Chapter 24

The dark, twisted boles of gargantuan mushrooms and twisting, gnarled fronds of fungal matter loomed above, clawing grotesquely at the sky and selfishly hoarding the darkness cast by their shadows, denying the light of Felucia's primary from reaching the forest floor. The muddy ground was as broken and undulating as the foliage that crept over it; what was not steeped in thick mud was covered in rich clusters of mold, or dropped away in sudden gorges and precarious ledges, some of which had standing water that was more slime than aqueous liquid from the large volumes of spores suffusing it. The fungal growths and protrusions were claustrophobic in their proximity, and there were many spaces between individual specimens that were barely large enough for a Chadra-Fan to slip between, much less the single-file procession of Iktotchi, Twi'lek, and human that trekked through the diseased depths of the jungle laden with equipment and weapons. They picked their way through the tightly-knit jungle carefully and quietly, moving low and fast, and focusing on making as little sound or evidence of their passage as possible. Vaevi led the way, carrying her E-11s before her, occasionally stopping to peer through the scope on the weapon to get a more comprehensive view of what lay ahead of them in the deepest shadows beneath the towering stalks. Foyi followed directly behind, her discblade gripped in one hand and her supernatural senses sweeping the immediate area for any approaching threats. Rayf brought up the rear, his wan-shen in hand, which he used in alternating capacities as a walking stick and a means by which he could clear particularly stubborn fungal obstacles slowing the group.

They proceeded into the dim, fell part of the forests, the Dark Side pressing more insistently upon the trio's consciousnesses. Even Vaevi, bereft of the Force, could sense the darkness inherent in this part of the jungles, the sheer wrongness of the place through which they trekked. It took them mere moments before they began to discover evidence of other creatures having passed through this way, both recently and in an unknown point during the past. Some of the larger, more resilient mushrooms showed old scars and weeping wounds that had mostly healed, but the growth of new fungal tissue betrayed the existence of this previous damage. Some of the furrows in the ground appeared to have been created by some tool or force beyond the meandering entropy instigated by erosion. Occasionally, they would find a corpse barely recognizable as the remains of a humanoid creature, due to the mold and fungi clutching to their desiccated bones. Foyi paused at one of these corpses when she caught a flash of white in the dim illumination, and was surprised and disconcerted to pull a stormtrooper's helmet from the mud, the head that had once worn it consumed by Felucia's ravenous jungles, the whole right side of the headgear caved in sharply. She tossed the helmet back to the ground and refocused her attention forward, though her mind began to conjure stormtroopers and Felucians lurking in the shadows ahead of them. Rayf was similarly distracted by a scattered set of bones that might have once belonged to one of the Jungle Felucians. He extracted a lengthy, jagged stretch of bone with a sharpened edge. One end tapered into a protrusion wrapped with leather and strips of plant matter, describing a hilt for its wielder to grip. Upon the edge opposite the sharpened one protruded a few jagged fangs, and only with closer inspection could Rayf see that the weapon, if that was what the object was meant to be, possessed a slot that may have once been an eye socket, suggesting that the implement had been fashioned from the angular skull of an unknown creature. He held it up for Foyi to see, but the Twi'lek merely glanced at it and continued to follow Vaevi into the thicker brush. So Rayf dropped the angular length of bone back in the mud, and trudged onward, keeping his wan-shen in front of him.

Vaevi offered little guidance beyond where she chose to place her feet amongst the morass of mud, treacherous slopes, and effulgent colonies of mold, as well as the directions she chose to slink through the undergrowth and beneath the wide canopies of the dark mushrooms above. The taint of the Dark Side was palpable, even tactile in this grove, which was soon becoming something far larger and wilder than a simple localized section of the jungle; indeed, Foyi suspected that the sickly flora they had witnessed and traveled through before had merely been the farthest reaches of the Dark Side's effects upon this world. Or perhaps, in keeping with the insidious and chaotic nature of the Dark Side, not all areas of Felucia's jungles were affected equally by the sickness that pervaded the world. Whereas Felucia's atmosphere was naturally suffused with spores, producing a dense and gritty quality that defused light from the rising sun, there was a veritable pall hanging upon the jungle now, as though the spores thickening the air had taken on a supernatural darkness all their own. The humidity in the air felt old and rotten, and Foyi was certain a clammy, viscous residue was building up in her esophagus every time she took a breath. She fought the urge to cough and spit, and kept moving forward, pushing the clinging, gnarled protrusions and fungal appendages of Felucian flora away from her limbs and face with both her hands and small, telepathic applications of the Force. She found it difficult to maintain a sure footing on the rough and uneven terrain they slunk over, for they were coming to an area that had a pronounced downward slope, and the continuing weakness of her legs and her own offset equilibrium nearly made her tumble headlong down the slope on more than one occasion. Foyi began drawing from the liquid strength of the Force more completely, trying to ignore the queasy sensations this induced in her as she inevitably touched the Dark Side by proximity. The further they traveled and the more she saw of this world, the greater Foyi's fear for her sister grew; the last few hours had been barely tolerable due to the Dark Side's prevalence upon Felucia. She could not imagine what it must be like for Tama, to have spent days, perhaps a week or more, on this world, constantly battered by the icy sprays of the Dark Side, crashing headlong against her consciousness. Perversely, some part of Foyi welcomed the tainted form of existence the life essences of Felucia had to contend with, the untamed passions and unbridled power that flowed like a vast and dark undercurrent to everything about the world. She vividly remembered tapping into that power on multiple occasions since Tama's kidnapping, and she secretly yearned to submerge herself in it once more, to give her the will and ability to take back that which had been stolen from her, to destroy this creature calling itself the Shepherd for daring to raise a hand against those she loved.

Foyi mentally backed away from such wandering and emotionally charged thoughts, as though standing upon a cold sea cliff and forcing herself to step back from the edge and the plunge into the nexus of seductive power she knew lay beyond. No wonder the natives were so hostile, so ravenously violent and destructive. The Jungle Felucian Vaevi had sniped had been sensitive to the Force, perhaps even a wielder of it as she brought to mind Rayf's relayed rumors regarding an indigenous species with "magical" powers. To live as a Force-sensitive on this world was to be constantly tempted by the Dark Side that was like a cancer festering upon its unique and interconnected presence in the Living Force, and it was likely almost any native they met would have fallen to their darker aspects already.

Vaevi suddenly stopped and brought a hand up to signal a halt. Both Foyi and Rayf crept to either side of her, to find that she crouched at the lips of a cliff that had been constructed more of sheered protrusions of fungal matter than dirt. The cliff dropped away into a gorge thick with shadows, nine meters or so at its deepest, with several other rises and grooves in the ground that formed tiered slopes down into its depths. Through the haze and by the light of the subdued blue and purple phosphorescence of fungal stalks and occasional blades of sunlight, Foyi could see the bottom of the trench if she concentrated, which showed a muddy floor that had been recently disturbed by multiple tracks of creatures large and small, bipedal and otherwise. What was more intriguing, however, were the trails carved into the mud, caused by the passage of repulsorlifts, some of which had been produced recently, if her low-light vision did not betray her. She could also see random protrusions from the mud around the trail, denoting the presence of other bodies, and a flash of metal suggested some sort of half-buried machinery.

Vaevi unslung her E-11s and adjusted the scope. "This is where I last saw the trail," she explained in a soft voice. "I had been following it from a little way ahead, and when I walked into the crevasse here, I was chased away by that hunting party."

Rayf gestured to the right, where the trail seemed to meander through the trench on a gradual slope. "If I haven't completely lost my bearings...that leads in the direction of the battlefield."

Vaevi nodded. "You have a good sense for direction, spacer."

"When you're used to plotting courses in three dimensional hard vacuum, keeping track of where you are dirtside is a slice of patogga."

Vaevi gave him a quizzical look. "I know many spacers who would disagree with that sentiment."

"Those spacers have probably been sucking void too long then."

"Most likely," Vaevi conceded. She suddenly reached out with a hand to catch Foyi's shoulder, for the Twi'lek was in the process of lowering herself from the cliff ledge, so as to drop into the trench below and follow the Shepherd's road, as well as place herself spatially closer to the past presence of the vehicle, and hopefully, her sister. Foyi gave her an irritated look, but Vaevi, not remotely intimidated, pushed her back, then shouldered her sniper rifle. "Hold a moment, girl." Without another word, she took aim and fired across the gap, the brilliant crimson bolt painting the trench's darkness in lurid, sanguine glow for a moment before it impacted a large, bulbous plant clinging to the opposite sides of the trench in a spray of sparks and viscous ichor. Vaevi shifted her aim and fired again, blasting apart another similar plant, and then another, until she had fired a quartet of shots, each one destroying fungal protrusions rooted to the cliff face or upon the muddy tiers, their warty petals of red and white enclosed around central organs Foyi had not the time to see more clearly. Vaevi scanned the immediate environs through her scope, then brought her rifle up and slung it back over her back. "Okay. Now you can rush headlong down there."

Rayf was looking about, as if expecting enemies to suddenly materialize from the mushrooms themselves. "I'm sure those plants deserved the lesson you taught them, though I can't help but wonder if we didn't just give away our position."

Vaevi nodded, unconcerned. "Most likely. But none of us would want to go down in there with those things standing watch. They're called Yerdua Poison-Spitters; the Felucians use them like guard droids. I couldn't tell you whether they're animals or plants, or some combination of both, but they fire globules of a caustic and debilitating chemical with eerie accuracy over several meters. If we had just jumped down in there, we would have been in those things' killbox, and probably still be convulsing in the mud when the natives showed up to finish us off."

Foyi let out a steadying breath. Does everything on this miserable planet exist to kill us? "Thank you." Without further words, Foyi leapt from the cliff to a lower ledge, and then to one beneath that, hopping the several meters down to the floor of the trench, where she landed lightly in the mud beside the trail, animal tracks, and corpses she found there. The atmosphere down here was somehow even more cloying, threatening to smother her with its claustrophobic presence. She centered herself, her focus maintained by the realization that she may not have much time before enemies were undoubtedly attracted by the sounds of blasterfire.

Rayf landed beside her within seconds of her own descent, though Vaevi arrived moments later, her motions slower and more cautious as she searched for enemies. Foyi, having reached deeply into the Force, searching for any sign of her sister's presence, soon opened here eyes. Rayf saw the glimmer of hope on her expression and whispered excitedly, "You've found her?"

"She was here," Foyi assured him. "Not long ago. This is the same trail we were following beforehand."

"I told you it was," Vaevi remarked, as though her pride had been wounded.

Rayf turned to look behind them, where the trail followed the rising ground that eventually led out of the trench. "Well, if we head back that way, it just leads to the old Sep platform we came in on, which won't get us any closer to the Shepherd." He then turned the opposite direction, where the trench continued onward, though the widening of its confining walls, barely perceptible in the pervasive darkness, suggested that the trail took them into a valley, or wider spaces of low country ahead. "And that way...probably leads to more running and blasting."

"And my sister," Foyi added.

"Preferably."

"Keep an eye out for more Poison-Spitters," Vaevi cautioned as they slunk forward, following the direction prescribed by the trench. "My aim's going to be thrown off if I have to haul either one of your limp bodies around."

"Your concern is so sweet, it's nauseating," Rayf quipped.

"Rayf, cool your jets. Vaevi, stop being a voorcat," Foyi admonished both of them. "Let's remember why we're all here, and focus on finding the Shepherd and those he's kidnapped."

As they crept swiftly down the trench's length, Vaevi came to the Twi'lek's side, cocking one brow in a query. "Voorcat, hm? It's been awhile since I've even heard mention of such voracious predators. Have you visited Yanibar often?"

Foyi gave her a dispassionate look, though her mind had expanded beyond her brain, sensing the motivations behind such a question. Being an Iktotchi, Vaevi should have been able to obscure her thoughts to some extent from Foyi's telepathic probes, even without Force sensitivity, but she was not even bothering to do so, laying her mind bare. It was simply a question, a query asked to learn more regarding her newfound allies, one Foyi decided there was little harm in answering, considering Vaevi had revealed a substantial amount of information regarding herself and her own past. Perhaps their partnership could be one reliant upon trust rather than shared goals, if Foyi merely took the opportunity to engender some of that trust. "My sister and I...are from Yanibar. I'm surprised you've even heard of the world."

Vaevi shrugged. "One of my prey believed he could hide in the wildernesses there, counting on the fact that Yanibar doesn't even show up on a lot of starcharts. But where there's an Imperial presence, there are Imperial starcharts, and survey data, and all kinds of useful information for bounty hunters such as myself, no matter how incomplete it is. Honestly, I'm impressed that you chose to live there; that world is barely habitable."

"It's my home. I grew up there. And like all those who do so, you either learn to be hardy, capable, and self-sufficient, or you die."

"Then my beliefs in the resilience and continuing survival of your sister are well-founded."

Foyi gave a puzzled but hopeful glance. "Is that...did you have a vision about my sister?"

Vaevi shook her head. "Nothing pertaining to a fourteen-year-old Twi'lek girl. The precognitive visions of my species are often accurate, but rarely specific. The Jedi of old were said to have the ability to see the future as well, and those of my species who became Jedi were even more accurate in their visions, and could see farther into the future. But even they never spoke of the future in certain terms, for they believed that nothing of the events to come were set in carbonite, that they could be changed by the actions of many or just a few, or by probabilities and events that were unpredictable. My visions have led me here thus far, though I refuse to rely upon them exclusively."

"You've mentioned the Jedi before," Rayf remarked. "Did you know many Jedi before the Dark Times and the Empire?"

Vaevi shook her head, her expression clouded, the sensations of her mind remaining evasive, shrouded from scrutiny. "No. When the Jedi were still around, I, and the life I lived, were so far removed from their Order and religion, I didn't take much notice. Later...experiences changed my views, but by the time I became interested in learning more about the Force, this energy that apparently insures the continuation of existence in the galaxy, the Clone Wars were drawing to a close. Since then, I've tried to learn what I could regarding the Force and the abilities of those who are sensitive to it, which the Empire has only made more difficult with each passing year as part of Palpatine's crusade to erase the existence of the Jedi Order from history and the galaxy." She grimaced. "You see, I have come to believe...that 'the Shepherd'...is like the two of you. A Force-user, albeit one who uses his abilities for nothing but his own game, and to further whatever twisted ideals he believes in. I've hunted him long enough, studied the impact he's left upon people and places around him, and found more than I can explain with mundane capabilities. I believe he is a creature of what the Jedi called the 'Dark Side of the Force'...I mean, I don't profess to be any epitome of virtue myself, but he would have to be, to act in a manner so revolting, so twisted."

"Well, this would certainly be the place for it," Rayf added, looking up at the looming darkness of the heights surrounding them with a paranoid regard. "This world is steeped in the Dark Side. It's rare to feel it so...strongly in such a large area."

Foyi alternated her attention between the path opening up before them, and the Iktotchi walking beside her. "This is more than just business for you, isn't it? You're after more than just a bunch of credits and a boost to your reputation as a bounty hunter."

Vaevi's expression had never been so sharp and severe as she saw it now, though her thoughts continued to be protected, skirting the edges of the waves Foyi sent toward her. "I don't like people hurting children. It's just not...not right."

Foyi would have asked for clarification on this point, but she was distracted by the walls of the gorge rising to disappear into the shadows cast by the humongous caps of the mushrooms standing over the deep valley in which they had found themselves. Before them lay vast stretches of mud interspersed with groves of glowing mushrooms and clusters of mold erupting from the ground. There were small gorges and trenches crisscrossing the valley floor, caused by creeks and streams that were filled with a viscous substance more like slime than water. The valley was hemmed in by more cliffs and deeper, darker sections of the forest, though the contours of the depression stretched on to and past the perimeters of their sight, making it impossible for them to determine the true size of the valley. The trail they had been following descended into it, the marks left by the repulsorlifts still evident in the deep mud; they continued forward for several meters, then curved off to the left, to follow the farthest perimeters of the valley, instead of cutting directly through its middle. Foyi could still feel Tama's presence, like a slight eddying current that brushed just past her skin, though the eddies felt...warmer somehow. As though she had drawn closer, physically or spiritually to Tama. She reached out further, to better define the feelings and sensations the Force granted her, but found it nearly impossible to pierce the roiling depths of the Dark Side, the pall that continued to press sharply upon, and envelop, her mind.

Foyi led the way along the trail, following her emotional connection to her sister and her feelings as much as her sight. The trail curved at a large protrusion emerging from the muddy ground, an immense shard of hard, calcified material that arose from an organic ridge that carved its way for several meters through the mud. The protrusion rose to a dull point well over two meters above her head, its surface rough, scaly, and pitted, marred by mold and deep grooves that may have been the remnants of weapons natural or forged. On instinct, she placed a hand against the spire, and was alarmed to feel a weak Force signature radiating from it, as though it possessed a life of its own. Vaevi came to her side, puzzled by the Twi'lek's interest in the terrain feature. "What have you found?"

Foyi shook her head, glancing around to see other protrusions like it, interspersed amongst the fungal growths and the valley floor in a sweeping curve disappearing into distance and darkness. "I have no idea, but...it feels alive, somehow."

Rayf joined the two women, and brought his own hand to rest against the spire. A thoughtful look came to his face. "You know what it looks like? A tooth."

"A tooth?" Foyi echoed with alarm. She glanced at the curved row of similar structures sweeping through the valley, and tried to imagine them as gargantuan fangs outlining the mouth of a truly colossal creature. A mouth they were practically standing in, if that was so. "What kind of animal could be so large?"

Rayf ran a hand through his damp hair. "A space slug...maybe. Though I've never heard of one making a nest on a habitable planet before."

"If it really belongs to a gigantic creature, will we disturb it from...whatever it's doing by proceeding?" Foyi asked. She had no thoughts of actually turning back; she would gladly walk through the mouth of a space slug, or whatever type of monster they may have happened upon, to rescue her sister. That did not mean she wanted to unnecessarily antagonize such a gargantuan product of freakish evolution if she did not have to.

As if to test her theory, Vaevi unceremoniously walked up to the tooth—if that was what it was—and gave it a solid kick. There was a slight shiver, perhaps a resultant vibration from the force applied by her foot, in the jelly-like material anchoring the protrusion in the ground, but no other response. Both Foyi and Rayf had tensed, ready for something terrible to occur, but when nothing happened, the Iktotchi shrugged and continued walking past the "tooth" and along the trail as it curved toward one of the valley's walls. After a moment, Rayf and Foyi followed, both peering into the shadows and thick foliage, listening for any sound of unknown creatures or monsters determined to consume their flesh. The jungle, which had been filled with the cacophony brought on by morning, was becoming more silent every moment, a hush that was almost religious beginning to fall upon them.

They had walked only a few more meters when Rayf suddenly diverted from the repulsortrucks' path, his eyes fixed upon a rock formation rising at a sharp angle from the ground beside another one of the "teeth". Without explanation, he trotted to its side, prompting Foyi to stop and call after him, "Rayf! What are you doing?! The trail leads this way!"

"Just a nanosecond!" was all that Rayf would offer. Vaevi and Foyi exchanged a look, and the Iktotchi shrugged. Foyi rolled her eyes, grumbling something under breath regarding "easily distracted flyboys" and trotted to Rayf's side, to see the rocks jutting out from the ground were not rocks at all, but rather armored plating, servomotors, and joints so covered in mud and colonies of mold Foyi had to study it from multiple angles before realizing she was looking at wreckage of an Imperial war machine. Specifically, the remains of an AT-ST Walker, having collapsed on its side and spent a significant amount of time sinking into the mud and succumbing to the erosive ravages of Felucia's flora. Rayf walked across the wreckage, perching atop it and studying the contours, how the cockpit of the vehicle appeared to have been crushed, the metal twisted by gigantic fingers instead of warped by the impact with the ground it had fallen upon. One of the legs had been completely severed by something sharp and strong enough to pass cleanly through the armored durasteel, a slight bubbling around the edges of the cut suggesting something that had emitted extreme levels of heat.

Vaevi reluctantly joined them, still keeping her sniper rifle at the ready. "So it's a slagged chicken walker...I told you there were Imperials on this planet, and they have no qualms about leaving their trash behind wherever they go."

"Looks like it's been here awhile, so we probably don't have to worry about the Imps coming back for it," Foyi added. "Come on, Rayf. We have other things to do...like rescue my sister. Crisp a creep. Save the day."

Rayf completely ignored one of the Zeison Sha's rare bouts of humor, his attention solely on the fallen walker as he strode around its wreckage, a troubled expression on his face. He paused beside the severed leg, dropping to a squat and running tentative fingers over the edges of the cut. Foyi was about to encourage him to continue moving with harsher tones, but when she saw his features become haunted, and felt his presence boiling with a bewildering mix of concern, memory, and nostalgia, she squatted beside him to similarly examine the cut. Unfortunately, whatever he was seeing was lost on her. "Rayf? Why is this scrap heap so important right now?"

Rayf ran a hand through his hair again, his eyes still fixed on the wreckage. "I've seen damage like this before...there's only one weapon I know of that is capable of cutting a walker's legs out directly from it."

"What?"

He faced her, and she could not tell what he was thinking; she was uncertain even he knew. "A lightsaber. Someone wielding a lightsaber did this, someone proficient enough with one to stand up to a walker and come out the victor."

Foyi backed away from the wreckage. "The weapon of a Jedi."

"Or a Sith," Vaevi offered.

Foyi turned to Rayf again. "You said there were battles here during the Clone Wars...did a Jedi do this in one of those battles?"

Rayf shook his head. "This walker isn't old enough, and the design is clearly Imperial, not from the Grand Army of the Republic. Besides, the Jedi fought on the side with walkers, not battle droids. No...this was done recently, and by someone powerful in the Force..."

"How do you know?" Vaevi asked. "It could have just been someone who stole a lightsaber, and got lucky with it."

Rayf snorted, as though such a suggestion was completely ludicrous. "Lightsabers require a great degree of skill and training to wield without cutting your own extremities off, much less those of your enemies, especially when those extremities are encased in several centimeters of high-grade durasteel. But that's not what I'm talking about...you see how the cockpit's been crushed, how it's actually been twisted and warped? That doesn't happen from falling over...a chicken walker's not that far off the ground."

Foyi studied the wreckage with new revelations. "It does look like a giant hand gave a squeeze and ripped back and forth until it was almost torn apart. If you're saying someone did that with the Force, they would have be incredibly skilled with telekinesis."

"That's a hell of a Force Grip, alright," Rayf agreed. His confused expression had changed to one of excitement, even hope. "This could mean that there was a Jedi here...as recently as a year or so ago."

"Or a Sith," Vaevi insisted again.

"The Sith are allied with the Empire. Why would they attack their own troops?"

"That's just an unsubstantiated rumor."

"It's the truth," Rayf replied insistently. "The Sith were responsible for the betrayal and destruction of the Jedi, and so many other Force traditions...anyone who might dare to stand against Palpatine's New Order. But there are always rumors that some of the Jedi, and other Force-users, survived the Purge. This could be the evidence right here!"

"What's all the excitement about?" Foyi interjected irritably. "If there is a Jedi here, what if he's in league with the Shepherd?"

Rayf gave her an expression of complete incredulity, as though a whole nest of drochs were busying themselves with sprouting out of the Twi'lek's body at that moment. "That was a serious question, wasn't it? If you actually knew anything about the Jedi, you would realize just how vapebrained that was..."

Foyi opened her mouth to retort, to chastise him for his infatuation with a stiff religion of Force-users, whom, in her opinion, the galaxy was far better without, but she was distracted by Vaevi beside her, who had suddenly gone stock still, as though attempting to listen to something beyond her normal range of hearing. Rayf sensed the sudden tension in the air as well, and the three of them remained silent for a moment, each one training their ears to listen intently for any sound that did not belong. Foyi was alarmed to come to the revelation that the sounds of the birds, animals, and insatiable insects had ceased almost entirely, the din of Felucia's morning producing a dread that seemed to reach from all around her to constrict her chest. Drawing her breath in a brief gasp, Foyi stretched out with careful eddies of feeling and sensation, but just as she did so, Vaevi snapped the sniper rifle to her shoulder and gave a shout of, "Incoming!"

The silence shattered by the bounty hunter's shout was filled with a cacophony of eerie howls, barks, and grunts as emerging from the darkness and the thickest, most obscured portions of the forests spread throughout the valley were several groups of Jungle Felucians, sprinting across the muddy ground and patches of mildewed undergrowth in skittering, loping gaits. In their primary pairs of arms they wielded curved blades of bones, many carved from the skulls and mandibles of large predators, others shaped more like clubs from heavier limbs. Their faces, which were difficult enough to discern due to the obtuse layers of waving tendrils emerging from them, were grotesque and twisted, their mouths gaping, as though weighed down by the immense and jagged rows of fangs that emerged from their jaws, while their clammy skin threw viscous slime like sweat with each erratic movement. They scrabbled across the mud with little balance or means of strategic approach, while some clambered across the tendrils and stalks of gigantic mushrooms like they wore adhesive on their palms and soles, even across sheer slopes in apparent defiance of Felucia's gravity. The Force itself seemed to boil in their presence, and Foyi was momentarily staggered by the waves of undisguised hostility, the blackest emotions rising from their presences like tsunamis of pure hatred, rage, and bloodlust. In the rush and shamble of bodies, Foyi could not determine at a glance how many enemies they were facing, but as of yet, they were not difficult to identify, for they all came in a headlong, suicidal rush from the right of the three gathered in the valley, announcing their charge through the insane and frightening howls they exuded.

As Foyi regained her balance and dropped into a low combat stance, Vaevi immediately spun around and dropped to one knee, pressing herself against one of the large, curving "teeth" and firing a well-placed shot. The rifle's blaster bolt cut across the intervening space and took the leading Felucian Warrior in the sternum, blowing a ragged, ichor-stained hole through his torso and sending the corpse tumbling end over end through the mud. Her next shot impacted another Felucian's elbow, sending the smoldering remains of both forearms attached there sloshing through the mud, and dropping the alien to the ground with a shriek that sounded almost like a mixture between pain and ecstasy. Vaevi shifted the rifle and fired again, but the bolt never found its mark, for the third Felucian she had fired upon gestured with its free appendages before it, and the laserfire impacted a shimmering shield of force that warped the air directly before and around the Felucian's head. In response, while still sprinting and howling like lunatic, the Felucian manipulated the shield of Force energy before it, transforming it into a twisting snarl of energy and atmosphere about its fists that was sickening to even look directly at. Before the bounty hunter could even or take another shot, the Felucian hurled its fists forward, and the shimmering, spiraling sphere of energy raced across the intervening distance, collecting spores, dirt, stones, and debris in its wake before slamming into Vaevi's position of cover with a rush of energy derived directly from the Dark Side. The "tooth" Vaevi leaned against took the brunt of the blast, rocking it viciously in its foundations, but enough of the energy and the detritus that it had collected slammed the bounty hunter with enough violence to send her rolling backward, the E-11s cartwheeling from her hands and bouncing away in the mud.

Foyi cast a glance Vaevi's way to see if she still lived, and looked away only when she saw the bounty hunter struggling to get her hands and knees beneath her. The Zeison Sha rolled to the side, the Force warning her of another of those projectiles of Dark Side energy aimed her way well before it reached her, and in the same motion, she let her discblade fly. The weapon curved from her fingers and up into the air, before descending down upon the head of the closest Felucian, sprinting toward her and waving its crude bone weapon only meters from her. The discblade's spinning edges sliced down through the Felucian's wildly waving tendrils and bisected its face before savagely tearing itself free and flying back to her waiting hand in response to her telekinetic call, and the native, already dead, continued to move forward by momentum alone, its body flopping limply in a pile of sludge before the Twi'lek's feet.

Rayf left her side at the same time she was cutting down the Felucian Warrior, sprinting across the ground with a speed and stride enhanced by the Force, his wan-shen leading. He practically ran headlong into one of the warriors, whereupon there was a flurry of blows that could not be perceived due to their speed, and in less than a second, Rayf was already jumping back and rolling to the side. The warrior he had met was halted in his tracks; he gave a shuddering step forward, hunched over a dozen cuts and stabs in almost every portion of its body that might house a vital organ, and collapsed to the mud. That Felucian was still falling when Rayf swept the feet out from another one, flipping his wan-shen over and above his head and slamming its blade down into the Felucian's chest, nailing the warrior to the ground for a split second. He ripped the polearm free and swung it in a dangerous and hypnotic arc, throwing his entire body into a blinding whirl that caught three Felucians in its sweeping slashes. But one of those warriors, with Force-augmented reaction time, blocked two of those cuts with his skullblade, eliciting a roar of rage and triumph. The second Felucian was a split-second too slow, catching a pair of slashes beneath its mass of tendrils and gaping maw, opening another savage grin upon its throat that vomited blood as it fell face first into the thick mud. The third Felucian was as quick and canny as the first, diverting Rayf's blistering assault with a well-aimed slash of its skullblade, then, as Rayf fell back on his trailing foot to ready himself for a new direction of attacks, thrust a widely-splayed and webbed hand forward. The air warped and groaned, and Rayf was struck in the chest and along the left side with vicious Dark Side energy, throwing him several meters bodily through the air. The Matukai gave a cry of pain and surprise as he attempted to right himself, only to strike the ground on his right shoulder, then flopping in a rough somersault that brought him to his knees, where he remained for precious seconds, gasping against the pain.

Within seconds of the Felucians' initial charge, Foyi was the only one of the trio left standing, but she barely realized her tenuous position as she plunged to the very depths of the Force, ignoring the physical and mental fatigue that continued to affect her and focusing on training and instinct that had been honed into her by her years of experience and practice in the ways of the Zeison Sha. The discblade flashed from her palm, weaving through the air as though it had a mind all its own and passing through the hamstring of the Felucian that had smote Rayf with caustic energy. Even as the dicblade was curving away from her wounded quarry, she reached behind her and pulled the A295 Blaster Rifle from her back, and in the same smooth motion, brought the weapon to her shoulder and triggered a trio of blasts into the same Felucian, who was screeching at its torn muscles as its knees buckled, that screech halting suddenly as it was blown backward. Another Felucian stepped within melee range and aimed a vicious, overhand chop of its skullblade for the Twi'lek's head, but Foyi dodged to the side and used the momentum of that move to flip her blaster rifle around and slam the weapon's stock into the warrior's jaw with enough force to flip him heels over head. A wave of hostility splashed against her consciousness, and Foyi immediately dropped and threw herself into a roll to avoid another slash from behind, made by a warrior she had not seen sneak around behind her, but the Force had intrinsically warned her of his hostile intent. She completed her roll, coming up into a crouch, and jabbed a finger at the skullblade of the Felucian she had just clobbered with her A295. The weapon was still falling through midair when Foyi's telekinetic hold seized it and altered its trajectory, spinning end over end at an upward angle that buried it in the stealthy Felucian's chest.

Foyi, still crouched, swung around at the sound of a bellowing warrior surging toward her from the side, but instead of firing with her blaster rifle, she searched through the Force to find the unique signature of her Force-imbued weapon, and called it to her aid. The discblade rose from where it had dropped across the wreckage of the AT-ST and whirled through the warrior's spine, severing it just above his hips and provoking a truly bloodcurdling scream of shock and agony from the native. Foyi could feel the life energy leaking from her opponent, but tucked herself into a sideways roll as the air groaned and shivered around her, narrowly avoiding another missile of dark energy that had been barreling down upon her. She spun around to spot the source of the savage Force power, only to find the Felucian she was looking for having put on a burst of supernatural speed, closing the gap between them in a nanosecond, his weapon of knobbly and heavy bone swinging inward and upward in a slash meant to split her in two diagonally. Foyi barely deflected the blow with the length of her blaster, but the Felucian had apparently anticipated such a response, and brought a knee into her ribs directly behind its swing. Foyi was flung to the side by the vicious maneuver, feeling the air rush from her lungs in a violent exhale, though the Force continued to strengthen her limbs and keep her focus sharp, even though she could no longer draw oxygen enough to breathe properly. She turned her uncontrolled roll into a somersault, using its momentum to spring to her feet and raise her right hand, telekinetically directing the discblade to rise in the air again and spin in a tempest of death and flecks of blood directly for her opponent's throat.

The Felucian warrior gave a barking growl of what Foyi assumed was defiance, the atmosphere before him twisting in on itself to form a barely-opaque shield of the Force that the discblade could not penetrate, and the weapon was thrown wide. Foyi did not let the failed attack stop her, though, for she was already sprinting across the short distance that separated herself and her opponent. Not bothering to try and fire blaster bolts into the Felucian's shield or maintain her telekinetic grip on the discblade, not even giving herself the chance to draw breath into her aching lungs, Foyi reached into the waters of the Force and made the waves surge about her foe, bodily carrying him forward upon its crest in a Force Pull. The Felucian gave a short squeal of surprise and horror as he was lifted bodily from the ground and hurtled toward the determined and sprinting Twi'lek. Foyi met his airborne form with savage, Force-augmented kick that shattered the Felucian's shield and connected directly with his throat. The Felucian's scream of rage and pain became a strangled gurgle as he was bent backward in midair and slammed to the ground with a splash; Foyi gave him no chance to recover, dropping her blaster and falling upon him with a flurry of punches and jabs aimed directly for his face and head. She viciously slammed her fists into the warrior's face repeatedly, letting the Force give weight and power to her melee assault, which she only relented when her knuckles were smeared with blood and pulpy gore.

Foyi jumped to her feet immediately, spinning a quick circle in search of enemies, but found that of the all the Felucian warriors that had attacked them, none were left standing, either dead or so severely wounded, they could no longer fight, not even with the Dark Side granting them strength. Realizing that the ambush had been foiled, Foyi allowed herself to withdraw from the Force, easing the energy pumping through her body like life-giving waters, like a secondary circulatory system of lifeblood, and gave a ragged gasp as her lungs screamed for air. She was still trying to regain normal breathing when she looked to where she had last seen Rayf, a spike of fear shivering through her as she imagined the worst. But Rayf was already on his feet, albeit leaning heavily upon his wan-shen and using it as a support to keep him upright, and the grin of reassurance he offered her was more of a pain-etched grimace. "Spast, that hurt," he groaned. The Twi'lek rushed to his side, laying a supportive hand on his shoulder, but he waved her off. "I'm fine, sweetheart; I was just surprised, is all. How's Vaevi?"

Foyi turned, still unable to speak as she sucked fetid and moist air through her nostrils, and found the Iktotchi had also regained her feet. Upon closer inspection, Foyi saw multiple minor lacerations and bruises on the bounty hunter's face, as well as superficial tears and rents in her shadowsuit and cloak, but otherwise appeared none the worse for wear. "I only got grazed by...whatever that was," she murmured as she retrieved her E-11s and set about reloading it. "Nice job, by the way. Not sure I could have done better myself."

Foyi let out a shaky exhalation and allowed herself a grin of exhilaration. "Is that a 'thank you' for saving both of you while you took a nap in the mud?"

Whatever Vaevi had intended to say in response was drowned out by a guttural, peeling sound that echoed through the valley and the forest beyond, a sound with a hollow and manufactured quality that made Foyi think it must have been produced by an instrument of some sort. Hurriedly, ignoring the aches in her joints, the pain radiating through her bruised side, and the draining effects of the past week's events, Foyi stooped to pick up her dropped weapons from amongst the strewn corpses. Vaevi craned her neck to look about while Rayf used both his eyes and the Force to determine the nature of any threats in the immediate vicinity.

The awful sound reached a crescendo, and dissipated into the eerie silence again. Vaevi's features took on a fierce grimace, though Foyi could sense her fear as well as she could her own. "That was a war horn," the bounty hunter explained as she slung the sniper rifle over her back. "We need to get moving; there'll be more coming, and in greater numbers."

Foyi gave the Shepherd's trail carved into the mud flats a guilty glance; she hated to leave it, but if there were more Felucians coming specifically to spill their blood, they needed a more defensible position in which to fight, or in order to retreat. "We're too exposed down here."

Vaevi affirmed her observation with a nod. "Let's get back up those cliffs, where we can gain the advantage of both height and sight."

They turned as one to the tiered cliffs and slippery slopes from whence they came, but were taken aback to see those ledges already swarming with Felucians, an entire hunting party that had made not a sound save for the call of the war horn. So steeped in the Dark Side energies of the abused and ill world of Felucia, and so accomplished in their camouflage with their natural environment, both in means mundane and of the Force, that the first of the Felucian Warriors were already reaching the valley's floor before the trio had even spotted them. Arrayed upon the slopes above, many of them clinging to the muddy ascents like Sacorrian grain flies on vertical walls, were more Felucian warriors and scouts, and at the uppermost heights of the walls describing the valley's contours stood two Felucians of unknown importance and biology. They were larger specimens than their comrades, their skin covered in crimson markings, their oblong heads shrouded in grotesque masks and headdresses, clutching large and unwieldy skullblades in one set of hands, the others covered in shields fashioned from carved bone and scales of immense predators. And in between them, rearing and shrieking in rage and hunger, was a rancor, its dark hide glowing with phosphorescent stripes and splashes. Upon its shoulders leaned the largest Jungle Felucian any of them had yet to witness, well over two meters in height with immense musculature outlined by bright yellow markings, his face obscured by a truly impressive and foreboding headdress and mask. With one webbed appendage, he raised a double-ended staff well above his head, while the other set of limbs clutched a shield nearly as massive as the staff. Foyi could feel the Force and the Dark Side swirling like a maelstrom around the rancor-rider, so palpable the atmosphere around him boiled by his mere presence. The rider gave a thunderous, hooting call that echoed through the valley and the forest beyond, and the sound seemed to bolster all the Felucians gathered in the war party. The Felucians began scrabbling down toward the trio, shrieking, howling, and bellowing as they came, blasts of Dark Side energy forming around their webbed fists while they waved their skullblades in lurid threat displays to accompany numbing their war whoops.

"Emperor's Black Bones..." Vaevi exclaimed.

"Run!" Rayf shouted almost simultaneously.

Their only familiar route of escape denied them, they turned tail and fled in the opposite direction, sprinting as fast as they were able, deeper into the valley, zigzagging between small groves of mushrooms, fanged protrusions of bones, and random wreckage protruding from the mud; anything that would provide temporary cover from the blasts of Dark Side energy that sizzled and spattered all around them. Some of these impacted the ground near their feet, sending up explosive splashes of mud, or connecting with stalks of mushrooms that erupted in showers of sticky spores and shreds of fungal material. Foyi's danger sense shrieked in the back of her head, and she ducked in time for one of the Force Blasts to sail directly through the space where her head had been only nanoseconds before, though she focused on continuing to run as fast and as far as she could. The fear inherently motivating her flight, further expounded upon by Felucia's connection to the Dark Side, begged her to draw upon the Force, to either turn upon her enemies and bombard them with the darkest and most savage Force powers she could imagine, or to apply the Force to her legs in enhanced speed that would allow her to cross the valley within moments. But the compassionate and honorable parts of her, the parts that made her the person she wished to be at all times, refused to leave Vaevi behind, who, insensitive to the Force, would be left at the natives' insane wrath.

So they continued to flee, running as quickly as they could as a group, dodging between spots of temporary cover, all sight of the landspeeders' trail left far behind. Foyi cast occasional glances over her shoulder as they ran, and each time, she saw more Felucians joining the chase, seemingly spawned by the shadows themselves as they emerged from spots of cover and ambush to support the war party. Despite the relative sparsity in cover and canopy of mushrooms they experienced as they continued further through the valley's expanse, the clouds grew thick in the sky, blocking most of the morning sun, giving further weight to the darkness and the Dark Side, which seemed to be a palpable beast that hounded their steps as assuredly as the natives did. The terrain features began to change as well, the valley floor sloping before them, the slick mud turning their sprints into combinations of frantic running and sliding as gravity and lack of friction pulled them onward as much as their momentum did. More of the living, calcified protrusions that Rayf had identified as massive teeth were sprouting from the ground, sometimes in apparently random arrangements and fleshy sockets emerging from the mud, other times arrayed in great, curving rows the ends of which disappeared in the distance and shadows. The snarled tangles of fungal growth and bulbous stalks consisted of greater density, but were separated by increasing distances, while the mud was giving way to greater sections of slimy, organic material, whole fields of which stretched between them, puckered infrequently by craters that looked more like ulcers than the marks of explosives, weeping viscous and caustic liquids. Foyi stretched out with her feelings as she gasped for air, uncertain of how long they had been running, or the distance they had covered thus far. The Dark Side continued to twist and pervert her perceptions, and the cluster of wrathful presences denoting the Felucian war party hounding their flight in a chaotic mass behind her, but there was a new presence that seemed to simultaneously surround her from all sides. It was a Force presence that was as complex as it was old, one stricken with pain and simmering with rage that lay just beneath the composition of its surface, as though that wrath had remained there for such a long time, it had become something tangible in its own right, barely contained and yearning for release. If a volcano had a signature in the Living Force, she was certain this was what it would feel like. What was even more concerning was the fact that whatever manner of creature she was sensing, they were running directly above it. Or across it? Were those protrusions truly teeth of some incomprehensibly vast creature?

Foyi did not have to wait long, for their flight took them to the edge of a precipice, a muddy ledge dropping away into a slick slope that fell away into a depression kilometers wide, flanked by tiered slopes of mud and fungal growth. The largest examples of the immense fangs she had been rushing past curved inward to the pit at the bottom of the depression, while random assortments of mushrooms and fungal fronds stubbornly clung to the floor of the basin that consisted of more organic material than mud or stone. The pustules and boils of vile, acidic liquid were scattered everywhere amongst the fangs that grew in concentric circles ringing the pit in the center. In between these protrusions and blemishes of the landscape were the remains of rounded huts and dwellings that had been built both apart from and within the bases of the widest boles of fungi, interspersed amongst the remnants of platforms and prefab structures that incorporated too much durasteel to be a result of the architectural sensibilities of the native populations. Even from the distance at which Foyi first viewed the depression and its central pit, she could see that one of the structures originating from offworld builders had once been a tower of sorts, most likely thrust vertically through the center of the pit, but now leaned heavily to one side, only the uppermost heights of which were barely visible past the mouth of the pit.

For a mouth it was. In the brief, surveying glimpse Foyi was granted at the top of the ridge, she saw the maw of the central pit ringed by smaller but more tightly-knit circles of teeth, all angled inward, many of them gnashing at the remains of the metallic structure having been rammed down its esophagus. Like grotesque mockeries of the jungles surrounding it, the maw was encompassed by abundant tendrils of thick, hoary flesh that glistened with mucus, tentacles that stretched dozens of meters in length, some of which were gripped tightly around the structure submerged in its maw, others splayed out from the center and lying languidly on the organic floor of the depression, while still others waved hypnotically in the air, as though attempting to snatch something out of the sky that dared to fly too close. The Force presence, the boiling rage, the constant pain Foyi had felt all around her and before her was concentrated in that depression, and she could feel the life within that signature of the Force, a life that had long been tortured by unknown circumstances, a life just as affected by the virulent corruption of the Dark Side as anything else on the planet. Whatever it was she was looking at, it was a creature, a creature driven mad far past its nonsentient faculties by years of unrelenting suffering.

Despite the danger they faced, and the war party that had fallen behind, though still doggedly haunting their path, the three of them paused at the clifftop to take in the sight before them. Rayf gave an exhausted gasp, his mouth hanging agape. "Holy sithspawn...it's a sarlacc."

Vaevi's shocked gaze flicked between the creature before them and the human. "There's no way that's a sarlacc...it's too damned big to be a sarlacc."

Foyi wanted to ask what a sarlacc was; wanted clarification on what exactly she was looking at. But the eerie horn of the Felucians rang out behind them, followed closely by a chorus of shrieks and ululating warcries, and she realized they were out of time to gawk, much less have a discussion as to the reality of what they were seeing. She began to propel herself over the cliff edge and slide down the muddy slope, yelling behind her, "Come on! We have to keep moving!"

"We can't go down there!" Vaevi replied, her tone suggesting she thought the Twi'lek had lost her mind.

"We can't stay up here!" Rayf supplied for Foyi, looking back over his shoulder, to see the first Felucian Scouts emerging from the haze and darkness behind them. He similarly vaulted over the cliff ledge and began sliding down the slope. After only a moment's hesitation, Vaevi followed, whereupon all three let gravity and the lack of friction expedite their descent into the depression and the sarlacc waiting beyond.