Legacy of the Cabal

Posted on Tue Jul 31st, 2018 @ 6:11pm by Thane & Amare

2,254 words; about a 11 minute read

Chapter: Chapter V: Unbound
Location: Cavern, Vaa (Thaal system)
Timeline: Following "Prey of the Cabal"
Tags: cabal, vaa, vaa-thaalda, thaalda, skeleton, minion, caanan, sithspawn, necromancy

OLD

"There is just one thing you are missing," she said whilst her lips slowly curled into a wicked little grin. "Pirates didn't kill my parents," she seized his hand, squeezed firmly, pulled herself close to him, and added with an icy whisper, "I did...I did it out of love...and I relished it. I will do anything for you, my lord. I will go anywhere to free the galaxy of the Jedi. And I swear I will kill anyone that gets in our way."

Despite himself, Thane smiled, gripping his Sith apprentice's hand tightly as he raised her up, bringing them both round to face towards the depths of the ancient cave. "The Force... shall free us."

NEW

The descent into the depths of the cavern had been surprisingly steep, the path a treacherous unnatural formation with rocky outcroppings and various skeletal remnants scattered about, crunching loudly underfoot as the two young Sith delved deeply into this Caanan mystery.

To confirm that their course was the correct one, at least from a certain point of view, the key that continued to hang from Thane's neck had grown warmer, throbbing incessantly against his chest, concealed tightly as it was beneath his now somewhat tattered and grimy explorer's garb.

Extended before him was his lit lightsaber, casting long shadows that danced menacingly against the jagged path they were clambering along. As time progressed, however, the tunnel appeared to be widening, and the ground became smoother, more purposely appearing as a stable flooring. Along the walls, ancient sconces started to become commonplace, and there were even carved out hollows within the rocks. Within those hollows, torn pieces of cloth and broken wood were scattered about, and upon inspection it was clear that a fully-grown average humanoid would fit neatly within each.

Based on the stench, Thane surmised that was exactly the purpose.

"Tombs," he observed to his apprentice, not looking back to her as he did so. All about them, the deep and foreboding essence of the dark side was omnipresent, but clung to it was also the spiritual decay that ever came with death and misery. "We are growing much closer."

"You're not wrong about that," she said quietly implying a euphemism from his choice of words.

As he so often did, Thane elected to not respond, instead finding himself dwelling partially on what Coda was commenting on. He wondered on the kiss she had confessed to as he instinctively let his two dry lips shift over one another, his mind also considering the views espoused by both the Jedi and Darth Bane's holocron on attachment.

But then an unholy fire roared to life just above and to the right on the wall, one of the sconces spontaneously flaring with the charred fragrance of old rotten incense, entirely diverting Thane's attention away from his inner musings. Then another sconce became a lit beacon, followed by several more until they reached a chamber held together by weathered old stone masonry with a large forked brazier fixed in the center that stood taller than either one of them.

There were the creepy hollow sounds of shuffling and chattering teeth nearby just as the brazier itself burst alight before them. Coda instinctively knew those sounds, and dreaded the sight of another skull as the fire revealed it at the base of the brazier and the worn down ancient skeleton it was still attached to. Her head reeled with flashbacks of Irrikut and what she had dug up earlier outside. Skulls...everywhere there were damnable skulls haunting her travels. Between this and a dark wraith tormenting her dreams (most of which she could hardly remember), it seemed she was fated to spend her days consorting with the dead. She wondered if it was all ridiculous coincidence, or if there was a meaning or purpose to it. If the Force wanted her to frolic with corpses, why didn't it just simply fate her to become a mortician? Heavens knows Nar Shaddaa could've used more of them.

Maybe that's how she would retire if she survived this crazy life as a Sith.

With the hellish light being cast by the two braziers consuming the aura of his blade, Thane brought it about to bear in a more combative Niman stance. Following the clacking of the ancient dead teeth, the former Jedi spied the rest of its form, slowly writhing upon the dusty ground.

It was a ghastly sight to behold, a different time of nameless horror from that they had already been subjected to by the Vaa-Thaalda on the surface above. With its ancient bones grinding and crunching against one another and within their yellowed sockets, the animated skeleton - for there was no other description for it - clumsily clambered its way upright, clutching against the brazier to right itself, an old scimitar-like blade clasped in one withered hand.

Thane immediately looked to detect the thing within the Force, but found its life-force, unsurprisingly, absent, but the mark of the dark side, writhing and twisted as it was, was deep within the husk. It was only now that he noticed some of the glyphs adorning the ancient ornament; several examples of the lettering had been shown to him by Bane's avatar as Sith script during his lessons, as well as several of the books he had delved into alongside Coda.

Now both curious and wary as he watched the skeleton shuffle awkwardly towards them, noiseless but for the scraping of its feet against the ground, Thane took one step back and extended his offhand in one motion, flinging the oncoming foe backwards into the shadows behind it. The clattering and snapping of bone against stone could be heard echoing in the darkness.

Raising that same hand to Coda, Thane listened carefully as the echoes of his minor victory gave way to yet more noise calling up through the unknown rocky corridors of this ancient lair. Again, he could hear the unsettling sound of bone once more again clacking against stone, only this time there were fewer pauses between the sounds, and the number of clacks made clear there were more owners of feet coming towards them.

Unsettled but unwilling to surrender, given what they had gone through to get to this juncture, Thane quickly claimed the skeleton's scimitar and passed it to Coda, before then gritting his teeth and clenching his lightsaber tightly in a double-grip.

The old chipped curved blade fumbled in Coda's hands as she barely managed to catch it without cutting herself. She never swung a sword of any kind before, but like other high-pressure situations in her life, she had to learn it fast, and learn it well, or bad things could happen.

Just as the first curdled milk-stained skeletal forms began to march forward from the shadows beyond, with these newcomers sounding as though a sick hissing were coming unnaturally from their empty shells, so too did several loud crashing sounds suddenly draw Thane's attention to either side and behind of him and his apprentice.

From the sides, several more bony fists and hands were pummelling and scratching their way through ancient dirt and masonry, whilst others now clawed their way up from the alcoves Thane had previously spotted during their journey down. Unlike their first opponent, many of these had the remnants of cloth and armour hanging from their bodies, and several clutched a variety of blades Thane instantly recognised to be of Caanan design. Each seemed to move with more ease with the more steps they took, and he even spotted one creature that still had sinewy flesh clutching to its frame. Of them all, that particular beast moved the most rapidly.

No trace of whatever creatures they had been, barring their Humanoid forms, remained them; their presence within the Force was physical only, bound by the ancient and malevolent magicks that gave them the illusion of life. Like many Sith tricks and spells of millennia long gone, these desecrated cadavers were tools, and Thane would not allow them to stop his and Coda's ascendancy. The past was not more powerful than the present.

"Keep close and don't let them touch you," he commanded to the Nautolan, eyes flitting from one enemy to the next. "They're nothing compared to the Thaalda. Go!"

Thane jumped forwards, cutting three of the corpses down in one abdominal swipe, although he only narrowly brought his blade up in time to block the axe-strike of the fleshy zombie. Noting the weapons, like so many, had been woven with cortosis, Thane delivered a Force-imbued punch into the creature's gut. Whilst it succeeded in blowing much of the thing away, he was also rewarded with a large lump of rotted flesh and organs spattered over his gloved hand.

He tried to pay it no heed as he noticed the split remains of one of his victims was still moving, clawing its way slowly towards him, oblivious to its broken condition. For the skeleton's efforts, Thane delivered a heavy stomp onto the skull, shattering it as he turned to face the other corpses shuffling towards them, blade swinging.

An angry shriek of a woman's scorn followed by the twang of cortosis steel colliding with calcium was heard directly behind Thane. Coda was beaming at Thane with voracious pride in herself at swiping the skull clean off her first shambler "kill" before the thing could flank her master. Like a madwoman, she then whirled about with a lunatic sneer and began swinging her blade around clumsily at another skeletal thrall. She managed to get a strike at its rib cage, but the blade got wedged deep in the spine and between the ribs. The thrall raised up its sword to strike while at the same time reaching for her throat with the other hand. She growled with frustration at her blade getting stuck, and so resorted to kicking the thing in the pelvis, and shoved it to the floor with the Force, shattering it into a mess of scattered bones.

She moved to retrieve her scimitar, but a much larger, big-boned skeletal marionette caused her to leap backwards with a frightened yelp just as a broadhead sledgehammer nearly grounded her to a pulp. She lost her footing and fell hard on her back just as the bony bruiser hoisted its oversized gavel of judgment for another killing drop.

*

In his own corner of the room, Thane had also been finding himself struggling against the storm. Sighting the predicament he saw Coda was in, he tried to spin himself away from the thrall engaging him but immediately stumbled. Noiselessly and without prior incident, a dismembered skeletal hand and arm had gripped his ankle, the ancient limb protruding alarmingly from the wall next to him. As he moved to slice it, another crashed through the dirt and stonework to grip his other leg higher up, and then another his offhand, pulling him in close to the wall as yet more invisible hands seem to start crawling their way out of Thane's surroundings.

Not like this! He heard himself calling within his mind, drawing the Force in on himself so that he could blast everything around him away. The panic within Coda was palpable as she now faced her own doom, her master unable to free himself in time to rescue her from the path he had set her upon.

"Caaaaaaain!" One of the skeletal minions suddenly rasped at him as it advanced towards him. In its bony hands, a large claymore was arced towards Thane's midriff, ready to impale him.

As Thane prepared to released the gathered Force energy, there was a sudden rumbling that gripped the entirety of the cavern system. Dust spilled from the muck and stonework above them as rocks dislodged themselves. For a moment, the skeletal beasts seem to pay all of that no heed, each prepared to end the lives of their Sith quarry. Just as the claymore and hammer sought to make contact and Thane prepared to loose his rage, an agonised cacophony of screams ripped through the air, and, to Thane's surprise, each of the skeletons half-exploded, half-collapsed, as puffs of green smoke escaped from inside their cadaverous forms as their bones tumbled and flew in every direction about them.

The hands gripping Thane went limp, and he immediately thrust himself away from the wall to dart to Coda's side.

"Are you okay?" He asked, deactivating his weapon and kneeling down to her level, looking over her. Beside them, several, but not all, of the scattered remnants of the thralls began to turn to dust or wither. Small auras of green wispy light continued to rise from the bones and ash, as if sand being blown across a desert. Looking up just briefly from the Nautolan, Thane saw all of the smoke and light was being carried further into the caverns beyond, where the majority of their attackers had come from.

Coda nodded a few times. "Yeah...why'd they give up? The big guy almost had me. How did you stop them like that?"

And that was the more troubling concern. "I didn't," he admitted, "and whilst I am wary of them returning, I don't care to waste the opportunity."

"We should get this over with and find where that key goes," Coda agreed, having had more than her fill of this grotto of the dead to last a lifetime. "I don't want to be here much longer."

TBC

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