Heya, folks! Blackviper327 here with a brand new story. Had this sitting unfinished for a while, but the Rebels season premiere got my inspiration going. Here's hoping that this lives up to the usual quality of my work. And to the fans of What If?, the next chapter will be finished soon, I assure you.
I own precisely dick. Star War is Disney's and George Lucas'.
Prologue
Giala ran. She ran as fast as her short, young legs would carry her, lungs burning and terror filling her mind as pushed past the thick foliage of Dathomir. She could still hear the last of the fighting behind her. No...she couldn't call it fighting. It was slaughter. The males in black were slaughtering the Frenzied River Clan, and they were doing it with the speed and brutality of the Reptilian Fliers that prowled the skies. Farr was close behind her, his club clutched tightly as he watched for any of the males in black that might have followed them. She could hear him panting heavily, almost totally out of breath, like her.
The nine year-old still though that maybe, just maybe this was all part of a terrible nightmare. That maybe the Nightsisters, out of spite of their latest defeat, were tormenting the village with the Dark Spirits to bring bad dreams again. But the blood running down her forehead, the hot liquid sting of it, reminded her that it was real. She wanted to cry, but she held it back for now. Her mother had always told her to be strong in bad times. That strength and courage pleased the Fanged God and the Winged Godess.
Her mother...who now lay dead in the burning remains of her village.
It had begun not an hour ago, when she'd left to check on Farr after his latest series of beatings from his mate, a cruel and spiteful female that seemed on the edge of fleeing to join the Nightsisters every day, but never quiet working up the courage to leave. His eye had been swollen shut, and he had trouble speaking with his damaged throat after his mate has used the Magicks to strangle him. Her mother had always told her that the males were inferior, untouched by the Magicks and good only for work and mating. She'd never even known her father, though she was told he'd been killed by a Kwi pack during the late season when she was born. She thought she might have had a brother as well, but the boy she suspected of it was dead before she could confirm it, after the shaman had decided that he was not worth wasting the cure for the wasting sickness that had struck them four years earlier, preferring to keep it for the females.
But Farr had always been kind to her. It was true that the Magicks did not touch him, as her mother said, but he was still strong in body, and contrary to what the females of her village said about the males being incapable of thinking as well as them, he showed as much wisdom as any of them.
"Yakris is cruel. I don't see why you deserved such a beating." She had said as she tried her best to treat the male's swollen eye with pilfered herbs from the shaman's basket. The giant had grunted at that.
"Many of the females are, little one. It is how it has always been on Dathomir." Giala frowned at that response, her little face taking on a look of digust as she rubbed the crushed root against his eyelid.
"I will change it when I am shaman. I will make the cruel ones leave." Farr let out a chuckle, a deep, booming sound that always managed to make her giggle. Well, not this time. Her mood was too sour for that. "I mean it. It is stupid how the males are treated."
Then, Farr stared at her for a long moment, his head nodding slowly up and down, like that was the wisest thing he had ever heard. "It is not my place to complain, little one. One day, maybe, but not today. For now the males must accept their role here." Giala opened her mouth to reply, but stopped when she saw something moving to the North, across the river. It was a brief rustle of leaves and bushes, then, slowly, she began to focus on the sight before her.
It was...a male? Yes, a male, she thought, though unlike any she had seen before here. He looked like one of the horned males that her mother had spoken of, the ones the Nightsisters kept prisoner. Black and red skin, baleful yellow eyes set grimly, marked with intricate, and intimidating, tattoos. He rode astride one of the oddest animals she had ever seen. Like his spikey, jet black armor, its fur was as dark as the moonless night, thick of the body and legs, its tail long and wide toward the tip, but with short arms that seemed of little use. What was most odd, however, was the strangely bird-like head of the beast, red eyes glaring at everything before it. It struck her as if someone had combined the parts from several different animals into one. She felt Farr's hand fall on her shoulder.
"Little one, we should go." She barely heard him as she stared at the horned male.
The horned male was staring back at her, his face going even more grim than before as he drew an evil-looking sword from his belt and raised it high. There was a thunderous sound now, she could hear. It was drawing closer by the second, and Giala realized that Farr was right. She started to turn with the big male as they began to move, but not before she saw the source of the thunder.
There were dozens of them. Males in black astride the same sort of beasts the horned male rode, all baring weapons. Swords, axes, clubs, and even the strange metal tubes her mother had called 'blasters' were raised and ready for battle. They were closing fast, and she knew that that the pair of them would have no chance outrunning them. From the corner of her eye she saw one of the males on foot, holding a pair of leashes that were tied to a pair of beasts that resembled the hunting cats that dwelled in the deep jungles; large, taller than her by nearly a head, with dark gray fur and black stripes along its back and tail. Their eyes were a piercing, evil green that seemed to burn with unnatural hatred. They were nearly dragging their master along as they ran, snarling and snapping their gigantic teeth at empty air.
She let out our a sharp cry as she stumbled on a knotted root, twisting her ankle and sending a jolt of agony up her leg. She struggled to stand, but almost immediately Farr was at her side, scooping her up in his enormous arms and bolting as quickly as he could. She could feel his scratchy beard on her cheek as he carried her, the sounds of the males in black growing closer behind her. Suddenly, Farr fell behind a large, fallen tree, pulling her in with him as he stuffed himself in the muddy hole it rested over. For a moment there was only the jungle before them, and then the males came storming forward, toward the village. None stopped to take them, she saw. She thanked the gods for that much at least.
And then, as the first of the males tore through the foliage that obstructed her view of her home, she heard the cries from her sisters, and the low boom of the alarm horn.
The screaming started a moment after, and her blood ran cold.
Farr waited until all the males had disappeared through the leaves before he stepped out of the hole, his shoulders, back and head muddy now as he carried her along. Gialla gripped his forearm tightly as he began to run through the trees, ducked low to protect her from the sharp thorns covering many of the branches. One caught her, however, and she yelped as it bit across her forehead. She thought the green would last forever, but then they burst through into the familiar sight of her village. The place she had called home her entire life.
The first thing she saw was the body of one of her sisters, facing away from her with a burning hole between her shoulders. No more than twenty summers old. She wasn't moving. The little girl saw many more of her sisters as she looked further into the village, sprawled out dead or dying while others fought the males. One of the dark beasts was riderless now, but many more were carrying their masters toward her sisters, their blades and axes flashing as they cut them down, and the blasters ringing in the humid air. Farr was running along the outskirts of the village, keeping them well out of sight as he tried to get her to her mother's hut. It was still intact, but many others were burning. One, the one that had belong to Valna, was completely engulfed. She could hear Valna herself screaming inside. She would never forget that sound.
In the center of the village, she could see one of the males, a hulking giant with bright red, pebbly skin with strange black tatoos covering his arms and neck, his face reminding her of an incent; pointed ears, a tapir-like snout and bulbous, black eyes that seemed dead to her. He was barking orders at the others while he spun an enormous axe around, directing his comrades toward different targets. The horned male was cutting down another of her sisters, her head sailing in a bright red arc as he sword flashed through her neck. Gialla was horrified to see that several of the males from village were joining the males in black, wielding whatever tools they could find as weapons, exacting their revenge for lifetimes of abuse and opression.
There was a high, ululating cry coming from just ahead of her, and when Gialla turned her tiny head up, she felt a surge of hope course through her. Her mother was there, sword in hand with two of the males already fallen around her, holding her ground as she glared at her foes. Another of the males rode past her, and she let out another high war cry as she leaped forward and slashed at his chest, sending him falling from his mount in a great, grunting heap. Then she heard a sharp, barking bellow from the insect-like male.
"Kill that one!" He was pointing right at her mother with his axe. Gialla gripped Farr's arm tightly as he ducked under one of the Baz Nitch coops, out of the way of the fighting. She saw her mother duck just in time to avoid the horned male's sword as it sailed past her head, his teeth bared in hatred as he rode past her. Her mother was preparing to pursue him when the first of the blaster bolts struck her in the belly. She stopped suddenly, letting out a shallow gasp as the energy burned a hole through her stomach. Gialla's eyes went wide, and she started to struggle against Farr's hold on her as she wathced. He didn't let go.
"Mother!"
Another bolt struck her mother in the chest, sending her staggering several steps, though she kept to her feet. She was wobbling uncontrollably, the mere act of standing a struggle for her now. And then the third male rode up behind her, his beast squawking angrily as he sank his axe deeply into her mother's back. She screamed as she watched the woman fall to her knees, a mouthful of blood trickling down her chin. She was struggling harder against Farr, calling upon what little she knew of the Magicks to give her strength. Finally she managed to slip out of his grasp, and she bolted toward her mother as fast she could. Farr was screaming behind her, begging her to return as he stood to follow her. She paid him no need in that moment, focused only on her bleeding mother.
Her heart tore in two when she saw the giant, dark cats charging toward the injured woman. The first tacked her with unbelievable force, its monstrous teeth sinking into the pale skin of her neck. The second slammed into her chest, tearing at her belly with its hind claws as it seized her arm in its jaws. Gialla felt her body stiffen as she watched, eyes wide and vision blurring as the animals...no...not animals, the monsters, tearing her mother apart. Tears ran down her cheeks as she fell to her knees, crawling. She screamed.
"MOTHER!"
One of the cats raised its head, jaws bloody and ragged flesh hanging from its teeth. The males in black were turning to face her too. One of them, a Human in a black coat over spikey armor, started toward her on foot, grinning wide as he brought a heavy club around toward her. There was no escaping that blow.
The club stopped abruptly over her. Farr was there, his meaty hand encircling the other male's wrist. With a roar he brought his other hand around at the male's face, bursting the raider's nose in a gush of red. He struck again and again, not stopping until the male in black went limp. He didn't hesitate for a moment, grabbing the male's club in one hand and scooping up Gialla in the other. He ran as fast as he could away from the village, cursing violently as they listened to the sounds of fighting growing fainter in the distance. Eventually, he had to set Gialla down, and together they ran deeper into the jungle. The Frenzied River Clan was no more. The males in black had conducted a slaughter faster than any of the predators of Dathomir or the Nightsisters had ever managed in all of the clan's long history. They had only once choice now. Farr was the first to say it, once they had reached the outskirts of the jungle, holding the young girl tightly as she cried.
"We go to the Singing Mountain Clan, little one. They will know what to do."
TTTTT
"You have heard the girl's story?" Augwynne Djo looked up to the source of the voice, her daughter Allaya, stepping through the flaps of her tent, her face set grimly as she approached her mother. The old clan mother of the Singing Mountain Clan nodded slowly as the younger woman sat before her, head bowed low in respect. Always the dutiful child. She had to treasure the moments she had with her children in these times, now that she was left only with Allaya and Kara'Teel. She spoke slowly, tiredly as she tried to shake the age from her bones for a moment.
"I have, Allaya. It is disturbing, indeed. It matches the story told by the sister from the Howling Peaks Clan?" Her daughter nodded firmly.
"Yes. Males in black accompanied by Sithspawn that set upon them suddenly. Few survivors from either attack."
"And the girl herself? And the male that came with her?"
"She has been placed with Kara'Teel. She will tend to her wounds and care for her. The male has been placed with the others. We will put him to work immediately." Augwynne shook her head at that.
"No. Even if only a male, he has done a great service. Let him rest, and send him meat and water. He has earned it." Her daughter nodded, and she knew it would be done. The old woman sighed deeply as she stood, turning toward the brazier in the center of her tent. "Gethzerion is behind this. The Fanged God and the Winged Godesss have told me as much."
That gave her daughter pause, her face becoming even more dour than usual. There was a long silence before she spoke.
"The Nightsisters have allied themselves with the Sith once again, then?" Audwynne shook her head.
"No. Not the true Sith. Not Sidious or Vader. A relic of an older time of their history, I think. It is not much better."
"Shall I rally the sisters, mother?"
"No. With the Nightsisters allied with these strangers, they are a foe beyond our clan alone. The other clans will not come to our aid, I think. They will seek to defend themselves first." The clan mother droned slowly, one boney finger rising toward the brazier as she spoke. "Allaya, you will retrieve the holocommunicator from our stores. Take whatever power cells you need to make it work."
Her daughter blinked at that, clearly surprised. They'd rarely made use of the technology they'd taken from the last ship to crash land on the planet's surface, and clearly she hadn't expected it to come into use here.
"Of course, mother. But...why?"
"As I said, this is a foe beyond merely our clan. We will require aid from offworld." And then, the old woman took a long, shuddering breath, feel the full weight of her age as she spoke her next words. "You will contact Ashoka Tano, and tell her that the Witches of Dathomir require her aid once more."
Woo, finally done with that. Its good to finally be writing some Star Wars material, even if its basically just filler right now while I try to work up some inspiration for the next chapter of What If? I'll probably be alternating between that story and this one from this point on, but you never know. Might just go as I whim it to. Anyway, let me know what you thing, and may the Force be with y'all.