The Harrowing [Preliat]

[Sarge Potteiger]

There was a pause to the quaking of the earth, the colossus stopping it's somber march back into the dark from where it had come. Turning around slowly, he made his way back over, sinking to one knee into the mud alongside the bleeding figure. His sword tip was pushed into the muck, used as a prop to to help keep his weight up as his other arm rests over the kneecap of his massive armor.

"Not like what?" He asks, the static-voice now a whisper. "On your back? Bleeding? Beneath the light of a moon that isn't that of your homeworld?"

For once, emotion had crept into his voice, as though sickened by the request spoken to him. "You came here, believing yourself in control, and found that it was never yours to begin with - and now, when the reality of your failure has settled into your bones and swept through your mind before pooling beneath your body in this muck... now you ask the question you should have asked before this started.

Who is helping them, and why?"

There was a pause. "Before every battle, we have a duty to yourselves to prepare for all outcomes. It's an impossible task, of course - ambushes wouldn't exist were that the case - and yet, we can try. In doing so, you wind up where I am now, rather than where you find yourself.

You wish to be saved, yes? I will activate a distress beacon. I will even inject you with a coagulant that should slow your bleeding enough that you can survive the approximately four minutes until help would arrive. Yes, I had planned for an eventuality like this, though I had assumed it would be to save one of my own.

Tell me, Preliat, before I take my leave... when your world came crashing down around you, why did you let it crush your spirit?"

[member="Preliat Mantis"]

 

[Preliat Mantis]

That beacon wasn't going to send his people. It was going to send this man's people. Whoever he was really with. He was damn sure it wasn't going to be the First Order- as much as Preliat would like to have seen a contingent of stormtroopers coming towards him.

He thought on his answer for a long while. His eyes left the figure of the man to face the sky again.

"My world came down long before the ash did."

Tears began to well in Preliat's eyes. His sins were catching up to him. If he was better prepared for the fight- better equipped, he might've fared better. If he were perhaps, also, younger. But these were only possibilities. So, he fell silent again- and waited for whatever outcome came.

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Sarge was in no hurry. He'd seen worse injuries last longer, but just to be safe, he adjusted the set of his gauntlet. A small syringe came from a bump on his left forearm, and he slid it down into one of the areas where fat was usually stored around the waist. It would help stem the bleeding, at least a little.

That wasn't saying a whole lot, all told, but it'd buy him a few more minutes. The armored behemoth remained leaning on his sword, still without a care in the world.

"Aye, that's what we all think." He says, having been in that exact situation at one point in time. Perhaps not exactly, but analogous enough that he could say something like that and mean it. And he did. To him it may as well have been gospel. A broken heart was a fickle thing, but it was one he knew quite intimately.

"The way I see it, you have two options. You die here, or I save you. And if I save you, that means you're going to go back to the First Order and continue killing innocent people. If not you, then you'll be party to it. I'm not going to argue the benefits of government with you - you're dying, after all - but I will say that it would be a fool move to save someone so clearly important to one of my myriad foes.

That would necessitate that you die, of course. The other option is that you live, and I either have to trust you to give up your ways, or I have to force you to work with me. Neither are particularly palatable.

So I'll pose another question - for someone who so clearly wishes he were dead, why do you not wish to die?"

[member="Preliat Mantis"]

 

[Preliat Mantis]

He could've mustered the last of his strength to stab him in the neck with the knife. The metal would've cut through his armor like butter. He asked a question, after speaking for a while. Preliat had to think on his answer, and came to an unfortunate conclusion.

"I don't know."

Preliat never touched an innocent- he'd done horrible things, but warfare, and everyone he killed, wasn't innocent. Not entirely. The First Order had simply given him purpose and a place to be. His favoritism and loyalty to them was waning- that much was obvious to anyone watching him. As much as he liked to think of someone subjugating him, this man couldn't make Preliat work with him. But- there was a chance that Preliat could be convinced.

"I think I was waiting for it to get better."

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

There was another static-laden chortle at his words. "It will only get better once you change your circumstances, or accept them." On the horizon, a low rumble was heard, steady and growing in intensity. "Perhaps you should look to walk another path instead of staying on the one that so clearly does little for your...." there was a pause as he seemed to cycle through words in his head, "...wellbeing."

Pushing himself up, chains rattling around his wrist, he held the blade low, point towards the ground as he watched the man beneath him. If he'd had any inkling that the wounded man had thought of trying to kill him, he made no display of recognition.

Mostly because Sarge was the rare Force User who couldn't sense or use telepathy. "That would be your ride." He remarks.

"It was good speaking with you, Preliat." Sarge smirked beneath his helmet, pulling his cloak around him until only his lenses were visible beneath a cowl that flickered as it attempted to maintain the appearance of the sky. "Until we meet again, no?"

His hand went down to his waist, and he plucked a small chunk of metal from a pouch, dropping it onto Preliat's chest. It was a fragment of the bolter the mercenary had destroyed, and it, like all weapons Sarge used, was imbued with a modicum of Force Light - enough to ferret out Dark Siders and generally prevent them from using his own weapon against him, should he somehow be disarmed. With that, he turned, even as a First Order dropship appeared over the horizon, taking it's time now that it was clearly in what it presumed was a still active AO.

[member="Preliat Mantis"]