3rd person: Dantooine mining complex
A barrage of blaster fire in sync with thermal charges erupted across the facility shaking the foundations of the already crumbling Jedi temple. Squads of Mandalorian warriors mounted on agile Stalker Lizards came thundering out of the tree line up the wall and through its breach, unleashing volleys from their rifles onto the unsuspecting Republic forces milling about the compound's high barriers.
Their rugged Beskar armor glinted fiercely in the dawn's rising light as they bore down on the unprepared security detachments with raw hate bellowing from their throats, the moment of careful preparation finally at their people's fingertips.
At their captain rode Jarelle, scarred face contorted behind golden helmet in a battle howl, she flicked extending wrist blades with skilled precision to lacerate into De'Busk's mercenaries that slept near the far side of the facility's breach to start their attack. Each life she took did not bring her the same adrenaline it did before her retraining with Zinn, her presence in the force a much calmer yet formidable entity.
She took care to free any native Dantari tribesmen unable to flee due to restraints, they quickly deserted or reaped up fallen weapons against their once dogmatic masters with similar hate as Jarelle. The Trandoshan commander's militias began scrambling to mount tower defenses as the initial chaotic skirmishes slapped their stronghold from the dense woodlands they relied on so crucially for security without even a twig snap warning.
Torrin and Sansa broke into a run toward the unfolding bedlam, sacred lightsabers gleaming to life. Their bickering had been abruptly terminated before she could retrieve the data they desperately required from the protocol droid making the timing feel all too coincidental for the Tholothan Jedi Knight.
"This raid makes no sense! Reports of their known bases have shown them to be inactive for weeks!" Torrin exclaimed hastily over his shoulder, his brown eyes racing to try and configure a strategy. Sansa scowled for a moment doing her best at deflecting stray bolts with her slim purple blade as the battle began in earnest now.
She cast her gaze out before speaking. "The dark energies have sent the planet into a frenzy!" She spotted Jarelle fighting fearlessly through a duo of mercenaries with her vibro-blade, Stalker Lizards tearing into machinery and toppling supply crates behind the Mandalorian's press.
The Tholothan watched for a moment at the sheer momentum the Mandalorian fought with, her motions with the dual-ended sword reminded her of the flowing techniques taught at Coruscant more than ever before. The warrior's wrist blades had already been snapped and her armor was cracked but she fought on with shocking newfound grace.
The Republic began to direct fire more heavily on the shattered infringement the enemy poured in from. Sansa glimpsed the raw anguish etched in the Mandalorian woman's rough voice between each cry of fury she let loose. Her mind went back to the original plan before the invasion.
"Where did the Trandoshan get off too?" Sansa tried to ask Torrin over the loud explosions but he could not hear her. Just as the Jedi Torrin began weaving through the smoky battle, a piercing shrieking of metal drew their eyes skyward. From the lilac atmosphere came streaking a battered dropship emblazoned with stylized Mythosaur skull sigils roughly painted onto the panels. It hurtled toward the planet's surface with blinding speeds.
"Gauntlet fighter!" Torrin's words perished as the damaged craft broke through the sky, the small planetary resistance showed to be just the start of the short fuse they had lit. Never before had the major clans taken notice of the plight of Dantooine due to a long-standing blood feud between Jarelle's father and the existing bloodthirsty Mandalore leader, the now multiple raining pods busting into an armory building near the gun turrets nestled most heavily signaled their currently harmonious cause.
They discharged in a roaring eruption that rocked the entire staging site to its core far worse than the detonated charges damage. Untouched squads of much heavier armed Mandalorian warriors poured from the wreckage before its blaze died down, they obliterated Republic troops within moments of their hellish arrival with bulky weaponry.
Dantooine's Mandolorian sister clan, now launching a coordinated two-pronged attack with their cruiser dubbed WarMonger that hovered above the temple like an angel of death. Its giant frame was marred with battle scars honoring their victory over the Republic commander's battleship that had only mere minutes before been decimated by an honored unit of commandos and well-placed gunn shelling.
In disarray, Sansa ran toward the albino Wookiee sentry lugging a bound struggling Mandalorian Youth barely older than 19 standard years old. His stringy black hair obscured his terrified eyes. "Get off me!" he shouted over the cacophony to Sansa's horror. Before the Jedi knight could move, the hulking white Wookie howled in stupefaction and agony as a golden plasma blade slashed across his torso.
The tough matted hair did not protect its bisection as the vile creature's split parts fell to the burnt temple's front gardens. The Mandalorian lad's binds fell free as he scrambled to his feet respectfully. Stood there benevolently was Master Zinn, face tusks dangling beneath the dusty brown hood of a combat robe that hid her injured arms from her comrades' glare.
Her gold lightsaber pike looped the air menacingly as she strode forth through choking dust, staff being controlled by her force abilities more than her true strength. Despite grievous wounds tarnishing her structure, righteous zeal propelled the aged Kel Dor woman to battle once more without a hint of pain.
At her arrival, many of De'Busk's forces turned weapons warily upon the mysterious Jedi knight they had been hunting secretly for years. Zinn raised her saber pike and bellowed in a piercing war cry toward the onslaught of blaster volleys. "You butchers shall terrorize innocents no more!" She sprinted onward faster than her worn body should allow, parrying incoming fire as she cut her way toward Commander De'Busk's fortified position at the mining tunnel's gaping mouth.
The Trandoshan was nowhere in sight but his heartache at his brother's death could be felt in the force like an atomizing bomb, he had witnessed the murder from behind a large cannon's viewers with abject horror. Zinn's gambit drew pressure off the entrenched Mandalorians still breaching from small pods and the outer gate, allowing Jarelle to fight towards her clansman witnessing her master's prowess with a wide smile. "FOR DANTOOINE!"
Sansa intercepted her path, presenting another placating hand toward the leader of the attack as she had weeks ago. The scarred warrior yelled before she had the chance to say any word in defense of the young Jedi's cause. "You united with our enemy and hid this slavery from the galaxy!" Jarelle's indictment was plain with despair as she broke into a run again. "My people shall have justice this day!" Her gold helmet fierciely refracted the sunlight back onto the scene as she raised her dual-ended beskar vibroblade toward the Tholothan.
Sansa grasped his lightsaber almost pleadingly as she stared down Jarelle coming toward her now. "We did not know...Please I can help." Her argument perished as sudden cannon mortaring from De'Busk's artillery slammed into their shared position, dropping her sprinting body just yards away from Zinn with sundering force. Sansa cried out in dismay but Torrin was already lunging to guard his companion, azure sabers deflecting the all too close follow-up shots as he imbued them with force energy. "Get back!"
Zinn rushed ahead, Force-ripping the mounted guns from their emplacement in fury before kneeling beside her student now unconscious and bleeding. Through the haze, the Mandalorian reinforcements could be glimpsed unleashing destruction upon the Trandoshan's wrecked fortifications.
De'Busk's scaly hide emerged to duel her blade-to-claw from the ruins of a nearby gun tower, finally answering her challenge face to face. This was no longer political disagreement but a clash between fundamental ideologies and pure instinct lay bare for all to see.
Sansa staunched Jarelle's worst injuries with Force healing techniques, sensing the young warrior's lifeforce faded but clinging to existence. Meeting Torrin's eyes across smoldering rubble, she knew frantic diplomacy was needed to avoid absolute tragedy today for all involved, yet knew no way to move forward. "We need to try to do as little damage as possible" Her voice whispered to Jarelle softly in line with Torrin protecting the two from both sides of the conflict's faction's fire.
The racket of warfare faded into the distance as Zinn locked regard with the hulking, towering form of De'Busk snarling in front of her. Abhorrence rolled off the Trandoshan in swells so palpable they made the Force itself shudder with its deplorable potency. "Jedi BITCH!" he roared, spittle flying from his scaled jaws as his white talons extended to their full, razor-sharp length. "You'll pay for taking the life of my brother!" De'busk's body shook with his speech, Zinn raised her lightsaber pike defensively.
resolute determination etched across her stoic aging Kel Dor features. "...you should beg mercy, monster," she retorted, each remark trickling with their mutual scorn. "This facility's atrocities, the enslavement of innocents...and the death of my beloved son at your hands..." Her gravelly voice captured with a pitfall of authentic anguish over her perceived loss of Filo in times past. Cognus's filthy quagmire of deception had become Zinn's harrowing reality for months stretching into years, alone without any connection but the Mandalorians she had sworn to protect.
With an incoherent scream of unadulterated delirium, De'Busk launched himself forward--a whirling cyclone of slashing talons, corded muscle, and blistering wrath. Zinn barely managed to dodge his opening flurry of swipes, the creature's feral attack testing the limits of her Form 1 deflection due to her weakened arms and his own combat training.
Seizing a shattered destroyed stone pillar in his thick free hand, De'Busk whipped it around in a bludgeoning arc. Zinn ducked beneath the deadly swing, then was forced to leap backward as he used the impromptu weapon to demolish the tiled floor where she'd been standing with multiple crashes. "I'll decorate my court with your cranium, Jedi filth!" De'Busk snarled the threat with conviction as he continued pressing the aggression, shrugging off and skimming past lightsaber burns with animalistic perseverance.
He seemed almost possessed by the way he was able to deftly dodge each blade slash thrown toward the Republic's decorated Outer Commander. Zinn backpedaled again, keenly aware of her fading strength and momentary openings created by her body's lingering wounds now fully tested. Opportunities the relentless Trandoshan would be ruthlessly looking to exploit with his flickering bloodlusted yellow eyes.
Reciting the Jedi Code's mantra under her rasping breaths silently behind her Antiox mask, Zinn embraced the Force's flow like an old companion she had lost touch with--allowing it to guide her movements with peerless synchronicity of water's soaking defense. De'Busk lashed out again, all finesse abandoned for pure ferocity, the aging Jedi seemed to drift around each looping strike and gnashing bite like a mist in the breeze.
With a slight flick of her damaged off-hand, Zinn used a well-timed Force push to accelerate De'Busk's racing momentum sending the bulky reptile tumbling off-balance. In one fluid upswing, her golden lightsaber pike flailed out...severing the Trandoshan's left arm just above the elbow joint like a tender cut of meat. "Sloppy." She muttered.
De'Busk's enraged wails reached untouched and earsplitting decibels as the cauterized stump sprayed a gruesome smell across the battlefield's already horrid wafting stench of death. He spun in a leg-sweep aimed at the much shorter Jedi master quickly. The Kel Dor agilely vaulted the attack, then unleashed another telekinetic shockwave that slammed De'Busk's mutilated body against the tunnel entrance's rock walls with crushing force.
The battered Trandoshan collapsed in a mound at Zinn's booted feet, grievously wounded but still conscious as he spat flecks of reptilian blood to her pleasure. "I love it when we fight..." De'busk willed sarcastically, glaring up through a haze of pain and turmoil, he dribbled another bout of phlegm and a mouthful of broken teeth at her impassive countenance.
"Kill me...Prove you Jedi are all the sssame, end the fighting--" he yapped, struggling to even articulate past his pulverized chest cavity. "You know nothing of the galaxy's dark secrets..." De'busks words met Zinn's expressionless mask causing it to break ever so slightly as she shifted her pike toward his sprawled wretched form.
Her voice was nearly silenced by the distant screams and explosions echoing through the war-torn complex all around her. "For the sake of all you've put through torment here," she finally intoned, pausing to gaze up at the fresh plumes of smoke staining the skies, "You will suffer far worse than this." With those parting words, Zinn turned on her heel and strode into the inferno still consuming the Republic mining facility, pinning the reptile painfully under the entrance as his muffled yells turned to curses.
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His fate left till after she had secured the rest of the fort, the battle raged ever more intensely as Zinn rejoined the fray, her lightsaber pike cutting down confused Republic troops with cold precision. The Mandalorians' unrelenting slaughter overwhelmed the mining facility's bastions quickly with their combined strengths, gray troopers pouring through the breaches left by the explosive insertion still the largest threat to the thinning ranks.
Sansa and Torrin fought back-to-back against the tide of beskar-clad combatants that seemed to froth at the mouth, their lightsabers a whirling vortex of purple and sapphire energy deflecting the endless barrage of scorching blaster bolts sent hurtling their way from smoking guns.
The allied mercenaries were quickly being routed near them as Republic troops locked all out of the base to fight off the Mandalorians alone, without De'busk as Commander their ranks began to feel the buckle of intense conflict.
"We cannot prevail here!" Sansa shouted over the thunderous cacophony of shelling and screams, her words laced with urgent practicality. "Surrender may be our only path to prevent further bloodshed!" Her sights tried to encounter Torrin's vacant stare as she struck a charging Mandalorian at the knee, sparing them yet she sent them flying away with The Force toward another impending enemy.
Torrin's jaw clenched, sweat beading on his large brow from the sheer exertion of fending off their attackers without real reinforcement from the Republic for the first time. "And what then?" he angrily retorted, almost accusatory in tone. "Allow them access to the hidden Jedi temples and their priceless knowledge and artifacts like De'busk? Zinn is clearly the Sith threat you mentioned!" He fired toward her as he decapitated an overly enthusiastic Mandalorian after a failed wrist blade slash.
The man's charred head fell near the feet of another bellowing warrior. A cataclysmic concussive blast rocked the earth beneath their feet, staggering the two Jedi knights momentarily. "Zinn is not the true enemy!" Sansa stole a glance around at the wholesale massacre and devastation rapidly consuming the complex around them.
Thick blankets of acrid cindered smoke choked the air, the screams of the wounded and dying a haunting underscore of the entire nightmarish scene that left dripping wounds in the living force. "I sense willful ignorance in you, Torrin!" she shouted over the din, batting away a fresh volley of crimson energy bolts before rushing to a new cover behind a destroyed dura-steel container.
"You Don't feel the corrupting aura poisoning this world? The dark side's unforgettable stain seeps from this very soil, not Zinn's cause!" Sansa pushed a rushing squad back with a powerful blast sent from both hands toward the treeline.
Her words struck a nerve deep in Torrin, counterattacks becoming ingrained with refreshed intensity. His mind was physically fighting against her argument as much as their Mandalorian aggressors it seemed.
"Which is precisely why we cannot allow them to claim victory here!" he barked through gritted teeth. "The consequences of failure are too--" His words caught in his throat as a blinding gray detonation ripped through a squad of Republic troops near her position.
Sansa instinctively raised her lightsaber to deflect the shockwave and shrapnel, but the concussive force still lifted her body off her feet and flung her in a sprawling angle near a now broken drilling apparatus.
Dazed, she blinked away stars just in time to see Zinn sprinting through the billowing black haze, beckoning Torrin outright into battle. The Jedi knight hesitated only briefly before following after her shadow, clearing a path through the Mando forces between them.
Sansa gathered herself, straightening her robes as a looming silhouette strode towards her purposefully. She tensed as the imposing figure resolved into the helmeted, ash-daubed form of Jarelle, somehow back to consciousness after her near-death experience earlier.
Jarelle's tall frame met Sansa with imposing might. "Your fight is lost, Jedi," she spoke without preamble. " Cease hostilities before more of your warriors are sent to bask in eternal glory." Her tone was utterly devoid of bluster or smug hubris. An undeniable statement of fact that could no longer be denied as the surface of Dantooine was now profusely drenched in blood.
Around them, victorious Mandos roared their jubilant chants and raised their beskar-blades into the scorched sky triumphantly as the last members of the mercenaries found themselves locked out of the temple to face war crimes for their past wickedness just mear feet away from their hirers establishing a plan to push back the adversary's charge.
Bristling in frustration at the futility of their circumstances, Sansa inclined her head respectfully to the capable warrior. "Very well...I warn you, that our terms of surrender include conserving all relics and shrines inside this primary site. Failure to comply will only--" Jarelle silenced her with a blistering glare, her body language shifting to something akin to genuine regret beneath the expressionless gold-plated beskar helm covering her face that she began taking off.
"Walk your path with dignity, as I permit all surviving Republic troops their lives on this solemn vow...all who submit will be spared." She turned and stomped away, raising herself with his jetpack with a thunderous flare and rocketing skyward to rejoin her warriors in victory planning their next push of the inner complex.
Leaving Sansa alone in the smoldering ruins to ponder her choice, swallowing the bitter ashes of hard-fought defeat, She wondered how Torrin was faring and if he was given the same choice. Only now realizing how their connection to Zinn and De'busk was the only thing truly making them the foe of the peaceful planet's constant cries into the Force.
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The combat devolved into a whirlpool of unrestrained chaos as Jarelle's clan and rogue Jedi Zinn utterly dominated the outmatched Republic soldiers encamped in the now fully blown-open Jedi temple.
Torrin stood resolute amid the madness, lightsabers whirling in defensive arcs to deflect the endless incoming waves of Mandolorians attempting to pillage the sacred site. For every blaster bolt batted away, a dozen more scorching crimson lances of searing plasma emerged from the roiling chaos of shouting warriors encroaching ever forward.
Torrin was backed by the most hardened of the Republic's troops, their will to survive emboldened in their returned fire and staunch defense maneuvers. Zinn herself materialized through the haze as the Republic troops ran further into the temple's heart, her body deteriorated and battle-worn yet moving with undiminished intensity.
Zinn's golden lightsaber pike whizzed with fatal promise as she engaged the Jedi for the first time, Mandalorian warriors fanning out in her wake. "You have been deceived by the Republic!" she cried, voice a strangled electronic rasp. "This world holds darkness outside reckoning--a blight the Order dared not confront but we can still take it head on!" The conviction in her voice could be felt through the halls of the trembling sanctum.
Zinn unleashed a telekinetic shockwave that sent a cluster of Republic soldiers hurtling away like puppets torn from their invisible strings. The path now clear, she leveled her long pike toward Torrin with a flare. "I compel you to abandon this place and the evils it has allowed to fester." purposefulness proffered defense as she spoke. "Let uncorrupt warriors purge what you are blind to!"
Torrin answered with a groan of sheer exertion, dishing out a series of practiced twin saber strikes with Force-enhanced strength. Zinn matched him blow for sizzling blow, parrying with a graceful economy of motion that spoke to decades of focused method even with her arm injuries taxing her solidity. "Zinn, you are utterly lost to the dark side's manipulation!" Torrin managed over the din of crackling energy.
"Can you not sense the shroud of deception clouding your mind to fight The Order itself?!" Torrin said as the vision of the crumbling Jedi temple flashed in his mind, he resolved himself further in his fight. Nothing said could truly change his mind to trust anything found here dut to its dark message.
From the corner of his vision, Torrin caught Mandalorian reinforcements bearing down on his position, their jetpacks leaving scorched contrails in their wake all along murals of ancient masters to his distress. Reacting on pure intuition, he reached out with the Force and summoned a crumbling ferrocrete pillar, attempting to crumble the section between them and the battalions.
The collum exploded in a spray of lethal shrapnel that sent the Mandos pinwheeling wildly off-course then crashing with deadly force into nearby tunnels. "Enough!" Sansa cried towards Zinn and Torrin, deflecting blaster bolt after blaster bolt with her lightsaber's spinning revolutions as she carved her way into the complex's hectic scene after her confrontation with Jarelle. "I beg both of you to stop this now!" Her head tendrils twitched with her latent rage at the continued loss of life over a simple establishment.
Torrin broke off from Zinn in a feint of evasive maneuvers. With a deft application of his mastery over telekinesis, he swept Sansa up in a willed Force-buoying--allowing them to sail unimpeded over the swirling battle toward one of the distant mining tunnel entrances snaking toward the cave they had walked before the invasion. "De'busk lives and cowardly hides within...If we give up we will need reassurance we won't be killed." He said to the more serene Sansa. "After we have him--If you choose to fight I will not join you." The Tholothan determined as they landed.
Zinn snarled in frustration but was quickly forced back on the defensive as a barrage of rockets streaked from the last burrowed Republic troopers regaining consciousness. She batted away the bombardment with a curt deflection of her lightsaber's wide form, the explosive impacts cratering the temple around her. Due to their distraction, Zinn could not give chase to her fleeing quarry as the two knights honed in on the Trandoshan's energy in the force deep within Dantooine.
Down the dim coiling tunnel, both Sansa and Torrin could sense the unmistakable energies of the ancient Force nexus now brimming with pulsing power. Along with the niggling ambiance of insidious decomposition that Sansa had so fervently warned about somehow seemed on full blast, unlike the last time they ventured down to the crypt.
Torrin's eyes were no longer shielded from its dark horror, but his mind yet sealed itself. "We must locate De'Busk...there are still too many layers of deception at play," Torrin murmured grimly as they pressed deeper into the passage. "The council and the Republic need to know that a Mandalorian war is on the horizon...and whose fault it is." The thundering volleys and anguished cries of the battle still raging over the surface echoed endlessly, pursuing them into that swallowing gloom.
"You still act as if this has nothing to do with them!" Sansa's voice nearly shook the cavern. "WHEN we find the Trandoshan, his corruption must be brought to light by him or else we stand to end up like Zinn." The shadows of the ancient Jedi tunnels seemed to swallow Sansa and Torrin whole as they raced deeper beneath Dantooine's surface.
"You keep insisting there is some bigger threat than the obvious blood thirst this planet's riches have brought...I do not agree that there is a larger conspiracy than the Commander and Zinn's own treachery." Torrin said as he led the way, his lightsabers casting an azure brilliance that only partially illuminated their perilous path through the underpasses.
They felt a vague life energy that the lizard jilted in the force, silently they both knew something felt off, almost as if the man himself had changed in the span of a battle's time. Another wave of reverberating explosions and the more muffled shrieks of clashing warriors punctuated their trek, yet another noise began worming its way through the subterranean gloom.
The unmistakable hum and snap of a lightsaber pike singeing the stagnant ambiance, gaining on their location. "Zinn pursues," Torrin expressed tersely over his shoulder. "We dare not confront her without the Commander in hand." No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a blinding energy bolt detonated against the tunnel ceiling.
Golden-white shards of rock shrapnel pelted them as another volley found its mark closer still as the Mandalorian cruiser began to raze the grounds to cindered ashes above them. Undeterred, Torrin gestured sharply, erecting a shielding Force barrier to absorb and diffract the incoming barrage of tumbling stone.
The relentless salvo continued hammering their position, runny streams of molten ferrocrete beginning to snake down the cracked tunnel walls from the temple's decimation. Sansa squinted against the scalding brightness, witnessing glimpses of Zinn's profile weaving between the suffocating debris clouds with almost preternatural speed.
The loud thrumming of her fierce lightsaber staff accompanied each pulse of superheated plasma lancing towards them. "We cannot outpace her like this!" Sansa shouted over the clamor. "We have to find him now!" Sansa knew once the battle was over that the Mandalorian justice system would spark a war between their two factions if not handled correctly.
"She is blinded by vengeance," Torrin responded, deflecting away a large boulder with his lightsabers' whirling dynamism. "We can use that to our advantage--" As if in answer, the tunnel trembled violently underfoot more violently than before.
A menacing energy pulsed ahead far greater and more insidious than anything either Jedi could have anticipated shot forth from the darkness of the tunnel ahead. The two were caught off-guard by a blinding blast that rocked the tunnel from directly behind them once more at the same time.
Zinn came hurtling out of the obscuring palls, lightsaber pike leading her deadly charge. With almost contemptuous ease, she battered aside Torrin's defensive posture, sending him crashing painfully into the far corner with her much stronger command of the force. Sansa's follow-up flurries were struck back against the Kel Dor's precise form 1 defense.
Master Zinn was a true Jedi practitioner of excelled blade combat, years of pushing herself due to her injury and path that diverged from the orders hold on ideas about building inner power.
"Fools!" Zinn spat the word with palpable disdain as she relentlessly pressed her advantage. "You remain willfully blind to the truth of what pulls the strings on this malformed system, I do not wish to simply execute the monster!" She tried to break through a saber clash with Sansa as Torrin regained his footing, combining his efforts with hers to erect a shielding barrier of pure Force energy against Zinn's mannered applications of her pike.
She hammered against their defenses with every ounce of her self-righteous fury. "Then enlighten us to this so-called truth!" Sansa shouted, straining against Zinn's unrelenting attacks with the help of Torrin. "What depths have you sunken to, old friend?!" Whether out of a deranged desire to educate them or simply buying time to recharge her offensive, Zinn's stance shifted subtly.
She stepped backward, still braced against their combined power yet allowing the merest respite. "This entire system--Dantooine and the multitude of lies obscured within--belongs to a far greater hand...Before the Republic betrayed me I found evidence of Sith right under the nose of The Order!" She sneered at the final phrase, almost tasting the irony on her bloodied beak.
With an empowered push, Zinn bashed their shielding barrier and sent them tumbling backward down the sloping passage in sliding motions. At the bottom of the short rocky declivity, a set of ancient stone doors a few dozen feet tall loomed.
Their pitted and cracked visages dating back countless millennia to the founding of this forgotten hallowed Jedi world yet completely tainted by something much more recent. "De'busk hides in the dark heart of this world's secrets...The tomb of Darth Zannah..." Zinn intoned harshly.
With a flaring push of Force energy, the immense durasteel-laced slabs ground inward--their millstone-like pivots screeching from lack of wear and tear. The two Jedi did not understand how they had missed such a large entrance in their earlier exploration but simply half-turned to brace themselves from both Zinn and the twilight horrors waiting for them.
The absolute pitch blackness of the void beyond those doors seemed to suck away all illumination that scampered inside. Sansa felt an immediate frigid chill grasp at her very essence, while Torrin physically recoiled as if struck outright. An oily, cloying miasma of pure malignancy slithered outwards like the very depths of the galaxy's own decrepit filmy soul given form.
At the center of the swirling emptiness knelt a hunched, tattered figure clad in the remnants of what appeared to have once been an opulent crimson Republic officer uniform. As Sansa and Torrin scrambled to their senses, the disheveled form turned towards them revealing itself to be De'Busk. The shivering Trandoshan seemed utterly oblivious to their existence, turning while rasping and pleading towards the eldritch murk in a language that made Sansa's very cells shudder with discordant agony.
His arm was still nothing more than a stump, ragged tomes and occult paraphernalia lay strewn about. The battered reptile had clawed his way bloodily through nightmare after nightmare to reach this profane sanctum after his battle with Zinn.
"What...what is this place?" Torrin's words swept into a void as his gaze traced the edges of that vanta black aperture. The slightest visual inspection birthed immediate pangs of soul-scouring dread. "The answers to the fiend's enlightenment," Zinn stated as if admonishing a pair of naive younglings. "Dantooine's new legacy was founded on the unyielding bedrock beneath, built to not honor but to conceal..."
As if answering her revelations, from out of the depthless nothingness came a dull, barely audible whispering that nonetheless slithered directly into the group's mind. It was not a language or even sounds as natural comprehension perceived, merely existential gloaming shards given voice to congeal into physical form through strange baritone ululation.
De'Busk bared his teeth in a grimace. Body and soul unmistakably roiling in anguish the longer he was exposed to those maddening emanations from the unseen presence he now appealed to. Sansa could not tear her eyes away, her mouth slowly falling agape in terror as she realized the entity had been feeding off the conflict this entire time. Like a large funnel of living force being swirled directly to this monster.
Before she could fully process what secrets this truly violated world contained, De'Busk's ravaged features took on fevered intensity unlike before. Prostrating himself inches from the floor as if entreating some long-forgotten deity, he wailed in that same alien tongue none of them recognized.
Anomalous, harsh, and croaking words culled from the black grinds of the cosmos' negative vitality itself...And from the abyss, an answer spoke back resoundingly. "You've pleased me greatly, my old friend...do not fear for another moment."