The Alchemist's Workshop

[Darth Callidus]

The thursters of the Blue Shadow threw clouds of white dust into the air, as the Firespray-class craft's pilot navigated the rugged terrain of Ambria, in search of a suitable landing point. The ships hull-plating reflected the light of the high and unforgiving sun, and gave the impression that the Blue Shadow was a polished dagger thrust amongst the arid foothills. It touched down and as the dust began to settle two figures emerged from within the craft and moved out of the cover of crags they had landed amongst.

Bone-white eyes narrowed against the harsh glare of the sun, Darth Callidus surveyed the vast and seemingly empty expanse of land before him. In the distance, mist rose like a heat-mirage from the shimmering surface of Lake Natth. Footsteps crunched the dirt and gravel behind him, though the Sith Lord did not turn to regard his accomplice.

[Chir'daki]

Chir'daki had been to many worlds. In fact, he had been to many desert and desolate worlds, like Tatooine, Geonosis, Lok, Ryloth; each was different, formed by a variety of acts of nature and quirks of science. Ambria was again different, and bore a special, unique quality. Despite his efforts however, he couldn't place his finger on just what it was. Something about the world just felt different.

Normally, he would have dismissed the notion as words. As a hunter, he chose to rely on every perception and instinct but his gut: for when you began to depend on that, your work transformed from the work of skill to the work of luck, and far too many hunters had met their end doing so.

However, his new mentor had opened his eyes: sowed the seed of realisation that perhaps the mutterings of his gut weren't merely indegestion, or apprehension; instead, they might be the faint whisperings of the Force. Granting them the benefit of the doubt, he focussed his mind, trying to decipher what message the Force might be trying to convey. As best he could tell, that message could be summed up in a handful of words: I have a bad feeling about this.

Even if his gut and the Force offered him little, his skills and experience told him much. The coordinates that his master had provided placed them in proximity to a lake. From above, the region immediately surrounding seemed uncharacteristically devoid of activity. While granted, the population of Ambria was spartan at best, they were scattered across the planet's surface, taking advantage of the natural terrain and geology to benefit their settlements. Everything that Chir'daki knew and understood about civilization and sentient behaviour suggested that a lake was the prime location for a settlement; but there was nothing. There weren't even the signs of infrastructure for water being collected by nearby settlements; nor settlements taking advangage of the other natural resources in the immediate area. It was as if, for some reason, the local inhabitants were giving the lake a wide birth.

Though the inhabitants seemed to avoid it, there were indications that wildlife was a different story. He'd seen tracks of reasonably-sized creatures highly active in the area; and while there was only so much that a brief glance from above and a cursory sweep with the sensors could tell, it was evident that something fairly large and fairly local frequented the lake shore.

The only solace came from the fact that, as far as he could see, there were no such creatures in the immediate vacinity. The lake was, as best as it could be determined, safe.

But then, if that was the case, why did the twist in his gut grow tighter with every approaching step?

[Darth Callidus]

Master and apprentice moved down through the foothills at a ponderous pace. To all appearances, Ambria was a world without life – yet both men felt, whether they were conscious of it or not, the presence of something. As they moved into the open, the arid wind clawed at Callidus' robes and when they picked their path amongst boulders, a tiny lime-green lizard sprinted across the dusty rock from one patch of shade to another, vanishing with seconds. It was the last living thing they saw, before they reached the lake.

Heat rose from Lake Natth's waters, vapor twisting into the air like smoke. Gnarled rock formations, like withered bony fingers, reached out of the waters surface, moisture clinging to their uneven surfaces like beads of sweat. The air had a peculiar taste – texture, even – to it, but that was not why the local wildlife eschewed using the lake for a wellspring. A dark and restless energy ebbed from within Lake Natth.

A step behind Chir'daki, the Sith Lord laid a hand on his apprentices shoulder as they stood over the waters edge, their reflections indistinct shadows on the rippling surface. “Kneel, hunter, and drink.”

[Chir'daki]

The conscious, logical part of Chir'daki's mind concluded that the bubbling, boiling waters of the lake were merely evidence of a hot spring, forced up from beneath the surface by the heat of the planet's core. The lake itself was perhaps a flooded impact crater, the same event having caused the weakness in the bedrock that provoked said spring into choosing this location to boil forth in the first place. The twisted rocks; the plumes of steam; the heat rising from the lake itself; everything agreed with that assessment.

And yet, the subconscious, impulsive part of Chir'daki willed him to recoil in fear. Despite knowing intellectually that the spectacle before him was the epitomy of nature, he couldn't shake the sensation that something distinctly unnatural was at work, lurking beneath the surface. He found himself flooded with fear, and longed to turn and run; the last thing he wanted to do was get any closer to those ominous waves.

The hand on his shoulder prevented him from his desired retreat, and instilled him with a sense of resolve that was perhaps more resignation than confidence. He dropped to his kness, one hand falling to the wrist of the other to unfasten the vambrace of his Ori'ramikade armour, and pull off the plated glove beneath. Fingers flexed briefly as they were exposed to the dry air, the sweat that had collected in the canyons of his palm vanishing with near visible speed. He hesitated for a brief moment longer and then, steadying himself against the rocky shore, reached down towards the waves.

The second his fingers made contact with the water, fear, anger, hate, and pain exploded inside his head, thoughts and emotions assaulting him as if he was being physically battered. He recoiled, snatched his hands away, and fell backwards, collapsing breathless against the parched ground.

[Darth Callidus]

Barely a beat passed before Callidus stooped and seized Chir'daki by his shoulder, throwing the hunter sprawling once again, this time on his hands and knees. One clawed hand locked over the back of his armoured neck as the Sith Lord hauled his apprentice back to the waters edge, and unceremoniously plunged the man's head down into the waters. The waters of Lake Natth, into which an ancient Jedi Master had banished the spirits of countless petty Sith. The waters whose bedrock hid the very minerals necessary to create the rare Luxum lightsaber crystal.

Callidus' voice was like a dart into Chir'daki's brain. “What do you see?”

[Chir'daki]

Instincts fired, willing Chir'daki to fight back against his mentor, but the unnatural strength posessed by the masked figure was too much for him to have a hope against.

Worse than the oppressive grip though, and worse the hot spring water that assaulted his skin, was the attack the water made against his mind. The emotions battered against him again, swarming his mind like a plague of insects, images blurring past too fast for him to comprehend. He tried to shut them out, but every effort made the flow - and the pain - all the more intense.

Suddenly, something snapped within his mind, and the flow stopped; or at least, slowed to a perceptable crawl before his mind's eye. Everything else was gone; he found himself in an impossible space, blinding whiteness stretching in all directions, and yet beneath him, though he felt solid ground, he could see no shadow cast by his own form.

There were shadows however; wrapped like cloaks around a myriad of figured that loomed ominously over him. He knelt, eyes averted, not sure if he was even permitted to gaze upon them. An arm reached towards him, a finger of darkness hooking beneath his chin, tilting his gaze upwards. Suprise resolved in his mind; for the cloak of shadow had faded, and while the figure (http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/object3/1369/92/n172745296557_6132.jpg) was swathed in robes and hidden beneath an armoured helm, Chir'daki knew without question that he now gazed upon itself.

The shadowed hand - now resolved into a gauntlet, adorned with menacing metal claws on each finger - remained outstretched, and puzzled Chir'daki rose his to match. The gauntlet inverted, a weight dropping from the gloved hand into Chir'daki's own ungloved fingers.

The vision exploded, fading swiftly into the familiar sight of the inside of Chir'daki's eyelids. He hesitated for a moment before his eyes slowly opened; his master's grip had faded, and he found himself knelt on the shore once more. The vision of himself hung in his mind, and he wondered as to its meaning; and then his eyes fell, settled on his ungloved hand, and onto the small crystal that lay now clutched in his fingers.

[Darth Callidus]

Callidus was gone, no trace of his passing left on the bleached stone that encircled Lake Natth. Ahead of Chir'daki, the shadows cast by the pillars rising from the lakes waters stretched longer than before. The lower most tip of the sun was obscured, however fractionally, by the mountains from which the Sith had descended.

Nearby, something hisssssssed.

[Chir'daki]

A chill shot down Chir'daki's spine, and he knew there was more to it than merely the unsettling eeriness of the sudden sound. Freezing, his ears tuned in on the sound; his eyes swept around, attempting to triangulate in on the source of the noise. His honed senses estimated - from the pitch and volume of the sound produced - the rough size of the creature; menacingly large, to give it a label. And yet, nowhere around him was anything that could conform to that assessment.

Invisible? That was certainly a logical conclusion to draw given the evidence, and Chir'daki had heard stories of creatures capable of such feats, though he had never encountered one face to face. He grimaced at the irony of the fact that, while one Hugo Montegue would be an invaluable asset at this juncture, Chir'daki had only a few years ago gone tooth and nail attempting to kill him.

His mind wandered to the man who had brought him here - vanished from sight - and wondered if this had been his intention all along: bring him to this world; pit him against this beast. Chir'daki only wished he'd known; he could have armed himself with more than the mere blaster that hung at his side.

He didn't doubt that the man would view the death of his 'student' as merely an inconvenience: but still, it stuck him that this was too much effort just as a means to merely watch him die, glorious and bloody a death as it may have been. His mind searched his options; wondered what it might be that he was hoping to see.

He opened his mind; pushed past his preconceptions; looked in the one place that his perceptions filtered him away from: the corner of his eye.

In an instant, a fleeting glance of shape and form caught his attention, and his mind snapped into action, resolving the beast before him, plain as day. Armoured scales seemed to radiate with inner darkness as the vicious creature loomed menacingly before him; and Chir'daki's hand strayed, carefully, towards his blaster, insufficient though it might be against this beast.

His jaw clenched. Perhaps it would have been better had he not managed to see the creature. At least then he wouldn't have to watch as it tore him to shreds.

[Darth Callidus]

A patch in the air some twenty feet away from Chir'daki rippled and in spite of the heat and high sun, a chill was settling across the hunter. Inexplicable scratches began to appear in the dirt, the kind that would be left behind if four huge feet were very slowly, and very meaningfully, clawing their way towards Chir'daki.

[Chir'daki]

Keeping his motions careful, Chir'daki's hand strayed towards the small of his back, plucking free an innocent-looking cylinder held in place via magnets. His eyes narrowed, sizing up his target; estimating the distance -

He threw, the object tumbling through the air; it struck the barren ground, and exploded in a brilliant flash of light, which Chir'daki turned away from with a wince. As expected, the concussion grenade barely caused a hesitation in the phantom creature's advance, but dust and debris dislodged from the ground by the explosion leapt up into the air like a cloud, raining down audibly against the creature's scales.

He watched as that same dust vanished, disappearing within whatever unnatural field rendered the creature invisible.

Chir'daki sighed. That would have been too easy, I suppose.

His hand fell to his blaster this time: styled not after an archaic slugthrower like most such weapons, but more akin in appearence to an archaic ancestor of a lightsaber's hilt. He ripped it free of the holster, rattling off a volley of snap-shots towards the creature's approximate head. The energy bolts vanished inside the invisibility field, and given how ineffective they were in slowing the beast, he hoped his shots had bounced harmlessly off resiliant scales; the alternative - that the beast was nigh invulnerable - was not one he was prepared to surrender to.

"Very well," he said aloud. A flick of his wrist triggered the inner workings (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82zW3l8-zPY) of his blaster; telescopics, pneumatics, magnetics and all manner of technologies that he didn't even begin to understand converting it from a non-descript foot-long rod into a staff that was almost as long as he was tall. An ornate flourish sent the weapon spiralling around his body, spinning around his wrists and palms until he gripped it in one hand, half the weapon pressed up against his arm and shoulder, the remainder reaching out towards the ground. He crouched low, off-hand held out for balance. His eyes narrowed. "We shall do this the hard way."

The creature advanced into range and he swung, weapon flailing before him in a violent arc that struck heavily about what - from the apparent cy of pain - was the beast's head. His lip curled, snarling in satisfaction as he felt the menacing advance finally begin to waver. A flurry of blows followed, the staff weapon lashing out to where his estimates placed the beast's head each after each strike. One blow met with resistance; he tried to tug the staff free, but the beast tugged back, mouth apparently wrapped around the weapon. Chir'daki summoned all of his strength, and managed to wrench it free by a few inches; he twisted, weapon pivoting in the creature's jaws; a squeeze with his thumb on the blaster controls sent a crimson bolt hurtling down the beast's throat.

Greater pain tainted the creature's roar this time; it lashed out, what Chir'daki guessed was a tail sweeping him off his feet, and hurtling him several meters to land heavily on the desolate ground. He winced as he felt something in his chest snap: his armour designed by ancient Mandalorians for protection against blasters and lightsabers, it did very little to guard against impacts such as this.

Using the staff as a crutch, he clambered back to his feet, eyes sweeping frantically for where the beast had gone. His perceptions were too slow; he barely had time to react as he felt the creature lunge for his face, staff shoved into it's jaws as he tumbled onto his back, providing scant purchase as he tried to wrestle the creature away from him. The invisible weight of its body began to press down on his legs, pinning him in place; his senses were assaulted with the stench of the creature's hot, rancid breath. His biceps bunched and buckled with the strain, letting one end of the staff fall against the ground as he tried to lever the beast off him. He felt the staff snap and splinter under the strength of those jaws; felt the roughness of scales against his ungloved hand -

A hand dropped free, snatching something else from about his person. A jab of a concealed control and the non-descript handle spat forth metal that unfurled into a glistening vibroblade. The hand lunged, driving the sword up through the base of the beast's mouth, and on into it's skull; a vicious twist ensured that any motion from the creature as it slumped to the ground was merely the twitches as the durasteel scrambled it's brain. Consciousness finally stolen from it, the mighty creature at last resolved into view, and Chir'daki was able to witness the beast against which he had fought.

At least, he would have been able to, had its corpse not now pinned him to the ground. He slumped backwards with a sigh, drained of energy. The combination of the weight of the dragon and the crack in his chest made his breathing laboured; but he ignored the sensation for now. For as he lay there, gazing up at the sky, only one, idle thought managed to resolve in his mind:

Damn it. I'm going to need a new blaster.