Revan in Xanadu (Part 6)
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{{#if:Jigsaw green.png|}} | Xanadu story universe |
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Hmm… I think it’s stronger over here…
The tastefeeling of wrongness hung in the Force like a mist, subtly deluding my senses. Unlike some of the previous events, I didn’t feel called to do anything or go anywhere in particular – it was just that in some directions I sensed more wrongness than in others. It didn’t feel quite like the Dark Side. Still, there was almost an aura of menace, and I was determined to track it down.
I physically sensed it as a whiff of decay, a haze in my eyes, and a sort of sibilant whisper, mostly incomprehensible but occasionally seeming to say ‘hahnass despicable’. In the Force, it just felt… diseased.
If I quit now, someone else will take care of it. This isn’t that big of a deal. Still…
It registered at last that I was in a completely deserted hallway in a place I hadn’t seen before. The lights - electric banks of tubing covered by square panels - were flickering strangely. The hall itself was now shadowed enough that it the walls seemed to have been smeared with nameless substances. My eyes tried to trick me into seeing shadows move and faces appear within them, but the Force showed me that I was unwatched.
I could not feel any lifeforms close by, but that didn't mean much. As if to underscore that thought, there was a scrabbling from the far end of the hall. The metal handle on one of the closed double doors half-turned several times, then completed its rotation with a click and cracked open.
A human girl squeezed through the opening and looked around frantically, wide eyed with fear. I noticed the oddly clouded look to those eyes, her paleness, the stickiness matting her hair and clothing, and the deep slash across her throat before she saw me and screamed hoarsely. When she did so, the gaping wound suddenly dribbled with blood and, horrified, I stared as if transfixed. By the Dark Side, how was she not dead, with a wound like that?
Force-given senses revealed that she was not really alive – part of the Force, yes, but no more so than a mossy boulder or a droid, devoid of the reassuringly complex interaction of energies found in the average living being. I shuddered convulsively. Ugh.
The girl ran past me as I automatically moved aside in revulsion, and her rapid footsteps echoed unsettlingly in the hallway. I had a sudden sensation of ill will, and felt a strong desire to copy the girl and simply leave the area.
What kind of Jedi does that? If something gives me a bad feeling, it’s probably not safe to ignore. Annoyed with myself, I strode to the doors she had slipped through. Taking a deep breath - blood, rot, offal, all those offensive scents of old death - and peered around the opened one.
A very dead human man stood a mere two meters before me, slack-jawed, with twitching maggots dribbling from every hole in his slimy flesh. He appeared to have been buried somewhere very moist and later dug up again – a practice I really don’t like. There is a reason why Jedi, and Sith for that matter, cremate our dead, and it isn’t just the symbolism of spreading our constituent molecules far and wide.
Remains everywhere, all apparently humans in various states of decay from freshly dead to skeletal, and everywhere in between. Some looked as if a noxious fungus had taken root in their flesh, and others had puffed up and begun oozing. The walls themselves were spattered.
…Why are they all standing?
The one closest to me moved.
That set off the others, I think. While my eyes told me that they were all dead and incapable of independent movement, they apparently didn't know that.
"Braaaiiins!"
Hurriedly I pulled back from the door and tried to shove it closed. Something lurched against it, rocking me back. I repositioned myself to shove better and watched a slimy green hand – why green? What could possibly occur during decomposition to turn human flesh green?! - thrust itself, groping, out of the opening. A chorus of strange moans emerged with it.
From the Force around them and produced by them, I felt nothing. No… not quite nothing, although I knew it was not something I could influence.
Hunger.
"Ohgodohgdohgod-" A woman's voice yammered annoyingly in my ears. It stopped as I set my mouth in a grim line and closed my fingers around the cool cylinder of one of my lightsabers, the first one to fall into my hand, and thumbed the activation switch.
Snap – hiss! VMMMMM…
It was the red lightsaber, of course. The Sith lightsaber. Still, it would work as well as any other. I cut through the hand in a quick, easy motion. Steaming fingers fell and with satisfaction I saw the remainder of the hand pull back through the door. Ozone and sickly meat cooking joined the pong that filled my nostrils, and I opened my mouth again to breathe through it, vainly hoping to dampen the thick scent.
Keeping the 'saber activated, I braced my left shoulder against the door. The occupants of the room had evidently discovered – if such primitive ‘thoughts’ could discover - that they wanted out, and that the best way to get out and to where a snack stood was through this door.
"Braaaiiins!"
There were several of the things pushing in concert, and I was losing ground. I set my booted feet into the coarse carpeting and wished that I was male, taller and with bigger muscles. Or that my Force abilities were strong enough to just jam the door closed. Or that I’d let Nate and his four friends come with me. Much too late to run now – the dead things would get me from behind.
"WHY do people like zombies, WHY?" That voice again! Someone was close enough to help me close the damn door! "It's not like th- arr.. ffff- frack it, woman, stop yammering help me keep them out!"
Wait a minute. I tried to say something while she was talking, and her voice… That is my voice. Higher, more panicked, but it is my voice. How can -
Her next frustrated cry tore at my throat. "Goddammit, I AM keeping them out!"
Yes, definitely my voice. Oh, Light Side succor me, that is a bad sign.
I bent my knees and lunged against the metal of the door. It gave, almost closing, until the things behind it redoubled their efforts. I realized that I was baring my teeth and breathing hard, as if I was terrified instead of merely... perturbed. My fingers were clutching the 'saber hilt with almost painful tightness, so I hit the activation stud twice and the blade retracted and I put it back on my belt.
My voice again. "Aaagh, why did it have to be zombies?!" A high-pitched electronic scream started up. "Chainsaws?! Why chainsaws?! AAAII!" Something hit the door and began to grind at it very rapidly, as the electronic scream intensified.
Enough of this. I'm done toying around.
Technically these creatures were not alive, but the Force has some hold on all matter. I visualized the silhouettes of each of them - four against the door, one of them with a screaming machine, another five pressed in behind them- and grabbed each one.
Force Wave
It is one of several techniques, such as Stasis Field and Lightning Storm, which affects all nearby enemies. I haven’t been able to master either of those, so by default Wave is my personal favorite. In essence, it is a telekinetic explosion that knocks foes off their collective feet and scrambles their senses briefly. It is extremely difficult to block, and to a lesser extent also works on droids and other nonliving opposition.
This time was no different. Wave by itself makes no sound, but the sudden thump-crunch that the things behind the door made was very satisfying. As always, I felt a rush of weariness and exultation at the successful attack, forcing my knees to buckle.
Unfortunately, Wave does not always finish things. It doesn’t kill, only incapacitates. Moans and rattlings started up again, if a bit weaker. I could just close the door now, but I don’t think this is the only exit. And they might know how to open it – I don’t see a lock. I reached into my inventory.
Adhesive, Fragmentation, Sonic, Ion, Cryo, or Plasma? Or a Thermal Detonator. Hmm. Small or not, nobody wants a thermonuclear explosive going off in an inhabited building. Plasma it is, then.
I pulled the red grenade out from behind my back, then yanked the door wide open, depressed the large thumb button, and hurled it in among the animated corpses. Then I slammed shut the door and backed up.
The fiery detonation was considerably larger than I had expected. And louder. My ears rang and closed off in response. Unexpected exhaustion struck then, and I stumbled a little. I'd been running about for hours and had drawn on the Force a great deal today, and doing that got... tiring.
An adrenal stim should help for a bit.
I reached - and froze as I realized that rather than groping into a bag or a pouch, I was looking at a list. Medpacks, energy shields, stimulants- a list, with a little picture and a description of each item.
Didn't I see something like that for David's Camera? Yes, yes I did. I thought it was just the camera. And… this happened back in the room, too, when I saw how much junk I was carrying. This… this is not something I can explain.
I could feel each object as I came to it. There - Adrenal Stimulant. I ignored the problem of how things got out of this list into my hands and slapped the injection into my right thigh, letting the spent case crumple and the rush of momentary energy flood my veins.
I'm probably just tired. Jedi, Sith... it doesn't matter. Exhaustion always does unpleasant things to a body.
Listening, I heard nothing closer than the background chaos. The woman's voice seemed to have ceased at last. Maybe the influence of the dead things had deluded my senses and caused me to hear things. With no tasks, no other pressing concerns, I started back for the tiny sleeping chamber where I dimly remembered coming earlier. Everything else can wait a while.
| Preceded by: Revan in Xanadu (Part 5) |
Revan in Xanadu{{#if:| (First: {{{first}}})}} |
Succeeded by: Revan in Xanadu (Part 7) |