The Fic Critic – waves New chapter below all these replies :)

Ameri: thanks :D And Zekk is most definitely mentioned evil grin I'm glad you like Garik – he's cool J

Eowyn Skywalker: I'm glad there's some curve balls in here – lets me know that there's hope yet for me :P And I'll try to remember about your site has the memory of a…well…short-term memory person Thanks!

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Die Another Day
Chapter 18: Rialom

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The courtyard looked like an expensive diner if you ignored that the side opposite Jaina revealed a pool of something that looked very much like toxic waste. Everything was decorated in an almost suspiciously tasteful way, and the lighting would have sent interior decorators into spasms. But that wasn't what caught Jaina's attention.

She took a step back and stood on tip-toe, trying to somehow change the image in her eyes. Instead, her new position only confirmed it: the clay floor was shaped to create a collage of scenes including Jedi – the Solo/Skywalker family, in particular.

What the sith?

She had a bad feeling about this.

"Do you like it?" The voice almost squeaked hopefully. "Isn't it beautiful?"

Her feet turned to jelly again, and Jaina had to fight to stay standing. "Who the hell are you?" she demanded, eyes flashing around the courtyard, trying to find the voice's owner.

Out of the shadows, something crawled. At first she thought it was a beast, and then a crippled alien or human. When he came into the light, however, she realized that it was a man: a perfectly healthy, uncrippled man that, for some reason or another, insisted on staying crouched to the ground.

When he looked up, she realized that this must be Rialom.

"Master Solo?" the man – Rialom – whispered.

"You need serious help, you know that?" Maybe insulting a psychopath wasn't the smartest thing to do, but Jaina had the poison in her brain as an excuse.

Surprising her, Rialom nodded vigorously to her rhetorical question as he stood hesitantly. "Will you help me?" His eyes were glowing. "Master, will you train me, Master?" Up and up his voice went, until he was almost wailing.

A dizzy spell – perhaps encouraged by Rialom – had sent Jaina to the ground. Her gaze, which was becoming slightly erratic, narrowed at Rialom's words. "Check yourself into a hospital, but don't expect me to train you." Rialom's eyes were wide with shock, and she continued. "I'd rather there be no Jedi than a large number of them, and one unable to cope."

Rialom's face became savage, and Jaina was sent flying in the air. "You'll die if you don't help me!" he snarled.

She bounced when she landed on the cloth sun-shield that hung over a door, and all the air squeezed out of her lungs. Desperate, she tried to bring the Force to bear, but it was still blocked from her. Was it from the poison or the planet? As she clung to the roof, she decided it really didn't matter.

"You must train me!" Rialom shrieked, panicked.

Never.

"You'll die!" Rialom keened warningly, his voice becoming only slightly more confident. "I mixed the chemicals myself! No doctor will know the cure!"

I have very little to lose, Rialom. If it comes to that, I've fought for this galaxy long enough.

Rialom's only response was to send her tumbling to the ground.

----

A man, dark, powerful, appeared by her side. Torture waited in his eyes; death laughed in his stride. The two of them – the woman with fangs and the death-lover – watched him with glaring, intense eyes.

And then his mind and body were torn apart and sent flying every which way.

Only his soul and scraps of his flesh remained. With sadistic glee, the woman recreated him, twisted him, until nothing remained but a shell.

----

Molair wasn't there to greet him, and Tiran momentarily felt as if he had been hit between the eyes. Had Molair been delayed by Rialom? Worse, had Tiran…had he imagined it all? Tiran had hoped he was past that stage of grieving – seeing his loved ones across the room or on the street – but what if he wasn't?

Thankfully, he was distracted from his thoughts when an irritated guard approached him. Although still disoriented by Molair's absence, Tiran was clear-headed enough to ask after Jaina. It turned out that the guard was short-tempered because of the same person for whom Tiran was looking.

Reimbursing the man a little more than may have been required in overdue payment for his services, Tiran received information about Jaina's direction. The credits seemed to put the guard in a generous mood, because he also told Tiran of a Jedi monument that Jaina may have gone to.

Almost immediately after the Jedi apprentice left the shipyard, the Force disappeared.

Because he was still new to consciously feeling the Force, the absence caused little more than an emptiness, but Tiran's surprise was more potent. Wasn't the Force supposed to be constant? He'd heard, of course, about the Jedi being unable the feel the 'Vong through the Force, but…

Anxious, Tiran took out his low-intensity, training 'saber and watched the shadows. He'd last two seconds against a Vong: even his healthy ego couldn't protect him from that truth. The barbarous aliens were almost gone, what with the war unofficially over, but that didn't mean the Vong were slowing down.

Tiran almost jumped out of his skin when an abnormally large lizard scuttled across his path. He stared dumbly at its exit point in the bush for a few moments, then burst out laughing. He was getting jumpier than an Ewok around a stranger.

He was going to save Jaina. His brother was alive. The Force was even starting to trickle back a bit – he had no reason to be jumpy. Not yet, anyway, and adrenalin would probably take care of his face-off with this Rialom person.

Tiran was a Jedi, after all, and hadn't everyone told him that the Jedi could do almost anything? They had the Force – he had the Force.

With a considerably lighter heart, Tiran continued down the path. In a surge of optimism, he reached out, searching for his master in the Force. He detected only wisps here and there, where she had lingered or experienced a particularly intense emotion, but he didn't let that get him down.

Tiran was a Jedi, just like in Calair's favourite stories. Rialom was just one person – a freak, to boot. What could a helpless maniac do against an in-control Jedi hero?

Absolutely nothing, that's what.


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He begged them to let him go, but their cruelty only increased until he could remember nothing that happened before. Everything existed around their mockery, the pain, the death that they repeatedly denied him.

Every day, Leila and Trihs died before him. Every day he died and came back to life, which hated him.

Everyday they told him that the only way he would escape was when the Jedi trained him, saved him.

Like they planned, he would do anything to stop it all.

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Tiran finally stopped for two reasons. First of all, Jaina's Force trail had ended; secondly, the mural stunned him so badly he almost fell over.

A gold plaque on the floor dedicated the wall of artwork to the "Myrkr Strike Team", something Tiran only vaguely recalled as a small disaster for the Jedi. It had occurred at the same time as the fall of Coruscant, however, and the Holo reports had only briefly glossed over the Jedi event. The Force trickled through him, however, and belied the Holo-net reports: this is important, it said.

Tiran studied the mural. He'd never been one for art – he liked things he could touch, feel, be sure of, and art tended to have deep meanings that he continued to miss. But there was only honest simplicity in this work, and he managed to understand it, if only because he had lived through something like it. The engravers hadn't tried to portray a second meaning – or, if they had, it wasn't immediately obvious.

He recognized only Jaina in the mural, though two of the men looked vaguely familiar, but her portrayal caught and kept his attention. She seemed to be fighting multiple enemies – the Vong in front of her, the one attacking a team member behind, and pain – which, he realized immediately, was still true today.

Over her shoulder, however, someone – not the original artist – had scratched out the faint outline of a scarred face. Tiran's gut twisted.

Rialom. It had to be.

How long had he been planning this? And why?

Icy fingers of dread clutched Tiran's throat, and he hurried along, hoping he wasn't too late, whatever Rialom planned.

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Then it happened. The Eclipse Massacre. Oh, how his tormentors dangled that in his face!

"No one can save you now."

"You are all ours."

"You're all mine," the Other corrected.

But they were wrong. He wept and nearly died of relief when he heard the news. One of the Jedi was still alive. She could – would – train him. He wasn't lost.

She could save him.

----

When the Jedi monument wing had been left behind nearly an hour before, the air grew stale, and even if Jaina's trail hadn't stopped, Tiran would have been suspicious. Everything felt compressed, pushed down until the neglect was only too obvious. The silence was oppressing, and not even Tiran's footfalls made a sound.

His search of the building proved fruitless (not that he wanted to look at any of it too closely) and the apprentice finally used the large door not only to expand his search, but to escape.

It turned out, Tiran's subconscious was smarter than he had thought.

Tiran came out to the courtyard, right next to a pool of thick, black sludge. Skirting around it carefully, he scanned the vicinity, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up in dread. All his visions of an easy victory vanished in the gloom that was cast over the otherwise picturesque scene.

His outlook was not helped by seeing Jaina, bound and apparently unconscious, on a cloth overhang.

Throwing caution to the wind, Tiran sprinted across the open area and pulled a table over. Stepping up onto it, he straightened until he could see her. "Jaina?" he ventured, shaking her shoulder gently.

Her eyes opened slowly, wearily, and were rimmed with a white, flaky substance. "Tir…Tiran?" she muttered foggily.

Thank the stars! Tiran breathed a sigh of relief; she was alive. At least he had one thing to check off his list of worries. "What'd he do to you?" the dark-haired man murmured, fumbling with the bonds around her wrists.

"I…he used a…dart. I think. I can't… It was…poison." Each word cost her, not only because her brain refused to supply the needed memories, but because her breathing was becoming more erratic.

The cord gave way from her hands and he shuffled down the table, starting on the bonds around her feet. "Jaina!" His voice was sharp, deliberately an anchor to keep her awake. "Can you walk?"

"I don't…" She swallowed and concentrated on keeping focus. "If I have to."

He nodded more to himself than to her words. "Okay. Okay, we can do this."

Jaina's eyes narrowed for a moment as she looked over Tiran's shoulder at a black form and furious visage. What was that? The connection was made too slowly and even before she managed to finish calling, "Look out!" in warning, her apprentice toppled to the ground with Rialom, furious, standing over him.

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-Tjz