Soon.
Very, very soon.
Chinnatah could sense the excitement of Mrekln and a few other uli-ah their age, and he almost felt as if he could sense those same emotions from Tuskens in other tribes, though he dismissed the thought as ludicrous. In just a few more sunsets, the Tusken adolescents at seven and a half birthing seasons would be out trying to find ways to become true members of their respective Tusken clans. Such an occurrence happened every year, but never before had Chinnatah been able to pick up on the enthusiasm of others so clearly.
To the annoyance of his Tusken elders, Chinnatah was sitting several meters away from the Sand People encampment and pensively stroking Vrentlla's long, shaggy fur. But such detachment was to the satisfaction of the aggressive Mrekln—adrenaline was surging through his system, and he was ready to pick a fight in private.
Mrekln, who harbored no good will toward the one who had once saved him, reached down and picked Chinnatah up by his rags, dragging him to his feet. Mrekln told him in a growl, [I am going after the big canyon, Jawa-guts.] When, as expected, he received no reply, he continued speaking, [Yes, I am going to slay a krayt dragon, and then I am going to bring back her pearl and crack open your pathetic skull with it.]
Mrekln released Chinnatah from his grip. Upon seeing that the smaller uli-ah was still standing, Mrekln shoved him, causing him to stumble backwards.
Somehow, however, Chinnatah managed to keep his footing. After catching himself, he rooted his feet to the ground.
Vrentlla began to growl, the noise starting as a low rumble in the back of her throat. She lowered her giant head, as if she were about to ram Mrekln.
[Are you still not going fight back? Womp rat spit! Son of a sandbat!] Mrekln pushed Chinnatah again, this time much more viciously.
It was at that moment that Vrentlla chose to attack.
She head-butted the spiteful Tusken uli-ah, forcing him to the ground. Suddenly aware of this new enemy, Mrekln picked up his gader stick from where he had dropped it after his fall, and he jumped to his feet and slashed at the angry bantha.
Quivering in a cold rage, Chinnatah summoned up all of his pent-up anger and frustration and pushed Mrekln, the latter Tusken flying back several meters, his gader stick snapping in half.
Mrekln remained frozen, his eyetubes trained on the normally nonviolent uli-ah.
And then Chinnatah realized what had happened. He had been feet away from Mrekln, but he hadn't moved when he had pushed Mrekln back.
The frightened Mrekln finally grabbed his broken gader stick and ran off muttering: [Wizard!]
Chinnatah looked fearfully at a confused Vrentlla. What had he just done?
****
Eyes flashing, Leia threw her head up, the datapad she had been reading forgotten. "What was that?" She had felt a strange and violently angry sensation...
Winter looked at her questioningly. "What was what, Leia?"
Biting her lip in thought, Leia shook her head slowly. "Never mind."
But a frown still creased her forehead for hours afterward.
****
Obi-Wan's eyes shot open as he jolted out of his meditation trance. "Oh, no," he breathed quietly.
****
A small, wizened creature looked up to the sky. "Alive, he is. But to what purpose?"
****
Darth Vader froze, his concentration slipping from the meeting he was in to...elsewhere. The ocean that was the Force had been disturbed by something powerful. Raw, it seemed, but powerful.
Though the initial disturbance was gone, the ripples still continued. Quickly, he reached out to the Force in an effort to locate the source before the ripples disappeared. His years of experience in hunting Jedi enabled him to trace the ripples to...Tatooine?
No...Surely the Force disturbance could not be from that wretched planet...
Without a word, he strode purposefully from the room, leaving several officers staring after him in confusion.
****
"What is thy bidding, my master?" Vader inquired. He was kneeling on the floor, a three-meter hologram of Emperor Palpatine hovering before him.
"There has been a great disturbance in the Force."
"I felt it, my master. It is coming from Tatooine," he offered, though the planet's name tasted bitter on his tongue.
The Emperor seemed to be peering into Vader's soul while he spoke. "Are you quite sure of this? I wonder how you were able to pinpoint the disturbance when I could not..."
Vader paused a moment before answering carefully, "I am certain, my master."
Palpatine nodded slowly, knowing his servant was loyal and would not lie to him. "You shall go to Tatooine and discover who is behind this disturbance. Then you shall bring him to me."
"Yes, my master."
****
The moment had arrived at last.
The moment which would determine his life...
Or his death.
As he stared at Vrentlla, at her still fresh wound, he knew that he would have to attempt what Mrekln had only boasted about doing.
He would fight and defeat a krayt dragon, taking away its pearl...
Or he would die.
****
"Father, I want to go."
"No, no, no, no. It's out of the question," Bail insisted, holding his hands up as if forming a barrier between him and his daughter.
Leia turned pleading eyes upon him. "Please? Winter's going!"
Bail Organa forced himself not to look into those two brown orbs. That was dangerous territory for a doting father like himself to face. "No," he told her. "It's too dangerous."
He was going to a Senate meeting, which was not an unusual occurrence—Leia had certainly been to a fair amount of those—but afterwards he was taking a little detour to help a certain rebellious party.
"I want to help." Leia paused, seemingly in thought. Her face lit up—and Bail decided immediately that he didn't like that look. "Besides," the teenager said casually, "if you don't let me help now, with your supervision, then I'm likely to try to help them on my own, which is definitely not nearly as safe, now, is it?"
Bail sighed, meeting his daughter's defiant eyes. He knew when to admit defeat. "Fine."
Leia made a triumphant noise, starting to run off, but then she abruptly turned around to gather him in a big hug. "Thanks, Father!" Then she left him.
"You're welcome," Bail said quietly to the empty room.
****
After taking a calming breath, Chinnatah prepared to set off. Mrekln and some of the others had already gone, beginning crusades that would bring them glory or death. Before he could depart, however, Arr't'ni came up to him.
She said nothing, merely holding out her hand until he extended his. She dropped something into his palm and then left without a word.
Chinnatah stared down at the brightly colored stone in his hand. He had seen Arr't'ni holding it several times. Usually, she rubbed it right before she went into battle or before something important was about to happen. He had always assumed it was a good luck token.
And now she was giving away her good luck to him.
After rubbing it and tightly clenching it in his fist, Chinnatah deposited the smooth stone into his carryall pouch, walking forward, his gader stick in his hand and a new purpose in his heart.
It wasn't long before he noticed he was being followed.
Vrentlla, though she tried to be quiet, could not silence the crunching of her wide feet in the sand. The youth turned to his loyal companion and reached a gentle hand up to place it on the matted fur covering her sharp back ridges. He tried to nudge her lightly back toward the encampment.
She wouldn't give in quite so easily though, and she stood coughing and snorting defiantly as she shuffled her feet in the sand.
Chinnatah stared at her through his eyetubes, pushing her away even more firmly. As if hoping she'd understand, he thought at her, trying to enable her to see that he had to do this for himself.
As Vrentlla's soft brown eyes gazed upon him, he felt that she did understand. Reluctantly obeying, the bantha trudged sorrowfully away.
Chinnatah clenched his weapon tighter.
Every step he took brought him closer to the mountains of the Jundland Wastes, and thus with every step he grew more apprehensive. Krayt dragons always seemed to be hard to find unless one didn't want to run into them, but he had a gut feeling that he knew exactly where one resided.
Chinnatah tried to keep his mind off the fact that he didn't have the slightest clue as to how to go about killing a krayt dragon. Instead, he thought about the prize that would be his, the trophy that he would bring back as evidence of his encounter with one of the elusive beasts. He would take the krayt dragon's pearl from its gizzard.
The beauty of such stones, coupled with the extreme danger that had to be faced by anyone attempting to retrieve them, had caused them to be worth a fortune in the galactic market. Such a price did not matter to the Ghorfa, however. What mattered to them was the intense fighting skill that was needed to defeat one of the magnificent beasts. The krayt dragon pearl was simply the long-lasting proof, though krayt dragon bones could serve in the place of a pearl—for Tuskens believed the bones possessed magical qualities.
Uneasily, Chinnatah wondered if he should have enlisted Vrentlla's help. Krayt dragons were larger than fully-grown banthas, and they were capable of more brute force than ten banthas combined. The odds would certainly be better if Vrentlla were with Chinnatah...
But the great beasts ate womp rats, banthas, and slow Tuskens. If he brought Vrentlla with him, he would probably just adding one more bantha to the casualty list.
If he were going to die, he would do it alone.
He was a loner in life with the Tuskens, and he was prepared to be a loner in death.
The cavern his feet were leading him to suddenly appeared in front of him. Jagged rocks lined the mouth of the cave, giving it the appearance of an open-mouthed predator buried partially beneath the sand, ready to swallow any unsuspecting victims whole.
Chinnatah froze for a moment in contemplation, trying to think past the sound of the raspy and ominous breathing he could hear coming from the cave. If the battle took place in the cave, then the krayt dragon would have the advantage; it surely knew the territory well. But out in the open, there was little cover offered to Chinnatah, and there would be even fewer opportunities at weapons should something happen to his gader stick. In the cavern, at least, there would be a steady supply of rocks.
Still not quite decided on his course of action, Chinnatah shifted his gaze when he saw a bit of movement to his left. A tiny arthropod called a sandjigger was nearby feeding on native Tatooinian razor moss. One of the long, armored Tatooinian cliffborer worms, which also feasted on razor moss, came up out of the sand, twitching for a moment before disappearing into the cave. After a moment, the sandjigger—looking almost curious—followed it into the cave.
Taking that as a sign, Chinnatah took a deep breath. Then, after fingering his mother's good luck stone, he began to slowly move toward the cave, trying to allow his eyes to adjust as much as possible to the dimness of the cavern before he was spotted.
When he heard the change in the krayt dragon's breathing pattern, he knew he had been seen.
He cursed inwardly. He had hoped for a little more time.
The krayt dragon inched forward to get a better glimpse at its prey, and as it did so, Chinnatah got a better glimpse of it.
Usually, one would hear a krayt dragon before seeing it, and few Tusken Raiders were stupid enough to stick around to see a krayt dragon. As a result, Chinnatah had never actually seen one before.
The beast was even worse than legend had made it out to be.
Its head was crested with five black horns. The middle horn was called its brow horn, the two surrounding the middle horn were its primary horns, and the two smaller ones below those were the motion sensing horns—it was these last two which served as the reason Chinnatah's presence had been noted so quickly. The monster's face was armored with dermal bone plates, and its forked red tongue darted in and out, testing the air.
It had a scaly, yellowish-brown body and contrasting crimson claws that matched its big reddish eyes, which were divided by black, slit-shaped pupils. The fins on its tail swished back and forth anxiously as its nostrils flared and air hissed out through its teeth.
Chinnatah quickly moved his gaze to its back. The beast's back was ridged with sharp, bony nodules and a jagged dorsal spine—anyone who chose to mount it was accepting an invitation of death. It moved even closer toward Chinnatah on its four squat legs, the five clawed toes on each foot digging into the ground and chipping the rock beneath its feet.
Squat legs or not, Chinnatah was smaller than even one of those legs, and he found himself wishing for Vrentlla's aid once more.
The krayt dragon, satisfied with its assessment of the small Tusken Raider before it, finally opened its mouth in a roar, revealing rows of pointed black teeth.
Chinnatah was too busy staring down the beast's gullet to notice the tail that came crashing down upon him until it was too late.
He hit the ground in a roll, so the blow wasn't as bad as it could have been, though he was certainly hurting after the hit. His ears were ringing, his face was bleeding, and his whole body ached from tiny punctures caused by his roll over the jagged rocks and chipped bones that lay scattered about on the cavern floor. His coverings hadn't been enough to completely protect him.
The frustrated Chinnatah, though still keeping an eye on the ferocious monstrosity in front of him, stared across at his gader stick, which he had dropped on the floor before falling.
He glanced down at the red seeping through his dusty rags and felt a sudden wave of anger roll over him.
Blasted krayt dragon!
He threw his hand out towards the gader stick without thinking, and before he knew it, the weapon was in his hand.
But during this time the krayt dragon had swiped at him, and so as he was reaching for and receiving his weapon from the mysterious force that had brought it to him, he was also leaping out of the creature's way.
The paw was soon back, though, and this time, with a flash of rage, Chinnatah was ready for it, stabbing it with the spear on his gader stick.
The creature let loose a teeth-chattering cry, one more of agitation than pain.
The Tusken then picked up and threw a splintered bone at the krayt dragon's left eye.
The roar that was then released left no doubt that only one of them would be leaving the cavern alive. The beast might have been blinded in one eye, but it would now be on its guard, ready for revenge.
The krayt dragon, tired of this game, went forward, not even phased by the rocks that were thrown hastily at it. Chinnatah backed up, suddenly finding himself up against the cavern wall.
And he knew then what it had all came down to.
He was now the cornered prey, and he would fight with all his strength to win.
Gazing quickly up, he surveyed the ceiling.
Yes, it might be just about right...His gader stick would be ruined, but what did he care?
The beast advanced, and Chinnatah threw another well-aimed missile at its eye. This time, the krayt dragon moved its head aside in time so that the bone would miss its eye, and, with an almost smugness about it, the creature continued forward.
But the bone had done what Chinnatah had wanted it to do: distract the predator for a few moments.
He flung his gader stick into the air with all of his strength, sending it slashing with precision through several well-picked thin stalactites that came falling down on the vulnerable sides of the krayt dragon, just missing its dorsal plates.
The beast's bellow sounded like it contained a note of fear in it this time along with the ever-present rage, but both beings knew there was no backing out.
The krayt dragon might be wounded, but it wasn't dead yet, and this time it abandoned all efforts at providing Chinnatah with a clean death and charged at him, its head down and its lethal horns pointed right at Chinnatah's chest.