What Comes Around...

With the holocrons hidden, Lord Ivix pulled his lightsaber and sprinted back towards the archive's new entrance, the impetuous warrior trailing just behind, his new red blade held low to the ground and he seemed more than eager to test it out..

As they rounded the corner to the Holo-record room, three figures blocked their path. Three Jedi, each radiating a great amount of power and their threatening postures made him and the sith skid to a halt. The front one stepped forward, blade raised. "I am master Ell, by the blood of my ancestors, you will not abscond with their charge, that item's creator slew the entire Jedi council, including my ancestor, sucking the force right from their bodies. The betrayer will never leave this archive. Master Vash, Lamar, block the exit. These sith will not get the betrayer's holocron past us."

The Jed I charged, sabers poised to destroy the two lords, who deftly blocked and parried, but lost ground quickly. The Jedi were much stronger than the others they had faced, each working in tandem, a perfect battle-meld using telepathic coordination with the force. The lords were eventually backed into a wall as they defended for all they were worth, but the outcome was becoming more and more apparent. They stopped in a semi-circle, blocking any escape, the masters approached and Ell began to speak. "Her teachings will destroy the force, we cannot let this happen. We will kill you, if we must. As the Exile did, despite his severance from the force."

With this, a loud, localized rumble occurred and a whisper began emanating from seemingly everywhere, an echo of a time long passed. The pouch containing the holocron and the Warrior's lightsaber each began to emanate dark energy as the whisper spoke.

"You who have lived your lives seeing through the force, see the galaxy as he has." with this, the two items outpoured a massive amount of purple energy into the masters, who contorted and screamed in pain, bones cracking from their violent convulsions and their eyes smoking with a purple fog before falling dead, completely drained of the force.

The two sith stood dumbstruck for a moment; each giving quizzical looks at their respective relics before relaxing a little.

"Incredible." The Twi'Lek lord stated, removing the holocron from its pouch and examining it. "A memory of the creator's past, triggered with a similar situation with the same deadly effect! But, the holocron, it seems, dimmer than in the vault. Why?"

The Warrior gestured towards the device with his saber hilt, causing it to glow once more as the hilt neared the relic.

"The two are linked somehow, maybe the same creator? We must take these to Dromund Kaas and study them. We could gain power unimaginable, enough to take on the council itself!" The sith frowned down at his saber, hefting it in consideration.

"There is no reason to show these to anyone, much less the council. I don't intend to hand over my prize, which is what we'd be doing if we assaulted the council. No, I should very much like to stay alive." Throwing one last disdainful look at Ivix, the pureblood walked off towards the main temple hall, and the remnants of the sith assault force.


Lord Drakal, his mind wandering as he walked back to the assault force, was bewildered. He couldn't fathom the reason for such a display, and he certainly didn't want to ask the pathetic scholar Twi'lek about it, so he decided to take a breather. He passed troopers and sith, searching bodies and recovering wounded. They hovered around a large concentration of dead jedi, their last resting place telling a story of it's own. The corpses were arrayed in such a way that it smacked of a last stand, and the sith assault appeared to have been blunted for a time. the sith bodies around the circle of dead jedi was almost knee high, but the empty temple now echoed with the pain and suffering of the dead, and he reveled in it.

Striding past the destroyed shuttle they had entered on, the flames slowly dying around the junk heap. His eyes scanned the area beyond the now shattered great doors, and his good mood returned in full. The sight of sith fighters and capital ships firing on the smoke choked city was enough to bring him to a stand still. His eyes alight, and a smile from ear to ear, Drakal slowly moved to the stairs that lead to the temple, and sat down to enjoy it more fully.

Here and there capital ships fired down on fleeing residents, and fighters struck down transports filled with republic supporting fools, all dying in flames as was their lot for resisting the empire.

His smile was fading however, when he felt a small tugging sensation in his gut. His mind also began to develop a migraine; in very short order the pain grew, growing steadily stronger until he was almost blinded by the pain. He rose to his feet, gripping his head as he stumbled back into the temple. He didn't know why he was running this way, but almost as quickly as the pain began, it began to fade.

He blinked to clear the pain from his eyes, but when he could see, he was instantly upset. He stood next to the Twi'lek from before, his back to him as he rummaged through a jedi's robes.

"What did you do to me Twi'lek!? What trick did you use, hmm? If you're trying to get me to stay with you you're sorely mistaken."

"what in Ryloth's name are you babbling about now, barbarian? Ah! Baran'Do scrolls! This Jed I had excellent taste, a tad bloodstained, but salvageable." Drakal growled low in his throat, anger rising as he stepped closer.
"You know full well what I'm talking about! The headache? The pulling sensation? Are you going to stand here and tell me I was drawn here by something else?"
"are you sure it wasn't just my winning personality? Or maybe you just don't know your limits. A sith feeling force overuse symptoms," he tutted, "how embarrassing"
"Were I not under orders from Malgus himself..." Drakal held himself in check against this idiot, but it was a grueling endeavor, and one he was not entirely sure he could win.

"Look Twi'lek, for some reason, I was drawn back to you. Believe what you will, but I'm sure you know I'm not here because I wish to be. And if you didn't do it, then something or someone else, did." Drakal made sure to keep his hand away from his saber hilt, but his hand itched to be done with the man as he raised a brow in curiosity.

"Hmm, well the only thing that could explain it would be that crystal you appropriated and the Holocron. It's all that's changed, and there must be a way to..." he peered around and lowered his voice, "There must be a way to prevent it from sending signals to the Holocron, shielding the Holocron from outside detection seemed to protect me from the effects, how interesting. But we can't do that with your crystal without enormously diminishing your combat capabilities. We've discovered a peculiar set of relics here my friend, but we'll have to stay closer together if you don't want to turn into a puddle of angry red nutri-paste."

The Twi'lek smiled at his obvious anxiety, and Drakal wanted to lash out at something badly, violently. He moved to rub the bridge of his nose, but his mask stopped him. Grabbing the mask and hurling it across the great hall, Drakal cursed loudly, and caught his mask just before it smashed into a pile of rubble. He gently guided the mask back to his waiting hand with the force, and stared down at it for a time while his anger subsided.

"What are we supposed to do then? If we can't leave each others side, and since I'm assuming you won't give up your relic…?"

"If I give up the holocron, who'll unlock its secrets? You obviously won't."

"I care nothing for its secrets. i would simply smash it if it were up to me."

"And that is why I told you not to touch any. These artifacts have ancient security systems that would flay you alive before you could even thumb your sabre's activation switch. If this one reacts so violently just to distance, imagine if it were to be damaged? For all you know it could summon the ghost of Naga Sadow himself to kill you. We can get to my research lab on Dromund Kaas, figure out how to separate our prizes, and then we never have to see each other ever again. My ship awaits me on Malgus' flagship, while Darth Baras negotiates the Republic's surrender, we can at least begin attempting to separate them in the mobile lab."

Once more pinching his nose between his thumb and forefinger, Drakal sighed and extended a gauntleted hand.

"I suppose if we are stuck together... Lord Drakal the blood-thirsty."

"Indeed. Lord Nozz'Ivix the Stalwart." he extended his own hand, clasping his hand with the sith's.

"Well come on then, i want this over as soon as possible." Drakal turned on his heel and began searching for a quiet spot to sit without a damnable blue alien blathering constantly.