#three princes

It’s like you’ve stumbled in mid-way through a conversation; half the meaning lost to the trails of laughter that twine through tinkling hammered chimes. The caw and trill of caged animals assails you, offset by music drifting from the misty upper levels, the sizzling fat from the food stalls, and the cries of children running around their parents’ legs. Merchants shout, selling their wares: potions mixed on premises, totems fashioned from fang and claw, and talismans imbued with the planet’s ichor. Some are real. Some are not. 

But one thing is certain: Dathomir is more alive here than it’s ever been.

The mountain teems.

It’s a sound that glitters, flickering like the spirit lanterns that line the avenues and alleyways, softened by cooking smoke and haze:

Red and gold and velvet dark, and far above you, over the layers of the market’s levels seem to spill, overwhelmed by those who’ve ventured to New Dathomir to cajole for a better price, to make an exchange, to find that one special thing that they crave —

Sex.

Magic.

Chaos.

And all of a sudden, as the beaded curtain falls behind you, the door that brought you here falls away. You turn on the spot, uncertain all of a sudden what bought your passage into the Night Market, though the new realization that you’re here is about as jarring as leaving the dripping stone pathway that opens onto Dathomir’s best kept secret. And:

You’re about to lose your mark if you don’t move your ass.

“Kriff,” you breathe, and crane your head as if the crowd might part for you to get a better look through the meandering bodies, preoccupied with the contents of the numerous shops, and there — yards away and passing a merchant’s table stacked with spare droid parts, you see him:

For a Zabrak with such an enormous carriage, it takes a moment to register the towering figure is crouched, exchanging words with someone over a small display. A patchwork awning drapes overhead, frayed from years in the market, but you know it’s him:

No one wears zeyd-cloth robes anymore. No one who doesn’t want to identify themselves as Sith, or would-be Sith, if Lord Maul had his way. Just another sign of changing times on Dathomir. Under the new regime, neither the Empire nor the pillars of that old religion the Opress brothers absconded hold court here anymore, but hell if Savage Opress can find something else as dramatic to conceal his identity. 

Zeyd-cloth just happens to be swishy.

There are certain exceptions, you think, your fingers ghosting over your blaster as the man straightens, bearing up to his full seven feet two inches in height, and it’s not that the hood really hides who he is — you picked him off on Koros Major before he even turned those burning eyes in your direction. 

It’s the horns:

Only a Nightbrother who’s been bested in battle would wear their shorn horns to demonstrate their defeat. It’s not shame; it’s an honour that they were wounded and fought their way out. And Savage has two of them lopped off mid-way up the cone thanks to a skirmish with a couple of Jedi from years back. Sure, his size is the first thing anyone would notice — but being honour-bound to wear the scar until the end of his days? That’s commitment to a code you can get behind.

Sure, he might be a possible Shadow Hand and the deadliest enforcer in Lord Maul’s emerging “alleged” criminal syndicate, but that’s for you to find out, intrepid little merc-for-hire that you are. There’s no bounty on his head, so no one’s running interference, and Savage is a guy who knows just how imposing he is… But that imperfection is like a badge. It makes him interesting. 

And you like interesting jobs: all muscle and burly sway over narrow hips, thick forearms and heavy hands. Big weapons. Wide thighs. Guys who take up space and swallow up all the light. 

You shiver.

The scrip is proportionate to the mark, you remind yourself, so you best keep your focus.

He’s moving, so you follow: becoming the shadow that clings to his heels, lightskipping across a handful of systems only to bring you back to his homeworld and to this place:

The fabled Night Market of Dathomir.

That it exists at all is part of the mystique. Between the rumours that it never reappears in the same place twice, and that it only admits those who truly need to find it, you understand now that the mystique isn’t half the appeal:

It’s a sprawling affair, multi-stories high and carved out of the rock like Gorgara Peak’s innards had been scooped out to accommodate it. Between the culinary spice merchants, the rancor hide tanners, the apothecaries offering everything from crushed gorpion pod powder for hair loss to birru wing shavings for impotence, there are permanent shops set up between the vendor tents, half-hidden behind awnings and fluttering flags advertising new miracle products. Merchant criers shout in your ear as you pass by, clamouring for your attention — Dathomiri remedies, handmade red stone pottery, Nightbrother-forged weapons enchanted with ichor whose potency fades the farther you get from the planet’s nexus. 

There’s a little bit of everything for everyone, if you know where to look, but all you need is dead-ahead: 

All seven feet and one inch of him.

You slip through and between, little more than a shadow, your quarry moving again as you pass by narrower alleys whose stone markings indicate what diversions you might find in the deeper arteries where the carved stone phallus and the markings in basic point the way to the Pleasure House, two stories up, and beyond it, up the Peak: Maul’s court and the Opress royal apartments. 

You expect that would be the direction Savage was headed, but to your surprise, he ducks through a collapsed portal, a ragged cloth barrier sagging back into place to conceal its purpose.

There’s no sign, and you hesitate.

What if it’s a trap?

Swallowing hard, you flip the safety catch on your blaster, hunch up your shoulders, and peek past the mottled fabric to find —

Nothing?

Straightening, you part the curtain and slip through after him onto a narrow, mud-stone cobbled alleyway whose walls ascend at a sheer rise. Nothing overhead save for balconies in the high, high distance — the drape of drying laundry over criss-crossing lines, desiccated vines and withered creeper spilling down the walls. Too high to climb.

It’s quiet here; like you’ve found a private alcove into a dead end, and Savage?

You shake your head, easing to the back of the hollow, your fingers brushing across red stone dust from the very solid walls: Savage is gone. 

“What the kark,” you breathe.

The air thickens, gathering into form just beyond your shoulder, and much in the way that human awareness sometimes needs a moment to catch up to manifesting magicks, the tension in the alley congeals into something hard and solid — something whose rising crown of horns casts a shadow across the wall before you, swallowing you in its penumbra.

It’s cold.

 “Lost, little one?”

You turn.

A fading doorway dissolves into the rock face behind him, taking with it a little sign that you misunderstand in your mounting panic:

Wishmonger, it reads.

You’re turned around so thoroughly, eyes lifting to the gleam of firelight eyes in a face backlit by the market lights that you react without thinking: you open your mouth to shout instead of going for your blaster. 

Not that anyone will hear you.

You blink, and in an instant, you’re level with that molten gaze, your shoulders tacked up against the wall, feet thrashing as you claw at the fist that has you pinned by the throat. The clawed tips of his fingers threaten to puncture flesh.

Savage leans in, a frown carving deeper furrows around his mouth. The strong jaw and thick neck notwithstanding, it’s a blip beyond disconnected terror that registers that the monster is handsome; that the teeth he reveals in a grimace are perfectly white and perfectly straight, because such a threat has no need for the poison lacquer. 

“Mercenary,” he rumbles. “You’re the one that’s haunted me across six systems.” 

He leans in, scenting you. You give him what he wants: a pulse of fear, and in your confusion, a plume of terrified heat —

You feel the curl of it as surely as you think your heart might explode at any moment: a choke of pressure between the legs, lit by a predator’s proximity and the way he so easily hefted you up.

“Go ahead,” you mouth at him, no air to add sound to the words, but that’s not what stalls him.

He cocks his head, gaze dropping to your grip on his fingers, and to the sleeves you wear pushed up to reveal the marks on your forearms: the tattoo on the inside of your wrist.

“Crymorah Syndicate,” he growls. 

You try for a grin that winds up more grimace.

“A spy. Foolish to risk war for a rumour.”

“But you’ve heard it,” you manage in half-mangled croaks. Somehow, he understands your meaning:

Maul’s building an empire.

“Crymorah declined an alliance,” he says. As if that’s it. 

Savage stops, his frown deepening into resolve, and withdraws — dropping you with a grunt like you were little more than a sack of meiloorun. Your soles connect with Dathomir stone, but your knees give out so you crumple, coughing. 

Even his booted feet are enormous. 

What the kark have they been feeding him?

Rubbing at your throat, you peer upwards with watering eyes, but the gleam of his gaze holds steady despite the blur of the world haloing him.

“You’re letting me go?” you rasp. 

The chill ebbs, his power withdrawing from the alley so that the only cold you feel is his indifference to an adversary who isn’t worth the trouble.

“You don’t belong here.”

“I don’t belong anywhere,” you croak, pulling your blaster. “But you do — in front of a tribunal. Someone needs to atone for the insult.”

They left your people out, and Dathomir flourished along with the syndicates that joined him: Black Sun, the Hutts, the Pykes — 

Everyone’s got deep pockets, but if Maul’s at the head of it like the whispers suggest, there will be blood to pay to alleviate inter-syndicate tensions. To say the Crymorah family heads are pissed would be an understatement. 

“What do you gain?” he asks you, all burning intensity. 

You’re risking inter-galactic incident coming here, and he knows it. 

Lips pressed together, you manage, “That’s none of your business.”

A small, barely-there smirk appears, twisting his features. Your heart kicks at your ribs at its appearance — he’s that arresting. 

“You are not consequential enough for me to pull the truth from your mind.”

Savage stares a moment further, as if you’re not threatening his life and freedom. When your hand starts shaking, it’s not because you’re unsteady, or nervous — but squeezing the trigger at such close proximity to a Force user?

Ballsy. But you’re up for anything at this point. You’re not going back empty-handed.

The weapon crumples, folding in on itself as the shot fires wild — the bolt slicing over his left shoulder and punching a scorch mark into the stone wall far, far to Savage’s left. The hunk of gnarled metal flies from your hand, smacking into the farthest point of the alley, still smoking. Your fingers tremble, and as Savage descends to crouch before you, you let out a shaky breath.

The drape of his robes fall to either side of his tree trunk legs, and while that frown doesn’t abate, something glitters in that gaze that isn’t exactly irritation.

“Do not try my patience again,” he says, and the frisson that ripples through you at his tone leaves you breathing harder, gripping at the dirt. 

Gulping a breath, you manage, “I’m supposed to bring you in for questioning before the family heads — they want to know what he’s up to… to…” You press your lips together. 

“You seem uncertain.”

You curse. “Your brother insulted them.”

“And they sent you to claim their pound of flesh.”

His frown deepens, his slow, searching consideration a perusal and not the folding over you expected for someone rumoured to be as powerful as his brother.

Savage looks you over. He could pry open your mind and overturn your thoughts for himself, but instead he asks with ill-concealed amusement:

He smirks — and kark it all, it looks good on him.

“Is this insult intentional?”

You bristle, straightening. You kick out your legs, levelling with him as you struggle to standing, slapping the dust off your kneepads. 

“A practical joke?” he tries again.

You’re nearly at eye-level with him as you stand, and when you scowl the tattoos above his eyes arch upwards. It’s too innocent on his face, melting his seriousness into a dark sort of amusement. 

“Feral sent you.” 

Savage’s chuckle is a throaty, earth-rumbling sound that curls through you at a meander. It’s so decadent that for a moment, you forget that he thinks you’re a diversion sent by one of his siblings to amuse him. 

“I am very good at my job,” you insist.

One glance at the scatter of blaster bits says otherwise.

Savage’s amusement doesn’t fade, and it’s almost like he’s mocking you when he asks, “Is your life at risk if you return with nothing, little mercenary?” 

That cuts probably too close to the truth to leave you easy.

Your eyes narrow, the promise of venom pumping your blood for just a second, and then you realize your opportunity. It’s not ideal. Hell, it’s not even sanctioned — but no one is questioning how you get your quarry; your clients are only concerning themselves with the payback itself. 

Besides, you’ve read his data file; you know all about Savage’s brothers: 

The youngest, Feral, keeps apartments in the Pleasure House to distance himself from their court in a ruse to misdirect. You know he’s Maul’s chief informant, living in the heart of the action where all important figures gather at one point or another to trade gossip and find respite through theatre or gastronomic delight, and other, more diverting pastimes of a carnal persuasion. 

And the eldest, the man himself:

Maul, formerly Darth, alleged head of a conglomerate of criminal syndicates carefully tucked under the protection and care of his… Crimson Dawn.

No one can get close to Maul, least of all Crymorah syndicate. Hence... his Shadow Hand. Here. Now. Implacable and terrifying and steady: staring at you as your chest heaves and your legs jelly at the incisive attention that creeps beneath your clothes and peels back the skin. He could tear you limb from limb, pull every dark persuasion from your mind and then shatter the rest to pieces.

Power drips from him, and yet he does not use it.

“What do you want?” Savage asks you.

“You,” you bite out, which is A Truth. 

Savage slides into a particular sort of stillness that gives you pause. 

Maybe you should clarify, but the word hangs. 

Savage tips his massive head, and rising to hover over you, his gaze smoulders, his frown deepening.

“Not like that,” you hasten to clarify, though you can taste the lie on your tongue — where did that come from? 

“Your —“ You shake your head, trying again: “Your cooperation. Your time. To prove to the five families that they haven’t been slighted —”

Flustered, you dig yourself deeper, the confession complicating itself the more you try to separate your mission from what his attention’s done to mess up a perfectly clean rendezvous and retrieval. 

You were never going to win this one, you realize. Savage huffs his amusement: him, the big brute who could snap your back one-handed, and you, the overconfident freelancer who overestimated her bounty. 

“This isn’t funny.”

“No.” 

It’s a sound that comes from his chest, rippling through the entirety of the alley and curling around your bones. You shiver. 

“There is no joke.”

He glances over his shoulder at the door that is no longer a door: only the faint outline and impression of a place that was beneath a little black sign inscribed in Paecian.

“A portent, perhaps.”

Dathomiri magicks, you recall, are sometime so imbued into the world that it’s easy to forget that not everything is as it appears, at first glance.

“That wasn’t there a minute ago,” you observe.

Savage searches you, growing serious.

“You can see the door?”

It occurs to you that you shouldn’t.

You frown. “I’ve never heard of a ‘Wishmonger’ before either.”

He goes rigid. Interesting.

“Far be it from me to decipher the currents of the Force, this meeting carries the weight of inevitability. One I will not indulge in.” 

“Look, big guy —“ you start.

But Savage interrupts, bowing down just enough so that you can see every carved mark on his face; every line and every weathered edge of his Nightbrother markings. 

“Do you know what transpires here, little one? Why people come to this place?”

You search him, intrigued. “To find things they need.”

A flicker of something in that burning gaze vanishes as quickly as it disappears. He corrects you:

“To find only the necessary directions when they are lost.”

It hangs in the density of the silence between you: a truth that shimmers at the edges a little with sincerity; something unsaid but fragile, yet. 

“All magic has a price to be paid and not all can afford it,” he tells you. “And the truest sort is rarely forgiving to those who stumble in. No tricks. No falsehoods.”

And if Maul controls the genuine article, it’s no wonder the Crymorah elders are so pissed off — 

“I haven’t stumbled,” you try to argue.

“No, you’ve fallen,” Savage says. “The Wishmonger is not one to trifle with when a request is made. I will negotiate the currency, but not the exchange. You are in the wrong place, at the wrong time, ” he tells you like it’s a warning. “Let us not tax fate.”

“I wasn’t planning on going in there —”

“You would have blundered in your effort to entrap me,” he rumbles.

“Hey, park yourself, big guy, I wasn’t —”

“You’ll find that to become indebted is a price that’s far too dear.” His frown deepens. “You are unfamiliar with the dark magicks here. Theirs is an old trade, human.”

Why your heart chooses that moment to start slamming against your ribcage, you have no idea: only the knowledge that something outside of your pay grade is transpiring right before your eyes.

Softer, he murmurs, more to himself than to you, “And I have paid the price for so long.”

His hand is enormous, and rather than choking you into oblivion like you’d expected, those massive fingers look strong enough to hang off open. He’s offers it to you like you’re somehow in need of his assistance.

Savage waits.

You don’t know what possesses you to ask, but you do: “What was the cost?”

He stares, the slightest flicker of his irises boring into you leaves you pressing backwards into the wall: trapped by a predator twice your size and ten times your ability. Your nipples pebble, heat unfurling in your belly at the myriad conclusions to a negotiation whose terms you don’t yet fully understand. 

“That is not for you,” he says.

You have one final blip of a rational thought:

What the kark.

And knowing you’ve lost, and that this is just a courtesy, you take his hand. Those heavy fingers fold around yours with a touch that’s entirely too gentle, the ease with which he pulls you to your feet sending you staggering into his robes. You bump him, but hovering over you as he is, Savage never lets go.

“If it’s information that you crave, then allow me to oblige you.” He leans in. “This is no place for your kind.”

You stiffen, the heat of his body so at odds with the ebb of cold that unfolds from him: raw power, unchecked and untethered, lifting the hair on the back of your neck.

His touch falls away, but the sensation lingers against your skin: burning.

“Leave now, while you still have the opportunity.”

He’s already at the mouth of the alleyway.

“What does that mean?” 

You can’t force your legs to move quickly enough, trotting after him, the bits of your weapon forgotten. You can’t lose him again. So you follow. 

“People disappear on New Dathomir all the time,” Savage says, returning his hood over his horns, the folds of fabric draping him as diaphanous as smoke. He looks like an enormous wraith: gleaming eyes alight in the shadow of his hood.

You can still feel what his proximity has done to you, pulsing between your legs, leaving you wanting to claw at your clothes. Raw power. Bestial ferocity contained by the will do control it. 

“Some people lose themselves deliberately, others… are perhaps less fortunate.”

Following the train of his gaze, you look over your shoulder one last time, finding the alley empty and the walls smooth: devoid of any suggestions that a shop had appeared at Savage’s will and disappeared as quickly. 

And when you turn back, pushing into the crowded thoroughfare, confused and heart thumping, you realize your failing:

A distraction. 

He’s gone.

—

How you end up lost in the Night Market of Dathomir is anyone’s guess, but you suspect that you can blame an encounter with Savage Opress for getting you all turned around. The entirety of the place soars: a netting of awnings stretched over narrow, twining alleys, shadowy alcoves with bright eyes winking open at your passage. There are trellised offerings of herbs and barrelled culinary spices, droid parts beside butchers; fortune tellers and seers, a magician pickpocketing credits from unsuspecting customers. 

A trio of witches ply their arts of divination over tiny, portable scrying pools whose mirrored surfaces are too thick and too dark to be water. You avert your gaze, uncertain what you might see in the reflection if you look too closely.

Stars overhead between the narrow crevices and cracks that show the sky — bruised — the moons’ light falling inward at a slant into the courtyards you pass. 

There’s a stall that sells teeth exclusively, and another whose carved bone flutes play no music you can hear. Another sells nothing at all, but sports a little sign that says, “Needful Things” in basic. You don’t question it. You keep moving, trying to find an exit, but uncertain how you’ll proceed when you do:

The Crymorah families are unforgiving — forget your credits, they will not accept your failure. You think of running, but where in the outer rim could you possibly go to hide?

The uncertainty leaves you unfocused, and Savage, in some respect, was right: the Night Market is a maze, and there is no wayfinder that would help you here. 

Weaponless and wide-eyed, you wander until your feet get sore — until the stalls all begin to blur, the streets look the same, and the way out never appears for you once more. 

The Market around you teems, and only your chrono tells you it’s well into the nighttime. The crowd around you may change, but the Market never closes. It only grows a little more wild, and a little more dangerous as the daytime wanes.

Your stomach rumbles.

Tired, frustrated, you find a little food stall, and using the scant credits in your belt pack, buy a slab of some grilled vegetable whose smell leaves your toes curling and your mouth wet. 

It’s some sort of mushroom steak, you think — spiced, and marinaded in something aromatic, and the vendor — who has too many teeth stuffed into his mouth — hands it to you wrapped in a little flap of waxed flimsy. 

Finding a little bench beneath a darkened alcove, the shadows accommodating as you crouch down, you bite down on the juicy red flesh of the thing, and the instant the aromatics hit your tongue, the world around you slows to a languid, stuttering crawl. A pattern on the stone floor brightens, colours swirling together. The walls begin to breathe — elongating and distending as you stare — and then start to melt in smears.

“Oh,” you say to yourself in surprise, your tongue thickening in your mouth. When you giggle, the sound comes from far away, and when you blink down at yourself, everything slows and stretches, sweet as taffy, pins-and-needles warm and pooling.

You take a deep breath, your lungs expanding, and the air is sweet. Lights sparkle, and when you roll your head back, everything feels so good that you turn on the spot, indifferent to who you brush with your fingertips when you stretch your arms out wide to the sides of your body —

The hand that catches your wrist is so big it encompasses half your forearm, and not even the sandpaper-rough fingers are off-putting: it’s just a different texture; one that slides along your arm to grasp your shoulder, and even the heavy weight that rests there is delicious. 

You sag, wanting to pour yourself into that touch.

“Hi,” you say, too bright for the darksome look that Savage wears. It pulls all his features down, smearing into swirls. Bright eyes. Strong chin. Looming shadows rising up behind him that disappear when you blink. “You’re pretty.”

When he bows down to collect the fallen meal from your feet — not stomped on, miraculously — you find yourself pressing your face into a wall of zeyd cloth and warmth, burbling happily about how he smells like fighting leathers and armour polish and amber accord and those little flowers that sometimes spurt through the cracks in the red stone. 

“Mushling —” Savage mutters, sniffing your half-discarded meal.

“Force bless you,” you tell him.

 “— is a low-grade psychoactive plant that causes prolonged euphoria when ingested by species other than my own.”

He doubles in your vision. 

“It’s tasty,” you inform him.

You blink, and the two Savages appear to frown even deeper at you. Lifting an arm that floats upwards as if on a cloud, you trace the curve lining his mouth with one of your fingertips. His skin is smooth. 

“It won’t kill you,” he mutters. “If any harm befalls you, it will likely be because you invited trouble yourself. Unwary travellers often have a knack for it.”

“But you’re here now,” you counter, rolling across the width of him, your chin lifted as you sag into his chest, wriggling a little bit to indulge in a little more of his warmth. 

He doesn’t budge, so you lift your arms and reach for his thick neck. Savage stiffens. You miss the look he gives the food stall vendor, who’s now shovelling his belongings into his cart. 

His earlobes are squishy, and you run a finger along the fleshy part where it’s as soft as the rest of him is hard.

Savage catches your wrist, swallowing your hand in his. 

Callouses create nice texture, you think from a distance. 

He mutters, “There’s no antidote. It will be worked out of the system on its own in several hours.”

“Well you’re just gonna have to look after me, aren’t ya, big guy? The whoooole time.”

The rumble of his discontent is easily misread, and your, “You purr like a kitty!” probably doesn’t land as well as you’d like, because the next thing you know, those big hands are wrapped around your waist and he’s slung you over a shoulder, leaving you dangling upside down with a great view of his ass.

It’s perfection: each mound is so round and firm-looking that you don’t stop yourself from reaching for one of them, poking him in the butt cheek with a giggle and a kick of your feet that earns a heavy hand clapping to the back of your thigh so hard that you jerk from the force of it. The bloom of pain that follows spreads from the spot and into your groin, and it might echo soreness later, but for the moment, all you’ve got is the melty throb of feeling between your legs to contend with.

And that’s nice.

“Don’t squirm,” Savage warns as he stalks off, leaving you swinging, watching, mesmerized, as the globes of his ass shuck from side to side with heavy, rigid precision as he stalks off through the Night Market.

imma tag folks (if u want me to remove u from the list lemme know slkdhfj this feels a little brazen of me to tag people ?? but everyone im tagging seems so nice and supportive and im a poor little meow meow rn so)