NJO Book II | Chapter V - Katarn Captivity

Several Months Ago
Three Hours after the Jedi crash-landed on Ator Hollos...

A war barge trundled along the wetland wastes of Ator Hollos, its engines roaring as it pushed forward through the fog. Sitting aboard its deck, Kyle Katarn regained consciousness.
He shook his hands to find them heavy, weighed down by chains. Cold mist had dampened his clothes and his hair, and it hung around his face. The last thing he remembered was pushing the Godspeed off the cliff so the other Jedi could escape.

The other Jedi.

He wondered where they were now, his head aching as the thought came. He had nothing but confidence in Aemos, Nokori, and Jun. They'd get the younger ones to safety. All is as the Force wills it, and they were where they were by its will, no doubt in his mind.
That's why he was here, right? The Force had shown him his path. He, good servant of the Force that he is, took it without hesitation. Now he had to trust it was all for good. Sitting there in wet clothes and chains, surrounded by enemies, it did take some effort to believe.
He took a moment, eyes half-closed, to glance around at his surroundings. On every side were the mocking jeers of what had to be two dozen cultists, all wielding various sharp objects. He'd seen gangs like this before. He wasn't shocked by the 13 or 14-year old he saw fumbling with a pike. Groups like this sucked people in, people with nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to. They became the closest thing to a protector you had, while also posing the greatest threat to your life.
Kyle closed his eyes. Turning his spirit inwards, he delved beneath seeing only the physical world and opened his eyes to the true sight given through the Force.

When he looked again, he saw only sickness. Like an unwell heart beating too quickly, too sporadically. Like a parasite in the brain.

Something was wrong with these people. Really wrong.

The beings around him were withered inside. Behind their bravado and apparent strength, he could sense that each experienced constant pain, was crippled by restlessness, anxiety, weariness, paranoia. There was a mark on all of them, something unnatural and dark, something in between a blessing and a curse. Maybe they weren't even aware of it.
This wasn't the usual mess of fear and pain, this was...something else. These were, in the true sense of the word, pathetic life forms. Kyle couldn't help but feel a surge of pity. What kind of Jedi would he be if he didn't?

One of them jabbed him in the stomach with the butt of his spear, and the pity struggled to hold on.

"Look who's awake!"

Foul-smelling breath swamped his nostrils, as a scarred and bearded man leaned into his face.

"Left your friends behind for us, eh? Bad blood there, I wager. They cheat you at Sabaac?"

The question went unanswered, as the spotter blew on a whistle and shouted.

"Somethin' up ahead, Warlord! The scouts are shooting flares."

"Our second catch of the day," said Kannick, one of the captains, who stood on the quarterdeck with rifle in hand. A few of the cultists broke into hungry grins.

The head barge rounded a steep pass and fell out onto a level marshland. A pillar of smoke rose in the distance, where several craft sat waiting. As they grew closer, Kyle could see that two of the craft were Immortal scout skiffs. The third was a makeshift skimmer, recently turned into scattered debris and sinking into the shallow mud. Several bodies lay facedown in the muck, smoke still rising from blaster burns.
The Barge slid on its repulsorlifts until it was level with the skiffs. A bridge was extended, and the scouts herded two survivors onto its deck by spear point. The men fell to their knees in the midst of the cultists. One of them, shaking with fear, met Kyle's eye. The Jedi grunted, instinctively struggling against his restraints, but he knew the reality of the situation; there was nothing he could do for these men. He could hardly stand it.

The scouts seemed far more stable than the men on the barge. Kyle sensed the cause: they had most recently whetted their appetite for death.

One of them addressed Kannick.

"Refugees from a shantytown up north. Nothing good on 'em. These two say they don't wanna die."

The Immortals' laughed. Some eyed the men, itching to do the deed.

Sabdan stepped towards them. Her massive armor clanked when she walked, and she gasped behind her respirator before she spoke. Her voice was strong, full, like a preacher.

"Who can blame them? Who of us is ready to face the end? Who would not do whatever was required to postpone their own oblivion?"

She lifted the first one's chin with her mace, and stared into his eyes. Her own were lightless. Cold, unfeeling, dead.

"Do you choose to live? Do you choose service to the One Who Gives?"

The man stared blankly, until a dark look overtook his expression.

"Half-living. I'll never be like you," he spat, and he lunged for a blaster hanging from the belt of his captor. The man's eyes went wide with dull shock as Sabdan smashed his head with her weapon, knocking him convulsing to the floor. A noise of excitement arose from the other cultists as they set upon him, eager to finish the job and enjoy their share of the kill.

Sabdan flicked blood off her mace, and inhaled slowly as she looked upon the still body. The smallest flicker of enjoyment played across her face.

"Shame. There's always a place for more slaves."

Kyle watched, horrified, from his confinement. All is as the Force Wills It, he reminded himself; a coping mechanism for cruelty, and his own helplessness to stop it. Why did this shake him so badly? Was he losing his edge?

One being still remained, a kneeling Tarsunt, his entire body quaking with terror.

Sabdan posed the question again, now to him.

"Do you choose to live? Do you choose service to the One Who Gives?"

"Yes, please, please," stammered the man. "I'll do anything. Anything. Please, I don't want to die. I'll do whatever you want."

"Tragic, isn't it, Jedi?" Kannick muttered in Kyle's ear. "Did you hear what he said? He'll do anything to live. You're not a young man, are you? You've seen a lot of things. So I bet you already know this well enough; this is what we all are, when it comes down to it. Animals. Animals, you hear me?"

Kyle frowned. "You sure do talk a lot."

There was a moment where he thought Kannick might hit him again, but he seemed to be storing up his hate for later. "Brave, aren't you? We're just getting started, you and I."

He turned to his men, shouting out over the rabble.

"Another servant for the Master and the One Who Gives! What do you think of him, warriors? Do you like the look of him? Perhaps once he's accepted the gift, eh? Let's hurry our new brother to his fate. Set course for the Citadel!"

They hauled the survivor off the deck and, despite his submission, clapped him in chains and hauled him next to Kyle.

The pilot pulled a few levers and engaged the engines. "I dunno about you lot, but I'm ready to be home. Starting to feel achey from all this wind," he groaned.

"It's that damn Witch!" another cried, scratching at his neck. "Always slinking around, waiting to make people suffer. Tormenting us for laughs! A few hours away from the Citadel, out in her blasted country, and my pains come back like I haven't got the gift at all..."

A few others muttered in response, relating to the point.

"She's a real piece of work. What I wouldn't do for 10 minutes to show her what it's like."

The driver rolled his eyes. "Get in line. The One Who Gives has first dibs there. You ain't been fightin' the crone for centuries, have ya? Show some respect!"

The war barge drifted away from the burning wrecks and its engines blazed to life, propelling it across the gray, mirror-still swamps of the marshlands. The scout skiffs split up, one roaring ahead and one taking up the rear.

Kyle turned his attention to the shivering, shackled Tarsunt beside him. Poor bastard looked like he could use some hope.

"Welcome to the party, friend," Kyle muttered to his new companion.

The Tarsunt said nothing. He glanced up at Kyle, taking in his features with hollow eyes, and once again dropped his gaze.

"Got a name?"

The man looked back up at him. When he spoke, he sounded airless and vacant. "Husu," he answered, and his eyes flicked away.

"Shut up, you two!" a cultist shrieked, and swung a mace at the air in front of both of them. Husu cringed and coiled up. Kyle didn't move.

The barges swept across the wastelands for hours. The air seemed to get heavier the further they traveled, while all that could be seen were sheets of white mist. Kyle had a sense that if Ator Hollos had an edge, they must be getting close.

The ground dropped out ahead, and they came to a sunken land of gulleys and canyons, punctured by sharp peaks that rose high above the fog. One peak stood out from the rest, for its stone sides were carved and shaped and sharpened so that what was once a mountain had been twisted until it had become a citadel, dark and foreboding and inhospitable. Lighting struck the ground around it incessantly. The place sure looked cursed.

Kyle wouldn't be shocked if it was.

They left solid ground to cross a long, narrow bridge spanning the breadth of the canyon. Finally they reached a triangular gate in the citadel's front face.

Hordes of Immortals stood waiting, leering at the prisoners, watching from balconies carved into the rock. Several mechanics hurried out to bring the barges in, and slowly they were pulled into the inner guts of the tower. They came to a stop once they'd reached a massive lift, supported by chains that rumbled with the very depth of the mountain itself. Slowly, slowly, they were lowered deep into the bowels of the Immortals' lair.
Kyle looked to his fellow captive. He muttered to him out of the corner of his mouth.

"Stay strong, friend. Don't take anything they offer you."

Husu turned weary eyes on him, and shook his head. "You do not understand."

"No, it's you who doesn't understand. I'm a Jedi, pal."

This didn't create the response Kyle was aiming for. Husu's face tightened, and he caught a sob in his throat.

"There's nothing left. I have nothing left. This world is death."

Kyle grit his teeth. "That attitude isn't going to get you anywhere. Look, I'm not saying we're breaking out today. Not even this week. But it'll happen, you have to keep hope."

"What hope? That you, one man, can break me free of this place? To go where?"

"We'll find my friends, the rest of the Jedi."

"Look around you. There are hundreds of these half-living warriors. Don't you feel the darkness, coming ever closer? There is no escape from this. I have nothing, Jedi. Everyone I know is dead. Everything I love is gone. I am taken by evil men, and shackled to a lunatic. I will take whatever comes."

He made it clear he was finished speaking, and turned away. Kyle's brow furrowed. He didn't try to restart the conversation.

They reached the bottom with all the noise you'd expect from several tons of rock hitting bedrock. The convoy crept off the lift and deeper into the dark, natural caves, into a labyrinth of tunnels. Kyle looked around as they went, to see chambers filled with cultists forging weapons, indoctrinating new members, and beating each other to a pulp.

As they pushed him through the tunnels, Kyle made mental notes of everything he saw, trying to memorize the layout. The operation down here was extensive. There must have been hundreds of cultists packed into the caves, all armed and surrounded by that same sickness in the Force. He tried to note any obvious social strata, but only saw a few who had the look of slaves or servants, tunic-clad non-warriors taken in from raiding. The bulk of the menial labor was being done by what he guessed were the warriors at the lowest rung of the ladder—probably newcomers, weaklings, those being punished by the ones on the rungs above. He wondered if more peasants were being hidden elsewhere in the complex, maybe in the quarters or barracks. Usually, in hierarchies like this, the enslaved outnumber the raiders. The other possibility was grimmer; maybe the poor souls taken captive by the Immortals didn't usually survive the ordeal.
He noted, too, that the warriors he saw were mostly male. That didn't bode well, either. He really needed to get free, and have a look around.

They came to a kind of motor pool, where other Barges sat derelict, halfway through repair or assembly, draped in cables and unattached armor plating. A creature met them there, reviewing their barge with intimate interest.

"Welcome, mighty conquerors! I see you caught some flotsam out in the wastes. How did the barge do?"

Sabdan, as was her way, glowered at the creature menacingly.

"Satisfactorily, Pintis Rryx."

As they disembarked, the one called Rryx caught sight of Kyle and laughed unpleasantly, a high-pitched cackle like the cawing of a crow. He leaned in close and examined the Jedi keenly.

"Straight back and clear eyes. Don't see that every day. A lot of pluck in this one, you can tell! Probably from the colonies, or the Western Reaches! What brought to you Hollos, Rimmer?"

Kyle shrugged, his restraints clanking as he moved. "Vacation. Came for the views."

Kannick slapped him across the face with a gloved hand, and Kyle spat across the floor. Rryx laughed again.

"Clever, aren't you?"

Sabdan looked disinterested in the ongoing abuse. When she spoke, her voice boomed out in a wavering monotone, like a proud ship on troubled seas. She had one volume; in charge.

"This one is a Jedi," she announced.

Rryx's eyes went wide behind his goggles, and a grin split his face. "Jedi-Jedi? The real thing? Oh-ho! Master will be pleased."

"They'll meet soon enough." Kannick rolled his shoulders, with a youthful slouch. He removed his mask for the first time, revealing the thin face of a young man. He might have been handsome, if not for the hungry gaunt in his cheeks, and the cruel spark in his eyes.

Kyle raised an eyebrow.

"I figured you were a Wookiee."

Kannick flashed him a grin, and jostled Kyle in a way that would have seemed playful, if he didn't obviously hate him. "There are other Jedi, too," he told Rryx. "But this one helped them get away. He's gonna hurt for that."

Rryx licked his lips with relish. "More Jedi? A new challenge. I have designs I've wanted to try, finally a chance—"

"Rryx!" The young marksman pushed Kyle's chin, chuckling darkly under his breath. "Quit babbling and bring me a sick-sticker, worm. Poxtaran. I'm taking our visitor to the Pit; we're gonna have a little fun."

"Belay that order, Pintis Rryx," snapped Sabdan. "The One Who Gives comes first, boy. Your play can wait."

"Naturally, the One Who Gives always comes first," Kannick agreed. "We'll go take these two to the ritual chamber." But he grinned again. "After that, we fight. Get it ready, Rryx."

Rryx giggled, then turned and screamed at several of his henchmen, who scattered to pull the Barge in for refueling.

Sabdan and Kannick broke off from the rest of the cultists, hauling Kyle and Husu ahead of them. A door stood at the far end of the cavern, tall and foreboding. The cultists gave it a wide berth, but Kyle and his fellow captive were marched straight through, into the shadows beyond.

The cacophony of the Immortal war camp faded the further they delved into the caverns. Marched into the darkness, chained and helpless. Kyle Katarn looked aside to both of his captors, each clad in dark clothing and metal armor, each walking with the gait of experienced warriors. 

Sabdan, large and plated in durasteel as she was, moved like a hulking capital ship gliding through the dark of space. Kannick moved like a Ankusian Hyena, hunched and eager and quick. 

Neither of the war captains would hesitate to kill them, Kyle knew. He had seen their kind before. They were the kind who relished the opportunity. 

The Tarsunt captive, Husu, stumbled to the floor. The door was closing at their backs, and the grinding of its stone thundered through the tunnels and shook their bodies, threatening to collapse the tunnels above them. The sound faded, and they were left in utter darkness.

It was the kind of dark where the walls might not even exist, where one begins to question if they even still exist. Sight and sense fall away, and as long as they stand still, one feels like their body has vanished, leaving them nothing but a disembodied soul. For some, the longer they stay there, unmoving in the dark, the more the sensation evolves into a comfort. The darkness does not challenge a person, it does not expect anything, It protects one from the discomforts of being seen. It promises safety, obscurity, ignorance. The longer they spend in it, the more the darkness deludes the dweller into feeling at home. 

Kyle and Husu were pushed forward, and trudged over uneven, sharp stony ground. Their eyes began to adjust and they could make out the shape of a jagged staircase, rising up through the endless, fathomless void to a pale light in the far distance, high above. Kyle squinted at the light, and tried to make out what it was he was seeing.

"Climb, worm."

Kyle felt Kannick's boot in the small of his back. He stumbled forward in the dark and grunted as he rose from his knees. He wiped his shackled hands on his trousers, and threw a glance back at his attacker.

He could not see him in the dark.

He pretended he could, anyway. Better to play the whole thing off, he figured.

"Alright, calm down, kid. I'm climbing."

But Husu stood frozen in place and shivering. His shoulders were drawn in, his eyes wide.

"What's up there?" He muttered. "What is that?"

"Salvation," Sabdan answered, her voice like a clear bell in the silence. "Rescue for the abased. Humble yourself, child. Prepare to receive the gift. Kannick and I go no further. You both walk the rest of the path alone. Soon you will reach the end. Soon you will reach the beginning."

Sabdan's manner had changed. The deeper they went, the less she seemed like the brutal warlord she had been out on the moors. Devotion laced the edges of her voice, zealous fervor for her higher being.

She was a true believer, Kyle recognized. He'd spent enough time around Imperials and Dark Siders to know: true believers were the most dangerous of all.

Shaking with every step, faced with no other choice, Kyle and Husu climbed the stairs toward the distant glow. There was no warmth in the light, no comfort or hope. Hope was a distant thought in a place like this. Kyle had felt it since they entered the caverns, a kind of gnawing, the sort of thing you feel after wading through the gutters of Nar Shaddaa. But it grew the further he climbed until it was strong enough to taste - a bitter darkness in the force. It seeped into his spirit, and he fell against the stairs.

Husu glanced back at him.

"Rise, Jedi. It is not far now."

Kyle nodded, but his body was wracked by coughs. It was like a sickness in his lungs, infesting him, sapping his strength, eroding his will. It was darkness so strong that it seemed to spoil. He felt panic rising in his chest, and it caught his conscious attention. He didn't panic easily, but the darkness crushed in around him until he felt like he couldn't breathe, like something was suffocating his connection to the Force, and his body was along with it.

His mind urgent, he fixed his thoughts on something grounding. That something rose up from the fog in his brain as the thought of Jan. He held onto her picture in his mind, and it strengthened him to resists the oppressive force crowding in at the edges of his awareness. He could feel it still. It was like he was being searched for an opening.

When they reached the top, their knees ached and sweat rolled off their faces. Kyle could swear there was something off about the taste of the air; it was thinner, weaker. It felt harder to get a full breath. But maybe he was deluding himself. Maybe he was finally getting old.

A vast chamber opened before them, ribbed with black rock and tendrils of cooled magma. Every surface was scraped and marked with old carvings and spiritual glyphs. The sheer amount, and in such detail, must have taken centuries. The shape of a tall door was on the far side, sealed shut.

In the center of the chamber was a pool, some forty feet wide on each side, the edges of which bore the most intricate inscriptions in the room. Scripts and verses written with old characters from a forgotten tongue.

This must have been an antechamber, Kyle thought. Taking in the carvings and the pool, the heavy atmosphere, he wondered what could possibly be in the next room over.

Everything in the room served to focus and to honor the pool in the center, which shone like a sheet of dark glass. The detail of the carvings around the pool stood in contrast to the oblivion in their center. The still waters within were black and gleaming like oil.

Kyle watched the surface of the water intently. The moment he laid eyes on the thing, he felt frightened. He could sense its depths were fathomless, that the dark waters within concealed something below. He could sense a dark presence, something powerful and old. A waiting leviathan. It was just beneath the surface of the water. Just out of sight.

He had no desire to see it.

Something moved in the corner of his vision. It was Husu - staggering forward to the pool's edge, an eagerness on his face that Kyle hadn't yet seen. He seemed determined to get a closer look. Kyle could not stop him in time.

Kyle kept his distance. He hadn't yet recovered from the effects of the spiritual assault of the dark side during the climb; his breath remained shallow and his body weary. His senses, however, were newly sharp, invigorated by adrenaline at the sight of the chamber. It was cavernous and evil, a place of hundreds of horrors. There was an emptiness in the air, like the silence of the world before the appearance of a stalking predator.

Something terrible was about to happen.

"Husu," he barked. "Back away from the water. Something's in there."

Husu did not move. "Do you hear that?" he asked softly.

"I don't hear anything, pal! Get over here with me. C'mon!"

Husu stared into his own reflection in the pool, listening intently to some unheard sound, and muttering quietly in reply.

Now Kyle did hear something, something in only his ears, meant for him alone.

It was not words, but he understood its meaning. It was not language, but he could tell what it meant.

It came with an offer.