Dark Synchron

[Miz]

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Every inch of his body soared with pain as the Knight ran into his ship. With the help of his butler, Mikkel was plopped down onto an operating table and injected with painkillers as the auto-doc performed the surgery to save his life. Alfred hopped into the cockpit and jumped to lightspeed only for the ship to bump into another Sith vessel exiting hyperspace. The crash sent the two careening into the planet below where the majority of the fighting was taking place. The auto-doc placed the unconscious body of the crusader into the bacta-tank as Alfred braced for impact on Onderon's jungle surface.

The ship disappeared underneath the jungle foliage, not before a loud crash and black smoke filled the crash site. Alfred took a blaster assuring Mikkel that he would return with help as he left him inside of the bacta tank. He would try to someone to help him retrieve the Jedi somewhere in the war-torn city. It was a fool's errand but he swore to protect him until the day he died.

Five hours passed when Mikkel's luxury ship sunk further into the swamp. The tilt of the ship knocked over the bacta-tank smashing the glass pouring the Jedi onto the metal floor waking him in the process. He was outsmarted by the Sith now his mission failed with him alone and beaten.

Mikkel propped himself up as he put on a fresh set of robes. He wouldn't stand idly by as Onderon was in danger. With only a lightsaber, Mikkel limped off his ship and began heading towards the city. Unfazed by his lost and the infinite amount of starships above assaulting the city. He'd make amends.

@Dmitri

 

[Dmitri]

The pilot Barrel reported that Darth Andredd's Icarus would be exiting hyperspace near Onderon in less than a minute. The Sith Lord was coming to the planet to the besieged planet to pick up the Moff of Raxus. Moff Wren had been an instrument in the conquest of Raxus, and the battle seemed to be reaching a close. Darth Andredd had contacted the man prior and was going to pick him up to take him to Jabiim for a special "party" they had in store for Clan Vhett.

When the Icarus exited hyperspace, they were met with a collision with a fleeing ship. The crash damaged both ships, though the pilots' skill avoided full-on collision. Metal scrapped and the ships shuddered in their brief flirtation. Enough damage occurred that both ships began to float back down to the planet. Darth Andredd contacted a nearby War Leviathan and had them use their tractor beam to catch the Icarus before it fell completely, which accordingly to a later report he would read in the future, had it taken ten more seconds for the tractor beam to lock on, they would have been out of range.

It's rare I feel this sort of rush of death, thought Darth Andredd. It was intoxicating, euphoric. But such matters could only be enthralled for so long. As his ship was brought into the War Leviathan, Darth Andredd contacted the ship's captain to organize a search party. The other vessel needed to be found. Its markings were not Brotherhood, and he planned to find the culprit for his near-death experience.

The search was not quick to employ. The escaping shuttle had crashed in a hotly contested area. With Argus and Gorman leading the charge on the city, several enemy warriors had fled into the jungle foliage to get the better advantage. As such, the search party led by Darth Andredd personally had to move slowly, as to eliminate any enemy forces in the area. Darth Andredd didn't mind. Jungle warfare meant the battles dragged out, and the Sith could feed on the pain of those fighting in the growth. Wounds from battle. Nicks and stings from the flora. Onderon was such bliss, a tease for what was to come on a galactic scale.

Finally, about five hours since the crash in the sky, Darth Andredd's search party arrived at the crash sight. The ship was in decent condition, a testament to the pilot. As they searched the ship, they only found an auto-doc and a used bacta tank. Medical data read that the recent occupant had been recently burned. Was the pilot burned during the crash? Darth Andredd wondered. If so, it left questions as to why the pilot had left the bacta tank early. A quick interrogation of the auto-doc went no where, its programming limited. The Sith had the droid shut off as he investigated the floor. There was bacta fluid on the floor, footprints. There wasn't a second set, suggesting the patient was by themself. Having not dried yet, he deduced that the person couldn't be too far. Widening his senses, he sought out pain like a radar. Pain was his muse, and he could sniff it out. If the man had been badly burned as the medical records said, he wouldn't be moving fast.

There! Darth Andredd's eyes opened as he felt the presence. The man was close, a hundred meters west of their location, heading toward the city. Without a word, the Sith dashed out of the ship, leaving the search party clueless as to follow the Sith or stay at the wreckage.

Come back, meal, thought Darth Andredd. Let me feed on your pain.

 

[Miz]

Looking past the jungle foliage, Mikkel spotted the search party just before landing. His callused feet providing much-needed protection from the burns and the sticks and stones that littered the jungle floor. As he made haste, the Knight felt himself nodding off, an unfortunate side effect of the drugs and stimulants he was given. Leaping on top of a high up tree branch Mikkel would lean his back on the trunk of the tree and rest his head for a bit. The surrounding chaos preventing him from getting any sleep. It was only a few minutes when he heard the commotion of a search party begin to close in on his location.

He wasn't exactly hidden, but his heightened sense of hearing picked up the com chatter of one of the soldiers. He didn't recognize any of the code words, but the accent was a dead giveaway. It would take him more effort to run away and avoid any more damage than to try to throw off their search. Looking down he realized he hadn't covered his trail as his footprints and specs of blood lead straight to him.

As the party closed in on him they would be met with the visage of a great and ancient serpent whose tail seemed to stretch infinitely as it coiled itself around the trees and boulders. Almost ten feet in height, Mikkel would project his voice so that it appeared in all directions to scare off the search party. "Hmm more sacrificez thiz early!?" the great snake would ask, as he greeted his guests with a snake-like grin with a mouth large enough to swallow all of them whole.

Mikkel had read of serpents like this long before the Sith had come back to power. Some of them turned to worshipping these beings as gods who demanded human sacrifices in return for the dark arts. He found old illustrations and folklore depicting such creatures, but none have since emerged after the ancient Sith empire crumbled. He found mention of one in an ancient Jedi holocron on a planet long since destroyed but that was all. Maybe they were extinct but it would be unwise to fight off the black-scaled snake.

If attacked the illusion would fade and give away the Jedi's location being unable to defend himself.

@Dmitri