The Machinations of Fate

Lightning split the sky over Drongar. For a fraction of a second, the flash of violet light illuminated everything and made a shadow-play of the rainforest canopy. The image burned itself onto the back of Salem Ave's eyes. When he closed his eyes, he could still feel the heavy heat in the air and see the outline of the trees above him. He waited until the ghost image had faded then blinked his eyes open and peered down at the device in his hands.

Rain drops plastered his hair to his forehead and splattered against the devices' screen, obscuring the pulse of light in the upper right-hand corner. Salem swiped the water away with one gloved hand and stared at the image, focused on the point of light that represented his destination, his targets location. With each exhaled breath, condensation formed on the inside of the breath mask he wore. When the transceivers co-ordinates were imprinted on his memory, he tucked the device away inside of cloak.

It had taken over two decades but, at last, someone had activated the beacon that the transceiver was connected to. In doing so, a survivor of the Jedi Purge - a lone warrior who had managed to evade capture for twenty years - had put in motion a series of events that might well end their life, and change the fate of the Galaxy forever.

"Ilias, please."

The hint of exasperation was new; and from a certain point of view it was quite an achievement. It took a lot to provoke any kind of emotion from the typically stoic Inyos Aamoran; but if there was anyone left in the galaxy with the skills and knowledge to do so, it was Ilias Nytrau.

The journey to Drongar had been long, but behind the controls of the Astral Queen, Inyos had felt a sense of peace. There was something serene about starfields and hyperspace; perhaps they echoed the endless, rolling diversity of the force in some way; or perhaps he just appreciated the silence. Whatever the reason, long distance voyages were almost like meditation to him, and he relished the opportunity to escape the constant interruptions of the Wheel.

Unfortunately, the constant interruptions had come with him. His own Padawan had not yet learned enough of her Master's idiosyncracies to know when it was best to leave him in peace; and while Ilias had that knowledge, it seemed that he chose to simply ignore it.

Eyes peeled away from the steadily growing planet in the viewport for just a moment, he cast a tired look over his shoulder. "I am quite capable of operating this ship without your -" He searched his mind frantically for a description that wasn't 'back-seat piloting'. "- intermittant input."

He sighed. "If you really want to make yourself useful, go and tell the other passengers that we are on our final approach."

A pleasant smile lay steady on the healer-warrior’s face, betraying nothing of the light touches of mirth that had crept into his eyes. Ilias Nytrau knew a great many things, things that would never go forgotten and for the small joys in life, a long-time acquaintance served well. Inyos ‘requested’ to be allowed to pilot the ship and he had not contested the request out of the simple fact that he had no reason to say no. But the way he sought to isolate himself most of the time went beyond what seemed acceptable to the red-haired knight – time to meditate, so on and so forth. But that was Inyos. It was just taken in stride – more or less.

“Very well, Inyos, very well!”

The sound in his voice was not what could be called laughter, but the warmth of it was close. He smoothed down the thighs of his trousers and rose from his seat.

“Perhaps someone should see what our charges have or have not gotten themselves in to, in any case.”

He turned away from the viewfield and the back of Inyos’ head to check with the other occupants of the Astral Queen as Inyos Aamoran had asked, with enough exasperation in his voice that he mused his fellow Jedi could possibly explode from it in some fashion. He left the cockpit area, certain that he heard Aamoran diffuse with a long breath out that surely indicated some sort of relief as he did.

"Yours too?"

At the girl's long-suffering sigh in response, Kala dipped her head and grinned. It seemed that Ilias was not the only Knight who was wont to quote philosophy at the drop of a lightsaber. Though, given Yolie's expression, it was a very frequent occurrence.

"Ilias isn't that bad with it, I have to admit. Though I do sometimes wish I could conjure a bucket of water over his head." the blonde smiled, her expression sheepish as she stood and stretched. Silver fingertips absently smoothed out her gray tank-top, before gathering her long locks back into a ponytail. Kala had done a bit of research before they'd left, looking up their destination planet of Drongar and its climate. Humid, swampy, storm-ridden place...then again, it wasn't the Wheel, and that was perfectly ok with her.

She fell back into her seat and picked up her cards, arching a brow and motioning for another.

I wonder what the Jedi is like.

The one who activated the distress call?

Obviously, you twit.

Thanks, fish-head. Reminds me that I need to have you exorcised.

Rin laughed, a warm rolling sound that echoed in the back of her mind. Aww, you'd miss me too much.

Sadly, that's true. Now shut up, I'm trying to concentrate.

"Oh no, for every thing or moment, there is an applicable bit of wisdom, most often from the teachings of Jedi Ari'ana. I swear, she should have written greeting cards."

Yolie sighed softly, a fond smile curling her lips, as she shifted in her seat. She set down the pile of cards she was dealing from and tucked a crimson lock behind her ear, while the ink of her tattoos gleamed softly in the light. She extended her arms to look at them and frowned, noting that at least one of them would need re-inking the next few months.

That was going to be a bit of a problem.

Letting the concern slide away, her fingers brushed against the metal studs that decorated her lip, neck, and sternum. Inyos hadn't asked her to removed them, or the tiny silver hoops that decorate her nose and each ear. A fact for which she was incredibly thankful.

Yolie shifted again and adjusted her belt, borrowed from one of the others aboard the Whaladon. Their generosity still surprised her, but she was slowly becoming accustomed to it. It was, after all, a very radical change from where she'd been before.

As Kala sat back down, nimble fingers picked up the deck and dealt the requested card. The blonde swore rather creatively and laughed as she tossed down her cards. "You lost track, didn't you?" Yolie asked, a glimmer of amusement in her dark gaze. Kala nodded and pushed the cards back over for her to shuffle. "I told you I could deal around that card counting trick."

His progress through the forest was slow but steady. He navigated through tangles of low-hanging vines and fallen branches, and ducked beneath the buttressed roots of trees that would have dwarfed the walls of Iziz. Though it was the middle of the night, the forest floor was alive. Beneath the ceaseless pitter-patter of the rain on the canopy above, Salem heard the calls of dozens of different creatures. Chirps, trills, hoots. The sounds were alien to him, but also reassuring. An abundance of life suggested that there were none of the ecosystems predatory beasts nearby.

Salem came across a tree that had fallen to the forest floor, its trunk twice as wide as he was tall. Glow-flies danced an aimless waltz over patches of its bark where pungent fungus had grown like scabs. The flies seemed unaware of Salem as he hauled himself up the side of the trunk, searching for handholds in the damp, dead wood. It would have been easier to use the Force to overcome the obstacles in his path, but there was too much risk in calling on the Dark Side. It was safer to rely upon his base senses, at least until he had found the source of the distress beacon.

Inyos brought the Astral Queen in for her final approach, searching through the jungle canopy for an opening large enough to deposit the ship. The Corellian freighter was stupidly large in his opinion, and a nice petite shuttlecraft like the Emerald Knight would have been a much more sensible ship to have brought. Unfortunately, the Knight was currently a snow-covered mound of debris half way across the galaxy, after an unfortunate incident involving derelict droid fighters and a planetary impact. He would have to make do with the resources available to him.

He considered using the ship's ventral quad lasers to clear a landing site. It was certainly what an Imperial ship would have done in this situation; probably what the clones would have done during the War as well, though in hindsight there wasn't as much of a distinction between those two mindsets as he would have liked. Flattening trees was certainly the most efficient option; but it was the least Jedi option, and he supposed that such considerations was of the utmost importance these days.

Luck was on his side however; just on the limits of his vision he spotted a broad hole in the canopy, and sensors confirmed that the ground within was stable enough to support the YT-2000's considerable mass. He angled towards it and, with the skill of a master pilot, settled the Astral Queen down amongst the undergrowth.

Fingers danced across controls, shutting down non-essential systems throughout the ship. Even the lighting was extinguished, plunging the cockpit - and every other part of the Corellian freighter for that matter - into darkness.

His joint protested slightly as he clambered free of the pilot's seat, his body apparently much preferring to remain in the position it had occupied for the last several hours. He refused to allow it to determine their actions, and forced it to march him out into the belly of the ship.

He halted by the access ramp, a hand triggering it's descent. The sounds and smells of of Drongar leapt to his senses and, taking a moment to acquaint himself with the local ebb and flow of the Force, waited for Ilias to arrive with the young ones in tow.

He had caught them in a game of cards, the sight of it eliciting a small smile from him and a small part of him urging the knight to best the both of them at their to plant some discouragement of this particular use of time – or, at least, teach a better way to go about it, using skills he and Inyos may have attempted to impart at one point or another in recent history. But he left it alone, all the same. The last time he had any sort of padawan was back in the temple on Coruscant, but that had little bearing here in a world so much more in the future and so drastically different. Even he was left changed.

There had been little complaint at the halting of their game of cards and in short order he had readied them, having them tail behind his tall, flame-haired form as they made their way through the now-dark vessel to the access ramp, where Inyos so patiently waited. Approaching the other man, Ilias signaled the two girls to wait and be quiet and slid his eyes shut briefly as he drew in a deep, tasting breath, releasing it when the initial greet of the planet embedded itself into his memory.

“So much life.” He breathed, opening his eyes once again and glancing at Inyos. “Starkly refreshing. I would wonder at what nourishing and medicinal plant life this place might have to offer. Alas, that is hardly why we are here.”

He turned his head back just enough to glance at the two girls.

“If you have not already, I would suggest reaching out and feeling for the planet. Get an impression. Be aware of what surrounds you.” He turned back to Inyos. “I would take it you have an angle on where we are headed?”

Black eyes swirled as the essence of Drongar swirled about her. She took a deep breath, and then another, allowing her eyes to fall half-closed. A warm, wet planet, it teemed with life in a myriad of forms that glowed with various degrees to her inner gaze.

It reminded her a fair amount of her home world, Glee Anselm, though at least there the humidity wasn't always quite so intense. Nor, she mused, were there deadly airborne spores, though at least they had been inoculated against them before leaving the Wheel. Still, Kala sighed as she opened her eyes, and tugged her hair out of its ponytail. She shook her head to allow her silver head-tresses their freedom amidst her blonde locks. While not as sensitive as a full-blooded Nautolan's, her slender, delicate head-tresses were still an invaluable part of her physiology.

They rippled in the atmosphere of their own accord before settling down, making her smile faintly up at Ilias. "Feels like home, almost." Kala said softly, before dipping her head and carefully keeping her senses extended as she'd been bid.

For her part, the scarlet-haired Padawan wrinkled her nose and murmured wordlessly under her breath. The air was thick and damp, making breathing a bit challenging for a few minutes as her body slowly became accustomed to it. Yolie had never been anywhere so damnably hot and humid, and she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to step foot off of the shuttle.

But still...Inyos awaited, his expression set firm as it always was. She did as Ilias asked of them both, though Yolie had to close her eyes in order to properly get her senses working. Her abilities were still raw and untested, though at least with Inyos' tutelage she was able to call upon the Force if not hold it for very long.

Feelings came to her in tiny spurts, little glimmers of life and glowing auras, a full picture lingering just out of her reach as it always did. Yolie frowned and opened her eyes though she avoided everyone's gaze. Disappointment was clearly writ across her posture, something Inyos would recognize. Fingers rose to pinch at the bridge of her nose as she tried again.

As the forest floor gave way to swamp land, Salem's progress slowed. It was an effort just to make each step. His feet sank up to a foot and a half into the muddy waters, tangles of vines grasping at his calves as he waded through the surface algae. He squeezed around and through clutches of tree trunks, careful not to knock his breath mask out of place. The still water betrayed no trace of movement beneath it, though Salem kept his watch on it regardless, knowing that airborne spores were the least of the dangers Drongar had to offer. Though he was carrying his lightsaber, it would take a substantial threat to make him draw it; far better to exercise caution and restraint than ignite its blue blade.

The canopy above the swamp was so dense that the rain could only trickle through, running in never-ending rivulets down the tree trunks. Salem pulled out the beacon transceiver and in the dank shadows, the blip of light representing his target looked brighter than ever before. The dot was practically central on the transceivers screen now, a sign that he could not be more than a few meters away from the beacon. In every direction, the densely clustered trees and encroaching shadows made a seemingly impenetrable maze of the swamp.

Returning the transceiver to his pocket, Salem considered his options. Though he could hear the hoots and chirps of animals, his immediate surroundings betrayed no other signs of life. If he walked a circle outwards from where he currently stood, there was a chance that he'd find the beacon eventually – if he didn't get lost first, and providing the beacon didn't move.

It was a risk, but Salem cautiously opened his awareness to the Force. He recalled the lessons he had been taught as a boy at the Jedi Temple, basic teachings on how to do more than just see and hear and smell the world. How to perceive that which the senses could not, to feel life within the Force. There was a wealth of life around him but there was no denying the pull he felt towards the swamp buttress that lay ahead. It's huge, knotted roots rose high above the stagnant water, forming troughs in which a suitably motivated creature might hide...

While the terrain itself did not slow them as they progressed through the wilderness, other factors tempered their pace. Caution played the largest role: it would have been all too easy to unload a pair of speeder bikes from the Astral Queen's hold; but while fast, such vehicles were noisy. Alone, a Jedi as skilled as Inyos could swiftly overcome the obstacles that the undergrowth provided without so much as disturbing a single flutterfly of Drongar's local fauna.

Inyos was not alone however, and so he was forced to pick not the swiftest route, but the safest route: the one best suited to be walked upon by four sets of booted feet; by two old Jedi and their fledgeling Padawans.

Drongar seemed intent on making their journey progressively more difficult. As solid ground gave way to a tangle of roots broken up by sludge-filled pools of stagnant water, Inyos quickly discovered that his graceful leaps from tree foot to tree foot were not easily emulated with the shorter strides of the Padawans. He changed his approach, choosing routes that hugged closer to the rain-slicked tree trunks; a severe hinderance to their pace perhaps, but at least it offered something to frantically snag hold of should anyone's footing become lost.

Halting for a moment, he pulled out the tranciever and glanced at it once again. "We are close," he remarked, to himself as much as to anyone else. That knowledge came with a certain sense of unease: it was hard to determine whether it was merely the apprehension of the unknown, the latent threat of the jungle around them, or a dark sense of something else.

Were Mandan Hidatsa here, he would have known exactly what it was: he was always far more attuned to the living force than Inyos had ever been. Alas he was not; and the present alternative hardly felt like much of a consolation.

His eyes turned to Ilias. "Can you feel it?" he asked, his voice as soft and quiet as he could make it while still being heard.

Rainwater pooled in the hollows between the roots as it would in a gutter. Each reservoir was at least a foot deep and two to three feet wide. Something swept down from the canopy above, skimming the service of one such pool for only long enough to pluck the body of a dead insect from the surface of the still water.

There was something much larger huddled within the furrow between two other roots, however. Salem balanced with one foot on either side of a pool, watching as the shape swelled larger for a moment, then shrank again. He could almost pick out the sound of a ragged breath being exhaled as he peered into the darkness.

Two large, liquid black eyes peered back at him.

The figures yellow-green flesh was smooth as the rain-slick trunk it was huddled against, its head-tresses near indistinguishable from vines.

“You.. found me,” the Nautolan said, resignation in his voice.

“I should be able to…”

He ratcheted up his pull on the force and intensified his focus to sift through the vast variety of different forms of fauna and flora and their respective signatures and genetic makeups. It was a similar practice to differentiating shrapnel from the living parts of a being assailed by many pieces of said shrapnel buried in their body, so that they might be extracted with the least harm. His own master had taught him this by having him seeking out one thing in a room of many things, before practicing such a technique on a smaller scale, on a living being.

The trees had their own unique identity, as well as the smallest bug and the moderately-sized creatures of flight. His scan reached out further from their position, sifting, setting aside, focusing on each object that was different and cataloguing them as he passed, his intent ever focussed on an item that would come up as out-of-place. It was as he swept over a nearby tree that a most unexpected signature came to him, followed by one that was less unexpected and finally, the faint ebb of the transceiver they sought. He retained his mark on them, only pulling back to half the focus to address Inyos.

“…we are not alone, my friend.” He breathed out, just barely enough to hear. “And the company is such that I am familiar with it.”

Ilias looked back at his traveling companions, his eyes still somewhat out-of focus. His findings had a place on another world and in another time.

“Salemescro Avesca. He is here, at the next large tree, a quarter turn to the right side of the tree, in one of the pools between the roots.” He turned his face back to the direction in which they needed to head. “Also, he is not alone, either.”

“I found you,” Salem echoed, his words misting against the inside of his breath-mask. Edging carefully forward, he lowered himself into the pool that the Nautolan was sitting slumped in. The water was a foot and a half deep, rising above the aliens waist and part way up his chest where damp rose up through the heavy fabric of his shirt and robes like mould.

“You.. heard the signal,” the Nautolan went on, a sliver of his eyelids twitching over the darkness of his eyes as rainwater trickled over his brow. “How?”

Salem reached for the transceiver and the stagnant water suddenly stirred at the Nautolan's right side, his fingertips breaking the surface in a feeble flutter. Salem froze as the Force stirred around them in response to the alien's gesture, faint but palpable nonetheless. The Nautolan's mouth stretched into something that might have been a smile, had his lips not quivered and the muscles in his cheeks and jaws not twitched. Salem understood. The Jedi was not dead yet and even on the verge of death, a Jedi was not to be taken lightly.

“You've come to a dangerous place,” Salem said, his own hands now still and held out at his sides.

A bark of laughter came from the Nautolan, though the sound was soon swallowed by coughing.

“What place in this Galaxy is not dangerous to my kind?”

The Nautolan dragged the back of one wet hand across his lips and when he pulled it away, the rainwater coating the back of his skin was muddied by something darker. He smiled knowingly and let his hand slip back into the water. Salem watched, his unblinking white eyes fixed with the aliens black. Was this what had become of the Jedi? He almost wished that Lilaena were at his side.

“Would you say, then, that you are a Jedi?”

“Of course I am. Perhaps the last surviving Jedi Knight.”

It had been some time since she had made that foolish confession, but somewhere in her heart of hearts he thought she might still believe it. Forcing her to strike down the sodden wretch might have taught her a lesson, but at what cost?

“Is it too much to expect.. that you are here to help?” the Nautolan asked. Salem blinked, refocusing his attention. The momentary lapse of concentration was forgotten and the task at hand lay before him, his goal as clear as crystal.

“You need not fear,” he replied, as he crouched down in the water, clawed fingertips flexing at his sides, itching to reach out and seize the creature by its skull and head-tails.

“I will help you find the peace you seek.”

Her nose wrinkled, but she remained silent Ilias reached out with his own mind, scanning the vicinity. Watching the furrow of his brown, she closed her eyes and followed him instead with her mind. He glowed with a brilliant light, warm and comforting, tendrils of it expanding outwards to bring him information.

Kala winced as he grew just a bit to bright and opened her eyes, fingers rising to press to her temples. It was informational overload on this world, much as it was back home when she was first learning to use her senses. But as she'd grown up learning to use her senses in a similar environment, it was relatively easy to filter out the pertinent bits.

"The Jedi is with him?" Kala echoed softly, ebony eyes wide. She tilted her head and reached out with her own senses as Ilias pulled back into himself, and sucked in a ragged breath upon brushing her mind up against the strange Jedi's.

"He..." she swallowed hard, a glance from Ilias holding her in place, but barely, pain writ across her features. "...he's Nautolan, Ilias. I would recognize the flavor of the Force signature everywhere. Please...let me go?"

There was a flickering of something at the edge of her senses, as they moved carefully through the boggy terrain. Yolie tried time and again to grasp the sensations lingering just out of her mental reach but kept failing.

At least, she mused, she felt like she was getting closer with each effort. Yolie spared a brief smile for Inyos as he glanced back at her, though it soon turned to a brighter, more triumphant grin as she finally got her senses to work.

She was flooded with information, little flickering bits of Force auras from insects, larger ones from animals, and the sheer vastness of the Force that linked everything together in a thin, shimmering web. Dark eyes widened as the connection slipped away and she lifted her fingers to rub at her now-watering eyes. The moment, however brief, was worth savoring.

Until, of course, Ilias and Kala spoke in relatively quick succession. Her eyes widened as she moved closer, but remained silent and observant. It wasn't her place to say anything to Kala, and likely, if she had the connection the other girl did, she'd want to throw caution to the wind and race ahead as well.

In silence, Inyos processed the new information that had been provided. He didn't ask how Ilias knew the identity of the sensation in the darkness with such certaintly; he had grown accustomed to such insights during his years fighting beside Mandan Hidatsa, and had long ago accepted that there were aspects of the Force with which he was not gifted.

He tried to consolodate what knowledge his memory held about the Jedi that Ilias had named. As far as he recalled, Avesca was not much more than a boy when the Republic had fallen; not much older than Inyos' own Padawan had been. He would be a man now, of course; but beyond that, Inyos could fathom little else. In the vastness of the Jedi Order of old, it was all too easy for a young Jedi to escape from one's attention completely; Inyos couldn't so much as name his Master, or even recall if he'd even had one.

Silently, Inyos wondered which of the two had activated the beacon that they now tracked: had it been Avesca, or had he merely been drawn to the summons of the mystery Nautolan, as they had been? It seemed trivial, but to Inyos it made all the difference: the Force whispered to him, hinting at how significant that detail might eventually turn out to be.

The Force's whisperings also fed his unease, his mind all too aware about the darkness and danger that potentially lurked beyond the trees. "No," he replied, a hint of stern in his voice as he intercepted Kala's question before her Master could answer. It softened instantly, however. "We all go," he announced, a look of solidarity offered to his Padawan in particular. "We came here to reunite with a part of us that was lost. Our cause will not be served by dividing our numbers."

His eyes narrowed as he peered through the trees, as if extra effort would somehow overcome the limitations of his human vision. "I will scout ahead," he informed them, his muscles tensed as he prepared himself. "Follow my path, as swiftly as you are able."

Without another word, Inyos' legs and the Force allied together, hurling him into the branches and towards where his clouded senses told him the two Jedi awaited.

Salem froze. The air around him was still, but the Force... the Force rippled. In front of him, the Nautolan's eyes had become even more drowsy and heavy-lidded, though the alien struggled valiantly to keep them open.

“I feel.. them too,” he said. Them. Not one presence but many. Each resonating like the string of a harp that had been plucked ever so delicately. Each producing a note that grew softer, fainter with time. All except one, that is. One became louder, became a rhythm. The feeling of someone touching the Force again and again, using it to propel themselves towards him.

“Feel them coming.. for us both,” the Nautolan coughed, flecks of dark blood staining his yellow-green lips as they stretched into a pained smile.

When Salem spoke his voice was muffled by his breath-mask, barely above a whisper.

“Let them come.”

The clothes of a Jedi Knight were many things. Their rough, coarse fabric was meant to serve as an uncomfortable distraction: a constant test of the Jedi's focus. They were more than merely ceremonial robes however, and had been tried and tested on thousands of worlds across thousands of years. The fabric was light enough to be ready for the intense heat of the galaxy's more humid and arid worlds, and yet insulating enough that it could take the harsh edge off all but her most extreme cold environs. Despite it's ability to breathe, the robes absorbed surprisingly little, and dried remarkably fast: ideal for the swamps and aquatic vistas boasted on so many of the Republic's worlds. And most importantly, eons of textile engineering had forged a fabric more resiliant than many military grade alternatives.

As the sharp edge of a snapped branch tore through Inyos' sleeve and bit into the flesh of his arm, he lamented the absense of his traditional garb.

Still, he paid the mere flesh wound little heed, the precision teamwork of muscles and force propelling him in swift silence through the trees. Behind and below he sensed the rest of their group moving, spreading out as they advanced cautiously through the trees towards whatever had summoned them.

As Inyos made his own springboarding advance, he reached out with the senses that the Force and the Jedi Order had blessed him with, feeling the way the Force flowed through each tree as he leapt towards them, and peering beyond towards the twin figures that waited ahead. The ripples their aura cast in the Force drifted towards him like scents on a breeze: he spared what concentration he could to scrutinise what he felt, but it was an enigmatic scent, of too many odors competing with each other. There was caution there, that much was clear: but that was hardly conclusive, as both ambush and defender were bound to exercise such in these hostile surroundings. He tasted the faint, bitter sting of fear as well: but he could hardly blame any organic for that emotion in this nightmarish place.

Ahead, the trees grew thinner, and the Force ceased to guide Inyos along a safe path. He came to rest in the boughs of a twisted and gnarled old growth, and reached out with his Jedi senses, grabbing at the air and the Force to wrap it around himself like a protective shroud. It wouldn't hide him from prying eyes, but perhaps it would conceal him from prying minds.

His gaze came to settle on the figures that waited. He allowed his breathing and his heart to slow, and reached out with every sense that he could spare. In his mind's perception, an eerie calm fell across the swamp as he focused only on what mattered, filtering out all other distractions. He sized up his potential opponents: felt the strength bound in their muscles, and the weight of experience that draped around their shoulders. One of their burdens was far heavier than the other; and yet, the shoulders beneath were broad and strong, and the man remained tall as if he paid them no heed. Inyos felt his confidence, and his righteous pride: but there was one question that the Force could still not answer.

Are you friend, or are you foe?

Inyos never had the opportunity to dwell any further. The sound of breaking wood slashed through his concentration like a 'saber; out of instinct his senses leapt to focus on the stumbling creature that was responsible. A dry lump formed in Inyos' throat as her petite frame resolved in his mind's eye.

"Damn."

Subtlety was art.

An art that was apparently not meant to be practiced by a petite padawan balanced on a rain-slicked tree limb.

With a fine display of pure and utter gracelessness, Yolie lost her grip and toppled off the branch she'd been perched on. There was some slight measure of pride that she managed to not squeak in dismay. It was lost as soon as she landed in a puddle of muck that was startlingly deep. She coughed and spluttered as she clambered out of it, sitting on a boulder as she tried to wipe it off of her skin best she could.

Dark eyes glanced up at Inyos and offered a faint smile that was more disgusted than amused. While she could normally appreciate the absurdity that was now part of her regular life, being covered head to toe in fetid water and thick mud was a bit beyond her capabilities still.

Closing her eyes tight, Yolie vigorously shook the green muck out of her hair, while chastising herself internally in some decidedly...colorful terms.

Salem crouched, silent and still. Even his connection to the Force had been quietened as he relied only on his natural, base senses. He heard the beat of his own pulse in his ears, like the ticking of a clock. A clock counting down to the inevitable moment of confrontation.

The situation was Salem's to direct and yet, he was frozen by indecision. A rush of possibilities flooded through his mind. There were too many unknown variables, too many factors beyond his control.

Lightning crackled in the sky above, illuminating the swamp for an instant. The split second of light allowed Salem the briefest glimpse of one of the figures approaching him: a bedraggled girl, wading through the stagnant water below. She did not wear military garb and he could not see any firearms in her hands or about her person.

The path that lay before Salem Ave narrowed.

“Who goes there?” he called out as he began to rise to his feet, his lightsaber held unlit in one hand.

A lump formed in her throat as the voice grated across her senses. Unsure if it was the Force warning her or the crack of lightning wreaking havoc on her senses, she listened to it regardless.

If anything emerged from her throat that was audible, it could only be akin to a faint sound of dismay crossed with a Coruscanti curse.

With a surprising adroitness, she scrambled off of the rock and behind the welcome cover of the tree Inyos was haunting the limbs of. Yolie tried as best she could to remember to breathe, and to do so slowly and evenly as her master had been trying to teach her. But it was proving difficult, and her earlier grasp of the Force slipped away like the slime sliding off of her skin.