Space Wizard
or
Yer a Space Wizard, Harry!
03
The thing you have to understand about deserts is that they're fucking miserable.
But, if you're smart—and blessed with Force powers—there are some hacks you can use to survive one. Namely, burrowing underground into the sand during the day. At between ten and fifteen meters down, the temperature decreases to the average of the day and night cycle of the planet, generally. Which was surprisingly low, even for a desert like this. It was surprisingly easy to find a sand dune, dig into the side and then down, and get out of the heat while still leaving myself air during the day.
The thing you have to understand about alien deserts is that they're even more fucking miserable than normal deserts.
Basically, everything in an alien desert is trying to kill you. That includes big fuckoff lizards or worms that see your burrow, get curious, and decide to come sniffing around. Or things that track by Force perception, so unless you can hide yourself from the force, they just keep following and swarm you. So, during the day, in order to get any sleep I had to dig down into the ground, fortify everything with the Force, disguise the entrance with my krayt dragon tarp, and then keep one of the tiger pearls fed so nothing could sense me. It made my sleep restless at best, but at least I wasn't miserable and sweating out all my water during the hottest hours of the day. And at least time passed normally here.
Finally, I mused, a few days later as I finished cutting the head off of a crocodile-sized lizard that had thought to sneak up on me while I was eating. Burying the butt of my scythe in the ground, I sat down in the little hollow I'd picked between two dunes and returned my focus to cooking. My pack was sat nearby and I sat on my deer skin rug to keep the sand out of my everything. Or as out of it as I could manage in a desert.
It turns out that in a desert with little to nothing in the way of vegetation around, there isn't that much to burn—which means there isn't that much to use to cook with. Thankfully, the Force provided. With some focus, I was able to create fire. It was about as difficult as making lightning, being honest, but as I'd never heard of it or seen it used as a Force power, I hadn't even thought it was possible until the Force itself guided me to sit down, clear out a spot, and do the needful with the lizard I'd killed. So, I pointed my hands at the ground, made a fire, and used that to cook with and had been doing it ever since I figured out the power. I imagined that, also like lightning, it probably had some combat applications—but at the moment I was more concerned with the practical applications.
I heard the sand shift behind me and 'saw' the intent in the air with my Force senses. My stalker of the last few days finally decided to stop following at a distance and move in. That was fine. Good, actually. I was tired of this game. Either they'd take me to civilization, or they'd tell me where it was. Closing my eyes, I focused…
A familiar burning humming sound filled the air from behind me and a red glow lit the camp, finally, truly confirming what I had suspected.
That's a fucking lightsaber. Neat.
When I didn't appear to go anywhere, the Sith grew impatient, leaping in and swinging for my head. The sword passed straight through like a hot knife through… nothing but air as the illusion was disrupted.
My attacker spun around, following the scythe as it spun through the air and landed in my hand with a smack. I got a good look at them in the light from the ignited saber, in addition to what I saw from the Force. The Sith was a female, clad in some very form fitting armor that covered her from the neck down. Her head was exposed and, quite honestly, she was a beauty. Though, she was looking a bit red. I couldn't quite tell if it was from the glow of the saber or if that was just her natural coloration.
She shifted her stance lower in the sand for better traction. I took my scythe in both hands, the claws of my left hand clicking against the bone. If we were evenly matched in speed, I had reach on her, but a lightsaber had no weight besides the handle, so she would have an advantage in moving the blade around. And there was no telling just how trained she was. So… I would be using every advantage I had to either scare her off, subdue her, or kill her if I had to.
Once more, I shrouded myself from the Force using the tiger pearl, cast a hologram over myself at the same time leaving me invisible, and made a second hologram of myself strafing off to the left. She turned to follow and as soon as she turned away, I ran towards her back, silencing my steps on the sand and using the Force to keep from disturbing the surface.
At almost the last second, I had a sneaking suspicion that she was smarter than she was letting on. That it had only taken once for her to figure out the trick. I jumped. An instant later, danger blared from the Sith as she whipped her lightsaber around and stabbed out straight behind her and brought herself to a dead stop. If I had been following, I'd have been impaled on the blade. Instead, I flipped through the air over her and spun my scythe, aiming for her head with the flat of the blade.
She must have heard something, or simply been that good, as she rolled out to the left, under the swing, and brought her lightsaber up into a swing through where I'd be landing. I countered with a Force push, not at the girl but at the sand dune beneath her, sending her falling flat on her face. The saber landed in the sand and immediately glassed everything it touched. I landed and leapt away as she yanked her saber back up out of the mess and made range herself. And then, I waited.
The woman shifted again, relaxing slightly. "You're no Jedi."
I remained silent. "No, no Jedi at all."
She started walking, circling around me and slowly closing the distance between us. "No Sith, either."
I shifted to face her, minimizing my movements. I gave her nothing to work with. "And yet, you hide yourself from my senses and cloak yourself in illusions."
Her motions were more like a prowl than a walk—a tigress on the hunt. "You have good instincts, but it's clear you're untrained."
Unfortunately for her, I knew tigers. Was intimately familiar with them, of late. "Good for me…"
I did not like being hunted. "…Bad for you."
And I knew exactly how to deal with them.
Her hand came up as she rushed me and a lightning storm flew from her fingers. I caught it with my own lightning and the woman blinked for just a moment, before I lashed out with my scythe. With a dismissive snort, she tried to bat the one-handed slash to the side. Normally, that might even have worked. Hell, normally, that lightsaber should have cut through most materials.
This was the claw of a krayt dragon, reinforced by my dumping Force into the material. And as I'd observed before, lightsabers have no weight, no mass, except in the hilt. My scythe, on the other hand, was a heavy motherfucker, weighing about three hundred pounds, that I whipped around like it was a pool noodle.
It would be so easy to use this thing to kill someone… if only my foe didn't know how to counter something like that. The blade passed right over her head without touching her at all as she ducked and allowed the scythe to slide off the blade, towards her as she ducked under the larger weapon, our blasts still locked together in a shower of light. I was left off balance and that lightsaber was fast… way faster than my scythe could even move.
She used her superior speed to move behind me—our lightning still crashing together between us growing louder and brighter with each moment the forces stayed locked together—as I rotated to face her, and then she slashed. Her strike landed on my shoulder, but instead of slicing cleanly across my neck, she hit my armor plate—and bounced back. The blade was deflected by the bone armor I wore—the krayt dragon parts paying off in spades now.
It didn't take her even half a second to recover from the rebounded strike, before she sent another streaking in, this time at my chest. But I managed to get out of the way, stepping back out of the path of her swing. She was fast enough to dodge anything thrown at her while dodging any attack aimed directly at herself; however, she couldn't do both simultaneously. If I had been able to focus more on attacking instead of defending myself, I might just have won this battle already.
In the end, victory came down to a simple difference in our nature. Sith are aggressive, full of anger and quick to attack, acting more on instinct than any sort of plan beyond completing the objective or defeating the enemy before them. She lacked the patience to back off, reset, and try again and she was too stubborn to disengage from the test of power going on between us. I would have preferred exactly that, however—a reset and a reprieve, a chance to reassess the situation and work out a plan. And that difference in mindset is what led to what happened next.
She rushed in again, closing the distance as we both strained against the lightning held between us until, with a deafening explosion, the lightning detonated—finding ground in the sand between us, glassing everything it touched, and exploding outwards. I was thrown off my feet and rolled as I hit the sand. I lost track of her in the haze of sand and glass particles thrown into the air.
I struggled to rise, coughing and spitting grit from my mouth from beneath my mask. I felt woozy and the world spun around me. Everything tingled and I tasted copper. As soon as I got to my knees, she appeared beside me, leading with another sword strike. The Force blared a warning and I tried to move, but I was having problems even balancing. The blade caught my head and I went down with a thump into the sand. I rolled away, kicking out at her, only to get a kick to the gut for my trouble. I raised my arm to Force push her away, but she zapped me before I could get the attack off.
I tried to scream, only to have the air stomped out of me. She dropped onto my chest and shut off the saber, before smacking my head twice, bouncing my brain around in my skull, then bringing up her hands. Purple lightning filled them and my world went black.
"I know you're awake."
Well. I was still alive, so that was good. It meant that she had likely never intended to kill me from the beginning.
On the other hand… My armor had been removed entirely. I had been stripped down to just my pants. Even my eye patch and prosthesis were gone. I was laid out on the tiger fur that made up one of my tarps and it was starting to get hot, but it was not nearly as hot or as bright as it could have been. Opening my eye, I took in my surroundings and found that whoever she was, she had put up the krayt dragon tent and decided to stay where we were.
Looking around, I found her sitting in a corner in a meditative pose. Her hood was pulled back and, in the light streaming in through the cracks in the tent flap, I finally got a good look at her. Medium height, maybe 5'6". Small breasts. Slim waist. Somewhat thick thighs. She looked very athletic—which was really about what I was expecting for an active Force user, Jedi or Sith. Her hair was inky black and pulled back in a bun. And, just as I'd thought, her skin was red while her eyes were a shade of molten gold.
Annoyingly, sitting in her lap were my crystals and pearls—all of them.
Her hand moved and I reflexively caught the water skin she threw at me with the Force, before bringing it to my good hand. She hadn't tied me up or anything. No, she didn't need to. Disarmed and unarmored, I wasn't much of a threat at the moment.
Sitting up, I sipped at the cool water as we regarded each other from across the tent.
Finally, her pink lips pulled into a moue of a frown. "It's generally considered polite to thank someone for sparing your life."
I couldn't help my response. I hadn't talked to anyone in… months? Years? I wasn't sure. It had been a long time. And the first other person I met decided to attack me in the middle of the night. Yeah, I was salty.
"Thank you," I nodded.
"So you can talk—"
"For attacking me in the middle of the night, while I was preparing dinner. Thank you for beating me senseless. Thank you for disarming me, literally," I waved my stump as her frown grew deeper. "Thank you stealing the things I earned. Thank you for all of that, and then not killing me on top of it."
Her left eye twitched slightly and her jaw flexed. She looked down at the crystals in her lap before looking back up at me. Taking a deep breath, she nodded once. "You are welcome." I sent her my best 'are you fucking kidding me' look. She continued. "You were an unknown Force user who appeared suddenly on Korriban, in the middle of the desert, with no ship. Whose appearance was preceded by a feeling in the Force unlike anything I've ever felt before—as though some great wellspring of the greater Force had opened for a moment, before just as suddenly closing, and you were what was left behind. You reached out and touched my mind. You all but invited me to come find you and you were even heading in my direction when I found you. You knew I was there and yet you refused to acknowledge my presence. You disrespected me when you refused to even rise and face me. You revealed your deceitful nature with illusions and by hiding yourself within the Force. You are welcome for not killing you and only disarming you and removing anything from your possession that could pose a threat to myself."
I considered her words for a moment before nodding. "Fair enough. It seems it was a misunderstanding on both our parts," I agreed and she relaxed minutely, nodding herself.
Sipping my water, I fell silent as we studied each other. I was out of practice with talking with people and, given that this was a Sith no matter how… congenial she seemed at the moment, there was still a very real danger of tripping a verbal landmine and getting my shit zapped. Again.
Her frown returned. "It's generally also considered polite to introduce yourself."
I raised an eyebrow at that and waited, but when she only narrowed those pretty golden eyes, I shrugged. "Harry."
"Heh rii," she muttered tasting the word. I was honestly kind of surprised we even understood each other so far, so seeing her trip on my name was kind of weird.
"Harry."
"Harry," she repeated firmly. "Harry the human. No surname?"
"Porter. Not that it matters." It was with an odd twinge of loss that I realized no one would ever make that annoying joke again. "And yourself?"
"E—" she paused, hesitated. Then, her lips twitched as she tried to suppress a smirk, but I could literally see her sly mirth in the Force around us. "Darth Exal."
"Nice to meet you, Darth. Or is it Exal?"
Her eyes narrowed as her mirth immediately evaporated, replaced with quick, hot anger. But she restrained herself. Taking a breath, she said, "To you, it's master."
I sent her a grin and visibly eyed her up and down. "Sorry, I prefer it when girls call me that, not the other way around. But you know what, it's been a while and you're sexy, so I'm willing to give it a try."
"Insolent." Her anger flared, but… beneath it, I could feel more. The thought had already been in her head. Had been sitting in the background since she stripped me and got a good look at me. Now, I'd brought it to the fore, out in the open. So she tried to hide it. Classic tsundere move, really.
"Yep," I agreed. "I assume that's not what you meant, though?"
"No," she denied, her pink tongue darting out to wet her lips. "Darth is a title given to a Lord of the Sith—which I have recently become." Very recently. Like two minutes ago, by my estimate. "As a newly minted Sith Lord, I am to take on apprentices to instruct in the ways of the Sith. You have never had training, yet you are adept in your use of the Force. Powerful, in spite of your lack of training, but you could be more. You're resourceful, as shown in your choice of materials for weapons and armor, and the things you've gathered. With my help, you could rise within the ranks of the Sith to a position of greatness."
"And what would that entail, exactly? Being your apprentice, that is."
"Doing whatever I told you," Exal sent me a smirk. "In addition to the training I assign you to do and any personal training I decide on. You will serve my needs, all of them, as I desire."
"I want to say no. Pretty sure I can make my own way from here."
She scoffed quietly. "You'll never make it off of Korriban alive. Not without proof that you're a Sith. Either an apprentice or one of the few masterless Sith allowed to take on missions for the Empire. In fact, I doubt you'll even make it to civilization before your water runs out." She shifted a bit and her robes slipped enough to expose the hilt of her lightsaber at her side. "I am also offering you the opportunity to work with me. We both know I could force the issue if I truly wanted to. I won't, because an apprentice that resents their master will inevitably betray them and attempt to kill them. I would prefer to try… a different approach. Taking on an apprentice, training them in a manner that makes them a strong, useful, and most importantly loyal ally in the future, and then elevating them to equal status before moving on and taking another apprentice. It is not the typical way of the Sith, but I believe the days of being wasteful and having apprentices kill their masters, or each other, are hopefully coming to an end soon." Quietly, under her breath, she muttered, "Preferably… before the Jedi kill us all."
"Alright. Suppose I say yes. What do I get out of this deal? Besides training. Or a position I don't particularly care about."
"You don't care about it yet. Being a Sith, especially a Lord of the Sith, opens many doors and will earn you much in the way of resources. Money, materials, holocrons, knowledge—all things valuable to any Force user. Money enough to buy a ship, the freedom to travel where you like and research whatever subjects you desire, so long as you heed your responsibilities to the Empire. If you're saying none of that interests you at all, then perhaps I don't need you as an apprentice."
I studied her for a few moments, sipping at my water as I did. Putting some real thought into it, I asked myself, What do I want to do?
I effectively had the entire galaxy open to me at this point, assuming I made it off of Korriban alive. Immediate concerns were fixing my body. Replacing my lost hand and eye with something worth having. After that, well… This was the Star Wars galaxy. I'd really like to delve more into Force powers and things of that nature—which sounded like it lined up well with Exal's own interests.
Of course, there was the fact that this was the Star Wars galaxy and it was absolutely full of hot xeno girls. I wouldn't mind working my way through a few dozen humanoid species.
Aside from getting my dick wet and learning space magic, all I really wanted to do was explore the galaxy and live. Enjoy this new lease on life.
Eventually, I nodded. "Yes, those all interest me."
"Good. But those are all things that will come later. As incentive for you to join, I'll see to it that your eye and arm are replaced. Korriban is only home to tombs and the academy, but there is a town surrounding the academy servicing the instructors and students. 'Accidents' happen frequently in the academy, so the medical services provided there are… adequate. Not as good as you'd find in other places within the Empire, but good enough. Also, you're in desperate need of a lightsaber. I'll provide the materials for your first lightsaber. Do you accept?"
"I do."
Exal's pouty pink lips pulled into a smirk and she sat up a bit straighter, preening just a bit. "Then you know what you must do…"
I let out a quiet sigh that she seemed to delight in. "Please take me as your student, master Exal."
"Oh, that is nice to hear," she murmured. "I accept and acknowledge you as my student, apprentice Harry." Standing up, she stretched, her armor pulling tight against her form in ways that drew the eye. She knew, of course, but she actually seemed to delight in the attention. "Get dressed. We're leaving. I want to get you taken care of immediately so we can back to work. This little excursion has cost me a few days, but I think having another set of hands and eyes will be worth the delay."
I stood and stretched as well, brushing the sand off as Exal's golden eyes followed my every movement. I put my prosthesis back on, the fingers clicking as I verified their range of motion. With it back on, I felt better immediately and pulled the rest of my clothes and armor on. The helmet and mask, I left off for now. We broke down the tent and loaded it and the rest of my gear into the back of a speeder Exal had brought.
Before we got into the car, she held my scythe out. I took it, but she didn't let go. "Remember. Loyalty will be rewarded, apprentice."
"As you say, master."
She perked up a bit at the word before letting go of the weapon. I ended up stowing it in the back seat and we loaded up into the flying car and were soon flying swiftly over the sands. As we went, a familiar set of pouches drifted up from the back seat under Exal's control to land in my lap. "Here. Hold onto them tightly, apprentice. You have a good eye for rare finds. They're very valuable."
Opening the pouches, I found all of my crystals and pearls, and my knife, right where they should be. Putting them back on, I considered for a moment before saying, "Thank you for returning them."
"You are very welcome. Spoils taken from conquest are one thing, but I am not a thief, apprentice. You found them on your own, therefor they are yours." She hesitated, before shaking her head and adding, "But those pearls. Very valuable, since they confer an ability very similar to Buried Presence, the art of Force Concealment. What sort of Force blank creature did they come from? The same as the fur?"
"Yeah. Don't know what you'd call them. They reminded me of tigers from my world, so that's what I called them."
"I see."
Reaching into the pouch, I pulled out one of the spare pearls. Holding it up, I offered it to Exal. When she raised an eyebrow, I said, "Payment, for taking me on as your student."
She took one hand off the wheel and carefully accepted the pearl. "Thank you, apprentice." She smiled and added, "This is how exchanges between master and apprentice should go. Not the sniping, fighting, and plotting of other Sith masters and apprentices."
As we rode, I looked out over the desert around us. Finally, I asked, "Just what are we going to be doing, once we've got my business squared away?"
"Ah! Right, I almost forgot to tell you. I am conducting research on Korriban, searching for a tomb and lost knowledge. Specifically, a thousand year old tomb belonging to one of the very first Sith Lords, Sorzus Syn. Sorzus Syn authored the Sith Code as we know it today." Turning her head to look at me, she said, "Pay attention now, apprentice. This is very important."
I turned to look into the beautiful woman's eyes, focusing on the Force to sharpen my perception and memory, and nodded. A moment later, she recited, "Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall set me free." She waited a moment, before commanding, "Speak it."
I repeated the words and she turned away, looking satisfied. "Good."
"What are we expecting to find in this tomb, if we find it?"
Exal hummed quietly, her fingers drumming on the wheel. "Sorzus Syn was renowned as a Sith Alchemist. One who perfected the art, in fact. I'm hoping to find her research notes, perhaps a holocron. Hopefully, even the rumored Amulet of Syn. Whatever we find, I promise you as equal a share as can be granted. Obviously, something like the Amulet of Syn can't be broken into equal shares, so we'll have to work something out. But just imagine it, apprentice! The power of the first Sith Lords at the tips of our fingers! Untold wealth and power on demand."
Something about that set off warning bells in my head—not the Force, just general caution. A need to know more. "What sorts of things can be done with alchemy?"
"According to the ancient lore, lots of things. Creating new lightsaber crystals, for instance, is one of the alchemical arts that has survived to today. They also used it for strengthening their armor, enhancing their bodies, even creating living weapons of war."
I focused in on that last one. "Biological weapons?"
"Yes."
"As in they had the ability to manipulate biology, genetics, growth, and other things through alchemy?"
Exal smiled. "Exactly."
"Nope."
The woman blinked. "What do you mean, 'nope?'"
"You want to go into an ancient, long dead Sith Lord's tomb? Okay. That sounds dangerous to begin with, but okay. Then you tell me this Sith Lord was renown for messing around with Sith magic that let her change biology? That's a recipe for zombies, deadly poison, and plagues if I've ever heard one."
Exal frowned. "Reanimating the dead was supposedly one of the abilities associated with alchemy, but surely those are just stories—"
"Haha no. I don't know about you, but I'm going to be buying or making myself a full NBC suit. Do they sell vac suits in town?"
"Yes… but they're kind of rare. That is, generally, no one wears them unless they plan to go out into vacuum. What are you intending, apprentice?"
"I want something that can fully isolate the wearer from biological contagions. If we're going in, I'm not catching some Sith virus and dying puking my guts out on the floor. Because there's no way she would have left her resting place un-guarded. And someone like that? Oh, you can bet money she'd have left stuff that would survive for tens of thousands of years."
The woman frowned at that, but she didn't argue. Eventually, after a few minutes of flying across the dunes, she asked, "Apprentice, what other traps would you suspect an ancient Sith would use to protect their tomb?"
"Automated defenses. Droids. Assuming those ran out of juice and failed, zombies. Air and water-born viruses and bacteria that could go into hibernation, but which would become active again the moment they were breathed in, ingested, or otherwise came into contact with a living being. Mutated monstrosities capable of hibernating for thousands of years at a time that would wake up the moment they detected an intruder. And you're talking about a Sith, so assume it's all tied to the Force somehow. Things that detect the Force, hunt for beings with the Force, that sort of thing. Oh, and just as an extra 'fuck you,' I'd guard the tomb myself as a Force ghost."
"I… see."
Exal fell silent and, after a few more minutes, a town came into view on the horizon. "There. Our destination. Remember, you are my apprentice. Any shame you bring on yourself you bring to me as well. Comport yourself with this in mind. Do not start start any fights, do not challenge any apprentices, do not accept any challenges. If someone forces the issue, which some hereditary Sith can and will, do not kill them—for their master's wrath will be great. Do you understand?"
"Don't act like an asshole. Don't start fights, but do finish them. Don't kill any assholes."
Exal sighed quietly. "Were I any other master, I would punish you severely for your cheek."
"You like it."
"Excuse you?"
I sent her a grin. "You like that someone doesn't kiss your ass, but also doesn't expect you to kiss theirs."
"Tch." She looked away. "Mind your tongue, apprentice. Being too free with your words among other apprentices and masters will see it cut from your mouth."
"So reserve my shit talk for you. Gotcha." Reaching into the back seat, I grabbed my helmet/mask combo and pulled it on under my hood. "Don't worry," my voice came out muffled, reverberating strangely through the bone over my face, "I'll keep my mouth shut and avoid embarrassing you."
"See that you do."