Before us, a door stood embedded in the wall, with multiple writings on its surface, letters that none of us could read or identify. The door itself was tallic, but it was also laced with blackened veins of strange alloys that gave out a strange, weird feeling. HK ca to a halt just before it, his photoreceptors intensifying, casting long twin beams of red light across the corridor, scanning it.
[Statent: This door, atbags, is what I discovered and was stumped by. This is a pri example of Rakatan's stupidity and over-engineering. Observation: It is locked, obviously, but I have detected subtle power fluctuations in its fra.]
"I don't see any latches..." Vila muttered, making HK tilt his head.
[Observation: The door is resistant to blaster fire. I tried. Conclusion: It needs a Jedi's lightsaber.]
"Easy!" Vila snorted, activating her saber, but the mont she slashed at the door, the blade fizzled out, and her lightsaber was deactivated. "What?!"
[Surprised Observation: That was unexpected.]
"Cortosis..." I whispered as I stepped forward, inspecting the alloy worked into the door. "This isn't just a simple door that leads to another part of this buried structure. This has to be sothing important, and they definitely did not use so chanical lock to secure it," I continued, reaching out to the Force to the best of my abilities. "Mhm... It’s reacting to the Force. I can feel it... But not in the usual way."
"Why would it?" Vila shrugged, crossing her arms in annoyance, "This place is anything but usual. What is it? Do we need to sweet-talk it or sothing?"
"Not exactly..." I muttered, feeling troubled, "It’s like it wants... dominance. Submission."
[Amused Query: You an it needs you to act like a atbag and profess your inferiority before everything that chanical, perhaps?]
"It is not you," I said while I gave HK a dry look. "Not funny."
"He's maybe not wrong," Vila said quietly, stepping closer. Her fingers brushed the faintly glowing seam of the door, and she drew in a sharp breath after her examination. "I think it wants to be commanded open. It’s not just a gate if both of you are right. Knowing how Sith worked in the past... I bet that it’s a servant waiting for a master strong enough to push their will through it and command it to open."
[Correction: The Rakatan were not Sith. Different species.]
"Stuff it, rustbucket." Vila snapped at him, growling a little.
On the other hand... I hesitated. One more ti, I placed my hand flat against the cool surface and tried to reach into the Force, trying to get a feel, sohow... ask it to open up. But... Nothing. Just like before, the only thing I got was clear resistance and rejection. But I don't want Vila to risk it; she just ca back out of that strange influence this place placed on us both... It was already late. By now, Vila had stepped forward and put her hand beside mine, and before I could speak, she closed her eyes. I saw her lekku trembling slightly... And I could feel anger rising in her once again.
"Let try," she said with gritted teeth.
Nodding, I just pulled my hand back, watching her, her rapidly moving closed eyes, and how she inhaled. It was deep, long... And then her voice dropped to a murmur, just above a whisper. I couldn't really hear what she was saying, but I could sense that her emotions were flowing raw and unfiltered. Vila was drawing on all those Dark Side emotions that she had felt not that long ago, be it the fear, boiling rage, and then... pain. They radiated from her like heat from a furnace... I felt the temperature shift. Maybe it was just my eyes, but for a mont, I felt as if the chamber darkened at the edges as if sothing resonated with her... But before I could catch on to the feeling, the door responded.
It didn’t slide open imdiately, thanks to its age. It groaned like a sleeping beast waking up from its slumber, and the noise it made was horrifying to listen to. The tal fra twisted as if it were in pain, cursing us that we woke it up from its death, slowly sinking into the ground and opening up before us.
"Are you good?" I asked, touching Vila's back. She was breathing heavily, but she just wiped her forehead and nodded.
"Yeah, but don't find another one to open, okay? That was... nasty."
"Understood. Co!" I held her hand, "HK is already in, the impatient bastard..."
Inside, there was a large octagonal chamber lined with obsidian-colored consoles and ancient, possibly holo-terminals, their surfaces covered in Rakatan writings and faintly pulsing lights that were trying to co alive now that the door was open. The air slled stale and burnt like the circuits in here had overloaded centuries ago, but the air never had a chance to be recirculated, stuck in an eon-long rotting and rusting death spiral.
"This must be... so kind of control nexus," I said, my voice reflexively hushed, not wanting to wake... whatever sleeping in here. My eyes flicked from one console to another, trying to make sense of it all, but... It was all alien.
"What's that?" Vila asked, pointing towards the middle of a cluster of consoles at the left end of the chamber.
"A... mainfra?" I guessed, cautiously walking towards it. Upon it, a crystalline node constantly flickered like a fla trapped in ice, going from red to orange, sotis violet. Interestingly, it had... a presence in the Force. I could feel it, so I stepped forward, drawn by instinct more than my thoughts, which I should have known was a bad idea.
[Statent: I have a bad feeling about this.]
"You? Feelings?" Vila snorted, looking at him, missing what I was doing... Missing that, my arms reached out... drawn to that... button.
The mont my fingers brushed the crystal, the world changed, and I felt sothing grab my arms and yank forward with all the force in the world.
...
....
......
I was falling.
Snapping out of the trance I was in, I looked around, taking two deep breaths, refocusing my mind... This was not reality. It was like when I got my lightsaber's crystal. I wasn't falling, really, not through the air, but more like I was being transported through a mory... Soone's mory... To a different place.
Then there it was, a loud bang... The sound of tal slamming shut sowhere behind , followed by the stink of unwashed bodies... Blood. Feeling the filth sticking to everywhere... And... then ca the screams.
I hit the ground stiff, feeling my knees scraping the stone below . I gasped for air, but what I could breathe was only a stench, making retch. When I looked up, I was in an octagonal room with high, seamless walls under a row of blinding lights shining down on . On us... I wasn't alone. We were many, oh, so many. Human, alien, species I had never heard of, all of us dressed in scraps, every one of us wild-eyed, gaunt, and starving. One of them near stumbled for a mont and then vomited red all over .
It was then that I looked down and realized that my hands weren’t mine. They were older and calloused, scarred, and missing a ring finger. A thin leather strap was tied around my left wrist, marked with glyphs, compelling to... kill?
“Get up,” soone snarled at .
That was a voice I didn’t recognize, speaking a tongue I had never heard before, but... Sohow, I still understood it. Was... Was he a... taskmaster? Whatever those were... Or? A fellow prisoner?
Another rumble, knowing that a gate was opening sowhere, followed by the roar of a crowd surging in. It was another sound that both felt alien yet familiar at the sa ti. I, or whoever I was now, stood and watched as another group scread at us... No... It was more like they howled, so of them already charging at us, driven by their madness.
A weapon was in my hand... A blade, rusted by the blood dripping from still... My hand moved to flex around its hilt without thinking. But deep down, my heart pounded in terror, and there was a surge of adrenaline trying to force to stand still and fight. But I was afraid... very... very afraid. Petrified.
Then, the crowd finally reached us.
There were no more teams and no chance for alliances. What only remained in my head was one word: survival. One by one, everyone died. Fighting on instinct, I heard bones snap and multi-colored blood sprayed onto my face as I decapitated soone with my blade. I watched as it got stuck in his half-hanging neck, only to break, forcing to pry the weapon from the gurgling woman's hand to keep fighting... And that I did. I fought... No... I killed. Like a savage, crying, shouting, going mad from it all. Every second was a nightmare; the more I killed, the more I maid, the more I scread... and it was a never-ending loop, making numb to it.
Maybe it was why suddenly, ti twisted... The massacre and the fights blurred in my vision.
Sotis, I was alone in a cell; sotis, I was dragged to another octagonal arena. In one of the images, I stood in an even larger one. Around , others died by my hands, so by poison, so by my fingers around their necks, strangling them. I had lost count of how many days passed... or how many I took down. There were no longer people, only... targets.
Then...
"Huh?" A boy... Surprisingly young... No... too young. What? Ten? Twelve? He was tossed into the arena with . Do they want to...? No...
But there was no use.
The child ca at at full speed; I could see his tears streaming down his face, a knife clutched in shaking fingers. I felt the fear and hate and the sheer desperation in his eyes.
"I... won't..." I muttered as I disard him without taking him down.
The reward was that the mark on my hand burned, sending commands through , making my body move, tossing the kid, letting him take up his weapon... No, don't do it... But... He wasn't aware of what he was doing... or maybe he was. It didn't matter; he struck again. Again. Crying... cursing, trying to stab ... And finally, my body responded, the animal I was forced to beco overtaking .
I saw my own blade go through the child’s throat... and I heard my own voice scream and break.
And then... a snap.
...
....
......
Darkness.
Then light.
I jolted back into my own body with a scream as my knees buckled. Before I knew where I was, I hit the ground, arms hugging myself, my eyes wide, trying to see where I was, who I was, but I just... saw nothing. What... What happened?! I tried to ask, but my breath ca short, and I knew I was convulsing. I couldn't speak... I could barely think. I only knew that Vila was at my side in seconds, kneeling, grabbing my face with panic.
“Kael?! Hey—Kael! What happened?!”
I heard her ask, but I couldn’t answer. The images were still in my mind, and they wouldn’t stop. The boy... The rusted knife. The blood... Killing over and over. Whatever I wanted to say ca out as a cry.
“I’m here,” she whispered, fierce and desperate, as she pulled close, using the Force to connect to , wincing at how turbulent I felt within . “I’m here! Kael! Focus on my voice! Whatever you see, it’s not real. It’s not now! Listen to , you hear?! Listen to ! Co back to , damn it—Kael!”
Yes... she is right... She is right... Through our connection, sothing that I was now feeling even more strongly than ever before, I managed to focus on. The mont my mind latched onto it, I felt as if I was being lifted out of a swamp... but I could still feel its stench on .
“It made kill him,” I sobbed. “He was just a boy... I didn’t want to—I didn’t want to…”
“You didn’t kill anybody,” she said hurriedly, not knowing what happened to . “It wasn’t you. It wasn’t real. It’s the machine, yeah, I bet! This bastardly place! It showed you sothing. It’s not yours... You didn't kill anybody, okay? Sssh... it is alright now!”
"There..." I gasped, trying to tell her, or maybe to myself, to make sure it was not , not my mory. “They were people... here. In this place... Thousands. They were... Forced to kill. Fight and die… I felt... I have seen… It..."
"Ssshh..." she continued, reaching down and kissing until my breathing beca much more even, only then letting my lips go. "It's alright... It is going to be alright..."
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