Location: Kubindi, Calaron Sector, the Outer Rim Territories
Interacting With: [member="Aryn Teth"] | [member="Varik Ice"] | [member="Luyioth Dakwin"]
Objective: 1 - Hive Kadsac Tunnels
(Headed toward Varik/Command Center)
As the electricity faded from the air, sparks dying around her fingertips, the subtle scent of manufactured ozone also disappeared. Her wrath was cloaked in pale shadow. Always, she was careful to hide it from Aryn in order to keep it from traveling the length of her bond, but her efforts seemed to have failed. While it passed through her, as if carried on a whimsical breeze, she could feel the darkness pooling within him. He had such propensity for the dark side. It felt almost natural, a sort of aptitude, and it bothered her. To her shame, it left her with a profound sense of unease. She refused to call it fear, because she could never be afraid of Aryn Teth, but make no mistake, the blackness she felt running through him was wrong.
Very,
very wrong.
He stared in into the abyss. A good Jedi should have stood his ground, held steadfast, and resisted the whispering temptation. Aryn did not. He looked inside the primordial night and found it comfortable. He let it pull him in. Let his guilt, his anxiety, and his compassion rule him.
By the time the dark-haired Commander spoke, a single syllable, she knew instinctively that he was not responding to her inquiry. She could still smell the scent of singed fabric and flesh in the air. What a foolish human. The fact that he wore no armor, took no precautions to protect himself, and only relied on the Force to deflect blaster bolts had never sat well with her. This was precisely why.
She could feel something happen, a palpable ripple in the Force, and Aryn dropped to one knee behind her. Momentary fear wound around her heart as she heard his saber clatter to the dirt floor in the darkness. She couldn’t protect both of them, not forever, not like this. The Echani spun in a full circle and liberated an elephant trunked head from its shoulders with the help of her white bladed weapon. The wound cauterized, the body fell where it stood, the head rolling away.
“Aryn—Talk to me. What happened? What’s wrong?”
The Kubaz couldn’t speak basic. She didn’t worry about them overhearing, or making plans against them with their dialogue, but she did worry about the precarious position he was in. Srina fell back, focused on protecting the Jedi, before a sudden well of anger, fear, and hate took her breath away. Almost dizzy with it, she was stunned to immobility, silver eyes wide as Kubaz rose from the floor. She could hear the struggling, the choking, labored gasps…The desperate whirling words that begged for air. Everything in the cavern seemed to respond to a telekinetic wave in the Force. Pebbles, rocks, the dead soldiers, deceased Kubaz…But not her. Something, kept this enraged Aryn Teth from choking the life from her, and for that, she was indebted. Appreciative.
Appreciative, but disturbed.
This was not Aryn. Not the Supreme Commander. Not even a simple boy and his droid. This was not the man she knew. This was the abysmal, dark, immoral ghoul that she had met only once before. On Sullust. That meeting had been brief. Fleeting. This was different. Something had set him off, and it wasn’t Varik Ice, nor the Kubaz. He was too strong for that.
"I will kill you."
Again, this was not directed at her. The hellfire in his eyes could have scared even the most stoic of men into defecating in their armor. Srina was, thankfully, not most men. Nor most women.
He didn’t even notice, not in the slightest, that the dozens of Kubaz he held suspended in midair had been dead for quite some time. He was fighting a foe she couldn’t see. Someone in the distance, perhaps corporeal, but as far as the Sith Apprentice was concerned it might as well have been a ghost. She felt at a loss, his emotions overwhelming, bleeding into her, despite her attempts to keep them out. It was too much. And he, this Jedi, he was much too strong.
“Aryn…”, she breathed achingly soft, letting go of her saber, letting it fall. It floated back to the harness on her hip and locked in place on its own. She crossed the distance between them in darkness. His blade had extinguished when it fell. The elegant woman dropped to her knees before him, with no thought of impropriety, and wrapped her arms around his neck. She embraced him, held him, and
pulled at his darkness. She turned the level of control she had on their Force Bond, gifted by his distraction, and let every bit of his hate rage flow throw her. It was better, within her, than trapped within him
. “Aryn…”
“No. This is not the way. Be here. I need you here.”, Srina whispered, her tones bell-like, echoing in the tunnels. If they wouldn’t have been cloaked in the pitch black dark of the cavern he would have seen her eyes, slowly yellowing, as she siphoned the encroaching corruption away. The young woman didn’t know how, or why, she knew what to do. She simply did. This man was important to her—and for him, she would break any barrier, any restriction, to save him from himself. Words, spoken sweetly, like spun silver would grace him of her native tongue…
“Tyava amin seere. Amin naa sinome. Lar- mime óma. Túl at- ana i kal.
[Feel my peace. I am with you. Hear my voice…Come back to your light.]”
“Come back to me.”
In that moment, Srina bridged the gap between Aryn and the being that had brought him to this, the Sith, that had brought the Commander to his knees. Her grasp on the dark-haired man tightened, protective, and the words that left her lips next were little more than a hiss. They were forceful, quite unlike the Echani, and filled with raw power. The mark from her Master, Darth Metus, combined with the hate-fueled emotions of the man before her left her unbound. Srina Talon was a force of nature, a storm prepared to decimate everything in its path, and all because someone had disturbed what belonged to her.
Aryn was not trained for this. Srina, was. His anger, now her anger, burned bright and clear like a falling star. It was unrefined, unrestrained, and lashed at their enemy like the unmerciful heat born of an erupting volcano.
“I see you... Leave this place. Leave this man be. If I find you…I will not kill you…But I will make you wish, with every breath, that I had.”
