Chapter Text
There's a seam in this forest where the wind doesn't blow and the birds don't sing.
Behind you, insects drone too close to your face. The canopy stirs in a breeze, catching sweet, pink pollen that collects in your hair. A critter scampers beneath an overgrowth while you crouch to check the first snare. Empty. The second caught a hare; long legged and thin at the belly. You unbind its leg, ignoring the grind of its displaced tibia.
The rhythm is easy now. You set the line here because the creatures that stalk each side of the seam avoid its immediate radius. Your shelter is built in a dugout underneath a fallen trunk, roofed with scrap durasteel from your ruined ship, and covered with an emergency tarp. You've been here long enough that the polyethylene paled at the edges. Long enough that you track your days by the durability of repairs you make to your camp.
Stretching out with your senses is a fool's errand. You learned early that calling on the Force stirs something sinister and interested on the quiet side, and haven't made that mistake since. You keep yourself small and wait for a way off this world that has not come.
You're seated at the mouth of your shelter, dragging your vibroknife against a whetstone. This is the time of day you take stock. The hare's meat cures on a hot stone in the sun, the fat melting in a tin over a fire. You have a snack for the next few days, and the lard will suffice for lotion when the temperature rises. There's fourteen hours of daylight on this planet, but the evenings have stretched the past few weeks. It must be the edge of spring.
This has been your life for forty days.
Home is a black bruise you can't stop pressing on. Someone waits for you in a subterranean cavern bathed in violet light. You can't linger there for too long. Hope, like the Force, is only a concept now— one that is impossible in practice.
You notice the silence first, too similar to the world on the other side of the seam. The wind picks up, and a rumble tears through the quiet and rattles in the fillings of your teeth. Darkness passes over the canopy with a wave of suffocating heat. Instinct takes you to your feet, hand on the hilt of your electrosword.
A ship, one you do not recognize, landing on the quiet side of the seam. The dead air does not stir, and no birds flee from its placid trees.
And then the thing you've cut yourself off from for forty days breaches your shields. It binds you to a presence that burns so vividly in the Force that you can almost smell the smoke. On the other side, the malice crawls to the ship that disturbed its slumber. You understand with a lurch that is almost grief, that hope is only a concept on your side of the world. And you must cross to live it.
The quiet side is worse than you remember it. The stagnant stench of rot and waste clings to your ragged clothes. Your footsteps fall flat, like the ground itself swallows the echo. Nothing flees your approach because nothing here acknowledges you. What the beasts sustain themselves on this side, you have no clue. You move toward the ship guided by sight and sound, nothing more— the hilt of your electrosword in your palm.
The ship's sleek hull shimmers with descent heat in a clearing. You crouch in the undergrowth and watch the twin radiator panels fold inwards towards its spherical cabin. It looks like it cost more credits than you'll ever see in your lifetime. That is the first thing that frightens you about him before you ever see his face. He landed here, on this side of the seam, with that fancy ship willingly.
The second is what you feel. Forty days of your own silence, your own breathing, your own voice gone to rust from disuse— and here is another mind. Another living, sentient being, and the animal part of you wants to fling yourself into his arms and sob.
You're not alone.
But you've survived forty days and know better. The Zabrak, who doesn't descend from the ramp as much as he manifests from the exhaust, has the certainty of a creature that has never once lived as prey. He's Force sensitive, this you're certain of, because he blazes hot enough to melt your shields. But you're safe because the malice hunts loudest targets, and that is not you. For now.
They pour in from the northern section of the clearing; quadruped beasts with sharp teeth visible from the sides of their jaws. The lower canines extend past their boxy muzzle and reflect in large amber eyes, void of pupils.
He turns to meet them, and ignites what you understand is a lightsaber, as crimson as his skin.
You stay back. If the beasts kill him, his body will serve as a distraction while you sneak onto his ship.
He's no amateur, that much is clear within three seconds. He moves with the grace of a dancer. The first beast looses its head. The second pounces and he splits it open from throat to abdomen, green organs spilling into a heap on the ground.
A pile of mutilated bodies surrounds him. He's good, but the creatures hunt in endless waves the longer he uses the Force. They will overwhelm him and rip him to shreds, then you will be the dessert. Unless you retreat now, but that turns his corpse into a fortress of sharp teeth.
Shit.
Alive, he gives you the advantage of drawing them off of you. You already have the flank— and he will owe you.
You leap out of the undergrowth, electrosword buzzing in your grip. You take the first beast by severing its spine. It draws the attention of another, who charges at you with an open maw. You jump at the last second and send your sword through the thing's head. It joins its friend's corpse on the ground.
The Zabrak kills the last two in a quick flourish, his red blade now pointed at you. His eyes glow yellow like your kin at home, but something about the red borders tells you it's not natural. His expression is hard, assessing you like he did the treeline. The lightsaber vibrates at your neck, reverberating in your throat.
"The more you use the Force," your voice is a rasp from disuse. "the more of them will come."
He looks you up and down, his mental presence slamming against your shields. His eyes narrow and the lightsaber stays at your throat. "You are no Jedi. What are you?"
"Does it matter? I know this planet and you don't."
The lightsaber moves closer, its radiating heat cooking your skin.
"I do not need your help."
"They don't stop," you bite. "This planet attacks Force users."
An ensemble of low, wet growls breach the treeline.
He doesn't move the blade.
It's a war of attrition— kill you and take his chance with the creatures, or owe you. For a long moment, you think he might do it. They grow closer, ripping through the shrubs. You hold his stare. You are calm, because you have faced the possibility of your death for forty days.
The first beast breaks the treeline.
The lightsaber leaves your throat and slashes through its jaw. It dies gurgling, tongue dangling out of its mouth. You spear another through the chest with your electrosword. Green blood oozes around your fingers like thick sap, the dead weight slumping over your weapon. More pour in from the treeline.
You and the Zabrak fight side by side wordlessly, dispatching wave after wave of beasts. It's after the third assault when you feel the Force withdraw from him, yet he fights like it still guides his hand. One by one, the creatures fall until you two are surrounded by gelatinous organs and detached extremities. The corpses' steam forms a mist that hangs in the dead air.
Hush falls over the seam again. You are panting. He is not. The lightsaber does not return to your throat. He is the one that breaks the silence.
"You say this planet attacks Force users," he clips his lightsaber to his belt. "Explain."
You make him wait while you search for your vibroblade among the bodies. That was an order, and you refuse to set the precedent that you're obedient. You find the beast with your blade buried in its skull, and yank it free with a wet squelch of blood and flesh.
"There's a structure to the north. I think it's a temple," you wipe the blade clean on the scales of the nearest creature. "It reaches out and bends the world around it. These things," you gesture to the corpses around you. "appear when they sense the Force, and won't stop until it's gone. But there's a limit to its influence. My camp is just past where it can't reach."
His eyes move past you to the north, jaw clenching.
"How far?" he asks.
"I don't know. I haven't been on this side since my ship crashed forty days ago."
Those yellow eyes slide back to you. He's assessing you and you don't like it. "My ship is your only way off this world."
You inhale and slide your blade back into the holster on your thigh. "Yes, and I'm assuming you're here for the temple?"
He says nothing.
"I'll help you get there if you get me off world."
His lips curl. "I do not need your help."
You look at the pile of corpses around you, but he's already walking away.
"Try to steal my ship," the bones of a severed leg crunch underneath his foot. "And it will kill you."
Biometrically sealed, then. You can cut off his hand to gain access when he dies. Or even his head, if the system requires a retina scan. You settle on both.
"Suit yourself."
You start the trek back to the seam. Camp is twenty minutes away and you spend it certain you have just watched a dead man walking. You don't look back and cross the seam to the living side and shed the dead air off you like a cloak. The birds sing, the sun is warm, and the blessed sound of life replaces the ringing in your ears.
You give it two days.
You spend them tending to your snares, dehydrating meat, and rendering fat. The Zabrak is done— swallowed by the dark or shredded to wet flesh between teeth. You'll cross the seam one final time and come back with a head, a hand, and a way home.
If there's nothing left of him, well, you'll figure it out.
You wake to your ears ringing on the third morning.
You're on your feet, immediately alert, blade in hand, and step out of your dugout. Dead insects litter across your tarp; the canopy, so still it looks frozen. Dread settles like iron in your gut. You walk to the seam to make sure.
The line where the world dies, the edge you've built your whole survival against, has moved. Not far. Thirty, forty paces, give or take. Your stretch of forest stands breathless this morning; the critters trapped by your snares overnight hang rigid and haggard. Your mind settles on the only explanation for the expansion:
The Zabrak is not dead, and the temple is hungry.
You laugh. Dead man walking. Every move he makes stretches the temple's greedy maw.
You break camp; strip your tarp from the dugout, haul the meat, and the small bag of emergency supplies. You rebuild, adding an additional fifty paces between you and the new seam. You reset your snares, and build your camp underneath an overhang by a stream. This spot has advantages the last one lacked. It's defensible, a natural protection from the elements, and your tarp is free for another use. You will survive this— the temple will settle when the Zabrak dies. It has to.
You sleep with your weapon, and the seam takes your new camp overnight.
You wake to the ringing and dead fish rotting in the stream. The seam doubled its advance overnight. This is not going to stop. Every day the Zabrak lives is another push off the edge you survived on. You are being herded, like a lamb to the slaughter.
You scream as loud as your voice can handle. You hate him. You hate him. You did not survive forty days on this Force-forsaken planet to die from a man's convictions. When he dies, because he will die, you will take one of his horns on principle.
The scream empties you, and what is left underneath is very cold and clear. You cannot survive this. Waiting for his death is not the right plan for a world that wants to eat you alive. You will find him. You will keep him alive long enough to reach the temple and get you off this rock. And when the ship jerks into hyperspace and he is no longer useful, then you will take a horn.
You pack what you need. This is not a rescue— it is a cornered animal taking the only route it has left.
You cross the seam for the second time in forty-four days.
The Zabrak blazes so loudly in the Force that you don't have to stretch out your senses to find him. He's far north, not much further than the clearing where his ship landed. Odd. You file that thought away for later.
You follow what was left of the stream, wrapping a handkerchief around your mouth to cover the smell. It leads you down through dead trees that close into a hollow. Through the fabric of your handkerchief, something acrid and sweet burns your nostrils. You draw your blade, and dip behind a tree.
It's a plant, one you've seen on the other side. They grow in thickets and feed on vermin by paralyzing them with whatever venom they secrete. If the animal is lucky and too large for the plant, the effect wears off.
This plant is bigger. Hungrier.
A sickly pink pitcher, wet at the lines where the leaves overlap. A single runner as thick as your wrist coils around the Zabrak's leg, penetrating his calf. It drags his body uselessly to the pitcher, dripping thick, yellow slime from the bulbs of its tentacles. He's on his back, lightsaber hilt a meter from his open hand. His Force signature is weakening.
You could do it. Take his head and hand, steal his ship and leave him to disintegrate into a paste of organ and flesh. You could wash your hands of this planet, of him, and never look back. Judging by the look in the Zabrak's eyes, he's daring you to do so. It's the strategic thing to do— the smart thing to do. But the body parts are a gamble at best. The ship is a model you don't recognize; you could crash before even breaking the atmosphere.
Your boot crushes the runner. It oozes more slime, squirming underneath your weight. You lean over him, close enough to see the sheen of sweat and dirt smeared across his face. He is furious.
"Here's how this is going to go," you say, looking down your nose at the Zabrak. "I will free you from this plant and take you to the temple. In exchange, you get me off this planet."
His jaw clenches, and you swear those ruptured blood vessels in his eyes pulse.
"You can't survive on your own. Not on this side of the seam," you ignite your electrosword, and let the tip kiss the stinger wrapped around his leg. It contracts. "Don't let your pride be the reason you die to a plant."
You watch him at war with himself. The price of owing you for the value of your help. After several seconds, he opens his mouth.
"Fine."
You don't move your boot or sword. "Say the deal out loud."
Oh, he wants to kill you. You feel alive.
"I will fly you off this world, if you keep me alive." Each word drags out of him. "Now cut me loose, wench."
You smile. "Now was that so hard?"
Written by a human in Ellipsus.