DEFEAT
No one can exist without balance…
Obi Wan looked at the planet through the cloaked, highly modified freighter's view-screen. The planet itself was located on the very edge of known space and very little was known about it.
It was the perfect place to stash prisoners or conduct questionable experiments. There was no real reason why any officials would want to visit this world and anyone trying to escape from it would find a harsh, inhospitable climate that would quickly destroy them.
Underneath the nearly sterile atmosphere of the planet, Obi Wan felt a rippling disturbance in the force, flavored with a sense of evil, pain, hopelessness and death. He shivered. If his Shadowlord companion could be trusted, his master was at the center of that disturbance.
Prophet looked at the boy and smiled to himself. He had a great deal of potential. It was a pity no Shadowlord had picked him up as an apprentice. Prophet shrugged inwardly. At least the Jedi had recognized that potential and didn't let it go to waste. He only hoped Obi Wan was strong enough to confront Quan Chi's evil.
"Get ready," he told the boy softly. "We're going in,"
"What's down there?" Obi Wan asked as they descended through the planet's atmosphere.
"A nightmare beyond imagination," he replied quietly.
***
Qui Gon was shoved against one of the laboratory's walls and held there as Morgan's guards shackled him to it. One of the guards brutally slammed his head against the wall, leaving him momentarily stunned. He heard the sounds of scuffling and opened his eyes, seeing his apprentice in the grip of two guards. Qui Gon's stomach clenched in fear and nausea. They had managed to capture the boy after all.
"No!" Qui Gon screamed as the guards savagely ripped Obi Wan's clothes off and strapped him down on the examination table, despite the boy's frantic attempts to get away. "Oh god, leave him be. Please!" Qui Gon begged as one of the guards viciously backhanded him, silencing him.
Another person came in through the laboratory's only doorway. This being was cloaked and hooded, obscuring his or her features. Hovering at shoulder height was a torture droid. Qui Gon pressed his back against the wall as the figure walked over to him and flung back the hood. His eyes widened in shock.
"Tahl?" he said, recognizing his old, dear friend.
But it wasn't Tahl. Not the Tahl he remembered. She smiled as she lightly, teasingly stroked the side of his face. He shuddered. "Tahl let me go. Let us go, please." He begged her softly.
Tahl smiled again, only this time, her smile was more predatory and evil. She moved over to the bound boy who shrank away in fear. Tahl looked over her shoulder. "You should have turned Qui Gon. Now it's too late," she said as the torture droid drifted over the boy, it's over-large hypodermic needle filling with fluid.
The boy cried out as it jabbed him with the needle, injecting him with a variety of nasty drugs designed to lower pain thresholds, slow down the perception of time and create horrible hallucinations whenever the interrogator spoke a few trigger words.
Qui Gon strained against the shackles binding him to the wall, trying to get to the boy. But it was useless. Tahl had turned; his apprentice was dying in front of him. Despair and pain overwhelmed him, drowning out the sights and sounds in front of him. He had lost and was lost in the darkness. And he could not escape. Ever.
Soralis too, was lost. She was in a maze that constantly shifted around, offering no escape. Screams echoed around her, screams of people in pain and people dying badly. Hands, rotting from some unknown disease reached out from the ground beneath her feet and from the very walls; snatched at her clothing and her hair.
She stumbled on, avoiding the hands as best as she could, while trying to block the sounds of the screaming with her own hands. Abruptly, the ground gave away from her and she tumbled down a dank, sloping tunnel, falling into a hole, an oubliette really.
She was unhurt, but stunned, afraid and completely alone. She couldn't even Qui Gon's comforting presence in the back of her mind anymore. She frantically searched for it, but found only darkness, a wall of darkness between her and him. She drew her knees to her chest, hugging them tightly as she rocked back and forth, lost in a wave of misery and despair.
The air around her shimmered, growing cold, bitterly cold. Two figures emerged from the shadow, one in the black cloak and hood of a Jedi Master, the other in the brown cloak of a Jedi Knight.
The Jedi Knight threw back her hood, revealing a grim-faced female with short black hair. She knelt down before the nearly catatonic Shadowlord and cursed softly. "Are we too late?" her black-cloaked companion asked her softly.
The female Knight took Soralis' chin in her hand and examined her worriedly. "I don't know. Xanatos has her wrapped up in so many spells, I can't feel her." she looked at her companion. "Help me Zanar. We don't have any time to spare." The Jedi Master knelt down. Around them, the air shimmered blue with energy.
***
They had easily penetrated the planet's defenses, landing some five kilometers away from the mountain complex. Now, they were traveling deeper into the mountain, on foot. "This is too easy," Obi Wan murmured to his companion.
"The predator doesn't expect to be hunted in his own den," Prophet replied dryly as he stopped at a particular, shielded door.
The Shadowlord knelt, placing the palm of his hand flat on the floor next to the door. His skin crawled as he felt the raw evil, helplessness and pain that had seeped into the earth. "They were here," he hissed, his voice roughening with worry and barely contained rage. "Come on. We don't have much time." He told the boy. Together, they raced down yet another passageway.
***
Xanatos sat cross-legged in the middle of the chamber. The walls were carved with strange symbols and glyphs. His eyes opened as he felt a strange stirring in the force. He smiled to himself. Qui Gon was well and truly lost in the hallucinations. He hoped every last moment the elder Jedi spent alive in that tank was one of torment. He frowned. Soralis should have been as lost as Qui Gon. Yet she wasn't. He would have to deal with it.
***
Prophet skidded to a halt in front of another, closed door. He swiped a strange crystal-like card over the retinal scan. The card glowed softly, revealing odd runes embedded in its crystalline matrix. The door silently slid open. Obi Wan followed the man into the room and stopped short.
The room was a huge laboratory, filled with equipment of every sort. He swallowed as he saw his master floating in a tank. Beside him, in a companion tank was a white haired woman. Both his master and the woman were thin, too thin. It was as if they hadn't been given enough to eat, or just enough to eat to keep them alive. Both were pale, their lips blue with cold. He couldn't feel either his master's or the woman's mental presence. They were completely walled away by a thick layer of dark-side energy. He ran to a monitor. "Oh no." he whispered. "We got to get them out of there. It's –29 degree's Celsius." He looked at Prophet. "They're freezing to death."
Prophet snarled as he ran to the tanks. He touched the crystal-like surface of Soralis' holding tank. The young Shadowlord's eyes were open, staring blankly into nothing. "No," he whispered as he clenched his fist.
"Prophet, someone's coming," Obi Wan hissed. Prophet's whirled around and yanked the boy behind a bank of equipment.
The door swished open, revealing a tall, black-haired young man. Obi Wan's eyes widened as he recognized Qui Gon's former apprentice. Xanatos drew his cloak around him as he stood in front of the tanks. "Why don't you just die?" he asked his unresponsive captives.
"I know you can hear me Soralis. Quit fighting. The longer you live, the longer Qui Gon remains in torment." He touched the tank holding Qui Gon, idly stroking the surface.
Prophet clamped a hand over Obi Wan's mouth, preventing him from crying out as the dark-side energy around Xanatos flared. Qui Gon jerked in response, his eyes opening wide and his face twisting in agony.
Xanatos smiled as he felt the pressure on the spells he had placed around her subside. "You don't get it do you?" he told Soralis. "You've lost," he turned and left.
Prophet held the trembling boy tightly, waiting until he could no longer feel the Sith's presence close by. He let Obi Wan go. "Come on," Prophet said as he pulled Obi Wan to his feet. He walked over to the bank of computers and placed a blue, crystal-like device on top of it. The crystal began to glow, bathing the computer in a bluish radiance.
"What's that?" Obi Wan asked as he ignited his lightsaber.
"Jamming device. It's essentially telling the rest of the complex that those two are still under ice," He grimaced at the turn of phrase and then he took out a cylindrical object from under his cloak.
Obi Wan jumped back a pace as he recognized it for what it was. Prophet moved towards Soralis' tank, the lightsaber in his hand coming to life. He swiftly cut a hole in Soralis' tank, catching her and gently lowering the younger Shadowlord to the floor. Obi Wan followed suite and cradled his master's head in his lap.
"What's wrong with them?" he asked as Prophet took a small palm-sized medical scanner out of his pouch and took a reading on both Soralis and Qui Gon.
He cursed. "Drugs. A lot of Bevo Six, Tridium, Xyrix Nine and some other drugs and compounds the scanner can't identify."
Obi Wan's eyes widened in shock. "Those are illegal!" he hissed.
Prophet snorted as he fished out a couple of vials filled with clear liquid. "Here, this is Gaia's Tears. Give it to your master. All of it." he said as he uncorked one of the vials and poured the liquid into Soralis' mouth. She swallowed it instinctively.
Obi Wan did the same, and watched as strange liquid began to take an almost immediate effect. Qui Gon began coughing and shivering uncontrollably as Gaia's Tears rapidly purged his body of the foul drugs Morgan had injected him with. Obi Wan felt the force surge around him as he felt his master stir.
"No…" his master mumbled, still lost in the last vestiges of the all-too- real nightmare the drugs had inflicted on him. "Leave…Let…"
Obi Wan almost cried, hearing how lost and defeated his master sounded. "Master! Wake up, please. Wake up. You're free. You're free!" he said, shaking him gently
Qui Gon opened his eyes, wincing in pain. His eyes widened as he saw the boy, alive, free and more importantly, healthy. "Obi Wan?" he said, surging up, wincing as his muscles protested, dismayed at how weak he felt. "Go, go away now!" Qui Gon told him firmly, his mind reeling with shock and elation. Obi Wan was alive and here in the laboratory. If Xanatos and Morgan got their sick, twisted hands on his Padawan… Qui Gon's stomach clenched in nausea. They would not. He would not let them.
"Not without you," Obi Wan told him just as firmly.
Qui Gon shook his head, clearing it. Memory surged. "Soralis! Where?"
"She's over there," Obi Wan said, helping his master to his feet.
Prophet held Soralis while the Tears of Gaia took effect, destroying the spells around her and the purged the harmful drugs from her system. She opened her eyes and he tensed. They were not the normal pale gold he was used to. Instead, they were black, completely black, drowning out both her irises and the whites of her eyes. Two points of boiling green energy took the place of her pupils. "Soralis?" he questioned.
"It's alright," she said. Her voice was strange, deeper, more menacing. "She's busy at the moment." Soralis stood and looked around.
Prophet scrambled to his feet, igniting his lightsaber at the same time. "Who are you?" he said, standing between her and the two Jedi.
Soralis or whoever it was possessing her laughed. "Don't be dense," she said. "You will need my help in order to get out of here alive."
"Prophet, it's alright." Qui Gon said softly. "It's her symbiont. Soralis is fine. She's slowing Xanatos down."
The symbiont nodded. "Yes,"
"You'll give back her body when this is over, right?" Prophet stated quietly.
"Of course. We must obey her and then protect her." The symbiont replied as Soralis' body blurred. Between one heartbeat and another, a huge, white tiger took her place. In another heartbeat, a black metallic substance boiled out of her skin, encasing the tiger in skin-tight armor. The tiger that was Soralis stepped gravely towards Qui Gon. "Get on. You do not have the strength to run very far." It noted dryly.
Prophet snarled quietly as he watched the tiger kneel, letting Qui Gon get on. The black metal shivered, expanding to cover the Jedi from the waist down. Prophet looked at the boy who stood frozen with fascination. "Come on, we don't have all day." Together, the fugitives snuck out of the laboratory.
***
Something was happening. The spirit of Sitari motioned for Zanar Dun to back away as she did the same. Bright green light surrounded Soralis and moved around her like a tornado as it was sucked into her. She stood, awareness and intelligence seeping back into her eyes and face.
"Thank you," she said gratefully. "Whoever you are, thank you." She looked at them curiously, knowing quite well that they were dead. She also knew that they were in some sort of prison within her mind. She could feel the connection to her symbiont return to full strength and the wall around Qui Gon dissolve, leaving them both free. With those connections and her powers largely restored to her, she quickly found her own mental equilibrium.
Sitari and Zanar Dun bowed. "We are the Jedi whom Morgan and Xanatos tortured and killed, drawing Qui Gon into this mess. Now that the spells around you are destroyed, Xanatos will not hesitate to kill both you and your mind-mate." Zanar Dun told her as he straightened.
Soralis nodded in agreement. "I take it you're trapped here even in death, right?"
Sitari smiled slightly. "Yes my lady. Only you can free us. Only we can help you escape."
Soralis smiled in return. "Of course." She said, her eyes clouding, momentarily distracted.
"My lady?" Zanar Dun asked, concerned.
"It's alright. Come on, we have to slow Xanatos down. My symbiont will insure that Qui Gon and I escape in the physical world." She said as she held out her hands.
Sitari and Zanar Dun gripped them. The green glow intensified, drowning out the darkness in its radiance. Then they were gone, free of the oubliette Xanatos had created to hold Soralis for eternity.
***
Xanatos ran down the corridor, closely followed by a contingent of soldiers. He was seething with rage. Somehow, someway, Qui Gon and his bitch of a mind-mate had managed to overcome all of his spells, all of the coercions he had so carefully placed around them and now, they were free. This could not be tolerated. He growled softly.
"My lord, Qui Gon and Soralis are in the southern tunnels leading to the outside," a voice crackled on his comm-link. "They are not alone."
"I know. We're on our way. Get the Indicator ready, just in case we fail to capture them on-planet. Their rescuers must have some sort of transportation nearby." He snapped back. He looked at his handpicked squadron of demons, droids and humans, all of them the best his own master could afford. He hoped they would be enough to stop Qui Gon, Soralis and whoever rescued them.
He skidded to a halt as he felt a stirring in the force. Something huge slammed into his shields and incandesced, making his own troops back away in fear. A huge, ghostly, predatory bird hovered near the roof of the tunnel, hissing and shrieking loudly. On either side of the bird were two glowing orbs of energy. They peeled away and shot down the tunnel, faster than he could follow with his eyes, so fast; he almost doubted they existed at all. With a start of recognition, he realized that the bird was Soralis.
Soralis bobbed up and down, banking left and right, teasing, taunting the Sith in her wonderfully nasty owl's voice. She dove under a furious blast of lightening Xanatos leveled at her and returned the favor by changing the rock in front of him to molten lava. She easily deflected the blaster fire the guard's rained on her, killing several in the bargain and made feints at Xanatos, daring him to strike her.
He snarled furiously at the wheeling bird, realizing that she wasn't trying to kill him, just delay him. And she was doing a fairly good job at it. Every step they took cost precious moments, moments that could have been spent reaching their quarry and stopping them. He glared at her. Time to change tactics.
***
Zanar Dun and Sitari wheeled and dove down, deep within the complex, spurred on by the influx of power they had received from just being near Soralis. Somewhere, deep within the mountain was Quan Chi, a great and evil sorcerer who had engineered the whole mess. They had found this out to their sorrow and death and were determined to shut down whatever magicks he may have in his chambers.
They coalesced in his chambers as full body apparitions, both of them glowing bright blue in response to the darkness the room contained. They both realized that Quan Chi had not been in his rooms for some time. It didn't matter. They began to methodically demolish the place anyway.
***
It was a running battle. They eluded many of their would-be captors, but in the end, they faced a brace of demons and droids just as they reached last tunnel that led to the outside.
Prophet and the boy fought side by side, flanking the tiger and Qui Gon, who was fighting just to stay conscious. The symbiont's metallic skin shivered, producing dozens of impossibly fast chains tipped with a variety of sharp implements that hacked and slashed its opponents into unrecognizable chunks.
Obi Wan ducked under a demon's wild charge, using the thing's momentum to send him crashing into a destroyer droid while Prophet sent two droids crashing into another huge pit demon. While the demon was distracted, the Shadowlord neatly cut his head off with his lightsaber.
Then they were quickly fitting breathing masks over their faces. Obi Wan turned to his master and was surprised to see him slumped completely over the shoulder of the huge armor-clad tiger. The symbiont's flesh oozed over the unconscious Jedi, enveloping him completely.
/Move! Soralis is on the run, she can't hold Xanatos back!\ the symbiont hissed in his mind as it leapt forward, following Prophet. Obi Wan shuddered, flicked off his 'saber and raced after them.
***
Soralis raced out of the complex, followed by two glowing balls of energy and what seemed like an entire legion of soldiers headed by a furious, singed Xanatos. Soralis and her companion orbs were only meters ahead of the army when they caught sight of Prophet's star freighter. They saw their fellow fugitives race up the gangplank before Soralis folded her wings and dove straight through the freighter to her own body and collided with it. The two orbs followed, taking shelter within her mind.
***
Obi Wan watched as the tiger sank to the ground. The black metallic stuff enveloping both his master and the cat withdrew back into the cat's body as the gang-plank lifted, closing them off from the planet's harsh elements. Obi Wan gently dragged Qui Gon off the tiger and laid him on the ground. "Master?" he asked softly as the star freighter lifted off.
Qui Gon's eyes flickered open. They were haunted, but clear of the drug haze Obi Wan had seen before. "I knew you would come Padawan," he whispered.
Obi Wan smiled through a haze of tears as he hugged the exhausted Jedi.
No one can exist without balance…
Obi Wan looked at the planet through the cloaked, highly modified freighter's view-screen. The planet itself was located on the very edge of known space and very little was known about it.
It was the perfect place to stash prisoners or conduct questionable experiments. There was no real reason why any officials would want to visit this world and anyone trying to escape from it would find a harsh, inhospitable climate that would quickly destroy them.
Underneath the nearly sterile atmosphere of the planet, Obi Wan felt a rippling disturbance in the force, flavored with a sense of evil, pain, hopelessness and death. He shivered. If his Shadowlord companion could be trusted, his master was at the center of that disturbance.
Prophet looked at the boy and smiled to himself. He had a great deal of potential. It was a pity no Shadowlord had picked him up as an apprentice. Prophet shrugged inwardly. At least the Jedi had recognized that potential and didn't let it go to waste. He only hoped Obi Wan was strong enough to confront Quan Chi's evil.
"Get ready," he told the boy softly. "We're going in,"
"What's down there?" Obi Wan asked as they descended through the planet's atmosphere.
"A nightmare beyond imagination," he replied quietly.
***
Qui Gon was shoved against one of the laboratory's walls and held there as Morgan's guards shackled him to it. One of the guards brutally slammed his head against the wall, leaving him momentarily stunned. He heard the sounds of scuffling and opened his eyes, seeing his apprentice in the grip of two guards. Qui Gon's stomach clenched in fear and nausea. They had managed to capture the boy after all.
"No!" Qui Gon screamed as the guards savagely ripped Obi Wan's clothes off and strapped him down on the examination table, despite the boy's frantic attempts to get away. "Oh god, leave him be. Please!" Qui Gon begged as one of the guards viciously backhanded him, silencing him.
Another person came in through the laboratory's only doorway. This being was cloaked and hooded, obscuring his or her features. Hovering at shoulder height was a torture droid. Qui Gon pressed his back against the wall as the figure walked over to him and flung back the hood. His eyes widened in shock.
"Tahl?" he said, recognizing his old, dear friend.
But it wasn't Tahl. Not the Tahl he remembered. She smiled as she lightly, teasingly stroked the side of his face. He shuddered. "Tahl let me go. Let us go, please." He begged her softly.
Tahl smiled again, only this time, her smile was more predatory and evil. She moved over to the bound boy who shrank away in fear. Tahl looked over her shoulder. "You should have turned Qui Gon. Now it's too late," she said as the torture droid drifted over the boy, it's over-large hypodermic needle filling with fluid.
The boy cried out as it jabbed him with the needle, injecting him with a variety of nasty drugs designed to lower pain thresholds, slow down the perception of time and create horrible hallucinations whenever the interrogator spoke a few trigger words.
Qui Gon strained against the shackles binding him to the wall, trying to get to the boy. But it was useless. Tahl had turned; his apprentice was dying in front of him. Despair and pain overwhelmed him, drowning out the sights and sounds in front of him. He had lost and was lost in the darkness. And he could not escape. Ever.
Soralis too, was lost. She was in a maze that constantly shifted around, offering no escape. Screams echoed around her, screams of people in pain and people dying badly. Hands, rotting from some unknown disease reached out from the ground beneath her feet and from the very walls; snatched at her clothing and her hair.
She stumbled on, avoiding the hands as best as she could, while trying to block the sounds of the screaming with her own hands. Abruptly, the ground gave away from her and she tumbled down a dank, sloping tunnel, falling into a hole, an oubliette really.
She was unhurt, but stunned, afraid and completely alone. She couldn't even Qui Gon's comforting presence in the back of her mind anymore. She frantically searched for it, but found only darkness, a wall of darkness between her and him. She drew her knees to her chest, hugging them tightly as she rocked back and forth, lost in a wave of misery and despair.
The air around her shimmered, growing cold, bitterly cold. Two figures emerged from the shadow, one in the black cloak and hood of a Jedi Master, the other in the brown cloak of a Jedi Knight.
The Jedi Knight threw back her hood, revealing a grim-faced female with short black hair. She knelt down before the nearly catatonic Shadowlord and cursed softly. "Are we too late?" her black-cloaked companion asked her softly.
The female Knight took Soralis' chin in her hand and examined her worriedly. "I don't know. Xanatos has her wrapped up in so many spells, I can't feel her." she looked at her companion. "Help me Zanar. We don't have any time to spare." The Jedi Master knelt down. Around them, the air shimmered blue with energy.
***
They had easily penetrated the planet's defenses, landing some five kilometers away from the mountain complex. Now, they were traveling deeper into the mountain, on foot. "This is too easy," Obi Wan murmured to his companion.
"The predator doesn't expect to be hunted in his own den," Prophet replied dryly as he stopped at a particular, shielded door.
The Shadowlord knelt, placing the palm of his hand flat on the floor next to the door. His skin crawled as he felt the raw evil, helplessness and pain that had seeped into the earth. "They were here," he hissed, his voice roughening with worry and barely contained rage. "Come on. We don't have much time." He told the boy. Together, they raced down yet another passageway.
***
Xanatos sat cross-legged in the middle of the chamber. The walls were carved with strange symbols and glyphs. His eyes opened as he felt a strange stirring in the force. He smiled to himself. Qui Gon was well and truly lost in the hallucinations. He hoped every last moment the elder Jedi spent alive in that tank was one of torment. He frowned. Soralis should have been as lost as Qui Gon. Yet she wasn't. He would have to deal with it.
***
Prophet skidded to a halt in front of another, closed door. He swiped a strange crystal-like card over the retinal scan. The card glowed softly, revealing odd runes embedded in its crystalline matrix. The door silently slid open. Obi Wan followed the man into the room and stopped short.
The room was a huge laboratory, filled with equipment of every sort. He swallowed as he saw his master floating in a tank. Beside him, in a companion tank was a white haired woman. Both his master and the woman were thin, too thin. It was as if they hadn't been given enough to eat, or just enough to eat to keep them alive. Both were pale, their lips blue with cold. He couldn't feel either his master's or the woman's mental presence. They were completely walled away by a thick layer of dark-side energy. He ran to a monitor. "Oh no." he whispered. "We got to get them out of there. It's –29 degree's Celsius." He looked at Prophet. "They're freezing to death."
Prophet snarled as he ran to the tanks. He touched the crystal-like surface of Soralis' holding tank. The young Shadowlord's eyes were open, staring blankly into nothing. "No," he whispered as he clenched his fist.
"Prophet, someone's coming," Obi Wan hissed. Prophet's whirled around and yanked the boy behind a bank of equipment.
The door swished open, revealing a tall, black-haired young man. Obi Wan's eyes widened as he recognized Qui Gon's former apprentice. Xanatos drew his cloak around him as he stood in front of the tanks. "Why don't you just die?" he asked his unresponsive captives.
"I know you can hear me Soralis. Quit fighting. The longer you live, the longer Qui Gon remains in torment." He touched the tank holding Qui Gon, idly stroking the surface.
Prophet clamped a hand over Obi Wan's mouth, preventing him from crying out as the dark-side energy around Xanatos flared. Qui Gon jerked in response, his eyes opening wide and his face twisting in agony.
Xanatos smiled as he felt the pressure on the spells he had placed around her subside. "You don't get it do you?" he told Soralis. "You've lost," he turned and left.
Prophet held the trembling boy tightly, waiting until he could no longer feel the Sith's presence close by. He let Obi Wan go. "Come on," Prophet said as he pulled Obi Wan to his feet. He walked over to the bank of computers and placed a blue, crystal-like device on top of it. The crystal began to glow, bathing the computer in a bluish radiance.
"What's that?" Obi Wan asked as he ignited his lightsaber.
"Jamming device. It's essentially telling the rest of the complex that those two are still under ice," He grimaced at the turn of phrase and then he took out a cylindrical object from under his cloak.
Obi Wan jumped back a pace as he recognized it for what it was. Prophet moved towards Soralis' tank, the lightsaber in his hand coming to life. He swiftly cut a hole in Soralis' tank, catching her and gently lowering the younger Shadowlord to the floor. Obi Wan followed suite and cradled his master's head in his lap.
"What's wrong with them?" he asked as Prophet took a small palm-sized medical scanner out of his pouch and took a reading on both Soralis and Qui Gon.
He cursed. "Drugs. A lot of Bevo Six, Tridium, Xyrix Nine and some other drugs and compounds the scanner can't identify."
Obi Wan's eyes widened in shock. "Those are illegal!" he hissed.
Prophet snorted as he fished out a couple of vials filled with clear liquid. "Here, this is Gaia's Tears. Give it to your master. All of it." he said as he uncorked one of the vials and poured the liquid into Soralis' mouth. She swallowed it instinctively.
Obi Wan did the same, and watched as strange liquid began to take an almost immediate effect. Qui Gon began coughing and shivering uncontrollably as Gaia's Tears rapidly purged his body of the foul drugs Morgan had injected him with. Obi Wan felt the force surge around him as he felt his master stir.
"No…" his master mumbled, still lost in the last vestiges of the all-too- real nightmare the drugs had inflicted on him. "Leave…Let…"
Obi Wan almost cried, hearing how lost and defeated his master sounded. "Master! Wake up, please. Wake up. You're free. You're free!" he said, shaking him gently
Qui Gon opened his eyes, wincing in pain. His eyes widened as he saw the boy, alive, free and more importantly, healthy. "Obi Wan?" he said, surging up, wincing as his muscles protested, dismayed at how weak he felt. "Go, go away now!" Qui Gon told him firmly, his mind reeling with shock and elation. Obi Wan was alive and here in the laboratory. If Xanatos and Morgan got their sick, twisted hands on his Padawan… Qui Gon's stomach clenched in nausea. They would not. He would not let them.
"Not without you," Obi Wan told him just as firmly.
Qui Gon shook his head, clearing it. Memory surged. "Soralis! Where?"
"She's over there," Obi Wan said, helping his master to his feet.
Prophet held Soralis while the Tears of Gaia took effect, destroying the spells around her and the purged the harmful drugs from her system. She opened her eyes and he tensed. They were not the normal pale gold he was used to. Instead, they were black, completely black, drowning out both her irises and the whites of her eyes. Two points of boiling green energy took the place of her pupils. "Soralis?" he questioned.
"It's alright," she said. Her voice was strange, deeper, more menacing. "She's busy at the moment." Soralis stood and looked around.
Prophet scrambled to his feet, igniting his lightsaber at the same time. "Who are you?" he said, standing between her and the two Jedi.
Soralis or whoever it was possessing her laughed. "Don't be dense," she said. "You will need my help in order to get out of here alive."
"Prophet, it's alright." Qui Gon said softly. "It's her symbiont. Soralis is fine. She's slowing Xanatos down."
The symbiont nodded. "Yes,"
"You'll give back her body when this is over, right?" Prophet stated quietly.
"Of course. We must obey her and then protect her." The symbiont replied as Soralis' body blurred. Between one heartbeat and another, a huge, white tiger took her place. In another heartbeat, a black metallic substance boiled out of her skin, encasing the tiger in skin-tight armor. The tiger that was Soralis stepped gravely towards Qui Gon. "Get on. You do not have the strength to run very far." It noted dryly.
Prophet snarled quietly as he watched the tiger kneel, letting Qui Gon get on. The black metal shivered, expanding to cover the Jedi from the waist down. Prophet looked at the boy who stood frozen with fascination. "Come on, we don't have all day." Together, the fugitives snuck out of the laboratory.
***
Something was happening. The spirit of Sitari motioned for Zanar Dun to back away as she did the same. Bright green light surrounded Soralis and moved around her like a tornado as it was sucked into her. She stood, awareness and intelligence seeping back into her eyes and face.
"Thank you," she said gratefully. "Whoever you are, thank you." She looked at them curiously, knowing quite well that they were dead. She also knew that they were in some sort of prison within her mind. She could feel the connection to her symbiont return to full strength and the wall around Qui Gon dissolve, leaving them both free. With those connections and her powers largely restored to her, she quickly found her own mental equilibrium.
Sitari and Zanar Dun bowed. "We are the Jedi whom Morgan and Xanatos tortured and killed, drawing Qui Gon into this mess. Now that the spells around you are destroyed, Xanatos will not hesitate to kill both you and your mind-mate." Zanar Dun told her as he straightened.
Soralis nodded in agreement. "I take it you're trapped here even in death, right?"
Sitari smiled slightly. "Yes my lady. Only you can free us. Only we can help you escape."
Soralis smiled in return. "Of course." She said, her eyes clouding, momentarily distracted.
"My lady?" Zanar Dun asked, concerned.
"It's alright. Come on, we have to slow Xanatos down. My symbiont will insure that Qui Gon and I escape in the physical world." She said as she held out her hands.
Sitari and Zanar Dun gripped them. The green glow intensified, drowning out the darkness in its radiance. Then they were gone, free of the oubliette Xanatos had created to hold Soralis for eternity.
***
Xanatos ran down the corridor, closely followed by a contingent of soldiers. He was seething with rage. Somehow, someway, Qui Gon and his bitch of a mind-mate had managed to overcome all of his spells, all of the coercions he had so carefully placed around them and now, they were free. This could not be tolerated. He growled softly.
"My lord, Qui Gon and Soralis are in the southern tunnels leading to the outside," a voice crackled on his comm-link. "They are not alone."
"I know. We're on our way. Get the Indicator ready, just in case we fail to capture them on-planet. Their rescuers must have some sort of transportation nearby." He snapped back. He looked at his handpicked squadron of demons, droids and humans, all of them the best his own master could afford. He hoped they would be enough to stop Qui Gon, Soralis and whoever rescued them.
He skidded to a halt as he felt a stirring in the force. Something huge slammed into his shields and incandesced, making his own troops back away in fear. A huge, ghostly, predatory bird hovered near the roof of the tunnel, hissing and shrieking loudly. On either side of the bird were two glowing orbs of energy. They peeled away and shot down the tunnel, faster than he could follow with his eyes, so fast; he almost doubted they existed at all. With a start of recognition, he realized that the bird was Soralis.
Soralis bobbed up and down, banking left and right, teasing, taunting the Sith in her wonderfully nasty owl's voice. She dove under a furious blast of lightening Xanatos leveled at her and returned the favor by changing the rock in front of him to molten lava. She easily deflected the blaster fire the guard's rained on her, killing several in the bargain and made feints at Xanatos, daring him to strike her.
He snarled furiously at the wheeling bird, realizing that she wasn't trying to kill him, just delay him. And she was doing a fairly good job at it. Every step they took cost precious moments, moments that could have been spent reaching their quarry and stopping them. He glared at her. Time to change tactics.
***
Zanar Dun and Sitari wheeled and dove down, deep within the complex, spurred on by the influx of power they had received from just being near Soralis. Somewhere, deep within the mountain was Quan Chi, a great and evil sorcerer who had engineered the whole mess. They had found this out to their sorrow and death and were determined to shut down whatever magicks he may have in his chambers.
They coalesced in his chambers as full body apparitions, both of them glowing bright blue in response to the darkness the room contained. They both realized that Quan Chi had not been in his rooms for some time. It didn't matter. They began to methodically demolish the place anyway.
***
It was a running battle. They eluded many of their would-be captors, but in the end, they faced a brace of demons and droids just as they reached last tunnel that led to the outside.
Prophet and the boy fought side by side, flanking the tiger and Qui Gon, who was fighting just to stay conscious. The symbiont's metallic skin shivered, producing dozens of impossibly fast chains tipped with a variety of sharp implements that hacked and slashed its opponents into unrecognizable chunks.
Obi Wan ducked under a demon's wild charge, using the thing's momentum to send him crashing into a destroyer droid while Prophet sent two droids crashing into another huge pit demon. While the demon was distracted, the Shadowlord neatly cut his head off with his lightsaber.
Then they were quickly fitting breathing masks over their faces. Obi Wan turned to his master and was surprised to see him slumped completely over the shoulder of the huge armor-clad tiger. The symbiont's flesh oozed over the unconscious Jedi, enveloping him completely.
/Move! Soralis is on the run, she can't hold Xanatos back!\ the symbiont hissed in his mind as it leapt forward, following Prophet. Obi Wan shuddered, flicked off his 'saber and raced after them.
***
Soralis raced out of the complex, followed by two glowing balls of energy and what seemed like an entire legion of soldiers headed by a furious, singed Xanatos. Soralis and her companion orbs were only meters ahead of the army when they caught sight of Prophet's star freighter. They saw their fellow fugitives race up the gangplank before Soralis folded her wings and dove straight through the freighter to her own body and collided with it. The two orbs followed, taking shelter within her mind.
***
Obi Wan watched as the tiger sank to the ground. The black metallic stuff enveloping both his master and the cat withdrew back into the cat's body as the gang-plank lifted, closing them off from the planet's harsh elements. Obi Wan gently dragged Qui Gon off the tiger and laid him on the ground. "Master?" he asked softly as the star freighter lifted off.
Qui Gon's eyes flickered open. They were haunted, but clear of the drug haze Obi Wan had seen before. "I knew you would come Padawan," he whispered.
Obi Wan smiled through a haze of tears as he hugged the exhausted Jedi.