Chapter 10

1007 BBY

Taris, Unknown Temple, Unknown Level

Time: Unknown, standard time

Unkown, Galactic Standard Calendar

The halls echoed with their rapid footsteps. But the sound was wrong.

This dark and perverted temple was already distracting her from her purpose. It was old, at least a millennium. Had it existed on Korriban it would not have been out of place. But even the Sith, worthless and idiotic as they were, would not have let this place stand. Vylai felt her Lords knew it too, if only because among their many emotions was the carefully concealed stench of fear. They had been in this vile place only briefly and already it had become nearly unbearable for them.

The dark side consumed and shrouded this place. But like nothing she had experienced before. An old, primal and potent shroud of raw power that pulsed like the final heartbeats of a dying star. There was life to this place, but it did not resemble anything she was accustomed to - even mutants and creations of Sith Alchemy held more life than this.

A repulsive element flowed through these halls akin to that of poorly designed battle stims, a highly addictive drug that would just as much strengthen the user as it would violently tear them apart from within.

Like anything steeped in the dark side there was pain, hatred and contempt lurking in the shadows. In Korriban, it would have attempted to overpower and command her until it realized her strength. But here, it stayed silent. Only ever showing itself in slow, creeping pulls. Like ambush predators too weak to properly kill their prey.

Vylai felt the collar attempting to latch onto her neck as the hands of more powerful men gripped her, dragging and screaming to a cage. For a moment her memories melded with these sensations so vividly she could no longer tell if it was herself being violated, or another.

It was enough to make her stop and vomit hard enough she became concerned for her organs. It was all too much and she could do nothing but give into this familiar yet new power. It fed her, enhancing her beyond what she could have imagined and brought with it a second wind for the chase. Even her alchemical concoctions could not compare to this.

But with it came immense pain. She watched in curious horror as the veins in her hand turned black, and felt a numbing sensation follow as the corruption spread up her arm.

She stopped running and drew from the Force, sinking into this newfound pain and corruption and turned her emotions into a surgical manifestation of her will. With a thought she sliced into herself and permanently removed this perverted energy like she would a cancerous tumor. Never was power so easily given and never without a price. The very thought that anyone or anything would have the audacity to dare give her such power as if she was an ignorant apprentice was enough to bring her back into clarity of a focused fury. The Force bent to her will and with it came the true strength of a master befitting herself.

She breathed in the musky, iron scent of the air and turned to face her fellow Lords. All in a similar battle of wills. Lord Quelrix had cut himself off from this foul part of the dark side and as he stared into her eyes, she knew how he had done it. She fed on the pride she felt for him, and the horror at the sight of the other Lords. All but one were still in a struggle against it.

Lord Arach stood staring into oblivion, holding his lightsaber near his chest in a vice-like grip. Through the darkness she saw the two points of what should have been his eyes absorbing the black around him. His flesh was corrupting, turning into an ashen grey. No, it was becoming ash. Flakes drifted off him with every breath and every sound he made became lower, distant and much more quiet with every take. She did not need mastery over the Force to know he was anathema.

Within a single beat of her heart his head was severed from his body. Her red blade filled the hall with its beautiful glow but was distorted and disappearing around the presence of the corpse before her. Unwilling to let there be even the slightest chance of him living, as impossible a chance it was, she flung a vial onto his corpse and commanded the remaining guard to follow as she sprinted down ever deeper into this vile temple.

As they passed down deeper into the temple she knew something was wrong by it's smell. Lord Arach's body should have been noticed by now. The liquid was capable of sublimating durasteel. But the absence of his stench was all she needed to be certain her action was justified for using such a rare vial.

Her blade lit the path forward after the unusual droid, the prey was impossible to see but with her senses so heightened the Force gave in to her command and showed her where it had run off to. Giving her foresight like that of one who had lived here. No longer were the halls, writing and statues interchangeable, she could see the subtle differences between the carved stone. The statues, once identical, now came to her as figures as unique and diverse as the Lords under her command.

The droid had been cunning to lure them into the temple. She felt the painful deaths of those who had attempted to turn away and saw the final moments of treasure hunters, seekers of knowledge and depraved low lives spent in utter agony.

So they continued forward. Moving through aged rooms with hidden mysteries past broken, eroded statues of beings long gone and down halls that felt as if she had been the first to touch them in over a century. Then a flicker of light shone above her. So brief and dim that had it not lit up in this dark place she doubted that it would have been noticed at all. Lord Quelrix laid a hand on her shoulder, and she nodded an answer. She did not even realize that they had stopped, that light had been so out of place here it almost broke her focus. But none other than father had given her this task, even Jedi would not distract her from it.

Still, even as they returned to the hunt, a small thought still lingered in the back of her mind. There were a chosen few who could survive the intensity of this taint, and that required a deep understanding of the Force. it was not unreasonable now to think the Shadows had planned to "fail" at their ambush. If they had sensed this place or seen what she had, perhaps they were the cause of this. They could keep their hands clean while still maintaining their hypocritical tenets. But then...why would any enter this place?

She shook it from her mind and focused on the task ahead, gripping the hilt of her lightsaber with even greater confidence as it all became so clear to her now. Her guard illuminated their surroundings with their yellow blades now and Quelrix had finally added his scarlet light to her own with his blade tilted outwards, ready to strike at anything before them.

After rounding a turn, they were greeted by a pair of statues standing on either side of an arched entryway engraved with runes vaguely similar to those often used by the Sith. Old, traditional words often written by apprentices with no understanding of their meaning. But these were only similar to those found in Sith temples, appearing like a dialect that had just recently branched off. Familiar enough to recognize yet alien enough to be incomprehensible. This only served to ingratiate her further, knowing that the one so skilled in linguistics was currently - at least hopefully - molten ash. Even were his unique translation device not currently incinerated matter, it would take time they did not have to examine these runes.

The statues were worn and broken, but the cuts and grounded parts made this the result of intention not erosion. Each stood in a stance that spoke of grim determination in the face of the inevitable. But it was the armor that caught her interest. Suits which bore the marks of endurance from numerous weaponry across many battles. There were faded objects on them, most so eroded she did not notice them despite staring straight at them. But looking at them she quickly understood why; they were grotesquely alien.

Lord Quelrix's mind brought her back into the moment and she looked around into the darkness surrounding the glow of her blade. It was time to play bait.

Her fellow Brothers and Sisters melded out and away from her as she entered the room with Lord Quelrix beside her, protecting her back. As they stepped out into the chamber, she could hear the sound of their armored feet be absorbed into the unnatural shadows slowly swirling around them.

They walked into the room and for a moment, she awed at the marvelous writings and symbols on the floor around her. Old and peculiar, they were just like those across the entryway but were unmistakably connected to old Sith alchemy with some runes being so old she did not even recognize them at first. Most were old, but much of what was there was that strange off-branch dialect she could not understand. Through another command over the Force she stared into the writing and runic carvings only to become more perplexed. Time could not have been the cause of such degradation.

She knelt down and graced the ground with tips of her fingers, the only parts of her gauntlets that were naked, and let her Force enhanced senses feel their way across the strange sigils. A finger moved through a mushy substance, she brought it up to her nose and breathed in. Then again. There was a scent, a mixture of smells so faint it was just out of reach of what she could detect, but one that was very familiar she just needed more of it to know. She dabbed it lightly onto her tongue and swirled it around in her mouth, letting the corrosive saliva give her the much needed amplification of her senses.

"Lord Vylai," Quelrix spoke in a low and serious tone. She violently spat out the substance onto the floor, her face contorted into complete disgust. "The ground can wait until we are safe." Her lips thinned, as she was barely paying much attention to him. The blood of many aliens had been spilt here, but it was how vile it tasted that disturbed her.

No alien blood held such an unnatural and twisted taste.

Vylai gripped the hilt of her lightsaber as if to strangle something and hissed her assent to his reason. Whoever had done this had somehow taken the life out of blood. She let herself sink into her fury once again and let the abominable act that had occurred here worm through her mind. The Force buckled under her command and obeyed her wishes, strengthening her even further as she bathed this atrocity with the true power of the dark side. She would be a beacon of real strength in the face of this void.

She stood up, and in the red light of her blade, she saw a liquid fall to the ground and immediately felt the sigils beneath her become alive for the briefest of moments. Pain flared out from her arm as the sigils lit up into a fading grey light. It distracted her so much she did not see the blade that nearly killed her until it struck the ground near her, deflected by Quelrix who then flung it back with so much force he caused the very ground to shake.

"As I said," Quelrix spoke in an unforgiving voice, "the ground can wait."

She could sense that Quelrix had allowed the weapon to cut into her, an incredible display of skill and love. "Thoughtful." She gave him a smile wide enough to show the rows of ivory sharp teeth before staring into the surrounding darkness and sensing those she could not see.

A bright blue-green beam ignited into existence and with it, a soft illumination of a figure wearing broken armor that revealed a being of machine and flesh. Then another blade lit up, showing a large but old war droid and beneath it the bearer of the blade: a man surrounded by the vile taint.

He stood there staring into her with an impassive face for just a moment before his face broke with a mirthless smile. Pieces of his face fell off like chipped paint and echoed as they collapsed onto a ground they never hit. His gaze came from hollow, cold eyes. Two warped deep orange-red eyes showing the depths to which this creature had practiced in the dark side of the Force, but these eyes were different. They did not burn with the strength of the dark side, they were withered monuments to something that was. "Living" equivalents of this very temple.

Dozens more blades blazed into existence, surrounding herself and Quelrix. Together they burned just bright enough to dispel most of the dark but nothing, not even her own crimson blade, was enough to so much as touch the creature before her as all light that reached about two meters away from him froze for the briefest of moments before being consumed.

Vylai lifted her lightsaber in a formal salute towards her newfound foe, tipping the end of her blade just enough to show him that she did not see him as an honorable opponent but a repulsive one. As if she was dancing, she took upon the first stance of Makashi just as Quelrix positioned himself behind her in a fluid motion, sinking himself into the first stance of Soresu. And for one tense moment nothing moved.

Yellow blades shimmered into existence behind the beings of machine and flesh, but before they could act the trap was sprung. But as she looked at the creature still smiling at her, she realized the mistake that had been made as her strength over the Force gave her a second of clarity into the purpose of this room.