Private The Witch of Endor

[Maeve Linahan]

Maeve did her very best to listen to Faye as the storm continued to batter them, rain and saltwater lashing at her skin. She had arrived at the planet with little gear, and while escaping her sinking vessel, she'd had to discard her usual Jedi robes, forced instead to carry herself around in a simple, white robe, and because of that, she felt even more exposed to the elements, to the biting cold and the harsh downpour. She hated it.

As for Faye's story, for now, she bought it. Historians and Core World museums prized Imperial-era artifacts, and it was perfectly reasonable they'd send someone to scout the wreckage of one of their greatest artifacts period—the Second Death Star, the site marking the beginning of the end for the Empire.

Maeve was not too familiar with the locals or their hostility to outsiders, but it seemed to correlate with her own experience while entering the planet's atmosphere. Minutes into her descent, her interceptor had been attacked, struck by a wayward missile. Why they hadn't at least tried hailing her or having a dialogue first, she still had no idea. There were mysteries here yet to be uncovered.

Maeve shouldered through the next wave with a little help from the Force. When they overcame the crest, she saw it—a stretch of the superweapon's remnants leading inside, a shore for them to rest on, and they were heading right towards it.

"We're coming up to the ruins!" she replied to Faye, casting a glance over her shoulder. "If we can't find ourselves a salvageable ship here, we can at least find some shelter." She steadied herself on the platform. "Just be ready for a rough landing."

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

The landing was indeed rough.

The ocean didn't so much bash them into the wreckage, as Vyle had expected. The water dipped, their raft sinking below a thick panel of sheet metal jutting down into the water, before lurching back upward. The sudden loss of her gravity sent Vyle scrambling through dead air. She reached for solid objects that weren't there moments before crashing into the hard surface of the Death Star.

The Force of the blow staggered her, and, as she fought to rise again, the slick surface of the wreckage nearly brought her back to her knees. She had to spread her stance to maintain her balance. The platform the ocean had vomited the two women out onto was as unstable as everything else in the rough waters. Despite its immensity, it dipped and swayed, groaning as it did. Every wave brought a new spray of salt water, and that didn't even take into account the rain that persisted, and had even seemed to worsen.

If I never see water again, Vyle thought. I'll be too soon.

She searched for Maeve amidst the thunder blasts. Locating her locks of golden hair first, Vyle trudged carefully across the slick surface and reached a hand out to help her up—hoping that the slippery metal wouldn't send them both back into the ocean for a second round. "If we want to find a ship," she cried out above the noise all around them. "We'll need to go there!"

She pointed to a spot about half-way down the Death Star's spherical super structure. A cavernous gash that had once been its equatorial hangar trench stood out like a slit throat on a bloated corpse, just above the water. When the waves rose, it was actually taken under the surface, only to gush saltwater back into the sea as the tide receded.

"If you've got any Jedi tricks to get us over there, now's the time," Vyle added.

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

"I know!" Maeve answered over the roar of waves and thunder. The storm was worsening as night ravaged the sea, and they had no time to idle or catch their breath after finally greeting land. They had to move, or risk the tide pulling them back out to the dark waters.

So, as she had before, Maeve took her hand and rose.

Stumbling down their little stretch of land, she spotted the Death Star's equatorial trench run Faye had pointed out, bobbing up and down in the water. Hangars. Dozens of them. Although ruined and flooded with water, there was still a chance one of them might contain a ship, maybe a TIE fighter either of them could squeeze into.

The odds were small, but better that than waiting for a rescue team.

Maeve wiped the water and clammy hair from her face, lifting her eyes ahead. "No tricks," she told Faye. "Just timing." She pulled one leg back, counting the seconds in her head. One, two, three, four—the tide moved in and out of the trench run as she did, a steady rhythm she committed to memory. Then, without hesitation, she shouted, "Now!"

Maeve took off, sprinting down the wreckage as the waves pulled back. She prayed Faye was not too drained of strength, but she'd slain a monster and survived an entire hour out on those waters. She could do this, too.

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

Vyle had pockets of stamina hidden away for moments such as this. She could not use her magick to enhance her speed or endurance as she normally would, but a burst of energy could easily be explained away as adrenaline. So, as Maeve took off at a sprint, so too did Vyle.

The slick surface of the Death Star's ruins made the venture treacherous. Without the Shadow to weld her feet to its surface, she sometimes had to brace herself on all-fours to keep from sliding off into the violent water again. Once, she caught herself on the remains of a turret, only to cut her hand on a jagged piece of metal.

Still, she persisted.

With one final heave against the wishes of her burning, protesting thighs, she pushed into one of the hangars before the trench could dip back underwater. It was massive. In its heyday, the hangar could have easily held two Imperial-class Star Destroyers side-by-side. Even when the trench dipped again, only the floors became coated in seawater. There was a chance. The problem was, the space was too dark to see. Most of the TIE racks were empty, but that didn't mean all of them were.

"How much light does that laser sword of yours pack?" Darth Vyle asked. For once, she was glad not to be using her Sith lightsaber. The red glow would not help them in these dark corridors. "There should be more TIE racks at the back, higher up, and unlikely to have gotten wet. So long as they haven't been looted, there may be one or two left."

But there was no assurance they would work. Hundreds of years likely meant they didn't—and Vyle had to think of what she would do if that were the case. Her magick could restart them, but not without revealing herself to the Jedi...

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

Maeve sprinted down the wreckage. It was astonishing she still had the strength and stamina left to continue on without a moment's rest, but for Faye? That was short of miraculous. Although the woman fell and struggled through the spray of water and over perilously slick steel, she persevered. Maeve would've thought she had to pick her up or offer her a hand, but she made it across just as swiftly as an untrained Jedi might.

Panting heavily, saltwater pooling at her feet, Maeve turned back to Faye, not unaware of the cut she'd received on her hand. "Are you alright?"

The tide rose to her ankles and she backed farther into the hangar, beckoning the woman along. The gash wasn't too deep, and if they'd managed to find a spare ship, she might be able to help clean and bandage it up before infection set in.

Wandering in, Maeve raised her lightsaber high and switched the ignition, casting the entire chamber in an icy blue light, peeling away the dark. "This should be enough to guide us ahead. Just stay behind me. There's no telling what other creatures might be lurking in the wreckage of this place." She searched the shadows. "Do you not have any weapons of your own? The serpent we fought before may not be the only beast we face."

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

"So you mentioned," Darth Vyle replied dryly. "Unfortunately, I didn't come here to butcher the local fauna. Though, if I had known the locals would shoot down my ship, I might have brought a bit of firepower."

In truth, her lightsaber was not far away. It was bound to the ichor that she used as a catalyst for her magick. With a simple incantation, she could pull the weapon out of thin air and red smoke. But she would rather not — even if the Jedi found out who and what she was. Her magick was a more potent weapon, and much less predictable.

Though every instinct in her mind screamed that she should chastise the Jedi for thinking she needed protection, Vyle did as Maeve commanded and stayed behind her, using the light of the Jedi's lightsaber to scan the walls. Further back, they saw their first sign of machinery—and it was not promising. Three TIE fighters and one TIE interceptor were docked higher up in the bay. One was flat out unusable, in no small part due to the rusting hole in its spherical cockpit. The other two ships might be workable, but the discoloration of their. metal and their damp hulls likewise dampened Vyle's hopes.

"Those two," she said, pointing to the two ships with no outward signs of wear. "They're our best hope. Do you have any experience repairing TIEs?"

Once more, Vyle cursed that a Jedi had also crashed onto this world. A spell would put the hulls of these ships in order and at least get her to the nearest Sith outpost. But she couldn't risk that now. Maeve struck her as the type of self-righteous Jedi who would sacrifice her one chance off-world if she could eliminate a Sith life.

She was just about to ask for Maeve's help ascending to the TIEs when an anomaly caught her gaze.

A shadow, at first. But as she squinted, she noticed a body sprawled on the floor of the hangar, just below the flight control tower. Only, this was not an ancient Imperial's long-decayed skeleton. This was fresh, bloated from its time in the water. Vyle said nothing as she took a few steps closer to get a better look, leaving Maeve advancing on her own towards the TIEs. The one on her question on her mind a simple one:

If this corpse is fresh, who or what put it here?

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

"I'm not much of a repair technician, unfortunately."

Although she wouldn't admit it, Maeve was not much of a pilot either. Ships in general were not her strongest suit. Lightsabers were, and killing Sith. She rarely wasted her time figuring out the intricacies of starship machinery or maintenance, instead leaving it to the repair droids back at the temple. She only prayed Faye had an idea of what to do, or if the fighters still functioned on their own.

Judging by the rust splashed across their hulls, she wasn't so sure.

"Give me a moment. I'll take a closer look and see what I can do." Maeve raised her lightsaber, casting out the shadows creeping in around them, and proceeded towards the closest hanging TIE. So focused on her chance to escape, she failed to catch the floating body in the water, thinking it just some old Imperial corpse, whereas Faye neared it for inspection.

She ascended a staircase leading up the side of the hangar to where she could board the TIE fighter, only the sound of lapping water at her back. The closer she came, the stranger the sensation. She felt ripples of warning in the Force, but ignored them, approaching the ship until she was right at its side.

"Faye?" she called, looking back over her shoulder to check on the other woman. The second she did, something rose from the fighter.

A massive, spider-limbed creature with blades for legs and eyes beyond counting emerged from the TIE where it had made its nest. The creature moved and snapped toward her in a fluid motion, fangs bared. She staggered back in shock. Though not as large as the serpent, this monstrosity was twice as terrifying and guided by an unnatural speed, soaring up the wall.

"Faye!" she called, keeping it short. "Company!"

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

Vyle sensed it too.

The carnal intentions of creatures were always more clear to those who practiced the dark side. The rippling was... hunger. The desire to rip flesh from bone. When the creature emerged. She recognized it at once: the knobby white spider, a species found all over the galaxy, particularly on her homeworld of Dathomir. Though, she had never heard of an aquatic variant.

The eight-legged freak lunged for her and it was all she could do to throw herself out of its path, forcing it to crash into some rusting crates on the other side of the hangar. In doing so, she had unwittingly thrown herself near the bloated corpse she had noticed just moments earlier; which was when she noticed something she hadn't before.

A smaller creature emerged from the corpse's mouth. Then another. Then another. From the nearby walls came yet more, pouring out of tiny white egg sacks that she hadn't noticed, because they had been hidden by shadow. "Fuck."

The spiderlings poured over the hangar like a horde and Vyle made a beeline for one of the service ladders near a second rack of TIE fighters. Meanwhile, the larger spider which clearly was their mother, had remembered Maeve and made a lunge for the Jedi. Perhaps it thought to try them both, figuring it would have a meal either way.

Vyle had to kick off several of its larger children as she sank into the cockpit of one of the rusted TIEs, sealing the ball shut behind her. She began to smash the controls randomly in an attempt to turn the ship on, but it was unresponsive.

She knew what she needed to do. And so, sucking in a breath, she did it.

A spark of magick traveled from her fingertip into the cockpit controls. It would only be a flicker of darkness — and she wasn't sure Maeve would sense it in the chaos — but it would bring the ship online, using the ichor as fuel.

When the weapon systems came online, she didn't even bother aiming. She just pointed for the throng of arachnids and fired blindly into them. The only good spider was a dead one.

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

Maeve watched in horror as the spider lunged for Faye, threatening to bite her head clean from her shoulders. Fortunately, the woman was as quick as she was cunning, and she leapt out of its path, crashing into the rising tide. Maeve considered running after her in hopes of fending off the creature, but she felt something brush against her heel. One look down, and she saw it. Them. Tiny, bone-white spiders flooding out of the ruined TIE fighter.

Now, Maeve feared nothing, but at that sight? She nearly cried out.

Bringing her lightsaber down in a furious rage, she burned through a cluster of the spiders, rendering them to ash in a moment. More continued to sweep in, one even climbing the side of her leg, but she used her other hand and the Force to cast it aside, tossing it into the waves. She roared angrily. Panic and fury coursed through every fiber of her being.

When she spun and saw the larger spider coming at her, then it was just panic.

Maeve jumped from the service stairs. An instant later, the mother-spider slammed against the ruined TIE, nearly throwing it off its rack. But it was terribly fast, and as she landed on the ground level, water pooling at her ankles, the creature gave chase, fangs bared. Maeve raised her lightsaber defensively. If it was a fight it wanted, a fight it would get.

As the spider-mother descended onto her, laser bolts shrieked across the hangar at the same time. An explosion ripped into the walls, destroying and scattering countless of the creature's children. Almost like it could feel their deaths, the mother shrieked in rage, and before it could clash at Maeve, it turned and charged right for Faye instead.

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

Darth Vyle was a fool to think the meager power she'd supplied her TIE fighter would be enough to extinguish the horde. The bursts of laser fire she had rained on them had extinguished it at once, leaving her with only two options. Hope the Jedi could save her, or reveal her dark power.

She had more or less sized Maeve up by now. The Jedi Knight was powerful, perhaps even one of the strongest she had met to date. Yet if push came to shove, Vyle was certain she could at least drive the Jedi off, if not win outright. After all, Maeve had been using her powers all along, and doing most of the fighting, while Vyle was still fresh. A full blown fight with a Sith Knight was unlikely to end well for her.

So, why not let her expend more energy?

With the last shot out of her cannons, Vyle crippled one of the large spider's legs. The creature shrieked, but staggered forward undeterred. Its injury slowed its crawl, crippling its ability to crush the TIE outright. Still, it attacked, and Vyle shook violently at the cockpit access hatch, attempting to appear desperate to escape. Desperation was oh-so-effective at prodding the weak Jedi heart; but she pounded harder at the hatch for good measure.

Meanwhile, outside, the spider queen was making good on her attack on the TIE's view port. Already, the transparisteel was cracking, splintering into shapes resembling her web. Vyle could only keep this game up for so long before she would be forced to act.

Come on, Jedi, she thought. Let's see what you can do.

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

It had been a miracle that Faye had managed to salvage a working TIE fighter amid the wreckage, blasting her way through the swarm of spiders they'd summoned from the hangar's cracks, but Maeve should've known their luck would run out. As the spider-mother focused on Faye's position, the fighter sputtered and died as quickly as it'd been activated, leaving her helpless against a wrathful, starving nightmare.

If her goal was to tug Maeve's heartstrings, it wouldn't work. But in motivating her Jedi instincts to act? The scene was more than enough.

"Hold on!" Maeve cried, brandishing her saber as she charged for the broken TIE. Although the swarm of smaller spiders had been considerably thinned, those that remained still tried to stand in her way, tiny fangs bared. She wasn't afraid. For those that didn't shrink back at the light of her blade, Maeve slashed and burned through the rest. Like mowing a field, she cut a path to Faye and the spider queen.

Little time was left. The creature, already in a rage, slammed again into the TIE's view port, opening a hole in the glass. The cockpit was giving way, and given a few more seconds, the spider queen would plunge inside and tear Faye to shreds.

But Maeve would never give the queen a chance.

Just as the queen shoved its face into the cockpit, countless eyes blinking and venom spewing from its mandibles, the Jedi would lunge high, and with her lightsaber raised, she'd come down like a thunderbolt, severing its head in a clean slash, and as a result, slopping Faye in thick, sickly green spider blood.

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

For a long, pregnant moment, Darth Vyle allowed herself to breathe.

Her face and body were covered in the slimy excrement the foul creature had unloaded; but she was alive. They both were. When it felt natural, she kicked the sagged corpse of the spider mother away from the hole she had cracked in the cockpit of the TIE fighter, and leaned out to get a better view of the carnage. She picked a strand of hair out of her face.

"Spiders can swim now," she remarked, all the sarcasm in her voice now drier than the seabeds of Tatooine. "The number of planets I can safely visit has just dramatically decreased." She threw a sidelong glance at Maeve, the effort of her strenuous attacks evident without any need to touch the Force. "Are you alright?"

Vyle was curious what other horrors had made their nests in the superstructure since Sidious' defeat. The dark aura of his first death would certainly have left a stain, drawing all manner of twisted, loathsome creatures.

And spiders would be far from the worst.

Across the hangar, the two TIEs Maeve had gone to investigate still looked intact; but looks were hardly anything to go by. "Did you get a good look at the ones on your side?" Vyle asked. "I don't think we should toil much longer, lest we find out what else came to snack on the Emperor's death."

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

"I'm fine," Maeve replied, then looked Faye up and down, not unaware of the slimy blood dripping from her face and scarlet hair. "The real question is, are you?"

They'd both gone through another horrible ordeal. First, a sea threatening to drown them, then a serpent hoping for a meal, followed by a raging storm and now, a swarm of water-wading spiders? The day could not have been worse. And yet, as Maeve looked around the hollow belly of the Death Star, only the sound of lapping waves and skittering spiders greeted her, that eerie silence she never liked.

Just what other nightmares lurked in these ruins?

Maeve turned back to the remaining TIE fighters across the hangar. "No point bothering to check again. That spider queen had nested into the first ship, so those controls are shot. The engines on the second are also rusted to bone." She patted the hull of the fighter Faye had managed to get working. "None of the ships are usable. They might have some fuel left, but not enough to get us both off-world."

She descended the service ladder, holstering her lightsaber. A bitter sigh escaped her lips as she stared on to the dark corridor leading deeper into the ruined orbital station. "We may have to venture further in to find us a ship worth our time. I just pray these spiders—" She crushed one of the tiny, scurrying things under her heel, "—are the last survivors we find."

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

"Right," Vyle said, the word coming out more as a breath than something with vowels and consonants. "Well, I suppose there's no use in complaining about it. Got to get off this planet somehow."

She climbed down the service ladder to the floor of the hangar, itself awash in spider blood. She pretended to tip-toe over the their ruined and scattered chitinous limbs, eventually coming to a set of double-doors leading deeper into the superstructure. The Second Death Star was moon sized. There had to be another hangar with more intact ships.

The mechanism to control the door had long since eroded, leaving Vyle to flex her muscles and shove them open one side at a time. "Must be particularly weird for a Jedi to come here," she remarked as she worked. "The old stories say your Order was reborn here. Luke Skywalker." She snorted. "That's how you know it's a myth. I mean, who even has a name like that?" She paused, feigning the realization that she might have given offense. "No offense intended, of course."

Once the door had creaked open, she stepped inside and looked up at a seemingly endless turbolift shaft of twisted metal beams and sheered iron bars. The level above was the most likely place to resume their search, but it was going to be a bit of a climb. Not for the first time, Vyle wished she could use her magick to just float her up there.

"Well, I've climbed old Star Destroyers before," she said, seemingly to herself. "How different can this be? Only," She took a step back and beamed at Maeve. "Maybe you should be in front. If another one of those things is nesting up there, your lightsaber is going to be a lot more use than me—" She shrugged to make a point that she wasn't armed "—and my nothing."

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

"I'll take lead, but don't count yourself out, Faye. You and your 'nothing' has gotten you this far, and you've killed your fair share of monsters this day."

She had successfully driven a stake through the serpent's heart and blasted the majority of the spider queen's children to ash with nothing more than her wit and swift thinking. Faye was stronger than she realized. Stronger than Maeve had ever thought possible for an ordinary woman. While that may have been cause for suspicion, she felt no strangeness about her yet.

Perhaps it was because she was too focused on ahead, then behind.

Moving through the dark corridor of the station, her lightsaber the only guiding light they had, she took particular care of checking each corner, her Firrerreo vision cutting through the shadows with heavy caution.

"No offense taken, by the way," Maeve said in answer to her earlier remark. "We Jedi honor and respect the Skywalker legacy, but I understand some may find his existence hard to believe. He was the greatest of us. Barely a man, and he'd ended a decades-long reign of terror and struck down the most vile Sith of our time."

Palpatine, the shadow of the millennium.

"But believe it or not, the stories are true. He was real, and you can feel it in these ruins around us." As she went on, the corridor eventually widened into a vast antechamber of networking bridges and columns, the inner layer of the station. Upon seeing a stairwell, Maeve began to climb. "What have you heard about this place?"

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

"Where do I even start?" Vyle said, noticing that Maeve had decided not to climb but to push ahead. Since the Jedi was in tune with the Force in a way Vyle couldn't risk, she decided not to protest too much and follow obediently. "Everyone in the guild says no one should come within a league of this place, and the locals shoot down everyone who gets near it, as we've both experienced firsthand. So, let's just say I haven't heard good things about the ruins." She feigned a smile. "Still, money is money, am I right?"

From the stairwell, they came to a tighter corridor that Vyle recognized as the service shaft just outside the command tower in the upper hangar. Much of the floor had collapsed due to erosion, and there was water leaking in from somewhere above. It was only then that Vyle realized they could not rule out entire chambers flooding. The structure was being pounded by waves the size of starships, after all.

"Then again," she continued, not wanting to lapse into silence. "You Jedi don't have much need for credits, do you?" She stepped over a rusting beam, and tried at a door to no avail. "I've only seen it in holos, but the Jedi Temple on Coruscant certainly looks... well-supplied? I suppose that's where you're from?"

At the end of the corridor, Vyle came to a sudden stop. There was more evidence of spiders here. Hatched eggs, old webbing. One's severed head. Only this one wasn't done by a lightsaber. This head looked to have been gnawed off.

"I don't mean to alarm you," Vyle practically whispered. "But you should probably check this out. I don't think spiders are the only thing sharing this space with us."

Or, at least, Vyle thought, it wasn't the only type of spider around. Either way, it was advantageous. The more tired the Jedi woman was, the easier she would be to deal with when she had expended her usefulness.

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

"I hope you do not mean to imply we Jedi live in a palace," Maeve said, perhaps a bit too harshly, though she was far from angered by the woman's remarks. She had just heard this tired notion too much in her travels, and at least this time she could correct it. "The temple is large, yes, but we Jedi swear off materialism. Those sorts of attachments lead to greed and darkness."

She did not say so to Faye, but Shadows lived in even less opulence than their ordinary Jedi companions. The name 'Jedi Shadow' was not just a moniker that hinted at their enigmatic work. A good Shadow lived and breathed the dark places of the galaxy. Those places were as much a part of the Shadow as the Light itself. It wasn't glamorous living, but Maeve would have chosen no other life.

At Faye's insistence, she knelt to examine the carnage the scavenger woman had discovered. Hatched eggs, a severed head. What in the Force ate spiders this large? Could they possibly have a natural predator? Or did Palpatine's stane create Sithspawn?

"These ruins are steeped in darkness left over from Palpatine's evil," the Jedi said. She knew what she had to say next would not be to her companion's liking, but it needed to be said nonetheless.

"I cannot ignore what the Force is trying to show me. I need to find the source of this evil before it spreads to the mainland and endangers the natives of this moon. That means climbing to the old throne room. You can either come with me, or stay down here and wait for my return."

She nodded to the severed spider head and the hatched eggs. "Just be on the lookout if you decide to stay. There's likely more of those around."

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

The self-righteousness of the Jedi knew no bounds—nor did their foolishness, their willingness to debase themselves. The denizens of Kef Bir had shot Maeve out of the sky and here she was suggesting that she had a duty to help them. To save them from the darkness of the Death Star.

Darth Vyle was exasperated enough to nearly take Maeve up on her offer and stay behind. Once the Jedi was high enough in the superstructure, the witch could use her magic to restart one of the TIE fighters and leave her behind. That was the smart thing to do.

But not the most opportunistic.

There was now proof that the echoes of power Darth Sidious had left behind was generating Sithspawn. As a Sith in her own right, Vyle could seize control of these creatures to seek revenge on the moon's inhabitants and even rid her of the Jedi. She would be a fool to let this woman expunge them. So, as Faye, she said, "I'm not really one to stay behind and keep spiders company, if it's all the same to you. So, I guess we're climbing."

So, climb they did.

It was a treacherous proposition. The throne room was ten or twelve stories above them, for one; and erosion had made some of the metal structure jagged and sharp. She had to move carefully to prevent cutting her hand open on her own handholds. Yet even then, the worst challenge was the water. Every inch of the structure was wet and slippery, making it an arduous task to climb. More than once, Vyle slipped and nearly fell in ways she wouldn't have if she had to Force.

If she used her magick, she could just fly. A frustrated thought Faye echoed for her. "Couldn't you just fly?" she grunted. "You Jedi are supposed to be super-powered right? Why can't you just fly us up there?"

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

Maeve would never admit it, but she was grateful when Faye decided to accompany her up to Palpatine's supposed throne room. She feared nothing, but this place reeked of the Dark Side and there was no telling to expect. She was glad not to be alone. Both for the destination, and their journey.

A journey that, honestly, lasted way longer than she'd hoped.

"I suppose I could jump, and I also suppose I could carry you aloft with the Force. But that would require a lot more energy than I care to use right now, and my reserves are already dangerously low." Between surviving on serpent-infested waters and against a swarm of venomous spiders, Maeve felt she was going to need all the strength she had for whatever laid ahead. Just who knew what other terrible things lurked in these halls?

"Come on. You withstood an hour on the sea and slayed a monster. The Force has clearly taken favor with you. I think you can climb a few more stories. We've already gone this far." Maeve continued to grapple up the enormous structure. To be fair, she was feeling exhaustion weigh heavy on her already, and part of her wished she took up Faye's suggestion on flying.

But she had to stay strong. She had to stay ready.

Grasping hold onto a jutting piece of steel, Maeve looked down and offered the woman her hand again. "We're nearly there. You can do this."

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

Darth Vyle heard nothing after the words My reserves are already dangerously low.

Well, she did; but she fixated on those words above the others. The Jedi was getting tired. She had already used up a great deal of her power in the fights below, the rest of it in the waves, or on the climb. Unlike Vyle, she was not hiding the better majority of her strength. And that meant she was fast growing vulnerable. Weak. An opening would soon present itself.

Vyle tugged her consciousness back to the present and refocused on the task ahead. She fixed on a comment made by Maeve. "Really?" she said, an octave too chipper. "You think the Force has favored me? I don't think anyone's ever told me that before." Hand over hand, she reached for the next hold and pushed herself up. "Wait, does that mean you think I could be a Jedi someday? Move things with my mind a swing around one of those fancy laser swords you all carry around?"

About that time, they reached the end of their journey, Maeve stretching out a hand to haul Vyle upward. She took the Jedi's hand and let her use her strength to pull her onto the metal platform. It was hard to believe they had climbed so far. The place where they had started was completely out of sight when the disguised witch peered over the edge to check.

But then she turned and looked through an eroded metal archway and saw it.

She felt it first, truly; but seeing it brought another wave of coldness over her. The throne of Darth Sidious. They were in what had once been the topmost spire of the Second Death Star. The place where the last Darth Lords of the Sith had ruled the galaxy. The place where they had finally fell. "So, this is where it happened?" she asked absentmindedly. She had never really been starstruck, but this was a close feeling. "Where Luke Skywalker vanquished the Emperor and his top enforcer?"

Maeve Linahan​

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