Let the Light In

Chapter 39: Vent

Chapter 39: Vent

Rey was somewhat glad to see that the facility was not on alert. A smaller part of her was downright disappointed, having perhaps been eager for a bloodbath to both challenge herself and release her pent up frustrations.

No matter, she thought as she crept down one of the halls, and ducked into the first chamber. There was an Elite working on a terminal. He had not noticed her yet.

No matter at all, she could work with this.

A twist of her wrist, and the man's neck was crushed. He fell limp in his chair, not a peep having been uttered.

Similarly, she cleaned out several more chambers, slightly dissatisfied that she was not coming across any particularly large forces, or any special soldiers for that matter. No Force Users. After having dispatched two more Elite, Rey was struck with a sensation, a tremor in the Force that was unlike anything else in the facility. It was almost like...an absence.

As soon as she felt it thought, it disappeared, and Rey was left with her side pressed to the door when it suddenly opened.

Before the Elite could make a sound, she grabbed his head and snapped his neck, falling back into a crouch behind the wall and dragging his body out of the doorway.

She snapped his neck...

Rey's breath came short.

She had reacted on pure instinct, and the adrenaline still thundered through her veins. She had never killed anyone like that before, with her own two hands. The last time she had done anything close was when she had used her staff to asphyxiate a particularly persistent slaver on Jakku. But never with her own hands...

She tried her best to shake it off, skirting the body and making her way down the hall. It was just something else that she could do, that she would have to deal with. This was war, after all.

One peek through the next archway had Rey ducking back behind the wall very quickly. Now, that was more of a gathering. There was still that stinging presence that wafted on the edges of her senses, though... Rey pushed it out of her mind.

It was not Ben, this she was certain of. This unsettled her more than calmed her.

As silently as she could, Rey snuck into the room, moving behind the columns to stay out of sight. From this new vantage point, she could see that there were far more Elite in the room than she had thought.

Not a problem...Per se...

Delicately, Rey reached her senses out to the nearest Elite, and slowly began tugging on the eddies of his mind.

Slowly...Slowly...

He screamed.

Frack!

That was not what Rey was intending to do. Oh well, she sighed, igniting her saber and stepping out from behind the column, at least she'd get some melee combat in after all.

It didn't take long to dispatch the ones who had been in the room, but more were milling in, as on Dromund. This did not bother Rey. She flipped her blade back and forth, falling into a steady rhythm that the Elite just could not keep up with. Their bodies fell around her, and this brand of death did not affect her in the slightest. Her form was not as tight as it should have been, though, and she received many burns and cuts from their vicious pikes.

Rey swore at herself every time they landed a hit, for every time she slipped, it was because she let her emotion get the better of her, and allowed the battle to carry her, instead of the other way around. Her poise slowly slipped away as she moved, her mouth curving into a clenched grimace as more Elite fell in progressively more gruesome ways.