Yavin IV. A place infamous throughout history. Steeped in the Lore of the Galaxy. With the remnants of the first Death Star scattered in the orbit of the planet, the skies above glinted with parts of the massive space station revolving above the atmosphere, the occasional piece descending through the atmosphere in a halo of fire, shooting stars marking their death knoll.

Quo stood near the ruins of an ancient temple, once the home of the Rebellion fighter base. Overgrown with tendrils and boughs of massive trees, the jungle reclaiming its own as the years progressed. Hard to believe that nearly forty years ago this had been the site of one of the most influential battles in Galactic history.

“Readings?” He said to his squad leader, Captain Relg. The tall, human soldier was staring intently at the information screen on his portable scanner.

“Nothing out there as far as I can tell from these readings. Are we confident that this is where they were?” He turned to Quo sharply, aware suddenly that he had questioned the Sith’s judgement. His body tensed, expecting to have his wind pipe crushed, or some other part of his anatomy. A look from Quo sent a shiver down his spine. He instinctively averted his gaze, suddenly very interested in the information coming from the machine he held in his hands.

Quo strode forward, his mind doing its own scanning through the Force. There was something out there. He could feel it. Dark, cold, and used to hiding. He admired this thing, it was a hunter, a stealthy one. “This is the area, and there is something here, I have felt its presence.”

Following him, Relg double checked his scope, still nothing. “It’s not showing on my scanner Sir, not yet anyway. OK everyone, ready status.” The rest of the squad checked their weapons, a plethora of clicks and snaps as their weapons were cocked and readied. ”Move out, squad formation Victor two seven.”

Falling into position around the Zabrak and their commander, the circle of the five other troopers formed a chevron. “Check your arcs, and zero comms chatter,” Relg ordered.

Making their way through the dense forest every one of them was on high alert, even Quo who was fingering the pommel on his lightsaber. Some three clicks from their muster position they finally came in sight of the entrance to the towering edifice of the temple like structure. From their vantage point some eighty meters from the entrance Quo could see the devastation in the clearing outside. Several battle speeders were reduced to twisted masses of metal and plexiglass, bodies and body parts strewn around the plaza before the huge entrance doors.

“Still nothing, Sir,” Relg reported, ”but what the hell could have done that?”

“I don’t know, but our job is to find out, and that’s what we’ll do.” The Zabrak was scanning the plaza for any sign of movement through a set of viewers. There are no blast patterns he though to himself. The scene was one of utter destruction, as if a divine wind had swept across the surface. Everything down there was crushed, twisted, mangled, and deposited in piles of debris, as if a giant hand had simply crushed them into pulp, even the personnel unlucky enough to be in its path.

“Spread out,” Relg ordered his small group, “watch and shoot, watch and shoot”

“Let’s move down, without attracting any unwanted attention,” Quo said to the Captain, “we need to get closer. But stay in cover”

The closer they got the eerier it got. No birds sang. The whole area was blanketed in a dome of silence, the animal sounds coming from far in the distance. Quo and Relg both knew that there had once been a squadron of fifty men, with two battle tanks, and a handful of speeder bikes here. Nothing recognisable remained of the hardware. It looked as if it had been dropped from a great height, much akin to a aircraft accident. Parts of disassembled machine lay in a debris field that stretched away to the edge of the clearing. The team sat at the perimeter, their faces a mask of disbelief at the scene that confronted them.

Bodies had been shredded. There was not a single recognisable body amongst them. Bits of arms, legs, torsos, and assorted viscera were splattered around the plaza, even up the face of the walls and the magnetic doors that sealed the monolithic structure. They stayed concealed in the shrubbery that skirted the open square, every eye scanning the vision, keeping alert for any indication of whatever had caused all this destruction. Even in the dark the carnage was evident.

“Near the doors, Sir.” Relg gesticulated the object of his interest. About twenty feet from the doors was a pile, resembling an ancient cairn. This was no cairn of stone work however. It was a cairn of human heads, perfectly arranged, the rictus stare of each of them a mask of terror. Every one of them had had any hair that they may have had in life had been removed, they were a statue of grotesquery, both in proportion and subject.

Relg’s squad were nervous. Quo could not only feel their tension through his connection to the Force, but by the tightening of their grips on the weapons they were aiming across the expanse of the open courtyard. Small creaks gave away the soldiers response of pulling their weapons tighter into their shoulders. The atmosphere was almost palpable.

“Drexxy, Millet, move to cover, I want triangulated fire at the middle of that monstrosity. Tergo and Pell, arcs left and right of centre, thirty degrees. Burl, you’re with me.” Relg arranged his troops to cover as much of the area in front of them as possible with his limited team. Travelling light had its advantages at times, but he wished he had some heavy weapons to back them up right now. He scanned his team, ready to go at Quo’s orders. Relg and Burl were crouched, waiting to go on Quo’s orders.

Sensing no immediate threat Quo motioned the team forwards. Relg and Burl moved low and fast over the ground, taking cover behind the debris as they pepper potted towards the obelisk of heads, constantly scanning for attack.

Burl broke cover, only ten meters until he was on top of the dark column of his former comrades, close enough to be able to make out individuals that he knew. The smell was sweet, almost sickly, with the massive stone slabs of the courtyard both slick and sticky from the blood and other fluids that had covered it. From his vantage point Relg covered him. From the middle of the perverted altar came a mist, a dark smoke, rising, curling into the air about a meter above the ground. Within seconds the mist had thickened becoming an opaque shadow that struck out enveloping Burl totally as he approached. The black sheath covered him completely, bulging around the big soldier until he was totally obscured. As suddenly as it had developed it disappeared with a ‘Schlup’ sound, parts of the soldier being dissipated in every direction. Nothing remained of Burl but a splattering of meat ejected from where he had stood. His weapon clattered to the ground a couple of yards away from Relg, twisted and mangled beyond recognition. He never fired a round, nobody had. The dismay was palpable.

“Fall back Relg!” Quo shouted the order towards his Captain. Relg hesitated, glancing left and right, his body pulsing with adrenaline. “Now Relg!!”. The Captain turned, covering the ground towards Quo’s position. Three meters from the cover of the forest a column of smoke snaked out like a black arm, covering the distance in the blink of an eye. Encircling the Captain in a grip of darkness, he was eliminated from view before he could make it to the jungle.

Quo struck out with an outstretched arm, lightning erupting from his fingertips, the whole of his pride and anger flowing into the effort. Sparks danced across the couple of meters to the enveloping fog, illuminating it from the inside. Faintly he could make out Relg, being torn apart, piece by piece. There was no noise, and the oppression of the darkness on Quo’s mental capacity was almost overwhelming. He knew the Dark Side, revelled in it in fact, but this was different, elemental, primeval. It was like a raw animal feeling, feral and lacking in conscience, like a base emotion, but concentrated into a physical force.

It touched Quo’s consciousness, and Quo pushed back, probing for a weakness. His ministrations of the Force seemed to distract the entity, releasing it’s grip on Captain Relg, ejecting it from its sphere of control. Relg landed twenty meters away, with a sickening thud, his head hitting the plascrete surface, smashing like an egg as it impacted the unforgiving surface, his brains escaping in a mush of grey and red.

The entity probed back and Quo could feel its tendrils entering his brain, tasting this interesting thing that was before it. Quo emptied his mind, allowing it freedom to meld with his mind, allowing it access to his very core. He must know the source of this power. He had to find a way to destroy it, or harness it. Yes. Opening his mind fully to it he enveloped it with his own consciousness, feeling the dark power surging through him, like a dark electricity it charged through every synapse in his brain. He fizzed with the glory of it, accepting it as his own, becoming symbiotic with the newly found malevolence. He could feel the raw consciousness joining with his own, fuelling his lust for greatness within him.

Quo was shattered, but ecstatic. It felt like hours since the being had first made contact with him. From the outside there was no difference to behold. The mist had killed their captain, and merely brushed against the Zabrak Sith before dispersing on the breeze. The troopers were still en guarde, however the cloying atmosphere was gone. Even the humans could feel the change.

Pell was still next to him, covering the area, still shocked at Burl and the Captains deaths. “Is it gone, Sir? Did you get destroy it?” The young soldier looked shell shocked, staring at their leader.

“It’s gone from here. Regroup, and we’ll go home.” Quo turned and set off back to the rendezvous point, a twisted smile on his face.

Sleep was a good thing, something that he enjoyed greatly, but this dream was perplexing. It was of happy times, times before he found the dark side of the Force. Over the years, his dreams, and nightmares, had kept him from getting any rest, which had started to cause him to question the reality of things around him. So he developed a way to shield his mind against dreaming altogether. Why he was dreaming now was very alarming. Panicking himself awake, Armad jumped up off his bunk and immediately tried to call upon the Force to….but it wasn’t there. He couldn’t feel the Force at all.

He knew that he’d spent his younger and adolescent years without using the Force, so he knew that he wouldn’t be completely helpless as some of his fellow Clan members, who’ve been using the Force from an early age. While he gets dressed, Armad contact his Battleteam Leader to see what is going on. Aexod informs him that he now has the ability to touch the Force, and that he’s having a difficult time controlling his new found power. Armad suggests that he seek out his second, as if what he suspects has happened, DarkHawk will have lost his connection to the Force and together, they would be able to help each other until this situation resolves itself.

Ending that conversation, Armad had an eerie realization drift up from memory. His Master, Macron, had been a product of others and self Sith experimentation for his entire life, and was definitely unsure how his old Master would react to not having access to the Force. Hurriedly getting dressed, Armad tried to get ahold Vicious, Macron’s current apprentice. Armad found that Vicious was slightly perturbed that he couldn’t access the Force, but that he was coping the best he could and that he hadn’t heard from Macron in a few days. Which was not unheard of, as he was prone to disappearing into his experiments for days on end. Telling Vicious to make his way to his Master’s quarters to check to see if he was there, then head to his lab on level 13. Grabbing his wrist controller, and tapping a few commands to send a couple of his droids to the level 13 lab, Armad headed himself towards his Master’s alchemaic lab.

Finally arriving on level 13, very tired, Armad forgot how exhausting it was to hurriedly walk somewhere without the aid of the Force. Thought about making a mental note to work on his physical strength and stamina, but chuckled that thought away. Though if this wasn’t resolved fairly quickly, then he might have to revisit that line of thought. Armad could see Vicious arriving from the other direction, when he he noticed him, Vicious smirked and shook his head in the negative, indicating that Macron hadn’t been back to his quarters in a while. Which was fairly known, that their Master could generally be found in his lab doing some experiment of one kind or another. As they neared the entrance to the lab itself, they started to hear loud piercing screaming coming from within. Sharing a quick fearful concerned look between them, both rushed in to see their Master writhing on the floor, in what appeared to be severe pain, as several nearby objects had either been destroyed or crushed while flailed about in his battle armor. It was just as he had thought, Macron’s Sith alchemy was starting to reject the implants and enhancements that he’d performed on himself over the years, and now that he could no longer use the Force to compel what he’d done to be accepted, it was literally biting him in the arse.

Knowing that they should probably get him to the infirmary, but not seeing an easy way to do it, both of them knew that the only other option would be to just put him out of his misery. But they both knew that if they failed and he came back, which would be just like him, that he would remind them both of whom the Master was, or he would just kill them both. Either way, not something they wanted to find out. Luckily at that moment, the droids that Armad had called for had arrived. Not wanting to subject his droids to too much damage, Armad looked around for anything that would subdue the Adept for his transport to the infirmary, which would by no means be easy. Looking around for anything that might help, Armad spotted a couple of syringes laying on the workbench, and recalling from his past, that Macron had said that those were filled with a powerful sedative, but never really explained why he had them or what they were for. Typing in a couple of commands into his wrist controller, Armad’s droids came forward to pick up the writhing Adept, three to each side. As soon as each droid had gained purchase on an appendage or piece of armor, Armad stepped in and injected one of the syringes into Macron’s neck. Almost immediately the Sith Alchemist calmed down and stopped flailing about. Giving a sigh of relief, Armad instructed the droids to make their way to the infirmary, while he commed ahead to let them know what to expect.

While in a turbolift, about half way there, Macron came out of his sedation. Coming to, he grabbed hold of the two nearest droids and crushed them in his gauntlets. The other four couldn’t handle the weight of the armored Juggernaut, and dropped him. Seeing the pain and anger swell in his eyes, Armad jumped back and up into the corner of the turbolift, narrowly avoiding getting swept onto his back. Vicious was not so lucky and received an armored boot to the shin, dropping him to one knee. The four remaining droids fared the worst of the damage, taking several kicks or arm bashes that they, either got ripped apart or damaged beyond use. Dropping back down, Armad pulled out another of the syringes and injected it into Macron again. “He burned through the sedation?” Vicious asked incredulously.

“His enhanced body and poison resistances make it hard for things like that to work for very long.” Armad replied. “Looks like we’re going to have to drag him ourselves, and we’ll have to be quick about it, as I’ve only got one more syringe left.” Each grabbing a leg, they continued on towards the infirmary, but it was slow going, plus they figured out about how much time they had before their Master burned through that sedative and wanted to be ready to administer the last dose before he woke up.

Finally limping into the infirmary, both Vicious and Armad looked like they’d both been put through the wringer. Vicious was favoring his right leg and holding his right arm against his ribs, while Armad had his right arm in a sling and the left side of his face was swollen with blood trickling out his nose. When the medics got over their initial shock, they asked what had happened. Armad recanted what had happened since finding their Master in a slurred voice, as Vicious was having trouble breathing. He finished by stating that about ten minutes ago, Macron had burned through his second injection of sedative, and proceeded to kick and punch his apprentices, until Vicious was about to control his arms long enough to administer the last syringe. “You probably have about three or four minutes until he wakes up again. Don’t know how long it’ll take this time.” Armad stated as they dropped his legs in front of the gathering medics.

“Let’s get him into one of the stasis chambers before that happens!” The medic barked. He must have been on the receiving end of a Macron punishment before, or seen the results of one.

Vicious managed to hobble his way over to an empty chair and plopped down in it, wincing in pain from the jolt of the sudden stop. Armad dropped to his knees and started to fall over as he started to see blackness coming in from the edges of his vision. The last thing he remembered was hearing someone say, “oh crap” as he watched the floor greet him.

Attached is the PDF of my entry for the Polarity Shift competition.

-- Atra Ventus #11708

*__ACC Absolution__*
*__Command deck__*

Marcus woke up feeling groggy, as if he hadn’t had enough rest for the night. In and of itself this wasn’t surprising, his workload had been increasing. He’d been given assignments by the Headmaster, the digital pile of exams was ever-increasing, and to top it off, Cethgus had left for the Dark Council. Just when he thought his work couldn’t get much worse, they had heard from Odan-Urr. The Grandmaster, Pravus, had descended upon the planet and burnt its surface to a crisp.

When he went to bed his head swam with questions, and it was probably because of them that he had been unable to rest properly. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he swung his legs from the bed and tried to stand up, only to end up on the floor as his legs completely gave way. His mind raced, *What the hell?* He tried to push himself up, but found himself faced with great difficulty, he couldn’t even push his own upper body from the floor. It was as if he had completely forgotten how to use his muscles. Instinctively he reached for the Force, to lean on it as a crutch. But instead of finding the power of the omnipresent energy field, he found nothing. He could not hear its whisper, nor grasp its strands, and straining to sense it caused him a splitting headache. What had happened? Why could he no longer sense the Force? His mind racing again, and he had to focus inward to calm himself. His breathing calm, he focused solely on getting to his feet. Slowly but surely his muscles reacted as he wanted them to, even though it took him great effort. Shambling over to the chair where his clothes lay he began to get dressed. Just as he had finished, an explosion rocked the ship. Alarms started blaring, and someone in the hall was screaming.

Hurrying outside, as best as he could with wobbly knees, the Mystic was unprepared for what he saw next. Several administrative aids were held suspended against the ceiling, like pieces of paper sticking to a sheet of plastic. As he spun around, looking for the source of the telekinetic display of power, but saw no other Jedi. What he did see were several troopers kneeling on the floor, their heads between their hands, muttering to themselves.

“H-help,” one of the suspended crewmen chokes. Panicking slightly, Marcus reaches for the Force again, to help them down, but was quickly rewarded with a stabbing pain to the temples. Cursing loudly, he motions for them to stay put, ridiculous as it was. They were obviously not going anywhere.

“J-just stay put,” he calls to them. “I’ll get help.” Limping through the corridor he passes by the set of troopers, whose muttering he could now hear.

“The voices, the voices, make them stop, stop the voices,” one of them says. Marcus flops down in front of him, not having the strength in his legs to properly kneel. He takes the head of the trooper in his hands and looks him dead in the eye, intending to reassure the soldier, but was instead faced with a screaming man.

“AAAAAAH!” the trooper yells. “I see your past, I can feel your future. You are surrounded by death.” The trooper begins rambling and eventually faints. *What in the blazes is going on?!* Marcus thought to himself. Working himself up to his feet again, Marcus starts down the corridor again, intending to find the bridge and see if any more sense could be made of this. As he rounded a corner, instead of being faced with the access door to the bridge, he was hit squarely in the chest by something invisible. It knocked him backwards and sent him flying into the bulkhead behind him. Dazed he saw the XO of the ship, Commander Walas Sedaya, run towards him, apologizing profusely.

“Oh no, I’m sorry sir. So sorry, I-I can’t control it. I meant to wave at you, and instead you were slammed against the bulkhead. That’s twice now it happened and I just can’t expla-,” she was cut short in her ramblings by Marcus holding up his hand. His head felt like it had split open and released several rancors onto his back who were now beating it into submission.

“Ow,” he managed weakly. “Keep your hands down will you.” It was beginning to dawn on him what had happened here, and if he was right, they were in dire straights. He pushed himself to his feet for the third time that morning, and continued down the corridor, ignoring the apologizing Commander. Keying in his access code, the doors to the bridge opened, and he was met with utter chaos. Deckplates were flying around, consoles ripped from the walls, crackling electricity shot through the air, and flashes of blinding light were going off every few meters down in the pits. The upper walkways were mostly fine, and he could see the Captain standing at the end near the observatory window.

Slowly limping on, he made his way to the commanding officer standing looking out into space. But as he got closer, he could see that something was wrong. The Captain was breathing heavily, labored as if unable to catch his breath. Marcus approached further, curious to see what was happening to the woman standing there. When he got close enough, he reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder, intending to spin her around and lean on her, but when she faced him and he could see her eyes, he knew he had made a fatal mistake. Her eyes burned red in rage, the energy of the dark side clearly visible through he visage, ready to unleash the terrible power that was inherent in the Force.

Marcus merely stood there, and whispered softly. “Don’t do it. You’ll end us all.” The Captain, Madhi Jeisel, trembled in utter restraint as she choked out the two words that would seal their fates. “I-I can’t.”

With a terrible scream, her last strength slipping away over the emotional torrent that had resided in her over the years which had been born of comrades lost, caused by insane orders by mystical superiors, and the grueling rigors of war, the power of dark side came to bear. A violent storm of energy erupted from her being, shredding her body in an instant, clashed against the deckplates and tore them asunder. The plastiglass in the windows shattered and the harshness of space sucked out the atmosphere in seconds. The torrential violence of the Force-storm ripped through Marcus’ body, and he could feel himself dissolving in hatred and anger. It expanded rapidly, ripping holes in consoles, conduits and the rest of the bridge. Nothing was left whole, and eventually it reached the reactors of the massive ship. From afar, it looked like the ship was dotted with tiny pins of light, before lighting up like a match being struck.

In the end, Marcus had realized that everyone on the ship who had had no Force sensitivity had suddenly become aware of the Force and was able to wield it. It had all been outside of their control, and left powerless, Marcus had not been able to do anything to stop the destruction.

-Fin-