Dying Light
Posted on Thu Mar 26th, 2026 @ 6:49pm by Mentis & Kalen "Rex" Vickers
Edited on on Fri Mar 27th, 2026 @ 11:48pm
3,997 words; about a 20 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter VIII: Broken Chains
Location: Rooftops, Mos Entha, Tatooine
Timeline: Lowering Suns, After "The Moisture Farm"
The roof radiated heat through Rex’s boots as he hauled himself up through the shattered skylight and onto the cantina roof. The sunlight hit him like a physical weight. Even with the suns beginning their slow descent, the exposed stone still held the worst of the day’s punishment, shimmering with trapped heat and baking the air into a wavering haze.
He crouched low near the parapet and let his eyes adjust to the glare before moving.
From above, Mos Entha looked wrong. Not destroyed exactly, but abandoned in mid-motion. Market awnings hung half collapsed between buildings, casting thick shadows across the lanes. Cargo crates lay where they had been dropped. Yet another speeder sat angled awkwardly into a wall with its canopy open and one door hanging loose.
And, everywhere, there was the smell.
Out in the desert, the air had carried it away. Here, though, between close-set buildings and alleys, the rot lingered. It clung to the back of the throat and rode the dry wind between rooftops.
Rex moved first, staying low and keeping to the brightest stretches of roof where the sunlight still ruled. His steps were careful but quick, weight placed deliberately to avoid loose objects or anything that might clatter down into the streets below.
Behind him, his Rattataki companion eased himself carefully through the skylight, avoiding the sharp edges. Once he was up and out, he turned and gently summoned the GalactaWerks droid head he had pried off the main chassis into his hands and tucked it under his arms. Once secure, he squinted in Rex's direction, his own eyes adjusting to the setting suns brilliant glow.
Rex reached the edge of the first roof and paused, glancing down into the narrow lane between buildings. Two infected locals wandered below, their movements slow and uncertain in the suns. One of them bumped shoulder-first into a wall and slid along it before stopping entirely, head twitching in small, irritated jerks. Every now and again, they seemed as if they were sniffing or sensing the air, perhaps telling prey was nearer than they first realised.
"Sun’s still holding them back," Rex murmured quietly. His eyes were still red, and he sniffed quietly every few seconds or so.
"Brisck was right about that," Mentis joined him on the edge of the roof, "We must have been blessed... well, just lucky that we arrived at the hottest part of the day."
Mentis' eyes swept around and he frowned, saying, "No directly connecting rooftops, but there's a few I could help you jump over to. Which direction are we headed to the workshop?"
Rex glanced once across the rooftops, orientating himself by instinct more than memory. Even after all the years away, the layout of Mos Entha still sat somewhere deep in his bones.
"The workshop’s in the old quarter," he said, pointing across the roofs toward a cluster of lower sandstone structures two streets over. "Used to be an alley behind it. We cut across there and drop down."
"Great, great..." Mentis seemed to be putting the pieces together in his head before turning to Rex with a wavering half-smile, "Okay, I think we can do this."
He pointed to a flat roof nearby, slightly lower than The Moisture Farm's roof that would provide a clear landing point for their jump.
"I'll go first and, once I'm over, you jump as hard as you can in my direction," Mentis spoke with more certainty, clearly preferring to focus on the familiar physics of the universe, rather than the insanity of biology going on around them. It was quite comforting, "Try to focus on getting some height and I'll close the distance for you."
Then he turned away, reading his body, arching his right leg back along with his arm, ready to spring over like a lava flea.
Rex echoed him, setting his boot on the lip of the roof.
Then, the vent beside them exploded.
The metal grille burst upward in a spray of dust and rust as something small and violently fast launched out of the duct. A thin, grey shape slammed bodily into Mentis' side with a shriek of feral rage. Clawed fingers and needle teeth snapped wildly as the infected Ranat collided with him, the two of them rolling hard across the hot roof in a tangled blur of limbs and tattered cloth, away from Rex.
The human spun instantly, blaster already rising - and froze. Something stood between him and Mentis. It was a Jawa, or what had once been one. The little figure stood crooked in the glare of the suns, its brown robe hanging in torn strips that exposed the narrow cage of its ribs beneath. The fabric beneath where its head was hidden still in darkness had been sodden with old drool that had soaked through and dried stiff in the heat. Its hood hung low over its face.
The eyes beneath it glowed, but not the familiar golden glow of Jawa eyes, but a warped, angry red that flickered unevenly in the shade of the hood, and both were misshapen, at odd angles and of incorrect proportions.
It then screamed, and its tiny body burst into motion with shocking speed, robes whipping as it launched straight toward Rex across the rooftop.
A muted series of blaster shots rang out from several paces away as Mentis unloaded his small pistol into the torso of the Ranat pinning him down. The creature grunted at the impact but still held its weight upon the smaller Mentis. Black, congealed blood dripped down onto Mentis, causing his fear to slip into an angry snarl. With a grunt of exertion, Mentis blasted the humanoid rodent off himself, flinging him close to the edge of the roof.
Mentis took a look down at himself, cape now stained with the grim fluid, before casting his sharp gaze at the small weapon and casting it away.
"Pointless thing," he growled, before wrenching his arms out towards the Ranat gnashing and moaning before him and unleashing a series of thin, blue-hued lightning bolts at the former sentient. Rex had never seen him use this power before and it did not appear to come naturally to the Rattataki either, with him having to summon it in short, quick bursts of anger like an arcing circuit, some sparks missing their target and staining the sandstone roof with a sizzling crackle.
After several successful blasts, the creature ceased its movement and Mentis bent over slightly, holding his now raw and blistered fingers, the smell of scorched ozone clinging to the air. He barely had time to draw a breath before a second infected Jawa hurled itself out of the vent behind him, landing on his back with a strained, garbled screech.
Moments before, Rex had barely got the blaster up before the Jawa hit him, too. The tiny body had slammed into his chest with surprising weight, knocking the breath clean out of him as the two of them crashed onto the blistering roof. His blaster discharged wildly into the sky as they went down, the bolt vanishing uselessly into the glare of the suns.
Clawed hands scrabbled at him immediately and Rex felt the creature's ribs through the shredded robe as it clawed at his jacket, the bones sharp and wrong beneath the thin, ruined flesh. Its head snapped downward toward his shoulder, the hood falling back just enough for a thick rope of dark saliva to spill onto his collar.
The smell hit him like a hammer. More of that stench of rot - wet rot. Close enough to taste it.
"Oh kark-!"
He shoved at the thing's chest, trying to keep its snapping teeth away from his neck. The Jawa shrieked again, the sound high and warped, its misshapen eyes blazing red beneath the hood as its tiny claws tore through the fabric of his shirt.
One of the ribs punctured through the cloth and scraped his skin. Rex felt a bolt of cold terror shoot through him.
"Get it off me!" he shouted, voice cracking with real panic as he twisted violently beneath the creature.
The Jawa clawed higher, trying to drag itself toward his throat. Its breath came in wet, hungry rasps that sprayed spittle across his cheek and jaw. Rex jerked his head aside, one hand clamped against its bony chest while the other tried to force its face away.
The thing was stronger than it looked and its nails dug into his shoulder and it lunged again, jaws snapping inches from his neck, even if still largely hidden within the darkness of the hood.
"Mentis!" Rex yelled, the word tearing out of him as he bucked his body hard against the roof, trying desperately to throw the creature off before those teeth found skin. "Mentis!"
"Kinda' busy here," Mentis barked back, his voice strained as he wrestled with his own necrotic Jawa that had appeared.
Rex caught only flashes of the struggle: Mentis stumbling backward, the Jawa clinging like a parasite before the Rattataki deliberately let himself fall. The impact crushed the creature beneath his back with a sharp, wet crunch. Its grip loosened just enough for Mentis to twist free.
The Jawa sprang at him again, shrieking, but this time Mentis was expecting it and, with a wave of his hand, he sent the creature hurtling sideways. It was not a clean telekinetic throw, more like a violent shove and the Jawa sailed off the roof entirely, its scream trailing into the alley below.
He sprinted to Rex, boots skidding on the hot sandstone. With a desperate yank, he tore the second Jawa off the Human’s chest. Rex gasped as the claws scraped across his shirt, one talon nearly catching skin before the creature was ripped away.
The Jawa twisted in Mentis’ grip, snapping for his wrist.
"Nope," Mentis yelped, eyes wide as he desperately hurled it away. It was not a far throw and the Jawa skidded across the rooftop, claws scraping stone as it barely avoided tumbling over the edge. It clung there, hissing, its limbs twitching with feral hunger.
Rex did not hesitate. The moment Mentis tore the creature free of him, he rolled hard onto one elbow and snatched up his blaster with the other hand. The Jawa was still scrambling at the lip of the roof, skeletal fingers clawing desperately at the sandstone as it hissed up at them, red eyes burning beneath its tattered hood.
Rex fired. The first bolt struck one of its hands, vaporising the thin wrist in a flash of light and charred bone. The Jawa shrieked, the sound high and broken, but the other hand held fast.
Rex fired again and the second bolt smashed into the remaining forearm, tearing it apart in a spray of blackened fragments. The creature’s grip failed instantly. For a brief moment the tiny body hung there, robes fluttering weakly in the hot wind - and then it dropped.
The scream dwindled quickly as the corpse tumbled into the alley below, ending with a distant, wet impact somewhere out of sight.
Rex stayed where he was for a second, blaster still raised, chest heaving. The smell of the creature still clung to his clothes and he wiped frantically at his collar and shoulder as if the rot might somehow soak through the fabric.
"You see that!?" he snapped, voice tight with lingering panic. "You see what that thing was trying to do!?" He shoved himself up onto his feet, still breathing hard, eyes flicking toward the vent the creatures had come from and then across the surrounding rooftops. "Next one gets within reach of me," he muttered darkly, tightening his grip on the blaster, "I'm shooting the roof out from under it."
There was a short pause. Whilst the sound of some other creatures was carrying across the heat towards them, they didn't sound near - and Rex's shoulders lost a bit of their tension.
"Thanks, man," he finally wheezed towards Mentis, hunching forward and resting his hands on his legs, now letting himself catch his breath.
Mentis stepped towards him and eyed Rex's clothes, clearly spying his umber skin through the clawed holes in his clothes, although the epidermis was fortunately intact with no blood drawn.
"I should have got over sooner," he went to reach out a hand, but stopped himself, now looking instead at his sore fingertips, "This is all complete madness: how do we fight things that don't stay dead?"
He did not await an answer from Rex, instead casting his gaze across the rooftops again, squinting as the rapidly sinking suns glared into his mis-matched eyes.
"I suppose we carry on running for now. Try to reach the shop and get some answers, if there are any to be had," he responded to himself, "Come on, I'll try that jump again before more emerge."
Lining himself up again with the same ledge as before, the Rattataki stretched back once more before leaping forth.
It had taken longer than Rex had hoped. The rooftops of Mos Entha were never meant to be a clean path across the town and the heat of the sinking suns pressed down on them the whole way. Twice he nearly slipped on loose stone that had cracked away, and once they had to flatten themselves against a parapet while something small and wrong skittered across the roofline ahead of them. Another time, a thin shape burst from a hatch and forced Rex to fire a quick pair of shots that sent the creature tumbling back into the alley below. The running, the jumping, the heat, Brisck’s death and the lingering terror of infection gnawed at him all at once. By the time the old quarter finally rose up ahead of them, his legs felt heavy and his breath came rough in his chest.
The balcony of the old workshop appeared between two taller sandstone buildings, exactly where memory said it would be.
Rex hauled himself over the final lip of roof and dropped onto the upper landing, boots striking the dust-coated stone with a dull thud. The faded doorway stood exactly as it had when he had last seen it, the metal frame dulled by years of sand and neglect. He crouched beside the old lock plate and pried the panel loose with practised fingers, exposing the simple wiring beneath. For a moment his hands hovered there, remembering, and he bridged the contacts.
The mechanism clicked softly and the door slid inward, slowly, with a dry scrape. The upper level of the Vickers shop opened before him. The small living space had been stripped bare over the years by whoever had passed through looking for salvage. The furniture was largely long gone, the walls marked with dust lines where things had once hung. A cracked table still sat near the far wall and the old kitchenette had been pulled half apart, cabinets hanging crooked where scavengers had searched for anything worth taking.
Rex stepped inside without speaking. He moved straight through the living area and toward the interior stairwell, not letting himself look too long at the empty space where too many memories still lived. The narrow steps creaked faintly beneath his boots as he descended to the lower floor.
The workshop waited below, where dust lay thick across the floor, but otherwise the room looked almost exactly as he remembered leaving it. Old droid chassis lay half disassembled across workbenches. Crates of scavenged parts had been opened and rummaged through but not entirely emptied. A swoop bike frame rested on a stand near the back wall, its engine block removed. Podracer components sat stacked in one corner beneath a tarpaulin that had long since stiffened with age.
It smelled the same, too. Hot metal, old lubricant and sand. For a moment, Rex simply stood there in the doorway, staring into the quiet workshop his father had once filled with noise and motion.
The smell reached him properly a moment later - not the rot of the town outside, not the dust and abandonment, but the deeper scent beneath it all. Burnt wiring and old coolant. Lubricant soaked into the grain of the benches after years of work, and the smell of hot metal that had clung to this place for as long as he could remember. Even the smell of old tar and cigarra smoke that had lingered in his father's clothes.
For a moment, he was not standing in a dead workshop in a dead town - he was a boy again, small hands inside a droid chassis while his father leaned over the bench behind him, pointing with a grease-stained finger and telling him which coupling to pull next. The memory arrived so suddenly it knocked the breath out of him, and a small, helpless smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before he could stop it.
Then, the weight of it all crashed back in. Rex reached out and caught the edge of the workbench to steady himself. His fingers tightened against the edge, the strength running out in a worse way than it had outside. The workshop blurred as his eyes filled and he blinked hard, but the tears came anyway, spilling over despite his effort to keep them back.
For a few seconds he simply stood there, one hand gripping the counter like it was the only solid thing left in the galaxy, breathing slowly through the grief that had waited years to catch up with him.
"Home..." came the now familiar voice of his Rattataki companion, "It must carry so many crystallised memories."
Mentis stood watching Rex from the stairwell. He did not rush to interfere, allowing the moment its weight.
"I can only imagine what it means to be here now," the pale humanoid continued, stepping down and displacing the gentle layer of dust and sand lining the floor, "But I do know that the things we run from never truly lose their power over us."
Outside, darkness was now firmly settling in and the shambling, disjointed daytime sounds of the undead residents of Mos Entha had begun to grow more energetic and organised. The crunch of footsteps on the sand outside could almost be mistaken for normal foot traffic if it were not for the wheezing groans that punctuated each re-animated movement.
Yet, here in the dark interior of the Vickers' shop, they felt very alone. After a slow, deep breath, Mentis spoke again.
"What really happened back here, Rex? Why didn't you stay?"
Rex's hand stayed on the workbench as he thought on Mentis' question, fingers still curled tight against the edge as if he had forgotten they were there. He let out a slow breath through his nose, head dipping slightly, eyes still glassed over as he stared at nothing in particular.
"I did stay," he said at last, voice quieter than it had any right to be. "Long as I could." He swallowed, jaw tightening, and dragged his hand away from the counter, wiping it once down his trouser leg as though grounding himself back in the present. "Ma died here," he went on, eyes flicking briefly around the workshop, not really seeing it now but remembering it. "Right out there in the front. Some idiot smuggler thought this was a good place to hide, and brought half the town’s problems through the door with him. Blaster fight broke out, and..." He exhaled sharply through his nose. "That was that."
Rex moved around, found a chair missing one leg but still standing, and carefully sunk onto it, legs splayed as some of the exhaustion from the running and gunning caught up with him. His back hurt and his legs hurt. He was as tired as a hard-ridden bantha, not that there was any true reprieve here.
"He never left after that," Rex then added, softer now. "Could’ve. Should’ve. But, he wouldn’t. Said it was her place. Said leaving meant losing her twice." A faint, humourless smile tugged at his mouth. "Always thought that was stubborn as hell."
His gaze dropped to the floor, to the dust, to the scattered parts that had once been work.
"I wanted out," he admitted. "Wanted more than this. More than sand and broken droids and waiting for the next bad day to walk through the door. Thought I could earn enough, come back, drag him off this rock whether he liked it or not." His throat tightened slightly, the words slowing. "I, uhh... didn’t come back in time."
Silence settled around him for a moment, heavy but not empty.
"Don’t even know if it was Company or someone they paid off, or just this place doing what it always does to people who stay too long." He shook his head once, sharp, as if cutting the thought short. "So I left," Rex finished simply. "Again. And kept leaving. Figured if I didn’t stop moving, nothing could catch up with me."
His eyes wandered back up to Mentis meaningfully, thinking of their unexpected meeting on Nar Shaddaa, the conflict with Seven-Gill, losing his ship on Korriban, the hijinks on Naboo, and even the madness in Bastion space and then on Cloud City.
"Guess you can never tell what cards you're gonna be dealt though, huh?"
Mentis had slowly been approaching and now lowered himself down to one knee to be at Rex' eye height.
"Rex..." he breathed gently, voice losing some of its composure to reveal the rougher street urchin beneath, "You've held that in all this time? All that guff about cards, cons and Krayt dragons and this is where I really find you..."
The Rattataki sighed and sank down beside Rex, the kneeling posture feeling too much effort.
"So, if we both can't run from our problems, then where does that leave us? Hopeless and messed up?" Mentis chuckled faintly, "At least you dared to come back."
Rex let out a quiet breath, something softer than before, the edge worn down by finally saying it aloud. His hand lingered where it had fallen between them, then shifted just slightly, almost without thinking, brushing against Mentis’ arm as his eyes held there a moment too long. "Yeah," he said under his breath. "Maybe... that’s where it leaves us." A faint, crooked half-smile, still somewhat sad, tugged at one side of his mouth. "Not alone."
The air seemed to settle around them, the noise of the dead city held at bay for just a heartbeat longer. Rex did not pull away. His gaze flicked briefly to eyes, something unspoken hanging there. "Could’ve ended up anywhere in the gal-"
The sound hit like a rupture.
A deep, warped roar tore through the streets outside, shaking dust loose from the walls and dragging the moment apart with it. It was not just infected like they had encountered before - it was larger.
Rex froze for half a second, then pulled back sharply, instinct snapping back into place as his head turned toward the hatch. The scraping, the heavy impact of something moving through debris, the wet snarling breath of it carrying even through the walls. His jaw tightened. "That ain't normal," he muttered, already rising, whatever had almost happened gone as quickly as it came.
Mentis watched Rex a moment before springing up too and carefully sliding towards a gap in the boarded windows. The light had left the streets now. Only the faint remnants that managed to weave between the buildings. Outside, the shadows now allowed the infected to move more freely.
"There are more now," the Rattataki whispered across the room, "But I can't see..."
With a start that almost had him tripping over the counter, Mentis sprung back, catching himself at the last moment so that he did not crash over...
TBC
MENTIS
▬ Force Lightning Increase
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