The Battalion
Darth Phyre III
Wearing: Warrior's Skin
Consort's Ring
Armed With: Elaine Tear's Lightsaber (Corrupted)
Objective: Try to bond more with Galahad
Three days after conclusion of Family Bonding
Earlier...
Dathomir.
The Battalion had been to Dathomir before, but only in the Gulag Era.
Phyre had been dead back then. Or so everyone thought. Until the Man in White's Flame Geist became a problem.
She had to give it to him. It was the one tactic hardly any modern Jedi would have dared to contemplate resorting to. But the Man in White saw the simple calculus of it:
What greater weapon is there than to turn an enemy to your cause. To use their own knowledge against them? (KOTOR reference #42974566544683376!: 90 XP)
She had not thought on those days lately. Settling Khemost, figuring out a comfy balance between such different groups, from Wisecracking Murder Bots to psychopathic shape shifters and traumatized refugees, had taken up much of her time, along with instructing her Wife/Apprentice in secret.
But The Battalion was a warrior at heart.
And to keep her edge, Warriors needed to fight.
Besides, this partially had to do with House Life anyway.
The Battalion was out getting her stepson a gift.
She was still baffled by how much she liked Galahad. On the surface, the two couldn't be more different. Their philosophies were diametrically opposed to one another. But rescuing him, watching his distress at having accidentally baptized himself in ritual blood. (Which technically made him a junior member of the Cult)
She knew, or rather, was starting to remember, what it felt like to be roped into something against one's will.
The Battalion walked across a very particular desert on Dathomir, one strong in the Dark Side. She was a pale ghost in an all white with a curling slightly puffy hairdo. This desert on Dathomir had a strange power that sapped the will of those who didn't use the Dark Side. She had been sustaining herself with it, drawing on it as she got closer and closer to the cache.
The Dark Side whispered a warning to her and her Light Red Blade snapped on in an instant. But she couldn't see the threat. So she closed her eyes and waited, holding the corrupted blade of her mortal self in front of her.
The clawed hand sprang from the sand beneath her as the Terentatek burst forth trying to grab her. But she was already gone, floating above the beast before diving...
...and was forced to block with her blade, as it it somehow instinctively discharged Force Lightning from it's mouth towards her. Her blade caught and absorbed it, but it when she dived to try and strike it's hide, the beast generated Force Lightning around it's whole body, preventing her blade, already much stronger than normal Lightsabers, from cutting it.
The Battalion barely managed to leap back but the beast scored a light cut across her abdomen, white blood spilling from the wound and burning into the sands beneath her. A pig like squeal escaped her throat as she seethed with fury at the beast touching her and gave a flourish of her blade.
The great monster roared, lashing out in hatred with it's lightning, which forced her to dodge the blast, which was powerful enough to absolutely shatter a pillar of rock behind her in the red sands.
What is empowering this creature? The Master Witch wondered, realizing this was going to be slightly tricky.
But if The Battalion could be said to have one virtue, any virtue at all, it was that she loved the thrill of tough opponents.
She relied on her athleticism and the Force to help her dodge it's next few powerful blasts of Lightning until she felt it weaken...and felt the faint link of whoever was empowering it, concealing their body with a Magical Spell.
The Battalion's rage coiled within her, the Dark Fire building until she released it as violet flames from her throat. They couldn't burn, nor could they kill, but they were capable of lowering morale, and had effects similar to Force Fear.
She could control them, make them spread out to try and ensnare the hidden spell caster she felt but couldn't pinpoint.
Sure enough, the flames washed over the hidden spell caster, a Nightbrother whose focus was disrupted as he was forced to fight off the effects of the flames. He was bare chested, his body tattoos red and yellow, Horns jutting out and forming a crown on his head
The Terentatek lost the magical effect empowering it but that didn't mean one could slack off, as even base Terentatek were deadly. She had known that even as Elaine Tear.
Best to focus on the more serious threat however.
The Battalion strode through purple flames as the disoriented Terentatek swiped around blindly in rage, focusing on the Nightbrother
"An impressive command of this beast so far. It takes talent to so utterly subdue a Terentatek." The Battalion complimented.
The Nightsister pulled out a Lightsaber. An Indigo blade slid out of an old and weathered hilt. But the hilt...
The Battalion blinked, peered closer.
"That blade..." she trailed softly. "Where did you get it?"
The Nightbrother leapt forward and The Battalion was forced on the defensive, a vicious display of Ataru catching her off guard, the blade attacks blended into flips and cartwheels and somersaults in dizzying combos she was forced to twist and turn and manipulate the blade around her Body to deflect and parry the assault.
Her Force Sense hissed about the swipe of the claws heading for her back and she somersaulted over the big powerful arm of the Terentatek, white clad feet landing on its back and brutally driving the blade into it's brain, killing it instantly due to the increased cutting power.
The Master Witch was immediately on the defensive from the Nightbrother's frenzied and renewed attacks, coming so rapidly she couldn't focus enough to use the Force. Still, The Battalion defended patiently, knowing it would be only a matter of time before he ran out of energy. It was an impressive assault. But the problem with Form IV is if you don't take your opponent down in the first thirty seconds, your odds of survival drop dramatically.
Finally, after another fifteen seconds of this, he sensed a minor mistake in the trajectory of a swing, and twisted her own blade, intercepting it in a one handed fashion, and twisting.
To her surprise, (and near fatal error), the Nightbrother worked his acrobatics, moving and cartwheeling with them to end up on a near blindside of the Witch, in a perfect position to swing upward and try and take her head off, the Battalion only managing to float out of the way of the strike at the last second, but the tip sliced through her cheek.
White drops of blood spilled to the ground from her torn open cheek, revealing the white blood and muscle underneath.
The blood drops immediately began dissolving the ground beneath them when they hit, releasing steam.
"Impressive..." The Battalion hissed.
She lunged with a sudden, powerful overhead strike, and the Nightbrother parried with a timing even The Battalion considered perfect, as she was forced to block the heavy counter assault, his blade crashing violently against hers.
Bastard's been eating his spinach. (MAX: 90 XP) she thought with a mix of intrigue and amusement.
"Most impressive..." she added.
He backed off, guarding in an Ataru ready.
"You still have not answered me..." The Battalion added, circling the guarding Warrior...
"Wasn't planning on it." he replied with a blatantly Clint Eastwood type voice, which made him sound hardcore AF. Besides, let's be honest, any NPC lasting this long against Batty IS hardcore AF, so he might as well sound like Clint Eastwood.
Rule of cool, folks. We live and die on it. Quotas must be filled. Asses must be kicked.
"I knew the man who forged the blade...he was one of my Apprentices in another life..." The Battalion explained. "He's dead now. But I would still know that blade anywhere. His was one of the few, in fact, that I did not confiscate. So how did you obtain it?"
All it got her was another set of furious strikes. The Battalion grew suspicious as she was hemmed in by his assault. What had he been out here for?
"Were you hunting me?" she asked, getting slowly perturbed by his refusal to say anything else.
He lunged, and The Battalion lunged, thirsting for the challenge. She hadn't had a duel like this in months, and was obsessed with proving her superiority.
Their blades locked.
"You will tell me where you got that blade..." she hissed, the red light of her blade casting her face with it's sharp angles in a ghastly crimson.
"One way or another..."
Only by summoning all his hatred was he able to break the lock and push her back even slightly. But she came at him like a Demon. His anger and fear the only thing allowing him to hold back her savage hammer strikes, which sent sharp needles of pain through his wrists every time he parried, and he didn't dare think outright blocking would do anything other than break his wrists.
He had been told she was good. He had studied everything he had been given. He had even cross trained in Soresu and Shii-Cho for over a year against the most lethal sparring droids he could afford. A year of fighting Droids armed with Lightsabers set to Knight settings, all safeties disabled.
All that training had given him was the ability to hold her at bay with a defense that would eventually tire. He had to find a way to escape her now.
He backed off and she tried to choke him with the Force, her hand taking a claw like gesture.
He fought off the attempt but just barely, stumbling back and gasping for breath. The dear gave way to rage and with a shout he lifted up a load of rocks nearby and proceeded to fling her one at a time at high speed at her, forcing her to dodge the heavy projectiles, any one of which were large and moving fast enough to smash her into bloody chunks. But it bought him only seconds, because she was flying at him with the Force once more, belching purple flames from her throat at him.
The Nightbrother focused, shifting his footing in the sand. One mistake and he was dead.
He parried the next blow, and then twisted, swiping the blade upward and executed an an Assured Strike.
It was a Juyo Technique. Completely weak, but what it lack in power it made up for with the extreme probability of landing a hit.
And land it did. The Battalion screeched metallic shrieks of pain as her lower jaw came off, causing the flames she was channeling to discharge everywhere, even partially detonating in her body and blasting open part of her side in spectacular fashion, spilling white blood, muscle, and bits of rotten yellow organs everywhere.
The Master Witch slammed into the ground, sliding on her own viscera as it burned through the sand so quickly she fell through into the desert beneath in a muddy soup of Witch blood and melting sands.
The Nightbrother ran for his life. He ran as fast as he fething could, high tailing it to a speeder bike and gunning the engines at max speed, for it was the only way to guarantee his survival now so he could try again...
The Battalion in the meantime, continued sinking ever deeper, the blood and gore from her body melting through more and more layers of the earth.
Finally, the blood and gore burned its way into an ancient cavern, and the Battalion fell through and impacted on a hard floor, finding the strength and rage to pull away from her own blood and gore as it continued to burn through.
(Dallas: That crap's gonna eat through the hull!)
Badly wounded, she felt the enchantments to her suit starting to work. But it would take time still. It had managed to stop the bleeding. Everywhere hurt. She drew on her hate and rage to remain standing.
She had been defeated. The Night brother had not only survived the encounter, he had outright defeated her.
This was something that deeply surprised her.
He was good. Not great, but he had managed it all the same.
The Battalion realized the man must have prepared an extensively long time to face, her, but why? And how had he gotten one of her old Apprentice's sabers?
She soon sensed the Dark Side however. She looked around. The cavern had been carved out.
This was a ritual site dedicated to focusing the Dark Side.
She instantly felt herself being rejuvenated. Perhaps in this momentary setback she had been made to stumble upon greater fortune.
She meditated, focusing the raw power of the ancient Cavern into herself. She tried to look back on the fight, trying to see what she had done wrong, trying to figure out when the duel had turned against her.
But for the dark in her, it kept coming back to the same irritating conclusion:
He had moved right, at the right time, and she hadn't.
Soon, the potent nexus had restored her Armor and body to an undamaged state, but she was still interested in discovering it's nature, this place.
She knew she would see the Zabrak again. She felt it.
She went deeper into the cavern, finding more Nightsister ritual markings. This was a place of immense importance once. She could feel the faint trace of slaughter here.
She at last found the source of the darkness warping the air invisibly.
It rested on an altar, a pulsating book of flesh and wisps of red hair as binding. The unholy words were literally burned into it's pages, still quivering.
She knew what it was immediately.
It was a fragment of an ancient Dark Side Sorceress known as Ersethy. A Witch so foul that the Atrisian God's had supposedly struck her dead and annihilated her soul, but her flesh had been so putrid, so utterly corrupt with The Dark Side, that it was in a perpetual state of decay that would never conclude, forever spawning abominations from it's decayed state.
Sometimes the fragments would spontaneously form into Witches or Sith Spawn with instinctive grasp of magic, leading some to believe Ersethy may well have been among the earliest examples of a Force Spawn, maybe even the first.
To take a piece of this monstrosity into one's self was something that had to be done with great care. Obviously the fragment had made its way here--she saw ancient markings on the walls that suggested she was revered as a Dark Goddess by the Night Brothers, worship getting so prolific it eventually had to be suppressed. More recent markings suggested this place was still visited in secret. In fact if she had the dates right, a secret band was due here today. Within a half an hour.
The Battalion sensed an opportunity.
She held out her hand and the corrupted remnants of Elaine Tear and every evil mind within got to work on devouring the powerful essence within the text.
But as powerful as she was, even she was not fully prepared.
This particular fragment had been experienced and powerful herself, and was such a raw, pulsating miasma of darkness...
The Fragment quickly established itself in the upper hierarchy, displacing Witches from their positions by sheer strength, outranked only by The Collage and The Assembly, who were themselves of equal rank, and of course Elaine herself. The transformation was compulsory, The Battalion's flesh and mind warping and vanishing into the body of a disturbingly athletic looking crone, with shriveled looking features and curling red hair, her eye balls nothing but glistening black spheres.
The fragment of Ersethy examined the new host body, feeling supercharged. She felt life approaching.
A lone Zabrak, clad in hooded rags, carrying a jeweled, Electrum goblet filled with blood.
He was seemingly the only one present. He set aside the goblet when he saw the book made long ago from the flesh of the fragment had turned to ashes.
"So it is the end, at long last..." he announced quietly.
"I suppose it was too much to expect..." he said to himself, slumping in a corner. "We pray, and pray, when the purges renewed. When we were hunted. No answer. I am all that's left, and soon, I fear they shall find me too.
"And now your book, the text comprised of your flesh, lays in ash. How am I to interpret that? Is it a sign? Of what? Or does it simply mean that at long last even your will couldn't go on..."
He fell to his knees.
"It's so hard to carry out your rites. So hard to find the proper victims. No. It is no sign. You are dead and so is my faith. There is no point in going on. I am without clan. None of the typical Nightbrother Clans would have me because of the crimes I committed to honor you. I have run out of other places to hide. This is the very last place they have not discovered. I have no supplies. No weapons but a knife.
He picked up the goblet.
"Perhaps it is futile. But I shall make one more offering to you, and ask for a sign. If you do not answer, than you shall have your very final offering, in the form of my blood, draining out onto your floor. But one way or another, I will at last learn the validity of my faith."
He went over and poured some blood in the ashes. Silently asking for an answer.
"Congratulations..." The fragment of Ersethy spoke behind him in a pleasant, almost perky voice.
"You finally reached 'Feth It.' " the red headed Force Spawn said, gently lifting the goblet out of the stunned Nightbrother's hand and taking a sip of its contents.
He fell to his knees.
"All I asked for was a sign...but if I had known you would actually appear before me..." he whispered.
"You'd have gotten overconfident, trust me." the fragment replied.
"But Goddess...what is to be done now?"
The Fragment smiled, flesh shuddering as she took his knife and opened her arm up, smearing runes into the chamber with white blood, which burned into the stone.
"This cavern will now hide your presence in the Force..." The Fragment explained.
"That...that is well and good, milady...but...what about supplies?"
"You have proven to me you are ready to die. Prove to me now that you are strong enough to want to live. I'll shall return in one week. If you have survived down here...you shall be worthy of further guidance."
The Nightbrother nodded. "I understand."
The Fragment nodded in sage like approval before departing...
It took Forceful prompting from every other Witch inside her to make the Fragment go in the direction they wanted.
It took even more prompting to make her give up the body back to the Battalion, and every Witch within made sure to disassemble that persona until they needed it. But she had nonetheless reached her original destination, an old vault of stone in one of Dathomir's mountains, sealed by spells.
The Battalion placed her hand over the vault door, in the shadow of a mountain where nothing grew.
The door slid upward and The Battalion retrieved her gifts...
Present...
Ession's Shadow, the TIE Reaper used by the Battalion since before she was The Battalion, streaked above the City of Midas, heading toward the newly designated archives tower close to the center, in spitting distance body Darth Mammon's palace. It had its own docking pads, newly tested and installed.
She found herself growing eager to see Galahad again. Other than Percival, she had really only connected with Galahad so far.
The Battalion had retrieved stuff she felt best suited him. Seeing how he was an archivist, she had found her personal copy of the Epistle of Marka Ragnos, along with a collection containing select chapters from Palpatine's Book of Anger. She had even retrieved her own personal essays on the nature of using the Darkness for combat purposes.
But one more gift was meant to serve him on a more concrete level.
It was an old Relic, an alchemical Sith Shield, round and black and heavy.
She didn't think any of it too ostentatious. Hopefully Galahad Io wouldn't either.
As she entered the still not fully set up archives, wearing her hooded red ritual gown, she carried her presents in black gift wrapping, one of the Nuetralizers comming Galahad to tell him his stepmother was present and wanted to speak.
Consort's Ring
Armed With: Elaine Tear's Lightsaber (Corrupted)
Objective: Try to bond more with Galahad
Three days after conclusion of Family Bonding
Earlier...
Dathomir.
The Battalion had been to Dathomir before, but only in the Gulag Era.
Phyre had been dead back then. Or so everyone thought. Until the Man in White's Flame Geist became a problem.
She had to give it to him. It was the one tactic hardly any modern Jedi would have dared to contemplate resorting to. But the Man in White saw the simple calculus of it:
What greater weapon is there than to turn an enemy to your cause. To use their own knowledge against them? (KOTOR reference #42974566544683376!: 90 XP)
She had not thought on those days lately. Settling Khemost, figuring out a comfy balance between such different groups, from Wisecracking Murder Bots to psychopathic shape shifters and traumatized refugees, had taken up much of her time, along with instructing her Wife/Apprentice in secret.
But The Battalion was a warrior at heart.
And to keep her edge, Warriors needed to fight.
Besides, this partially had to do with House Life anyway.
The Battalion was out getting her stepson a gift.
She was still baffled by how much she liked Galahad. On the surface, the two couldn't be more different. Their philosophies were diametrically opposed to one another. But rescuing him, watching his distress at having accidentally baptized himself in ritual blood. (Which technically made him a junior member of the Cult)
She knew, or rather, was starting to remember, what it felt like to be roped into something against one's will.
The Battalion walked across a very particular desert on Dathomir, one strong in the Dark Side. She was a pale ghost in an all white with a curling slightly puffy hairdo. This desert on Dathomir had a strange power that sapped the will of those who didn't use the Dark Side. She had been sustaining herself with it, drawing on it as she got closer and closer to the cache.
The Dark Side whispered a warning to her and her Light Red Blade snapped on in an instant. But she couldn't see the threat. So she closed her eyes and waited, holding the corrupted blade of her mortal self in front of her.
The clawed hand sprang from the sand beneath her as the Terentatek burst forth trying to grab her. But she was already gone, floating above the beast before diving...
...and was forced to block with her blade, as it it somehow instinctively discharged Force Lightning from it's mouth towards her. Her blade caught and absorbed it, but it when she dived to try and strike it's hide, the beast generated Force Lightning around it's whole body, preventing her blade, already much stronger than normal Lightsabers, from cutting it.
The Battalion barely managed to leap back but the beast scored a light cut across her abdomen, white blood spilling from the wound and burning into the sands beneath her. A pig like squeal escaped her throat as she seethed with fury at the beast touching her and gave a flourish of her blade.
The great monster roared, lashing out in hatred with it's lightning, which forced her to dodge the blast, which was powerful enough to absolutely shatter a pillar of rock behind her in the red sands.
What is empowering this creature? The Master Witch wondered, realizing this was going to be slightly tricky.
But if The Battalion could be said to have one virtue, any virtue at all, it was that she loved the thrill of tough opponents.
She relied on her athleticism and the Force to help her dodge it's next few powerful blasts of Lightning until she felt it weaken...and felt the faint link of whoever was empowering it, concealing their body with a Magical Spell.
The Battalion's rage coiled within her, the Dark Fire building until she released it as violet flames from her throat. They couldn't burn, nor could they kill, but they were capable of lowering morale, and had effects similar to Force Fear.
She could control them, make them spread out to try and ensnare the hidden spell caster she felt but couldn't pinpoint.
Sure enough, the flames washed over the hidden spell caster, a Nightbrother whose focus was disrupted as he was forced to fight off the effects of the flames. He was bare chested, his body tattoos red and yellow, Horns jutting out and forming a crown on his head
The Terentatek lost the magical effect empowering it but that didn't mean one could slack off, as even base Terentatek were deadly. She had known that even as Elaine Tear.
Best to focus on the more serious threat however.
The Battalion strode through purple flames as the disoriented Terentatek swiped around blindly in rage, focusing on the Nightbrother
"An impressive command of this beast so far. It takes talent to so utterly subdue a Terentatek." The Battalion complimented.
The Nightsister pulled out a Lightsaber. An Indigo blade slid out of an old and weathered hilt. But the hilt...
The Battalion blinked, peered closer.
"That blade..." she trailed softly. "Where did you get it?"
The Nightbrother leapt forward and The Battalion was forced on the defensive, a vicious display of Ataru catching her off guard, the blade attacks blended into flips and cartwheels and somersaults in dizzying combos she was forced to twist and turn and manipulate the blade around her Body to deflect and parry the assault.
Her Force Sense hissed about the swipe of the claws heading for her back and she somersaulted over the big powerful arm of the Terentatek, white clad feet landing on its back and brutally driving the blade into it's brain, killing it instantly due to the increased cutting power.
The Master Witch was immediately on the defensive from the Nightbrother's frenzied and renewed attacks, coming so rapidly she couldn't focus enough to use the Force. Still, The Battalion defended patiently, knowing it would be only a matter of time before he ran out of energy. It was an impressive assault. But the problem with Form IV is if you don't take your opponent down in the first thirty seconds, your odds of survival drop dramatically.
Finally, after another fifteen seconds of this, he sensed a minor mistake in the trajectory of a swing, and twisted her own blade, intercepting it in a one handed fashion, and twisting.
To her surprise, (and near fatal error), the Nightbrother worked his acrobatics, moving and cartwheeling with them to end up on a near blindside of the Witch, in a perfect position to swing upward and try and take her head off, the Battalion only managing to float out of the way of the strike at the last second, but the tip sliced through her cheek.
White drops of blood spilled to the ground from her torn open cheek, revealing the white blood and muscle underneath.
The blood drops immediately began dissolving the ground beneath them when they hit, releasing steam.
"Impressive..." The Battalion hissed.
She lunged with a sudden, powerful overhead strike, and the Nightbrother parried with a timing even The Battalion considered perfect, as she was forced to block the heavy counter assault, his blade crashing violently against hers.
Bastard's been eating his spinach. (MAX: 90 XP) she thought with a mix of intrigue and amusement.
"Most impressive..." she added.
He backed off, guarding in an Ataru ready.
"You still have not answered me..." The Battalion added, circling the guarding Warrior...
"Wasn't planning on it." he replied with a blatantly Clint Eastwood type voice, which made him sound hardcore AF. Besides, let's be honest, any NPC lasting this long against Batty IS hardcore AF, so he might as well sound like Clint Eastwood.
Rule of cool, folks. We live and die on it. Quotas must be filled. Asses must be kicked.
"I knew the man who forged the blade...he was one of my Apprentices in another life..." The Battalion explained. "He's dead now. But I would still know that blade anywhere. His was one of the few, in fact, that I did not confiscate. So how did you obtain it?"
All it got her was another set of furious strikes. The Battalion grew suspicious as she was hemmed in by his assault. What had he been out here for?
"Were you hunting me?" she asked, getting slowly perturbed by his refusal to say anything else.
He lunged, and The Battalion lunged, thirsting for the challenge. She hadn't had a duel like this in months, and was obsessed with proving her superiority.
Their blades locked.
"You will tell me where you got that blade..." she hissed, the red light of her blade casting her face with it's sharp angles in a ghastly crimson.
"One way or another..."
Only by summoning all his hatred was he able to break the lock and push her back even slightly. But she came at him like a Demon. His anger and fear the only thing allowing him to hold back her savage hammer strikes, which sent sharp needles of pain through his wrists every time he parried, and he didn't dare think outright blocking would do anything other than break his wrists.
He had been told she was good. He had studied everything he had been given. He had even cross trained in Soresu and Shii-Cho for over a year against the most lethal sparring droids he could afford. A year of fighting Droids armed with Lightsabers set to Knight settings, all safeties disabled.
All that training had given him was the ability to hold her at bay with a defense that would eventually tire. He had to find a way to escape her now.
He backed off and she tried to choke him with the Force, her hand taking a claw like gesture.
He fought off the attempt but just barely, stumbling back and gasping for breath. The dear gave way to rage and with a shout he lifted up a load of rocks nearby and proceeded to fling her one at a time at high speed at her, forcing her to dodge the heavy projectiles, any one of which were large and moving fast enough to smash her into bloody chunks. But it bought him only seconds, because she was flying at him with the Force once more, belching purple flames from her throat at him.
The Nightbrother focused, shifting his footing in the sand. One mistake and he was dead.
He parried the next blow, and then twisted, swiping the blade upward and executed an an Assured Strike.
It was a Juyo Technique. Completely weak, but what it lack in power it made up for with the extreme probability of landing a hit.
And land it did. The Battalion screeched metallic shrieks of pain as her lower jaw came off, causing the flames she was channeling to discharge everywhere, even partially detonating in her body and blasting open part of her side in spectacular fashion, spilling white blood, muscle, and bits of rotten yellow organs everywhere.
The Master Witch slammed into the ground, sliding on her own viscera as it burned through the sand so quickly she fell through into the desert beneath in a muddy soup of Witch blood and melting sands.
The Nightbrother ran for his life. He ran as fast as he fething could, high tailing it to a speeder bike and gunning the engines at max speed, for it was the only way to guarantee his survival now so he could try again...
The Battalion in the meantime, continued sinking ever deeper, the blood and gore from her body melting through more and more layers of the earth.
Finally, the blood and gore burned its way into an ancient cavern, and the Battalion fell through and impacted on a hard floor, finding the strength and rage to pull away from her own blood and gore as it continued to burn through.
(Dallas: That crap's gonna eat through the hull!)
Badly wounded, she felt the enchantments to her suit starting to work. But it would take time still. It had managed to stop the bleeding. Everywhere hurt. She drew on her hate and rage to remain standing.
She had been defeated. The Night brother had not only survived the encounter, he had outright defeated her.
This was something that deeply surprised her.
He was good. Not great, but he had managed it all the same.
The Battalion realized the man must have prepared an extensively long time to face, her, but why? And how had he gotten one of her old Apprentice's sabers?
She soon sensed the Dark Side however. She looked around. The cavern had been carved out.
This was a ritual site dedicated to focusing the Dark Side.
She instantly felt herself being rejuvenated. Perhaps in this momentary setback she had been made to stumble upon greater fortune.
She meditated, focusing the raw power of the ancient Cavern into herself. She tried to look back on the fight, trying to see what she had done wrong, trying to figure out when the duel had turned against her.
But for the dark in her, it kept coming back to the same irritating conclusion:
He had moved right, at the right time, and she hadn't.
Soon, the potent nexus had restored her Armor and body to an undamaged state, but she was still interested in discovering it's nature, this place.
She knew she would see the Zabrak again. She felt it.
She went deeper into the cavern, finding more Nightsister ritual markings. This was a place of immense importance once. She could feel the faint trace of slaughter here.
She at last found the source of the darkness warping the air invisibly.
It rested on an altar, a pulsating book of flesh and wisps of red hair as binding. The unholy words were literally burned into it's pages, still quivering.
She knew what it was immediately.
It was a fragment of an ancient Dark Side Sorceress known as Ersethy. A Witch so foul that the Atrisian God's had supposedly struck her dead and annihilated her soul, but her flesh had been so putrid, so utterly corrupt with The Dark Side, that it was in a perpetual state of decay that would never conclude, forever spawning abominations from it's decayed state.
Sometimes the fragments would spontaneously form into Witches or Sith Spawn with instinctive grasp of magic, leading some to believe Ersethy may well have been among the earliest examples of a Force Spawn, maybe even the first.
To take a piece of this monstrosity into one's self was something that had to be done with great care. Obviously the fragment had made its way here--she saw ancient markings on the walls that suggested she was revered as a Dark Goddess by the Night Brothers, worship getting so prolific it eventually had to be suppressed. More recent markings suggested this place was still visited in secret. In fact if she had the dates right, a secret band was due here today. Within a half an hour.
The Battalion sensed an opportunity.
She held out her hand and the corrupted remnants of Elaine Tear and every evil mind within got to work on devouring the powerful essence within the text.
But as powerful as she was, even she was not fully prepared.
This particular fragment had been experienced and powerful herself, and was such a raw, pulsating miasma of darkness...
The Fragment quickly established itself in the upper hierarchy, displacing Witches from their positions by sheer strength, outranked only by The Collage and The Assembly, who were themselves of equal rank, and of course Elaine herself. The transformation was compulsory, The Battalion's flesh and mind warping and vanishing into the body of a disturbingly athletic looking crone, with shriveled looking features and curling red hair, her eye balls nothing but glistening black spheres.
The fragment of Ersethy examined the new host body, feeling supercharged. She felt life approaching.
A lone Zabrak, clad in hooded rags, carrying a jeweled, Electrum goblet filled with blood.
He was seemingly the only one present. He set aside the goblet when he saw the book made long ago from the flesh of the fragment had turned to ashes.
"So it is the end, at long last..." he announced quietly.
"I suppose it was too much to expect..." he said to himself, slumping in a corner. "We pray, and pray, when the purges renewed. When we were hunted. No answer. I am all that's left, and soon, I fear they shall find me too.
"And now your book, the text comprised of your flesh, lays in ash. How am I to interpret that? Is it a sign? Of what? Or does it simply mean that at long last even your will couldn't go on..."
He fell to his knees.
"It's so hard to carry out your rites. So hard to find the proper victims. No. It is no sign. You are dead and so is my faith. There is no point in going on. I am without clan. None of the typical Nightbrother Clans would have me because of the crimes I committed to honor you. I have run out of other places to hide. This is the very last place they have not discovered. I have no supplies. No weapons but a knife.
He picked up the goblet.
"Perhaps it is futile. But I shall make one more offering to you, and ask for a sign. If you do not answer, than you shall have your very final offering, in the form of my blood, draining out onto your floor. But one way or another, I will at last learn the validity of my faith."
He went over and poured some blood in the ashes. Silently asking for an answer.
"Congratulations..." The fragment of Ersethy spoke behind him in a pleasant, almost perky voice.
"You finally reached 'Feth It.' " the red headed Force Spawn said, gently lifting the goblet out of the stunned Nightbrother's hand and taking a sip of its contents.
He fell to his knees.
"All I asked for was a sign...but if I had known you would actually appear before me..." he whispered.
"You'd have gotten overconfident, trust me." the fragment replied.
"But Goddess...what is to be done now?"
The Fragment smiled, flesh shuddering as she took his knife and opened her arm up, smearing runes into the chamber with white blood, which burned into the stone.
"This cavern will now hide your presence in the Force..." The Fragment explained.
"That...that is well and good, milady...but...what about supplies?"
"You have proven to me you are ready to die. Prove to me now that you are strong enough to want to live. I'll shall return in one week. If you have survived down here...you shall be worthy of further guidance."
The Nightbrother nodded. "I understand."
The Fragment nodded in sage like approval before departing...
It took Forceful prompting from every other Witch inside her to make the Fragment go in the direction they wanted.
It took even more prompting to make her give up the body back to the Battalion, and every Witch within made sure to disassemble that persona until they needed it. But she had nonetheless reached her original destination, an old vault of stone in one of Dathomir's mountains, sealed by spells.
The Battalion placed her hand over the vault door, in the shadow of a mountain where nothing grew.
The door slid upward and The Battalion retrieved her gifts...
Present...
Ession's Shadow, the TIE Reaper used by the Battalion since before she was The Battalion, streaked above the City of Midas, heading toward the newly designated archives tower close to the center, in spitting distance body Darth Mammon's palace. It had its own docking pads, newly tested and installed.
She found herself growing eager to see Galahad again. Other than Percival, she had really only connected with Galahad so far.
The Battalion had retrieved stuff she felt best suited him. Seeing how he was an archivist, she had found her personal copy of the Epistle of Marka Ragnos, along with a collection containing select chapters from Palpatine's Book of Anger. She had even retrieved her own personal essays on the nature of using the Darkness for combat purposes.
But one more gift was meant to serve him on a more concrete level.
It was an old Relic, an alchemical Sith Shield, round and black and heavy.
She didn't think any of it too ostentatious. Hopefully Galahad Io wouldn't either.
As she entered the still not fully set up archives, wearing her hooded red ritual gown, she carried her presents in black gift wrapping, one of the Nuetralizers comming Galahad to tell him his stepmother was present and wanted to speak.
