Abattoir/Part 7

Had she just been sleep-deprived and fatigued by injury, or had she been fool enough to have the faint flicker of trust? I trusted you! had been her refrain since her earliest days as a Sith. She had thought she learned her lesson at eight…

She heard Odelia's mocking laughter in her memory, and it joined with all her other distractions to sap her focus on the fall. She righted herself in midair, but her left ankle came down on a thin, toppled tree trunk, bent, and slid off the side. Alecto screamed as her ankle rolled and buckled under her, spilling her to the forest floor.

"Oh, they'll find you on their own," Rassan called. "You don't need to call them."

The first sharp stab of agony passed, but her ankle throbbed, and Alecto knew it was badly sprained, if not broken. She tried to stand and felt another lance of anguish in her ankle, but even as she wobbled, she heard the ferns crumpling with the swift passage of something large, and the rasping snuffle of deep breaths.

She raised her hands to defend herself, but it leapt and bowled her off her feet—it had to be twice her body weight. The darkness made it hard to tell, but it looked humanoid, and they were definitely hands that seized her wrists, pinning them to the ground. She felt its weight on top of her, its body between her legs and pressing into her, and primal fear brought the dark side to her command, but even then she barely got her arms off the ground; it was too strong. Its hot breath molested her face, and she gagged and tilted her head sideways.

Then she felt two slithering tendrils, like little worms working up her lips, and she understood the real danger.

"NO!" she screamed, twisting to bite at them. She caught one between her teeth but couldn't bite through; the Anzat roared and twisted back. Alecto saw the now-familiar features distorted and warped; it was plainly an Anzat, but its teeth had sharpened, and its eyes were blood red and far beyond reason.

She knew those teeth could tear out her throat with one bite, and the Anzat felt far more of madness than sentience in the Force; it might kill her in rage rather than committing to sucking out her brain, which meant she had a single chance. As it reared back in pain, Alecto squeezed her thighs around its waist and locked her ankles. Pulling on the left with the right made her gasp in pain, but she pushed the Anzat with her legs, and as it lunged for her face, its proboscises were just out of reach. It snarled, spraying spittle on her face; Alecto spat back in its eyes, and as it freed one of her wrists to clear its vision, she shot her hand up and hooked her thumb into the eyeball.

The Anzat screamed, clutching its face and lurching away; Alecto drew her legs back and kicked with her right, sending it sprawling. For a second she acted on instinct instead of thought and kipped up; her left ankle buckled again and sent her to her knees with a gasp. The wounded Anzat turned on her and snarled, blood streaming down its face as it bounded toward her on all fours. Alecto ripped open the pouch on her belt and flung both hands forward. Her aim was horrible, but she had a dozen fangs left, and she expended them all. Two went through the Anzat's mouth as it reached her, ripped through its brain stem, and blew out the back of its head. It collapsed into her, dying on top of her as she struggled to wriggle out from under its bulk.

She lay panting in the grass, stress hormones flooding her body; she would have vomited if her stomach had anything left to expel. From above her, she heard Rassan's voice.

"Bravo, witch. Don't think you'll last much longer, though."

Alecto struggled to her feet, putting the weight on her right; she would not cower in the dirt before the traitor. As she raised her head, she could just see a patch of darkness through the mist above that might be him. Her ankle would never support the crouch for a Force Jump to get back up… Her throat still ached from almost drowning, and it hurt to raise it enough to be heard. "Come down here and prove it, coward."

"Oh, you're right about that—I'm not nearly as brave as you. I wouldn't have lasted against that one; I definitely don't want to try my luck with the others."

"The…the others?" Alecto tried to keep the iron in her voice, but her stomach turned and her throat squeezed. Rassan didn't answer, and in the ensuing quiet Alecto heard faint howls—bone-chilling and distinctly not animal. Others answered. After a moment the first group howled again, and they were closer this time.

"Should be a fun fight to watch," Rassan mocked. "Brief, though."

Alecto's back rose in defiance. A Sith Lord did not run…well, not usually. She had fled from Kal-Di on Gizer Battlestation, but that was years ago, before she was anointed. Her powers had doubled since then. Of course, she hadn't taken a second crack at the Dark Vanguard on Toprawa, either, but there she had been weakened by captivity and badly outnumbered. ''These are not Dark Jedi. Slaughter them'', the dark side urged, and Alecto bared her teeth, fully prepared to do just that.

Except…

Here she was outnumbered. On Toprawa she'd had her lightsaber; here she had spent all her fangs, and she couldn't waste the time to rip out the Anzat's. She had been at full strength when she ran at Gizer, but now she was seriously injured; it would take her time to even move, and running might be out of the question. Summoning lightning at this point would be likelier to kill her than anyone else, and if she set the forest on fire, she was no longer confident in her ability to outrun it.

She had to flee.

Gritting her teeth, cringing in shame, she turned away from Rassan and limped into the forest, pursued by the Anzat's mocking laughter and the distant howls that grew less distant with each echo. All the mist hung overhead, but it acted as a secondary cloud cover, blotting out what little light had come from above; Alecto's eyes strained to adapt to the dark, and even as her pupils dilated as far as they were able she still bounced off trees, hissing when she came down hard on her bad ankle. No tree she saw was wider than her shoulders, and many were thinner than her thighs, but there were thousands of them, some grown so tightly together that they made a fence ten meters high, forcing her to stumble and pat blindly at the bark until she found a gap. Long straw grass snagged on her pants and slowed her down as she forced her way through it.

She did not know how far she had gone when she heard the savage snarls that meant the feral Anzati had found their mutilated comrade, but not nearly far enough. She realized she could not outrun them; she needed a place to hide. She had barely survived fighting one of them; if they caught her on the ground she was dead. That left only the trees.

The vines had too much give when she tugged them, and she gave it up as she heard the first, faint crash of foliage as her hunters closed. She knew she needed a safe spot to rest; once she was off her feet long enough, her ankle would swell and the pain would be amplified tenfold the next time she put weight on it. The dark side did not like to flee from danger, but she concentrated on protecting herself; more than anything else, the dark side wanted her to remain alive. Eventually, as she could hear the Anzati bashing against the tree barriers and snarling in rage, Alecto staggered to a copse of thin trees surrounding a fatter one.

There was no question of bracing her feet, so she hugged the tree, gripped a little knot, and hopped up, choking the trunk with her thighs. The bark grated on her raw palms and her thighs burned as she clawed her way up, struggling not to put too much faith in her upper body strength; if she fell, her ankle would break, and she would be screaming right up until the Anzati came to put her out of her misery. When she got high enough the tree started to bend; Alecto shifted her weight so it spilled her out where three branches spread off from the main trunk of the fat tree.

Shifting her body just right, she managed to wedge into a stable position. The Anzati were still coming, and Alecto didn't know if they had enough sense left to climb. Her vision was blurring from exhaustion, but she tore off the midriff of her tunic, grimacing as she pulled the fabric away from the wounds in her lower back. She couldn't smell anything more precise than her overall reek, but perhaps they could pick the blood out from the swamp water and sweat. She wadded the damp fabric into a ball, then called on the Force, channeling her anger and fear into it, charging it with the dark side.

The snarls grew to roars, and Alecto pitched her wadded ball of distraction as far as she could, giving it a little telekinetic boost. Then she shrank back, clutching her arms to herself to make her body cower. Her pride rebelled at the weakness, but the cringing, Please don't hurt me! position made it easier to reduce her presence in the Force, too. She could feel when she vanished from perception; the feral Anzati blundered off after the fabric, and Alecto knew Darth Saleej himself could have walked under the tree, blithely oblivious to her presence.

She kept herself deliberately uncomfortable to stay awake, which was not hard, until the angry snarls faded into the distance. Then she carefully pulled her boots off, gritting her teeth so she didn't so much as hiss when she took off her left. As quietly as she could, she tore another strip of fabric from her tunic and wrapped her ankle, snugging it tight to minimize the swelling. Letting her feet hang to dry off, she pulled a leaf close, rubbing it over her forearm and taking note of it. Her throat begged for water, but it would do no good to get poisoned, and she could barely keep her eyes open.

Leaning back, she nestled the back of her head in the split between two branches. Sleep claimed her in seconds, sending her from one nightmare to another.