Beasts

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Darth Filiae"]

Skai cursed and pulled her hand back.

With it came the calling of the air spirit, which was trapped in every single molecule around them. As a swift wind it pulled Filiae back, all the way back behind the pulsating organic heart pulsating like insanity with the appearance of the Terentatek. No, not just one, the Dathomiri's reaction had come from what was beyond the first Sithspawn.

Its brothers.

Two more- marginally smaller, but together forming a pack of hunters that craved food of substance. "We cannot!" She shouted to her as the Terentatek crashed against the heart.

The first one... disappeared as its talons and teeth ripped through the tissue fabric. Skai didn't care, she was already dashing into one of the side corridors. Behind her the screeching and the sounds of ripping sounded, telling her that it had been the right choice to fall-back for now. Who knew what was going on there.

It felt like she ran for hours, even though it was probably more like seconds to maybe a minute.

"Feth, that was... feth."

 

[Nan'eth'illa]

She was ready, come what may. Her face curled with the hatred she summoned, bordering on Force Rage. Darth Filiae darted forward, about to bring her blade down with a powerful swoop.

Yank

Her body flew back before she could engage the creatures. Her body curled in the air, twisting like a cat so she would land on her feet, rather than her back. As her feet touched the floor, she caught herself sliding. Looking up, she saw the terentatek tear through the quivering psuedo-vascular demon-spawner, followed by its two smaller comrades.

The rage fell out of her as she saw them ravenously ripping into it. Fear replaced the hate, and seeing Skai bolt, she followed - Ashamed.

Could she had taken them on? It would be a tough fight, but Nethil thought she could take at least one of them. Could she? She clutched the now deactivated hilt as she stopped a few steps away from Skai. She didn't look at her.

[member="Skai"]

 

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Darth Filiae"]

"We can't prove anything if we are dead. Filiae." Skai mumbled, before taking another sip of the cool, heavenly air. In the distance they could still hear the ravenous clawing of the Terentatek. They screamed in joy, until the pitch turned into horrific pain and agony. The stamp and the breaking of metal, twisting under intense pressure. Something else had shown up. They could hear them fighting and Skai just shook her head. She wasn't prepared to find out just what that had been. Instead she looked for another way in-

They had need of that corridor to get to the lower levels.

But that wasn't an option now. "Look for a hatch, a vent, there is one here somewhere." It was difficult to make out by the blood sprayed everywhere and the body parts strewn royally everywhere. It was disgusting, but Skai was slowly getting used to the entire thing.

"Gonna need a long river bath after this." She mumbled, while crouching down next to a - mostly - still intact corpse.

Who was she kidding?

This crawling feeling just beneath her skin wouldn't leave with a single bath.

 

[Nan'eth'illa]

Clawing, screetching - What a happy little feast they had - Then, the crashing of something bigger and stronger. feasting upon the Terentatek in turn. There was an old saying: There is always a bigger fish. Nethil looked up at Skai. The emotions melted from her face, leaving a scowl in its place. There were so many things she could say about why she was wrong, what she could find in the twilight zone of life and a bloody death. Her lip moved just a little as she bit down on the words.

Skai did not know.

"Why don't we just make a hatch instead?"

She started looking, focusing on her cybernetic eye and setting it to look for a regular shape in the surfaces. There were bits of flesh strewn about, smeared underfoot of whatever had wandered through. A little bit of it still moved, fluttered even.

"I think I see something."

She turned exactly 180 degrees and looked at the wall on the opposite side. It was slick with blood, and now she could now make out the splatted humanoid form stuck to it. Taking a step backwards, she then ran straight at the wall and jumped. Both feet hit the vertical surface and instantly kicked off as she turned once again. Her hands plummeted towards where she had seen the fluttering and-

Schlick​

They entered something. The Chiss' nose wrinkled as she stuck her hands deeper into the gap. It was full of something soft, cold, and sticky

"Ah!" Pain shot up her right arm.

Filiae put her feet on the wall and kicked herself away from it. As she flipped away from the wall, she pulled something with her from the gap now apparent. It looked like a humongous larvae, holding on to her arm with a pair of pincers.

"Fething, cssin's'im bah rcasv!"

She unleashed a series of vicious punches with her cyborg arm, hitting around the pincers to numb the muscles and free her right hand.

[member="Skai"]

 

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Darth Filiae"]

Skai was too busy checking out the dead corpse to notice Filiae's complicated maneuver.

Otherwise she might have whistled in a sign of appreciation, but the witch had noticed something attached to its belt. A holster and in it... a blaster, she took it out - poor bastard hadn't even had the time to pull it out and try to fight back. But the blaster? It seemed state-of-the-art and it was clearly designed by Cerbera, the angles, the feeling of the casing burning against her skin (darkside corruption seeped deep in it) and the graceful lines that had been etched out for aesthetic reasons.

Clearly one of hers, but why?

"Ah!" Now that didn't sound good, Skai looked back and eyes widened as Nethil was suddenly hanging off the wall and ceiling with her arms stuck in a... vent? Then she pulled herself out and brought a very unwelcome guest with her. It was a.... oh feth, that wasn't good, that wasn't good at all.

"Fething, cssin's'im bah rcasv!" Nethil would notice that every time she punched the wyrm it only tightened its grip around her arm, teeth sharp biting into the soft flesh. "Stop that!" The blaster was hooked into her pants, where it would rest for now, until she had time to come up with a better solution. Instead she ran up to Nethil, scowling at her when she hit the thing again. "This is one of Cerbera's things. She took a bite-wyrm from the swamps of Dathomir and... well, that came out of it."

She raised her hand and from one moment to the next the air blurred.

Whisps of acidic emerald constructing itself into a smol dagger. "I can save the arm, but you need to trust me, can you do that?" Already her hand reached for Nethil's shoulder.

 

[Nan'eth'illa]

Based on her performance so far, it would surprise anyone that Nethil was in fact very capable of dealing with a wide variety of beasts and gentlebeings. These things? They defied every instinct she had, and this place was a death trap in itself. She muttered a curse under her breath as her legs positioned themselves in a position to better prevent the worm from swallowing more.

Her fist hung in the air, poised like a stinger wanting to sting. She thinned her lips and held it back.

"How about this: If you cut off my arm, I will cut something off you."

Her thinned lips turned into a grin, there was a sliver of jest in her voice. Then, the grin turned into a wince. Nethil shifted again, reinforcing her position.

"Just karking do it."

If Skai did not, then Filiae would do it herself. Considering her compromised position, it would likely turn out less than ideal if she did it herself.

[member="Skai"]

 

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Darth Filiae"]

"Sounds reasonable." Skai responded with a grin of her own, before focusing herself on the wyrm. It was very similar to the ones in the swamps of Dathomir.

Big maws gripping hold of limbs whenever you wade into the murky waters.

They didn't have teeth the size of her fist though and neither were they completely blind. What they used to do was use either smoke them out or use fire to burn them out, but that did not seem to be an option here. There was a third one- risky, very risky, but if done correctly it would minimize the amount of damage done on the nerves and bone.

She scowled at the wyrm, before gripping Nethil tight by the shoulder, forcing her to stand still.

Next she pushed her against the wall, adding to the pressure and focus in the moment. "This will hurt." Skai warned while angling the tip of the dagger just right.

"Three... two-." Before the witch said one the dagger was already thrust into one particular fold of the wyrm. The membrane had a soft discoloration here. Difficult to notice, unless you knew what to look for. Skai twisted the knife violently and then pulled it out again. Violet ooze seeped out, bursting, before the wyrm screeched in agony.

It immediately let go of the hold on Nethil's arm as muscles weakened involuntarily.

 

[Nan'eth'illa]

"This will hurt"
"I expect nothing less."

Filiae bit down hard to swallow the impending pain. She did not look at the dagger, but instead stared at where her arm disappeared into the maw. She focused on all the ways she had failed since she arrived on Wayland. Even that witless rustbucket, Darling, had been right. Twice, he was right twice. Perhaps she ought to translate his left leg to huttese measuring system, deactivate the auto conversion, and watch him run in circles for a few hours. It was rather tempting.

They never counted to one, did they?

Her hand finally came loose from the grip of the maw, and she instantly pulled it out. She barely even looked at it as she threw herself up on her feet and ripped the lightsabre from her belt. The orange blade burst out sounding about as angry as Nethil looked. Her right arm was now black and slick with chiss blood, and it drained into the grooves of her hilt.

Filiae made a slamming motion down with her left hand, the fingers curling like talons as the telekinetic grip seized the worm. Her left arm raised the hilt, then let it swoop down repeatedly. The orange blade metaphorically filleted the worm, each cut accompanied with growl of exasperated irritation as she took out her frustration on the body while it was seized in her force grip. She was quick about chopping it into little bits, and and with each cut she squeezed it more with the Force, driving the gore out from its form. There was a driven madness in her eyes near the end.

When it was all cut up, she stopped, lowered her blade, shut it down, and looked at Skai.

"We may have to move. Terentateks can sense where the Force has been used. They will be coming."

She wasted no time in preparing to perform the same manoeuvre as she had the last time, walking to right under the vent and drawing a deep breath.

[member="Skai"]

 

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Darth Filiae"]

Her attention was already over her shoulder towards the hallway from which they had come.

If her force-usage had tipped those bastards off, they would be coming any second and there was little that would could do about it.

One Terentatek? A schutta, but doable if they worked together. Three fething Terentateks? No, that wasn't realistic and that was important in a battle.

Gotta be realistic about things. Can't go around deluding yourself about your chances, not when it's life or death, sometimes... sometimes it was better to cut and run. That was the lessons Skai had learned from the Nightsisters. The spirits would protect her only for so much, before she would be on her own. Filiae was already taking a measure of the vent. Her regard for the blue girl was increasing- took someone with guts to shove her arms in it the first time... get burned hard by luck and then go right back at it.

She kept on looking over her shoulder, feeling the rumble of feet raging against the metal, soon... very soon.

Skai looked up, Filiae was already climbing and she was through. The witch breathed in, took a few steps back and vaulted, using her momentum against the wall to quickly snap up a few meters. Her hands already held the vent's lid, when the first Terentatek stormed onto the scene.

Just a few centimeters more and it would have gored her.

"Feth... that was close." She mumbled to the girl next to her, pressed closely, too closely. "Let's go, barely got any room here to breathe."

 

[Nan'eth'illa]

She had barely even noticed how cramped it was before Skai mentioned it. Filiae was used to confined spaces as a means to escaping monsters chasing her. Most of whom her master had sicced on her. She looked at Skai in a new light at that moment. This person she had found to be a constant stick in her mud was kind of cu- 'Nope, not going there'.

"Less talking, more moving."

Nethil squirmed past Skai, turning her face away. She crawled her way through the duct, making as little sound as possible by keeping her weight evenly distributed. She had been trained in the arts of quiet movement since she was a little child. First it had been a game she played with her mother, then a duty to her esteemed master. Now she did it to survive attention that could kill.

If they didn't move, the terentatek would sniff them out. The duct was pumping air in the direction, after all. They had to get lost in the system before the beasts figured it out.

As she squirmed along through the first intersecton, Filiae stirred in a compartment of her utility belt and picked up a little disk. She turned a dial and put it on a wall of the airduct. Eight minutes later, it would release a spray of gas that would break the trail of their scent. Especially designed to throw Noghri off her literal scent. If it could throw off a Noghri, then it could throw of anything.

"Which way?"

[member="Skai"]

 

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Darth Filiae"]

Brows rose as the disk was stuck to the wall.

A moment later vile gas was released into the air, immediately swept away by the circulation system of the facility, she immediately understood what it was. Hmmhm. The sound Skai made played between an impressed noise and low-key curiosity. "Gonna need a few of those, nice." Then back to work- she looked around, re-orientating herself with the mental map in her head and the exact direction they had come from. Now that they had some time to kill Skai realized they had been rather close to the medical wing... which could have been handy for Nethil's... hand. (ugh).

"Depends. Go left, we will circle back around and get to the medical wing." She eyed Nethil's organic arm. The deep gashes were still visible on the skin and Skai hadn't been imagining the way the blue-skinned girl was keeping the pressure off of it.

"If we don't treat that soon, you will have two prosthetic arms instead of one." Brushing past that she studied the right vent. "Right? Right takes us... past a guard point, we might find some weapons there, towards the outer research labs." Those labs weren't where this hellspawn was originating from. No, Cerbera would have kept that below ground, as deep as possible, protected by layers of security. But clearly that security had meant crap when these things could literally make new holes and create more beasts out of the things they killed.

Nethil's expression was already dark and scowling.

"We can go there after your arm gets unkarked."

 

[Nan'eth'illa]

"Let's go there now."

She cradled her bloodied arm and prodded around the wounds with her left hand, checking the amount of damage. The gashes were many, and she was bleeding profusely from some of them, but no bones were broken, no tendons cut, and no major veins completely severed. Filiae could still move her digits. The wound that concerned her most was a cash on the inside of her bicep, which bled the most.

"I don't need the medical bay. I just need somewhere safe to patch up."

Taking this moment while they spoke, Nethil pulled another thing out from her utility belt. It was a pad meant for removing fingerprints, but right now it helped in stopping the worst bleeding.

"If we take an extended path, we will only decrease our chances of success in the mission at large. We go right."

She would not be a liability on the mission. That was not how the Csen'ai had raised her. If she lost another arm for the sake of the mission, then so be it. However, she was confident she could patch herself up if she got a few minutes in a secure location. It was not like this was the first time she had been chewed up and spit out by a monster.

Filiae moved to the right, barely using her right arm at all. The less movement she put it through, the less it would bleed.

[member="Skai"]

 

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Darth Filiae"]

Skai sighed loudly, but otherwise didn't protest.

Instead she followed along while trying to not look too much at the wiggly behind as Fil awkwardly moved through the vent with one arm for support.

Not the time, not the time, oh my.

The Dathomiri coughed gently, before her attention was snapped up by the grate to her left. Through the thin spaces she could just about see what was happening in the corridor leading up to the guard point... and it wasn't good, not good at all. The hallway was filled with things. Shambling beings, more skeleton than anything else, they looked like humans, but devoid of skin and bleeding. They were slow, some of them ripped apart and still somehow moving, crawling by nails across the floor.

"The feth." Skai mumbled in a whisper. "Now we know what happened to security."

But they were in luck- it didn't seem like the security outpost itself was filled with these... things. Difficult to see from this angle, but Skai remained a bit hopeful. "There should be a duct in the next intersection that drops us in the outpost itself."

First thing they would have to do was make sure the doors leading into it were closed off.

 

[Nan'eth'illa]

It didn't take Filiae very long to shed awkwardness in her movement. Sure, she had to wiggle a little more than usual, but she made an even pace and less sound than one would imagine, given her metal arm and all. One could easily guess it was not the first time she had crawled through a confined space with only one arm in hostile environment. The trick was to move her legs in wider motions in order to take the weight off her upper torso.

She stopped for a moment, mid motion with one leg extended forward to take the weight off her arm and the other still back from the last step. Craning her neck, she looked down on the mass and made sure to capture some images of them with her eye.

"Might have improved their work ethics, though."

There was half a smile on her lip as she nodded towards one who literally crawled its way across the others. The smile faded quickly as she turned her eyes to the remaining vent ahead. She shook her head a little to regain focus, then carried on.

"I will have a look"

Filiae gritted her teeth as she opened a small compartment in the side of her mechanical arm and pulled out a tiny disk. She put the disk in her mouth and crawled over next to the vent. The disk clicked to her finger like a magnet; then, closing her cybernetic eye, she slipped the disk between the bars of the vent. It was a tiny camera, feeding straight to her eye so she could see in instances just as this.

"Two figures by the door." She turned her finger "One across the room, on the floor. Not moving."

The sounds were rather descriptive: A blaster fired twice, two figures falling to the floor.

"Make that no- Wait. Chit. They are getting back up. The third one just moved. Hey, at least the door is closed."

She looked at Skai, one eye still closed.

[member="Skai"]

 

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Darth Filiae"]

Skai blinked when blaster fire sounded.

Didn't work out as they wanted when the corpses apparently got up again though. "Well, at least we know they got a tendency of getting up after being shot." She responded with a snort and a smirk. "I think we will end up needing to hack them to pieces. Maybe if we destroy the head we will sort them out that way."

That was ancient Dathomiri folkore anyway, when it came to the rising dead.

Even if they would still be crawling around... without a mouth or eyes or ears it would be difficult for them to pose an actual threat. "Where are they right now?"

Skai listened to the answer and then nodded.

"Alright, hit the one by the wall, I will take out the two by the door." If they managed to kill them quickly and without too much noise they might avoid getting the attention of the little group outside the doors. She didn't think it would be a problem? But at the same time the witch wasn't interested in finding out if that door held up against a horde of walking dead pushing and running against it.

Seemed a thing to avoid.

 

[Nan'eth'illa]

Nethil showed the locations with practiced hands, hovering them just over the metal of the shaft in which they hid.

"You misunderstand one thing. Before they shot themselves, there were no zombies in the room. They were unharmed. At least two of them were."

She looked directly into Skai's eyes.

"They shot themselves in the head, and now they walk."

It painted a grim picture of what would happen if one of them died in there. What if infection was unnecessary? What if they were infected already? If they died, would they rise as undead as well?

"If we die - Anywhere in here - then we may turn into one of them."

On that note, the Chiss checked again. Their targets hadn't moved notably, just turned and shifted in place. Filiae tucked her spying equipment away, opening her cybernetic eye again, then nodded to Skai and slipped her fingers through the grate of the vent. With a quick yank, she pulled it up and dove through head first. One would think she was about to faceplant into the floor when her body tipped enough to give her a three point landing.

Not stopping for the action shot, she darted towards the undead creature by the wall. Practically pouncing on it, Filae seized it's forehead with her metal hand and pressed it into the floor while the other whipped out her lightsabre hilt, activated it, and made a quick sweep towards severing its head. As she stood, she restricted the target's mobility and sight, while also gaining access to its throat.

It was clear-cut assassin work; simple and effective. Even with her injuries, she had enough strength to sever a head.

@Skai.

 

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Darth Filiae"]

"They... shot themselves?" Skai cursed and shook her head. Had it been the small horde of walking dead just outside the room? No, that couldn't be it, they were annoying and would be an issue if you weren't paying attention. But to actually take one's life? Maybe it was because Skai was biased around that very concept.

After all, her tribe had taught her about what happened to those who took their own lives. Their spirits were denied entry to the final realm and they would be forced to move through the mortal world. With no one seeing them, not being able to do anything, besides look upon all that they had lost through that one cowardly act.

Skai shuddered.

"They deserve their fate then, cowards." The witch mumbled, before nodding that she was ready. With a quick snap of her body she rebounded against the floor of the security booth. The blade already materialized in her hand, angled to the side and Skai lunged, immediately going for the heads, instead of any other maneuver she had.

They were slow.

And they collapsed without heads within the span of three breaths. In reaction to their sudden appearance the horde outside was pressing against the glass.

It held for now.

"Let's step on it- get your arm in order, I will look for supplies and anything else that might help us."

 

[Nan'eth'illa]

Just in case, Nethil threw the severed head across the room before plopping over on her behind and unzipping the lower part of her trouser leg. Perhaps to no surprise, her left leg was as metallic as her left arm.

"Just do your thing and I will do mine."

She did not stop as she spoke, but pried open a little sliding slot on her calf which revealed a secret compartment. From inside, she pulled out a small packet. Ripping it open with her teeth, she pulled out a small stim and jabbed it into her shoulder. Filiae's upper lip curled with the onset of pain, then trickle of relief running through her vein. She did not have time to savour it, instead the Chiss quickly moved on to tearing open a patch and placing it on her arm. It looked baggy at first, but quickly tightened against her skin. She put one on each of the wounds, sealing them up. Last, but not least. she wrapped her arm in a fresh bandage, mostly to keep anything from tearing off the patches.

One could tell she had done this before. Her hands were quick, her face focused, and one would have guessed it would look more awkward to dress one's own wounds, but she made it look relatively easy. One got hurt a lot when training under the Pale Assassin; imagine then to be her daughter. When all patched up, she closed up the container, zipped down her trouser leg, and bounced to her feet.

The stim took the edge off her pain and was quick at work with tearing apart any blood infections. The patches were soaking her wounds in bacta gel. She had bled more than one would like, but Nethil would be fine.

"Did you find anything?"

[member="Skai"]

 

[Nan'eth'illa]

Double post. Karking Wifi.

 

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Darth Filiae"]

Skai smirked at her response.

So touchy.

It was from Cerbera that she got that particular trait- to push people, their boundaries, coax out reactions that they normally reserved for different occasions in private. Train enough with someone, be tutored, mentored and it became simply a part of your usual attitude. There wasn't really much to be done about it.

"Yeah, catch-" From one of the corpses she got a keypad. Orange, it would get them access to the innards of the facility. Through the heavy blastdoor that led down, down, down.

"We will need that to get through the blastdoor and get down the elevator."

Elevator was putting it lightly.

It was a huge platform that descended down into the shadows. Specifically to carry heavy machinery and other necessary equipment up and down, wherever it was necessary.

"We will do another quick sweep, now with two sets of eyes and then figure out how to best get there."