Chapter 30

The world passed in a frenzied blur of shadows and infrequent glows across a background of endless night, fraught with nightmares and fear. Rain lanced across their vision, like stars streaking through the infinite depths of space. Fungal stalks rose out of the mud all about them, hemming in their flight and limiting their options in the paths they might take to flee the monster pursuing them. The mud made echoing protestations of broken suction as their feet pulled themselves out of the viscous substance with great resistance. Whatever form of solid ground existed beneath the sludge was rising before them, making their struggle uphill nearly impossible, for their feet and hands tended to slip back down from where they had been placed as they scrambled and crawled in their assent. There was little direction to their rushed and tumultuous sprint through the jungles, though their panicked minds managed to remember to stick close to their fellows as they ran, lest they find themselves alone and wandering in the wilderness, waiting to be swooped down upon by the insane and twisted predator who had brought them to this planet of fear and despair, who continued to hunt them down in retribution for escaping his "justice".

Tama had fled to the front of the shifting group of remaining children, her attention affixed on the echoes of Foyi as a means of concentrating on something beyond her abject fear, horror, and grief, as well as the impressions she continued to have of the grotesque presence flitting in and out of the perimeters of her perceptions. She was no longer helping Nuri along, for the Zabrak seemed to have recovered from whatever mind-affecting Force power had been levered against her. She remained at the Twi'lek's side, clutching her rifle to her chest and a truly grim expression etched into her features, which could have been made of stone with how tightly they were clenched. Ashla and Cyran followed directly behind, the Duros girl muttering and giving small, wheezing gasps of pain at the insignificant but painful blaster burn on her shoulder. Vo-Yees huffed behind them, his thicker-set frame lending extra weight, and subsequently extra suction, to every footfall in the mud. Farr and Vibak-Ol did not stay in any particular place within the group, darting forward and back, occasionally stumbling, and sweeping their blasters at the darkness beyond, expecting creatures of fear, destruction, and senseless violence to leap out of every shadow. More than once, one of them would be spooked by something they believed they saw, only to pause a moment to take a shot or more, the blaster bolts momentarily casting a scarlet glow on the jungle for meters around. Tama wanted to tell them to stop wasting ammunition and giving away their position, but she had barely the breath to continue maintaining their breakneck pace, much less draw enough to reprimand them for their actions.

They crested the ridge of mud and rivulets of water, emerging into an elevated clearing that allowed them to look upon kilometers of forest, spreading out to the horizons, rising and falling in tangles of uncultivated growth under a clouded sky of darkest night. Had it not been for the frequent flashes of lightning above them and the many natural patterns of phosphorescenece, they would have been looking out into nearly complete darkness, unable to distinguish environmental features and terrain masses from the night's oppression of the light. Silhouetted against the momentary illumination of the frenetic bursts of lightning was an immense terrain feature looming before and above them, an outcropping of moss-garbed rock forming a precipice over deeper and wilder sections of the jungle beyond, rising multiple meters in the air in the suggestion of an arch, before becoming mostly level at its peak. Gracing the top of its peak was a small grove of large, bent mushrooms, and even from this distance and with poor visibility, Tama could see that there was something wrong with several of the fungi at the precipice's peak. They exuded faint hints of smoke and steam, and some of them appeared to have been recently collapsed or uprooted with extreme violence.

Tama's eyes were drawn to the cliff rising before them, but they saw little of its particular features, as her vision had unfocused entirely while her mind reached out into the Force. The echoes of her sister's presence were overpowering here; Foyi had been here recently. Indeed, it felt as though she had just left, and Tama cursed herself and the speed of her companions for so narrowly missing her.

Farr was suddenly by her side, his voice loud and practically manic as he hissed, "Why stop, wormhead?" He waved his blaster rifle at her for emphasis. "We need move more!"

Tama felt a shard of anger lance through her concentration, and her hand snaked out to grip Farr's ragged tunic before she could consciously stop it. "You call me 'wormhead' again, bantha breath, and I'll shove that blaster up your exhaust port." She pushed the Rodian away from her, wrinkling her nose at his unique and rancid body odor, then returned her attention to the cliff before them. "My...sister was here. Just here. We can't be far from her."

Vibak-Ol came to her other side. "'Ere she go?" he growled in a voice that sounded like he was interrogating her rather than asking for clarification.

The other children began to gather around the Twi'lek as she closed her eyes a moment and concentrated. Thunder grumbled overhead again, and the wind's howls became more acute. Tama's eyes snapped open, and she shuddered as she reeled her consciousness in from the Force. Nuri, panting from exertion, placed a hand on the girl's shoulder, both to announce her presence and to draw Tama's attention to her. "What did you...see?"

"Something happened here," Tama replied with a quaver in her voice. "Around and atop that cliff. Something violent, I think. There's a scent of recent death, of despair, of failure. I can definitely feel my sister was here, but there were others as well, and I think they were all involved in some kind of conflict. The Force is particularly raw and in turmoil here."

Cyran asked a question through gritted teeth, which Nuri voiced in Basic. "Do you still feel your sister alive?"

Tama nodded. "I think so...I think she's scared of being found, and is trying to hide herself. But this close to where she was recently, and with our familial relations, I think I can still sense her."

"You 'think'?" Vo-Yees grunted skeptically.

Tama whirled on him. She had grown quite impatient with this constant doubt, despite the others' insistence on following her. "I've led us this far, haven't I?"

"Maybe led us to 'Savior' in first place," Farr suggested viciously. "Maybe Fenn, Ossa alive still if not out here. Maybe alive if Nuri not go crazy!"

Nuri, normally so ready to confront Farr's incessant aggression, merely looked away in shame. Tama wanted to offer her comfort, but she did not understand what had happened to the girl anymore than the others did. She suspected that their captor had used the Force upon her, causing her to hallucinate or feel an uncontrollable and primal fear, both of which were motivations for the wild spray of blasterfire she had unleashed. But Tama did not know for certain what had occurred; she could not erase the image of Fenn falling in the mud, multiple maws of smoke and blood opening on his chest. Of the Bothan screaming as he was inexorably pulled into the darkness by the Force. Nuri may not have dealt the killing blow to the unfortunate boy, but she had been instrumental in his death.

The Gran boy turned away from Nuri to face Farr. "Now not the time for this, yeah? Savior still being out there."

Cyran turned her regard to Tama and asked a question. Tama glanced to Nuri, who was still looking down at her hands, which limply clung to her blaster and shivered with suppressed emotion. "Is he near? Can you still sense him?"

Tama opened her mouth to answer, but Farr spat more of his vitriol in an interjection. "Why you even ask her? Why we even follow?! She didn't sense Savior until right on top us! What good she?!"

To Tama's surprise, Vibak-Ol came to her defense with another snarl. "Yo dint either, greenie. Yo have eyes; we all does. Can't blame."

Farr was too angry to be intimidated again, and his response came as shriek. "I too can blame! She said lead us to sister, get offworld, get away for good!" He was no longer jabbing with his overlong fingers, but emphasizing his verbal points with his blaster, pointing the weapon first at Vibak-Ol, then at Tama. "Now we lost, in dark, in rain, and two dead! Dead 'cause she said she do this, she lead us! She has no more idea where we are, where we going, and I no follow no more! I no want to be dead 'cause some crazy schutta and all her vapebrained friends don't like hiding!"

Nuri emerged from her self-pity and despair with a flash of anger, stepping in front of Tama and facing down the nearly-incoherent Rodian. "Farr, you've flapped your snout enough! We've all had doubts about this decision, but we took it to vote, and we decided to do this together. If you bail on us now, how far you think you're going to get on your own? He's out there, waiting for us to lag behind, to separate and pick us off one by one!"

"He don't have to!" Farr screamed. "You kill us all for him!"

"He...he did something to me!" Nuri shouted back, though her voice sounded more like a plea rather than an angry retort. "All I saw were shadows, monsters reaching for us, and I responded. I...I just couldn't see...I didn't see Fenn and Cyran...all I saw was him."

"You saw nothing!" Farr responded. "You've gone crazy! I won't stay here no longer if you have blaster; I don't wanna get shot in back!"

Nuri's features twisted back to rage. "If I'm going to shoot you Farr, it'll be in your karking face!"

Farr's blaster came up to aim at her forehead at the same time the Zabrak shouldered her own rifle. The other children leapt several steps back, fearing that blasterfire would soon erupt between the two. Neither one seemed even remotely fearful that the other would fire; indeed, both expected the other to fire, and thus both Zabrak and Rodian had gained a fearlessness in the expectation of mutually assured destruction. Vibak-Ol and Vo-Yees similarly raised their blasters, but seemed uncertain of whom they should be aiming their weapons at. A moment where the very air itself seemed charged with the promise of violence passed before Tama jumped forward, reaching out with her hands and gripping the tops of both blasters, forcing them to point at the ground. She was seething with anger, and that anger gave her a strength, a presence through the Force that suppressed the feelings and emotions of those near, as both Nuri and Farr's gazes were drawn to her in rapt attention. "That is enough. We are not going to start killing each other, out of fear and spite. This is what that bastard wants. He wants us to turn on each other, to expose ourselves as the beings of darkness he already believes we are. He wants to feel justified for stealing us from our homes, for starving us, for throwing us into a cage of monsters and droids and desperation. For killing us in the most horrible ways he can imagine. We all have one enemy here, and he is out there, right now, lurking, waiting for us to split, to turn on each other so that he can kill us and feel like he is doing the galaxy a service in the process. You don't hear his voice, but even now he influences us, reaching out to the Force to twist our doubts into violent action, to pit us against each other." She met Farr's eyes, then Nuri's, and her voice softened. "We don't have to like each other. We don't have to trust each other. But we do have to stick together, to fight, or else none of us will survive this place. I promised that I would get you all to my sister and offworld, but I need your help, too. I'm not giving up on either one of you, and I refuse to allow you to give up on each other." She turned to look back at the other children gathered. "That goes for everyone here. Will we stand together, or will we fall separately?"

There was a moment of silence between them all, when the only sounds came from the wind shuffling the boughs and canopies of the jungle, the trickling of water through the mud at their feet, the minute splashes of rain drops striking Felucia's surface. Tama's grip on the two rifles quivered, her overextended muscles compromising her ability to keep the weapons pointed at the ground, and not their respective owners. But neither Nuri nor Farr were fighting her. The Rodian was the first to step back, reluctantly propping the stock of his blaster in the mud at his feet and turning away, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he tried to make himself calm again. Nuri simply dropped hers and threw her arms around Tama, rocking the girl back and nearly knocking her on her posterior. The Zabrak buried her face in Tama's shoulder and whispered hoarsely, "I'm sorry."

Tama returned the embrace, giving her a comforting pat on the back. "I know."

Vibak-Ol met Tama's gaze over Nuri's quivering form, the Gormak boy's face characteristically fierce. "We probly die. But I with yo."

Vo-Yees blew out a snorting sigh. "I'm not being happy alone in jungle. We stick together, yeah? Getting offworld, getting back home."

Ashla said nothing, but she gave Tama a nod, reaffirming the confidence she had placed in her before they had departed to the jungles. Cyan, who continued to lean against the Togruta girl, simply gave a pained but courageous nod of her own. Nuri, who had extricated herself from her Twi'lek friend, rushed to the Duros, holding her up as she similarly embraced her. The Duros groaned as the sudden motion elicited pain from her shoulder, but she seemed accepting of the Zabrak's presence and gesture. Probably as close to forgiveness as was possible for their extreme circumstances.

Farr, who was still leaning on his rifle, gave a grunt, his dark, multifaceted eyes shifting in hue as his vision flicked from those of the group and the dangerous jungles beyond. "Look...we should be going. Not safe here."

Tama nodded, hefting her own E-5 and scanning the forests, though even with her natural low-light vision, she could barely make any features out in the darkness. She opened herself to the Force again, sensing the chaotic shifts between dark and light, the innumerable menageries of living beings in the immediate area. She felt the Dark Side surge in a chorus of chuckles and a growing, coppery tang resting on the back of her tongue, a taste that was all too familiar to her, and instinctively whirled toward the deeper parts of the forests, somewhere behind and to the left of them. It was a presence she knew too well, peering out at them from the shadows he cloaked himself in, though he could not completely conceal himself from the Zeizon Sha Initiate and her determination to be aware of his movements at all times. Even as she caught a whiff of his otherworldly scent through her enhanced perceptions, she could feel his presence moving through the forest, inexorably drawing closer to them, as a voorcat might stalk a durni in the underbrush back on Yanibar. "Farr's right," she whispered. "We need to keep moving, 'cause he's not stopping, and he's coming right this way."

Farr gave her another skeptical look. "You sure he's coming?"

"Do you think after what happened to Ossa and Fenn he's going to stop there? He wants us all dead."

Farr pinched his face in a grimace, but deigned not to argue. Vibak-Ol followed Tama's gaze, sniffing the chilly, spore-filled air. "'Ere he is? 'Ow far?"

"I don't know how far, but he's coming from that direction," Tama indicated with a pointing index finger.

"Then we head the opposite way," Nuri replied in a weary voice.

"Opposite, but a little more to the side," Tama amended. "My sister went that way, past the cliff and toward that high country on the horizon. If we skirt the base of the cliff and make a run for those hills, we might get there quickly enough to lose 'the Savior' in the darkness."

Cyran gently pushed Ashla away and stood on her own, cradling her wounded shoulder, a new direction giving her the determination and purpose to press on. The others were similarly ready to continue moving, though Tama could feel the apprehension and near exhaustion they all experienced, how tired they were with both running and fighting, how sick of this corrupted world they had all become. How many uncertainties they still held regarding their survivability and Tama's capabilities in the Force and in her leadership. And yet they followed her as she carefully picked her way down the ridge upon which they stood, deeper into the thick, entangling underbrush and sucking mud. They were not presented with many choices after all.

The group hustled underneath the dark canopies. Thunder and lightning dueled in the atmosphere above, gouts of rain splashing down like spilled blood from the resultant violence. They ducked beneath the multilayered canopies and the frequent cover they provided, creeping toward the precipice in short spurts of activity, sprinting across clearings in between careful treks over more treacherous terrain. Presently, they found themselves in the deep shadows cast by the cliff, looming above them and blotting out what little light effused by the tumultuous sky they could see peeking between individual spreads of fungi. The acrid stench of drifting smoke, guttering flames, and ozone assaulted their olfactory senses as they drew near, reaffirming Tama's assertions that a battle had occurred about the cliff shortly before the children had arrived. The echoes left by Foyi in the Force were strong here, and she could almost hear her sister letting loose a warcry in her ears as her connection to the Force gave her a limited view into the recent past. There were so many echoes here, the imprints of sentient presences as clear to her as her own sister's, for she felt at least two others who held spiritual signatures unique to those who could feel and draw upon the Force. She wondered what it all meant, if these other Force-users were allied with or against her sister, but her metaphysical assessment of the site only urged her onward. She glanced back momentarily, to make certain the other children continued to follow her unerringly through the path she took that circumvented the precipice's base.

Tama's foot caught on something solid, the impact eliciting a ping of metal. She stopped to regain her equilibrium, then squatted down beside the heavily-armored carapace of a battle droid, only this one was massive, pieced together from matte black plating of phrik alloy, a heavy repeating blaster rifle embedded in the mud beside where it had fallen. Most of its limbs had been detached and crumpled by impact with the ground, suggesting it had fallen from a great height. Perhaps even the top of the cliff. Its head was fashioned in an exaggerated and fearsome version of the helmets worn by stormtroopers.

Nuri squatted beside her, poking at the lifeless machine of war with the barrel of her blaster. "What d'ya suppose this is?"

"Evidence that there are Imperials on this planet," Tama replied glumly. "I think...I think this droid fell in battle with my sister."

Nuri whistled in wonder. "I don't recognize this model of droid, but if your sister was able to take this thing down, she's even more formidable than you've led us to believe."

"She didn't attain the rank of 'Warrior' through the Holonet," Tama replied sarcastically. "Though, I fear there may have been more..."

"If you still sense your sister somewhere out here, she's probably fine. Right?"

Tama concentrated a moment again, then responded with a grim nod. "Alive, as far as I can tell. But fine? Healthy? Unharmed? I couldn't say."

"All the more reason to keep moving," Nuri remarked authoritatively. She stood and turned in time to see both Vibak-Ol and Farr attempting to extract the heavy repeating blaster from its fixture in the mud. Had they been in good health and properly rested, either one of them would have been able to lever the unwieldy weapon from the mud, but between the two of them, they were barely capable of making it shift in the deep mud. "Guys, even if you get it out, what're you gonna do with it?"

"Turret," Vibak-Ol suggested between grunts of exertion.

"Turret requiring stationary position, yeah?" Vo-Yees scoffed. "I thought we're being gone, quick quick."

Not even Farr could argue with that logic, and the pair of boys gave up on acquiring the weapon. Even so, Vibak-Ol refused to give up, his eyes alighting on something that was lying perpendicular to the droid's right arm. With a frustrated growl, he extracted the length of grimy metal, a staff over a meter long, both ends capped by a cylindrical, transparisteel casing housing complex electronics and energy conductors. His clawed hands slid along the staff's grip until they thumbed an actuator, and both ends were suddenly wreathed in shrouds of sparking, snapping electricity, suffusing the immediate area with a lurid violet glow. Vibak-Ol swung the weapon through a couple passes, displaying the skill with melee weapons he apparently, that he had yet to reveal. With another flip of the actuator, he doused the electricity of the weapon, then undid his belt and made a carrying strap of it, which he attached to the staff and then used it to carry it across his back. Farr, whose eyes were larger than usual in jealousy, pointed at the staff on the Gormak's back. "What that?"

"Electrostaff," Vibak-Ol replied simply. "Mine," he added with a growl.

"'Nuff gawping. More moving, yeah?" Vo-Yees encouraged as he strode past the Rodian and Gormak.

Farr was obviously jealous of the new weapon the Gormak had acquired as he sullenly grumbled in Vibak-Ol's direction. "What you plan on doing with that?"

"Hit Savior" Vibak-Ol replied nonchalantly. "Real hard. Knock on ass, then beat an' buzz to dead."

Tama ignored the pair of them and pressed forward, continuing to follow the path described by her sister's presence, the wreckage of droids and carbon scoring of fungi further suggesting the small but vicious battle that had taken place about the precipice. But Tama was certain she would have felt Foyi's distress had she been gravely wounded or even killed, and the fact that she was still able to sense her sister's presence, even faintly, gave her hope that they would not be too late to find each other. Doubts hidden in the recesses of her mind reminded her of her own limitations in telepathy and the difficulty she experienced using the Force at all in the corrupted and dark morass of life essences on Felucia, but she ignored them, denying anything terrible befalling Foyi. Foyi's fine. We'll find her, and she'll take us away from here. That sequence of thoughts became a litany against the fear of loss, of failure, or overwhelming despair, words she repeated to herself in an effort to make herself believe them.

The procession hurriedly left the precipice behind, picking their way through the dark, dripping jungles, following Tama's vague hints at direction. The Twi'lek paused often the further they trekked, stopping to reorient herself and refocus her mental energies on the signature in the Force Foyi had left. It had been more difficult to concentrate over the last couple hours, but upon finding the precipice and the scene of the unknown conflict, she had redoubled her efforts to maintain her attempts to locate her sister. She wanted more than anything to be reunited with Foyi, to leave this world and never come back as long as she lived. The Force seemed to respond positively to that desire, for she found it not quite as arduous to reach out with her mind to glimpse the metaphysical nature of what awaited them ahead, the Dark Side receding from the perimeters of her consciousness and relatively leaving her alone for the time being. The presence of their kidnapper continued to flit in and out of the boundaries described by her expanded consciousness, as though he were simply reminding her that he was still out there, still following them. Waiting like a dragonsnake for the opportune moment to strike, to drag another of their number off to a terrible fate. Tama was determined to prevent anymore deaths at his bloodstained hands.

Despite Tama's lead, it was Nuri who spotted the physical signs of what was assumed to be Foyi's path, though the evidence discovered suggested Tama's sister had not been alone when she had passed through this way. There were multiple tracks imprinted in the mud, following a line of broken fungi trampled underfoot. Though Nuri had difficulty in distinguishing exactly how many people had carved a path through the jungles, but she was able to pick out three unique sets of prints that she was certain of. The Zabrak squatted beside the path, peering closely at a set of prints fading into the mud due to the intermittent rain that continued to fall. "One of these...is off, somehow. Like they were limping."

Vibak-Ol crouched beside her and sniffed deeply of the prints. "Bleeding. Hurt, this one."

Nuri looked up at Tama with a question in her dark eyes. "Was your sister traveling with mates? Other Zipper Shawls, perhaps?"

Tama ignored the play on the Zeison Sha's name and gave a shrug. "I don't know. The last time I saw my sister, I was being drug off by slavers, and she was trying to stop them. I highly doubt there were other Zeison Sha with her when she came this way, but I did sense more than one Force-user involved in that battle back there, just as I'm sensing...other presences along the path we follow. I don't think she was alone when she came this way."

"Keep some eyes out anyway, yeah?" Vo-Yees cautioned. "Maybe more Imps in the woods; won't listen before blasting, I'm thinking."

They continued with new speed and determination, following the path now as it meandered through the jungles, inexorably upward as they drew closer to the crags, ridges, and hills they had glimpsed in the distance when standing beside the cliff. There were stretches of jungle where the trail almost disappeared completely, the persistent fungi seemingly remaining undisturbed by sentient passage, the footprints obliterated by continuing precipitation. At these times, Tama would reach for the Force again, reorienting and directing their search by her brief flashes of insight and familiarity with her sister. Thus did she relocate the continuation of the path, allowing her to rest her supernatural powers, to simply exist and focus on the present, instead of actively drawing upon the Force for a dizzying insight into the recent past. Each time she drew on the Force again to reacquire her sense of her sister, she would reach just a little further, to attempt to relocate their captor, whom she was certain stalked them still. Her brow creased in worry when she realized she had not sensed his presence for well over an hour, or what she assumed to be an hour, as she had no exact recollection of time. She drew more from the endless possibilities of the Force, asking it to aid her in divining the location of her enemy, but his presence continued to elude her extrasensory regard.

The former captives struggled down a sudden slope, a slick of mud and gummy spores that descended into a narrow ravine, flanked by protruding rocks and fungal fronds. They clambered out of the ravine by helping each other over the rocks and fungi, then pushed through a tangle of bulbous stalks that would have been nearly impassable beforehand, had the individuals they were following not cleared many of them out, cutting most of them to manageable sizes and removing them from their foundations in the mud with some form of weapon that had melted and scorched the lacerated edges of the Felucian flora. Tama gave it a passing glance of curiosity, and continued to urge her companions forward, her earnest desire to reunite with Foyi growing exponentially as her sense of Foyi's closing proximity grew in her mind. They were not far behind the Zeison Sha Warrior now; she could feel every cell of her being vibrating with her conviction. The Twi'lek girl pushed aside the last of the fronds, parting them like a slimy curtain, to reveal a clearing beyond. She had to take a second look to realize she was not viewing a valley or patch of open earth in the forest, but rather a narrow thoroughfare that had been carved through the forests' interior, a scar left by artificial transportation, with no regard for the sanctity of Felucia's untamed and diseased nature. The road slashed through the jungle's heart showed signs of recent use, though stubborn colonies of mold continued to grow along its edges and in the deep, muddy grooves left by repulsors and multiple speedercraft that utilized it. The amount of erosion present in the passage suggested the road had been constructed long before any of the children had been brought to this planet, though the fact that the jungle had not reclaimed the strip of mud and strewn rocks that constituted the pathway denoted its continued use. But who was using it? Did this planet boast a larger population of sentients than they had been led to believe? Was this an Imperial road, one built by the Savior, or did it see use by other groups they had no knowledge of?

"Finally," Farr breathed, his breath coming in ragged, whistling gasps through his snout. "Civilization."

"Not likely," Vibak-Ol argued. "Imperals or Savior, dis belongs to. Better stays away, keep to trees and cover."

"It's no safer in the trees than it would be out here," Nuri objected, walking out into the open space described by the road with her A280 leading the way.

"Can't see us 'idden in trees."

"That son of a Hutt doesn't need to see us to find us," Nuri retorted wearily. Her countenance adopted a grimace as she undoubtedly recalled the gruesome fates of Ossa and Fenn. She looked back to Tama, who was walking along the road's edge, searching the ground for disturbed puddles and more bootprints. "Your sister came this way, right? Maybe she's following the road?"

Tama inspected the minor suggestion of tracks she discovered, then nodded her head slowly. She pointed along the road's length, where it sloped back from the hills they had yet to reach and made a left curve, disappearing behind towering piles of mushrooms. "I believe she and...whoever she's with went that way."

Cyran voiced something that sounded negative, even exasperated. Nuri grimaced again, translating. "That's the way we came from. The Savior's back that way."

Tama tried to keep a neutral expression in response to that, but the frown on her lips betrayed her uncertainty and prompted the Zabrak to step closer, that she might have a better view of her friend's eyes. "He is back that way...right?"

Tama bit her lip, her tchin wrapping defensively about her throat. "I...I've lost...track of him. Awhile ago, now. I've been trying, but I can't sense where he is. I think he's trying to stay hidden, and if that's the case, I don't think I'll be able to sense him until he wants us to know where he is."

A chorus of gasps and curses greeted that announcement. Farr glanced nervously at the walls of foliage leering over the road, their strands and fronds like grasping fingers dripping with ichor, reaching down to pluck them from the road should they make the mistake of drawing too close to the shadows they cast. "What he doing last you...sensed him?"

"Following us. Waiting for us to slip up, likely."

"Or be springin' some kinda trap, no doubt," Vo-Yees offered pessimistically.

Tama could not argue with that, and said nothing in response. The Gran was most likely correct, but there was little that could be done. They would have to keep constant vigilance, like they had been this entire trek through the jungles, and hope that they would have enough time to react to any diabolical schemes or sadistic attacks the Savior might machinate against them. The entire situation made the skin of Tama's lekku crawl, but she would not be dissuaded from following and finding Foyi, even if Foyi's trail led back from whence they came, back to "the Savior". If she was heading in the same direction they had last encountered that monster, it was likely she would run afoul of him, and if there was anything Tama could do to prevent him bringing any harm to her sister, or anyone else, she had to try. "Has anything really changed? My senses and the tracks say my sister went back this way, so that's where we go. Just keep an eye out for the bastard like before, and if we hurry, we should catch up with her. We're close now; I can feel it."

A rumble chased the tail end of her sentence, which she initially assumed was another burst of thunder, but a glance at the sky overhead revealed the storm finally beginning to abate, and the sky lightening. The rumble continued and grew in volume, and Tama realized it was a steady sound of some sort of vehicle approaching rapidly. She began to back away from the road and toward the cover offered by the jungles as the other children similarly retreated to the shadows, though Tama's steps were slowed by the hope that the unseen and approaching vessel would be transporting her sister, and the reunion she longed for was mere moments away.

But her hopes were dashed to ruin when a large, unwieldy speeder truck swung a wide turn around the curve down the slope and ahead, a rusted and scarred ST-101 Repulsortruck that barely seemed to hover above the mud as it sped ponderously toward her. The vehicle was laden with heavy equipment and many skeletal forms clinging to the open sides of the vessel, their angular heads swiveling to face her at the same time their blasters rose to their shoulders. Tama gave a squeak of fear as she dove for the forests' edge, and blasterfire erupted around her, piercing the air with high-pitched shrieks and lurid crimson glows. The noise was even more deafening than the ferocious thunder had been, accompanied by the screams of the other children, the almost excited growls of Vibak-Ol as he reached out from his place of cover and seized a hold of her filthy tunic, ripping her down as a fusillade of laserfire knifed through the air in which she had stood. She found herself rolling through mud and moss, barely keeping hold of her blaster as she slammed against the hoary bole of a gargantuan mushroom. Tama breathlessly pressed herself against the fungus, her eyes briefly meeting the red and yellow orbs of Vibak-Ol. Had Tama not been able to feel his exhilaration through the Force, she would have mistaken the grin on his alien face for an enraged snarl. He had been waiting for the opportunity to fight, to retaliate against the creature who had imprisoned him; he had been waiting for vengeance, and his vengeance had been delivered into his lap with the arrival of their captor's minions.

Tama opened her mouth to say something, but the Gormak boy was already sprinting out of cover, his puny holdout blaster in one hand, his procured electrostaff in the other. Crimson blasts of light sped toward and around him, but he charged headlong regardless, giving a wordless cry of pain, rage, and bloodlust. Tama craned her neck to peer around the mushroom's stalk, and watched in perverse wonder and abject horror to see those hyphens of bright energy slash the air all around him, though none hit him as he charged the starboard side of the repulsortruck. One of the B1 Battle Droids aimed its weapon down at the suicidal youth, but Vibak-Ol's electrostaff swung upward beneath the droid's angular chin and took its head off with the resultant arc of electricity. His other hand jabbed forward, the holdout blaster spitting miniscule bolts of energy, but at such close range, they packed enough of a punch to melt another battle droid's sternum to glowing slag. Fully immersed in the heat of battle and the adrenaline rush that came with the determination to fight with nothing left to lose, Vibak-Ol's movements kept him dancing back and forth, avoiding the flailing arms of battle droids and the wild potshots they aimed down at him. First one hand stabbed forwad, and a battle droid took enough of a shock to send it flipping over the portside of the vessel. The second hand jabbed, his holdout blaster spat, and another battle droid collapsed to the open floor of the vehicle, smoldering from a quartet of wounds in its carapace.

Tama willed herself to react, to bring the blaster she fumbled about with in her hands to bear, but even as Vibak-Ol's savagery got underway, it was ended suddenly and brutally. For not all the droids upon the speeder truck were malfunctioning and idiotic battle droids, as a B2 in better fighting shape clambered over the side of the repulsortruck and advanced on the Gormak. Vibak-Ol fired a multitude of shots into the automaton's thick armor, but the duranium held. He swung his electrostaff in a wide, devastating arc, but was too slow for the Super Battle Droid's mechanized reflexes. The droid caught the haft of the weapon, halting the electrified end centimeters from its chest, and brought its other arm up, its weaponized wrist directly before Vibak-Ol's face. There was a scream of energy as a trio of bolts erupted from the Super Battle Droid's wrist simultaneously, and the Gormak's head disintegrated into a wash of blood and brain matter, and all the tension and fight went out of his body at once, which limply dropped to the mud beside the speeder.

Tama heard a shriek of denial within a meter from her, and turned to see Nuri crouched within a tangle of fungal fronds. She braced her blaster rifle against her shoulder and unleashed an onslaught of lasers, riddling the Super Battle Droid with a multitude of glowing holes, then shifting her aim to the cockpit of the repulsortruck itself. Tama snapped out of her shock and horror to marginally aim her E-5 Blaster Rifle, and joined the Zabrak in concerted fire upon the repulsortruck's cockpit, while the other children unleashed their own blasts at the speeder's flanks. Battle droids attempting to draw beads on their unseen foes beneath the mushrooms fired wild, straying shots that did little more than knife through the thick, spongy flesh of Felucian fungus. The children's shots were more devastating, bisecting limbs and furrowing through droid carapaces, sending limbs and slagged circuitry spewing from the repulsortruck's open interior. The speeder gave a throaty groan as blaster bolts dug deep into its rusted, moldy plating; the vehicle had little in the way of armor, and it soon dropped from the meter above the ground where it rested, its repulsors overheating when one of Cyran's blaster bolts impacted the underside of the vessel. By that point, what few battle droids had not been damaged beyond repair or completely destroyed tumbled from the interior of the vehicle, often giving off wails and whines regarding the misfortunes of machines programmed for wanton violence and destruction, and continued to possess a desire for preservation of their functions.

Nuri stood from her crouch and the cover the fronds provided and fired a single bolt, sending the oblong head of the final B1 spinning off into the forest. The decapitated body collapsed atop the pile of wreckage that had once been several droids and the smoldering ruin of the ponderous and awkward speeder truck, its rusted sides now blackened by carbon scoring and fire, accompanied by the glowing edges of bolts that had punctured its decrepit hull plating. Her gaze was as fierce as it was distraught as it fell upon the corpse that had been Vibak-Ol. "Stoopa bastard. The hell was he thinking?"

Tama similarly emerged from cover, feeling shaken and uncertain of her steps as she returned to the road and knelt beside the Gormak's body. She made herself not look at the smear of ichor and fragments of skull that had been Vibak-Ol's head, then reached down and retrieved the holdout blaster he had carried, hefting the electrostaff after. She thumbed its actuator to determine if it still functioned properly, then slung it over her back. She discarded the E-5 she had been using, flexing her hands as the uncomfortable levels of heat produced by the weapon had chafed her palms raw; judging by the feeling of some of the grimy skin there, she believed the blaster had given her minor burns. She reached down and procured a more suitable weapon from the locked manipulators of a B1 Battle Droid, a DH-17 Carbine. She tested the heft of the weapon in her hands as the other children joined her in rummaging for more weapons and power packs for their current blasters, casting furtive glances at the body of their former companion. Vo-Yees seemed particularly despondent as he squatted beside the Gormak's corpse, his trio of eyes blinking rapidly, a strangled grunt emerging from the back of his throat that might have been the Gran's version of a sob. Ashla, who rarely changed the detached and dejected expression of her face, almost seemed relieved.

Cyran made a lengthy remark, speaking directly to Nuri. The Zabrak absentmindedly translated for everyone present as she slapped a fresh power pack into her A280 and slung the weapon across her back. "Cyran thinks this might have been a trap laid by 'the Savior'. He's been following us this whole time, herding us toward this path, where his droids could shuttle in and capture us."

Tama glanced down at Vibak-Ol's remains. "They have a strange definition of 'capture'."

Nuri gestured at her head. "They're Battle Droids. They're barely capable of shooting straight, much less interpret orders correctly. For all we know, that Hutt-licker told 'em to kill us all right here and now. He's gotta be as sick of running through this infernal jungle as we are."

Any further discussion was halted by the sound of thunder once more, but it was not the enraged arguments of the cumulonimbit above that produced the cacophony. The children whirled to look back along the direction of the path from whence the first speeder truck had emerged, and around the curve of the road, seemingly materializing from the jungle itself, came no less than three similar speeder trucks, all laden with various kinds of battle droids, a menagerie of machines in different levels of functionality, but all capable of killing the children upon the road and now out in the open. Tama opened her mouth in a wordless scream of warning as blaster bolts erupted from the approaching vehicles, filling the intervening space with so much laserfire, it was as if the atmosphere itself had been set aflame. The children ducked and ran the opposite direction, unable to withstand an onslaught of such magnitude, especially caught in the open as they were. Tama began to scurry for the mushrooms lining the road, but her danger sense suddenly tugged upon her consciousness, and she caught a flash of insight, of the insane, sadistic presence that she had come to recognize as that of "the Savior". She waved her arm to catch the attention of her compatriots, screaming as loud as she could over the shrieks of laserfire overhead. "Don't go into the forest! Not yet! He's here again!"

Tama took off running down the road as it sloped upward, meandering its way toward the hills, crags, and ridged high lands in the distance, barely perceptible as vast silhouettes of varying heights on a horizon obscured by haze and mist. "Head for the hills! We'll try to lose them all there!"

The Twi'lek did not know if all of the children heard her directions, but she guided them nonetheless by sprinting along the road's edge, keeping her movements erratic so as to foil the droids' attempts to draw a bead on her back, their aim feeling like hot vibroknives pricking her spine. Blaster bolts whizzed past them, a few close enough to force her to duck, another whizzing past millimeters from her left side, immediately evaporating sweat and mud from her clothing. Tama ignored the close call, focusing on the Force, on the dark presence pacing them from the depths of the forest, on the children following her lead. The rumble of the landspeeders was inexorably drawing closer, and now she could hear the unnecessary vociferations of the battle droids, their nonsensical banter as they continued to pour hyphens of lethal energy into the air all around them, spattering the mud of the road, blowing chunks from the stalks of mushrooms along their sides, and burning the air just above their heads.

Tama focused on the Force, allowing it to guide her steps as she sprinted forward, her feet shifting to keep her always in motion, always unpredictable. And all the while, she prayed, to whomever might be listening, that she might survive this, that those with her might survive. That she would see the face of her sister again before she left this world, one way or another.