Part 3
Arya knelt on one knee in a small grove about a mile or so from where she had landed Maul's ship. Her heart was pounding in her chest and her entire body felt drained. Several hours ago, the area around the ship had been crawling with droids, and then suddenly they had all had packed up and left. The next thing she knew, two missiles were headed for the ship, ready to destroy her only way off the new planet she was now on. Shelter, weapons, food, and a wealth of information were all things that the ship provided her. But of all the benefits it contained, the ability to leave the planet was the most important. When Arya had noticed the missiles, she had attempted to use the force to stop them mid-air, but they were so strong that she had only managed to change their trajectories. Still, that had done enough to keep Maul's ship intact.
As she struggled to get to her feet from the sheer exhaustion of exerting so much force energy at once, she prayed to the Old Gods and the New that there were no follow-up missile attacks. Scanning the distance, she tried to remember what she had been doing at the moment she had noticed the missile strike.
About a day and a half ago, Arya had been on her way to Westeros and was examining the holocrons that she had at her disposal when the pilot droids had made her aware of an odd piece of code that had been embedded in the ship's system which would allow someone to track the ship's location. The droids were working on deleting the piece of code but were having a tough time so they advised Arya that if she didn't want to lead her pursuers to her final destination, that she should make a detour at any nearby habitable planet and wait until they could delete the tracking code. Apparently, the planet she was now on was the closest.
When she landed on the planet, she had instructed the ship to find out what information it could gather about her new surroundings. To her surprise, the planet she had landed on was not documented on any map that Maul's ship contained. The ship stated that she was in what she had learned from Maul to be the Unknown Regions of the Galaxy. Undocumented planets, weird and unexplainable anomalies; the Unknown Regions could be a dangerous place for even the most veteran of space explorers, or so Maul's training had taught her. Apparently, the planet that housed Westeros was on nearly the other side of the Unknown Regions. How and why Maul was out that far in the first place when he had found her was a question she would ask him…if she ever saw him again.
When she landed the ship, she had planned to make camp just outside of it, but she knew that if the people tracking her had wanted to find her, the ship would be the obvious first place that they would look. The droid scouting party that arrived a day later told her that her instincts had been correct. So, she had kept a low profile and watched the droids from a distance before they had all abruptly left. After that, she had grabbed the pack containing the holocrons along with a pack of supplies and had begun scouting to see where she could build a camp that was close enough to the ship that she could get back to it quickly, but not too close that she would be in danger of being found. It was then that the missile attack had come. She had heard them enter the atmosphere and thought that maybe they were more droid drop ships, but they were moving much too fast, and she recognized them as being missiles from the training material on weapon types that Maul had forced her to study. Her last-second attempt to stop the missiles had saved her ship and her chances of getting off the planet.
While the missile attack was worrisome enough, there were two other things that worried her more. One was the dark force energy that was emanating from one of the ships that was orbiting the planet. Someone with a strong connection to the force was here for her. It wasn't Sideous. She would recognize the Sith Lord's force presence if she felt it again. However, it was someone with a similar force signature. Perhaps an apprentice of his? Whoever it was, she knew in the back of her mind she would probably end up having to deal with them before she left this planet.
The second thing that worried her was something slightly stranger. As soon as she had left hyperspace around this new planet's proximity, she could feel a force presence on it. The strange thing was, the force presence was not necessarily a dark presence, or a light presence. It just was. Out of everything that had happened in the last day, one thing was for certain. This new planet housed a mystery connected to the force, and Arya wasn't sure that she wanted to find out.
Dusk was quickly approaching, and Arya needed to get out of the open and into some shelter. So, she shouldered the pack of holocrons as well as her pack of supplies and turned on her heel, following the mountain ridge that hugged the immense forest she was in. Eventually she found what she was looking for – a cave in the mountainside. She set both packs she was carrying on the ground and pulled her lightsaber from her belt. The scan of the planet Maul's ship had done had indicated there was an immense amount of wildlife on the planet's surface. Thinking of the bears and dire wolves from her own planet had her on high-alert and the cave was a welcome sight. But, if there was one thing she had learned in her days on the road with the Hound, it was that if a place looks to be a convenient spot for shelter, then someone or something most likely had the same idea and was already there.
As quietly as she could, she snuck around to the side of the entrance and then peered around the corner into the darkness. All she could see was what looked like the orange dying embers of a fire. She was about to call to whoever was in the cave to come out, when a curious thing happened. The embers of the fire began separating themselves in pairs and spreading out through the cave. It was then that Arya realized what they were. Eyes. Pairs of orange glowing eyes contained within the skull of god know what type of beast. And it looked like there was a pack of them.
Arya remained as quite as possible and used the force to feel for the living things in the cave. But to her surprise, she found none. What? How is that possible? She thought. Those were definitely eyes she had seen.
With inhuman speed, Arya rounded the corner to the cave and activated her lightsaber. The entire cave lit up in a brilliant red glow and Arya counted no less than eight creatures standing huddled together in the back portion of the cave. They were humanoid in their appearance, but each had jet black skin that was almost oily in its appearance and at the end of each muscular arm were four long, razor sharp-looking claws. The most unnerving part about them was their head which contained two small glowing orange eyes and a massive mouth that spanned from what would be ear to ear if these had been humans.
At the appearance of Arya, all eight of the creatures charged at her with their mouths open and their claws ready to strike. The screams emitted from their enormous mouths was almost loud enough to force Arya to drop her lightsaber and cover her ears. Her disorientation lasted for only a moment before she recovered. In a split second, Arya made a plan of attack in her mind and then began to execute it.
Jumping backwards, she removed herself from the small confines of the cave, giving her more ground to fight. The eight creatures followed her into the open air and spread out in an almost perfect semi-circle around her and began making strange clicking noises at each other. They began to advance on her perfect unison. If she didn't know any better, she would have thought they were just communicating with one another.
She sent a quick force blast to send the three creatures directly in front of her flying backwards. The blast was not nearly as strong as she would have liked due to her sapped force supply from trying to stop the missile attack. Next, she jumped to the side over two of the remaining four creatures. When she landed, all four of the remaining creatures were now on the same side of her. She emitted another force blast, but all four of the creatures slammed their claws into the ground and held on instead of being flung backwards. It was as if they knew the force blast was coming.
By this time, the first three creatures had returned to the fray and Arya used her lightsaber to make quick work of them. Cutting cleanly through their flesh, Arya noted that the other four were not advancing, but instead they were watching her with great interest while she dismembered their packmates. She rolled to the side and squared up on the last four. As she advanced, the closest creature jumped at her and she swung her lightsaber to decapitate it. Only, her lightsaber didn't slice cleanly through. Instead, the creature's long claws caught her blade and forced it backwards. Arya stalled for a second in shock and jumped backwards just as the creature's claw swung to disembowel her.
They can block lightsaber attacks with their claws?! She thought. The fight had just turned from dangerous to extremely deadly.
Arya remembered her training and focused on every deadly point on each monster. The creature's claws, teeth and rippling muscle were all locked away in her mind. She knew what to watch out for, now it was time to strike. She used the force to raise a veil of dust, shrouding herself from the creatures. As fast as she could, she burst through the veil and buried her lightsaber in the chest of the closest creature, the others jumping back defensively. She sprang off of the creature she had just slain before its trashing limbs with razor sharp claws could accidentally catch her.
The moment her feet hit the ground she could sense the claws from the other three creatures heading straight for her abdomen. She spun and deflected all three blows. Weaving in and out, she hardly managed to land a blow on these creatures. It was almost as if they knew when she would strike. As her attempts at killing the creatures failed repeatedly, Arya began to get frustrated, and then she got angry. She made an ill-advised thrust at one of the creatures and its claws nicked her forearm causing her to scream out in pain.
The other creatures sensed weakness and moved in even faster. Arya deflected most of their blows, but a few more managed to leave some painful cuts in her arms and legs. It was at this moment that Maul's voice sounded in her mind. Use your anger as fuel, but do not lose focus. Anger gives your attacks power, but your focus allows you to land those attacks and do maximum damage. Arya spun around quickly. It was almost as if Maul was standing behind her, growling his next bit of advice to the back of her as she faced whatever challenge he had set up for her in the training cave back on Dathomir. He was right though. She was being too brash in her anger and it had allowed the creatures to draw blood.
Arya turned and fled. As she ran, she swept some gravel off of the ground and threw it at the pursuing creatures, throwing an extra force push behind the small stones to give them deadly velocity. The creatures barely slowed as they ran after her. Still fleeing, a plan began to form in her mind as to how she was going to trick these creatures and gain the upper hand. She felt for her belt and pulled needle from its sheath. All at once she pulled up and spun. The creatures reared up in surprise as she dove towards the closest one. She swung her lightsaber down with one hand and the creature reached up with both claws to stop it. What it didn't stop was the point of Needle that Arya had in her off hand. She drove the pointy end up under its chin and out though the top of its head.
The other two stopped in surprise and started communicating with one another again. This time, it was the creatures who seemed angry. They both converged on her at once, but in their wild anger, their attacks became sloppy. Arya managed to sever the leg from one of the creatures before driving her lightsaber into its chest as it wailed on the ground.
The last creature, sensing it was now grossly outmatched, turned to run, but Arya threw her lightsaber point-first at the creature, using the force to guide the blade straight between its shoulder blades. The creature slumped to the ground as the blade retracted back into the hilt and flew towards Arya's open palm.
That, was unpleasant. Arya thought.
She looked down at her wounds and noticed that she was actually losing quite a bit of blood from where the creatures had managed to cut her. She would need to get back to the cave and used the supplies she had brought in her pack to tend to her wounds.
Using the force, she picked the corpses of the slain creatures and brought them with her. Those massive claws that could deflect lightsaber would most definitely be useful if should could figure out what to do with them.
Back at the cave, Arya used the force to stack the corpses of the cave creatures just outside the cave entrance and then scouted the cave further before setting up here camp. The cave went back a surprising distance and eventually, Arya found a good spot to settle for the evening. She started a fire, tended to her wounds, and pulled some rations she had gotten from Maul's ship out of her pack. Laying her head back and holding tight to the pack of holocrons, Arya began to doze off in front of the fire she had built. It was then that a voice unlike any she had ever heard began to speak.
"That was an impressive display. Your connection of the dark side of the force is a thing of beauty, but you have much to learn."
Arya sprang up, her lightsaber activated and ready, but nothing was there. When the voice spoke again, it was as if the speaker had whispered intimately into her ear.
"Follow me."
Arya spun again, and this time she saw a small glowing yellow orb floating about two feet away. It took off towards the back portions of the cave. Arya grabbed the pack of holocrons and followed it.
