The Knight, Death, and the Devil

Chapter 35: The World Laughs With You

As the blue waters became a shade darker and choppier, lapping at the sides of their small sailboat, it occurred to Torin that this was his first time being out on the open ocean. Tinnel IV had no bodies of water large enough or salty enough to even call 'seas', and he felt it unfair to count his time in the floating cityscape of oceanic Manaan.

No matter how adeptly the two Rakata manning the raft tacked their sails, the wind seemed to fight them every step of the way, turning the journey into a frustrating exercise of one step forward, two steps back. In a flash of inspiration Torin began rhythmically throwing his open hands at the sail, propelling their raft forward with intermittent gusts of air. The exercise demanded more of his muscles than it did of the Force, and Isatryn silently refused to offer any help. The Rakata seemed to have no idea what he was doing at first, glancing back at him like he were a madman while they also tried to decipher the strange wind patterns propelling them towards the rocky island at breakneck speed.

Eventually they caught on, and suppressed their amazement to better manage the sails until the hewn logs flooring their raft touched down on sandy shoals. The stone cliffs of the island still lay a few hundred feet away, but the ship could take them no further in the shallow, sand-barred waters. Torin and Isatryn stepped from the raft, glancing back to see one of the Rakata pointing to the right around one of the curving white cliffs while speaking to them in his alien tongue.

"Right—got it." Torin gave them a thumbs-up, though the Rakata didnt acknowledge it—if he even grasped its meaning. The alien pair was already pushing off back into the ocean, sparing not one glance back at their passengers.

"Move," said Isatryn.

Torin spun about and began splashing through the shoals, making his way down the beach and towards the cliffside where they would hopefully find an entrance into the rock-ringed inland. After a minute of walking his mind cleared, and his walk slowed.

"You don't have to tell me to do what I was going to do anyway," he said to her.

She stomped through the waters behind him, her bare feet moving more easily in the squelching muck than Torin's soaked boots.

"Why would I risk it?"

"I—"

Unable to muster a convincing retort, he closed his mouth and turned around, frowning as they stepped onto dry land. They were close enough to the natural walls of sandstone to touch them, and they moved along until the cliff abruptly ended, yielding a view of a broad, sandy passage that cut inland, growing wider as it went. The interior of the island was covered in green grasslands dotted with palms, and rocky terraces that rose higher the closer to the center of the island they went. So far there was no sign of any Rakatan technology or starship—or that the island was inhabited at all.

They reached a dirt cliff a few dozen feet high, vines hanging low—but not low enough to grab onto.

"Find a way—" Isatryn started.

Before she could finish, Torin lowered a hand down to the ground and then sprung upward from his crouch, throwing her upwards with the Force. She gasped and scrambled in mid-air, disappearing from view as she crested the top of the overhang. A moment later her head reappeared, a scowl visible even with the distance between them. Her mouth moved, though he couldn't hear a word she said.

"What?" he shouted upward.

A pressure appeared on his ankle and then yanked him up, his world turning upside down as he was pulled up the length of the cliff by his foot. With an unceremonious twirl of limbs he fell face-first into grass, groaning as he staggered to his feet.

Isatryn stood glaring at him with her hand poised at the lightsaber hanging from her waist. She opened her mouth to say whatever he had missed before, but stopped and snapped her head away from the direction of the cliff. A moment later, Torin heard what had drawn her attention. A mechanical whirr, like a cruiser far off in the distance. A small object flew out from behind a rocky outcropping further inland, the noise growing louder as it flew closer. The spherical droid came to an abrupt stop above them, then turned its blue eye downward and spoke a short phrase in some alien language.