Post: 2
LOCATION: Port Sorrow, Rand
Objective 3: Destroy Bone Temple. Survive.
Equipment:
Cybernetics |
Jet Pack |
Beskar’gam |
Weapon load out
Allies: [
Kyyrk
] [
Diocletian Kahmen’’a
]
Opposition: [
Dakrul
] [
Darth Senthral
] [
Darth Tennacus
]
“Where are they?” Jhira murmured, studying both her HUD and the terrain itself. Not a single MAW military force appeared anywhere on her scanners. No crazy priests, no victims, no soldiers. Flickering, unsteady power still ran through the temple before her, but the low, tale-tell hum was nothing to the sense of misery and grief emanating from it. Pools of blood and worse spotted the ground, but
nothing living awaited them here.
Yet something moved, in the darkness.
Tension crawled up her spine and pooled into limbs made heavy with wariness. Kyrrk’s sharp, single breath beside her drew Jhira to take a step nearer to him, meeting his gaze as he agreed to try the tunnels. There was something in his glowing, violet eyes, that unsettled her.
Deeply.
Whatever the ancient Knight saw here, was far, far worse than moving shadows. Gaze sweeping the area again, Jhira found the bitter stillness unnerving. Unnatural.
Nothing alive moved out here. No rustle of small animals fleeing, no swarming insects. Just corpses, and a sultry, poisoned breeze. The carrion stench reached her, despite the combat-rated filtration system she used. If she hadn’t been so convinced she’d need her Oxygen later, she’d have triggered her vacuum seal.
Tearing attention away from the despairing dead — even small squirrel-like rodents and birds lay strewn upon the ground — Jhira studied her HUD, and highlighted a possible entrance to (or exit from) the temple through a wide, shallow grate. She had a few grenades that could be set on a timer, meant for situations like this.
[
Gerwald Lechner
] Far from them, over the distant city, the sky flashed with azure lightening and billowed acrid smoke. Battle raged, fierce and ragged, as the CIS and Stril sought to land troops, and the MAW to prevent it. Here, the cold stagnation of death reigned. Were they too late, somehow? How were you
late to you own invasion?
A single COMM transmission reached them, answering her silent query.
“Absent gods,” she swore softly, her heart plummeting. The priests put the slaves in the Sky Hook!
[“Hut’uun!” The second expletive, in her native
Mando’a, carried her contempt and rage as she called them the cowards they were.
“Boarding action, versus a prepared foe who absolutely will and are using their hostages against us … ” Despair shattered her heart. So many would die; would her new-found
Vode be amongst them? The
ramikad’alor? This would not be a victory. Even if the CIS and their allies won, the people they had come here to save had already lost.
Which left only vengeance.
Kyrrk’s blaster fired into a pool of rustling darkness, drawing her gaze from the sky. A rotted arm flung itself free, to crawl towards them. Benumbed, Jhira saw more and more of the unnatural creatures swarm out of every unblocked orafice of the ancient temple. Grotesque, twisted by an unnatural death as much as by the sorcery that summoned them, they shambled forward. Freakish, white-on-white eyes appeared to see Jhira, even as they twisted and fell out of sockets, or distorted before her horrified gaze. A thigh bone was thrown like a spear, and Jhira turned her shoulder into it, blocking the foul projectile.
Hard, bitter eyes watched the shambling enemies before her, even as Jhira uploaded the route she’d found to Kyrrk, labeling it
Wet Transit.
Ret’lini. Just in case. Just in case they needed a way out that would not be filled with the undead.
Gaping jaws … unintelligent rasps, deathly howls, whimpers of pain emanated from the horde, even yet. It was the whimpers that hurt Jhira. Shackles, their own slave shackles, used as weapons! That, and their twisted bones. Jhira slammed into motion, jet pack flaring to life, laying down a path of freezing cold with her
LPD-40 Ice Jet Miniaturized Cryoban Projector. Spinning in mid air, she sent a single, deadly shot through the head of a tall, skeletal form threatening to block their way. It might have been a wookie, once. Now it was twisted beyond recognition; only horrors dwelt here. Another, and another. Slicing between two hulking, still oozing malevolences, she used her jet pack to burn one, and placed three shots into the larger one’s skull.
Reload. But reloading, was safe, because Kyrrk was here, and she ducked behind the arc of his Saber, as if they’d been fighting together for years. Maybe he was adjusting to her style, maybe it was his early training, but they ended up back to back, Kyrrk clearing the way before them and Jhira keeping the twisted monstrosities behind them at bay. His owl leapt into the sky, a single natural life that defied the death here.
A beacon of hope, though they left it behind.
Down, down, into the dark temple they went, and every breath was a trial. All of her instincts screamed for her to get out, to head for the fading, distant light of day. The deeper they went, the worse it got. It hurt to breathe, to walk, to move. No room to maneuver in these narrow, grief-riven corridors. Several hits slid through her guard, during the frantic minute when she’d had to do without her
Myntor Personal Shield, for the fighting went on and on.
The oppressive weight of doom and hopelessness, locked so deeply into the twisted place wore heavily upon Jhira. Sharp, stuttered breathing of combat was a terrible echo of tears, as the animated dead were a corruption of life itself. Tension crawled up her spine, an oppressive sense of being watched shattering the silence.
“Do they see us, Kyrrk? Can they see us, through these … creations?” She needed to hear his voice; needed that connection and life-line, in this place that was anathema to loyalty, hope and friendship. Sought to draw him back, though his gaze had been so very, very … tormented.
Sweat trickled down Jhira’s neck, her spine, her face. Adrenaline shook her body, and her heart pounded in pointless exertion, as she gazed upon the foul, open chamber Kyrrk had designated as their target. A defiant, fierce laugh escaped to challenge the darkness itself. The world flickered, as if in response to that single moment of hope. Figures coalesced between the two of them and their goal; ghosty, pale.
Force Wraiths.
“That … looks like Lightsaber work to me, ner vod.” she hoped it was lightsaber work; she had no doubt he’d more terrifying powers to play with, but she had used up all of her terror for the day.
Jhira Mereel
||
