Darkness Falls
Posted on Wed May 16th, 2018 @ 2:52am by Amare
Edited on on Mon May 28th, 2018 @ 2:01pm
2,560 words; about a 13 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter V: Unbound
Location: Polar Region, Irrikut
Timeline: Day Two on Irrikut (the night before "The First Lesson")
Tags: Irrikut dungeon, Sith, hey kiddo
ON
Two days of wandering had passed. Two days of impervious silence from Thane. Two days of dry ash-filled air had torn at Coda’s face. For her, Irrikut was fertile ground for madness and despair. Part of her wanted to run from Thane and hide, but she knew there was no going back, and nowhere to go if she wanted to live. It was a familiar feeling having no choice but to follow and obey; the story of her life.
They had rested out in the open on the first night in a harsh rock quarry. Her teeth were chattering, and her body was wracked with piercing cold. All the while Thane calmly meditated in the near-pitch black night entirely unaffected by the elements. Scarcely few minutes went by without the howl of the gale slashing across the barren landscape, or the call of the wild echoing from an unseen distance. What made it worse was that she had no means of defense to comfort her; Thane had relieved her of her twin blasters yet again before they departed from the Red Raptor.
After the second day’s trek in what seemed like a long winding path that took them through cracked hills riven with geothermal vents spewing dangerous hot steam and canyons littered with the bleached bones of creatures humanoid and otherwise, Thane had led them to a nondescript cavern at the base of a towering limestone plateau to retire for the night.
Coda had found a spot nestled in a spot beside the cave wall with a slight incline that was a few dozen feet away from the mouth of the cave. She was determined to physically divorce herself as far from Irrikut’s frigid atmosphere as possible and was deeply grateful that Thane hadn’t yet parted her from the spare brown consular’s cloak Master Bomoor had graciously lent her.
With cold hard earth as her only cushion, sleep was nigh impossible to attain. Lumpy pebbles and stones pressed and ground against her skin as she shifted and turned to find some tiny semblance of comfort. Sudden crashes of lightning from the torrential storm that was passing outside refused to grant her the silence she needed for quality rest.
Occasionally, she would turn to see Thane either meditating, or practicing a fierce lightsaber kata. She admired the whirling purple blur of his weapon’s energy blade slashing the air with its swift buzzing and humming sounds. Watching the blade deftly flash its dervish dance in the dark inspired her to imagine herself as the one wielding it, slashing at armored men trying their best to kill her. It was hypnotic, it was beautiful, it was…comforting.
She hadn’t realized she drifted off, and when she opened her eyes again, Thane was gone.
“Master?” she snapped awake to a seated position glancing about the relatively small cave. Her eyes adjusted to the lack of light and saw no sign of her Caanan master. She rose to her feet and went to the cave entrance to search for him. The storm had passed, and darkness had fallen outside with little moonlight to illuminate the landscape, but all around she could not see where he went. She look down and saw boot prints leading out of the cave, but the trail beyond the entrance was long gone with the squalls that had blown away clues to Thane’s path.
“He’ll return soon,” she assured herself. “He—”
“…Has abandoned you!”
Coda spun around to where the loud whispered voice was behind her and saw a black silhouetted figure standing in the back of the cave. The eerie, almost ethereal sight of it chilled her to the core with far greater intensity than anything Irrikut had thrown at her thus far. Her heart rates sped up exponentially, and the fear of the figure standing motionless dredged up such fear that her eyes filled with tears.
“Who are you?!” she shouted at the shadow trying to seem like she was ready for whatever it was going to do, but her every instinct told her that her only response would be to turn and run from the cave.
“You are cowering,” the whispered voice replied noticing Coda’s visible trembling. “Don’t be afraid. I have been here all along watching you. If I desired to bring you harm, I would have done so already.”
Coda swallowed hard and gingerly took a cautious step forward.
“Good,” the shadow uttered with serpentine satisfaction. “We understand each other. Come closer. See the truth for yourself.”
Coda stepped back into the cave proper and halted her progress halfway about over a dozen feet from the shadow. “What is your name?” she asked whilst still fearing violent treachery at any second.
“We are Zara,” the voice answered. “Two faces of the same coin. A past, and…”
“…A future,” they said together. Coda gasped softly in surprise as the voice spoke up from a whisper to a normal speaking tone. It was her voice, yet not quite the same. The shadow’s tone was a touch deeper, however, and more mature.
“Yes,” the dark one spoke with further approval. “I have returned to this place to put my past to rest. A pair of reddish orange eyes glowed to life as its arms slowly spread out to its sides, and the blade of a golden lightsaber was ignited from the right hand. The yellow light fleshed out the outline of the silhouette’s head, and it became clear that it was a nautolan woman in billowing black robes. “The past must die,” she added in a lower, rumbling tone, “as all weak and forgotten things should.”
Before Coda could react, the blade shot across the cave at her in a throw that was almost faster than the blink of an eye. She jerked back a step as the blade impaled her clean in the abdomen. Completely stunned, her head fell to look down upon the lightsaber hilt, gazing at its elegant shape and design for but a second, and then looked up expecting the shadow was going to be the last thing she ever saw.
The shadow had vanished, however, and looking down again revealed the killing blow to have been nothing but a morbid illusion with the absence of the saber as well. She patted her hands on her stomach just to make sure she was still alive, and sure enough everything was still whole, expect, perhaps, a tiny sliver of her sanity.
“Come to me…”
The voice was heard again as a loud whisper from the back of the cave. It spoke the words slowly with a soft, alluring tone of temptation. Coda furrowed her brows at the words. It was as if the phantom spoke them as a form of mockery. It was the exact same tone and style she used to mentally disarm her clients back on Nar Shaddaa, bring them close, and embrace them to psychically read their knowledge and bind them to her mesmerizing verbal manipulations.
As she approached the other end of the cave, a pang of guilt came over her; she never realized until then how deceptive and controlling she really was under Saucy Feril’s watch. Sometimes Coda had been aware of what she was doing around the friendlier clients such as the kind and lonely Rodian slicer that taught her everything she knew about computers, both voluntarily, and bits she plucked from his mind when they made out together. Other times, however, she let herself go and operated purely on instinct around the more dangerous and tougher looking ones. The sooner she had her hands on their craniums, the sooner she had control and could avoid the pain and humiliation of their more carnal desires. There were occasions, however, where she failed to control some of the brutes, and Bentley the gamorrean bouncer would have to storm in and save her. He was big and ugly and rough with the rowdy customers, but Bentley was the kindest and most honest of his species she ever knew. She missed him and wondered if he was still alive somewhere.
She placed a hand on the cavern wall, feeling its rough powdery texture, but could also sense something more to it. It was a familiar tingling on the pads of her lithe fingers, the kind she felt when they were placed on the heads of living people. She always felt a strange unholy hunger deep within herself each night in her special romance suite where she worked at the club. It wasn’t the kind of famished feeling any food could sate…it was the hunger to touch minds. It was the desire to devour thoughts and gorge on their souls. If only she was strong enough. If only she knew how to go beyond simple mind reading and slowly putting them to sleep with soft taming words…she would have destroyed each and every one of them. She would have mentally crushed them to down to their very identities and left them babbling and raving in madness on the streets.
OOC: Some mood music for the scene below: The Encounter
When the dark musing passed, Coda blinked and saw there was no wall at the back of the cave at all. A blast of rancid air thick with dust thrust upon her face as a great vaulted cathedral-like expanse was revealed upon the dispelling of the illusion. It was a painstakingly molded work of esoteric architecture dotted with rows of tall obsidian obelisks each crowned with ornate braziers presenting moody illumination in the form of crackling blue flames. Two of the four sides of all the obelisks were etched in strange golden writing and symbols that made no sense to Coda, and the other two sides bore hanging lanterns that radiated crimson light from the steady glow of packed blood red crystals.
At the center of it all was a raised dais with what appeared to be an unmarked stone casket with two small figurines set atop it…and the same nautolan shadow that attacked her a moment earlier.
“The air is profuse with the remains of the dead,” the phantom noted in its whispered voice, its words carried across the vaulted chamber in a faint echo. Its back was to Coda as it added, “Can you smell it? You are breathing their bones. The essence of the dead fills your lungs with their ignoble legacy.” It reached out, and with the simple wave of a smoky black hand tipped over one of the figurines with the Force. “They were all failed Sith. None of them were worthy of this place.”
“And you are?” Coda asked brusquely with more than a little anger and annoyance at what she was being put through with this dark entity that seemed to be toying with her.
“Yes, we are,” it answered emphatically as a loud mechanical click was both heard and felt beneath Coda’s feet. The casket began to shift and slowly slid across the dais revealing an opening beneath and a stairway leading to the unknown below. “The power of this place is mine to take, but for you…” it said as it began to descend the stairs, “…he awaits you in the abyss.” The casket began to slide back into place over where the shadow stepped down out of sight.
Glancing cautiously all around her for any signs of a trap, Coda carefully approached the dais and set her eyes upon the figurines. They appeared to have little detail other than the vague abstract shapes of generic feminine humanoids. The left one of the two was still face down. Coda instinctively reached to pick it up but stopped herself as she recalled the shadow having moved it without touching it. She thought back to Thane’s teachings before arriving on Irrikut, and Coda reached out with the Force to move it. The figurine twitched and shook for a moment until she finally had a measure of shaky control over it. It hovered unsteadily in midair for several seconds, and gradually it lowered back onto the surface of the casket upright.
A steadily rising chorus of pained moans of agony and despair interplayed with the dusty air all around Coda as she turned around to see where it was coming from. She saw no change in the cathedral around her, and so as the voices died down, she nervously returned her gaze to the figurines, and her deep coal black eyes widened at the reveal of yet another dispelled illusion.
The figurines had transformed into a pair of nude nautolan females. The striking resemblance to herself in both of them was uncanny and particularly disturbing. The left one that had been tipped over appeared just as she was at present: youthful, nervous, worried, and arms crossed over its chest to protect its modesty. Its eyes were closed, and its head bowed forward. At its flat base were etched in nautolan calligraphy the words: I am weak+I am craven. The other figure seemed somewhat older, taller, more developed and curvy and muscular. Its arms spread out low just above the hips with no care of its modesty, eyes wide open with head tilted back slightly, and a face creased with a victorious smile. She could even make out the details of its teeth and could make out…fangs? In total, it was like an image of her laughing with triumph, as if it were embracing something it long sought for…something amazing and powerful. The words etched at its base read: I am reborn+I am Sith.
“Hmph,” Coda balked at the latter figurine thinking it was some horrible joke the spirits of the cave were playing on her. She flicked her wrist, waving her hand just as the phantom had done, and the smiling, basking Zaracoda figurine toppled over. This prompted yet another loud grinding click, followed this time with entirety of the dais itself rotating beneath her. Coda stepped away from the casket as the dais slowly turned a half-circle and ground to a halt. The casket then slid aside as it had before, only this time the stairway lead down in an opposite direction.
“H…e….y…” the faint broken sound of a man’s voice wafted up from the passage. She had never heard the voice before, yet it was inexplicably familiar at the same time. She inched closer to the stairway and peered down into the blackened passage below. “H…e…y…k..i..d…”
“W-who are you?” Coda called out to the voice. “Are you hurt? Are you trapped down there?” She took one step onto the first stair, then another step on the other.
“Hey kiddo,” the voice was suddenly heard right next to her sending chills of terror through her head tendrils and spine. Before she could turn, the stairs beneath her feet instantly flattened and became a slippery slope which consumed her into the black void below. The sound of her screaming was drowned out as the casket slid over the passage sealing her to her fate.
To be continued…
RSS Feed