The Dark Forest: Chapter Two
- Location
- Somewhere, over the rainbow
Dathomir, 31BBY.
I sigh loudly, and around me the forest echoes with the sound of my exasperation. The rusted and rotting trees and what little brown, decayed, and dissolving grass remains does not answer my silent inquiry for an explanation.
I reach out for signs of my padawan, Ilena, any of my compatriots and feel only a faint sense of static buzzing under the crackling heat of the Dark Side that emanates and permeates the surroundings. The trees, uniformly dead, remain as towering sentinels above the ground. The mist around me floats and drifts in an unfelt breeze, but it burns brightly in the Force, a crackling heat that I really don't want to get too close to.
"Okay, think Viera, you've got two options. This is a dream and someone is trying to make use of it against you, or you're really here somehow. Wherever here is," I muse aloud, tapping my bare feet on the ground. If this is a dream, I'm a little pissed they didn't give me my boots back.
How would I know one way or another? I really can't, so treat it as if this is real and find a way out and back to the Howling Crag, or whoever's the closest clan. That would be easier if I had a comlink to call for help. But then again, if I'm having trouble reaching out for my allies with the Force, then the comlink probably wouldn't be any better.
I reach out for the Force, letting that comforting sunlight bathe itself beneath my skin again and relish in the warmth and light of the one thing in my life that has been a constant, reliable companion.
Immediately, the mist changes direction, drifting with purpose towards me like a firestorm traveling along the path of its kindling. I leap up into the branches above and find purchase on one of the larger ones. The mist doesn't pursue me upward, but merely coalesces and…sniffs it seems before separating and going off again.
Traveling on the ground is a no go then, or at least not if I use the Force. Instead I go up, ascending the branches higher and higher. The wood claws and snags at me as if thousands of tiny hands grasping for me to drag me back down again.
Above the canopy the dead forest extends like a broken, rusty sea, crackling in the Force with geysers of distant fire that spread hot ash across the landscape. There is no sign of vibrant life or living trees anywhere that I can see. To the south and east the forest goes off as far as I can see. To the west there looks to be an ocean of some sorts, but it feels as foul, if not fouler than the forest I'm in. To the north a tall mountain pierces the landscape, jutting above like a guard over the dead land with piercing rocks, fierce crags, and precipices. But it's high up, so I should at least get a better view of the area from there, and it doesn't feel as tainted.
North it is. I retreat beneath the tangled canopy and rest against the branch with a tired sigh. Okay, it looks like a two day trek if I don't stop. I can do that, two days of walking is easy for me. But two days of walking with no way of communicating to let anyone know I'm alive, assuming this isn't some kind of dream, is going to be such a pain!
Duala is going to panic, Ilena is going to be furious with me and whatever's caused this, and who knows what it'll do to the negotiations. We had one clan left! One! I was so close to getting off Dathomir with quick, short negotiations.
"Having a spot of trouble are we?" a smooth voice asks beside me where there should not have been anyone. I ignite one lightsaber and point it in the direction of someone who should not have been able to sneak up on me like that.
My vision rests on a very average looking man wearing strips of hide and leather bound together into a rough looking garb. Long hair spills down his shoulders and muscular form. He's holding his hands up, smiling nervously, unarmed save for a dagger sheathed on his belt and a makeshift spear.
I don't feel the Force in him, which is nonsense, complete and utter nonsense that I am not going to tolerate for even a second. No way, absolutely no way a normal, non Force-sensitive man, snuck up on me this close through these winding branches without me noticing him well in advance. I have almost three hundred and sixty degree vision.
"No, I'm not doing this right now," I tell him firmly. His aura shifts with apparent confusion, as if he doesn't know what I'm talking about, but his face and posture says otherwise. He's too calm, too collected, too aware of his situation and me. He's not a normal person, and in this place where spirits and other such creatures abound I'm not taking any chances.
"I don't know what you mean." He chuckles awkwardly. "I just saw a stranger who looked like she had a rough day," he says while I keep my lightsaber trained on him.
"You were not next to me a second ago, I know that without a doubt. So what are you and why are you approaching me. Let's skip to the part where you reveal whatever true identity you possess and I decide whether I need to expel you or not," I tell him pointedly.
His aura stills, freezing before falling away behind an inscrutable wall of durasteel. His face settles, and then he smirks, stepping back on the branch as his form morphs and shifts around before settling back into itself as if just to prove he was indeed what I presumed him as.
"Astute of you, Master Jedi. I suppose I was a bit too crude. You wouldn't have forgotten me, would you? After all, we had such a good rapport the last time we were on Dathomir. I helped you with Zalem, or I tried at least," the spirit says with a long suffering sigh. Wait, Zalem? My mind flashes back to that whole encounter.
"You tried to extort me to let you out of wherever you were if I recall, and tried to get me killed when I refused," I retort, climbing down to a lower branch to head northward. My annoying friend follows.
"I do apologize, you simply made me so angry that I lashed out. I truly did not want to do that, but don't you see I was right? Look at what has happened since? I could have stopped it all, Sidious could not stand against me in the fullness of my power. I imagine your guards, Nidiri and Orta-Kin were their names I think, would still be alive," he replies, drifting after me through the air, passing through the trees while I have to navigate around them.
"As if you wouldn't have killed them and more yourself. I'm not so desperate, even now," I tell him sharply. Oh yeah, release a Dark Side being to fight another, that'll work well. I'm not lucky enough for them to kill each other in the process. I jump from one branch to the next, choosing my destination carefully and wincing as the bare wood bites into my feet.
This had better be a dream I wake up from, otherwise I'm going to find myself full of splinters.
"Viera, why would I bother with you and your friends? Mortal realms and their petty issues barely matter to a god such as I. Indeed, these Sith and their plots are barely worth my time." The spirit inspects his nails idly, wiping a smudge of dirt away. "Destroying them would be child's play." His gaze turns to me as he smiles cruelly.
"Or perhaps you would like to do it yourself? Does that appeal to you? The Sith and these slugs prostrated at your feet, their armies scattered to the galactic winds and you able to dictate the terms of surrender? You need not even be a Queen if that bothers you so much," the Fanged God suggests, shifting to float on his back as if this were a calm and cool pond. Great fungal pods start to appear as I move forward, the fiery mist drifting from their presence.
"The Rim Alliance will win, it might take us time, but we are going to overcome this. We neither need nor want your help," I tell him. It figures that I come back to Dathomir and immediately find myself under his eye again. The Fanged God drifts to float in front of me, childishly blocking my sight of the forest ahead of me.
By the Force I wish striking him with my lightsaber would actually make him go away.
"You say that now, but in a year when the death toll starts reaching into the billions will you still hold to the same belief? When you could've ended it in a day? Truly, take my hand and I will show you what you could be?" He holds out his hand, and I stop, resting on a large tree branch amidst a tangled web of rusted wood. He stares at me, face set in a smugly confident smirk. Like he's so confident that the thought of me not taking it hasn't even passed across his mind. His face slowly morphs into a furious snarl when I don't take his bait. Flames leak from his eyes and mouth as he straightens up.
"Fine then, see how this forest treats you," he growls and begins to fade out just as a long, leathery, gnarled hand surges through his form reaching for me. I leap back, lightsabers igniting as the limb continues reaching for me, pulling behind it what can only be described as a grotesque abomination.
It was a Rancor once, I'm pretty sure, but now the head is pulled back, cracked at an odd angle that looks almost upside down as it snuffs and snarls at me. Another torso is connected to its torso, with arms and legs of its own in a locomotive pattern that pushes it along remarkably fast.
Open jaws lunge for me, distending like a snake, but miss me by inches and tear into the rusted wood beyond. I fall down to another branch a level lower as I consider my options and just what the fuck this all is. It doesn't stop though, merely chews apart the chunks of rotted and rusted wood and turns to me, coming at me again with a vicious speed. I raise my lightsabers up in a defensive position as it draws near with distended jaws wide open and leap up, sailing over the lunging jaws to land on the beast's body. The other torso connected to it surges and shakes, arms reaching for me desperately while its head seems to curve inward after me.
I slash with each blade, one for the head and the other for the arms. They thrum with energy, a sudden sizzling snap as they tear into the leathery flesh. It howls at the pain, but still against a creature this size it's merely a flesh wound. As its arms press on after me I leap again, narrowly twisting myself through the gap between the arms. Another slash on the way out and as I land on the branch it continues on like a derailed train.
The branch creaks under the weight, so I leap off to another, putting more distance between me and the monster that is still following me. I can feel it now, and that thing is in a horrible amount of pain even putting aside my lightsaber wounds.
It radiates an abject misery that almost makes me put my lightsabers away in pity and shame at myself for fighting it. Whatever made it this way was not by the creature's own choice. Its confusion tears through the Force like a stitched over mouth straining at its bonds in a desperate attempt to be free.
And deep within it there burns an almost distinct other entity. One slumped in on itself and withered from who knows how long it's spent lingering in whatever hell it's been trapped in.
It's a distorted Rancor with a second torso and an unnatural amount of limbs and ability to move itself. Was it originally two? A mating pair perhaps forcefully combined together in a horror of the Force and of life itself.
"You like my work? My sister made this place her home, once upon a time long ago. But I always thought it needed remodeling," the Fanged God rasps amusedly in my ear, everywhere and nowhere at once in the most infuriating way because I can't do anything about it. Either I'm in a phantom dreamscape where I'm at his whims until I find my way out or somehow I am physically here, and that does nothing to actually help me with this man.
"Do you take constructive criticism?" I ask into the darkness. The mist below seems to quiver and shift like a living mass amongst the fungal infections, shrubs, and detritus. Perhaps ending the life of this creature, if ending it I am, would be a blessing? Put the damned thing out of its misery.
The Fanged God doesn't reply, so I take my sabers and toss them up, directing them with the Force to the branches above to begin cutting them apart as the beast tears back up towards me in a shambling mass of morose, confused fury. What a poor thing, left to suffer like this. It roars at me, coming on instinct and pain and nothing else.
I reach out with the Force and pull, yanking branches downward and letting their weight do most of the work. The Rancor abomination lunges again and a log slams down on its head, crushing it in place. More branches slam down after, adding to the weight and pushing the creature down towards the ground, with the heavy trunks as wide as a speeder following it down to form a pile on the ground.
It struggles to rise from under the pile of branches. Its strength is massive, but its mutated body makes using that strength awkward at times. I call my falling lightsabers back to me and leap for the ground, coming down like a lightning bolt, blades angled down to thrust into the front head.
The impact hurts just a little bit, as even slowing my descent with the Force leaves me with the distinctive problem of being barefoot! I swear, this is either real, or because I decided to only take off my boots to sleep, my dream self has everything but firm boots.
Still my blades plunge into the head with a resounding smack as the effort the beast was putting in to rise and shake off the burdens stops and it falls back down to the dirt with a thud. I spin the blades still in its skull until I've made a foot wide hole in its head burn with cauterized flesh that unfortunately does not overpower the strong smell of rot and decay.
Looking at its body more closely now, the whole thing seems rusted and decayed, scaled leathery hide worn and wizened, flecks of rust drifting away in a breeze that doesn't seem to exist.
The fiery mist closes in again, circling like a piranha around the corpse of the beast. I leap up back into the towering trees to find refuge, and the mist descends upon the corpse, surrounding it and filling every gap and entry point it can reach. The body below jerks and shifts, spasming as the mist enters it.
Then it starts to move again, pushing off the heavy tree branches. Its aura is filled with fire, blazing bright and hot. The pain and confusion that was there before is gone, and now only a deep, crackling hatred remains. It looks up at me, snarls, and then trudges off into the undergrowth, having extricated itself from the trees holding it down.
"Well, aren't you a grand help, that one resisted me quite vigorously," the Fanged God's voice echoes eerily in my skull with a shrill, amused laugh. I sigh and press on with more care this time. I'm still not sure if this is real or a dream, but it's real enough to probably end very poorly for me if I'm not careful.
As I walk the landscape changes. It's not easy to explain, because the forest doesn't go away entirely but morphs to fit a new environment. Almost without warning, a city begins to grow up around the forest. Towering skyscrapers somehow place themselves between the growths of trees or into them with the branches pushing through cracks and holes in the structure.
I look down and sigh at the bodies now littering the ground in various stages of decay and rot. The Jedi robes and RA armor and uniforms make it real clear who they're supposed to be. But I can vaguely make out Dathomiri and others among them.
The fungus has grown up in and around them, pustules and bulbs of fleshy warts pushing out from rotted flesh in a grotesque display. I turn my gaze back to the winding branches of the trees ahead and keep going.
"What's wrong? Can't bear to look? You're more than happy to lead them to their deaths, seeing the bodies is too much for you?" the Fanged God mocks. Shrill laughter bounces between the trees around me, seemingly echoing from every direction.
"I have grown a low tolerance for people trying to manipulate me. I know how this goes, you want me to feel bad about the death of friends and innocents so you can try to convince me that by freeing you from your prison it can all be averted. It's no different from what you did last time, and it didn't work then," I tell him. I'm not dumb, and whatever this is, it's just another attempt at what he's already done.
I'm no more weak to such arguments than I was then. His laugh turns into a chuckle, deep and patronizing like a father seeing their child attempt to play at the work of grown ups. Now that is annoying, but I let the condescension wash off of me as I near one of the buildings, traveling along the tree branch next to it. Ahead a corpse that vaguely looks like an RA army officer leans out a broken window where a small split from the branch has snaked its way inside.
"Perhaps so, but I know a fair bit more than you do, and you're walking blindly to your doom." My erstwhile torturer laughs. I draw near the corpse, and suddenly a fire blazes in its chest. Its arm snatches out for me. I bat it aside casually, wincing at the icy sensation that spreads from the point of contact.
The corpse shambles forward, grabbing for the branch to pull itself nearer toward me. I reach out with the Force and lift it up, flinging it back into the building dismissively. The zombie's already trying to get up and move back towards me, but I've leaped to another branch. Down below, the corpses are standing up and shuffling after me.
"Okay, zombies? Sidious is going to start a zombie plague is what you're trying to tell me?" I ask doubtfully. Sidious could probably manage it. If he doesn't know the Sith spell to do it, he could probably learn it with a little bit of time and effort. I mean, sure it could be a tactic, but that would only be a tactic for ground battles. Dellalt? Kill a bunch of our frontline troops and turn them into zombies to fling into the other defensive lines.
"Will he? Or will another?" I listen to the sardonic drawl for a moment. Plagueis wouldn't. He's a Sith through and through, but that's not his style. What benefit would he get from starting an outbreak of Sith zombies on some random planet besides a crisis that would get put down quickly.
It's a bit dark, but what's one more planetary crisis these days? Besides them, who could do it? Sidious's new apprentice? That has the same issue as Sidious; it's only ever going to be used on the ground on isolated fronts. A new problem, but not a calamity.
"You don't know…a dagger lies ready to plunge into your back and you walk gormlessly to your doom. It's quite tragic, many a tale have been told of the great heroine who but for a sudden calamity, might have saved her people. But such dramas are surely better left in stories, don't you think?" The question rattles through the dead branches, shaking them as if they were blowing in a strong wind.
"Okay? But why keep coming after me about it when you know I won't listen? Do you not have anyone else you can petition for aid? Did I take away all your Nightsister followers at the Star Temple fight?" I ask him humorously, allowing myself a moment of satisfaction at the silence that follows.
More bodies gather below until there's a slow flood of corpses shambling beneath me and following. One seems to be a grotesque abomination of man and horse merged together and twisted with long sloping arms that trail across the ground while both their heads are elongated and warped into beastly caricatures.
"None of my followers care for the world beyond Dathomir, save one, and she I can influence only a little. And of the offworlders, only you have a mind so open to connection that I can so easily grasp at. It seems I am stuck with you." He doesn't sound quite thrilled with that prospect, but hey wouldn't you know it, neither am I.
"But perhaps there is another, one who doubts her path. One to be molded." His voice is soft, saccharine sweet with the implication he makes, even as I stiffen with subdued ire. Not anger, not yet.
"She wouldn't listen to you, she knows better than that," I reply instantly. Another leap takes me safely across the gap between the trees above the hordes below. They gleam bright in the force like thousands of glowing torches as if a mob coming to burn me to the ground.
"Wouldn't she? Augwynne thought the same of her daughters, but still two of them came to me for lore and teaching. With how often she rushes off on her own, who is to say what she might do? But she is not as capable as you, not yet." His voice slithers like a snake through my ears, worming its way through the deep part of my mind that stirs with the ember of rage, wanting to tear him apart from whatever hiding place he holds for even daring to think such a thought.
I stop and exhale, drawing my focus to suppressing the feeling, even as his mirth at my reaction suffuses the air about me. Smug prick that he is.
"Can I wake up now? Or if I really am here, can I have some peace for the journey to the mountaintop? Because I'm really not interested in anything you have to tell me," I grind out annoyedly. There's a moment of very blissful silence, and I foolishly think that maybe, just maybe, he actually listened to me.
"So you don't want me to tell you that you're standing on a mutated tree planning to eat you?" the Fanged God says in feigned innocence just as the branch beneath me begins to shake wildly. I leap for safety just as it flings itself at me. It barely scrapes me, but the momentum still sends me plummeting down to the earth below.
I correct my fall in the air, lightsabers igniting as I come down amidst a torrent of shambling corpses. I spin with my lightsabers as I go and sever heads and torsos, limbs and other extremities as I spin to face the tree that is coming alive. A crack in the midst of the massive trunk opens up in the shape of a mouth from which a thick ooze begins to emerge and drip onto the ground where it sizzles and steams.
Seriously, he's an asshole, but that's par for the course. The corpses close in around me, raising appropriate weapons. The Jedi corpses even have lightsabers, and now I know this is a dream. That or this place gives the Fanged God a lot more power to do this kind of stuff.
Though oddities aside, they're not nearly strong enough to be as threatening as a Jedi. Their weapons are batted aside before they could even hope to harm me, blasters fire wildly about, and vines wreathed in the flame of the Dark Side slither like snakes across the ground toward me.
I turn and leap back, moving away from the tree for safety. It's a tree, so it can't really go far to pursue me. Once I've gotten some distance I'll go back up into the trees and get clear of the corpses shambling around me.
Nice and simple, except for the part where the horse abomination comes by, galloping across the ground while its claws rake the earth and fling clumps of it at me. He's literally flinging dirt, and it's so ridiculous I only half-block the oncoming clumps.
It's just…normal dirt. For a moment I had a half-concern it might be somehow poisonously tainted like the rest of this place.
Both mouths open, and from the abomination comes a stream of fiery mist that flies like a spray of water from a hose directly at me. The general droning of danger from the Force becomes a scream of warning. I leap up, cutting at a few of the shambling corpses as I go, and yet in the midst of the leap a vine snakes up and shoots out, grabbing at my leg to pull me back down.
Cutting it is a matter of a second, but it's enough to lower me down. The mist hits my leg and almost immediately suffuses into the skin. I hit the ground hard and struggle to rise as a racking pain courses through my body as if someone has set fire to my very blood.
My vision shifts, the translucent, colorless shapes warbling and blinking in and out of a sea of flame as if suffering the worst glitch imaginable. For a brief moment I see color in a way I have not for two and a half decades: blackness, splashes of blue and green from the lightsabers, the clear white and green of my own blades, and mottled patches of brown and orange rust flaked bark among the trees.
The color goes out in another moment, but that was enough to give me a headache and a nauseous rumble in my gut. Oh wow, seeing color when your brain isn't actually primed to see it is not a good sensation, oh my. I heave and lean to the side before I remember there are shambling corpses and a big abominable fucker spewing more of that mist at me.
I reach into the Force and find that place of calm again, warm sunlight on my skin, melting away the darkness and the cold, standing as a bulwark against the ravage of the flame. Then I release it in a burst of light that explodes outward. It's not much, with my concentration wavering between the nausea, splitting headache, and fire burning in my blood. But it is enough to give me some space.
'Having some trouble?" The voice of that Fanged Bastard rattles in my skull like a handful of pebbles in a tin can as I toss one saber in a swinging arc toward the horse abomination. The other I twirl in a series of defensive slashes against the vines from the tree. More mist drifts towards me, hungry like a living cloud eager to consume or in this case poison.
"Don't really want your help, I'd rather wake up from this dream," I grit out, moving further from the tree towards the safety of a building. The saber I tossed tears an arm off of the beast and then two legs on the way back. But as I retreat the mist drifts back toward it and soaks into its skin. The flesh begins to regrow slowly.
I dart through a window and find myself in a nondescript home the likes of which I'd find anywhere in the galaxy. It looks picturesque almost, like something you'd find in an advertising magazine
Okay, the buildings are tall. I just need to find the stairs to go up until I get to where the tree branches are, leap up to them, and keep going in relative peace away from the living tree trying to eat me. All while avoiding throwing up, or anything else this cursed place is throwing at me.
"Did you think it would be that easy?" I hear the voice whisper. The room spins, and I press on through the building. The next room is a startling shift in style. The entry is large and high vaulted with delicate ornamentation of magnificent statues and soft rugs, and a reclining lounge chair rests in the middle of the room around a pool of cool, clear water. I feel like this is very recognizable, uncomfortably so.
"Oh, Viera, back so soon?" I watch as Satajayu rises from the lounge chair dressed as stylishly as ever and internally prepare myself for the inevitable. She's not here. This is some kind of astral projection or dream meant to fuck with me. This is not going to have a happy ending.
But even still, I really can't just do what I ought to and walk past her and towards the clear exit on the other side of the room. So, I put on a smile and walk quickly towards her, ignoring the nausea and my head to take her by the shoulder and lead her gently along.
"Hey, so something's come up. It's very important and very dangerous, we should leave right now," I say, guiding her along to the exit. This isn't going to work, I'm going to regret it, but oh well. I can feel her concern and worry, and it's so real it hurts. I don't like this, it's not real, but it feels real.
"Of course, whatever you say. Let's go," she responds, unsure. I hum quietly and lead her to the door before a tall figure steps out. I almost think it's Plagueis, just going by the dress, but the face isn't right. No, it's the Fanged God. I put one hand out, lightsaber pointed toward him.
"Don't," I say warningly. He smiles and raises a hand, pointing one delicate finger at me. A fire begins to burn beside me, red hot and scorching against my skin. I reluctantly let go of the woman I love as her face breaks out in weeping sores that expand and open until from beneath her skin another Satajayu, rotting and decrepit, tears out and lunges for me. I dodge to the side and advance on the Fanged God with sabers raised.
"I could help you save them all. All I need is to be freed from my prison. You would hardly notice the effects, after all what is a mortal realm to one such as I? I could amuse myself in the glory of the cosmos for tens of millennia and never once think to look at you and yours," he suggests, tongue dripping with poisoned words he thinks I'll be dumb enough to listen to.
"I would need to trust you first, tell you what. How about you tell me what this big threat you're hinting at is, with enough evidence for me to confirm it. Then maybe I'll start thinking of you as trustworthy." And like as not, do nothing to actually help him because at best I am helping a Dark Side spirit get free, and at worst I am letting something infinitely worse than Sidious and Plagueis go free. He smiles cruelly, knowingly. He's not dumb, which is why he'll only ever tell if I do what he wants first, and at that point he'd probably backstab me.
I push the corpse Satajayu back with the Force and close the distance, but he ducks back from my swing, chuckling in amusement. More corpses are shambling inside. A number of them are new ones that look disturbingly like my padawan and friends.
"Their deaths will be on your head, as usual. You will go forward dealing with the knowledge that you could have ended this war before it began, that you could have unmasked and destroyed the great movers of this conflict before they could continue their foul work," he gloats, words dripping with poison as we move into the next room.
I follow behind, flinging the furniture aside or at him while decay creeps across the room like hoarfrost rapidly spreading its icy tendrils over frozen ground. He deflects the attacks casually while he retreats, floating calmly around obstacles without looking at them.
"The Hutts do hate you quite a bit, I wonder what they would do with your family if they got their hands on them. They care nothing for your parents, nor your brother or niece, but your adopted daughter would be a grand prize and a rich princess like Satajayu Dendup would find no quarter or good treatment at the Hutt mercies. In fact I suspect her treatment would be quite abysmal. A quick death would be the best she could hope for." I reach out and fling a dozen pieces at him with enough force to explode them into shrapnel on impact with the wall as he deflects them. I stomp across the shards and ignore the pinpricks of pain in my bare feet.
"Touched a nerve, have I? Well, I suppose you'll content yourself in death with the fact that you stuck to your principles as billions die around you. Will you say the same over the graves of your family too? The great Jedi, Viera Sarat, too afraid to lay down her pride and do what it takes to win, how droll," he drones on and on with this filth and stupidity. Even he can't believe it.
"To win at the cost of unleashing you would be no victory at all, I refuse to win a temporary victory now only to kick the can down the road for another to deal with. You are staying trapped and if I get so much as a hint as to where you're imprisoned, I swear I'll wipe all memory of that place from every star chart in the galaxy. You'll never be free if I have my way," I growl, holding my sabers out. The decay creeps past me and over the ground, encompassing the entirety of the room as the Fanged God stops, standing in front of me. The fire burns in his chest, a torrential inferno raining fire around him and through his body as hot as the sun. He snarls at me, then smooths his face into a cruel grin.
"You say that now, and perhaps you even mean it. But will you hold the same belief after she has had her way with you?" he asks darkly. The room warps and wobbles, morphing and contorting into shapes and symbols incomprehensible to me. But when it does, he raises his hand as if to take a bow.
When he lowers his hand, a figure garbed in a black cloak, female by my guess, steps through him with a burning lightsaber raised to swing.
I sigh loudly, and around me the forest echoes with the sound of my exasperation. The rusted and rotting trees and what little brown, decayed, and dissolving grass remains does not answer my silent inquiry for an explanation.
I reach out for signs of my padawan, Ilena, any of my compatriots and feel only a faint sense of static buzzing under the crackling heat of the Dark Side that emanates and permeates the surroundings. The trees, uniformly dead, remain as towering sentinels above the ground. The mist around me floats and drifts in an unfelt breeze, but it burns brightly in the Force, a crackling heat that I really don't want to get too close to.
"Okay, think Viera, you've got two options. This is a dream and someone is trying to make use of it against you, or you're really here somehow. Wherever here is," I muse aloud, tapping my bare feet on the ground. If this is a dream, I'm a little pissed they didn't give me my boots back.
How would I know one way or another? I really can't, so treat it as if this is real and find a way out and back to the Howling Crag, or whoever's the closest clan. That would be easier if I had a comlink to call for help. But then again, if I'm having trouble reaching out for my allies with the Force, then the comlink probably wouldn't be any better.
I reach out for the Force, letting that comforting sunlight bathe itself beneath my skin again and relish in the warmth and light of the one thing in my life that has been a constant, reliable companion.
Immediately, the mist changes direction, drifting with purpose towards me like a firestorm traveling along the path of its kindling. I leap up into the branches above and find purchase on one of the larger ones. The mist doesn't pursue me upward, but merely coalesces and…sniffs it seems before separating and going off again.
Traveling on the ground is a no go then, or at least not if I use the Force. Instead I go up, ascending the branches higher and higher. The wood claws and snags at me as if thousands of tiny hands grasping for me to drag me back down again.
Above the canopy the dead forest extends like a broken, rusty sea, crackling in the Force with geysers of distant fire that spread hot ash across the landscape. There is no sign of vibrant life or living trees anywhere that I can see. To the south and east the forest goes off as far as I can see. To the west there looks to be an ocean of some sorts, but it feels as foul, if not fouler than the forest I'm in. To the north a tall mountain pierces the landscape, jutting above like a guard over the dead land with piercing rocks, fierce crags, and precipices. But it's high up, so I should at least get a better view of the area from there, and it doesn't feel as tainted.
North it is. I retreat beneath the tangled canopy and rest against the branch with a tired sigh. Okay, it looks like a two day trek if I don't stop. I can do that, two days of walking is easy for me. But two days of walking with no way of communicating to let anyone know I'm alive, assuming this isn't some kind of dream, is going to be such a pain!
Duala is going to panic, Ilena is going to be furious with me and whatever's caused this, and who knows what it'll do to the negotiations. We had one clan left! One! I was so close to getting off Dathomir with quick, short negotiations.
"Having a spot of trouble are we?" a smooth voice asks beside me where there should not have been anyone. I ignite one lightsaber and point it in the direction of someone who should not have been able to sneak up on me like that.
My vision rests on a very average looking man wearing strips of hide and leather bound together into a rough looking garb. Long hair spills down his shoulders and muscular form. He's holding his hands up, smiling nervously, unarmed save for a dagger sheathed on his belt and a makeshift spear.
I don't feel the Force in him, which is nonsense, complete and utter nonsense that I am not going to tolerate for even a second. No way, absolutely no way a normal, non Force-sensitive man, snuck up on me this close through these winding branches without me noticing him well in advance. I have almost three hundred and sixty degree vision.
"No, I'm not doing this right now," I tell him firmly. His aura shifts with apparent confusion, as if he doesn't know what I'm talking about, but his face and posture says otherwise. He's too calm, too collected, too aware of his situation and me. He's not a normal person, and in this place where spirits and other such creatures abound I'm not taking any chances.
"I don't know what you mean." He chuckles awkwardly. "I just saw a stranger who looked like she had a rough day," he says while I keep my lightsaber trained on him.
"You were not next to me a second ago, I know that without a doubt. So what are you and why are you approaching me. Let's skip to the part where you reveal whatever true identity you possess and I decide whether I need to expel you or not," I tell him pointedly.
His aura stills, freezing before falling away behind an inscrutable wall of durasteel. His face settles, and then he smirks, stepping back on the branch as his form morphs and shifts around before settling back into itself as if just to prove he was indeed what I presumed him as.
"Astute of you, Master Jedi. I suppose I was a bit too crude. You wouldn't have forgotten me, would you? After all, we had such a good rapport the last time we were on Dathomir. I helped you with Zalem, or I tried at least," the spirit says with a long suffering sigh. Wait, Zalem? My mind flashes back to that whole encounter.
"You tried to extort me to let you out of wherever you were if I recall, and tried to get me killed when I refused," I retort, climbing down to a lower branch to head northward. My annoying friend follows.
"I do apologize, you simply made me so angry that I lashed out. I truly did not want to do that, but don't you see I was right? Look at what has happened since? I could have stopped it all, Sidious could not stand against me in the fullness of my power. I imagine your guards, Nidiri and Orta-Kin were their names I think, would still be alive," he replies, drifting after me through the air, passing through the trees while I have to navigate around them.
"As if you wouldn't have killed them and more yourself. I'm not so desperate, even now," I tell him sharply. Oh yeah, release a Dark Side being to fight another, that'll work well. I'm not lucky enough for them to kill each other in the process. I jump from one branch to the next, choosing my destination carefully and wincing as the bare wood bites into my feet.
This had better be a dream I wake up from, otherwise I'm going to find myself full of splinters.
"Viera, why would I bother with you and your friends? Mortal realms and their petty issues barely matter to a god such as I. Indeed, these Sith and their plots are barely worth my time." The spirit inspects his nails idly, wiping a smudge of dirt away. "Destroying them would be child's play." His gaze turns to me as he smiles cruelly.
"Or perhaps you would like to do it yourself? Does that appeal to you? The Sith and these slugs prostrated at your feet, their armies scattered to the galactic winds and you able to dictate the terms of surrender? You need not even be a Queen if that bothers you so much," the Fanged God suggests, shifting to float on his back as if this were a calm and cool pond. Great fungal pods start to appear as I move forward, the fiery mist drifting from their presence.
"The Rim Alliance will win, it might take us time, but we are going to overcome this. We neither need nor want your help," I tell him. It figures that I come back to Dathomir and immediately find myself under his eye again. The Fanged God drifts to float in front of me, childishly blocking my sight of the forest ahead of me.
By the Force I wish striking him with my lightsaber would actually make him go away.
"You say that now, but in a year when the death toll starts reaching into the billions will you still hold to the same belief? When you could've ended it in a day? Truly, take my hand and I will show you what you could be?" He holds out his hand, and I stop, resting on a large tree branch amidst a tangled web of rusted wood. He stares at me, face set in a smugly confident smirk. Like he's so confident that the thought of me not taking it hasn't even passed across his mind. His face slowly morphs into a furious snarl when I don't take his bait. Flames leak from his eyes and mouth as he straightens up.
"Fine then, see how this forest treats you," he growls and begins to fade out just as a long, leathery, gnarled hand surges through his form reaching for me. I leap back, lightsabers igniting as the limb continues reaching for me, pulling behind it what can only be described as a grotesque abomination.
It was a Rancor once, I'm pretty sure, but now the head is pulled back, cracked at an odd angle that looks almost upside down as it snuffs and snarls at me. Another torso is connected to its torso, with arms and legs of its own in a locomotive pattern that pushes it along remarkably fast.
Open jaws lunge for me, distending like a snake, but miss me by inches and tear into the rusted wood beyond. I fall down to another branch a level lower as I consider my options and just what the fuck this all is. It doesn't stop though, merely chews apart the chunks of rotted and rusted wood and turns to me, coming at me again with a vicious speed. I raise my lightsabers up in a defensive position as it draws near with distended jaws wide open and leap up, sailing over the lunging jaws to land on the beast's body. The other torso connected to it surges and shakes, arms reaching for me desperately while its head seems to curve inward after me.
I slash with each blade, one for the head and the other for the arms. They thrum with energy, a sudden sizzling snap as they tear into the leathery flesh. It howls at the pain, but still against a creature this size it's merely a flesh wound. As its arms press on after me I leap again, narrowly twisting myself through the gap between the arms. Another slash on the way out and as I land on the branch it continues on like a derailed train.
The branch creaks under the weight, so I leap off to another, putting more distance between me and the monster that is still following me. I can feel it now, and that thing is in a horrible amount of pain even putting aside my lightsaber wounds.
It radiates an abject misery that almost makes me put my lightsabers away in pity and shame at myself for fighting it. Whatever made it this way was not by the creature's own choice. Its confusion tears through the Force like a stitched over mouth straining at its bonds in a desperate attempt to be free.
And deep within it there burns an almost distinct other entity. One slumped in on itself and withered from who knows how long it's spent lingering in whatever hell it's been trapped in.
It's a distorted Rancor with a second torso and an unnatural amount of limbs and ability to move itself. Was it originally two? A mating pair perhaps forcefully combined together in a horror of the Force and of life itself.
"You like my work? My sister made this place her home, once upon a time long ago. But I always thought it needed remodeling," the Fanged God rasps amusedly in my ear, everywhere and nowhere at once in the most infuriating way because I can't do anything about it. Either I'm in a phantom dreamscape where I'm at his whims until I find my way out or somehow I am physically here, and that does nothing to actually help me with this man.
"Do you take constructive criticism?" I ask into the darkness. The mist below seems to quiver and shift like a living mass amongst the fungal infections, shrubs, and detritus. Perhaps ending the life of this creature, if ending it I am, would be a blessing? Put the damned thing out of its misery.
The Fanged God doesn't reply, so I take my sabers and toss them up, directing them with the Force to the branches above to begin cutting them apart as the beast tears back up towards me in a shambling mass of morose, confused fury. What a poor thing, left to suffer like this. It roars at me, coming on instinct and pain and nothing else.
I reach out with the Force and pull, yanking branches downward and letting their weight do most of the work. The Rancor abomination lunges again and a log slams down on its head, crushing it in place. More branches slam down after, adding to the weight and pushing the creature down towards the ground, with the heavy trunks as wide as a speeder following it down to form a pile on the ground.
It struggles to rise from under the pile of branches. Its strength is massive, but its mutated body makes using that strength awkward at times. I call my falling lightsabers back to me and leap for the ground, coming down like a lightning bolt, blades angled down to thrust into the front head.
The impact hurts just a little bit, as even slowing my descent with the Force leaves me with the distinctive problem of being barefoot! I swear, this is either real, or because I decided to only take off my boots to sleep, my dream self has everything but firm boots.
Still my blades plunge into the head with a resounding smack as the effort the beast was putting in to rise and shake off the burdens stops and it falls back down to the dirt with a thud. I spin the blades still in its skull until I've made a foot wide hole in its head burn with cauterized flesh that unfortunately does not overpower the strong smell of rot and decay.
Looking at its body more closely now, the whole thing seems rusted and decayed, scaled leathery hide worn and wizened, flecks of rust drifting away in a breeze that doesn't seem to exist.
The fiery mist closes in again, circling like a piranha around the corpse of the beast. I leap up back into the towering trees to find refuge, and the mist descends upon the corpse, surrounding it and filling every gap and entry point it can reach. The body below jerks and shifts, spasming as the mist enters it.
Then it starts to move again, pushing off the heavy tree branches. Its aura is filled with fire, blazing bright and hot. The pain and confusion that was there before is gone, and now only a deep, crackling hatred remains. It looks up at me, snarls, and then trudges off into the undergrowth, having extricated itself from the trees holding it down.
"Well, aren't you a grand help, that one resisted me quite vigorously," the Fanged God's voice echoes eerily in my skull with a shrill, amused laugh. I sigh and press on with more care this time. I'm still not sure if this is real or a dream, but it's real enough to probably end very poorly for me if I'm not careful.
As I walk the landscape changes. It's not easy to explain, because the forest doesn't go away entirely but morphs to fit a new environment. Almost without warning, a city begins to grow up around the forest. Towering skyscrapers somehow place themselves between the growths of trees or into them with the branches pushing through cracks and holes in the structure.
I look down and sigh at the bodies now littering the ground in various stages of decay and rot. The Jedi robes and RA armor and uniforms make it real clear who they're supposed to be. But I can vaguely make out Dathomiri and others among them.
The fungus has grown up in and around them, pustules and bulbs of fleshy warts pushing out from rotted flesh in a grotesque display. I turn my gaze back to the winding branches of the trees ahead and keep going.
"What's wrong? Can't bear to look? You're more than happy to lead them to their deaths, seeing the bodies is too much for you?" the Fanged God mocks. Shrill laughter bounces between the trees around me, seemingly echoing from every direction.
"I have grown a low tolerance for people trying to manipulate me. I know how this goes, you want me to feel bad about the death of friends and innocents so you can try to convince me that by freeing you from your prison it can all be averted. It's no different from what you did last time, and it didn't work then," I tell him. I'm not dumb, and whatever this is, it's just another attempt at what he's already done.
I'm no more weak to such arguments than I was then. His laugh turns into a chuckle, deep and patronizing like a father seeing their child attempt to play at the work of grown ups. Now that is annoying, but I let the condescension wash off of me as I near one of the buildings, traveling along the tree branch next to it. Ahead a corpse that vaguely looks like an RA army officer leans out a broken window where a small split from the branch has snaked its way inside.
"Perhaps so, but I know a fair bit more than you do, and you're walking blindly to your doom." My erstwhile torturer laughs. I draw near the corpse, and suddenly a fire blazes in its chest. Its arm snatches out for me. I bat it aside casually, wincing at the icy sensation that spreads from the point of contact.
The corpse shambles forward, grabbing for the branch to pull itself nearer toward me. I reach out with the Force and lift it up, flinging it back into the building dismissively. The zombie's already trying to get up and move back towards me, but I've leaped to another branch. Down below, the corpses are standing up and shuffling after me.
"Okay, zombies? Sidious is going to start a zombie plague is what you're trying to tell me?" I ask doubtfully. Sidious could probably manage it. If he doesn't know the Sith spell to do it, he could probably learn it with a little bit of time and effort. I mean, sure it could be a tactic, but that would only be a tactic for ground battles. Dellalt? Kill a bunch of our frontline troops and turn them into zombies to fling into the other defensive lines.
"Will he? Or will another?" I listen to the sardonic drawl for a moment. Plagueis wouldn't. He's a Sith through and through, but that's not his style. What benefit would he get from starting an outbreak of Sith zombies on some random planet besides a crisis that would get put down quickly.
It's a bit dark, but what's one more planetary crisis these days? Besides them, who could do it? Sidious's new apprentice? That has the same issue as Sidious; it's only ever going to be used on the ground on isolated fronts. A new problem, but not a calamity.
"You don't know…a dagger lies ready to plunge into your back and you walk gormlessly to your doom. It's quite tragic, many a tale have been told of the great heroine who but for a sudden calamity, might have saved her people. But such dramas are surely better left in stories, don't you think?" The question rattles through the dead branches, shaking them as if they were blowing in a strong wind.
"Okay? But why keep coming after me about it when you know I won't listen? Do you not have anyone else you can petition for aid? Did I take away all your Nightsister followers at the Star Temple fight?" I ask him humorously, allowing myself a moment of satisfaction at the silence that follows.
More bodies gather below until there's a slow flood of corpses shambling beneath me and following. One seems to be a grotesque abomination of man and horse merged together and twisted with long sloping arms that trail across the ground while both their heads are elongated and warped into beastly caricatures.
"None of my followers care for the world beyond Dathomir, save one, and she I can influence only a little. And of the offworlders, only you have a mind so open to connection that I can so easily grasp at. It seems I am stuck with you." He doesn't sound quite thrilled with that prospect, but hey wouldn't you know it, neither am I.
"But perhaps there is another, one who doubts her path. One to be molded." His voice is soft, saccharine sweet with the implication he makes, even as I stiffen with subdued ire. Not anger, not yet.
"She wouldn't listen to you, she knows better than that," I reply instantly. Another leap takes me safely across the gap between the trees above the hordes below. They gleam bright in the force like thousands of glowing torches as if a mob coming to burn me to the ground.
"Wouldn't she? Augwynne thought the same of her daughters, but still two of them came to me for lore and teaching. With how often she rushes off on her own, who is to say what she might do? But she is not as capable as you, not yet." His voice slithers like a snake through my ears, worming its way through the deep part of my mind that stirs with the ember of rage, wanting to tear him apart from whatever hiding place he holds for even daring to think such a thought.
I stop and exhale, drawing my focus to suppressing the feeling, even as his mirth at my reaction suffuses the air about me. Smug prick that he is.
"Can I wake up now? Or if I really am here, can I have some peace for the journey to the mountaintop? Because I'm really not interested in anything you have to tell me," I grind out annoyedly. There's a moment of very blissful silence, and I foolishly think that maybe, just maybe, he actually listened to me.
"So you don't want me to tell you that you're standing on a mutated tree planning to eat you?" the Fanged God says in feigned innocence just as the branch beneath me begins to shake wildly. I leap for safety just as it flings itself at me. It barely scrapes me, but the momentum still sends me plummeting down to the earth below.
I correct my fall in the air, lightsabers igniting as I come down amidst a torrent of shambling corpses. I spin with my lightsabers as I go and sever heads and torsos, limbs and other extremities as I spin to face the tree that is coming alive. A crack in the midst of the massive trunk opens up in the shape of a mouth from which a thick ooze begins to emerge and drip onto the ground where it sizzles and steams.
Seriously, he's an asshole, but that's par for the course. The corpses close in around me, raising appropriate weapons. The Jedi corpses even have lightsabers, and now I know this is a dream. That or this place gives the Fanged God a lot more power to do this kind of stuff.
Though oddities aside, they're not nearly strong enough to be as threatening as a Jedi. Their weapons are batted aside before they could even hope to harm me, blasters fire wildly about, and vines wreathed in the flame of the Dark Side slither like snakes across the ground toward me.
I turn and leap back, moving away from the tree for safety. It's a tree, so it can't really go far to pursue me. Once I've gotten some distance I'll go back up into the trees and get clear of the corpses shambling around me.
Nice and simple, except for the part where the horse abomination comes by, galloping across the ground while its claws rake the earth and fling clumps of it at me. He's literally flinging dirt, and it's so ridiculous I only half-block the oncoming clumps.
It's just…normal dirt. For a moment I had a half-concern it might be somehow poisonously tainted like the rest of this place.
Both mouths open, and from the abomination comes a stream of fiery mist that flies like a spray of water from a hose directly at me. The general droning of danger from the Force becomes a scream of warning. I leap up, cutting at a few of the shambling corpses as I go, and yet in the midst of the leap a vine snakes up and shoots out, grabbing at my leg to pull me back down.
Cutting it is a matter of a second, but it's enough to lower me down. The mist hits my leg and almost immediately suffuses into the skin. I hit the ground hard and struggle to rise as a racking pain courses through my body as if someone has set fire to my very blood.
My vision shifts, the translucent, colorless shapes warbling and blinking in and out of a sea of flame as if suffering the worst glitch imaginable. For a brief moment I see color in a way I have not for two and a half decades: blackness, splashes of blue and green from the lightsabers, the clear white and green of my own blades, and mottled patches of brown and orange rust flaked bark among the trees.
The color goes out in another moment, but that was enough to give me a headache and a nauseous rumble in my gut. Oh wow, seeing color when your brain isn't actually primed to see it is not a good sensation, oh my. I heave and lean to the side before I remember there are shambling corpses and a big abominable fucker spewing more of that mist at me.
I reach into the Force and find that place of calm again, warm sunlight on my skin, melting away the darkness and the cold, standing as a bulwark against the ravage of the flame. Then I release it in a burst of light that explodes outward. It's not much, with my concentration wavering between the nausea, splitting headache, and fire burning in my blood. But it is enough to give me some space.
'Having some trouble?" The voice of that Fanged Bastard rattles in my skull like a handful of pebbles in a tin can as I toss one saber in a swinging arc toward the horse abomination. The other I twirl in a series of defensive slashes against the vines from the tree. More mist drifts towards me, hungry like a living cloud eager to consume or in this case poison.
"Don't really want your help, I'd rather wake up from this dream," I grit out, moving further from the tree towards the safety of a building. The saber I tossed tears an arm off of the beast and then two legs on the way back. But as I retreat the mist drifts back toward it and soaks into its skin. The flesh begins to regrow slowly.
I dart through a window and find myself in a nondescript home the likes of which I'd find anywhere in the galaxy. It looks picturesque almost, like something you'd find in an advertising magazine
Okay, the buildings are tall. I just need to find the stairs to go up until I get to where the tree branches are, leap up to them, and keep going in relative peace away from the living tree trying to eat me. All while avoiding throwing up, or anything else this cursed place is throwing at me.
"Did you think it would be that easy?" I hear the voice whisper. The room spins, and I press on through the building. The next room is a startling shift in style. The entry is large and high vaulted with delicate ornamentation of magnificent statues and soft rugs, and a reclining lounge chair rests in the middle of the room around a pool of cool, clear water. I feel like this is very recognizable, uncomfortably so.
"Oh, Viera, back so soon?" I watch as Satajayu rises from the lounge chair dressed as stylishly as ever and internally prepare myself for the inevitable. She's not here. This is some kind of astral projection or dream meant to fuck with me. This is not going to have a happy ending.
But even still, I really can't just do what I ought to and walk past her and towards the clear exit on the other side of the room. So, I put on a smile and walk quickly towards her, ignoring the nausea and my head to take her by the shoulder and lead her gently along.
"Hey, so something's come up. It's very important and very dangerous, we should leave right now," I say, guiding her along to the exit. This isn't going to work, I'm going to regret it, but oh well. I can feel her concern and worry, and it's so real it hurts. I don't like this, it's not real, but it feels real.
"Of course, whatever you say. Let's go," she responds, unsure. I hum quietly and lead her to the door before a tall figure steps out. I almost think it's Plagueis, just going by the dress, but the face isn't right. No, it's the Fanged God. I put one hand out, lightsaber pointed toward him.
"Don't," I say warningly. He smiles and raises a hand, pointing one delicate finger at me. A fire begins to burn beside me, red hot and scorching against my skin. I reluctantly let go of the woman I love as her face breaks out in weeping sores that expand and open until from beneath her skin another Satajayu, rotting and decrepit, tears out and lunges for me. I dodge to the side and advance on the Fanged God with sabers raised.
"I could help you save them all. All I need is to be freed from my prison. You would hardly notice the effects, after all what is a mortal realm to one such as I? I could amuse myself in the glory of the cosmos for tens of millennia and never once think to look at you and yours," he suggests, tongue dripping with poisoned words he thinks I'll be dumb enough to listen to.
"I would need to trust you first, tell you what. How about you tell me what this big threat you're hinting at is, with enough evidence for me to confirm it. Then maybe I'll start thinking of you as trustworthy." And like as not, do nothing to actually help him because at best I am helping a Dark Side spirit get free, and at worst I am letting something infinitely worse than Sidious and Plagueis go free. He smiles cruelly, knowingly. He's not dumb, which is why he'll only ever tell if I do what he wants first, and at that point he'd probably backstab me.
I push the corpse Satajayu back with the Force and close the distance, but he ducks back from my swing, chuckling in amusement. More corpses are shambling inside. A number of them are new ones that look disturbingly like my padawan and friends.
"Their deaths will be on your head, as usual. You will go forward dealing with the knowledge that you could have ended this war before it began, that you could have unmasked and destroyed the great movers of this conflict before they could continue their foul work," he gloats, words dripping with poison as we move into the next room.
I follow behind, flinging the furniture aside or at him while decay creeps across the room like hoarfrost rapidly spreading its icy tendrils over frozen ground. He deflects the attacks casually while he retreats, floating calmly around obstacles without looking at them.
"The Hutts do hate you quite a bit, I wonder what they would do with your family if they got their hands on them. They care nothing for your parents, nor your brother or niece, but your adopted daughter would be a grand prize and a rich princess like Satajayu Dendup would find no quarter or good treatment at the Hutt mercies. In fact I suspect her treatment would be quite abysmal. A quick death would be the best she could hope for." I reach out and fling a dozen pieces at him with enough force to explode them into shrapnel on impact with the wall as he deflects them. I stomp across the shards and ignore the pinpricks of pain in my bare feet.
"Touched a nerve, have I? Well, I suppose you'll content yourself in death with the fact that you stuck to your principles as billions die around you. Will you say the same over the graves of your family too? The great Jedi, Viera Sarat, too afraid to lay down her pride and do what it takes to win, how droll," he drones on and on with this filth and stupidity. Even he can't believe it.
"To win at the cost of unleashing you would be no victory at all, I refuse to win a temporary victory now only to kick the can down the road for another to deal with. You are staying trapped and if I get so much as a hint as to where you're imprisoned, I swear I'll wipe all memory of that place from every star chart in the galaxy. You'll never be free if I have my way," I growl, holding my sabers out. The decay creeps past me and over the ground, encompassing the entirety of the room as the Fanged God stops, standing in front of me. The fire burns in his chest, a torrential inferno raining fire around him and through his body as hot as the sun. He snarls at me, then smooths his face into a cruel grin.
"You say that now, and perhaps you even mean it. But will you hold the same belief after she has had her way with you?" he asks darkly. The room warps and wobbles, morphing and contorting into shapes and symbols incomprehensible to me. But when it does, he raises his hand as if to take a bow.
When he lowers his hand, a figure garbed in a black cloak, female by my guess, steps through him with a burning lightsaber raised to swing.