A Sum of Lies

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]~Soon[/SIZE]
[SIZE=10pt]“G’won. Get the bastard to his feet.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He couldn’t see. Not well, at least. Blood had fallen to his eyes and stung their sensitivity. The ground where he rested, cheek down, was blurred into brackish mires of cobble-grey and mud dark as pitch. Trying to turn over off the pain that wracked his left side, rows of nearby tall shops were no better but blocky impressions. Hazy windows, choppy doorways, frightened witnesses peering from beneath awning rain catchers. Rain… The lad lifted his chin off the cobble. It was pouring for the day, forecasted to last through ‘till the next weekend. Droplets the size of swollen marbles stung his brow and temples. Tremulously, he tried pushing off the ground to stand.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He saw the motion too late. A steel-toed boot cracked into his jaw, exploding pain behind eyes. It caught and turned him over onto his back with a muddy splash. Blood flecked his teeth, and the boy counted himself lucky he hadn’t accidentally bitten off his tongue. Churlish laughter sounded. To right, down. Down by his ankle. He tried sweeping the laughing man off his feet but was too slow. Too inebriated with hurt. The boot sole found his shin and pushed back his effort, then wound up and thudded hard into the small of his back. More pain. More lights bursting in the back of his mind. It was enough for him to loose a gruff whimper, sagging limply. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Lookit ‘im. Still tryin’ to stand and give a go, eh? Huh…!”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]It was true. The lad sucked in wet air and came over onto his knees and palms, expression grit in concerted effort. Before any further progress could be done, blows fell on his back and skull harder than the slapping rain. Axe-handles cracked his shoulders, as dagger pommels worked into the meat of his spine and backbone. Fists followed, slugging across his kidneys, boots then that drove the breath from his lungs. Dazed, vision spinning, it was all he could do avoiding the inclination to violently hurl. There was no difference between which was mud-water and which was his blood. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Huh, enuff o’ that. She’ll be wanting to see him now, I think. Up he goes.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Gruff, calloused hands latched around his arms and tugged him free of the muck-mire. The lad could see now: a long avenue lined with cheap ferrocrete cobble beneath his boots, buildings of wood, steel, and stained glass panes that rose high as old crags. The way was lit by tall posts of twisted pig-iron, strip-lamps the colour of sodium. Every doorway and alley seemed lined by tall figures cast in tar-shadows, eyes white and blinking. Wide, white, blinking, undeterred by examples of violence. The boy blinked back, dragged along, boot toes catching in uneven cobble-bricks and deceptive rain puddles.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Ahead was a civilian square, patterned in perfect symmetry. Two hundred broad meters in any direction, criss-crossed with foot traffic streets and avenues that led off to neighborhoods and mercantile quarters. This morning, it’d been emptied. Save for a small crowd of tall men and women dressed in gang-colours: off-white, leather brown, sashes of satin black, and silver caps. Each was armed, with vibro-axe and long dirks, holstered with pistols at the hip. They stared impassively at the bleeding boy being hurried along, man-handled, and tossed to puddles by their boots. He was shivering now; water had soaked him through to the bone and chills wracked him. Lacking the talents to warm himself by esoteric means, all he was want to do was push it from his mind. It took a moment, the gang-crowd watching, the boy staggering to his legs.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He came face to face with their ‘Ring-Leader’. Shaggy-face, bearded, mopped with an unkempt crop of brown hair framing piercing black eyes. The man’s frame was adorned with plating, ‘cross the chest and shoulders, down the sweep of his back, connecting via an ancient exo-skeletal system that was rigged directly to feeding off his biometric data. Polished induction ports, framed by inflamed skin, dotted his throat and naked arms. One hand idly toyed with a micro-edged vibrosword. The other, a length of double-edged damascene steel, some modification of the old katar template. It was a man the boy knew and should have expected to encounter, but found himself disappointed all the same. He knew his face but it was not the one he sought.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“She asked me to deal with this,” He said, voice gruff, sonorous. “I told her I coulda done that ages ago, but for some reason, you gave her cause to hesitate.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Stenwulf…” The lad grunted.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You jus’ had to mind your business,” Stenwulf cut him off. “Wasn’t none of yours firstly, but then again, kin’s a funny thing.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Where is… Where is she…?” The boy spluttered, lips dripping rainfall.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=10pt]“Gone off, none of your concern anymore.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The unlit cutting-edge of his polished blade rose, tweaked the lad’s chin up a few degree’s higher. The sword swept back and came on, slapping him across his nose with the dull flat. “You only need to worry ‘bout me and us here now. Killed off a few of us. More then a’few. Killed off some I’d trade a hundred of you back for, boy. Had no right to slaying them.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I… Disagree…” The lad replied in turn, spitting blood from his tongue, nose-bridge reddened and stinging. “You think that… Somehow… That camaraderie excuses you… From justice? Between… The two of us… I am not the worse idiot here…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Shut it,” Stenwulf growled. The gang keeping to his flanks spread out into an even circle of some thirty bodies, impassive still though they brimmed with an unspoken, ire-laced contempt. “For your grief against us…? For putting Guen on the run? I’m giving you a chance to die on your feet. ‘Least in someway, that might make her proud. For once.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Something was thrown off his left peripheral, skittering through clay troughs of soaked earth and broken ferrocrete cobble. Stenwulf backed off by a handful of paces, running his arms through a fluid warm-up. Sword and katar worked in a liquid figure-eight, scattering spats of water and light, as the man-bear that held them tightly braced for the coming contest. The boy glanced to the tools resting by his ankle: a durasteel tomahawk and a long-dagger fashioned from chipped smoothstone. Weapons with the aesthetics of tools, brutally elegant, simplistic and raw. The lad bent and gathered them into his cut hands, hucking a gust of wispy fog-breath. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Anything to say?” Stenwulf called.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…No,” And then the boy broke into a fast charge and hurtled on at the waiting killer.[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]Outer Rim Territories – Saijo System[/SIZE]
[SIZE=10pt]~Saijo[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“My days grow long and short in equal measure. Rosa Mazhar has brought me into a fold of wanderers or Vagrants, as she prefers. She told me that I and they were quite alike. I have not found reason yet to argue with her. Circumstance and belief has forced each of us into isolation. We are people without nation or monarch, preferring to answer only to ourselves. Ori’Vod is our Admiral by default. I’ve not seen her face nor heard her voice but she is respected. Her word is law. You do not compromise the Vagrant fleets. You do not harm the innocent. The consequence of breaking either ruling is said to be harsh. I do not doubt it.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]We work hard to maintain our vessels. What we lack in resource, we excel in creativity. In ingenuity. If there is a solution to a hardship, I have faith it will be found. Making do with what is provided is the motto of every day. Rosa seems content. And so I will remain content. Though, for a little while, we will have to remain parted. The Vagrant fleets allow word of mouth to travel quickly and discretely. I have been asked to come and resolve a private matter, on a realm called Saijo. The world once belonged to no one. Then the Nagai came. The Tofs followed on their heel. And then Darth Krayt took the world and forged it into a ball of black steel. It has been lost to the Empire for generations now. The Nagai and Tof have returned and have earnestly resumed their racial vendettas. I do not know what it is I will encounter. I have promised Rosa to be careful.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]I have not told her of my sense of anxiousness.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]~Seroth Ur-Rahn[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I appreciate your sense of candour, in helping to attend to this…” A voice said. “…Issue.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The lad sat in a chair trimmed with satin folds, seating pulled tight with leather upholstery died the colour of dark cherry. His accommodations for the moment was a decorated office space, twenty meters in length by ten wide, and lined with wroshyr-wood paneling. Spaced a meter apart were decorative weapon mounts: ancient blunderbuss rifles and old gunpowder carbines arrayed alongside slug-magazine bullpups. Each was immaculate, chased with plated platinum and precious metals, plating etched in immaculate free-hand designs. Attention was kept centered by a wide desk some nine meters long, rowed with monitor-banks, holo-emitters dimpling the polished quartz surface. The boy may have been sitting in the quarters of a noted arms dealer. For all he knew, he may have been. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He’d come to Saijo, an Outer Rim world that once housed some of the Empire’s most daunting fortresses. Yet, Darth Krayt’s ‘empire triumphant’ lost their grasp. It belonged to no one now; Nagai and Tof, ancestral enemies, waged their petty guerilla wars, cycling through bouts of violence. Mifune was the de facto capital, source of import trade and export profits. A rare demilitarized zone, policed by private militia. Street fighting was no more tolerated than the plague. Any Nagai or Tof found in violation of weapon laws were dealt with harshly. Those found guilty of engaging in running firefights were brought outside the city gates, shot, and left for their warriors to come retrieve. Despite truly Draconian measures, Mifune was the only sanctuary ordinary civilians felt a true measure of safety.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You had asked after someone,” Seroth replied. “Who you could trust for discretion?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“And your name came with high recommendation, Sir Ur-Rahn,” She said.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]‘She’ was a business woman. Short in stature, dressed contemporary in the times, platinum hair cropped to a close cut across her arched, sharp skull. His employer turned a glance over one shoulder, revealing a long line of ghosting scar tissue. The lad knew the culprit: a virbo-blade or otherwise small dagger, perhaps a punch knife that managed to gouge too close. There was a distinct impression whomever had laid the wound had doubtlessly been swiftly, brutally dealt with. Anyone with the gumption to thrive upon Saijo, maneuvering deals with the honorable if duplicitous Nagai and the coarse, aggressive Tofs, was not an individual to run afoul of. The woman turned, showcasing full cheeks curtaining sharp, narrow cheekbones. Her nasal bridge was pierced through in three installments of pearlescent rods that highlighted unseemly brown eyes. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“To the point, if you’ll pardon my brusqueness,” Mahda Salvatore turned to sit upon a high chair of immaculate white Hapan-styled leather. “I’m losing time and ground attempting to track down a boy. He’s of your age or so, a little older.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]An emitter flickered. A three-dimensional portrait of a youthful man with a standing resemblance to the Lady Salvatore, spun idly. The lad noted the boys thick nose, thin lips, deep set eyes that seemed too bright with bored, straining intelligence. He was handsome, in a strangely raw impression. Seroth committed his visage to memory, waiting on Ms. Salvatore’s instruction.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“This… somewhat cretinous boy,” She sighed. “Is my eldest son. For the past few years, he’s fancied himself an advocate of the plight faced by the Nagai. The boy fell in with one of their women. Smitten fool. So he’s taken to broadcasting his disdain of the local Tof militia wherever and whenever possible.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“He has disappeared then.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Yes. I feared he’d eloped but…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth switched his gaze from the pausing gun magnate, back to the rotating holo-bust. “But…” She went on. “The local street runner gangs have lost track of him similarly. I’ve no contacts in any of the Tof ranks, though I’m hesitant to plant the blame for Daina’s disappearance squarely on them. Mifune is an odd cauldron. More stews here than most come to realize.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You wish me to locate your son.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Mahda Salvatore nodded. “I could sick my own footmen to handle the ‘heavy lifting’ but that presents a bind. My personal workers are not unknown. Their faces are familiar. In attempting to scare up remnants of Daina’s trail, they may otherwise endanger his position. …Whatever it bloody is.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You do not sound worried for your child.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Mifune demands as much cruelty as impartiality. Any fool with a notion of priority knows better than to cheat me. If Daina is not simply passed out drunk in a bathroom trough, then whoever has him in stockade will keep the boy relatively intact. I’ve punished footpads for lesser transgressions. What do you think will happen, young Knight, if I find my son harmed?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The lad hesitated offering an answer. “I am to search and locate your son.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“And if at all possible, mount a rescue,” The gun mistress nodded. “Though contact me before you undertake any efforts.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Where shall I start? Did your son have any places he liked to frequent?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Madha pursed her lips. “…There’s a market bazaar in the southern districts. Ryoko Square. It’s a meeting ground of las-pistol enthusiasts, anyone with an overblown sense of nostalgia really. Antiques are ferried through the shops on a regular basis. Daina, he… He bought me several of these examples you see…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Briefly, the boy could note the veiled affection that stemmed from Lady Salvatore. True, that her son’s habits rankled her practical sensibilities, but a kin was a funny thing. ‘Lovingly strained’ was what he could gather, between mother and son, business woman and young idealist. Seroth rose and collected a holo-tab of Daina Salvatore’s likeness, pocketing it against his work harness. His blade-hilts rustled idly by his hips, earning an appraising glance from the Lady gunrunner. Frowning, the lad drew up his travelling cloak, bid her farewell, and departed down a long hallway lined with grey-faced, old men and women. Recessed glow-lamps lit up Contruumian carpets, laid in black and white woven fibers.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Such opulence he would never possess. Though, as a young learner still untried in the ways of Force, Seroth hoped he had a greater sense of value than purely physical possessions. Mahda Salvatore’s estate was four wings of interconnected rooms, arrayed in an immaculately geometrical diamond when viewed above. Waiting parlour and greeting foyer was shared in a single, grand hall. Chandeliers tinkled overhead, rustled by air-conditioned winds. House security ran the Knight through a gamut of precautions, then issued him on his way. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Wood-plated durasteel portcullis’ opened wide as terrified iris’. The lad found himself deposited on a quiet roadway paved with clay-red asphalt, observing a quiet aircar wing overhead. Unmarked, but brandishing underslung anti-personnel slug-cannons and air-to-ground mortar-head missiles. Private militia. Seroth nodded to the driver and began to stroll on. Ryoko Square was a distance on foot. He minded not the stroll. The air was promising an evening drizzle and the hunt was on. Come hell or high water, Daina Salvatore would be located.[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]Ryoko Square was a hub of repurposed warehouse floors, great depositories laid side by side, akin to giant brickwork. Time, deliberate modification, saw five generations of craftsmen and women ply their hands in trading out brusque, grey utilitarian flooring and aluminum walling into an expression of almost oriental aesthetics. Seroth first saw them from a half kilometer out, walking up a brick-laid avenue between closed cobbler shops, small, dilapidated department stores, and the odd restaurant and laundromat. Ryoko Square still pulsed through the night cycle. Each converted silo-bin, across their wide face, flaunted soda-lime float glass panels, arrayed in such a manner to suggest an interpretive pattern. The boy adjusted his rucksack’s ride over his shoulder and went on strolling for the antique bazaar.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He had expected a roar of barking voices, buyers and sellers clamouring for instantaneously brief credit pledges. Three pairs of seven foot tall guardians, masked in etched, silver-steel face plates and garbed in sex-baffling robes, kept the watch over each storehouse entrance. Converted gun-pikes rested easily in gloved hands, fingers barbed with quartz hook-claws. They said nothing as the boy approached; their unstated threat was enough to ensure compliance of general law and order. The lad strode past and through an opened pair of tall, weathering-steel doorways, chased with pig iron reliefs. The loudest sound at his entry felt like his own footfalls.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The interior was a vast, vaulted atrium that stretched on for a solid kilometer. Trains of red, bunch-woven carpets lined tiles of polished black-skein marble, immaculate in motif. Overhead, pale cage lanterns shone tones and tints of dusky blue, swollen carmine, and sodium yellow. Shop avenues, hardwood buildings sometimes as tall as nineteen or twenty meters, were framed by ball-pines and bonsai-styled miniature sequoias set in gardens of washed rock and pebble. Paper signs detailed in black ink scripting hung from every establishment. The lad observed small crowds of potential customers walking in measured paces, bunched close and holding quiet conversation. It was a dull hum of muted voices that lent an almost droning quality to the scene.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“But where to begin?” Seroth said to himself.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He chose one avenue, not so broad as the others with shops barely breaching five meters in height. They were squat, specialty shops, for the precise, preening eye. Passing one open stall in particular brought out a crowd of young children, skin painted silver as they held up tiny, inked banners fluttering from bamboo straws. The lad regarded them, then the shadowed stall, nodding and walking up the cobbled stair to where glass cases showed the merchant’s wares. Seroth caught himself staring. The cases were padded with orange, crushed velvet, underlit by false glass bottoms. There were blasters but not of the kind the youth had encountered. They lacked denoting energy packs, reinforced alloys, or electronic interfaces. The steel of the short barrels seemed crude by current standards, the pommel and grip unnecessarily ornate, and the firing mechanism baffling.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“A flintlock,” Came a voice.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth glanced up. The shopkeep was a more elderly Duros, bald, blue domed pate wrinkled with age, from concentration. He wore a poncho woven with electric blue threads and accented by touches of lightning yellow patterning. Long, gnarled digits reached to gesture at the display crates. “Primitive things by our standards, to be sure, but it’s that archaic quality that draws attention. Note the firing mechanism: the cock clasping the flint shard, the frizzen plate and beneath it, a hollowed pan. The barrel itself is smoothbore, lacking rifling. But these are mere pistols, ill-suited for long range firefights.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The Duros stood back and swept his arm out behind him, high and slow. Rows of restored, infantry rifles, enlarged but so very like the guarded handguns, stood polished and oiled on custom, silver-grained holding racks. Whetstone sharpened bayonets were tied by chain to every barrel, proudly shining. “Muskets were the tools for soldiering. A lengthened barrel improved accuracy considerable, but the lack of rifling still ensures an inherent instability in the shot’s flight. However, the attraction is that crude simplicity. Rugged, no?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“They are very graceful,” Seroth complimented. The Duros snorted in deprication.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“But what they can do to unarmoured flesh is not so graceful,” He chuckled. “Are you interested in making a purchase?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The lad’s eyes glinted hard a moment, bright as grey flint. There was a passing opportunity to trawl for information and as Darron Wraith would have emphasized, he took hold of his gut instinct and ran with the line of thought. “I would like to, yes. But I am lacking in necessary funds to give a good transaction.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Sighing, the Duros nodded but seemed more than a touch perturbed that his potential sale had been wasted on a poor lad. Seroth caught his gaze. “I leave my money in my friend’s hands. He was supposed to meet here, this evening, but I have not seen him. He has been strangely silent.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Unfortunate.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth produced a holo-waifer and thumbed its activation key. The smooth plate shivered as micro-emitters hummed a three-dimensional bust construct. The lad watched for the shopkeepers reaction; the widening dilation of his red-on-red eyes, lipless mouth turning, tightening, a tension in the wringing grasp of his hands. “This is him. Mr. Daina Salvatore.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You’re… A friend of the Salvatore family?” The Duros licked at dry, square teeth.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“He and I share a mutual interest in weapon antiquity. He invited me for a month’s stay at his mother’s estate and I accepted. We made an arrangement to search for valuable wares here, tonight, but that was before he disappeared. Mr. Salvatore informed me that it was his habit to be out of reach, a few days at a time, though he assured me tonight would still be viable. Yet, he has not made himself known. I cannot find him around the shops. I was hoping you may have encountered him, earlier.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The shopkeep found the boy’s avoidance or lack of contractions a little odd, but he regarded the revolving holo-bust with sincere appraisal. The lad held his tongue and eased his breathing through a quiet, mental routine. Errant thoughts and wasted notions were purged out his nostrils, leaving only a crystalline concept: find Madha Salvatore’s son.. Several moments passed before the Duros gestured the boy closer.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I haven’t seen him personally, no.” He started. “But several days ago, there was trouble.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Trouble?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“In this very silo. You could hear a sudden explosion of shouting, and then violence. Weapons were discharged, though thankfully, none of the merchant-keepers were harmed. It ended as soon as it began. The outside guards intervened. I saw one dead Tof carried out by stretcher, and a wounded N’Gai knife fighter hobbled out for arrest by our contracted militia. The most interesting portion is the rumour.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth noted the Duros baiting his sense of curiosity, nodding for him to continue. “Supposedly a young man was involved in some sort of confrontation. No one’s sure over what, exactly, but it goes that a band of ‘shopping’ Tof marauders scrambled when the guard showed after the first rifle shots. With said young man in tow.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…Where was the knife-fighter taken?” Seroth pressed.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Further down the district,” The Duros explained. “We contract out to DrizLine Armouries, they have holding facilities where…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The lad turned from the stall and left, striding with a quickening, purposeful pace. His mind ran a quickening gamut of deduction. The city of Mifune kept a score of Tof warbands corralled within its walls, a score more of lesser gunrunner gangs and pockets of Tof muscle acting for the local underground scene. The effort required tearing open each warrior clique was both unseemly tedious and risky. A whiff of warning and Daina Salvatore saw his chances for coming out alive from this strange episode heavily diminished. The boy required a local eye on the tense scene, and who better than the Tof’s most implacable foe? A greater trouble would be convincing the ordinarily aloof Nagai to lend him a little aid…[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]DrizLine Armouries preferred harsh angles and stark geometry. Their compound was a long series of heptagonal, lime-green edifices lacking any sort of window or viewports. Communication spires stuck out from where the sides met at apex, bristling, ebon quills ringed with thickened cable-bunches and guidance lights. Nine meter razor fences were strewn in triple-layer around the compound perimeter, barring off paved tracts of landing field. Patrol-speeders idled silently, hooked through hose extensions to a block of tall refueling silos. Harsh, neon-white flood lamps swept the grounds in sixty second intervals, washing over foot patrols that hurried along greased, cyber-mastiffs.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The lad waited a day and some, and then approached the mag-lock gates. He needed the Savlatore family’s matriarch to confer with him on the matter, and had in hand a writ-seal ‘politely’ asking for their generosity in seeing to their Nagai shiv-fighter briefly. With time of the essence, Daina Salvatore in bondage in possibly savaged condition, he couldn’t afford waiting on a fool errand-boy running twice over to infiltrate the DrizLine prison houses. The guards halted him ten meters out from the entry checkpoint, giving his modest travelling gear a once over with practiced aim down their carbine scopes. They didn’t like the presence of a ‘Sensitive’ or ‘Jetii’, slinging Mando’a. They liked even less the writ he scanned into their datapads. But a watch overseer promptly speeded the boy through. Mahda Salvatore’s instructions were dry cut and perfectly, achingly clear. Privateer authority superseded most lines of objection.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He found his source laying bandaged against a hard, white plastic chair next to a cot swathed in grey blankets. She was short for a Nagai, only six and a half feet. All wiry muscle and taut, ghoulish skin, rowdy black hair and violet eyes speaking promises of sudden, incredible violence. She eyed him a long moment and rose, pressing her narrow features against the reinforced cell barring. A smoky haze of shielding added a second degree of shielding. The cell block stank of ozone. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Well, well, well…” She crooned, maybe mockingly. “What have we here? You look a little too fresh-faced to be from around here. I’m thinking… Offworlder. Sympathetic, full of empathy. Came here to help out in the healing houses? Convert us all from our ‘evil, violent ways’?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“No,” Seroth said. “I have questions, and I need your help answering them.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“What’s in it for me?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Nothing.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Her derisive stare snarled into a hostile glare and she gave her cell-door a blistering kick. “Then kark you, and your sow mother! Come here, looking to make a fool of me - !”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You asked what I could give you, and I told you the truth. Nothing more.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Fething little – “[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“There was violence at Ryoko Square, maybe some weeks ago. You were dragged out wounded, and then arrested,” Seroth cut her off. “A Tof was slain. In the confusion, a rumour says a young man was captured and carried away. Can you tell me what you saw?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The Nagai’s slit-thin smile turned as wide as a ship bow. “Now… Ain’t that something? Sure, I can. But I won’t.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth’s gaze tightened. “Why?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“It ain’t ‘why’ but ‘what’, little boy,” She crooned. “I can sing you a tune, but what I’ve got isn’t for free. Not by a damned sight.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“What do you want?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“My freedom.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“That is not in my power,” Seroth said.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The lady knife-fighter shrugged and strolled over to her cot. “Then I’m afraid we’re done talking.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Yes, we are.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The lad turned over his shoulder and began long strides towards the cell-block security portcullis, down the far end of her prisoner row. He picked up the scamper of naked feet on cold, polished tiles, hands clanging against a resolute cell crossbar. “Hey! Just where you goin’?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I am leaving,” He replied.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“What abo – “[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You ask for an exchange of favours that I cannot honor,” The boy called over his shoulder. “I am not wasting my time for your sake if you are unwilling to cooperate.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Hang on! We can cut something together!” Was the desperate reply. Seroth felt himself smile a touch.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Cut what? Neither of us is in a position to dictate terms.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…Just c’mere a minute. Parlay?” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He approached the containment room. The woman was now on her toes and bouncing from wall to wall in agitated consternation, brow furrowed, thinking hard. She looked down at him, the boy waiting with arms folded behind the small of his back. “…What exactly do you want?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I am looking for a young man. Perhaps my age, a little older or so I am told,” Seroth said. He reached out with his palm spread, holo-waifer glowing up a three dimensional bust in the air between them. “His name is D – “[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]A kind of an odd, altruistic pain crossed the Nagai’s violet stare. “Daina. …I know him, yeah.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You are involved with the Salvatore boy?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“We’ve been seeing each other, yeah. He’s… sort of sweet, in his own naïve way. Thinks he can solve all of Saijo’s problems but…” Her head turned, shaking, swishing the soft of her wild hair to and fro. “Should never have liked the boy.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“What has happened to him?” Seroth pressed.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…We were down at the antique shops, in Ryoko,” She explained. “I was pissed with some… family stuff, couldn’t get it sorted, so he said we could go out for a walk. You know, DMZ, thought we’d be left alone. Two of us are down in the bazaars, checking out these sweet old dirk’s, when Woyzick’s gang came along.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Woyzick?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Tof heavy gunner, soldier under his father, ‘Captain’ Karlaigh the Red Duke. Youngest son out of his brothers. Don’t know what he was doing there but he came along and ordered his shooters to grab Daina. I sunk my knife into one of them and took him out, then carbine guns went off. Panicked, I guess,” She sighed. “Clipped me something awful and then the guards came in. The Tofs scattered, I got hauled off, patched up, and thrown in here. …Spast knows what they wanted with Daina, or what they’re doing to him.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Where can I find Woyzick?” The lad queried.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Let’s slow down a tack, and you can tell me…” She batted a clever gaze his way. “…What’s in it for me now, since I spilled my guts on this?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth took his turn to pace, rubbing a worn gloved thumb across chin scruff and dark whiskers. “…I represent the interest of Daina Salvatore’s mother, Mahda Salvatore. For your help, I can convince her to press her influence to guarantee your release”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Yeah?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“A small price in exchange for her son and his well being, I’m sure.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…Woyzick’s a cagey bastard,” The Nagai gestured him close. “He’s a chip off his father’s shoulder. Got it in his head all these lunatic ideas to become a big captain himself, ‘bombad admiral’ I’ve heard bragged. But, he’s got his pride. Wants to do it all on his lonesome. So he’s taken to keeping him and his boys locked up in this old warehouse complex in the northern limits, by the anti-ballistic walling. No telling how many he’s got settled in. …Think you can get Daina out of there?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Yes,” Seroth said, nod solemn. Departing on swift steps, he brought a comm. key up close to his mouth, murmuring softly as receives in the Salvatore compound plied his message through to one woman’s waiting desk-suite.[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]“The old warehouse complex” proved different from the femme Nagai’s account. Seroth spent a long afternoon idling amidst foot traffic running by parallel sidewalks and partially bricked alleyways, observing the Tofs comings, goings, and lunatic binges where one burly specimen screamed incoherently at his minions. The ‘warehouses’ were three lots fenced off by tall, solid ferrocrete pylon-walls laced with biting scorpion-wire meshing, the warehouses themselves converted munitions bunkers dug up partially from the shale earth and dirt. The lad noted savage discipline, the guards frighteningly steely, lacking the usual Tof boisterousness. The entrances were tall, paired, sliding gates of corrugated durasteel, maglocked at the center connection and appearing dramatically impregnable.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]At least by one boy.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Lady Salvatore impressed on him the gist of her ‘plan.’ The first leg: infiltration and extraction of her son. The second leg: Escape, covered by mercenary reinforcements. Heavy lifting was required on his part. The initial branch of action required fate to be kind, allow the rescue to go off impeccably. For the duration of her briefing, the lad couldn’t help recalling one of Ben Watt’s many personal maxims: depend on nothing when faced with confrontation. Lady Savlatore gave her personal guarantee of eventual aid. Eventual. The lad would be on his own until Daina’s face was seen free outside the complex walls.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He chose high noon. A swift comm. blip signaled his start. The guard for the day had been doubled at the gates. Four Tofs, barrel chests, corded arms naked from the shoulder and wound with tattoos both intricate and obscene. The lad noted their natural might, feet planted wide in idling, readied postures. Sullen, fierce eyes kept a lookout on passing foot and aircar traffic. It’d be suicidal to contend with the heavy armaments slung over their harnessed torsos: thick, chrome chased repeaters and carbines weighed by distended power-magazines. The guards enjoyed a constant, wide berth that created a buffer pocket before them. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]They were still surprised when a young man with glowing swords approached on their peripheral. The first guard raised his gun and let out a shout, falling back over his heels when Seroth clove through the tempered barrel. The second and third charged and leapt over their tripped ganger, meeting a flashing wall of green-white blaze. Seroth twitched his left wrist, severing the catch-straps from the second’s shoulder harness, then slammed the blade downwards, wrecking the repeater into half-melted slag. It fell, banged onto the brute’s knees and toes. His right hand caught the polished butt of his sword-hilt over the gunner’s nape and jerked back and down. The Tof went sailing onto his chin. The third tried to bring his sights to bear in the sudden fight’s closeness. Right, left, right. Three blows whacked his carbine to pieces. A dividing slice by his waist ruined his belting and dropped his trousers. The fourth, preoccupied with relaying over his collar mic. piece, looked up too late. Seroth felled him with a placed snap-punch across his nose.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Alarms sounded beyond the grey-painted perimeter walls. The rescue was on. The lad contented with the stubborn alloys the gates composed, hurrying to melt through the steely detritus. There echoes of boot falls, sandy pebbles kicked up alongside dusty gravel slurry. Contingents arriving fast to deal with the coming intruder, avenge the disgraces meted out upon the front guard. They should be so lucky they faced a lad more compelled by principle than death-lust. He had learned fast, at a tender age, how to know a killing vector from disarms. Finally, after a cool minute, the durasteel quivered. His swords receded from the makeshift ‘door’. Planting his right heel against the earth, he pivoted over his left hip and kicked out. The hefty two-foot thick slab carved against the surrounding metal bucked and fell back with an ungainly slam.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth anticipated Woyzick had corralled an even dozen followers to his cause of self-aggrandizement. He met with four squads, five Tofs a piece, scattering fields of shrieking bolt-fire towards his unarmoured flesh. The lad charged on. Jaxton Ravos asked on his habitual refusal of physical protection. Simply: “It slows me a little.” Seroth ran in, jinking hard to right, kicking off into a forward roll. He came off the tumble and spun counterclockwise as bolts traced the air mere inches from his frame. One sword rose and he cocked his wrist. Contrary to Shien protocols, what bolts he spat aside were not redirected. They flew too high or low, pitting the ground in squib plumes. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Then he was in their midst, closing the fight sphere so their heavy guns were rendered useless, impractical. The lad worked one arm disengaging three armsmen, the other cleaving at a packed bunch of four. Rifles and heavy-weighted pistols thudded at their feet, belching scatters of fitful sparks. Disarmed, menaced by the boy’s swords, those left weaponless turned on heel and sprinted for the entryway he’d cut through moments earlier. The rest charged, venting walls of incandescent firepower. Defense katas caught pertinent shots, pinging them aside or back into thickened blaster-carbine frames. Unnerved, robbed of hardware, most followed in retreating. …Save for a pair of foolishly bold souls that came at Seroth with knuckled dirks.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I would not…” He advised aloud. They charged on regardless.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth backstepped and jerked right, then right again. The first was failing to turn swift enough to re-engage the foe off his left hip, switching out the dirk to his offhand and slashing in abandon. Lightsaber met vibroblade. Seroth willed one sword arm, slapping the short blade low, then aside, and then twitched his swords glowing tip. The Tof’s hand fell away, neatly detached. His screams nearly distracted the lad from the second aggressor. The Tof drew out a long cy-cutlass and came on, heaving with short sidelong blows packed with concentrated kinetics. Seroth fell into Djem-So, plying his philosophies of simultaneous offense and defense. His left hand slid an overhead slice away high while the right ducked below the Tof’s dirk-hand. It took just a slight wrist-flick, to burn through his elbow’s flesh and cleave hardy bone into smoking gristle. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Wounded, diminished, the Tof stumbled as his remaining limb reached to clutch and massage at the traumatized arm. Seroth halted him; a humming blade-point hovered in perfect stillness an inch off his leather-tanned throat. “Tell me how to find the boy,” Came the calm demand.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Wern!” Some pirate-mate called from behind a crate-stack. “Keep ‘her shut. Yu tell ‘im, Woyzick’ll have yer skin fer ruggin’!”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The crippled challenger looked off his shoulder, back to the boy with steely, grey eyes. “Luh-Lissen…!”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Woyzick is not here,” Seroth said. “I have a greater appreciation for mercy than he would. There is a boy here. Where are you keeping him?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Woyzick’ll kill me…!” The Tof whimpered.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Woyzick is finished. Where is the boy?” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]A tremulous hand pointed past Seroth’s left shoulder, to a bunker kept isolated off the rest of the converted warehouse bunkers. A subterranean holding pen. The lad nodded his thanks and busted a knuckle-slug into his aider’s jaw. The Tof dropped, dazed, pot shots whizzing past his prone body as the remainder of the guard crew tried harrying the Jedi’s rippling sprint for the bunker.[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]When it counted, this Woyzick allowed reason to keep his clouding ego leashed. The Tof himself was not present, but redirected a contingent of what remained of his fighting manpower to the holding cells. They were in a phase of denial: whatever the coming Jedi wanted, he couldn’t have. If the boy wanted the fettered brat, by necessity, he would have to answer to the thirty plus seasoned privateers packed into the compact cell halls. Seroth nearly lost his head approaching the entry portcullis. His step down the low cement stairwell had been heard. Heavy caliber slug-rounds punched through inches thick portal plating, ricocheting and ploughing into composite rock. Seroth ducked low, lit his swords, and shunted the doorwell off its hinges with a Force-charged mental blast.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The prison quarters had been designed with a vessel brig in mind: long, cramped corridors shouldered by pylon stanchions of durasteel, ceiling low and harshly lit by naked glow lamps. Every sharp corner was manned by five bodies, kill teams racking up breaching shotguns with flechette rounds. The lad still possessed reach but with ebbed room to work the meter long blades. He disengaged one sword, attached the hilt by his hip harness, and stalked forward. A wall mounted paper overlay showed off the bunker layout. Three wings, connected by single, side-long, choking corridor that branched into entry halls. Secondary staff bunk rooms, a low cantina, armoury, and medical treatment chambers were dug out below a security atrium. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]His initial attackers had smote a few more petty rounds his way down the hall, retreating. Hearing them working to fall back while loading up their blast-flechette guns, Seroth took the initiative. He sprinted out of a sidelong alcove and around the corner, hurtling into the fist killing back. He’d observed, once, the hulking Zeltron Jax utilize Makashi maneuvers. Though unlearned, Seroth applied the grim basics. His arms curled back, jutting the pommel against his ribs, then propelling forward with a violent gust. A first stab punched through one armoured body and the pressed attacker behind, wounding a third by gouging a inch-thick, smoking furrow across his pectoral. The Tofs screamed; death cries. Seroth receded, jutted the hilt back again, then stabbed a second time. The third squadmate fell and the fourth behind, both pierced in the throat.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The fifth managed to rack a last slug-round into his rifle’s breach and turned to sight down on the lad. One shot blew apart a toppling body, the second impacting through an armoured spine, turning the dead Tof’s intact remains into a bloody shower of lancing gristle. The close walls became splattered with high arterial sprays, patterned by flailing, dead limbs. Seroth listened to the third shot cock on himself. He simultaneously leaned back while his right foot rose. The boot sole connected with the flechette gun, soiling the aim. A round roared off and blasted into a sectioning of light paneling and coiled pipes. Plumbing water, frigid cold and steaming hot, burst down on them in coned sheets of wafting liquid. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Eyes clouded with moisture, Seroth fell back on his perception. He couldn’t tell the Tofs immediacy. Was he too close, too far? Rosa taught him just a measure’s worth of empathizing… Catching onto the song-notes emitted by life through the Force. He listened… And heard this one’s discordant jangle echo brutally near. A green sword gashed through the water fall and skewered the bastard through his sternum. The lad ploughed on through the slurry gore puddles washing over his ankles. Daina Salvatore waited, with twenty five apprehensive guards watching every quiet corner.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Eventually, the corridors became a storm of screaming breech guns and a vicious, buzzing hum. The lad was merciful where could exercise prudence. The thin corridors that narrowed into no better than clamping bottlenecks forced his hand into killing routines. He cut and sheared, stabbing through falling bodies and pining them up into makeshift anti-ballistic shields. Before long, his clothing was turning torn, ragged, forced to churn through struggle after struggle. Flesh was stuck in the treads of his boot soles. There was no addiction to every encounter of compacted, wild violence. Jedi ordinarily were prone to falling prey to the zest that came with combat. The lad had long driven death-lust from his palette, regarding killing as a necessary facet of his calling. He just made sure to his blows count: swift, merciful.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The confrontations ended with a final ganger squad. Seroth whisked his arm ‘round a portcullis frame. His fingers loosed a tumbling cylinder. It ignited a half-meter from contact with the first body in its road, activation plate stubbed down by a clench of mental force. One Tof fell and brought his bulk down against the leggings of the second gunner behind. Aim obscured, the barrel caught against a catch in his dead squadmate’s pauldron, he fell savaged by an onrushing blur of whipping green. Seroth held to his remaining hilt in a classical Djem So stance, working his swordarms through a whacking routine. Right and down, diagonally, sweeping up a swift reversal timed with a forcing step, then a bisecting overhead cut that took the last Tof clean through his skull, sternum, and groin.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Swords retrieved, retired to their hip clasps, the lad turned his attention to the isolated cell chambers. One salvaged keycard allowed brisk entry. It fast became clear anyone caught in a Tof ‘brig’ faced meager chances. They were lightless, windowless, save for an overhead vent. Walls were left unpadded and there was rarely a sleeping cot installed. Defecation was produced by, presumably, squatting over a crusted pipe thrusting up from a grate in one of the room corners. There was an unsurprising stench of living misery. Occasional smells that he knew as ‘death mould’. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Something whimpered and scurried out of the light in one cell that the lad braved. The Jedi tensed, waited for his eyes to accustom as he kept a tense watch on the fidgeting, crying bundle. Features became discerned: long hair like dirty straw, fine features bruised, swollen, bright green eyes that were piteously wet. A young man, barely older than himself. Naked, scratched over with wounds, some scabbed. Obviously brutalized. Seroth had little truck with managing sympathy for the exorbitantly rich, but suffering still gouged with unkind blows over his conscience. Striding forward, kneeling, he still the poor fool with his gloved hand.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Be still. …What is your name?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The gaunt face, hollowed by starvation and fear, looked up. Thin lips quivered. “…D-Doh-Don’t… I… I don’t… Know… Wh-Whuh-What else I… I c-cuh-can give y-you… St-Stuh-Stop hu-hurting me…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“What is your name?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…Daina… Wh-Who are y-you…? Did… Did they buh-bring in sp-specialist…?” A learner in the torturing arts, he meant. The Jedi shook his head.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“My name is unimportant. Your mother asked me to come find you.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“My m-muh-mother…!?” Wet eyes previously cold with fear burned hot, then fell into washes of unbidden tears. The young man curled over and hugged into Seroth’s chest, wetting his torn tunic with pained sobbing. The lad wondered if mother and son would yet recognize one another… Born with a silver spoon on his tongue or not, Mahda Salvatore would see this ‘Woyzick’ destroyed when her eyes fell upon what remained of her eldest child.[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]He took the boy by his arm and propped him enough to lend some aid in his walk. Daina Salvatore had been stripped to the nude. To preserve something of his dignity, the lad stripped down one of the more intact corpses and dressed Daina in an oversized pair of bloodied, navy blue breeches. The boy offered no objections. Seroth turned to observe his facet of expression. When they began the trek back towards the bunker entry stairs, Daina was caught up staring at the broken, burned remnants of his former captors. Some faces he recognized; his lips curled upward into a neat sneer, spitting. One dead Tof he took notable exception to. Seroth allowed him a moment to vent his incredulous rage, bucking his worn, calloused heel off a dead face.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]They ventured through the guard atrium, occasionally tripping on fallen weaponry and displaced limbs. Where friendly fire had stoved in armour and flesh, low currents of syrupy blood stuck at their feet. Daina looked to the fallen, to the man hauling him along. A different kind of fear blinked in his eyes, for a split moment. The Jedi caught it though, from the twinge of his emotional state. Jedi were noted warriors. Yet, this display was something more reckoned from a Mandalorian kill-squad. Lightsabers were clean weapons, efficient, elegant. It appeared every inch of the long corridors had seen some deathly, struggling brawl. Seroth wiped at a sliver cut bleeding on his cheek and shouldered Daina on.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Warm sunlight from a white sky beamed down the cramped stair ramp. The pair rose up, one step at a time, Daina struggling a moment to readjust to the ambient light blooming from every surface. Blurred shapes took on sharp countours; colours jumped out and added defining texture. The boy wondered why his captor paused and followed his sharp stare. Silent, armed with a four times the size of his meaty fist and a wicked, saw-tooth vibrosword in the other, stood the hulk “Woyzick.” Green skinned, beard braided to hold a steel fashioned ‘hammer’ motif, bald save for a Mohawk strip spiking wildly from side to side, the youngest son of the warlord Karlaigh made for an awing first impression. Dressed in pirate finery, huffing smoke from two cigars stuck against brown teeth, he took a step forward.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The fifty killers backing his flanks took a step in time.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Wherrr y’think yer takin’ tha’ son therr, eh?” He asked. Every word was accented in thickened Toffese. “Ya paid for ‘im?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth kept his silence. Grey eyes flashed for the hole he cut through the gate fencing: there closest escape, though it was a forty meter run over coverless ground. Woyzick smiled a little broader. “Dun thunk ya paid for ‘im. Juss put ‘im down and c’mere, son.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“No,” The Jedi called back. “He is going home. Stand aside.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“HA!” Woyzick guffawed. “Lookit ‘errre. I gawt at me back sum of th’ worse bastid skewerin’ whoresons thisside a’hell! Ya got, whu? Fethin’ boy there, lookin’ fit to puke. And sum flashy-arse swords! I gawt guns, m’boy! …Y’gawt a mouth and sum luck.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]More than luck. Mahda Salvatore had been good to her word. Over the back walls vaulted two score tall figures, dressed in mercenary colours and hurried skulking along. Seroth hadn’t yet encountered their lot. Each was dressed in dirty white long-shirts and leather brown vests, jackets, and loose slacks. Black satin sashes were tied around their muscled waists, where rested matted pistol holsters. An even count of women and men, they held vibro-hatchets and short-swords in their gloved palms. Amidst their number was a tall figure, draped in a burlap over-cloak that hid away the majority of his frame. Seroth noted a mop of wild, brown hair, intensely dark eyes, and hints of a compacted exo-frame sprawled over the cut of his build. He idly waved a signal the lad’s way. Just a moment longer for preparation.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth stalled. “Mayhap I have paid for him, Woyzick. But it was your men who proved to be the cost.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…They died well?” Woyzick called and cocked his pistol hand up to aim.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You will have to tell me.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The burlap cloaked man took his cue. The cloak was thrown aside and a polished vibro-longsword appeared in his gritted palms. His compatriots dashed forward in tune to his long strides. They made no battle cries. Like a lead cape, they fell heavy and silent upon the back ranks of the massed Tofs. Twenty fell in two seconds span, sucking for air, upchucking blood. A roar arose from the Tof noticing the deathly clamor. Even Woyzick was forced to divide his attention as the hatchet-killers overwhelmed into his posse. Seroth just observed a moment. Their fighting was a close brawl of brutal strength, ripping, hacking, axe and knife working in curt synchronicity. One butted a Tof off his feet with a high knee-jab, bringing her knife down in her fall, slashing hard right with her axe-blade into a nearby unguarded knee. The shin and knee came away in gouts of arterial spray. Another fighter by her side took a Tof through his throat with a left-hand knife slash, hacked twice through his rib cage and heart, and then turned over his shoulder and blew out a second Tofs brains with a snap-up pistol shot.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Swiftly, Daina was hauled along to the cutout gate exit. Salvatore family agents were waiting in anticipation. The lad was gripped by his now skinny arms and thrown into the dark backseat of a heavily armoured air-cab. The agents dispersed, nodding to the Jedi, hopping aboard foot landings. The air-cab rose, skittered south and west and disappeared out of view. A success. Seroth turned and lit his swords, running headlong to aid in the outmatched brawl that was fast concluding.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Woyzick was making his final stand. Few could get in reach as he swung his saw-bone sword around, three torn corpses crunched under his iron heeled boots. The tall crew leader, the mop-haired, bearded man tried harrying with his longsword. He ducked one snap-shot erupting from Woyzick’s blaster magnum, a second shot and then a third. The Tof wannabe Captain was gusting with sonorous laughter; surrounded by enemies and assuredly going to die, it was a fine a death as any. It grew better as he saw the Jedi coming in at a dead run, impossibly fast, lightsabers catching sparks in the dusty gravel. The encircled mercenaries parted, knowing a duel was in demand. The crew leader just smirked, muttering something to a close second who kept to his side.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The Tof was skilled in boarding combat, using his s[/SIZE][SIZE=10pt]aw-tooth sword to cut, hack, and stab for Seroth’s soft belly. The lad was belying in his strength, taking the heavy strikes and turning them aside, forcing Woyzick into awkward, off-balance dodges. Seroth swept low, cutting right for a thigh, feinting and bringing his left-hand sword to whack against a gap in the Captain’s defense. Woyzick anticipated the false move, using his magnum-blaster as makeshift club. It struck and blocked the cut for his ribs, though suffering irreparable damages. The barrel was slagged through in half, an underslung power pack going off in a burst of light and heat. The Captain roared, his gun-hand no more than a charred mass of flaking, cooked meat.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He laid in even fiercer, chopping with ceaseless overhead blows. Seroth knees braced, taking the battering, wrists twisting and cocking to readjust for every coming slice. One blow came on, right firstly in a light feint sparking with contact and then a sticking jab that would have punched through Seroth’s shoulder. He didn’t bother answering the motion. He ducked and stepped, coming in close behind Woyzick’s unguarded back. The Captain gave one last defiant cry, then fell dead with a lightsaber burning clean through his fat heart. His mass of green skin and pirate gilding, rippling with corded muscle, trudged one pace forward. The mercenary lead rolled his eyes, with the brute finally tossing still onto the ground.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Not bad,” The long swordsman muttered. He proffered a worn hand. “Stenwulf.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Seroth,” The lad replied. They shook, as dust wafted by in a sudden high wind. It was still whistling in their ears as the venerable ‘hatchet company’ took their leave.[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]“Mister Stenwulf, young Master Ur-Rahn, young Master…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“We’ve talked,” Stenwulf grumbled.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Mahda Salvatore paused to strip the haggard man down a notch with a notably frigid stare. The scar tissue running from one temple down to her jaw wriggled a moment, tense with idle energy. Wiping a stray, platinum strand from her eyes, she resumed her height when Stenwulf finally dodged his eyes towards the exo-plates strapped round his ankles and laced boots. Seroth bade his silence, hands wrapped behind his waist as the family Matriarch addressed the pair.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Mifune, city wide, was in a state of controlled uproar. News had spread, faster than the wind and with only trailing rumours finally catching up to fall into gossiping ears. Woyzick was dead; the youngest of Karlaigh’s spawn, he’d taken to terrorizing every quarter where he could do so, protected by an unspoken immunity. The Tofs and Nagai could not touch one another within city limits. But, local authorities were also disallowed from interfering with racial affairs. However, his folly caught up to him when he attempted a kidnap of Mahda Salvatore’s eldest child. Her groomed inheritor. She had disregarded all diplomatic channels, all processes ordinarily sought out when dealing with the thick-skulled Tofs. The Matriarch went for the throat, and now the Dread Captain Karlaigh was minus one child.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]And so it went, a Jedi was the one who delivered the killing blow. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Continuing, gentlemen, this affair is now virtually closed,” Madha said. “And your payments dolled out. On behalf of Sal-Ann Motors and Munitions, your cooperation in this endeavour is thanked and appreciated.” She stood to turn, looking out through an angular, shaded transparisteel window.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Y’sure you got the Tofs squared?” Stenwulf said. His voice was between a churlish bark and scraping rock. “Karlaigh’s got an awful lot of big guns and he might make exception to shove ‘em down your throat.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Those ‘big guns’ are sentimental relics that haven’t seen since firing the Mifune Armistice. Two hundred years ago prior. They may look impressive, if you can glean past the calcium buildups. But otherwise, our ‘Dread Captain’ relies purely upon physical numbers. How many guns he can bring to bear. Did you know? Prior to this whole debacle, he was in negotiation for a shipment to revitalize his militia.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Tofs ain’t got taste for women, though,” Stenwulf snorted. “Probably had to swallow ‘is own prick ‘fore he went to the table to speak. Woyzick dead an’ all, he might just bail out on you.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“He can. Of course, then he’ll be without fresh arms, armour, carriers, ammunition, consoles, and the like,” Mahda smiled thinly, unseen. “And at the N’Gai’s mercy. Because I’ll make my profits regardless. The N’Gai are far more personable and prone to business savvy than a lot of green-skinned rubber-necks with delusions of privateer glory. If Karlaigh is smart, he’ll limit his sense of vendetta.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Hope you’re right. Ma’Boss says you pay decent credit. And we’re lookin’ forward to whenever you’ve got a good war on y’hands. S’don’t go gettin’ blown to hell jus’ yet.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth kept post to the portcullis entry portal far across the stately room, framed on either side by polished weapon racks gleaming almost hot beneath suspended glow-globes. He glanced, noting the harsh angles born from the sheeting white-gold light. Imperious. Calloused. Wholly tools but of a killing specification. The lad unconsciously rubbed a palm over a worn hilt-matte. What was it that distinguished his tools from the relics Mahda Salvatore adored and coveted? Another question he lacked the requisite wisdom to interpret. Maybe Rosa would have known. The droll of the opposite banter had him sick for her voice.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Master Ur-Rahn, you’re a free agent, no?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Lady Salvatore’s question brought his glance snapping around. “What do you mean?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Mercenary work, my friend,” She said. He could hear the softened ice in her tones. “You’ve proven capable, reliable. Mifune’s a messy scene and you seem sharp enough to ably cut through.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I must decline,” He said.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Must you?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The lad nodded. “You paid for your son’s rescue. I do not take coin or orders to otherwise kill.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Psshht,” Stenwulf snorted. “Tell tha’ to those gunners y’wasted in the cell holds.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I was left without choice.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Aw’yeah? Well what was it exactly you expected, takin’ up wit someone like Mahda here, huh?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I came to find the boy. The Tofs imprisoned him wrongly. Killing is not a joy, but a reality of my work. The Tofs paid for their cruelty, though I had not meant to be their slayer.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…Gods, where th’nine hells did you crawl out of?” Stenwulf said, regarding Seroth with an impenetrable expression. “Lissen to y’self…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Stenwulf, enough,” Mahda quieted him and turned a grey stare over her shoulder to the boy. “Your work is appreciated. Both of you. Until I next call upon either of you. Good day.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Stenwulf cocked a sloppy, mocking salute and turned about to depart. He brushed aside Seroth, though fixed him with a long glare. One hand reached up, gripping the lad’s chin to turn his features about for scrutiny. One blurred hand pushed away his wrist while the other bucked palm up to his chin. The soldier backed off easily, though found himself having to strain for speed a little quicker than normal. His opposite, the boy, had piqued eyes and had his arms positioned in a style he couldn’t quite recognize. Jedi arts or summat, Stenwulf grunted to himself. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…I seen you somewhere b’fore?” He asked.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“No.” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Huh…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Are you two quite finished?” Mahda sounded from the plush of her temp-controlled, tall seating. “Perhaps I need to be a little more firm in my wishes. Business has been concluded. Get the hell out of my office.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Hah! Y’heard the woman…” Stenwulf chuckled to Seroth and gave his shoulder a not so light punch. “…Y’so sure we ain’t never set eyes on each other? …Coulda swore y’er someone I know.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The Jedi shook his brow, still perturbed at his slight manhandling. He followed the mercenary out into the hallway, down through a spiral stairwell of polished, black metal and solid grate foot-plates. “I am sorry if you have mistook me for someone else.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…Right.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Together they sauntered through the entry foyer, past pairs of glowering guards that were unappreciative of their presence. Stenwulf, for his easy irreverence and disrespect. Seroth, for his Jedi power and ability, and the fearless gleam always so bright in his eyes. The lad didn’t think he would soon hear from Mahda Salvatore, and if he did, he would be apt to be a touch more reserved in their dealings. Mifune, its dirty, brown-caked vistas of tall, rust-glowered and broke fortresses, was a dismal locale. What the Tofs and Nagai saw in battle out over its dwindling wealth and resources, he couldn’t guess. Anger the lad could understand but there was some deeper sorts of hate that would forever elude his deduction. Stenwulf went on his own way, drawing up his savaged, thread-bare burlap cloak and shouldering on. The city offered to swallow him up, and he accepted with ease. He was gone, though… Seroth had an inkling their dealings were not yet finished…[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]He awoke at midnight to some inexplicable feeling. Naked save for a hugging training thong, Seroth guided himself hand hold by hand hold as his eyes adjusted to the dimness. The lad found the fore cockpit, starlight beaming down through a dusty transparisteel screen. He flicked a switch for the auxiliary batteries, enough to give the console a electric throb. Immediately he called up the subspace transit logs: nothing. No missed calls. Rosa had not sent him a communiqué, as he’d presumed. The boy rubbed over his eyes and sat back against the pilot’s seat. What… What then, this sensation of paranoia? He’d an overwhelming impression of being watched. Grey eyes darted; one left hand darted, banged beneath the fore-console, discharging a secret weapon compartment. Lightsaber in hand, he rose, faced the long spinal corridor running from the cockpit to the belly hold.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth felt foolish. He’d stronger nerves then this. Anonymity, distance, out here in these squalor portions of the Outer Rim, these things kept him alive and alone while working. There were no invisible Sith Assassins stalking the Iron Snakes birth, no Omega Pyre or Republic commandos. If there had been, admittedly, he would already be dead. The boy relaxed his tensed posture and put away his blade, retiring it back beneath the control panels. His frame ached from the action of the past few days. Bruises, bandaged gashes, lined his stomach and ribs, up and down tracts of his backside. Dirtied linen bedding called to him and he answered, sighing through a breath exercise. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He’d sat down against his rump when dull, thudding whacks thumped the berth-hold ramping.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The ramp lolled open like a length of hydraulic tongue. Harsh hold flood-lamps robbed the moment of privacy, flashing glinting strobes of blue-hot light. Someone tall, dressed in ragged burlap thrown over a muscled frame, raised a gloved hand against their eyes. Stenwulf. Seroth relaxed the tense in his lungs and swiftly strolled down the hold ramp. He’d pulled on just a salvaged pair of denim workpants and a dirtied, white tunic. Two matte-casted lightsabers hung off their hip-harness catches. About to ask what Stenwulf was after this late in the night, the lad paused when he noticed his company. The tall, stocky woman standing idle by his side… and the tightened line of armed fighters watching from several close meters off. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Axes and long knives. Paired pistol holsters. The mercenary killers from the Tof compound melee. Stenwulf laughed aloud at the boy’s perturbed expression, stepping forward. Seroth’s hand shivered and a readied hilt rested against his palm, thumb to the activator plate. Frowning, the captain held his hands to placate. “Hey now, wha’you think we’re up about now?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Would you not feel threatened?” Seroth asked. Stenwulf just grinned wolfishly.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…Is this that boy?” The woman asked after. Seroth couldn’t make out her facial features, thanks to a heavy, obscuring hood. A hint of a strong jawline. Small mouth that pouted. Her dress, like that of her bearish partner, distinguished her from being any mere grunt. Combat khaki’s ran up tall legs, to a black undershirt dressed over with a tightened battle harness, wrist-pad strapped over her left forearm. Her armaments were akin to the others, save for a long hanger sword sheathed in a black and copper encase. A hooded, blue-white camo jacket obscured the toned strength of burly arms. “…Hell’s teeth…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Y’see what I said?” Stenwulf replied. He reached out, Seroth allowing his palm to lightly double-slap over his cheeks. “Spittin’ image, bone for bone.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“What’s your name, boy?” The woman asked. Her voice was like a blade on whetstone, like ice water over cold stone. “…Won’t ask you twice, child.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Would he not have told you?” Seroth nodded brusquely at her companion.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Heh, I told the girl alright, Serry, but she didn’t feel like believin’ it,” Stenwulf chuckled. The woman’s green-lit stare silenced him. “…She uhhh… She thought better iffen you said so y’self.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Then why would you come out here just for my name?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You’ve asked enough. I’ve asked now, and I’ve gotten nothing but a boy’s paranoia,” The woman spat, hand to the pommel of her sword. “Speak your name or shut up and go back to bed.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…Seroth,” He said softly.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…Seroth. …That is your name?” The woman blinked and drew back her hood.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]She was a harsh beauty, with sharp features that complimented her strong jaw and small mouth, bright green eyes beneath a familiar widows peak coloured as dark as soaked obsidian. Thickened swell-lines of capillary veins lined the tan skin of her throat. Regarding the shorter lad, her expression twisted into an oddly disappointed frown. Stenwulf looked from his keeper, to Seroth, back to the woman, barely able to contain a note of humour on his unshaven face. “…Sure you’re remembering yourself right?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“What do you mean?” Seroth stared up at her, noting the glacial air stirred between them. “I know myself. …What do you want? Why are you here?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Pretty sharp, eh?” Cut in Stenwulf. “Got tha’ same lil’ sense as you, when ya get itchy over summat.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Sten, be quiet,” She said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “…Who gave you that face?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The lad blinked. “No one.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…What is going on here?” The woman said, just to herself, working her tongue over in a whisper. “…Perhaps I’ll be blunt. I think I [/SIZE][SIZE=10pt]know you, boy. Sten here came to me, saying he found a kid wearing my husband’s face. My husband’s been dead nineteen, going on twenty years.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I am sorry.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Hmph. His anniversary’s coming up soon. I thought my Second was getting cute. Found some pretty fethboy, slapped a plastflesh mask over him, give me the night to relive some memories. …Instead, he’s right. You do look just like him, and I don’t believe in sheer chance. I think I truly do know you, child, though I thought I’d never chance seeing you again.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth was tongue-tied for a response. His only reaction was frank and bewildered, stepping away from the commander. The woman reached out and stilled him through with a piercing, glinting stare. Déjà vu toyed with his sense of the here-now. His grip over his one weapon never relaxed and as her hand reached out to touch at his jaw, he looked from peripheral to peripheral. Stone-faced axe-wielders, watching with passive intensity. Stenwulf, grinning like a fool. There was a danger and he felt increasingly drawn into a net of invisible tensile string. But the woman… There was… No. No. …A familial resemblance?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Her fingers slid over his cheek and nose, then fell away. …And then moved like glacial oil, pinning Seroth in his diaphragm. The boy wheezed, robbed of breath, rocking back onto his toes as he thumbed on his blade. A fighter rushed to his right, catching his forearm with an axe-beard, the sharpened underside cutting into his skin. The fighter followed in, bashing with a knuckled long knife, crushing his fingers and loosing the lightsaber from his grasp.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The lad gritted his teeth, fought the pain, fought his breathlessness and the fog coming over his senses. He snapped out with his left, thudding a strike to the woman’s throat, curling back and smashing his palm to her brow. The woman choked a moment and stepped out of his reach. Her blows rained in: two socks to his bicep and shoulder, one to his solar-plexus, three to his jaw and sternum, and a sweeping knee across his thighs. Backing off, she didn’t seem to take any amount of preparation and so caught the lad again with surprise. The woman spun left and kicked high with her right foot, booting his jaw. Seroth fell, rendered dumb and dazed by the blow. He just managed a blink, face bloodied as a half dozen vibroblades poked at his belly.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The woman rubbed at her bruised neck. “Huh…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Pretty fast,” Sten chuckled.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Yes. Put him out and bind him,” She commanded.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Wha’for?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“He’s coming with us,” She replied and left their conversation at that. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth could only watch her backside retreat from the landing field, toward an aircar rapidly spinning into gear. Stenwulf was swearing a blue-streak. ‘Take th’ gods-damned boy!? Aww feth me, eh?’ The lad watched him approached. The merc undid the sheathe catch of his long sword, menaced its drawn edge against his naked throat. The lad swallowed, jaw braced as he stared coldly upwards. Stenwulf paused and glared back, then knelt and brought his pommel down onto Seroth’s brow. There was no pain, nor a sensation of bone crunch. Just sudden and immediate darkness, swimming in weightless unconsciousness that throbbed dully with aching pain across his frame…[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]A blunt, heavy hook to his left pectoral woke him. Seroth wheezed awake, feeling his lung sphincters lock as they tried to cycle through oxygen that simply wasn’t there. He tried calming, relaxing the constriction of pain in his chest, before the process was upset by a second strike. Something cracked as armoured knuckles bent in against his right portion of his ribbing. Wretched, seething fire turned into a sharp, pricking sting that made his eyes water as the lad tried to wriggle. He noticed he was bound overhead by his wrists. The sag of being hours unconscious had run the blood out of his wrists and fingers. The boy couldn’t tell if they were responding to his thought of ‘clench/unclench’. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Eyessup ‘ere.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The boy tried leaning back on weak legs, pitching his neck back so he could properly gaze forward. Stenwulf stood in his way. The commando was dressed down to just his khaki’s, naked from dirty brow to his muscled waist. Induction plugs and other electronic bio-ports lined the flesh of his sternum and ribs, upon his shoulder blades and throat. He looked strangely lacking, without his vaunted exo-suit strapped across frame. The man reached out and slapping Seroth’s face side to side, observing the bruising of his cheeks and jaw.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Awwwh, you’ll be ah’right. Gotta keep you a lil’ reeled, Ma’arms orders,” He shrugged. He drove his curled knuckles into the hard of Seroth’s stomach, stepping out of the way of the boy’s hurling reaction. Acid bile splashed close his boots. Stenwulf sighed and stepped in to kick, striking up into the tender of the lad’s genitals. Seroth couldn’t find the strength to even groan. He sagged forward off his bound arms, teeth gritted in a pure grimace.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“A lil’ pain keeps a Jedi off their feet. Least some of ‘em,” Stenwulf said. “I hear some Jedi got it in them to jus’… ignore pain. Like it ain’t even there. I call bantha dung on tha’. Better ta take your licks, like a real grown up. Sign of a real warrior, when they dun even need fancy brain-tricks like that. S’what we’re all about, Serry. Workin’ through pain.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The lad didn’t hear him. The injuries were beginning to meld together into a dulling resonate that echoed drum-like in his ears and skull. Seroth wondered briefly if he had blood on his ear-drums; it was certainly caked across the rest of his stripped frame. Light flashed in his eyes again, Stenwulf wailing into a boxing routine that broke punches across his jaw and cheek. It went on for seemingly forever: the lad clinging to bare consciousness, staring up at Stenwulf, and the mercenary doing his utmost to beat the boy into a strung piece of gory pulp. Several of the fighting clan approached to observe. Some called out direction. Others taunted.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Mind how you handle him, Sten, he’s got a hefting knob there, don’t break it!” Catcalled one woman, eying the lad’s state of nudity. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Finally, the crude torture stalled long enough for Seroth to get a bead of his surroundings. They were situated in a tall chamber perhaps nigh on thirty meters high. The walls looked hewn from rough stone, a strange, reddish granite that was both wind-worn and scalded by cutting beams. Rock stairwells lined the domes lower walling, leading up to serpentine tunnels that fed into accompanying rooms and wings. Light was cast by torch sconces and solar-charged glow-lamps hanging overhead on anti-grav suspension fields. The air smelt with rough traces of power: fyceline, unprocessed petrol, charging energy cells, uncooked meat, sweat, scat. It was here Stenwulf, that woman who’d so handedly beat him, and the rest of the crew built themselves into silent legends. He could feel uncounted eyes on him. Wordlessly judging his worth. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Is he up?” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth turned to look over his shoulder and strung bi[/SIZE][SIZE=10pt]cep. It was her: the wall, muscled woman with glacial, green eyes and a painfully similar widows peak, hair like raven’s feather. She approached with a swift, confident gait, dressed down into just a body-sleeve, midriff torn to reveal the hardened packs of skin across her belly and navel. Stenwulf licked his teeth appreciatively, though wisely out of the woman’s sight. She took a vibroaxe off her waist-belt and prodded the boy in his forehead.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Still conscious.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Aye,” Said Stenwulf. “More or less. Th’ boy’s got a bit ah’ iron in his bone. Took his lickin’ but never fell out.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The woman leaned close, enough for Seroth to scent her breath. Minty, frigid. No different than the rest of her demeanor. “…Do you know yet, who I am?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth blinked, let the well of blood on his tongue leak out the sides of his mouth, and shook his head. “So you don’t know my name or my face. I’m not sure if I feel relieved or disappointed. I’d hoped I left more of an impression that just blank memory.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Been waitin’ all day for this…” Stenwulf could be heard snickering to a compatriot, in the ring of observers watching the one-sided exchange.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The boy watched the woman pace, lips pursed. She seemed briefly preoccupied, deciding how best to broach this unexpected and perhaps unwelcome confrontation. Seroth was a mess, livid bruising turning into bloody welts that would take no short change of time to heal. His face was a puffed mess, ready to pop at the slightest provocation. Tears and a touch of blood ran from the corners of the boy’s eyes. But the stare he wrought on Stenwulf across the way… The mercenary shrugged in slight discomfort, unnerved. The woman took the scruff of his chin lightly by one hand and refocused his gaze to herself. “I won’t offer apology for your state. Jedi can’t be trusted, ‘specially not one Sten told me was damned wily. I need you in pain and I need you helpless. Otherwise, you’ll run roughshod and get yourself and my fighters killed. Now…[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You said your name was Seroth? Seroth Ur-Rahn? Something you’ve had since you were a boy? Now, nod or shake, if you can manage even that. Was that something they gave you, your name?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The boy shook his head. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You took it yourself…?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth nodded.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Hmph,” The woman snorted. “That’s something, at least. You didn’t accept some dumbly banded moniker so they would have something to call you. Other than ‘boy.’ You’ll have to tell me who he was, this Seroth. …When you can manage speaking at all.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Ignoring his long stare, she went on. “It’s still not your name though. I’d… had a hope or three, that maybe you’d remember it, but – You were young. I think almost too little to understand what was occurring around you. Those last few days were the worst and strangest of my whole time alive. Have you figured it out?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The lad regarded her a deep moment, fogged faculties working over through logic routines, trying to garner that odd truth the woman was trying to feed him. He’d never been well able to sense another’s intent, but he was sharp enough to tell when something was truth and something was an outright lie. There was… a glimmering shard of grain. An irreproachable truth. He blinked up at her, words slurred as he tried speaking. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=10pt]“Hush. And listen,” She said. “You can at least remember this: alone and cold, stuffed tightly as you could in an oversized anti-rad suit. The dead and dying around you, watching their faces burst with cancerous lesions. Your mother and father, nowhere to be found. And then rescue arriving as Republic troops burst in to find you by yourself.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He could recall it: the Tund wastes, infected by centuries of radioactive contamination. Lifeless, gray, dead. He seemed to think he would wake up and walk up to the tall force-fields that kept the ash-winds in check. Staring up into a blood-red sun that heralded another gruesome day. But this stranger with a familiar face, how could she possibly… Possibly have any sort of clue as to what those distant, faded days had been like? A sudden, starkly terrifying idea lit up behind his swollen eyes.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The woman reveled in the bleak realization. “Seroth isn’t your natural name. I would know, boy. I would know the son I birthed amidst gunfire and cold winds. I named you Seydon. After my father, his father’s father, and so on. I am your mother, boy. My name is Guenyvhar Gunn. And these…” She gestured over her shoulder to massed fighters behind. “Are my Sayda.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Welcome home,” She chuckled in his ear, as shock, agony, and deprivation finally took its toll. Seroth hung limply in unconsciousness, Guenyvhar’s voice echoing on like a cruel, mortuary dirge. [/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]A vista. Blue, grey, and gold, colours of day and twilight mingling as night began to edge in over the eastern horizon. Star-gold sands. Dunes tipped with the blue-on-satin black shadows, against a velvet backdrop of melting sunlight that begun to twinkle with distant diamond stars. Seroth blinked a moment, aware of the glib pain in his chest. Breathing too deeply brought an unkind scar of agony up his throat and up behind his nose. He became gently aware of his back propped up against a stack of shale rock, a light pillow jammed beneath his skull and nape. A grey, wooly blanket had been thrown across his body. He’d been redressed, some medical briefs and thick swathes of damp bandaging. It was difficult to tell if the wetness was from salve or his own blood.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Gently, he trained his eyes around, rotating a stiff throat. A dark entry tunnel yawned open to his right. Before him was a short lip of rock jutting out from a sheer, high cliff-face. Some mountainous formation, that hadn’t been swallowed up by the infinite sand dunes below. The sand… Seroth looked on ahead, over an infinite desert ocean. Their vista must have lent them a vantage point of some three hundred kilometers, out over the eastern prospects. Cold night winds caught and froze the tenders of his naked toes. The boy shifted, trying to ease himself forward to kneel and then stand.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Don’t try to move. Just lay back and rest. You’ll be back inside soon.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Guenyvhar was sitting atop a smoothened stone meditation plate, legs crossed, a cloak thrown over her backside. She seemed still adorned in her ripped body-sleeve, unconcerned with the cold. “You’ll have your full motional range back in a day or two. We’ve some bacta. Not much to truly spare outside of medical emergencies, but I decided to make an exception in your case.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Thank you,” Seroth croaked.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You impressed Sten. He doesn’t like you, but you impressed him,” She said. “You took your licks and you didn’t crumble. He respects that. Most of us do. I’m a little harder to please.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]A beat. Quiet only broken by the sound of wind chaffing at the mesa’s lip edge fell between the pair. The boy simply closed his eyes and rested his tongue, too worn and broken to bother trying to converse. He was yet coming to grips with the notion of ‘family.’ Blood relatives, beyond the soulful connections he’d made with the former Adamant Company, with Rosa Mazhar, and the odd independents of the Vagrant Fleet. What would they think of him now, trussed up in medical gauze, blackened and blued across his chest and facial features? Damned fortunate to be still breathing. Or unfortunate, depending on what ‘Guenyvhar Gunn’ had in store for him. The lad blinked and looked over to her. “…Why am I alive?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Because I didn’t want to kill you,” She said simply. “Because… You’re my son, very simply. I went easy with you on Saijo. I didn’t shatter your collarbone or snap your forearm and bleed you out by your femoral arteries. I was… curious.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“What were you wondering?” He managed to grit.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“How you’d turn out. I thought you might have been sent out to one of the child service facilities the Republic runs in the Expansion territories. Maybe… working minimum wage, saving up for a nice college, running after girls. Typical stuff. Instead…” Guen turned around, revealing Seroth’s blade-hilts clutched in her hands. “You’re a Jedi Knight, running errands on the Outer Rim. You get tired of being told what to do?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I…” Seroth tried to begin his own explanation, though his throat felt akin to pitch soot singed with coarse fire. Guen waved for his silence...[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]…And unceremoniously tossed his weapons past her shoulder. They sailed on a pretty trajectory arc before twinkling into lost slivers of glinting silver. The boy’s long gaze turned narrowed, questioning. His mother loosed an uncharacteristic giggle, and drew out a long knife to play with between her fingers. “You’ve a hard time putting hate into what you do. Might be that Jedi training, might be just your disposition. I’ll know soon enough. So much the better. If you hated me, I’d just have you gagged, thrown to Mos Eisley, and told to go home.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Mos… Eisley…?” The lad croaked. “…Tatooine…?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Yeah. Out beyond the Dune Sea, where the real desert is. It’s a simple hideaway but… No one thinks to look,” Guen snorted. “Everyone holes up in citadels, bastions, towers. Everyone knows where they are. Intimidation keeps them away. I’ve thought its better, to be simply hidden. You can’t measure strength by battle fleets and soldiery, Seydon. It’s only measurable by what you, by yourself, can accomplish. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Which I am going to show you,” She nodded past her shoulder. “Know why I threw out your blades?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“No…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Because they aren’t you,” Guen said in confidence. She watched the boy start, eyes suddenly bright as he tried to rustle forward.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“That… Is not… For you… Or anyone… To decide…” He groaned, forced to pause and grip his hand against a twisted knot of cloth over his liver.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Is that so? “ Guen rose. She capered over to her ailing boy and pushed him back prostrate with the tip of her toe. “I didn’t spare you to humour back talk. You listen, son, and hard. You’re young, so I’ll forgive your ignorance. But this has been the life of me, our family, going back as many generations as you can bother to count. I’ll be damned we harboured a strain of Sensitivity in our blood, because all the Jedi have done is dull you to the point of softness.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Well. Better Jedi than the other facet. Otherwise, you’d have just turned out an angry prick. Wanna know how you survived Sten’s beating? …You chose to. We’re Gunns. We’ve never needed any magiks and we never will. Hell, Seydon, if your Pa could see you now. Weep with pity, he would, at your sorry state.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The hardened flint in the lad’s eyes softened. “…My father?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“He made me promise, Seydon. Were anything to happen to him, I’d see to you and make sure you were raised up right. …I’ve been what? Nineteen years late in seeing to that? I lost him and then I lost you. Some way to hold up your end, huh? Kept the boys and girls together, got Stenwulf in on the deal, and we’ve carved out a life. Good, hard, bloody, and when we go to play, ohhh, how we play. …Better than at the beck and call of some fat Master or flakey Senator, boy, I guarantee you that.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“What… do you want?” The lad choked out. Guen stepped close and laid the flat of her smooth sand-boot across his throat.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I didn’t think I’d live to see myself bear another boy or girl, Seydon,” Guen said, the lines around her eyes and mouth tightening and softening in turn. “Losing your Pa, and then you? Just gave up. Figured the Gunn’s would die out quietly and then the Sayda’s would fall to whomever I decided. Now I find you and the Republic’s sullied your strong blood with this hocus pocus, I’ve come to see my work is cut out for me. So I’m giving you a choice. …Let go of them and come under us. Or, renounce me, your mother. If you do, I’ll respect that. I’ll break your neck, but you can die proud.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You leave me… no choice at all…” Seroth managed to murmur.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“No, I don’t. But it’s for your own good,” Guen said. “Now go back to sleep. You’ll be taken in shortly. When you feel like you can walk and fight well enough, I’ll be leaving you in Shev’s care.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Shev…?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You’ll see,” She murmured. There wasn’t a note of comfort to be found in her frigid tones, that voice of cold oil on frosted glass. Seroth laid back against his threadbare pillow, staring across the darkening Tatooine dune crests. Gold sand turned to grey dust, as a long night heralded a deep cold. The stark cries of the roaming Sand People echoed out, mimicking the raw undulation of pain and fear that ran through the boy’s blood. His mother was between a matron and a slave driver, cold and hot in equal measures. Did she love him, her prodigal boy? Or… Or what? He didn’t know. And figured he wouldn’t, until Guen herself was ready to settle accounts…[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]His name was Shev Rayner, Guen said, and he was a wiry bundle of desert robes tied taut by lengths of gut-leather she said he’d dug out from the gullet of a Krayt dragon. Seroth had awoken three days on, sufficiently by his word to stand and move with relative ease. He would bear slight facial scarring for what remained of his days, in no small thanks to Stenwulf’s impeccable sense of fisticuff torture. The wolfish man himself was encountered on their way down to a sub-basement cordoned off by a semi-permanent rotation guard. Stenwulf just smirked and gave the boy’s shoulder a punch. By all his rights, Seroth had justification to one day demand a redress for his pains endured. The lad simply kept his tongue and countenance to himself, curious to where Guen was leading on. She came to awake him, neglecting breakfast but slapping a cold water flask into his hands.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You’re starting today,” Was all she felt bothered to say. “Stay close and keep quiet.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The sub-basement was a diamond of four cavernous chambers, laid out for training and recreation. Narrowed stone passages led the way from hall to another, linked in a nexus fashion. Installed glow lamps set to a lower illumination level painted the sandy walls with gold tones and cinnamon-brown hues. Seroth noted the almost disarming, dream-like aura. Weight machines and exercise equipment laid scattered on matted floors in a haphazard order. Blunt, bronze quarterstaffs and wooden scimitars, plastic play-axes and dull-edged longknives fashioned from wrought-rion, a small concentrated arsenal of teaching tools that had been brutal use. Some were left caked with sparse gouts of old, unwashed blood. The thickened aroma of sweat and pained effort was soaked into every padded stone.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]That was where Shev Rayner waited, in the primary lyceum. As they drew close, Seroth felt the man putting up a ghastly stench. The man was a head shorter than he, stature thick and planted, stocky as wroshyr-tree trunk. He kept a barely trimmed square jaw, head rowdy with sand-laced auburn curls coiling over his crown-line. Almost too bright, blue eyes, crazed with flashes of maddened emotion, looked up to regard the pair. Shev flicked his stare briefly to Guenyvhar, nodding imperceptibly… and then settled upon her son. Seroth matched the unspoken intensity with a modest gaze. The man garbed akin to the Sand People grunted, then barked to Guen.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Thought you said you brought someone to train,” He snorted, looking to the lad as if he’d spat on his cotton jerkin.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I have,” Guen replied, keeping a perfectly neutral candor.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Nay. You’ve brought another sunuvabitch, same as those idiots you keep around for fodder. Lookit him!”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I have. And I’ve made my decision, Rayner.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You won’t be holding me to it, that’s for damned sure!” Shev spat and turned to walk away. “Find some other fool with time to spare.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I did,” Guen chuckled. Seroth had never heard her laugh aloud. “And now he’s giving me shid.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Shev waived over his shoulder at the boy. “He’s in a worse, sorrier state than you were when Dathan dragged you here. You I could fix. …Reckon that manchild’s the greenest thing on the Outer Rim.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Stenwulf vouches for some of his prowess.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I don’t give a flying shid what that sorry, stupid feth has to say for anything!” Shev roared aloud, turning on his hip. “With Sten having his way, we’re already whored out. I ask for fighters, he sends in lunatics.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Shev. He’s my son. And you know perfectly what that means to me. And you,” Guen said with a chilly point. “I’ve work to see to, so I’m leaving him in your care. Each time I return, I expect that I will see progress. Improvement. You will give him a hundred fold the grief you acted on me. Am I understood, Shev?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The weapons master turned to regard his former pupil. Guen simply glared back, focusing the frost of her notoriously cold green eyes into overpowering the elder’s will. Seroth minded his own attentions, noting the span of the high ceiling and the entrances, exits, the type and style of barbells and hand-weights, weighted juggler bats and Wookie-balls, oddly packed stillsuits and body gloves. If his mother had her way, vast tracts of his time would be spent sweating and bleeding into the rows of gymnastic mats. By now, Shev had gathered the leader of the Sayda’s close and was engaged in a heated row. Spittle flew from his teeth, face scrunched in rage, in indignation. Guen matched him ire for ire, still frigid, always glacial, keen and precise as a stiletto dagger.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Are we finished?” Her voice rose.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]A worn glove flicked through his messed curls, but he capitulated with a sharp, reluctant nod. Guen strode past Seroth with, face stamped with smug triumph. She reached, gripping his shoulder. “You’ll listen to everything he has to say. He’ll spit piss and vinegar your way, but you’re going to accept it. When he’s finished, I have every expectation that you’ll be his better.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Where are you going?” Seroth asked quietly.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Never you mind!” Guen returned with a spit. “That’s my business. You just survive and maybe we’ll be lucky enough for you to know about it later.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The lad watched after her, clean, languid strides taking her out of sight up the long exit well of rock-hewn steps. Guen didn’t bother with a second look or final stare. Her eyes were frosted with calculation, running mental math protocols that dealt with whatever new work had fallen into the Sayda’s lap. Perhaps protection services… or more bloody labours. Seroth found his mother’s band difficult to appreciate. They upheld an almost monastic attitude, strangely ennobled, unyielding in mind, in body and soul. Yet, he suspected they were no less a harlot than ordinary bandit mercenaries. Their skills and discipline for a met wage. Unless he was mistaken… Guenyvhar Gunn saw fit to keep his impressions severely limited.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]What was it she wanted out of him…?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“About face, idiot!” Shev screamed.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth responded with a crisp turn and a ramrod straight back. The weapons master was on form, toes digging in against rock and mat, all hellfire and steel as he smacked his knuckles across the lad’s face, chest, abdominals, and spine. “As it stands, boy, you and I are going to be acquainted closer than maggots on rot. Guen wanted her way and what Guen wants, she usually gets. Usually. If I had my way, you’d be out in the Jundland Wastes with a nine-dayer pack and a bit of Bantha scent. You’d might make it to the farms, if you hucked it quick enough. Be no great sorry if the Sand People got you first.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Sir.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Boy, let’s get some ground rules settled first and foremost,” A stiffened finger waved under Seroth’s nose. “I am your keeper. My instructions will be followed to the letter and with perfect clarity. You will give me as much as I ask for. Your routine will be whatever I set it for. Running, lifting, fighting, whatever I set the regimen to. And I don’t want to see one whiff of any Jedi magicks. Am I clear? I will break you in half if I do.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth nodded. “Yes.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Good,” Shev turned. “We are starting now.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth blinked but rolled his shoulders and ran a fast disciplinary mantra through the quiet of his mind. The WM led him to a set of bulked body gloves, tossing a sleeved shirt and pant-legs at his feet. The boy disrobed and swiftly dressed, loosing a breath as he felt a constricting weight come over the entirety of his frame. Shev just grinned and gave the lad’s belly a none too gentle pat. “Y’feel that?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Yes…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“That’s eighty kilograms of extra padded weight braced against your frame. It’s a weight suit. Normally?” Shev laughed. “Start you off at twenty kg’s, maybe forty. But? Guen wants you broke in something quick. Come.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He led them down a stairwell carved downwards in a helix spiral, the entry hidden behind a heavy row of weapon cabinets. The coolness of the sun-shielded halls and cavern-ways began to stifle. Lukewarm drafts haunted upwards from beneath the step-grails. Seroth felt his vision adjusting to increased light, crags of sand blowing up into his nostrils and gathering in his eyelashes. Lukewarm turned to hot, turned to scorching and then deathly. The stairwell bottomed out into a rough patch of cleared sand and a single, hollowed out portcullis that faced into a flat section of dune-less desert fastness. Shev walked out into the twin-sun glare, almost too happy to be faced with what was, admittedly, beautiful desolation. Seroth said nothing. His eyes took in the endless grains, which counted to more suns then there were in existence.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Foreboding. Desiccated. A grim reminder of the Universe’s impersonal regard for sentient life. Shev slapped Seroth’s shoulder and pointed to a far pole across the flat bed. It was planted up a dune that had been constructed from several smaller, drifting mounds. By his estimate, it was a ten kilometer walk. “I want you to run out there, touch the pole, run back, and do so again afterwards.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The lad simply struck Shev with an incredulous, wordless stare. The man just shrugged and gave him a shove out onto the sand and salt licks. A forty kilometer hike, all told. In a glove-suit weighing eighty kilograms that felt the equivalent of several lead blankets draped over his brow. The heat was a prime, vicious excoriation that seared into every strip of exposed skin. Seroth threw over the body-gloves thin hood and began to pump his bulked legs. Impassively, Shev leaned against the rock face of the half-buried mountain tip that served as the home of the Sayda. Soon, the lad was just a thin sliver working its way over the washy heat haze. To the lad’s credit, he hadn’t complained. …Maybe there was something salvageable about Guen’s boy after all.[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]“Tell me what you know about strength training,” Shev snorted down close by the lad’s eye.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth paused, replaced the electrolyte-laced water tankard in his hand with a worn washcloth. It hadn’t seen a scrub and a wash in perhaps unseemly months, and it felt crusted with both sand and salt against his brow. Still, it collected and idly soaked off the sweat that stained and ran down his cheeks and jaw. For the past seven days, he’d run the Pole-Jog. Shev kicked him awake three hours before dawn on the first morning, harrying him with a beleaguering set of coarse insults all the way to the training caverns. He mounted on the weight suit, braced his constitution, and took the run. Over, and over, and again ‘till Shev said so. The weapons master noted that the Pole-Job was now a permanent staple in his daily regime, the weight-suit his second skin. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“A dangerous sort of creature,” Shev had said. “Is the combination of will power with a sound body.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“One requires the other?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Hell yes, just so!” Shev then barked. “You put your mind to something, back it up with a steel soul, nothing’s out of grasp. You give that sort of valorous fool legs that can run, arms that can lift, you watch him. You watch him and fethin’ see, he’ll go farther than all the lot of the other gawking bastards.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]So now a week on, they’d paused at high noon. Despite whorls of air-conditioned drafts chasing down the hewn steps from the upper floors, the bottom exercise and sparring arenas were still damp. Moisture clung off the smoothed ceiling in bulbous drips that pattered down in a broken, randomized rhythm. Shev had called an end to the day’s running and handed a bucket of cocoa butter. The boy sighed gently, slapping a handful of the easing grease across the burn of his nape. Sweat fell from his face, down his throat, slicking into the slight misfit of his body glove. He kept mindful of occasional, stinging blisters. Seroth gulped back mouthful of rejuvenating refresher juice and looked up this taskmaster.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Strength training?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Aye.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“For increasing the load your body can carry,” He said. “And your ability to endure those hard loads.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Huh,” Shev murmured. “Well, let me get technical here. Ya undergo this brand of work to give your physical strength a boost, improve anaerobic endurance, and enlarge the skeletal muscles. The anaerobic bit is what we do so your body begins forming lactic acid. That bit ‘o juice is the lynchpin of this whole exercise.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“What does it do?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Something of a complex subject, but the short of it? Combined with your aerobics, we’re gonna put some bite in ya. Greater strength, increased speed, maximized endurance, physical power, boy.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth nodded, looking to the rows of weighted machines awaiting their veneers of mica-dust to be wiped off. He paused when Shev reached and slapped his knuckles over his chin. He settled back his attentions, as the taskmaster glared pointedly down at him. “Don’t forget what I told you. Strength with will. You need trust in your physical capabilities and where they can take you. And then will yourself to go past that. Mind o’er matter and all that philosophical tripe. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Now, c’mon. Get here and lay back on this.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]There was a set of laid bars beside concentric rings of weighted steel, measuring between small twenty five pound discs to outright colossal wheels evening out at one hundred. In the center midst was a very well worn bench-brace that had been whittled down to the very wood plating and metallic support stanchions that prevented the seating from collapsing. The lad sat his shoulders and spine flat to the benching and steadied his outstretched arms. Shev laid a bar against his palms and began securing roughly a hundred fifty pounds, taking care to balance the disc-loads. The taskmaster snapped a keyed clamp down on either rod-butt, shifting to a knee while his subject rested the heft against his chest.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“This fethin’ marvelous exercise is the tried and fethin’ true ‘bench press.’ It puts a bit of resistance on the pectoralis major alongside a shidding plethora of secondary supporting muscles.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“How long?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Hmmn?” Shev furrowed his bushy eyebrows.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“How long do you wish me to work with this?” Seroth asked, in his ordinarily quiet tones.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Shev replied. “You need to know how this works, boy. We’re going with a few solid reps in a number of assigned ‘sets’. Ya gotta keep a good form and a strong tempo in order for this to work. Form is… well, sorta, kinda how it sounds, shid. How you perform the motion. And tempo is just that. How fast or slow or lazy ya go about it.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You will regulate the exercise?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Gorram straight. Ten sets, ten reps per,” Shev barked. “And then break! G’won!”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He worked in almost dead silence, broken only by the clearing passage of his esophagus gasping in hulking breaths. Guen had long departed, taking the entirety of her warband, leaving an old, strange grouse with an unproven student to mind the watch. An itch grew in the taut skin of his arms. The lad was still dressed with his customary, weighted body-sleeve, adding a potent resistance to an already mildly straining task. The lad kept his quiet, Shev observing from above. His fingers would poke, press, readjusting the curl of his elbows and the roll of his gloved shoulders. When the exercise finished, the bar was replaced to an overhead holster as the lad loosed a guttural moan.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Don’t get worn on me yet,” Shev muttered behind. “You’re not done with your pectorals today. Not by a damn sight. Tomorrow, your quadriceps and the hamstrings. After that, abdominals, lats and the trapezius. And so on as I say.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Because you have precedent.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Shev grinned. Browned over teeth caked with film caught the lad’s stare. “Because I have the fething precedent.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]So the day went. From bench press to the barbell variant, chest and machine flies, ending on a note of seemingly unending push ups. Shev insisted for every rep, every set, and when he felt slighted that the boy’s all wasn’t being given, great, reddened lashes stroked over the expanse of the boy’s now shirtless spine and shoulders. He did not cry out, biting over yelp after yelp. Though he was not so prideful to excuse himself hot tears of concentrated agony, worn out from toe to hair-end. There was no permission to quit, no word to sunder and collapse. The taskmaster nodded slightly to himself and kept a solid heel pressed over the nape of the lad’s throat. Guenyvhar wanted her son pushed until his stamina threaded, broken down into a grunt creature of routine and regular pain. Shev knew the cause for it, the necessity of retraining the boy’s flesh into an oiled, biomechanical machine. Flesh was pliant. Muscle would obey. Seroth possessed the requisite gene set that fed strength and definition into his packed frame. Would his mind be so malleable? Pushing weights, running, stretching, and the agility tumbles the taskmaster kept planned were one degree of compiling an able fighter. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The fighting arts themselves were another matter entirely… [/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]His days became a tunnel of ordeal and effort. The lad gave up attempting to sleep anywhere but upon a washed patch of matting in the training sub-basements, throwing over a patched blanket woven with too-coarse fibers. Every day he awoke, backside reddened from incessant scratching as he tossed during the night. It left his flesh raw with a strangely cleanly sensation, pores scrubbed and caked sweat across his epidermis literally scratched away. When Seroth was preoccupied with the day’s courses, Shev would steal the blanket, wash it, return it, and say nothing of the matter. The rough linen was an unspoken heirloom. It’d adorned his mother’s, Guen’s, shoulders once upon an age. His father’s, Dathan, their shared grandparents and back at least three sets of ancestors. It was something akin to a coming-of-age ceremony, and Shev himself called the physical trials ‘the Bitter Work’.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The taskmaster’s routine was simple and ordinarily flexible. Overnight, Seroth was allowed four to six hours of recuperating sleep. Upon waking, a fast breakfast of nutrient yogurts, imported protein sausages, a mixed concoction of juices laced with electrolytes and a pinch of sodium. Once that was swiftly wolfed and washed down, they retreated downstairs to the auxiliary entry tunnel and began the Pole Run. Seroth donned his customary weight-suit, shrugging on the eighty kilograms across his coarsened body, slapping cocoa butter across his face, hands, and throat. If the lad was fortunate, he had an hour of brisk morning twilight to enjoy, shielded toes stamping into doughy, wet sand. Ten kilometers to the pole and back, repeated as much as Shev declared necessary. It was only when the rising suns hitched up in the east horizon, a half hour past dawn’s light, that the effort became hellishly scorching.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Afterward, following cool-down and a bright drench of water, they ascended to the second-level chambering and took up the weights. The taskmaster kept the custom modular, always thoroughly demanding every last vestige of attention, industry, force, and struggle Seroth could muster. He didn’t expect a high standard of work from the lad. He expected a flawless attempt. If he felt any slight against his ordinarily impossible standards, out came his knuckles or a lash and a fresh, welting cut across the boy’s shoulders or belly appeared before either of them could blink. An evil rite but one Shev Rayner knew inculcated an expectation, not only from himself, but from the youthful practitioner. Seroth was now waking and performing the requisite preparation stretches without his trainer’s go-ahead. Always one more set, one more rep, one more attempt to beat his previous personal best. And like a reluctantly proud parent, Shev indulged him.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The exercises were cycled on a four day period. The first day, quadriceps, hamstrings and calves. The second period, pectorals, lats & trapezius, and deltoid muscles. On the third cycle, biceps, triceps, and forearm drills. And finally, by the fourth day, the abdomen and concentrated oblique muscles, and portions of the lower back. Every exercise was performed still strapped to the heft of Seroth’s slowly wearing plate-suit, adding on an extra bite and sting of resistance that burned acid and fire over taut and steeling tissue and meat. While the boy kept his concentration narrowed upon the requisite work-out sets Shev asked for, the grizzled ex-legionnaire kept an able eye on the matters of hydration, nutrition, and enforcing rest protocols.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“The flesh breaks down and then begins knitting over the day’s damages,” He lectured once. “Your body is never, never idle, boy, don’t make the mistake that it is. You can sure as shid beat the feth outta yourself on an hourly basis, whatever gets you hot. But rest, son. The real work starts when you stop. And you better have a damned decent meal and drink on hand for it. Can’t begin to tell you how much gods-fething potential is lost when some shid consistently forgets to replenish after all that strain.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Their shared routine remained unbroken as such for six months. Rest, waking, stretching, eating, running, working, dinner, and then blissful sleep. Modern regiments prepared for Galactic Olympiads across both Republic and Omega Pyre space included bio-feedback machines, personalized and highly potent diets designed to maximize power and speed. Electro-chemical baths were at times utilized, relaxing and tightening targeted shelves of muscle one tendon at a time. An athlete could develop powerful mass, a steely core, without so much as raising a hand. The Sayda under Guenyvhar Gunn enjoyed no such luxuries. Seroth’s ribs ached from catching Wookie-balls for hours on end. Fingers and wrists grew numbed juggling Massian clubs. There was no sanitation, cleaned and polished chrome and steel. He worked through earth and sand-grit, laced with odorous excretions, sucking down brackish water while his meals were cooked over an open stone pit.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Progress?” Guenyvhar asked pointedly, one evening. Rarely, when not busied fortifying the Sayda’s coffers with further off-world caches of crisp platinum and gold credits, she came to watch, observing her kin ‘in flight’. Shev reveled in his broadly smug, toothy grin.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Y’might say that.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth was completing his workday with an impromptu session against the bench-press lifts. The bar kept clenched between taped palms and roughened fingers was near bent from his chosen weight-load. Ten thickened black-carbon steel discs, five for each secured bar-end, groaned like vessel stanchions slowly snapping under a structural flaw. Every rep Guen noted performed was slow, smooth, the lad’s form a perfect gait of curling skin. Her son satisfied himself with five repetitions, concentrating to ease the bar into its overhead hanger grips. Worn arms fell away, snatching a thermos of cooled electro-juice and a washing cloth. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Pressing a thousand pounds, right there.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Frosty green eyes snapped down to regard his craggy expression. “A lie.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Dathan did it, in just as much time, if not a month later than your boy’s,” Shev argued, unafraid to let a hissing edge overtake his diction.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Dathan was special.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“So is he,” The taskmaster grunted in return.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“And the run? The rock climbs?” Guen pressed.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“He makes fifty kilometers in under an hour. And the climbs, the agility hurdles?” Shev made a show of reaching into his pocket and drawing out a cracked, crystalline data-pad. “Lemme see. …Can make the twenty meter climb in six seconds. And the hurdles…? …Six again.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Gods be damned…” Guen whispered beneath her breath. An eager edge to her tones betrayed her cloaked sense of burgeoning excitement. “When does his fighting commence?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“We start drills tomorrow. Hand to hand in conjunction with the long-knife. Gonna have to accelerate it a bit, but…” Shev shrugged, running through a mental checklist. “Can’t be helped. …What does help is he’s got a steel-trap mind there. Soaks everything in, fething sponge.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“By the years end?” Guen muttered.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…He’ll be ready,” Shev assured. “Tomahawk, long-knife, vibrosword, bayonet and firing drills…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The Sayda warmaster cocked a thin eyebrow. “Some of your legionnaire expertise? Even you didn’t teach me that.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I got a plan for that kid…” Shev said, quietly. “Just you wait and see. He’ll be everything you want, maybe even more. Just give me my time, Guen… Don’t throw him in the cauldron yet.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…Just make sure he’ll be able to keep himself alive,” Guenyvhar snorted, turning to depart back up the stone step-well.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Just you wait, woman…” Shev muttered.[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]“D’you know what this is?” Shev asked one day.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The lad glanced up from his stance. Seroth was upside down, legs stiff and back straight as a mast ramrod. Impeccably balanced, he was finishing with the final reps required to ease out of his handstand pushup. A routine which left his shoulders itching with lactic burn, ears thrumming with a heady pulse of rushing blood. He felt as if his eardrums were fit to burst, sweat pooling in a small crevice indented against a portion of mat-less, dusty stone flooring. Grunting, the boy swung his legs down and carefully brought his torso to a stand. Regarding his taskmaster through a brief haze of rushing blood, vision edged with motes of reddened darkness, Seroth saw the unremarkable blade the old coot spun idly through his knuckles.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“It is a knife,” He said, pausing for a thought. “…Well balanced. The tang is fashioned down into the gripping. Single edged, and perhaps sharpened by a cutting laser. The edge is too fine for a whetstone.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Yeah. You can’t put your thumb against the blade, or it’ll go right through and get stuck to the bone. It’s fine yeah, but you can get obsidian just as sharp,” Shev said. “So you know your weapons, eh?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I am not an expert,” Seroth nodded, gaze quiet, focused. “But I would know a longknife if I saw one. My mother carries one. And the others under her leadership. Stenwulf, I have noted, does not.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Stenwulf has little respect for others and even less for his blades,” Shev spat. “Before we begin any new lessons, boy, let me make one thing perfectly clear. This – “[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth raised his hand and took the proffered weapon. The handle was a single piece of polished wood grain, inlaid with vibro-circuitry woven into the tang of the pattern-welded steel. Its guard was a single curling piece that caught over his thumb and knuckles, and bore a signs of concentrated scuffing. The blade itself had been cleaned into a glassy sheen. Seroth found his reflected eyes staring back across the blood channel.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“ – This is a burden,” His teacher went on. “It’s not a privilege or a gift. It’s a tool and the responsibility for its usage and upkeep falls squarely on you. Just you. You’ll regard this object with the utmost degree of respect. If I find you taking any of the coming lessons lightly, I’ll give you a good scar to remind you of your hubris.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Yes, sir,” Seroth answered, gently regarding the knife.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…I know you’ve killed before. And somehow, you’ve kept it from becoming like an addiction. For all a lightsaber’s brutal power, it’s nothing compared to the fething intimacy of steel cutting through meat. I’ll show you how to destroy a man with just a two-inch punch-dagger. I’ll teach you how to turn a blade until its just liquid silver, scything through air and limb. I won’t turn you into an Echani-like killer. But you will be the one to come out of a street fight intact. So long as you respect your blade. Understand what it does, and what you can do it with it. C’mon.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The sub-chambers were divided into a diamond quartet of equally dimensioned half-globe halls, intersected with a straight network of connecting tunnels that fed into a small nexus anteroom. From the anteroom, a stroller could conceivably visit any of the four chambers he or she desired, without having to resort walking around the secondary perimeter alleys. Through the anteroom, teacher and pupil kept roughly northward and came out into sparring grounds. Unlike the general purpose strength building quarters, kept mostly unkempt with idle play-weapons used for impromptu mock duels, this den was kept maintained with an explicit care to preservation. Shev walked with softer footfalls, near silent. Seroth saw his eyes were partially lidded, and arms crossed over his waist, left hand gripping over the opposite wrist. Wistful. Observant. Nostalgic and brimming with uncharacteristic sentiment.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Shev Rayner, weapon master, had arrived into his element. He gestured over his shoulder to a line of weapon racks bolted to the dry stone walling. “Take a look. Familiarize yourself. You’re going to be working with everything there you see.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth walked up, intuitively inspecting from trestle to shelf to secured bracket. Longknives, kept in sharpened vigor, polished and immaculate. Longswords, ranging from the classic hanger pattern to bastard blades to two-handed pseudo-scimitars. Humble tomahawks and standard wooding axes, plied with a whetstone by hand to lend them a brutal edge. Thin rifles fixed with gleaming bayonets, spines serrated like saw blades. And finally war-clubs, fashioned with a jarring similarity to gun stocks, punctuated by a single, gleaming spear-head spike. The Jedi Order prided its singular weapon for being a scion of efficient, elegant design, an advanced blade that could cut through any material imaginable. In his youth, studying, taking his bruises from the stick-sword fighting exercises, the instructors dismissed vibroswords and their ‘ilk’ for being instruments of excessive maiming and needless gore. Yet, Seroth had come to a chilling realization, watching through an ancient holo-vid of Knights in war time. An opponent fell, bereft of their arm and leg. They didn’t bleed, wounds ferociously cauterized, collapsing like mangled… dolls. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Aimed to limit the effects of so-called ‘inhuman, undignified’ weaponry, the Jedi had constructed a tool that led to a state of callous indifference to damage. Bloodless. Cool. Detached. Seroth wondered often, listless in his meditations, if the Order truly understood the realities of a combatant life. Of if being able to tune out their investment to a given confrontation distanced them from relating to the oncoming pain and physical mauling. The lad took up a tomahawk in hand, testing its off-balance weight, pleased at the ease of his muscles’ compensation. Shev appeared by his side, snatching the axe and slapping its flat head across the lad’s temple and nose.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You’ll touch nothing except what I hand to you,” He barked. “Are we clear?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Yes,” Seroth said, feeling his cheek and lip beginning to bruise, swelling.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Good. Come over here with me.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Past a wide sparring circle, labeled underfoot with specific concentric rings denoting different fencing and combat steps, laid four ‘machines’ of testing. Shev noted each in turn. The Log: a length of slender wood suspended by four posts by reinforced roping, one end facing a weathered training dummy, nicked, scored, and horridly battered. The Comb: A portioned and widened square of sunken square and circular foot-posts, raised between a half meter to a full two above a sandy pit. The Windmill: A bizarre contraption of multiple ‘paws’ stuck with metal bars, rotating and swinging at variable speeds, guarding a beleaguered dummy from oncoming blows. And the Pendulum, set above a second sparring circle, weighted with a heavy but hollow iron ball that could swing about with unpredictable motion if the spin was set properly.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“In the first morning hour, you’ll run,” Shev said. “Run across the desert dune-flats, as you’ve done. There and back, just twice. Then, your exercise drills. Those will not be skimped. Full sets and reps of whatever is partitioned. Afterwards, we come here. And I beat you into a black pulp ‘till I say you can crawl away. You got that, young idiot?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“We will see how often you can land a blow, old man,” Seroth teased. Shev weighed the small smile on the boy’s quiet expression. And then burst out into his own, snickering, patting the lad’s shoulders in sympathy. Every warrior took their licks, Shev more-so than many others. Hard lessons were learned, bones cracked, fingers broken, seething with a retching pain. The ex-legionnaire endeavored to inculcate every vestige of agony-earned wisdom in the lad a hundred-fold. Perhaps out of thoroughness and a sense of a teacher’s dedication. Perhaps at Guenyvhar Gunn’s insistence that nothing be spared in her sons tutelage. …Or perhaps out a want to spare the long decades spent belly-down in muddy trenches, listening to the hiss of mortar fire and las-cannon blasts, repairing splints and sucking down numbing alcohol.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Sir?” Seroth said, noting the glaze in the elder’s hollow stare.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…Nothing,” Shev grumbled. Maybe one day, Seroth would too be deep in some Gods-forsaken siege line, bracing for the trench raids as enemies came falling down in the screaming scores. “…C’mon. The log for today.”[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]It took Shev a mattered of three weeks before he deemed the lad ready to possess anything but the now chipped and dulled fighting knife he had given him on what was now an almost distant day. The first course was education in basic maintenance. Usage of the whetstone, cleaning oils, the effects of certain atmospheres upon select metals. A condensed passage of tutelage, to be sure, but Shev knew his time was running increasingly short. He could not keep the lad stuck in street fighting theory while there was work to be done with the muscles. In the Gunn family, bodily memory seemed to adapt with unseemly quickness to whatever it was they took up as arms. Shev chalked up Seroth’s own burgeoning expertise as a matter of prior familiarization. Of course, his lightsaber combat-form habits were still a bother, weaning him off the idea that he needn’t scared of the blade-spine if it rested against his torso.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]They took to the Log. The taskmaster set drills for balancing on the treacherous beam, both dressed and barefooted. The log was a practice in balance, coordination, agility, and dexterity. Shev was of a mindset that a life-or-death contention between two individuals could occur anywhere, anytime, without the slightest provocation. It was of the unconditional need that Seroth not be caught flatfooted. So he wove back and forth along the featureless beam, swaying lightly from side to side every time his weight caught in at an odd angle. Those mistakes caught a lashing across his heels, his arse. The boy grunted, adjusted with a thought, and went on. He found a knife wasn’t as hefty a manstopper as, say, the fearsome war clubs awaiting his eventual attentions. Shev proved, however, in close combat drills that saw the lad thwumped repeatedly, that it was still a devastatingly effective tool. A knife could cut, gash, thrust, slash, carve and disembowel. Truly effective dagger-wielders could even ruthlessly block, parry, and counter against full meter blades.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“A solid knife is your safest fallback when you’re in a position to dictate how a fight will be performed,” Shev told him. “’I thought a blaster was the’ – shut – the – feth – up. Any punk can grab a pistol off a shanked officer and pretend he’s Boba Fett. You know what a carbine repeater represents, Seroth? Chances. They can afford a miss, a reload, a sighting. A gun’s weight in your hands is a kind of… drunkenness. You feel empowered, invincible, because you can shoot.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“You can’t afford an ill stab, or an underpowered pick-grip slash. Most seasoned fighters only need whatever opening you can provide them before they end you. Here. Come at me with a high cut, throat.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth obliged in the half-second’s span, gliding his blade out in a back-hand left to right slash. Shev was upon him, stepping into the lad’s right flank, forearms raised as block appendages. With his right hand, he crashed a powerful, open palm smash across the lad’s cheek bone and ear. His left gripped over his wrist, letting the strike feed into his frame. A moment later, the lad felt his arm nearly yanked from it socket, tripping over Shev’s thigh as their brief struggle was brought to the ground. The teacher then pantomimed a fast five-knuckle pummel into his eyes, nose, and jaw. Were he an unlucky mugger or opposing soldier, his skull would have been cracked and his senses rendered heavily dazed, if not wholly unconscious.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Don’t forget that a knife affords you nothing,” Shev lifted the boy back to his feet, rubbing a salve over his bruising noggin. “A lightsaber affords you nothing. Bare hands and a sharp reflex can render you crippled in moments. Remember that. Respect that. You’ll be learning a few moves yourself. But don’t ever let the end of my instructions be your end. You’re a young man, Seroth. Take every advantage of that.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]And so bladed tactics were mixed in with what the old man nicknamed ‘street kung’. A dirty, ragged, explosive set of controlled, precise brawling. In his own admittance, street kung would be hard pressed to keep, say, an Echani artist from picking the lad apart. But you didn’t very often find a practitioner of the whiter martial arts in the back alleys of Commoner, or the wilds of Endor. Shev had in mind the wilder sorts of trails for the lad to eventually embark on. Open and closed hand strikes, elbow jabs, fore-arm cracks, low and high knee butts, and even more flourishing snap-kicks and boxing maneuvers. These too Shev ran the lad through in paralyzing drills, before setting him up again atop the Log. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“What was that? What the hell was that? Are his eyes on his forehead? That’s it… That’s it, one more time! Eye jab, nose crunch, collapse the gut, now the throat! Feth me, you’re starting to get an idea, child.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Another bruising, harried bane of Seroth’s physicality was the Comb. A two score of heavy posts driven down upright into an accommodating bed of sand, alternating in height between a half meter and a full one hundred to two hundred centimeters. And like the Log, the Comb was likewise utilized to train an almost inherent sense of coordinated balance, dexterous agility, alongside improved and enlarged spacial awareness. Together, Shev and Seroth crossed and leapt from one beam foothold to another, the taskmaster always a step ahead and raining strikes from behind, below, or atop. Seroth was mastering a omni-directional parry, quick to intercept Shev’s oncoming stabs and cuts, working back his rhythm that saw the coot often switching to desperate, blistering defenses.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Don’t get fancy!” Shev called out during a heated dagger fight. “Half-circle motions, step in with the cuts! Watch your footing, watch it! Is your off-hand useless?? Use it! Strike me, blind me, grip the weapon hand! You have to put – OHHFF!”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth snapped his weapons-appendage high, catching Shev’s overhand pick-strike and arresting its fall. Up came his knuckles, crunching and bursting Shev’s nose in a bright spray of flesh and blood. The lad carried the man off his feet, tripping his left knee and heel over a placed leg set behind Shev’s hip, throwing him to the Comb. Shev cracked his shoulders and spine off a pair of waiting foot-posts, tumbling ungainly between them. Seroth fell in close behind, poking into his teacher’s liver, between his ribs, and at the temple. Light, pricking touches that drew no more than a slight scratch. The boy had earned the contest.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Yeah, yeah, fine, fethin’ dandy!” Shev growled. “I’m fethin’ bleeding all over the ground here, get me up, idiot!”[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]“And now, my eager young fool,” Shev said one warm morn, calling the lad over from his drills against a hard-light holo-construction. “…Now we get to the bread and butter.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]In his wrinkled hands were a paired set of near identical axes. Tomahawks, sheathed in leather catches that collapsed over the axe-heads, swaying slightly in Shev’s restless motion. Seroth was intercepting clouded impressions of barely suppressed excitement streaming off the elder’s emotional center. Momentarily, he felt oddly young. As if the crusted film of world weariness, heart ache, and long suffering had just briefly melted like wax against a close candle. Shev blinked, shaking his brow, rolling his stocky shoulders through a quick rotation. He handed off one to Seroth’s hands, who closed comfortably around the synthetic gripping.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Axes are ancient. Moreso than most cutting weapons, barring the tried, true longknife. …Well,” Shev shrugged. “In most humanoid spaces. Just humour me. A tomahawk is a metamorphosis of the woodland hatchet, which comes in Gods know how many variations and permutations on the open hardware market. What differentiates a tomahawk from a hatchet or ordinary cutting axe is the shape of the head and face. See it? A little longer, larger on the cutting edge? And the spike attached on the butt?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth wove a hand over the bright, chased finish of the crunching spike woven over a capped ‘eye’ attached in a permanent fashion to the handle. Shev went on. “Your family, from the great patriarch and matriarch Jerem Gunn and Sayda Gunn, founded this ‘fighting clan’ on the basis that this would be its most signature tool. That was… Maybe nigh on four hundred, five hundred years ago, when the Gulag outbreaks destroyed most galactic infrastructures. Many outlying worlds, isolated communities, were cut off from replenishing supply runs. It was brief revival of blacksmith and ye olden tyme harvesting, farming tactics. Tech was expensive: pricey to obtain, very difficult to keep maintained. Tomahawks were simple to forge.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]They strolled to a pair of tall, gelatin dummies, hardened into a chilling close approximation of an average humanoid’s weight and physical consistency. Yellowed, partially translucent, they appeared like basic if too-obvious shape-shifters from children’s fantasy sagas. Blinkered, featureless eyes stared in a solemn, neutral expression. The chest cavities, shoulders, ribs, hips, bellies, and thighs were thickened to simulate resistance from basic armament. And atop them were actual light anti-ballistic plates, sutured into the jello. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I’ll explain a handful of the advantages these little bastards carry,” Shev grunted, working up an eager smile. “Watch.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]His right arm shot forward and drove the axe-edge clean through the dummy-head, pulling down and out with a ripping jerk. Their feet were showered with false gore, and Shev smoothly kicked the dumb, poor thing off onto the floor. “One shot, one kill, so it goes. Y’see, all the weight is in the head. True, that it makes it unbalanced, but the collected mass generates tremendous force. You can smash through almost any raised defense. A sword, a rifle, a staff, almost anything. Maybe even cleave a shield in half. Because all that generated force is focused here – “[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Shev’s palm patted the axe-head’s sharpened, gelatin stained edge. “In this zone right here. Not all over the place with a machete or broadsword, but here. It’s like driving in an ice-pick, if that helps. Pick up the dummy.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth obliged, standing back as the taskmaster went into another routine. He kept his leading, strong arm forward, tomahawk held steadily aloft in what he referred to as ‘the hammer grip.’ In his second-hand wove a longknife, weaving through a parrying pattern meant to distract and swiftly intercept an oncoming blow. “The top and bottom of the axe-head, sloping in from the cutting face, are called the leading edge and the following edge respectively. One advantage over other bladed weaponry is the ability to hook and trap with the following edge.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Shev then demonstrated. Rather than blasting a heavy chop through the collarbone or throat, he leaned and caught the head’s underside in behind the shoulder, gouging the bottom tip through what would have been meat and boney gristle. With a yank, the dummy came tumbling forward: right atop Shev’s waiting blade. It drove into the groin and shredded up through intestine, belly, liver, and then diaphragm. “You’re going to learn that grappling, trapping with a tomahawk can be highly beneficial in controlling your opponent, and controlling a fight overall.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“What of disadvantages?” Seroth asked, tapping the shaft with the butt of his own ‘hawk. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Foremost, unbalanced,” Shev said in exaggerated emphasis. He began to showcase with a few slow up and down strokes, wrist cocked and strained to properly compensate. “It’s almost impossible to redirect a missed stroke once you’ve launched it. Recovery time is likewise botched, since your wrist, arm, and shoulder are struggling to gain back control. It can lead to a long second or two of opened defense, which an opponent can take advantage of. Plus…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He cut a third blow to his ravaged dummy partner, then held up a pinky. It drew a short line, gesturing to the cut. “Average hawks can only cut small swaths through a given material, though we’ve fashioned our blade edges to be over ten to twelve centimeters in length to try and make up for the loss. Plus, gripping can be a sunuvabitch. The shaft is smoothened, straight, so it can easily let fly. As I said, if you miss, your grip strength better be damn well developed. Which, fortunately…?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Shev struck the lad with a superior grin. “Is why you’ve been working yourself to death up and down on the weight machines, son. Aren’t you glad I took the time to break your poor arse?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I will be sure to thank you, Shev, when I am fighting for my life,” Seroth replied, tone as dry as the sand caking their boots. “What now?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…What do you mean ‘what now’!?’” Shev grunted in incredulity. “Take the fethin’ hawk and get on the damn Log! We’ve work to do, and fethin’ how! Be another three weeks before you’ve got even the basics at least partially understood. What am I going to do with you?”[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]The mats began to stink in equal measures of sweat salt and drying blood. It wasn’t the basics that now were grappling for the boy’s attentions. Three days drilling with the locum master Shev Rayner smoothed over details pertaining to gripping, stance, choking up on the shaft, and grappling. Strong side forward. Strong side back. Shev smashed the head of his axe against the small of Seroth’s spine, poking into his elbows, ribs, knees whenever he found a fault in the boy’s standing. Stoically, with no more than a handful of laconic words, Seroth weathered Shev’s obsessions and plied his own in mastering what he could as swiftly as possible. Despite Shev’s tutelage and attentions, he could sense an anxiety. Was he losing his boyish eagerness to play with too-sharp weaponry?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Despite its cutting edge, wielding the tomahawk was an experience unlike anything Seroth encountered in his youth upon Tython. Often, such ‘medieval’ tools were decried as inexpensive and unwieldy, lacking finesse, finery, style, or precision. The opposite could not have been truer. The head-weight lent credence to every swing and chop, noting and encouraging the strength in his sword arms. In Shev’s own words, the Sayda habitual utilized hawks that were ordinarily weightier than any comparable brethren. The boy’s mornings running fierce gamuts of muscular exertion and stamina had been in preparation for these exercises. By sheer physical power alone, the imbalance could be offset, control regained swiftly after an incorrect swing or missed chop or stab. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]As for a lack of elegance? The small slashing edge of the forward axe-face, the small spike protruding from the butt, each required a ferocious degree of dexterity to land with wounding, crippling, or even killing force. A lightsaber, in essence, could be utilized as a grand club, hammering the meter-long plasma blade without worry of misplaced blows. The length would compensate, if the fighter had closed in properly. Shev emphasized a defining ‘brawl’ style: closing in, controlling the opponent, utilizing every inch of weaponry and physicality. Most opponents operated from an easy ‘sphere’ that buffered and protected personal space. Sensitive’s especially, given their predilection of the lightsaber. Breaking the bubble off-set their momentum, rhythm, forcing them to grapple with an unfamiliar closeness as a slashing knife and barreling axe came crashing through their defense maneuvers.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“It ain’t pretty. Then again, it’s not meant to be,” Shev replied one noon as they sparred. “The idea’s you walk away, and they don’t. You ever g[/SIZE][SIZE=10pt]one hunting, boy? When an animal attacks you, everything goes out the window. You fall back on what you know and make it up as you go along. …No, no, use the haft, block, strike, dodge, parry! Perfect! Flowery move-sets, advanced routine katas, spirituality in the kill, these are all fine concepts in a Dojo. Maybe if I were less inept, I could be teaching you the same. …But I’ve just fought with – No, no, always come out of a dodge with a parry, always!”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Fought with what, sir?” Seroth prompted, intercepting an axe-stab for his shoulder with his parrying knife, dodging left, right, feinting and pushing Shev back towards the fencing circle’s edge.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Animals. Desperate men, women, trying as hard as I was to stay alive. That’s all it’s ever about, boy,” Shev said, catching the following edge in over the lad’s forearm and yanking him off his feet. Seroth went with the motion, rolling and coming to his ready stance, smashing the T-head of his ‘hawk into Shev’s sternum. The teacher fell away, winded, blinking as a fury of liquid blows hacked his axe out of hand. His parrying knife fell from his hand, cracked by a crunching knuckle-jab. Seroth felled him with a high knee-strike into his diaphragm and pinned him to the ground. “Oooohhgg!! That’s… That’s all it’s… Ever about. Staying alive. Staying in one piece. Going home or living to fight again, see that better day. …Now get the feth off me, I owe you for cracking my good hand.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The coot showcased what he could of deflecting skills. He had Seroth run with slowed but routine chops and slashes, using the T of the spike, eye, and axe-head to plough in and intercept the boy’s wrist. A variant was to intercept with a countering blow in return, cutting through wrist meat and finger bones as the blow stabbed, cut, or slashed in from almost any angle. Shev emphasized to never be neglectful of any inch of the tomahawk. He parried a cut with his off-hand hand knife, tapping bruising cracks with the opposing axe-spike. Shev choked up on the haft, gripping the head below the guarding curl generated by the following edge and the killing spike across his thumb and knuckles. He pantomimed punching through Seroth’s ribbing, gouging into the tender skin between his neck and collarbone, following through with what would have been a devastating rip. But for every trick and maneuver, every piece of advice or showcased tactic, the lad-in-training knew it would be many years yet before he could even begin to muster the arrogance to call himself of a ‘master’ of hawk warfare. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Not much pressure is needed to penetrate a humanoid skull with the axe-spike,” Shev noted to the lad, stoving in a practice pottery head. “Keep up your grip. Let your wrist fall. Bam. Jerk back, take care of the next fella coming in for you.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The skull, throat, the ribs and side, through the gut and kidneys. If armour was not there, standing guard to halt the penetrating gouge, the spike and the noted weight fore-weight would reward a strong arm with devastating results. An alternate tactic to the standard ripping hacks was the prior noted ‘punch.’ The leading edge over the axe was kept as sharpened as the head itself. Rather than winding back with a tell-tale telegraph, Shev often simply banged the T-bar up into his partner’s chin or face. The lad managed to catch on, deflecting with the haft, ducking out of range as he snapped his head back, extending his arm, bringing the leading edge up to halt centimeters from old Rayner’s eye and brow.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Hook! Forehand! Backhand! Spike! Forehand again! T-block! Hook! Strike, parry, strike, dodge, parry! Good! Now, faster!”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Every angle held potential for a striking vector. The backside spike driven up through the groin or thigh, hooking onto the wrist as it swung up, deflected a blow, then cutting forward with the axe edge into the throat or jaw. Or simply reaching around and digging the spike or downward head-point into the soft nape, dragging ‘round to eviscerate the arterial veins and windpipe. The following edge could catch into the shoulder, dragging an opponent forward off their stance and into a waiting knife-slash, stab, or whatever held the lad’s fancy. Shev also laid emphasis on keeping the off-hand consistently armed with the long knife he’d spent those long weeks gaining a degree of mastery over. In tandem, blocking and striking with either weapon, any number of limitless killing combinations could be reached.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Which the lad learned, time again, limping to his upstairs cot with a body bruised and suffused with blood and darkening flesh. “Simultaneous offense and defense, son,” Shev would say. “That split second that it takes to switch in between will end you. You’re weaning off it. …Somewhat. Heh. Now, take off the blind fold…”[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]They took to the Windmill, the Pendulum, now for practice with solid-weight swords. They’d run into a comfortable routine, Seroth legging out across the dunes for the Pole-Run and plying the weight and exercise machines in the few hours afterward, before the noon chron-bells rang throughout the rocky fastness. Afterward came knife practice, tomahawk practice, mastering the basics while contemplating and utilizing the more advanced forms of battle thought. Shev was as ever in his element, ready with a fast trick, an unseen foot-step, always ready with a painful blow and a sharp tongued lesson that drove him every point he wished to make. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Another three weeks, and then came the familiar ritual of unceremoniously plopping a new tool at the lad’s toes. A simple closed hilt saber, curled up to a meter and an inch. Sterling as silver, weighted perfectly from the pommel to tip, gripping woven from sucking leather that drew in the flesh of his palm. They retired to the second hall… Though a tall shadow wearing an interwoven poncho of coarse, burlap fibers kept up its stare from the unlit stairwell. Stenwulf, mercenary and iconoclast, face struck with a constant smirk, murmured to some unseen figure up the steps. Seroth glanced and saw him leaning in to catch some unheard snippet of private conversation. The captain snorted, eying the boy. He departed up the steps a moment later as Seroth ran to catch up to his hollering mentor.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“It won’t be often you’ll face off against fencers,” Shev said, though the lad found himself smiling slightly. Every other conflict seemed to bring him closer to individuals with a penchant for blade-work. “This day and age, its rifles, pistols, bombs, and anything that can detonate far, far away from you. However, everyone and their mother is coming out claiming they’ve got the Jedi or Sith touch. Suren you can just run out and grab a few crystals, build yourself some new laser-blades. But what are you going to do in the meantime, when it’s just your vibrosword versus some maniac with a hard on for beheadin’?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Shev pulled little of his blows. He took Seroth to the second sparring circle and set the weaving Pendulum in motion. Orders were shouted out, the flat of his own training blade slapping in time to Seroth’s knees, thighs, and ankles. The coot’s unfamiliarity with Seroth’s advances with Djem So caused a moment of contention. The lad could modify to attack lines and blow vectors to accommodate weighted swords, but Shev was quick to dismiss. The boy shunted down the boil of frustration in his gullet and took up practicing the assigned steps. Shev had little time to humour petulance and neither did he. A wasted moment was a permanent loss, something neither of them could ill afford at this late, burgeoning stage.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Faster now, boy! Lunge, attack, dodge! Half-pirouette, thrust, dodge! Balance, keep your left hand and the parrying knife close! Steady on your legs and toes!”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The pendulum menaced them every four seconds. A pulley system kept the motion perpetual, using drag resistance to tense an unseen coil. When the coil was wound tight enough, it released and sent the ball flying back into the midst of the spar sessions. Seroth learned quick the benefits of keeping an able foot ready at all times: step left, dodge, backstep, feint right, duck, dodge, backstep, step in and drive the point in. Shev’s idea was slowly coalescing. Even with a balanced sword, it was odd not to feel to the gyroscopic hum of a tuned lightsaber. The weight was comforting, sturdy. The lad had to compensate for a lack of a three-sixty degree cutting edge, syncing with the single slashing line.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]A second exercise, beyond the Log, the Comb, and the Pendulum, was weathering the pained beatings sewn by the vaunted windmill. It was an odd, ungainly device, multitudinous in its oddly angled arms, each grasping a spinning wheel mounted with paws gripping rebar rods. Midst its guarded center laid a haggard, meek dummy that’d seen better days. Shev set the wheels and paws spinning, until they became a roiling hurricane of barely perceptible action. The mentor gave his student a brunt in the back, propelling him forward at the nightmare. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Point is to land a blow without getting struck yourself. The machine’ll beat you for me if you foul up,” Shev laughed. “Just remember the Pendulum. Remember everything in so far.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Shev preferred making a difficult task seem as easy as squeezing cow udders. Performing it was another matter. For three days, Seroth could not strike a hit without nearly having his arms torn off and his shoulders broken. With a burst of Force Speed, he could easily argue the course and land what cuts he wished. Such was the temptation. ‘Stead, he simply strapped on his salved bandages over his forearms, bowed his head to the beatings, and spent as much or as little time that Shev demanded he master the Windmill. In a few days time, Seroth was managing to whisk a three-stroke maneuver that severed the dummy’s windpipe, stabbed through the nose and skull and ripped down through the sternum. He allowed little pride for it. His movements needed tightening, a speed increased with more mind to his overhead. At times, he forced Shev to keep up through the night, running parrying movements until the pair fell asleep on the tumbling mats.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Sten mentioned on Saijo, you showed off a hand in fighting with paired blades,” Shev struck in a second saber down to the earth by the lad’s toes, nodding at the less than subtle invitation. “So come on. Show me.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Again, the Pendulum. Again, Shev making note and snark of the lad’s Djem So habits. However, every movement made to strike his blade-flat across the lad’s flanks met a quick jerk-block and a smoother slash. In came a variable block, with a launched attack not even close on its heels. Exactly as one motion started, the other was already in flow. The teacher found himself becoming swiftly outpaced. Seroth was fighting with rhythm, working Shev’s defenses high, upper-cutting into the tender of his belly every time he slowed or wavered. For once, by the day’s end, the elder mongrel was forced to take a breather. He snatched a flask from the lad’s proffered hand, eyeing him narrowly.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…Where’d you learn to fight like that?” He spat, moreso to himself than his student.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth shrugged. “I have fought with two blades since I was twelve, teacher. The style is Jar’Kai, modified to accommodate the Perseverance Form. I spent time studying under Darron Wraith, a Vaapad master. What they taught me, I applied to your lessons with steel. I did as you would have wanted me to.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Huh… No shid…” Shev glowered.[/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]Something tickling at his throat and eyes woke Seroth one morn an hour earlier. His room was a bare, Spartan chamber of rectangular dimensions, a bathroom chamber cut out against one solid flat of walling. All he had to his name was a pile of acquisitioned bandages and wound salves, some of it bacta, some disused kolto, and a cot with a small desk beside. A holoquil laid inside its recharge well, beside a stack of papers scrawled in busied shorthand. The lad became aware of a hunched figure by the bedside, cradling something long and sky-blue on its lap. Shev glanced to the lad with bloodshot eyes.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Get up,” He said. “We’re starting early.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The Pole-Run was performed, body ached with frigid chill as a bright night dome beat down a heavy lunar glare. The lad still wore his accustomed body suit, weighed heavy and feeling it tug a burn into his arms, chest, legs, shoulders and back. Shev seemed especially attentive this morn’, running stares across Seroth that would have striated through asteroid rock. There and back, thrice in the hour before the suns rose, the teacher kept his student running ragged until he gave the stop sign. Again, they sauntered up stairs. And once more, with an emphasis on his deltoids and lower back, Seroth sat in and began his sweating exercises.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Only after his sessions with the weight machines and stretching kit, having run through his hurdles with the longknife, tomahawk, and sword did Shev again speak up. His knuckles were white, gripped to the bundle pressed tight up across his chest. “D’you know something, son?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth shook his head. “There is very little I’m aware for, sir.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Huh. Always humble of heart. …When I was a boy, I lived out on a farm by the Jundland canyons. One day, the Sand People came,” Shev said. “I don’t remember much of that night. I lost my folks, that much I was certain of. I would have died out on the homestead, save the Sand People took me with them. Spent seventeen years in a warband. Went native, all that usual tripe. Before I left though, I learned some of their arts. I grew to like fighting. I built these… Out of what I learned from their Gaderffii.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Seroth took the club handed from Shev’s knobbed hands. He’d seen its like before, in the weapons racks lining the walls that Shev had showed on his first inspection. This one, however, was something special. Shaped in the straights and butt-lines of a common stock rifle, fixed atop where ‘stock’ met a long, groove formed gripping handle with a tempered spike, coloured a vivid blue like the mid-afternoon skies on Tatooine. Several edges were fire-hardened, run under a sharpening craftsman tool. All fashioned from a singular piece of rare wood that the sand-world hardly ever saw outside Mos Eisley.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“That’s mine,” Shev said. “Crafted that for my seventeenth year, before I ran away from the tribe. There’s few club fighters left in this day and age. I took that thing with me everywhere, ‘cross every mercenary tiff on the Outer Rim and down through the gullet of Nar Shaddaa. …Never even taught your mother how to use it. None of the Sayda do, either.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…Mister Rayner?” Seroth said softly.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“…Come on. I’ll show you how to properly grip it…” Shev shrugged off the sentiment brewing behind his wizened eyes.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The club made for an almost unwieldy tool. The balance was all in the head-stock, which was off-limits for a grip unless wearing an armourweave glove or some other gauntlet. On all three edges, the underside, the ‘shoulder-butt’, and the top leading line, Shev had put a slicing grain that could cut as well as crunch. Like the tomahawk, it was not a weapon to be used by creatures of insufficient strength. Seroth felt his arms bunching from the effort snapping the club up for a guard each instance he missed a blow. There was no manual for how to make the weapon behave. Every word from Shev’s biting voice was committed in triplicate to memory. Despite the tool’s unfamiliarity, its heft and ungainly design, it possessed a certain lethality.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Shev demonstrated time and again the mauling, bone-crunching capabilities inherent to a good club-fighter. He would take the club, set himself off against a pile of ferrocrete blocks and durasteel rods. Seroth shielded his vision every instance the blocks exploded into dusty shards, the rods bent hard in half. The master tossed back the club, motioned for the Log exercise, and off went a familiar routine. Whisking to and fro breathlessly, smashing, clubbing, rending and breaking at the almost disintegrated dummy partner. By now, nothing short of a titanic upset could dislodge him from the narrow footing. The boy reckoned it was no different then strolling on a sidewalk, shifting his footing to drive the club-butt down into the dummy’s face.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]On came the trials of the Comb, the Pendulum and Windmill in turn. Shev now joined the Comb runs, his own club-copy in hand, dueling and whacking at the lad every time they crossed close on the pedestals. Decades of self-taught technique and weathered experience lent him a winning streak, tumbling and catching Seroth off his footing. The posts collided in against the hardened pack muscles across his belly and back, though the pain hadn’t lessened since his first session leaping from foothold to foothold. Seroth simply worked through it. Such was the Sayda mantra: Work Through Pain. But he was becoming accustomed to the differing grips required to retain full control of the war club. Shev taught to keep one hand at the butt, the other choking up the shaft and utilizing the now naked haft as blocking shield. Same with the edges of the stock-end, and even the spike.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“Every inch of this war-club is a facet for you to understand, to master. Same with the axe. Turn it upside down and use the haft as a makeshift parrying pole, as I showed you. Just so with a war-club. It is a tool of improvisation as it is discipline. However, one can’t be augmented without the other,” Shev told. He turned to a set of set dummies, loosening his shoulders. With the haft-end loosely held aloft over head, he stepped forward, tucked down, and let the club fly. It turned end over end in three complete circuits, the stock-spike impacting through hardened gelatin as the rest of the club’s weight drove it through like a nail. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]The dummy was split almost in two down through its torso, leaving only what would have been a twitching, deadened set of legs and waist. Seroth walked in, retrieving the club, marveled and humbled at its destructive potential. He looked across to Shev, standing arms akimbo. “Never underestimate what that can do. Or what any weapon or item can accomplish. You’re only limited by what you can imagine, kid.”[/SIZE]