46 Years After the Droid Wars
Leia stood atop a flat mountain peak, looking out over dark green hills that stretched to the grey horizon of Dathomir. Something was different about her world today. She could sense a stirring in the land that simple felt...wrong. Her entire life she had lived and fought here. Fought against the terrifying power of the Nightsisters. She had given everything to this unforgiving land because in some way it was a part of her. Just as her clan sisters of the Singing Mountain Clan were a part of her. And though she came from another world, they had all grown to trust in her. And eventually to love her. Now she stood as their leader. Charged with their safety and their protection.
Which is why she trusted her senses now when they spoke to her of a growing threat. The fading light of day was like a portent of the malice she sensed around her. For years she had been at war with the Nightsister Clan. Proving her worth time and again against the darkest foes imaginable. Her struggle against the power of Gethzerion had nearly been the end of her. But with the defeat of that twisted witch had come a kind of stalemate. An uneasy war of attrition with her successor Baritha that had dragged on for decades.
"Why do you worry so, my love?"
Leia turned to face her lover, the only woman in the world she could confide in. Teneniel Djo.
"Something doesn't feel right." Leia answered, meeting her woman's adoring gaze. "Something is coming."
Teneniel stood before her leader, the woman she loved, and reached up to touch Leia's cheek tenderly. Leia closed her eyes as her beautiful red-hair lover caressed her face in the fading light. She drew in a breath and smiled. Leia was hardly surprised that Teneniel had ascended to this peak without a sound. While Leia had struggled to climb to this vantage point, quietly singing songs that gave her the power to make the summit, she knew her nimble lover had made the climb completely unassisted. Teneniel had always loved to climb. And powerful though Teneniel's songs could be, she would never have relied on the power of Dathomir when she loved the challenge of an unassisted ascent so much.
"Night is coming." Teneniel whispered. "And I am here to claim you with it."
"Claim me?" Leia opened her eyes and smiled. "Remember who it is that leads this clan."
"You lead us all." Teneniel replied. "But I have a power over you that not even a rancor can match."
Leia nodded and turned her back, looking out again at the horizon. Looking towards the Nightsister stronghold. As Teneniel pressed her body against Leia from behind, running her hands down her lover's hips and gently kissing Leia's neck, Leia found herself unable to relax into the embrace.
Stepping away from her warrior lover, Leia shrugged off the tender advances and turned to face Teneniel resolutely.
"Something is coming. I'm sure of it."
Teneniel saw the grim determination in her woman's eyes.
"What must we do?"
"Assemble everyone." Leia ordered, turning back to the direction of the Nightsister encampment. "Ready them for battle."
As Tenenial nodded and obediently left to ready the warrior women of the Singing Mountain Clan, Leia found her gaze turning upwards to the evening sky. The stars called to her, much as they always had. As if another part of her was out there among them. Somewhere.
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Baritha, leader of the Nightsisters of Dathomir felt a shiver of excitement run over her pale skin as she entered her hut while night fell over the encampment. It was time. Time to commune with her dark master. Time for their plans to come to fruition. And for her final triumph over Leia and her accursed Singing Mountain Clan.
As she walked across her hut to the locked cabinet, she reflexively looked over her shoulder. Her darkest secrets were locked within....and ambition often ran strongly in her clan. Satisfied that she was alone, protected by her bodyguard outside, she quietly sang a song of dark power. Reciting the words exactly, she invoked the incantation of unlocking, releasing the deadly power that guarded her treasures from prying eyes. Just as Gethzerion had taught her long ago. Getherion...soon to be avenged!
As she felt her dark power release the deadly spell protecting her most guarded secrets, she slowly opened the cabinet, and cautiously pulled forth a fleshy sphere. It writhed and pulsed in her hands, responding to her touch. As always, she marveled at her master's absolute absence from her senses. Somehow he existed outside of her powers...or beyond her powers. It was something that had intrigued Baritha since she had first found the pulsing mass of flesh decades ago. Or had it been the one to find her?
As she expertly stroked and caressed the curves of the fleshy ball, it pulsed and gyrated. She had awakened him...he was coming forth!
At once the sphere inverted, impossibly pulling into itself, as a head emerged and took shape. A skeletal and grim face. A face that Baritha worshipped. Worshipped as a means to ultimate power.
The twisted visage of her lord completed forming and starred at her through his one, good eye.
"Baritha." He spoke eloquently. "You have done well."
"Thank you my lord." She whispered. "Your children are ready. They are powerful beyond reason."
Across the galaxy, secluded safely in his private chambers, Nom Anor stared at the villip recreation of Baritha's face. He had sent his villip to her world decades ago. A very special villip for a very special mission. A mission that would soon be nearing completion.
Though he had never met the Nightsister leader in person, their relationship had accomplished more than he had initially hoped possible. The villip smiled, telepathically reflecting the ambitious malevolence of Baritha's own smile from so very far away.
The villip's approximation of her neck extended forward, towards Nom Anor. Its eyes closed in a perfect imitation of his lover's eyes as she asked for a kiss across the vast cosmic gulf of the galaxy.
Nom Anor sighed quietly and leaned forward to indulge his mistress. This was one aspect of this mission he had simply accepted long ago. If any of his people could have witnessed his actions with this woman over the past decades they would have been repulsed. But he knew that Yun-Harla could only but smile on so insidious a plot. Leaning forward, he brought his mouth to the villip, returning Baritha's kiss. The villip's approximation of Baritha's tongue extended into Nom Anor's mouth and he returned his own into hers. Across the emptiness of space, the villip's telepathic connection perfectly transmitted the passionate kiss.