Private Apprentice to Earth

[Syd Celsius]

The Sorceress of Yurb blasted sand at her attackers, the dust storm she generated fast and unrelenting, even with the magic wards they had placed weakening her. More mercenaries fell the more they engaged her, and where outright brute Force would not do, The Sorceress would merge with the very walls of rock in the bunker, disappearing momentarily then re-emerging and slashing at arms and legs with her Lightsaber.

She winced, dropping to her knees in agony as she felt the Blood Poison course through Starlin Rand . The bastards were torturing him to get to Syd. It was both Syd AND her own pain she was experiencing--

The distraction cost her. A bolt hit her, blasting off part of her body, glowing green sand in place of blood spilling out as the flesh turned to glass. She retaliated with a heavy sand blast that knocked the shooter cold as she resumed her advance, deflecting stray shots, sand flowing onto the wound, becoming flesh, and sealing up.

She moved, calmly and methodically, though still in great pain due to what Starlin was suffering...

Meanwhile...

Bandage Face listened impassively as Starlin screamed in agony, yet still managed to insult him.

It brought back unpleasant memories...

Darth Phyre chuckled as her Apprentice screamed in agony on the white floor of her throne room. Phyre sat on her throne, still holding the dart gun filled with Devaronian Blood Poison.

"The pain is breathtaking isn't it. Just makes you want to beg for death, doesn't it?"

Her apprentice couldn't even answer, fire to every cell creating a flood of horrible pain that threatened to drive him mad.

"Pain is subjective, my apprentice." Phyre began, rising from her throne in her white and gold catsuit, circling him as he writhed on the floor. "Sensory imput. Nothing more. Nothing less. By learning the strength of one severe pain, you can learn to overcome lesser forms of pain. And what greater pain is there than to have your very blood infused with its essence?" Phyre asked rhetorically, smirking with sulphur eyes as she watched him writhe on the floor.

The Apprentice couldn't say anything. He wanted to choke her. Wanted escape, flee this nightmare tutelage and be free of her. But she was vastly more powerful than he. And he didn't know how to kill her. No one did.

It was strange...technically in the Cult, he enjoyed vast authority being her personal apprentice. Phyre had even openly confessed to considering him extremely useful, even telling him she considered him a friend.

Thing is, with a "Friend" like Darth Phyre, you really don't need an enemy.

The Apprentice thought he had known what a proper Sith was. Phyre had shown him he knew nothing when she had killed his original Sith Master and forcibly recruited him.

He had never encountered a Dark Sider of such unrelenting malicious sadism and cruelty. Such unrestrained vicious evil. He couldn't help but wonder how she had gotten like that. Was that her "Brain Demon" at work? Or had she chosen that herself.

The Apprentice knew that Hate could not exist without its contrast. If she hated and killed this much now, did that mean she must have been capable of the most sacrifical acts of Love a long time ago?

Truth was, he didn't know and did not care. All that filled his world was suffering and pain at her hands.

"Feed on it, my Apprentice. Feed on your own suffering. Let it make you stronger."

The Apprentice knew he was but a placeholder. He knew that if she had acquired Julia Crownwraithe she would eventually be put through what he was suffering. As for him...who knows what would have happened...

He screamed and screamed, trying to do as she instructed. But the pain was so great he was rapidly losing consciousness.

As he blacked out, he knew Phyre would punish him for his weakness when he awoke...

Bandage Face was amazed the boy still had the presence of mind to mouth off. Strong willed. Phyre preferred that sort of apprentice.

Bandage Face half wondered if killing her would count as a good deed, if it meant the boy would no longer be trained. Bandage Face began to seriously consider just letting the boy kill him once the poison wore off and after the last remnant of Phyre was extinguished. Wouldn't be a bad way to go. He was surprised though, at how much the boy believed in her. He himself wasn't sure what had taken him so long to finally break away from her as her student...

A merc rushed in. "She's mowing us down! I thought you said the wards would stop her!"

"A wrinkle in the plan. Nothing I cannot adjust for..." Bandage Face assured. "Water is just as effective for making mud as it is for extinguishing flames. Get the hoses...be ready..."

The Merc nodded and left them and Bandage Face leaned a bit towards the cage.

"Just between you and me..." he trailed as the boy writhed. "I'm a dead man walking. Cirrhosis. No cure. Don't want one. It doesn't matter if she kills me, as I am dead even if I succeed. Have you ever faced an opponent like that, Padawan? Wait, don't answer that...I 'know' you haven't. What do you scare such an opponent with? How do you 'stop' such an opponent? You are used to fighting those who want to live. You have 'nothing' to threaten me with."

(Cutaway of Batman smashing the Joker's head into the two-way mirror)

"And neither does she..."

Meanwhile...

The Sorceress of Yurb had pushed them back quite a bit. A fair amount. She was on the verge of breaching their main chokepoint, when Mercs surprised her with large fire hoses, tapping an underground water source as they blasted her.

The Sorceress screamed as her flesh was soaked, skin turning granular or muddy, parts sloughing off as mud as she was severely weakened.

There was no time to react as one of them drove rifle butt into her face, knocking her out cold...

 

[Starlin Rand]

“Feth you!” Starlin snarled. “I don’t care about threatening you, you crazy schutta. I just want out of this cage! And for my ryving leg to stop hurting! You’re the one who’s torturing me and trying to kill my master!”

The pain was somehow getting worse. Spreading. It was a poison, so it would circulate through his blood, pumped by his heart throughout his body. Soon he would be engulfed in it.

“You’re a few starships short of a fleet, motherfether!” he screamed. What were they doing… water making mud and extinguishing flames…?

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he murmured. Cold sweat trickled down his back. Only now did he realize his clothes and hair were soaked with perspiration.

If he had the Force, he would’ve tried something, anything to help her. But now he felt only dread. He couldn’t even sense her with the Force nullifying materials on the cage. He wondered if she was all right.

What would he do if she died here? Imhotep didn’t seem interested in him. Perhaps he would have a chance to get away. He’d have to report her death to the Silvers. Petition for a new master… would he even want a new master? Surely there wasn’t anyone else out there like Syd, and good master-apprentice relationships didn’t grow on trees.

The thought of Syd dying was too much for his pain-addled, beleaguered mind to handle. He didn’t want to think about it anymore. In fact, he didn’t want to think at all.

Syd Celsius​

 

[Syd Celsius]

The Sorceress of Yurb awoke, parts of her still granular and muddy as she stood up in the large Force Cage that had runes drawn over it. She was under guard...three mercenaries, all pointing shotguns at her...

The muddy mess that had once been a beautiful blonde woman stood up, muddy skinn sloughing off her skull. She had been led into the same chamber as Starlin Rand and sealed within. The Bandaged man (Who it should be stressed looked like an Expy of Hush) had left to prepare the means to Syd's end. The Sorceress was too injured to change back into her.

This entire day had gone pear shaped.

"No funny movements, no talking..." one of the guards warned, pointing a shotgun at Starlin. "We hear you whisper anything weird, and we'll shoot that little bastard in the face..."

Both Syd and the Sorceress had their berzerk button triggered by this threat, because both rather liked Starlin. The messy, muddy creature stood up, staggered to the edge of the field.

"Word of advice to your bosses, son..." The Sorceress growled, muddy flesh dripping off her bones onto the runes...

"If you're gonna put something like me around all these runes...designed specifically to cut off my powers...make sure I don't have a means to obscure or damage them...

Her hand shot out painfully through the field, the energy vitrifying the sand based skin on her arm , weakly conjuring a dust storm as she grabbed the barrel of one of her captor's shotguns just as it fired, killing the one next to him just as he fired, grazing her side as the mud like flesh that had fallen off her partly obscured the nullification wards, reacting with the magic still in the remains as she threw her pilfered weapon at the head of the third about to blow Starlin's head off, the dust storm having bought a precious few seconds of blinding him, forcing him to rub his eyes, when the butt of the thrown weapon slammed solidly into the back of his head, knocking him out cold...

The Sorceress staggered, as she managed to send a solid tentacle of sand to the cage controls, deactivating both.

She dropped to the ground, automatically absorbing the Sand in the area to revuild herself as the Alarm sounded.

She covered the doors in a barrier of solidified sand as she regenerated, Syd's worry forcing control from the Sorceress and back to her.

"Starlin!" she called out in panic, going over to her Padawan, trying to sense the damage. His pain hit her like a chill in the Force.

"What did they give you?!" Syd asked, trying to control her panic that he might die, and her fury at his captors for hurting him. "I need to know what they gave you...please wake up...please wake up..."

 

[Starlin Rand]

Starlin faded in and out, fleeing the agony of the poison by hiding in unconsciousness. He wasn’t even aware that Syd had been brought into the same room until she had already broken out of her cage, knocked out the mercenaries, and deactivated his prison.

Suddenly he heard the alarm blaring in the background and Syd calling his name. The Force returned to him like a gasping inhale of breath after he had been drowning. So did the pain.

“My leg,” he whispered. “They shot me in the leg… blood poison.”

Syd Celsius​

 

[Syd Celsius]

The red headed Syd struggled to control her outrage at shooting him up with Blood Poison. It had been one of Phyre's favorite torture tactics so she knew well the agony he was experiencing.

The nausea and guilt made her switch out of her red headed form to her more elderly one, needing the emotional distance from having once been Phyre to operate quickly.

Her mouth opened, and a healing light, more powerful than any she had yet manifested, erupted from her throat to burn away the poison in his veins. She was very careful not to injure him further, taking her time even as she sensed great danger all around her.

When she was finally done, she helped him to his feet.

"Where is he? Who is the one who did this too you and why?" She asked tersely, struggling to control her reaction to seeing him in pain. She struggled to let go of her desire for vengeance on whoever had hurt her surrogate son, but it was difficult. But she managed it, having his future to think about and wanting to set a good example.

She took a few moments, and was calm again.

"We will do this as much by the book as we can. We will see him arrested, questioned, and then imprisoned. We will not indulge our emotions, even though we both have cause for anger. We don't want to feed that. We are Jedi, and we will not sink to his level...no matter how much we want to crack his skull open..."

She began looking for another exit to this prison, sensing at last, the powerful adept who had set all this up... curious...he felt very weak...

Syd began walking down another route out if the Prison area. She felt stronger again, and didn't sense any traps, magical or otherwise.

"C'mon, Starlin, let's end this the right way, or as close as we can get to it being right..."

 

[Starlin Rand]

Starlin lay still as Syd worked to save him. Perhaps it would be a stretch to say he could feel the shards of Devaronian crystal breaking down into their mineral components within his veins, but he definitely felt something as she vaporized the poison in his blood.

The pain dissolved. Starlin allowed Syd to haul him to his feet. He did feel better, rejuvenated, but he was soaked with sweat and covered in dirt. Not to mention his hair was still singed.

“I don’t know who he was or where he went. He said… he wanted to kill you, not me… but he wouldn’t tell me why…” Clearing his throat, he caught his breath before he spoke again. “Dude was covered in bandages and hacking up a lung. He said he was dying of cirro—cirrhosis?”

He was telling her everything he could, anything that might give a clue as to the man’s identity or weaknesses. Starlin was pretty pissed off at Bandage Face, and definitely wanted some form of revenge, but… well, did he really want to kill anyone today? No… he’d have no problem accepting his arrest and eventual imprisonment. As long as they succeeded in getting this guy before he had a chance to escape, whether he was a dead man walking or not.

Pushing his wet hair back and mopping the sweat from his brow before it could drip down into his eyes, Starlin followed Syd, retrieving his weapons before he left the room. Assuming Bandage Face hadn’t taken them with him...

Syd Celsius​