It turns out "whirlwind off at top speed in a random direction" is as bad a navigational strategy as it is good an escape plan. 

As fitting as a tornado in a desert is, this should have been a tundra.   He can't have gone far enough to be in the South.

And yet it seems he has.  ...But that's a blessing, is it not?  By the time the Hunt can get a sorcerer here - he'll be ready.

He steps out.  After only a few minutes, he smiles.  Nobody in sight.  Very well, then.

He reaches down and touches the ground - reaching for Essence as well - strange, foreign Essence... but it will do.  As he stands, caste mark now burning bright, a mass of clay emerges and shapes itself into a servant, man-sized (or at least mortal-sized), before him.

Stupid, slow, yes.  Worthless on the battlefield.  But strong.  Stronger than any Exalt, even.

He motions, the servitor walks off into the distance. Minutes later, it's back with ten tons of sandstone.  He always forgets quite how strong.

And two hours later, the Solar and his servant have built - well, certainly not a house.  A serviceable shelter, at least, though; and a large one - mostly of sandstone, given the environment.

Benches, a table... very well. Now to get to work.

He hardly notices the servant's return to the earth at the appointed time.  Nor much else.  This work is too important, and though he is yet to know how, this reprieve from the Hunt will let him finish it.  It simply must.

Pradnakt approaches, traveling through the familiar areas near her home to the merely explored, and then to unexplored places that she knows only from Force-sense. It doesn't take very long for her to be back in range of the disturbance - she thinks, but isn't sure, that it's a person, now. Not a Sith. Not a Jedi. Not human. Certainly doing something with the Force. Too strange to be any surer. She rides on, keeping her own Force presence muted and small.

She slows as she makes her final approach, watching for signs that she's been noticed.

Artifice is hard work.  But work the Solar is well-practiced at.  And there wasn't much left of this particular project before the Hunt found him.

And so, after a few hours, his four-foot long, four-inch wide reaver of orichalcum is forged and attuned.

He thinks back to his first blade.  As a mortal.  Forged over far too long.

If he were still that same boy, he would have died today.  Relying on mundane tools, on time, on the fairness of the world.

But an Exalted need not do so.  He slashes at the air briefly, testing what he knew regardless to be true.

This will do.

He breathes, steps outside, and looks around.

His surroundings are much the same as the last time he saw them, though night has fallen as he was working.

If he's very, very perceptive, he may notice that there's a spot on the horizon that seems to make his eyes slide away from it.

He isn't.

Swish swish, glow glow.

Today just keeps getting stranger. (That's not a lightsaber; what is it?)

Pradnakt stops the speeder most of a mile away, leaving it behind a stone pillar, and drops the unnoticeability effect to approach on foot from there, 'saber lit but held low.

"Most of a mile away" still isn't quite close enough for Walker to notice the unexpected visitor, but "some of a mile away" certainly is.

He's still going to wait for them to introduce themselves first, though.  That's just polite, and they certainly don't look Dragon-Blooded.

She has her Sith aura out, but low, as she comes into range: a vague unease, a simple announcement that she's someone to be wary of. "Hello!" she calls, stopping far enough away that even her drawn saber isn't an overt threat.

If he notices, he isn't particularly making it obvious.  He returns the greeting, however - in the usual Solar fashion.  If they are a disguised Terrestrial, he might as well get a chance to test out the new daiklave, after all.

"Greetings indeed! I am Walker In Mists Untold, Chosen of the Sun, Sorcerer of the Emerald Circle, Forger of Artifacts -" he lifts the reaver and puts a touch of Essence through his anima to make sure the visual effects are appropriately impressive "- and occasional whirlwind.  You are?"

"Lord Pradnakt. Sith. I've never seen your species before."

"...Sith?  And if you think we're of different species, then I suppose I could say the same."

"I'm human, just Force-trained - I suppose it's not impossible you've never met one before, though I don't know how you'd've gotten here without at least hearing of us. Or how you're speaking Basic."

He seems somewhat relieved.

"Oh, an enlightened? Salinan, I take it?  Are the Sith an academy, then?  Or did you do it the hard way? ...And I'm speaking High Realm."

"There is a Sith academy, but I've never been. I wouldn't call being personally trained 'the hard way', though. We're talking past each other, I think."

(She recalls that her 'saber is lit, and deactivates it, though she doesn't put it away entirely.)

"Perhaps. You could come in, if you'd like, and have a seat - though I don't have much more than that to offer you presently.  ...Where am I, actually?"

(He's still sort of idly playing with the shiny new artifact, but not in any intentionally-threatening way.)

"Thank you. The planet is called Lapetcher; the nearest city is Kinkardine, but it's a few days' travel from here. Lapetcher's part of the Sith empire, but more or less in name only, it's unlikely to matter."

"The planet. What does that mean?"

Sincere confusion.

"...the planet. Everywhere you could get to from here by walking or swimming or flying, if you could walk or swim or fly forever without getting tired. If you want to go to a different planet, you need a spaceship."

"...You're saying there's something hidden deep underground that doesn't have entrances, and you have a Charm to pass through the stone?  Something like that, at least?"

"No, the middle of the planet is part of it too; to get to other planets you start by going up. And they're not hidden or anything, they're just very far away, and there's no air for most of it."

"The middle...? No, I meant under.  But I think I see what you mean.  Which raises the question, again... where am I?  ...Is this some trick of the Wyld?"

He looks over Pradnakt for a moment, searchingly.

"No, I think you're real."

"I'm reasonably sure I'm real, yes." She seems amused, then serious. "I don't know how you got here, though, if you're not from Lapetcher to begin with; I just saw you go through the edge of my Force-sense range, I didn't see you arrive."

"Oh, I just rode a tornado.  Not sure how it took me so far, though."

"If you were moving in a fairly conventional way, and it took you anything less than six years to get here - I'm not sure how the translation is working, but that should at least give you an idea of how long - then something besides just that has to have happened."

"Then I suppose something did. The Spiders playing tricks again?"

"Never heard of 'em."

"The Pattern-Spiders. Which weave the Loom of Fate."

"Ah. Maybe. Nothing big enough for me to notice, but that's not really my strength." She shrugs.

"You noticed me, didn't you?"

"Yes, but Force-senses are my strength; precognition isn't the same at all. What is, not what will be."

He looks over her again, then smiles. "Fair enough.  So what happens now?  Is there an Empire that's going to come hunt me down here too?"

"If they find out about you, you'll be in some trouble, yeah. Fortunately Lapetcher's a backwater; I've been here eight or nine years now and they haven't bothered me. As long as you leave me and mine alone, and don't try to keep slaves or anything, I doubt you'll have any problems."

"...Huh. The Empire here hunts down slavers?  Strange - 'planet?' - you live in."

"No, I hunt down slavers. Here, anyway, if nobody else gets around to it first. Slavery's illegal on this planet, that's a big part of why I picked it."

"Huh. Are you sure you aren't a Lunar or something?  No animals you turn into?"

"Nope. Shapeshifting's theoretically possible, I suppose, but as far as I know nobody's figured it out. And that wouldn't have anything to do with it, anyway."

"The Lunars figured it out Ages ago." The capital 'A' is audible.  "Well, one Age, at least."

He smiles briefly.

"Well. I don't particularly like the idea of waiting to die in a desert here.  Especially since I won't be dying any time soon.  Anyone you need help to go hunt down?"

"Not as such - if you want something to do, I can call in a couple favors and point you in a direction, but unless you've cracked immortality, that's probably not what you're looking for. On the other hand, if you just don't want to be bored, it sounds like we're well ahead of you for science; I can get you some books."

"Do you mean old age immortality or not getting stabbed immortality?"

"The stabbing one." She pats her lightsaber.

"We're pretty good at it on an isolated basis, but that's not quite the same thing."

"Yeah. If you pick fights with enough Sith, eventually someone will get you. I was joking, though; the real thing you'd need to worry about would be being captured, and that really wouldn't go well for you. Better to stay away, whether that means staying here or heading for the outer rim or something."

"That isn't how Solars work."

Shrug. "Okay, so how do Solars work?"

"Perfectly."

He laughs.

"The Sun chooses us.  For being the type of person who is willing to do great things."

She doesn't look impressed. "Well, if you want to go fight the Empire, I'm not going to stop you. But they aren't above trying to torture you into working for them, consider yourself warned."

"Yeah, maybe I should get a Circle together before I try that one.  ...Okay, so. What else is there?"

"If you don't like slavery, the obvious thing would be to go bother the Hutts, they're pretty enthusiastic about it, worse than Sith are. Merchants, not fighters. Or you could head for the Outer Rim - there's no big political units out there, it's anybody's game, so there's all kinds of things going on. Or the Jedi, but that doesn't sound like quite your speed; they're the other kind of Force users, and they're not exactly better at morality than Sith, but they're a lot more subtle about it."

He is lost in thought for a few moments.

Then he appears lost in thought for several more, as he focuses his attentions on the Sith. 

If she is watching through some sort of magic-sight, she will see him drawing Essence - but it is inwards; he is improving himself, not attacking her.

He thinks back to what he's heard, to everything he's seen today.  He closes his eyes for a moment.

And he sees someone, through his-eyes-but-not-his-eyes.  A so-called ruler who could not bear the throne, could not bear the sacrifices he had to make.

And so, he convinced himself they were not true sacrifices, that those lost were but his possessions to use as he wished.

He breathes.

He opens his eyes, looking at - or through? - Pradnakt.

She is not the same as him.  But, nevertheless...

"Tell me, Pradnakt, if you would.  What, precisely, is a Sith?"

There's a new tension around her eyes, when he looks at her again, even before he speaks.

"We're Force-users. The Force is - you seem to be doing something slightly orthogonal to it; I'm not sure how much sense this will make to you. But it's about living things, and to a lesser degree all physics; we use it to affect those, or to be affected by them. What we know how to do varies - it sounds like powerful people where you're from are divided into groups with known abilities; that's not true of Sith, beyond a few basic things we can all do. We're - the law, for Sith, is that we can do whatever we like until someone kills us for it; we're the type of people who can survive that, but we're mostly not the type of people who can avoid being corrupted by it, because people mostly aren't, and the Force itself makes that harder."