The half barren crests of acacias seemed to unfurl as the shuttle plummeted towards the surface, their thorns bristling with a silent anticipation. Branch patterns created gnarled claws rather than umbrella skeletons, which was probably fair; Shili rarely saw rain. Wooden fingers curled, noiselessly, waiting for the ailing craft to fall into their clutches.
Thanadd Mawgath, deposed Lord of Castle Tarentum, found no moment to appreciate the subtle glory of dead topiaries and bone dry soil. Such marvels were reminiscent of Pau City and its Ossic architecture, whose sinkholes welcomed their exiled son only once every year. He rued this, and the pain of regret and longing were worthy cynosures for the hatred and rage of a Sith - at least, they would have been, had the Pau’an warrior not been plummeting to most certain demise.
“Secure the foxtrot and brace for im -”
The pilot’s words were stolen from him, the way that gravity and entropy swept away the Sheathipede transport’s flight: suddenly. He didn’t scream, and neither did the ship as it drug deep furrows through Shili’s parched crust.
Sparse, meandering bumps in the terrain - what passed for hills amongst the endless plains of the Savannah - were crushed and shaved by the cold momentum of the hot-burning shuttle. Its metal skin was lacerated and twisted, maimed by impact and resembling discarded porthomer eel roe cans instead of a Quaestor’s chariot.
The air fell silent as plumes of smoke ascended into the troposphere, the shuttle exhaling its final sorrowful breaths. The wisplike lingering of the turu grass, towering above even the wreckage, lent an overwhelming anonymity and calm to this tomb from the stars.
Micronized iron servos whispered their telltale mechanical creak as black gauntlets slithered through a partially open door, the slide-hinges mangled from the crash. Thanadd Mawgath forced the portal agape, grunting, reluctant to call upon the Force if not absolutely required; he would need his remaining strength.
He did not bother to check on his crew, the pilot and a lone trooper, for he felt their deaths as his ship touched down. He had sensed no other presence, no danger, no impending threats - so how did this happen? He paused contemplation long enough to navigate the stifling fumes, his respirator working hard to cycle the smoke and deliver clean oxygen to his lungs. He felt no pain, a mercy granted by his dark might, but he relied on the armor to regulate other vital functions.
After a moment to orient himself, during which he examined his armor for significant damage and operational competence, the looming Pau’an put the smoldering remains of the shuttle behind him, not giving them another thought.
He was here for her.
The coordinates were scrawled upon an old parchment - likely the corner of some dark scroll no longer meriting study. It was the last thing he secreted away before boarding his escape vessel, whose starboard window allowed him to survey the overwhelming siege of Castle Tarentum by Quarren forces, bolstered by elite agents of The Collective.
He focused on his shame, then. His suffering, as always, would be useful.
It made sense, Thanadd knew; Tahiri was Togruta, after all. He was unsure how she would react to the evacuation orders, but when he found her quarters empty, there was no question about retrieving her. It was as natural a choice as Shili was…
...and he found himself now upon its barren flesh. A dessicated world which was the stark opposite of the one Tahiri had ruled over, by his side.
The swell of the Dark Side was a welcome wave, penetrating the pores of mottled flesh. It was the heaviest matter, a ruthless fade in that did not diminish in puissance for any being. Only a Sith could truly withstand it. Understand it.
Closing his eyes, Thanadd basked in the blackness, drawing himself to it and it to him. Wrinkled eyelids fluttered at their creases, and he lifted them with triumph. Expectation.
She was here.
From somewhere, a gust of wind had routed the smoke, and through it he saw her figure. Unmistakable, she did not tremble in her rumination, kneeling. Her montrals peeked from beneath her cloak, alchemical tattoos wrapped around their girth with an alien precision.
“Tahiri!” Thanadd called out, shattering the macabre silence with electronic avidity. His voice retained a menacing baritone, wrought more intimidating by the vocabulator within the collar mandible.
She didn’t seem to hear him.
“Tahiri!” he plead again, leaving deep bootprints in the sand as he approached...
...only to watch her fade.
“TAHIRI!”
He spun in circles with bewilderment, yearning to find her but meeting only the endless wilderness. His confusion became anger - the only way he knew how to process it. What game was she playing, here? He had risked his life to locate her, nearly perishing due to an unexplainable engine malfunction. Now she was gone? It all seemed...surreal. What was he missing?
That blackness, the Dark Side - it was still there. He felt it, but it shifted now. Expanding with what felt like some strange, elliptic geometry. Not just invasive, but probing.
It wasn’t her.
“YOU!” Thanadd snarled, spotting another silhouette emerging from the shipwreck. Its frame was lithe and shuddersome, resembling Thanadd in its methodical, shambling gait.
Samael Ozriel’s ghoulish face materialized first, from within the smoke, his cracked and blighted flesh obviously pockmarked beneath a prodigious and unkempt beard. Nacreous and vile, a single eye seemed to bore into Thanadd’s own horrific gaze, neither creature obstructed by something so ordinary as hair.
“YOU did this! Where is she?”
Embarrassment, like bewilderment, led to rage. Samael had earned it; it finally occurred to the mighty Pau’an that his clanmate - a heretic and not of the Sith - had orchestrated all of this. In the end, as his clan burned, Samael had come for him. Not for power. Not for glory.
For fun.
The Umbaran offered no words in exchange, slinking over the earth and drawing the fleshbound hilt of his lightsaber. What looked like talons jutted from the weapon’s ends, bursting forth as the bone-like outgrowths adorning Samael’s denuded skull.
“You are not Sith!” Mawgath declared, with a voltaic howl.
His own blade hissed to life, the air around it curdling and cracking. It hummed as the armor clad Pau’an readied his weight for a charge, tapping into his fury. He feared the worst; where was Tahiri?
“You are a weapon! A tool! You were never meant for more. You were never meant to survive!”
Thanadd Mawgath, the revenant hound of his master, did not consider his own words.
Samael grinned, as if sensing his prey’s feelings. The sickly beryl of his lightsaber promised not only violence, but depravity. There would be no retreat. No quarter.
“Bloodthirst will be slaked, cur!” the Pau’an roared, “Ours was the Clan of Death; I’ll grant her one final tribute!”
Only the exclamations of blades clashing, accompanied by the counterpoint of agonizing wails, rung out in the swiftly darkening day.
