Origins: Minor Beasts

"There's always a bigger fish."

Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, 32 BBY

Age of Ardustagg Year 611
499 LE

When he was cast away from Rinn, Beniyassa had stupidly assumed he'd end up on another world. That had been by his reckoning over a year ago, and he'd yet to see a sky.

What he got instead was a maze of warrens like the burrows he'd grown up in, only these were made of metal and were filled with star men. There seemed to be infinite kinds of them and he learned their names as he learned their shared language, which was apparently native to none and which they called the Holy Tongue.

The leather-faced star men were called Weequay. The ones with pale smooth faces were Evocii, the ones with furry barrel-shaped bodies Moralans, and flying ones with trunk-like noses were Toydarians. And that was just a sample. Almost every day on this metal maze he spotted a new kind of creature; yet he was the only T'iin T'iin.

The Weequay sold him to a Toydarian named Krumkoo, who decided Beniyassa would work well as a secret courier. Being a small T'iin T'iin, he could slip through literal cracks in the maze that other species couldn't. Krumkoo gave him the task of delivering small packages to clients. The most important rule was that he never be caught delivering anything and Beniyassa was good at this, because he'd memorized all those secret passages and because this third eye hinted at trouble and let him avoid it.

However, he was far from safe. Beniyassa witnessed his first murder a month after coming aboard. He was acting as server at a cantina and a Weequay took objection to an Evoci's hand in a card game. He got a flash of danger from his third eye but was still shocked when the Weequay took out a knife and slit the Evoci's throat, splashing orange blood all over the table. And the worst part was, nobody cared.

Life was cheap here. Beniyassa did his best to lay low and avoid attention, but it didn't always work. His third eye, while helpful, was not infallible.

He found himself running for his life one day after taking a package to its recipient, only to find the recipient cooling on the floor and his killer, a bipedal reptile of an unfamiliar species, ransacking the tiny apartment. Beniyassa still wasn't used to the sight of corpses and upon entering through the cracked-open door he froze in shock.

The reptile saw him. Its nostrils flared and it hefted the jagged, bloody sword in its right hand. Beniyassa, really wishing he'd learned to knock, took flight.

He dropped to all fours and raced down the hall. He could sprint faster than most bipeds this way but he heard a clamor behind him, looked back, and saw that the reptile pounding after him in a four-legged dash.

Beniyassa was too panicked to use his power. He dashed through inhabited corridors, past bystanders who jumped out of the way as soon as they saw the reptile lumbering down the hall.

He saw a ventilation duct near a ceiling, bounded atop a crate, then up into the shaft and thought himself safe. Then he heard metal bend, a body slam, and saw the reptile was still coming after him.

As he ran, the reptile somehow squeezed through the shaft behind him. Beniyassa found the first grate he could, kicked it open, and dropped into a lower passageway. It wasn't technic-ally a sewer, but for its dirt and stench it might have been.

That didn't ward off the reptile. His hunter just kept coming.

Beniyassa ran deeper through shadowed passageways. They were in the most forgotten part of the metal maze now, inhabited only by indigents. Rag-covered rabble gazed glassy-eyed and useless at the reptile and the rat. He took twists and turns at random, praying for escape. Instead: a dead end. Beniyassa skidded to a halt in front of a few crates and piled rags. He looked around for another vent but there was nothing. And the reptile skidded in from behind and blocked his path.

"W-wait!" Beniyassa chirped in the Holy Tongue. "You can't eat me! My people are naturally poisonous!"

It was the best lie he could come up with. It didn't work.

The reptile lumbered ahead, its jaw hinging open to display rows of pointed teeth. Beniyassa cowered against the side of a crate a tried, one fumbling time, to compel this monster's mind.

And then a voice said: "Stand back."

It wasn't his voice, nor the reptile's. But his attacker stopped.

"Rise," the voice said.

And the reptile rose to two legs. Its forelimbs dangled at its sides, next to the blood-wet saber, but it didn't reach for it.

"Turn and go," the voice insisted. "Done, your business is."

The reptile turned and went.

Beniyassa couldn't believe what was happening. That voice—a goofy voice, really, like a belching amphibian—seemed to have come from on high to deliver salvation. He staggered away from the crate, looked around, and saw movement among the pile of rags.

He hopped atop the crate for a better look and found himself right in front of a creature not much bigger than him, one with light green skin, black hair pulled off a wrinkled scalp and wide triangular ears. Large eyes stared directly into his.

"You saved me," Beniyassa panted. "Thank you!"

"Saved you, hmmm?" the creature said. "Saved myself, I did. An appetizer you'd have been, and me the main course!" He smiled, to show he was joking. "Bother you again he will not. Minor beasts we are, mostly beneath the notice of larger ones. Count ourselves lucky, we should."

"That was more than luck. How did you..."

"Only make a suggestion I did." But still the smile.

Beniyassa struggled to even say it. He'd confided his powers to one other soul and paid for it. Yet this creature's wizened face, his tight smile and gentle eyes, begged to be trusted. And he was clearly no stranger to this power—call it a third-eye, water-sense, or bewitchment.

"You… compelled his mind, didn't you?" Beniyassa asked, almost in a whisper.

"Hmm… As you were trying, you mean?"

"You felt that?"

"Yes. Help you needed. Practice your talents much, do you?"

"Not when being chased by crazy carnivores." Beniyassa laughed, giddy to be alive and standing in front of another Diviner—an alien Diviner, from who-knew-where. It had never even occurred to him that other species might have his power.

"Are you… alone here?" he asked.

"You ask if companions I have? Of my race, do you mean, or my talents?"

"Both. Either."

"Alone, I am." Sorrow crept into his voice. "As I have been for many turnings. But perhaps that has changed."

"Were you rejected by your people too?"

The creature looked at him curiously. "Betrayed, in fact."

Beniyassa couldn't believe he'd met a kindred soul at last. He could almost cry. "What are you called?"

"Gedor my name is. And you?"

He hesitated. His parents had named him 'son of rains,' and his parents had rejected him. His world had rejected him. He needed a new name, a new beginning, but he'd never forget where he'd come from.

"Call me Oziaf," he said. In his birth tongue, now a secret language known only to him, the word meant 'Castaway.'

Gedor nodded. "A pleasure it is to meet you, Oziaf, and a surprise. Perhaps for a purpose we have been drawn together."

"What kind of purpose?"

"Discover that we shall. Still budding and unrefined your talent is. Like to grow, would you?"

"You mean I can become… powerful, like you?"

"Hmm… yes. Sense this I can. A fine teacher I once was, and perhaps can be again. Rare our talent is and sets us apart it does. Know this you already do. All the better reason to cultivate it and become more."

He took a deep breath. "I… I do want to be more than I am."

Gedor smiled fondly. "From this, everything will flow."