Chapter Text
With a jolt, Omega opened her eyes and lifted her head, unaware that she had even been knocked out.
Well, she must have been knocked out, there was nothing else to describe the pounding in her skull, though that was second to the sharp, burning sensation emanating from her wrist and knee.
Slowly, she surveyed her surroundings.
Shuttle... She was sitting in a row of seats in the back of a transport shuttle, surrounded by stormtroopers in a similar state as her. Helmeted heads lulled to the side, some had cracks in their armor, others had dirt or blood staining the otherwise pristine white duraplast. Some had all of the above.
The one deviation from the soldiers was the man who was sitting across from her. The Twelfth Brother.
Blood was trickling down the side of his face, matting his red hair down, dripping from his chin onto his black armor and suit. Even if he had been conscious, the doctor doubted he would have cared.
They clearly had more pressing issues to worry about.
Something hissed above her, sending electrical sparks down onto the ground between her boots.
She needed to get out of here.
The doctor moved to lift the bracer that kept her in her seat, but hissed when she tensed her left wrist against the latch.
Gritting her teeth, she pushed through the pain and lifted it, immediately tilting and tumbling out of her seat, falling to the ground, her left knee flaring up, causing her to cry out.
Potential break, more than likely a sprain, will have to check for that, she mentally noted before grabbing the seat with her right hand, using it to pull herself up to her feet without putting much pressure on her left leg. Holding onto the seat with one hand to keep herself balanced, she reached forward with the other, pressing two fingers against the neck of the stormtrooper that had been sitting on her right.
No pulse.
She swore and looked around.
Lambda class shuttle... capacity for twenty passengers, not including the two pilots.
"A-anyone alive?" She asked, looking for a response, voice shaking before swallowing and speaking again, louder this time. "Call out!"
There was a groan to her left, prompting her to look. The Inquisitor was stirring, the frown on his face deepening before he opened his eyes.
They were cloudy and unfocused as he inclined his head in both directions before slowly turning to her.
She made her way over, limping as she did and started to lift the bracer around him.
“What… happened?” he asked, voice slightly slurred, possibly concussed, before he closed his eyes, grunting, holding his head.
“I think we crashed, I don’t know how many survived,” she reported, before she started feeling her pockets, eventually pulling out a pocket torch she always carried with her. “Where does it hurt?”
She started to shine the light in his eyes, checking his pupil response before he grabbed her wrist in a crushing grip. “I’m fine,” he hissed before shoving her arm away.
Figures. A crash landing would only make his dour mood even worse…
“I need to see if you have a concussion,” she informed him, raising her torch again, but he shoved her away, causing her to put pressure she didn’t want to on her left leg, and she almost buckled under the pain.
“We need to get off this shuttle,” the Second Brother said, pushing himself out of his seat.
“What… What about… the others?” she asked between steady breathes, trying to keep herself composed despite the massive amount of pain she was in.
“They’re dead,” he said, deadpanned, as if it was obvious. He started to make his way towards the closed boarding ramp.
“Is that your mystic Force powers telling you that?” she asked sarcastically, limping after him as he stopped in front of it.
He inclined his head towards her, pulling out the circular lightsaber hilt, the insignia of the Inquisitorious.
“Yes.”
With that, he reached forward with his left hand, fingers curled like he was mimicking a predator’s claws.
Then, he started to close his grip, the metal of the boarding ramp started to screech in protest as it started to crumble, folding into itself like cheap aluminum before he pushed out, what was the ramp flying away from them, landing somewhere out of view.
“You coming or what?” he asked, strolling forward, jumping down from the shuttle.
Omega stared at where he disappeared before looking at the stormtroopers around her. She thought for a moment before moving towards the closest one, grabbing the blaster he was still holding onto, even in death. Fortunately, death made his grip rather lax.
“Sorry,” she muttered, pulling away. “I might need this more than you do.” With that, she made her way over to the opening, and frowned when she saw it was a drop. A small one, but a drop regardless, nothing she could simply step down from.
With a sigh, she gritted her teeth and lowered herself to the edge, legs dangling over the drop before she pushed herself down, making sure to stick the landing with her right leg, but the unbalanced nature of it all caused her to stumbled, attempt to catch herself with her left leg, which did not hold her up at all as she fell face-first to the ground.
When she lifted her head, she saw that the Second Brother was staring at her from a short distance, one hand resting on his hip, an eyebrow raised in a semi-blank, entirely judgemental expression.
She pushed herself back to her feet, blaster still in hand before she limped over to where he was clearly waiting for her.
“Spit it out,” she snapped, bracing herself for whatever biting comment he had to say.
He stared at her for a second before looking at the shuttle.
“Somehow, I think I still prefer you over those bucket-heads.”
“Oh, careful, Inquisitor. I might think that was almost a compliment.” She pushed past him and surveyed their surroundings.
It looked like they had crashed on top of a plateau that gave way to a large mountain, just a few feet from a massive drop. Omega tried not to think about how close they had to plummeting down into the unknown. Bare, craggedy cliffs of baked red earth stretched as far as the eye could see, spiraling up to the dusty purple sky where a red sun bared down on them.
“I don’t think we’re on Tantiss anymore,” Omega muttered, turning back to the Second Brother.
“Definitely not…” he muttered before pointing off into the distance.
She followed his gaze until she caught the object of his focus. Tilting her head upwards, she saw that, on the ridge next to their plateau, was a massive mountain with the image of three faces carved into it, the base of the landscape forming into a rancid-looking swamp.
It was clear that this was the mark of something ancient, some civilization that had settled and thrived, but that posed a new question.
If there were people, once, where did they go? Were they still here?
“Do you know where we’re at?” The Inquisitor asked.
Omega thought for a second, examining her surroundings with a new, scrutinous eye. The arid geological features narrowed the field, certainly, but it was the monumental carvings and red sun that tipped her off. She knew of several planets that boasted such features, combined with what she knew to be their charted flight path, she came to the name of one planet that was the most probable suspect.
“I believe… we are on Dathomir,” she guessed.
“Dathomir?” The Second Brother repeated.
She looked at him. “I read about it, once. Home of the Nightsisters… or, it was, at least. Until the genocide committed by the Seperatists, during the Clone Wars. I’m surprised you’re unfamiliar with it, Inquisitor, as they were a clan of Force-Wielders. I figured it’d be your area of expertise.”
She could see him working his jaw, grinding his teeth as he bit back some retort and instead, turned his attention back to their surroundings.
“It is… unique, in the Force. Cold, like the Dark. But… different, somehow.”
That made absolutely no sense to Omega, so she kept her mouth shut.
“If there are no more Nightsisters, then I suppose there is no one to ask for help,” he continued, “So we’ll have to figure out how to survive on our own until a recovery team arrives. I’ll gather kindling. See if you can scavenge the ship for any supplies that may have been on board. With luck, the shipping crates held up better than the crew.”
Before she could say anything, he started to walk away.
She looked back to the shuttle, thinking about the soldiers, still in their seats; nothing she could do for them. And how difficult it had been for her to climb out of the damn thing, and now he wanted her to gather supplies.
With time, she supposed it would be feasible to accomplish the task. But it was going to hurt like a bitch.
The Second Brother was slowly becoming convinced everything on Dathomir wanted to kill him.
First was the environment itself. The structure he found himself in, just beyond the small plateau was falling apart. The ground itself giving way to the gorge below. The rotting wood supports creaking in protest as they bared his weight, and sudden drops that, had he not been paying attention, surely would have led to him being injured at best, having to rely on the doctor to come rescue him at worst.
Next was the flora, most of it poisonous, based on looks, and would provide nothing to eat while they were stranded, making the doctor’s ability to scavenge the shuttle that much more important.
If all that wasn’t enough, there was the ravenous fauna who’s territorial rage was basically triggered at the mere sight of him. Already, a large predator that almost gored him with its sweeping claws; ambushing him in a long, leaping attack, and that was to say nothing of the several large spiders that spit poison, bit at his armor and clothes, then erupted more poison when he struck them down with his red blade, the substance sizzling on the dry stone ground.
He had no reason for exploring the ruins as he did. He had only meant to gather kindling and to bring it back to the shuttle.
But then there was… something about this place. Like a voice calling to him from around the corner, he felt a compulsion to follow, to see what was just beyond, leading him further and further away.
It was the Force, he knew, pulling him into the ruins. Compelling him to tune in to the Darkness that lingered around these strangled cliffs like a heavy fog.
He should have ignored it, should have just gathered kindling and returned to the doctor before she tripped on her coat and shot herself with the blaster or something. But he was no one to ignore the call of the Force.
Eventually, he made it through the cliffs and found himself at the maw of a structure. Two stone statues stood on either side, as if they were guarding it. They did not look like the Zabrak species he knew occupied the planet… he didn’t know what species they were, actually.
It didn’t matter, he supposed, strolling in.
The meanings of these ruins were lost now. With what the doctor described as a “genocide”, there was no one left to pass on their stories.
Wasn’t he familiar with that?
Still. Even if he did not understand it, he was drawn to the monument in the middle of the small cavern he found himself in. Kneeling at the base of the stone structure, he brushed his gloved hand along the inscription, written in a square-ish alphabet he could not read.
He felt the hair on his neck stand up, prompting him to look around, but still, there was no one.
It was strange… the place seemed abandoned, but…
Wind rushed past his ear, and he jolted, standing to full height, drawing his hilt, igniting it as a cloud of green smoke condensed before him, and from it, emerged a woman adorned in blood-red robes, a scowl on her face as she focused her sights on the Inquisitor, as if he was prey.
Laughable, wasn’t it?
“You trespass… Jedi, ” she remarked, the disdain in her voice obvious.
The Second Brother couldn’t help but make a face at the accusation. “I’m not a Jedi,” he said before looking her up and down. “But you’re a Nightsister… I had heard you were all gone.”
“Not all of us,” she immediately retorted.
Figures. That was the last time he trusted the doctor to give him any information on Force-Sensitives.
“If you are not a Jedi, why do you wield the weapon of one?” She pointed to his saber.
He looked down at it, the crackling red, letting himself hear the screaming of the crystal inside.
“To hunt them,” he answered, simply, looking back at her.
If the Nightsister was shocked by his answer, she didn’t show it. “Dathomir is forbidden to outsiders. You will leave at once.”
“Would if I could, but unfortunately, my ship crashed,” he started, casually, not sure how well she was going to respond to his scenario, true as it may be. “Trust me. I don’t want to be here anymore than you do. But if you give me a couple days, me and my… associate will be out of your hair when we contact a rescue team.”
The Nightsister raised a brow. “You mean to bring other outsiders here?”
“That is the only way off this rock,” the Inquisitor relented.
“No. There are other ways to rid you from Dathomir.”
He did not like the sound of that, the sentence only made more ominous when she waved her hand and two Zabrak males appeared in a green smoke, similar to how she had emerged earlier, both of them brandishing heavy-looking weapons with spikes on them.
The Second Brother immediately held his lightsaber in front of him as the Nightsister disappeared.
Figured she wouldn’t fight her own fights, but it did not matter.
The Inquisitor made quick work of the grunts, even if their weapons were enchanted by the Nightsisters sorcery to be resistant to his blade, their brutish and slow attacks were no match for his elegance and dexterity, and soon, he was alone with the carved remains of what were the Nightbrothers.
He extinguished his blade and brushed a few strands of hair that had fallen into his face back into place.
He was alone physically… but he could still feel the presence of that Nightsister, like she was a shadow in his peripheral. He wouldn’t doubt that she was watching him, somehow, with the powers of her magick.
“If you attack me again, I will strike you down,” he called, voice echoing off the cavern. “Leave me and my associate be, and I will leave you be.”
There was nothing to indicate that she heard him. Nothing to indicate whether or not she agreed to the terms and conditions he had just set.
The Second Brother did not seek a fight unless it was necessary. It would be a waste of energy and time to hunt her down. No, instead, he could focus his efforts on leaving this hell-planet and keeping the doctor alive.
With a final glance around, he turned on his heel and departed the cavern the way he came, heading back to the cliffs to collect some dry wood he had spotted earlier.