Z is for Ziost

[Isar]

The cold, coniferous laden climes of Ziost recalled earlier years for the small figure trundling through the heart of one of the planet's last remaining forests. The wooded deeps gave a shadowy cast to the ursine warrior's features. He looked on the towering pines around and felt a calming sense of familiarity. The forests were his, all of them. It had been prophesied. So why did this unease string beneath all else like the trembling lines of a spider's web?

Shaman of Shamans, that was the title Spirit Talker had given to him. Lately he found himself Shaman of nothing, sent to do tasks as if he were but a tribal apprentice again. On Endor many had followed him, blindly, loyally. They believed in the prophecy. He had relished their worship. Remembering it now caused only pain. Exiled and betrayed by the chief, his grandfather, who had sworn to protect him. How could he?

Memories of childhood mockery came back, whispering from the cloistered shadows as he passed them by.

"Tribeless."

"Son of None."

And more, worse. He'd thought he'd grown past their jibes and mockery, but the taunts and disdainful sneers of these Sith he'd come to work with - for - reopened old wounds. They thought him a fool because he could not speak their tongue. Ah, but among his own people he had been a great orator. Oh bitter, recurring irony. Did the spirits laugh at him? He stretched out his senses.

He could feel presences watching him. They were unfamiliar and full of intrigue and spite, watching to see what he would do.

Tiny fists curled into tight, trembling balls.

One day he would show these Sith the might of Warok of Endor. One day they and all the rest of the galaxy would hear the name of the Defiler and the drums of terror would beat in their hearts; for if he could not be loved, then he would be feared.

He would start by completing the mission the Grand Chieftain had assigned him. Though she feigned insanity, she saw his true potential. He could feel her interest in him, a palpable thing. With her backing he could rise through the ranks and achieve a greatness surpassing that of any of his ancestors.

Thoughts of bringing the snide, proud Epicanthix and his Echani counterpart low kept him warm as he traversed the inhospitable terrain, more than once relying on his knowledge of forestry to avoid potential predators.

At last he arrived at the target location. The coordinates provided had put him in the relative proximity of his target. The Grand Chieftain had told him to rely on the powers of the Spirits for the rest. Again, he stretched out to touch the spirit world. He felt their powers in the breath of the wind ruffling across his fur and lightly shaking the branches of the trees, in the groaning of the trees as they whispered to each other, in the dark heart of the forest that called him forth. Always that spirit called to him. The Trickster.

He followed its call, coming to the mouth of a cave, across which the wind hummed hauntingly. It spurred recollection of how his people came to be, arising from the world below to that above through a cave in the ground. A cave like this.

The Ewok stepped in, feeling no sense of trepidation. It was prophesied he was to be Shaman of Shamans and so it would be. What did he fear of the waking world? No, the dangers came from the dream sleep. And this was no dream.

Venturing further inward, Warok found that the cave expanded into a large cavern. An enormous forge crackled nearby. Beady eyes glanced around in the dim light.

"War Child, I see you, I see you in the shadows. Come out."

[member="Ginnie Ordo"]

 

[Ginnie Dib]

SLAM, slam, slam her hammer clanged down on the red hot iron on her anvil. Slam, slam, slam the girl brought her hammer in repeated strokes that thundered and echoed through the Cathedral Forge. The Cathedral Forge had many things, but a new locking mechanism on her door. None too soon, she would have thought if she'd seen the Ewok enter. Bringing her hammer up again, Ginnie swung down with muscles imbued with the Force and the metal bent and flattened. Ginnie stuck it in water. The steam and vapour curled upward to the slit in the high vaulted roof of the naturally created cavern and out to the atmosphere of Ziost. The particles thrown off by the sudden cold would become part of Ziost, breathed in by millions of people over and over until the molecules themselves became dormant and too heavy to do anything but fall.

Seemed even the purest, best intentioned fell eventually to the heavier pull of molecules. Ginnie was clad in her bright pink Beskar'gam, the 360 degree pan of her HUD showing her the brown Ewok and giving her a readout of what he'd said. Ginnie whirled around wielding the hammer and walked briskly toward the usurper. "Who are you? How'd you get in here?"

The child blinked. She wasn't much taller than the Ewok, Ginnie's Buy'ce dipped and rose as she scanned the sentient being. Her hammer lowered and the child stared. A wafting fragrance of foreign forests slid across Ginnie's nostrils and with it the oppressive feeling of failures and scorn. Once orphaned and lost, Ginnie had nothing to cling to but her brother Isley. Then, in a mere matter of months he too was gone. The art of alchemy was the last vestige of Isley's presence in her life, and the child grabbed at it as [member="Warok the Defiler"] grabbed at the prophesies and forests of Endor.

"An Ewok? What're you doing all the way in Mando space? You're almost as far from home as I am. War child? You're here for me, aren't you? How'd you know where I was? How'd you find me? What do you want?" Did she trust the fluffy critter? No and yes.

Come on, he was a teddy bear and she was twelve. Ahani Najwa had been incredibly cognizant of the girl in Ginnie when she'd sent Warok to ply this mission. What little girl could resist a fuzzy-wuzzy Ewok?

 

[Isar]

The ursine warrior's glittering eyes watched as the war child stepped forth, steam curling off her as though newly emerged from the boiling well-springs of power. He clenched a dagger in one paw, a club in the other. She clutched her hammer. They mirrored each other, children of violence and prophecy.

Warok disregarded the forge, focusing on the Mando-child. He began to speak in a slow, broken basic that carried an ancient melody to it.

"I have been sent by a great chieftain to find you. You have item of power that do not belong. I-ley Verd. Art-i-fact. Give here and I go."

[member="Ginnie Ordo"]

 

[Ginnie Dib]

If the Ewok had paid attention to the Forge, he would have seen a soft shimmer of blue in the background. The holocron sat on Ginnie's work bench, surrounded by trinkets and crystals from Ginnie's supply.

"Iley? Isley Verd was my brother I think whatever stuff there's left of Isley Verd belongs to me most of all. Who sent you? What Great Chieftain?" Ginnie took another step toward the Ewok and lowered the handle of her hammer. In the back of the girl's mind she'd known she wouldn't get far in the universe without her brother's tracks creeping up behind her. She'd feared it at first, an ill tiding of little joy that creeped in with the abandonment she suffered under Clan Verd. And now that her father was in a hover chair. . . the girl licked her lips and smacked them together.

"My Clan. . . my clan abandoned me. My momma died to protect me and my Dad left me all by myself. I had no one. Not a single person but my brother Isley. Now he's gone too, but I got adopted by a new Clan and my new father taught me the art of the forge and I've only got one or two things from Isley. Only one. I can't give it to someone I don't know. So why don't you tell me why you need it and we can figure something out."

A thrill of fear had taken the child's spinal column and the back of her neck. A great chieftain? Who could it be, Phoebe? Had Darth Metus returned in some nether worldly form and wanted his stuff back? Was it one of the Masters in the Confederacy or Albion Whatever it was now? Had some long lost enemy of her brother tracked her down, or was it a student who longed for his teacher?

 

[Isar]

Warok gestured dismissively with his club.

"Chieftain no matter. I know no purpose for the art-i-fact. You have one? Two? Keep one. Give other. Give. Give me art-i-fact."

He nodded his head once for emphasis, causing his necklace of bones to clack softly.

Those beady eyes studied her, withholding feelings of kinship with the war child. She too was abandoned and alone. Should he feel sorry for her? He refused. The prophecy told that he would rule over all the forests. She lived in this forest. She was under his rule. Chieftains did not feel "sorry" for those under them. They judged.

[member="Ginnie Ordo"]

 

[Ginnie Dib]

"Ah, yeah Chieftain matter. I'm not giving my brother's Forge holocron to like, a stranger. I wanna know who it's going to." The girl harrumphed and crossed her arms over her chest. "Tell me who the Chieftain is or you no getting nothing. Tell me who it is, and I'll consider it."

How adult was she acting, she thought as she stared down at the Ewok. Why, she could stare down to someone! Epic. A niggling worry hit the back of her brain. What if this was right? Isley's hologram guardian had said the holocron wasn't for her. What if [member="Warok the Defiler"] was here on the right kind of business? Ginnie had her HUD scan behind her and brought the image of the holocron up. It shimmered and glowed deeper than it had before. She bit the inside of her cheek and turned around to take the holocron in her crush gaunts.

"We'll let Isley decide." The holocron whirred to life, and a life-sized hologram of Isley Verd shimmered into being.

"I already told you, ad'ika. This holocron is not for you. . . who is this?"

"He says some Great Chieftain told him to come take you away. Why do I have to give you up, Isley? You're all I got left."

"Ginnie, love. I am a shadowy image of your brother. It was not your brother's will that you fall to the Dark Side of the Force, nor that you took up the hammer and alchemical wheel. You have learned much from the History of Castle Ne'tra, do not test me more."

"But I miss you, Isley. It's not fair. Why do other people get pieces of you and I don't?"

"Ewok. Where would you take the knowledge of my Forge?" The image bore down on the Ewok, Ginnie was glad for her buy'ce as liquid streams poured down her cheeks.

 

[Isar]

Beady eyes glowered at the holocron image. The progenitor. Warok had read that the Mandalorian Sith had been a practitioner of sorcery, a distant, supposedly evil cousin to the Shaman teachings, but in the same veins. It dealt with the Spirits, with the forces of nature. Some thought controlling the Spirits was unnatural and unholy. Warok thought it was simply justice. The Great Spirits controlled every aspect of his life, why should he not repay their kindnesses? He licked his lips, staring at the flickering image of Isley Verd. Power. He could feel it at his fingertips.

The War Child seemed sad. The Shamans said death was the natural course of life... but why? Why did there have to be such suffering when Warok and others like him had the power to twist the natural course. They could forge their own path. No more tears. No more sorrow. Visions of an undying forest, pines stretching in eternal heavens crested Warok's vision. He bit the inside of his cheek, gnawing as he thought of a reply to the looming holocron.

"Away," he grunted at last, "Aaah... Aaahani. A use for you. A purpose."

[member="Ginnie Ordo"]

 

[Ginnie Dib]

"Ahani is the intended recipient. This Holocron was forged for her. Take me to her, Ewok."

"Ahani? You made your Holocron for her and not for me!?" The Mandalorian child balked and stamped her foot. "You suck Isley!" She shoved her hand on the Holocron and tossed it to [member="Warok the Defiler"]. "My own brother goes poof and what does he do? Leave a message in a bottle for his Echani girlfriend!? That makes me so . . . so . . . [member="Isley Verd"] is a Dingus! A miserable dingus!!"

In her huff, Ginnie lit her hands on fire. She pulled the fire into a sphere and tossed it from hand to hand. Behind the mask, she tried to keep her wobbling lip from bursting. Why did life have to be so hard? Why couldn't she keep one tangible piece of her missing family? "Do you have brothers, Mr. Shaman Ewok Dude-Guy?"

 

[Isar]

The Ewok caught the lobbed holocron with surprising deftness. He stared at it for a moment, the light from the intricate lattices reflecting in his eyes, before glancing back to the War Child.

"No," he grunted, "I am fatherless, motherless, brotherless."

He scowled bitterly. Perhaps he might have called the the other woklings of his tribe brothers, but they had betrayed him. He felt no remorse in his exile, no pity, no kinship. They had set themselves apart from him. So be it.

Warok pointed at the fireball, then at the forge. "You work? Maybe I come watch some time. Goodbye War Child."

Then he turned around and left.

Lost in thought as he wandered through the forest of Ziost back toward his ship, Warok never spotted the booby trap. One stubby leg stomped down. He felt a subtle give, but the noose had already snapped tight around his ankle. Before he could so much as squeak, he was whipped into the air, upside down. The lack of mass caused him to swing violently as he flew up and he smashed his head against a tree. Blackness engulfed him.

Warok awoke in darkness to the smell of sweat, defecation and the feeling of cold metal bands around his paws and feet.

The holocron was where he'd dropped it, stuck in the snow.

[member="Ginnie Ordo"]

 

[Isar]

The Ziost slaver camp was filled with the stench of the unwashed. It lay on a patch of hard earth with its back to a cliff. Pitched tents sprawled out below in a barely organized mess of cook pots and fires. The forest sat beyond, looming like the shadow of a watching giant. Inside the camp, large wooden poles had been rammed into the earth. Slaves sat clustered around the poles, huddling for warmth. Chains bound their hands and were threaded through the steel loops at the top of the poles.

Slavers lounged around the camp, in various states of sluggardness.

Warok found himself tethered to his own private pole. After several escape attempts the slavers had wised up to the fact that he was a force sensitive. They'd brought out beskar chains normally reserved for wookiees and chained him by both paws to the pole. Breaking them would now be next to impossible. Besides, Warok had exhausted most of his energy. For all his effort, he now had bloodied palms full of splinters, a swollen eye and a very sore stomach.

Lying slumped against he scratchy wooden pole, he groggily listened to the conversation of the nearby campfire.

"When in 'teh blazes is ou' dam' shuttle gettin' 'ere?"

"Oy, can the grumblin' Groiser. They'll get 'ere when they get 'ere. We've got a lot of o' shipments to make."

Warok chewed the inside of his cheek as his stomach knotted into ropes. Mandalorians, he decided, were the worst sort of people.

"Hmm, think that Ewok is gonna make a break for it again?"

"Wot? Eh, nah, he's done. Tiny bloke's gonna be spit polishin' some noble's jewels once we get rid of 'im."

Warok was not entirely sure what that meant, but the slavers sounded like they relished the thought.

"Hope he gets it good," muttered the one called Groiser, "Little freak nearly bit mah finger off."

The reply was a chorus of brutish laughter.

Warok scowled and curled up on the hard floor, closing his eyes. Sleep called to him.

 

[Ginnie Dib]

Ginnie had finished in the forge and taken Wembley the Tuk'ata for a run through the forest. It was a pleasant enough, if cold day. Wembley went bounding off and Ginnie yelped. "Woa! Wembley hey, hold on! I'm coming!" Running in her beskar'gam was still not her favourite past time. The thirteen year old would have tripped over the Holocron if not for Wembley's protective snarl. "Huh? What's this doing here?"

Why would Warok leave this behind? Ginnie sat in the snow and leaned against Wembley. She took off a crush gaunt and placed her bare hand on the Holocron. Her inner gaze drifted violently to the history of the object. The Kiffar slowed the images down until she saw Warok get his foot caught in a trap. "Slavers. . Slavers got Warok! We gotta save him, Wembley!"

Ginnie dropped the Holocron in her bag and raced off in the direction of the rope, climbing the tree for any trace of the coil. She found a knot, put her hand to it and saw the direction the slavers took. Slavers. . . her first day with her adopted daddy was defeating slavers on Serenno. It had been in fighting slavers that Ginnie found herself a new home and today she would free Warok. She would give him the Holocron to give to Ahani and then she would be done with it. Besides, who would want to harm a teddy bear?

The pink and purple clad Mandalorian had thrown an old white cloak over her beskar to better hide in the snow. She crept up on the slaver camp and saw beings of all kinds tied to poles. Ginnie's tempers flickered like the flames in the camp. She held out her crush gaunt clad hand and a fire erupted in the middle of the slavers themselves. A flicker through the shadows: Wembley raced through the camp, pounced on the back of a slaver and snapped the man's back from behind, dragging his prey backward, past where Warok laid tied in Beskar chains. Wembley's maw crunched down, the Tuk'ata tossed the body behind some bushes for later and pounded down, catching the next slaver in the confusion as more fires sprung up in odd places. Wembley made short work of the second, much like the first and threw the slaver's body behind the bush.

Ginnie hunched down and crouched beside Warok, hefting the Beskar links in her hand. "Beskar. . . 16% copper alloy. . . I can melt this. Wake up, Mr. Ewok. Hey, it's okay wake up I'm getting you out of here."

"Oy! Over there! Wassat thing!?"

"AAUUGH!"

"FERDINAND! Kill it! Shoot it!"

"AUGH! AW MY LEG!"

"Grab the slaves!"

"Ditch the slaves, let them burn! We gots to get out of here!"

"AAUUUUGH MY LEG!"

"Stop griping, Ferdinand! We KNOW!"

Ginnie's head snapped up. She held up her hands and commanded the fires to obey her. The Slavers wouldn't stand a chance.

 

[Isar]

He awoke to screaming. It was not unpleasant. Warok rolled over, beady eyes flicking across the camp. Something that looked like a small boar-wolf had its fangs in the throat of a slaver. The screams didn't last long after that. Not from him anyway. Warok narrowed his eyes. He watched the human's spirit leave its fleshly host and drift away. A ring of pale shapes encircled the camp, ghosts of Ziost. They watched expectantly. Death drew them. Warok wondered why. He looked across the camp.

In a place where spring never came, crimson blossoms now sprang, vibrant on the white snow.

Black eyes snapped toward a familiar voice.

Warchild.

He said nothing as she studied his chains. Melt them? Beskar? It was said to be the hardest metal in the galaxy. The child truly was blessed by the spirits, if such a thing was possible. Warok studied her as she worked, aching to be free. The shackles bit into his paws. His earlier efforts at escape had drawn blood. He waited, as expectant as the ghosts.

[member="Ginnie Ordo"]

 

[Ginnie Dib]

"It's gonna be okay, Mr. Ewok." Ginnie pulled off her crushgaunts and took a healthy, deep breath. Her Tuk'ata continued to whip around the flames and fires lit by Ginnie's pyromantic powers, eliminating more of the slavers. The Sith Hound's growing intellect was keen - he whipped around the slaves one by one crunching the wood stakes holding their chains in his jaws. He made short work of the pillars and slaves burst away, huddling together in freedom and grabbing what they could.

In the chaos was one still, eye-shimmering little girl. Her hard working hands wrapped around the chains. It was enough of an alloy to make the Beskar pliant, but melting Beskar was no simple, nor easy trick. To melt Beskar, one needed to know what Beskar was and match that rigidity with the power of their own will. Beskar was rigid, demanding, sovereign of all the metals. Beskar withstood weather, heat, time, energy and kinetic pressure. It would not withstand Ginnie Ordo. The Goran'ika took another deep breath and a whistle of steam came from the seam in her Buy'ce. Her hands began to smoke as she grabbed the chains - careful of grabbing too close to [member="Warok the Defiler"] 's bleeding skin. She didn't want to light the little guy on fire, after all.

The Beskar alloy began to thrum in the air, a sound unconscious to others but rife in the deaf girl's spiritual senses. The thrum grew and grew until it became a softening of the Beskar's colour from grey to blue-tinted, yellow took hold. Ginnie kept fuelling the heat of her own pyres into the metal, emphatic that this would work. That she would heat the Beskar enough to pull it loose of the moorings. Any closer work to Warok's wrists would have to wait until they got back to her Cathedral Forge.

The metal turned nearly white, flames poured from the chain and Ginnie kept her concentration. Under her Buy'ce her face was a sweating mess. She clenched her teeth and pulled. The effort of focusing her pyromantic powers on the Beskar had given the child tunnel vision and made her head feel giddy. She leaned to the side, shuddered once and grunted.

The Beskar chains fell apart in a glopping, glowing mess in the snow, hissing, popping and jumping as the frigid snow cooled the exterior of the metal. Ginnie pulled the chain pieces through the loop and freed Warok, sticking the scalding ends of the wrist-holds in the snow until she was satisfied it wouldn't burn him. She left and came back with as clean a fabric as she could find, rubbing the canvas in the snow until she was satisfied. Once done, she put the cold compresses under the Beskar wrist shackles and wrapped them around the bleeding, oozing wounds. She hoped the coolness of the compresses would help ease the pain and staunch the bleeding until she could take a proper look.

"I ain't melting that metal near your wrists, I'd likely immolate you before the Beskar would fall off. But I can bring you back to my Forge and we can take the rest off there and treat your wrists. C'mon." Ginnie pulled her crush gaunts back on and wrapped the pieces and chains of Beskar in her armourweave cloak. Hey - Beskar was precious! There ain't no wasting it!

"Wembley! We good?"

The Sith Hound barked and growled, chittering through his blood-streaming jaws. Wembley was too busy eating. . . Ginnie didn't watch. "I'm gonna do a quick search and see if there's anything useful we can take off these bums. They owe you compensation for being idiots." Helping Warok up, Ginnie searched the ruins and came out with four more sets of Beskar chains, loops, smithing tools and stakes, some solid copper and durasteel alloy chains, a small bag of credit chits, and three foot lockers of weapons, supplies, credit chits and medicine from the main Slaver's tent. Bundling it all together with the Beskar from Warok's chains, Ginnie loaded them telekinetically onto the back of a small speeder the slavers had tucked into the brush and went back for Warok.

"Let's get you cleaned up and take those shackles off before you bleed out. C'mon, I can help, my Mom's the best Force Healer in the universe and even though I can't heal with the Force, I can bandage you up alright. Besides, you're probably hungry. Wembley! S'go!"

The growing Tuk'ata glanced up from a fattened slaver and sat licking his chops. the Tuk'ata pulled the bone sack to the same bush he laid the others and kicked a pile of snow on top, rubbing his maw on fresh snow to clean it off before running alongside the small speeder.

 

[Isar]

Warok gnashed his teeth as the metal turned molten, the heat of it so very near him that he felt as though his fur would begin to char and his flesh melt beneath. But the War Child held the flames away with her power and Warok was spared. Black eyes flicked between her and the molten beskar. Not so long ago he had been ready to fight her for the holocron. Now here she was saving his life. It made Warok wonder, if he had the chance, would he kill her?

Yes, he thought, yes he would. If he wanted to. If he needed to. He might owe her a debt, but he overthrew conventions and traditions. The galaxy was survival of the fittest. Her altruism would be her undoing. If not now, then later.

The fluffy teddy bear thought all this and more as the youngest Ordo worked to free him. Schemes rustled through his mind like wind through a forest.

And what of the other slaves? Warok spared them a single glance. Would this War Child free them as well?

He trundled after her as she looted the camp, watching and waiting. What else could a captive do? For was he not even a captive now? Captive to her whims, at least... and the whim of her pet. He eyed the beast warily. One day he would command all creatures of nature, living or dead, plant or legged animal, but today he had not the power nor the knowledge. So he must bide his time, as he had for so long, and wait for the opportunity. The beings of this galaxy thought him a thing to be cuddled or kicked aside. And for now, he was.

But soon.

Soon.

They zipped off on the speeder, bound perhaps back to her cavern.

"I have idea," Warok pronounced in his broken Basic, "Idea for weapon. Go back to forge? Help me build. Venge-unce."

Black eyes glittered.

"Dest-oony."

[member="Ginnie Ordo"]