The Geist dodged the flung wax spider, noting that as things progressed and heated up, the Oldest's wax form gradually grew muddier, less defined, the wax that had been holding her shape starting to slough off the alchemized skeleton beneath.
The wax that dripped on a metal floor that was now starting to cook the remains of her fellows in darkness ran like hot water towards her.
The wax spider that attacked her from behind splashed all over her and the Geist felt a sudden deadening of of her power, like she was being smothered magically.
More of the wax piled onto her, she tried to thrash around but the diabolical substance flexed in response. Strongly, restraining her. Most of the wax had sloughed off the skeleton of the Oldest by this point, leaving a frame of obsidian black with red runes touching every pitted surface. The eyes in the skull were nothing but black fire. It knealt down and picked up the lightsaber it had dropped as the wax smothered the Geist and dampened her magic, the wax now smothering the red garbed jedi creation completely.
"You are a...unique creation...I will give you that..." The Oldest hissed somehow through bone without muscle. "But I see now your focus is too narrow to survive."
The Geist flew upward, smashing into the ceiling trying to dislodge some of the wax, she succeeded and got some air in...
She pushed her focus past its limits, igniting the air and struggling to fight the living wax's magic-nulling effects, which were overcoming what meager defense her own suit provided. The flame tried to ignite but the magical wax smothered anywhere it appeared, constantly shifting in its liquid state. That this had once been nothing but simple human fat was not forgotten by the geist, even as she fought to keep it out of her nose and mouth as she fell back to the floor before the waiting skeleton, the wax restraining her arms from attacking.
"I will dissect you, ghost of flame. Study you. Learn every secret of how you were made..." the hissed as it drew closer, its bare teeth giving it a perverse rictus-grin. "And I shall take what I learn and rebuild this cult you have destroyed with a million 'geists'.
Syd flew upward again, away from the saber strike. Her force strength was rapidly dampening...
Wait...would phasing work?
She thought about it as she fell, having knocked some of the wax off and feeling some of her power return. She had a second to decide. The wax was magical in nature...
Then again...so was the Geist. The wax wasn't metal, the very fact it was in a semi liquid state meant it wasn't impermeable...
She felt immense pain in her very being as she focused, the wax starting to go up her nose...
Ghost-like, the Geist screamed as she phased through the wax completely, feeling her strength returned and flew at the skeleton with both blades, forcing the Oldest to back away, its bones rattling as it back flipped away, turning aside blue-white flashes to its skull, the wax flowing across the floor to catch up, the Geist attacking swiftly in a brutally efficient flurry, every move linking to the other in an attempt to overwhelm the acrobatic defense. The Geist blasted the skeleton with flames from her mouth and at this range the Oldest simply could not avoid it, the wax close to ambushing the Geist from behind shuddering in pain, going slower.
The Geist and the Skeleton found themselves in blade-lock, the Geist completely igniting the air.
"You can't destroy my bones with mere flame..." the Oldest taunted as the wax latched on to The Geist's legs.
"Of course not. Your bones have been enchanted..."
The Geist breathed a flame that with a twitch of her eye she sent upward into the chest cavity of the skeleton.
The skeleton was alchemized, but that same skeleton had to have openings to the brain, or what passed for it...
The flame traveled upward, flowed into the skull, the Geist struggling to keep the flame alive as The Oldest struggled to keep it from going in. The Wax close to smothering her shuddered, fell off as The Oldest's attention rapidly came to telekinetically holding back the fire from traveling up its skull.
The wax fell away, still writhing and shuddering as The Geist grew stronger again, focusing...
A simple crack across the jaw floored the Geist giving the Oldest time to focus, smothering the Geist completely in wax while forcing the flame away. The Geist struggled, its magical abilities nearly dampened, the wax forcing the weapons from her hands.
Dull, reduced panic started to creep into the Geist's mind. Not just because she could very well lose this fight but because being so completely enclosed was...
...unnatural to her...
She'd never been so enclosed.
But she had memorized the layout. The fountain, its book like shape leaking the Calculus altered fluid might be enough to scare her off...
She barely managed a slight gust the fountain's way, but just enough to avoid the plunging lightsaber held by the Skeleton. She struggled to rise, to stagger to the fountain, the wax trying to pull her back to the Skeleton.
The Geist managed to stagger forward but the Skeleton started chanting something that instinct told the Geist to be of unholy nature. She felt herself being severely weakened physically, barely able to summon the strength to take a step forward.
But she did summon it, eventually just leaping and forcing a nearly restrained arm to grab the rim of the small moat surrounding the fountain itself.
The Oldest snarled, the wax crawling away as she threatened to pull herself into the Calculus altered liquid. So they were linked...
The wax flew back onto the skeleton, quickly reassuming the form of the sheer-clothed Nun. The Geist stood back up, drawing her back up weapon and igniting the orange blade. She was greatly depleted however, and the Oldest looked no worse for the wear, her dead white eyes gloating at her weakened prey.
"It seems the Dark Side has out done the petty creations of Jedi Alkahest once more. Perhaps I don't need to learn anything else from you..." the Oldest mused as she kept her distance from the fountain.
A fireball sprouted into existance.
"Then destroy me...if you can..." the Geist challenged.
"Insolent elemental..." The Oldest growled.
The Geist tossed the fireball, blasting some of the wax off the Oldest's face and shoulder.
"More fire? That hasn't worked well for you so far..."
"You still haven't managed to kill me, for all your talk of being a superior construct..." the Geist shot back, creating a pool of flame next to her.
"Going to try and burn me again?" The Oldest asked.
The Geist smiled. "Not exactly."
She jumped, just as the wax sloughed off the skeleton, forming a large tentacle to try and swipe her.
"Ashla, transport me through my element..." the Geist spoke as its feet hit the fire.
The Geist vanished into one flame popping out of the flame filled hole she had first entered the chamber in flying at top speed with the force just as the wax-joined skeleton turned around, being impaled and pushed upward as The Geist strained to carry the extra weight, even as she grabbed the oldest by the wrist to keep from being impaled by the Oldest's lightsaber.
Force Flight had a number of advantages compared to other forms of traversal. It felt wonderful...
And one could stop their momentum suddenly. Which the Geist did, letting the Wax Nun fly off her blade...
...and hitting the fountain.
The Wax Nun screamed as the black liquid spilled onto its form.
"I couldn't help but read a piece of the Calculus inscribed on the fountain...clever work, that. I read of a similar attempt by Kerimi The Apostate on Ossus. A true fountain of eternal youth. But you don't need youth. You're magical..." the Geist said, floating in the air with her arms folded as the Oldest continued thrashing, screaming as the wax started to turn yellow and bloody as it was exposed to the liquid.
"The fragment of the Calculus you have obtained works well on flesh. Fat is a form of tissue. But your enchantments are getting in the way of making all that fat on you nice and fresh, so its reversing those enchantments...'retconning' them out of you, you might say..."
The runes on the shrieking skeleton cracked and broke as it struggled to leave the fountain, only to trip and fall into the moat. It continued thrashing, the bloody fat curdling in the black bubbling liquid of the moat.
The Geist continued to watch as the Skeleton burst into flames, which she reinforced as she landed, channeling the fire deep into the Skeleton's chest cavity. She forced it out ward just as the alchemized bonds holding the skeleton together finally failed.
The Skeleton exploded violently, bone shards and bits of brain and gobs of formerly alchemized human fat flung against the chamber. None of it hit her, fortunately.
She dropped to her knees, badly drained. A nice hot fire would be good right now...
"These backwater cultists..." she grunted, pulling herself to the firey hole she had cut her way into the chamber from. "They always use human fat in their deranged experiments, and it always goes poorly..."
Inwardly though, she was troubled. She knew it was pure circumstance that had allowed for victory. If the fountain hadn't been there (she pondered whether the fate The Oldest suffered hadn't been meant for her, in case capture had proved impossible. The Oldest certainly seemed to have given up at some point.)
The point was...they had been evenly matched. Only quick thinking had saved her.
She certainly hoped there were no more wax constructs...
"Master Celsius! We are in position!" A Jedi confirmed on the comlink, snapping her from her reverie. "But there is something else..."
"What?"
"We found the source of the blast. Its frozen. You better get up here."
"We cannot delay more than is necessary..." she warned, going to a turbolift, phasing through the door and flying upward through the building, landing on the lip of the door a turbolift normally locked in place with and phasing through it, finding a Jedi startled by her as she stepped forward, her eyes widening.
She saw some sort of accident with a power generator. Men and women frozen in time at the center of the fireball erupting from it.
"Why would they need a generator so far up here?" The Jedi next to her asked.
"I suspect its the same reason a whole building got covered in the Calculus..." Syd answered, frowning as she thought of the wax nun. "Check the records on this floor. I want the timesheets for the janitors in particular..."
The Jedi eyed her, even as he turned a grim stare to the frozen blast.
"Why the janitors?"
"Who else would have the time and isolation needed to lay out the Calculus when nobody knew? Afterhours, with hardly anyone around? At least one janitor was involved..."
"And the outside?" The Jedi asked, rifling through important looking papers and pads.
Syd paused. "Check for recent maintenance files..."
The enclosing nature of the office space was now starting to unsettle her. She shuddered slightly.
[member="Ciana Teigra"]
[member="Hyonu Ye"]
[member="Elizabeth Skywalker"]
