A soft rustle of grass beneath her feet, the helmed Sith noting people pulling out of her way as she moved, and a few steps and Aran was near the front lines. Well, the forward command at least, where she had finally volunteered to go.
She had expected to be called in by the Sphere of Defense to give up what information she had long ago, but her allies had likely protected her. The least she could do was pay that back with a little effort. She wondered if she should've told Venny or Xek she was going out to an actual battlefield, or perhaps Ark... but no, this was a decision she had made on her own.
"My lord," the commander said, addressing her by rote title for a sith and nothing else. He didn't bow and the lack of formalities would normally have risked being met with a haughty attitude - but Aran knew the fine line she traded. It was hard to go from being a master to someone with no power but what she could take.
"The Republic forces are pressing their attack here-" he indicated markers on a map, Aran stepping up to 'look' at it, "-here and here. We have enough forces for two defenses but can't handle the third. It was indicated in my orders," and here the man spat the word out, distastefully, as if he resented being ordered to accept a single Alchemist's help, "that you would assist us."
Aran nodded, folding her arms and waiting.
"Well then-" the man's patience was wearing thin, angrily pointing at the map. "Tell me what little you can do! A single Sith, they said, it's rubbish the expectations-" And then, curiously he cut himself off.
Under her helm Aran smiled - and the expression was cruel. With a finger she delicately picked up two tokens, placing them at the ousides of the battlelines. "You will take those two positions. I will handle the center."
The commander looked up, his disbelief apparent. "How?"
"I have my ways," was all she said, striding off towards the lines. "Pull your men back, commander, if you don't want them harmed~" she called back over her shoulder, for once not caring if the call to save lives was heeded or not.
---
First it was the screaming. Her start was slow but Aran worked methodically now, with a firm plan in mind. Lightning arced from her fingers and the pain was negligible compared to the results she reaped; first she broke the mind of one man, ripping his thoughts from his skull until blood ran from his ears. Then she played with her marionettes, waiting until the lines focused on her.
She had once been a healer. She threw herself into the moment, suspending everything but the exultation of the battle to feed and draw from, and slowly the air thickened. Now she turned her healing knowledge to battle, proving one of the whispered rumors true - a healer was a deadly foe.
It was subtle at first. Some men coughed, their aim shaken. The haze rose out and spread like curls of smoke rippling from her form, rising around the men and blanketing the immediate area with a thick dark fog. She stepped forward and like a spark it roared in the air, a living thing now, clawing through the men to spread further and further into their ranks, further and further down the lines. The Imperial soldiers began to pull back, edging far away from the drifting contagion and leaving the woman alone, facing the onslaught of the Republic army.
One Sith.
The closest men began to tremble and she took another step forward. The catalyst for this plague was, well, her. Her Force, her presence, her actions - so she raised her hands, fingers lightly splayed as if in friendly greeting, and the Force wove around her before everything grew quiet.
The fog crept and blanketed the men and they breathed it in, unaware. One breath, two... she smiled. On the third deep breath some men began to tremble, and she stood, transfixed by what she saw. Emotional shifts were beginning, faster than they had in her slaves - she wondered if the battle had already heightened them to the point where it was just that little push they needed.
The first man broke and screamed in incoherent rage and with a flick of her fingers she directed him to the people behind him. Slowly more and more men and women began to scream, rage building into a wave crashing over the forces - and they turned on their fellows, as the plague spread through the ranks, and began to fight, berserk in their emotions, past reason or caring. They were fountains of power - and she fed on them, spreading her plague far across the lines until it stretched beyond her ability to control it. But the beauty was it would burn her victims out.
No rakghoul problems.
It took minutes for the men to tear themselves and each other apart, minutes in which the woman simply stood. The Republic ranks were being torn apart by their own forces, and the screams and wails of terror broke through. And with a nudge Aran turned the fear into a weapon itself, spreading that even further - fear and rage spread as far as her Force could reach and the army broke. It turned into a mindless howling mess of screaming flesh, dying bodies, and incoherent emotions.
Later she noticed the blaster burns from a few lucky shots, later she noticed that she had healed them, later she knelt down in the massive piles of corpses sprawled before and around her, fallen dominoes arranged in a spreading wake around her feet. The plague died without anyone further to feed on as Aran called back in the Force.
The lines routed, the Republic falling away from their dead and leaving them, discharged piles of horror. And when she returned to the camp, still exalting on the feelings she had seen, the commander offered her a bow.
She didn't care though and with a flick of her hand an arc of lightning left her fingertips, forcing the man to both scream from pain and straighten up before she released him. "I'll be heading back now," she said softly, walking back to the waiting shuttle where two guards stood in attention.
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