Her foot taps incessantly, knee bouncing with eager anticipation for the mission that lay before her. How long had it been since she'd stepped foot in a tomb? Several years, surely. The last was when the Lord-Herald had first summoned her to the Valley of Kings, and as she had been then, the expectation of seeing ancient history in person excited her.

Yet, she was not here as a tourist. Her appreciation for the tomb would have to wait. Her eyes skim over the readout of her data pad as it scrolled through sensor readings she'd had taken upon their initial descent into orbit. No signs of life readable on the surface, and no power to the long-term temporary structures around the tomb's entrance. If anyone was there, they certainly hadn't left the tomb since last contact had been made.

"...How long do those generators last after they've been abandoned? I can't imagine 5 days is enough to run dry." She tabs through different sensor readings - nothing abnormal electronically, either.

"A week or more," an artificial and monotone voice responds.

Looking up from the screen, she narrows her eyes at the Foundry droid across from her. Across the chest, a small placard bore his serialization. The string was too long to memorize, but she'd come to calling this one 'Tom' in light of the tag starting with T-0M. Besides him, T-1M sat in silent stillness with eyes coldly locked on the bulkhead.

"Thought so. Power was cut then, obviously. Are we close enough to receive visuals, or are we still relying on electromagnetic sensors?"

Silence passes for a beat. Then another, and a third. Tim shifts, reaching out a hand. Adastra sets her data pad into it and the silent droid connects to it briefly. When the device is returned to her, she has been granted a sky view of the tomb. Tim returns to his rigid state. How strange it was for two identical models to be so different.

She looks to Tom, incredulously. He does not react the same way. With a shake of her head and a quiet scoff of disbelief, she looks over the imaging provided. Four structures - one large, likely the barracks and mess hall for the staff who lived on-site; three small, likely a foreman's office of some sort, a quartermaster's building, and a workshop. More importantly, visible splotches of color stain the area.

In a more generously contextualized scenario, she might not assume the worst, yet... Given the abrupt radio silence, she could not help but think that they appeared to be an alarmingly large series of blood stains. Skimming across the area, she sees no sign of people, but she does see a toppled stack of crates and several sooty marks that looked like the aftermath of errant blaster fire.

A voice comes over the inter-comm into the bay where they waited as the pilot alerts them that they'd be landing in roughly five minutes. Adastra settles back into her crash chair and latches shut her harness. The bounce of her knee returns. Anticipation, anxiety or both?

Touchdown. The Fury-class jostles to a stop, and the whine of the Scythe's engines quiets down. The familiar click, click, clicking of heated metal rapidly cooling drew the meditative Adastra out of her drifting thoughts. She'd started to love that sound for how much it reminded her of long summer days when her father would finish working the field for the day and drive the tractor home. She'd run out to meet him each evening, practically leaping at him with a hug before he could even fully disembark from the cooling vehicle.

How strange it is for that memory to strike her now.

Like shrugging off a heavy robe, she returned her wandering mind to alert sharpness as her hands worked to unbuckle the harness that kept her snugly sat in the bay of her ship. The door hisses as pneumatic locks dislodge massive metal bolts. It swoops open, and the ramp extends to meet the ground even as she takes her first strides down it's length. Behind her, the heavy footfalls of her Foundry companions make her feel a proper specter of the Lord-Herald; in his stead, she had come to be an ill omen for whatever had caused issues here.

"Tim, Tom, get me confirmation we are alone out here. I don't want to be ambushed."

At her word, they begin to sweep the area. As expected, the site was dead silent and would be pitch black soon as the setting sun stole their light source. Alone, she would tread the grounds in search of -- ah, there.

A generator sat to one side of the foreman's office structure. Tipped on one side and askew of it's original spot, the thing had been killed by some violent blow rather than through neglect for it's fuel source. Discoloration around it suggested something had spilled, but in the days since this must have happened the fluid seemed to have evaporated. She positions herself for a challenging lift.

The droids pace around the area, heavy blasters sweeping with lethal intent as they masterfully ensure the location is secure - insofar as to confirm that nobody from OUTSIDE might cause issues. From within the tomb, however...

Adastra feels her musculature strain against the weight she tasked it against. Even with the Force pouring through her incredible muscle mass, this was asking a lot. Still, she manages to right the unit. Mostly. The shifting weight had bent one of the legs slightly, and left it lopsided. She hopes it still works.

By the time she'd refueled the generator from her own cargo's supply of emergency fuel, the shadows had long grown vast enough to shroud the entire area in night. The stars had begun to emerge, and in their dim glow the pooled stains (which she had all but been certain were dried blood) seemed like inky pits of darkness.

Was she biding her time? Had she been nervous after all? No. Surely not.

She flips the switch on the unit, and one by one the lights around the camp began to flicker back on. Several sparked and died as soon as they received power, but even with all the damage done it gave her enough to work by. 

First, she pours over the area outside of the Tomb in which the work site's structures had been built. Two things stood out to her immediately - the prominence of what was likely blood suggested people had died here. Yet... she could locate no bodies. Second, one of the blood stains in particular lead into the foreman's office.

She reaches out a hand to open the door leading into the office when she notices that the frame had been mangled in such a way that it would not open without specialized equipment. The latch was bent and warped, and deep furrows had been gouged into the metal where something had apparently clawed at it to try and get inside. She pulls a flashlight from her belt and uses it to peer through the narrow slit of the damaged door into the darkened interior.

A glisten of crimson. Moreover, clothing stained a muted black from the bloody saturation. She was looking at the mangled body of what she assumed had been a worker here. The upper body carried injuries, but the thighs and down seemed to be almost entirely missing. The person clutched a firearm in one limp hand as if ready to try and defend themselves. At risk of damaging IAB equipment, she would leave the structure sealed. However... With a subtle gesture of one hand, the corpse's data pad would pluck itself from the uniform and drift through the narrow gap into her hand. She'd come to find it was locked and encrypted.

Something for her benefactors to deal with themselves.

An hour later, she'd come to several conclusions. Firstly, she was fairly certain the culprit was an animal. Given the fact Vodal Kressh had been known for his alchemical mastery, she imagined it must have been some sort of Sith Spawn. How it had survived for so long unable to escape it's chamber, she had no clue. A myriad of creatures on Korriban had evolved to survive on the sustenance of the Dark Side to compliment their scarce biosphere. Maybe this, too, was the case?

Could an animal survive for so long, though? Even sustained by the presence of the Force, the total lack of food must have driven the thing mad. That it woke from torpor and found a bountiful feast would make sense. That hardly mattered, at this point.

She motions for Tim and Tom to follow her, and they make their way into the tomb itself. More blood. More claw marks. No bodies. With one hand permanently clasped around the lightsaber hilt on her belt, she leads the way into the darkest depths, where the chamber had been first discovered. 

There is an oppressive stillness in the air as they make their final approach to the uncovered chamber. The air this far down feels like a wool blanket; warm, uncomfortable, heavy. Several times, subtle vibrations through the floor suggested movement of something massive, but she had yet to actually see anything.

All roads led to here. Every smear of blood, every tattered article of cloth caught on the uneven stone floor, every troubling furrow gouged into ancient tiles. Ahead of her, a yawning maw of darkness lie before her. Down here, the IAB's lighting rigs had been cut off from the generator above by the beast's prior movements. She'd found the tattered cable to prove it.

Then, she hears it. A not-so-distant trembling in the earth, as she had heard before, but now joined by the audible sound of something akin to metal scraping at stone, and the heavy footfalls of a lumbering beast. Instinctively, she raises a hand to her ear and toggles off the headlamp she wore. Her droid companions follow suit.

For Tim and Tom, they could get by just by the sheer quality of their other senses - and the night vision capabilities of their ocular sensors. For her, she'd be relying solely on her lowest spectrum of vision - her genetic predisposition to see into the infrared spectrum. It would leave her vision crippled to a fraction of it's usual ability, but she feared the thing's proclivity for the darkness would make her flashlight an immediate beacon hailing her arrival. She blinks her eyes a few times, allowing them to adjust.

Darkness. The space about her was a pit of blackest night, yet the sensory equipment of her droid companions put out just enough infrared light to give definition even to the cold lifeless stone of the tomb's deepest passageways. Silence enshrouded her movements, and at once she felt herself slipping away into another of her roles.

Was she anything more than a predatory animal in search of prey in this moment? Here, away from the world of the living and hidden from the realm of the dead by the oppressive darkness, it was hard to say. Her movements feel instinctual; hands reaching out to aide in her maneuvering through the corridors like some great beast bracing itself against the walls as it hunched over to loom in the way of anything that might pass her.

Onward. Down. Closer. And closer. And closer. Until...

The other beast's lumbering movements had quieted, and in their place the wet squelching of a feast echoed quietly from around the corner. The blood-drenched sound of human flesh tearing. The dull crunch of bone against gnashing molars. The deep grumble of satisfaction from an ancient being left to starve for untold centuries.

She gestures to her escorts, positioning them with a crossfire against a narrow doorway that bore the damage of the creature's heft repeatedly pushing its way through. Pausing at the doorway, she stops to affix a small package above the door frame. She treads on, weapon at the ready as she rounds a corner to find her quarry.

There amidst a feast of unholy nature, the approximately wolf-man shaped thing gorged itself on the abdominal cavity of what must have been a researcher or security personnel. In the darkness, she could make out only it's hot-blooded silhouette against the other features of the chamber. Large claws at the end of too-long arms, digitigrade legs so heavily drenched in human vitae that it partially masked the thing's body heat, and a head of some mammalian predator whose muzzle bore a razor-toothed snarl. It's body, though still horrific in it's proportions, also seemed unnaturally thin. Wiry limbs, gaunt torso. She'd bet the thing's ribs skeleton might be discernible beneath it's emaciated flesh, were she not staring at it in the dark. 

Around him, she could barely discern where one body ended and the next began, but she noted the degree to which the room seemed to be smeared in more blood than the present corpses could have provided. Clearly, she'd been right in that it was recovering from years of starvation. She marveled at the beauty of it's creation...

For a moment, she is reminded of the abominable creation of alchemy that was her own Master. His skin had been hard enough to deflect her blade. She hoped this quarry would not be so durable. Setting aside the worry, she takes a slow and quiet breath. Game time.

Acting on instinct, she lets loose the trapped ember of her heart, bringing it's roiling mass to the surface in a show of immense power. Fury burned beneath her flesh like a wildfire, and taking advantage of her foe's obsessive feasting she takes a long moment to gather energy and give it form. Moments pass in increasing clarity as her senses sharpen, and at the apex of her preparation she gives herself goosebumps as the sensation of a storm approaching fills the chamber.

Lightning erupts from her like the wrath of a hateful god. The blue streak of light practically blinds her as her eyes fail to compensate for the shift in brightness. Fractions of a moment later, the creature lets loose a deafening howl of pain and fury as the strike nearly blows through its arm.

Not invulnerable after all.

She lets loose a howl of her own - adrenaline seizing control of her as she makes for the door. She loses sight of it as she rounds the corner, but the thing rushes after her with all the noise she had expected of it. Without looking back, she triggers the detonator in her offhand. The shock wave tosses her deeper into the room, but she rides the momentum into a roll. 

Another howl, this time indiscernible if it had been her or the Sithspawn's own. Turning now, she slaps a hand at the light affixed to her armor and sees the cloud of dust and debris beginning to clear. Her droids immediately begin to fire, pummeling the monstrosity with blaster bolts the moment the crumbling doorway had trapped it.

Her saber ignites, and she rushes in. Before she can bring it down on the spawn's head, it manages to rip its way free and lash out at her with lethal intent. She narrowly avoids the strike, but the deflection of his strike had cost her the hilt of her lightsaber as he nearly takes off her hand. Instinct. She challenges its roar with one of her own, and in a narrow window opened by the pummeling fire of her support droids, manages to cleave into the thing's wrist with the large blade she'd pulled from her belt.

It snaps at her with gnashing teeth, but with superhuman might she slams the pommel of her weapon into it's jaw and sends it reeling. She dives into the vulnerability, spearing it through the throat. Her fingers tighten around the hilt of her blade and she pulls back to remove it, but it must have been lodged in bone for it did not budge from it's spot as a weakened smash from the previously damaged arm sends her sailing into the wall.

A grenade blast topples the creature just long enough to allow Adastra to stand. She, in all her animalistic fury, had barely noticed what must be three or four broken ribs. She explodes forward, sheer force-imbued strength driving blow after blow into the creature. It swipes out a claw, and she manages to apply her grappling techniques to seize one of the fingers.

As it moves to swat her away, she manages to cling to the hand and, after several moments, feels the flesh and tendons give way to her savage prying. The clawed finger tears free, and with a deftness honed into perfection by her years of training she drives the pointed claw through the back of the maimed hand and into the creature's heart.

With one arm disabled and the other pinned to it's own body, she disengages. Weaponless, she doubted she could outright kill it. But... She braves the thing's gnashing head to get another grip on the long blade she'd left in it's throat. With a desperate yank, the now-chipped blade comes free. For a few short moments, the spawn's resistance is almost admirable.

The blade raises.

When it falls, the beast ceases it's movements. Its massive head drops to the floor with a heavy thud, and the last gasping gurgle of a dying beast is the only sound she can hear besides the pounding of her own heart.

She drops to the floor, awash in the ecstasy of adrenaline and satisfaction with a prey worthy of her talents. Heaving breath into her exhausted body, the fading endorphins and adrenal compensation for her immense bodily pain fades as rapidly as it had arrived. She pulls a syringe from her medical kit, jamming the kolto concoction into her leg.

She does not remember being carried back to her interceptor by her droids, but when she awakes she is being seen to by a medical droid and... upon a surgical table across the room, the severed head of the creature sits with eyes black as night and just as dead.

With a deep satisfaction, Adastra begins to laugh -- until her broken ribs spear through her enjoyment as her diaphragm tenses uncomfortably. With a groan, she slaps the button to call for her droid so that it could sedate her until she'd had time to recover.