Toil and Trouble

[Akasha Khan]

The air in Akasha's nostrils was hot and humid and heavy with the stink of blood and rotten gore, mixed with the vinegar-sour stench of reptilian scales and the pungency of human fear. Even her night-trained eyes could see little in the darkness, just jagged shapes that might have been spurs of rock or bleached, regurgitated bones or the armored spines of the monster who owned this den. The zakkeg. A creature so fearsome even the Mandalorians of Onderon dared not attack it, even when it had caught one of their own children and carried her off into the wild as a plaything for its own young. Lanai was in there somewhere, broken and bleeding and beyond hope of rescue.

But I did rescue her, Akasha thought to herself indignantly. I don't see why I should have to do it again!

"Of course you have to do it again."

Akasha leapt back against the uneven cave wall and bit her tongue to stifle a cry that would have had the beast on her in an instant. If the stranger's voice hadn't been enough to draw its murderous attention. But it wasn't a stranger at all. It was Granoi, her old Mandalorian taskmistress, who'd found just enough light to reveal her crown of short, spiky, gray hair, which shimmered like the head of a ghost in the darkness.

"You did it then. Will you do it now?"

The black-furred Orryxian gawped at the old warrior, and at the gulf of darkness behind her, where the zakkeg lurked. "Is this really the time?" she hissed.

"This is all the time you have," Granoi said, and she lunged forward with her staff, driving Akasha backwards--

Into the penthouse bedroom of Illandra Dillean, the Imperial-loyalist heiress of Industrial Automata. Compared to the zakkeg's den on Onderon, the scents here were muted and sanitized, but the fear was much the same. The home security alarms wailed impotently, as most of the house's security had been slaughtered on her way in, but Ms. Dillean cowered before her, a tow-headed girl in her dressing gown, scarcely older than Lanai, and marked for death by Rebel intelligence and, more importantly, by Master De'Ville. Akasha stood over the whimpering girl with her lightsaber ignited and bathing the room in shimmering, blood-red light.

"I did this, too," Akasha growled. "I passed your test. What am I doing here?"

Master De'Ville stepped beside her, moving like a wraith in her black robes. "You did it then. Will you do it now?" she asked. "Who are you, Akasha Khan?"

"Are you a Jedi?"

Akasha lifted her head and stared in shock at the woman with fiery red hair and a smile like the nexu who caught the canary, like she knew all the secrets of the galaxy and thought yours were the funniest - the paradox of joy and cynicism, of licentiousness and law that was Jedi Investigator Tionne Thanewulf.

"Or are you a Sith?"

Now Akasha whirled and found herself shrinking before the death's head mask of Darth Callidus, whose cold and unsympathetic gaze pinned her to the spot like a butterfly on a card. Terror bubbled up inside her like water from a spring.

"I... I have sworn to serve you, master," she stammered.

"Yes, you have," Lord Callidus replied. "You have been doing that a lot, lately."

"You did it before," said Lanai, standing up out of the zakkeg's nest, covered in horrible, bleeding wounds.

"Will you do it again?" asked Ms. Dillean, unblemished except for the smoldering line of a lightsaber wound across her throat.

"Who are you, Akasha Khan?" Granoi demanded.

"Are you a Jedi?" Master De'Ville said, lips curling with scorn.

"Or are you--"

With a snarl, Akasha wheeled and struck with the lightsaber in her paws, spraying the air with a cloud of indigo blood vapor. Kala'ndryl Ryj fell from the darkness into the light at the Orryxian's feet, cut open from her collarbone to navel. Akasha cried out in horror like a wounded animal, and her lightsaber tumbled from her listless claws.

"You don't know, do you?" another voice whispered from the shadows behind her.

Akasha froze, all except her claws, which curled out so far from her fingers they began to hurt. "Now I know this is a dream," she said at a growl. "You're dead. You have no power over me!"

Idesca Corvera laughed, and it would have been a pleasant, musical sound, if not for the chittering of chitinous legs and the stench of necrotizing flesh that accompanied it. A delicate hand closed over Akasha's shoulder.

"Of course I'm dead," the Sith witch replied. "But I have more power over you than ever before."

Akasha was no longer standing, but lying down on a stone-cold slab, helpless to do anything but watch as a tumorous yellow creature crawled down from Idesca Corvera's hand and onto her chest, probing her fur with its sucking mouthparts until it reached the scar directly over her heart, where it plunged its razor-sharp jaws and began to feed--

The Orryxian woke with a strangled roar and a piercing hot pain in her chest, and she shot up out of her bunk bed like a ball from a cannon, landing awkwardly on all fours on the floor as she sucked air. In a moment of crazed panic she felt blood soaking the fur over her breastbone, and she tore back her tunic to see if the orbalisk was still there, but then she saw the blood on her claws and realized she had only pierced herself in her sleep like a fitful kitten. Her tunic was ruined, cut to ribbons in the middle, and she looked up to her bunk to see that her blankets and pillow had been similarly mauled. Akasha peeled back her lips in disgust - how was she going to explain this to Kala? But of course Kala wasn't there, she was off on a mission with Master Nytrau, and now Akasha wished she were here to confide in, even if it meant owning up to destroying a set of bedclothes--

Sentiment. Fear. Weakness.

Emotions roiled in Akasha's breast too fast to name them, but every one of them was a liability, except for anger. Anger gave her focus. Anger gave her strength. She shut everything else away, even the throbbing pain of her self-inflicted wounds, and reveled in her righteous indignation, against Master De'Ville for abandoning her to other teachers, against the Jedi for being weak and limited in their understanding of the Force, against Tionne for not being there, Kala for not understanding, herself for allowing the phantom of a dead enemy torment her through something as trivial and childish as a nightmare.

Akasha drew strength from anger, but no direction. Now she felt like the arrow on a drawn bow, heedless of her target, simply wanting to be unleashed. But she couldn't do that here. There were too many Jedi about who might feel the shockwaves of her outburst, not to mention that it was more difficult to explain a room full of splintered furniture than a few tattered sheets. It was a few hours earlier than she usually went hunting, but Akasha was in no mood to hunt. She called her Echani fighting staff from its spot on the wall rack into her paw, slid her window open, and dropped from her second-story dormitory to the cool grass below. Then she marched off into the Ossian night in search of something she could safely destroy.

[Hobgoblin]

Ask a Jedi Councilmember "Where's Hobgoblin?" and you were likely to get an answer in the form of Hob himself popping up from off to the side, as though he'd been waiting there for a long-scheduled appointment. "Here," Hob would answer, and then explain that the thing you just knew you needed was in your pocket all along.

Or, you were likely to find him entirely absent, perhaps because there was a more important pie-fight in the mess hall on his calendar. Still, by the time you tracked him down, that thing you were looking for would've turned up and so you never really needed Hob in the first place, even though you thought you did.

And of course, if Hob was quite literally the last being you'd want to be around, the likelihood of his presence was 110%, the math of which has been computed with allowances for the chance of Hob running off due to the distraction of a frolicking small dog.

How Hob happened to be in these sorts of positions (or, in the case of pie fights, why he even put himself there) was something of a mystery. If asked about Hob's natural serendipity, his reply was often "Good ears, has Hob." Sometimes it was "Listening!"

Many among the Jedi presumed that Hob was simply strong enough in the Force that he was constantly placing himself where it guided him. They were not entirely wrong, but this explanation overlooked the pair of fairly large ears atop Hob's head. Though he'd only admit it when the admission could be passed off in jest, Hob was greatly proud of his ears and the advance news they brought him.

In this case, they hadn't brought him advance news so much as magnified the noises that others might dismiss. The noises of cat paws stomping their way through grasses and dirt, heedless of what twigs they broke or rocks they kicked.

And there was the twisting swirl in the Force, too. The kind Hob often saw among the angry or the dismayed who were trying rein themselves, but without the control to do so. For lack of a better description, Hob imagined it as a tempest in a bottle. A light tempest, of course.

Standing from his meditation mat with his walking cane in hand, Hob opened the window to his first-floor room at the Jedi dorm and gazed into the early morning darkness. Something was heading off into the nearby forest.

With quiet born of 100 years of sneaking and a delicate step that had avoided detection during the Last Great Jedi Purge, Hob leapt through his window and followed the noises into the forest.

[Akasha Khan]

A pair of gokobs scattered from the tall grass as Akasha's warpath took her in their direction. If she'd been paying any sort of attention, she might have caught one, let it exhaust its stink fumes, and then use it for a furry football until she felt calmer. Now their flight would put all the wildlife for a hundred meters on alert. But what she was about to do would probably spook the game for kilometers.

She padded further through the field, heading southeast away from hydroponics or anywhere else someone might be working late enough to hear her racket. Then she came to a shrub in the middle of the field, standing about her height, its spindly, thorny branches bearing clusters of tiny, green berries that were safe to eat but far too sour to enjoy. Akasha stood and glared at the bush, as if it alone was responsible for robbing her of a night's rest and her peace of mind. She took a few heaving, hissing breaths as her ire built like water behind a dam.

"Hrrrrrrrraaaahh!"

Her staff flew into her paw, rapidly expanding from a stubby, white cylinder into a gleaming rod equal to her height. The weapon pinwheeled back and forth through the shrub, splintering its branches and spraying the air with sour green juice. In seconds she'd taken off most of its foliage, leaving only a sad, twisted trunk covered in weeping, white scars. With another feral howl, Akasha turned and swung her staff like an executioner's axe, aiming to sever the trunk completely just above its root cluster.

[Hobgoblin]

Hob tailed Akasha through the woods, keeping as low a profile as possible. Which, fortunately for Hob, was not that hard - his profile was already low to the ground to begin with! But, just to be certain he wasn't noticed before he wanted, Hob pulled on the Force to draw in and hold some of the already meager ambient light.

Once or twice, Hob thought Akasha might look back the way she'd come, but in the end she was too busy stomping her way through the undergrowth to notice Hob tailing her. Then she stopped, brought out her weapon, and attacked a shrub.

Such rage at a helpless plant? It really made no sense. The plant had not injured her. It had not even stuck out its tongue and razzed her as any good plant would do when it was being beaten up.

No, this was a Padawan misusing her anger and it would not do.

As Akasha brought her weapon back for a final mighty swing, Hob leapt into action.

Hob uncoiled the light energy he'd been holding back and to Akasha's right, a bright flash suddenly pulsed from nothingness. It wasn't quite blinding, but it was the perfect distraction to allow Hob to get into place. A few quick hops landed Hob behind the shrub.

When Akasha next turned her attention to the shrub she'd been about to end, she saw a rather curious sight. Two short arms, one holding what appeared to be a walking stick had sprouted from between the vines. In addition, two not-very-well-concealed ears clearly poked out from its sides.

"Away put your weapon!" the shrub declared with a rustle. "I mean you no harm!"

[Akasha Khan]

Maiur's spine!

The burst of light was enough to make Akasha hop-skitter away with arched back and bristling hackles. Her staff had spun up into a defensive guard when the bush suddenly grew arms, legs, ears, and a voice.

After a moment her sanity returned and reminded her that, no, plants didn't have that kind of limbs, and she'd evidently blundered into the nest of some small, native... thing. A thing that hardly looked like it could offer any sort of threat. But her temper was still high, and she turned her staff end-on toward the creature and peeled back her lips in a predatory snarl.

"Who are you? Step out where I can see you!"

[Hobgoblin]

A name? She wanted a name?

"No one else is here! Ho- I mean, I am a simple plant. You may call me Bushroot."

Speaking in proper Basic grammar was strange, but for all Hob knew, that was how plants spoke. Better to stick to something likely.

"Bushroot wonders why you have hit me? What did Bushroot do to you?"

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha tilted her head in disbelief, eyes narrow, jaw gaping. This? She'd stormed out of bed in the middle of the night and burned halfway through a perfectly good tantrum for this?

She let her staff fall back to her side in contempt. "I'm not about to empathize with a plant," she spat. "Plants are the food that my food eats."

[Hobgoblin]

'Bushroot' bristled at this news. "And when gone am I, what does your food eat? What food do you eat? Nothing! Hm!"

The hand holding the cane raised it pointedly at Akasha. "A higher predator, you may be. And yet, you are nothing without me."

Bushroot's other hand extended itself, palm open. "Let us be friends!" it said brightly.

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha spread her paws helplessly before such madness.

"Why would I make friends with a bush? You're stuck in a field, and it's not even a very good field, and you're too short to climb, and Maiur's claws, this is daft! I know you're standing behind the bush, I can see you!"

[Hobgoblin]

"No! What is ridiculous is attacking poor Bushroot for no reason! Noble Bushroot! The Clown Prince of Shrubs!" Bushroot paused. "Er, Crown Prince maybe."

The cane pointed at Akasha again, this time accusingly. "Why would a Jedi Padawan do such a thing?"

[Akasha Khan]

"Because I'm angry!" Akasha roared back in self-demonstration. "Why does it matter? I'll go find another bush!"

She collapsed her staff back into its handle and started stalking off with no real destination in mind.

[Hobgoblin]

"No! Bushroot will protect all shrubkind from your silly rampages!"

A claw-tipped hand scooped up a thick, gloopy handful of mud from the ground near the bush. With a quick toss, it took flight. For five glorious seconds, it dove through the air, only to be interrupted by the back of Akasha's head.

Splat.

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha froze in mid-step, every muscle, every tendon quivering like a harpstring. She could feel the viscous muck rolling down her head, seeping between every obsidian hair down to her very pores, vile, clotting, filth that it was. Cleanliness wasn't next to godliness for an Orryxian, not when your very body was divine. This. Was. BLASPHEMY.

With a feral snarl, she wheeled around and sent an open-pawed blast of Force energy through the bush, snapping twigs and stripping leaves from its branches.

"What is WRONG WITH YOU?"

[Hobgoblin]

The Force blast did less harm to the shrub than it did to the shrub's temporary inhabitant. Hob flew backwards out of the bush, tumbling end over end until he came to a stop some twenty feet away.

Hob held out a hand as he clambered to one knee. His walking stick leapt into his hand from several feet away and he used it to hoist himself all the way to his feet. As he raised his head to look at Akasha, he revealed an expression of intense focus. His eyes locked onto Akasha's; he was clearly not angry, but all comedy had vanished from his demeanor. Were you to ask Hob what he was about to do, he would have answered with a word.

Listen.

"So." The alien Jedi began the trek back to 'Bushroot' and looked up at Akasha.

Then his face broke out into a grin. "There was no Bushroot!" he cackled. "It was Hob all along!"

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha stared back, frozen in disbelief. One of her backswept ears fluttered involuntarily.

"I already knew-- ERGH!"

She clapped a paw to her forehead as if she were trying to stave off the mother of all headaches. She didn't really know Hob, but she knew of him - some sort of mad Jedi master whom the other knights generally left to his own devices. Which apparently included impersonating a bush and tormenting angry Padawans. Much as she wanted to teach the little green troll a lesson of her own, she couldn't risk word getting back to the other Jedi, and the galling fact was he was probably more powerful than she was.

"I'm leaving," she declared at last. "I'm in no mood for games!"

[Hobgoblin]

Step one was to prevent Akasha from running.

"You lie," said Hob. "You wish to play your game, and no others. Unfortunately, Padawan, the universe rarely grants such wishes."

Hob gathered the Force into himself and sprang upwards. For a brief moment, sailing through the air, he felt the joy of touching the entire world around him. The whispers raised their voices to a conversational tone, a million million voices all talking over one another.

Then he landed in front of Akasha, blocking her exit.

Step two was to shine light on the things that wanted to hide themselves.

"Many confuse Hob's understanding for insanity," he remarked in a bemused tone. "They hear not, what Hob hears because Hob listens for what others do not. Sees places others blind themselves to."

A single finger raised an accusation at the Jedi Padawan. "Hob sees your anger. But more importantly, Hob hears your pride."

"Hob has lived a long time - over a hundred years! Hob knew the old Jedi Order, learned from Yoda, but stayed apart from them. In doing so, Hob passed unharmed through the dusk that was the Clone Wars. Hob survived the Imperial midnight when many others fell. Hob now lives and thrives in the Alliance dawn. Three eras of conflict and more besides, has Hob lived in. And yet, you who have barely seen the stars think yourself better than Hob."

"If so much better, you are," Hob asked, settling into a martial stance. "Why leave?"

[Akasha Khan]

The Orryxian backpedaled before the accusing claw, feeling far more trapped than she had any right to in a wide open plain under the friendly cover of a starry night sky. She no longer wanted to win. She simply wanted out.

"Fine, you're better than me," she rasped. "Can I go, now?"

She took another step back, ears lying low. "Look, I'm sorry about the bush. I got angry, it happens. Maiur's fangs, what do you want from me?"

[Hobgoblin]

"Truth." Hob did not move from his stance as he answered. "A better question, Hob has. Come out here to fight, it seems you did. Now talk, perhaps, you would rather? Hm?"

[Akasha Khan]

"I came out here to blow off steam," Akasha retorted, "and I was doing that just fine before you decided to impersonate a bush. But now the game's all hiding, and I'm too worked up to go back to bed, and if it's very much the same to you, I'd like to be left alone."

All her pretenses of shrugging off Hob's interference in a cloud of aloof now lay shattered at her feet. Her chest heaved, her tail snapped like a viper, and her claws pressed out of their sheathes no matter how she tried to keep them in. All the calm she practiced in Knight Hicchoru's meditation classes, all the cool-blooded guile she relied on to carry her through her daily deceptions, seemed parsecs away, while the strangling panic she had felt in her nightmare seemed as close as the domineering little imp glaring at her out of the darkness. She was in a perilous state, and she needed this conversation to end now.

[Hobgoblin]

Alone? Well, why didn't she say so earlier?

"Hm!" the goblin hm'd brightly as he stowed his walking stick in a little holster. "The perfect place to be alone, knows Hob! Come! Come, Hob will show you."

Cloak and hood awhirl, the goblin leapt into an airborne spin. With one hand, he tapped Akasha on the snout; with the other, he deftly plucked the collapsible pike from her hand. "Borrow this, Hob must! Give it back he will, when reach our destination we do!"

And then Hob's foot touched ground and across the field he sprang as though he were a sudden shower launched from a raincloud. Tri-clawed foot met earth and rock and grass and mud and none of it slowed the goblin down. Whether Akasha could follow Hob, moving at breakneck speed and barely touching soil long enough to leave traces of his passing, wasn't a thought that entered his head. His certainty in Akasha's ability to track his path was so strong, it did not register a level of concern high enough to distract him from his goal.

His goal was a tree.

Well, it was one of the goals. The tree was a landmark on the way to his final goal, but it was the first goal and the very first thing of interest Hob himself had encountered when he had explored Ossus for the first time. The tribes that called Ossus home did not live out in this direction; it stood apart from any civilization ancient, wild, and well overgrown.

But Hob had been out here many times and knew the way.

The journey to the tree took five minutes, maybe less, for the ball of green speed to reach it. A pair of bushes stood angrily to the left, a shallow brook gurgled serenely to the right, and then the tall field grass parted and the tree lay visible.

Most trees were notable for their height; this tree's trunk stood at an average height for a tree. The tree's most distinguishing feature was how far away from the thick, squat trunk its branches reached and how far up they grew relative to the trunk's height. It reminded Hob of a candle with a billowing green flame atop the wick.

With a mighty leap, Hob made it to the lowest of the branches that would support a goblin's weight. The journey into the forest behind the tree could be made on foot, but branch-to-branch travel through the forest canopy made the trip that much faster. The forest ground could be - what was the word?

Tricky.

[Akasha Khan]

"What - hey!"

Akasha snatched at her Echani staff as Hob spirited it away, but all she ended up with was a pawful of air and a rear view of the little imp sprinting through the grass. Without another thought, she fell to all fours and bounded after him, driven more by animal instinct than by choice. She knew she was being played for a fool. Knew he was leading her to some secret den where he could work more mischief on her. But it didn't matter. It was her staff. He'd taken her staff!

The Orryxian was built to move silently, or at great speed, but not both at once. While Hob flitted lightly through the waving grasses, she charged through them like an panicking reek, scattering gokobs and fieldhoppers shrieking from their burrows while the sawtooth edges of the grass blades scraped at her fur and clothing. When at last the tall grass stopped and the forest loomed ahead, she hoped they'd reached the end of the mad chase, but then the little goblin began ascending.

Maiur's bile.

With a snarl, Akasa leapt into the branches after her tormentor. Now that Hob was weaving from branch to branch, he wasn't quite so far away. Coming to rest nimbly on a swaying bough, she reached out with one paw and tried to close her ethereal grip on the familiar length of her staff, hoping to wrench it out of Hob's three-fingered grasp.

[Hobgoblin]

Akasha succeeded in grasping right where she sought. She did not grasp what she sought, because the what was no longer in the correct where. The explanation for this took the form of the goblin gripping the branch he stood on with both feet and swinging forward. The result: Hob's upside-down visage hanging eye-level with Akasha.

"Hm! Hello!" he stated in the tone he reserved for his upside-down conversations. "Well you have done, to keep pace with Hob! Be careful in the forest! Sinkholes, there are. Hob will see you again when we reach the Divide!"

Hob nodded a wise nod, which to Akasha would undoubtedly look like someone imitating a professional chin inspector. The goblin did not wait for her opinion of his inspection technique, though; he dropped from his hang into a cartwheel onto a fairly solid-looking branch and took off again.

The branch he darted across connected into the greater forest canopy. This stretch required a bit more care, since falling to the ground would drop Hob into treacherous territory. However, here the goblin benefited from his short stature. Branches that might require careful trodding from a heavier being supported his weight easily.

For the goblin, the interwoven forest canopy acted like a highway, albeit one where the stairs sometimes required climbing upside-down and backwards. Thanks to Hob's natural inclination towards an unnatural approach, the canopy provided an almost level route to his next destination. Careful hops plus quick steps plus the occasional hand-over-hand walk across a branch plus Time equaled the goblin's arrival at the point where the soupy-mud forest floor transitioned into grass and grass-covered rock. The grass-covered rock, in turn, gave way to the Divide.

The Divide was a ravine that cut into the forest, or perhaps more accurately, looked like something had cut into the forest. A sudden break of rock that dropped fifty feet or more down, with vines growing from the cliffs on either side, stretched out into the forest to the point where the ends vanished from sight.

Crossing the Divide would be easier for Akasha than it was for Hob; a larger being could long-jump the distance across. Hob usually took a much more out-of-the-way path, but here the pike would lend him aid. With a one-two-one-two-three running start, he ran at the Divide, planted the extended staff into a rocky crack in the ground, and pole-vaulted into the air, sailing clear over the crevasse and safely landing on the opposite cliff.

The staff, released during Hob's pole-vault, dropped to the ground, rolled off the cliff edge, and tumbled into the Divide. Before it could fall beyond sight, Hob asked it politely if it would return to his grasp. The staff obliged, making an abrupt about-turn from its drop and spinning through the air towards the other cliff edge. Neatly catching the staff in his hand, Hob plopped down onto the ground to meditate and listen for Akasha's arrival.

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha stared in outraged disbelief as Hob began monkeying through the trees like some sort of... monkey. This was absurd. She could imagine any number of horrible traps the imp might have in store for her at the end of his merry chase - a pit lined with slimewort. A net of cave spider webbing. An unsuspecting Ysanna hunting party. An earnest conversation about feelings. If it were any other Jedi, she'd seriously consider leaving and scheming to get her staff back later, but this was Hob. He might use it to put up a birdhouse, or go fishing with it, or just drop it down a gokob burrow and forget about it altogether.

Cursing with every labored breath, Akasha plunged through the canopy after the retreating goblin, tracking him from the lower, thicker branches that could easily support her weight. But as the ground rose up to meet them, she found it first, crashing headlong into a jungle of ferns taller than she was. She lost sight of him momentarily, then glimpsed a flash of green and brown leaping form a twiggy branch to the rocky embankment above. The Orryxian surged forward and--

SINKHOLE!

She yowled in fury she slipped into the muddy crevice, splattering herself from head to toe in soupy filth. Maiur help her, but there was no time to attend to her sorry state with Hob still climbing. Akasha sprang as far as the semiliquid earth below her would allow, scrabbling awkwardly over loose pebbles and protruding roots. Up she climbed, panting, until she crested the rocky ridge some fifty meters from the Divide, just in time to see Hob land with a thud on the far cliff, a shard of gleaming white tumbling behind him into the abyss.

Akasha cried out incoherently, stretching out an impotent and filthy paw as her treasured weapon went hurtling into oblivion. And then it bounced straight back up into Hob's waiting, three-fingered grasp.

She froze where she stood, chest heaving, ears pounding, mud prickling through her fur like a gushing wound. The last time she had felt so defeated, there had been an orbalisk sucking her life away through her chest. What was he doing to her?

With her tail dragging low, Akasha slunk on to the edge of the Divide, considered the gap, and leapt across it with relative ease. She drew up in front of the meditating Jedi and sat cross-legged before him, staring at him with dilated eyes.

Once she had recovered her breath, she said, again, "What do you want from me?"

[Hobgoblin]

Want? What a silly question. "What could Hob possibly want from you?" he beamed. "Hob has all he needs. No, no. Offering you something you want, Hob is!"

It suddenly struck Hob to notice how mud-caked Akasha was. It would not do, he reasoned, to have her traipsing through the forest looking like she'd grown from it. One of Hob's tri-clawed hands hovered, palm down, and then thrust at the ground. A downblast of air similarly blew around Akasha, removing ooze and detritus alike from her fur.

The end result wasn't perfect, but it was much better than it had been.

With that matter settled, the goblin's ears perked up. "Not far now, the cave is! Come! Come!" he urged.

With that, Hob scampered off into the forest, one hand clutching the staff.

The goblin made no attempt to conceal his trail, to trick or mislead Akasha, as some might have assumed he would. He wanted her to follow, so he kept his path as straight and direct as he could. Regardless, with the advantage he had of knowing the way, his small frame outpaced hers.

The trip to the cave wasn't long (maybe ten minutes?) and by the time Hob reached its mouth, the rising elevation was clearly visible through the forest canopy. The cave itself led through a rockwall at the forest's abrupt edge. Tiny sparkles of light - crystals of some kind - illuminated the way through.

The cave opened out onto a broad cliff surrounding a perfectly circular valley. Far in the distance, a lopsided rocky spire loomed over the valley center. A deep trench stretched out from the spire; the obvious origin point of the Divide.

Hob gently set the staff next to a rock not far from the cliff edge. With a mighty leap, he turned and began scaling the wall above the cave opening, seeking to be out of sight.

Akasha had wanted to be alone, after all.

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha braced herself when the little imp raised his stubby claws at her, and nearly toppled over as gobs of mud and sticks and pebbles fell from her thick fur like a sudden spring shower. She blinked owlishly, her tail jerking in place. And then he kept running.

She lacked the energy to even curse him anymore. All she could do was plunge on after him, trampling shoots and breaking small branches like a panicking baby reek, until their path took them into a cave. She had no need for the tiny glowing crystals to light her way, not with eyes that could see in the blackest of Ossian midnights. But when she burst out on the other side she nearly skidded down the pile of loose rocks that spilled down into the valley below.

The Orryxian squinted up into the starry sky and caught just a glimpse of tiny feet disappearing over the ridge above. Her staff lay safely on a rock nearby. She called it into her paw and examined it for any sign of damage, but it was as pristine as ever, aside from a few smudges of mud that came away in her paws.

Akasha glared back up the cliffside and howled, "And what was the point of THAT?"

A flock of birds startled out of their slumber in a cleft of the mountainside and flew off to another hiding place. Akasha, it seemed, was alone. She grumbled to herself, attached the staff to its sling at her side, and turned around to go back the way she came.