Tolok Amnan’s damutek
Wreckage of the Baanu Amnan, Tingel Arm, Wild Space
Day 236, 29 ABY

Eshin Shul yawned and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Tolok Amnan was asleep next to her, apparently still exhausted from the previous night. She suppressed a laugh and stood up, gently avoiding waking the young commander, and pulled on a flimsy robeskin, the jelly-like cloth automatically conforming to her lithe body shape. She was attractive by any species’ standards, and the scars she’d picked up only enhanced her appeal within Yuuzhan Vong society. Few intendants could speak of fighting the dark Jeedai and living to tell the tale.

Of course, few intendants were social outcasts who had changed their identities either.

‘Up already, Eckla?’ Tolok said, yawning as he pulled the blanket up around him. Like everything else their species used, the fabric was made of living vurruk cloth.

The once Shamed One sighed inwardly, but forced a smile with her tattooed lips. Eckla Muyel: that was the name she now went by since returning to this wretched worldship—the very same worldship she had helped cripple. ‘Not all of us can sleep all day, lover.’

Tolok frowned, not getting the hint. ‘I was hoping—’

‘—I’m afraid,’ she cut him off, ‘I have a meeting to get to with the Master Shaper.’ It was not completely true: the meeting wasn’t for a few hours. But Tolok didn’t need to know that. He didn’t need to know a lot of things. Like the true nature of the experiments she was conducting with Niiriit Phaath. Yes, Tolok was a useful pet, so long as he continued to serve her purposes.

Fortunately, like most males, getting him to serve her was as easy as convincing him her ideas had actually been his ideas—a grin crossed her lips—which also meant that when that fool who was now calling himself ‘Warmaster’ finally found out what her Jeedai were really for, Tolok would be the one who got condemned for it.

She chuckled and forced down a laugh.

A bright flash burst through the gricha membrane covering the window and she was hurled into the nearest wall as a loud explosion rang through in the damutek. In the crash, a rough piece of yorik coral on the wall had thrust into her spine. The pain was deliciously agonising, but she merely winced; she would not show weakness before the warrior.

Tolok jumped from the bed and hurried over to her. ‘ECKLA!’

‘I’m fine,’ she replied hoarsely. It was obvious she was not, but the warrior knew better than to argue with her as she pulled herself to her feet and spat out a mouthful of dark blood. She was stubborn, even by intendant standards, but it was hardly the first quake. The gravitic disruptions had recently been growing more frequent. It was only a matter of time before the remains of the Baanu Amnan finally gave up and fell apart completely.

But for now, it would have to serve her needs. And when it did finally surrender to its fate? That just meant any evidence of heresy which could be used against her would be destroyed along with it. She had nothing to lose.

The villip in the corner of the room started to vibrate, causing the hau polyp it was seated on to rumble. Tolok stroked the leathery ball’s eversion stoma, causing it to pucker and invert its skin to resemble the face of Romm Shai. ‘Commander Tolok Amnan,’ the villip rasped, perfectly mimicking the Supreme Commander’s voice. ‘The Warmaster has identified our next target and commands you report for duty immediately.’

Before Tolok could respond, the villip reverted back into a ball.

Eshin feigned a sympathetic smile. ‘It seems we both have work to do. It was only a matter of time before Varesh launched his next raid anyway. Rrush'hok ichnar vinim'hok.’ Without another word, she made her way outside the damutek and into the ruined dark canyon which she currently considered “home”.

For all their efforts, the shapers had failed in worldshaping the remains of the sundered pieces of the worldship. The land was simply dead. Apart from the specially grown grashals and damuteks that served as barracks and command outposts for the Yuuzhan Vong forces stationed there, nothing would take root in the lifeless rock. Ionic storm clouds cloaked everything south of the equator where this particular fragment had broken free from the rest of the doomed Baanu Amnan, and flashed with further impacts from crumbling wreckage.

She and Niiriit Phaath still had much to do before the ‘Warmaster’ launched his future strike against the dark Jeedai. The Shamed One knew the Sseeth well enough to know they would take few prisoners, and that as devoted to pain as any Yuuzhan Vong may have been, it was better to die than be captured by ones even the Republic’s Jeedai called heretics. However, even better yet, it was so much more satisfying to break them. She allowed herself a chuckle as she hurried through the rocky canyons towards the shapers’ grashal, her laughter lost to the blistery wind as forks of lightning exploded along the mountaintops encircling her.

She ran her fingers along the scars on her cheek that the Jeedai who some had claimed to be the avatar of Yun-Shuno had given her above Telos—how ironic that the Pardoner had supposedly saved her life only to later return to try and finish her in person. But this time not even the gods themselves could stand in her way. She would have her revenge; and soon, very soon, they would all see the True Way for what it really was.

A lie.