The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (Season 2+)

Fickle Musings

"These tendons are proving to be most unbearable to deal with," skekTek muttered to himself. "I don't remember this being so difficult before."

The skekSis ripped and tore through what remained of the gruenak carcass. Using his surgical equipment he expertly cut away skin and cleaved tendons from the bone, laying the tissue on a wheeled table to his side. He coughed andretched at some of the old black blood spraying him in the face. He took a rag from his clothes and wiped the grime away, careful not to damage the mechanisms of his bionic eye. All that remained of the specimen was bone, skin and organs. skekTek looked at all he had harvested. Five remaining tendons and about ninety or so strands of muscle. Not enough for another Garthim soldier.

"CURSES!" the skekSis shouted, dumping the remains down the crystal chamber shaft into the magma below. They were worthless anyway, and he had gotten what he needed. His frustrations turned to his lab, tilting over tables and tossing equipment about. The animals he had caged screamed and squeaked in a cacophony of fear and excitement. He continued his rampage, picking up a large apparatus, ready to smash it down on the essence draining chair.

"SKEKTEK!!!" a voice screamed, stopping the scientist in his tracks. "No..."

He looked over his shoulder at the softer, almost a whisper, negative command. Though quieter than the shout of his name, the voice sounded like it had been right in his ear. Half expecting to see a fellow skekSis, his heart fluttered a little in shock when he saw no one. He raised his one good eyebrow and looked around his entire lab, twisting and turning as he heard muttering. This was much too quiet for him to understand and sounded more distant than the first shout and whisper. But he was able to pinpoint a source for it. He approached a cage, the nebrie young cowering away to the back corner as he approached. The muttering and whispering increased tenfold, yet he was still unable to understand what was being said; like a madman muttering to himself. He crouched down to better enter the holding cell, sending the little critters to press into the stone even further. The skekSis found a crack in the back of the wall, pushing in closer to peer inside. With his mechanical eye, the darkness faded and he saw another eye staring straight back at him.

"SkekTek," some said behind him, the suddenness breaking his concentration and shocking him. It made him jump and bang the back of his head into the roof of the holding cell.

"Ow!" he exclaimed, looking out to see skekEkt looking at him with a confused stare.

"What are you doing down there?" they asked.

"Just eh..." skekTek trailed off, looking back to the crack in the wall, where the eye was no longer. That and the muttering had ceased.

"Checking the nebrie bedding," he lied as he pulled himself from the cage. "Making sure it's not dirty or infectious with diseases. Don't want to get sick when we eat them."

"Fair enough," skekEkt said, stepping back a little and visibly put off at the notion the creatures around them could carry diseases. They adjusted their clothing to better keep it away from the animals.

"What do you want?" the scientist asked, disgruntled about now having to clean up his lab while also dealing with The Ornamentalist. "Or better yet what caused you to be forced to wander into my place of work?"

He pushed the other skekSis out of his way, as they were standing on one of the gruenak tendons. Upon seeing this skekEkt held in a screech and retreated to the doorway of the lab.

"Grow a backbone will you?" skekTek jeered. "It has no ability to move on its own. Yet."

He turned back to picking up all the pieces of most importance, laying them on his table once he uprighted it again.