Disclaimer: All non-original characters and ideas mentioned here is SW material, not owned by me. Like countless others, I'm just playing in the Lucas Universe, inspired by Episode 3. The Schintian race was thought up by me.
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Four: Who are You-
Smoke, confusion, and an everpresent layer of mist had settled into the highlands of Whrede.
It was the animal's confusion, not herconfusion. Asaajj Ventress' mind was clear as space in its desire and destination- she was looking up, out of the cloud where the Ammonia was thick enough to hinder visibility. Now that the animals around here rightfully feared her, she would have no more interruptions.
I have you now. Zurxix was very close by, close enough to see in normal visibility. He'd ended this night's chase by perching himself on the highest hill for a hundred klicks. Then he'd just stopped moving.
It was such an odd tactical choice she'd instantly suspected a trap. Not only was the cliff only accessible by one path, but it stretched high enough so that one could see the world's weakling sun, above the mists.
If it had been her, she would have plunged into the very deepest of the planet's overgrown valleys. Down there, eyes were much worse than useless- they would sting much harder than anything she'd felt in the past few days. She'd seen the valleys herself, giant openings thrusting through the earth like gaping mouths. About half a kilometer down each of them, the mist would thicken so that she could not see the valley bottom.
If there was a bottom.
In any case, Zurxix had been stupid not to hide in the valleys, to pop his big head up where his assassin would be sure to see it.
In one long leap, she parted ways with the tree she'd been hanging from and bounded straight for the Gand Jedi's back.
Something large and black flew directly into her at the halfway point. Not a Force affected object- the thing was kicking at her with dewclaws on its hind legs even as they fell off to one side. The thing had pounced from nowhere, and pinned both her arms before either could use the weapons they held.
Instantaneous white rage fired all through her, and the predator suddenly found it could not make its pin stick. She kicked the creature hard in the chest before it could bring its needle-tooth jaws down, slackening its hold on her already-bleeding arms.
Suddenly she took great care to remain perfectly still. Either it's injuries or something else had made the creature back off from its kill. Instead, there was now a familiar purple beam cutting across her vision, angled in such a way so that the slightest twitch would remove her head from her shoulders.
Zurxix's bug eyes bored downward at Asaajj, betraying no more emotion than his weapon. "That was most unprofessional of you, young Ventress."
She mumbled a Sith-curse, but forcefully stopped the fast-boiling urge to leap up at him and into the purple glare.
Above her, the Gand hunter sighed remorsefully. "Zurxix has feared this. Young Ventress will not listen to Zurxix, she will not listen to what he has to say."
In the back of her head, something else clicked- the whole of Gand society felt it the height of arrogance to use personal pronouns. A silly little cultural rule that forced his mandibles to buzz out his entire name instead of just 'I'.
To her surprise, he removed the blade from her neck just then, and stretched one arm down to grasp hers.
The absurdity of it was too much. Ardor and compassion for a Sith assassin? Did this fool even know who he was dealing with?
Whatever the reason, she was going to make him regret his weakness. All in one single motion, she flipped onto her feet, ignoring her wounds, then grasped and ignited both of her blood red lightsabers into an 'X' shaped cross of death against his single beam.
Far too late, she heard a familiar growl- the same animal, pouncing from behind and forcing her round head into the grass with both paws. She could only see the black dirt of the ground, partly scorched by the twin sabers she'd turned off just in time to save herself.
"And yet", he said as if nothing had happened to interrupt them, "Zurxix knows Asaajj hunts him for a good cause. Which is why Zurxix will surrender his life once Asaajj listens to him."
Buried face-first in the dirt, Zurxix couldn't see her snarl, one not unlike his pet Vornshkr, who now held her pinned again. Careful. This bug is playing mind games with you. Wait for him to drop his guard, then carve his heart out.
The slightest tremble, a shift in his stance- he'd felt those violent thoughts as well. Only once she dug her face out of the wet dirt did she see that he'd backed all the way to the cliff's edge, arms spread-eagled.
"If Asaajj attacks now", the Gand said, "Zurxix will leap to the bottom of this, the deepest of Whrede's valleys. Zurxix knows where he can hide for weeks, eluding death. Listen to Zurxix, and he will allow you to accomplish your mission."
-
An eight-foot reptile gazed at the image before him, and tasted the air to be sure of the truth.
He gave a toothy smile, having felt every inch of the death as though he was there himself. "Then you felt it also, Lon?"
The Forgotten Jedi nodded to his comrade across the holo-link. "I could not ignore it. Reyne's despair and anguish called out to me, as did Kahl Gonak's before his death. The old man is picking us off one by one."
Trasshk hissed semi-hysterically at the gall Lon had in calling Palpatine an old man, considering the furrows that weighed down his sloping brow. Even in a blue-trim hologram, Lon's cracked leather wings were showing their atrophy along with his talons and fangs. His species, however voracious they were in their prime, aged quickly.
He's strong with the Force, Trasshk gloated inwardly, but not that strong.
He would never allow such a fate to befall himself, he swore. He'd seen century-old Transdoshans back on the home world, and bedrock knew they were sad, pathetic little creatures. Yellowed, filmy scales covering seemingly infinite wrinkles. Far worse, though, was the dulling of their teeth. His own father, for one, couldn't even penetrate hide without help.
No, I'll find a way to make myself useful before that happens. His teeth slid out again, reminding him why he was working with this dusty old Schintian fossil. Ruling the new Galactic Empire is a nice start.
That had been the plan, three weeks ago when they first conceived it. Lon had passed the message on subtly, informing each of them about the recent shift in power within the decaying Republic- a system of authority just as obsolete as his late father.
But the thing he'd found growing in its place was appealing as a nice fat haunch of Wookiee meat. Now the Jedi are gone and we are here, ready to pluck the spoils from Palpatine's withered hand. Lon, the human named Kahl Gonak, and himself had all wanted a piece of the rhyscate. Reyne A'kla and Zurxix had been less enthusiastic, but still agreed to come to the proposed gathering.
But now the young upstart human was dead by an unknown hand, along with that disgusting little pacifist Reyne A'kla. While he'd regretted Gonak's passing, he wouldn't really be missed in the grand scheme of things. Just two fewer hands to divide the spoils with.
"I have been trying to get a hold of Zurxix", Lon continued, "to warn him about the assassins, but he doesn't seem to be listening. If he dies, I really do doubt our chances of toppling Palpatine. With five it would have been easy, but only two?"
Trasshk's reptilian eyes tightened at the mention of another member of their group he would not miss. "Zurxix is a bug-faced idiot. He spends more time on the Outer Rim looking for visions than he does helping us! You know he never really wanted to rule the Empire."
"May I remind you", Lon said, the strain of his patience finally edging through, "that Zurxix was a prophetic legend on par with Master Yoda before he left the order? He might not have been a mental adept like Reyne or a supreme master with the Lightsaber like yourself-"
"-No need to flatter me-"
"-But his visions have never been wrong", Lon continued weightily. Relaxing his leather wings into a folded cross, he sighed. "I feel less than comfortable conspiring behind the old man's back without Zurxix to make certain our futures remain assured."
Trasshk let his own repulsion shine through in full force, snarling loudly enough to scatter nearby patrons. "Listen to you, you sound like a fussy protocol droid. I know you're not so much of a coward that you'd back out of this without a 100-percent guarantee that we'll succeed. Zurxix said we'd win last time, and nothing's changed since then."
Lon showed his own dull fangs, tiny little things compared to Trasshk's nightmarish jaws. "Everything has changed since then, my friend. Since then, we had five. Whoever it is that killed young Gonak and Reyne will be coming for us next- you don't need to be Zurxix to know that."
Even this news only broadened the Trandoshan's grin into a meat-eating smile. "Good. Ruling this fragging backwater was fun for about two days until I found where all the interesting animals hide."
It was difficult to tell what sort of feelings Lon was radiating in response to this gruesome bluster. As strong in the Force as he had been, Trasshk had never completed any sort of training on how to perceive the thoughts and feelings of others- just one of many reasons why he'd left. His was a species naturally inclined to anger and fighting, but not even another Trandoshan would dare challenge him now.
Now, that Lon and Zurxix had helped him become the self-imposed dictator of T'gattok. Just as Lon had procured his own little enclave of power on another planet as a prelude to the coming succession, he now had enough fear-driven servants and resources to keep him busy.
Now he looked back into the aging Schintian's eyes with his own lizard-slits and realized that Lon thought of him as an inferior. More than just the arrogant so-called wisdom of his people, he had always viewed him- a fellow reptile- as hired muscle with no brain, to be used and discarded like a hefty vibroaxe.
"He'll come for me next, yes?" he said eagerly, trying to ignore Lon's bemused stare. "Once he gets here, he's dead- I'll see to that. But like you said, he already got Gonak. Can't you-"
"No", Lon spoke up, his tones now icy as he folded his ratty wings. "Not in the way you would imagine. Even I recognize that ability as unnatural, an affront to the Force itself. I… shouldn't use it any more than I must. Only once the old man's assassin is taken care of, Trasshk. Don't fail me."
Coward. Bantha-brained fossil. The insults were on the tip of his tongue, along with a few other choice words, but the holo-link had already faded.
"Oh well", he hissed out with enough enthusiasm that every servant in the room ducked away expecting to be summarily killed in his good mood. That made him laugh as well, standing up in front of the projector. I can wait a few more days, just as long as a Sith Lord is as tasty as my dear father was.
-
His body twitched awake to remembered pain. It was as though the man had woken from a deep sleep, the power of all senses just now returning to him.
Once he did, he immediately realized that several things were terribly wrong with the galaxy.
For one, he was looking at the world- or in this case, just a corrugated metal wall- through red-tinged lenses. The sound of crying was coming from somewhere, but he was still too overwhelmed to get up off the floor. Such weight and mass on his body!
The emptiness. That was the cause of his despair. A memory devoid of the answers to such basic questions as: Who am I? Why am I here?
Such concerns would have to wait- he wasn't so stupid as not to know how to work his arms and legs, heavy as they were. And he really wanted that annoying mechanical breathing noise to stop.
Sitting back up to his full height, he realized it was him who was making the noise. A mechanical respirator was muffling his face, flowing downwards into black armor and cybernetics. He presumed that the respirator had been put in due to a need, and did not fiddle with it.
The next source of his discomfort, however, he was sure he could do something about.
"Enough", he spoke for the first time to the many tear-stricken men and women around him in the warehouse. A very deep and serious bass, he noted, accentuated by the mechanical breathing apparatus. "I do not know how it is we all came to be here, but crying about it will not accomplish anything."
He may as well not have spoken. His voice scared several of them, causing him to actively wonder why all these people were so fragile. Clearly he was different from the others in many ways, the black armor being the least of them. He felt stronger, more stable than everyone else, and he was certainly less prone to weak emotional displays.
The man- if he could still be called that- stood motionless for nearly a minute before determining he could do nothing for these people until he regained some of his own memories. Striding through a freshly-burned hole in the door that seemed etched around his figure, he stalked out into the glaring sunlight of Chandrila, seeking answers.
-
Stalemate.
Asaajj Ventress' twin sabers were both out and at the ready, illuminating the jungle a mere five meters from Zurxix's flesh. So close, and yet so far he may as well have been miles away.
No doubt existed in her mind now that Zurxix's threat was real. Tempting as it would be, as possible as it might be to fall down the valley after her prey and Force-accelerate herself to catch up midfall, the bottom of these valleys was death for any creature that did not breathe ammonia. It would be suicide even without Zurxix's pet Vornshkyr breathing down her neck.
At the edge of the cliff, Zurxix blinked once, sensing her thoughts as they formed. "Zurxix is glad to see he is not the only creature who can predict events", he buzzed smartly, "So many creatures in this galaxy can only understand what is in directly front of them."
"Alright", Ventress growled out in a way the Vornshkyr would be hard-pressed to equal. "Get your little story over with, then I'll kill you."
At once, the Gand Jedi's mood seemed to brighten noticeably, folding his arms. "Zurxix is pleased. The young one demonstrates more patience than expected. Zurxix will tell you of the reason he left galactic civilization behind."
"Hurry it up", she replied harshly. "I'm in a race I don't want to lose."
Nodding slightly, he motioned for his pet to move several meters back. "About five years ago, before the outbreak of the Clone Wars, Zurxix caught hold of a new vision in his meditations. He saw a galaxy in flames. He saw civilization as we know it ending forevermore, along with the Jedi."
She spat on the ground. "I could tell you that much, bug. The Jedi are all but extinct now, thanks to the efforts of Skywalker and his master. They're changing things-"
"No", the Gand interrupted her suddenly. "That is not the vision Zurxix saw. He saw a new threat approaching from outside our own galaxy. Not human, nor any alien species he knows of. It is this threat that destroyed galactic civilization in his vision."
Finally stunned into a momentary silence by the seriousness in his tone, Asaajj waited for more.
"Zurxix does not know if the threat is twenty, fifty, or a hundred years distant," he admitted. "All he knows is that they are coming to destroy and enslave us all. The threat is coming from this edge of our galaxy, closest to Helska 4. That is why Zurxix agreed to help these greedy, self-serving fools seize power over the Empire- to make as many warships as possible for twenty years, to unify us for the threat that is to come."
"And that's why you left for the edge of the galaxy", she finished for him sarcastically, shifting to a fake-sweet tone. "You thought you could see more of them coming from that distance. That's an interesting little doomsday theory. I'm not buying it. Now, how many pieces would you like to be divided into?"
Zurxix said nothing, instead projecting himself into Asaajj's mind with renewed vigor.
The younger fighter's head throbbed as she lunged forward with both sabers, this time careful not to use the Force too strongly. More images forced themselves over her sight in the opposite fashion of Reyne A'kla's ability- Zurxix was adding memories, not subtracting them. He was still doing so when the two sabers converged upon his neck, removing his head…
Which left Asaajj alone with the images so forcefully pushed into her in Zurxix's last moments. These were not the by-products of a fevered imagination, or a mind driven mad by solitude out here in the jungle.
These were very real. She could almost reach out and touch the flesh of the ugly bipedal creature standing in her mind's eye. Beyond that, she sensed strange shadows, voids in the sense Zurxix had used to get them. A rainbow-eyed enemy, commanding thousands of ships, an armada containing billions of the bipedal aliens... altars devoted to Gods and legendary names she did not know…
For the first time since she was a frightened orphan on Rattatak, Asaajj Ventress knew true fear even as Zurxix's pet nuzzled her in comfort.
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M: I'll be honest- I really was ready to give up on this story until I got my fourth review, a very detailed and nice one that encouraged me to write more. :) Hopefully now that the school term is up until January, I can concentrate on this a bit better, maybe get Chapter 5 up by Christmas. No promises.
Personally, I think I dropped a few too many hints about what the 'threat' is, but don't go blabbing it out to everyone who hasn't read about them yet.