Star Wars: Slave Of Darkness

I stared at the comm, my mouth opening and closing.

Finally, I got control of my jaw and spoke, "You're…you're kidding…right?"

"I assure you, this is no jest," The Sith on the other end replied, not even a hint of humor in his tone, "You will accomplish this task…or you will perish in the attempt."

So that was why Selvin hadn't landed and why they hadn't told me what I'd be doing until I was on the surface. Not only did it keep them safe from the Leviathans…but it also kept them safe from me.

For now.

As more pain lanced into my mind, I knew there was no choice.

"So how am I supposed to accomplish that?" I asked. I hadn't been dropped with any weapons…not that they would have done much against a Leviathan.

"Improvise. I hear you are quite good at it." The voice answered with a dry edge to his monotone, "I care not for the method you use, only that the task is completed."

I looked at the horizon and the broken crags jutting up into the skyline like spikes. They looked a little odd, but then I'd never seen a battlefield after nearly three thousand years of erosion, so they might have looked that way back during the Battle of Corbos.

"Oh, one more thing." The Sith continued, "While the Corbos System does possess a hyperspace comm buoy, your comm unit is only strong enough to reach signals in orbit. Once we are finished here, the shuttle will depart."

Meaning I'd be completely cut off from the galaxy, unable to call for help.

"Major Selvin will return in three days. He will then await your comm signal for retrieval and only a comm signal. If he does not receive it within a day of arrival, he has been instructed to leave."

If I lost my comm unit, I'd be shit out of luck for getting off planet, "And if I accomplish my task before then?"

I could almost picture the smirk in his response, "Survive."

After which, the holocall abruptly ended.

Survive. Oh yes. I'd definitely do that.

If only for the chance to kill the smug sunnovabitch.

...

I'd barely had time to pack up the comm and its power unit before the screams started. A hundred thousand voices descended on me in one cacophonous wail, pounding into my head. I'd stumbled and nearly fallen several times in my scramble to just move, to get away.

Though my mind was muddled from the pain, I still knew the source.

Cracked, dead earth broke under my bootheels as I ran. I needed shelter…no…I needed a place to hide, if only for a few moments. A cave…something…anything too small for the Leviathans to get at me.

I could feel them searching for me, even the ones on the other side of the planet. Their conscious presences were simply too enormous to miss as they each woke from hibernation.

Thunder rumbled threateningly in the distance as lightning arced between unnaturally dark storm clouds. The flashes of light illuminated the mountains beneath them.

In the empty and notably flat wastelands, they were the only hope of shelter. Pouring the Force into my legs, I ran for the shattered cliffs at their base with a speed that would have made an Olympic sprinter jealous.

I needed to hide. I needed to think. But I couldn't do the latter with all the voices screaming in my head.

It would be nearly an hour of running at full speed before I reached the first cliff. My legs burned from the effort and it was only thanks to the Force that I could keep up the pace. As soon as I saw the first cave entrance, I didn't stop and dove right in.

I had seen things moving in the darkness of the oncoming storm. Very, very large things.

As soon as I crossed the threshold, the sky let loose with a deafening thunderstrike. Thankfully, my helmet automatically adjusted the audio to preserve my hearing. But even that sound paled in comparison to the screams.

They were louder now, clawing away at my mind as the Leviathans approached.

Think…think…How the fuck did they know I was here? Did they sense my arrival?

It would make sense. Unlike Terentateks, they weren't immune to the Force. Hell, the actually used it…kind of. If they were sensing me like any Force Sensitive would, then I needed to do something to prevent that.

But the pain in my head made concentrating difficult, which was what the normal method would require. Which was entirely the point behind the psychic screams as Leviathans were created specifically to fight Jedi en masse.

I ripped the glove off my right hand and stuck my thumb into my mouth, biting down hard until I could taste blood. Compared to the agony in my head, the pain from my bloodied digit was pathetic.

Pulling it free, I clumsily began inscribing runes on my chest. It was a variation of the ward I had employed while hunting Terentateks with Tyrene. Only this time, I was hiding myself instead of a trap.

As I wrote the phrase Jen'dzwolut onto my chest, scarlet blood glowed briefly before fading to a more subdued illumination.

It was crude and improvised. Had I not been in such danger, I wouldn't have dared to use Sith Magic so recklessly, especially on myself.

But I had little choice.

"That's been true of a lot of things lately," I noted aloud sourly as I slumped against the first wall I could reach.

One day, that would be different. One day, I would be stronger. Then, there would be no chains binding me. No Masters.

But for now, all I could do was wait.

...

Soon, the storm had overtaken my position, blotting out all the sunlight that had managed to poke through the heavy cloud cover. The only illumination I had to work with now was from the lightning that struck now and again.

The screams had faded somewhat as there were only a few thousand instead of a few hundred thousand, though I could only guess at the reason.

Leviathans were incredibly intelligent creatures, especially as they devoured more victims. And these had been survivors of the One Hundred Year Darkness.

…Maybe they just got bored when I disappeared and went back to their dens. They were intelligent, but they were animals in the end. The lingering presence of the screams indicated that at least one was still curious enough to come sniffing around the place they had last sensed me, though the fact it wasn't all of them was somewhat reassuring.

A point in the favor of my ad-hoc spell, though I had to renew it several times in the last hour. Thankfully, the sacrifice of blood had been enough to power it.

If I wasn't in so much pain right now from the Leviathan's proximity, I might even have been giddy in addition to my relief because it meant I could hide from them. If I could devise and set up a more permanent ward on the cave as the more stable anchor would mean I wouldn't have to keep renewing it.

But for now, I just needed this one Leviathan to go away already.

In the darkness, I could only see the outline of the creature as the lightning flashed. But that was enough to see all I needed to.

The ground beneath me shook as the titanic creature slowly walked through the mountainous terrain, each step covering dozens of feet. Intellectually, I knew what it actually looked like. But from just the outline, it was almost as though someone had taken an Xenomorph…and then supersized it.

Not exactly a comforting thought.

In between the booms of thunder, I could hear it taking deep breaths in huge snuffles. Since it couldn't find me with its Force senses but had my general location, it was trying to track me by scent.

I had to grudgingly give it credit for that leap of logic. I hadn't started hiding my presence until after I was in the cave, so there wasn't a trail of me leaving the cave.

Just as I expected, the cave entrance was soon blocked by a red eye the size of a cargo speeder as a pair of equally enormous tentacles wormed inside.

I stood in the center of the cave, facing the Leviathan. My heart was pounding in my chest as I waited for something to go wrong. But it never did.

The giant eye swept over me without pausing and I was able to side-step or jump over the probing tentacles. Eventually, the creature decided to give up.

As the screams faded completely and it stomped back to its nest, I slumped to the floor and quietly stared at the place it had occupied. If my spell hadn't worked…

I shook my head roughly to dislodge that thought before it could take hold. Now wasn't the time for doubts.

Now was the time to plan how the hell to kill one of those things and survive.

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The first book of this fanfic has been completed on Patreon, you can look it up in the collection alongside the second book. You can visit Patreon if you want to read in Advance.

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