Episode X Dark Hunter

On the Threshold

"She's going to die." It was Terrah's voice. "She quit too fast."

"Yes, she did," Boba returned.

Videsse was again swimming in the thick dream state; a black mist that coalesced into oil and enveloped her, only this time, she was acutely aware of the unwieldy weight of her throbbing headache. It was so painful, she could not think. She opened her eyes and could see nothing within the viscous darkness. Her left limbs moved and she felt the cold thickness of the dream flow over her arms in ebbs. She tried to breathe, but the effort felt like liquid ice and fire within her, so cold it burned her lungs with every breath. She gasped in a spasmodic cry and tried to hold her breath again as long as she was able.

Her right side seemed not to move as if it was pressed against a wall, however at the same time, it felt to her like she was floating. Her mind could not make sense of it. She pushed away from the wall in the darkness, but she found herself too weak, and every muscle lurched in excruciating epileptic fits.

The dream thinned a bit in the center of her vision and it cleared just enough to see through a swirling tunnel. Far away was a woman, a clone, lying on a floor, the floor of what appeared to be a stone-carved prison cell. She was unarmored and clothed in only in a tight-fitting synthetic under-armor, and a linen tunic; both were drenched with sweat and clung to her in bunched folds. Videsse recognized the clothing. Wet strands of hair stuck to the woman's face and forehead. She was lying on her right side and writhing as if trying to move through water. She was crying and gasping for air.

Videsse tried to swim to her, but with her side pressed against the invisible wall, she could not move. She cried out and winced at the pain. Still, she pushed against the invisible wall and reached her trembling arms toward the woman, gasping and sobbing. The woman did the same.

"Patch, you can't do this alone." Boba's voice said.

"Neither could we," Terrah said.

"Stop calling me Patch," Videsse blurted. "Nicknames are for people who need--" She choked on the words.

Her vision altered seamlessly and suddenly as if another wave of her dream had simply moved her; now she was seeing through the eyes of the woman on the floor, through the narrow tunnel, the black swirling oily mist covering almost all of her vision. Her body still writhed in pain; her head still throbbed; the dream still continued.

"Dess," a voice spoke, a different voice, a hissing Trandoshan voice; a voice she recognized.

"Dess," it repeated.

Videsse struggled to right herself, succeeding in raising her shoulder just a few centimeters from the ground, before falling back, exhausted.

"Dess," the voice hissed again.  It was the voice of someone familiar, the one that helped her care for her mother, the voice she hoped to hear when she desperately dug through the burned rubble on Nar Shaddaa.

"Donal?" Videsse managed to muster enough air to somehow speak into the black liquid dream.

Donal laughed. "It is you!"

Videsse coughed and gasped as a horrifying thought came to her. "You're dead. You're dead, too." To her, his voice in this place was enough proof.

She rolled to her stomach and buried her face in her arm, trying to push back the building despair within her. She felt the sweat between her head and upper arm; the cold and disagreeable wetness, damp and unpleasant.

"Dead!" Donal's voice exclaimed. "Not so lucky. You're not dead. Thank the stars! They were coming for you, and I couldn't warn you. I thought they might... Are you alright? Are you hurt?"