He is in a dark room, surrounded by people wearing red hooded cloaks and holding lit black candles, which they are waving in mysterious patterns while chanting ominously. There is an incomprehensible diagram drawn on the floor in what appears to be fresh blood, and more bloodstains beneath that.

Directly in front of him, past a gap in the circle of hooded figures, is an immense throne made of carved wood with a tall pale man sprawled in it. The man is wearing an enormous fur robe, and he has a corpse cradled in his lap and is absently stroking its face and neck with one hand as he stares at the floating man. He looks annoyed.

The floating man takes it all in with one long, slow blink. What is this, some kind of murder cult? Well aren't they in for a surprise. He floats neatly to his feet, and looks at them, unimpressed.

Hm. Diplomacy, or murder the fools? Murder the fools, or diplomacy? Obviously these people are bad news and likely need a good murdering. But can he gain any valuable information from them before a fight breaks out, and he inevitably ends up killing them all? Probably. Let's give it a shot.

"Do you speak Basic?" he wonders, idly. If they don't speak any language he knows that might be a slight problem. Slight. He can fix it.

This does not seem to be the kind of murder cult that will invite him to the cantina to share a couple of drinks and discuss the merits and drawbacks of - what do these people seem to want? Ah. They want to kill him, and the one in the robe wants to eat him. Yes, these people need a good murdering. Still, he'd like to know how they managed - this, so he can keep up diplomacy. For a little while.

"Bocce?" he asks, switching to that language. "Huttese? Ryl?" He reaches into his robes - black, practical, easy to move in - and retrieves one of his lightsabers. The purple blade, he'll leave the red one alone for now. He ignites it, and smiles at his kidnappers. "Shyriiwook? If so, I can't get the growls right, I'm afraid, but I'll understand every word you say." That one's facetious, it's near impossible for most species to speak Shyriiwook, human included.

Nobody reacts appropriately to the lightsaber - surprise, confusion, low-key wariness, but no recognition at all.



The corpse opens its eyes and draws a deep breath.

The robed man exclaims happily in an unfamiliar language.

The strangely animate corpse snarls wordlessly.

The robed man pats the corpse's cheek and gestures toward the middle of the circle; the corpse spares a glance in that direction. He is slightly more impressed by the lightsaber than the rest of them.

... Oh dear. That is unfortunate, now isn't it. He doesn't like the robed man's intentions. At all. The language is unfamiliar - and if it's unfamiliar to him, he doubts these people have even heard of Basic. And they don't recognize his lightsaber, or the threat it holds. Diplomacy's a bust, then, at least for now. He can rip the language out of their heads, but somehow he doesn't think they'll sit still and let him. Time to skip straight to murder.

The man with the lightsaber looks at the strangely animate corpse, and quirks an eyebrow. His expression says, Want to kill all of these people with me?

The strangely animate corpse grins. The grin says, With pleasure.

Then he reaches up lightning-fast and grabs the robed man's throat. The robed man yells something, and all the hooded figures throw their candles at the man in the circle.

As they tumble through the air, the flickering orange flames go dark. Now the only light in the room is from his lightsaber. And a column of hissing black flame engulfs him, painfully cold, swallowing his senses and cutting him off from his body and the Force.

If there were a hell, he would sincerely think this was it.

The loss of the Force is worse than the loss of his body. A thousand times worse. There is - nothing, nothing, nothing, this isn't death, this is worse. Death is nothing but the Force, a return to where one came, this is - this is - absence, nothing, falling alone in an empty dark void and not even having the air to scream.

And then his body returns, and the Force with it. Not all of it, just the faintest trickle, fuzzy and awkward and slow and weak. He's on the ground. He's on the ground and there are people with knives. And something - odd, he can't really tell what it is, but there's definitely a something.

Along with that comes rage.

"Aaaaaugh!" he roars, lashing out with his lightsaber and lightning.

That is the point.

Three die before his sense of touch returns. His feel of the Force expands, languidly, slowly, and it's like he's a child again, only able to fumble at the things near him. But fumbling lets him know where they are, where he can slice, where he can shock, where he can grab with the Force - he's just as strong, he's not as weak as a padawan, he just feels like one - and snatch and toss.

He picks one of them up, flings them into another, and fries them both. He slices another in half. Another loses his knife and the arm attached. Another is kicked with enough force to break several ribs, and then he is impaled by his red lightsaber. Oh yes, now is the time for dual wielding. Fuck diplomacy, he is going to kill them all.

At some point in this process he is going to notice the corpse fighting the robed man. Well. 'Fighting' may be an inexact description. They both move with superhuman speed and strength, but the corpse has precision and skill to go with it, and is ruthless in applying this advantage. The robed man is accumulating broken bones at an accelerating rate - he has completely lost the use of his left arm already.

Neither one of them is breathing, but this doesn't seem to slow them down.

Well, good for the corpse. He likely needs a bit of rage-fueled murder of his own. He doesn't think he'll interfere with a battle that's being won, and it's not like any of the people with knives are focused on anyone but him. Well. Actually most of them are too much of a mess to even continue fighting.

He kills the ones that can still fight. He kills all but one of the ones who can't. He stalks towards the last, growling. With two slices, he removes this person's limbs. He'll live long enough for his purposes. Probably. He turns off his lightsabers. He leans over his victim, snarling. It's time for some diplomacy of a different sort. He grabs his head with both hands, and reaches into it with the Force, and rips his language from his head.

This sort of thing is already painful. He's not feeling merciful. He makes it worse to get what he wants faster, he will not be stranded on some strange out of the way murder-cult planet and not know the language. He. Will. Speak it.

Meanwhile, the corpse has the robed man pinned to the floor. The robed man struggles weakly, but doesn't have enough functioning limbs left to get anywhere.

"—would go a lot quicker if you'd tell me how to kill you," the corpse is saying.

The robed man whimpers with terror.

"No? Then I will just have to experiment."

Oh, there's his hearing back, now all that's left is sight, and a bit of the Force that's still creeping back.

And he has the language. Excellent.

"Want help? We can try lightning," he growls, in English, releasing his language victim. He draws his lightsaber - red, it seems wrong to use the purple one to kill an unarmed (ha) prisoner - and kills him. "Or my lightsaber. Either."

"I have my doubts about lightning," the corpse murmurs. "As delightful as the prospect is. You should have your sight back in another minute and a half, by the way, if it's the same for you as it was for me."

Thoughtfully, he reaches down and breaks the robed man's neck. The body goes limp, but the head is still animate, and grimacing with terror.

"Evidently not that. Mm. If you're not planning on doing anything with that knife, could you give it here?"

"Good to know." He pauses, and tilts his head. "... What knife?"

He reaches out with the Force, looking for the knife.



"Oh," he says. He retrieves it from where it is stuck in his side. "Yeah, sure." He tosses it corpse-ward.

Snort. "Thanks," he says, catching it with casual grace, and he hauls the robe off its owner's broken body and starts methodically opening up major blood vessels. The robed man doesn't quite bleed with proper force, but he does leak very messily.

"I don't advise touching his blood," the corpse adds as an afterthought. "He fed it to me to turn me into a vampire. The exsanguination was probably also a critical step, but there's no point in taking chances."

"I'll avoid it," he agrees. "And uh. Stop bleeding out. 'Scuse me."

He picks his way to a place that has the least amount of blood on the floor, and sits. And breathes. And - not much else, actually, to the casual viewer.

But this is not a casual viewer.

He's distracted by his experiments, though. Removing considerable amounts of blood from the vampire's body does not seem to have killed him. Next, Mark tries dismemberment. The knife is not the best possible tool for this job, but it seems rude to interrupt... whatever the recently stabbed man is doing about his recent stab wound.

The recently stabbed man is healing himself, actually.

He'll be sitting there for a while. Injuries like this are kind of fiddly.

In which case Mark will just continue disassembling the vampire into medium-sized pieces. He saves the head for last, because it seems likely to be more difficult than the rest.

The vampire's head is not quite fully detached from his torso - but there is a clear air gap between the two ends of his severed spine - when head, torso, and pile of vampire parts all explode into dust.

"That was unexpected," remarks the blood-covered man with the knife.

The blood-covered man without the knife opens an eye. Sight's back. That's nice.

"Wow, yeah. Convenient, though. Sort of."

He snorts.

"Thanks. I take issue with the cultural introduction here of stabbing. Let's not. Hello, I'm -" He hesitates, then smirks and shakes his head, apparently amused with himself. "Revan. Nice to meet you, wish it were under better circumstances, where the fuck are we? Some weird backwater planet of murder cultists?"