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~King of the Dragonfish: Chapter 7~
Obi-Wan uses a faint tendril of force to brush over his kyber, sending the animus of it his affection. It murmurs back at him, ill at ease to be handled by the energy signature it knows as Maul.
With a sigh, the jedi holds the hilt out. “Kneeling wasn't in the agreement.”
The other man sways closer, tense and watchful.
“It would please me to see you on your knees,” the sith says, reaching out and lifting the unlit saber from his palm.
Obi-Wan leans back on a hip, and crosses his arms. “I'm sure it would. Beat me up some more if you must, but I won't kneel to a sith lord willingly.”
Maul squints at him, calculating, and he has the uncomfortable realization that the other man may have simply taken that as a challenge.
“Hmmm…” The half dragonfish hums, twirling Obi-Wan's saber between his fingers, then igniting it.
He can feel the kyber song shudder. It does not want to be wielded in darkness.
Maul makes a swift strike, stopping a matter of inches from his hips. “Perhaps I should take your legs as you took mine… would that not be fair?” The man sneers, “Surely you jedi care about fairness.”
“No,” Obi-Wan counters, not giving an inch despite the sputtering heat of his own blade too close to his side, crackling as it resists this use. “The jedi code isn't concerned with being fair, only just.”
Maul grins. The defiance only seems to please him.
The dragonfish sith extinguishes the blade and sways backward on his tail, retreating to the water's edge. “I will return, and then I will take you to a different cave. Be prepared to go, jedi. I will drag you under either way.”
“Wonderful,” Obi-Wan drawls as Maul backflips into the water, hardly making a splash, “It's a date.”
Alone again, unarmed again, the jedi prisoner scowls and goes to lurk beside the magma ball. It's only mildly warm now, the cooled shell being too good of an insulator. The center of it is likely still fluid, but it's thermal radiance is diminished. Obi-Wan still leans back against it, plotting.
He had been too stressed on that first day to pay much attention to the pathway Maul had taken from open sea to this particular cave as he kidnapped Obi-Wan to it. An oversight on his part. They would be going to a new one though, and as much as he isn't looking forward to the blasted cold, it would provide an opportunity to learn some of the area.
He could pay attention to the path between here and there, and then, maybe in a day or two, find a way to make Maul consider the new cave to also be an unacceptable cell. The sith would move him again. Another opportunity.
It would take time, cunning, and no small amount of manipulation, but if he could map out enough of these caves, he may be able to learn a way out.
The next problem would be getting all the way to the surface, slowly enough to not die of drowning or diver’s sickness.
One problem at a time.
Obi-Wan flips where he's leaning on the magma rock, attempting to warm his front side in advance of this next trip. That's how Maul finds him, practically hugging the misshapen ball of it.
“Jjjedi,” the sith calls to him from the water. “Come.”
Rather than waste energy being difficult when he wants to be focused and aware for the trip to the next cave, Obi-Wan opts to approach the water himself, and -with a grimace- take a deep breath and hop in. He manages to not gasp from the immense chill by a small margin of success. The temperature is bitterly cold, shocking even when he'd prepared.
Regardless of the chill, it's beautiful and alive down here. The seaweed drifts like tall, ribbon grass. The moss glows white and blue. Little fingerling fish with translucent bodies school around pink coral and porous stone.
Amid the beauty, the sith swims over to him, black and red and incongruous with it all… yet a part of it. A monster from above with dual citizenship on the ocean floor.
Maul swishes up to him, fast and graceful, and grabs his tunics before taking off.
‘Well,’ Obi-Wan thinks as he relaxes into the hold, ‘at least he isn't coiling around me like a vice this time.’
Maul glides them through the water, into a small tunnel that opens up into a larger one after only a few feet. Obi-Wan can see it going off to the left and right, lit by the moss. The sith takes them left, around a curve in the tunnel. The path splits into a dark corridor. They go left again, then right.
He hopes they arrive quickly, he'd like to breathe soon.
They go up, across the open sands of a massive cave the size of the senate chamber. The space is brightly lit by orange crystals and purple fish that glow in neon stripes.
He's running out of breath.
Their path leads though a hole in the wall. Obi-Wan looks upward, hoping to see an air pocket…
There isn't one.
Alarmed, he wacks Maul in the chest and gestures at his mouth. Where in the blazes are they going? He needs air! Even with the lungs of a swordfighter and the aid of the force, he has to-
Maul presses their mouths together, and breathes into him.
‘What,’ he thinks dumbly. The jedi master feels six different things at once. His thoughts are mangled by the chaos.
Now his lungs are overful, but the edge is taken off from his need to inhale. Obi-Wan lets some of the air escape him, making a cascade of silvery bubbles erupt around their faces. Maul does it again. A second stale breath fills him.
Oh. Right, yes, okay, the sith has made himself into a rebreather.
Obi-Wan breathes out again…
…and the Dragonfish sith gives him air once more.
… and again.
… and again.
They breach a water surface and Obi-Wan opens his eyes, blinking owlishly.
When had he closed them??
'Drat,' he thinks, dismayed.
… he'd lost track of their path.
Maul lifts him onto shore, and he feels heat at his back. Obi-Wan rolls towards it before he's even got his bearings, shivering and disoriented.
Mmmmm. Warm.
“This shall serve. A gorogoro cannot pass the threshold to enter unless it is juvenile, the door is too small,” Maul declares, sounding pleased with himself.
“That's nice,” Obi-Wan tells him, trying to get as close to the fresh magma ball as possible without burning himself. He shrimps around it with a sigh.
“You will drink. There is fruit. I shall hunt, while the magma is still hot enough to cook on. Speak your preference, Kenobi, or I will simply bring you crab.”
“I love crab,” he tells the wonderful black stone before him, “but I've no seafood cracker.”
The sith snorts, “You are an idiot,” the man tells him.
With a small splash, he's gone.
Obi-Wan's desire to be warmer fights with his desperate need to hydrate, until finally he gets up and at least looks for the supposed fruit.
There, not five feet away, is a massive pile of coconuts and laundry. He squints at it, making sure he's seeing it right. Did the oxygen deprivation do something to him…?
No, indeed, it's a pile of coconuts and laundry. There's even a laundry line and clothespins mixed up in it.
“Why-” he starts, then shakes his head, “No, nevermind. Let's see if I can split a coconut with the force.”
He can, but it spills the majority of the milk everywhere. Obi-Wan screws up enough coconut crackings to get his clothes covered in it, but who cares? The swim here might've cleaned off most of the octopus viscera, but he is still wet anyway. What's a little more?
The trick, it turns out, is drilling a hole in the top with a sharp rock, and drinking from that.
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