Abattoir/Part 6

Three days earlier

The six-legged reptile plodded past, flicking its tongue as it tried to track her scent, and Alecto leapt from concealment onto its back. It hissed in fury, but her body weight kept its spines flattened to its back. Her sharp rock had enough of a point to puncture the reptile's hide, and she ripped it sideways, leaning just a little on the Force for strength so she could slit its throat completely. Half-decapitated, it slumped under her; she felt its blood pouring over her hands, but held her grip until it stopped twitching. She dug its fangs out with her rock and tucked them into her belt, cut the head the rest of the way off, then slit its belly and began cutting out strips of meat.

Six days in the Abattoir and she still missed her lightsaber.

Vandak faced the Abattoir without your Sith weapons, Azeroth had told her, and she had sensed the truth of it in the minds of the other assassins. If you would rise to his station, you must equal his accomplishment.

She had accepted the master assassin's terms, though she had left her lightsaber with Zeff rather than Azeroth himself. She trusted the Ubese more than the Anzat, which was a disturbing thought; she had endured more than one close call with a predator or dangerous piece of terrain because she was imagining Zeff making a deal with Azeroth on Gasald's behalf. Then again, it was equally possible the Anzati, expecting her failure, would just kill him now rather than later; she wondered if a second lightsaber would aid his survival.

A scree-krawk from above was Alecto's only warning, but even with only the few hours of sleep she had snatched in the last week, her reflexes had become well-tuned to that sound. She rolled aside as the leathery wings beat past and the hooked talons closed on air. She threw her rock, but her aim was a little off from weariness; she rerouted it in midair with the Force and added a bit of speed to nail the avian to a tree, then pulled it back to her hand. She had long since stopped wiping the blood off her rock knife; instead, she peeled back the thing's skin where her rock had pierced it and devoured some of its entrails before tossing the corpse aside.

She had lost sight of the sandstone walls of the Temple of Shadows days before, but more than once she thought she saw them looming out of the mist and turned. She had tried to follow the progress of the moon, but the canopy thickened above her until that became a hopeless pursuit. She descended, as the Anzati had instructed her, but always hesitated when she came to a ridge; would ascending lead her uselessly back up, or did she have to go up to go down? She wanted her lightsaber just for a decent light source.

Controlling her muttering, she stumbled on yet another corpse.

Alecto had been inured to bloodshed since she was a girl, but this scene turned even her stomach. She recognized Iridonian armor, though it was badly scarred, and the occupant had lost an arm and a leg. Half-decayed skeletons of predators lay all around it, their bones cleaved through too neatly to be brute strength, but without the charring that would have indicated a lightsaber's passage. She looked around…and there it was, embedded through the mouth and out the brainstem of what might have been a mutated wolf. Alecto pulled the vibrosword free, but the blade was hopelessly corroded; the vibration cell was depleted, and when she flexed the blade by hand to test it, it snapped in half.

She kept the hilt end, throwing away the rusted point in disgust. She thought she'd have only a few good swings with the jagged end or the dulled blade before it became completely useless, but it was better than a rock. She started eating a strip of reptile meat as she meandered on.

It took her a while to realize she was being watched, if only because she was always being watched by something intending to do her harm down here. She laid a hand on the pouch full of fangs, but thought better of it as she walked on; this mind had the hallmarks of sentience. For all that one Anzat's protests of the sanctity of the Abattoir, the Anzati clearly had no compunctions about introducing aliens like the Iridonian into the Abattoir as prey, but she knew enough of Iridonians to be sure he would have fought her as savagely as the animals who killed him, and she had no reason to expect anyone else stuck down here would be more charitable. Was this It? The nameless something she had sensed hunting her? She didn't think so, somehow, although It was still out there too.

She took her half-a-vibrosword in a reverse grip for a better defense, slowing her steps and ambling a little to make herself a more tempting target. The distance between them closed, and Alecto let the Force flood into her, preparing her for instantaneous movement. That seemed to give her pursuer pause, and Alecto made a show of leaning her free hand against a tree and doubling over, taking audible breaths. The distance shortened again…was It there with her pursuer now…?

She spun, bringing her half-sword to guard, but a flicker of motion was all she saw before laying her eyes on empty jungle and swirling mist. But her Forceful reflexes were up to the task, and she continued her spin, reaching out to grab him by the collar and slam him into the same tree she had leaned on, bringing the rusty blade to his throat.

"I yield!"

That was a phrase she had not expected to hear down in this festering deathtrap. Alecto did not move her blade, but she took a look instead of driving it through his neck and into the tree. He was ghastly pale, like an unwanted child locked away from the sun from childhood, but Alecto had been on Anzat long enough to recognize the broad, flat nose and the way his cheeks sucked in—like they had just sealed wounds, or retracted tendrils.

"Azeroth's not that confident in his dungeon after all?" She dug the point into the Anzat's neck. "Wanted an insurance policy?"

"Azeroth?!" The Anzat's eyes widened, and he tried to squirm away; she had to almost open his throat before he stilled. "You're one of his?! Hasn't he done enough to me?!"

Alecto's eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"

"Rassan! Rassan Darvash."

"You're not one of the Brotherhood?"

"Me?" He looked terrified at the very idea. "It was bad enough when Darth Vandak was in charge, but now with Azeroth? They threw me down here to die!"

Alecto could sense him holding back, although his fear was very real. "Why?"

"I…fought with one of them over prey. I sighted him first, I had tracked him through the spaceport for days.  And he was Forceful, too." Rassan moaned with desire; Alecto flicked her blade up and nicked his chin to refocus him. "But you don't oppose the Brotherhood."

His hard eyes matched his bitter tone. Alecto weighed her options. "How long have you been down here?"

"Ha! They tell me Darth Vandak served a…Council of Nine?"

"Five."

"Whatever. When I entered the Abattoir, there wasn't a Council of Anything."

Alecto tried to keep the intensity of her reaction off her face, but Rassan pulled a deep breath through his nose, and he gritted his teeth. "Been a while then, has it?"

"…more than a few days." The Anzat growled in the back of his throat while Alecto thought for a moment. "You know the Abattoir well, then."

Rassan snorted. "Better than any being would ever want to."

"You can lead me through it."

He frowned. "And why would I do that?"

Alecto almost opted for swordpoint persuasion, but said instead, "The Brotherhood left you down here…what, as a challenge for their try-outs? If I get out of the Abattoir, I can get you out too."

She opted not to share her real goal, not knowing how an Anzat would take the prospect of his fellows being ruled by an alien. Alecto felt a mix of guile, suspicion, and faint hope in his mind. "And how would you do that?"

Holding her blade tight to his neck, she released her grip on his collar, raised her left hand, and ran blue-white lightning through her fingertips. Rassan's eyes widened. "Put it out! Quickly!"

"Proof enough for you?"

"Yes, yes, fine! But put—"

Scree-krawk.

Alecto dove aside and Rassan flung himself to the ground in the opposite direction. There were three of them this time, talons and wing claws slashing past in a lethal crisscross. Alecto came up swinging and her blade took the wing off one of them; it wailed in agony, but fell to a stumbling landing on its four paws and swung its barbed tail at her. Her boot took most of the sting out of it, but she felt the leather rip.

Rassan punched one of them and it bounced backward in midair, shaking its snakelike head and screaming, but then it dove again. The other slashed his back with its talons, and the Anzat cried out in pain.

Run, the dark side advised. A convenient distraction.

But you can handle these three, the darker side countered. ''You might not handle the next one. Save the distraction for when it's useful''.

Seize the opportunity you have!

''Plan for the future and use a tool where it's most effective. Be a Sith, not just a Dark Jedi.''

Alecto struck. Her blade punctured the grounded predator's skull, but bone and blade jarred one another, and she found it harder to pull back out. Abandoning the half-sword in the thing's head, Alecto opened her pouch with one hand and extended the other, fingers splayed toward Rassan's tormentors. Several of her collected fangs shot out like rounds from a slugthrower. She caught one predator cleanly through its face, and it was dead before it hit the ground; the fangs only peppered the other, but it screeched in pain and had to land, its wings trembling. Rassan seized it and snapped its neck.

Their fangs were not long enough to be usable, and their talons were too brittle; Alecto resisted the urge to kick their corpses in annoyance. "You know the Abattoir, and I have the power to get us out. Do we have a deal?"

He looked at the ruins of the avians, cast a nervous glance up at the sky, then nodded. "Yes, all right. But let's go, we can't stay in one place too long."

It was hours later that they came upon the Mandalorian.

"You have to be more discreet!" Rassan hissed as they crept through head-high ferns.

"You're an Anzat!" she fired back. "I'm a Sith Lord! Why are we cowering in the dirt every time something with teeth looks at us?"

"You haven't been here; you don't know what this place is like!" He glared at her, and even through the thickening mist Alecto saw something fractured in his eyes. "We need to save our strength."

"For what?"

"There…there are things out there worse than animals."

Alecto could sense It, out there in the jungle, stalking her still. "Like?"

"Ask him."

Alecto followed Rassan's pointed finger, advancing into the clearing until her boots crunched on burned grass. She saw scorch marks on the tree bark, though the accompanying smell had long since vanished. A Mandalorian lay face-up in the soil…or at least her face was up; the rest of his front was pressed into the ground. This corpse was intact, and Alecto realized animals hadn't been responsible for this.

"You see?"

"Yes, I do," Alecto replied. As she looked closer, she saw the dead woman's fingers contorted unnaturally, her bracer crushed in to a third the size of the wrist beneath as if it had been squeezed in a vice. She popped the helmet seals and pulled the T-visored helmet off; the woman's hair had turned the consistency of straw, and her features were wasted. Surprised the armor hadn't preserved her better, Alecto looked at the helmet and saw where the visor had been broken in. Holding it up to her own face, she measured the break against herself, drawing her index finger from the shattered transparisteel to her nose…

She looked at Rassan, slowly dropping the helmet and laying a hand on her rock knife.

"I didn't do this!" he protested, raising his hands.

"Friends of yours?" she spat, looking around in her peripheral vision, letting the Force expand in its hunt for proximate danger.

"Brotherhood."

"And how has an Anzat survived for so very long without…what is it, 'soup'?"

Rassan licked his lips. "It's…hard. But the Brotherhood…they release offworlders down here.  Not ones like this, just random spacers.  I think…I think they want me to hang on, suffer longer…"

Alecto looked at the helmet and back to Rassan, eyes narrowed.

"Look, I kill to eat, but don't you kill? You're a Sith Lord!  I can help you, remember?  And you can help me.  We need each other."

"You're useful to me," Alecto corrected.

"And I still am," Rassan promised. "If you can get me out of this hellhole, I'll get you there. Trust me."