Side by side, blades thrumming and held at the ready, Raezyr and Trychon backed slowly away from the King Vornskr, and the beast held it's ground. It stood there, roaring at the two Sith. The other vorskrs stood behind him, and joined in with their howls, as more of the animals appeared out of the mist to add to the swelling ranks of animals behind their Alpha.
The fog slowly enveloped the pack, obscuring Raezyr and Trychon's physical view of them as they backed away, although they could sense the animals perfectly through the Force. They retreated a bit more quickly then, but knowing the King could still sense them as well, they still moved cautiously until they sensed the pack dissipating.
At last, they shut down their blades and began trotting away, putting as much distance between them and the vorskrs as possible. Once they had traveled a two or three kilometers, they stopped to rest.
"Dude. I can't believe that worked. It didn't even dawn on me to try and communicate back to that thing. That was quick thinking," Raezyr commented to Trychon as he looked at the man's arm. "I think you're just going to have to deal with numbness. There really isn't much of a wound to treat, and besides, we don't really have anything to treat it with."
"That's fine, I think you're arm is worse than mine right now, anyway. I'm still shocked about that thing's ability to communicate like that. I just knew we had to do something. There were too many of them. We would have taken a lot of them with us, but they would have overwhelmed us in the end," Trychon responded.
They talked for a bit while they rested, discussing the possibilities of where that thing may have come from, whether it was a natural ability or some mutation caused by the Dark Side imbued fog that permeated everything on the planet. In the end, they were unable to come to any firm, logical conclusion.
They got a quick bite to eat, before beginning their trek toward the Sith library again, and contacted Aitchkay once they were moving again. The droid had gathered their packs and reported he was close to the designated rendezvous point, calculating that he would reach it by nightfall. Doing their own calculations, they informed the droid they should be arriving sometime the following afternoon.
They spent an uneventful night in cold camp, taking turns staying up to watch and meditate, while the other slept. The meditation by itself would lend them strength, but with the injuries they had sustained, nothing was going to substitute for sleep.
It turned out they could have both slept the entire night, as neither of them sensed the vornskrs anywhere within a kilometer or so throughout the night. Their first such night on THX 1138.
The next day, sometime before noon, they came across a path. It was small and narrow and nearly overgrown. So much so that they would have missed it, if it weren't for a bit of woven cloth that was snagged in a twig.
They debated following the path, but it ran perpendicular to the direction they were heading. After their last encounters with beings on this planet, they decided it might not be in their best interest to follow it at the moment. Trychon made note of it on his datapad, and they continued on their way.
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