Jungle Boogie - The Dominion of Rakata Prime (One Sith and The Underground)

[Khallesh]

[member="Vrag"]

Tentative at first, Khallesh started to laugh. But after a moment it turned into a hacking cough. She wheezed for a moment, before spitting out a mouthful of inky black blood. Taking off her helm, she placed it beside her and managed to manoeuvre herself into a sitting position. She whispered a prayer to the Trickster Goddess that Vrag may have heard before, touching a small wooden piece of jewellery in her ear. Taking a few breaths before continuing she added: "Yun Harla does take her time revealing her jokes."

Her expression turned serious for a moment. The Yuuzhan Vong had no eyebrows and expressions played out quite differently on their faces. If Vrag spent enough time with her species, she might have recognised the look of deep concentration. Khallesh ran her fingers through her hair, pushing the matted mess back across her scalp. With her other hand she re-tired a knot behind her head. For a moment she didn't seem the hissing, spitting, rude Huntress that Vrag was accustomed to. She seemed a typical person. "Well my own domain of Val would be happy to have you beside us on the field any time," she said. In their language Domain was the same as family.

"We need to get off this mountain," she sighed. "Help me up?" she said, holding up one arm. What was that human word again? "Please?"

She wouldn't have asked that of one of the warriors under her command, nor would she have dared say such to one of her superiors. They had fought together, they had nearly died together. That was as close a bond as the huntress knew.

 

[Vrag]

Without really knowing why, the urge to join the Huntress in her ragged, tired laughter bubbled up in Vrag's chest, and she didn't have it in her to swallow the odd feeling swelling in her throat. Not after the day she'd just had.

So she leaned back against the twisted trunk and let out a few small chuckles of her own, not even sure what they were laughing at in the first place. Their pitiful situation? The absurdity of their shared family name? The crappy and/or glorious turn this trip through the woods had taken? Probably a healthy combination of all three.

"The Universe does like its irony, yeah," she murmured in agreement, more to herself than to [member="Khallesh"].

She was staring at nothing in particular when the Yuuzhan Vong in question spoke again, and the words that came out of her mouth were so jarringly unexpected that Vrag nearly broke her neck as she looked back at the other woman. Later she would thank the Force for helmets, because her expression in that moment was very much comical and not at all befitting her stature.

She blinked, once, twice, then collected her scattered thoughts. "And I would gladly fight beside you," she offered in their language, forcing her tired muscles to shape the sounds correctly. It was a process.

What the Huntress said next would've had her gaping in surprise were it not for the previous statement, and so the woman was only mildly shocked. Not quite enough to stay grounded, though, so with a grunt the firrerreo rose to her feet and walked over to the Commander. Cold blue eyes peered down at the woman with a mix of curiosity, respect, and confusion for a few long moments, and then the Hand offered her hand.

Carrying her down the mountain would have been a bit too much. For both of them.

The drone of Sith ships in the distance was steadily growing in volume, and through the gaps in the canopy above them, Vrag could spot the sources as specks on the horizon, steadily growing in size as they approached. It could only mean one thing.

Rakata Prime has fallen.

 

[Khallesh]

Khallesh’ left hand wiped the blood from her chin, before planting on the ground. Her right hand clasped Vrag’s forearm with a vice-like grip. The muscles in her chest, and arms had been reshaped when she had been implanted with fighting claws to augment her beyond a natural Yuuzhan Vong.

“Slowly, Vrag Val,” she requested. She was not one of the self-mutilators of Domain Shai, like so many of Yun’Do. Pain was to be earned in sacrifice or in combat, not administered to oneself for recreation.

As she was lifted she placed her foot underneath herself and pushed herself up. Every inch was agony, but rather that than come up quickly and rip her skin apart and spill her guts all over the human. She stood, if a little precariously, on her own feet. Her chin came up a fraction as she released her grip and demonstrated her ability to stand.

Suddenly she felt quite abashed at having appeared so vulnerable to the human. They had fought many times beside each other, but it was still a strange thing for Khallesh to do. Her staff slithered down her arm and formed itself into something akin to a crutch.

“I will manage now,” she said. “Who shaped your armour? It has too many spines,” she snapped. In truth whilst Khallesh was a natural scout and favoured a relatively sleek Vonduun Skerr Kyrric, Vrag’s armour was hardly exceptional in its design. Khallesh didn’t even understand why she spoke with a testy tone.

Looking at her own feet she recalled her time with Willard Jamaane, and how she had snapped at him. He had clouded her thoughts and greatly confused her view on the natives of the galaxy and her own religion. Was this just a defensive reaction? She thought to herself.

“We should probably get to a clearing,” Khallesh added, in a much softer tone.

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

Her nostrils flared for a moment as the considerable weight of the Huntress suddenly hung on her arm, but Ygdris and Vrag flexed both, and with an extension in the knees, the woman pulled her wounded ally to her feet. [member="Khallesh"]'s black blood remained smeared all over the plates of the Vonduun crab once the other warrior released her grip, and the creatures greedily reeled at the taste, claws and pincers reaching for the bleeding woman leaning against the firrerreo.

She felt the sting of the insult almost as much as Ygdris itself, and the woman had to double down with determination, lest those spines would have readily reopened the sealed wounds peppering the body of the Yuuzhan Vong.

Vrag narrowed her eyes behind the skull mask and took a step to the side, leaving the Commander to stand on her own three feet.

Wait what.

Oh, that was the arachnostaff. She blinked, and the moment of confusion and anger passed as quickly as it had washed over her. Normally it took a lot more to rile her up, but the long day had taken its toll, and the exhausting battle with an unknown beast of untold prowess certainly hadn't helped.

Well. Bonding time was over, it seemed.

"We should," she offered a curt nod in agreement to the Huntress' suggestion and then started down the treacherous slope, keeping her gaze glued to the ground in an effort to avoid a repeat performance of the previous tumble downhill. Once had been quite enough, and she was entirely unwilling to try her luck a second time. The woman would be perfectly happy to just take the first dropship back to the Imperious lingering high above the planet and beeline for the captain's cabin for a hot shower and a good, long sleep.

Kark. I'm getting old.

 

[Khallesh]

[member="Vrag"]
The first tentative step elicited a guttural growl from the proud warrior. The terrain seemed to stretch out ahead of her. Suddenly a short walk seemed a greater challenge than reaching this altitude in the first place. But as always, she held her head high and took each step in turn. She had faced worse than this. Commander Shuun Val had threatened to wipe her name from the list of commanding warriors and have her mate with a lesser male for a few decades rather than kill her in combat. Yet she had endured and come out alive. He had not.

As she walked she found herself reviewing her own behaviour. Slowly coming to the conclusion that even by Yuuzhan vong standards she had been unnecessarily rude to the human. She wasn't about to apologise for it, but as they slowly hobbled she cleared her throat.

“To die fighting such a magnificent creature would have been exquisite. But I am glad to have shared this triumph with you. Glad we will get to face another test together,” she said quietly. She stumbled across the root of a tree, and loudly unleashed a string of quite colourful yuuzhan vong curse words.

 

[Vrag]

To say that walking down a slope covered in monster blood and aching all over was an odd situation would be both an under- and an overstatement. Both of them had doubtless gone through worse, on their own, and sometimes even together, but it was not the near-death experience that made the whole thing weird. It was, simply put, the closeness.

Vrag nearly shuddered as the word flitted through her mind, and with a set jaw she took to the terrain once more, intent on focusing solely on their perilous descent. To die of a broken neck after surviving the skirmish with the mountain horror would be terribly annoying, to say the least.

For all her wishes, however, it was [member="Khallesh"] who would not let the matter lie. They had just reached the treeline of deciduous trees when the Commander spoke up again, awkwardness written all over her tone. The Hand nearly winced in sympathy, realizing that uttering the admission probably felt a hundred times worse than all the lacerations and puncture wounds marring her flesh.

Vrag stayed quiet for the longest time, partly out of conserving energy through focus — for there was no denying she was tired — and partly because the firrerreo had no earthly idea how to respond. The Yuuzhan Vong were a proud people. She was not. Despite its simplicity, the difference was a difficult obstacle to overcome in moments like this; more difficult even than the treacherous soil beneath their feet and the boulders on their path.

"I will always be honored to fight with you, Khallesh Val," she finally said, because it was simple, and because it was the truth.

 

[Khallesh]

[member="Vrag"]

There was a quiet grunt, and the slightest hint of an affirming nod. Despite her curt nature Khallesh may well have had more to say. Unfortunately, despite her natural and nurtured tolerance for damage and pain, most of her concentration was directed at putting one foot in front of the other.

Each escalation had tested her strength further. The Yuuzhan Vong did not administer analgesics when carrying out their shaping. Despite her stoic resolve, each procedure had left her feeling nervous and vulnerable; having to put your life in the hands of the gods was not the same as taking your own destiny in your hands. She was not proud of the fact that she preferred not to watch as the shapers pulled her body apart and remade it. She knew that she should have believed an escalation was the same as meeting a worthy opponent in battle, yet Juun Phaath had directly told her that it was a nonsense. As her skill was put to the test in battle, the shapers were tested during an escalation.

As the edges of Khallesh’ vision turned dark, she started to wonder of the Master Shaper’s views were really that heretical. Was there truth there buried by the priests. A sudden memory came to the fore. That meeting long ago on Selvaris where she had almost locked blades with Vrag. Now that would have been a worthy fight. Was the sky spinning? Jun Phaath and several shapers had stood on one side of the grashal, the highest ranking priests in Hrosha-gul on the other. The trees were going round in circles now. Perhaps the board of – what was it Juun showed her again, ah – chess was not as hidden from her as she thought.

It was then that the realisation hit her. She was looking up at the silhouette of the canopy against the sky. No matter how determined one was, every body had its limits.