The Deep Woods

For an entity that had long ago sacrificed its flesh and bone body for an idea, traded in its organic tissue and bleeding parts for flawless cybernetics and a skin of sacred Sith iron, ascending beyond the purely physical plane as digital software spread throughout the Holonet like a virus...it was safe to say this mechanically blessed war-machine had no fear of death. He had evolved beyond its grasp long ago, much as admitting so would be sacrilege in the presence of the Death Lord. Mortale, the Great Necromancer, who had resurrected the soul of loyal COE Major Daniel Starkiller, just to see him butchered by the NOEs mechanical servant Commodore Starkiller in ritual offering to the Eye. The humour was not lost of him; he had spent more than enough time reflecting on it while collecting dust in the supply closet in the Black Temple's workshop. Yes, death held no fear for the Machine Lord, but failure? To fail in his service to the Almighty Eye and to see the disappointment written on the faces of Lord Dragus and Lord Havok, that he could not bear. Even considering such an outcome made him want to scourge his circuits with electrical shocks and to thrust his digital code into anti-viral firewalls.

Failure in this instance meant the destruction of his current droid frame. If it was destroyed or received critical damage it would be an impossible setback to recover from. The hannite high priest had assured him of those portents before the outset of the mission, promising the end of the Adventists as they knew it should the Commodore fail in this most sacred duty. The Eye demanded his success.


As Tyna's blaster bucked with each shot from her crouched position at the tunnel entrance, wisps of acrid smelling vapour rose in the air, then wafted back into the Machine's Lord's faceplate. Already airborne, his four gruesomely garbed eye-bots provided tactical data with their combat sensors, sharing a three-dimensional image of the immediate danger zone. Computing faster than an organic mind could ever hope to, the Eye's Executioner calculated a path to victory. It would be bloody, but he was prepared to shed more than a few circuits if it meant ensuring the Oracle's safety and completing the mission. The rune-script etched across the face of his axes burned fiercely bright in that moment, casting an ominous red glow that even the darkness of the blackstone could not swallow. Black smoke hissed from the burning runes, reeking of sulphur and sorcerous spore. Reaching over his back, the barbed armour nightmare knight gripped the twin handles of Butchersbane and Goreguzzler, and slid each of them free from their place on his back. Metal shrieked as the two double-bladed war-axes scraped free and sliced the air over Tyna's head as the Commodore took a warmup swing. Time to get to work.

His pneumatic joints groaned as he prepared to spring into action, but the voice of the apprentice at his feet caused the grizzly gladiator droid to pause, halting in place as his visor focused his optic lenses on the blessed Saint. His Lady spoke words of compulsion, imbued with the holy power of the Eye, of that he was certain. Amazingly, as she spoke the words in the righteous tongue of the Sith, the dozen or so brutes that emerged from the grassy thicket around them did indeed heed her words.


Whatever effect the Oracle's words had on the tuk'ata pack that appeared to have them cornered, it was rudely dismissed by the savage canines who only had a full belly on their primitive minds. This close, the freakishness of their appearance could not be ignored. Dense musculature bulged beneath a thick layer of leathery flesh that could have easily been mistaken for armoured scale due to its craggy surface. Long obsidian talons that curved like butchers hooks carved up the ground with every step they took. An odor of blood was carried on each steaming exhalation of breath from jaws full of gleaming white fangs that dripped poisonous saliva onto the ground, where it hissed as it wilted the grass and blackened the soil. Their eyes looked even hungrier than their mouths, betraying intention as they glowed sinisterly even beneath the bright mid-day sun. Each and every one of them was larger than the Sith Elite Warbot, especially larger than the lithe wisp of teenager by his feet.

As a unified force they sprang into action. Three of the beasts picked the easiest prey and threw themselves at the chained tuk'ata, the one he had named Error. His newly acquired hound whinnied and barked, snapping with its jaws and slashing with its claws, forced to fight as flight was not an option for it. That battle was already lost. He couldn't protect Tyna and kill the tuk'ata pack while also saving his pet. Some things were even beyond the tactical algorithms of his battle computer to calculate. In the three on one scrum as the pack bullied Error into the dirt and tore into his hide with obsidian hooks, the Inquisitor Lord's impervium hunting spear came free from the ground, releasing the mutt's anchor. Error frantically pulled itself up and forwards with its claws and bounded into the tall grass before veering to the right as it followed the black river upstream, fleeing in terror while its three pursuers gave chase, the scent of its blood making their jaws froth with scalding spittle. The Inquisitor's hunting spear trailed on the ground behind it as Error disappeared, dragged by the consecrated chain needed to bind Mortale. A problem for later. According to the Machine Lord's eye-bots, that left the remaining nine for the Commodore and Apprentice to contend with.

During Error's plight the rest of the pack had not remained idle. On mass they sprang at the mouth of the cave, racing to be the first to taste Tyna's midi-chlorian rich blood. They rushed right into the buried mine as expected. Boom! A bright flash was followed by a loud explosion as the ground erupted, spraying shrapnel, stone, and fire in all directions. It scattered the pack, dropping several of them to the ground, but finishing none. As the smoke cleared, they began to pick themselves up again, growling with renewed fury. The clearing erupted further as the Oracle began to open up on them with her blaster, picking her targets carefully as she watched the charge on her weapon tick lower and lower. Unfazed by the explosion, Commodore Starkiller roared in synthetic rage and was quickly among them, swinging his two terrible axes with all the strength his servos would allow. The ground trembled as he pistoned forwards on two armoured legs, practically throwing himself at the nearest beast before raising his weapons overhead and bringing them down in a single stroke, planting both axe heads in the top of one brute's thick skull. There was a wet crack as bone splintered, followed by a suctioning squelch as he planted a large armoured boot on the creature's body and pried his war-axes free, taking the top half of the tuk'ata's head with it. That left eight.

Seven actually, as a bolt of energized tibanna from the apprentice's blaster zipped past his head and caught a canine closing on the Commodore's right side in the eye, flash boiling the optical organ before searing its way into the beast's brain, which it left a cooked ruin. That seventh beast dropped just beyond the Machine Lord's reach. Unfortunately their initial success was short lived. By this point the other six had rallied and again aggressively charged. Even as the hulking warbot turned to face them, his cybernetic brain calculated the futility of their actions, right before he was brought to the ground by two bounding tuk'ata. As an impossibly sharp claw extended and scraped gouges in his chest plate, the sorcerous instruments were knocked from his spiked gauntlets into the dirt. His hands came up just in time to catch one of the beasts by the jaws, holding it from his iron throat as the creature attempted to push him further into the ground until its steaming jaws were around his neck. The other attacked his legs, swiping its claw at his Sith-iron skirt and sending sparks and metal splinters spraying across the clearing with every damaging blow.


The Machine Lord watched helplessly as the other four strode past his position, closing with all appropriately due drama on the cave mouth where Tyna's blaster was clicking to near empty. A final surge of strength found its way into the Commodore's chassis as he saw the danger, but with that strength all he could do was slow the grind of the tuk'ata's jaws from closing around his head. Already one of those long fangs pierced the face plate of his helm, puncturing his sacred war-plate and gouging the cheek of his silvered skull. Like a cat playing with a mouse, the four approached the cave mouth purposefully slow, savouring the moment. Two approached from the front, the other two from the sides. There would be no escape. The Oracle would need to fight her way clear, or...


A second eruption of light occurred so similar to the first that one could be forgiven for thinking there had been a second mine. That's not what this was. While a blinding flash seemed to burst from the ground in front of the cave mouth, somewhat obscuring the apprentice still in a crouched firing position, no blast wave or shrapnel followed. When the spots cleared from the tuk'atas eyes and the smoke dissipated, a solitary figure was standing in front of the cave mouth, blocking Tyna's aim. She would recognize the species. Many of its kind lingered in the bones of the Eye's former capital. It was a ranat, wearing a midnight hued silken kimono over chalk white fur meticulously smoothed back against its pinkish skin, with a wire thin tail that swayed gently in the breeze behind it. Two scabbards were thrust through the belt wrapped around its waist. The larger of the two, which looked like it would have suitably fit a katana blade, was empty. The second scabbard contained what appeared to be the handle of a wakizashi, a shorter version of a katana and an essential part of any ronan's daisho. The ranat raised an empty paw, touching a thick necklace of wooden beads looped around its neck on the way to its face, where it stroked a set of fu-manchu style whiskers that drooped down either side of its short snout. No longer stunned from the flash bomb that preluded the ranats arrival, the four tuk'ata were yet again bearing frothing jaws at the threshold of the cave, now facing two prey...even if one was just a puffed up rodent.

At the corner of the ranat's mouth, its lip curled upwards into a smirk and what could have passed for eagerness seemed to cross its features. Whatever it was for certain, it wasn't fear. The stoic mouse appeared entirely unconcerned with the four creatures, stifling a yawn as they inched closer. It defied logic, for if the savage Sith hounds were larger than Commodore Starkiller, then you can only imagine how they towered over the solitary rat. Removing the immaculately manicured paw from his beard whiskers, the ranats lips parted and it spoke a single word in elegant rat-speech.



Five more blinding flashes followed the ranat's singular squeak, each startling the pack and temporarily stinging their eyes. Atop the rock the cave containing the gamorrean tribal markings had been carved into, appeared three more ranats garbed in shadowsilk keikogi, unmistakable as Shadow-Squeaks from the eastern clans of Dragusblight. Each wielded an expertly crafted ninjatō sword in their paws that reflected the mid-day sun back into the eyes of the beasts surrounding the cave. Those swords had a bluish tinge that a craftsman's eye might have recognized as cortosis. Two more of their number stood on either side of the grounded war-bot, who was still wrestling with one tuk'ata while another shredded his leg armour. These deadly ranat assassins wasted little time in making their presence felt by the pack.

A flurry of star shaped shuriken flew from their paws in the breadth of a second, peppering the Sith hounds with a hail of razor blades that nicked and pierced even their armour thick hides. Then as one fluid organism the ranats closed the distance and attacked. Unlikely as it might seem, these sentient rodents that were no more than a meter tall made all the difference in that desperate hour. Where their blades bit tuk'ata flesh, dark blood followed. Wielding their short swords like a surgeon with a laser scalpel, they picked apart their opponents, slicing tendons before stabbing vital organs. The Machine Lord felt the weight bearing down on his chassis lessen as the tuk'ata on top of him was forced to back off as a ranat to its rear removed the poison stinger from its tail in one graceful sword sweep, causing the creature to yip in pain before turning its snout and snarling in rage. That opening was all the Commodore needed. The spiked fist of his right gauntlet came up in a pneumatic punch that shattered the lower jaw of the beast and disoriented it just long enough for the shadow-squeak assailing it to land a lethal blow, thrusting its blade tip through the Sithspawn's ear and out the other side as it pureed the hounds brain. It collapsed on top of the nightmare knight, temporarily pinning him to the ground. Fortunately between the two blades of the ranats closest to him, the tuk'ata on his legs was quickly put down in a storm of slashing steel.

As for Tyna, while whatever was happening in her head was for her alone to know, her actions spoke volumes of her mood. Mouth agape, she really couldn't believe what she was seeing as the nimble vermin took the pack down. The three ranats atop the cave had all leapt down and were in various stages of picking their opponents apart, whereas that first ranat in the kimono was still standing in place, blocking the apprentice's line of fire. He, if it was a he, stared down the last tuk'ata that remained focused on the cave mouth. 'Get out of the way!' thought the apprentice in frustration, even though the battery pack on her blaster only had fumes to spare. Unlike the other rodents, this mouse did not draw the short sword still sheathed on its hip, choosing instead to face the beast with naught but its paws alone. The Sith Hound bounded forwards, swiping across the ranats body with its left claw, only the blow never landed. With a grace of movement reserved for an echani gymnast, the nimble figure evaded the sweeping paw with hooked claws curling off its end, fast and fluid. The ranat countered with a directed flurry of paw strikes into the side of the tuk'ata, each blow hitting a pressure point or nerve that quickly incapacitated the hound. In a furious blur of movement, the tuk'ata it faced was brought down, stunned and quite likely paralized.

It was obvious this was no ordinary rodent. The precision of its hand-to-hand skills bespoke of an unparalleled martial discipline rarely practised these days. This mouse was a master of the ninth and most deadly form of Teräs Käsi, known as Squeak-Fu, the Way of the Ranat.

Fast as the fight began, it was ended almost as equally quick. Save for one instance. One of the Shadow-Squeaks missed its finishing blow on a tuk'ata that was bleeding from a dozen cuts. A combination of fear and furry, it bounded past the ranat assassin and in its panic flung itself at the cave mouth, flying past the ranat in the midnight kimono and coming directly for Tyna.

A groan of straining mechanical joints sounded from beneath a mass of scale and claw. Metallic hands encased in spiked gauntlets of sacred Sith iron gripped the sides of the tuk'ata that had collapsed on top of the nightmare knight, digging the ends of armoured digits into its mutant flesh, and then heaving in a mighty push of bionic brawn. Hefting the dead canine chonk, the Machine Lord shoved the beast aside and sat up. Filthy blood sluiced out from the grill of the warbot's faceplate, having pooled there while the Commodore had been trapped beneath the broken beast. His faceplate flipped up with a squeak, the gore caking its hinges serving as a poor lubricant. The remainder of the organic juices spilled out and dripped down the front of his armoured chassis, red beads getting trapped in new grooves carved by tuk'ata claws across his chest-piece. He raised his right gauntlet and ran one of his cybernetic fingers over the new marks, comprehending for the first time that his previously pristine plate meticulously hand crafted in the hell-forge beneath the Black Temple had been marred by bestial claws.

An odd thing. Receiving damage was an regular part of being the Eye's Executioner; his programming had lost count of the number of mechanical wounds he had suffered over the years, let alone the amount of Starkiller Units that had been destroyed. It had never seemed to trouble him in the past, yet... As he peered through blood grimed photo-receptors at his scratched chassis and shredded skirt, that same hand that had touched the blemish in his plate folded into a clenching fist that vented wisps of scalding steam from his joints. ...this time it bothered him. The Machine Lord had become accustomed to this particular unit, which had been graced by the Oracle's blessed touch. It felt sacrilegious to allow it to come to harm, even if his duties placed it directly in the path of potential danger and most certainly damage.

Synthesized Sourness "This unit maintains 98% operational efficiency, my lady." There was certainly no containing the bitterness that had seeped into the viral program's mood.

A metallic growl sounded from his vocabulator as the Machine Lord got to his feet, standing at the center of a ring of dead beasts, though he could only claim complete victory over one of the potential future throw-rugs. Casting his cybernetic eyes around the clearing between the cave and the tall grass, he was able to get a better grasp of what had happened. His floating eye-bots wirelessly uploaded their battle recordings to his program, which his tactical algorithms began to analyze. Though he had been blinded to much of what had occurred during the brief fight, his grotesque DRK-1s had witnessed everything from a place of elevated safety. The Machine Lord replayed the video footage of Tyna tearing apart the tuk'ata that had assaulted her in the cave, using nothing more than the dark power that coursed through her blessed veins. He replayed the footage several hundred times over the course of about an actual minute, observing all in painstaking detail. An unnatural tremor of pride shook his program as he listened to the eye-bots captured audio of the young apprentice offering the kill as a sacrifice.

She hadn't seemed quite herself in that moment. While temporarily wielding the righteous power, her eyes had taken on the same golden glow as they had back during the events of the Neti glen. He wondered if she even remembered her actions in that moment. Tyna had almost seemed possessed, as though her body had been used as a conduit through which the Eye's power flowed. Although he had nothing to compare the changes that were occurring inside the apprentice, something deep in his cybernetic core told him it was his sacred responsibility to nurture those changes, following the Oracle down whatever dark path it eventually led them to. Being in her presence made him feel closer to the Eye.

It was at this point that the Machine Lord took note of the fact that Error had run off with the Inquisitor Lord's hunting spear and the consecrated chain they needed to bind the Death Lord with. That was a problem. They wouldn't be able to complete the mission without it; however, a thought occurred to him for a temporary remedy until the chains could be recovered. The Machine Lord walked over to the steaming pile of tuk'ata innards spoiling on the sacred soil of the Deep Woods from the beast Tyna had ripped apart in ritual offering. Lowering his gore caked bulk to the ground, the warbot knelt in the spilt viscera and bowed, touching his crimson stained silver forehead to the cooling pile of guts. As he rose from the bow, he slipped both of his spiked gauntlets into the pile of tuk'ata organs and rummaged around, retrieving several long coils of slimy intestine which he began to wrap around his chassis in place of the consecrated chain.

While the tuk'ata's intestinal rope hadn't been bathed in the blood of fifty hannite virgins, it had been a part of a religious ritual, thus perhaps contained a portion of the Eye's radiance. His program acknowledged there wasn't much logic in that, but he took it as a matter of faith, which he had learned long ago often had little to do with logic. Either way he felt less naked while encircled in digestive tract like a grotesque spool of guts.

Reaching down to his hip, the Machine Lord's gore slick digits fumbled for the hilt of his curve bladed filleting knife. The shredded segments of his iron skirt allowed him to draw the small tool into his palm without the need to reach under his armour. He then set to work skinning the top half of the sacrificed beast's torn torso. As he worked, the ranat in the silken midnight hued kimono casually climbed atop the tukata it had submitted with only its bare paws, laying on its side near the mouth of the cave. The mustached mouse stood atop the side of the fallen canine and gave it one last stamp of his foot, allowing the last of the air trapped in its oxygen starved lungs by paralyzed muscles to escape. Its eyes glossed over as it died, expelling one last hot snort before sinking deeper into the dirt. The ranat then atop the dead dog dropped to his rump, sitting on the cooling canine corpse as his sandaled feet casually dangled over its side. The rodent martial artist produced a small circular coin from his lapel, and bit it once between his fangs, eliciting a bluish crackle of electrical current that caused his fur to stand on edge. He then rolled the coin between the clawed fingers of his paw, playing with it as he watched the filthy robot cut away the beasts scaly armoured hide. There was a look of amusement splayed across the rodent's whiskered face as he focused two beady black eyes on the droid. When he squeaked his words were in basic and they possessed the accent common among the eastern ranat clans of Dragusblight.

"That's really gross." Remarked the martial mouse, adding a 'squeak!' at the end.

Up until that point, despite the fact that his eye-bot recordings clearly indicated the silken garbed rodents had been responsible for saving them, the Machine Lord had largely ignored them as though the lower life forms were beyond his notice. That was until the seated ranat commented on the Commodore's grizzly work. A synthesized snarl rumbled from the vocabulator set in the warbot's mouth, his left gauntlet recovering Butchersbane from the ground and gripping it tightly, before sweeping it through the air so that the double bladed head was pointed back towards the offending squeaker.

Synthesized Ire "You should not be here. You have intruded on sacred lands blessed by the Eye's holy sight."

As usual, the Commodore was a paragon of Pzobian diplomacy. Scowling, the mouse looked far less amused as he squeaked his reply, but not before flicking the coin it had been playing with up into the air. It spun end over end, falling casually towards where Tyna was sitting in the dirt. Whether she caught it or allowed it to fall onto the ground, the coin would be revealed to be a cortosis token with the image of a rat embossed on one side and a grinning barabel on the other.

"Intruded?" Squeak! "Now listen here, Krell." Chittered the ranat angrily. "How about you show your old pal Chang Fang a little appreciation for saving your metal butt, huh?" Squeak! "And if anyone is intruding, it's you two." He turned his snout from the warbot to the apprentice, then tucked his snout into his chest and crossed his arms, letting out an irritated squeak. "Playing with a tuk'ata pack on the roof of our burrow...." He shook his head. "Have you no shame?" Squeak!

---

Elsewhere, at the same time as the events in the Deep Woods.

In the dimly lit library of the Black Temple at the heart of the ruins of the once great City of the Eye, a hannite monk in the pearlescent white scapular of their religious order, busied himself by dusting the shelves and putting away volumes in their correct place. It was somewhat dull work, but Mordechai enjoyed the solitude and the silence. As he was tidying up the monk came across an open tome on a sturdy table of iron hard Pzobian oak, bound in what appeared to be gamorrean hide with pages consisting of thin sheets of stretched human skin. He recognized the offensive volume as the Famine Lord's abridged musings on the history of holy Pzob. It was obvious from the morbid choice of materials used to craft the book and the fact that it appeared to have been penned with claw scratches dipped in blood in place of ink. Mordechai's pale lips moved as he read the contents of the displayed page aloud, which he noted was open to a chapter entitled 'The Ranats of Pzob'.

"It is a widely held belief that the Gamorreans were the first to colonize holy Pzob, before the arrival of the Eye, but my investigations have led me to believe otherwise. Long before the porcine clans waged tribal war in the lush green forest, this world was home to the under dwellers, the vermin folk the scientific community has labelled 'ranats'. They first arrived during the height of Celestial civilization. These Celestials were not the cuddly adorable bear folk that we know today as ewoks, but the precursors from which they evolved. Back then they were the size of wookiees. Through the use of their Kwa servants, the Celestials exploited the Kwas infinity gate technology to spread their influence across the galaxy. While it is unknown where they first came into contact with the ranat species, what is clear based on the evidence collected is that these rodents used these technologically advanced races to spread their species across the galaxy, much like the rodents they had evolved from have done since time immemorial. Psychometry has revealed some of the truth to me, though even the memory of stone fades over the course of aeons, and I suspect only Havok would be able to determine the complete validity of these assertions."

"Like the vermin they were, the ranats spread from one world to the next, until at last the Kwa opened an infinity gate on Pzob. When the Celestials empire gave way to the Rakata Empire, these gates became inactive and were lost to the memory of time. I have reason to suspect that Pzob's gate lies beneath the undercroft of the Black Temple itself, though despite my many arguments, my brothers have refused to allow me to excavate the temple in search of answers. They call it sacrilege, which I can see from a certain point of view, but science demands sacrifice. In any event, when the gate was shut off it left the ranats stranded on the future home-world of our Order. Primitive and barely sentient by all accounts, the rodents lived a hunter/gatherer society much like the gamorreans that would later supplant them. This happened after the fall of the Rakata Empire, when hyperdrive technology was eventually discovered by the lesser races and the natives of Gamorr expanded out beyond their homeworld to nearby and fertile Pzob. With the arrival of the physically larger and more aggressive swine tribes, the ranats were forced underground, burrowing deep beneath the planet's crust where they continued to expand their quickly growing population. It wasn't until the arrival of the Eye that their species transformed into the more technologically sophisticated rodents we know today."

"The battle moon's influence on the planet was profound. If you've read this far then you're already aware of my thoughts about its influence on the stretch of terrain dubbed the 'Deep Woods'." Mordechai snorted upon reading this, scanning the the very lengthy previous chapter. More long winded drivel, he surmised. The hannite continued reading aloud. "Its arrival seemed to have a direct effect on the ranat population living beneath Pzob's surface, increasing their intelligence and transforming them in a number of ways. The different burrows began to take on the various qualities and attributes of the Almighty Eye's avatars. Those living beneath the region where the Warmaster conducted his gamorrean hunts took on warlike tendencies, breeding the very first storm vermin of Clan Skrittlespike. Those living closer to the Death Lord's domain became obsessed with death, mastering the art of meting it out to others, forming the Shadow Squeaks of Clan Moonblade. Though Force sensitivity is rare among the ranat species, those few with an affinity for the fey became the first Far Squeaks, emulating the Dread Seer with prophetic visions. Lastly, following in the footsteps of the mad genius Kaan, were the Warlock Enginseers of Clan Rustrot, crafting insane machinations with their growing mastery of dark science."

"Although I doubt any of the other High Lords were aware of it, a war was raged in Pzob's under-verse between these different factions of ranats, which would later become known as 'The War of the Rat'. With a combined population of billions, the ranats waged cataclysmic battles that nearly consumed the entire planet, detonating numerous atomic devices near the core of the planet that caused massive ground quakes the gamorrean tribes associate with our sorcery. It is possibly they would have continued to go unnoticed by our Order if not for a random happenstance. One evening while helping myself to a late night snack in the temple pantry, I stumbled upon one of the creatures helping itself to a slab of gamorrean bacon in the attached larder. It fled upon discovery, disappearing into a narrow hole in the wall. Despite sending several of the smallest hannite children into the hole after it, none of the squirts returned to report what they had seen, forcing me to take matters into my own claws. Unafraid of tight dark places, I squeezed my body through the opening and began my journey into the Under-Empire that existed unbeknownst beneath our very feet."

"Blah, blah, blah!" Repeated Mordechai, skipping ahead until he found a more interesting part. The tales Dragus told about his adventures beneath the surface were ridiculous to the point of beggaring belief. "Here we go, this seems more interesting." He cleared his throat and continued. "After saving the ranat princess from the sarlaac, I brokered a peace between clans Skrittlespike and Moonblade, though even I must admit it wouldn't have been possible without the assistance of Far Squeaker Havonella, who owed me a favour after preventing the destruction of the Far Squeaker Enclave by Clan Rustrot's insanely inspired Doom-Wheel of Spinning Destruction. No easy feat, mind you, for the Doom-Wheel was a super weapon on par with the late Emperor's World Devestators. It was only as I was brought before the high verminlords of the ranat clans of Pzob that our connection was revealed. You see, as the last Sith elevated to the position of High Lord within the Order, the ranat clans had already evolved in the shape of my brothers, each clan choosing a different avatar of the Eye to emulate. Yet unmistakably they all shared something in common with me. The same unnatural hunger that consumed my every waking hour was also present in these rodents, who for millennia had been gnawing away at the roots of our homeworld. They believed me to be some sort of prophet, an entity they called the Harbinger of Decay. Swearing themselves to my service, the clans were finally united in common cause."

Mordechai skimmed ahead, but the rest of the chapter mostly spoke about the mass mouse migration from Pzob to their new burrows on Roon in the subterranean realm of Dragusblight. The hannite shook his head and closed the heavy volume. "What a load of rubbish." He said, picking the tome up from the table. Rather then add it to the book collection on one of the shelves, the monk took the thick encyclopedia sized tome to the library's glowing hearth and tossed the book into the fire. He held his hands near the blaze, attempting to alleviate some of the unnatural cold that had settled into his bones as he had read the ridiculous fictional fabrication. It was fictional, right?

---

Synthesized Anger "My name is not Krell, fleshling filth. You stand in the presence of two of the Almighty's Eye's chosen champions. I am Commodore Starkiller, the Eye's Executioner and..." Interrupted.

"Greeeaaaattt. More Eye worshippers." He squeaked sarcastically, before muttering to himself. "The Devourer warned me I'd run in to no end of your kind."

Fuming in rage to the point of steam geysers rising from his venting circuits, the Machine Lord put away his filleting knife and held up the tuk'ata skin he'd been working on. Swaying in the gentle breeze was a make-shift vest that looked to be about Tyna's size, a bit crude and still sopping wet with gore. He let the garment hang from his clenched right gauntlet, still pointing at the ranat that had identified itself as 'Chang Fang' with the sorcerous war-axe held in his left hand. He stood, rising from the remains of the dead creature and turned to face the mouthy mouse. The other five ranats in matching shadow silk keikogi, fanned out and raised their cortosis swords in response to the Machine Lord's aggressive posturing. Meanwhile, the Commodore's four eye-bots observed, three of them floating just beyond the reach of the ninja-mice, while the last with the flayed spider head drifted towards Tyna, observing the apprentice with its singular filmy lens. An advanced visual scan of the Oracle determined that her head wound had reopened and was in need of medical care. Though he wished for nothing more than to hack the smart talking rodent's head from its body, that course of action was downgraded as less important than seeing to the Oracle's injuries. Commodore Starkiller lowered his axe, causing Chang Fang to raise a curious brow. With a casual wave of his paw, the ranat motioned to his vermin-kin to lower their weapons as well. He watched from atop the tuk'ata corpse serving as his seat as the Machine Lord went to Tyna's side.

Clearly unconcerned with infection, the warbot prodded the opened skin flap on the apprentice's head with his gore slickened metallic index finger. "I believe ID10 is correct." Said Starkiller with synthetic concern. "In the absence of a supply of synthflesh, bacta spray would be the best method of treating this wound. Unless you were prefer I stitch it closed." A grinding metallic squeal sounded as the warbot brought one hand under his silvered chin and stroked its sticky blood spattered surface. "I did not bring any thread, but perhaps if we were to use some of the tuk'atas sinew fibres..." His photo-receptors brightened as a thought occurred to him. Reaching down to his side, he produced the vest he had made for Tyna out of the flayed hide of the tuk'ata she had killed. "Oh, it nearly slipped my memory banks. I made this for you."

Much to Chang Fang's annoyance, it seemed he had been forgotten about in favour of the girl. The Shogun of the Black Fang had an idea who the robot was, based off the information provided to him by the dark apothecary, but he had no idea about the human. He surmised she must be important though if the warbot prioritized her welfare over gutting him. The ranat slid off his makeshift seat and took a few steps closer to the cave mouth where the hulking warbot was tending to the human female. His whiskers twitched and an amused look crossed his narrow snout.

"Whenever you two are done canoodling, I have a proposition for how you can pay us back for saving your hides from that pack of beasts." Squeak!

"I could tell you were the smart one." Squeaked Chang Fang, eyeing the scuffed up Machine Lord with one beady orb while he focused the other attentively on the teenage Sith apprentice. He leaned against the wall of the cave mouth, his wire thin tail swaying in the mid-day breeze as a sour note of air blew in from the North.

Where to start? The history of ranats on Pzob was long and storied, but the Eye worshippers were unlikely to believe most of it, despite at least a quarter of it even being true. He decided to stick to the pertinent details. That stood a better chance of avoiding argument with the automaton and perhaps reaching an agreement with what he assumed was its more fleshy master.

"Here my story." Squeak! "Many years ago my Clan called the warren beneath your feet home, for you stand upon the former burrows of ranat Clan Moonblade. Deep below the surface, my people mastered the echani combat arts and even developed the ninth and most deadly form of Teras Kasi to date. Squeak-Fu, the Way of the Ranat. We were the greatest assassins the Under Empire had ever seen, striking from the shadows in the dead of night, silent and unseen." Squeak! "We even had our pheromone glands removed..." He tapped scars on either side of his neck with a gnarled rodent finger. "...so that our scent wouldn't betray us. We were led by Shogun Scree Ironpaw, wielder of the Doujikiri Yasutsna, the Death Shard. It is a sword, the finest ever made, and the symbol of authority for any Vermin Lord wishing to claim dominion over Clan Moonblade." Squeak!

Pausing in his story, the martial mouse retrieved a long stemmed pipe from within the lapel of his silken kimono. He removed a pouch of what looked like narcotic spice and placed a pinch in the pipe's bowl end before lighting it with a flick of a match and suckling in a lungful of sweet euphoric ryll. A purple fume rose from the bowl, scattered as the rodent released the smoke he had been holding in his tiny but impressive lungs, briefly obscuring his chalk white snout behind a delightful mind altering cloud.

"I claim leadership of Clan Moonblade for myself." Squeak! "But my position is far from secure. I need the Doujikiri Yasutsna, which was last carried by our former Shogan. After the events of Ranat-Reunification when the Great Devourer brought the great ranat race together in united purpose, we migrated from our warren on Pzob to the volcanic chasms of Dragusblight on thrice cursed Roon. During our departure, Shogun Ironpaw attempted to pilfer weapons from a munitions plant to the north, the very same that had turned the once clean waters of the Rodentia River black with industrial runoff. According to the only Shadow Squeak to survive those events, the Shogun and his guard encountered resistance, leading to Scree Ironpaw's death and the loss of the Death Shard." He squeaked sadly. "It is my belief that the sword remains inside the weapons factory. My fellow rodents and I have attempted to enter the facility on our own, but encountered...mmm, things. Humans I think, Eye worshippers based on their garb, but not like you. Their bodies and minds seemed to have...rotten. Though our blades pierced their vital organs, they refused to die and we were forced to retreat." Squeak!

His furry brow narrowed, and he stroked his fu-manchu style whiskers as he made his offer.

"Here is what I am proposing." Squeak! "You two appear to be heading in the direction of the old plant, or at least that is what we have surmised since we started following you after you entered the tall grass. Perhaps our paths crossed for a reason. I don't know or care what your reasons are, we only care about the sword. But, we can't retrieve it on our own. I suggest we work together, at least as far as the weapons plant. If you help us acquire our Clan's symbol of authority, we'll help you contend with the dangers of these lands." His beady eyes briefly flitted to the tuk'ata corpses all around. "You two seem woefully ill-prepared to handle this stretch of wilderness on your own." Squeak!

From her position sitting on the ground, Lady Tyna looked up at the ranat as he spoke. The well dressed Ranat lounged on the slain Tuk'ata and providing a very brief history of his clan and his claim to leadership based on possessing a revered weapon called the Death Shard. Once again, Tyna noted that the ranat referred to the Great Devourer. She felt her thoughts drawn to Lord Dragus- as if the dark side was bearing witness to his deeds. The only one she knew that could properly lay claim to such a title was the High Lord of Famine. She had been finding traces of him in the deep woods and this was unlikely to be coincidental.

She nodded and listened with interest as Chang Fang described hannites that resisted the blows of their shogun and footsoldiers. "Refusing to die..." She nodded, feeling stronger as the medications that ID10 had given her were taking full effect. "That might be a sign of Lord Mortale." She looked up to Starkiller to see him venting thick steam and fixing his glowing red eyes on the ranat. The Ranat puffed his own blue smoke from his pipe before finishing his proposition. The sith apprentice stood up.

The breeze caught the blue smoke just right and waffed it over Tyna.

"I think we have to..." Tyna felt her perception alter and the world seemed to slow. She looked down at her hands and saw reptilian hands and claws. "What in the...?!" She looked up to see the sky turn dark, as if someone had rolled the atmosphere up like a scroll. She could see past the sky to the stars above as if she had been on a space walk. The Pzob nebula floated prominently in her view. The stars all seemed to shrink in fear, seeking to escape the glowing cloud of space dust. But she felt no fear. Only longing.

"The Eye's sight is upon us. It is watching." Tyna stared at the sky another moment before she blinked and looked around her as the brief vision ended. "Starkiller, it is with us. It sees us and knows our names. Our real names. It calls to us and we must become powerful enough to answer its call as our masters did. We must!" She looked down at her hands again relieved to see they were human and her normal pale hue. She opened and closed them to be sure. "This I know."  With renewed energy, she turned to Chang Fang. "Sir Fang, we are heading for the weapons plant. I see no reason we can't go together." She looked back to Starkiller, who did not visibly object. After a pause, she continued, "I think it is fair that we help you search the plant for the Dohgeekearee Yasootzmah, death shard." Tyna's pronunciation was clumsy. She butchered it as well as Starkiller butchered most things. "We also had a mechanized attachment but..."
"-ayday! Mayday! Can anyone read me?"  Darth Tyna slapped her hand to her ear piece as it crackled to life.
"They're alive!" She blurted to Starkiller. It was unnecessary for her to shout; Starkiller could hear the transmission on his own internal comlink. She was almost glad her prophecy hadn't come true. "Tyna here! Fuck, I mean Quasar-2. What's your sit-rep?"  Tyna looked around and grabbed her backpack.  She was ready to move out. 
"Rooster-1, Mayday mayday mayday!  Any First Order forces, please respond!"
They must not have heard her transmission.  "Rooster-1, Quasar-2, I read you. Do you read me?" She motioned to ID10 to boost her signal.
"-vehicle damage, one casualty. We need med-vac! We can't raise the Belphegor!"
"Rooster-1, can you hear me? Copy if you hear me.  I repeat, copy if you can hear me." Her heart sunk at the report about the casualties.
"Rooster-1, this is Quasar-2." She motioned to ID10 to boost her signal again- all the way up. "Who is injured?"  She wanted to know. She hoped it was Commander Martaine. 
"Rooster-1, Mayday mayday mayday! Anyone who can hear this, please respond! We are on the banks of the black river and need assistance!"
"Rooster-1, this is Quasar-2. If you cannot reach them, I will not be able to. We have to assume we're on our own for now. Follow the plan. Advance along the river to rendezvous with us. Home in on ID10's tracking beacon."
"Mayday mayday mayday..." They couldn't hear her.  If the AT-ST was unable to reach any First Order assets with their more powerful communication array, it was unlikely Tyna could. Something about the area was jamming or interfering with her transmissions. She hadn't heard the clanking of the AT-ST, so she estimated it had to be more than 5 clicks up the black river/ Rodentia River. 

Tyna addressed the party. "The other half of our group is up stream. Fang, Starkiller, are we ready to move out?"
Synthesized boast. "Milady, as an executioner, I am always ready."
The crafty Ranat-sama twirled his whiskers in mild amusement before he issued a command with a guttural "HUP!"  In the blink of an eye, he flipped from the Tuk'ata onto the ground, with his shadow paws at attention. "We GO! For the honor of Shogun Ironpaw!" Squeak!
"BONZAI!" 
"For the glory of Clan Moonblade!" Squeak!
"BONZAI!"
"For the Doujikiri Yasutsna!" Squeak!
"BONZAI!!!!"

Moments later, Tyna and Starkiller were running through the tall grasses of the plains and following closely behind the agile shadowpaw warriors.  

*    *    *

"Rooster-1, Mayday mayday mayday! Is there anyone out there?!"
The transmissions in her earpiece were incessant, but grew stronger the further they traveled upstream. She continued trying to contact the AT-ST. "Rooster-1, this is Quasar-2. Can you hear me?" 
"Rooster-1, Mayday mayday mayday! First Order scouting patrol. We engaged multiple hostile monsters and sustained damage and one casualty. Please respond!"
Tyna could overhear voices screaming in the background on the comlink transmission.
"It hurts! It hurts so bad!"
"You're doing great! Just hang on bud!"

"Rooster-1, this is Quasar-2, I hear you. Can you hear me?"
Rooster-1 finally acknowledged. "Quasar-2! Roger, I hear you!"
"They can hear us, Starkiller!  Rooster-1, where are you now? Who's injured?"  Tyna let Starkiller go ahead of her, as they progressed along the shortcuts and trails with which the ranats were so familiar. It would be easier for her to follow through the tall grasses behind the broader wake of the wardroid. It was hard enough to follow the nimble rodents moving at speed and she was diverting some of her attention to the conversation she was having. 
"We reached the river!  We're on the river. Where are you? Sit-Rep: Taug is injured. The walker is damaged. Barely able to move."  
Tyna could hear a heartbreaking voice wailing in the background, "It should have been me!"  That had to be Jarvins. She could imagine him cradling his younger brother with who knows what kind of injuries... 
"We made it to the river also. How is Taug doing?"  
"Just a second. Let me check." 
So many questions. How the fuck was commander Martaine not already helping Jarvins take care of Taug?  She waited as she jogged along, listening to what she could overhear through the comlink.

"How's Taug?"
"He was fighting me for a minute and he bit me, but then he passed out. I think he's still breathing. But, I'm not so sure now. The bacta was working, but now it isn't and he is bleeding again. I keep thinking about how the monster's stabbed him with their tails. I wonder if their tails had some kind of poison??" 
"Uh, Jarvins, you might need some bactamine yourself. You have a big gouge on your arm also."  
"It's nothing, it can wait. We need to save all the bacta we've got for Taug."
"Now Jarvins, don't be a hero. We'll need that bacta for our hike back to base." 
"Sir! I'm not going anywhere without Taug!"
"Don't get emotional. Look at him. How is he going to walk back with only half a leg?
"We'll carry him. Or Agent Tyna's droid can carry him."
"He was shouting gibberish before he passed out, and he bit you hard enough to draw blood. You think you can carry him when he tries to bite your face off?"
"What are you saying? What, what are you doing?!"
"He is out of his mind and combat ineffective. He is of no further use to the First Order. Stand aside."
"How dare you?! After what he did for us??"
"Stand aside! That's an order!"
"You'll have to shoot me first! How long do you think you'll last out there without my blaster? You can't hit the broad side of a bantha!  Or would you rather depend on Agent Tyna and her droid to get us out of her? I'm all you have left!"
There was a tense silence. She didn't hear a blaster shot. Tyna imagined that the cowardly Martaine sullenly holstered his blaster instead of putting down Taug or Jarvins.  Martaine came back on the comlink. "Rooster-1 here, Taug is unresponsive. He lost a leg. Jarvins is also injured, but still able to perform most of his duties."
"We're already on our way."

She looked at the sun lower in the sky. They might reach the AT-ST before sunset.

Fang and the shadow paws avoided entering the clearing and melted back into the grasses to watch from their concealment.

Darth Tyna and Commodore Starkiller arrived at the clearing shortly behind them. The AT-ST stood on the bare dirt on the river bank, poisoned by the black waters. The AT-ST was smoking from the engine bay, mauled, scratched, dented and it no longer could stand straight. Broken Tuk'ata claws were embedded in the armor. The E-web miniblaster on the roof was mangled. Behind the scout walker, a leaking trail of lubricant dripped onto the ground and had caught fire, quickly burning grass and shrubs before the lubricant soaked into the ground.

Tyna pulled her trusty sith-forged blaster pistol "Guts" from her thigh as she entered the clearing behind Starkiller. The whole clearing felt wrong. Next to the Scout Walker she could see a human figure laying face down in the dirt. Where was Martaine? "Hello?" Tyna called out to the clearing, half expecting a pack of Tuk'ata's to emerge from the tall grasses in an ambush. Despite the walker's condition, it's roof was still the high ground and the most defensible position. "Rooster-1, Quasar-2, We're here. Man down?" Her eyes landed on the person laying at the base of the walker. Assured that she was ready to react to an ambush, she jogged over to find Jarvins lying face down with two blaster bolts in his back and a bloody gash in his arm. Tyna squatted beside him to shake his shoulders as ID10 hovered and pointed a probe with a light at Jarvins' head. "Jarvins?! Are you ok?"
"Boota-beet-doot."
"Well fuck." Her probe droid's scans indicated Jarvins was dead. Over head she heard the sound of the cabin hatch unlocking and clanging opening.
"Agent Tyna?"  Commander Martaine's cautious voice came from above.
"I'm down here." She called out, as she holstered her blaster, but left it unfasted for a quick draw.
"About time you showed up." He grumbled. Commander Martaine deployed the crew service ladder as his head peaked over the edge of the walker to look down at her. "What the-! Agent! What the hell did you do to your uniform!??" Hypocritically, he ignored his own smudged and bloodstained uniform to focus on hers. "That's not regulation!" He motioned to her, head-to-toe. "Where is your helmet and service blaster rifle?!" Where moments earlier he had been begrudgingly glad to see her, now he was berating her.
Her helmet and chest plate were missing and her one-piece armored jumpsuit was rolled down to her waist, exposing her chest binder and bare midriff. She also appeared to be wearing a bloody vest of untanned animal skins, fleshy-side out. "Is that what I think it is? Animal skins? By the Moons of Cato!"

Tyna looked down at herself, with her standard issue athletic bra visible to all. Suddenly she realized Martaine could look down at her chest from above. Tyna hugged arms to her chest to cover up, wishing she was invisible. She turned her back to him, walking away and blushing in embarrassment. She found herself staring at her distorted reflection in Commodore Starkiller's chest armor, right above the virgin blood encrusted chain and Tuk'ata entrails wrapped across his body.

"Don't you turn your back on me when I am speaking to you!" He shouted after her. Martaine saw the back of her shaved head was bloody, black and blue and smeared with bacta. Her bare upper arms and shoulders were covered in bruises. Martaine took delight in the fact that her plan for a stealthy crossing of the plains apparently didn't work out for her either. It made him feel like less of a failure.

Starkiller's voice boomed: Synthesized rebuke: "Silence!" With his 7 foot tall mass, he stepped forward, shielding the Saint from Martaine's gaze. "Do not offend the Eye's justice."

The towering be-spiked war-bot was still intimidating, but seemed less invulnerable now that Martaine could see that his shiny armor was damaged with gouges, dents, and scratches. "What? How dare YOU speak to ME, droid?" Martaine descended from the roof of the AT-ST, while shouting at Starkiller. "It's always the Eye! The Eye this, and the Eye that." His tone was mocking. "Fuck this Eye nonsense! You're a hunk of backward, malfunctioning, gut-obsessed metal, with no imagination, or freewill. You have no soul, no feelings, no value. You're rubbish at chopping wood and following orders!" The commander hopped off the last rung of the service ladder. "See that river, DROID?" He emphasized, as he pointed at the tainted corrosive black waters of the Rodentia River. "I order you, DROID, to walk over to that river and take a long bath. I bet you won't, because you're shit, just like everything else on this shit planet!"

The armored walking death-machine's red eye's burned bright and steam hissed and blasted from his vents in jets. The Blessed Seer of the Eye, High Lord Havok himself had commissioned Starkiller to create his present new body. It was unthinkable that his parts, processors, chassis, and armor were anything but his holy fate as foretold by the seer. Starkiller reviewed the Seer's exact words: "Bacca constructed you, and no other war-droid. Knowing Bacca, nothing would please him more than to see you in good condition when he wakes. You are precious to him. Construct a body that matches the soul he forged in you." The seer's holy word commanded Starkiller to build a body to match his soul, ergo, the definitive truth was that Starkiller possessed a soul. Furthermore, Starkiller was precious to High Lord Bacca. By his processor's calculations, there were fewer than 10 things in the galaxy that were more important than being precious to the Holy Sage of Battle. Beyond this, he stood as the trusted friend of Saint Tyna, ready to sunder man or beast to carry out her judgments and commands. Under his feet lay the blessed terra firma of holy Pzob. This planet and star system, unlike any other, was the divine dwelling place of the Omnissiah. It's value was beyond measure. The dark temple lay under the divine gaze of the Eye.  The sacred Deep Woods and these plains were teeming with dire beings, twisted and magnified by the Eye. Beyond the ken of any mortal or machine he was blessed to watch over Tyna's metamorphosis here in the heart of Pzob's preternatural darkness; in the womb of the Eye. Every transistor of his divinely sanctioned circuit boards bristled with electronic wrath. His voice blasted in sonic judgment. Synthesized rage: "BLASPHEMER!!" There could be only one punishment. Death. The War-droid resolved to wipe Martaine's stain from the face of this holy planet. Synthesized judgment: "Kneel to receive the Eye's blessing!" By blessing, he meant punishment- which also was a blessing, since it flowed forth from the Eye.  Starkiller hoped Martaine would resist. It would make cleaving the cowardly man all the more pleasant, to use an organic turn of phrase. In an instant Starkiller drew his mighty axes, now glowing bright with runes. Starkiller could feel the Saint's hand pull on the sanctified chain wrapped on his body, to hold him back.
"No not yet." Tyna could see the Pzobian sun hovering over the Rodentia River, nearly ready to begin its march into the underworld, beyond the horizon. "Judgment is mine." She had predicted that only one would live to see the sunset, and the sun had not yet set. She had hoped it would be one of the brothers that survived though...

Synthesized deference: "Milady."  Though it strained his systems to do so, he would defer to the will of the Eye, as manifest through the Saint's inspired judgment. Though the armored mechanical executioner towered over her five foot frame, he faithfully lowered his glowing axes, ButchersBane and Goreguzzler. He would trust in the judgment of the Eye, though he fervently prayed that he would be the messenger of death, and that the Eye's will concerning Martaine's life and demise would be transmitted through his hands.

It gave Tyna confidence to see Starkiller stand ready to back her up and defend her. It brought her back to herself. She was not the scared, shamed child that she felt like inside-- she was Havok's apprentice, heir to his powers and favored by the Eye. And they were alone out here in the vast plains of Pzob, no one from the First Order could see if she used her light saber or the force... except Martaine.

"That droid might kiss your ass, but in the First Order, rank and regulations matter!" Commander Martaine continued speaking with a traumatic desperation of a man that only had those things left along with an ingrained air of superiority. His fear of the droid was plain on his face, even as he continued reviling them both. "He can't even follow orders! And look at you! Hiding behind your broken droid!"

The sith apprentice turned around and stepped out from behind Starkiller to face Martaine. "What happened to Taug and Jarvins, Commander?" Tyna's voice was stronger now. It wasn't that shw was over looking the hateful words that passed his lips, but they were aggrivating his case. She would be his judge. She made the prophecy. She could break it. But first she wanted a confession...  <"Kill him. No one will see. No one will know.">  She could hear the small distant voice in her head awaken; the voice that whispered dark things to her.
"I'm the one asking the questions! I out rank you!" Commander Martaine had walked over to Jarvins' body and was blocking it from her view. 

"I sense fear in you. Fear that I will discover part of the truth and condemn you."  Tyna could almost smell it. Lord Havok had ensured she was present for his interrogations of spies and partisans and she had watched her master work until floods of words poured out of them.  "But I will give you the chance to set the record straight. Tell me what happened."
"That's not how rank works." Martaine sneered, "Stand at attention when I am talking to you!" His eyes wandered over her body. He wanted to better observe her attire, or lack thereof.
Tyna ignored his order and crossed her arms over her chest, disobediently thwarting him.  "You're in no position to dictate orders to me."  Did he even realize how close she was to just killing him?" I am an agent of Imperial Intelligence. This is my mission."
Commander Martaine was so angry and flustered, he sputtered as he fumbled with his holster for his sidearm. "I never!... you bitch,... runt..." He finally pulled out his blaster pistol and pointed it at Tyna, certain that his weapon would turn the tables and make her cave and submit to him. "Lieutenant, I already executed one soldier today," he motioned to Jarvins,  "for insubordination."
"Careful, Martaine. It is my duty to log the truth in my mission log." She wagged her finger, with more bravado than she felt.  "But I may overlook your present indiscretion if you tell me what happened." So far her interrogation felt far more clumsy than skillful. Tyna could feel the force quicken her flesh, readying her muscles to dodge and counter in case her trick did not work.

Her words gave Martaine pause. She could see the wheels turning in his head, believing he could manipulated her. He lowered his blaster. "Very well." He started, "Everything went according to plan until we were attacked by those monsters. You had a name for them, and I don't recall- Tuk- something."
"Tuk'ata"
"Yes well, they attacked and I valiantly cut down many with the E-web, until we were about to be overwhelmed and then Taug blundered and abandoned his post..." Martaine paused to think. "Yes, Taug's incompetence got him wounded by a monster that was lunging for me. I heroically pulled Taug to safety, while Jarvins... fumbled with the E-web and got it damaged. After we managed to hold off the monsters, I kept a cool head and personally piloted Rooster-1 to the safety of the river bank, while Jarvins neglected his duties in favor of being a nurse to his brother." Martaine's voice was dripping with scorn for the brothers. "I executed Jarvins for insubordination and putting the walker at risk. If they had both done their duty, the AT-ST would be unscathed and they would still be alive." 
Tyna patiently waited for the commander to finish his narrative, which was clearly fictitious. His story made himself out to be the hero struggling with an insubordinate and incompetent crew. Nothing he said appeared to match up with her knowledge of the brothers which, from what she saw, had been competent, devoted to their duty and to each other. She didn't even need Havok's soothsayer training to see through Martaine's lies. "I think we both know your story is bullshit."
An expression of fear shot across Martaine's face before he regained his composure. "You can't prove that. I am the only survivor and you know nothing about what happened to us. You have no basis to contradict me."
"Tell me the truth." At that moment the body laying on the ground in the long shadow of the walker stirred. "Or perhaps Jarvins will." Tyna pointed and Martaine whirled, bug-eyed, to stare. Jarvins slowly rolled over and sat up.
"That... That can't be!" Martaine gasped, "You fell! I shot you! You're dead!"  Jarvins sat with a blank expression; the two blaster wounds in the driver's chest and a bloody gash in his arm highlighted the miraculousness of the moment.
"Jarvins! Are you ok?" Tyna asked, keeping an eye on Martaine's reaction. "What happened to you?"

"Impossible!" Martaine's voice was a squeal. "Don't answer!"  Jarvins slowly climbed to his feet, and stood wavering as if drunk or in a stupor. One of Starkiller's probe droid hovered over to examine Jarvins. Tyna also motioned to ID10 to see to Jarvins. It hovered over to the wounded man and started scanning him. 
"Fine! I'll tell you what happened!" Martaine talked fast, before Jarvins could speak. "We got a strut stuck while crossing the plains and we had to dig it out. Jarvins did the digging, while Taug was on the E-web. I was at the walker controls when the monsters attacked. Taug kept firing and Jarvins kept digging, until the E-web overheated. There was something else out there, something else killing the Tuk'ata. I didn't see what happened, but Taug saved Jarvins from an attack and lost his legs. He's still up in the cabin." Martaine pointed up at the AT-ST cabin with his blaster. "I piloted and finally we reached the river. Jarvins was treating Taug when I raised you on the comlink. Taug lost too much blood and died. Jarvins... I don't know what happened. When Taug died, Jarvins blamed me, went insane, and attacked me! He bit me! Out of nowhere, he bit me!" Martaine turned to show Tyna the bloody bite marks on the back of his neck. "See?"
"How did Jarvin's get out here?"
"We were on the roof waiting for you when he attacked me. I managed to push Jarvins off the roof...  And then I shot him while he was laying on the ground."  Martaine swallowed hard and squinted in the dazzling orange light of the setting sun reflecting off the river. "The First Order is no place for insubordination... or sentimentality, even if your brother died." His tone was apologetic. The commander tugged at his collar, to breath better, before unfastening it. "It is really quite warm out." In the space of several minutes Martaine had started sweating profusely. "-even though it's almost night."   Martaine's confession took the bluster out of him. He looked like a defeated man, but also sure that Jarvins would not contradict him.
"Boota-beet-doot." Tyna's ID10 probe droid repeated its earlier report.
"He's dead?" Darth Tyna scrutinized the contradiction standing before her. Jarvins' face was pale with a blank stare. She had seen it before in drug-addicts in the slums of Corescant... and on the faces of the dead. They were on a mission seeking out necromantic activity. It looked like they found some. "Necromancy!" She hissed.

On the river, the last of the sun's incandescent sphere disappeared over the horizon, leaving the sky painted in brilliant shades of oranges and reds.

The sith apprentice, Darth Tyna, did not think she and Commodore Starkiller would find the Death-Lord's necrotic influence so quickly, and on the plains. She expected to be in the shadow of Mount Soulfire before they found it. Jarvins was the first opportunity she had to see necromancy and she stared at him. His expression showed no recognition of her as his glassy eyes looked through her face to some distant point behind her. It was like his mind had abandoned him.  The husk of Jarvins seemed to have an appetite though, enough to be enthralled with the end of intestine that Starkiller waved in front of his face. 


In contrast to when Darth Tyna had shut down the Commodore and his rage, Starkiller seemed almost happy playing with Jarvins; far more interested in the AT-ST driver now then when Jarvins was alive. Tyna wondered if the death of Error affected the War-droid. It had barely registered with Tyna while they were hiking along the river earlier. Maybe Starkiller took it hard? She had been so caught up in trying to contact the Scout Walker, that she didn't even ask Starkiller if he was ok. She felt a momentary pang of guilt.  Tyna wondered if the War-droid was more organic than she supposed in a former iteration. Perhaps by a different name, Krell, as Chang Fang seemed to call him.


The throwing star that sprouted from Jarvin's head had the telltale marks of cortosis. Lord Havok had a prized gauntlet made out of the stuff. Darth Tyna instantly changed her estimation of Chang Fang and his Ranat footsoldiers.  In all her experience in the First Order, cortosis was only used to interact with high energy beams. Usually in heavy machinery or shielding. Weapons made of the stuff were themselves so rare that they were a novelty. From what Havok said, cortosis was very difficult to work with, and harder to make into a blade with a fine edge. And the only benefit that the cortosis imparted to such a forged blade was making it resistant to blasters and light sabers. Most normal individuals didn't have the reflexes to deflect blaster shots with the heavier physical blade of a cortosis sword. In Havok's estimation, only a person that expected to fight against a light saber would carry or prize a blade made of the fickle material. But did any of that apply to throwing stars? The purpose of cortosis throwing stars remained a mystery to her.  


Commander Martaine's xenophobic outburst was far more tame than some that she had heard from other officers in the First Order, but that didn't stop the shadow squeak from exacting lightning fast retribution.  The sith apprentice again noted that the foot-soldier responsible held a short sword, which also appeared to contain cortosis. Tyna had to accept that any thoughts she had entertained earlier about betraying and overpowering these furry warriors had not been a realistic possibility.  It would have been a fatal underestimation, when she first met them, to think that she would be able to kill them with her light saber alone. She packed that away as a successfully learned lesson regarding the value of being deliberate and discerning in sizing-up potential opponents. 

She regarded Chang Fang more closely. Based on Fang's helpfulness, he seemed like a creature of honor. The "aura" that she could see around the graying hairs of his head did not indicate that he harbored murderous intent toward her.  When she closed her eyes, she could see the aura glow all the brighter. It had become more visible to her force augmented sight the longer she watched him. It showed the soul of a champion, touched by the rich undercurrents of the dark side of Pzob.  He had fought countless battles, and in his darkest defeat was where he found his greatest personal triumph. His unstoppable discipline to carry on marked him as a creature of strength-- with a weighty future still before him despite his age. Retrieving the Death Shard was only the beginning. At this point, Tyna was as much a supporting character in his life story, as he was in hers.  Tyna no longer regarded him with suspicion, beyond the nature of his clans weaponry. She abandoned any plans of backstabbing or double crossing him, unless, or until he or his clan forced her to re-evaluate her trust in him.


Not even his severed hand was enough to shut Martaine up or end his annoying complaints- only now it was about his hand. "My hand!" He kept repeating.  Martaine still had the presence of mind to pull his trauma tourniquet from his boot. As he put it on his wrist, the loop automatically tightened on his new stump and stemmed the bleeding. He collected his severed hand in his lap, not reacting or apparently comprehending the talk about infection. His had already run pale and gray from the loss of blood. Where before he had been sweating, now he suddenly seemed to be shivering as his body started to go into shock.

"Infection?" Darth Tyna stood wide-eyed in recognition and then fear at the suggestion that the necromancy had a pathogenic origin.  She looked down at the vest that Starkiller made for her, where the raw flesh of the Tuk'ata skin had been dripping and drying.  While she luckily put it on so that the bloody flesh was not against her skin, flecks of blood had dripped onto her shoulders and smeared on her arms... and Starkiller had poked her headwound with his bloody finger after skinning the Tuk'ata!  Without speaking, she stripped off her backpack, blasterpack bandolier and bandolier of grenades. Slowly, carefully, she let the blood encrusted Tuk'ata-skin vest slip from her shoulders. "ID10, I need you to scan me for an infection!" She tried not to sound too scared.

Beep bee, doo, dock dock.
The appendages on her back wiggled and stretched involuntarily, free from the confines of the vest. The black scaly webbed hands spread their fingers and beat against the breeze with a meter wing span.  After a flutter, they folded themselves up to lay against her back. She wasn't even paying attention to them. How they would be perceived by the others was the least of her worries.
"I know you're not a medical droid, but can't your probe-thing do that?  Or scan my vest?" Tyna hoped she didn't need to discard the vest. It was a one-of-a-kind gift... and She was nearly bare from the waist up and needed the clothing.
Dock dock, doop doop.
"Right, Basic first aid, acute illness, and trauma response. I get that your probe wasn't built for diagnostics or patholo..." Tyna paused,  "Finding pathogens."   She looked to Starkiller and Chang Fang for guidance. "Could I be infected?"

"Ha. Not so... brave now... MUTANT C**T!" Martaine spat. Martaine had managed to stop whining about his hand long enough to see her wings and continue being a xenophobic, sexist ass.
"Shut up you prig!" Tyna ripped the double-bladed light saber from the small of her back and threw it at Martaine, not bothering to turn it on.  The hilt struck him full-on in the mouth and silenced him. He clutched at his mouth, before coughing out several bloody teeth. With the Force, she stretched out and called the weapon back to her hand. She had already decided the Commander would die (not that there was any doubt) and so there was no need to hide who, or what, she was from him. There wasn't any need to explain it either.

Without an answer yet from Starkiller or Fang, Tyna pointed the lightsaber hilt at Martaine accusingly. "You weren't supposed to be here. You weren't supposed to die here." She waved her hand at the dark foreboding river. "But by chasing me you tangled your fate and your crew," She motioned to Jarvins, as one of the shadow squeaks retrieved the throwing star. "with mine. That usually ends poorly for people if they are not my friends." She glanced at Starkiller when she said 'friend,' before turning back to Martaine. "And now you're paying the price. The future was re-written. The stars re-aligned, and you had one opportunity to serve me and live,... and you failed. The Eye has weighed you and found you wanting. For your disrespect to Grandfather Pzob, the Eye, and Starkiller, I condemn you to death." The detached coldness in her own voice surprised her, given the anger she was feeling. Darth Tyna spun the double-bladed lightsaber hilt in her hand as if contemplating killing the infected commander.  She wanted to be the one to wipe Martaine's stain off Pzob, off her Home.  But then again, Starkiller was the Eye's executioner...  "Commodore Starkiller, please kill that piece of shit... with the imagination that he denied that you have.  Make him suffer, imaginatively."  Her friend would enjoy it more (if "enjoy" is the right word for a killer droid).  She had stopped Starkiller from exacting punishment on Martaine and she owed this to him as a friend.  If she was infected- this might be the last thing she may see... 

Darth Tyna felt her face and skin flush with the rush of excitement. With her anger simmering, she was thrilled to see Commodore Starkiller string Martaine up by the neck as the commander kicked and twitched helplessly, before lapsing into unconsciousness.
And then do it again...
And again...

While it was rather gratifying to watch Starkiller work, She had not completely grasped how creative Starkiller could actually be until she watched him "kill" Martaine several times. The execution seemed to go on... and on... Chang Fang and his crew were not emotionally invested in watching the event and they silently melted into the 3 meter tall grasses. Tyna assumed they went to scout around for a place to make camp.

The orange light from the sunset bled into pinks and magentas shortly before fading into greys and blacks. In the heavens above her head Tyna could see the stars begin to come out one-by-one. Here on the plains, her view was unobstructed. For the first time on the mission, she was not blocked by the thick forests of Pzob. While she had seen stars many times from the imperial warships she grew up on, those stars were always changing from planet to planet, never the same. These stars above her were the first stars she had seen from her new home, Pzob. It was like staring into the galaxy and being able to see your place in things; where you fit. Her place was to be right here on the plains of Pzob, with Starkiller.

In the center of the sky overhead, was the faint glowing outline of the Pzob nebula. The cloud of gas and dust that hid the Eye from the view of heretics and heathens.  Based on the events of the day, she was starting to become a believer in the Eye. The sacrifice, the vision, the dream last night... On top of that, Starkiller seemed to know with unshakable faith, and that was good enough to push her doubts to the side at the moment.

When the light completely faded, Tyna had to break from her role as spectator to build a fire. The supplies on the AT-ST included food and artificial fuel. Tyna climbed to the top of the AT-ST cab to collect fuel and some wet rations.  The same rations that Jarvins and Taug had joked with her about the prior evening.  She heard a scratching sound from inside the scout walker cabin. She almost did not want to, but her morbid curiosity got the better of her and she pushed aside the mangled e-web and opened the walker's hatch to look down at Taug. The lights were on and Taug lay on the floor of the crew compartment, surrounded and covered in his own dried blood.  His legs were no where to be found, as he restlessly dragging himself in the confines of the walker. The creature, what was left of Taug, looked up at her with clouded eyes, and blood stained mouth.  She closed the hatch and waited as her eyes adjusted to the darkness again. It was clear that Taug was gone, only a monster that looked like Taug remained. She could still hear Martaine's wails in the night as she dismounted from the walker. She hoped they wouldn't attract more Tuk'ata, but something told her that they had already dealt with the near-by dens and were unlikely to encounter more for now.  But she kept her light saber handy in case she was wrong. 

Once she had a fire going, she sat working on tanning the Tuk'ata vest, eating, and watching Starkiller repeatedly 'kill' Martaine, only to wrench him back from the brink, and do it all over again in another completely different way. It was like watching an evil child torture a baby animal. Martaine had no hope to resist Starkiller, and Starkiller was psychopathically un-moved by Martaine's pleas and cries of terror and pain. At one point in her life, she would have felt distress from witnessing wardroid's exhibition. She resisted that feeling, as she did in times past by reminding herself how much of a piece of shit Martaine was, and how much he deserved this. Above all, it was right that he suffer for his crimes. It was one of the techniques her master, Lord Havok, had showed the young sith to embrace the dark and resist the toxic pull of the light side and its vain weaknesses of compassion and mercy.

At some point in time, Tyna took stock of her health and noted that didn't seem to have any symptoms. She tentatively concluded that she was not infected because she hadn't changed like the others yet. Surely she would have become like Jarvins or Taug by now, right?  Her fortunes must be truly blessed to avoid such an unceremonious end by contagion.  Her conclusion allowed her to relax even more in the endless symphony of screams that Starkiller elicited from the fraying man's body.  As an afterthought, she checked her armor. Because of her stubby mutant wings, her armored jumpsuit really only fit below her waist, which is why she was forced to wear the top rolled down to her belt.  The Tuk'ata on the river had destroyed her helmet, and the Tuk'ata that charged her into the cave destroyed her blaster rifle and chest armor. She still had the armor on her thighs, knees and shins, as well as the plastisteel bracers on her forearms. Only the technology in her left bracer was still functioning though. She still had her utility belt, double bladed lightsaber, mystical sith blaster (Guts), and her training lightsaber, camping supplies and remaining smart mines in her backpack. With the Tuk'ata vest, that was everything she had.  Absent mindedly, she felt the electrum medallion through the fabric of her standard issue athletic bra.  She pulled it out to look at it in the firelight.  As a piece of Starkiller given to her to prevent him from being hijacked, she valued it more than even her light sabers. The medallion glimmered, with the crafted image of a fiery eye. She told him she would keep it safe- and she would. She tucked it snuggly back into her bra next to her heart. 

It was shortly after Starkiller pealed Martaine's face off and put it on one of the DRK-1 droids that Tyna felt her eyelids getting heavy. It had been an eventful and tiring day. Despite her best efforts to stay awake, Tyna fell asleep. She didn't know how long she was out and it was still dark when she awoke to find Martaine impaled on Lord Kryptman's impervium spear.  Starkiller beheaded him shortly thereafter, and stomped his cranium like paint-bomb art in the markets of Favray on Tomussat.

Tyna couldn't help but clap and cheer at the performance. "Huzzah! Well done!"  If she had flowers, she would have thrown them at Starkiller's feet. It took skill to keep the decaying man's body alive and conscious in the onslaught of the infection for as long as he did. She was impressed by the feat. 

With that business finally completed, the tireless war-droid came and sat next to Tyna, by the fire she built. One of the larger moons of Pzob rose over the horizon and bathed the area in a soft white glow.

He began explaining his plans for galactic cleansing, which Tyna found extremely relaxing to listen to. It was clear to her that Starkiller was "happier."  In contrast to his lamentations about being forsaken by Lord Bacca when she met him in the woods a month ago, he was like a new droid. In a minute or two, her eyelids became heavy again, and she leaned against him, and rested her head against a relatively unspike-y plate on his bicep. The twenty minutes passed quite peacefully. 

Tyna awoke with the return of the Ranats each carrying a head freshly severed in a raid. With Fang's admonition she quickly dowsed the fire and gathered her things. In a trice, they were once again moving quickly through the grasses. At night, Tyna wish she still had her scouting helmet with night vision, but with the moon, it was not too difficult to follow.  She was glad that she managed to get some sleep before the night operation commenced. The plains gave way to hills and vales until Fang stopped them on a bluff overlooking their target: the weapons and munitions factory.

With a sniper crawl, Tyna approached the edge of the bluff to poke her head through the grasses alongside the other ranat. Against the backdrop of the moon and stars, Tyna could see the glint and outline of the factory complex.  Her view of the complex was blocked by the nearest building, though in the distance she could see two huge powerplant cooling towers.  The building looked to be too tall for her to leap from the ground to the roof in a single force jump. The moonlight reflected off the polluted water and a cracked sluice gate that presumably had broke and flooded the dead marshlands down-stream. Tyna could see that it had been a mistake to place this factory here. It was too remote from the City of the Eye, and encroached on the sacred lands of the dark woods and plains. Fang silently pointed out several infected individuals mindlessly shuffling about the grounds on this side of the complex.


"This used to be an old Order of the Eye facility-- Starkiller, do you have the schematics for this place?" Beyond what she could see of the building, the area around the outside of the buildings had a high security fence, with periodic guard towers. There was a single access point facing their side through a checkpoint gate with a guardhouse. The husks she saw shuffling around outside were probably former guards.

The shadow paws were a very stealthy group. But they also did not appear to have their speed or stealth aided by the currents of the force, instead using flashes and smoke to make their movements appear supernatural.  Their failure caused Tyna to re-examine how she had planned to approach the place. Her stealth skills unaugment by the force, though prodigious, may not be enough.  Aided by the dark side, she might succeed where the shadow paws had failed.  But on the other hand, how much more could she drink from the powerful well of dark force power in these lands, before her body changed and mutated further?
She rubbed her furrowed brow.  On the other hand, if she directly assaulted the limited numbers of un-dead that she could see outside the facility, it would not be difficult to take them out by herself.  But, if the factory was packed with infected monks or slaves (which Fang said it was) a direct assault inside the factory was not a winning strategy. Her slight 5 foot frame was only two feet taller than the Ranats. If the husks swarmed her, she would eventually tire and be overwhelmed.  The shambling bodies below seemed slow, but there had to be more to them if they managed to repulse the Ranat warriors.  She took a moment to note that her strategic process reminded her of Lord Havok, an observation that gave her more than a moderate feeling of self-satisfaction.

"This looks too easy Fang-sama. They seem to move so slowly. Besides, your shadow paws look like they could balance on a blade of grass without causing it to collapse.  Are you saying we can't climb the roof and just drop in...?" The young oracle nudged one of the Shadow-lads beside her with her elbow brushing against the hilt of his short sword. With that brief contact against her skin, Tyna had a vision, not of the future, but of the past.  <<In her mind's eye she could see a troop of the Ranat's scurrying up the outer wall and silently running along the roof top in order to retrieve the Death Shard. They planned to enter the roof with grappling hooks, over the target area with surgical precision-- only to have a section of the roof collapse under their light paws. The Ranat was a survivor of that ill-fated expedition and escaped the fall by jamming his sword in the roof and holding on while the others fell to their doom.>>  The psychological trauma carried in the blade's metal was palpable. "I suppose not." She definitely weighed more then a Ranat.  

Though she had napped during Martaine's execution, she was still quite tired and sore. The medical staples in the synth-flesh on her scalp were beginning to ache from the accelerated healing process, and the anesthetic was wearing off. They had a better chance of success if she and the Ranats were well rested.  "I think we should camp here and wait until dawn." Tyna knew by Chang Fang's demeanor that he was growing impatient. She wasn't sure how well her suggestion would be taken.  

Darth Tyna waited for Commodore Starkiller to transmit the factory schematics to her. Commodore Starkiller had said "One moment, Milady." in the synthesized tone of his unique crackly vocabulator and then appeared to time-out, or engage in some exhaustive processing task. It didn't take long before tempers flared from the delay.

The sith apprentice preferred to not argue with Fang-sama, but hearing him muttering that Krell never used to freeze in the face of danger, made her ask who "Krell" was, which lead to a brief discussion of the NOE's use of cybernetics (from the Ranat perspective), and additional questions (for Tyna's curiosity), which were perceived as just an attempt to waste time (From Fang's point of view), which in turn were seen as a denial of bodily needs (curiosity is a sith passion to be indulged not denied), which once again was perceived by Fang as an attempt to overanalyze the situation and stall rather than engage in the traditional sith passion for violence (and relic retrievals). 

Fang's comment about bravery was misplaced. To Tyna, whether she was brave was besides the point. What she really resented was having her tactical deliberations characterized as 'stalling' or 'wasting time.' In her experience, planned, calculated strikes were what she was used to... even if had she regularly ignored the plans that Brother Eli and IG-LOMM created for their missions. It didn't feel right to not have a plan... (She refused to self-reflect and consider whether her stalling was due to the lack of a plan rather than her own anxiety or tiredness). Regardless, the argument drove the sleepiness from her eyes, which she rubbed after Commodore Starkiller's revelation that Ballz Bralor's factory had a production line for Starkiller units. Given Starkiller's reaction, he did not appear to be aware that he was mass produced after High Lord Bacca created him, the original. Tyna had not been aware either.

Tyna realized that the existence of a factory line potentially meant that Starkiller was destroyed frequently, (she wouldn't put it past him, given his prior inclinations towards self-detonation) and/or that Starkiller was not originally constructed to be a singular bespoke creation by the Lord of War. She wasn't sure which conclusion was worse from Starkiller's perspective. Before she could think of other interpretations of the situation, Tyna had to shield her eyes for a moment after the soul-lantern at Starkiller's hip seemed to sense the moment and flashed them all with blue light.  The light  shown from the top of the hill like a navigational beacon for all to see in the valley...


A distraction?  "I can be a distraction." She narrowed her eyes at Fang and fingered the bandolier of grenades she wore. Tyna very seldom had the opportunity to go for a loud and flashy entrance. She had plenty of grenades, including flash-bangs so bright they could blind a Miraluka.  So Fang wanted his sword, eh?  So he wanted it now, eh? She'd show that elderly Ranat how 'brave' she was...  Faster than an eye could follow, her double bladed light saber appeared in her palm, and danced.  It spun, and rolled up her arm, bouncing off her bare bicep and landed in her hand again. Standing in the purple light, the oracle shrugged her backpack off her shoulders before she crossed her arms and glared her golden eyes at Fang.  "I'm ready now," with an unspoken addendum, "bitch," that only teenage females (of any species) seemed capable of conveying.  Some of her thunder was robbed by how loud her stomach growled moments later. Even though she ate some rations back at the AT-ST, she still felt like she hadn't eaten in ages. "I'm fine." She stated, certain that the others heard, "I'm just going to..." She bent down and pulled a handfull of ration bars from her pack and shoved them into her thigh pockets as the appendages on her back fluttered irritably. She knew she had to have been burning through calories on their march but she couldn't ever recall feeling this hungry before. 

"Survive." It was Darth Tyna's command to her mechanical friend, Starkiller. She murmured it under her breath, half to herself, and half to the lands of Grandfather Pzob as the mechanical executioner readied himself. "Please Survive." She repeated to herself, as if she were bargaining with the fates for his life. In the pit of Tyna's stomach, Commodore Starkiller's unspoken plan felt like the Kinrath cave all over again. Although the warbot promised not to self-detonate, he had done so anyway. It admittedly affected her trust. His sacrifice was a valid one though; he stayed to fight a whole Kinrath nest to allow her to go on to assist Brother Eli and face Atlas, Lord Havok's wayward Tarantatek. That time too, Starkiller had been the distraction for her to sneak past a horde of Kinrath. This time she would be the distraction for him.

** In another time and place**

"Survive." That was the command Lord Havok gave to her five years ago when the sith lord marooned her for the first time. Lady Tyna had been much younger when The Dread Seer took her to the outer rim to harvest a rare mineral. The planet was so remote it did not even have a name. He left her with a month's worth of supplies and food, and said he would return in a month...  Her master did not return in a month.
In the first week, she felt such fear and anxiety, that she was barely able to eat.  With no holo-reception on her datapad, there was little for her to do but work on mining the opalescent nuggets that Havok wanted. The work took her mind off her fear, but it was still there. She was afraid to look at the future then, too, but she sensed hunger coming for her and so she started rationing her food. After a month, Tyna waited a whole day at the landing site, waiting for Havok, but her master did not show up.  The voices in her head were quick to tell her that she was abandoned and betrayed then too.  The thought was so terrifying that she spent three days screaming, to try and drown the voices out, until she went horse and lost her voice.  The only thing that shut up the voices was swinging the vibro-pickax.  With every swing in the canyon, she imagined she was burying it in her master's skull.

She had had to learn discipline. Her anger made her swings more powerful, but tiring too. Too much anger at the situation could cloud her mind and waste energy. Learning to burry it deep down and let it simmer was hard but necessary.  At 6 weeks, her food ran out. As starvation came for her, she started eating anything that moved. Cliff crustaceans, rock bugs, roots; she ate it, knowing that in order ever get revenge she had to survive and to survive she had to eat. There was never enough. She had dreams about eating huge banquets where she would stuff her face until her belly burst.  She learned that hunger will do that when she woke up with nothing.

** **

Even then, she did not feel half as ravenous as she felt at the moment. Soon she would be surrounded by filthy rotting meat, and none of it was eatable. All of it trying to eat her. Just like on that nameless planet in the outer rim, Tyna felt the closeness of death through the veil of fate... She bit her lip and thought about eating another meal bar to distract herself from her unease and unusual hunger.
The metal staples in her scalp holding her flesh to bone as well as the dents and scratches in Starkiller's armor from the Tuk'ata were testament enough that both Tyna and Starkiller were survivors. There was no help coming, no evacuation.  She was certain that she could survive, would survive, if only just to put Starkiller back together again if anything happened to him.  It was becoming clear that excessively relying on the force and using her gifts had... consequences to her body.  She looked over her shoulders at the short bat-like wings on her back.  Survival at any cost... 

Around her, Starkiller engulfed his oily Tuk'ata cape in flames. He was a breathtaking sight as the flames licked at his chrome armor and charred fragments of scales dripped and cracked to the ground.  She suspected the formidable warbot was more a danger to himself, than to her. She wondered if he was upset from the revelation that Starkiller had been mass produced. It made her feel protective of him in his current particular unique form.
Tyna watched as her beloved warbot moved along the ridge-top to get into position to start his blitz.

The instant Starkiller signaled his readiness, Fang gave the command. "ATTACK!  *Squeak!*" At Fang sensei's own word, his hidden shadow paws emerged and joined his charge down the hill.

Pulling the currents of the force to quicken her muscles, Tyna liberated a flash bang grenade from the bandolier on her chest, and with a running start, leaped off the steep bluff of the hill. 
At the apex of her jump, the sith apprentice ignited her spinning inquisitor's lightsaber to allow her to hover and glide towards the factory high above the foes below.  In the flashing red light below, undead monsters looked up and clamored towards the lights and the furious humming above them attracted by the sight and sounds. The spinning red light of her blades cast her shadow over the hosts as she swung her weight forward aggressively and dove toward the factory, flashbang grenade at the ready.  Hopefully the phosphorescent explosives would attract as many of the undead as possible, clearing the way for Starkiller.  Tyna lobbed flashbangs into the mob below her like a Y-wing, as she continued her descent. 

At the last moment, Tyna closed her eyes to avoid being blinded by the grenades.  Even with her eyes shut, the flashes of light felt like night had been momentarily turned to day through her eyelids. The concussion of the bangs shook her in her chest. The bright explosions, the load bangs, were like stirring a Kinrath nest with new bodies approaching and filling the yard of the factory.  Husks of workers that hitherto seemed to walk sluggishly, perked up and oriented themselves towards her position. Some ran towards her, while others walked, or waddled as fast as their stiff or bloated corpses would allow them. 

She deactivated her saber to drop to the ground in a roll, coming up in a flourish as her dual ruby blades came to life.  Before her golden eyes, the leering faces and grinning cadavers pressed towards her, reaching out only to lose their arms. The spinning blade of the inquisitors had been an excellent choice for the mission so far. She thumbed the length control on her inquisitor's blade to maximize its reach and and began kata number 4: "Spinning Fury" for lightsaber form 12.  Perfect for defenseless opponents.  None of the fetid, decaying bodies appeared to have much in the way of armor. Most appeared minimally dressed, like slaves she had seen in the markets on other planets, but a few were properly dressed like skilled laborers or craftsmen. There was no risk in shorting out the over extended blades on flesh and cloth and soil.

Most saber users had an innate grasp on Form 12, and even Anakin Skywalker had used the forbidden form in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant against the younglings, to Kenobi's shame. The Sith had lightsaber forms and techniques that were designed to be employed against the unarmed. While some lightsaber forms appeared overly flashy and stylistic without actually being overly so, Form 12 embraced spins, flips and flourishes, as well as dual wielding or double bladed light sabers. With Form 12, or the form of the "Persecutor," each flick of the blade- each flourish can fillet and dice unarmed and unarmored opponents for maximum fatalities. According to her master, Lord Havok, the more advanced techniques and practitioners in the inquisitorious (such as Lord Kryptman) could inflict maximum harm and still keep the opponents (victims, really) alive for future interrogation or to force them to suffer longer. While Tyna was by no means an expert, she executed the style well enough, spinning around and around, severing un-life and limb.  The waves of bodies that pressed towards her seemed to be never ending, but then again, so much the better for Starkiller that she was drawing them to her!
<Terror is an art. Use all forms at your disposal!>
Tyna closed her eyes, spinning her glowing red blades at the ghostly forms that she could see without sight, as her grenades again turned night to day in quick succession.
The waves crashed and broke like storming writhing flesh thrown upon a rocky isle shore.

* * * The fight continues * * * 

Amid the hacking and slashing, Darth Tyna wasn't sure how much time had passed.   She made her way to the factory buildings, and found herself backed against the duracrete wall of the outer factory complex.  She had miscalculated how high the building was and never had a clear stretch of ground for a running start to force jump for the roof.  Tyna performed an acrobatic jump and flipping cartwheel, decapitating a line of bodies with her spinning blades. There was no time for her to pat herself on the back for her excellent form, before she landed and rolled into a low flourish. Around her, the bodies groaned and growled as they slumped to the ground, now missing their legs below the knees.  

The sith apprentice's acrobatics took up maximum space and cut anything that entered the radius of her fast flourishes and spins.  But it felt like she had been at it for hours. Tyna was feeling the fatigue beginning to set in.  Her muscles ached; her lightsaber felt heavy, and she could feel blisters forming in her gloves; enemies that shouldn't have been able to touch her were getting perilously close to doing so.  She looked up to see a fat bloated corpse, too close for comfort. Close enough to swipe at her with its festering, skeletal hands. The split-second force push that she unleashed, not only pushed the animated corpse backwards, it also caused it's bloated torso to explode in a shower of putrid ichor. Instinctually, her small wings on her back shot out and wrapped around her face to shield her vulnerable head from the virulent gore.

With a flick of her wrist, she activated the pilot light on her functioning left gauntlet. With another flex of her wrist she pointed the stream of flaming liquid in an arc over the mass of rotting bodies seeking out the flesh of the living.  The flaming jet forced the dead to recoil until the flame nozzle sputtered and quit as it ran out of fuel. 

Just then, through the screeching and growling of the gaggle of burning corpses, Tyna heard the high-pitched squeaking of pain and terror. The sith apprentice had lost track of where Fang and his soldiers were. Her five foot frame could not see over the zombite masses that continued to press towards her. She couldn't see the Ranat go down, but she saw the necromantic hosts raising hunks of Ranat meat above them and feasting on fresh furry chunks clad in silken fabric.

That was a shock given how much she had seen of the Shadow paws' skill. They had proven themselves exceptional warriors against the Tuk'ata and anything else thus far. Only a horde of the un-living had managed to take one down.  The loss was jarring.  The fight so far had seemed like a game of cutting down waves of the undead, but they just kept on coming...  and coming!   The real fight had become one of stamina and endurance.  

With a burst of adrenaline and force speed, the small Sith apprentice flipped into the air and began leaping from zombie shoulder, to zombie head, to try and get a clear place to jump for the roof of the factory to regroup. From up there, she might be able to take a breather and rest before jumping back down into the fray. "GOING TO THE ROOF!" Tyna shouted her intention over the cacophony around her, hoping Fang and the other shadow paws would hear her. Once she was up there maybe she could help them by--- the sith oracle threw her lightsaber up in a block, faster than she could process her pre-cognition- as a dark body slammed into her from above, knocking her sprawling to the ground.

Tyna quickly collected herself and flipped to her feet swinging her lightsaber hilt in the dark, only to realize the weapon had shorted out and was doing nothing but shooting sparks from both ends.  No longer was she able to see her surroundings through the weapon's haunting red light.   Only the smoldering victim's of her flamethrower and the rising moonlight illuminated her way, though above them the pale green light of the Pzob nebula watched over all.
"ID10! Need backup over here!" She was running out of weapons. She dropped the broken pieces of the double bladed lightsaber hilt and drew the ancient sith blaster, Guts, at her hip to await the onslaught of necromantic grunts. 

The creature whipped its shortsword around striking down two undead that crowded it. As if understanding that the rotten rat was claiming her, the undead halted behind the Ranat as if waiting for permission to continue assaulting the Sithling. In front of her, the ranat looked unwell- to say the least. The warrior had lost its lustrous fur, and its skin was grey and bumpy with cankers and sores.  Its shinobi attire was ripped and tattered and blood coated what fur remained.  The Ranat's eyes glowed with a blue light like the soul lamp that Starkiller carried.  "Lord Mortale!" Tyna spoke in recognition of the necromantic lord's power.  Whatever power was animating the hosts of the undead at the facility, Lord Mortale appeared to have a hand in it. 

Regardless of the spark of the Lord of Death that Tyna recognized in the Ranat, the creature showed no recognition of her. It attacked with a growl, swinging its cortosis alloy blade as if it were a lightsaber.  Tyna dodged by leaping sideways onto the wall, with the rodent's blade following her as she bounded off the vertical surface to dodge a second slash and thrust. 

Tyna fired off a series of snap shots as she dodged, most missing the limber Ranat, but one blasted a hole through the chest of the walking rodent corpse.  It kept on coming.  Tyna thumbed the fire selector switch to the highest power setting, 'Crater,' intent on atomizing the furry bastard.  (The adjustable power settings of the sith blaster selected between draining a standard 300 shot energy cell in 100 shots, 30 shots or 5 shots; settings Darth Tyna liked to call, "Dead," "Deader," or "Crater.").

The Ranat's cortosis blade resisted the blaster's energy, deflecting it into the bodies of the horde of undead around them, exploding flesh like a Mikahawk egg in a hyperwave oven. The ranat's deflection of her second blaster bolt confirmed that the first deflection was not a fluke.  Vaporized guts misted the air with the virulent blood of the victims. 

The Ranat was likely fortified by Lord Mortale, to allow it to deflect blasters, Tyna concluded.  Drawing on the force was the only thing that allowed her fatiguing muscles to keep on fighting.  The voices in her head gave life to the powerful currents of the fates flowing through the ground under her feet and called out to her, demanding that she drink from the flowing power.
<Gaze and behold the threads of fate! Take part in your destiny! Drink from the well of the force!>
Tyna knew that using the force in the unholy Deep Woods of Pzob would continue to corrupt her in ways she could not imagine. But she had no choice. She had to answer the call and trace the flowing threads of fate under her feet.  It did not matter that the voices lied to her over and over in the past, that they had manipulated her into killing her friends.  It no longer mattered that back before she met Havok, back when she roamed and scavenged in the vents of the underworld of Coruscant, the voices told her to kill those that tried to help her, claiming that her friends would betray her. It did not matter that the voices could not be trusted.  It did not matter that the force would continue to alter her and change her into a monster. She had to survive!  For Starkiller!

The pull was strong. Even as she reached out to peek behind the great curtain of that which would come to pass, the voices, ever her betrayers, called out to her weakness.
<He will die. You fear it. Fear will make you weak.>

It did not matter as the Ranat thrust its short sword at her, interrupting the sith oracles' force sight. 

Tyna was forced to block the Ranat's strike with the emitter shroud of Guts.  She could feel the ancient mystical metal of the Sith blaster crying out to her in protest, as the blade cut a notch into the twisted barrel.  "Filthy Cortosis!" Guts seemed to say. The ancient blaster 'bit' back at the blade and held it so that it could not escape.  Tyna held on for dear life as the dead shadowpaw pulled at its sword, trying to free the ninjato from the bind with the blaster.  Frustrated, the crazed Ranat let go, and unleashed a flurry of rusty shuriken before drawing its tanto.   Tyna managed to block the throwing stars and tanto with her armored bracers while still holding Guts, but its slowed her too much.  The corrupted ninja flung itself at her thrusting its tanto at her heart.  The festering Ranat knocked her back into the wall, as it repeatedly stabbed Tyna's chest, until the black metal blade broke. 

The golden disk of Starkiller's dented electrum medallion, that just saved Tyna's life, slipped from its hiding place over her heart and landed on the ground with a clatter.  The rotting foe flung the tanto aside and began scratching and tearing at the oracle's face with its pestilent claws and snapping incisors, hissing and howling for her flesh. Momentarily overwhelmed, Darth Tyna covered her face and head as best she could, using elbow strikes and the shuriken sticking out of her gauntlets to stab at the fiend. Finally laying hands on the creature, she used the force to push the shadowpaw off of her.  The creature went sprawling into the undead behind it, snarling and lashing out at anything around it.

Using the force, Tyna pulled Guts and the medallion to her hands.  In one hand, the nicked blaster gifted to her by her master, in the other, her favorite gift from her friend.  She was beside herself with rage.  To have these treasures marred by the rotting necrotic scum unworthy to touch them was infuriating.  That she stood scratched, bleeding, and exhausted was embarrassing enough, but to also have had her inquisitor's lightsaber destroyed?  Humiliating!  How dare they! 

The festering Ranat jumped to its feet and turned on her again. Tyna's nostrils flared as she turned the blaster, Guts, on the walking corpse and blasted a second hole through its chest.  It remained standing in defiance of her will. If only she had the power to kill them all right NOW!  Tyna looked up to the sky, to the faint green nebula, and uttered her most sincere prayer: "O Holy Eye!  Starkiller calls me your saint.  If I am your saint, help me!  Help me kill these bastards!  I would sell my soul to kill them all...!"

The unexpected answer was short and simple:
<Smite them.>

With the force bristling over her skin in unseen ripples, Tyna felt as if she was watching outside her own body, watching as she lifted her sidearm in the air and began firing, calling down the wrath of god to end these blasphemers who refused to bow the knee, and continued to fight against her. Back against the wall, her eyes glowed molten gold as she fired Guts into the sky...  The first blaster bolt hit an electrical box on the wall high above her, the second shot severed a power cable that came swinging down towards her crackling with live energy. Her final shot punctured a high pressure hydraulic pipe that began spewing fluid into the crowded yard of the facility.  

She took a step forward and the electrical cabled swung behind her, just missing her as it swung like a pendulum along the wall.  The hydraulic fluid continued to pour generously onto the rotting hulks below as they advanced on her. 

"Every knee shall bend and every tongue shall confess..." Tyna pointed her blaster at the snarling Ranat with her stubby wings spread out, "thy divinity, O god." She held out her hand behind her... "This I swear, Amen!"  She caught the arching powercable with the electrum medallion and the yard exploded in electricity, sparks, flames and smoke.  The world froze in an instant in time:

A lightening bolt shot from the muzzle of the ancient sith weapon, as Tyna's body cracked and coursed with the visible and invisible electrical power arcing around her from the medallion to the blaster.  The bolt of white-gold electricity struck the Ranat, blowing him off his feet with tendrils of blue electricity shooting from his feet to the ground.  Around the Ranat warrior, branches of the lightening stretched out and jumped from corpse to corpse radiating out through the hosts of the netherworld.  From those that had been sprayed in hydraulic fluid, the arching electrical bolts ignited their sopping rags, producing a raging inferno and thick black carcinogenic clouds.  The bodies, shaking and twitching as though possessed, fell to their knees genuflecting before Lady Tyna as they shot sparks and flames from their eye sockets and mouths before finally bowing forward to fall into the spreading fiery liquid, arms prostrated as if worshiping the sainted personage of the Sith oracle.  The flames spread as the liquid slowly flowed outwards on the ground, with flames radiating outwards in an arch from where Tyna stood by the factory. 

Tyna let go of the power cable and surveyed her work. With the bonfires of roasting cadavers before her, and her small wings outstretched, she cast a monstrous shadow on the wall behind her of a dark menacing angel, smoking gun in hand. She stood there laughing as seven horns began growing out of her forehead, like a twisted bony tiara. Wave after wave of dead marched towards her like moths to a flame, and likewise were consumed in the fires. Beyond the flames, Tyna saw Fang and the remaining shadowpaws still slaying the stray corpses that materialized from the darkness around the factory yard.

"By firelight by firelight,
Ranats advancing, standing slight
Swords sharp enough to cut the night
Do not underestimate their might
by firelight by firelight."

Tyna's eyes still glowed with a penetrating unholy golden glow when she turned her back on the fires and scrutinized the wall before placing her hand on its duracrete surface, sensing for a place to breach and uttered a prayer. "Not the walls of Nirn or towers of Bastion can escape the sight, or withstand our righteous purpose."  She pulled out her single shaped demolition charge from her belt and placed it on the chosen place.  "Yield."  

*****
On the inside of the facility, hordes of undead workers milled about in darkness, unaware of the carnage that transpired outside.   Emergency lights had flickered for years waiting for full power to be restored, and floors and floors of conveyor belts and machines stayed silent, frozen mid-production on some of the most deadly and perverse anti-personnel products the former New Order of the Eye produced.  Unceremoniously, an oval area of wall exploded, sending debris and shrapnel into the bodies unfortunate enough to be on the other side. 
With an additional two flashbangs to dazzle and disorient, none saw the Sith apprentice and Shadow paws enter the facility and slink into the dark shadows of the factory floor.