Open A 'Simple' Experiment

[Alhazred]

Alhazred gasped deeply as his senses returned to normal. Having been rescued again by the Jedi, he was feeling more and more miserable and annoyed at himself. He he did not mean to be a dependent idiot, but a student of the cosmic galaxy and the Force. And yet, here he was, mucking it up further for everyone else.

"I'm sorry master jedi...!" Alhazred apologized profusely. "Hiraya decided to return to the ship to retrieve my research, and I was trying to stop him. I...I..."

The thing shrieked again, and Alhazred felt it thoroughly. The sheer chaos of the thing...the darkness of it. It was too much. It needed to be silenced. He needed this thing to stop. This experiment, this entire situation, it all needed to end. His failure here, needed to end. To be silenced and never come to life again. It needed to end. It needed to...

Amidst another shriek from the thing trapped by the Force stasis, Alhazred broke a bit.

"SHUT UP!" Alhazred yelled as loudly as possible, his weak vocal cords straining to make a noise larger than they possibly could conjure. "TO MY GOD WITH YOU AND LET THE MAW TAKE THEE!!"

Alhazred tapped into a part of his mind he had not realized he had. A part of the mind every being had, but only those of madmen cultists, and willing sith touched on a regular basis. He was but a student of the Force, but in this one moment, the fear, anger, and the darkness inside him reverberated outwards, through his body and towards the monster. For the Jedi, the ex-student of the Church of the Dead God and observer of movements of cosmic objects, there could be no hope in this hell, and in this one moment, he gave into the feelings of dread that came with that realization. A shriek of his own darkened discord from the peaceful orchestra that was Alhazred.

The force push reverberated down the hall towards the engine room, a wave of energy made of discord and choas.. The ship shook slightly as the monster was thrown backwards alongside floor panels and wall frames. A push so strong and tainted with darkness and discord that it could be nothing other than destructive. Both it and the debris crashed into the engines, sending sparks and fire flying.

Alhazred's mind cleared immediately afterwards, realizing what he had done. He was no mechanic, but given the state of the ship, he believed he had just irreversibly set it on a path for self-destruction. He wasn't sure how much time the group had.

"Oh no..." Alhazred whispered, his vocal cords completely shot. The automatic emergency doors to the engine room began to close to contain the breach, but it would not last long.

@marshland

 

[Hiraya Manawari]

Zion's gaze sharpened, hints of shock flickering in his grey eyes as he witnessed Alhazred momentarily falter, the faintest undercurrent of Darkness tingeing the Nu-Vaal's intent - whether unintentionally - in the Force as the Padawan banished the Starweird. He did not spare the creature a glance when he felt the ship shook in protest of the Nu-Vaal's destructive surge of anger poured out with frustration through the Force. As fire and sparks erupted from the damaged engines, Zion knew that he needed to act quickly.

He would grab the much smaller Padawan, lifting Alhazred like a child. Zion would then make a mad dash back to his own ship, knowing full well that he alone could never hope to fix the Sentinel-class landing craft's engines on his own. By the looks of it, the damage seemed beyond repair, and the only thing left to do is to abandon the ship.

The Knight would ignore any protest, would shoot down any attempt of escape. Zion would even go as far as to put Alhazred in a Force Stasis if the Nu-Vaal so much as attempted to struggle in his hold. Alhazred was injured, and it would be evident in the stern glance Zion sent his way that the Nu-Vaal was expected to do as he was told and stay put.

Back in Zion's ship, he would then carefully put down Alhazred back to his own feet. Seeing that the startup sequence had already been placed, most likely by Hiraya, the human Knight glanced at Alhazred.

"Stay here, please," he all but begged the Padawan. "I will go and get Hiraya-"

An explosion from the Sentinel-class craft rocked Zion's ship. Just then, the comms crackled to life and Hiraya's panicked voice rang in the cockpit.

"Alhazred! What's happening?"

"Hiraya! Thank the Force you're alive!" answered Zion, a flash of relief overriding the dread the Knight felt, if only momentarily. "Listen, closely, please. The engines of Alhazred's ship has been compromised. Find an escape pod, and get out of there! Set a course for Kashyyyk, Alhazred and I will find you! Hurry, Hiraya!"

In the Sentinel-class craft's control room, Hiraya's blood ran cold. He knew that something had gone awry much further when the ship was rocked by an explosion. But to learn that the engines were ompromised?

At least Master Zion was with Alhazred now. That eased the Tiefling's worry somewhat.

"O-Okay!" he replied. "Master, you gotta leave, too! I'll get out of here, I promise! Tell Alhazred-"

Another explosion rocked the ship, and with it communications ceased. Hiraya looked at the screen, letting out a triumphant huff when all of the experiment's data were successfully transferred into the datastick. The Tiefling hurriedly plucked it out and scooped Itty Bitty in one arm. What followed was a mad dash for where the singular escape pod he knew the ship had was located.

A telepathic scream, filled with fury, ripped through the Padawan's mind as the enraged Starweird made a reappearance. With his presence still cloaked in the Force, Hiraya did not bother engaging with the abhorrent creature, instead focusing on escaping. But as he jumped down the ladder, the sound of his booted feet caught the Starweird's attention. It rapidly closed the distance between them, bony arm jutting forward and finding its mark on Hiraya's shoulder. Agonizing pain engulfed the Tiefling, a strangled yell escaping him. The Padawan crashed to the floor. He wasted no time and crawled away from the ghastly creature, however, which-

The Starweird's hate-filled gaze focused somewhere, the perpetual snarl on its face momentarily flicking to one of confusion. Suddenly, a pulse from the Force reverberated throughout the ship. The creature honed in on that pulse, leaving Hiraya bleeding on the floor.

Although confused, the Tiefling poured his focus into crawling towards the escape pod. He pushed himself up on his feet, crying out as his shoulder burned and throbbed with pain, blood pouring from the wound. Still clinging to his bunny droid who now held onto the datastick containing Alhazred's experiment and resulting data, Hiraya soldiered on until he found the escape pod. He opened it, crashed inside, then mustered every bit of strength left in him to set a course for Kashyyyk. And as the escape pod hurtled into space and towards the planet nearby, blessed unconsciousness gripped the young Tiefling.

---

After receiving Hiraya's confirmation that he would escape, Zion knew that the only thing left to do was to trust in the Tiefling's resilience and resourcefulness. Focusing on his earlier promise of distracting the Starweird, the Knight drew the holocron from his pocket and opened it. He let it float back into the Sentinel-class craft before closing the docking ring.

Unaware that the creature had found and wounded Hiraya, Zion focused on funneling the energies of the Force into the holocron, turning it into a beacon of Light that the Starweird would find irresistible to locate. And as life continued to thrum into the ebb and flow of the Force, seemingly confirming Hiraya's safety, Zion pushed forth one final wave of pulse into the holocron and severed the connection. The holocron, suffused with the Light side of the Force, would eventually be found by the Starweird to destroy.

Zion then hurried back to the cockpit, disengaging his ship from the Sentinel-class craft. Setting course for Kashyyyk, he searched the beacons for any sign of the escape pod containing Hiraya, and guiding the ship to follow it once he caught sight of it.

As they made their way to Kashyyyk, Zion finally glanced at Alhazred.

"Breathe, Alhazred. Focus. Do not dwell on what you did earlier for now," he gently advised the Padawan. "Trust in the Force, in the Light. I will not tell you not to worry, because I feel it to. But we'll find Hiraya. If you cannot trust me, then trust in the Force."

@Narzen

 

[Alhazred]

Of all the things Alhazred had happened today, from conducting to his experiment and discovering their may be some weird relation between celestial objects, to discovering the existence of star weirds, to tapping darker portions of his mind he would rather never have, one thing messed with his mindset above all else.

The fact of being picked up and carried like a child actually made sense in this scenario.

True, he didn't enjoy it. Anyone, especially a grown Nu-Vaal and easily most people's elder, being moved around like an object would find the ordeal humiliating. But the fact was, Alhazred was small, the situation was dire, and the Nu-Vaal was more likely to stumble than anyone else. He was a broken soul at this point and did not argue at this point, though he did whimper and whine quietly to himself.

"I have far exceeded all logical thought... the end draws near and I know it is my doing. Even my structured mind cannot hold fast over the terrors of the void. My mind, my mind... fragile like a robin's egg. Oh what have I done, what have I done?"

Even at the Jedi's ship, Alhazred stayed in this state of mind. Rocking back and forth in a sitting position, Alhazred's mind flashed over the sacred texts of his people. Even now he recited it to himself, unable to know what else to do.

"Remember this above all else. Ruin will find you in the end, as it will find all things, great or small. Overall, sentience and life are weak hypotheses, and will not last long. They are unbalanced equations... imperfect angles. We all sow the seeds of our destruction, and seek to deny its reckoning. We make mountains of our mistakes, monsters of our misdeeds. We slip and stumble, we fail and we falter. We fail and falter.. fail and fal- oh what comes after that line?"

As Alhazred fumbled for the correct line in his people's sacred texts, he heard the sudden soothing song of the Force come from the holocron. Alhazred gasped like a man surfacing in water. The tune was beautiful and soothing, and even in the noise, Alhazred could sense a light glowing within it.

"And yet, in each of us, a hopeful light..." Alhazred remembered, feeling a sense of peace starting to ease him of his mental anguish. "A hopeful light, a radiant song that holds fast against the hellish shadows that gather between our good intentions and our clumsy misdeeds. While ruin may find us, and will suffer no abnegation, we can take heart, for the hopeful light can burns on brighter than all the stars in the sky"

---

The Starweird had found its foe. The incessant glow of the light irked it to no end, blinding everything else from it. Even in its small form, the cube shape thing before it overwhelmed all its other senses much in the same way its own shrieks of discord did to the others. Wherever they beings of life were, they would be taken care of later, but this thing, this damnable piece of light and hope that shined so valiantly against the darkness, it needed to be destroyed.

It seized the thing in its hands and tried to pull it apart. The thing resisted, and burned at its claws much how fire burned at the hands of stupid and careless. No matter, the thing shrieked and roared as it drove all its energies into the thing. This radiant light needed to be doused with impunity. The starweird would not stop until it was destroyed and forgotten. It was all powerful. It was that which gazed back from the abyss. Destruction was its treasure, and life was its bane, and this thing shined with the life of the Force.

Even as it tried to tear it apart, the fires of the ship's engines began to spread and explode with wild abandon. Even as the flames licked its flesh and burned away its body, the starweird shrieked with untold rage at the box before it. Even as its ethereal muscles gave away to the fires of the engine exploding outwards, it continued to shriek and bash and tear. Only when did the holocron finally break apart did the thing finally rest its voice. Unable to hold its form anymore, it evaporated into nothingness as one final explosion completely destroyed the ship.

---

Alhazred felt the thing's death. The discord in the Force suddenly died down just as much as the peaceful tune of the holocron did. While he could not see or hear the ship being destroyed, he could sense it in the force that the thing was finally gone.

Relief overwhelmed the Nu-Vaal. A veil of stress finally lifted, and Alhazred felt his soul become a bit more at rest. This experience had left him damaged, but he had come out of it alive and possibly wiser. He would need time to heal, in both mind and body, but Alhazred felt at ease again. While he was certainly imperfect, he felt like there was a chance he could become whole once more. Like his comrade in the escape pod, Alhazred drifted into unconsciousness.

@marshland