The Knight, Death, and the Devil

Chapter 23: Far From Home

Torin stared at the Jedi across from him. So many questions went through his mind. How had he gotten here? What had ultimately become of Lord Andar's ship? Had she found his friends, too? Were they alive? Were any of them alive?

The woman made no more attempts to move closer to him, even as he backed away. Nor did she make any hostile movements. He couldn't see if she wore a lightsaber under the brown tunic that hung just past her waist, but he knew that if she were anything like her Sith counterparts, her weapon never left her side.

He opened his mouth to speak but found it dry, and had to swallow to allow himself to talk. "Who are you?" he said in a raspy voice.

She smiled and beckoned him forward with a finger. "I'll show you." Her voice was matronly and rustic, her accent betraying her as someone who had grown up on the edge of the core worlds. With that short declaration she exited the door she had entered through and walked out into the light of day. Torin reflexively moved to chase her before stopping himself and looking around the hallway. No, there was nothing to do but follow. Whatever game this woman was playing at, he'd have to go along with if he wanted answers.

He followed her out the door and stopped, shielding his eyes against the blinding rays of sun as he scanned his surroundings. A sparse evergreen forest surrounded him, ancient pines towering far above while others grew hardly any taller than himself. The air was crisp and clear, carrying the scent of fresh pine needles and fertile soil on a stiff breeze that had him wishing he'd pillaged the bedroom for a shirt before leaving.

The woman was nowhere to be seen, and he turned around to look back at the building he had left. It certainly wasn't a hospital. It consisted of two white domes, the sort of reliable homestead one would expect to find on border worlds the galaxy over. He stepped back on the concrete porch, then stopped when the his heel collided with something. A set of wool-lined boots sat on the ground. Taking another look around, he slipped them on, then bent down to tuck his pants into them.

"Don't take too long!"

He looked up to see the woman standing beside the thick trunk of a tall pine.

"Hey!" he shouted back, then stood up and ran towards her. She walked behind the tree, disappearing from view. He reached the pine and slid to a stop beside it, only to find empty air.

"What the hell..." he muttered under his breath as he wheeled around on his feet. Without the house he had left still standing a hundred feet away, he would've already gotten lost in the forest. There was nothing to guide him, just endless trees and flat scrub.

The crack of a twig had him turning around, looking for the source of the noise that bounced off of tree trunk after tree trunk. Off in the distance stood the woman, leaning on a tree with one hand. Without saying a word Torin bolted at her, determined to reach the Jedi before she was able to pull her disappearing act again. She calmly strolled behind the trunk of the pine, and Torin picked up speed until he nearly sprinted past it. As he came to an abrupt halt he whirled his head about and ran around the trunk, looking in vain for a woman who seemed more magician than knight.

"Almost there!"

His head whipped to the left, where the Jedi had assumed a new spot some fifty feet away. His foot lifted up from the ground but he pulled it back and waited, glaring silently at the woman. The wind rustled the branches above him and the pair stared at each other in silence until the woman shifted her weight onto one foot and grasped her wrist in front of her. Torin relented and trod slowly over, crunching dead pine needles underfoot as he fully expected the woman to slip behind the tree again.

She did not, and he came within arm's reach of her before stopping. They had reached the edge of a forest, and stood beneath a stone incline that jutted up from the forest floor in both directions.