First Reply Sands of Time

[Helix]

Tag: Itzhal Volkihar ​

Helix crossed the distance between them in an eyeblink. Claws, fangs, and a thousand other nightmarish implements scored and gouged at his nemesis' iron skin, searching diligently for purchase. All he needed was one serious wound or breach.

The illusion of a humanoid body-plan (or any sane structure) was all but gone now. What was left was a clinging, ever-shifting mass of ill-intent.

Much as he presented himself as something advanced and convoluted beyond understanding, this was the true face of the droid warlord. Bloodthirsty, savage, and wanting nothing more than to see other beings suffer as he had suffered. There was an all-consumptive malice and madness in those shifting nests of photoreceptors, and every ounce of it was now focused on one man.

It had not always been this way. He had been a thing of formidable and ordered intellect once, and in some ways still was. Even so, the assimilation of so many living things, and the utilization of barely-understood substances in his makeup had undoubtedly had their effect.

Here was a monster that presented itself as a machine, warped by its own hubris.

Blast after blast gouged his surface, scoring away semi-liquid lumps of metallic sludge. Some few he managed to slip away from, twisting and warping his body in midair as they struggled, or causing his flesh to part to allow them to pass through him. Most, however, were simply too close to meaningfully avoid.

Painful, and enraging, but he had survived worse. One may as well have tried to empty a lake by shooting it.

Nor was he perturbed as the warrior seemingly tried to punch him with one armored gauntlet. The movement even prompted something like a laugh, as the colony-being formed a pair of pincer-mandibles to attempt to clamp down on the extended limb with all the staggering strength he could muster.

Whether the bite-force landed or not, the repulsor-swing certainly did, and its effect was quite more pronounced than anything the blasters had done.

A meter-wide cavity opened up in the liquid droid's surface, splitting him in twain down the middle. What would unquestionably have been a mortal wound to most other creatures only seemed to frustrate Helix. Still, the sheer concussive force of the repulsor's impact caused his grip and focus to noticeably slacken even as he adapted to this unforeseen inconvenience.

The two halves of the bisected entity formed into their own separate creatures, one a scurrying insectile thing resembling an oversized Kouhun, and the other something more like a power-drill married to a nest of strangling tentacles.

While the former seemed to search for vulnerabilities, the latter's approach was considerably more direct: the piercing structure of its body spun with a loud whirring snarl, and jabbed directly for the imposing visor of its foe's armored faceplate.

 

[Itzhal Volkihar]

​

| Location | Nam Chorios, Outer Rim Territories

Thin rivulets of crimson trickled from the narrow fissures running along the length of Itzhal's fingers, each delicate strand dripping to the sands below, alongside splatters of chemical compounds and metallic alloys that painted the black sands a vague greyscale bleeding red at the edges. Marked with minuscule scars that matched the damage beneath, the armour of his crushgaunts stretched and flexed, flowing over the injured skin exposed to the air only through the faintest of gaps, where a tide of blades and tools had ripped apart the flexible joints and mechanisms that couldn't be sheathed in a layer of beskar.

Beneath them, the pulse of expanding force reached the night-soaked sands, and erupted outwards in erratic plumes of skittering obsidian grains. The air trembled and shimmered, a surreal distortion reminiscent of heat rising from a forge or a mirage beckoning those in its grasp towards the lie of safety. Pain rippled up his arm, a cry for help and a reminder that, regardless of the impact, their situation wasn't over.

The machine wouldn't even let the lie last for a second.

In a bubbling wave of metallic slurry and shifting shards, the droid—if one could even call it that any more—split apart into equal parts: a grotesque mimicry of nature, and an unnatural amalgamation of the worst parts of both, writhing and twisting in a disturbing display of life and technology intertwined. Within less than a second, it leapt, twisting in the air as the abomination closed the distance between them, its nightmarish visage inching ever closer to his face, while the rest of the creature crawled over his armoured frame.

Cracks formed across the centre of his visor, a spider-web of future failures and strain etched over the reflective sheen of the transparisteel, in a moment that brought unsettling memories of the Mandalorian Protector's last encounter with the Slavemaster General. It was always the eyes with beasts like them—whether it was a matter of basking in the fear of loss, or their own sadistic joy of scooping out pain and suffering from a still-living foe, he could not say only that this time was just as unpleasant as the last.

This time, however, a single shot wouldn't fix his problems.

Through his bones, he felt the faint hum of the repulsor attached to his gauntlet, the system building power again for a follow-up shot that would separate the two and possibly even worse for the diminished droid, but time was not so kind.

Slipping open a pouch with the thumb of his left hand, he dropped the fragile form of the Tsil, allowing him to reach upwards, as the wrist-mounted vibroknuckler ejected and attempted to scrape over the mechanical pieces assaulting his visor. Unfortunately, in the same motion, the under-segment of his armpit was exposed as lesser metals chosen for agility and flexibility started to screech under the tide of probing metal.

Simply staying here would only prolong the inevitable, so with a hissed word, half-seeping out of the cracks in his visor and modulated by the vocalizer in his buy'ce, Itzhal's jetpack roared even louder, fuel burning at excessive rates as the trio of monster, knight and civilian were launched higher into the air, juking and twisting as the Mandalorian's erratic movements fought against whatever grip the abomination had managed to acquire.

Tags: Helix​

 

[Helix]

Tag: Itzhal Volkihar ​

"Your blood is sweet." Observed the machine conversationally, extending a thin tendril to catch a drop as it fell toward the sand below. "It appears the armored casket contains a mortal man under it, after all."

"It tells me a story. Strong genes, strong lineage. A fighter, born to fighters." This was no idle boast. The weave of DNA was his to peruse like a book, plucking strand by strand of biological data with rapt attention.

Past his youth for his species, but with every ounce of a young man's vim and vigor. Yet, he also seemed to be just beginning his journey. This and more the horror observed. He knew much, but still had not a name or a face to use.

Helix had personally woven entire new life forms into being this way, an act that had not helped his arrogance. Yet here he was, grappling with the faceless warden on more-or-less even terms.

He had been around for a long time, and in his experience, it took a man to slay a monster. Bravery and conviction often won out where sheer power could not. This fellow posed more of a danger to him than most of his own countrymen. The risks, however slight, were still unacceptable.

Whatever their other virtues, the Sith were lacking in such inner invulnerability. At the core of each was fear, yet if fear was in the Mandalorian's heart, it had long since been mastered.

"I don't think your story ends here. Not at my hand, at any rate. You can have the crystal, I've already gotten what I need from it."

Surprisingly, the horror's grip loosened even as his enemy began to thrash to dislodge him. Grasping tentacles, snapping pincers, and searching blades ceased their rending, receding backward.

The nameless warrior offended him, but also paradoxically fascinated him. Helix decided it was more prudent (and fun) to prolong the final act, whoever might wind up coming up short during it. The bone-crushingly strong terror seemed to dissipate on the wind, whisping away into fine, near-invisible particulate that caught the moonlight as it faded.

Yet somehow, that voice still thrummed through the air.

"It was a pleasure meeting you." Rather than carrying an air of mockery, this phrase echoed with something much worse: sincerity.

"Until next time."

The terrible presence was gone, leaving the warden alone with his terrified burden, and the shrieks of the desert wind. Were it not for the carnage they'd wrought on one another, it might almost be possible to dismiss the entire experience as a nightmare.

 

[Itzhal Volkihar]

| Location | Nam Chorios, Outer Rim Territories

Above the vast expanse of the black sands, the lawkeeper hovered, his steely gaze sweeping over the stark, desolate landscape stretching below him, now devoid of the threat that had vanished like a dissolving mirage amid the harsh, biting wails of the cruel wind. His refined sensor equipment, scanned the terrain with tireless determination, probing beyond the limits of his unfortunately limited natural vision; heat signatures faded with a dying flare, reduced to just another piece of the background, as an assortment of electronic pulses fizzled out into nothing more than a fragment of the puzzle that remained, leaving only one conclusion, the monster was gone—at least for now.

Still, his hand remained welded to the grip of his blaster pistol.

In the stillness, a high-pitched whine pierced the air from somewhere behind him, though he did not turn; his eyes flickered instead to the small panoramic strip displayed at the top of his visor. Seconds later, he felt the drained sputter of the thrusters attached to his jetpack, struggling against the weight of his beskar'gam and crackling at the seams, where the heat became noticeable, pressed into his back as it was, even with the protection of his bodysuit.

Drawing in a deep, calming breath, he cast a fleeting glance at the fuel gauge, its marker hovering precariously low. As he began his descent, an assortment of soft hisses and faint pops emerged from the twin propulsion units, each sound heralding the unsettling shifts and dips of the device that had kept him in the air, rather than splattered across the sands. Then, with a gentle thud, his boots sank into the cold black sands, the grains shifting and settling around him, as if to slowly consume him.

With another step, the sand attached to his boots poured over the sides, a trail of black that only added to the endless ocean around him, as he marched closer to the ruined campsite and the extinguished fire. The muffled sound of the desert shifted to the clack of stone as he strode forward, eventually coming to a stop inches from where their fight had begun.

In hindsight, Itzhal had been unprepared, far more than he had initially expected when face-to-face with the abomination's presentation of a civilised visage. By all accounts, it should have been a fatal mistake—torn to shreds by the onslaught of its writhing, animalistic appendages and twisted mechanical implements. Miraculously, he had emerged alive, narrowly escaping what should have been a gruesome demise, though the question of why still remained at the forefront of his mind. Perhaps the droid had found amusement in his struggle, or maybe it had deemed the outcome of their clash uncertain; he could not say, not with so many unknowns. It was a nice thought to cling to hope for the latter, yet the memory of those nightmarish limbs skittering across his beskar'gam left him with a disquieting whisper in the back of his mind.

In the end, it didn't matter. He had survived.

But so had the droid, and he knew its type: a machine unbound by any sense of morality, designed or warped till the point it revelled in the chaos that it brought about. Its metallic form was fuelled by an insatiable desire to reduce sentient beings to mere factoids and calculations in its cruel experiments. And so, it had to be stopped. If not today, then in the future.

Without realising it, his hand instinctively drifted to the worn leather pouch at his side, where the Tsil rested, its form subtly pulsing against his fingertips. In the distance, the sleek, aerodynamic silhouette of his starship swooped majestically across the horizon, growing larger by the second as the wounds across his body throbbed in the anticipation of relief.

Tags: Helix​