Chapter six! I'm so very proud!
Disclaimer: I'd be a lot richer if I owned KOTOR, but I'm not and I don't.
Zara wrinkled her nose as she took in the stench of the Undercity. There was a reek of rot and sickness, poison and human filth. Her skin was goosebumped with her awareness of the area, with minds clinging to humanity and slipping crazily at the very edge of her consciousness. She remembered the name as soon as she recognized the presence.
"The rakghouls are still here."
"Rakghouls?"
"Count yourself unlucky. You're about to meet creatures created by impure minds for the sole purpose of destruction. Don't get bitten. Don't get scratched."
"What are they?"
"You'll see them soon enough."
Briefly, Zara wondered if the Mandalorian she'd encountered had been to the Undercity and how he'd fared. Probably and well. He was an Ordo, renowned for their fearlessness and tactics.
"This way."
"How do you know?"
Zara shrugged. "Sooner or later, we'll hit a gate. I doubt a large settlement could survive down here, even with well-protected gates. There simply aren't enough resources and the last thing you want to eat is rahkghoul."
"What's a rahkghoul?"
"Nothing you ever want to see, but you're going to anyways. Deadly, dangerous creatures."
"You're being vague."
Zara was silent, walking to where she sensed the rahkghouls. Her shoulders were tense and her steps were reluctant.
"You there, savior!"
She wheeled, facing the old man. His eyes were milky with age, his body whip-thin with prominent veins and deep wrinkles. "Me? A savior?" She laughed bitterly. "I'm anything but."
The old man shook his head and Zara sensed a glimmer of the Force in him, dimmed by age and physical weakness. "You are." He insisted, strongly and surely. That glimmer of the Force flared strongly for a moment, surely. "You will lead us to the promised land!"
A surge of compassion compelled her to kneel. "I have a feeling my destiny lies elsewhere, wise one." On another planet, he would have been taken to become a Jedi. "But I will do what I can."
The elder nodded, as if he'd expected nothing less. "My apprentice, Mayla, has gone missing. If you could find her and her journal, as well as the journals of my father and grandfather, I know there will be enough clues for me to find the Promised Land, where we will be safe from sickness and persecution and the wretched rahkghoul plague!"
Zara swallowed. "I'll bring you those journals."
His hand reached up quickly, despite the trembling of age, and touched her eyelids. He murmured something, perhaps a blessing, and leaned back, apparently satisfied. "The gate lies north. There are rumors of a serum to cure the rahkghoul plague, though I do not know if these rumors are true. I believe the journals are close."
She touched her forehead, then clavicle in a traditional sign of respect. "Thank you, wise one." Carth's surprise was palpable as she rose from her kneeling position, more sober than before. She headed straight north, her lips pressed into a thin line.
There was a commotion by the gate. Zara sensed it before she saw it and took off running, leaping to the roof of a crude structure before jumping powerfully, over the high fence, among the rahkghouls chasing some man. Her twin vibros were out blindingly fast, silver arcs as she shore through the corpse-white flesh of the monsters. Green-black blood, stinking of rot even stronger than the rahkghouls themselves, made her gag a little as she turned, trotting for the gate. She didn't look back as she trotted for the gate, nor did she clean her blades.
"Thank you!" The woman at the gate sobbed, hugging the man.
"It was no trouble." Zara's lip curled. "I would've had to deal with those creatures sooner or later. Carth, you coming?"
Shocked silent, he followed, keeping a wary eye out for the corpse-white flashes that would identify a rahkghoul. After a few moments of silence, someone broke it.
"You're dying to ask me." Zara said flatly. "Go ahead now."
"What did that old guy mean?"
"Elder." Zara corrected sharply. "And he meant that he saw that I could do what he asked, that I was young and strong and mostly light. That I would bring him the journals and be, in effect, the savior."
Carth nodded, obviously formulating the next question. "I've… I've never seen anyone other than a Jedi or a Sith jump like you did, before."
"I am a Force-user, trained in the ways of the Zeison Sha and Matukai, with some Jedi training from my mother. The Zeison Sha live on Yanibar, a planet too harsh for any but a Force-user to survive. Their telekinesis is unsurpassed among the Jedi and the Sith and their favored weapon, the discblade, exceedingly rare and nearly impossible to fight. The Matukai are nomads who will take only one or two apprentices in all their life. Matukai training focuses on using the Force—and a good deal of effort—to make your body into an extension of the Force, a most versatile weapon. Their signature weapon is the wan-shen. I lost both my discblade and wan-shen in the Mandalorian Wars, in a battle against clan Ordo. There was an exceedingly tough and clever young soldier. He managed to catch my discblade and ram it between the plates of his Basilisk, wedged so I could not call it back to myself. My wan-shen was battered to uselessness."
"Sounds like a warrior." He sounded like he didn't care too much for Mandalorians.
Zara shrugged. "His father offered to adopt me when I was captured. I declined and was gone the next morning."
"Mandalorian prisoners don't just escape." Carth said sourly.
"It was easy for me. They didn't realize I was a Force-user—they just thought I was an amazing warrior. Chains are nothing to me. Only a Force cage could hold me and even then, not for forever. I have a talent with anything mechanical that's hard to beat." Zara did not mention she'd slept with the warrior and escaped while he was dozing—Carth seemed the sort to harshly judge consorting with the enemy.
"And your discblade?"
"I always thought I would find it at the camp, but I never did." She shrugged. "And I simply never had the money or materials to make a new one. My second wan-shen was destroyed with the Endar Spire. And the lightsaber my mother had given to me," just a bit of a lie, "was lost when some fool thought it was trash. Since I was going out of my way to avoid being noticed by Jedi, I never threw a fit or went hunting for it."
"You sound… colorful."
"Criminal? Yeah, I did do a few years of smuggling. Nothing like a touch of the Force in negotiations." She didn't mention she'd smuggled slaves to safe worlds like Yanibar if they had the Force or to places like Dantooine if they were younger and Nar Shaddaa if they were able to survive. She hated slavery with a passion.
"Ah." He sounded discomfited.
She smirked a little. Mister Carth Onasi was as straight an arrow as the Republic came, honest to a fault but wily if he had to be. Then she sensed something, an object smudged with the Force so it could be found. She veered accordingly and soon enough came upon a pile of well-chewed bones and a spat-out canvas bag.
"Those are human bones."
"Rahkghouls eat humans." Zara said callously, lifting the bag with her telekinesis and dumping out all the objects. She found a cloth-wrapped journal in very good shape and tucked it in her back. "And I think we just found the remains of Mayla." She pressed her lips together. "If we had time, or if it was safe, I'd say burn her bones. But we don't."
Carth grimaced. "The awful truth. What's this?"
He handed her a small vial, marked with a shorthand in Rodese. The scientist had probably been paranoid, but she could read Rodese. "I can't be certain, but given the location, I'd say that it's the rahkghoul serum the elder told us about." She tucked it in her belt. "I hope their healer can synthesize it."
"I hope we don't have to test it."
Zara pressed her lips together. "I hope not. But I have a pretty good grasp of Force healing. I think that I could burn the virus down enough for your immune system to take care of the rest, but I don't want to test that either."
"Agreed."