Author: FoxFire

The engines went from rumbling to hissing as they powered down. Merce slapped the hatch controls and leapt down before the gangplank had fully extended. Another telekinetic slap and the gangplank went back up the other way with a groan of protest.

Merce had intentionally put down several miles from the old, glassed Shadow compound on Honoghr. The walk allowed him to think as well as conceal his trail from the Jedi he hunted — one Den Akaro, Knight of the Order of the Righteous Blade. Continue reading “The Hunt for Den Akaro”

Brant walked away from the BBA pet class as quietly as he had come. The edge of his robe was soggy where a kath hound had kept gnawing on it, and little imprints of its hoofs were all over his legs and torso where it had kept jumping up on him. He had sensed the beast was only excited to get out of its cage, so Brant hadn’t been particularly hard on it despite the bad behavior.

He knew what that felt like, after all.

Frustrations and anger pounded on his senses. His desire to master Lii’s form fought with the fear that there was something wrong here, something heretical, and both Brant’s senses wrestled with a further inkling that he was scraping the nose of a whale. Like a monster underwater, there was power here, in what Lii did, something altogether unlike what the Sith Academy had taught him.

Lii’s demeanor was very… Jedi-ish, to Brant. Lii spoke of calm and focus, yet he also spoke of reaching that state through emotions, rather than lack thereof like a Jedi might. It stuck in Brant’s mind like a wrench jabbed into the interior of an engine. How was one calm and emotional at the same time?

As Lii bade him, Brant scraped his memories for a time he had been in a similar state. Emotions, Brant knew well. He knew the heart-racing thrill of skimming a starfighter over the surface of an enemy capitol ship, the hit-the-roof terror of a punitive Overseer turning his way with lightning on their hands, the mind-stopping fury of a rival gloating over him as he lay on the dueling ring floor with blood in his mouth.

But these were not the things Lii sought, for they were not also calm. Continue reading “Yin and Yang”

Swamps. Why did it have to be swamps? Sometimes Brant thought his master Hu’izei had a sense of humor.

It was raining when Brant set down just outside of Dewlight. It was always raining on Auratera now, the clouds thick and black as if they were made up of something other than water vapor. Brant turned up his collar, wishing he had thought to bring a hat. His presence in Dewlight was supposed to be a secret, so he didn’t dare wear a Sith’s robe and hood, though he gloomily reflected that, too, would have been suitable for the constant downpour.

Gamely pushing past his distaste for the wet, Brant spent most of the first day scoping out the small city. He visited the governmental buildings, asked to see a record or two under the plea of historical interest, even signed on for a tour of the President’s Palace — anything, in reality, to get closer to his mark, though the actual assassination would have to come later.

Brant spat blood on the plating of the Nar Shaddaa streets, glaring at the retreating back of his master. He should have expected that punch. He really should have. Did he think just because he had somehow snagged the attention of a Dark Councilor, he would not be above more beatings? Brant cursed in Mando’a. Of course that would have been too easy…

So, obviously the crows and sparrows here aren’t like Earth’s crows and sparrows because this is Star Wars; I just didn’t want to go hunting down an appropriate name for them. I picture these ones something like an archaeoptryx.

Author’s Note

Brant watched the birds scrabble in the courtyard. It was midday, and the Academy preparers had just finished putting together the slop normally fed to the Acolytes. Typically the scraps and cuttings went into the incinerator, transported there by an astromech droid, but the droid was getting old, and it would leak and drop pieces of food across the courtyard as it rattled along, and the birds would come to fight over them.

Today, along with the usual sparrows, had come some great crows and a vulture. All the sparrows scattered when the crows came down to snatch up their meals, and the crows scattered before the vulture. Yet there were a few among the sparrows who didn’t take off when the bigger birds came, but instead chose to hop about just out of their reach. When the crows weren’t looking, they’d dart in to snatch at the food, cleverly backing out again once they tasted of it.

Yet there was one in particular who seemed to make it his mission to antagonize the crows before flying off. Whenever a crow settled, its lizard-like tail draped calmly over the balcony rail as it ate, the sparrow would dart to it and, nip, sink its tiny teeth into the crow’s gray, feather-bared tail.