Robert Meta
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Star Wars: Rise of the Battlemage - Chapter 5
🕑 Added 2023-02-27 16:12:38 +0000 UTCI wanted to try out linking images and wiki pages to relevant stuff when it comes up. Some chapters will have a lot, some will have none. Let me know what you think!
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Clairvoyance was a spell I had, at first, assumed was purely a video game construct. It was just a way to introduce GPS into a video game that was easy to get lost in. It turns out I was half correct. Clairvoyance was, in fact, one of the novice spells I could learn from my grimoire. What it wasn't, however, was an omniscient direction system that could tell me exactly where whatever I wanted was.
The description was rather vague, but the directional spell tapped into the aetheric connection between all things and used your knowledge of what you were looking for to tell you exactly where it was. A master of the spell could hear a detailed description of an object, cast the spell, and mark its probable location on a map for you. Unfortunately, it would be years of use before I could reach that level, so I needed a more direct connection to what I was looking for. Namely, I would need to have been there or have held the object in my hand. I would also have to travel the path the spell made for me, not just mark it on the map for others to explore.
Eventually, I would be able to use other people's direct connections to an object or location, but for now, I was more limited. However, it wasn't all bad because this variation of Elder Scrolls magic had two forms of the spell. One was the standard path-following spell that was very similar to the version in the game. This form used the aetheric connections to follow paths taken by other people, but it wouldn't work if the most common path was on a horse or a boat, which translated to a speeder or any other transport for my situation.
The other form was a simple arrow that would float in the air. It pointed directly to the target, ignoring bodies of water or large landmasses. It was primarily used by sailors to navigate since there was no connection to follow in large bodies of water. Even better, it was an illusion that I cast on myself, meaning that no one else would be able to see it.
Tatnia and Nal both left the small room to start putting feelers out. All three of us were woefully ignorant when it came to politics and current events around Nar Shaddaa, as neither of my compatriots came from Hutt Space, and I was from a different universe. Hell, I didn't even know when on the timeline I was! While I was learning my new spell, both of them would be getting up to speed.
I sat down in the room's single chair and worked through the spell, a familiar pattern now. I started by recreating the matrix as the book described before slowly starting to adapt it to my own harmonics and frequencies. Which is where I ran into a bit of trouble. Where the healing spell had sort of just… meshed, my matrix starting off partially usable, this spell seemed to fight me at every turn. It wasn't a monumental struggle, but I couldn't help but feel like it just wasn't gelling with me.
It ended up taking me four hours to finally get the spell to work in both forms, about an hour longer than I had thought. By then, it was about noon, so I set out to find my new friends. I locked up the room and made my way down to the hotel's first floor. This building was surprisingly clean, especially considering I had bought a four-day stay with a used blaster pistol. Then again, with cheap labor in the form of unfortunate masses and droids, there really wasn't any reason not to keep your building clean.
I stopped once I was standing in front of the hotel's main entrance, pushing my hand in my pocket and casting clairvoyance, focusing on Tatnia. A glowing, pale blue billowy path appeared in front of me, leading away from the door and through a crowd of people. I smirked when no one saw the magic, with plenty of people walking through the strange pathway without even hesitating.
I followed the trail for about half an hour, through streets and a few back alleys before finally arriving at a hole-in-the-wall bar. I walked in, ignoring the several looks that were definitely not people sizing me up as a mark as I did, and eventually spotted Tatnia sitting along the back around the corner of the bar, nursing a drink.
She spotted me as I made my way to her, her eyes going wide. I gestured if I could join her, and she winced but nodded, waving down the bartender as I did.
"How in the hells did you find me?" She asked, motioning the bartender to get me one of what she was drinking.
"Finished that thing I was working on. I could find you or Nal anywhere on the planet," I explained, quickly continuing when I realized how that sounded. "Well, I would know your directions. Nothing I can do if you are somewhere I can't get to. Nal not with you?"
"We split up pretty early. He went to a different bar," She explained. "One less friendly to humans."
I nodded and took a sip of the drink Tatnia had bought me. It was alright, a little bitter on the aftertaste for my liking, but it led with a fruity flavor I couldn't identify, which didn't surprise me.
"How are we paying for this?" I asked, turning to look around at the bar, spotting at least two people, a male Twi'lek and a human, still looking at us.
I resisted the urge to flip them off. Instead I turned back to Tatnia, taking another sip of my drink and focusing on her. She was clearly on edge.
"Sabbac," She explained simply, pausing for a moment before continuing. "I've always been good at it."
"I'm sure you're smarter than that, but you didn't go overboard, did you?" I asked, turning back to her, raising my hand in defense when I saw the look she was giving me. "Not doubting you, but I'm sure you've seen what gambling can do to someone. Besides, you've got a couple of admirers."
"...I didn't go overboard, just a couple hundred credits from a handful of people. I…I had a reputation as someone to not be messed from... well, from before I got dragged here. I forgot I don't have that anymore." She admitted, with a lot less vigor than she was originally intending. "They are probably going to try and mug us when we leave. I… I was hoping to find someone to help take them down when I leave."
"I'm glad I came along then," I said with a small smile. "It's fine, though. We could use some more stuff."
"What?" She asked, looking at me in confusion.
"What? Do you think they are going to expect me, the unarmed man, to be a threat?" I asked, making sure to turn slightly and show that my hip was bare. "We will catch them off guard. Are you ready to go?"
She looked at me for a moment before shaking her head and downing her drink. I did the same, standing with her. She swiped a credit chip on a scanner on the counter before heading out, with me right behind her. We slowly made our way to a dark alley, both of us ignoring the approaching footsteps. One of them grabbed me, and my ingenious plan was suddenly ruined when instead of holding me hostage, they slid a long vibroknife between my ribs.
The pain was intense, but I still had the presence of mind to cast Sparks, reaching behind me and blasting the one who stabbed me with both hands. I could feel him jerk and switch against my back, the vibroknife cutting me erratically. When he fell to his knees, tearing the knife from my side, I stopped the spell for a moment. I turned to find the Twi'lek holding a blaster with wide eyes, the weapon vaguely pointed at me. Before he could do anything, a red blast of energy whipped by and took him in the chest, a second and third taking him down completely.
I finished off the guy who stabbed me with two blasts of electricity to the face, holding it for a few seconds to cook his brain. When I was sure he was dead, I half sat, half collapsed onto a box along the side of the alleyway. Tatnia stepped closer to me, but I waved her away.
"Loot them first. Take anything worth keeping or selling," I said, already starting up a healing spell in both hands. "I'll be fine."
The healing energies coursed through me, rushing to the stab wound. I could feel it starting to heal me, the process slow but steady. I was lucky that the armor I was wearing, old and worn as it was, had forced him to stab somewhere not immediately dangerous. By the time Tatnia was done and I was out of mana, I was strong enough to stand.
"C'mon, let's put some distance between this and us," I said, wincing and limping as we walked down the alley.
Tatnia quickly helped me by taking my arm around my shoulder and giving me a bit of support. We walked until my mana was refilled, stopping in another alleyway for me to heal again. We repeated this three times until I felt good enough to finish the walk home in one shot, using clairvoyance to get us there. We got more than a few looks as we walked through the hotel, mainly at the blood stain on my shirt, but no one willing to say something came forward. When we entered our room, Nal was waiting for us.
"Oh good, you have returned," He said before spotting the blood on my clothes. "Have you been injured?"
"Got jumped by a few idiots," I said with a shrug. "But on the plus side, I have a blaster again."
"I messed up," Tatnia added. "I'm used to relying on my reputation. Should have realized that I'd get jumped if I started winning."
"How bad is the wound?" Nal asked as I stepped into the refresher, activating the sonic shower.
"Just a shallow stab. I've been healing it on and off," I explained. "I wouldn't be dead even if I couldn't fix myself."
I slowly turned, letting the sonic waves wash away the blood from my skin and my clothes. While I was waiting, I cycled my double healing spell, allowing the healing energies to sink into my wound. It still wasn't fully healed, but it felt like it was a few weeks old. When all of the blood had been cleaned off of me, I turned off the shower and stepped out, playing with the small stab hole that was in my shirt and working very hard not to think about how close I had just come to death… again.
"We wouldn't be able to afford getting you treated," Tatnia pointed out. "You-"
"Tatnia," I said, cutting her off, trying my best to sound understanding. "You messed up. Learn from it, and move on. I don't blame you, none of us are on our A-game right now."
She looked at me for a long moment and nodded. She looked down at her hands and noticed she was still carrying the small bag of stuff she had pulled off the muggers. She quickly laid it on the bed and started going through it, handing me the blaster pistol and its holster.
It was a beefy bastard with a grip that reminded me of my father's 1911, while the barrel assembly looked like it was meant to be pumped like a shotgun. Its power pack loaded from the side, but it was different from any of the other packs we had. Luckily Tatnia handed me a few spares. The entire weapon had a robust feel to it, like it could survive a lot and keep on firing.
"That is a Bryar. A K-16, I believe," Nal said, holding his hand to me.
I passed him the pistol, and he examined it, pulling out the power pack and looking into its innards. I watched as Tatnia tucked the vibroknife she had looted from one of the muggers into its sheath before attaching it around her leg, hiding it under her pants.
I attached the holster to my right hip, making sure it was secure, before Nal handed me the pistol back.
"It is in decent shape, but its secondary fire is nonfunctional," He explained. "Usually, it can charge a shot to deliver more power. Said function is from a secondary unit inside the pistol. Currently missing."
"But normal shooting works?" I asked, looking down at the pistol.
"Yes. Shouldn't be difficult to fix, either. Common parts. I wonder if mugger knew what he had," He responded. "Bryars are expensive in good condition."
"Well, then maybe we should sell it?" I suggested.
"No, keep it," Nal said, shaking his head. "You need a weapon, just in case."
Nal accepted a backup hold-out blaster, the last weapon Tatnia head pulled off the pair of would-be muggers. As he strapped it to the inside of his jacket, she attempted to split the small collection of credit chips between us, but I waved her off.
"Don't worry about it. You are in charge of food for the next couple of days," I said, getting a nod in return. "Now, do we have enough time to go check around the berthing dock?"
"We do, as long as we pay for a speeder," Nal said, "It would likely take several hours to walk."
It took very little time for us to hire a ride, all three of us climbing into a run-down but functional speeder taxi. The droid driving the speeder was happy to follow my strange directions as I tried to use the compass version of clairvoyance to locate the berthing dock where we had landed the day before. After about ten minutes of flying around, we found it and informed the taxi to drop us off a few blocks away. We didn't make a beeline for the dock immediately, instead walking around for a while, taking in the area.
There were multiple docks connected together in a large U, and all but the one we had landed at were full. Most of them were light and medium freighters, offloading enough cargo that it was basically impossible for them to also be carrying slaves.
After walking around and familiarizing ourselves with the area for a while, we all split up and started subtly trying to find out everything we could. I didn't do much beyond asking a few street vendors how busy the area was under the guess of looking to rent out one berth for my ship. Most of them just shrugged and mainly stayed quiet. It wasn't until later in the afternoon that a Vurk, selling pre-packaged snacks from a cart, gave me a bit more information.
"You're better off going somewhere else," He said, shaking his head. "The owner rents to slavers. It's not illegal, but it's just asking for trouble. He takes bribes to keep them off the records as well, so they don't have to pay taxes to the Hutt clans. Not worth the trouble, my friend."
"How do you know that?" I asked, not having to fake my surprise.
"You'd be surprised what idiots will say in front of a vendor," He said. "I wish you luck in finding a berth for your ship!"
I nodded and bought some snacks before making my way to a predetermined spot to meet with the others.
