Lucina watched with rapt attention as Kalis stood over the raiding partner that she shot in the eye. His visor slowed the arrow down considerably, and it had not peirced his skull. A sick burning smell came up from the wounded man's face. Kalis held his hand in front of the bloody socket. Between his fingers and the man's skin arched a purple glow. Lucina heard the crackle, saw the glow, and smelled the burning flesh. She almost gagged as the streaks of lightning hit the socket flesh.
"Are you-" She began to ask.
"-No." Kalis replied with a huff. He moved from the front of the man to the military pack behind the saddle strapped to the thranta. After a short rummage, Kalis raised a hand length vial filled with an off-pink liquid, before plunging the needle end into the wonded man's neck.
"Why are you helping him? He's the one that planned to steal your heard." Kalis hopped off the back of one dead thranta, and began to move to the one Juji trampled.
"And you felt his plan was wrong at what point?" Lucina found it hard to not take that question like an arrow itself.
"There was nothing wrong with the plan, until you were the target." She tried to be diplomatic.
"Explain." Kalis said simply as he climbed up the thranta corpse.
"You're a-" Lucina began before the old man cleared his throat. "A Force user." She said intently.
"The Force and I have a relationship, yes." Kalis began to rummage through the dead raider's pack. "What of it?"
"We couldn't beat you if we wanted to, plus. I-" Lucina hesitated. "I want to learn from you."
Kalis raised his head to look Lucina in the eye. She felt the intensity from the gaze, even though half his mouth was tearing through the corner of a biofoil wrapped rationpack. Kalis stopped on the spot and sank into a medatative pose. Lucina looked at her former commrades. She remembered arguing with Drevarian Siltpress about the mission before they found, this man.
"Did you have a buyer?" Kalis asked departing the thranta.
"Yes, on the other side of the pass."
Kalis pointed toward Juji. "Patch him up, and use him to lead the herd through the pass. The others will follow him. Make sure that you don't let this fellow-" He pointed to Drevarian. "-get a wiff of the proceeds."
"I don't want to sell the heard. I want you to teach me!"
Kalis bristtled. "Teach you what?" He approached Lucina. Power came off him in waves flattening the grass as he walked.
Lucina stood calm in the face of the challange. "The Force." The waves coming off Kalis died down.
"A complete knowlege of the force does not entitle you to the powers displayed by people like the Jedi. Are you ready to take the chance that you have not been chosen?"
Lucina thought a long while, as Kalis surveyed the rest of the choatic scene, ready to depart.
"I am a noble daughter of the House of Qel-Nosh." This stopped Kalis in his tracks and his power immediately laid flat a circle in the grass as wide as his height. Lucina didn't look at him. She shearched her mind for the right words.
"But I've put that behind me. No matter how easy it was to become a THranta Rider, it wasn't easy being one. I made many terrible choices to end up with that gang, but I'm ready to distance myself from those mistakes and learn what it takes to find my destiny in this world." Lucina paused. "Even it I find out it isnt't with the Force."
She looked up and noticed the grass was still again.
"How much was your buyer going to pay you?" Kalis asked.
"80 tokens a head-"
"That Bothan Manged Swindler!" Kalis barked. He took a breath in and out before continuing in a calmer tone. "I'm going to select four of the herd to keep until we reach town. The rest I want you to sell in the pass. Sell your thranta if you can, then walk to meet me with the tokens."
"Wouldn't it by safer if I kept her? Quicker too-"
Kalis poorly supressed a growl. "-I try and stay out of sight. Not flying where everyone can see me is one of my top priorities. If you and the creature are a package deal I hear that the Shadow Temples are recruiting."
Though his words were harsh, Kalis climed onto one of the nerfs that he had chosen to keep. The effortlessness with which he mounted the creature impressed Luciana. Due to her training, she couldn't imagine mounting a thranta that easily. There were too many pnuemantics, straps, and buckles. Kalis collected the othe three animals with a slight tug of their four-horned heads with his stave. "I'll see you when you get done." Kalis paused. "Or not, you decide."
Lucina clenched her fis, watching Kalis and his nerfs slowly plod down the hill.
"How will I find you?" Lucina called.
Kalis turned so effortlessly, and there was so much brown matching to his clothing to nerfback, that she could have sworn his hip was disconnected from his spine.
"I'll call out to you. All you have to do is clear your mind and listen." With that he turned back away from her, his pace of withdraw painfullt slow. There were so many questions, but she assumed this was all part of some sort of test.
Lucina went to Juji. She examined the arrow wound and then searched the raider's packs for supplies. Medpacks were literally life savers. She numbed the pain, filled the wound with foam after extracting the arrow, and patched it up all out of Drevarian's pack. With Juji fixed up, she would be ready to depart. Lucina went to her thranta.
"It'll be okay, Long." She said petting his smooth nape. The creature, who Lucina had brought out of captivity, gave a large disheaertened sigh. This cycled the air of his floatsacks keeping his altitude stable.
The rise and fall of his body stirred something in Lucina, and she started rapidly unbuckling, unstrapping, and unscrewing all the equipment from the back of the thranta. As she threw off peices of gear, she thought about how lonf she had worked to get each peice. Helmet - Three days wage. Saddle - Four months. Standard issue contraband medpack - Forty-five days. Soforth, with pounds of clothing, knicknacks, and a few holopads. Her raiding companions had called them bricks. She never found out if either of them could actually read.
After the baggage was away, Lucina slid off the animal and gazed at him. It was the first time she had seen Long without some kind of retraint or that electric collar his former owners kept him in.
"He wasn't sure I'd be able to sell you." Lucina said as she stroke the thranta's nasal ridge. "Which means." She grit her teeth and felt the tears well in the corners of her eyes. "That I'm free to let you go."
Lucina stood there for what seemed like hours stroking Long's face and fighting back tears. However, after a few moments, Long gave a delighted sigh as he stretched out his wings. He turned his head, rubbing his cheek again Lucina's body. Sucking air into his floatsacks, Long began to flap his large leathery wings. The flying reptile rose slowly into the air and looked down at Lucina as he acended. She squelched and sign that she had been crying with a sniff, and nodded at the large beast.
Long took to the sky, doing one circle around the nerfs, drawing their attention to Juji and Lucina. He then rode the air higher before dissapearing into the clouds.
Lucina grabbed a couple of medical supplies, her bow, arrows, a bronze amulet, and a change of clothes. She slung the freshly packed gear and bow on the back of Juji. She began to mount, carefully to avoid his wound. As her hand entered the tangled maze of filth and goo that matted the beast's fur, Lucina held back a gag, but not a grimace. Throwing another hand over, she held her breath and tossed her lower body on the back of the nerf. Daw's Pass was only half a day's walk from where Lucina's band had attacked Kalis. If she had taken Long, she could have floated on the ridges above, looking down on the herd below.
Juji wasn't cooperative at first. His clam demenor left as soon as Lucina hopped on his back. He shook his head. Throwing it back made his four horns jab at his new rider. She froze at first, thinking that she had somehow already failed her test. However, Lucina paused, composed herself, and rubbed the back of the creature's neck. She frowned as her fingers passed through spit, bugs, snot, puss, and other sticky semi-liquid substances.
"Let's go." Lucina commanded. Juji seemed to calm down, and began to walk. He was pointed in the wrong direction, and Lucina reached out to grab one of his horns. Feeling the weight shift forward, Juji threw back his head, spearing Lucina's forarm with one of his horns.
"Nerf Lick!" Lucina grasped her wounded arm in pain. Juji capitalized, and bucked his rider, and all of her gear. The former thranta rider wasn't shy of a fall, and made sure not to further endanger her arm. She and the rest of her things laid in the mud for a few moments. Lucina looked over for her medpack, instead her eyes caught the amulet. The Block and Nail, the crest of her house, covered in mud. She caught herself laughing, before pain shot up her bleeding arm.
The medical foam filled in her flesh with a stinging and itching sensation. Lucina picked up her things, leaving the Qel-Nosh amulet in the mud, and began walking alongside Juji. She put herself to his unwounded side, and the two of them led the herd to Daw's Pass. As the group entered the pass, Lucina sorely missed the open air grassland. It began with the nerf's hooves clacking on the hard barren rocky soil. As the wall began to close in, it reverberated and grated in Lucina's head. Then the clostrophobic area lendt a new annoyance, the moist, hot, musty air rising off the backs of the nerfs, who grew closer as the pass became more narrow. Lucina sighed and tried to reassure herself, quoting an old hero story.
"The path of a destiny is unknowable, we can only thank the Force to be alive to take the first step."