Allies | [member="Ara Zambrano"] | [member="Samka Derith"] | [member="Kayrce"] (nearby) |
Enemies | The Galactic Alliance | [member="Veino Garn"] | [member="Tanaski Yumi"] (?) | [member="Mishel Noren"] (?) |
Equipment | Armour | Lightsaber Pike |
Scenic wasn't the word that Elensa would have used to describe this awful place, though it was true that there was something primal about it, possessing a draw that beckoned one to let go of all civilised restraints and simply merge with the jungle. For is that not the true embodiment of the Dark?, she thought in silence, observing Samka with dispassionate eyes. My chains are broken. The Force shall free me. What is that, but to truly be oneself, free of all restraints? Yes...the lure of the darkness was stronger here than she had felt in a long time, and it would have been a thing of utter simplicity to surrender to it.
But it's also known that the things that are most seductive are those that can so easily corrupt you. That was ever the danger of the Dark Side: the double-edged sword which ever threatened those who practiced its arts. On the one hand, the power necessary to achieve any goal, to be free of every obligation and to walk no path but that of your own choosing. On the other...corruption and madness, as reason and inner balance gave way to the darkness, that destructive element that was but whimsy and impulsiveness given form. When one is wholly taken by the darkness, that which returns is but a pale shadow of what once existed, replaced only by wild instinct and destructive reflex.
Dagobah, it seemed, would be a far more dangerous world than she had suspected. The mere physical hazards were of little consequence to the darker fate that might await the mind.
Her attention drawn by the words of the diminutive Master, a person who looked more like a girl than a grown woman, and yet possessing the strength of something far more deadly than the snake that had curled around her body, Elensa shook herself from her reverie, focusing instead on the task at hand. The Ren prove themselves more suited to the Sith path by the moment, she thought solemnly, not for the first time. Her own Master had exhibited such tendencies before, and now this one did the same. Always testing, always pressuring, looking for the breaking points. It was part of what she admired about them, but also what she despised about them. As it should: love and hatred in equal measure, one set against the other in endless struggle, with power being the result of that tension.
She closed her eyes slowly, another sense lost to her for a moment as she reached out with the one that stemmed from her very core, touched by the energies all around them, one with a firm grip around her heart that refused to relinquish her. Ah, the power in this place. So tempting, so alluring...so lethal. And yet, where the Force existed, so too was there insight: knowledge of things that she would not have known simply from reading a book, or observing the landscape. Her mind's eyes showed her the swamp, heavy with moisture and close from the heat. It showed her the darkness snaking through the trees, permeating everything, a black mist that snaked through branches and penetrated roots. And, at the end of that stream of shadow...a cave, the mouth of it narrow and worn smooth, the within, nothing but impenetrable tenebrosity. The heart of the darkness.
Where else would they go? The Force, it seemed, wanted them there.
The pommel of her pike stabbing firmly into the ground before her, the young woman made her way over to the smaller Ren, reaching out with her free hand to make contact with the girl's forehead, the lightest of touches, pale fingers against warm flesh. Her thoughts coalesced, drawing upon what she had envisioned with her senses, and projected it to the more experienced Force User, hoping that she would see the same thing that Elensa now observed in her mind's eyes.
There, she confirmed, that single word echoing through her thoughts in a voice that rang through her mind in a lilting Hapan accent, carefully-accentuated in the way that she remembered her own voice once sounded, though older, less innocent, more weary of the world. Such is what she had become. Darkness gathers there. And before it, she sensed, bright lights that showed the presence of those who would stand between the Ren and that nexus - Jedi, perhaps, or those who had yet to embrace the truth that was the dark.
The Disciple lowered her hand, nodding towards Samka in a gesture that was intended to confirm her choice. Though their objectives here were undoubtedly to aid their forces in the removal of all hostiles from this planet, to claim it for the First Order...something told her that they first had to embrace the gathered darkness, and use it to cleanse this place of the Light. Only then can it be ours, an offering to the Supreme Leader, and the darkness over which he rules.