Ahsoka stepped carefully into the clearing, her boots crunching softly on the cracked, ash-dusted earth.
The scene had all the visual hallmarks of a grand Sith ritual site. Dozens of massive apex predators lay scattered across the open ground, looking as though every drop of life and vitality had been systematically sucked right out of them.
The environment around them made no sense.
Normally, an ancient Sith ritual involving this much death would leave a heavy, suffocating stain on the dark side. It should have drenched the soil itself with raw dark side energy, leaving behind a lingering nexus of malice that would make any Force-sensitive nauseous just standing near it.
Here, the dark side felt strangely fainter.
If anything, the Force felt lesser overall in this specific clearing. It was as though the ambient energy had been pulled into a void and simply vanished, leaving the surrounding air thin and hollow. It defied everything she had been taught about dark side nexuses and corrupted grounds.
Ahsoka raised her eyes toward the far side of the clearing.
Beyond the field of dried husks stood a massive stone structure. It was clearly artificial, constructed from heavy, dark blocks that nature had spent centuries attempting to reclaim with thick vines and creeping moss. The entire building leaned unnaturally, having sunken deep into the swampy earth along its eastern foundation.
Ahsoka approached the nearest Terentatek corpse to get a better look.
She crouched beside the deflated shell of the beast. Up close, she could see dozens of deep, irregular marks carved into its leathery hide. They felt far too small to have been made by the massive claws of another Terentatek, and the skin around the wounds looked strange, warped inward in an uneven pattern.
Curious about the texture, Ahsoka extended two fingers and lightly touched the edge of one of the marks.
The moment her gloves made contact, the entire corpse collapsed.
With a soft, hollow poof, the desiccated husk disintegrated into a massive cloud of fine grey dust, completely coating her hand and drifting up into her face.
Ahsoka recoiled, waving her hand frantically to disperse the ash while coughing into her elbow.
"Ugh, gross," she muttered, shaking her hand violently. She wiped a stray smear of corpse dust off her cheek with her sleeve, grimacing at the smell.
She stood up and moved toward another carcass a few yards away, taking careful note to keep her hands to herself this time.
Leaning over the second corpse, she studied its head and shoulders. This beast had a massive region of its thick, armored neck completely missing.
The tearing looked violently jagged and uneven. It didn't resemble the clean burn of a lightsaber or the heavy crush of an Imperial explosive. It looked as though something had physically torn a massive chunk of hide, muscle, and bone straight off the creature's neck.
Ahsoka straightened up, her eyes scanning the quiet clearing. She felt that there was something missing, something strange, something irregular, but couldn't determine exactly what...
---
It turned out the field of mummified husks was merely the outer edge of the actual disaster.
Ahsoka slipped carefully around the perimeter of the sunken stone structure and found herself looking down into a massive, heavily fortified Imperial encampment.
The entire garrison was established in a wide ring surrounding an enormous crater in the earth. The hole looked as though the ground itself had simply collapsed inward into the deep subterranean levels below the ruins. Even more desiccated animal corpses littered the mud around the crater's rim, completely ignored by the squads of stormtroopers patrolling the walkways.
Dozens of temporary shelters and heavy canvas tents were erected in neat military rows.
Mixed among the white armor of the Imperial troops were several clusters of those red-robed cultists. They were directing the soldiers, gesturing toward the crater, and inspecting the surrounding tree line with visible agitation.
Ahsoka remained perfectly still in the shadows of the ruins, assessing the numbers.
She possessed neither the time nor the resources to storm a fully operational garrison using flashy, direct methods. Whatever ancient creatures these deluded cultists had accidentally awakened on this miserable planet was absolutely not her problem. They could deal with the consequences of their own dark side experiments. They might even learn a harsh lesson about provoking things buried in the dark, though she highly doubted zealots were capable of that kind of self-reflection.
Her priority was locating the boy.
According to the frightened acolyte she interrogated earlier, a cultist named Lord Garkis had been actively tracking the second survivor from the crash site. If she could figure out where Garkis had gone or where he reported his findings, she would find the trail leading to Ezra Bridger.
"I'm just saying I haven't seen Squad Delta-Four since yesterday," the first stormtrooper muttered, shifting his heavy rifle as he scanned the dark tree line. "And Kells still owes me fifty credits from that sabacc game on the cruiser. I want my money."
The second trooper leaned against a damp barricade and sighed loudly. "You can forget about the credits, man. Command sent Delta-Four to clear the southern trail."
The first trooper paused, his helmet tilting slightly. "Wait, the southern trail? Isn't that where..."
"Hey, shut your mouth!" The second trooper hissed, waving a hand frantically. "Keep your voice down."
"I was just asking, like, um, a basic question."
"Well, don't ask it. If you want to keep your head attached to your neck, you don't talk about that thing wandering around out there. The Prophets are already executing people for spreading panic."
A sudden, sharp rustling noise echoed from a thick patch of briars a few yards beyond the perimeter lights.
Both troopers immediately snapped their rifles up, aiming the barrels directly into the dark foliage.
"I swear, I hate this kriffing planet and every single thing crawling on it," the first trooper grumbled, taking a slow step toward the bushes.
High above them in the canopy, Ahsoka used the distraction to drop silently from a heavy branch, landing lightly in the mud directly behind their patrol route before slipping past the outer barricades.
The stolen plastoid armor pinched uncomfortably at her shoulders, and the helmet visor offered a terribly restricted field of vision.
---
Ahsoka adjusted the heavy utility belt and continued her slow, measured walk through the heart of the Imperial encampment. A few minutes ago, she had dragged a lone supply trooper into a muddy ditch, knocked him unconscious, and borrowed his uniform to speed up her investigation.
For the past ten minutes, she had been systematically checking the larger command tents to locate any tracking logs or dispatch records regarding Lord Garkis.
Most of the tents she peeked into were essentially makeshift occult laboratories. The red-robed cultists had dragged several of the drained animal corpses inside and formed strange enclosures around them. The zealots were busy painting elaborate Sith occult symbols on the floor in deep red pigment, apparently attempting to analyze whatever anomaly had sucked the beasts dry.
She kept moving, bypassing the ritual tents entirely.
Eventually, she slipped through the heavy canvas flaps of a smaller, heavily insulated shelter near the edge of the crater.
This tent looked completely different from the others. There were no occult symbols painted on the floor, and the air smelled sharply of medical antiseptics rather than wet ash.
A single corpse rested on an illuminated metal examination table in the center of the room. Ahsoka stepped closer, noting that this body did not belong to a Terentatek or any other local wildlife. It was dressed in the tattered, mud-stained remains of a dark red robe.
Cultist? Did it encounter the same creature or what?
But Ahsoka didn't get a chance to inspect the corpse any closer.
A heavily sweating Imperial medical officer stepped out from behind a bank of portable diagnostic monitors. He wiped his hands on a stained surgical apron and frowned at her stolen armor.
"Hey! This is a restricted medical analysis zone, trooper," the officer snapped, his voice tight with stress. "Please provide your operating number and state your business."
Ahsoka lowered the pitch of her voice through the helmet's vocal scrambler. "Lord Cronal sent me for an immediate update. We have new sightings on the southern trail, and the High Prophet is getting incredibly impatient."
The officer froze. His eyes darted nervously between Ahsoka and the entrance flap of the tent.
"Lord Cronal doesn't use garrison troops for his personal errands," he said slowly. His hand began drifting casually toward a surgical tray holding a standard-issue blaster pistol. "What did you say your operating number was?"
Ahsoka didn't bother maintaining the charade. She raised her E-11 rifle and aimed it squarely at his chest.
"I strongly suggest leaving the blaster on the tray if you prefer keeping all your internal organs intact."
The officer's eyes widened in sheer panic. He didn't reach for his weapon or try to call for guards. Instead, his knees immediately buckled, and he collapsed onto the muddy floor with his hands raised in surrender.
"Wait—please! I didn't betray the Empire!" he babbled, his voice cracking violently. "I swear to the Emperor, I didn't want to hide anything! The red robes... they threatened my family! They forced me to keep this off the official garrison logs!"
Ahsoka blinked behind her visor.
Well, that was easy.
Are the cultists trying to hide something from the Empire? How strange. She had pegged them both to be one and the same, but it seemed like they had more than a few differences amongst them...
Ahsoka immediately leaned into the persona, through not knowing what it was meant to be.
"Command is rapidly losing its patience with this entire operation," she said coldly, stepping closer to loom over him. "Is this how Imperial officers demonstrate their loyalty now? Groveling for cultists?"
"N-no! Sir, I mean, I—" The officer scrambled backward slightly, pointing a shaking finger at the desiccated corpse on the ground. "They wouldn't let me report the actual cause of death! They wanted Command to think the local wildlife just got lucky!"
"Then tell me what actually happened to him," Ahsoka demanded.
"I... I haven't been able to determine exactly what led to Lord Garkis dying like this!" the officer stammered, wiping sweat from his forehead.
Ahsoka felt her breath catch.
Wait. This gray, shriveled husk is Lord Garkis?
If Garkis was the one actively tracking the second survivor from the crash site, and Garkis ended up like a deflated ration packet in the mud... what the hell happened to Ezra?
"Explain the anomaly," Ahsoka ordered, forcing her voice to remain steady.
"There are multiple deep lacerations across the torso," the medical officer explained, speaking so fast his words blurred together. "But the autopsy scans show he absolutely died before blood loss could cause total failure. It makes no medical sense! His cellular composition just... degenerated. It caused rapid, catastrophic death."
"Degenerated how?"
"Like... um, somewhat like what we see in extreme cases of deep-space frostbite combined with aggressive cellular necrosis. The cells just hollowed out! But there is zero environmental or biological agent present that could have triggered a reaction like that!"
The officer looked up at her, his face pale and pleading. "I swear, I was going to transmit the real data to sector command the moment the Prophets left the encampment. You have to believe me!"
Ahsoka stared down at the terrifyingly fragile remains of the dark side cultist.
Whatever had completely drained this man of his life and his connection to the Force was still out there roaming the swamp. The exact same swamp where a twelve-year-old boy with no backup was currently trying to survive.
This just keeps getting more complicated by the minute.
"I believe you," Ahsoka said simply.
She thumbed the selector switch on her E-11 down to the stun setting and fired a single blue ring of energy directly into his chest.
The officer slumped over into the mud with a soft groan, completely unconscious.
Ahsoka lowered the rifle and stepped over his legs to observe the corpse closely but unfortunately there was nothing particularly different she could discern from it other than an terrified expression on the face, which looked quite eerie.
Looking around the tent, she unfortunately found nothing of significance. Most likely than not, anything of value had already been taken away, leaving just the corpse which was too fragile to be moved...
Sighing, she turned back and slipped quietly through the heavy canvas flaps, blending right back into the busy Imperial patrol routes outside. Just as she was considering whether she might need to infiltrate one of the main tents, the comm in her helmet came to life.
"All units in sector four-auresh, divert immediately to the primary southern gate," a stressed Imperial dispatcher barked over the tactical channel. "Rendezvous with Team Foxtrot-Seven and provide heavy covering fire. They have multiple hostile swamp wampas in active pursuit."
Wait. Swamp wampas?
Ahsoka had nearly been torn apart by a wampa on the frozen plains of Hoth years ago. She had absolutely no idea the massive, temperamental predators could even survive on a humid, storm-drenched mudball like this, let alone thrive in it.
"Extreme lethal force is authorized and heavily encouraged," the dispatcher continued, his voice tight. "Ensure Foxtrot-Seven's package is secured and delivered to the command bunker intact. Acknowledge and move."
The stormtroopers around her immediately broke their routine patrol routes. A chorus of annoyed, fearful complaints muttered over the local comms before the squads began jogging heavily toward the encampment's reinforced southern perimeter.
Ahsoka stood still in the rain for a brief second.
Is this my opening?
She glanced toward the massive command tents near the center of the crater rim. The sudden deployment was definitely a distraction, but a quick tactical scan showed it wasn't nearly enough of one. Only the perimeter squads were rotating out. The heavy canvas flaps of the command tents remained securely closed, and she could still sense the distinct, oily presence of several dark side cultists lingering inside.
Trying to slice into an Imperial database with a half-dozen red-robed zealots in the next room was a terrible tactical decision.
Before she could weigh her alternative options, a strange sensation washed over her.
A subtle, almost physical current in the Force tugged her attention directly toward the southern gate. Talk about coincidence huh?
Well, let's see what all the commotion is about.
Adjusting her stolen E-11 rifle to a standard patrol carry, she fell into step behind a squad of heavily armed stormtroopers and jogged toward the southern barricades.
[A few moments later]
Ahsoka slid into position behind a heavy durasteel barricade, pretending to check the power cell on her E-11.
The southern gate was a mess of organized panic. Floodlights sliced through the torrential rain, casting long, erratic shadows against the thick tree line. Stormtroopers were aggressively shoving each other out of the way to mount heavy E-Web repeating blasters on the reinforced parapets.
Red blaster fire suddenly flashed deep within the jungle canopy, followed by a series of frantic, overlapping shouts.
Then the tree line violently parted.
Three battered stormtroopers burst from the thick foliage and sprinted toward the floodlights. Their white armor was scored with deep mud and fresh claw marks. Two of them were desperately dragging a heavy, portable magnetic containment cage between them, completely ignoring standard tactical retreat protocols in favor of raw survival.
Right behind them, the swamp wampas broke through the trees.
Ahsoka had to admit, the Dromund Kaas variant was somehow uglier than the ones on Hoth. Instead of pristine white fur, these massive predators were covered in thick, matted layers of greenish-brown hair that hung in heavy, wet dreadlocks. They moved with a terrifying, knuckle-dragging speed, their massive jaws snapping at the heels of the retreating troopers.
"Open fire! Light them up!" a squad leader screamed over the comms.
The barricade erupted into a deafening wall of noise.
Ahsoka raised her stolen rifle and fired a few obligatory shots into the mud near the beasts' feet, doing the bare minimum to blend in while the E-Webs did the actual heavy lifting.
The concentrated barrage of heavy plasma tore into the charging wampas. The beasts shrieked, their thick, swamp-matted fur catching fire before they finally collapsed under the sheer volume of blaster bolts.
The surviving members of Foxtrot-Seven stumbled past the barricades and dropped the heavy magnetic cage into the mud, gasping for air.
Ahsoka lowered her rifle and casually stepped closer to get a look at the highly prized package Command was so desperate to secure.
She fully expected to see some ancient Sith artifact, or perhaps another desiccated animal corpse.
Instead, a heavily damaged, custom-built spider-droid was currently thrashing wildly inside the energy field.
The droid was missing one of its manipulator legs and its chassis was badly scorched, but it was fighting the magnetic restraints with an incredibly aggressive, stubborn energy. It snapped its remaining pincers at the troopers hovering over it, emitting a series of furious, high-pitched binary curses that would have made a Corellian smuggler blush.
Ahsoka almost smiled.
Feisty little thing.
Then her eyes locked onto the object securely tied to the droid's back.
It was a metallic cylinder, wrapped partially in some kind of makeshift leather grip, strapped tightly to the chassis with a strip of dirty cloth.
It was a lightsaber.
Looks like I found my lead.
Ahsoka didn't recognize the design yet she could tell that it wasn't one of those standard imperial ones that were given to the Inquisitors.
In fact It looked almost like a Jedi one, through for some reason, it had a stench to it, but she reasoned it away as influence of the Planet.
"Get this thing to the medical command tent!" the squad leader barked, kicking the side of the containment cage. "The High Prophets want to rip its memory banks open immediately."
"BEEP-BOOP-BEEP"
The spider-droid shrieked what seemed like another string of binary profanity and threw its weight against the magnetic shield.
While Ahsoka couldn't understand exactly what it said, she had no doubt it was something vulgar from the feels of it.
What are they teaching children these days...
Ahsoka sighed internally as she adjusted her helmet and fell into step right behind the troopers as they hoisted the cage back up.
A/N: Sorry for the wait, it took quite a lot of time to write it.
And also i have posted an announcement/discussion about the story status a bit, please read it.
Thank you.