Chapter Text
Grains of sand spilled through black leather fingers as Vader tilted his prosthetic. It caught on the breeze and drifted over the remains of speeder, recently excavated from the grit.
The vehicle stank of Kenobi's presence, oddly warped, but it wasn't the source of the disturbance. That lurked further in. The Jundland Wastes. So the rusted trash meant nothing to him, except perhaps a whisper of vindication in his heart.
So Kenobi had survived, had hidden from him here.
So be it. Let the old man huddle in a hut on a rock furthest from the bright center of the universe. Let him know the misery his apprentice had grown up in.
Vader rose. The troopers who had excavated the thing had spread its paltry cargo on a tarp around it, and he scanned them mechanically. Nothing among them seemed consequential, but he committed them to memory anyway. Then, without bothering to raise a hand, he levitated the three chunks of speeder into the air a foot, and crushed it into a ball of durasteel and synth oil.
When he turned, the four members of Death Squadron behind him snapped to attention, ready to receive orders.
“Return to Anchorhead and await my orders. Do not contact me unless I am summoned by the Emperor.” Without hesitation, all four turned, mounted their speeder bikes and departed. Cold satisfaction flared in his chest at the sight. Sidious' Empire may be bloated with corruption, incompetence and lack of faith and conviction but the 501st was not similarly blemished.
Vader eased his leg up and over his own modified speeder, designed with a reinforced frame and repulsors claimed from an Imperial Combat Speeder to account for his bulk. Kenobi's presence led further into the deep desert, tainted and mingled with some presence he could not define. A second being? No, not a being, a vergence of some sort. He squeezed the throttle and shot off over the sands, chasing a ghost.
A sandstorm blotted out half the horizon like some great apocalyptic wave, but Vader sped forward undeterred. Fear of such things belonged to those who lacked the power to bend the world to their will, and here Vader's will was iron. The disturbance he sought was further in, somewhere at the heart of the storm. Kenobi was further in.
As the storm reached him it parted. No grain of sand or blistering wind would touch his armor. A flicker of will and the HUD in his helmet began displaying readouts on the storm. Wind speed and direction and an orbital synoptic chart of the storm cropped up, along with an infrared filter over his vision to track heat signatures in the storm. Splitting his focus, the Sith Lord began casting his senses out allowing the currents of the Force to guide him towards his ultimate goal.
The world went white as a bolt of dry lightning struck the sand before him. Pain landed through Vader's skull, eyes burning. Artificial tears from the suit flooded his visor, laced with a numbing agent. Vader drank in the pain and channeled it into rage, and forced it out into his shields.
Not an instant too soon, either, as the next bolt of lightning struck him directly. Sense memories of his Master's punishments forced themselves to the front of his mind, ghosts of old pain dancing down natural and artificial nerves alike. But this was not Darth Sidious's doing. Vader need not suffer such indignity, for fear of inciting further damage. So he simply batted it away with the Force.
As it always did, the galaxy threw everything it had at Vader. Several more strikes flashed in rapid succession, and he was forced to draw his crackling red blade and parry them manually. Each supernaturally swift swing left an arc of burning red glass in the haze and a burst of light as the energy dispersed.
Sand coated the exterior of his armor as his focus failed him, split too many ways. It collected in the joints of his limbs and the microscopic cracks in the composite, fueling his hate further. It became a feedback loop, hate fueling rage fueling hatred in turn. He began to sense something… more. This was not simply the storm's doing. Some will, some great presence in the storm did not desire Vader to reach the center.
“NO!” A great burst of power poured from him, contesting with the buffering winds and sharp, tearing sands. Whatever will drove the storm opposed him, as a wall resists a surging wave. He could not simply sweep it away, but around him an eye formed. It felt like grudging acquiescence, as though whatever entity opposed him had either thought better of it or recognized his power as greater than its own.
In the center of this clearing, surrounded still by raging sands, was a tear. Vader approached it with something near to wariness. Once more he reached out with the Force.
When he brushed against the suspended rift, a great vibration seemed to shake the desert. Or simply shake him to his bones. Snarling into his vocoder, Vader pressed forward with his will, gritting his teeth and enduring the sensation even as it intensified. He strode forward and touched the thing, attempting to rip it wider so he could gain entry or see through. He bore down with as much might that his focus would allow.
With a sound like two ships grinding against each other at Mach speed, Vader ripped a hole about a foot and a half wide in the fabric of the world. The energy he'd poured into it lashed back, slamming into him as if a bomb had gone off.
The last thing he remembered before he lost consciousness was an overbearing sense of amusement. As though the desert itself were laughing at him.