The Old Sith Trials

IC: Hobrun Sokar
Leaving work, Nar Shaddaa

Hobrun Sokar wiped tired hands over greasy eye-no, that's not it... He wiped greasy hands over tired eyes as he stared, blearily, at the subturbo viewport.

There wasn't much to see.

The subturbo, as the name suggested, was a subterranean turbotrain, hurtling some three hundred commuters of every race, creed and species through the dingy tunnels of Nar Shaddaa to Destinations Unknown. As such, past the bowed heads of Rodians taking a nap and an Aqualish pretending to be intelligent enough to read a newsflimsi (upside down - and purely to impress the somewhat overweight Twi'lek girl squeezed into the opposite seat, Hobrun thought), Hobrun could only see his own visage in the viewport's reflection.

There wasn't much to see.

A balding head, somewhat prominent jowels, cheeks pockmarked with acne scars and wet, bloodshot eyes. The image added up to somewhat less than attractive, but the middle-aged human male was not ugly; although his love of beer had given him a slight paunch, his shoulders were broad, and he had a jaw that would have been chiseled if he took better care of himself. A confused mass of impressions, like the old rubbish-heap he worked at, with a fatigued, faded, lusterless air, as of a creature caged.

"We are now arriving at... East Promenade. Exit here for the Jekk'Jekk Tarr and the Nar Shaddaa Overground System."

Hobrun rolled his eyes. "Mate, I swear down she's the announcer on Coruscant, too," he grunted at the passenger beside him, attempting to strike up a conversation since his datapad had died. But then can I even trust my memory on this? It's been two decades since I've been to Coruscant... Since I've been to anywhere. He received no response; the Devaronian beside him, along with the rest of the aliens in the carriage, was already rising to his feet, shuffling out the subturbo's doors and elbowing, swearing and cussing at the spoiled-looking young human girls trying to board the train before letting the outgoing passengers off. Ah, of course. The Jekk'Jekk Tarr. Nar Shadaa's infamous alien-only cantina. It did not violate the Republic's anti-discrimination laws, not that the Republic or laws existed out here, as no humanophobic sentiment had gone into its design.

No, no, but a lot of cyanogen had. If a human so much as stepped foot in the carefully sealed cantina, the cyanogen fumes that circulated the establishment, deadly to even assembled thousands of humans yet breathable by many alien species, would instantly be their doom.

Sometimes, Hobrun had entered the Tarr in a vacsuit, if only as to impress luxuriating Twi'leks with the effort he expended to find them, but tonight was not a night for such shenanigans. No, he was older now, and besides he had to wake up at 6 o'chrono sharp for tomorrow's shift at the dump, so it was a one-beer kind of night. Certainly not enough to muster the liquid courage necessary to pursue such lithesome Twi'leks... or at least that was the case for most of his peers. Hobrun was... different.

Destinations Unknown it was.

A short bus from the last stop on the line. The sun had set entirely when the subturbo finally completed its circuit, spitting out Hobrun and a handful of others in a smaller but still vibrant entertainment district of Nar Shaddaa's lower levels. It took only five minutes to to arrive at the cantina, although Hobrun had to run to make it to the bus. As he got off, still panting, Hobrun managed a smile at the intimately familiar sight of the flashing neon sign above the entryway and burly Trandoshan bouncer. Destinations Unknown.

"Ah, Sokar, how ya doin' ol' boy?" The bouncer growled at him, sharp teeth splitting his rugose lips in a bloody grin. "Geraaaak," Hobrun drawled, shaking the reptile's hand and patting him on the back. Some small-talk and a brief cigarra later, Hobrun was inside, squinting through the darkness and flashing lights, scoping out the optimal path through the crowd of rowdy patrons, swaying in dance or swaying more in drunkenness. He coughed as he weaved his way towards the bar, tasting the acrid smoke. He shouldn't have had that cigarra. He'd told his colleagues he'd quit a month ago, but every time he'd found himself here since, there was always some minor social excuse to light up and have another one.

Ah, what the kriff, it was fine. Just the occasional treat. A reward for going from pack-a-day to once-a-week, really, if you thought of it like that.

Same logic applied to the pint of beer and shot of firewhiskey he ordered next. Down the shot, get in the mood, then nurse the beer. Same routine every time, he didn't even need to ask the bartender, just wave and wink at him. "Thank you," Hobrun muttered, sliding a cred chit over the soaked, sticky bar while picking up the shot with his free hand. Firewhiskey promptly down the cargo hatch, Hobrun looked around, first to his left at the Bith jizz band on what could generously be called a stage, and then to his right, at the other patrons at the bar-


And there she was. Skin as ivory warmed in the savannah sun, a face as imperturbable as fate, angular as if chiseled by time, as beautiful as the purple flush of dawn. But it was not her outward attractiveness, nor the skimpiness of her apparel as was customary among the women of Nar Shaddaa, that made Hobrun stop in his tracks, hand frozen around his pint glass.

No, no, it was the aching sense she was familiar. He had never met her, he knew that. Her signature would have betrayed her if he had, and besides, he never forgot a face. But the feeling was definitive. She was familiar... almost as if she were the descendant of... Impossible. She had never born child. Another opportunity I robbed from her.

No, but she was familiar nonetheless, and Hobrun Sokar had to know why. Slowly clambering across the row of three unoccupied bar seats to sit beside her, Hobrun coughed and introduced himself. "Hey lady, not to be disturbin' ya drink there, but I just wanted to introdu--"

"Take a hike, buster." Her response was quick, cool, precise. Practiced out of necessity through a plethora of unfortunate encounters with many a lubricious character.

"I already did, long, hard one up the Radian Way too," Hobrun chuckled. Wait, why'd you make innuendo? She'll think you're just another concupiscent creep. "Why'd ya think I'm all so sweaty?"

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, skepticism and distaste warring in her eyes. The decision, whether to brusquely tell him to kriff off, or whether to play along out of pity, inebriation or boredom, or perhaps all three. "You don't look like you go hiking much," she settled on, after a pause swirling her blossomwine.

"Well that's why I'm takin' hikes now," Hobrun smirked. "I have to get in shape or I'll be fatter than a Hutt before long. Say, what's a beautiful woman like yerself doin' in a place--"

"Excuse me," the voice called from his left, prompting Hobrun to turn around. "You forgot your drink, sir." It was a barmaid, handing him his glass. "Ah, uh, thank ya," Hobrun nodded in appreciation, gratefully taking the beer and turning back around to talk to the woman in blue. But she wasn't there, and only the slightest flash of blue was visible in the crowd as her skirt swayed around her retreating rear.

Damn it. He'd overplayed his hand, come on too strong, and in that moment she'd clearly decided there was absolutely no utility in continuing a conversation with an old, bedraggled and thoroughly ordinary man with seemingly ribald intent.

Of course, he was a fair bit older than his handful of wrinkles and sagging jowels suggested, and his intent had actually been curiosity disguised as a more lascivious interest if only so as to not raise suspicions.

Hobrun Sokar played over the few seconds of his encounter again and again in his mind as he walked home that night.

He couldn't shake the familiarity. His senses never failed him. He had definitely not met her before, that much his perceptions were clearer than the crystals of Ilum on, but there was a definite similarity.

He would have to go home to solve the puzzle. No, not the shabby apartment he entered, nor the bedroom he ambled into to withdraw a blaster pistol from his night-stand drawer. No, his true home.

Hobrun Chalk looked up into the mirror above his bed, watching the blaster pistol shake in his hand, the barrel pressed to his temple. It was almost sad, really. 43 years as Hobrun Chalk; it would be a shame to cut such an interestingly dull life short prematurely. But this was far more important. The shaking was irrelevant; merely a million years of evolution shaping the body to tremble involuntarily as its senses detected imminent death. A reflex buried deep in the brain not even the spirit that had inhabited it for 36 years could override. Hobrun Chalk sighed. "Well, goodbye, Hobrun," he whispered to himself. "It was nice being you."

Hobrun's finger squeezed the trigger, and as brain splattered over the wall, the failing body, no longer able to support life, squeezed out the soul that had worn it as its shell. The spirit of Darth Dreadwar flew free.

---

Four thousand, two hundred and sixteen years later, the hooded form of the Emperor's undying shade brooded in the darkness of the Tuk'ata pens, deep in meditation. The benefit of existence as pure energy, he mused, was that memories were never lost. He could see it all, survey it all, surveil it all. He had solved the mystery he had been presented with millennia ago, but perhaps in these ancient memories he could find a clue. For Danar the Dread was feeling that familiar sense again. No, not the same source of the sense, nor of the same nature, but a distant echo it was, building so slowly, yet audible, even over the background life of the universe.

It, too, represented a person from his past.

And it was coming for him. He was coming for him.

Ortan?

It had been a rhetorical question to the abyss of his own mind, a mere pondering. And so it was most surprising when the darkness of his unconscious bubbled forth an answer, oily and squamous to his mental touch, high and reedy in its sepulchral tone.

Yes, Ku'ar. Girdle up your loins, if you yet have them, and whhhine in fear in the night. I am come for you, dog, to put you down at last.

TAG: No one

---

COMBO WITH ADMIRAL VOLSHE

IC: Isis and Grand Admiral No
Courtyard of the Cathedral ship, orbiting Odessen

"NO!" Tano cried aloud as the flames of sour orange crept closer, ready to deliver their bitter sting on the tips of lashing tongues that would burn in more agony than the biting nails of a scourge. Does the Togruta call for me? It was all Grand Admiral No could think, his tendrils curling in the gelid wisps of his cyanogen tank. Does the Togruta call for me? There was no answer to his question, which leaked out of his hovering home into the Force in unintentional laxness of telepathy, nor was there any answer he could give to Tano, if it was his name she was calling.

"Kindly release my student, Isis," Shira derailed No's racing train of thought, perhaps a good thing, considering the abyss of numb despair it was hurtling towards. "I will not ask again.”

For all the fire she commanded, Isis could have been made of ice colder than Hoth, or perhaps it was the stone of obsidian her dispassionate dark features were carved from, the legacy of a tributary of magma that had spilled forth to consume Alisha Tano like so much chaff. "I am releasing her," Isis smiled calmly, as the rivulet of trickling death completed its second-to-last circuit, the inferno encircling Alisha growing closer by the second.

"I am releasing her from the darkness of her blood, and purifying its uncleanliness with fire. As her blood curdles in the searing flame, so shall the whey of Togrutan heritage be strained from her spirit, able to be washed away."

The Imperial Knights were already rushing forward to rescue their Sword, the din of lightsabers clashing drowning out Alisha's sobs. But it was no use. The monks were too many, and while the Knights were accustomed to catching lightning on their blades, their defense had no use against the fire the monks summoned from the Force. Silver lightsabers sought hearts and speared chests, and the screams of Imperial Knights rang aloud in the unnatural night of the courtyard, as the Cathedral ship cleared the atmosphere entirely and entered geosynchronous orbit around Odessen.

The fire completed its last circuit, and the oil began to flow into the basin in which Alisha was held kneeling.

NO! Tano's cry repeated itself in No's cephalopodic mind. NO! It would be her last word, if he didn't think of something. A'dola's command was next to useless. There was nothing the fleet could do in time, and unless A'dola was holding out on them all, nothing she could do in time either; dozens of monks stood between her and Tano, who was seconds away from a seraphic if torturous death. But there was something he could do. Something he had planned aboard the Triumphant, the addition of further canisters to his tank, in case the absolute, inescapable worst befell them.

NO!

"No!" Isis screeched, as danger surged in the Force and No's tank of cyanogen shattered. The Grand Admiral had thrown the throttles of his repulsor-tank into overdrive, dashing it against the cruel wall, breaking the transparisteel shell and letting loose the gases he required to breathe - the air he required to live. As the Celegian fell with a wet thwap onto the cobblestone, the putrid yellow toxins spread throughout the enclosed space.

//Hold your breath// No transmitted his last words to Shira, Alisha and Xal'den, who stood alone, wounded, as the last surviving Imperial Knight in the escort detail, while the gases spilled into the sealed courtyard. //Do not fear//. And within no amount of time at all, the hundred monks of the Terrible Glare choked, and fell.

By virtue of her exceptional reflexes and command of the Force, Isis was able to save herself, throwing up a telekinetic bubble to push back every particle of deadly cyanogen as they reached her. The Grand Master of the Ordu Aspectu remained, as did the fire she had lit, which even now reached the hem of Alisha's robes... and set them ablaze. But the telekinetic hold that had been pressed upon her had vanished, and as Isis quailed, the Force wailed at the death of Grand Admiral No.

TAG: Shira @padawan4686 and for the last time, Volshe

---

COMBO WITH GORZAN AND DARKHERMIT

IC: Lemmy, Tarpy, Turdfucker and Kint
The Dauntless, in the middle of nowhere

Lemmy looked down at the extended hand and snorted. “Let’s get a few things straight. One,” he jerked his thumb towards his chest, “I ain’t a bounty hunter. Two I didn’t shoot you, nor at you, nor near you. I tried to ram you but that ain’t shootin’ so get yer facts straight and yer panties unwadded. Three, I ain’t so worried about whatever yer carrying on yer boat an’ since ya did save me I suppose I owe ya a return favor. So long as yer not carrying a golden mirror that clones things.” He grasped the hand offered to him and shook hard. “Name’s Lem. This here’s Turdfucker.” He motioned toward the chrome colored protocol droid that stood in the hall leading to the cockpit. “What’re you?”

The tarp, meanwhile, unclasped itself from Lemmy's shoulders at Kint's instruction, with evident reluctance one could hardly express fabric to emote.
It violently folded in on itself, and then righted itself, in the facsimile of a cough. "Ahem," it shuddered. "He does, in fact, have a golden mirror that clones things. That's where I came from."

Kint sized him up. "The name is Kint Dranlor. Force user, bounty hunter, the best around."

As tarpy blurred out, Kint internally facepalmed. Clearly he would have to teach him about the intricacies of negotiating with hostile parties.

But on the outside, he took a half step back and subtly placed his hand on his hip, near his pistol, while he held up his right arm as if to stave off a verbal assault. "That is of none of your concern. Private business, I'm sure you understand."

“Aye, ya don't say Tarp... “ Lemmy mused. “Yer right Kint." A devilish smile crossrd Lemmy's face. "Private business. Which is why I ain't at liberty to say who hired me as well.”

“Sir we weren’t hired by the Tiss’shar,” 3D-4XR spoke up, “He simply proposed that finding the mirror and bringing it to Zakuul would result in great reward.”

“TURD!” Lemmy shouted. “We don't talk about business with everyone who asks!”

"Tiss'shar? What Tiss'shar?" The tarp flapped, swivelling between Kint and Lemmy, as if asking his master whether he knew what the Feeorin was on about. "And how much of a reward?" Greed infused the whispery tones of rubbing fabric; so far as the tarp could tell, the Mirror was nothing but trouble - it had most regretfully bestowed him with consciousness, after all - but he was rather determined to make the most of his newfound sapience and enjoy himself. From what he understood from years dumbly observing Kint, sapients squeezed the most enjoyment out of their unfortunate self-awareness through credits. Preferably lots and lots of them.

Kint's eyebrow raised. "Well, if it is the tiss'shar I am thinking of, you can have fun trying to get any payment from him. He is dead, deep in the caverns under the temple on odessen. He can't pay you, so you have no reason to want me dead, or to take that mirror. Our primary goal right now is to stay alive, and unless you want to try to solo those pyramid ships, you need me. So, you in?"

“Dead?!” Lemmy’s jaw dropped. “Gah! I wanted to wring his scrawny neck myself!” He stormed around in the cargo bay. “I suppose that means I ain't gettin’ paid by him. Say…” He turned to Kint with a glimmer in his eye. “What are you gettin’ paid for the mirror? We need each other to get outta this mess. I think that gives me a right to some of the profit.” He folded his arms in front of him. “Unless ya think yer gonna get away from this gravity well on yer own.”

Kint's eyebrows rose even further. "Well, the mirror isn't going for profit. Firstly because I don't know what it can do, and thus don't trust anyone else but myself, and secondly because nobody paid me to grab it. I was there to retrieve a different object, which I..... was unable to retrieve entirely. I used the mirror as a weapon to get out, and kept it due to its usefulness. I would be willing to compensate you financially to a certain degree, as I certainly have sufficient funding. But once again, our primary goal is to get out of here alive."

"Nobody paid you?!" The tarp's fabric pulled taut in the facsimile of a shout. "You're telling me I was made bloody conscious and there's not even credits waiting for me?" Its top furled over in a sad flop, giving the distinct impressing it was hanging its non-existent head.

But then... What else Kint said registered, and it straightened once more, a fold appearing that resembled a raised eyebrow. "Wait," it said. "What different object?"

Lemmy shook his head. "It ain't worth it. Funding ain't an issue for me either. Sounds to me like ya need to go back there and get yer other prize though. I'll help ya get out, and I know where ya can get some profit on that mirror." He grinned at the mercenary. "Then I'm taking ya to Odessen and we're gettin your other toy!"

Kint shook his head. "Negatori on that. It wasn't there. I went there to retrieve a holocron, a unique one, called the celestial holocron. very powerful, rare, and expensive. I figured I could learn what I could, and then sell it off. But when I got there, well....... nothing was as it seemed. but the holocron isn't there either. I'm starting to think maybe it doesn't exist, but if it does, then to retrieve it, I will need more information. Specifically, information from a man by the name of Darth Persevus. I had him as a captive for a while, until the Starweirds attacked, and somehow freed him. I believe he is on the largest of those pyramids, but it shouldn't be an issue retrieving him. He was....... mentally incapacitated before he went."

“Darth Persevus eh? Ah Sith don't scare me no more,” Lemmy replied confidently. “Tell ya what. You're an alright spacer. I'll help ya get outta this jam and once yer finished messin’ with that mirror we can find a way to offload it onto some sap for a boatload of credits. Much as I don't mind a good fight, this mirror seems like more trouble than it could be worth if ya got the Sith involved and it was on Odessen. Ya know there's some weird Jedi cult there right?” Lemmy tapped his chin for a moment. “Plus I'll sweeten the pot. We both get outta this alive and I'll call off the hit I had put on yer ship.” A sly grin creeped across his face. “I couldn't have ya gettin’ away from me too easily one we hit Terminus.”

"Seems we need to hit the pyramid with balls, then," Tarpy said shortly, rankled at having been completely ignored by the two. "You know, hit the pyramid that has the balls, not hit it with ba... Ah never mind." It shook slightly in a silent laugh, its mood improving already. "How do we go about it? We need a wholloping good plan to go up against that, get aboard, deactivate the interdictors and find and free this Perseverus guy."

TAG: gorzan Darth Catalyst

---

COMBO WITH VOLSHE

IC: Darth Apollyon and Darth Viscretus
Tomb of Naga Sadow, Valley of the Dark Lords, Korriban

"I see great beasts, braying in the darkness," Viscretus whispered, eyes enraptured by distant visages from yet more distant aeons. Her breath escaped her in gelid puffs of crystallised vapour, all but invisible in the icy darkness of the crypt. Her golden eyes, radiant like the twin suns of Tatooine, glanced downwards at Apollyon, an unsettlingly intense smile curving lips as soft and red as a pomegranate into a gibbous crescent of maleficence. A blushful moon to eclipse cheeks cooler and more sculpted than the statues around them.

"I see the Terentatek," she continued ceaselessly, "I see them fall before the revanchist's blade. Down there," She nodded her head in the direction of the right passageway, before her gaze, bright with the power of the darkness, fell upon the Sith gathering ahead at the baleful pool. Her pupils narrowed at the light of Apollyon's torch while her eyes narrowed in thought. "Coatlec may be right. But what is right at this crossroads, I cannot say. It is beyond even my vision."

"You're being cryptic again, my friend," Apollyon chuckled, her skirts whispering over the stone as she trailed behind Viscretus, pulling near to the lake's poisonous edge. "Cryptic and vague. But we need decisions."

They all had good points. Coatlec's recitation of Revan's path through the tomb. Catalyst's consideration of telekinesis. Robyn's sensible paranoia. And even Jania contributed usefully: no, not her whining, which did not even touch on Apollyon's sympathy, but the reluctant step back she took. It was obvious what she was thinking. She's the most expendable one here. She's the logical choice.

But Apollyon was no ordinary Sith. She had no desire to use Jania like a disposable tool. If Dreadwar had confronted her over it, she would have justified it even to herself as a rational recognition that wasting an acolyte on a tomb trap, when it had cost credits to transport her and would cost opportunity to spill any amount of midichlorian-rich blood, was folly only worthy of sadists not sophists. But truthfully, Apollyon cared. Even about Robyn Shaire, as hopelessly beneficent a profligate as she was. Peace was a lie, there was only passion, and Apollyon's passions ran deep; what was the point of being a Sith, if one had to seal themselves off from one's emotions, one's natural human instincts? Wasn't being callous and unfeeling at a comrade's death, "rejoicing when they transform into the Force," the way of the Jedi robots?

No, she would burden the risk herself.

"Lord Xirr," she purred, as she crouched like a vorn tigress near the pool's lip. "While the clarity of your analysis is truly... supernaturally prescient..." Apollyon's fiery eyes glanced over him in suspicion. "...I will suggest this. We are looking for a secret entrance, no, to an unexplored section? Something no other Sith has found before us. So perhaps the standard way is not the way to proceed. Perhaps this pool trap was designed with higher cunning than we thought; suppose the existence of the grenades is meant to invite us to use them, but actually, the easier and more efficient way of getting across is simply..."

Apollyon swallowed her fear as she crossed her legs underneath her, putting down the torch beside her, and began to float, concentrating the Force beneath and around her as she wafted as light as a lotus flower over the pool. Please don't be a trap... please don't be a trap... please don't be a trap... please don't be a trap...

Her breath held in her throat, her eyes closed more tightly than ordinary floating meditation would call for, as she repeated the prayer in her mind. She didn't even know who she was praying to. The long-dead builder of the tomb? The Emperor?

And then she felt the Force unspooling around her, the fabric of the energy field relaxing as if released by shaking hands that were pulling it taut. She opened her eyes, and let her feet find the stone beneath her. Standing, Apollyon turned, looking at her team over the thirty meters of toxin she had crossed. "Well," she smiled shakily. "It's safe to cross. Come on, come on over. Jania and Robyn are not strong enough to lift themselves, so if a Master would levitate them across first, then--AUGH!"

Apollyon cried aloud as two tentacles, tipped with the stingers of scorpions, thrashed out of the toxic lake, and jabbed her in the face. Apollyon fell back, scuttling backwards on hands and feet out of the range of the eldritch monster, but it was unnecessary; the thing had already disappeared, its tendrils leaving only a ripple of faint crimson to disturb the green pool.

"BY THE EMPEROR'S FUCKING COCK," Apollyon screeched, all decorum of the deeply religious Sith having fled. "I CAN'T SEE! I'M BLIND! OH FORCE, HELP ME! HELP ME, OH FUCK, I'M BLIND!" As she lifted her caramel face back towards the opposite side of the pool, even across the gloom of the lake the Sith team would be able to see the bloody, unsightly ruin where Apollyon's eyes had once been.

TAG: Sedriss Nathemus the Conqueror Volshe @padawan4686 dice Darth Catalyst

---

Scionica's electrostaff illuminated the twins' surroundings moderately. They were in a claustrophobic, rectangular passageway, with bare walls of rough grey stone, bearing no hieroglyphics or inscriptions. There was only darkness in either direction. However, a keen eye would notice the small rivulet of green fluid running along the crevice between the ceiling and the wall, occasionally dripping to the passageway floor and echoing as dripping water might echo in a cave.

The Rakghoul, meanwhile, snarled as it charged, showing no sign of fear as Scionica's electrostaff twirled in lethal grace towards the open wound in its chest. The electrified stave made contact with the beast, wrenching forth a yelp of pain, but the Rakghoul, despite ordinarily lethal amounts of electricity coursing through its system, grabbed ahold of the staff with its taloned hands, pulling it deeper into the wound Scionica's efforts were opening. It seemed content to impale itself upon Scionica's weapon, preventing her from pulling it loose, so long as it could bring itself closer to its quarry - and with its dying effort, its claws lashed out towards her thigh while its maw descended towards her shoulder, hoping to at least draw blood from the Arkanian offshoot.

TAG: Shira

---

IC: Darth Blight and Dynami
Lower Valley, Korriban

Flesh as dry as desert dust cracked in a malicious smile as Dynami peered at the onrushing Nihl. The revenant merely backpedaled from Nihl's whirling storm of chaotic acrobatics, the slightest and smoothest of movements contorting its wretched body just so, causing Nihl's lightsaber to miss her each time by inches. Amidst the kaleidoscope of whirling scarlet and cloud of dust Nihl's assault was rapidly kicking up, Dynami's smile widened further, and she spoke. "As a child in play scatters the heaps of sand that he has piled on the seashore, so are you more an enemy of Korriban than an enemy of me."

The dust was swirling around them, now, parching the air in which Nihl attacked and Dynami artfully dodged with a spry elegance that defied her antiquity. Yet the undead Lady's smile was drenched with mockery, and soon to be soaked in blood. "If you would face an ancient Sith Lord in combat," Dynami spoke with a strange lilt, as if reciting from memory or quoting a great figure of times' past, "you would find you are as children playing with toys, compared to the prowess of the old masters." And then her smile widened to impossible girth, her flaking cheeks pulling apart at the seams, and the airborne sand that surrounded them turned to a swarm of locusts. Locusts with stingers like scorpions, and pincers like crabs.

When Dynami spoke next, the swarm spoke with her, drowning out her deathly rattle with a buzzing cacophony. "He has risen!" She howled wildly in triumph. "The Dead-King! And if not Death herself, I shall be his bride!"

The locusts descended as a flock towards Nihl, as danger screamed in the Force. "Nihl, watch out!" Blight screamed, springing towards Dynami with a Force-enhanced leap, her lightsaber whistling towards Dynami's crooked neck. "Don't let them touch you!"

TAG: Volshe Sedriss Nathemus the Conqueror