[LotS] Vader and the Emperor kill the Lylek Queen

Vader and the Emperor stood in the shadow of the queen's towering form. Her respiration was audible in the sudden lull, loud and wet. Each of her six legs was a meter and a half in circumference, and the spikes they ended in looked like sword blades. Her squirming tentacles-four instead of two-were ten meters long, as thick as a man's waist, and ended in glistening points of chitin that leaked some kind of ichor, or perhaps poison. Her mouth could easily bite a person in half.

She advanced slowly, tentacles squirming, the ends of her legs striking the ground with a clipped, staccato rhythm. She lowered her head and hissed as she came on. Her mandibles worked the empty air.

Vader's Master wore the same knowing half smile he seemed always to wear. "Shall we begin, Lord Vader?"

Vader answered only with the sound of his breathing.

The queen exploded into motion and so, too, did Vader and the Emperor. A tentacle lashed at Vader and he leapt over it, sidestepping a second tentacle, and chopped down with his blade. He missed as the queen snapped the tentacle back, his blade putting a charred furrow in the stone of the floor. He leapt high over her, flipping at the apex of his trajectory, and as he descended he took his blade in a two-handed grip and pointed it downward to impale her.

She lurched sidewise and lashed out with a tentacle, which struck him squarely and knocked him to the floor. She turned as though to advance on him, but his Master sprang before her, jumping, twirling, and ducking under the rapid swings of her tentacles and the spikes of her legs. His lightsaber slashed rapidly at every opening, striking the tentacles but scarring them only, not severing them.

The queen lunged toward his Master and he flipped backward, landing a few paces away. Vader jumped to his feet, spinning out of the way of her attempt to stab him with the chitinous spike at the end of one of her tentacles. He found himself face-to-face with five lyleks, all of them hissing, tentacles squirming. He stabbed one through the head, back-flipped high over another, hit the ground, and severed its rear legs.

To his right his Master gestured and, with the Force, lifted two of the lyleks from the floor. Vader and his Master exchanged no words, but each knew precisely what the other intended. With a casual throwing motion, the Emperor flung the two lyleks in Vader's direction, their legs and tentacles squirming, bellies exposed. Slashing and turning a rapid spin, Vader bisected both of them; the four gory pieces that remained fell to the floor in a heap.

From above, blaster shots slammed into the lylek that remained before him, with several shots bouncing off its carapace before one finally caught it in the head and put it down. Vader glanced up to see Deez kneeling in the tunnel's mouth, blaster rifle lowered, firing down into the melee.

Vader reflexively slashed with his lightsaber as another lylek scrabbled toward him. The blade took off the legs and left the creature squealing and spasming. He saw his Master dodging the rapid, repeated strikes of the queen's tentacles. The Emperor twisted and spun and leapt, slashing with his lightsaber where he could, and where the blade bit into the thick tentacles it opened black gashes that leaked a thick ichor. The pain seemed only to make her angrier.

Vader leapt high and landed at his Master's side. The queen roared and loosed a flurry of strikes. Working in tandem, they parried her blows, counterstruck, opened dozens of holes in her tentacles, their blades spinning blurs before them. Her very bulk slowly pushed them backward, and from time to time they had to turn their attention to a lylek that rushed them or tried to jump them from the side. Moving almost as one, the two Sith Lords turned and spun around an unspoken central point, parrying, slashing, killing. Frustrated, the queen rushed toward them with surprising speed. Her huge body slammed into them both, knocking them backward. Quick as a lightning strike, she struck with snapping mandibles...

The Emperor fell flat to the floor to avoid the bite and she slammed her legs down at him like so many pikes, each blow chipping the stone of the floor. He rolled and spun underneath the mountain of her body while Vader slashed at her tentacles, the ichor from her many wounds spraying in all directions. She was trying simply to smash his Master with her mass, but Vader perceived her intent, raised a hand, and held her up, straining, grunting for the fraction of a moment that it took for his Master to roll out from under her. And then they were at her again, their blades humming and cutting. She hissed, wounded tentacles flailing, legs stomping, and bounded backward in a crouch.

"Emperor!" Deez shouted from above, and fired at the queen as rapidly as he could pull the trigger.

The shots bounced off her carapace and ricocheted wildly around the chamber. Vader used his lightsaber to deflect one into the face of the lylek nearest him, killing it. Beside him, his Master split the head of a lylek that lunged at him. Vader decided to finish matters.

"Master," he said, and nothing more.

"Go," the Emperor said.

Vader sprinted forward and leapt high. The moment he reached the apex of his jump, his Master seized him with the Force and flung him the rest of the way so that he landed atop the queen's back.

Immediately she bucked, tentacles flailing, and he drove his lightsaber down into her back. To his surprise, the blade only bit partially and then slipped to the side. She screamed and hissed with agony. He grasped it two-handed again, preparing another blow, but she reared up hard, bucking, and flung him to the floor. He landed near his Master, who grabbed him by the arm and heaved him to his feet with uncanny strength.

She whirled around at them and whipped her tentacles at Vader and his Master, following with a lunge forward and a vicious bite at Vader. They sidestepped her attacks, once more falling into their usual rhythm, and crosscut at her head with their lightsabers. Both blades struck home. The Emperor tore a long gash in the armored exoskeleton of her head, and Vader destroyed one eye. She shrieked and reared backward, eye socket leaking gore, tentacles whipping wildly. Deez continued to pour down fire at her, but the shots appeared to do her little or no harm. Still, the distress of their queen drove the remaining lyleks into a frenzy, and they charged from all sides.

Vader bounded backward, leapt high up on the wall, and hung with one hand from a narrow ledge, his boots planted on the stone. He'd assumed his Master would do the same, but he hadn't. Instead, his Master stood in the center of a crowd of the creatures, spinning, whirling, slashing, killing. Deez diverted his fire from the wounded queen to the lyleks attacking the Emperor, but the frenetic motion of the combat prevented him from aiming accurately, and his shots bounced off their carapaces in all directions.

The queen recovered enough to survey the scene and her eye fell on Vader, perched as he was on the wall, seemingly vulnerable, and she lurched toward him, shrieking. She pushed through the lyleks around her, her tentacles squirming wildly, grasping for him. Her remaining eye fixed on him and her mouth opened wide in a prolonged hiss.

Below, an explosion of Force lightning shredded a handful of lyleks and left his Master standing in the center of a circle of charred, dead creatures. He made eye contact with Vader, nodding, and Vader knew to hold his position as the queen closed.

His Master raised both hands and sent a storm of Force lightning into the queen, enmeshing her in sizzling blue lines. She screamed and spasmed in agony, her mandibles parting wide to reveal the rows of her teeth as the lightning tore at her carapace and the organs underneath, burning her inside and out.

Vader acted quickly. Drawing on the Force, he leapt off the wall straight at her head. Despite her pain, she managed to snatch him out of midair with a tentacle, seizing him around the waist and squeezing. His armor creaked under the strain and he shouted with pain but, as ever, let the pain draw him deeper into the Force.

She lifted him high and jerked him toward her slashed face, the ruin of her eye, her mouth opened wide to hiss, exactly as he'd anticipated.

"Finish her!" his Master shouted.

He threw his lightsaber at her open mouth, guiding it with the Force, causing it to spin as rapidly as a rotor as it flew into her gullet. She gagged, recoiled, one good eye wide with pain and confusion, as Vader maintained his mental hold on his spinning blade, cutting her apart from the inside out. Desperately, instinctively, she drove the spiked, poisoned tip of another tentacle at his chest.

Enmeshed in the Force, he caught the spike in his gauntleted fist and stopped it before it reached his armor. He grunted with pain, with exertion, the thick, muscular appendage of the giant creature straining against his Force-fueled strength. He was the stronger, and stared into her face as his lightsaber tore through her innards and his Master's lightning charred her flesh.

She screamed again in a final burst of agony, and the hulking remains of her body collapsed to the floor, taking Vader, clutched now in a limp tentacle, with her. He hit the floor in a crouch along with the bulk of her carcass, shook off the tentacle, and recalled his lightsaber to his hand. The blade cut through her carcass and returned to his hand, slick with fluid.

The remaining lyleks shrieked and chittered, tentacles and legs jerking wildly. Deez continued to blast at them.

Vader met the eyes of his Master, standing five meters away, and both nodded. Immersed in the Force, they set about slaughtering the remaining lyleks. The lines of their lightsabers rose and fell, rose and fell, and the confused, stunned beasts barely defended themselves. Soon the floor was carpeted in carcasses, and Vader and his Master were the only living things standing amid the carnage.

His Master's cackle filled the silence. Both deactivated their blades.

"Well done, my friend," the Emperor said.

Back up in the tunnel, Deez used the high-tensile cable integrated into his belt to rappel down the wall. He picked his way through the slaughter, obviously trying and failing to control the expression of awe on his face, until he stood before Vader and the Emperor. He took a knee, his fist to his chest.

"My Emperor."

"The captain?" Vader asked.

"Killed by one of the creatures, Lord Vader," Deez said as he stood. "His body is...not recoverable."

To Vader, the Emperor's mind seemed to be elsewhere. He may have heard Deez or not; Vader could not tell.

"I think we should leave this place before it starts to stink," the Emperor said finally. "This is the way to the surface, I'm quite sure."

Together, Vader, the Emperor, and Deez moved quickly through the tunnels, ever upward, back toward the surface. They stayed alert for lyleks, but the tunnels were empty. The entire nest must have been annihilated.

"The creatures struggled when the queen died. When the head is removed, the body must soon die," the Emperor commented.

Vader said nothing, merely looked at his Master.

"Do you not see? That's why we're hunted, Lord Vader. The rebels hope to cut the head from the Empire."

"Of course," Vader said. It was unlike his Master to state something so obvious except with a purpose. "And?"

His Master adorned his face with his usual half smile. "Many things are that way, even some relationships. If the head is removed, the body cannot exist alone. The relationship is complementary, almost symbiotic."

Vader understood his point then. "Yes, Master."