Disclaimer: George Lucas owns Star Wars. I am not making any profit from this work of fan fiction.
Author's note: Look! I learned a handy technique for indicating talking-in-someone-else's-head. You put the text between colons! Totally saw it in Doctrine of Labyrinths. Okay, yeah, my news is … not newsworthy. On to the fic!
CHAPTER NINE
"Damn it, Ryn, you're supposed to prevent shit like this!" Evinne growled into the dirt. Anakin craned his neck to shoot her a cautious glance.
"You know she can't hear you, right?"
"I bet she gets the general idea." Evinne leaned over the mound of dirt to lob a wad of the tarry substance the Lorethans were using on their weapons and flinched back down as it burst into flame. "Orun! Your mother shot so crooked -"
There was a boom as someone else's fireball hit something more explosive.
"Cover me!" yelled Ryn's voice.
"What the -"
Several Lorethan archers answered; arrows sang as Ryn leaped into the right edge of Anakin's vision, sprinting toward the center of the Bolg line in a zigzag pattern that danced around incoming fire like a kid jumping rope.
She whipped a sling around her head and let loose, hitting the dirt and dropping out of Anakin's field of vision.
Slimy bits of liquefying Bolg spattered the ground around them; Anakin saw a particularly nasty clump catch Evinne square on the nose. She went cross-eyed, staring at it in distaste, and then practically deafened Anakin giving the order to move out.
"GO! Go go GO!"
Ryn caught up with them as they reached the sleipniri, waiting with five members of the band. "Did we lose anybody?"
"Just our dignity," Evinne reported sourly. "For fuck's sake, warn me the next time you're about to try a stunt like that."
"No promises." Ryn threw herself into the saddle and caught the reins. "Let's not waste daylight."
They heeled their mounts and took off again.
"Sir, I have the, er, the king of Loreth on the com."
"Excellent, Lieutenant. Let me speak with him."
The first wave of the earthquake lifted Sarta from his saddle and flung him free, sailing through the air in an oddly peaceful silence.
Then he hit the ground, and everything hurt.
He reached for his connection to the planet, the sense of belonging that tied him here, to soothe the troubled land, but he found ... nothing. Or no response, anyway. The trees screamed out in fear and pain as they were torn from the living earth, but they did not heed his call.
It felt like ... something, but for a long time he could not remember what. Then he saw the sleipniri running wild and his men chasing them, and ...
Of course, he thought dully. Stampede.
The thunder rolled overhead.
Battered and bleeding, they ran for their lives.
It was a race against time now. The things she and Evinne had set in motion could not be undone. They would reach Khalî and end her hold on the depths of their home planet, or they would die trying. And either way, it would be soon.
Ryn lost her breath for an instant as she dropped into the saddle again, her face and hands spattered with the thick blood of the Dhraghol pack whose survivors now dwindled into the distance.
"That's three attacks in two days," Merach said, glancing nervously down their backtrail.
Ryn nodded, still trying to catch her breath. "We're getting close."
Anakin passed by to her right, tired and filthy and brave, and Ryn's heart gave a sharp, painful little twist that bit deeper than her healing wounds.
"We have to live to finish the journey," said Merach.
"We've made it this far." Ryn refused to look back at Anakin, wouldn't ask if he was looking for her, only pain there ... "Tell Makesh to take point. I'm going ahead to scout."
"Your wounds -"
"Are healing. Go."
She titled her head up, eyes closed, and let the dying rain sluice off the worst of the filth.
Soldier up, Orun.
Anakin's voice, behind her, asking someone about the territory ahead, and her heart twisted again.
What was it Loron had said?
Passion, yet serenity.
"I hear you, Greatfather."
She kneed her mount and swung off, keeping her head head down beneath the ridge.
"Fool," said the commander mildly. "It is clear that he will let his planet be destroyed, rather than accept our help. Lieutenant, have you had any luck pinpointing the source of the disturbance?"
"Not yet, sir."
"Shame. Ensign!"
"S - sir!"
"See if you can find me someone in their government a little less suicidally independent."
"Sir!"
"And kindly learn to accept an order without barking at me."
The ensign blushed furiously. "Yes, sir."
The sense of dark power, the ecstasy of destruction barely held in check, is intoxicating. Dooku takes a deep breath, reaches for the controls, and ...
"Unidentified alien vessel. This is Lieutenant-Adept Deirdriu Orun. Please respond."
The presence whispers against the edges of his mind. :Help me.:
It gives him Ryn's face again, Ryn's face with eyes clouded by despair. :Help me.:
Obi-Wan sits up, tries to separate the presence from the general darkness and only marginally succeeds. "Who are you?"
It's hard to be sure, but it almost seems as if the entity at the heart of the darkness is ... confused.
A jumble of images rushes by, too fast to catch.
:Death. Destruction. Despair.:
Obi-Wan cannot hide a shudder. "Why should I help you?"
:Help you. Slay the Empty One.:
"The Empty One?"
Confusion again, but the sense of ... lack, of void, is clear.
That has to be Omega.
:Help me?:
"What do you want?"
The entity shows him a starless night.
"I don't understand."
:Help me,: the thing says pitifully.
Voices, coming closer. The entity fades back into the darkness of the Force around him, present but indistinct.
"... cannot break him faster, an thou wilt have him sane." A Lorethan accent, stronger than Ryn's and speaking an unfamiliar dialect of Basic.
"I don't need him sane, as long as his connection to the Force is undamaged."
"All beings are connected. Thou dost not -"
"The Jedi have special abilities. You have felt this."
The Lorethan voice, a woman's, hisses impatiently. "Thou hast sworn to make offering. The dark goddess will not wait forever for her prize."
"You know I care not for your heathen rituals. Feed her another of your ghouls, or have an orgy, or whatever it is you do."
"Ssss! Do not mock what dost not understand."
"My apologies." The insincerity is rank in Omega's voice. "Appease your deity however you see fit." His tone hardens sharply: "And prepare for the ritual that will invest me with her power. But the Jedi is mine, you understand?"
"I do understand."
"Good." Footsteps, of a man with boots and a light tread, fading quickly away.
"Ssss." The Lorethan voice again: "Heard that, young Jedi?"
Obi-Wan catches his breath, just a second's hesitation. "A little."
"He does not understand the nature of our dark goddess. Do you?"
"I cannot say that I do."
A scent past his face, the stench of blood. "She ends things."
"How charming."
"Some things need ending. Maybe even you."
Footsteps again, fainter this time, a mere brush against the floor.
Ryn's voice again, speaking for that foreign presence: :Help me.: