Skirmish Return of the Sith [TSE vs SJC]

[Wyatt Morga]

Nearby: Sofiel

The cycle was perfect, mastered over years of constant effort - it would mean little to magnify the Sith's strength when it would only impart that same amount unto Morga. Like a perfect current with no resistance, it twisted back around until everything given was taken, and everything taken was given. Synergy in the most unnatural way, Wyatt became an nigh emotionless husk as his stance lowered.​

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All that was left on his mind was the threat of the mace - tri-tipped flails dripping with liquid he could only assume was acidic or poison. Stopping them with his lightsaber was possible, but even one slip up would mean at least one of them would slam into him. A second later and they were bearing down on him - his blade catching their chain on the low side of it. Normally it would wrap around his blade entirely - gripping it, setting it up to be taken from his grasp, but Wyatt timed his counter perfectly.​

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The lightsaber turned off just as it was caught - forcing the flail to direct itself directly back at Gnox - but the second issue became apparent. The dripping poison scattered into the air before Wyatt, making his only save from it being a raised portion of his cloak acting as a buffer between him and what it would likely do. In the other hand, his blade reignited - jutting forward in its cyan path directly at the armpit of the beast lord; looking to slide between where armor would be to a tender underside.​

 

[Sofiel]

"They'll swing back at me is what you assumed, right?"

Gnox's voice rang out hollow. The excitement that had built up within him had seemingly dissipated as his red eyes stared down towards Wyatt Morga . For the briefest moment the flail followed logic. Catching around the saber before the momentum sent it back towards the behemoth. Only they froze unnaturally just before impact.

Then moved on their own. One of the heads swung down, aiming to catch the saber that had been thrust for his side as the other two would greet the Jedi's charge. The strength Gnox brought behind the swing was gone, but the spiked skulls were deadly enough on their own.

 

[Wyatt Morga]

Nearby: Sofiel

Without the momentum they once had, and the small moment it took to change their direction - Wyatt was able to adjust in some regard. Premonition was the backbone of his lightsaber combat, to fall into the guiding arms of the Force and allow it to adjust his movements; so while this was a suprise, it was one he had foreseen in the zen of his mind's eye. The hand that held the cloak jerked forward to grip the base of the chain leading to the skull that moved towards his dueling hand. The movement itself drove the lightsaber forward into the great beasts armpit to the hilt of his saber - or so it would be.​

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However, the cost of the strike was harsh. The other two hit his metaphysically reinforced shoulder - breaking skin and bruising him, but superficially compared to the threat of the poison that dripped from their great multi headed visage. No doubt it would begin to slow him - and his efforts to cleanse it from his blood using the Force would further hamper his ability of prediction - of standing on par with the Sith lord before him.​

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With his hand still on the chain of the weapon, he would yank it towards him -further increasing the velocity of his stab would the lord give in to his tug. Were he not, however, Wyatt would use the strength of his tug to jet his foot forward in a high straight shot towards the chin - hoping to send the Sith into dissaray, create space to give him a second to clean the first wave of the poison, to hold him down in this place longer.​

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"Not swing back -", he offered without a smile.​

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"- but something like that."​

 

[Travot Ravenna]

Objective One
Engaging: Viatore Darth Ophidia
Gear: see signature

Travot kept track of the strange alien's movements through the corner of his eye, but he did not attempt to quickly overtake the alien, instead preferring to methodically plod forward under the protection of his defensive guard, deciding in the process that it'd be better to ignore the telepathetic calls from his unknown assailant in order to better commune with the Force itself. He took a deep breath and sought to immerse his consciousness into the energy fields around him - the rocky cavern walls, the insects and worms that crawled around them nearly unseen. He could feel it all, and then the unnatural around him as well - the danger too.

Shadowy forms seemed to rise up out from the darkness and snap at him, but thankfully apparently partially deterred by the Force shield. Travot briefly paused his walk for a millisecond - just enough time to better decipher their shadowy forms and hear the hiss - before he resumed his stride forward. He wasn't entirely sure what to think of them - they didn't appear to have a corporeal form, which he found strangely comforting. True, he could not easily dispatch them with a lightsaber, but he wouldn't feel bad about killing a living thing either. And he guessed the Sith that summoned them there would also likely have to be expending some concentration in order to keep the present. A contest of wills. Travot renewed his submersion into the current of the Force itself, letting them guide his every footstep and deftly managing the shield around him, even as he appeared almost unconscious to the world around him.

As the alien engineer slipped the door, Travot felt an impending sense of danger emanate from Viatore itself before the alien could fully bring his weapon to bear on him.

In that moment, his natural fight and flight response quickened his heart rate in order to better prepare him to instinctively run, but his spirit guided by the Force opted to almost immediately lessen as it intuitively called him to step to the side - he managed to partially make the movement even as the blast roared towards him. It would have smashed into his left arm had his Force Shield not buffered some of the attack before its remains swept across his armor. Red light suffused the scene around them as Travot passed through the door into the laboratory itself. He could feel Viatore's presence, even as the alien sought to conceal himself. But Travot didn't pay the engineer much attention...yet. Instead, the susevfian silently approached the droid.

 

[Saeva]

The hum of conflict echoed from above, steadily fading away. It no longer had anything to do with Saeva. Saeva had delved deeper into the cave. The path had forked but he had not hesitated. Instinctively he had known which path to take. The further in he got, the clearer it all became. This was the right cave.

The area Saeva reached next felt less like a cave, and more like some lord’s basement. Gone were the rough edges of the cavern, now chiseled into a smooth flat surface, perfect walls, save for three rectangular shapes carved into all three walls, left, right, front. In each there was a single elegant claw. It looked as if it gripped at something that was no longer there. Beneath the left wall there was shattered glass. The rest of the room was a mess of dust and sand, some wooden furniture that looked ready to fall apart. The chairs and tables had been hacked into, and not by design. Saeva figured the room had been raided before, stripped of all its wealth.

What called to the young acolyte, however, did not come from this room. It came from beyond. There was likely a mechanism somewhere… A hidden switch. Some finesse or secret password that would slide secret doors apart and reveal a final chamber.

After nearly twenty minutes, Saeva was done with finesse. If the walls would not budge, he would make them. Drawing the Force to him, channelled by his anger and frustration, he slammed it against the wall in a powerful wave. Then again, and again. Push, pull, he’d exhaust himself upon this wall, but one way or another it would yield to him. He would not be the first to break.

 

[Darth Ophidia]

Viatore Travot Ravenna​

Keeping its hand still on the switch, Darling turned to face the approaching Jedi, seemingly unphased by the chaos of the war around him. It would seem the droid had a singular quest in mind, one that occupied all of its processing power. The shadows around the droid seemed to cling so closely to his chassis that even the red light that now flowed from hidden recesses could not dispell it. If anything, those lights only served to deepen the pockets of shadow in the dusty laboratory

The singular yellow eye beheld the Jedi Knight as he approached.

The shadow serpents coiled around the base of Travot's shield, and even hissed toward Viatore as if warding off an area. Their eyes glowed like little embers in the shadow, watching unblinkingly.

<None can stop the rebirth. To your knees and repent your transgressions>

Its synthetic voice croaked with old vocabulators as its eye turned from yellow to red. The serpents hissed and screeched until their shadowy maws turned inside out and their bodies dissolved into smoke that gathered like tendrils. The voice was sourceless, shifting, ghostly yet distinctly present. Darling looked to Viatore.

<Kneel before the Pale Assassin, the Queen of Shadows.>

Darling turned his back on them as the shadows, like a swarm of scurrying bugs, withdrew into the corners.

The laboratory began to shake. Dust trailed from the ceiling as materials rolled and tumbled out of their resting place, some shattering on the floor as twelve beings screamed out in the Force. They sent waves of pain, fear, hunger, hate, and the panicked cries of a newborn mind. Liquid begun to shift inside the twelve tubes as their contents began to thrash and writhe.

<She is coming.>

Some of the tubes began to crack, one partially dislodged as its stand dented inward, sending a plume of steam cascading from a pipe, and sparks from connected wires.

 

[Viatore]

Viatore was surprised as the lights went red and the droid began to speak. Maybe he had underestimated the tin can? He looked aorund, quickly climbing up to another computer before putting a spike into its droid port and starting a data transfer. He had to keep up and do something during all of this, and it was become pretty clear his gear wasn't great for Jedi. He definitely wasn't sure what the Sith was planning to do, but she did have the Jedi distracted at least while he grabbed as much information as he could.

Darth Ophidia Travot Ravenna

 

[Travot Ravenna]

Travot had managed to at least keep a relatively calm exterior throughout most of the encounter thus far. But there were some things that clearly unnerved him - if that had been Darth Ophidia 's goal, she had succeeded. Fear began to seep through, muddling his meditation even as he neared his immediate goal - Darling the droid. He took the droid's warning quite seriously as he neared it. A quick flash of his saber lopped off the droid's head, which he promptly snagged with his free left hand.

He wasn't planning on sticking around to find out just how the sith's revival went. He noticed that there wasn't just one body within the vats, but at least several. Would that mean that there was going to be multiple copies of this Pale Assassin, this Queen of Shadows? He wasn't sure if he could take on the reborn Sith one on one, much less sure that he could take on multiple opponents. He silently wished that he had packed some explosives to set off before this Queen of shadows awoke, but he had none. He would have to try and take the memory from the droid away from the site for analysis by the tech experts in the Concord to maybe get a better of who this Pale Assassin was, where she had been, and what she planned to do. He spared a brief glance at Viatore , raised his lanvorok, and mentally pulled its trigger. A trio of durasteel discs sprang out from the weapon before gently curving in to home in on the unusual engineer's head. Travot wasn't entirely sure if any of them would hit, but he also didn't necessarily need a hit to a win - he just needed a distraction to escape.

Loosing some of his concentration (and thus strength) on maintaining the Force shield, he began to sprint as best as he could from the laboratory, aiming to escape through the very doors in which he had came.

 

[Darth Ophidia]

Travot Ravenna Viatore
Post script.
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The Jedi's sabre cut cleanly through the neck of the droid, sending a shower of sparks across the workspaces, but otherwise causing little distraction. His voice was cut off as his ocular sensors went dark. The tall metal body tipped over after a second, unbalanced by the removal of the head. There was a moment in which it would almost seem as if everything had stopped.

Then the glass tanks shattered.

The iquid spilled out in a tidal wave, flooding the floor of the workshop with its pungent odour. Eleven bodies tumbled frantically out of their slumber, pale and slender, with bald heads and eyes of pitch black. The eleven did only appear human on the surface, but had the resting minds of beasts. In their sudden arousal from hibernation, they were spurred to a frenzy.

But one remained.

The twelfth climbed out carefully, ensuring she did not cut herself on the broken glass. While the sclera were dark as coal, like her frenzied sisters, this one had irises that glowed like rings of molten metal. Bare as the day she was first born, she strode into the workshop with the effortless elegance of a master.

"Darling."

It took her a moment before she looked down at the decapitated body of the droid, now at her left hand side. No sadness rippled through her, only anger, as she looked to the fading hues of blue fleeing the vault.