Scourge of the Cabal

Posted on Wed Jul 11th, 2018 @ 6:49pm by Thane & Amare
Edited on on Mon Jul 16th, 2018 @ 9:07pm

5,135 words; about a 26 minute read

Chapter: Chapter V: Unbound
Location: Vaa, Thaal system (Moon of Caanus)
Timeline: Continues from "The Vaa-Thaalda"
Tags: vaa, thaalda, vaa-thaalda, caanus, dark transfer, cabal

ON:

Coda had lost whatever foreign influence had overwhelmed her, as well as the brief uncanny boost to her running speed. She didn't understand why one moment she was touching Thane's hand, and the next bolting through a dense forest with blasters in hand. It did not matter, however, since she was suddenly overcome with exhaustion and a really bad feeling about all of this. She froze in place and saw them stalking her in all directions making no rush to pounce at her. It was as if the beasts wanted to savor her fear before they moved to end her life. She backed up against a tree, her hands trembling as she knew there was no way she could blast her way out of this given that there were five of them and only time to shoot one, maybe two at best. She couldn't tell if Thane or Bomoor were nearby, or even where exactly she was. All there was were the hungry snarls of the Thaalda that surrounded her. She slid her back down along the tree and curled up into a ball. She closed her eyes just as they were close enough for her to smell their rancid body odor.

She chose to do the only thing she had left: think of her brother, Capo. She thought of the time as a little girl she was shot in the chest by a sharp quill from a rare ganjinda tiger plant when she swam too close to it. She remembered Capo telling her she was going to survive and that she would grow stronger and smarter than before having lived through the experience. She could still feel his warm embrace and hear his loving words...

I got you, Zara... Capo had said. I'll never let anything hurt you ever again

It was a lie and an empty promise. Capo couldn't protect his little sister, nor could he protect their parents or himself when the slavers came. For years, Coda never held it against him.

All she wanted was to save him from the kind of hell she suffered, but now...there was a new feeling: resentment. At death's door, with only seconds left to live, she pulled her arms tighter against her folded legs pressed against her body in a seated fetal position wanting nothing more than to hide herself and live another day. Yet rather than giving into her fear of impending doom, all she could feel was a seething, soul-drenching antipathy towards Capo consuming the comfort she nostalgically mantled herself with when thinking about being in his protective embrace. She focused on that entirely, dipped her emotions into that boiling stream of serosanguineous consternation that threatened to tear her apart as quickly as the five Thaalda beasts that approached her.

As she withdrew deeper inside herself, a massive sinuous claw rose up to cleave Coda asunder.

However, instead of the deep gauging of flesh by sharp, splintered claws, followed as it would have been by the icy embrace of an unknown death on a faraway moon, whatever beast had drawn itself closest released a quick grunt and howl, followed by the sound of several bones crunching, a deep, sick sound.

Coda heard the scampering of the other creatures that had drawn about her's feet, making it clear they were now whirling around from their Nautolan prey to their new target. As they had before, the Vaa-Thaalda released a sickening howl of starved hatred, all now turning about and leaping towards the threat.

The orphan could hear the telltale sound of a lightsaber cutting through the air, through bone, sinews and flesh, as several damp thuds punctuated the battle. The arrival, grunting and growling as he did occasionally, let out his own pained cry at one moment, which was then almost immediately followed by a sudden burst of electrical crackling, and yet more unnatural - but undeniably pained - screaming from the monsters, all whilst Coda kept her eyes averted, still drawn inwards by the rancour directed at Capo. Even so, she could feel the simmering rage from her nearby saviour, emanating starkly from his person.

Whatever creatures remained made peculiar whimpering noises, giving the impression as though they were unfamiliar with making such sounds, especially as they continued to growl in-between the whimpers. The sounds themselves became less audible, accompanied as they were by the pattering of their elongated limbs ferreting them away from their subduer, the occasional growl of frustrated derision still being carried back along the fog. All that was left then was the sound of the man's boots against the hard surface of Vaa, and the intermingled stenches of seared flesh and smoke.

"Get up," Thane said to Coda coolly, now standing beside her, and she could hear his lightsaber disengage sharply.

Those two words pulled Coda from her emotional descent into hopelessness and antipathy like a fish caught on a hook being reeled in with the commanding power of a rancor holding the pole. She raised her head to look up in disbelief at Thane. Seeing that tough chiseled grim look on his face inspired her mind, for a split second, to revisit the memory of that moment they first met in the Raptor's cargo hold.

The fallen Jedi had his right hand extended to his apprentice, and she could see fresh red blood running along it quite freely, dripping onto the cold ground beside her with an unpleasant damp sound. Like his clothes, his pale face was already covered in grim and the occasional flecks of blood, just from the short time he had been engaged with the denizens of the wayward moon. His outer robe was torn in a few places, most notably in two blood-laden parts of his body: halfway up his right arm, and across the lower left part of his torso, exposing some his dark underclothing.

Most alien to his usual appearance, however, was the molten gold swirl that coiled around the black irises of his eyes, a smattering of blue gently, but slowly, leaking back into the unnatural colouring.

The Nautolan was filled with deep inner conflict as she was drawn back to her feet. Part of Coda wanted to apologize for putting herself into yet another situation where her master had to save her life. Part of her wanted to throw herself into his arms and hug him affectionately for valiantly coming to her defense yet again. Still another part of her felt like recoiling from the sight of Thane's wounded state. She did none of these, kept silent, and stared with heavy impassioned breathing into the supernatural alteration of her master's eyes that should have struck her with a sense of dread, but to her the golden touch to his handsome eyes was rather... beautiful. Her intent awe-struck gaze was the only way she knew how to thank him in that brief silent moment.

She barely found it within her to muster the willpower to notice someone who should've been there was conspicuously absent. "Where's Master Bomoor?" she asked glancing around anxiously seeking their stout Ithorian friend. And then she noticed the fresh Thaalda corpses around them. Her first reaction was to feel sickened by the carnage, but instead she felt... pride for her master's victory. A subtle subconscious hint of a smile curled on one corner of her lips.

Thane eyed the younger woman curiously, his sombre visage unchanging as he inwardly contemplated both her odd expression - and her failure. She was, however, still young to the Force, and to such adventures.

A sharp pang of pain sliced through his midriff, and he struggled to restrain a wince as it reminded him he had not been quite so victorious either. "We got separated," he said, although he looked back towards the direction he was certain he had run from, numerous corpses littering the otherwise-invisible path. "And we are not yet clear of this menace," he went on, still hearing the occasional cackle in the distance as he raised a hand to his abdominal wound, although the exact direction of the sound was impossible to pinpoint.

"The key, it's been guiding me towards you - to where you ran." Thane nodded to where it continued to feed him sensations, but yet another screech pierced the air. "We-" The Caanan paused, pain throbbing once more as he called upon the Force to quell the sensation before it could grow too distracting. "We should keep moving forwards. I don't think we've far to go, and those creatures will be back upon us soon. Our best hope is that Bomoor can find his way to us in this murk and mire through the Force, or take himself back to the ship. If we stay out here in the open like this, we'll die."

Thane decided to not be too overt about his injury, or how severe he currently thought it was. Although he clearly had the deep gashes, the former Jedi felt it best to direct them forwards with what energy they had, and then they could afford the luxury of discourse. "We don't have time to talk, nor can we afford you being claimed by whatever power is here again." He locked his eyes with hers, focusing intently as he said, "You must focus your mind, construct the barriers we spoke of in your training; you are more powerful alive than anything foul and dead on this rock."

Coda took a deep breath to refocus herself just as she was taught and closed her eyes once more. Instead of the dark cover of her amphibian eyelids, she instead saw the world in a different light. All was monochrome in shades of black and white, and there was a hazy billowing black smoke where there wasn't before save for a winding path ahead through the woods. She then saw the faded ghostly image of someone strange, yet familiar to her...an older nautolan woman dressed like a Jedi stalking gracefully ahead whilst cautiously taking cover behind rocks and trees and brush.

"I can see...no, feel the path again," she said to Thane with a rising smile of confidence. She felt her body shudder slightly for a few seconds as she felt a cold invisible sensation sweep past, coiling around her that seemed to ignore that she was even dressed in layers of thick clothing. It was most definitely spiritual and beyond the reach of the physical realm, but she somehow did not feel it was Shadrak at all, but rather something else from within and without. "The Force will guide us there and keep us hidden. Stay close to me." She tenuously offered her hand to him once more. "I am in control this time. I promise."

"A yard of performance," Thane breathed, even as he took the proferred hand, "is worth parsecs of promises, Zaracoda." With his Force-attuned hearing, the young man noticed the audible cracking of branches and the occasional grotesque hiss in the distance, seemingly closer, but still impossible to exactly pinpoint.

As they began striding quickly, he said, "These creatures must be some Forcespawn; they variably conceal themselves from us." He winced as some of his steps grew heavier, each jolt of weight causing another rush of pain to threaten to break through his barriers. "And they seem drawn to us, too." Just as before, however, he was also finding the experience of clasping the Nautolan's hand queerly winsome, but his physical discomfort and concentration were detracting from that. "We should move more quickly."

Coda's vision returned to normal upon opening her eyes, losing sight of the ethereal Nautolan woman that was charting a more clandestine path through the wilderness. Coda followed step with Thane as best she could, but every instinct she had said that running was the wrong move. The beasts didn't seem to be hunting for survival or fear at all. It was almost as if they were attacking...for sport. If one was going to avoid a group of fierce hunters, then it would be better to think like a cunning predator, not the prey thrashing loudly through the brush.

"Your wound, master," Coda noted the accelerated flow of blood with grave concern.

"I can cope," Thane rebuked quickly, his ire flashing internally. He had no intention to lash out at Coda, but his patience and manners wore thin with their circumstances. Before either could say anything more however, one of the Vaa-Thaalda suddenly crashed onto the dirt in front of them, cutting them off from their path.

Pushing himself away from Coda, Thane brought his lightsaber to bear on the threat, but in that moment, he sensed something quite new from the beast, almost like a spark of recognition, both in the Force and physically, as it cocked its head at him. It was not a comforting gesture, but before he had a chance to analyse it, he sensed yet more of the beasts behind them.

Leaping and lurching through the fog as they had before, a score of the Thaalda were calling and howling at their prey, leapfrogging over one another and off the dead bark of the petrified trees to spring closer to Thane and Coda.

"Just run!" He shouted to Coda, pushing her forwards towards the lone Thaalda, which immediately lost that glimmer of intelligence as the pair drove forwards. Its elongated, unnatural teeth bared, it raised itself up to a monstrous height, arms extended as if to envelop both master and apprentice in one murderous gesture.

"Together!" Thane issued another command to the Nautolan, and raised his offhand with an open palm outstretched to the beast, ready to pummel the Thaalda with a joint wave of telekinetic energy with Coda.

Their synchronicity was a near match as Coda threw her Force-induced thrust at the Thaalda's gut followed immediately by Thane's brutal push that struck its chest with far greater and more focused power. The combined telekinetic lashing was bone-shattering as it came at the beast like a speeder plowing through head-on at full throttle.

Have to warn the general, Coda heard echo across the thoughtscape of her mind. The key was attempt to exert its will upon her again. Cabal is coming...need to find General Claad. The insane cackling of a mad old man followed. Only the copious flow of adrenaline and sheer grit spared Coda from succumbing to it once more.

"Ungh! These insufferable spirits! I hate this place!" Coda bellowed through grinding teeth. It was bad enough having to deal with Shadrak's unwelcome mockery, but now this cowardly idiot in her head trying to warn some general that was probably nothing but bleached bones about some other laughing old idiot? Enough was enough.

She got her chance to release her rage as a Thaalda attempted to flank her to the left. She slowed her pace, drew one blaster with her left hand, spun to face the creature, and with a scream of fury double-tapped it on the chest and face bringing it down at her feet. She then whirled around and aimed at another that was coming up from behind, but didn't have time to shoot. She dropped her left pistol, sprung backwards into a half-backward somersault where she landed on her hands, pushed off, and landed on her feet barely avoiding a clawed swipe that was meant for her throat. She let herself fall into a crouch and pummeled the Thaalda with her other blaster. She then called upon the Force to pull the blaster she had dropped and finished the Thaalda off with the combined force of both weapons, vociferating loudly with fevered wrath and a sneer on her face as she pulled the triggers with piston-like intensity. She turned to scramble back to Thane's side before the fell creature toppled over with roaring pain on its back, its chest serving as a canvas displaying an artistic array of smoking scorched craters.

However, as she turned to face Thane, instead of finding him standing stalwart against a range of foes, the former Knight was down upon one knee, just about holding his weight up. To his side, the patter of his blood upon the ground was audible, and even a faintly metallic scent was emanating up from the small claret-coloured pool. Even so, there was a scattering of limbless Thaalda strewn about him, with one even still dragging itself along with its one remaining limb.

Without a second thought, Coda mercilessly shot the creeping survivor into permanent stillness and holstered her weapons. She went over by her master's side and guided his free arm up, over, and around the back of her shoulders to let him brace in weight on her. "You're in a lot of pain, but we have to keep moving," she urged him. There was also something amiss as she helped him back up. "Oh no. I can't see it anymore. My vision of the path is gone." In all the excitement, her exertion had drained her and made it difficult to focus on seeing the world through the Force. She feared Thane might have been as lost as she was.

"There," Thane answered, pointing with one blood-stricken gloved hand to the near distance, where the stony structure of a solitary cavern could be made out in the mist, a lone and entirely ill-fitting occurrence within the barren petrified forest, with no other rocky outcroppings of the like anywhere nearby.

With his other hand wandering up to the key still dangling against his chest, he knew this was where it was calling them, and if they could get there, there might be more chance of him treating his injuries, with the Force or otherwise. Looking briefly to Coda's eyes, flecked with concern and other feelings as they were, he felt a pang of embarrassment, but knew this was not the time to indulge in such unnecessary emotions.

He also, for the first time, in that moment appreciated exactly why he must have an apprentice, but yet another barrage of screaming ripped through the still, deathly air, heralding once more a wave of the incorrigible monsters that called Vaa home.

Coda took up a blaster in her left hand and tried to push Thane along as best she could towards the cave. She tried again to focus herself, but this time not with her vision, but with the feelings she felt earlier. The anger toward her brother's broken promise, and the desire to vanish and hide from the monsters. She didn't know exactly what she was doing, but she remembered something from a recent dream she had. Shadrak was there and said some things to her, but she couldn't remember them so well, except that she could hide from her troubles. She had a blessing of shadows...whatever that meant. She wasn't even certain those were the exact words.

She imagined Bomoor--whilst being deeply afraid for him--next to her along with Thane, and a gathering of mist followed. She thought about the Ithorian being safe, wrapping him with a blanket, and giving him a hug. Then she looked up at Thane again and could feel the heavy tension, the deep intensity in his wincing blue eyes outlined with gold, and knew her purpose in that moment.

The Force wanted her to be here all along. Her childhood growing up with the loving Wolphs learning to be a good, kind, and responsible girl, and then enduring the tough realities of life outside the safety of home as a slave was all preparation for this. Thane was her destiny and the true master she was meant to serve. Thane was her heart. Thane was her reason to live. She knew this was compassion--an act not of the darkness--but she didn't care. She was already agonizing over having possibly lost Bomoor. Not again. No more would be lost on her watch. Thane needed to survive so she could grow and learn to have the power to protect those she cared about. She would do anything it took to achieve it. Kill anyone that didn't hold a place in her heart. And if the Thaalda did kill Bomoor...she would find a way to exterminate every last one of them to extinction.

She didn't see her hands in that moment, but they had started to emit a dull white glow around them as the mist gathered around them into a dense masking field of fog. The two were not completely invisible to the Thaalda, but it would buy them precious seconds to get closer to the cave. All the while she was subconsciously allowing bits of her own inner essence to seep gradually into Thane's body as a subtle bond began to form between them.

To Thane, the glowing light and shifting of the fog seemed like a peculiar miasma, a symptom of his blood loss and pain, and he paid it little heed as he called upon his own agony and frustrations to propel him forwards, an unknown source of power trickling into him, alongside fevered images of his Jericho sacrifice and the risk to Bomoor allowing him to dart forwards with Coda.

The screams of the Vaa-Thaalda was becoming earsplitting, and the sounds of their misshapen hands and feet pummelling the ground was becoming louder and closer behind them. Thane was sure he felt one of their gnarled yellow claws narrowly miss his back as the two Force users drew within just a few feet of the cave. Not leaving anything further to chance, the Sith aspirant let the power of his loathing flow, even as he curiously beheld sensations of antipathy towards an unknown source that were not his own, and released a blast of Force energy that launched the pair haphazardly, but rapidly, into the cavern's opening.

Falling through the air for a few seconds, an entangled mess, Thane and Coda crashed into the cave mouth, the pair rolling over one another until they crashed into a wall of rock just a short way in, causing the two to separate and Thane's lightsaber hilt to rattle away. As expected, sharp pain coursed through the Human's body, which was apparently made only worse by his sudden uncoupling from his apprentice.

Although he let out an audible groan, he summoned his weapon back to his blood-stricken hand, holding it high as he stumbled forwards and then stood askew at the entrance to the unholy grotto, doing his utmost to ignore the heavy throbbing of the ancient key dangling hidden from his neck. The horrific screams outside had oddly stopped, however, and instead of finding himself hacking at the Thaalda, whom he expected to be flinging their grotesque bodies en masse at them, he saw them menacingly prancing about over fifteen feet from the entrance, waving their claws and hissing with their eternally-open mouths at their sheltered quarry.

By the way they moved, deliberately in circular motions and clearly refusing to step any closer than they currently were, Thane could tell the Thaalda were either unwilling, or perhaps simply unable, to reach them where they now were.

"They can't get us here," he grumbled to Coda as she joined him by the cave mouth, the violet blade of his weapon withdrawing into the hilt, but he said nothing else as he staggered a few steps to the side, and let himself slide awkwardly down the rocks that served as the inner cavern's wall, his lightsaber rolling a few inches from him.

Before Coda could say or do anything else, he also reached beneath his undershirt to fumble and remove the key that had drawn them here, its incessant pulses having become a difficult distraction from his need to recover, and let it drop to the floor next to his lightsaber. Almost immediately, gripped by the relief of narrowly escaping an unnatural death on the accursed moon of his homeworld, his eyes flickered shut and his head gently rolled forward onto his chest, consciousness seeming to escape him.

"Hang on, master," Coda begged him with deep concern on her face. "Please hold on!" She did her best to ease him to the ground and knelt beside him. Thane was slipping away before her eyes and she felt powerless to stop the encroachment of death creeping upon him. When he became unresponsive, she felt crushed in a grip of overwhelming grief and fear. It was certain there was something mysteriously holding the Thaalda back from the cave, but she didn't know how long it would hold. She turned a malicious scowl at the Thaalda, and bellowed, "I'll kill you all! Get out! Get out!" All the while she began shooting wildly with her twin pistols. None were felled, but she wounded them and somehow scared them enough to make them scatter. Still, she keeping shooting at their withdrawing forms, a scream of unbridled rage tearing through her vocal cords as the blaster barrels glowed broiling red. When they overheated and the power packs completely drained, she still kept pulling the trigger to no effect in spite of the warning beeps from their safety mechanisms.

Papa...mama...nooo...I'm sorry... A block in memory had lifted that she never knew was there. An awakening revealed the truth. She was a murderer.

The last of the breath she had expended towards her blind anger escaped her lungs and she fell to both knees, dropping her useless weapons, the barrels burnt and melted and the internals utterly fried. Again, she expected that dark formless bastard ghost, Shadrak, to chime into her mind and torment her, but there was nothing at all--unbeknownst to her, Shadrak's connection to her was blocked for the first time in her life. She sobbed, giving in to her inner childlike weakness, and began to lose all hope.

She saw the truth in her mind that was being clouded for years: it wasn't the slavers that shot her parents...it was her. The slaver captain had put the blaster in her hands, made a false promise to let one parent go if she shot the other. She had chosen her father. Her father said it was alright, to protect her brother and mother. Coda had looked away and squeezed the trigger. After her father fell, the slavers went back on their word and killed her mother, and her brother Capo witnessed it all...and he hated her for it. He had cursed at her as the slavers took him away. He swore revenge.

She turned to the only man she had left in all the galaxy, torn up by the pallor on his face, his shallow breathing, and his weeping critical wounds. She felt a faint tingle in her fingers, and through tear-filled eyes held them up before her and saw them aglow in a roiling bright aura of red light. She thought back to what she did to that woman on Sheva, and how she drained the essence from her body. She wondered...was it possible to reverse the effect? Could she give rather than take?

She moved over to her master's side and held up his face cupped in her slender glowing hands. This man...this great and powerful man could not be lost. With all her remaining resolve, she silently swore with all the pain in her heart that her fate would be the same as his.

She leaned in and passionately kissed him on the lips, and the glow on her hands were flares of burning red and orange. From her fingertips poured all her emotion and longing to belong, to be wanted, to be loved, and to return the favour without fear or hesitation. Through her instinctive kiss, a strange oily flow of soot-like blackness fed from Thane into her mouth for a few short seconds. She felt that terrible dark poison molded from the dark side influence of Vaa drop into her stomach and she recoiled in pain as her body held in the insidious infection, but kept her hands on him as her hands shifted from red to silvery white. She doubled down her focus and cried aloud as she shared in the horrific pain that had overwhelmed Thane. She felt every cut, felt the same chill in her extremities just as Thane had, felt something deeper...guilt...? For her? For Bomoor...? For someone else?

The sheer agony that ripped through her was unlike anything she had ever felt in her entire life, even outstripping the whip lashes she took on her back in her early years as a slave. Her skin gradually shifted from its azure blue colour to a bluish gray pallour, and she felt what seemed to be knives stabbing and hacking away at her sides even though there was no damage to her skin. Her back stiffened, her black eyes became enmeshed in a deep red glow, she bent over backwards against her will and her mouth was forcefully opened up as a pillar of thick black smoke entwined with sparks of crimson red energy howled up with the voices of many fallen Thaalda to be absorbed by the crags in the cavern ceiling.

After a few seconds, the smoke had passed, she regained control of her body, and the first slash on Thane's side had started to spontaneously mend. With the purge of the Thaalda taint removed, Coda poured more of her power into Thane for a few more moments until the energy started making her hands feel like they were on fire.

She thought that if this didn't work, she would have to slap him awake, scream really mean words in his face to startle him, or shake him violently with lots of begging and crying, but she started fading too fast to even attempt such desperate shenanigans. Her eyes faded back to black, and she breathed out slowly with deep fatigue, the remaining smoky remnants of dark energy curling off her dry lips, the faint rotten taste of the Vaa taint on her tongue akin to sulfur and charcoal that would have made her ill if she wasn't so completely spent. Exhausted beyond her limits, she ignored her discomfort and moved to seat herself by Thane's still motionless side. She held him close in a tender and protective embrace, and quietly lost consciousness with her head resting contentedly on his shoulder.

Her sleep was dreamless, and her purpose--at least for the moment--had been fulfilled. She staked all her hopes and dreams for a brighter future on Thane and the promise of power through the ways of the Sith. She could not let her master die when there was so much left to do. Not today. Not ever.

TBC

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