Well, who wants to read a crossover between Scorn and Star Wars: Jedi Survivor? *Crickets chirp in the background* Yeah, I know no one asked for this, but it was a plot bunny that got stuck in my head and refused to let go, so now we've got this short story. To clarify a few things, this story takes place after the events of both games, so spoilers ahead if you haven't played through them already.
In Survivor's case, I'm assuming that Cal, Merrin, BD-1, Greez, and Kata were able to eventually get members of the Hidden Path set up on Tanalorr after a few months, so this story in particular takes place after that timespan. That's all I'll say about the setup for right now, and without further ado, let's just dive right in to the meat of this, shall we?
Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars or Scorn.
"I really don't like this idea." Greez muttered as he brought the Mantis down towards the desolate planet they had been orbiting, turning back towards Cal Kestis and Merrin as he spoke. "Why are we even here?"
"That's what we're here to find out." Cal replied, as his faithful droid companion BD-1 tootled in agreement. "Something about this world is different, and for better or worse, we need to figure out why."
"How do we know this isn't some sort of trap?" Greez countered, gesturing to the desolate world below them as he reluctantly began the landing cycle. "For all we know, there could be an army of Stormtroopers waiting to ambush us when we get down there."
"The Mantis could detect any Imperial presence with ease." Merrin replied dismissively. "And if there are any Imperial forces on the planet, we can deal with them easily."
"I doubt the Empire have made it this far yet anyway, Greez." Cal assured the Lateron. "After all, this planet doesn't appear on any star charts for the system."
"Yeah, about that." Greez turned to look back at the two Force users. "Do either of you wanna explain how you were able to find this place? Because I've still been wondering about that. Or should I just assume it's another one of your Force things that I won't understand?"
"An oversimplified explanation." Merrin shook her head, before looking at Cal. "Though admittedly not an inaccurate one."
"Alright, I'll take your word for it. Both of you." Greez said as he made a pass over the landscape, spotting a building and enough room between it and a strange cliff wall that looked like a good landing zone. "I'd rather not spend any more time on this planet than I have to. Besides, I promised Kata I'd cook her up some Greezy-Loaf for dinner tonight."
"We'll be back on Tanalorr in no time." Cal assured the pilot as the ship touched down, before turning to the landing ramp, his partner in more ways than one by his side. "You ready?"
"Always." Merrin smiled, briefly patting his shoulder warmly before the door opened and the two Force users got their first look at the planet surface.
To call the surface a desolate hellscape would be a polite way of saying things. The ground was rocky and barren, devoid of any and all vegetation and plantlife. Nor could they detect any real sources of water, as if they had all dried up or had been completely poisoned into something toxic.
Miraculously, the planet still had a breathable atmosphere, though given the sheer environmental destruction the Mantis had detected from orbit, that was unlikely to last forever. Furthermore, there were clear signs that the planet once held civilization of some kind, though the architecture was unlike anything they ever seen before.
"No use standing around all day." Cal said as he and his lover made their way onto the rocky surface, with BD-1 clambering onto his back as they walked down the ramp. "You good, buddy?"
BD-1 gave an affirmative hoot, and Cal took comfort in the presence of two of his closest companions, especially with the turmoil in the Force around them. The truth of the matter was that despite what Cal had told Greez, he wasn't feeling any more enthused about this place than he was. This world wasn't permeated with the Dark Side, like it was with Dathomir, but nevertheless, Cal felt a deep sense of unease.
Something about this place set him on edge, and though she was calm about it, the Jedi could tell that Merrin was feeling similarly. Nevertheless, they could feel a need to be here, as if something was simultaneously calling them, yet telling them to stay away, and neither the Jedi nor the Nightsister could refuse the chance to figure out what this was, especially if the Empire or something else decided to stumble upon this planet as well.
The companions were silent as they made their way through the rocky landscape, letting the Force guide them to their first destination. A haze surrounded them, the brown and desolate ground around them contrasted with just a tinge of purple. Despite this, the massive wall with strange spherical outcroppings jutting out was hard to miss, and so Cal and Merrin made their way towards the cliff wall.
The first thing they noticed when they approached was that the wall wasn't completely made of rock; in fact chunks of it almost seemed to have broken off, revealing fleshy interiors, as if the wall had been a living being once. But despite this curiosity, the two Force users had their attention immediately drawn to the haphazard network of circular cocoons jutting out of the wall, and more importantly, the large amount of skeletal and alien bodies that were on the ground in various positions.
"I have never seen such species before." Merrin whispered, as she noted the strange skulls and the fact that these humanoid aliens didn't seem to have any mouths or hair of their own.
"Nor have I." Cal agreed, before looking over the aura that only he could sense around the bodies. "Give me a second..."
Reaching out with his gift of psychometry, Cal felt their echoes, as these people were born and just... died. Some fell to their deaths the moment they emerged from their birthing pods. Some didn't even get that far, as they were effectively stuck in their birthing pods and died of starvation. Some had survived the fall though, but the Jedi couldn't envy what their first memory would be: the bodies of their fellow people, simply left to rot in this desolate hellscape.
Cal and Merrin had both lost their families at such a young age, but to be literally born with no one... it was a nightmare scenario neither of them had ever wanted to imagine. Speaking of which, Merrin was looking at him expectantly, a concerned look in her eyes.
"What did you see?"
"They... they were literally born as adults like this." Cal shuddered as the memory remained fresh in his mind. "Whatever apocalypse destroyed this world, these people were born long after, and were just... left here to rot."
"To have one's first memory in such a place." The Nightsister stated in disgust, looking over the bodies again in sympathy before turning back to Cal. "I don't like this place." Merrin said flatly, BD-1 beeping in agreement.
"No arguments from me." Cal couldn't help but chuckle at his lover's bluntness. "But we can both feel something calling to us here, can't we?"
"Yes. Yes, I sense it too." Merrin agreed, briefly closing her eyes before looking intently at her Jedi Knight. "Then again, if the star charts are correct, it's almost like this very planet didn't even exist a few years ago."
"I wouldn't put it past someone to make an error, especially when it comes to Imperial records." Cal pointed out before frowning. "But you're right. It's almost like this world just... came into existence one day."
"And we were fortunate to stumble across it before someone like the Haxion Brood or the Bedlam Raiders did." The Nightsister pointed out as she turned to look at the ground around them.
"Or worse, the Empire." The Jedi Knight agreed, as BD hooted out an acknowledgement whistle. "Good point buddy. We should still spend as little time on this rock as we need to."
"Did any of these people make it any further than this?" Merrin asked, causing Cal to nod.
"Some did." The Jedi nodded and pointed in the direction of a nearby structure. "A few of them headed in that direction."
"Then let us not linger in this place." Merrin said, as she offered her hand to her lover. "We should spend as little time as possible here and find what we're looking for."
"Fair enough." Cal took her hand as the two of them began making their way through the wasteland again. "Let's go."
Fortunately, the rocky terrain was fairly simple for the two of them to traverse, not requiring Cal to climb around or Merrin to teleport past obstacles. This allowed the two Force users to conserve their stamina and energy, though upon taking in the sights, around them, neither of them felt any particular desire to prolong their stay on this world any longer than they absolutely had to.
Strands of red flesh linked to the strange living wall littered all over the place, alongside a few more bodies along the ground. And there were pieces of architecture and archways littering around, though it was unclear if they had been intended to be there and just been buried, or were dumped there without any care.
As the Jedi and the Nightsister explored the landscape further and got a better look at their surroundings, they could see just how different the designs were to basically any other world in the galaxy that they had become familiar with. The buildings and technology looked like a disturbed mix of flesh and machine, as if bone and metal had been fused together in an unnatural fashion.
One such building currently towered over the barren landscape, serving as a beacon besides the strange living wall. But within walking distance was also a large and deep crater coated with biotech, with another biotechnological building that could be seen in the distance hovering over it, connected to some sort of tunnel and passageway that was hard to make out through the haze. Weirdly, there seemed to be something large swinging from the building that was over the center of the crater, though from this distance, none of them could make out what it was.
"Do you think we need to head over there?" Merrin asked, pointing towards the structure in question. "Perhaps we should take the Mantis over there now and save ourselves the trouble."
"That's definitely tempting." Cal had to agree, before following up with a sigh as he turned back towards the building nearby, one which seemed to be slowly dissolving as he looked at it. "But I can't help but feel we'll miss something unless we explore that place first."
"Sounds like fun." The sarcasm in Merrin's voice was palpable, followed up with BD's own beeping in agreement. "Very well, my Jedi. Let us see what nightmares await us."
"Loving the optimism, my Nightsister." The Jedi Knight chuckled, drawing just the slightest of smiles from the Nightsister as they made their way towards the building.
...
It didn't take long to find their way inside, as what appeared to be some sort of vent cover had been open or broken off at some point near the edge of the crater, close to where some sort of large bio-mechanical cable connected to the building itself and stretched out into the hazy distance on support pillars.
Though if the fusion of flesh and machine was obvious from the outside, entering the interior of the building only made it more so, as it felt like they were walking through the interior of some living organism. Exiting the vent tunnel didn't change that, if anything, entering the large chamber and seeing all the strange biotechnology around them meant that it still felt like they were in the bowels of some living organism.
"Why do we always end up in the most unpleasant of places?" Merrin asked rhetorically as they made their way through the vent until they reached an opening. "It feels like we've had date nights that end up in places like this more often than not."
"C'mon, you're exaggerating." Cal protested as he landed on catwalk that encircled a large open chamber, with a strange grotesque pillar in the center. "You can't tell me our nights on Tanalorr and Koboh haven't been nice."
"Yes, they have." Merrin admitted fondly, as BD tootled out his own perspective on things. "And yes, I am well aware that we are not a typical couple. Something I would not change. But this place..."
"Yeah." Cal nodded as he and Merrin looked around the atrium, trying to figure out what happened to make this place look like the interior of some creature. "I sense it too."
The color of the building meant that it was mostly sickly green, with occasional examples of the purple haze around them still. But more than the sights, it was the smell of this place that was really uncomfortable. While there were worlds both had been to where the stench was arguably much worse, the smell of death had never been so constant as it was here.
But even without the typical five senses, this place's presence in the Force was filled with such desolation and decay that it was almost tangible. Wanting to find out more, Cal reached out with his psychometry once again, getting flashes of memory of some humanoid creature working on the pillar in the center of the room.
The Jedi still wasn't sure what the purpose of this place was, but it was clear that something had gone wrong as the pillar had erupted in white liquid that had ended up enveloping the man. An unclear amount of time passed before he woke up, the liquid having hardened into strange tendrils that enveloped him to the floor. But that wasn't all... there was something different about this man, as if he had undergone a transformation.
"Someone was here before, but they were changed." Cal murmured as he broke free of the trance. "Almost like they were mutated."
"Mutated by what?" The Nightsister asked, to which Cal simply shrugged.
"I don't know." The Jedi shivered. "But whatever was in this place, and what it was used for, I doubt it was for anything pleasant."
"Well, we certainly won't find out anymore information by staying here." Merrin pointed out as she leapt over to another passageway across from them. "Let us see what else we can find in this place."
Without needing to say anything more, the duo and their droid companion made their way deeper into the facility, finding more and more of the strange architecture and machinery that neither of them could properly figure out what it was truly for. Even with Cal's usage of psychometry, this place was so alien in nature that trying to understand it felt like an exercise in futility.
Still, he was getting a rough idea of what had happened, at least within the last few years or so. It seemed that at least two humanoids had been present here, one of which had been mutated and another who followed much later in his wake. What they were hoping to find, Cal didn't know, but seeing as they had almost certainly just been born when they discovered this place, it was also quite likely that even they didn't know why they were here either.
One thing was certain was that there seemed to be a certain artistry about this place, beyond simply a desire for form and function. And the fact that the lighting in this place still worked suggested that whatever they were using for power was long-lasting. Still, as the Jedi and Nightsister made their way through the facility, scanning the various odd biomechanical contraptions around them, the duo came across an odd looking one that was jutting out of a wall, with a noticeable light over it and an aperture designed to stick one's hand in.
The device looked like it was practically carved out of bone and chitin, but the way it was designed briefly made Merrin consider putting her hand inside to see what would happen. Before she could do much more than reach towards it however...
"Don't touch it!" Cal grabbed Merrin's hand before she could put inside the contraption.
"Why?" She couldn't help but be surprised at Cal's concern. He knew she could take care of herself, so for him to stop her like this... "What is it?"
"These things are meant to be keys, but..." Cal gestured to the facility around them. "They have no regard for worker safety, so they're just directly implanted into your arm, blood and all."
"I see." While Merrin was touched by Cal's concern for her wellbeing as always, and she certainly didn't want to mutilate herself like that if she didn't have to, she couldn't deny the concern that it might pose a problem for their travels. "And what if we need to go somewhere and we don't have the key?"
"Universal door opener." Cal simply smirked in response, and pulled out his lightsaber, activating the blue blade.
"I see your point." Merrin couldn't help but smile at her Jedi's confidence, before turning back to the machine in the wall. "Still, to directly implant necessary tools into your body like that-"
"It's something the Empire would do." Cal finished her thought for her as he deactivated his lightsaber, with BD-1 letting out a series of sad beeps in response. "No kidding, buddy. This actually might be worse than what the Empire would do."
"We should keep moving." Merrin sighed as they passed by the contraption, before a thought occurred to her. "Has BD been able to find any readable data?" The little droid shook his head with a beep.
"If there are any computer systems still intact in this place, they aren't compatible with his operating system." Cal translated the little droid's technical explanation to a simpler format as they walked through rocky tunnels supported by organic-looking pillars. "I think it goes without saying that this planet's tech is not even remotely comparable to galactic standard."
"No doubt." Merrin agreed as they arrived into a large atrium, with a large platform in the center and a massive hole in the ceiling that led to the outside, one that seemed like a deliberate design. "I suppose this is where your psychometry will be quite useful."
"You say that like it hasn't been useful before." Cal teased, but before Merrin could reply, they both spotted the body of a dead humanoid in front of a large door, and the presence of a large amount of sadness in the Force gave them pause.
A quick examination of the creature showed that it seemed humanoid at first glance, but it had seemingly been born misshapen and disfigured, with its arms and legs not set properly and the creature's head partially melded into its own shoulder.
It had no mouth, like many of the other bodies, and it had one of those keys the two Force users had seen earlier embedded in one of its hands. The creature was sitting next to one of two control consoles for the door when he had died, eyes open and now lifeless, which Merrin rectified by closing the creature's eyes herself.
Meanwhile, Cal reached out with his psychometry once more to get an accurate idea of what happened to this creature. What he found wasn't pleasant, as this being had spent almost the entirety of his existence stuck inside a cold and fleshy pod-like cocoon, squished in so heavily it couldn't move.
Until one day, someone had grabbed the pod and allowed his arms and legs free, while wheeling it on a cart to somewhere else. The process was filled with pain though, as the pod was still biologically connected to the creature so when something had been pressed into it, he had felt its pain and blood rather acutely.
The creature was then carted to another room, where its pod was placed into a crevice front first so it couldn't see anything. But it could hear just fine, and while the creature didn't understand what it was hearing, Cal could; the sound of a circular saw, which cut right through the pod, painfully stripping the shell away from the creature within.
Miraculously, the being survived, and with no real understanding of what was happening, this creature, this Moldman, stumbled after one of the mouthless humanoids, the same one the Jedi had seen getting mutated earlier. This being clearly had no regard for the Moldman's well-being, as he grabbed the creature when it fell and shoved its arm into the same sort of machine he and Merrin had seen earlier, painfully implanting one of those keys on it.
And the reason for the humanoid doing all this? It needed two people to open the massive door the Force users were currently in front of, and so the humanoid forced the Moldman into the position of holding open one of the control consoles while the he moved to the other one.
Once the large door was open, the humanoid walked through the door without even sparing the Moldman a second glance, who was able to free itself from the console eventually as the door shut between them, leaving the Moldman trapped and alone in this place where it eventually starved to death without any form of nutrition.
"He just left this creature here." Cal whispered, seeing the echo of innocent confusion from the being. "Left him to starve to death. Didn't even spare him a second thought."
"Who did?" Merrin asked, with BD-1 echoing the same confusion.
"One of the other beings I saw earlier, before he mutated." Cal shook his head as he stared at the Moldman sadly. "He was just a means to an end for him, just a way to open this door."
"This place is sounding more and more like the Empire and the Sith with each passing moment." Merrin hissed as she regarded the door in question. "I sense that we're not going to like what we'll find on the other side."
"You don't need the Force to know that." Cal tried to lighten the mood, but it came off as tired even to him as he pulled out his lightsaber and started cutting through the door. "But for good or for ill, we need to get a better idea of what happened here."
No other words were exchanged for the moment as Cal sliced through the door, allowing the two humanoids and the small droid to make it through with ease. From there, they found a short hallway that led to a platform, one that was clearly an elevator if the control pad was anything to go by.
The elevator controls were simple enough, if rather esoteric: they were a simple biotech contraption that you had to stick four fingers in and pull them to activate it. They were certainly somewhat strange, but hardly confusing, especially compared to the High Republic technology they had encountered on Koboh previously.
However, it was what they found at the top of the elevator and after making some further twists and turns that made the Jedi and Nightsister stop and stare for a moment. In a slightly more open chamber and hallway, there was a machine at the end, one who's purpose was quite unclear.
What was clear however was the massive pile of bodies that had seemingly been ejected from an aperture in the machine and simply left to rot in a barely deep pit. Several more bodies were also discarded to the sides of the hallway, with the stench of death being almost overpowering had the two not been used to far worse.
Still, BD-1 beeped sadly as he scanned over the bodies, with a futile hope that at least one might have survived or failing that, figuring out some explanation as to how these creatures died.
Meanwhile, Cal and Merrin could get a much clearer picture in both the Force and simply with their own eyes about what kind of society this one truly was. The fact that there was so much death just left out to rot without even the slightest bit of care said all the two of them wanted, let alone needed, to know.
"They had no respect for life." Merrin clenched her fist as looked over the pile of bodies. "Of any kind."
"It goes beyond that." Cal shook his head, feeling the echoes around them. "They- this whole place is equivalent of a supermarket. Sapient beings were packaged and stored alive for various purposes. They didn't even have names among themselves, it's worse than the clones, worse than the Empire..."
Sensing her lover's distress, Merrin pulled Cal into a hug, and Cal felt himself calm, letting the feel of his love's presence and connection in the Force soothe him and keep him from being overwhelmed. He normally had a better handle on his psychometry, but despite the lack of actual Dark Side presence, this place... there was an evil to it that was chilling in its banality. It was painting a rather comprehensive, if disturbing picture of the many possible reasons that this world had been wiped out.
"Do you wish to continue on?" Merrin had to ask as she held onto Cal, feeling his arms wrapped tightly around her. "I know your psychometry can be overwhelming at the best of times..."
"I can make it, as long as you're here." Cal assured her, pulling back to plant a quick kiss on Merrin's lips, something she gladly reciprocated. "And as much as this place is haunting me... I'm still sensing the echoes of presences who passed through here before. And I can get a sense that... they were looking for something here."
"And you're sure you want to stay here?" Merrin asked with a raised eyebrow, to which Cal sighed.
"No, I don't particularly want to be here." The Jedi Knight acknowledged. "But for better or worse, we should follow in their footsteps to get a clearer understanding of what's going on. Even if all we find is going to be more pain."
Nothing more needed to be said for the moment as the two Force users made their way deeper into the facility, past various pods and more dead bodies. One of which was strangely different from the rest, with sleeker and purple skin alongside a third eye in the middle of his forehead.
Cal had quickly determined that like those in the wall, this one had died basically as he had been born, with his last memory being a humanoid standing above him, taking some sort of key with them. Leaving a quartet of biomechanical pods just lying there, bathed in an eerie red light coming from the machine that looked vaguely like a heart.
As the two of them continued their way through the facility, Cal abruptly got a really strong echo right out of nowhere as he saw the memories of one of the humanoids who had been born from that wall.
He was simply making his way through the facility when suddenly a strange mutated creature leaped out from the ceiling and latched itself onto him, as the humanoid desperately tried and failed to fight the creature off. The parasite slammed its arms into the humanoid's stomach and painfully ripped out chunks of flesh and blood before burying its arms deep inside the humanoid's abdomen.
From this, Cal also noticed two other things: the first was that the parasite had some sort of strange device attached to its tail, one that looked like a biomechanical jackhammer, which the humanoid picked up for itself.
The second thing Cal noticed was that on the parasite's left arm was one of those same keys that he had seen emerge from those machines earlier, confirming that this parasite used to be another humanoid before being mutated, most likely by whatever was in that room they had entered earlier.
"Cal!" Merrin's husky voice drew the Jedi Knight out of his psychometry induced trance, and he realized that he was still feeling the phantom pain of having two arms buried inside him as he hunched over. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine." Cal took a deep breath and waved off a healing stim from BD. "That was just a... particularly vivid memory, is all."
"What did you see?" Merrin asked, raising an eyebrow as BD-1 tilted his head in similar curiosity, causing Cal to share what he had seen, about the parasite latching onto another humanoid, the fact that the parasite itself was likely also another humanoid, everything. "That is... concerning." The Nightsister said after Cal had finished explaining. "Do you think we will encounter more of such creatures down below?"
"I hope not." Cal shook his head, to which BD suddenly interjected and asked what they meant by down below, as they had scanned for lifeforms previously and found nothing. "Looks can be deceiving, buddy."
"Agreed. You were not exaggerating when you called this place a supermarket." Merrin noted grimly, while directing her senses down below. "And yet... perhaps this place once doubled as a farm?"
"Maybe..." Cal nodded as he also reached out with the Force and found quite a bit more life than what they had initially scanned from the Mantis. "Either way, it seems this world isn't quite as dead as we thought."
...
As the Jedi and Nightsister made their way deeper into the facility, they began to encounter actual living creatures, though they were clearly what passed for surviving wildlife on this planet than anything actually sapient.
It first became clear that they were passing into a different environment when the tunnels around them started to become more alive. While they had certainly looked that way before, it had clearly been more for aesthetic reasons, at least for the most part.
At first it was simply patches and strands of red flesh, like they had seen on the surface earlier. But when Cal and Merrin started walking past writhing and undulating masses of flesh on the walls, and occasionally bits of those masses detached themselves into distinct creatures, it was clear that some sort of underground ecosystem persisted despite the planet's ecological collapse. Many of them were all melded in strands of flesh, and it seemed like only a few had actually pulled themselves out, with exposed musculature and all.
There were a few varieties they had to concern themselves with, as BD-1 scanned them. The first were small almost bird-like creatures that waddled and spat some sort of liquid glob, something none of the offworlders felt like getting on them. The second variety was slightly larger and looked like a lizard in some ways, which vomited out corrosive liquid at short distances. A third variety was a bit larger and bulkier, and while it didn't spit out any dangerous liquids, it tended to charge towards any opponent and ram them with its considerable bulk.
Fortunately, none of these creatures were particularly dangerous to the Jedi or the Nightsister, as Cal's lightsaber and blaster, alongside Merrin's magic knife and staff, were enough to make quick work of them when needed.
Not that they had to fight them much, as the creatures seemed far more territorial than aggressive, allowing the human, Dathomirian, and droid to simply wait for them to pass by without incident. Given how Cal and Merrin were both used to fighting extremely aggressive and hostile wildlife who were usually much larger and more dangerous, the relative docility of these creatures was both surprising and a refreshing change of pace.
"I am curious as to how these creatures came to be." Merrin noted, studying the creatures around them with a mix of fascination and disgust. "They don't seem to have come about naturally." BD-1 eagerly scanned the fleshy walls around them and gave a whistle of affirmation.
"Some sort of genetic alterations?" Cal repeated. "Certainly seems to match what they were doing up above us." He tapped his chin in thought. "Though we still don't know what their end goal was."
Suddenly, BD-1 leapt off of Cal's shoulder and ran down an alcove, beeping all the while as his scanners detected something. Cal and Merrin looked at each other in surprise and confusion before following the droid to what looked like some sort of storage facility, where two odd looking machines were embedded on separate walls. One looked relatively familiar enough in design though, as did the bio-machines on it.
"Even their weapons are alive?" Merrin questioned, looking over the racks of gun parts and the twitching tendrils on them.
"It looks like it." Cal grabbed one of the guns and used his psychometry to read it and how it worked. "I've been all over the galaxy, and I've never seen anyone make weapons like these before. It looks like the trigger portion is missing though." He recalled what he had seen in the Parasite echo, how the jackhammer device had a similar design. "I think they actually had it designed so that you could swap it out with multiple different weapon portions."
"Then what's this device then?" Merrin gestured to a second wall mounted contraption, one that BD was still scanning before letting out a couple beeps.
"An ammunition dispenser?" Cal repeated as he walked over, with BD-1 leaping back onto his shoulder while Cal reached out with his psychometry. "Huh, you're right about that, buddy." Cal patted the small droid's head. "If I didn't know any better, I'd swear these people used actual eggs for ammunition."
"Given what we've seen already, I wouldn't put it past them." Merrin snarked, before looking at Cal thoughtfully. "I'm guessing one or both of the beings we're tracking grabbed one of the guns and ammunition?" To which Cal simply nodded. "Then we seem to be on the right track."
Neither of them bothered to question why there would be weapons down here. They'd seen enough of the Empire in the wider galaxy to know that a similarly callous society would have plenty of need for guns, and none of them good.
Though the fact that the trail they were following took them to this place meant that it was most likely a necessity for survival in the most recent user's case. Regardless, the Jedi and the Nightsister left the room and made their way deeper into the facility, past the various fauna and through the twisting maze of biomechanical hallways and mechanisms with little trouble.
Making it through the inner workings of the facility was easy enough for the two lovers anyway. While some of the creatures and native humanoids of the world were stuck working with the pathways and tunnels that dotted the facility, Cal could use both Force jumping and his own natural talent at climbing to bypass a number of obstacles like broken elevators and the like. Merrin, of course, didn't even need to bother with that much, as she simply warped between walkways in a flash of green, waiting for Cal and BD-1 to catch up to her.
Besides the occasional bits of banter between them, t here wasn't much to say, as save for a few moments of psychometry where Cal felt the parasitical creature taking over that other humanoid even further, leaving patches of blood on the ground, the rest of the journey was fairly standard.
Of course, standard in this case still qualified as walking through a biomechanical hellscape where the Force practically screamed out in unpleasant sensations around them. Still, the Jedi Knight and the Nightsister were able to take comfort in each other's presence through the bowels of the unknown facility as they eventually began to make their way into the crater that they had seen from the top of their landing zone earlier.
And soon, they had found a path leading them into the crater proper, which was another mystery they couldn't immediately solve. Whatever this place was before, it had clearly been artificially designed for some other purpose, as more of the same biomechanical infrastructure coated the interior of the crater.
However, it was also overrun by many more of those fleshy strands and the creatures that made them up, as several flying varieties flew past the duo as they made their way down one of the few functioning elevators into the crater proper.
"This place seems to be the source of these creatures." Merrin murmured as they arrived at the ground floor. "The concentration of them seems higher here than anywhere else."
"Was the source." Cal corrected as he looked around the crater, with the companions noting one rather disturbing element around them that clearly wasn't natural.
The crater was coated with large amounts of red blood and looking up, they could see why. A massive creature was painfully pinned against a platform above, its head swaying in the wind, and likely what they had seen earlier when they first landed on the planet.
It was hard to make out what the entity looked like from down here, but it was clear to the two Force wielders that something the creature had somehow previously grown over this crater, and the machinery in it, only for someone to have activated the transportation without any concern for the creature's well-being, shooting it up to the ceiling.
And judging by all the twisted flesh and strange creatures roaming around the crater interior, the larger creature had likely been the source to most of the wildlife they had encountered. Fortunately, none of these creatures were too difficult too deal with, as they remained territorial instead of naturally aggressive. The few that did attempt to attack were easily dissuaded by the efforts of Cal and Merrin. However, the circumstances led to a problem.
"It would seem this is where our ground journey ends." Merrin said, before turning to Cal with a slight smirk on her face. "Unless you would prefer to climb up?"
"Tempting." Cal tapped his fingers in thought, before shaking his head as he regarded the crater's height. "But we should probably conserve our strength and just call Greez down here so we can take the Mantis down the rest of the path." The Jedi Knight turned his attention to the interior of the crater. "Before we do that though, I want to see if I can get an idea of just what happened here."
"More listening to echoes?" Merrin faux complained, though the sarcasm in her voice was easy to discern as it mixed with fondness. "I will keep any of these creatures off your back." The Nightsister swore as her dagger became her enchanted staff with a flash of green ichor.
And so, Cal made his way through the sides of the crater as he sought to gain a better understanding of just what had happened here. A trio of those consoles appeared all around the bottom of the crater next to a number of walkways, indicating that this is where the transport platform used to be. And as Cal came up to said consoles and felt the echoes, he was able to get a good sense of what the creature looked like and its sheer size when it was down here.
The creature was primarily grey and black in color, with a leathery body, a relatively wormlike head, a pair of clawed hands, and most disturbingly, a rather human-like face, only with patches of skin over its eyes and a circular hanging opening of skin where its mouth should be. But as Cal continued to watch the echoes, to see as the creature ended up being mutilated by the consoles being activated by the humanoid and parasite, what really disturbed him about the beast was how passive it was.
The creature dwarfed a rancor in size, and the Jedi Knight had plenty of memories of how dangerous those were to fight. Every time the creature's innards were mutilated, it could have very easily raised its arms and crushed the offending console and the humanoid who activated it like they were little more than an annoying insect. But the creature did nothing of the sort, nor did it try to flee.
All it did was stare at the humanoid in an almost pleading fashion, as if begging the man to stop. Perhaps the Jedi was simply used to aggressive wildlife constantly trying to kill him, but to see something so large be so passive in the face of direct harm to itself... Cal couldn't help but wonder just what kind of life this creature had lived that it would allow itself to be hurt so easily.
"Were you able to learn anything about this place?" Merrin asked once Cal had finished sensing all three consoles, leaving a number of creature bodies in several pieces as part of her handiwork.
"Nothing particularly pleasant." Cal replied, to which Merrin scoffed.
"From this world so far, that is nothing new." The Nightsister replied, before gesturing with her hand, while returning her knife to her holster with the other. "Come. I already called Greez to pick us up."
Sure enough, the sounds of the Mantis quickly became loud enough for the two Force users and the droid to hear, which also caused most of the wildlife that were still around to retreat somewhere safer. The crater was large enough that the Mantis could squeeze inside with minimal difficulty, though actually landing was out of the question when the bottom of the crater didn't exactly have any flat space large enough for the ship to land.
Still, it was no trouble as the landing ramp opened up a few meters above them. Cal called on the Force and was able to make the jump with ease (BD-1 riding on his back), while Merrin simply teleported onboard herself.
"Welcome back, lovebirds." Greez greeted as the landing ramp sealed behind them. "Please tell me we can finally get off this rock."
"Not just yet, unfortunately." Cal shook his head as he took in the familiar mechanical aesthetics of the Mantis, before sitting down in the co-pilot's chair. "You saw that platform and those buildings above us, right?"
"Of course." The Latero's hands deftly moved over the controls as the Mantis rose from the crater to give them a better view of the platform in question, as well as the rather snake-like bio-mechanical tunnels that were laid out across the landscape. As the ship rose from the greater, the green tinge of the facility became replaced with a purple haze of the atmosphere once again. "Honestly, my best guess is that it's some sort of tram system or something."
"Most likely." Merrin agreed as she took her own seat. "And we need you to follow it."
"I was afraid you were going to say that." Greez sighed as he set a course through the purple haze.
...
The journey didn't take that long, as in less than a minute, they were able to follow the tunnels to their destination: a large building that had the design of a temple, grandiose in form and made to draw the eyes from many miles away. Like everything else on this world though, it had clearly been abandoned and left to decay, as the damage around them was pretty clear.
The crew of the Mantis had noticed that all the buildings seemed to be slowly disintegrating from the top down, and this temple was no different. Though the purple atmospheric haze seemed oddly cleaner around this place, and for the Force users, something else also drew their attention.
"Well, this certainly feels ominous." Greez snarked as he turned to look over his shoulder, already aware that Cal and Merrin were standing at the door to the landing ramp. "You two sure you want to do this?"
"Not really, no." Cal admitted with a reluctant sigh.
"But we have to." Merrin added. "The sensation that called us to this world... it seems to be stronger here."
"I'm not going to ask." Greez shook his head as he guided the Mantis as low as he could to the ground. "There isn't any good spot to land, so I'll let you both jump out here. Call me when you need a pick up and we'll work from there."
"Got it, thanks Greez." Cal said as the Mantis' landing ramp opened over the temple grounds, allowing the two Force users to leap out of the ship and land within the courtyard.
As soon as they were out the door, Greez wasted no time in retracting the landing ramp and flying the Mantis away, allowing the temple grounds to quickly grow quiet again. Meanwhile, Cal and Merrin took in the architecture around them, which unsurprisingly, had the same sort of biomechanical aesthetic, though it was much artistic in nature, as opposed to semi-functional.
The bone-white color was a sharp contrast to the shades of brown, green and purple that they had seen elsewhere on this world. What also became clear as they looked around was just how much this society seemed to revere sex.
"These guys had rather... explicit artwork." Cal couldn't help but comment as they passed a statue of two humanoid figures in the middle of sexual copulation. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but still..."
"Are you feeling uncomfortable, Jedi?" Merrin teased him as she nudged his shoulder. "We have done the same thing many times now."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that." Cal flushed slightly. "That it makes me uncomfortable with us, I mean. Doing that."
"I would hope not." The Nightsister simply smirked at her lover's awkwardness, before turning her gaze back to the artwork. "They do seem to have a strange fascination with pregnancy." Merrin noted as her eyes were drawn to the bulging bellies of several of the statues.
"Sounds like you do too." Cal teased in turn, drawing a flush from Merrin this time. "I suppose given how you are with Kata, that shouldn't surprise me."
"We can have this conversation another time." Merrin said a little too quickly, eager to change the conversation as they looked towards the open entrance of the temple. "Shall we?" Merrin gestured to the opening, but BD bleeted to get their attention.
"What is it, buddy?" Cal asked the droid, who ran off to a side passage under one of the stairways, and scanned a bloody handprint. "How recent is this?" BD replied that it was relatively recent, as was the trail of blood leading towards it.
Following along, Cal touched the side of the passage himself and saw the same humanoid with no mouth, his guts having been ripped out and the man just barely holding them in. That he was still standing was miraculous in and of itself. With a start, Cal recognized him as the same being who had been attacked by that other parasite, only now said parasite was missing.
To make things even more curious, the humanoid was holding a vial of some sort of red fluid that was almost certainly blood. Abruptly, the psychometry vision ended, leaving Cal with more questions than answers.
"Karabast. What the hell happened here?"
"What did you see?" Merrin asked, a sentiment echoed by BD.
"The humanoid I sensed earlier, he was here." Cal replied, looking over the blood trail leading to a lower level of the temple that had an open gate. "Only he was missing the parasite."
"And clearly a lot of blood." The Nightsister replied grimly, as she began walking towards the open gate. "Well, one way or another, we're getting our answers in this place."
BD-1 climbed up on Cal's shoulder again before the Jedi quickly caught up with Merrin as they entered the bottom levels of the temple. There was a certain grunginess to the lower levels that the courtyard had lacked, but the aesthetic was definitely much more ornate than the previous facility. Despite this, the two Force users were struck by how completely devoid of life this place felt, lacking even the ecology of creatures that had permeated the previous facility.
Although there was a sense of... something else here, Cal and Merrin put that thought on hold as they continued their investigations into the underlevels of the temple, and quickly found a machine that was covered in blood, with a claw-like contraption hanging over it.
"Well, this is definitely where the parasite was removed." Cal said, after a brief use of his psychometry showed the humanoid doing just that with the machine's unusual interface. "I can see why as well, as that thing was literally growing out of him."
"And what of the parasite?" Merrin asked, to which Cal simply pointed to the circular shaft on the ceiling over the machine. "So, it escaped?"
"And it might still be in the building." Cal grimaced as he rested his hand on his lightsaber hilt. "Be on guard."
And with that comforting reminder, the two of them kept moving through the underlevels of temple, their senses open along with BD's scanners to ensure that they didn't miss anything. In truth, Cal wasn't entirely sure that the parasite was still lurking around, but until he found an echo that suggested otherwise, the Jedi intended to remain on guard.
Though as he and Merrin made their way through the odd doorways and platforms, with Cal needing to cut through one doorway that was locked in a way they couldn't open, the Jedi Knight did find more echoes showcasing just how bad the Parasite's mutations were getting.
Tendrils of some sort were emerging from the humanoid's body and covering every inch of him, to the point of covering his hands so that he couldn't drop his gun, or even close his fingers to actually accomplish any tasks with his left hand.
And given all the consoles around them, Cal could see how that was a major problem. A bit more exploring had found the solution, as the human, droid and Dathomirian found another device similar to the key implantation devices they had found earlier. Only instead of implanting keys, this one's interior was just covered in spikes, allowing the humanoid to destroy the tendrils for brief periods before the parasite grew them back.
"Why do I get the feeling this situation is disturbingly common here?" Cal asked rhetorically as he finished reading the echo around this machine. "I don't know why else they would have a machine that apparently has the sole purpose of mutilating whatever extremity is placed into it."
"Of course they do." Merrin couldn't help but roll her eyes at how absurdly callous this whole society seemed to be, to a point that even Dathomir was looking gentler by comparison. "Somehow, this is no longer surprising to me. Is there anything good we can actually say about this place?"
"The architecture is kinda nice?" Cal offered with a half-hearted shrug, as they passed by a balcony that overlooked another section of the large temple, where a stature of a mouthless humanoid was on display. "There's almost a certain beauty to this place, if we ignore how disturbing everything else is."
"I cannot disagree with you on this." Merrin admitted.
They had seen a few such balconies on these lower levels, positioned to allow observers to see other pathways and statues dotted around the temple. Though their purpose and meaning to the Jedi and Nightsister was still a mystery, as was what this place was actually for, the vistas certainly had their own haunting beauty to them.
Though as they emerged down another hallway leading to a similar balcony, the duo found a side passage that seemed to lead into some sort of an arena or storage area, which itself was next to a strange machine with some sort of container present.
"Okay, this is really bizarre." Merrin quickly teleported into the arena in question as Cal followed behind her, and saw what she meant.
A pair of broken down biomechanical mechs were just lying in the middle of this strange room, having clearly been subjected to some sort of battle in which they lost. Noticeably, the weapons they had mounted on their arms were different to the ones the duo had seen previously, almost looking to be some sort of grenade launchers.
The fact that one of the grenade launcher barrels was missing from one of the mech suits indicated that it had been taken, and as Cal reached out with his hand, an echo in the Force revealed that the humanoid and the parasite had been here, still connected to each other.
There were also strange... fetus-like creatures in pods, pods that fit into the little niches in the center of these mechs and allowed the creatures within to power them. Cal watched in confusion as the fusion of two individuals placed one such pod in each mech suit, and allowed them to power up, causing the creature to immediately attack them and starting a brief fight, one which the humanoid and parasite won.
Confusion turned to horror as the dead body of the fetus-like creature slid out of the wrecked mech, to which the humanoid picked it up and headed out of the room, towards the machine they had passed by a moment ago.
"Cal?" Merrin called out as the Jedi abruptly headed back down the entrance they had come through. "What is it?"
BD's concerned bleeting followed Merrin's question, but Cal didn't answer, as a growing sense of foreboding dread had gripped him after seeing the outcome of that fight. And as he laid eyes on the strange machine near the balcony once more, that dread only increased as he considered its purpose.
Intellectually, he already knew that this device clearly had unpleasant uses, this planet's society proved that much. And a part of him did not want to see what the exact function was. But another part, the curiosity within him, still needed to understand as he reached out with the Force and his psychometry once again, even as Merrin and BD came up behind him.
Cal watched in disgusted horror as the fetus-like creatures were crushed down into paste and drained of their blood. Just when he thought this civilization couldn't horrify him any further... The worst part was that he now knew that this was entirely what this machine was built for, to drain these infantile creatures and use their blood as both battery fluid and a hallucinogenic drug.
The Jedi Knight wanted to hurl, in fact he almost did hurl if he hadn't used the teachings Master Tapal had taught him to steady himself in the moment. Still, his unease didn't go unnoticed by his partner.
"What did you see?" Merrin asked, and Cal couldn't help but tell her everything he had witnessed from his psychometry, from the battles with the mech suits in the other room, to what had been done to the bodies of the creatures piloting them.
After his explanation, the Nightsister was silent for a long moment as she stared at the machine, before her eyes and hands flared with green ichor. Reaching out with her magick, the machine found itself surrounded in a green aura before being crushed into a pile of scrap and dead flesh, which she promptly threw out the nearby balcony.
It probably said something about Cal that he wasn't even remotely terrified by that display. If he was in a better disposition at the moment, he might have even been turned on by Merrin's show of power.
"Let us continue." The Nightsister said as if she hadn't just scrapped a horrific device and tossed it out like it was garbage.
Cal still took her hand anyway and he felt the tension in her posture ebb away at his touch. Then again, the contact was as comforting for him as it was for her, while BD hopped back onto Cal's shoulder.
The Mantis crew members finally made their way out of the temple sublevels and found a set of staircases leading up to the main floor, where they finally got a good look at the interior of the temple proper. The grand hallway leading into the temple itself had had more statues of people in sexual copulation, but that was but a distraction compared to what was actually in the temple proper.
The grand atrium of the temple had webs of purple flesh growing around and high into the ceiling, but unlike the previous facility, the flesh had the distinct appearance of brain matter, and a faint purple glow could be seen amongst it. Bizarrely, strands of this neural matter seemed to be connected to various figures crucified on altars around them, altars that were on rows of pews higher up. A five armed humanoid statue stood in the center of the room on a dais, though it had clearly had six arms at one point, as one was missing.
It was positioned right next to yet another altar that was clearly designed for a humanoid to be placed there, though for what purpose, none of them were certain. There was also a pair of platforms with pyres on them that looked like they were connected to the levels below, though for what purpose, none of the explorers could say. Cal and Merrin leapt up to the dais in the center with ease, with BD-1 drawing attention to something that was lying at the foot of the altar; The top of someone's skull had actually been cut off and just discarded like a piece of trash.
"Rituals of some sort took place here, that much is certain." Merrin murmured as she looked over the piece of the skull in question, and noticed that all the other altars around the room had figures who were similarly devoid of their skull tops. "And yet, this is nothing like what my sisters were doing on Dathomir."
"This whole world is unlike any we've encountered." Cal agreed. "If they used the Force here, it was certainly an aspect of it that the Jedi and Sith would be unfamiliar with."
"But you don't think they did?" Merrin asked, to which Cal shook his head.
"We've felt it ever since we've arrived here." The Jedi Knight pointed out. "Despite how many echoes in the Force I can sense, and despite the misery and wounds that grip this world, there isn't a single trace of the Dark Side that would suggest heavy usages of the Force like that."
"You're not wrong." Merrin admitted. "Dathomir was steeped in the Dark Side, and yet there is a distinct absence of its presence here."
"Which makes this feeling now all the worse." Cal couldn't help but shiver slightly as he gazed at the altar in front of them, as well as at the operating machine, feeling the sensation of echoes in the Force around them. "Still, this place is important to what these people were doing here. Hopefully we can get some sort of answers." BD bleeted out a concerned tone in response, to which Cal smiled softly. "I'll be fine, buddy. I've got you and Merrin here to keep me grounded."
And before any more objections could be raised, Cal's hand grasped the altar as the echoes of this place started to seep into him, quickly threatening to overwhelm his mind as if the entire history of the world was being shoved into his head at once. One thing was clear though; this was a nexus point for all the atrocities committed on this world. Images of suffering and agony, of indescribable torment flitted through Cal's mind as his psychometry worked against him.
Even with this clearer view, he still wasn't entirely sure what he was seeing, but from what he could understand, the ruling class of this world were trying to reach some sort of transcendence, at the expense of all the people beneath them. And they were willing to to reduce their fellow inhabitants into little more than livestock or resources to attain their goal.
The Jedi Knight let go of the altar, but the feelings and sensations from the visions he had gotten lingered in his mind. The feeling of so much pain and misery seeped into Cal as he regained his sense of place, but he could feel the familiar sensation of the Dark Side at the edge of his thoughts, tempting him to give in once again. Cal ripped the operating statue machine from its mountings and telekinetically crushed it. He tossed the wreckage aside, feeling tempted to start smashing the rest of the room around before he felt a hand squeeze his.
The calming sensation of Merrin's presence slipped into his veins, keeping the Jedi Knight from slipping back into the Darkness that had once consumed his thoughts after Bode's betrayal. To further steady him, the Nightsister brought her lips to his and kissed him deeply, with one arm wrapping around his waist and the other going to rest on his cheek. Cal's own arms snaked around Merrin's neck and pulled her closer to him, feeling the need to drink in her presence as much as possible. Eventually, Merrin pulled away slightly, just enough to lean her forehead against his and gaze into his eyes.
"Better?"
"Very." Cal nodded and sighed. "Sorry about that... this place, these echoes-"
"I understand, Cal." The Nightsister assured him, looking around. "This world, these people... I wish to do the same thing you do. But they are already dead and gone. Losing yourself to darkness here will not change things."
"What would I do without you?" Cal asked, his voice tinged with love, causing Merrin to give a soft smile.
"You won't have to find out." The Nightsister promised, to which BD-1 gave an indignant vocalization. "From either of us." She amended, to which Cal let out a shaky chuckle.
"They were trying to give themselves some form of transcendence." Cal said after a moment, letting the calming sensation of the Force and Merrin flow through him. "Everything their civilization was working towards, it was trying to free their minds from the limitations of the body."
"Did they succeed?" The Nightsister asked, to which Cal simply looked up at the strands of brain matter above them.
"I'm not entirely sure." He admitted. "One thing I do know is that they didn't use the Force to do it."
BD suddenly bleeted out a vocalization to get their attention, as further past the dais and down past the two pyres, there was another room. And something that all of them had initially overlooked, as Cal and Merrin cautiously approached now.
There was a figure standing motionless at what appeared to be a control console, but the two could sense no actual signs of life from it as they drew closer and got a chance to examine the figure. Disturbingly, it looked like a rotting corpse from the back, as if two skulls had been fused together. Though the front was rather smooth with purple skin and a small slit with a mouth, it was marred by strange fleshy petals in the middle of the skull with a humanoid eye in the middle of it.
"I think it might be this place's equivalent of droids." Cal said, while BD ran his scanning device over it. "Either that or... I think they were able to upload their minds into these forms."
"This place is clearly important." Merrin noted, as her gaze moved around the walls, to the various murals on the sides of the atrium and this strange antechamber.
The various murals they had seen scattered around the temple had often depicted these humanoids in sexual copulation and yet... there was something else present, with wings and tentacles. Something that could have been an entirely different species, though what Cal had seen in his vision suggested otherwise. If he had to guess, it might have been a representation of their attempted transcendence or their idea of what consciousness actually looked like.
With that thought in mind, the perspective of these murals became a bit clearer now, though the strange piece of artwork in this antechamber was also distinctly different from the artwork they had seen elsewhere.
As BD ran a scanning device over the console, where the body still had its hands motionless inside the console, he quickly realized that the large purple mural was actually a door, one which required standing on a pressure plate at the other side to fully open.
As the droid relayed this information, the Jedi Knight and Nightsister could feel something important at the other end of the mural door, mainly the strange and unknown force that had been drawing their attention to this planet, alongside two distinct, yet... oddly fused presences. Both of which felt worryingly familiar to Cal at this point.
"This is it." Cal said as BD clambered onto his shoulder and Merrin teleported over to him. "This is where our journey on this world ends."
"Are you ready for whatever awaits?" Merrin asked as they stopped just short of the pressure plate needed to fully activate the door.
"With you?" Cal took her hand and gave a soft smile, one she quickly mirrored. "Always." No more words needed to be said as they stepped on the pressure plate and the door opened in front of them.
They didn't know what to expect at the end of their journey, but neither the Jedi nor the Nightsister had ever expected what they found. Behind the door was a pathway with ornate statues and arches lining it. And at the end of the pathway was... they weren't even sure what it was. It almost felt like a void in the Force itself, something fundamentally off from the very nature of existence.
It was impossible to miss, rising into the sky, vaguely shaped in the form of a vagina. At least, given all the sexual imagery in the temple, that's certainly the first comparison that popped into Cal's head. Whatever the case, it was some sort of anomaly, a hole in the world, and clearly the source of what had been calling them to this planet.
"What is this?" Merrin asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
"I- I don't know." Cal shook his head. None of the visions he'd gotten from the echoes showed whatever this was.
With BD still on Cal's shoulder, he and Merrin cautiously made their way down the walkway, and despite the sheer presence of the anomaly, the Force users were able to tear their attention away from it enough to see that the walkway wasn't unoccupied.
There was one of those robotic figures standing motionless near the end of the walkway, with the missing arm from that machine attached to its shoulder. And in front of it was an abomination. Not just in appearance, but in the Force, as Cal and Merrin could feel this entity much more clearly now, and it was clear just what it was.
"Is this what I think it is?" Merrin's voice was tinged with horror and disgust.
"The two people who's journey we were following." Cal confirmed with a heavy heart. "The humanoid and the parasite. This is all that's left of them."
They couldn't help but stare at the creature who had two presences in the Force, now reduced to a disturbing and twisted blob of flesh with two faces that appeared rooted into the ground. One of the faces was much larger than the other, but only half-completed at the top of the creature, while the other one was trapped in the center of the body, almost like a cocoon.
It was vaguely shaped in the form of a sitting humanoid, if it was made of tendrils, but the proportions and appearance were all wrong, and that wasn't even accounting for what they felt in the Force.
As the two new arrivals drew level with the humanoid robot, Cal reached out with his psychometry into the machine, and saw everything that had happened. The mutilated humanoid had made his way up to the dais and the machine on the center, losing blood all the while.
He attached himself into the device and let the automatic surgeon operate on him, leading it to start slicing deeper into his guts, but also removing the top of his skull and connecting a portion of his brain matter to the web they had seen earlier, allowing the humanoid to mentally connect his mind to the two robots.
Through this link, the humanoid had directed one of the machines to pick up his comatose body and one of the arms of the auto-surgeon that was constantly cutting into him, and attached it to the machine carrying him. Next, the humanoid commanded the machines to get him past the same mural door Cal and Merrin had made it through moments ago, successfully doing so as the machine began carrying him to the anomaly ahead of them as was the being's end goal.
However, when the machine was mere meters away from the rift, the mental link between humanoid and machine cut out, through means that Cal was unclear of himself. Whatever the case, the humanoid found himself in the arms of the machine carrying him again, badly wounded and having his intestines carved into by the bladed appendage of the surgical machine. To make things even worse, the parasite had returned, climbing down one of the statues and crawling up onto the robot to knock the humanoid to the ground, who desperately tried to crawl towards the rift before being halted by the parasite re-attaching itself to him.
From there, the process was painful and twisted, as the parasite completely tore the humanoid's guts out and replaced it with its own body. Blood pooled on the ground as the humanoid desperately reached a hand out towards the motionless robot, begging it to do something to help him. But the lifeless machine gave no response as the two beings slowly and painfully fused together until they became the disturbing abomination that Cal, Merrin and BD-1 found themselves in front of right now.
"Cal." Merrin softly put her hand on the Jedi's shoulder as he came out of his trance, the two of them looking at the abomination of two beings.
The pair of eyes of the humanoid trapped in the middle of the monstrosity was looking right at them in an expression of pleading. The two Force users could sense the desperation under the surface, the pain of the creature who had been forced to commit horrible acts to survive, who had struggled from his very birth, clawing his way through hell, being mutilated beyond repair, and getting so close to the end of his journey, only to have his potential salvation ripped away when he was mere meters from it. There was nothing left now but endless misery for these two, a fate neither the Jedi nor the Nightsister would wish on anyone.
"Is there anything your magick can do for them?" Cal knew it was probably a hopeless question, but one he had to ask regardless, though his suspicion was confirmed when Merrin shook her head.
"I think there's only one way to help them now." Merrin said sadly, as Cal drew his lightsaber.
With a snap-hiss and a muted cry of pain, Cal bisected the abomination into two pieces. Merrin didn't leave it at that as her hand took on a green glow. She lit the remains of the creature on fire, immolating it until there was nothing left. As the ashes blew away in the wind, the two looked at each other, and both knew what the other was thinking; those two had been victims of their civilization, forced to suffer for the crimes of those who came before them. After what they had been through, killing them was a mercy.
"Now, there is only one thing left." Merrin said grimly as the two Force users looked back at what had called to them.
It was a tear in reality itself, an anomaly distorting everything around it. There were statues on the path leading up to it, and the statues themselves were actually warped and almost bleeding, as this thing was drawing them in. This anomaly seemed to be the source of all the strange disintegration on the buildings around them. Slowly, cautiously, the two of them continued down the walkway, and past the warped statues, making sure not to get too close.
"You getting anything on what this thing is, buddy?" Cal asked BD-1, to which the droid ran his sensors over the anomaly only to answer in the negative.
"This is what has been calling us here." The Nightsister realized.
"Not just us." The Jedi Knight replied, glancing back at the ash of what used to be two of the inhabitants, feeling their echoes strongly now. " He was trying to get to it so badly, like a dream." Cal explained, feeling the echo. "He knew he had to get here, even if he didn't know why."
"And it's been doing the same to us." Merrin realized, even as she felt its call again, and they both felt the urge to enter this rift, giving her a major sense of foreboding.
"It feels... so strange." Cal murmured, as he took another step towards it. "Like it's calling me, and yet-"
"Screaming at you to stay away." The Nightsister finished as she walked up beside Cal, looking at him with concern. "And I'm thinking we should listen to that second part."
"We've come so far, followed this call." The Jedi Knight replied, and Merrin was concerned at how entranced he sounded. "Shouldn't we at least see what's on the other side?"
"If we go through, there's no guarantee we could come back." Merrin grabbed his hand, keeping him from stepping any closer. "Whatever these people were creating, whatever this gateway was meant to be... it isn't worth it."
There was a long moment of silence, as Merrin sent calming waves through the Force and into her lover, hoping to snap him out of whatever sensations this gate was causing him, while simultaneously trying to drown it out of herself. She focused primarily on her love, the feel, sensations and memories of Cal, letting them flow between them, aiming to silence the call of this gateway. She was relieved to see it having an effect, as the trance Cal seemed to be falling under began to disappear.
"You're right." Cal sighed as he abruptly turned away from the rift, letting the Nightsister guide him away from making a mistake. "It isn't."
Cal took a deep breath as the two Force users turned away from the rift. The call of the anomaly still resounded around them, trying to pull them back, but Cal refused to listen to it, focusing on the sensation of Merrin's hand in his, his light in the darkness. Neither of them let go as they walked out of the temple and left it behind.
...
Once they were back in the temple courtyard, they called Greez and made their way back onboard the Mantis, with the Latero all too happy to leave the planet behind. And so were the Jedi and Nightsister, to be honest, as the call of that anomaly was already getting fainter as they took off away from the temple.
"You guys sure you want me to delete the nav data for this place?" Greez asked as he began flying the ship out of the atmosphere. "Unless you do your Force thing, we won't be able to find the planet so easily again."
"It's better that way. This place is nothing but Scorn to life itself." Merrin said as the Mantis began to fly into orbit.
"This world is best left forgotten." Cal agreed, with a deep sigh as they broke atmosphere and saw the familiar lights of the stars. "Set a course for Tanalorr."
"You got it." Greez nodded as the he set a course and activated the hyperdrive. In a matter of seconds, the Mantis left the unnamed world behind.
And thus ends Exploring a Dead World. I know the ending was probably a bit disappointing seeing as Cal and Merrin don't actually figure out what that anomaly is, but seeing as even Scorn's artbook doesn't really clarify what it is either, I felt it would be better to just leave it as a mystery.
There's also the fact that as Merrin pointed out, there's no guarantee that if they go through the rift, that they could actually come back out at all, which isn't something they feel the need to risk this time, unlike with the journey to Tanalorr. So, it's something they wouldn't want to chance anyway.
Anyway, while this story had the two Force users following in the footsteps of Scorn's 'story' as it were, I didn't want to just make it a complete rehash of that game, especially since unlike Scornguy and the Parasite, Cal and Merrin are two powerful and armed Force-users. They'd easily be able to trivialize any combat encounter, as well as bypass any obstacle or puzzle in their way.
So, I tried to play up the more psychological and emotional aspect of the planet through the Force, especially for Cal, given how his psychometry works. Even assuming there isn't any direct ties to actual Force-using elements like Dark Side rituals or the like, the planet would just feel completely awful. Though in the end, I'm not sure how well I succeeded in that part.
Don't expect me to do a follow-up of this story in the future, as I said, it was just a plot bunny, combined with me scratching a bit of a Merrical itch I've been having since Survivor came out. Regardless, I do hope everyone enjoyed this rather lengthy one-shot of a crossover and reviews are always welcome.