Private The Brain Demon

[Starlin Rand]

“Fancy.”

“I came up with it myself,” Starlin said proudly. He was swaying a little on his feet, and promptly plopped down on a reasonably smooth rock. “Yeah, I’m good. Just a little tired, is all.”

Exhausted was more like it. Summoning Luminous always did this to him.

A few minutes passed, and the being of Light returned. Starlin breathed it in, absorbing all that it had seen and heard. It strengthened him as well, so that he no longer felt so wilted.

“There’s no more prisoners,” he said. “But the head of this chapter of the Cult is in there. And she knows we’re here.”

He pointed down a cave passageway that was narrow and pitch black... and promptly started walking toward it.

Amani Serys​

 

[Amani Serys]

Starlin Rand

“That figures,” She sighed, cocking the gun, “Let’s stomp it out here and now, then.”

With the head of the chapter gone, they could put an end to the cult’s efforts here, “Can’t be that hard, right?” A sarcastic comment, but hey, they had gotten this far at least.

Amani followed behind Starlin down the corridor, steeling herself for the coming threat, “You wanna draw her in? I’ll try and harry her from a distance." It would certainly be a lot easier if they both could draw on the Force, but it seemed as it was, splitting her between a fight on two fronts was a good bet. Then again, Amani was far from a tactician.

 

[Starlin Rand]

At the sound of Amani’s gun cocking, and her strategic talk, Starlin’s pace slowed a little. He gave her a side-eyed glance, biting his lip. He had a feeling this wasn’t going to go over well. Not just because his companion didn’t have the Force, but… well, okay, that had a lot to do with it. She was an ex-Jedi of uncertain rank turned medic. During her Jedi days, he imagined she was likely training to be a healer, not a warrior. This wasn’t her thing.

He halted. “Uh, no offense or anything, but… are you sure you wanna do this?” he asked, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “‘Cause you could go back and let me handle this… alone...” He trailed off, his eyes widening and teeth gritting at the mere thought of taking on a cult leader by himself. But he still left the offer on the table for Amani’s sake.

Amani Serys​

 

[Amani Serys]

Starlin Rand

Truth be told, no, Amani very much did not want to do it. But far be it from her to turn her back on something like this, especially when they were so close to finishing it. “If I didn’t want to see this through, I would’ve quit back at Mos Eisley. We’ve got a job to do now.”

It would be a challenge, no doubt. A risk between life and death even. But she had seen worse. Fought worse. If Amani could find the strength to stand up face to face with Sith lords and Brynadul war beasts, she could do the same with just another cult leader.

Just ignore the fact that those weren’t all explicitly fights that she won. They hadn’t put her in the ground yet.

“I’m ready when you are.”

 

[Starlin Rand]

Amani wasn’t backing down. Oh well. It was her funeral. Assuming anyone found their bodies.

Starlin wasn’t unappreciative. “All right. Yeah, you should probably hang back and shoot at her while I… get up close and personal.”

He glanced at Amani again, and on a jittery, nervous impulse, leaned over and gave her a peck on the cheek. Unless she turned her head and it landed elsewhere, of course. Like her nose, or her chin, or her mouth… or she saw it coming and elbowed him in the ribs first.

“There, I kissed a girl finally. Now I can die having at least done that.” Never mind that he had just met her, wasn’t even sure he liked her all that much, and they were maybe about to die horribly. Bracing himself, he took the final few steps into the lair of the cult leader.

The chamber beyond the passage was lit by hanging crystals that glowed with red and orange energy, not dissimilar from candlelight. Symbols had been painted in blood on the ground in preparation for some sort of ritual. At the center of the runic web there sat a female figure. Unlike the previous two waves of cultists, she was neither ordinary looking nor hideous in appearance. This was a beautiful young woman dressed in a gray gown, her long black hair soft and silky, her blue eyes shining and bright even in the dim light.

Of course, it was pretty obvious her good looks were the result of evil and malicious acts, feeding on the life force of others to stay young and healthy. One only needed to look a little deeper to see that her aura in the Force was miasmic and vile.

“Hello there darlings,” the priestess greeted them with a smile, showing perfect white teeth. “Have you come to take the Choir on all by yourselves?”

“‘The Choir’? Is that what you call yourself?” Starlin asked. “I already killed ‘the Assembly’, and I’ve heard of ‘the Amalgam’, but not you, sis.”

The Choir kept on smiling, refusing to let him get to her that easily. “I am more powerful than the Assembly, I assure you. But if you’re so eager to test your mettle, then have at me, Jedi.”

“Look witch, do I look stupid to you?” Starlin had rather pointedly stopped at the edge of the bloody symbols, also preventing Amani from going any further. “I know how this old song-and-dance routine goes. I step into your ritual web, I get caught in your trap and you go all black widow on my ass.”

He rubbed at the blood with the toe of his boot, smearing the lines. The suffocating atmosphere of the chamber began to abate. The smile was wiped from the Choir’s face.

"You... you're her apprentice! But she's supposed to be gone, in exile!" She sprang to her feet. "You dare to come and challenge me on your own?"

“Yeah, I guess I do.” Activating his sabers, Starlin sprang at the Choir.

Amani Serys​

 

[Amani Serys]

Starlin Rand

If there was one thing Amani was not expecting going in, it was the sudden kiss he gave her as they stood on the precipice of their shared annihilation. Made even more awkward by the fact that she had just turned to face him, leading to a peculiar peck on the front of her nose instead. Even as her cheeks burned a darker shade of green, she stifled an awkward laugh, preferring to let him keep the small victory rather than dwell on it. They were, after all, possibly going to die.

The interior of the chamber was top shelf cult style, complete with mood lighting and blood soaked imagery. The woman at the center of it all though was certainly a surprise though, given that she was far more pleasing to the eyes than the decrepit witch-like state her previous followers had been in. But they both knew beneath the façade of beauty laid a sinister mind and darkened heart.

Starlin and the woman exchanged introductions, throwing around a number of ‘The Noun’ titles of which she had no knowledge. At least one of them did, and Starlin’s experience came in handy as he disrupted the Choir’s machinations and sprang into action. As soon as he leapt at her, Amani raised her pistol, unloading a volley of rounds at the witch, hoping to quickly overwhelm her with shock and awe.

 

[Starlin Rand]

The Choir’s hand thrust toward Starlin, and suddenly he was no longer moving forward, but backwards. He hit the rough wall of the cavern, barely managing to cushion the impact with his own use of telekinesis before he fell to the ground with a dull thud.

Trooper that he was, he shook it off and was back on his feet in no time—just to see the Choir pluck the slugs from midair and fire them back at Amani. He sincerely hoped she ducked before they hit.

Gathering sand, he tossed the grains in the air, superheated them into shards of glass with his shoto blade, then lobbed the jagged projectiles at the witch. She snarled as they cut her face and arms, the wounds oozing white blood. With the Force she seized some rather large rocks and flung them at him.

He put up a shield and started toward her, but she simply grabbed more rocks and threw them at him while he was charging her unprotected. A stone hit him in the face, leaving dull ache in his nose and the sensation of warm blood gushing from his nostrils. Probably broken. Oh well. He was never that good looking anyway.

His sabers slashed down at her, but get this—the witch caught the blades in both her hands, absorbing their energy. Advanced Tutaminis or some chit. He was rewarded for managing to get close to her again by being blasted back once more, and this time his collision with the cave wall was a lot less cushy. He slumped to the ground with a groan, taking longer to clamber back to his feet, his vision going shaky...

Amani Serys​

 

[Amani Serys]

Starlin Rand

Amani was prepared for some Force trick her way, and managed to slide under the hail of bullets in time, though not without one striking her shoulder. She didn’t let that stop her, in fact at this rate arm-related injuries were becoming so common for her they bordered on cliche.

So far the Choir had little trouble managing the two of them, having made quick work of Starlin as well. The range game wasn’t working, and Amani switched up her game plan accordingly. Loading one into the chamber, she rushed the witch, using Starlin as a distraction to leap onto her from behind and pin the barrel of the gun against her back. It would have been a pretty good time for a cheesy one-liner, like “Dodge this” or some chit, but Amani was never much of a quipster, instead just discharging the bullet point blank with little fanfare. With any luck, even a powerful force user like herself could be felled by a simple gunshot, but luck had been awfully fickle so far.

 

[Starlin Rand]

The Choir sensed Amani coming, but not fast enough to prevent the shot to her back. It discharged, the slug passing cleanly through her amid an unpleasant shower of white fluid and yellowish globs.

Starlin was on his feet, shaking himself, struggling to recover. He looked straight at the Choir, and saw the blown-out mass of torn flesh in her chest starting to wriggle and writhe. “Oh, not this chit again,” he muttered, spitting flecks of blood that coated his lips. He was less shocked by the horrific sight of her flesh repairing itself than annoyed and dismayed.

The cuts he had made earlier were healed too. Thus mended, the Choir turned toward Amani and flung her away like a ragdoll. Starlin attempted to intervene, only to be thrown back for the third time in a row.

“Fething spam attacks!” he roared. Regaining control over his anger, he grinned, his teeth stained red. “At least you aren’t two feet tall like the last chick who did this chit to me. She spammed me with lightning! I felt like I was being shocked to death by a Jawa!”

He promptly sensed a blast of lightning coming and narrowly managed to bring up his blades to catch it… but it didn’t hit him. Instead, the Choir directed the current at Amani.

“Hey! Hey!” he yelled in a panic. The Choir ignored him, continuing to focus her efforts on Amani.

“Oh, you fething—I’m gonna fething kill you, you schutta!” He was screaming like a maniac, his voice growing hoarse, the taste of blood filling his mouth coupled with the reek of burning dust in the air. He threw his shoto at her, the orange blade spinning wildly, scattering flecks of lava as it boomeranged, then his lightsaber, slicing elegant blue arcs through the air.

Amani Serys​

 

[Amani Serys]

Starlin Rand

Amani’s victory over the witch was short lived. Just as quickly as the bullet had passed through, her wounds began to heal, and Amani herself was then tossed aside.

Apparently, the Choir was not fond of slugs in the back, and focused her attack directly onto the medic. Jagged arcs of electricity crossed the distance between them, and with no way to defend against it, Amani was struck with what was unfortunately an old, familiar pain.

Though the power of the cultist’s lightning was a far cry from the sheer might of a Dark Lord, it was by no means just a mild shock, and its mere use was enough to trigger an intense reaction in Amani. Memories of old battles, old tragedies, flooded back in, paralyzing her with pain both mental and physical as the lightning coursed through her. Muscles spasmed and writhed, leaving Amani as little more than a twitching heap on the ground under the Choir’s power.

 

[Starlin Rand]

The Choir at last spared a glance Starlin’s way, smiling cruelly. “Really? Will you?” she goaded him, all the while continuing her attack upon Amani. “Can you really kill me, Jedi?”

His blades spun towards her. She made no attempt to stop them. Starlin had a moment of doubt—a realization that something wasn’t quite right—before they struck, one after the other, in a shower of sparks as the plasma swords crossed paths.

There was a sound like rushing air which filled the cavern, loud and drawn out as a wolf’s howl. Starlin felt something strike his chest, then pass through him… and suddenly it all became very clear.

He’d had only a moment or two of vulnerability, yet another scrape with the Dark Side inside himself, and the Choir had moved to exploit it. Spectral hands sank ghostly claws into him, trying to tear out his mind to add to its collection—or all the minds that made up the Choir were trying to tear their way inside him, he wasn’t sure which. This wasn’t like when he purified the corruption in order to make the Luminous; he couldn’t afford to take this thing into himself, or it might possess him.

In his terror he cried out to Syd, his first master, as if he were a child again. But his master was not there. Steeling himself, he called upon the Light instead. It felt distant, but he reached for it all the same, repeating the Ward Against the Dark he had been taught years ago, desperate to dispel this thing before it could seize any part of him, his mind or his body.

"I walk in shadow and darkness; Ashla, shield me from wickedness…"

He said it over and over again like a mantra or a prayer, until at last it felt the Choir’s presence begin to retreat. A burst of strength drove him to chase after her. He found that his weapons were in his hands again, and he plunged them into the center of the mass of minds she had absorbed. He heard the wind howl again, but this time it was coupled with the ripples of shock and horror as the Choir’s many-voiced death scream reverberated through the caverns.

And then, darkness.

Amani Serys​

 

[Amani Serys]

Starlin Rand

Even after the lightning had ceased, Amani was reeling from its effects. The lightning had amplified her irregular heartbeat, spurring a tachycardia episode that put her on the verge of suffering from a full on cardiac arrest. Through shaky movements and twitching muscles, Amani retrieved her heart pills, using every last bit of effort she had to take the dose and restore a natural rhythm. Even still that would take time, and she flopped over onto her stomach, looking about as dead as a living, conscious person could.

Her eyes lazily dragged across the scene laid before her, locking onto her partner, “...Starlin?” She slurred out, her face still smushed against the stone floor. Everything was so hazy it was near impossible to even make out his figure, her only resort being to call out and hope for a response.

 

[Starlin Rand]

Starlin had passed out.

After dispatching the Choir, he had simply keeled over and collapsed, unconscious. No amount of yelling in his ear, shaking him, or dumping water on him would wake him. He was out for the night.

Zzzzz Amani Serys​

 

[Amani Serys]

Starlin Rand

In time Amani dragged herself close enough to learn Starlin’s fate, taking some relief in realizing he was still breathing. “...Chit. Alright.”

She rolled back over and laid on the floor for a solid hour as she waited for the panic to subside and the drugs to take effect in her system. When she was finally confident that the attack was over, Amani stood up and made a wobbly walk to the exit.

Once she was outside and with reception, she called for aid, hoping to get proper authorities to clean up the mess, and also to get the two of them proper medical attention. Mos Eisley emergency service quality be damned. And with the work done, Amani slid back down for a much needed rest.

 

[Starlin Rand]

When Starlin awoke, he was in a hospital bed at the Mos Eisley medcenter. Against the complaints of his muscles, he got out of bed, pulling his IV stand along.

He peeked his head out into the hallway, looking either way before he stepped out and started walking. No nurses or doctors or orderlies lurking around to hustle him back to bed.

Now, where was Amani? Probably in the place where they dealt with people who got electrocuted. A burn victim unit? What floor was that on? Oooh, look, a directory. Burn unit… second floor. He rolled into the lift, pressed a button, and the doors slid shut.

Amani Serys​

 

[Amani Serys]

Starlin Rand

“Look, even if I had the time to get this all fixed, I definitely don’t have the money. I’ll stick with the beta blockers.” Amani had already been awake for some time, arguing with one of the doctors over the cost-benefit of undergoing a surgical procedure for her condition. She finally managed to wave him off for a few moments of peace and quiet.

Amani understood full well the dangers of getting into a situation like that again. But the fact of the matter was that it wasn’t in the cards right now. And to be honest, she’d much rather have it done somewhere other than here anyway. With any luck, trouble like this would continue to be the exception rather than the rule, but she never really knew these days.

Being on the receiving end of medical treatment had become increasingly common for her over the last few years. That was probably a bad sign. She felt at the large bacta patch plastered across her chest, the scars of her last run in with lightning emanating out from underneath like spider webs, fading at the base of her neck.

Another figure emerged in the doorway, Starlin this time. Amani gave him a tired wave, “Hiya. How was your nap?”

 

[Starlin Rand]

“Ayyyyy!” was the greeting Starlin gave Amani upon entering her room. “Very good, I slept. You did too, I hope.”

His eyes drifted to the scars snaking out from under her shirt. “Oh damn. As cool as those scars look, I don’t think a bacta patch is gonna cover ‘em. What you need is a nice long soak in a bacta tank. And we’ll throw in a spa day for your trouble.”

He paused. “Thanks, by the way. For calling for help. I’d hate to still be lying back there at that cave.”

Amani Serys​

 

[Amani Serys]

Starlin Rand

“That’s good. We both needed a rest after that.”

She hand waved his comment on her scars, “These ones are old anyway. The patch is just for treating minor electrical burns.” The thought of being stuck in a bacta tank wasn’t her favorite. Too claustrophobic, not to mention the taste and smell it left in your senses.

“Well, I thought about just leaving you there,” she smirked playfully, “But I figured you probably wouldn’t be too happy about that.”

 

[Starlin Rand]

“I probably would’ve died if you hadn’t!” he replied, his cheerful tone and the smile on his face utterly at odds with the words coming out of his mouth.

He was too chill to push the subject of her gnarly scars or bacta, though the fact that she mentioned some of the scars were older shed a little light on Amani’s past. Anyway, what was there left to talk about? Patting each other on the back for a job well done?

“Uh, you did… pretty good back there, all things considered. You lived. And you got a shot in on the witch lady.” A shot which didn’t have much of an effect, unfortunately, but it still counted as a hit. “Not bad for a medic.”

Amani Serys​

 

[Amani Serys]

Starlin Rand

Amani raised a brow high, unsure of whether or not she should be insulted by the comment on her skills, “I’ve seen my fair share of fights,” she assured, “Field medics wouldn’t be all that useful if they couldn’t handle combat.” It’s also a lot easier when your opponent can’t throw you around using only their mind. Still, Amani was no warrior at heart.

“You seem like you have a lot of promise.” She acknowledged, shifting the conversation onto him, “Just keep up your training and you’ll be a knight in no time.” No, he had never told her his rank. But she could deduce that much.

“What will you do now?”