The Rebel Faction

Dolash was struggling to figure out what to do - Marek needed his attention, but the situation with the ghosts was worse than he'd feared. Finally, he passed his padawan to Proq and said "Get him out of here - go!" and with that, stepped forwads towars Lavality and Trazu.

"The sphere reacts." stated Jubaz plainly, and Dolash turned.

The Rodian was pointing to the sphere, which had seemed unstable enough as it is. Something was making it flicker, though, and as it did the tears floating in mid-air began to whistle and shudder again. A sensation, like a dreadful intake of air, passed over the group.

"Get it out!" Bellowed Dolash to Trazu "Get the spirit out! The Force in this place is weakening and threatening to tear!"

The Force is a web that connects all living things, but when too much pressure is put on that web it threatens to snap. In plainer terms, that which held the raw energy of the Force in this place had been eroded, and with the battle of spirits and the presence of great manifestations of Force energy the fabric that held everything together in this place was beginning to break up. The tears in the air began to widen, and Dolash stationed himself foresquare between them.

Calling on all his mastery of the Force, like a conduit for energy Dolash poured his will into these gaps and held them closed. Jubaz dragged Trazu, who was holding Lavality, down the tunnels to get away from the instability before their mental battle made it worse.

Up ahead, Proq broke into daylight dragging Marek with him. Outside, Ian and Katria gave him a confused look before the story spilled out of him. They had to get him back to the ship.

It had taken longer then he liked to ‘loosen’ the spirits grip on Lavality enough to where Lavality was able to retake control and help finally defeat the spirit. His mental form nodded at Krevlok when she thanked him and that’s when his ‘sixth sense’, which he now knew was the Force warning him of danger, kicked off. Returning his consciousness quickly to his own body, he looked out of his eyes and not only saw the look of urgency on the faces of his companions, but ‘felt’ the raw power of the Force threaten to rip itself apart in the sphere room.

Lavality then collapsed yet again, no doubt from the strain of the mental battle that just took place, and Trazu caught her before she hit the ground. She was as big as he was, but Trandoshans are a physically strong species and he was able to pick her up and carry her with little difficulty. He burst out of into the light seconds after Proq did and only now realized Dolash wasn’t with them: he must have stayed behind to try to give them time to escape before it was too late. But what was his fate?

A part of him wanted to go back in, to help the Jedi Master if he could. But the effort of traveling the Force current and the mental battle with the spirit had taken a toll on his own body: already Lavality felt ten times heavier then she should have been.

“Take her….” He said to Proq, feeling the mother of all headaches starting to throb in his head.

Walls cracked and fissured all around - the clouds of force energy crackled and groaned along the tear-lines as Dolash struggled to keep the whole thing together. The Force was battering at his mind, wearing him down, and creaking under the weight of trying to hold the caves together under fading power. He couldn't hold it much longer.

It was then that he realized that his grip was already lost. Tears began to appear all around him, tears leading to nowhere. Rocks shattered into razor fragments all around and the sphere in the center warped and twisted into strange, disturbing shapes. Dolash had one more hope. Instead of resisting, he gave into the flow, letting it wash over him. The caves began collapsing instantly, no longer able to hold together.

In his mind, the whole thing seemed to be happening very far away. Instead, he was focused on the Force. The flow. As every tiny rivulete can be traced back to a river, and that to a lake, sometimes even as far as the Ocean, so to did Dolash suddenly find his mind flowing with lightning speed back up the current, into the Force itself.

He expected glimmering lights, or to be able to see all the galaxy at once. Or maybe nothing visual or sense-related at all, perhaps it would all be a sensation in his mind. What confronted him was much worse.

He saw the the galaxy, made indeed out of lights and shadows, twinkling throughout infinity - but something was wrong. The image was strained, torn, and in places neither shadowy nor bright but vacant. It was worn, damaged, straining against some great central cancer. In the few moments he had in this vision, he focused his eyes on the center of it all.

In the deepest hole, the most terrible tear on the entire fabric of the galaxy, was Coruscant. From the capitol, the damage spread like tendrils throughout space. As soon as it had came, the vision was over as Dolash was whipped backwards through existance and into his own body.

Outside, the Jedi and others had reconvened just outside the cave. Marek had been updated on the situation and hurried to the entrance. Proq held Lavality, and there was silence as everyone waited for something to emerge.

Instead, what they heard was a rolling thunder. A push of air began to emerge from within the caves, along with a cloud of dust.

"Get back..." murmured Jubaz, who then shouted "Get back! It's caving in!"

The group scattered back as rubble spewed out from the entrance of the cave in a heap. A huge dustcloud burst forwards, and then silence and motionless fell again.

No one said anything.

In the silence, a feeble whisper passed through the Force to Marek. Find me.

Her eye's flickered a few time's and she slowly opened them, noticing that she was being carried, she had a mother of all headache's and couldn't move herself, much less speak

She didn't make any sound's, naturally, but she did think about what had happened... or.. tried to

"How are you feeling?" Krevlok asked as she floated in Lavality's mind. "Tired... worn out... I have a headache that hurts..." Lavality responded. She could see the spirit, but also herself.

She looked around, although all she saw was darkness, along with the spirit. "What happened..."

"What do you mean what happened?" Krevlok folded her arms, trying to make sense of what Lavality was trying to say

"I... I can't remember....."

She raised an eye-brow. "Remember? Remember what?"

"Remember.... what happened... remember... what occured...." Lavality said while glancing about

Krevlok stared at Lavlaity for a second then looked away. "You mean to tell me you don't remember the past?"

"I ... don't remember what happened...." Lavality kept repeating those word's for quite sometime.

Krevlok couldn't make sense of it all, she would try and make a connection with Trazu but she already knew he would be feeling the effects of the battle right about now, and she didn't want to risk it. She felt though the only person who could really help her was the other Akisi, Asri, that she knew of. But she didn't know if it was even possible to communicate it, what worried her was her mistake in revealing herself the few minutes back

It was sudden, and she did need assisstence. She just stared at Lavality's image, the girl was confused and apperently the mind battle had harmed her seriously, she would probably need medical attention or something when they got back.

On uninhabitable planet, one that probably once had an actual atmosphere in times past, in the deep core of the system lay a network of caves much like the ones Dolash and his friends had just explored. Like the one they were now leaving, this one was also one of the few places where the Force was particularly strong and it was suffering massive distortion due to damage to the Force itself. Here though, the damage was more advanced, the wounds in the Force much larger and it was from one of these wounds something crossed over.

If anyone was there to observe it, it would have appeared like thick black smoke seeping out of one of the largest wounds much like blood. At first it spread across the floor, until the flow from the wound ceased and it gathered up onto itself, condensing into a tangible form. The result…was something nothing had ever seen before in the galaxy.

It was a shiny black in color; the head bore no eyes and a domed forehead that had a short spire curving sharply out and down. On top it's head was a crown of a total of seven horns, the lowest pair sweeping down and slightly forward past it's jaw line, while the rest splayed out in gentle 'S' curves, their color fading to silver at the tips. This head was connected to a somewhat short, but strong neck and it's torso was covered by what looked like a thick stylish carapace. From this torso sprouted six of it's limbs: a pair of leathery wings on the dorsal size, and two pairs of forearms on the lower part. The front most pair of forearms was only half the size of the others, sporting three long fingers each and each tipped with a sharp claw.

The second, and larger, pair of arms rested on the ground, propping it's massive torso up. These had three fingers much like the smaller pair, but in addition to those was an additional digit on the inner most side of the hand that sported a wicked looking large claw shaped like a sickle. The rest of the body looked lizard-like, almost draconic, in appearance, but also looked too long and ungainly to function well. The belly was covered in hard plates and the dorsal side had short, large, silver spikes. The hind legs, digitigrade in shape, had three clawed toes and the tail was long and split until uneven duel tails roughly two-thirds of the way down: both tails baring a large, blade-like claw at the end. The overall creature looked to be roughly ten feet tall starting from the tip of the horns on down and it's length seemed to be somewhere around twenty feet long.

It looked around, amused by what it saw, the claws on it’s smallest pair of arms clicking against each other as it pondered what it had discovered. It had come here against the wishes of it’s elders who had cordoned off the tear that had opened on their planar home and forbidden anyone to go near it. Always open to opportunity and chances to defy the elders, it had come through with no thought of it’s own safety, believing fully that it’s status as a higher being would be sufficient to protect it from harm. It’s belief in that was about to be tested….

Suddenly a Force storm erupted in the small space, the Force lashing out in a way that some would call ‘pain’. At first the visitor just watched the show, fascinated by the show of raw power, until one of the bolts of raw Force struck it. For the first time in recent memory this creature roared in pure agony and it fled the chamber, running into the one of the connecting passage ways just far enough to be out of reach of the pain inflicting bolts.

It checked itself over feverishly now, looking for signs of contamination. Upon finding that what damage had been done was already healing, it breathed a sigh of relief, though there was no air to breathe here. At the same time however a revelation struck it: the essence in this universe was whole.

Back home, a cataclysm long ago forcefully separated essence of their universe into three separate types: dark, light, and shadow. As a result, his people separated into three separate species: The Karred, Uota, and Eztee and forever more they could bring great harm to each other, as long the species was different. The greatest harm was when one’s essence was contaminated with another’s as a result of a fight while on what they call the ‘mortal plane’. If the contaminated party didn’t make it back to the home plane, they suffered a long and painful death.

But here there was no risk of that, especially since it wasn’t likely anyone else would attempt to follow it through the improvised ‘portal’. There was no Staros, no Nadia, no Azuwesia, no one else but him: it smiled at the thought of doing what it damn well pleased for once. One concern did occur to it though and it looked back at the chamber where the storm had finally subsided. The essence here may be whole, but it was in sorry shape. Something was causing it to twist and tear itself apart and the visitor was currently at a lost as to why.

Could this place be starting to suffer from a cataclysm much like the one that had struck it’s home plane long ago? It was not alive during that time so it could not be certain. One thing was for sure though, with this happening on the mortal plane in this universe it would not bode well for the mortals here, unlike back home where it only affected it’s kin.

Normally any thought of pity wouldn’t be wasted on mortals and this was still true. Instead, it more concerned it would never get the chance to really spread it’s influence. That won’t do at all life suddenly ceased to exist, so it made the conscious decision to find the cause and, if it could, stop the destruction. But to do that it needed knowledge of this place and it’s workings. A good place to start it felt, was by studying these interesting carvings on the wall….