Temples and tombs, Eilan mused as he led Vette up the broad, curving stairway into the Dark Temple. The legacy of the Dark Side, buried in dust. What wisdom is lost every time some secretive, paranoid Sith Lord goes to his grave?
That was what they'd come here for, long-lost Sith secrets — items and knowledge that had passed out of memory or into legend. Darth Baras had sent them to find a very specific artifact, but that didn't mean that Eilan wouldn't keep an eye out (figuratively speaking, of course) for anything else that looked valuable or useful. Anything that could give him an advantage over the Sith around him — especially a hidden or unexpected advantage — would make this little adventure worthwhile to him.
"Um... I know I'm supposed to be a professional treasure hunter and pirate and everything, but this place is super creepy," Vette piped up, interrupting her "master's" train of thought. "Worse than the tombs on Korriban, even."
Some other more oafish Sith might have laughed at her fear, or even struck her for speaking out of turn. Eilan, on the other hand, silently weighed the concern in her voice and the fizz of nervousness he could sense around her via the Force. She wasn't simply commenting on the temple's grandiose, but crumbling, architecture, or the ghoul-patrolled corridors — she felt something here, dark and ephemeral and wrong.
And so did Eilan. This place was seething with Dark Side energy, as tangible to his Miraluka senses as the heat of a fire would be to Vette. The intensity of it was enough to make him feel slightly queasy if he "looked" at it for too long, although nausea was oversimplifying the sensation; he might also describe it as claws scraping across his brain, or his mind being turned inside out, or his blood reversing its course in his veins. He was horribly tempted to open himself to it just to see what would happen. The thought of surrendering to that power, of letting its corruption wash over and through him, was seductive, even erotic, and it was only reluctantly that he closed his "eyes" to the Force and returned his attention to his companion.
"The tombs on Korriban were built to commemorate individual Lords of the Sith," he explained, his voice lacking some of its usual polish as he focused on blocking out the energy around them. "This was a temple — designed as a powerful focus of the Dark Side — and many Sith died here for the darkest of purposes. I would imagine that their strength flowed into the dark fount and intensified it."
He could feel them, those Sith Lords of old; their spirits (or souls, or whatever remained of them) drifted on the dark currents in the Force like flotsam on the stormy seas of Kaas. Every so often, one would brush against him, and he would instinctively lash out at it, as a swimmer would against something bumping into him in the water. So far these spirits seemed... not harmless, because they weren't, but quiescent. But these were Sith, he reminded himself. It is power they respect, and power they crave. If I draw heavily on the Force while here, who knows what attention I might draw? Of course, he wasn't going to handicap himself based on such a supposition; if he needed to reach into the Force to fend off the mind-addled soldiers and slaves here, he would. But he'd do so with the assumption that he was being watched by unfriendly eyes.
"You're not afraid of ghosts, are you, Vette?" he asked his companion, a hint of mockery in his voice.
"'Course not!" the Twi'lek girl replied indignantly. "Long-dead Sith? Can't possibly be scarier than the live ones."
Eilan wasn't sure if he was included in that statement or not, but he chuckled quietly anyway as he led his companion deeper into the temple's shadowy halls.
Within an hour, the Sith apprentice was forced to revise his understanding of the ghostly presences in this place. It seemed that some of the disembodied spirits had taken control of slaves, soldiers, and even Sith who had been sent here to investigate the site. Eilan could only assume that no one was truly immune to possession; he tried his best to guard both himself and Vette against any aggressive spirits, but he wasn't entirely sure what form such an attack would take.
As a precaution, he warned Vette not to touch anything until he'd had a chance to examine it first. Given her background, he expected her to be on the lookout for anything that seemed valuable, and in fact, he was counting on it, since that was at the heart of their task here. But it was all too easy to imagine some holocron or lightsaber hilt or the like, imbued with the Dark Side energies of this place and bound to one of the restless spirits; who knew what would happen if someone were to try to pick up and use such a thing?
That worked well enough for a little while, and the apprentice had already deemed a jeweled trinket and a bizarre little stone figurine too potentially dangerous to bother with. But old habits were hard to break; one moment, Vette was reaching for a gleaming shard of some darkly reflective metal, calling for Eilan to come see — and the next, she was writhing on the stone floor, clutching her head and moaning unintelligibly.
"Vette? If this is your idea of a joke, it lacks style," Eilan said shortly, his unignited lightsaber in his hand as he cautiously approached her. His Force sight warned him that this was no hoax, however, and he stopped in his tracks as the Twi'lek stilled, then sat up. Her bearing was subtly different, and the aura around her was entirely wrong.
"What are you— How dare you brandish a lightsaber at me, you insolent cur!" not-Vette snapped. Her voice, suddenly older and harsher, rang with the commanding tone of a Sith Lord who expected to be obeyed. "Drop your weapon and grovel at my feet," she snarled as she stood up, "and perhaps I'll let you live to crawl away!"
"I think not," Eilan replied, smiling in a way that he knew infuriated his betters. "I don't even know who you are."
"I am Lord Edacis, and you will address me as such, slave!"
A name I shall look into later, Eilan promised himself. At the moment, he was more concerned with freeing his servant from this body-thief. There seemed to be little point in trying to reason with her — the other possessing spirits they'd encountered so far had been firm in their belief that they were alive and in their proper bodies. No, if the ghost was to be driven out, it would have to be done by force somehow, and in such a way that Vette would be left unharmed.
"I am no slave — I am Sith," he said out loud, pouring arrogance into the words, "and I think it is you who will kneel in the end, Lord Edacis." As he spoke, he raised his free hand, gathering energy into a nimbus around it. It was an open threat, and "Edacis" reacted as Eilan expected her to, lashing out with her own power to preempt his attack. The bolts of Force lightning were every bit as searingly hot as they would have been from a living Sith. Rather than steeling himself against the agony, however, the apprentice opened himself to it, embraced it, and laughed as he felt himself skirting unconsciousness. Peace is a lie; there is only pain. Pain fuels passion. Passion becomes strength...
He was vaguely aware that he had fallen to one knee, but that would be of no consequence in a moment. "Edacis" was still channeling lightning into him as he slammed his hand to the floor, releasing the power he'd gathered into a shockwave that rocked the ersatz Sith Lord on her feet. As she stumbled for balance, her attack faltered, and Eilan was ready; without a flamboyant warning this time, he surrounded her with Dark Side energy, smothering her with the intensity of his aura. Even as she continued to attack, lightning sparking from her hands, he could feel her recoil in dismay at his sudden show of strength, and that hesitation was the break he needed.
Within the Force, he sought out Vette's familiar presence, buried beneath Edacis's venomous spirit. Once he found her, seemingly unconscious of what was happening within her own body, he could begin to see where she left off and Edacis began. The ghost had latched on to Vette like a spiritual leech, but now that Eilan had exposed the connection, he could cut the parasite away.
"What— What are you doing, you fool?" Edacis shrieked as the Sith apprentice pried her away from Vette. His hands pantomimed his purely Force-bound actions, fingers curled into taut hooks as if he could physically grab hold of the spirit and tear her out of Vette's body.
"You're trying to steal something that belongs to me," he said coldly, "and I won't stand for it."
The ghostly Sith Lord's only reply was a wordless cry of defiance, but the more Eilan loosened her connection to Vette, the weaker she seemed to become. The feeble lightning that she summoned as a desperate last resort felt like a mere tickle after her earlier attack, and the Miraluka tsk'ed in disappointment.
"Is that the best you've got, my lord?" he asked, his tone making the title of respect into just the opposite. It was an excruciating effort to sound so nonchalantly dismissive, but an insult had to be delivered properly, or not at all, in his book. "Pathetic. Unfortunately for you, I prefer partners with a bit more stamina, so it looks like this is farewell."
With a final wrench, he pulled Edacis's consciousness away from Vette and cast it into the temple's currents, then quickly recentered himself within his body, in case the ghost tried to possess him next. The moment of disorientation that followed left him unable to react in time to catch his companion, who, freed of her unwanted tenant, crumpled to the floor like a discarded toy. Wincing in chagrin, Eilan stooped to pick her up; her slender frame was a light burden in his arms.
As he turned towards the temple's entryway, he thought he felt a swirl of hot, bitter spite in the darkness around him, but he was dangerously spent now, and it was hard to tell what he was truly sensing versus what he was conjuring from his own imagination. Regardless of whether the spark of ill intent was real or imagined, however, it was time to leave this place, before another ghost could take advantage of his state of weakness.
Carefully hoisting Vette's small, limp form over his shoulder to leave his sword arm free, Eilan made his way out of the haunted temple, projecting his foul mood as both a warning and a threat to any other opportunistic spirits.
He felt Vette's return to consciousness, the same way he felt anyone's: a slow unfolding, much like a flower bud opening. She seemed startled, then confused, at her surroundings: the infirmary tent at the outpost on the outskirts of the temple grounds. Suppressing his amusement, Eilan artfully excused himself from his conversation with one of the Imperial officers stationed here and returned to where he'd left his companion.
"So, you're awake?" he inquired as he drew close to her cot. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at him with an expression of consternation.
"What happened? Did I get hurt? I mean, I feel okay, and I don't see any bandages, so..." As the little Twi'lek spoke, she sat all the way up and looked herself over for signs of injury.
"Hurt? Not physically, no." The qualifier made Vette pause and look up at him in surprise.
"'Not physically?' You don't mean that I... those things in the temple..." She held her hands to the sides of her head, as if shielding herself from the truth — or from further ghostly incursions.
"Yes. For a few minutes, you were a Sith Lord," Eilan replied with a wry smile. "Not a very competent one, as far as I was concerned, but you were certainly not yourself."
"Oh." Vette seemed to chew on that for a while before admitting, "I don't remember any of it! Did we fight?"
"Of course," the Miraluka snorted. "How else do Sith solve anything?"
"True," she agreed with a nervous laugh. "I guess you won, then?"
"Of course," Eilan repeated, grinning. "Or you wouldn't be here, would you?"
"Huh. Right. But..." The girl paused for a moment, frowning slightly in thought. "How did you get me, um, un-possessed?"
There was an implicit why alongside her how, although Eilan wasn't sure that she herself was aware of it. They'd struck down the possessed troopers and slaves and Sith that they'd encountered in the temple; why had he decided to try to save her, and how had he done so?
Unfortunately for her, he had no particular desire to answer either question.
"Oh, simple enough," the apprentice said with a lazy shrug. "Once I'd stunned her — you, that is — I kissed you."
"What?!" Vette exclaimed, loud enough to draw curious looks from the nearby troopers. Embarrassed at the sudden attention, she continued in a quieter, but vehement, undertone, "Liar, you did not!"
She wasn't entirely sure he was lying, though, that was the fun of it. Eilan decided to prod her further. "I did. With tongue.I suppose 'Lord Edacis' didn't care much for it."
"You... you're such a..." Eilan only smirked at the Twi'lek's speechlessness, and she threw her hands up in frustration. "I don't believe you, you know."
"Believe what you will, my dear," he said with a coy smile. "Just remember, I could have left you wandering the halls of the temple like those other mindless puppets."
That seemed to finally drive home for Vette just how much danger she had been in. Eilan felt her mood suddenly shift from exasperation to confused gratitude, but before she could say something awkward and sentimental, he preemptively silenced her, gently pressing his fingers to her lips. Uncharacteristically obedient for the moment, she stared up at him, but Eilan knew she'd learn nothing from the cold, intricately worked metal of his eyemask. Just the way he preferred it.
"Rest tonight," he said finally, breaking the tension as he stepped back from her cot. "We're going back tomorrow."
"Seriously? Ugh." The Twi'lek sighed dramatically and flopped back down, pulling her pillow over her face. "Do we get hazard pay for this, or what?"
"What? You think we're getting paid for this?" It was a running joke of sorts between the two of them, and Eilan laughed at the girl's exaggerated groan of dismay.
Satisfied that Vette seemed none the worse for her brief possession, the apprentice bid her a good evening and made his way out of the infirmary. His blood was still up after the fight with Edacis, and that trooper captain had seemed quite friendly after Eilan had retrieved the archaeological data he'd wanted. Perhaps today wouldn't be a total loss, after all...
Author's Notes: Our guild had a little writing contest for Halloween, and the idea was to write something Halloween-ish.. spooky, dark, scary, etc. I went with a Sith-style haunted house romp. ;P
