Private Ashes in the Mouth, Dust in the Shadows

[Seren Gwyn]

The heat on Chalcedon was never subtle; it did not ease in with the morning or retreat with the evening, but instead pressed down constantly while clinging to skin and fabric alike. The air was thick with dust, smoke, and the faint metallic tang of an industry that never truly slept, and even beneath the sprawling canopies stretched across the market district, the atmosphere shimmered with a restless warmth that warped light and sound into something heavy and oppressive.

Seren moved beside Varin through the narrow corridor of stalls and cages, her pace measured and controlled, her posture calm and composed even as her eyes tracked every shifting movement around them.

The soft rattle of chains punctuated every step taken by the enslaved, while merchants called out in half a dozen languages with voices sharpened by a volatile mix of desperation, greed, and a long familiarity with cruelty. Overhead, holo-signs flickered with a synthetic glow, advertising "premium stock" and "fresh arrivals" in polished fonts that clashed violently with the grim reality of the lives beneath them. As they passed, a Twi'lek child clutched the bars of a cage, their wide eyes following the pair with a haunting mixture of fear and fragile hope.

Though Seren's jaw tightened for a fleeting second, she forced her expression back into a smooth mask and continued forward without stopping, and Varin followed suit with the same grim determination. They moved through the crowd as distinct outsiders, neither buyers nor sellers, threading their way through this intersection of cruelty and commerce as silent observers who offered no credit, no questions, and certainly no approval. Seren kept her hands clasped loosely behind her back, though her fingers occasionally tightened within the fluttering sleeves of her travel robes as if she were physically restraining the thoughts she refused to voice.

"I knew it would be bad," she murmured under her breath, just loud enough for Varin to hear, "but knowing something in theory and seeing it in front of you like this are two very different things."

Ahead, a group of buyers gathered around a raised platform where a Rodian auctioneer barked prices into a crackling amplifier, overseeing the exchange of credits with the casual, practiced efficiency of people long accustomed to the commerce of living souls. Seren watched just long enough to witness another person being sold in less than thirty seconds, internalizing exactly how little time it took to strip a being of their agency before she finally looked away.

They eventually turned down a narrower passage where the stalls grew more improvised and far less regulated, with scrap-metal walls leaning precariously against one another for support. Here, tarps were patched together with wire and cloth while cages were welded from mismatched parts with a hurried, careless construction that reflected the nature of the "unregistered" stock kept within. In this dark corner of the market, there were no records, no paperwork, and no protections—there was only profit, extracted with even less pretense than in the main thoroughfares.

"We're not here to make enemies," she said quietly, as if the reminder were intended for her own conscience as much as for him, "no matter how much I might want to."

A vendor's eyes followed them as they passed, sharp and appraising as they weighed financial possibilities rather than human beings, and Seren felt the weight of that calculating, unfriendly gaze linger on her back long after they had moved on. They continued their journey forward, framed by the bars of cages, the flicker of neon, and the acrid drift of smoke as they walked deeper into one of Chalcedon's darkest arteries. The noise of commerce and the echoes of suffering blended into a constant, unsettling rhythm around them, yet they kept moving—silent, watchful, and trapped in the narrow space between being unwilling to look away and unwilling to take part.

Aiden Porte Varin Mortifer

 

[Varin Mortifer]

Varin walked beside her clad in his heavy armor. The heat of the planet and its normal discomforts held little effect over him. The sounds of people in chains and cages were no strange noises to him either. He had heard them time and time again from his father’s slave pits.

The only difference is his father’s slaves were not innocents or children, they were all convicts serving their sentences. And that was how it stayed under his rule. Varin was cruel, some would even say he was a monster, but he was not heartless. His cruelness only reflected over those who he deemed deserved it. He could tell the sight and the sounds of everything weighed on Seren, though she kept a very strong face and a stronger pace. Varin was not as strong when he noticed the child.

Stopping for but a moment to gaze at them with his glaring red visor. He could see brands of ownership over each individual and it made his blood boil. He looked for but a quick moment before he had to pull himself away from the cage to keep with Seren.

“I would never enslave children.”

Varin responded to her just as quietly as she had spoken to him. He looked at her as he placed his hands behind his lower back, loosely folding his hand over the other. He noticed the buyers ahead of them, glancing towards the duo as if sizing them up for worth. Varin’s gaze glared.

I could reduce this whole place to ash if I wanted.

His fist clenched behind his back as they continued.

I would parade every buyers body in the streets

He slowly exhaled as the thoughts echoed in his head. No he was not truly as cruel as many said he was. He didn't know if that was a good or bad thing truthfully. Some would see him as soft and weak.

“I feel they have already made enemies of me, Seren.”

His gaze fell back onto the buyer that he felt was sizing them up, the molten eye flaring beneath his visor, before continuing with her pace.

Aiden Porte | Varin Mortifer​

 

[Aiden Porte]

Varin Mortifer Seren Gwyn​

Aiden Porte had read the reports. He had prepared himself for what he would find.

It did not matter. The reality of Chalcedon struck him like a physical blow. The heat, the cages, the branded flesh, the casual rhythm of credits exchanging hands for living beings. Disgust tightened his jaw as he stepped into the edge of the market district, robes stirring faintly in the restless air.

The darkness here was not subtle. It coiled thickly around the platforms and cages, clinging to the minds of those who profited from it. He felt it pressing at the edges of his awareness, testing him.

He was outnumbered. He knew that. It did not change what needed to be done.

Aiden drew in a steady breath, centering himself in the Force. Hope answered him. Light answered him.

With a sharp extension of his will, he thrust the Force forward. One of the guards on the raised platform was hurled off balance and sent crashing down into the dust below.

In the same motion, Aiden leapt.

He landed atop the platform as his blue blade ignited with a clear, resonant snap hiss. The first slaver barely had time to turn before Aiden struck, swift and controlled, cutting through blaster and resolve alike. Another rushed him and fell just as quickly.

For half a heartbeat, there was stunned silence, then chaos erupted.

Buyers scattered and cages rattled. Shouts filled the air as some fled and others surged forward in fury at the loss of their "property." Blasters came up and credits were forgotten

Aiden stood at the center of it, blade humming, posture firm. Outnumbered, yes, but unafraid.

 

[Seren Gwyn]

Seren had learned long ago how to maintain an iron stillness in places that made her want to scream, keeping her breathing rhythmic and even when every primal instinct urged her to tear the world apart. On Chalcedon, that discipline was tested to its breaking point; she felt Varin's anger beside her like a gathering storm, heavy and barely contained, while her own fury burned at the sight of every branded wrist and every hollow, exhausted stare that followed them through the market.

So when the Force suddenly surged with violent, unmistakable clarity—throwing a guard from his platform as a blue blade ignited to shatter the air—Seren did not flinch or hesitate; she simply shifted.

As chaos exploded across the district, Seren allowed the rising panic to become her shroud, slipping sideways into the press of bodies and choking dust. While buyers screamed and order dissolved into a blur of smoke and rattling cages, she moved like water through cracks, vanishing behind stacked crates and hanging tarps without ever needing to ignite her own weapon. She did not require a spectacle to be effective; the first slaver never even saw her before her hand snapped out of the darkness to lock around his wrist, twisting with a sharp drop of weight that sent his blaster clattering into the dust. Before he could draw breath for a cry, she drove her elbow into the base of his skull and lowered him silently into the shadows.

She moved with predatory grace, appearing behind a second guard like a specter grown from the dark itself to catch him in a precise, non-lethal squeeze that left him crumpled quietly in her arms. Around her, Aiden burned bright at the center of the storm, drawing the slavers' frantic fire like a beacon of blazing defiance, which allowed Seren to slip along the edges of the platforms undetected. She worked with surgical intent, severing power cables and yanking support lines until the walkways shuddered and collapsed beneath the panicked guards' feet.

Reaching the cages, she applied Force-enhanced pressure to snap locks and bend hinges, wedging the doors open for those trapped within. "Go now," she whispered urgently to the disbelieving faces peering out from the gloom. "Run when you can, and hide if you can't."

She continued her work of dismantling the market from within, a silent shadow circling the devastation while Varin loomed nearby like a force of restrained destruction. Pausing for a heartbeat near a collapsed stall, she caught the molten glow of Varin's visor through the drifting smoke, sending a silent message of solidarity before melting back into the darkness. There were three paths but only one purpose: to reach the next lock, the next cage, and the next life that did not deserve to be bought and sold.

Aiden Porte Varin Mortifer

 

[Varin Mortifer]

THEME​

The fury had been contained within the metal casing around his body, though blood simmered and nerves burned, even as a Sith, the sights he had been witnessing were…

Unforgiveable​

He did not flinch when the first blows struck, he did not flinch when the hiss of a saber sounded off, he did not even flinch when guards and slave traders broke formation.

It was only until she moved out of his range that he would move.

Smoke poured, billowing from his back as it encircled the slavery that surrounded the Jedi that attacked them. The slavery would look around for a moment confused.

The smoke then erupted into a ring of flame engulfing some of the slavers into it burning embrace, sucking the air from their lungs so they could only struggle to scream as their bodies burned. Above the ring of fire thick smoke clouded all vision, except Varin's.

His molten eye pierced the veil of smoke tracking the slavery frantic movements through there force signatures. He calmly walked into the fire, like a curtain spread open for a ruler the smoke parted as he walked through, towering over the slavers and the Jedi.

He slowly unsheathed his black blade, like a predator stalking in slow circles before within the blink of an eye he struck across the chest of one of the slavers, he fell bleeding out. What blood there was that coated his blade, the black void of the metal seemed to absorb it as if drinking from the violence.

He quickly pivoted around the Jedi as another slaver sought to attack him from behind, Varin's fingers wrapped around the man's face as he forced his body backwards, slamming his skull into the ground with a sickening wet crunch.

Aiden Porte | Seren Gwyn​

 

[Aiden Porte]

Varin Mortifer Seren Gwyn​

Aiden felt them before he fully turned to face them.

Two presences cut through the chaos like opposing blades, both unmistakably dark in the Force, both carrying that cold, sharpened weight he had come to recognize too well. His jaw tightened, though his expression remained steady. He did not understand why Sith were here in the middle of a slave market raid, and he trusted the timing even less than their presence.

Still, he had seen enough in the last moments to know the truth of what was in front of him. The woman was helping.

That did not answer the larger question.

A fresh wave of slavers pushed forward through the smoke, shouting for order, for weapons, for blood. Aiden pivoted and thrust his hand out. The Force surged from him in a broad, controlled blast that slammed into the advancing line and sent them crashing backward into crates, railings, and each other in a heap of curses and falling metal.

He turned sharply toward a cluster of freed captives nearest the broken cages, his voice low but firm as he gestured through the haze.

"Get to the shuttle. You will find my team there. Northern sector, half a klick. Wait there. I will be en route."

The captives hesitated only a second before fear and hope carried them into motion.

Aiden watched them go, then shifted his stance and faced the two Sith fully, blue blade still lit and humming at his side. His senses remained open, tracking the smoke, the movement, the danger around them, and most of all the intent behind the pair before him.

His gaze settled first on Seren, then Varin.

"What are you doing here?" Aiden asked, calm but wary.

 

[Seren Gwyn]

Seren stood a few steps behind Varin, a silent anchor amidst the ruin. She was framed by the moment's dichotomy, half-swallowed by the acrid, thinning smoke of the fray and half-illuminated by the flickering, fractured orange light of the burning ring. Her posture remained remarkably calm, her feet grounded firmly upon the blood-stained stones of the market, as if the surrounding chaos were merely a backdrop to a deeper stillness.

She had not ignited her lightsaber. The weapon remained a cold, silver weight clipped to her belt, untouched and unneeded.

Instead, the shadows around her continued to pulse with a faint, sentient rhythm. They were the silent architects of the slavers' downfall; remnants of her umbra-work still clung like obsidian silk to the hinges of shattered cages and the throats of fallen men. She had moved through the battle like a ghost, binding limbs with living dark, twisting the footing of the armed, and dragging blasters into the dirt—all without ever drawing the eye of the victims or the perpetrators. Even now, as the last of the captives vanished into the city's labyrinth, they did so unaware that their chains had been parted by the quiet, surgical precision of her will.

She turned toward Aiden slowly. There was no sudden shift into a defensive stance, nor was there the predatory coiled tension of a Sith seeking blood. She moved simply, and with terrifying deliberation.

Her expression was a mask of composed, scholar-like focus. Her amber eyes were steady, carrying a quiet, seasoned authority that mirrored the very masters Aiden likely looked to for guidance. If not for the cold, magnetic hum of the Dark Side that radiated from her. An unmistakable undertone of shadow and salt, she might have been mistaken for a Knight of the Republic.

She met his gaze, her eyes unyielding and devoid of flinching.

"Freeing the slaves," she said evenly. Her voice was not loud, yet it possessed a resonant quality that cut through the settling ash and the distant screams without effort.

Her eyes flicked away from his for only a heartbeat, surveying the carnage with a clinical detachment: the splintered wood of the pens, the ragged trail of the freed, the cooling corpses of the handlers, and the roaring, hungry edges of Varin's inferno. When her gaze returned to Aiden, it was heavy with the reality of the moment.

"And taking care of their handlers," she added, her tone as level as a horizon line.

Then, after a pause that stretched long enough to let the weight of the moment settle between them, she spoke the word that defined the chasm between them.

"Jedi."

There was no mockery in her voice. No jagged edge of Sith hostility or theatrical malice. There was only a cold, stark acknowledgment of what he was and what she was not.

Her hands remained open at her sides, palms visible and unthreatening. Yet, the Force around her continued to vibrate, a low-frequency hum of restrained, dangerous potential that suggested she was less like a person and more like a storm held behind a glass pane.

"We did not come here looking for a fight," she continued, her sincerity as sharp as a blade. "We came because this place exists. Because people were being bought and sold like cargo. Because someone had to stop it."

A brief, meaningful glance was spared for Varin before her focus locked back onto Aiden.

"You happened to arrive at the same conclusion."

A faint, tired breath escaped her that was too controlled to be a sigh, but carrying the same exhaustion of dealing with the inevitable.

"So for now," she finished, her voice dropping into a quiet, iron-clad finality, "our goals align. Whether you are comfortable with that or not."

Aiden Porte Varin Mortifer

 

[Varin Mortifer]

The sword was held by him as one of the slavers struggling for breath tried to crawl away from him. Varin reverse gripped the hilt of his blade and silently, but slowly walked towards the slaver. Stopping just in front of him.

His eyes widened as sweat beaded from his brow, slowly looking up to the massive figure that stood before him. The same slaver he felt was measuring him and Seren as they first approached.

Varin’s visor opened up revealing his eyes to the damned soul as the molten prosthetic within his socket flared to life.

The slaver started to smoke, then sizzle as a scream ripped from his body, before a flash of fire consumed him, still screaming and frantically rolling in the dirt and mud, Varin kicked him to the side into the nearby wall.

That was when Aiden asked why they were here.

Varin’s visor closed once more over his eyes before his head slowly picked up to look at the Jedi. Opting to let Seren speak on his behalf.

He remained silent as he took his place beside her in front of the Jedi, slowly sheathing his cursed blade.

He knew this Jedi. They had crossed paths before in a great battle. His gaze sharpened as his head tilted, looking at the warrior before him.

The screams of the slaver behind him now falling silent as the flames pulled the air from his lungs.

He sent out his senses to detect any other possible force signatures near them, to see if he had any allies that could ambush them. He did not feel any at this moment.

He let her speak.

Aiden Porte | Seren Gwyn​

 

[Aiden Porte]

Seren Gwyn Varin Mortifer​

"our goals align. Whether you are comfortable with that or not."

"Goals align, but that doesn't mean I will work with you. Stay out of my way." The Jedi Knight voiced quickly and very clearly. He didnt' trust them, and he wasn't going to jeoperodize what he came here to do to side with agents of darkness.

It wasn't going to happen.

Aiden moved on, and continued what he was here for.

 

[Seren Gwyn]

The last scream died in smoke and heat.

Seren did not flinch when the flames swallowed the slaver, nor did she look back. Her posture remained straight and composed as the shadows that had answered her will settled like a quiet cloak around her boots.

Aiden's refusal came sharp and immediate.

She watched him for a moment after he spoke, measuring the resolve beneath his words rather than the words themselves. Suspicion, discipline, and conviction; he was predictable. Her gaze flicked briefly to Varin at her side. She felt the shift in him and noted his sharpened attention as he moved to assess the threat. With a small, steadying movement of her fingers near his, she signaled him to remain still.

Then her eyes returned to the Jedi.

"Then don't work with us, Jedi." Her voice was calm and almost conversational despite the bodies cooling around them. "It would be easier if you did."

There was no challenge in her tone and no mockery, only practicality.

"But we are not here for you." Her gaze shifted toward the fleeing captives in the distance before returning to him. "We are here for them."

The shadows at her feet thinned and retracted fully now that the immediate resistance had been broken. "Stay out of our way, and we will stay out of yours."

She turned slightly, angling her body back toward the chaos still unfolding in the market. A final glance returned to Aiden. She was not hostile or friendly; she was simply aware.

"But understand this." Her tone lowered, sounding as steady as steel beneath silk. "If your refusal costs them their freedom, I will not hesitate to act."

Then she moved, flowing back into the smoke and scattered conflict without waiting for permission or approval.

Aiden Porte Varin Mortifer