EPISODE III
Prologue: Awakening
One month after the Battle of Krantisi
"Time to wake up." Said a voice with a vaguely Toydarian accent.
"Ugh…Five more minutes."
"You've had a month to be useless, Manthis! Now wake up, you lazy c-!"
Dynn suddenly woke up, instinctively raised her left arm and telekinetically strangled the source of the voice: a slender black-cloaked man of a species she hadn't seen before with a beaked, goggle-eyed mask that made him look like a Kubaz.
"Next person who tries to say that word loses an arm." Dynn then released her grip on the man and got a good look at her surroundings.
She was wearing a very simple light grey tunic in contrast to the more elaborate custom-made Valkoran armor she was wearing before and was chained to what looked like an archaic medical cot with a hard, uncomfortable cushion. Also she was inside some large rustic-looking chamber - illuminated by crude yellow-glowing lamps - with several more cots of different sizes similar to the one she was chained to, all with creatures of various types recovering from sometimes fatal-looking injuries, including a large, screaming cyclopean insectoid-reptilian creature that had its arms amputated, a long but cropped tail and suffered severe burns all over its body yet was somehow still alive. It was like a grossly-outdated hospital combined with a condemned prison.
"What happened to that… thing?" Dynn asked in response to the scorched lizard.
"That thing is Lord Belluzub, and he was thrown into a star."
"How in space did he survive that?"
"He didn't. His death was just slow and painful enough that we were able to retrieve his body and soul before he was completely incinerated, just like you. Suffice to say, he wasn't very easy to recover compared to previous subjects."
"But why does he still have fifth-degree burns?"
"Yalbdalaoth made him keep them as punishment for being an idiot and failing to kill his target in an efficient and logical manner." The masked man changed the subject after Dynn had time to absorb her unfamiliar surroundings. "Speaking of which, I would have thought one month in the Pool of Souls would have tamed that rebellious attitude of yours."
"Wait, the Pool of what now?"
"That big, black infinite void where all the glowing eyeballs scream at you."
"Oh, that place. So that wasn't just some bad spice trip. And I heard more static than screaming. From the looks of what's going on right now, I'm assuming this is Hell?"
"You would be wrong, Manthis. You may have been killed, but my master has denied you death so you will continue to serve the Collective."
"And if I refuse?"
"You won't."
A familiar voice cropped up in Dynn's head. "Hello, Dynny."
Dynn suddenly looked at her right arm, noticing that it was the same sentient arm that had taken over her body before her death. "Son of a Hutt..." At the very least, she could tell her body wasn't forcefully mutilated again… at least not yet.
The masked man chimed in again. "You should be thankful, Manthis. Not everyone resurrected by my master gets their original body back."
"Original body? Judging by the accent, I guess that means you were a Toydarian before you became whatever you are now."
"Correct. I had a name once. I was called Girdretto. I was once a lowly kingpin on Sleheyron before the Forceless Collective came. I was terrified, but after a few months in the Pool of Souls, Yalbdalaoth has enlightened me and made me realize how terrible our galaxy, and by extension, the universe is. Eventually, you will see the same."
"But why me? Why do I get to keep my original body, and why I am not in the face-chest phase yet?"
"Yalbdalaoth has realized a potential weakness in one of his highest-priority enemies, and you are that weakness."
"Let me guess: Zolph."
"Ding ding!" The arm chimed in. "I'd bet a million credits that he's still reeling from the circumstances of your death. And if you still have your original body when you reunite with your boyfriend and I reshape you again, we're more likely to make an impact on him."
"Do you really think he think he's going to fall for that twice?"
"It's only been one month since you died, and for someone as young as him, he's still pretty vulnerable right now. Even after a few months, one doesn't just recover from a traumatic incident."
"Not if I have anything to say about it!" Dynn instinctively tried to grab for her lightsaber, only to realize it wasn't in her possession.
Girdretto taunted her. "Nice try, Manthis. Anything that was on you before you died is a long way from here. Besides, even if we retrieved your equipment in preparation for your service, we aren't stupid enough to arm people who have proven problematic for us."
"I guess that only applies to Private Helms then." Dynn muttered to herself before directing her speech to Girdretto again. "I'll admit, that was very smart, except you forgot one thing…"
A massive shock wave suddenly erupted from Dynn, shattering her shackles and sending Girdretto flying and stumbling over a vacant altar.
"A Jedi is never unarmed." She tranquilly boasted as she got on her feet.
Girdretto smugly taunted her back as he was recovering. "Oh, we didn't forget."
The Forceless arm suddenly bent backwards, causing Dynn to feel the exact type of excruciating pain she would be feeling if she still had her original right arm once again. Dynn then fell on her knees.
"I'm still heeeere." The arm mocked her. "Master Valkor knows you Force users all too well. Most of his disciples are Force users, and anything that flows with the Force is food for him."
Mentioning Valkor when Girdretto didn't gave Dynn something to think about, something the Forceless Collective probably didn't want its followers outside this location to know about. She turned her attention back to Girdretto. "Tell me, Not-a-Toydarian. You keep mentioning this name like it's very important. Who the hell is Yabby-dabby-bobby-loth?"
Girdretto responded defensively. "Yalbdalaoth's name is not that complicated to pronounce in-!"
Girdretto was suddenly interrupted by a puddle of Black Matter oozing out of his plated boots. It started breaking him down inch by inch, making it look like he was sinking into the puddle despite its apparent volume and the solid floor it emerged on.
A gargled voice came from the puddle. "You have said too much, Girdretto! Perhaps you need some more…correction."
"Please have mercy!" Girdretto begged as the puddle consumed him. "I don't want to go back in there!"
"Then you need to learn to keep your mouth shut. Or I can give your next body no mouth at all."
As Dynn guessed, they probably didn't want her learning the name "Yabladoth" or however-the-hell-it-was-pronounced until she was fully converted to this Forceless-worshipping cult.
As Dynn smirked at the trouble she just caused, the Forceless arm pulled a nerve in protest. "Bitch, what did you do?!"
"I did nothing…yet." Dynn used her left hand to Force pull a scalpel from a surgical tray on a cart – that looks like it hadn't been used for thousands of years – and stabbed it through the single eye on the back of the living arm's palm. This elicited a scream of pain it never gave before when it harmed her despite sharing the same nervous system. It still hurt her a bit and she'd have to get used to having only two eyes again after spending the last seven months before her death with more.
Dynn followed up on her previous response. "I just alerted you to an incompetent disciple." While the scalpel remained impaled through the arm's eye, she took the opportunity to use some more surgical tools to remove the tongue from the arms palm and the teeth from the fingers. She figured if the scalpel stayed, it would have trouble regenerating or trying to cripple her.
Eventually, Girdretto was completely broken down, but the puddle was still there and sprouted an eyestalk. The symbiote tried to charge at Dynn, but with no tangible and practical weapons around, Dynn used the Force to lift the blob off the ground and threw it at the badly-burned Belluzub. This caused the massive Archfiend more agonizing pain from just being touched.
While the symbiote was preoccupied with the charred beast and nothing else in the room to stop her, Dynn rushed out of one of the chamber's exits.
Navigating through the corridors of wherever she was, Dynn deduced that she was in a hospital that has fallen into disuse – and become criminally outdated by galactic standards - and now become a correctional facility for resurrected Forceless hosts, whether they're up to the Collective's standards or not.
Before Dynn could think about anything else, the scalpel impaled through her Forceless hand shifted a bit, indicating that it was still alive but struggling to regenerate.
"Oh, no you don't!" Dynn aggressively twisted the scalpel to undo the parasite's progress.
Before she could think of any long term plans, her first thought was to get the arm amputated. She was tempted to use whatever was available, but the tools provided in the hospital couldn't cauterize the inevitable wound and prevent her from bleeding out. While death might be preferable to being enslaved to some nightmarish abomination again, she thought she might as well use her second chance at life to her advantage.
As she continued trying to find a way out, she found a chamber filled with six people bolted down to the floors by tight body-concealing robes that were essentially straight-jackets and helmets that blocked off all their senses to the world around them. She unmasked one of these prisoners, revealing a male Abednedo who was apparently psychologically disturbed.
"Who-who-who are you?!" The Abednedo asked Dynn.
"I'm Dynn Manthis. What were these people doing to you and the others?"
"It was horrible! It was so dark! Yet I couldn't shut out the eyes! Or the screaming!'
Judging by the description, this seemed to be a way to simulate the Pool of Souls for the living, and potentially brainwash them.
"Calm yourself." Dynn tried to comfort the Abednedo. "Whatever you were experiencing, it's over now. What is your name?"
"M-m-m-Matra Kee. They tried to make me forget my name. I was a scout for the Galactic Alliance operating on Sleheyron before… before those things invaded… and I was eaten by one of them."
Dynn wasted no more time releasing the other five prisoners from their torment, all being of species she was at least somewhat familiar with. Most of them were still sane enough to be horrified by what they experienced, but one of them, a bald tan-skinned human male, was more broken than the rest and laughing like a mad man.
"What is your name?" Dynn asked the human.
"Name? Names are only for people who have been deemed worthy by Valkor!" The man tried to grab at Dynn to strangle her, but she merely used the Force to throw him against the wall and knocked him unconscious.
"You….you're a Jedi?" Matra gasped. "Then that means we're saved!"
Unfortunately for Matra, his joy was dashed a bit when Dynn informed of her circumstances. "Don't get your hopes up too high, Matra. First off, I've just been resurrected from the dead with the intent of being used as a weapon again by these guys, and maybe you were too. Second, I need something to amputate this arm without killing myself because I don't have my lightsaber. And last, aside from this place being a conversion clinic, I have absolutely no idea where we are. Between not knowing how many more people in this clinic have been converted, being handicapped and outnumbered, things don't look so good for us right now."
Suddenly, five long-limbed humanoids bearing four-eyed masks with capes hooked behind them entered the chamber and pointed the bases of their pikes at the prisoners as if they were rifles and the blades were stocks. The other prisoners – all people who were on Sleheyron when the invasion happened – recognized these uniform beings as the foot soldiers for the invaders.
"Shavit! It's them!" Matra panicked. If he had his blaster, he'd be ready to fight back, but since he was unarmed, he felt hopeless now.
Despite being physically unarmed, Dynn stepped forward in defiance to the creatures.
"Stand down, Forceless scum. I'm the most dangerous person in this room." She boasted to the warriors.
The Forceless all pointed their weapons at Dynn, but she simply lifted her false right arm and used the Force to toss them all against the wall, smashing all but one of them into pieces. As the last one got up on its feet and reclaimed its weapon, Dynn's Forceless arm tried to distract her as much as it could again by triggering a muscle spasm near her shoulder.
"Restrain her and then have the rest of them put back in processing." The arm communicated to the warrior.
As the warrior approached Dynn and tried to restrain her, Matra charged for one of the dropped rifle-pikes, picked it up and after a second of trying to find the trigger based on how its wielder was holding it, fired an energy blast into the Forceless warrior's head and killed it.
With nothing else to distract her, Dynn twisted the scalpel again to incapacitate her own arm.
"Good shot, Matra." Dynn commended the Abednedo scout. "Unfortunately, heated blade or not, I can't deal with this arm forever. For those of you who haven't figured it out, this arm has a mind of its own and is the same as one of those creatures."
"This weapon works just like a blaster, but blasters don't cauterize wounds as well as lightsabers. However, I've got a temporary solution to your arm problem until we get out of this hellhole. This will hurt a lot, but please put your hand on the floor."
Dynn complied and did as Matra told her. Without hesitation, Matra swung the rifle-pike's blade downward and chopped off Dynn's hand, eliciting a pained scream from her as the stump bled out a mix of both her own blood and Black Matter. Matra then wasted no time tearing off a large piece of the deceased Forceless warriors' capes and wrapped it around the stump.
"Like I said, this is only a temporary solution. We'll still need to find you an actual doctor."
"Well, we are in a hospital." Dynn replied while trying to maintain a sense of optimism in such a tough situation. "The worst one in the universe, that is. Now, we need to think about escaping before we can think of long-term plans. And reinforcements are most likely on their way here thanks to my screaming."
"Unfortunately, we're one gun short of our party, and I'm not sure if all of us have held a blaster before."
One of the prisoners, a Rodian female named Veeaba, replied to Matra's assumption. "We might not have military training like you and I might just have been a mere dancer, but when you live in an Outer Rim cesspool, knowing how to use a blaster is almost a necessity, even when you're not a criminal or living in poverty. So you don't need to worry about us."
"And don't worry about me either." Dynn commented. "I was obviously able to get this far without a weapon. Besides, I can always just pick up another on the way out."
The incapacitated human prisoner Dynn knocked out earlier started coming to his senses, but Matra wasted no time shooting him before he could fully recover.
"It's too late for him, Manthis. The brainwashing already took its toll on him." Matra then turned his attention to the other escapees and pointed to the grip near the rifle-pike's guard. "You might not be able to see the trigger, but if you just squeeze your trigger finger on the grip, it will fire. Using the blade should be pretty straightforward."
Everyone else picked up a rifle-pike and they all moved out.
As the group moved to the lowest levels of the "hospital" and fought the security force, it didn't take Dynn long to get a rifle-pike of her own. Not knowing how long it would be before she had access to non-living prosthetics, Dynn thought this would be a good time to get used to fighting left-handed. She felt slightly clumsy compared to Matra Kee's wielding of the weapon, and only not as clumsy as the normally-non-combatant prisoners thanks to the Force.
Along the way, they bolstered their ranks with a few other prisoners, but most of them had already fallen to the Collective's brainwashing procedures. And sometimes, those that were just liberated would be killed in battle, or possessed and then killed by those that had just rescued them.
It didn't take long for them to get out of the hospital and get an indication of what planet they were on. This hospital was situated in a desert with ash gray sand and an orange sky, almost as bleak as the ward they were just inside.
Unfortunately, the group wasn't home free yet. Guarding the hospital courtyard's main gate was a platoon of Forceless warriors and Nidracha, led by a hunched-over, 20-foot tall, Forceless-possessed humanoid with four pincer-tipped arms – two of them connected to his back and much longer than his primary arms, presumably the warden. His face had four glowing red eyes and a line-covered trunk splitting down the middle of the face, with the center-most line splitting open to reveal a toothy mouth.
"This is as far as you go, traitor!" The warden boasted to Dynn. "It would be a shame if just one patient escaped from the Darksand Correctional Facility."
"There's a first time for everything, Nose-mouth." Dynn boasted back. "And you're calling me a traitor? Don't make me laugh. You knew I was a double-agent working for the Galactic Alliance when I joined the Valkoran Empire."
"You people have nowhere else to go." The warden continued. "Even if you did get away from me, there won't be any starships to get you off this planet. And even if you found a ship or two, you're several galaxies away from home. You'll be trapped here, forever! That is, unless you pledge a life of servitude to Emperor Valkor. Only he has the means to let you go back."
Dynn tried to filter him out. Whatever he was claiming, it was clearly intended to break their spirit.
"We'll worry about those little details after we get out." Dynn then gave some words of encouragement to the non-Force-sensitives fighting alongside her. "Don't listen to a word he says. We've gotten this far. I know some of you, especially those of you killed people for money, are scared, disillusioned and tempted to join them. Whatever empty promises he's giving you, it will cost you all sense of freedom you have in the process, and I mean that literally. You won't be able to do anything on your own volition, and they'll torture you until you know nothing but unquestioning loyalty to their cult. They tried to do it to me once, and that's that what they were doing to you before I freed you."
"Impressive bravado, Manthis. But Jedi or not, you're far from your full potential…at least for a few more seconds."
Dynn suddenly felt something sprouting out of the stump where her recently-amputated hand used to be. The blood-soaked piece of cloth fell off and revealed the Forceless hand grown back.
"I'm back, bitch!" The hand boasted before looking to Matra Kee. "You should have chopped a lot higher, Abednedo. As long as there is a little bit of me left, I can keep growing my head back."
"I don't know what that b-word means, but judging by the context, I bet it's the same as schutta and the c-word. So for that, you're losing more than your tongue." Matra then fired his rifle at the hand's eye crystal and incapacitated it, if only temporarily. "Sorry, Dynn. We cut that slime off from the roots now, and you're at greater risk of exsanguinating. Just try to hold on a little longer and keep stunting him."
The warden taunted them further. "With Manthis's arm still around and nothing to prevent her bleeding, what hope do you have of getting away from here? Only two of you have actual military experience, and one of those two is a disabled Jedi without a lightsaber."
Matra Kee promptly shot down a few of the warriors and Nidracha accompanying the warden. "Ugly, Mom and Dad fought the Galactic Empire when I was a boy, and Mom told me 'Matra, don't take shavit from any nerfherder who tries to take away your freedom'. And we're not having yours…nerfherder."
The remaining Forceless fired back, but they were all shot down by the rest of the escapees.
"Seeing your Rebellion roots, you don't seem likely to turn without me forcing you to, Matra Kee. But what about the people of Sleheyron? A lot of them are credit-clinging criminals. They don't have any sense of patriotic loyalty."
One of the escapees, a burly male Weequay named Vahn Tahkna, stepped up and spoke to the warden. "No, but I only killed people for Girdretto because I had a wife and two kids to feed, and I highly doubt your cult would reward me with credits or the chance to see them again. And if I did join you, I probably wouldn't recognize them as my family. I'd rather die only having memories of them than have them see me again as more of a monster than when I was with Girdretto."
Veeaba also spoke up. "When most of us were possessed during the invasion, those two Jedi that were there clearly didn't want to kill us, but only did so because they thought they were sparing us from something far worse."
Dynn speculated that the two Jedi Veeaba was talking about were Zolph and Grein.
"You're defending the ones who murdered you?" The warden taunted Veeaba. "I would think you would be bitter about them killing you over something you had no control over. You didn't ask to be killed after all. In fact, all of you should be grateful to us. We brought you back from the dead! Therefore, you owe us your lives!"
"You made us your slaves before we died, you entitled, bipedal Hutt!" Veeaba protested. "We didn't ask to be brought back to life in the middle of who-knows-where, either!" The Rodian then calmed down a little before raising her rifle-pike again. "Besides, the Jedi might not have expected us to be resurrected at the time, but they gave us a chance to be free from you, whether it meant permanent death or being resurrected without your possession."
Veeaba then shot the warden in the face. The shot burned away his upper left eye, but it didn't kill him.
"It would seem…disciplinary action is to be taken!" The warden angrily lashed his left back arm at Veeaba, knocking her and a few of the other escapees to Dynn's left and against the courtyard walls.
Dynn tried to chop at the warden's arm with her pike and what physical strength she had, but didn't cut deep enough into it. The arm then swung the other way and knocked everyone else out except for Dynn, who had just enough strength to leap over it.
"You are not keeping us from getting out, Warden Nosemouth." Dynn boasted to the warden. "I will make sure the survivors are free from you."
"Oh, that reminds me. I forgot to formally introduce myself. I am Bethlerot, and as you already figured out, I am the warden of this hospital."
"You have a name? I guess those are privileges to your little cult."
"Little? Cult? You dare downplay the size of the Collective of Valkor?! We have far more divine right than your pathetic Jedi Order and Galactic Alliance!"
"Religious pretenses: the laziest yet most effective rationalization of getting the gullible or desperate to follow you and seemingly validate your rule. Apparently, your Collective is a Yuuzhan Vong wannabe, except without the oh-so-inconvenient roadblocks that restrict most religions' own followers from doing everything they want. And you're still naming Valkor as the leader of your Collective? Why bother? Girdretto's already spilled his guts on the existence of a supposedly more powerful entity with a Y-name I haven't gotten the hang of pronouncing yet. But then again, eating him was a clear sign that's something you don't want us foreigners knowing about unless we're on one-hundred percent."
Bethlerot's anger over Dynn's speech was barely concealed. "You should all pray that you don't survive this, because you will all be sent back to reconditioning. But you, Manthis, you will survive! Valkor will have his weapon!"
"Don't you mean Yabadoll?" Dynn mocked the massive warden, still failing to get the pronunciation of Yalbdalaoth right. This sent Bethlerot into an uncoordinated berserk rage.
Bethlerot tried to chop at her with all four of his clawed arms, but she dodged all of his swipes with her Force-enhanced dexterity and continued to make weak chops into his left back arm until it came off.
As Bethlerot groaned from the pain, he also commended Dynn. "It looks like Maesterus taught you well, being able to only fight back with your weak arm and a comparatively inferior metal blade. I'm surprised none of your group has accidentally stabbed themselves using them to shoot. But alas, hero time is up for you."
Suddenly, Dynn's right arm came back to life again and forcefully bent backwards, causing her enough pain to effectively immobilize her.
"Dammit! Why now?!" Dynn shouted.
As usual, the smug arm mocked her predicament. "Well, you can have life or you can have freedom, but you can't have both."
"Since when?"
"Since it was established that the purpose of all life is to serve the Collective."
Bethlerot took one more opportunity to taunt Dynn. "Like I said, Manthis, nobody leaves Darksand alive without being in our service."
While Bethlerot was taunting her, Dynn saw a mysterious grey-skinned, humanoid alien shrouded in a white cloak with a few pieces of jade-colored armor beneath emerge from behind the top of the gate post on her left.
The alien then drew out a sword with a metal blade that enveloped itself in an orange, glowing energy field, leaped off the post and slashed off Bethlerot's front right arm with almost no effort, leaving a cauterized stump as the large creature screamed in pain.
Suddenly, Dynn's arm dropped its smug demeanor and started to worry. "Damn! That old fool's still not dead yet?!"
With the arm panicked, Dynn took the opportunity to slam its single eye really hard against a small rock poking out of the dirt, dazing it again.
After landing on the ground, the warrior glanced at Dynn while continuing to face Bethlerot. "Young lady, get the survivors out the gate. I'll answer your questions after I'm done with this two-armed toady. And don't stop resisting that parasite!"
Dynn was a little perplexed to see a member of a never-before-seen alien species speaking Basic, but for all she knew, now was not the time to ask about that. Dynn complied and started helping up the survivors of Bethlerot's attack, including Matra, Veeaba and Vahn. Thankfully, only six out of the twenty-six escapees were killed by Bethlerot.
While Dynn was helping the others, the warrior and Bethlerot exchanged words in a language Dynn did not understand at first.
"Admon Onae." Bethlerot muttered. "After I kill you, there will be no one to discredit Valkor's sovereignty."
"Don't you mean Hazral Vangeli's sovereignty?" Admon mocked back. "After all, he's the one who created your cult. But then again, it would have been invalidated as soon as it began if the name of an infamous religious extremist was credited to its creation." Admon activated his sword again and pointed it at Bethlerot. "Besides, I'd say you are the ones doing the discrediting! Your so-called 'faith group' has turned one of Muriga's oldest religions into a bad joke."
"It wouldn't be a bad joke if the remnants would just accept it or die!" Bethlerot yelled before swiping his back right arm at Admon.
Admon held out his left hand to redirect Bethlerot's strike into the dirt with assistance from what was apparently - to Dynn at least - the Force. Admon then jumped really high to cut through the planted arm's midsection. This Force-sensitivity could possibly explain why he's able to speak Basic so fluently, since Dynn herself has used it to pick up other alien languages quickly upon hearing them.
"How?!" Bethlerot panicked. "You're an old man near death, and you aren't even benefitting from Yalbdalaoth's blood! How can you even stand against us?!"
"You underestimate the power of the Plamora, Bethlerot." Admon answered. "And it's a power that a sycophantic Deathborne abuser like you couldn't hope to understand."
Bethlerot made one more futile strike with his remaining arm, but Admon simply threw his heated blade into the warden's slit-like mouth and skewered through his cranium. After he fell down, Admon forcefully removed his weapon from the warden's massive corpse, with any excess Black Matter burned away by the heat. He then turned off the blade and placed it back in the scabbard on his belt.
By now, Dynn's party had made it out of the institution's gates. However, some hooded-and-masked men and women – apparently cultists in attire similar to Girdretto's – started pouring out of the main building and pointed their weapons, consisting of non-hybridized pikes and rifles – at Admon.
"The infidel has killed the warden! Death to the infidel!" One of them shouted.
"Not by you, you hack plague doctors!" Admon boasted as he fled the vicinity and dodged rifle-fire, firing back at the cultists with an ether pistol.
An hour after getting away from the institution on foot and fighting the arm's influence, Dynn's party had made it to an oasis with some surprisingly green vegetation.
For how much time Admon Onae spent stalling Bethlerot, it only took a few minutes for him to catch up to the party.
"We owe you for saving us back there, Admon. I have so many questi-."
Admon interrupted Dynn. "Let's get rid of that arm first. When was it last incapacitated?"
Dynn felt the Forceless waking up again, but barely coherent from all the repeated shootings and bludgeonings. "You…cannot…escape…from me…" Dynn abruptly skewered it onto her rifle-pike again before it could insult her with some other foreign expletives.
"About a second ago." Dynn weakly answered Admon.
"Good." Admon then commanded Matra Kee and Vahn Tahkna. "I need you two to help restrain her in case the arm wakes up during the amputation process."
Vahn kneeled down behind Dynn and used his muscular arms to bind Dynn's left arm to her torso while Matra held the Forceless arm out to her side and the pike it was still skewered on.
Admon unsheathed and activated his thermal blade again. Dynn took a deep breath, knowing that this was going to hurt like hell. After making a judgment on how far the roots have dug, Admon swiftly sliced close to her shoulder – inevitably burning off a little more of Dynn's natural arm in the process - and safely separated the parasite…for Dynn that was.
As Dynn groaned from the pain of having her arm cut off for the third time, the severed Forceless arm violently writhed around – no longer feeding telepathic messages into Dynn's head – before dying and decomposing into a puddle of Black Matter.
The Black Matter tried to slither away, but Veeaba fired her rifle-pike at it to finish it off, causing it to evaporate into the air.
"Yes! I am FINALLY free of that kriffing arm!" Dynn yelled with exasperation before collapsing down onto the grass.
Matra checked on her. "Jedi or not, even with the wound cauterized, you've still lost a lot of blood today, Dynn. Not to mention all the self-inflicted blunt trauma. You need to rest a bit."
Admon handed Matra his water canteen to give to Dynn while everyone else, undoubtedly thirsty and hungry from their ordeal, drank from the oasis and took some fruit from the nearby trees. Once the canteen was empty, Matra refilled it for Admon, who then pulled down the wrappings over his mouth to take a few sips himself.
"After we're done resting, we need to get moving again." Admon informed the party. "Deathborne are hive-minded, so that arm we just cut off may have given away our position to some hunting parties."
Dynn was a bit baffled by that name. "Wait…Deathborne?"
"That's right. You're not from this world…Dynn, that's your name right? Much like you probably have a different name for what we call the Plamora, you have a different name for them, and Yalbdalaoth just goes along with it when it comes to drawing in new followers."
"I'm going to make a guess and assume that this 'Plamora' is another name for what we Jedi call the Force and 'Deathborne' are what we call Forceless. You fight just like a Jedi and call upon the Force- excuse me, Plamora, to aid you. And that sword you wield is similar to another weapon I had back home, except it doesn't need a solid metal blade to give the plasma energy its shape."
"So, these Jedi are much like the Paladins of the Plamora that once existed here, with me and Valkor being the last remnants of that order."
"Wait a second…"
Admon interrupted again. "We should get moving now. We're almost out of Darksand Wastes. You can continue probing me while we make the journey back to my camp."
Thirty minutes after resting and evacuating the oasis, Dynn continued with her many questions.
"First off, who are you and where am I?" Dynn asked Admon.
"For a proper introduction, I am Admon Onae, one of the last of a generation long gone, but you already knew my name. You are on the planet of Muriga, a world which I hear from others of your species I've helped save, hasn't reached its space age yet, thanks to the Order of Yalbdalaoth enslaving the Levioths and using them to travel beyond this galaxy, thereby rendering further technological growth on this planet meaningless for them when they can just steal from others. In other words, you are on the capital of what you call the Forceless Collective."
Dynn suddenly paused in her tracks and fell to her knees. She started to cry and laugh at the same time, realizing that breaking speech that Bethlerot threw at her team an hour and a half ago had a ring of truth to it. Valkor once told her that his Forceless Empire was made up of a few galaxies.
With the rest of the party worried, especially with such behavior from a seemingly stoic Jedi, Veeaba rushed over to her to calm her down. "What's wrong, Dynn?" The Rodian woman asked.
"That nose-mouthed goon wasn't lying! We're stranded beyond the reaches of our own galaxy! Worse, my own boyfriend doesn't know I'm not dead anymore."
"You're not alone, Dynn." Veeaba tried to comfort her. "Most of us are desperate to reunite with our friends and family, and we're worried for their well-being too."
"It's not that simple, Veeaba. Zolph killed me in a futile attempt to save me from possession, and he's undoubtedly plagued with guilt over it right now. I told him to move on before I died, but now that those monsters brought me back for their use, I feel like I lied to him. And I can't reassure him that I'm back."
Admon joined in the conversation. "I think I can relate to what your boyfriend might be going through. I was too much of a coward to kill Valkor back then to save him from Yalbdalaoth and was so desperate to ensure he wasn't recognized as a monster. Now that I'm old, frail and living on Plamora-based life-support, I partially regret not ending it the pragmatic way sooner; and to this day, Valkor continues to suffer while his name is tarnished. But I still continue to fight even though I could die of old age any moment, and I'm sure this friend of yours will do the same. And if you're lucky, you'll be reunited some day."
Dynn calmed down a little bit and got back on her feet when she was reminded of another question she wanted to ask. "It's a slim chance, but the Force may have another trick up its sleeve. Thanks, Admon. Anyway, what's the relation between you, Valkor and this Yalbdalaoth?" As an aside, Dynn retained some slight optimism realizing she finally got the pronunciation of the name right. "I thought Valkor was the leader of the Forceless Collective."
"That's what Yalbdalaoth and Hazral want everyone to think. Valkor's not the real leader of the Collective. He's just an unwilling face to hide the real leaders. As for his relation to me, he and I were once Paladins of the Plamora, as I mentioned before. He was both a comrade-in-arms and a dear friend, but such labels would be understatements for the relationship we had. Suffice to say, Hazral, his deranged religious fundamentalist father didn't take the idea of his legacy not living up to his standards very well. So he forcefully turned Valkor into a herald for the monster he created; the monster he named after one of our gods to sell the idea it had taken physical form. However, we must continue to move on to the camp. I'm sure you'll have more questions, but I don't want to stall us with everything I know at once when the Collective has most likely sent Rapthounds to sniff us out."
"So, there's much more to the Collective and the Valkoran Empire than I thought. We may never get home again, and we may live with the sorrow of never having our situation known by our friends and family, but at least here in the capital, we can put up a fight and make a significant difference for them from afar. It's just too bad that once it's over, we're going to die on this bleak desert planet."
Admon was slightly offended by that remark. "You know this is my home you're talking about, right? If you're sad about dying on this planet, don't be. Darksand Wastes is just one region of Muriga, and not all of it is a desert. There are plenty of livelier and beautiful places to die, and my camp is in one of these places."
"Really? In the galaxy I come from, usually when you see one part of a planet, you have pretty much a good idea what the rest of the planet looks like."