Chapter Eleven:

Where Vev is Brought to the Natives' Leaders

The natives were not thrilled to see her, though Vev found their reaction a bit of a puzzle. She had landed, carefully checked her surroundings—the readings warned her that there were some larger life-forms around—and slowly descended with her 'saber drawn.

She was greeted with the sight of rather boring trees and mountains that looked like anywhere between like a bother and bloody murder to climb. Some sort of furry creature gave her an unimpressed look and scurried up a tree. Vev considered pulling it down, simply because she wasn't going to put up with that kind of behaviour from food, except there was also a woman and a man watching her.

"Awww, look she's so tiny," was the first thing she heard. Vev nearly started—it hadn't been Basic Rakatan that almost everyone in the Infinite Empire spoke, but rather the language Xesh had taught her when they were children.

The words themselves came from a dark-skinned human woman with reddish brown hair, who was both absurdly tall and built like a duracrete wall. She felt mostly surprised and between repulsed and... Vev wasn't sure what the other emotion was.

Protective, maybe? Why was that directed at her and not towards the man who was with her?

"Yes, a tiny spiky ball of hatred with a stabby light-sword," a twi'lek man with a blaster said. He was also red and on the weedy side. Unlike the woman, he was simply suspicious. Well, if he wanted a spiky ball of hatred she could be one. Really. "Forgive Norrie there, she is having maternal instincts and teaching hasn't done anything to stop her from mothering everyone."

"I check on my brother once and all he does is complain I mother him," the woman sighed. It sounded weirdly rancorless and she didn't feel angry at all, even if the twi'lek had been clearly insulting her. And did she just say he was her brother? How did that even work? "Forgive Sanaa, he thinks he's funny."

Vev definitely was not going to forgive anyone, regardless of what they were thinking and of their rampaging maternal instincts. Especially being called tiny. She was a Force Hound, and her size did not matter at all.

"So, you saw the other one—was he like that too?" Sanaa asked his companion, quite cheerfully unconcerned with the fact that Vev did not like him at all. Still, "the other one"?

"Jumpier, taller, male and prettier," Norrie answered, which was a thoroughly unsatisfying way of describing someone. Vev couldn't tell anymore if the person she sensed somewhere on this planet was Xesh—hadn't been for a while now. "Is that actually relevant in any way? Look, maybe we should do this properly. I'm Noortje Eilidh—Knight of Stav Kesh. That is Sanaa of Qigong Kesh. And you are..?"

"Vev," Vev said. A human with a title—that was quite new.

"Right, we could have guessed," Sanaa muttered. "It's written on her face."

"Shush," Knight Noortje said. "Can you maybe turn off your sword? I mean, we probably could fight if you absolutely insist, but since you didn't attack I guess you aren't really interested in that?"

Escaping from slavery really oughtn't to be so easy. It kind of made everyone look stupid for not trying it earlier. Still, even if she had been welcomed by infuriating nuisances, Vev was still fairly certain that listening to those two for the rest of eternity would still be preferable to being a Force Hound.

She turned off her 'saber, and realized she really should have thought about what to say much earlier. Which was a regret she would have to live with, she supposed.

"Um... You're going to be invaded in the future," she said. "So... er... bring me to your leaders?"

At first, Noortje had assumed that this Vev was at best sixteen, but having taken a closer look, she knew she had been wrong. It was mostly the petite stature that had misled her— dathomirian women averaged taller than their human counterparts, close to Noortje's height.

She looked quite mono-chrome with the white hair and skin, and dressed in grey-and-black armour. The only splashes of colour were the red tattoo on her face and her pale-purple eyes. The tattoo especially looked incongruous—in Noortje's experience, grey was the standard colour for those.

And she felt off. Not exactly like the survivor, who—in the brief moment she had spent escorting him to the Council—had felt like someone had cored him and what was left had been filled with a howling frozen dark. The woman was more like a blizzard—reaching outwards and trying to draw things into herself as if they could quiet the storm.

Hopefully, she would not end up like the apprentice of the Master of Science and be tasked with looking after the little ball of hatred.

"Are you going to eat that?" the little ball of hatred asked. When Noortje turned to look she found Sanaa standing with an apple core in his hand, contemplating where to throw it away.

"No," he said.

A slender gloved hand shot out and a moment later the young woman was munching on the apple core that she practically tore out of his hand.

"That's nice—can I have more when you eat those?" she asked, her mouth half-full.

"You can just have a whole one," Sanaa said, fishing out a red fruit out of his backpack. It was snatched out of his hand with equal speed and the young woman wasted no time in biting into it. Noortje sensed mistrust from her and surprise, but mostly it seemed like the stupid apple was making her very happy.

Temple Master Lha-Mi was feeling old. Perhaps it was time to look for a replacement? Of course, there was the question if any of the Knights were ready to take over as the Master of Martial Arts. Somehow, he had doubts any of them would want to trade with him right then.

Perhaps he could send the girl to the Temple of Skills, given that the other person who met the new Force Hound was from there. Still, that was a matter for later.

Lha-Mi curled his fist under his chin as he watched the young woman in front of him. She was short, and her built was mostly obscured by the armour she was wearing, but the way she tracked his movement and how she stood—coiled like a snake waiting to strike—indicated she was a warrior.

And, going by how his elbow had felt after Xesh had nearly broken it, probably quite a dangerous one.

"You are abandoning your owner, correct?" he asked and the woman nodded. "Why?"

The woman started fidgeting then, quite like a nervous teenager.

"Um... I don't like him, he's awful and and- and I'm not stupid, I don't know why I didn't think about running away earlier, and I know you'd rather not get invaded, but you were going to end up invaded anyway so... er... I thought that I could tell you things, and maybe hide, and not go back," she blurted out, all on one breath.

Lha-Mi blinked slowly. This one certainly was not taciturn. Having dealt with nervous teenagers before, he was fairly certain he managed to catch all of it.

"I see," he said. "And what can you tell us?"

"Er... stuff about plans and things," the woman answered, equally quickly, as if afraid the words would escape if not spoken the moment they formed in her mind. "My master was more important than Predor Tul'kar—that's the one who was scouting here, so even if you have him or X- his Force Hound, I know more, because he had me around when he planned."

She shifted again from one leg to another, and added, "Um... Do you have any of them?"

Though she was trying to hide it, Lha-Mi thought he sensed concern from her. It was oddly out of place in her. Still, he saw no reason to withhold the information. "The scouting ship crashed, but Xesh survived. He is in another temple."

"How-" the woman started to speak and then closed her mouth abruptly. She looked at the floor for several seconds and then continued. "How did he survive?"

Lha-Mi was fairly certain a Force blind child would have been able to tell this was not the question the woman had wanted to ask.

"Luck, I presume," he said. "Now, I need to inform the other temples about you. In the meantime, Noortje can show you to a room and you can shower and eat something."

It was more than unnerving. Xesh recognized whom he sensed—Vev's owner had been his owner's superior. And he'd known her before either of them had- Well. Before.

She didn't feel any different than when he had last seen her. Except, somehow, for years, he'd managed to not realize how wrong she felt. Just like he managed not to realize that the Infinite Empire was a screaming black hole in the Force.

And now he was fairly certain it wasn't because he was outside of it that he noticed. It was just that he had been part of that and now he wasn't.

"Did I feel like that?" he asked.

Daegen Lok looked up from his datapad. "Like what?" he asked, as he scratched his beard.

"Someone came to Tython—don't you sense them?" Xesh asked. He supposed it was possible—he had been trained from early on to focus on negative emotions, and while Vev certainly didn't always feel negative, her presence stood in a stark contrast to everything else on Tython.

"I do," Daegen Lok answered. He put the datapad down then. "And I have no reassurance for you. You did not feel entirely like her, but that's because you are two different people, not because you were less… We really need to think of a good short description to what you, and whoever that is, and the Infinite Empire do to the Force."

Xesh shrugged. "It feels closest to something cold and dark."

Daegen nodded slowly. "I wonder if this is something tied to humans being diurnal and not particularly adapted for very cold climates." He looked at Xesh, and clearly remembered that as much as his vocabulary in their language had improved, there were still words he didn't know. "Humans operate during the day and sleep during the night. As opposed to nocturnal animals, which do the reverse."

"So, it feels like this, because those are the first thing a human will think when they think unnatural?" Xesh asked frowning. "That seems rather far-fetched."

"Dangerous," Daegen said. "They're dangerous, not unnatural."

"So is getting set on fire," Xesh pointed out. "Do you know if other species sense it differently?"

Daegen shook his head. "No, I don't. I assume it would be easy enough—Selkath, for example, are a lot less sensitive to cold than humans."

That still didn't seem exactly right, but he couldn't exactly put a finger on it. For a moment, he mulled over the question, until he finally thought to simply check again what he had sensed Vev to be. It was unpleasant, yes, but then, it wasn't the same level as so many other things he could imagine or remember.

"It doesn't feel like 'I need gloves' kind of cold," he said after a moment. "But rather the kind of cold where you're starting to feel your blood is turning to ice." Then, because Daegen was giving him an odd look, he added, "Or I guess what I imagine that would feel like. I never did come close to freezing to death."

"I'm glad to hear this," Daegen said. His voice sounded dry, as it did most of the time, but he actually did seem relieved. Then, he reached out in the Force too, and frowned. "You're right about that—it doesn't just feel cold and dark, but freezing and so dark you can't see. Two things that would be very obvious warnings, come to think of it."

"But if it's a warning, why didn't you just kill me or lock me up alone?" Xesh asked.

"Hm… Could you try answering this on your own?" Daegen replied.

That seemed quite unfair—he wouldn't be asking if he had known, would her? On the other hand, if he did get to the right answer, he would be getting more chocolate. So, he should at least try.

So. Where to start? "A warning is just a warning," he said, thinking aloud. "Just because something is possibly dangerous doesn't mean it always has to cause harm." Daegen was nodding, so it seemed like he was at the right track. "So, since you couldn't know for sure I was going to harm anyone, you decided to give me a chance to prove I won't."

Then, after a moment, he added, "And since suffering is unpleasant, and you're not horrible people, you wanted to help?"

It still sounded weird at times, but at the same time there was something very liberating about being able to say that his master was horrible. That being owned, and being hurt, might be how things had been for him, but that didn't mean it was how they were supposed to be.

"Tell me, do you ever plan on not letting me bribe you with chocolate?" Daegen asked, handing him a piece.

"You hadn't asked me to do anything that I really hated," Xesh said. It took him a moment to actually realize just what he had said.

He could have said no at any point. And the only consequence would be not getting a treat he didn't need anyway. All the things that Daegen had told him to answer or to do—he could have refused at any moment. Any power Daegen had over him as his teacher had been power that Xesh had given to him.

The idea would take some time getting used to.

Notes on changes:

- Since it wasn't entirely clear what Trill was supposed to be (Arkanians have all white eyes, but the unmodified ones have golden skin, and it's too early for offshoots, I think? Plus, if she were an offshoot, she'd have pupils. And Arkanis isn't part of the Infinite Empire, which sort of ended up clashing with Vev's backstory), Vev is Dathomirian now.