Adamant Like Corusca

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

OOC context: The Alliance invasion thread of Coruscant has ended, and a winner hasn't been decided, but it looks like a probable Alliance victory.

[member="Darron Wraith"]


CORUSCANT

The more she tried to remember, the more the past few days were a blur. The Galactic Alliance had invaded Coruscant. Mara had led a strike team of Jedi Masters on a long, brutal climb up from the undercity to the so-called Valley of the Dark Lords where the Jedi Temple had once stood. Darron Wraith had once used the same route to slide down from the Jedi Temple to a secret holocron vault, where her father had found him on Je'gan Olra'en's orders. Olra'en was long gone, Jorus was far from the canny swoop pilot he'd been at the time, and Darron Wraith was largely legend. But Jorus had passed word to his daughter: Wraith was alive, and he was fighting on Coruscant. Not under the Galactic Alliance banner, just a Jedi coming home.

Jorus had connected them, two warriors trying to root out the last of the Sith. Mara, after leading the strike team to the Valley, had joined her powers with a number of Jedi and used the fabled Ankarres Sapphire to cleanse the Force nexus, one of the strongest in the galaxy. She'd rested all she could since then, but now another task demanded as much power as she could muster. And, unfortunately, more. That was where the retired Grandmaster came in.

She'd holed up in a blaster-pocked Sith temple, one of several small temples that lined the Valley of Dark Lords. From here she could look down into the undercity, or out across the Valley, or off toward edifices of Sith administrative power. Wherever she looked, the last dregs of the fighting continued, barely-visible sparks of blades and gunfire.

In a stone room near the temple's apex, she'd set up an array of Force crystals of various types, all adamantly Light Side, doing to this part of the Valley what she'd done to the nexus below. She meditated here, trying to draw refreshment and endurance from the purified Force.

 

[Darron Wraith]

Coruscant​

Wraith may have been ageless, appearance-wise, but his body felt thoroughly ancient. Kryptus’ experiments on top of the carbonite freezing had left him immune to the passing of years. His soul battered by everything he had seen and done had left him playing Jedi Guardian in the shadows. The days of him taking titles, leading armies, or even voicing his opinion in galactic matters had long faded. Whether it was shame, a sense of failure, or just fatigue from seeing how the galaxy wouldn’t just stay in order; Wraith had just become aloof from the matters of the galaxy. Doing good where he could, in a quiet manner, had helped cleanse his soul. That approach had also allowed him to stay away from the larger conflicts, mainly due to distrust of the Jedi at large.

Saving Coruscant, that was something he couldn’t avoid.

Copper laced his lips, Darron didn’t know if the blood had come from biting his own tongue or from the various impacts he had sustained to his skull. Blood matted his shoulder-length hair, most of it not his own. Exposions in the distance made his head throb, and his eyes were just a little too sensitive to light. Low-level concussion aside, he had managed to avoid harm during the assault save for bits of shrapnel and bruising over his body from all the fighting. On the belt of his signature armor, hung the lightsaber of Mace Windu, the very artifact he had taken with him the last time he was on Coruscant.

We’re barely even a mile away from the temple remnants, he mused as he turned around to look at what [member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"] was up to. During the assault, he had stayed close to her upon urging from Jorus. Silence had been their dialogue of choice during the battle, but he couldn’t keep it up. His entire body was humming, his one flaw. Violence attracted violence, and Wraith wanted to be in combat, to use the very darkness within himself. Yet, they were looking at crystals, something he knew nothing about.

“The fighting is finally dying down, but I don’t think we will be safe for long.” Darron had seen these things go south when one side knew they had lost, that was when individuals became most desperate.

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Darron Wraith"]

"Then we'll have to get in as much work as we can, and keep our weapons close at hand."

Mara tore her gaze away from the crystal assembly and glanced at the big blonde man. She'd grown up on stories of Darron Wraith. Warriors tended to set her on edge, and this one more than most. Her birth mother had come from a powerfully empathic species, and Mara had devoted a good chunk of her time to figuring out the empathic senses she'd inherited. Wraith felt unique. That was Vaapad, she knew, a Vaapad practitioner coming from a fight and aching to get back out there. But under control, firmly and cleanly, or he'd never have come here, away from the fight.

She set her lightfoil and her scattergun beside the crystal assembly. All her heavier weapons had stayed behind, along with the tough longcoat she preferred. Instead, she wore an old Iron Skin armourweave bodysuit, suitable for the long climb a couple of days back. Since running around in armoured spandex was more a Silver Sanctum thing than a Kilian Ranger thing, she'd also grabbed some random dead Sith's black cloak and wrapped it around herself for a touch of modesty.

"This is a derivative of the Ankarres Sapphire. It's for purification. The Force passes through, and the Dark Side gets leached away. Now, I've done my reading, I grew up with the Great Holocron -- I know how Vaapad works, the superconducting loop, all of it. There's still a taint woven into the Force around here, even though we cleansed most of the nexus. If you set up a superconducting loop with the contaminated ambient Force, and channel that energy through this crystal assembly, it ought to strip the Dark Side away and accelerate the cleansing process. And we can start cleaning the Sith filth out of Coruscant.

"Of course, it'll also get a lot of attention. This area's only mostly under Alliance control."

 

[Darron Wraith]

Vaapad, it was at the core of him, no matter how far away he ran. Mara’s every word ran through his mind, but he didn’t even emote. That was the price one paid, you never truly could experience things if you were constantly vigilant on releasing said emotion, or holding them at bay. Decades ago he was being trained in the ways of diplomacy, but life and the will of the Force had molded him into something else. Hands built to help with orating, and brokering negotiations were now weapons. His mind, always thinking, had become the focusing agent with which he carried out all of his deeds and fought back against the darkness. Events beyond his control had made him the way he was, because he didn’t fold, he endured and kept going forth. Through it all, he had found the one thing he loved almost as much as duty.

Combat, Wraith loved to fight.

Every muscle in his body involuntarily would flex after every blaster shot, and his skeleton practically was vibrating with that hunger. His calm exterior was the sum of years of control, all of his focus on keeping that urge in. “So, in layman's terms,” he began as he approached the crystals. Their lightside energy washing over him, pushing away the fatigue that was threatening to set in. “You want me to be the catalyst to help push this along.” Pointing towards the crystals, he noted that their alignment must be for a particular reason. “I’m going to have to open the loop and channel it through?” The Jedi Master didn’t mean to sound thick, he understood her plan. There was just a small item that needed to be addressed.

Because the moment he opened the loop and let his aura show, they were going to attract attention. Turning to Mara, he finally opened his palms and raised his hands while explaining Vaapad, seamlessly turning into a combat and philosophy instructor on the battlefield.

“Vaapad is about using your own innate aggressiveness and lust for battle as a tool, you are fighting fire with fire, or rather darkness with your own darkness. So you are correct in that I can form a loop with the crystals, with myself and them forming the connecting points.” Wraith looked back at them, his expression growing inquisitive. “I can pull the darkness in through them, but where do I unleash my own darkness with that of the surrounding areas?”

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Darron Wraith"]

"Pour it back into the nexus. The nexus tends to take...its character from those who use it. Impressions of personalities, you could say. Worst-case scenario, instead of the memory of mass sacrificial rituals and alchemical perversions, the nexus acquires a Vaapad master's...proactiveness. Willingness to root out what nastiness is left. Eventually, the crystal armature will cause negative feedback and diminishing returns, but by then we should have roiled and filtered the waters enough to really solidify the cleanup. Between those diminishing returns and the attention we're about to draw, I'm aiming for maximum impact as quickly as possible, because we're working with limited time." She leaned over her shotgun and adjusted the angle on one of the crystals.

"On the plus side, though," she added after a moment's fiddling with the armature, "we're almost at the apex of a pyramidal Sith temple, the kind patterned after the old ones that could enhance Force rituals. Jedi have used temples like these for major workings -- if you've ever heard of Dorsk 81, that's one big example. So we've got the temple on our side, believe it or not; we've got the nexus mostly on our side; we've got the best crystal setup I could get smuggled in; and we've got you. You can start whenever." She patted her shotgun. "And if things get hairy, keep going with the loop. I may not be Darron Wraith, but I can stop most things that're coming at us."

 

[Darron Wraith]

“It’s going to take on my character?” Given the seriousness of what they were about to do, Wraith managed to chuckle. “Are you really sure you want that?” Strangely at ease, he could feel the vibrations in the ground, conflict was coming to them. Instead of putting him on edge, it simply brought the man out of his shell. Restraint hid the excitement that was beginning to pour over him despite the work that they had cut out for them. Mara had mentioned other sites, which meant they would be repeating this. Another life flickered out, drawing his gaze away from the alignment, and more followed, their losses felt within his sphere of responsibility. Knuckles turned white as his fist involuntarily clenched before relaxing.

“It can wait, calm your mind.”

Hearing Je’gan’s voice in his mind, he did as instructed. Finally stepping towards the crystals, he placed his one hand of flesh on their cool surface. Crystalline structure met flesh, the cool temperature a stark contrast to the heat of the battlefield. “Believe me, no matter what you may have heard Mara. It might be better to not be Darron Wraith. Legends and stories have a way of getting blown out of proportion.” A sad knowing smile fell on his features before giving way to turning to stone, set in a blank stare as he looked up towards the sky. The Jedi Master didn’t even comment on the fact that he was the one doing the Force work while being protected, that was typically his job. The role reversal was one he never expected.

Except his eyes were a storm, one that was only brewing. That willingness to fight, the need to meet the darkness began growing within him. It wasn’t something he had to conjure, or work to make appear. No, that innate will to fight was always in him, and he was releasing the chains that held it back. As all concept of himself faded, the Force washing over him, he felt the crystals doing their work as the darkness around him started to flow towards him. The loop was forming, and the are was clearing as that energy flowed into the superconducting loop. Wraith’s senses were overflowing as he focused on walking the penumbra of the darkside, his duty and devotion to doing the right thing ever present.

Eyes focused upward, his skin crawled as the Force nudged him towards what to do. “Mara, I’m sorry.” His sphere shrunk as his focus shifted towards the lightside even as the darkness filled him, the circuit still not complete. A slight glow was visible, as he released all concept of himself and raised his right hand into the air. Power resonated within him, and then a blinding light was released from the built up energy. Wraith had turned his own darkness and the nexus into Force light with the help of the crystals, turning the entire area into a beacon as the very light of the Force burned away what darkness was around.

This continued on for several more minutes, before the Jedi Master fell to his knees.

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Darron Wraith"]

She mulled over that apology for a while, because it made no sense to her. His actions fell within a realm of acceptable outcomes -- and wasn't that a Rave-like thought? -- and he'd chosen an option that she hadn't known he possessed. Intellectually, she'd known about Force Light; she'd grown up with the most comprehensive Jedi holocrons in history. Offhand, she could name half a dozen times when Force Light or comparable Force manifestations had tilted the scales on a planetary, even galactic level. But neither her father nor any of her instructors at the Yavin Four academy had known the technique, and her real Master, Aleidis, hadn't ever demonstrated it in their time together. She found herself flinching as some deep-rooted insecurity wondered if she was about to burn, if her commitment was weaker than she thought. No charring or combustion took place, of course. The Ankarres Sapphire burned Darksiders on contact, and she'd been using it for a long time now.

The same could not be said for the people that came through the door.

Wraith had focused his Light on the nexus, but the edges were still enough to make the Sith marauders' faces tighten in pain. They swarmed into the room regardless, or tried. Large men and armored women, alchemized to one degree or another, torn and scorched by days of combat, they each outmassed Mara by a considerable degree. All they saw between them and the decidedly occupied ex-Grandmaster was a girl, short, slim, wearing a ratty stolen cloak over a full-body leotard. Not exactly intimidating.

KABLAMM

KABLAMM

KABLAMM

Her scattergun was an RCFC special, loaded with proprietary Underground ammunition. The kind that ate away at Sithspawn. They charged, and silver light filled the room with a precise, quiet snap-hiss. She met them head-on with Aleidis Ijet Zrgaat's flowing, precise Makashi, the blade-art of the Barsen'thor.

Je'gan Olra'en, Darron Wraith's friend and brother and peer, was dead. His greatest student's greatest student would just have to do.

 

[Darron Wraith]

Thump!

His armored knees hit the ground first, followed by his hands. Drops of sweat pounding against the dusty, dirt covered tile. Every joint in his body felt like it was on fire, and a war drum was pounding in his head. Darron’s very nerves were screaming from what had just happened, combining Vaapad, Force Light, and those crystals together had just about burnt the Jedi Master out. Smoke was rising from his one exposed palm, and the very floor vibrated along with his jaw. Moving at the speed of smell, Wraith managed to sit up as his senses started to come back and expand away from him. Death littered his senses, but Mara’s Force presence was still there, standing strong holding…

...a lightfoil.

No words were said as he looked at the Sithspawn and other assorted bodies laying around them. Even the air felt fresher, all of the dark taint had been destroyed. The beginnings of a frown formed, Darron hadn’t expected to actually survive using Force Light, it was why he had shied away from it. Mara didn’t need to know that he had been shying away from using true Vaapad while they were out there in the field, he had fallen back on Djem-So, yet it had worked to cleanse the area. Whether he was sad, surprised, or shocked at still being alive and able to use Vaapad after everything Kryptus had done to him, he never would say. What he did know, was that he was still pure somehow, but he didn’t care.

Instead, he pushed all those thoughts and questions aside and came to Mara’s side to look at her weapon. Wraith’s chin visibly quivered, Mara hadn’t said a word to him about her background, and he hadn’t thought to ask. “I only know one other being who used a light foil as well as you just did, but she did that because she wasn’t physically strong enough to handle any other style of combat. Ghostlings aren’t the hardiest race. So she had to use that, and her Master was the greatest Makashi user this galaxy will ever know.” Looking around, he could see the shrapnel wounds. “I also know the man that taught her would have appreciated using your environment and tools at your disposal like this.”

Wraith went for the exit, there was much more to do. His lightsaber was now back in his hand.

“Gather your crystals, we don’t need to linger.”


[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Darron Wraith"]

Breathing hard, Mara brushed back a lock of hair that had wrestled itself free of her braid. She tucked it behind her ear and doused the lightfoil. Without the silver radiance, and without Darron Wraith's light, the temple chamber looked dingy and dull, a reflection of the imaginations that had crafted this place. She tucked her weapons away beneath the ragged Sith cloak, then set about packing up the crystals. They'd come in a repulsor-equipped supply drop container, which had also included a simple backpack.

"I didn't know you knew my Master," she said, trying to exhale away the tension of just having killed several people. Bad people, to be sure; people intent on slaughtering both of them; but people nonetheless. She grimaced and put on the backpack. The entire crystal armature weighed no more than fifteen pounds. "But yeah, Aleidis Ijet Zrgaat, the Barsen'thor, Olra'en's Padawan -- that's her. She lives in the middle of nowhere, just about a hermit. My parents..." Her eyes skidded away from one corpse surrounded by a pool of blood, where the sabre's cauterizing kiss had failed to close a major artery. "...they sent me to her when I was twelve, after my cousin took me shockboxing through the Outer Rim. And it worked -- Aleidis was a wonderful, if seriously frustrating, Master."

Despite herself, she smiled as memory blocked out the grimness of the moment, the setting. Backpack settled on her shoulders, she got out her scattergun again and headed for the temple's entry hall. "She trained me harder than I'd ever trained before at anything but piloting. She knew I could navigate by instinct, so she pushed me hard that way; by the time I was done, I could find things she'd concealed with her best White Current work. And the Makashi...well, it worked a whole lot better than the Shii-Cho and Ataru they'd been teaching me on Yavin at the academy there."

KABLAMM -- and there went a Sith straggler. Mara gritted her teeth and kept walking. "Not that the Yavin academy is bad; it's better than most. But Aleidis, Master Zrgaat, she was what I needed, when I needed it."

 

[Darron Wraith]

“She probably got that from Je’gan a-”

Snap-hiss went the purple blade as he pivoted on his left foot while stepping back and around with his right. Kinetic force built from every lever as he used every ounce of speed he had, momentarily becoming a blonde and amethyst blur. Ozone and burnt flesh filled his nostrils, and the oddly disturbing but pleasing sound of relaxed flesh hitting the ground met his ears. Windu’s blade was deactivated, and the former GrandMaster was walking again, not glancing back at the bisected straggler. For the briefest of moments, the world had become like crystal. Every flaw in it was exposed through the releasing of himself, and Wraith had struck the shatterpoint to cover Mara.

That was duty, even if it meant he had to add another to the long list of fallen foes.

“It’s our fault as I was saying, we probably contributed to her being so difficult.” A mental note was made to go and visit her again when he had the time. “Je’gan was notoriously hard on her, but we were both like fathers to her. I know I viewed her as the daughter I never got to have.” Emotion wasn’t present in his words, he had long let go of that hurt, he was simply stating facts.

Wraith playfully looked over as they made their way through the warzone, his senses stretched to their limit checking for any life. “I get it, I didn’t truly find myself until I got away from Teferi and the academy. They were trying to make me a diplomat, me.” He chuckled, finally being in his element again, he knew another fight was coming. “So, what’s the endgame? Coruscant isn’t exactly the smallest planet, and we are sitting ducks.”

Azure eyes caught sight of a familiar statue, and he could only shake his head that it had somehow managed to stand this long.

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Darron Wraith"]

"She always talked about you and Olra'en and Boolon Murr like you were the best part of the life she left behind when she resigned from the Order, when she became Chancellor. The time after that...when she looks back on that, I think she just sees challenges. Her own successes and failures. She's as hard on herself in some ways as you three ever were on her."

They walked out into the light, such as it was. Extended battle had filled the Valley of the Dark Lords with pale smoke, and laserfire lit the overcast clouds. The battle was mostly over in the Valley: statues broken, temples scarred. Two stories down, in the foundations, she and Sedaire and Meeristali Peradun and some others had begun to cleanse the nexus. Much farther down, they'd begun their climb.

"I don't have a clue what the Alliance's endgame is for taking Coruscant. I got their strike team here, past all the One Sith security perimeters; that was my part in their plan. Cleansing the nexus, that doesn't have much to do with them. The endgame for that...well, keep doing this kind of thing, cleaning up, until we sense a real difference. I don't know what to expect, cleansing a nexus this strong. Nobody does."

She pointed at another Sith temple, clear at the other end of the Valley plaza. "But starting there is probably a good bet."

 

[Darron Wraith]

“If I had to guess,” looking around at what Coruscant had become as they pressed on towards the temple. “The real battle will be trying to establish law and order in the coming months. Everyone sees this as a bunch of large battles to stamp out the darkness, when shadows linger and never go away.” Vibrations caught his attention, shaking the dust off the large bridge they were on, and a few adjacent skyscrapers. Not even bothering to look up towards the skyline, or rather all the buildings that blocked out the sky, he kept his senses pushing outwards. Even if the battles were far away, they were walking towards another Sith temple, and experience hadn’t been the kindest teacher when dealing with those particular sites.

“If I had a credit for every time I was dragged towards a Sith temple, well I’d not be a J-”

Only a few meters from the entrance, and the aura of darkness was palpable. Humidity mixed with sweat, and the taint of the darkside and war were the least of the warrior’s worries as he sped up towards a large slab of durasteel. Clipping his lightsaber, he ran towards the man underneath, who barely appeared to be in his early twenties. Short, dark blonde hair was stained with blood, and an exposed hand revealed tan skin like his own. Years of training, of pain and loss hardened him as he released those emotions to the Force. “Tobias?” It was a weak question as he got down on one knee, the old armor he wore getting in the way more than anything. Senses honed from years of training wrapped around the slab, and it was lifted and off the crumped corpse in an instant.

Gently rolling the man over, to his shame he exhaled a sigh of relief. It’s not Tobias, he’s still safe.

Closing the man’s eyes, Darron took his lightsaber from his hand and clipped it to his belt. “We may not be able to fully give him a funeral Mara, but we will honor the fallen.” Crossing the deceased's arms, he started to work on tearing a nearby jacket when a tingle went up his spine. Precognition only gave a millisecond, and he was completely caught off guard and flat-footed. Turning, the Jedi Master could barely get his lightsaber up in time as the three meter-tall Terentanek barreled into him taking him off the edge and down to the undercity below.

More beasts of all alchemical creation followed, their teeth and tentacles bearing down on the Warden.

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Darron Wraith"]

In a single instant, Wraith went from at-ease to disturbed; her Zeltron senses caught the edges of his dread. She held back in respectful silence, keeping an eye on their surroundings. She felt hunger and fury from some other direction, too, but she couldn't quite pin it down.

Then, without appreciable warning, a mountain of armor-skinned flesh rammed into Wraith. It drove him across the distance that separated them from the edge of the Valley. One brute shoulder passed through the guardrail like tissue paper, and the terentatek's bulk overloaded the tractor fields that normally caught falling visitors. Sparks exploded from half a dozen points along the edge, tractor emitters burning out in a moment. Then Wraith and the terentatek were gone, and something else, something vicious, was closing in around her.

She'd always heard that the One Sith had strange Sithspawn. They'd fielded armies of something like undead, capable of exploding and scattering a corrupt influence. Now, faced with the genuine article, she realized what the stories had gotten right and wrong. A few in the rear ranks exploded, scattering a mist of warm black fluid over their fellows and Mara. The rest closed in.

They had been prisoners once, before Sith arts ripped away parts of their bodies and sewed shut their eyes and mouths. They were miserable, in agony. Their pain and despair overwhelmed her empathic senses, and she found herself frantically rubbing at her face where the fluid had spattered. The Iron Skin bodysuit had kept it off the rest of her, but her hands and head were contaminated. She lashed out around her with her lightfoil, all technique gone. Her ears were ringing; she reeled, but kept her feet for now.

She clawed in her belt pouch for the Ankarres Sapphire as their own claws tore at her armor and backpack. Each time her sabre met one of their bodies, she felt mingled agony and relief as they died. They shared those sensations between them, she felt, in a hive mind of sorts -- and there were ways to fight a hive mind. Her fingers found the Sapphire, and the influence began to retreat from her body. Her balance returned; her ears stopped ringing. The Sithspawn clutched at her free hand, pried her fingers loose-

The stone, so recently attuned to the nexus, flared blue-white. Smoke rose from the flesh of the Sithspawn, but with the pain came, again, that sense of relief. Mara shoved out instinctively in a Warden's telekinetic projected fighting, and invisible fists knocked back the Sithspawn. She snagged the Sapphire out of the air and pressed it to the forehead of the nearest enemy.

Enemy. What a word for a tortured prisoner.

Smoke puffed out around the Sapphire as the other Sithspawn drew back a pace. The nearest one froze, shaking. The skin around the Sapphire began to lose its pallor. Rotted flesh sloughed away, revealing something raw but potentially healthy.

Mara found her footing and her mental equilibrium, right on the edge of the Valley, over a long fall. A semicircle of Sithspawn watched her -- her, and the one connected to them, the one that was feeling the full power of the Ankarres Sapphire. Mara took a deep breath and called on the nexus, hard, through the crystal arrays in her backpack and the Sapphire in her ichor-smeared fist. That ichor was turning to dust and falling away.

She deactivated her lightsabre and clipped it to her belt. Slowly, deliberately, she reached into another pouch and removed a handful of...sawdust. Wood shavings, mingled with blue crystal that had grown throughout the wood in veins back when it was a tree. In this moment of stillness, she took another breath and let out the power she'd gathered. The sawdust accelerated across a hundred-eighty-degree arc, biting into the skin of the Sithspawn.

Their rage and pain and confusion began to ease away. Their magical deformities, too, and their sense of corruption. That black fluid began to leak from their bodies and turn clear, evaporate.

Ankarres Wood, it was called. The last great creation of perhaps the greatest alchemist in modern times. A Sithspawn-maker's last shot at redemption. The master of Aza'zoth's Dark Forge, unmaking what others had made with the dregs of her art and her former home.

One by one, their eyes began to open.