As he did so, the shot he unleashed struck true, shattering one of the crystals and causing the creature attacking Titius to dissipate as the shards fell to the ground. Another shot, not quite so on-point, winged the crystal of the other spectre, causing a significant crack to form on its surface but not yet fully destroying it.

Had his eyes not been scarred black all those years ago, one might have seen the Lion’s eyes dart across the battlefield. Rapid calculations, tracking the remainder of the creatures as they flitted menacingly between the other members. The shattering of the crystals upon their apparent demise suggested that they were some manner of congealed etheric spirit, using the crystals as fetters to affect the prime. He’d want to know more, to come back and tempt one of them into a trap, such that he could tear them down slowly to see if his thoughts were right. But not yet. Not while they attacked his people. His Brotherhood.

He watched, letting each of his compatriots retaliate in kind, to flex their skill, to vent their wrath, to avenge their wounds. A crimson blade ruined two more, blaster fire took a third, then a fourth. Three remained, and there was already too much friendly blood spilt. The villains poised to attack, claws roiling back to gain momentum.

“Enough.” One simple word boomed in the cavernous vault, the command resonating between the crystals and thought. A moment later, the razor hum of searing blades whipped around the battlefield, their golden brilliance the lightning to the thunder of collapsing spirits and shattering crystal hearts. He maintained his position for a few seconds, letting his awareness scour the battlefield for unrealized threats before exhaling and raising himself back up to his full height.

It was done.

Muz took a step forward, hand sreleasing his sabers midair, the weapons deactivating and tilting for a moment before retreating to the holsters at his waist. Fingers grasped the edge of his warcoat, opening the way for the golden hilts that darted to him. Calling one of the golden hilts to his hand, he turned it over, then flipped it. The counterweight was out of alignment. Only a few degrees, but enough that he noticed.

Adalinde let out a long sigh, flipping her side-swept locks back over her shoulder. “Zat was unamusing,” she noted alongside a deep inhale. The sanguine glow of her blade slipped away as she deactivated the weapon and clipped it back to her hip.

Now that the big, scary, ghoul spirit thingies were gone, Laurie emerged holding a needle in his hand.

“You,” He pointed to <@864003319584391179>. “Come here.”

Aylin looked around and tilted her head slightly at the remnants of the spirits. She wondered how they made the ghosts appear and be angry. ‘Probably some Space magic stuff,’ she thought silently, though she half expected Muz to hear with his mind talk.

Carefully she picked up one of the shards and looked at it, “You messed up my favourite clothes with my own blood, bastard.”

Siky beeped and pointed over towards the doctor, “I’m sure he can help me, but I also want to know what these things were and what these shards do, cause it’s not any circuts and electrisity stuff.”

Alex stepped out of the way to allow the Doc to attend to Valaeron, keeping both pistols drawn and ready and his armor’s systems actively scanning the area. They hadn’t exactly been caught by surprise, but these creatures had appeared quickly enough and attacked brutally enough to do some substantial harm to part of the team. This was something he would not let happen again, as long as he could avoid it.

He had come through the battle unscathed while some of those around him had been severely wounded - a circumstance he was uncomfortably familiar with. For now, the best thing he could do is make himself a big, obvious target and distraction in case anything else was lingering about that wanted to take a chunk out of himself or one of his companions.

Valaeron didn’t need to be told twice. He rolled up his sleeves and waited for the good doc to inject him with the drug. At least he was trusting the doctor’s concoctions more than last time. By now, he could see the doctor was eccentric, not useful in a fight, but pretty useful after one.

The injection took a bit of time to take effect. He’d have at least attempted to heal himself with nothing but the Force, but he was wounded badly to do that. Who knew ghosts could be so vicious? He thought they were merely scary. Besides, what were they guarding down here? Artifacts? Alien technology?

Moments later, he felt better. At least 60% of his wounds had closed and there was no infection.

“What do we do now? Explore more? Surely those spirits were guarding something important.”

Slipping the saber back into its home behind a veil of leather, he lifted his gaze. The dour doctor had attended to the most harmed of them, but the Nautaln who had returned to his side had some blood dripping down her even as she focused on the remnants of the spirits shattered soul stones. He tilted his head at Forge, then nodded at some of the other broken pieces. The droid nodded once, unclasping its arms from behind it, and set off dutifully to collect samples for him.

Muz flexed his wrist as he stepped forward, the glint of the armor on his left arm refracting light into his eye before he adjusted. Pulling the glove off of his right hand, he took another step toward the Nautolan. Transfixed as she was on the shards, she didn’t seem to notice until his hand reached out and touched her arm above the wound. The natural reaction to flinch back from the proximity to the pain subsided once she recognized. Pulses of warming energy synchronized with his heartbeat as he willed her flesh to seal, knitting the skin together as best he could. The cooling sensation in his eyes, the ever present tinge of pain seemed to abate whenever he followed those rotes. He’d enjoy it for the moment before it would inevitably return. He worked the weaves quickly, trying to get as much done as he could.

“What do we do now? Explore more? Surely those spirits were guarding something important.” Valaeron posited from a few dozen feet away, the doctor limping away from him.

It was a valid thought. When he was done here, he would reach out, try to ascertain what might be coming next as they discussed.

Aylin looked curiously at up Muz. She had seen it used on others, but never on herself. It felt strange for a moment, but then she smiled.

“Thank you,” she said with a bright smile and held up her crystal shard, “Do you know how these things work?”

Not yet. He half tilted his head in the direction of his Architect Droid, who was collecting several of the shards and scooping them into a pocket of his apron. But soon, I hope. It was patently, as one of the new batch of members had called it ‘Wizard stuff’, but how exactly it factored into the wider tapestry was not yet abundantly clear. A not-insignificant part of him wanted to install one of the shards into a saber, just to see what manner of madness it would create. Unwise, of course, at least until he had a better grasp of it all.

She nodded slightly and looked at the crystal again, “It’s not techy stuff, that’s for sure.”

Putting the shard away in her bag she looked towards the others, checking on how they were doing and what their next step would be. Part of her wondered what they would find in the houses and what the big crystal in the ceiling had to do with the ghosts.

“I’m no expert, but I’d say tbe academy has a bunch of Forcie nerds that can look into that for you,” Laurie shrugged his shoulders and tapped his cane along the floor. “Or we can wait and see if it possesses any of you. That’s an option.”

He opened his bottle of pills and swallowed some. Damn. That jar was running empty.

Good thing he brought his backup supply!

Titius glared at Laurie with eyes so filled with malice and rage, it was palpable.

“Mention possession again and I will turn you into a hand puppet myself”

“Oh goody,” Adalinde intoned sarcastically. “Nozing sketchy about zis, no?”

Alex heavily side-eyed Ji’ac as the man excitedly moved toward the temple. He had worked with academics before - many times, in his particular career as an adventurer-at-large - and knew it was all too easy for academic interest to rapidly overflow into manic obsession, and that could be dangerous for everyone involved. Pistols were holstered for the moment, though not locked in so they could be quickly redrawn if needed. He used the silent hand motions to indicate to the target tracking system in his armor to keep Ji’ac marked as a secondary potential target. He wasn’t planning to initiate any hostilities, as that wasn’t his style, but if the Kel Dorian began acting in a way that was a threat to himself or any of the others - Ji’ac included - Alex would take him down as quickly and harmlessly as possible, but with no hesitation.

Titius ignored the order from the deluded fool of a Kel-Dor, instead turning to his wounds. Diddling with his datapad, it appeared to leak gray sand. The sand coagulated along a boot before flowing up a leg to his still leaking wound.

“I will take the lead, seeing as I came through our last little altercation unscathed,” Alex kept his hands hovered over his holstered pistols as he strode into the corridor. He was walking at an angle, so he could keep both the length of the corridor in view as well as more quickly get a view around the corner. While the temple itself was fascinating to see - the crystals lining the walls sparkled in the light, and the color of the floors and walls was a beautiful contrast against the more timeworn stone of the city they had just come through - but none of that was as important as making sure they all made it home in one piece. Between the shades outside and the unnerving sense that something was beckoning further into the temple, Alex was operating under full-on “hostile territory” assumptions for now. If it proved to be unfounded, maybe then he could take the time to appreciate the intricate artistry of this place.

There was something… peculiar about this temple, that much had already been made apparent by the spirits that had attacked them. Whatever lay dormant here, it was worth protecting enough that apparitions of the Force were deemed necessary to protect it.

As the team made their way through the temple, it began to feel as of the air became heavy. minor headaches began to form. They soon arrived in some form of ritualistic antechamber, blood from eons past staining vases that must have been centuries old. Ropes, traps, and spikes of old lay triggered, again, stained with the blood of past victims. To the west stood a staircase leading up to a circular ritual room.

Aylin looked around as she made a record of her surroundings and frowned as the light headache was getting annoying.

“Seems like a lovely place to… end,” she said softly. “I can’t make much of this room only that lots of blood was spilled here.”

Of all the things Laurie expected, a headache was not obe of them. How curious it was that Aylin was under its effects too.

He reached for his pack of medicine and swallowed a couple of pills. It numbed the pain in his leg, yet did nothing for his head.

How odd…

“Really? The coagulation liquid wasn’t your first clue?” Laurie resisted the urge to roll his eyes. His head hurt. Instead, he took a deep sigh.

The sooner they were out of here, the better.

The Nautolan stared at the doctor. “I’m engineer, not a doctor… or historicus.”

Shaking her head slightly she kept recording her findings.

Some things never changed. Another temple, another tomb, another unfathomable nightmare lurking beneath the substrata of the tapestry. Muz would have laughed, but his attention kept flitting back to the vision, the song of the Force. It was here, somewhere. The heart of it all, crystalline and vicious. They would protect it of course, be it with ephemeral claws or …this. The pulse behind his eyes drew louder, more substantial. They were so far below everything, that of course the pressure would be different, but this seemed exceptional.

Muz watched as the others moved about the antechamber, examining the ignoble dead, interlopers caught more on their own hubris and lack of foresight than they were on the rudimentary traps.

Indeed, some things never changed.

Titius was thinking of canned goods.

More accurately, he was thinking of a popular field method of opening the lids by puncturing an edge and peeling the top off with a large knife. The team had been explicitly told no explosives but that had been by some academic blowhard who probably thought flatulence was equivalent to a mining charge.

“How simple it would be to just eliminate the roof, knock a wall out and speed this process up a touch…” mused the mercenary.

Ji'ac attempted to ignore the ever increasing throbbing in his head. He was not interested in the blood, nor the contraptions that littered the antechamber. What he was most intrigued by was the set of steps that led up to the altar. His heart pounded in his chest, years of research in his field potentially culminating in the greatest discovery of his career.

He had barely made it up two steps before the most blood-curdling screams he’d ever heard echoed all around the team. Yet, there was no-one else in the room with them. It was as if the temple itself was fighting against them. It manifested their greatest fears and biggest flaws, each in front of and within each member of the team, heavy, suffocating, nauseating.

A chill went down Adalinde’s back. An itch she couldn’t scratch. Invisible tendrils creeped their way up and entwined themselves around her head. She felt this, even if she didn’t see it, but that just wasn’t enough. Those tendrils forced their way in and she hissed in answer. It was a long, sustained blast of air between clenched teeth punctuated by an almost growled, “Get out of my ‘ead.”

Then she saw the flames. They reflected in her unnaturally blue eyes, but they weren’t there. She knew they weren’t there. Couldn’t be there.

Then came the shapes.

What she saw there would never be mentioned. Adalinde held it all too closely. Too deep. And there it would stay.

Instead of pushing back at her regrets—her fears—Ada instead embraced it. It encircled her like an old friend, sending heat flushing through her. The power that came with it suffused her and pushed back at the Force infecting her. leaving her free of its grip.

Aylin looked around as her head became more painful. She held her hands against her temples as it got too much.

It felt like a nightmare, but she knew she was awake. It forced her to take a few steps back as patterns became holes, holes that wanted to flush her away.

“No… No nononono. This isn’t real, this can’t be.” Aylin muttered as she looked around in panic.

Siky tilted its head curiously as it had never seen her react like this. It beeped inquisitively. The Nautolan didn’t react to its questions. The little droid started to get worried as it’s friend didn’t want to react.

Aylin keept trying to get away from the holes. Getting more freighted by the second. She didn’t even hear her little friend. She did feel something though.

She screamed out in pain and a whole slur of curses followed. Her little droid chirped happily as it zap had helped get her back.

Valaeron trudged on unwillingly with the assorted trigger-happy mundanes, malicious Force-users, and a genius but mean-mouthed doctor. Thanks to the latter, his wounds were now almost healed and his nerves were calming down. Getting scratched by a ghost does that to you. That concoction of his cured everything but a growing headache.

However, it seemed that the more he walked toward the center of the compound, the worse his headache was getting. Like someone stabbing the top and sides of his skill with a bony fish. As more time passed in exploring the various rooms, the Sith lost all interest in trying to guess the meaning of all the hieroglyphics on the walls. The headache was worse than ever. But there was something else too…

Failed missions…the shame of watching his squadron of starfighters being blasted out of the sky due to his miscalculations…watching the names of the dead at the large screen back on base…being stripped of rank and being demoted…

All this happened many years before, way before he became a Force-Sensitive. Yet all these suppressed memories were coming back with a gusto. Partly as split-second, smokey visions, and partly as intense, uncontrollable feelings. Valaeron almost stumbled on the stone-cobbled floor, his hand clenched to appear stoic. Thank goodness he still had his helmet on.

He turned, his eyes gliding across the pale stone and ancient dust, seeking his next steps. The pain behind his eyes bloomed a bit louder and his mind snapped around it. Shaking his head a moment, he raised his view again, watching the others rapidly turn grey and tired. Backs became stooped, as armor began to hang from thinning muscles. Eyes clouded and faces hollowed out as they moved slower and slower, finally laying down and never getting back up again.

Dust. Nothing more.

He stepped forward, his bootfall echoing in the lonely chamber, sweeping his eyes across the memories of what they were. What they all had been, a thousand years ago. A few heartbeats ago. Instinctively he reached out to her, his mind scraping across the void that divided them to seek her warmth, her presence, his peace.

And found nothing.

Nothing but the fire, the blinding light of time that would take everything from him. Even his memories, the scent of her hair, the color of her eyes, they flitted away from him, mere dust before a storm.

He stopped, gritting his teeth as he looked down at his hand, twisting his fingers into patterns he had known since he was a child. He focused on the soothing measures that reminded him of who he was and calming his resolve. His mind raced through the possibilities, like lightning forking through alternatives before finally striking the ground. This was not yet. Eyes closed slowly, his breaths helds longer. This was a work, a carefully tailored illusion. A defense of what lay hidden between the ether and the real. Whatever lay this here had spent a lot of power in order to defend it.

And it had just pissed him off.

As Alex stood, looking up the stairway, visions began to flood his mind. Slowly, they overtook his reality as he watched a world in flames. His people dying by waves and droves under an attack there was no escape from, no way to retaliate against, no shield to protect.

And where was he now? Half a galaxy away, safe and sound and unscathed - not screaming defiance as death rained from the sky alongside his vode, standing tall in the face of imminent destruction.

Slowly, as though a marionette with its strings severed, Alex fell to the ground. Sitting, staring off into the distance, his hands still clutching his pistols but now simply laying limply on the ground alongside him as the emotion overwhelmed any clear thought.

A tickling buzz started up in Titius’ implants, at first barely noticeable but rapidly growing. His face screwed up in annoyance as he looked away from his observations to reboot the offending implant. The buzz quickly overtook the boot tones, drowning sound in the staticky whine of a post concussion ring. Why are my ears malfunctioning? he mused as he rebooted his implants again. This time the tones were completely gone, despite his datapad indicating a successful connection.

The ringing grew louder, more intense, begining to come alive like a parasite burrowing into Titius’ brain. Then came the vision loss. The room gained a fuzzy lens as the virulence pressed on his optic nerves. The ringing split into a harmonic band, combining to a skull splitting crescendo. The control pad on his wrist flared through a color spectrum yellow to deep crimson as his armor pumped support drugs in response to the physical reaction. Despite exceeding maximum dosing, they proved inneffectual against the psychic onslaught.

Titius was stumbling blind, nauseated beyond measure with a skull that felt both collapsed yet filled tighter than the support cylinders on his suit. Scrabling hands fought the seal on helm, assuming a suit compression malfunction. The helm blew steam as the seal failed, followed by ragged breathing as a rivulet of spittle dribbled over the chestplate.

Then the world became silent as pain faded away. Titius blinked in dismay, suprised at the snap change. He made to reseal his helmet and…nothing moved. He tried again to no avail. It was if Titius was sitting in a pool of water, floating out of reach from his body. Pushing harder, he tried to force anything, a moan, a step forward. And nothing responded.

It was as if the world around him lost all control. Laurie was a man who valued himself for his control. Control of his medication, of his pain, of life and death.

Yet, as the sea of blood began to rise up, he could hear the screams and cries of those he had failed to save blame him for their lack of existence.

He tried to call out for one of the team, but none responded, trapped in their own miasma. The blood began to rise higher and higher until he accidentally bumped into Titius.

Relief came over him for half a moment until the blonde-haired man responded by pushing him down a small flight of stairs and into the thick, rising liquid.

Eyes narrowed and his head shook as the visions began to dissipate. His world was gone and his people scattered to the winds, true, but that was the reality he lived with every day. A reality he had been prepared for thousands of years ago, and been blessed to only have to face far more recently. There was no reason why, at this moment, it should be any more impactful to him than any other. Taking a deep breath and steeling his resolve, Alex tightened his grip on his blasters and once more rose to his feet.

“Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc. Ni partayli, gar darasuum,” slowly, under his breath, he began chanting to himself.

It came like a breath of cool wind at first, although there was no physcial wind down there. It was a feeling or a sensation, one of relief. The mental pressure he was on, coupled with the occassion illusons and visions of the past, slowly drifted away, leaving behind a sense of peace and quiet. He glanced around himself and observed that most of the others were either reeling from the sensations as well, or were completely uneffected. Valaeron felt had a vague feeling of having passed the last test. Where and why that feeling came though, he could not tell.

For Laurie, nothing hurt worse than his leg when reality came back to the team. His little tumble down the stairs had caused him to curse whatever mental faculty decided to occupy the Plagueian’s mind.

Nonetheless, he kept his thoughts to himself as he slowly ascended back up the stairs, leg twitching, cane wobbling in his hand.

The Nautolan was rubbing her arm were Siky had given her a shock to get her back to the ‘normal’ world. She sighed softly as the last remnants of the scary holes disappeared from her mind and glanced towards the rest.

Seeing the doctor struggle she moved over towards him. “Do you need help?” <@837236610684813342>

He did, in fact need help. He was a rather tall man, and Aylin was rather short by comparison. Nonetheless, he appreciated the offer.

That is, until the spirit emerged.

“Don’t suppose you have anything for that?” He asked her.

Aylin stared at the ghost as a chill ran down her spine.

“I’m not a Ghostbusters…”

“Yeah, to ‘ell wiz zis,” Adalinde declared with a growl.

Power coalesced across her fingers, sparking like electricity, just as she extended her arm. The Lightning surged across the space and crashed into the ethereal creature.

And why wouldn’t she do so? Everything they had encountered had struck at them. She was getting the first hit this time.

All but mentally ramming every last ounce of her raging emotions into the stream of power, Ada maintained the onslaught. It hungrily licked at the spirit’s defenses—if it had any—and across the surface of its form.

Some things were simple. Violence was simplest of all.

Not combat. Combat was complicated, multifaceted. There was a give and take, a million possibilities unfolding in milliseconds. The difference in potential a simple posture change meant could echo into mortality. Choices would have to be made, gambling with life and limb that they were correct, even with minds as sharp as their weapons. No, Combat was complex. But violence? Violence was simple, unthinking, and brutal.

What was before them was raw. Teeth gnashed, ichor pulsed, and wrath seethed from its form. Black eyes considered if it was simple or complex, chasing the odds of the bet he would have to make in a moment’s time.

As Adalinde’s electricity seethed across the essence’s form, Muz took position, his feet braced as he lowered his center of gravity. Sabers floated from their holsters into the air, igniting as two found their way to his hands. As the lightning receded, He was ready with his own onslaught, the golden blades of his weapons screaming forth as if on their own accord, harrying the essence’s body as it tried to avoid their pain. He followed them, launching himself off of a wall made of crystal, the ruby blade tracing a line of ruin in the beast’s substrate, a mote lighter than the last wound. He recoiled backwards, his feet bounding away from the creature’s retort as he shifted weight back in, blending his Sokan with Ataru as he darted below the defensive attack with almost lazy ease.

His eyes dissected the movements as he lunged in with his favored blade last, the scorching heat of his weapon tracing even a finer scar than the last. His mind traced possibilities as he rebounded backwards, out of the creature’s reach. His blades set defensive velocities in front of him by rote as his golden weapons returned to the air beside him, leashed as they were to his will. Each successive attack was less damaging.

Muz audibly laughed. This was not simple.

His sabers were not impacted, he would feel that. Could it be adapting to their attacks? Or was this some ancient and ethereal trick, luring them into a trap where the true means of disposing this gatekeeper was less obvious. The heart. The hovering crystal from his vision earlier lay in the air beside the beast. Perhaps it was the generator of this specter. His lip curled as he thought it through. That crystal was to be their prize, not their target. There was not enough to go on yet. Another volley from them all, and he could ascertain a smarter plan. Flicking his wrist back in a traditional Kyataran sword technique, his saber snarled in response as it burned the air. Dark eyes glimmered as he watched the others take their shots, measuring the tapestry as it unfolded before them, a work in the making.

“That,” Alex pointed directly at the large creature menacing them, “is a lot bigger and scarier than the other ones were.” Eyes and sensors swept the situation, gathering every scrap of information he could about his team, their enemy, the surroundings - anything that could make a difference or provide an advantage to this fight.

“Big and angry as he may be, there is only one of him. We have the advantage here, and it is ours to use! Watch out for one another, and do what you can to keep its attention divided!” A background thrum could be felt as Alex called out, everyone feeling just a little more alert, more aware of what was going on. The armored Mandalorian closed with the creature, holding his fire for now but putting himself in a position to respond to any action it might take, deflecting and distracting to take the heat off of his companions.

Valaeron **didn’t like the looks of the sinister spirit that emanated from the crystal. Back in the Shadow Academy when he was a student, he had heard of Force Spirits and the like that lived within artifacts. That, however, was just technical and theoretical knowledge. The Sith had faced tons of organics in skirmishes and battlefields, but Force Spirits are a whole new dimension, no pun intended. Although, it should be said here that his surprise and fear had almost dissipated by now, leaving behind a resolute fearlessness. Getting scratched by a gang of ghosts does that to you. Besides, **Muz was doing pretty well stabbing the thing. Alex was firing it at randomly to distract it. Inspired, Valaeron did the following:

He blasted out Force Lightening at the crystal itself, thinking the spirit will be suffieciently distracted if someone is trying to electrify its etheral residence. At least that what the Sith thought. After all, how can a mere crystal resist Force Lightening? Surely it will blast into shards. But that’s not what happened.

The crystal just absorbed whatever he threw at him. And not just that! He somehow became ‘connected’ to it. He could feel its unbirdled power in the Force. Almost Grandmaster-level Force power and connection to the Force. He tried to disconnect and end the stream of lightening from his hands, but the crystal seemed to amplify the lightening around itself and was forcing him to continue the connection.

It was with great effort that Valaeron was able to disconnect from the crystal, and fell back feeling quite drained of energy.

Aylin frowned as she looked between the spirit and the crystal and then started to whisper something to her little droid. It nodded eagerly and got ready to be thrown. The Nautolan hoped her luck hadn’t ran away just yet and threw Siky towards the crystal. Luck being on her side, her little droid landed nicely onto the crystal. Skittering around the surface of the crystal a few times it then looked towards the spirit and stood ready.

Taking her DC-17m from her back, Aylin made sure she was out of the way from the others and took up position in the hopes an opening would arise so that she could let one of her explosives fly.

Adalinde sneered at the entity, repositioning herself within the space. Her lightsaber hissed to life and bathed her in its sanguine glow. She had no intention of using it, however. No, Adalinde intended something else entirely.

“Look upon me, creature,” Ada stated calmly, her aristocratic accent hanging off each word. “And know true fear.”

Unseen tendrils of power lashed out from her and wrapped around her intended target. Slithering over it, they drilled into the very mind of the entity and peeled away at the layers until she found a place she knew so very well. Her power infused itself into the unprotected mind and nurtured an ember of pure terror. An eldritch presence built there until it coloured every thought the being had, be it past, present, or future. It was no longer Adalinde’s power that clinged to it, but raw and emotional fear.

The spirit flew towards him with its sinister open claws, seemingly ready to rend him to pieces, armor, skin and bone. Fortunately, he missed. It does feel doo to be missed by an evil spirit’s claws. The last one wasn’t too kind. Valaeron immediately took a defensive pose.

A flick of the wrist wasn’t necessary for him, but old habits died hard. Muz wrapped his mind around the creature, tightening first the air around the creature as his will compressed. Held in place, the Lion’s lip twitched in rhythm with the groaning bass of the Force behind his eardrums. He watched as the creature struggled against invisible bonds, raged against restraints. The gnashing of teeth, confined wrath building pressure as he denied the beast its prize.

The crystal.

Muz would have chuckled, had he the time. It was the heart of it all. Why they were here, and seemingly why this creature was there. Tilting his head, he maintained his focus, trying to keep the beast, the crystal, and the team all in view as he squeezed his hand, fingernails digging into his palm as he began to crush the creature. Those who came with him had to know now, they had to see, they had to feel what he was doing. That he was giving them all the chance they needed to end this monsters threat. He just had to hold the lines that tethered it to the tapestry as they dispatched it.

Muz decided that he had time after all.

Titius readied Deluge for a shot, intent on incinerating the creature with waves of explosives. The mercenary paused, remembering the strict warning from earlier.

No Explosives

Lowering his weapon, he instead pulled out a misshapen canister. A high whine spun up as the prominent switch on its top was twisted, its harmonics forming an undulating whine as it spun from his hand towards the creature.

The canister impacted, its scream growing louder, becoming a hungry howl as it rolled under its target. Still caged by Muz, the phantom began to slowly droop in places as the grenade clawed everything in its radius to the floor.

The spectre appeared to be well-in-hand at this point, with both Muz keeping it held tight telekinetically and now being caught in the gravity of Titius’ grenades. Alex was sure there was some deep, intriguing metaphysical depth to the creature, its connection with the giant crystal here, and even perhaps some deeper connection to Arx itself. But those were thoughts for somebody far more knowledgeable in the ways of mysticism and religious thought. What Alex knew was talking and violence, and this fiend didn’t seem like terribly much of a conversationalist.

Pistols spun in a dance of destruction, hurtling blazing hot plasma across the chamber and searing chunks out of what corporeal form the spirit had managed to make manifest. As much as he could get any sort of read on the spirit, it did not appear to be doing well after the assault. It was looking much more ragged and thin as bolt after bolt slammed into it. It seemed its hold on whatever power allowed it to manifest through into the physical realm was being worn away by their attacks, though what this would mean in the long run was far beyond Alex’s understanding.

Valaeron slashed at the spirit with his lightsaber. Well, Force Lightening was surely not working. Also, others were using Telekinesis and lightsabers to bring better results. Maybe the spirit is partial to certain Force Powers, he wondered? “Scratch me, will you. Take that!” He slashed and stabbed at it, and it howled, and its dark light flickered.

Aylin tinkered with her ammo as the others were attacking the spirit. Siky was guarding the crystal as instructed and kept a close eye on what the spirit was doing.

As soon as the Nautolan was done she got up and aimed her launcher at the spirit. “Eat this!” she yelled at it as she pulled the trigger. A rocket flew towards it and hit its mark, it exploded, but the explosion was smaller then one would have expected from such round.

Patience was a virtue.

A virtue that Adalinde lacked.

The woman quickly grew tired of the attempted attacks on the spirit. Fine. Would it not be faster to merely remove its reason for being there? Perhaps it would. Worth the attempt, at the very least. And so, Ada once more let her rage and pain coalesce into a tangible force, pulling it through her core and into her outstretched hand where crackling tendrils of power lashed out at…the crystal.

Searing past the manifestation, the blue-purple stream connected with the crystal. Something seemed to snap into place in that moment and Adalinde was unable to break off the attack. It formed a conduit and the crystal pulled at it hungrily. It was starving.

She bit her lip in a mixture of frustration and effort, tasting metal on her tongue as the crimson stain spread out. Already, she could feel her energy threatening to flee her. But she resisted with everything she had and managed to let the lightning fizzle out.

“Ze crystal…” she managed between ragged breaths. “It seeks to drain us.”

Muz set his teeth, feeling the creature strain against the bonds wrought by his own will. His intellect wove around Adalinde’s words in his mind, chasing possibility down contingencies and fall-back plans. Could the crystal be in command of this entity, or was it a symbiotic relationship? Or was it something more? The lack of information irritated him, and as if by instinct he reacted, reaching out to the crystal with his own mind.

Except it wasn’t his mind any more.

He saw everything.

Aeons crumbling to dust. Hearts born in the dark, living and dying and living again. Countless voices echoing across the song of the tapestry, of the universe in ways that made everything feel small. It was a river, and it was pulling him away from here, away from everywhere. It needed him, it wanted him, his power, to help fight off this thing, this aberration. He resisted, bits of thought remained but flayed by the call, soaking him to his core, trying to dilute his essence into the rest of the Force. It was the way of things, after all. To become one with it. The Force. It felt like going home, the warmth of belonging, the bliss of love.

A boot stamped down, lips moving, the gravel tones reaching his own ears with words accumulated across a lifetime of wreckage and ruin. All he had worked toward, all he had trained, every stolen holocron he had studied all had but one end. To stay himself, even at the end of all threads. The words slipped in languages and in tempo, dragging meaning back into his mind, reminding him of who he was, what he had done.

The flavor of his name coursed across his tongue and black eyes slammed open, a sneer forming on his face.

It was the longest second of his life. The entity flexed as it stood up, freshly freed from the bonds of his will by the distraction, it crackled and menaced anew. Muz’s reaction was immediate and visceral, emboldened by the burden of self. His hand seethed down, the bloodshine blade screaming to life as he struck, a miasma of sparks and something else erupting from the creature as loudly as its wail of pain. Good. Another like that and the work would be done. The crystal could be convinced. The Force could be convinced. He drew his right hand around, the dark amethyst blade screaming to life as he brought the weapon to bear, his body committing to the stroke as his mind wondered if he should have instead bouced back, impacted as he was.

The enemy’s instinct outpaced him, a wounded limb catching him in the miniscule window where his balance lent his body weight to the attack. Fingers clenched harder to hold on to the weapon as he felt his leg swept out from under him. He braced, knowing his next hit would be to the ground, his body retiring to break his own fall as best he could as he went sprawling.

“Finish it!” his words were raw, less potent than his mind. It had to end here. Now.

As Muz fell to the ground, having been caught off balance, two pistols raised pointing through the exact space the Lord of the Krath had just occupied. The words rang in Alex’s head, somehow simultaneously carrying the weight of a command and the desperation of a plea.

“I think I can manage that,” Alex drawled casually as he depressed the firing studs and Honor and Glory both roared to life, an intense red glow reflecting off the visor of his helmet. The screeching whine of blaster fire hung in the air as twin bolts of plasma ripped through the air and struck the spirit perfectly, both dead-center of its chest. Before they had even struck, the Mandalorian had already turned his back and was spinning his pistols back into their hoslters, trusting his aim and his instincts that this was finished.

Muz rose to his feet as he watched Ji'ac speak over the evaporating remnants of the entity, the smoking hole in it’s fading carapace provided by Alex’s weapons, the lightning strike from the crystal itself. The threat passed, his own blades retreated into their hilts as they flew back to their homes on his belt. The snap of their holsters reached his ears as he removed his helmet, the mane dragging forward over his shoulder as he placed the alchemically treated helm between his hip and his arm. Scarred eyes blinked slowly, the Lion turning to cast his view across the others, making sure that the others were as whole as he now felt.

It made a sort of sense. Known or unknown, Arx was picked as their new home whilst he was away, encumbered by threats he had left to handle. Perhaps he would have chosen differently, perhaps he would have advised to the contrary. Yet in the end, this vergence had called the Council there, whispering in a keening tongue they didn’t understand, and perhaps never would. A decade ago, he would not have accepted that uncertainty. Muz chuckled at the thought, letting the smile reach his eyes as they slid across the rest of the team, coming to rest on the crystal itself.

“Well done.”

Siky skittered over the surface of the crystal, chirping inquisively about what happened.

Aylin tilted her head and looked towards the others as she tried to figured out what happened as well. She felt better than when she came here and that the crystial light probably had to do something with it.

“I have no idea, Siky, perhaps the space wizards know.” She looked towards the Force users, “At least the ghost thing is gone.”