Arleigh Burke

Arleigh Burke, once called by the surname of Nightsong and one of the last surviving nightsisters of Dathomir from the holocaust partitioned by the Black Sun, slowly trudged through the light rain behind the Jedi Master. Where grass had not yet taken root, ash and dusty topsoil formed a thick slurry that clung in black mess to her boots. Eventually swollowing the two of them and forcing her to tred barefoot like she used to when a child on this planet. Before Starlisk, before Faust, before Qaela. The rain turned into a gale of wind and heavy raindrops that felt almost like hail, she was soaked to the bone when they finally arrived at the waiting ship and as Arleigh Burke sat down in the crash webbing she finally answered the Jedi Master’s question before falling asleep. “Yes.”

Red eyes smiled gleefully back at the Jedi Master as he awoke. The pounding was the thundering hoofbeats of a whole pack of rancors, though Arleigh was unsure as to if they were going to attack or not. She shielded the Jedi Master with her body for a few moments until they had passed and then she smiled wistfully at him. “Not all good has returned to this world I think.” She stretched her thin arm towards the grown grass around a field of bones. Some very large, some very small. “And not all returned from our fight, and I think Wally was among them.” She shook her head, letting locks of auburn hair spill passed her knife pointed ears to fall upon the Jedi Master’s face like downy feathers. As she did a light rain began, soaking into a thirsty earth, and bringing life with every drop. “What now Master Jedi, is your mission to guard this planet forever, or will you wander on like a hermit from world to world?” She buttoned her light white lab coat around her to shield against the startling cold.

Cool wind blew softly across the two bodies that lay together in a circle of green and brown. Stirring red hair to curls and waft in the stiff breeze and fall across the face of the unconscious Cerean. It was Arleigh Burke that awoke first, her bright red eyes opening to stare in fright at a surprisingly blue sky. Her eyes twitched from one puffy white cloud to the next her eyes opening wider in shock. Her sense of smell returned next and even though she could smell blood and ash it did not permeate every breath like it had before. With every breath she took, the smell cleared from her nose and strength returned to her body. Her stomach growled angrily and she sat up fully, almost screaming in the effort it took to pull her body and limbs into a sitting position. She noticed that her ripped tunic was also strangely damp with dew. Dew? On Dathomir? Panic rose in her and she finally started looking around in earnest. The ground was still black as charcoal, but all around them, as far as she could see were the tiny sprouts of new life. “Master Jedi, the curse has been lifted!” It was a stupid thing to say of course, but there were no shambling ghostly children or dead voices to be heard. Only the distant chirping of some kind of birds. "She coughed and called to him again. "Master Jedi." She rasped, her voice sounding like it was fighting its way through stone. She looked down at her wounds and saw they were long scabbed over. She blinked. Then looked at the black chronometer she wore on her wrist since serving in the medicorps. It was filled with a black ash water and she frowned, She tapped it gingerly and the date flashed up for a second before going dead. “It’s been a month?” She shook the Jedi Knight vigorously. “Wake up dammit. Wake up.” Tears running down her cheeks and falling onto his upturned face.

The chanting resumed from the husks of gnarled trees and tents, increasing in tempo and ferocity. The last curses of the Nightsongs. To end the Jedi, their daughter, and the planet itself. When the animals placed Burke’s body on the ground they could observe that where they had placed their paws and snouts that the flesh on her tremouring body had necrotized. As if the force was eating the flesh like a terrible disease, the animals were reviled by it as the girl went into another painful convulsion, her back and appendages arching at a painful angle, the only thing escaping her blood red lips was a terrible scream and a mist of dark necrotized blood. Azagrath ensfare asfelt ezgarth Every word elicited a scream from the young Arleigh, until she could scream no more, her mouth still open, her back arched, and her breaths coming in painful, agonizing, gurgling gasps.The Terentatek, though cornered by large beasts, was more terrifying than the lot. The claws of Wally and his pack cut deep gashes into its hide , but not deep enough to kill. The fierce swipe of the Terentatek killed a handful of creatures large and small, spraying blood across the blackened earth in long crescents of crimson. The hurricane from the Jedi Knight was strong indeed and hurled the husk children into the burned forest, but did not topple the great beast. Azagrath ensfare asfelt ezgarth The chanting continued. But in the Cerean’s mind the soft voice of Arleigh Burke whispered. It's not your target, they are. Her voice carried pain in every syllable. Across the field in the meadow beyond the reach of the Terentatek, the cerean could see the bright glow of her red eyes staring at him as her body was wracked by another seizure. Behind her, in the burned and dusty forest the lights of a hundred other red eyes glowed in the shadows.

You are Dathomir? You cone-headed dotard, our entire existence is darkness. Their laughter was a peal of lightning that shot across the stormy sky. We Are the Wild Hunt. The pack of shadow that hunts on the wind. The young darksong’s screams were cut brutally short as a husk’s hand simply seemed to pass through her chest. Then their faces appeared in the wind. White masquerades of the old occupants of this site, the tribe of Nightsisters that had felled the two husks before them. Their whispers filed into a chant, attempting to fight the Jedi in the hardest trial he would face. The Trial for the fate of Dathomir. Azagrath ensfare asfelt ezgarth Their incorporeal voices chanted as the bright red blood of their last living daughter coursed in a stream into the thirsty earth. All her hope, her misery, fed what lay below, summoned four thousand years before. Show us what kind of hunter you are old man. The ground shook and split with a sound of a mighty roar. The chanting ceased, and in its void the horrific hunger of a Terentatek. Two dozen meters tall and born from the darkside itself. It stepped over the red haired body and strode slowly forward, draining the life itself from the ground where it stepped. It lived off fear, and with a glance it cowed the lesser animals. Its grotesque mouth rumbled a taunt, for it had seen its first prey. A Jedi.

As the force flowed forth from the hands of Kro' Roene Givrah of Cerea to freeze the corpses of the dead the darkside answered. Writhing and weaving up from the ground itself to wind around the ankles of Arleigh Nightsong, slithering up in coils of impenetrable night. Corrupting darkness that oozed from the very soil they stood on as burned and scorched with turbolaser fire as it was. Bits of metallic armour shone bright for a moment before they were swallowed in the false night of the darkside. The young apprentice was being eaten and possessed alive. The wind picked up into a galeas Burke struggled and screamed, whipping her red hair like a flag in a storm. Slowly the darkness crept up, unabated by her cries for help. Elsewhere a lonely rancor wallowed in the dark storm, thrashing and crying for his master. The two boys looked up with sallow faces, smiles stretched thin against darkened faces. They leered at the Jedi Knight. Their mouths unmoving save to smile their words carried into the minds of those around them. “A Jedi? Mommy told us about you…” One of them took a step forward, slowly the force bent against the will of the darkside. Exploiting the weakness of tired exhaustion. “She hated you.” Came the voice of the other. The wind began to howl in earnest and a chant could be heard. Azagrath ensfare asfelt ezgarth

Arleigh sat up from her strangely comfortable bed of dirt, she yawned and stretched, patting Wally behind the ears when he also stirred and whined. Her back spasmed a bit as she sat, it had been a long workday of using the force and though she still felt drained, she forced herself to rise and wade through the water to the opposite shore and set off after the Jedi Knight. Wally begrudgingly followed, running his dragging paws through the scorched earth. He whimpered something about wanting to go back to bed and Arleigh let out a kind laugh. “It's not our home anymore Wally, but we still have to do the right thing and try to fix it up. Even if it means getting up early.” Within several minutes, she joined the Jedi in the brutally scarred farmland with what looked like piles of salt in the middle of it. Off to the edge of the forest she could feel the creeping darkness of pure anger and death in the force. It sapped at her will and her joy. “What in the force did this world do to earn such strange wroth? Can you sense it? I can feel the force stirring in wrath not very far away from the Darksong clan camp.” She could feel a small hand tug at her coat’s hem and she looked down in fright. Two young boys with a emaciated faces, bright purple eyes, and skin that seemed to be stretched across taught dead bones. They were close but at the same time seemed almost transparent, and though they were crying in fear no tears streamed down their gaunt faces. The dark side seeped like a plague from their presence. She let out a short scream.

Arleigh followed the Cerean’s example, and after several rough hours of work, the anger in her heart had tempered into a general feeling of sadness. But also Finality. It was something she had never felt in her life, she had always drifted from one thing to the next, never gaining closure. But now here, waist deep in the sludge of her homeplanet she had it. Dathomir, whatever it was and whatever it could be was no longer home. Her old hut, old friends, old loves, all lay in uncharted wastes of ashes and destruction. The only way was forward. She slowly dissolved another toxic pile, following her senses and learning from the Cerean Jedi Master. It was tough work, tougher than any she had known. And left her dripping pools of sweat into the recovering water of the creek. She sat back after the six hours of work had finished and lay down in a patch of riverbank next to the Jedi Master. “I am exhausted Master Jedi, is there a way to draw upon the force to return my strength? If there is i’ll help, otherwise im kriffed right out.”

The smell of burning petrochemicals signaled the burned husk of a small freighter, which had crashed alongside the burning campsite. A quick peak into the cockpit showed mangled remains of skeletons. From a cursory glance, the majority of the camp’s dwellers had piled in to takeoff for safety and a stray turbolaser had ended dozens of lives in a second. Arleigh’s lips turned white as she stepped over another body draped over a dessicated Rancor. This violence from the Black Sun was so typical, so disgusting, she wanted to crush them. To destroy them. If only to avenge the thousands that had died on this backwater planet she called her home. She kept her thoughts to herself though, no reason to piss the Jedi off by being angry about the massacre of everything she ever knew. It was easier now to be mad about the destruction, she was no longer caring for anyone else, and did not have the distraction of it. Her hands curled into fists as she stood beside the Xanthek, watching the dark water flow lazily by. As if nothing had changed other than the colour of the water. She looked back at him and forced a smile across her face. Her teeth were gritted together as she spoke, her voice muffled behind a rebreather mask. She worked on her breathing as she responded. “I live to help people Master Jedi, but I fear that my anger isn’t going to help you at all. But I will try. I have to try.” She waded out to join him, letting the dark water creep up her shins, to her thighs, then to her abdomen. It was eerily cold despite the caustic surroundings. She let her mind relax and she began to concentrate, mimicking the Master’s movements.

Arleigh wiped her brow with the hem of her now not so white labcoat and patted Wally on his flank, she whistled and the cub meandered up as well. She patted his head and fed him some protein cubes from her belt and apologised when he went sniffing for more. “Sorry little one, thats all I can spare for now, if we are lucky we might find something precooked out there, but we will see.” She collapsed the tent and placed it back into her pack before they set off on the long hike. Wally did his best to nudge the Jedi Knight whenever he looked like he was about to fall or to stick out one giant paw to catch him when he did. Arleigh took a swallow from her canteen and passed the rest to the Jedi Knight. “That’s the last clean stuff we got. May as well drink up before we hit this large patch of burning rubble up here that was the Running Brook Clan. Rest in peace to the lot of them.” She shook her head, red hair momentarily covering her face and darkening her eyes as they trudged by the twisted remains of teepees with burned skeletons. She shivered despite the heat of still burning wood and glanced off at the horizon at the deepening dusk.

"Oh you are awake?" Arleigh spun around and lifted up the flap of the tent, her meditation broken by the sound of the Jedi Knight placing a comm call to an unkown person. "Are you feeling well enough to travel?" She asked as she leaned forward and took his pulse. It was strong and not thready as before, but she never knew with alien species what was good and what was not without consulting manuals that she did not have on hand. Wally growled inquisitively and leaned down behind her to stare with a beady eye at the long headed Jedi.

Her bright red eyes opened with the annoying beeping that was coming from inside the survival tent. She pulled herself to her feet and pushed aside the flap of the tent to tap the Jedi on the ankle. “Your comm link is going off Master Jedi, please answer it before Wally smashes it.” She laughed and went back to kneeling and meditating on what she had learned so far.

She was cheery as she helped him sit up. “Oh you are welcome Jedi Givrah, now hold on, we are going to get you into shelter so you can rest.” She whistled and Wally hunkered down over them to protect from the falling embers until Arleigh had dug out a crevasse in the soft loam near the river. She pulled out her satchel and with a pull of a cord a survival tent erupted around them. She tucked the Cerean Jedi into the warm dirt and made sure he had taken a few sips from her canteen. When he was resting, she crawled out of the tent to kneel next to Wally. Watching the horizon for any change in the weather or predators. She patted Wally’s leg. “Don’t worry about him, after a nap he should be good.”

Poison, especially the chemical kind that came from high yield weapons of war and the mixing of spent tibanna gas with carbonized earth and rain water runoff was a deadly and painful fate. Arleigh pulled the coneheaded Cerean, further up the bank from the polluted stream and pulled off her backpack. She retrieved an autoinjector of anti-poisons and chemical decomposors from the pull tab and opened the container for the hyposyringe of pyridostigmine bromide and an additional syringe of oxime and atropine to combat the nerve agent that Black Sun had graciously sown into the soil in their wake. Saying a prayer she began to apply the medication. One high dose autoinjector to his thigh, one to the other thigh, and topical under tongue application of the pyridostigmine bromide. The Jedi would be in extreme pain and likely vomiting out all sorts of chemicals over the next few minutes. Meanwhile she concentrated on him, willing him to recover faster, like she had seen the Jedi do long ago....

While Wally and Arleigh had not hunted with each other in nearly a decade, they were soon sprinting alongside each other at high speed down the ash choked stream. The heat of the world, raised by almost ten degrees by greenhouse effects from the fires pollution, was causing her to sweat profusely so she dropped the lab coat behind her, letting the thick fabric fall off her bare shoulders to bury itself in the falling ash behind them. It was almost a snowscape along the river bank when they found the Cerean. Arleigh dived into the brackish water and pulled the man to the bank. Wally stood over them protectively shielding them from falling embers and ash from the burning forest almost a kilometer away. Arleigh checked his pulse, and watched his chest for rise and fall, when she felt nothing and saw nothing she went into her training. Chest compressions followed by rescue breaths. She admitted it was a mistake to not bring her kit with the airway preserver in it but she continued anyway. His lips were cold and tasted like burned trees when she gave him the first breath. The resistance she found could only meen water blockage. She rammed her fist into his solar plexus and pulled him to his side in a recovery position. A large amount of water heaved from his lungs and she sat back wiping her mouth until he was done throwing up. He took a staggering breath and she reached out to hold his hand. “Welcome back Master Jedi. Did they not teach you to swim in Jedi School?”