Chapter 1: Nothing Easy
The sickening squeals and coarse, vile cackling emitted by the gnashing talons of those massive fiends filled the room with terrifying echoes. Their dark, multifaceted eyes, glinting with tints of red and blue and green, reflected the horror in her own. Struggling against the pounding of her rebellious heart, she breathed deeply through her nose and tried to reach out to the Force. With the stench of these vile creatures filling her nostrils and making it impossible to concentrate, this wasn’t the easiest thing to do.
But since when was anything easy?
“Master?” she gasped, feinting at the nearest Tanc Mite with her long lance.
“Yes?”
Renora Ta’a rolled her eyes at the almost lazy response. It was apparent that her Master wasn’t taking the situation as seriously as she should be. As usual.
“Master, I’m not so sure--argh!” Amidst a shrieking cry, one of the beasts directly to her left raised his massive, sharply-haired leg, and brought it down with the full strength of his large body. Renora blocked the blow with her lance and batted its leg aside, pulling the weapon back and forcing it into the creature’s body with a nauseating crunch.
“Master, I don’t think this is such a good idea!” she hissed into her wrist comlink.
“It was your idea, Padawan,” Gidrea replied, her voice muffled by static. To her annoyance, Renora thought she could hear a faint hint of laughter in her Master’s words. Master Giddy was enjoying this.
At least somebody was.
“Master, you pick the weirdest times to be amused.”
“And you have the weirdest ideas of what a good idea is and what it isn’t.”
“I thought it was a good idea at the time!” Renora growled, thrusting her lance into the leg of the nearest overgrown insect and whipping it around just in time to block a mammoth strike from the one behind her.
“Then you should take responsibility for the fact that it’s not,” Gidrea chuckled over the static.
“There’s a word I’ve never heard you use before.”
“What’s that?”
“Responsibility,” she grunted, snapping her lance in an overhead strike at the Mite closest to her and leaping over it. She grinned savagely in apparent triumph, only to land roughly on her left shoulder and roll head-over-boot-heals against an immense tree trunk.
“Ow,” she muttered, looking around frantically for her lance.
When she saw it, she immediately wished she hadn’t.
“Oh, kriff.”
It was about twenty feet away, which wasn’t too far to sprint, even with her cracked head and injured shoulder. But it wasn’t laying in the wispy grass of the artificially maintained bestiary environment. It was resting in the jaws of a Giant Tanc Mite.
“Feeling responsible?”
“Are you kidding? Master, you taught me better than that.”
“I also taught you how to hold your weapon properly.”
Renora glanced down at her comlink in shock, then rebuked herself for being taken by surprise. For all her…eccentricities…Master Lightsky was wiser and more skilled than she let on. At least, Renora had to try and believe that as much as possible. After all, the pair had managed to stay alive all these years within the vortex of turmoil that was the Empire for some reason.
Renora had to believe it was something other than just dumb luck.
“I was holding it properly, Master,” she replied, tensing the muscles in her thighs and centering herself in the Force. “That is, until I wasn’t holding it anymore.”
“Holding it means keeping it, too, you know.”
“So I’ve heard,” Renora grunted, leaping for the tree branch directly above her head and hauling herself up onto the limb. The Mite who had captured her lance reared its head back shook it fiercely. Renora leaned forward on the tree branch and closed her eyes against her mounting fear, opening herself to the multifaceted tendrils of the Force.
She landed a bit awkwardly on a branch about ten feet away, wrenching her injured left shoulder sharply. With growing dismay worming its way through her chest, she felt the joint wrench from its socket. Clutching the bough for dear life, Renora threw her head back and screamed until her lungs ached. An icy fire seemed to weave its way up and down her arm, and her hand slipped off of the limb. Gritting her teeth against the pain, Renora used her good arm to pull herself into a crouching position on the branch.
“Kriff, kriff, kriff,” she mumbled as a thin bead of sweat began to roam down her forehead and into her eyes.
“Shoulder?” asked Giddy.
“No, just my head,” Renora said through clenched teeth. “It hurts from having too many good ideas.”
“I warned you about that…”
“I was too busy thinking to hear you.”
“I warned you about that, too.”
“Should I find it odd that you’re able to keep track of me with such efficiency from halfway across the galaxy?”
“You’d rather I didn’t?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“And I didn’t say that I was keeping track of you.”
Renora sighed in resignation. To her knowledge, there was only one person in this sentient galaxy who could manage to out-talk her. Not that Renora would ever admit it. At least she had been able to keep her mind off of the pain radiating from her shoulder long enough to regain some of her composure.
Hopefully, it was enough to keep her alive for a little while longer.
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