Insatiable

Posted on Wed Feb 27th, 2013 @ 12:35am by Thane & Bomoor Thort & Berry & Kip Hoddai & Sev Rezer & Morgo Le'Shaad

3,992 words; about a 20 minute read

Chapter: Chapter III: Relics
Location: Ancient Temple, Tython
Timeline: Day Eleven

OLD

With his senses still warning him of impending danger, although there was clearly nothing to be seen before him, Thane kept his violet blade engaged as he turned to his friend, giving him a small respectful look. "You're going to have to teach me how to do that," he commented, genuinely impressed by the Ithorian's displayed Force talent. He looked to Bería, but was cut short as he opened his mouth as another voice interrupted.

From the gloom beyond, their tormentor came forth.

NEW

"No, no, yes, no, no!" The voice called, the high shrieks carrying about them from all angles, the sound then seeming to sink into the doorway that led to the passage Morgo and Berry had come from. "The box, oh yes, the box and your sweet fruits of sour chaos. How contemptibly delicious... but poisoned! Concise and twisted!"

The voice made Thane bring his saber up high again, once more in a heavy Niman stance. The voice was strange, somewhere in-between disembodied and clear, and went from cheerful tones to dour ones in the space of a word, as if undecided - or perhaps both at once. After a few seconds, with each of the group looking to see this newcomer, they were greeted by a peculiar sight.

A bulky figure, it was a Whiphid, covered in matted fur that had fallen out in places, and had faded in others, leaving a strange mix of greys, light and dark browns across its hunched form, the creature's body looking permanently twisted. A male, tattered faded robes hung from certain parts of his scarred body, and his elongated snout was dry, save for the saliva slipping between rotten teeth. A mad glint filled his eyes as they searched wildly the faces of each of the group.

Immediately, it was clear this was the source of all of their troubles; this Whiphid was a massive black blotch within the Force, and although the shadows could no longer be seen, through the Force, it was almost as though they were gathering about him whilst simultaneously surging from him, making it hard to tell what was feeding who, only that this crooked and broken being before them was more powerful than his form or mannerisms belied.

His massive fingers twitched every now and again, sometimes moving towards one of the group, but then he would recoil, as if punished from some far off authority, before finally gathering up some courage and snarling at them.

"Things had been going so terribly wonderfully before you arrived!" He drooled angrily, body angling in disjointed ways. "Before you brought such putridly tasty morsels of delusions and fears, the box was whispering so loudly throughout the hunger, but we became so happily content and disturbed, darling Valtris and himself!" The Whiphid's tone had become almost like sing-song, but quickly became dark again, and he took a heavy foot forwards. "But... but... but you had to... didn't you? Damning loving K'Errekh to a multitude of nothingness and gorged on famine!"

He then raised a hand and pointed a shaky finger. "You will... I will... Perhaps... They... Feast!" Suddenly, he clutched his head and stumbled backwards, rocking himself. "Only three point four-two seconds," K'Errekh seemed to beg, tears starting to well in his eyes, before then jumping up quickly and angrily, staring at the wall and shouting louder than before. "Only three point four-two seconds!"

Thane looked at the creature, feeling the flowing and ebbing of erratic dark side energy crawling all about him, as well as random and disjointed thoughts that were even more troubling than the words he spoke spilling forth from his mind. It was a pathetic sight to behold, but it was powerful. Keenly so, and that sort of power in the hands of one with no true control - well, he had experienced that enough on this day.

Whatever K'Errekh had once been, he was now a shell of a true Force user, this amazing potential given in to madness and chaos; everything that stood to dismantle anything of worth in the galaxy, and a source of that very plague now stood before Thane, but he thought carefully on how to move forward. For now, he kept silent, not wishing to antagonise the Whiphid by saying the wrong thing, although he sorely wanted justice for what this broken thing had done to them all - this waste of life and Force power.

No lightsaber hung from K'Errekh's less-than-modest outfit, but whether that was a good sign or otherwise was hard to tell, and it was already proven that he had amazing dark side power. Thane then considered how he could reason with such a creature, and was quickly concluding any attempt would be pointless. It would be better to just end its miserable life now, before any more damage could be done.

Morgo had been wary when she’d first seen the Whiphid come forth from the shadows, glad for the barrier the others created between him and Morgo herself. But as he chattered on, mad and disjointed, she immediately began to warm towards him. Oddly enough, his crazed, contradicting words made a small amount of sense to her. And suddenly, he wasn’t just another dull malicious villain anymore, out to kill them, but a delightfully insane malicious villain…out to kill them.

In one instant, Morgo found herself arrested by the Whiphid, fascination snapping to attention. Her own stance became less guarded and more…interested. Perhaps it was the scientist in Morgo, ever objective of events and hungry for delightful new specimens such as this, because Morgo found herself smiling slyly at the defective being that called himself K’Errekh, despite all the injury he'd caused. All of a sudden, he wasn’t boring anymore.

“Force, what is this magnificence we’ve stumbled upon?” Morgo whispered as she placed a hand on Thane’s shoulder, gently pushing him a few centimeters to the side, stepping forward a little, just so she could get a better look at him.

His mind must be nothing short of psychedelic, Morgo thought to herself, intrigued.

"I have seen all kind of Jedi and Dark Jedi but this is new", Sev muttered. "Listen, shabuir, I don't know what you want and what you intend, but if you try get in our heads again, I'll promise you that you'll find out the true meaning of pain."

Morgo closed her eyes, silently exasperated with the bounty hunter's utter lack of tact, "Really Sev, you're being quite rude." She pointed out quietly, arching an eyebrow, "Are you deliberately trying to set him off and kill us all?"

"Deliberations?" K'Errekh exclaimed, hopping around to face the pair who had spoken, almost excitedly. "Pain? Oh, devilishly angelic, you two of all!" He pointed with his two forefingers at Morgo and Thane. "And so far from here you all stand with your legs crossed, knowingly out of the loop of any true falsifications..."

Thane glared, the Whiphid appearing to go off on a tangent in an almost poetic tone, still weighing up his options. It was clear, already, that this crazed being was nevertheless powerful, and immensely practised at invading minds, so any true plans would likely be siphoned from their minds quickly. As such, he tried to shield his thoughts, but he knew the concentration to do so may cause lapses in other abilities. But K'Errekh had to die.

"Oh, the one who dances the diabolical merry game of death, with much cowardly bravery behind his opaque visor of seeing," K'Errekh had hunched up again slightly, but he was clearly addressing Sev, speaking of him like a child. "You don't think little of so much pointlessness in your impending death that you bring chaos with your order, cloaked in transparency. You deny what you could will once be in future's past - blissful insanity! A truthful liar of doubts and honour!"

The Whiphid waved his arm in an arc, and an apparition of several crippled and bloodied bodies appeared, as if clawing their way out of the ground. They wore Mandalorian armour, but to the back of them was the worst sight: a woman, her flesh melting and burning, was crawling from the wreckage of something, hissing the word: "Dar'manda." All of them could see it.

K'Errekh began to laugh. "Yes, oh no, yes! Apart you are together with yourself and a tyrannical martyr to yourself." And then he grew angry. The Whiphid grew tall and his back straightened, his eyes glowed golden and he looked down. A red glow grew about the room. Amongst the living carcasses of Mandalorians, more figures began to crawl from the stone. A man dressed in Dromachean finery reached forwards, but his eyes were dead, as if there was no thought behind them.

Devaronians, like horned devils, were amongst them, flames all about them as they cursed Kip as a failure, and then a sight that even unsettled Thane for a moment, the Jedi Council lit red blades from around them, circling like the statues once had. He felt Bomoor tense, but not as much as when Berry tensed; the sound of a mechanic tapping was echoing about the room, and he knew that was what the part-Aquar was focused upon. It was clear these were the fears from each of them, and as he drew himself back into a combat-ready position, he awaited his own fear, expecting Axion.

Instead, he saw a familiar boy and woman, their regal clothes tattered and ripped, and their faces beaten and bloody. The beautiful rose-gold hair of the woman was matted with blood, and the young boy's face was torn apart by deep gashes. Both pairs of eyes were lifeless, but staring straight at him. His believed-missing mother and brother were staring at him.

All of them felt shock, but none of them gave in. Not this time. They were together, and they were aware. These were ideas and thoughts, plucked from their minds, and nothing hidden or knew. K'Errekh's manic laughter turned into aggressive snarling as the attempt failed. "You all reject acceptance of a greatly terrible false reality, to hate sweet and loving chaos for the burdens of broken reality, and so the dawn of a day's dusk is your twilight! And... my unwanted desire."

K'Errekh thrust his hands forward, palms outstretched, a massive blast of wind gusting at them all as the figures of their fears twisting and malformed. Their features shifted, fur and claws grew and their statures grew. In seconds, they were surrounded by a multiplicity of K'Errekh's, each snarling, whimpering or laughing at their prey.

"I will feast on nothingness and starve on plenty," a disembodied voice warned, almost hysterically, "and you shall suffer the enjoyments of ever-ending beginnings!"

As one, the various copies of K'Errekh jumped forward, gnashing with blunt teeth and scratching with ragged claws at them all. As one, the Red Raptor crew responded. The battle reminded Thane of fighting a swarm of rakghouls, as he had once seen during an outbreak; their primal and feral instincts making them vicious and unpredictable, but he found slicing these 'fakes' resulted in them evaporating into black smoke.

"Kill them all!" He growled, letting a sharp groan as a claw tore at his leg, blood instantly seeping forth. Thane quickly decapitated it, but found his sense clouded; with the mania K'Errekh exhumed and had unleashed, it was a trial to even commune with Bomoor.

Sev Rezer was angry. But no one could see how angry he actually was with his face hidden behind the helment. As one of K'Errekh advanced towards him, the mandalorian pushed the trigger of rifle, in automatic mode. Before K'Errekh was able to arrive, he raised his hands and deflected the shots away. But, what the madman wasn't expecting was several other blades that have been fired from Sev's wrists at the same time. The blades hit the copy in several parts of the body.

Berry experienced wave upon wave of relief now, first to know everyone was alive, then Kovu wasn't real (since this weird boar guy was definitely not with the World Government) and that not all of the people around them were real, either. But which one was? Well, they could still be hurt by the fake ones, and so Berry quickly pushed all worries of hurting the real one and quickly sliced through the huge thick leg of this pig guy. He was such a sad, thin fat hungry octopus, shooting all this confusing inky water magic at them. It was so dark, and so gross...Berry waded through it by pushing outward with her own, and kept pushing, brows furrowed in concentration and worry.

Bomoor, still weak from severing the dark bond, went on the defensive. His lightsaber held firmly above him and his eyes fixed upon several K'Errekhs advancing upon him. One flew towards him but faded away as Bomoor brought his lightsaber down through its chest. He could sense the true maniac among the duplicates but he lacked the strength to sift through them as he had done before. He could feel an untempered passion, mixed with a deep rooted fear. The Whiphid was a walking contradiction - his broken mind fuelling its own insanity in a vicious circle of chaos.

He struck another one down, clearing the space around him for a moment. He saw several of the figures circling around Morgo, muttering and humming to themselves like a pack of Gungans on Deathsticks. Morgo expertly dispatched several with her staff but the horde was approaching too quickly. Bomoor sent a wave of force through them, blasting all but one into atoms. The last Whiphid standing turned to face the Ithorian, casting a glare before splitting once again into several more copies.

"Damn!" exclaimed Bomoor, thrusing an arm outwards, "That was him there. One of those ones."

Quickly, Morgo had looked to where Bomoor had pointed, but by then he was lost again, hidden amongst his numerous copies.

Looking over to Bomoor who’d come to her aid as she was being surrounded, Morgo spared a moment to nod to him in silent gratitude before returning to battle, her lightspear humming levelly as she swung, feinted and thrust her spear through one Whiphid copy after another. And as Morgo fought, her eyes took note of every detail of K’Errekh’s copies, hoping that maybe a difference between what was fake and what was genuine would present itself. But with the speed required to truly fight with a spear, Morgo could never see much more than a face or a sleeve before she had to kill the ugly creature, the thing dissolving into black mist after being dealt a finishing blow.

“My, you’re quite like a cancer cell aren’t you.” Morgo muttered to herself as she sidestepped a Whiphid and brutally thrust her spear through his heart, “Defective, troublesome, with a tendency to multiply uncontrollably.”

Kip was riding the flows and felt the force, dark and light, as they moved through the area. They flowed through people, they flowed through objects, they flowed to and from the constructs and from the puppeteer that controlled them. Kip rode the flows and his body, well, it seemed to ride the air as a flame dancing in the wind.

He rolled and leapt, one leg folded to brace against the other, an illusion slashing at him from one angle as another rushed from another. The first slashed the second as Kip passed over the first, his foot snapping out at the end of the rotation and smashing the first into shreds of seething screaming darkness. Kip body still wavered with the flame-effect he had come back to the other with and whatever it was, seemed to make him somewhat like a Force-object.

The Devaronian landed and spun into a camel-kick, legs flaring out at two levels, catching one shade and forcing another to dodge even as Kip's upper body moved out of the way of an attacker who was swinging at his head. He landed in a rotation and spun, sinking to lash out with a foot and bring one of the attackers down without pausing or slowing, he rose and then back-flipped in place and stomped down with both feet onto the chest of the one now prone, shattering it's torso and sending it's shards back into darkness.

All the while Kip fought, he made his way towards the center of the threads of Force, the one that seemed to be in control, even as it moved about not too far from where it had originally been.

Swinging his blade about in arcs, slipping and sliding between his allies and the shades, Thane cut down at least three in one fell swoop, but only narrowly avoided having a finger bitten off by another. As he delivered a sharp kick into that one's illusory chest, he resisted the urge to unleash his fledgling dark powers again, fearful of causing more trouble than it was worth with his allies about him.

Even so, he gave himself a few moments to feel pride in Bería's ability at handling this new conundrum, of how she had kept her cool in the hard situation, and had easily slipped into using his old lightsaber, albeit in an improvised rendition of Shii-Cho. Nevertheless, she was successful, and he'd only had to avoid her slicing blue blade once.

It was then that he felt a blaze of hate-filled fury blast past him; Sev was slicing and dicing as well as the Jedi, and his narrow-minded intent seemed to cause a stir nearby - the real K'Errekh was close, and was trying to feed from the Mandalorian's anger.

Sev pressed his attack well, going to straight to melee combat. With his cortosis blade firmly in his hands, he slashed another. "Enough talk", he said.

And all at once, the shades contorted, and a wispy black haze began to appear around them as they drifted away into nothingness. The doom and gloom of the room gave way to the glow sticks that were still embedded in the stone (what few remained), the six Red Raptor crew bloodied, sweaty and exhausted from the day's torments as they gazed down at the solitary and pathetic figure on the floor.

Cradling his arm where Sev's blade had gauged out a meaty chunk, K'Errekh's dirty hands were smothering it, and he was making a strange noise, a cross between a pained gurgle and a chuckle of delight. Looking down at him, Thane's senses were becoming clearer and clearer; the majority of K'Errekh's magic seemed to be dying, and only the residual - but still might - lingering sensation that accompanied Tython remained. Outside, the billowing of wind could be heard, accompanied by thunder.

It was only then that Thane realised how comforting he now found that, not simply because it reminded him of Caanus, but because it was the first time he could truly hear what had been going on outside for some time. In the end, he was the first to step forward, his violet blade pointed down at the Whiphid.

He raised an eyebrow and slightly turned his head towards the others, although he never took his eyes away from the downed opponent, who was bleeding heavily. "Any objections?" He asked them.

Morgo stepped forward, looking down at the dying Whiphid. Catching his eye, Morgo smiled prettily, "Before we kill you, would you mind telling us where we might find little goodies such as, oh, manuscripts, tomes, crystals...." And watching him from the corner of her eye, her voice was low, "....or holocrons? This box that 'whispers', you mentioned, sounds absolutely riveting."

Kill? It finally sunk into Berry's mind as Shady Lady prattled off smart stuff. She scowled over at them, including Morgo. "You think he's gonna tell you all that before he's killed? They only cooperate if they get something good, like not dying." She turned off her saber and crossed her arms, frowning at Thane. "Which I bet no one wants."

"That tends to be true of rational beings," Thane admonished, slightly annoyed at Bería's misplaced idealism. "Given who this person is, what he has done, and what he can do," the Human went on, "the punishment fits. Do you really think that, if we could get him out of here and back to the Republic without him pulling something on us, he wouldn't be able to do something to them?" He pushed the tip of his blade closer to K'Errekh's face, who was salivating and breathing heavily, not looking as though he was really paying attention to what was going on around him. Thane scowled at him. "Death is the only suitable solution."

Suddenly, breaking them off mid-debate, the Whiphid's eyes grew alert and frantic, something between anger and fear as he looked straight at the wall, almost as if peering through it. "No!" He roared, taking his blood-soaked hands away from his wound to put them around where his auditory organs would be, clenching his eyes shut. "Shouting so quietly, always encouraging with contempt and admonishing with praise!" His words turned into unintelligible inane babble, and he began to roll about the floor.

Alert and fearing K'Errekh might now try something, Thane brought his blade about to end the abomination, but then he and the others were then smashed by a heavy wave from the Force, blowing them back with almost the same ferocity Bomoor's Force bellow had knocked Thane back earlier. Luckily for the former Jedi, though, he got a soft landing in the form of Kip, who had been blasted into the wall. With his armour, Sev was probably the luckiest, but they made a sorry sight in their crumpled heap on the floor.

Looking up, Thane sighted the Whiphid scrambling out of the room and down the corridor, in a direction that seemingly led back to the centre of the ancient Je'daii temple. He lifted himself up from Kip, pulling the Devaronian up with him. He gave Bería a sour look as she rose, pointing a finger towards her. "Next time, don't get in the way." He did not wait for her response, as indignant as he assumed it would be, and began a brisk jog towards the door, gesturing for the others to follow him quickly. They could not let K'Errekh get away from them.

Berry made a face at him, even though half of hers was bleeding slightly from scrapes. "That's why I'wanted t'be in th'back..." she muttered before trudging after him, feet dragging. She wasn't the captain anymore, but she couldn't let go of her rules that easily. This octopus guy was way too pathetic to die, and it'd be waaaay too easy right now, anyway. Even if it did take five people to subdue him. Which means they weren't strong enough and therefore not even worthy of being alive if they faced him one on one. She pouted slightly to the side. If you're not strong enough to keep back your alive enemies at your weakest, then you're gonna die anyway, right? They all were going to eventually. Well, at least, she was. She stomped off, echoing indignant mannerisms that were entirely her own this time.

The group stumbled out of the now-ruined chamber and back into the winding corridors. K'Errekh had made no attempt to hide his path. Blood soaked the floor before them and his maniacal voice danced back through the hallway. His wound seemed deep. Something no ordinary being could recover from. But the Whiphid had proven his abilities all too well and they could take no chances.

TBC

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