Acknowledgments

First to God, The Author of Life

Matthew Kok and Josh Fenwick whose patience and suggestions helped turn messy ideas into this finished product.

Drew Karpyshyn, whose books laid the brilliant foundation that my story is built on and whose website's advice "If you really think your idea is good then turn it into something useful" prompted me to begin this project.

My Grandfather, whose to quest find me all the Hardy Boys got me interested in the written word.

Sue Spires who took on the daunting task of editing my miraculously terrible grammar.

Carole Allison who is responsible for the beautiful cover art.

2 CHAPTERS EVERY OTHER DAY

Reviews/questions/critiques always welcome

A/N I usually use a line of asterisks but those didn't show for this program. So a gab between paragraphs, indent and bolded first letter means a change of scene and/or perspective.

1

Rogin stared down on the dark forest from his perch, waiting in silence. His infrared eyes picked up nothing but the cool grey of the surrounding vegetation. He had only been out for a few hours but he could hear the clouds rumbling above him, letting him know the rains would be coming soon. He either had to get something soon or go a day without food. If he ended up caught in the torrential rains he doubted he'd be able to navigate the forest and get back to his cave. If he was still out when day broke he wouldn't survive the sun's poisonous rays. His stomachs grumbled, as if they could read his thoughts and were fighting the idea of leaving without food.

He heard a soft rustle near the base of a tree to his right, loud in the dead silence of the night. His cold black eyes darted to the source and he saw the warm orange glow of a living body. His heart immediately started beating, flooding him with a rush of anticipation. He could see the outline of the things warm body. It stood high on four thin legs, somehow supporting its long, plump body. It had a long snout it used to dig up bugs and large ears that stood up straight, twitching constantly scanning for any noise. He recognized the animal as a heroni; based on the size he thought it was a male, nearly full grown.

Moving at a painfully slow pace in order to keep from making noise, he rose from his crouch and made his way over to the other tree, taking care not to shake the branches with his massive weight. In a few seconds he was standing on a branch above the unaware animal, clinging tightly to the bark of the massive tree. Crouching down he wrapped his flexible tail around the thick branch that was supporting his weight. Almost all Barabel hunters used blaster rifles or set up traps early in the night; Rogin preferred to use his sharp, clawed hands

The heroni stood on its hind legs, frantically digging at the tree with his sharp front hands for bugs, trying to get food before one of the many predators of the night found him. Rogin lowered himself centimeter by centimeter down the tree, his tail wrapped about the thick branch above him keeping him from falling to the forest floor. He stretched out his clawed hands and reached for the animal's skinny neck.

The high pitched whump of a hunting blaster pierced through the silent night as a bright streak of red flew from the bushes. It struck the heroni, sending a waft of burnt flesh up to Rogin as he curled back up to his perch and searched the hazy darkness. For a moment, he saw nothing and considered taking the animal and running while he had the chance. Before he made the decision, the cool blue heat signature of another reptilian Barabel, emerged from the dense foliage. Curious, Rogin switched to his normal vision and saw it was red-skinned Boondal.

The distance and the darkness kept him from seeing what clan the red skinned hunter was from, but it didn't matter. Rogin was in Boondal territory; hunting in another tribe's territory was punishable by death. He couldn't be caught. He used his claws to crawl down the massive tree, completely unseen, his coal black scales and matching eyes blending in with the dark night around him. He waited as the hunter walked forward to pick up his catch, gun hanging limp at his side. Rogin lowered to a crouch, one foot on the ground and one on the trunk of the tree. Rogin pushed off with his coiled legs and pounced on the man, his body completely extended. Just before he reached him, the hunter looked up in surprise, facing Rogin with wide red eyes. Rogin reached with his hands for the man's mouth, wanting to silence him before he could call for help. The other man reacted much faster than Rogin would have thought possible. He dropped his rifle and his hands shot up, grabbing tightly to Rogin's wrists. The hunter rolled backward and shoved his feet into Rogin's stomach, pushing him up and sending him flying. Rogin flipped in the air past the man and landed on his back, the soft mossy grass cushioning his fall. As Rogin recovered and turned around, he saw the hunter reaching down to grab his rifle. Too far away to grab it before the man did, Rogin called upon the Force sent a wave of energy out at the rifle, pushing it through the unkempt grass and fallen leaves. The hunter turned and regarded him with a surprised, quizzical look. Rogin gave him a low, hissing growl in response and used the excitement of the coming fight to shake off the momentary weariness that always came over him when he used the Force.

The hunter looked up at him and, seeing the angry red scar across his chest and abdomen, hissed in recognition.

"So, the Blight of Barabel crawls out of his lonely pit to hunt. This is the first sighting in months; we started thinking you'd moved on to a different forest, or died."

"It's not the first sighting," Rogin replied in a cold voice, crouching low and preparing for the man's next attack. "There are, what, three or four red skinned weasels missing from your tribe? he asked.

He felt a flash of hot anger from the hunter and the man sprinted towards him, his teeth barred in anger. Rogin was ready for the rage fueled attack he had coaxed out of the man. The hunter jumped forward with his arms extended, a dark red streak aiming to tackle Rogin to the ground. When the hunter's hands were just centimeters away from Rogin's body, Rogin jumped back into a sprawl and let the hunter's forward momentum crash into him. In the same motion, Rogin slipped his right arm under the hunter's throat. The man's momentum and weight pushed him back but Rogin managed to stay on his feet. He tightened his grip on the man's throat and leaned into the man, using his significant weight to press down on his neck from above. The hunter immediately started to panic, trying in vain to squeeze his fingers in-between his neck and Rogin's arm. As much as he struggled, he couldn't find any space for his fingers to get through. He started scratching desperately at the larger man's forearms, trying to dig into Rogin's scales with his sharp claws. Rogin ignored small stabs of pain and kept his arms locked. After a few minutes the attacks got slower, and then the hunter went limp. Rogin wrenched his head to the left, snapping his neck; he didn't want the man waking up later and telling the story. If word continued to spread, if he became a real and proven threat rather than a mystery in the forest, people would start looking for him. He was certain they knew his general location and, if he wasn't careful, they would come after him. As it was, this was just another hunter who had gone missing, no proof it was Rogin, and there were many dangerous things that could have killed the man.

Rogin released his grip and let himself relax, his heart starting to slow and his blood cooling. He stood up with a grunt, weariness quickly falling over him like a heavy cloak. He slung the smaller red body over his shoulder, then bent down to get the heroni and heaved it over his other shoulder.

Cognus was alone in the barren training room beneath her home on Aargonar. She paced quickly back and forth across the long stone floor, filled with rage. As she walked, a storm of pure Force energy brewed around her, picking up and dislodging chunks of stone from the walls of the empty training room as the intensity of the storm grew. She stood in the eye of the storm without noticing the destruction it wrought. She was too angry to notice, too focused on her failure. It had been almost four years since her apprentice had left, yet still hatred brewed within her whenever she thought of him. She honestly wasn't sure what made her madder: that he would dare to leave or that she had been such a failure as a Master.

Never in her time as an assassin had she failed a mission. She was spoken of to this day as one of the Galaxy's most ruthless and dependable killers. As an apprentice learning under Darth Zannah she had astonished her Master with her quick learning.

For a moment the rage was forgotten and Darth Cognus smiled. Her poor master; after only ten years of training she had risen above Darth Zannah and challenged her, defeating her with surprising ease. But now she was supposed to be a Master, but a Master with no apprentice. She screamed in frustration and the storm dissipated violently, the loose stones crashing into the walls and exploding into dust.

She sat trying to calm herself, to clear her mind and figure out where she had gone wrong. As she searched back the memories flew past with stark clarity. She was amazed at the blindness of her past self. How had she not realized how foolish it was to choose Millennial to be her apprentice? There had been many factors forcing her hand. Chief among them was that she had risen above and defeated her Master so quickly that she'd never had the time to find a potential candidate while she was still an apprentice. So, after defeating her Master, she'd realized her mistake and begun panicking, tearing through the Galaxy in search of someone worthy. She'd come across Millennial on a tiny moon far from the worlds of the core. He was living alone, run out of his small town years before because of his glaring deformity. She had been desperate for an apprentice and, as a young man whose entire world had turned on him, he had been desperate for guidance and somewhere to belong. She had been drawn to him because he was like her, an outsider among his own people. Cognus should have been on guard for his revolt; growing up as an outcast had encouraged a tendency to question rules and authority, and his rebellious spirit had been stewing through his entire apprenticeship. As Cognus looked through her memories she saw the times it had boiled up, over and over, before finally bursting. Cognus saw now that she had been too soft with him, entertaining his ideas and slight disobedience instead of reprimanding and stomping out the seeds of defiance before they sprouted.

Cognus dragged herself from her trance; it didn't matter how it had happened. Her apprentice had severed himself from the lineage of the true Sith and fled from Cognus to Dromund Kaas. She had, for a time, entertained the idea of going to Dromund Kaas and convincing Millennial to join her once again, but she quickly dismissed the idea. He was a weakness and a blight of shame on the Sith and especially her. She had also considered heading to Dromund Kaas and purging him from existence, but knew that there wasn't any point to it. He was a worthless failure and she would only be wasting her time to go after him.

She pushed the thoughts of her old apprentice from her mind and focused on the future instead. She'd been searching for an apprentice for three years and she hadn't found anyone to replace Darth Millennial. There had been a few possibilities, but her experiences had made her more critical, fearful of wasting all that time just to have another apprentice fail. With a forceful, angry breath she cleared her mind of worry and stress and opened herself up to the Force to let its calming energy flow through her. As she opened herself up, just trying to control her emotions more, a vision flashed into her mind.

She was transported to a large open-topped coliseum. Inside she saw tens of thousands of beings from all across the Galaxy roaring in the stands. She zoomed in quickly and Cognus saw a dirt gladiatorial pit, spikes lining the edges. Three combatants were inside, one dead and two still locked in combat. They were two Cathar and a massive black-skinned reptilian she thought she recognized as a Barabel. An uncharacteristically large Cathar was impaled on a spear and lying dead on the floor. In the middle of the pit, the Barabel was using the Force, lifting the smaller Cathar off his feet and choking him. The Barabel had multiple of cuts and stabs on his legs, draining blood, as well as a long scar on his chest and abdomen that she could tell was old. She focused harder on the vision, hoping to discover which planet this would take place on or was taking place on. As she focused in, her field of view widened again and panned out. Below the stands was a large sand arena with empty gladiatorial pits of varying sizes with different aspects to add danger, from huge holes to pockets of quicksand. She caught sight of a geyser billowing bright green smoke in the middle of one of the pits and the vision came to a quick end, jolting her back to reality. Her eyes snapped open and she was once again alone in the cold, still room. Her heart beat rapidly and her skin was soaked with cold sweat, having a vision always did that to her.

Her anger forgotten, Cognus walked quickly across the stone floor and up the stairs to the above ground level of her home. She moved over to her computer, a stark contrast to her bare and seemingly ancient basement, and sat down to get a clearer picture of her vision. She first searched planets with famous gladiatorial pits. She noted certain names with a smile, memories rising up from her past life. She got rid of all the names she recognized; knowing none of them had naturally occurring geysers. She searched the atmospheres, makeup and other aspects of the remaining planets to see which had the potential to produce the dangerous hot springs.

There was only one planet left on the list, Alkaroe. It was on the edge of the outer rim territories in the Albanin sector. She decided to wait until tomorrow to leave, hoping that, as she dreamt the Force would show her the meaning of this vision.

Rogin trudged slowly towards the mouth of his cave, still weary from his short fight and his use of the Force. Jogging back carrying the two bodies hadn't helped either. Before going in, he leaned to the side and let the body of the red skinned Barabel slide off his shoulder to the ground outside the entrance to the cave, adding to the messy pile of bodies. There were seven bodies now, three greys and now four reds with the last entry. He had only ever killed one black, whom he had buried off to the side of the rest. As he walked past the grouping of bodies, he couldn't help but look to the telltale mound of disturbed dirt. He slowed down, lost in thought, bile rising up.

He worked to keep his mind off the mound of dirt just a couple meters away from the entrance of his cave. He wondered, as he had many times before, why he always felt so tired and drained after he used the Force. From what little he had heard about the strange power, it was often used to rejuvenate, but he couldn't imagine it bringing him anything but weariness. His assumption was that one had to be trained in its use in order to fully take advantage of that. The only problem was he didn't have anyone to train him. There had been a moment when he could have gone with the Jedi, but that chance had slipped away a long time ago, and, to be honest, he had run from the opportunity. Now all he had was this, the small but useful tool that was just another advantage over his opponents. With a quiet groan he pushed it out of his head. This was just another thought that led down a path to nowhere.

He shook his head and continued into the cave; he refused to dwell on it. He had done what he needed to do and there was no changing it. He impaled the heroni on a stick and started a fire. His stomachs growled in anticipation as the smell of the cooking animal filled his small cave. Outside the rains started pounding signaling the end of another day.