CHAPTER ONE:

Into The Unknown.

Helia Potter's P.O.V

She didn't have much time to reply before two robust hands were at her shoulders, hauling her upright, settling her back onto her unsteady feet. There was a whirring in her head, a whine of grinding cogs not connecting. Suddenly, she was-

A structure made of stone. A hall with a thousand eyes staring back from gilt frames. A woman stood at the far door, hands braced up, glowing, straining to hold back the flood coming-

Screaming.

There was so much screaming coming from outside.

Screams she knew.

The woman glanced back, frantic, mouth stern, the salt white hair of her severe bun falling around her face-

Blood stained.

"I can't hold this much longer! Run!"

A girl beside her snatched at her shoulders and arms, anywhere she could find purchase, yanking, tear tracks white on the grime of her face, hair an explosion of caramel singed black by dust and ash.

"Helia! It's too late! There's nothing we can do! We have to go! Move!"

Pssshhew.

A light.

Blue.

A beam of light and force and-

It pierced the door, slicing, slashing-

The woman holding it back-

She saw it come through her back.

There was no blood.

Not so much as a drop.

There was only light and death.

There was ever only light and death.

A gasp of fading breath.

"McGonagall!"

This scream was hers. She could feel it burn in her throat. Hot and angry like a dying star exploding. Grieved.

"Helia! No! We need to go! They can't find you! Please! Run!"

The girl tugged her away, down the hall, and she watched the woman fall to the ground, hand slapping granite, still and cold and-

She was looking right at her. Those blue eyes unfocused. Face slack. She was looking right at her and-

The door burst open.

Abruptly, she stumbled back a step when the hands vanished, hitting her shoulder into the cracked pod behind her. She felt breathless, as if all the air inside her lungs had been sucked out and replaced by flames torching her from the inside out. What was that? What-

"There we go. Good as new. Didn't R'em tell you? No safer travel to be found around these parts than with me and the good ol' Iridonia Reaper. Your credit was well spent. I appreciated the advance payment, by the way. Never know when one or two stowaways try to run without paying the fee."

Right… Yes. Whatever that was, she wasn't there. She was… She didn't know where she was apart from it smelled thickly of oil and iron. Wires. There was so many wires and cogs and nuts and bolts, and so different to the stone place, slick with moss and hills. And someone.

Someone who had grabbed her from the floor.

When she finally managed to stay upright, find a way to struggle in a gaunt inhale that doused the fire in her chest, she glanced up, and up, and up, and up. R'em, or so she guessed his name was, as this ship must be Iridonia Reaper, was a being of immense quantity in every regard. He spun on a single point, from which his legs, all eight of them, skittered out to clack on the meshed flooring of the narrow runway.

Waist down, he was all arachnid, but upwards, if you were brave enough to venture that way, was some sort of chaotic jumble of reptilian and toad, with a broad and blunted whiskered face and two oversized black marbled eyes.

"Do I know you?"

He scuttled closer as she braced herself, for what, she did not know, she did not know much of anything, but all he did was send one of his spindly steel legs out to sharply kick at the bottom of the pod she had fell from.

A hidden panel flipped free, another wisp of smoke rising in the murky air as a drawer came bursting out. Bursting like the door had burst open and-

He bent in half, even so, he was still so much larger than her, and promptly plucked out a frayed and threadbare bundle swathed in clothe.

"As well as any passenger knows their temporary captain, I suppose. There we go, the lodger…"

He squinted over to the flashing panel beside the pod, plump fingers tapping away on the screen.

"Helia Potter, nineteen-year-old Zabrak female, paid in full at Boshnik Dock's three weeks ago. Wanted direct travel to Dathomir, but we don't go that far, so settled for a drop off at Yipnara… Blah, blah, blah… There, left herself a recording before stasis due to previously 'unexpected' reaction to the stasis drugs."

He stymied back a step, giving her… Helia, just enough room to squeeze through in the confined space, nodding at the screen.

"Go ahead. It's all there."

Gingerly, Helia edged closer, keeping herself steadied at the wall, eyeing the blue screen wearily before glancing back. R'em nodded encouragingly.

"Press the engage button… The big circle one."

Helia did, and her hand snapped back to her chest as the screen throbbed in a blur of hot light. The mist faded, leaving a woman's face peering back at her. Not a woman… Her. That was her. She knew that intrinsically, as instinctually as if she was staring at her reflection in a mirror.

Though the woman was made of cerulean, jittering light, she knew that hair, braided down her back in a twisted rope of coils, was black so dark it was almost blue. She knew that skin, from toe to head, was a green like sunbeams bouncing off an emerald, interspersed with black ink markings like roots of a tree. A tree of her life right there, born on her skin, if only she knew what the symbols and curves meant and-

How did she know that?

Where had she-

Nothing. She could not remember. Something was there, she knew it, buried deep, but she simply could not reach it.

Yet.

The green skin was a shade lighter than her eyes. She knew that curl of lip, slope of nose, lightning scar and crown of thorny horns around her head.

She knew… And it felt wonderful.

"I'm Helia Potter, and if this message has gotten to who it is supposed to, me, than we have much to talk about and no time. Trust R'em. He's a quibbling malingerer who only cares for credits, but he's an honest one. The best, I'm afraid, you're going to find around these parts."

Suddenly, the fleeting feeling of wonder was replaced with sinking dread, as the woman, Helia, her, spoke on.

"I know you're confused. I was too. That is why I tell you now, as I know you are planning already, do not go back to Boshnik Dock's to try and retrace your path. We've done that twice already, and only lost more time. They will be there by now. Waiting. R'em should have our things. Take it and do not, for a second, for a minute, for anything, lose what the satchel contains. Kill, if you have to."

Helia in blue sighed.

"They are coming. We must get to Dathomir. It's our only hope. I know you feel it too, inside. Do not ignore that voice. It has kept us alive through Tom and Albus and the-… Listen, and tread carefully. Be brave like Gryffindor, but for Merlin's sake, be the Slytherin you really are. Before you go, for time is short and I need to go into stasis soon, I have one last piece of advice."

Her chin raised, nostrils flaring.

"If trouble comes, if you find yourself in a sticky situation, there will be a certain… Urge you will have. Whatever you do, do not do it. Not once. Not ever. Not until we get to Dathomir. That's how they found us. They can sense you when you use it. They will find you. They will take you. We don't have a second chance. Only this. Now go, get to Dathomir, find father, and sweet Circe… Give them hell."

The recording cut off.

R'em slapped a friendly hand down on her shoulder, grinning, showing off his keen, pointed teeth.

"Big ball of doom and gloom you were, weren't you? Your things."

He held out the bundle for Helia to take, which she did, cradling it close to her stomach. She held it tight like it was the only thing she had in the entire universe. Perhaps because it was. She had nothing. Just this sack, the impulse to get to Dathomir, and a sinking feeling of being hunted.

Helia peered up at R'em, eyebrows drawn down tight over her hooded gaze.

He must have seen the recording. He must have heard her warnings; heard the strain she had placed on the safety of the bundle clasped in her arms.

Had he peaked?

Had he taken?

What if something was missing now? What if-

"Don't you want to know what's inside?"

He shook his big head frantically, holding his hands up as if to ward her, and the bundle, off.

"You paid me extra to keep my nose far away, and I'm old enough to know better than sticking it somewhere it doesn't belong. In my line of business, you don't see nothing or hear nothing, and you keep all your limbs. Learn that lesson many moons ago."

Ah, once burnt and twice as shy. Wistfully, he looked down to his darting steel legs, perhaps he was imagining his old pair, before he began to make his way down the runway in a putter and patter, squinting back over his heavy shoulder to Helia.

"You going to start moving, kid? Yipnara's the closest I could bring you to Dathomir, but that doesn't mean it's close, if you catch my drift. You have a long way to go yet, and if you want to stay here another night, it won't be free. I ain't running no charity. You coming or not?"

Helia hurried after him.

Helia Potter's P.O.V

Helia stood beside R'em on the boarding ramp of the ship, staring out at the landing pad before it, and further, Yipnara itself. It was a bright place, almost blinding to Helia's sensitive eyesight, another new thing she had learned in a matter of minutes, how much yellow light scorched her eyes, with two suns rising high into the weak pale sky.

It was a craggy place, she thought. Hewn of cliffs and bluffs. A sea of sand and rusted towers, crooked pikes, and hobbled huts pressed closely together in speckled rings of life between the sandstorm dunes.

"Oh, Helia, one more thing?"

Helia, or so the lodger of the spacecraft stated she had signed her name as when boarding, carrying her small bundle, slowly turned around.

R'em's blunt, rounded face was stern, his toad-like eyes blinking out of sync.

"Careful, alright, kid? Try covering up. Hutt's collectors prowl Yipnara's streets. I ain't never seen a green Zabrak before, and I've seen a lot of folk coming and going through these backwaters. Hutt and his ilk would pay a pretty credit for merchandise so rare. Just... Be careful. Watch your step out there."

From behind his back, R'em produced a tattered hooded cloak and a strip of cloth, a makeshift scarf, perfect for concealing her face. Gently, she took them, stroked a thumb over the rough drapery. Even this, something so plain as fabric, felt new and strange in her hands.

"Thank you… For everything."

Helia thought the brown rinse to his face might be a blush, but he recovered quickly, gruffly coughing and folding his arms over his barrelled chest.

"Don't mention it. Really, don't. I have a reputation to preserve, and I don't need some fresh-faced kid ruining it. Off you pop, and if you ever need quick travel back to mainland, if you have the credit, give me a transmission. I left the Iridonia Reapers communication code in the cloak pocket."

Helia nodded, sensing the unspoken goodbye, wrapping the crude scarf around her neck and the bottom half of her face, before she slipped the cloak around her shoulder, clasped it tight, and flipped the hood over her horned head.

With a lazy wave, she disembarked into the unknown.

She had no where else to go.

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Feral did not have many chances to go off world, but when he did, especially on occasions such as this, out from under the watchful eyes of his fellow Nightbrothers and older brother Savage, he made the most of it.

Thoughts?