The energy had coursed through the orbalisks embedded in his skin, too. The creatures absorbed the power, hungrily devouring it until they became so engorged that the soft, pliant flesh of their underbellies had began to swell. Squeezed ever tighter against the unyielding chitin of their own exterior shells, they'd begun to burrow deeper into Bane. He remembered screaming as thousands of tiny teeth started sawing away at subcutaneous tissue, chewing through muscles, tendons, and even bone.
But burrowing deeper hadn't stopped the creatures from feasting on the electricity coursing through Bane's frying innards. They'd continued to expand until they had begun to pop, rupturing like overfilled balloons pinched beneath the hard shells.
Bane had stayed conscious through the torture of the electricity cooking him alive and the agony of the teeth burrowing into his flesh. But the indescribable pain from the chemicals released by the exploding orbalisks dissolving his body on a cellular level finally caused him to black out… only to wake up here.
A pair of boots stepped in beside Caleb's: the smaller feet of a woman, most likely Zannah.
"He's trying to speak," Caleb said from up above Bane's line of sight.
He tried to tilt his head again, this time managing to look up toward the pair standing over him. Zannah noticed and crouched down to raise his head and shoulders. She slid a makeshift pillow formed by her balled-up cloak underneath his neck to support him. He felt her long, thin fingers on his back as she did so.
The contact brought a realization crashing down on Bane-the orbalisks were gone! That was why he had felt the coarse blankets against his bare skin. That was why he could feel Zannah's fingers pressing against his flesh.
"Orbalisks?" he managed to gasp.
"We had to remove them" his apprentice informed him. "They were killing you."
Bane felt the world going dim again, his body exhausted by the two words he had spoken. As he lost consciousness, he felt a pang of regret for what he had lost.
To Zannah's untrained eye, her Master looked much stronger when he opened his eyes again two days later. This time he was able to turn his head slowly from side to side, taking in the surroundings of Caleb's home and the nearby presence of his apprentice.
"What happened?" he asked.
The words were faint, his voice still raw and ragged.
"Caleb healed you," she told him, adjusting the pillow she had taken from the Loranda and placed under his head and shoulders to prop him up. "He saved your life."
Four days ago such a statement would have been hard to imagine. Caleb had watched Zannah program the message drone and send it off to the Jedi, then warned her there was a strong chance Bane wouldn't survive the treatment.
She'd thought at first it might be a ploy, an excuse Caleb was giving to cover up his actions if he decided to let her Master die… or simply killed him. So she'd kept a close eye on the healer during Bane's treatment. Even though she knew there were a hundred ways he could end Bane's life without her having any clue as to what he was doing, Zannah hoped her presence might dissuade him from trying anything underhanded.
Now she realized how pointless her vigil had been. Caleb was a man of his word; he was burdened and bound by foolish notions like honor. He had promised to help Bane as long as she alerted the Jedi, and since she had held up her end of the bargain, he had made every effort to do the same.
Zannah had originally suggested moving Bane back to the Lo-randa's medical bay for the treatments, but Caleb had refused. He'd claimed the powerful energies coursing through the land around his camp gave strength to his medicine. Darovit had agreed, and Zannah, having felt the power of the place herself, had relented.
The healer had started by forcing a foul-smelling liquid he had concocted in his cooking pot down Bane's throat to counter the effects of the orbalisk toxins. Darovit had warned her that the poison was killing Bane, eating away at his body. But it was only when they began to peel away the orbalisks, beginning with the charred shells of those that had died, that Zannah understood the full scope of how badly her Master had suffered.
What lay beneath could no longer be called skin; it couldn't even be properly called flesh. A pulpy mass of green and black ichors released by the parasitic organisms mixed with oozing white pus and bloody red tissue from Bane's own body. Looking at the damage it was obvious, even to someone like Zannah, with no medical expertise, that the only thing keeping Bane alive was his power in the Force. His wounds gave off the gangrenous odor of spoiled meat, and it was all she could do not to vomit.
The next step involved removing the still-living orbalisks. The key, as Zannah had suspected, was electricity. Caleb had brewed a sticky, highly conductive gel over his fire, then used it to coat the exterior shell of each orbalisk. Next he took a long, thin needle attached to a power cell salvaged from the Loranda and inserted it into a tiny hole at the very tip of the orbalisk's plated skull. The needle pierced the soft body underneath, discharging a powerful electrical jolt to stun the creature.
This caused the orbalisk to release a small burst of solvent chemicals that weakened the powerful adhesive the creature used to bond itself to the host. With the adhesive bond weakened, the creature could be manually pried loose. The still-stunned parasites were then tossed into a large, water-filled tank hooked up to one of the Lo~ randa's power cells and killed with a final dose of electricity. The process had to be carefully repeated for each individual in the colony that had sprouted over Bane's body, and even with both Darovit and Caleb working on him the procedure had taken several hours.
The flesh beneath the living orbalisks was pale and ragged, with deep, weeping sores where it had been constantly chewed and gnawed by the parasites' tiny teeth. The wounds looked minor when compared with the grisly mess beneath the dead shells.
Once Bane was cleansed of the infestation, Caleb had rubbed a salve over his entire body and wrapped him head-to-toe in bandages.
The dressings had been changed every four hours for the first two days, the salve reapplied each time.
Zannah was impressed with Caleb's skill. Bane had been little more than a mass of dead and infected tissue when the healer had begun, and by the time the bandages came off for good Bane's ravaged body had been reborn. His skin was now a bright pink, unusually supple and extremely sensitive, though over the coming weeks she'd been told it would slowly return to a more normal color and texture.
"Caleb saved me?" Bane muttered softly. "How did you convince him?"
Zannah hesitated, not sure what to tell him. Darovit and Caleb were just outside the door; they could walk in at any moment. But even if they caught her telling Bane about the message drone, why would they care? The deed was done. Her Master was still too weak to stand, and by now the Jedi were probably less than a day away from Ambria.
"We had to tell the Jedi you were here. I sent a message telling them a Sith Lord had killed five Jedi on Tython. I told them you were with Caleb on Ambria, injured and helpless. They're coming for you."
Anger flashed through Bane's eyes and he tried to sit up, but only managed to raise his head a few centimeters off the pillow before falling back. Realizing he was helpless, her Master stared at her with accusing eyes.
"You exposed me," he said. "You betrayed me."
"I had to keep you alive," she explained, falling back on the argument she had used to make her final decision. "You still have so much to teach me."
"How can that happen now?" he demanded angrily. "The Jedi will never allow it."
Zannah didn't have an answer she could give him. Bane closed his eyes, though whether in defeat or thought she couldn't say. She could just make out Darovit and Caleb talking in low voices outside by the fire.