Ascension/Part 4

Zeff Rogu brushed aside a few ferns, careful not to squish his boots too loudly onto the spongy ground, and saw through his helmet's visor a sexuped herbivore pulling at a gummy fungus with its square teeth. He reached out into the Force, feeding weariness and delirium into the animal's mind until it swayed on the spot. When he had it good and defenseless, he pulled off his gloves and launched himself out of the high grass. Stiffening his fingers into a blade and putting the Force behind the blow, he gouged straight through the animal's tough neck, hooked his fingers around its windpipe, caught a few extra blood vessels along the way, and ripped out the whole mess.

No animal would remain sedate and delirious through that, but it was too damaged to muster much resistance now, and Zeff stood back out of hoof range to let it spasm and die on the ground. When it had stopped twitching, he put his gloves back on and began tearing the hide free of the muscle beneath. It might be safer to try a plant or fruit, though he had not had time to learn much about Lisal's flora and anything that thrived in a bog was inherently suspicious; without a lightsaber or his gear, and as yet unable to conjure Sith lightning, he also had no way to cook the meat and purify it of parasites in the time he had been allowed. But Darth Alecto had said hunt, and he took it as a challenge. Besides, the feeling of blood running over his fingers from a thing he had killed, and the sensation of its death in the Force, was a good experience for a Sith every now and then; it was a pure, visceral expression of the dark side.

When he had laid out several strips of meat, he held a hand over them, willing everything in them to die. He could not be sure whether he had accomplished it—he could not shrink his perceptions to the microscopic to check—but after a few minutes he had no more time to spend on the exercise. He looked around with his eyes and stretched out with his senses, searching for Darth Alecto, Nevya, or any of the ten adepts. Only when he was satisfied that he was alone did he reach up and pop the seals on his helmet.

Many beings assumed that Uba IV, the Ubese homeworld, was one of methane, like Drackmar, or ammonia, like Gand, and that Zeff needed the gas regulators in his helmet lest a Type I atmosphere cause his lungs to shrivel and die. The truth was far more infuriating; after the Republic had launched a preemptive, unmerited attack on Uba IV some four centuries earlier, the atmosphere had been so damaged that its oxygen levels had plummeted and most aliens would have died within a few breaths. The Ubese had survived, of course—they were not the weaklings other near-Humans were—but they had adapted to ensure that survival, and now a Type I atmosphere and its "normal" content of oxygen could be dizzying, even nauseating for true Ubese, the sons and daughters of the world the Republic had ravaged in its wrath and its boundless confidence in its military supremacy.

The Republic would pay for that hubris someday, and if Darth Saleej and Lady Gasald succeeded in driving their blades into Coruscant and Corellia, Zeff might have a chance to walk through the ashes that had once been his people's oppressors. But that would have to wait; the task of the moment was hunger.

Zeff drew off his helmet and set it aside, squinting against the brightness of the morning light even filtered through the squat trees. Every scent was sharper without the helmet running interference for him—the fungi ranker, the puddled water staler, and the herbivore's corpse sharper. Zeff picked up the first strip of meat, tearing off a bite with his teeth and trying to breathe shallowly without hyperventilating. He had spent so much time away from Uba IV that the first few minutes of exposure were little more than annoyance; he could get through a full, if hurried, meal before anything like disorientation set in.

The strips of meat were chewy and less than flavorful, but Zeff managed to get two down without his stomach launching a protest. He reached for the last.

"Zeff."

He froze, hand outstretched, running his mind over the entire area and coming up with nothing. It was Darth Alecto's voice, and judging by the tone—calm and soft, quieter than normal conversational volume—she could not be more than five meters away. Was this another castigation for his failure to perceive his surroundings? Was it a demonstration of her superiority, that she could sneak up on him and catch him unawares?

After a few seconds he realized she had given him an opportunity—she had come at him from behind, and thus not seen his face. Was that coincidence, or a courtesy—allowing him to preserve some measure of dignity? There was no time to think about it; he grabbed his helmet and put it back on, affixing the neck seals before he rose and turned.

She stood in the shadow of a thick tree, a few strands of her red hair stuck to her forehead with sweat, her chest glistening down to the black fabric of her tank top. Zeff looked past the enticing sheen on her skin; he found her as attractive as anyone—he was a man, after all—but a Sith who served in Vedya Gasald's domain for any length of time quickly learned not to be distracted by sexual charms.

Darth Alecto nodded as if donning his helmet had been a response and said, "Round up the others. We're moving out."

"Yes, Master," he replied.

Was it courtesy? he wondered as he pushed through the ferns and undergrowth in search of the other adepts. Ubese rarely showed their faces to others—at first because that would involve breathing oxygen-rich atmospheres, but it had become something of a cultural trait, which his master surely knew. Darth Alecto made no secret of the fact that she would employ her minions, Sith and Brotherhood alike, for her own purposes; Zeff knew that and accepted it without issue, for the same could be said of every Sith Lord. But every now and then she did things like this, as if she was not content with obedience but wanted loyalty.

Zeff knew she did not yet trust him fully. She had left him out of the planning of the Anaxes operation, to his frustration and regret; she had won endless glory for the greatest Sith triumph since Mizra, and all he had been able to do was applaud with the rest of the crowd, owning no share of that triumph himself. Darth Alecto and her fellow lords still suspected he was informing on her to Lady Gasald; given the circumstances of his transfer to her command, Zeff would have been shocked if Darth Alecto hadn't been suspicious. But she seemed to want him to trust her, and perhaps that was his opening to affix that bond both ways.

Had she allowed him to remain an Acolyte for this—to develop their trust as master and student—or was it no more than what she said: that he had proven his skills for her to see? Or was he merely an instrument through which she could humble the newly-demoted Acolytes, the Irrukiine and the Zanibar, and test their reactions? Zeff understood that the Anzat ambush in the night had been for that purpose—to assess how her different students with their different skills responded to the same situation. Perhaps Zeff retaining his rank served as nothing more than the vehicle of another test.

His wonderings carried him all the way to Zurgharjhen himself, who had killed a predator and was busy consuming it, his muzzle and all four hands stained with blood. Was the wolf-like Irrukiine's system better adapted to handle eating raw meat, even of potentially parasite-ridden predators, or was he simply showing off his ability to kill another predator barehanded? "Zurgharjhen."

Zurgharjhen did not look at him, but he did stop eating and cocked his head to the side to show he was listening.

"Darth Alecto says we're moving out."

"When I'm finished," Zurgharjhen said with a nod, pulling another bite straight out of the predator's shoulder with his teeth.

"Now."

The Irrukiine rose—and rose and rose, towering over Zeff—a strip of flesh dangling from his fangs, lips pulled back to expose his teeth. Zeff braced himself, meeting that ferocious, feral gaze without flinching. He had put the squeeze on Nillan yesterday for lack of respect, but he suspected that would not go well at all with Zurgharjhen.

Are you an Acolyte or aren't you? he thought the dark side demanded. Put the beast in its place!

Zeff flexed his hands, letting a little of his usually-constrained rage out, feeling the rush of power. He could reach out and rip all four of those arms off with nothing but his mind, he knew; he could tear out those sharp fangs and use them to gouge out the fire in those narrowed, animalistic eyes. The possibilities of the dark side were endless…

Zurgharjhen plainly noticed Zeff's preparations, and he called on the dark side in turn. Unarmed, alone in the swampy wild, which of them would prevail?

"Now, Zurgharjhen," Zeff said, fighting down the instinct to rise to the challenge. "Our master commands it."

Zurgharjhen snarled, flecks of gore spattering Zeff's visor, but he gave one final sneer and loped off into the woods. Zeff wiped his visor clean, working to breathe evenly as his heart thundered in his chest. Zurgharjhen had not called him "sir", but Zeff did not call him back to press the point. The dark side could demand to be unleashed all it wanted; Zeff Rogu was no fool.

He knew how to bide his time.

The plant girl, Megaera, had taken off her boots and stood barefoot in a puddle of swamp water, face turned up to a hole in the canopy to take in the sunshine. She turned at his approach, and too late Zeff remembered her telepathic abilities. Scrambling to clear his thoughts, he said, "Darth Alecto says move out."

"Yes sir," she replied.

He half-expected her to have put down roots, but she pulled humanoid feet out of the swamp, brushing the mud and muck onto the ground before she put her boots back on. Curiosity overcame Acolyte detachment, and he asked, "Can you—?"

"No, it's just comfortable," she replied. Her nascent smile withered when she realized what she had done, and one of the flowers on her head actually closed its petals. "Sorry. Sir!"

Can you take nutrients that way? had been Zeff's question; apparently she had extracted the whole thing right out of his thoughts. Anger at her presumption and humiliation at being read so easily by a child fueled one another in his mind, making it harder to clear and putting a look of unease on Megaera's face. She got her boots on and fled the scene rather than face Zeff's wrath.

He struggled to calm himself as he hunted down the other eight; by the time he had found four more, he felt sufficiently in control to try Darth Alecto's own tactic of minimizing his Force presence. She had never told him how she did it, but he suspected it had much to do with clearing his thoughts and bottling his emotions. The results were mixed; the Phindian Lukurt and the Human Crile started when he spoke to them, but the Kubaz Varriben turned at his arrival before he spoke a word, and the little reptilian Rewz pulled aside the fern for which he had been reaching and hissed, "Ahh, there you are. Time to go?"

The thirteen of them met where the swamp became a bog, the spongy ground giving way to marsh and ankle-deep water. Some of them slapped at insects landing on their skin to feed, and Zeff was grateful for full body armor. It had been more than a year since Darth Alecto descended into the Abattoir, and her red hair had grown long enough to tie into a ponytail; she bound it up at the back of her head and said, "Follow me."

She trudged off into the muck, through chest-high grass and water that was waist-deep in spots. The swarm of buzzing insects continued to hound them, though Darth Alecto did not seem bothered and the insects ignored Nevya altogether. Zeff was alert for danger, but he felt none, and after a few moments he allowed himself to enjoy walking behind Nevya, watching the way her hips swayed…

"Zeff," called Darth Alecto. "With me."

Zeff's eyes widened behind his helmet; surely she could not have dragged that out of his thoughts? He sloshed forward to his master's other side and bowed at the neck. "Master."

"How long can you live without your helmet?"

Fighting down instinctive discomfort at the question, he said, "In normal air, I can get five or ten minutes without any ill effects. After that, dizziness, fatigue, nausea.  Eventually I'll pass out.  And all those times would be shortened here; even filtered, I can taste the air quality."

Darth Alecto looked thoughtful in a way Zeff didn't like. "Confusion? Hallucination?"

Zeff swallowed. "Only as side effects of not being able to breathe. It's like…like being smothered, slowly."

The violet eyes tightened, and Zeff wondered whether he had said the right thing or the wrong one. But after a moment she waved a hand. "Well, we can't have that. Keep it on and stay here with us.  An Acolyte has to enjoy some privileges."

"…thank you, Master?"

She chuckled and led the way deeper into the swamp. Zeff had explored Lisal since Darth Alecto had chosen it as her throneworld, but he had never come this way, and as they slogged on he grew wary of whatever trap his master had in mind.

"This is it," Nevya said.

Darth Alecto nodded, then turned to face the adepts. "There are some wild creatures through here—pack predators and lizards, mainly—but nothing you shouldn't be able to handle. Keep up."

She let Nevya lead, and now Zeff spared the Anzat's body no attention at all, reaching out for danger in the Force. He felt Darth Alecto calling on the Force herself, and her chest rose and fell with paced breaths. Instinct made Zeff reach for the lightsaber he wasn't wearing, and Darth Alecto's continued refusal to teach him to use Force lightning galled him anew. A tang in the air reached him through his helmet's filters.

"The hell was that?!" someone cried suddenly—one of the near-Humans, Zeff thought. He whirled to find Crile Craetor with his hands raised, flattening a patch of grass with the Force.

"What?!" barked Zurgharjhen.

"I saw something…" Crile said, though a note of uncertainty had crept into his voice.

Zurgharjhen took a snort of the air, grunted, and shouldered past Crile without another word. Zeff turned to his master only to find she hadn't stopped. Jogging to catch up, he asked, "Another test?"

"Quiet now," she warned in a whisper.

The next time one of the adepts cried out Zeff did not turn, nor the time after that. Zurgharjhen's roar did make him jump, and he glanced over his shoulder to see the massive Irrukiine ripping up clumps of mud with all four hands, tearing apart a prickly plant with his teeth, and bellowing, "WHERE ARE YOU?!"

The adepts scattered, plainly eager to put as much space between themselves and Zurgharjhen as possible, and Darth Alecto's newest trial began in earnest. Some of them leapt on targets that weren't there, others slapped themselves frantically even when the clouds of gnats and stinging insects retreated, and still others blundered off in odd directions with looks of determined confidence. Zeff was just starting to wonder whether Darth Alecto had invented the pack predators and lizards to fuel her adepts' paranoia when a monitor lizard as tall as Zeff's knee sprang from the brush. It had the misfortune to target Zurgharjhen, and he ripped it in half with his upper hands, but several of the other adepts lurched out of sight.

Only Megaera was left, watching the unfolding chaos with wide eyes. Giving Zurgharjhen a wide berth and ducking Crile's outstretched arms as he snatched at the air, she skipped to the lead trio. "What's wrong with them?!"

Darth Alecto raised an eyebrow. "More intriguing is why it isn't wrong with you."

Megaera's confusion was obvious, but Zeff understood. Something about the air in the swamp was affecting the adepts, but the air filters in Zeff's helmet had saved him. The swamp gases weren't affecting Megaera either…but she was a plant, not a mammal; her respiratory system might be evolved to handle whatever nature could throw at it. Nevya didn't even have a pulse, so who knew what it would take to affect her. And Darth Alecto…

There Zeff hit a wall, but Megaera looked at him. "Oh. Oooh." She looked at Darth Alecto and asked, "You're controlling how your body processes them? The swamp gases?  Kinda like breathing in a toxic environment?"

Zeff took a step forward, and Megaera retreated with wide eyes. "My tolerance for your prying is running low, vegetable."

Darth Alecto laid a hand on his shoulder, digging her fingertips in just enough to make her point. "Calm, Zeff. We all have our talents.  Join us then, little flower, and watch the fun."

It was certainly more fun watching than participating. Dolre Thyle kept shapeshifting to different forms and appearances, apparently unable to decide what would serve him best in whatever world he was seeing. Zurgharjhen's roars and attacks on the grass only served to draw out the predators, and he sustained a number of bites and scratches before pummeling four them to death and driving the others into retreat. Fruuna appeared now and then, leaping over high grass to pounce on who knew what, while Rewz crawled over the swamp on all fours like one more native lizard. Varriben had taken off the piece of his mask covering his snout and was sitting near an insect hive, happily shoveling swamp bugs into his mouth while others stung his hands.

Shrizzzqadl, the tall, thin Zanibar cannibal, was the first to recover. He staggered to Darth Alecto's side, deep-set eyes glowering and trembling with nystagmus, but there was a determined focus in his mind, and he gave a jerky bow. "Next, Master?"

"A decent performance," she answered. "Let's see how the rest do."

The sun had risen to zenith and Zeff was sweating in his armor when the last of the adepts staggered out of the swamp. Fruuna had closed her eyes and navigated by smell alone; Nillan had emerged only seconds later, which had seemed impressive until he admitted under questioning that he had merely followed Fruuna. Rewz and Zurgharjhen came out at the same time too, though then because Zurgharjhen had identified Rewz as prey and was pursuing her, and she fled toward the strongest concentration of the dark side. Zeff, Fruuna, and Darth Alecto all hit Zurgharjhen with Force pushes at the same time, which sent him flying back out of sight; he was lucid again when he reappeared, but newly enraged. The next person to emerge from the swamp was Darth Alecto, though she turned back into Dolre under the real Alecto's gaze—he'd had just enough awareness to realize something was wrong, and shapeshifted into Alecto in hopes that the Anzati were behind this too and would come to his aid. Darth Alecto laughed so loudly her voice drew Crile Craetor and Lukurt Kreen out of the mire too.

Varriben was the last to emerge, patting his belly with hands swollen to twice their normal size from bites and stings. Darth Alecto raked them with her critical eyes and said, "Amusing as that was, I'll expect better awareness of your surroundings in the future. Now come—we're going mountain climbing."

As they all plodded on toward the mountain peak in the distance, Zeff felt the resentful glares on his back. Had Darth Alecto set the trial up to pit her ten adepts against the one Acolyte? Did she hope the constant danger would be a sort of ongoing test? Or had she truly only realized the flaw in her design when they entered the swamp and decided on the fly that giving him a bye was preferable to having him suffocate? Once again, a year and a half's experience of Darth Alecto since Milagro failed to give Zeff any insight as to what she was thinking.

He knew what his fellow servants were thinking, though, and he understood their sentiments as if he had borrowed Megaera's telepathy. There could be no more exemptions, nor any further failures; from now on, he had to be the best.