Holo's heart vanished; fell into a great slavering abyss yawning cold between his ribs. Gazing down upon that terrible scene, that fiend of steel and storm standing dauntless amid the seething tide.
Tempest-heart she loomed before all he loved. The gate in her heart knew no bound, hungered without falter, flounder or fail. Something cold spread through him at the sight; slid slick through the chasm behind his breastbone, joined the foul dark that roamed unleashed within. There would be no salvation this day.
Or so his bleak mind thought. But for the first time in all his life, for the first time since Tin's birth, for the first time since they had come upon this drear place, Fate looked down upon them - and smiled.
***
All the world shook; rocked by a tremor like none it had ever before known. It shifted, shuddered, convulsed. Unraveled.
Swift, a sable seam snaked through the charred sands, opened wide its jagged maw. Exhaled a single, thunderous breath; a roar like all the voices of every soul ever sheared, every life ever sliced short. Like every father who had ever screamed, every mother who had ever keened, every child who cried out at the cruelty of the world.
Dust the air itself became; a mire raking its way across the oval plane, broiling up at its tattered edge, smashing its silt-surf over the AT-ATs where they like sleeping tortoises lay. Holo fell back, driven from the precipice as much by shock as the tidal swell slamming its tawny, glass-quilled mass down before him.
Through its rusty haze nothing at all could he see; not shade of Death's angel, not sliver of his comrades pale and white. Only the filthy storm, and the dark shape of a great churning chasm buried deep, deep within.
"What?" Blithe, bland, bumbling, his voice stumbled to his call. "What in all the galaxy is going on?"
Sixes merely shook his head, rocking where he stood as the hill shuddered, remembering the spasm of mere moments prior.
"I cannot begin to guess."
***
"Lorral?" Los'Crena scrambled back, bow tumbling forgotten from his quaking hands. "What is this?!"
She grinned, madness a bog-light burning in her eyes. "A sign!"
"Of what?!" He felt the other hunters scatter, their footsteps whispering in the storm-scream.
Then the earth thrashed again, and Los'Crena did not linger long enough to guess.
***
The Resistance had spread its vile seed upon a world once pure. They stood now, arrayed as a tumor of a hundred bristling cells; curving slowly around their champion. Watching mirthful, as Death loomed above their dread foes.
Through storm and sand, through stone and silt Gahalas glimpsed their legion souls: crimson blades cracked and jutting; pieces of pewter catching the rays of a dying day. He raised a hand, even as the world parted around him, even as the threads of earth unspooled.
He felt their heartbeat pulse against his fingertips; a hundred drums beating just out of synchrony, a chorus just slightly offset. Their song would never reach its end.
His fist closed, and as one, their percussive peals fell silent.
The world ruptured. Four and ten thousand cracks smashed through the scorched sand, broke it apart like a leviathan plate hurled from great height. At its core, a hurricane rose.
Seven points of burning light speared the swirling sands; drove their bristling, nettle-strands through the murk; cast their foul amber glow upon the mottled face behind. Rugged, seven sockets crouched beneath cowls of black bone; rippling and rumpled like cloth drawn across his angular face.
Down upon his lean chest, his narrow shoulders its wan wisps drifted, shining upon the sinewy lines new-healed muscle had etched. Mouth of nightfall, eyes of dusk, throat of mountain-fall howl, he tilted back his hairless skull and unleashed again the scream that slit the world along its stitching.
Even she staggered back, fell upon the sands - yet they were moored no longer. Grains floated, danced, raked around her, held by nothing more than the ferocious wrath of Gahalas. Her eyes of snow snapped wide, her heart's drum hammered quick, her pulse quicker.
So this was the true might of Gahalas.
***
The entire world heaved. Sand sprayed up, floated forgotten like a thousand thousand burned-out stars, stone and glass shimmering between. Onyx staggered back, reeling from the ruin, never realizing that he stood upon the only solid patch left.
Blitz's broken frame lay before him, Tanner's husk at his back. He knew he could not save either. His heart tore, when he released Tanner's hand, when he stood, turned toward the AT-AT where Tin's life ebbed.
Two lives had been sundered this day. He could not save them now.
But there was one he still could.
***
Run! Gahalas' voice slashed through Tin's broken mind, left its stain shimmering bleak within. Take those dear to you, and be gone from this place.
Light touched his fading mind, kissed with lips of sunrise soft and warm. The Force. All-rending, but all healing as well.
Tin gasped, breath rushing cold to his scorched lungs. Vigor blazed through his body; tongues of lightning lashing their way through his battered frame, leaving pain a dull afterimage shivering behind. Life crackled from oblivion.
His fist came down upon blood emblazoned steel like the hammer of God, and shuddering, shivering, a ghost all but frayed, he stood.
"Thank you."
***
Gahalas hung amid the seething remains of a world he loved. Sands swirled around him, raking his marbled flesh, polishing his scales where they like new-poured tar shone.
I will never let you escape. His step struck naught but air, yet echoed still, pulsed out like thunder. It slammed through her, crashed against her soul: a war-hammer pounding every bone at once, a dagger spearing every muscle, a barb of venomous flame sinking into every pore.
Not after all you have done. All you have defiled, despoiled, destroyed! His hands closed at his sides: black novae burning with twin eclipses' blinding glory.
Not when you nearly took him from me.
Hate welled up fierce within; spread its shattered flames through his battered frame. Through his veins it pulsed like winter-wind, scratching its way to his fingertips as one hand rose, spearing its wordless accusation through the sibilant smog.
Not when you would sow sorrow among the stars, and smile all the while.
Hate bleached his sight, froze his marrow, ignited his blood. Venom, it rushed out from his racing heart; prickling all the way. Then it reached his palm, pounded against his flesh like a thing alive and yearning to be free.
Not when you would burn your own life to ashes if it meant taking theirs with it.
Lightning burst from his outstretched hand. Nova-bright it slashed through the chasm of day, raked through floating sand and glinting stone, leaving a jagged trail glowing molten behind. Thunder had not the chance to deafen her before that blinding light seared her soul.
