Private Blasted Deals: An Arm And A Leg

[Itzhal Volkihar]

| Location | Concordia, Outer Rim Territories

The main street of Concorida's capital bustled with the march of civilisation. On the corner of the thoroughfare, a merchant with a handful of fresh buns in hand called out to customers—in a dazzling array of colours and shapes—towards the sizzling grill packed with waiting food. Numerous footsteps clacked against the faded grey limestone stairway up towards the capital bank, filled to the brim, with doors that never seemed to close, watched over by marble pillars and solemn figures carved into the visage of beskar'gam. Towering over those who walked below, the grim-faced facade of the Protectorate Headquarters cast a looming shadow across the road, sheltering those under its vigilant protection from the glare of the sun.

Itzhal smiled beneath his buy'ce, greeted with a world that he thought forgotten.

Across the street, a woman laughed—bright and airy—tears in her eyes, unable to face the scarlet cheeks of their friend, who shoved them back, one hand against the silver-coated pauldron of their beskar'gam. It wasn't home, not quite, but it felt a little closer to the ideal as he stepped past, into the snarling maw of the Protectorate Headquarters.

Inside, a receptionist watched as he stepped through the door, their position covered by the circular slab of duracrete, dressed in a tasteful layer of ebonwood and reinforced with metal supports that framed it into something quite beautiful. One never forgot to appreciate a sturdy piece of cover, nor the amount of firepower that could be concealed behind it.

They shared a nod before he walked past, his boots clacking against the stone floor, on the way towards a corridor that led deeper inside, guided by a map that appeared in the corner of his HuD. His steps echoed down the corridors, each path lined with a dozen doors, and twisting passages that never seemed to quite lead to where they should, at least, if not for the map that led him true.

A few minutes later, he came to a stop outside a blast door, sealed shut despite the ID card attached to his wrist. His eyes lingered on the buzzer of the control panel, rather than the ventilation grid in the wall beside him, detached from any of the local maintenance shafts and failing to produce more than a short huff of air. He'd rather stick with the fantasy; it was cleaner that way. With a shake of his head and an amused huff, he clicked the buzzer.

The door clicked open a moment afterwards, sliding silently along the guide rails. Itzhal Volkihar stepped through.

Tags: Siv Kryze​

 

[Siv Kryze]

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CONCORDIA​

​

Siv Kryze did not look up at first.

The briefing room was carved straight into Concordia's bedrock—old, utilitarian, built for war councils rather than comfort. A circular holotable dominated the center, its surface alive with slow-spinning wireframes of cargo routes, port manifests, and blinking threat markers clustered like infected wounds along the docks. Red light washed over beskar-inlaid walls etched with sigils of past Protectors, watching silently.

Only when the blast door finished sealing behind Itzhal did Siv lift his gaze.

The Warden of Concordia stood with both palms braced against the holotable, shoulders squared, buy'ce tucked under one arm. His expression was calm, but it was the calm of a man cataloging problems rather than enjoying peace.

"Volkihar," Siv said, voice steady, carrying easily in the stone chamber. No ceremony—just acknowledgment. Respect, without theatrics.

He straightened, turning fully now, studying the newcomer with a sharp, assessing eye. "You picked a good time to come knocking. Bad time for Concordia."

A gesture of his hand caused the holomap to shift. Several trade lanes flared amber, then red. Cargo icons split, duplicated, vanished.

"Arms are bleeding off the books," Siv continued. "Not small stuff. Military-grade components. Enough to arm clans who don't answer to the Empire—or anyone at all." His jaw tightened slightly. "Protectorate seizures keep scratching the surface, but someone higher is greasing the channels. Too clean. Too consistent."

He met Itzhal's visor again.

"That makes it my problem," Siv said. "And now, apparently, yours."

A pause—deliberate.

"You're here as a specialist. So I'll ask plainly." One corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "Do you want to start by breaking the smuggling ring from the outside… or cutting out the heart and letting the docks panic?"

The hum of the holotable filled the space between them, waiting.

"Either way," Siv added, voice lowering just a fraction, "Concordia doesn't tolerate uncontrolled weapons in its streets. Not anymore."

He gestured to an open position at the table.

"Welcome to the Anvil, Volkihar. Let's see what you hit first."

 

[Itzhal Volkihar]

| Location | Concordia, Outer Rim Territories

Itzhal strode into the room, scanning the beskar-inlaid walls with quiet acknowledgement of the many sigils carved into their red-hued surface. It would have been simpler to create a brutish structure built and refined to a sharpened edge—a battleground of ideas and decisions, existing solely to exercise control over the city of Anvil. This was something more. Duty remembered and elevated, a memorial of the past and their shared oath to the Mandalorian people.

Once before, on the planet of Nessantico, Siv Kryze had gleamed in glorious victory, perched upon a Basilisk War Droid out of stories of old, with his lance cracked, and a defeated foe laid out in his wake. At the time, Itzhal had been reminded of a mural he'd seen once before, the victory of a mythical figure, knightly in tale, sealed within the bowels of an ancient fortress. The reality was surely much darker than the story stored in pigments, but still, it had remained a memorable tale of what Mandalorians could be.

With an expression carved from stone, Siv Kryze loomed over the glowing presentation of Anvil, the furrows of his face highlighted in hues of ominous red and calming blue.

In return, Itzhal lowered his helm—deliberate and silent—as he paced his way across the floor, roaming around the edges of the holotable. His skin prickled under the weight of their attention, examined with the precision of a scapel, his every movement dissected and judged. They would not be the last.

Anvil peeled apart under the Warden's touch, buildings dissolved, and infrastructure vanished in a flash of light that unveiled the intricate web of pulsating veins that snaked beneath the surface, alive and vibrant with the patient touch of those who had ensured it flourished. It was more than an infection. It was an outbreak waiting to explode. The only question was, where was Patient Zero?

His eyes traced the lines to their initial markers, black markets and off-world smugglers with bills to pay and credits to earn, another symptom of the greater problem. Itzhal turned towards Siv, a slight tilt to his helmet that kept the map in sight, as his closed knuckle pressed into the corner of the table.

"Smuggling rings are inevitable; they're a natural consequence of demand and the desire to fill it."

The map dissolved with a flick of his finger, replaced with a sprawling array of numbers and statistics, "Military-grade equipment, though, shouldn't be in demand with these numbers. Not without a purpose."

Not everyone had bowed to the Mandalorian Empire; the New Mandalorians hadn't, for all they'd been willing to provide a friendly presence, alongside a wary eye on the new arrival, up until they'd broken apart with the uncertainty of their place after Onderon. He couldn't say the same for others. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility that they might have been planets under the Caburan Creed, though, Itzhal dismissed that one as unlikely; there were better places to focus upon than Concordia if they wanted to break free.

With a stretch of his arms, Itzhal pushed off the table, leaning back with a satisfying crack that echoed down his spine.

"My recommendation is to start with the smuggling rings, reduce their output, and try to get things under control, but they're a temporary fix to the problem at large," Itzhal advised, voice level and firm. It was not his right to command, not here, but his voice still carried with the certainty that it was in his power to ensure he was listened to. "Our highest priority is understanding what started this fire sale, then we can start properly dismantling this problem."

Tags: Siv Kryze​

 

[Siv Kryze]

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CONCORDIA​

​

Siv Kryze studied the holotable in silence for a long moment, letting the projection settle back into its default state—Anvil whole again, layered with routes, permissions, and quiet anomalies that only appeared if you knew where to look.

When he spoke, his voice was measured, controlled. Familiar.

"Your assessment tracks," Siv said. "Before we act on it, I want to verify a few things in person."

He adjusted the display, isolating a section of the city near the port's industrial edge. Cargo spines, freight elevators, and stacked warehouse blocks slid into focus.

"These refit yards were mothballed years ago," Siv continued. "On paper, they're dead space. In reality, they still draw power and intermittently touch the port network." His finger traced a narrow route between structures. "Traffic skirts them just close enough to hide movement."

The image shifted again—timestamps, short-range sensor blips, maintenance requests that never escalated.

"Nothing overt," Siv said. "Which means if this is your patient zero, it's being handled by someone disciplined."

He looked to Itzhal then, not appraising—already past that.

"I'm not sending you down there alone," Siv added. "Not because you need oversight, but because this falls under my jurisdiction, and I want firsthand confirmation of what's actually happening on the ground."

A brief pause.

"You take point on reading the operation," he said. "I'll handle access and containment if it turns active. If it's a dead lead, we rule it out cleanly and move to the next."

Siv keyed the table, locking the area in amber.

"These yards are our first check," he finished. "If weapons are staging anywhere in Anvil without tripping alarms, it'll be somewhere built to be ignored."

He stepped back from the holotable, posture settling into readiness.

"Let's confirm it," Siv said simply.

 

[Itzhal Volkihar]

| Location | Concorida, Outer Rim Territories

Itzhal altered the display, a wireframe of buildings and routes, expanding from the amber-emblazoned sector, layered in soft tones of blue, stretched across the horizon.

"A firm pick," Itzhal acknowledged. "The question now is where else?"

He leaned forward, one hand braced against the table for support, his fingers danced across the control panel as crimson light bloomed—dealer safehouses, known blackmarket sites, defunct warehouses with suspicious activity. Sparks of red scattered over the blue haze of Anvil, small and inconsistent, but without treatment, it was only a matter of time before a flare became a blaze.

Fingers wrapped around the finned edges of a dial, twisted to the right, and hoisted the display of Anvil higher into the air. Maintenance tunnels, sewer systems, and railway lines sheltered in the deep beneath the surface, unearthed by the flick of a switch.

"The old freight routes might still be operational," His finger trailed down a tunnel system, marked disused by the current owners, a private company operating under the name T-Rails. "They were made to operate under siege; power cores equipped in every train, and the walls muffle sensory equipment. It's slower than the spaceport or skycar, but discreet, and the quantity of goods they'd be able to transfer would help explain part of our current problems. If they've found a side route in, they might not even need the trains."

If they were lucky, the routes were still inactive, and this was merely a hypothetical exercise. Over the years, however, the old Mandalorian had found that luck favoured those who planned in advance. At least till everything went to osik, after that, it was all a matter of how quickly they could improvise a solution.

Another switch, and the display flickered, the entire subsystem of train routes illuminated in a bright green that pierced through the washed-out blue above. Anvil sank under an invisible weight; the city pressed down onto the table until they were once again staring down at blocked-out buildings and the wireframe of roads, slipping down into an acrid, glowing maw below.

Itzhal jabbed towards one of the buildings situated above a green haze, "This looks like a clan foundry, but I can't see ownership details attached. Do you recognise it?"

Tags: Siv Kryze​

 

[Siv Kryze]

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CONCORDIA​

​

Siv watched the colors shift, the green-lit routes threading through Anvil's underside like exposed veins. He reached out and steadied the display once Itzhal finished, holding it in place.

"T-Rails," Siv said. "They took over most of the old siege transit when the Protectorate reorganized the system. A lot of it was written off, but not fully shut down."

His finger followed the tunnel Itzhal had marked.

"Standby power was left in place," he continued. "On Concordia, that usually means someone expected it might be useful later. If even part of this is active, they could move cargo without ever surfacing."

When Itzhal pointed out the building above the haze, Siv adjusted the overlay, pulling up older records. The structure resolved into something older beneath its modern shell.

"It was a clan foundry," Siv said. "Pre-Protectorate. Ownership gets… vague after that. Shell holders, no active clan tied to it." A brief pause. "That's not an accident."

He leaned in slightly.

"If it's quiet, it's either dead or being masked," Siv said. "And masked fits better with what we're seeing."

Siv straightened and looked back to Itzhal.

"Staging, not production," he said. "Move it below, redistribute elsewhere."

He tagged the site and the tunnels beneath it.

"We check it ourselves," Siv finished. "Lower access keeps us off the main sensors. If it's nothing, we move on. If it's active—"

He let the rest go unsaid.

"Let's see what's moving under Anvil."

 

[Itzhal Volkihar]

| Location | Concorida, Outer Rim Territories

The briefing room thrummed with the projection of Anvil hoisted above, an offering in the name of duty—blueprints torn apart piece by piece for the secrets that lurked beneath. Their privacy earned in the palm of suffering dolled upon the innocent, an absence of law, now exposed by the strength of an Empire willing to glare back into the dark.

Itzhal bared his teeth in the parody of a smile, sharp and vicious, in search of blood not yet spilt—a hunter, concealed by layers of beskar.

"Let us hope the rot does not cut so deep," his vocalizer held the words in check, disdain contained to a slight drawl. You never knew what you were going to find in the dark, nor what would find you.

He paused, taking a step closer to the table and the glowing green mass of tunnel systems.

"If these are Mandalorians, there's every possibility that someone is keeping an eye on your operations," Itzhal warned, reaching down towards the control system and the assortment of data displayed upon the hologram. With a soft whirl, a slender probe extended from his gauntlet, sliding gently into place through the open port of the attached scomp link. "It might get," he searched for the word, "unpleasant."

Thirty seconds later, he tapped against the screen and deleted their history; Anvil erased in a pixelated gust of wind, scattered to the four corners of the board, where a soft glow faded into nothing. His left hand rested against the edge, lingering in the moment, before he stepped away and started to move towards the exit. Itzhal tilted his head, slowly. Siv Kryze's armour reflected in the glint of his visor, a slight twist of his body allowing them passage if they desired to lead.

Tags: Siv Kryze​

 

[Siv Kryze]

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CONCORDIA​

​

Siv Kryze did not mirror the smile.

He watched the probe retract, the projection die, the room fall back into its bare stone and low light. When the holotable went dark, something colder replaced it—focus, sharpened and familiar.

"The rot usually does," Siv said quietly. "It's why Concordia learned to build its foundations thick."

He stepped forward, armor moving with a muted weight, until he stood beside the table where Anvil had been moments ago. One gauntlet rested against the duracrete edge, fingers curling once, as if committing the vanished image to memory. He didn't need the projection anymore.

"If they're Mandalorian," Siv continued, turning his head slightly toward Itzhal, "then they already know I'm watching. Concordia doesn't move cargo at this scale without leaving a shadow." A pause. "What they don't know is how close that shadow is."

He straightened, rolling his shoulder once, the faint whirr of servos breaking the silence.

"You're right about one thing," Siv added. "It will get unpleasant. But not because we stumbled into it." His visor angled toward the exit. "Because we're choosing where to step next."

Siv moved first, passing Itzhal by half a pace, not rushing, not hesitating—just assuming the ground would follow him as it always did. At the door, he keyed the release manually rather than through the room's system. Old habit. Fewer records.

The blast door slid open with a low groan, revealing the dim corridor beyond.

"We start below," Siv said, glancing back just enough for his words to carry. "Maintenance spine off the old freight grid. No patrols, no cameras that report upward." A beat. "If someone is watching my operations, they'll expect pressure at the ports—not two Mandalorians walking into the dark."

The corridor lights flickered to life in sequence as he stepped through.

"Stay sharp," Siv finished. "Anvil doesn't give up its secrets easily—but it does reward those willing to bleed for them."

 

[Itzhal Volkihar]

| Location | Concordia, Outer Rim Territories

Itzhal followed in behind, passing over the threshold of the briefing room and out into the dimly lit durasteel-plated corridor, with only the slightest pause to close the door; a grinding drone of metal sliding into place, before it sealed with a soft click.

Their journey through the Protectorate Headquarters proceeded in mutual quiet, neither man feeling the pressure to speak, simply pleased with the progress made and the sharp focus that quickened their movements, cutting the distance to their objective with purposeful strides. Their boots echoed starkly against the polished durasteel, the soft tread clacking with swift steps. Lights flickered above, following their stride. Doors opened to greet them, and closed just as quickly—a memory of service packed between the walls, eager to quicken their pace. It didn't take long for them to leave the upper levels.

In the basement, enormous doors barred their way, inlaid with beskar that defied brute force; attached to security panels that judged their purpose, solemn sentinels, unmoved by sentiment—cold, logical, sealed with purpose. They opened like praetorian blades parting at the edge of a ceremonial hall, an honour guard to the world beneath.

Beyond awaited massive pillars that reached from floor to ceiling, like ancient legends that held up the sky, prepared for the day it burned again and their protection was needed. Itzhal stared across the room, past the towering foundations, and over the enormous stretch of blackened floor, dotted with the metal frames of unused beds and stored supplies, that extended beyond his sight, hidden in the darkness he had no desire to illuminate with the equipment in his visor. On the other side of the room, an access duct loomed, ready to take them deeper as a sequence of codes opened and the door unfurled with a sharp twist.

Into the darkness, they descended.

Tags: Siv Kryze​

 

[Siv Kryze]

.​

CONCORDIA​

​

Siv did not slow as the light thinned.

The moment the doors sealed behind them, the Protectorate above became irrelevant—another layer of stone and memory stacked atop older truths. His visor adjusted automatically, low-light sharpening the edges of the chamber without fully betraying the dark. He let it remain imperfect. Darkness was a language; you learned more by listening than by flooding it with light.

"Basement hasn't changed," Siv said at last, voice low, measured, carrying just enough to reach Itzhal Volkihar . "They keep it like this on purpose. Reminds people what we're built on."

He moved past the first pillar, one hand brushing the cold surface as he passed—checking for vibration, listening through the armor rather than trusting sensors. Nothing. Yet. The vastness of the space pressed in, the rows of unused frames and dormant supplies reading less like storage and more like a promise waiting to be called in.

At the access duct, Siv paused. He glanced once across the open floor, committing angles and distances to instinct, then keyed the final sequence himself. The mechanism responded with a familiar resistance before yielding.

"From here on," he continued, stepping into the duct without ceremony, "we don't assume this place is empty just because it's quiet. If someone wanted to watch Concordia from inside its own bones—this is where they'd start."

The duct swallowed the light behind them as Siv descended, boots finding purchase with practiced ease. The walls tightened, the air cooling, sound dampened to breath and motion alone.

He didn't look back, but his tone made it clear the words were meant for Itzhal.

"Stay close. Not because I expect trouble immediately," Siv said. A brief pause. "But because if it comes, it won't announce itself."

Deeper they went, Mandalorians moving as they were meant to—into the dark, not away from it.

 

[Itzhal Volkihar]

| Location | Concordia, Outer Rim Territories

"There's a lot of beds," Itzhal whispered, his voice a ringing sharpness in the stillness of the chamber. Stone columns carried the words from pillar to pillar, resonating through the air with the weary weight of old memories, sharp as a blade sliding across skin, and yet with a dull throb of muscles aching underneath a layer of scar tissue. No question lingered in the repeated remark, only a remembered dread.

Measured footsteps glided over the laminate floors, the tread of his boots strangled the sound of each footfall before it could form, as quiet as the ghastly promise stored between empty beds.

Ahead of him, Siv Kryze stood, illuminated underneath the sharp-edged focus of a single spotlight that covered the cordoned-off square of the Access Point and the lonely keypad embedded in the wall beside it. The warden's firm shoulders, layered in beskar, shifted with the sequence of inputs, each press accompanied by a whining bleep from the machine, which finally stopped with a single approving click.

"Understood," Itzhal acknowledged, paused at the top of the Access Point as his fellow Mandalorian descended into the depths.

He followed a moment behind, the brown tread of his armoured boots leaving faint trails in the dust-covered rungs as he descended further. Light faded with every step that carried him deeper into the underground labyrinth, with only a faint glimmer from above, filtered through the open access port. Itzhal's visor flickered with intent, burning away the shadows that lurked in the corners, as low-light sensors deployed moments before he reached up and pulled down the metallic frame of the entrance point, the seal closing with a final grunt of effort.

A few seconds later, and with steady movements to guide him safely down the ladder, the ground settled beneath his feet. It was quiet. Stone-brick walls on either side of the passage curved to muffle the sound, wrapped around to form a tunnel, with only two directions that sprawled off into the distance.

Lifting his right arm, Itzhal assessed the map integrated into his gauntlet, the display showing known schematics of the area, including the suspected routes in both directions. To the south, a number of the tunnels looped back on themselves, working around a cistern that led to a recycling plant outside the city boundaries, as well as the more notable port district. To the north, remnants of the old city, whatever had existed before Anvil's current state, clung to some measure of relevance, including the supposedly abandoned foundry.

Another dial altered the bandwidth of his comm-link system, reducing the signal's output to only a few feet, "If trouble comes, we'll face it."

"We always do," He said, calm and assured. "It's just a matter of how?"

"I didn't ask back in the briefing room, but this is your city, and your methods; what are our rules of engagement?"

Tags: Siv Kryze​

 

[Siv Kryze]

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CONCORDIA​

​

Siv let the question hang in the tunnel for a few seconds before answering.

The underground air carried a faint metallic scent — coolant, maybe — mixed with something older. Neglect. His visor swept slowly across the passageways, not searching for movement, but for intention. Down here, nothing existed by accident.

"Our rules?" Siv said quietly. "We don't announce ourselves unless we have to."

He stepped forward, boots slow against the stone, then stopped near a junction where old conduit lines crawled along the ceiling. One of them had been recently opened — panel resealed poorly, screws mismatched. Small detail. Wrong enough to matter.

He tapped the edge of it with a knuckle.

"Someone's maintaining access," he said. "Not smugglers moving blind. This is support work."

The panel came loose under a slight pull. Inside sat a compact relay node — civilian make, recently installed, its signal light barely visible under a strip of black tape meant to dull the glow.

Siv studied it for a moment.

"Runner," he decided. "Not the one moving weapons. The one making sure routes stay clear."

He straightened and looked down the tunnel branching east.

"If this were a full operation, the people in charge wouldn't come down here themselves. They'd use someone local — expendable, informed just enough to keep things running."

A faint flicker crossed his visor as he pulled a short-range scan from his gauntlet. A signal pinged back — weak, moving slowly.

"There," Siv said, marking the direction. "Maintenance badge still broadcasting. Either careless… or they think nobody's looking."

He began walking again, pace steady but deliberate, clearly expecting Itzhal beside him rather than trailing behind.

"We take the middle step first," Siv continued. "Find the handler. The one keeping the doors open. People like that talk when pressure shifts — especially when they realize they're not the ones in control."

His voice lowered slightly.

"They won't be the culprit," he added. "But they'll know who signs their credits."

Ahead, faint light bled around a corner — portable illumination, not part of the old system.

Siv slowed, one hand resting near his sidearm but not drawing it.

"We approach quiet," he said. "Listen before we move. If they run, we follow. If they talk, we learn."

A brief glance toward Itzhal.

"Either way," Siv finished, "this is where the trail stops being theory."

 

[Itzhal Volkihar]

| Location | Concordia, Outer Rim Territories

Anvil's tunnel system sprawled across the length of Itzhal's gauntlet-mounted screen, an intricate web of crisscrossing lines and dead-ends, fading off into assumptions and hearsay—buried secrets lingered in the absence. His fingers scrolled over the data, expanding the image as details were lost for the sake of additional space, growing larger and larger, as the miles of underground structures slipped through the edges of the map. Hours of travel dangled in all directions, a small fragment of the greater whole, the true challenge that awaited them.

Crime had seeped into the very cracks of Anvil, an insidious poison clinging to its victim's veins, the vibrant spirit of the city mirrored by the ghoulish shadow of what lurked beneath, reaching out to the surface. Determination alone would not purge the darkness; no, it required a more surgical effort, a measure of precision backed by the relentless march of time, slowly chipping away at that which lingered in the absence of light.

This was only really the first step.

Itzhal followed, his steps a whisper concealed beneath the soft clack of Siv Kryze's confident strides. His visor swept slowly across the stretch of the tunnel, over the stain-marked walls, covered in a crusted layer of ancient grease and flaking paint. A flicker of light from the side of his helmet illuminated a collection of dust congealed to the wall, the faint markings of a hand pressed into the surface—faded around the edges, history already on the march of time.

Siv Kryze reached up towards the old conduit lines, the sharp rasp of his knuckles an announcement of the discovery made in the dark.

Itzhal neared closer, peeking over their shoulder as he followed the lines of their assessment—this was proof, an affirmation of their theories, now shoved into the light.

"Give me a moment, I can see what information's passing through the relay," he said, reaching for the compact device shoved into the tight confines of the panel. A slender rod of metal lined with connection points extended from a minuscule gap in the armour of his right gauntlet, sharpened edge gleaming against the outline of his helmet light; it slipped seamlessly through the black tape, towards an induction port concealed in the bottom of the relay.

In seconds, Itzhal's visor sparked with a torrential downpour of passing information, far too much for one man to sift through in the mere moments of access provided; he didn't, instead leaving the information to collapse into his awaiting databanks, where AI intelligence systems could trawl through the deluge of knowledge. Then, just as quickly as it was inserted, the slender rod retracted back into the concealed crevice.

Attached to the Journeyman Protector's buy'ce, the portable flashlight flickered once, then deactivated, leaving only the low-vision sensors to detect the slight tilt of his head, a firm nod, before they continued onwards.

Itzhal followed beside the Warden of Concordia, a near-silent spectre, the only whisper of his presence the tightly contained communication band shared between the two. "You're right, we won't find the people in charge here, probably not even the handlers. It's a start, though, a piece of the puzzle that they don't want us to find. Their mistake was made the moment they began. Now, it's only a matter of following the trail."

His voice trailed off into silence as a soft glow emerged in the distance, illuminating the dry walls of the nearby tunnel. The beam wavered like a cluster of fireflies spiralling in the dust, gradually dimming the further it trailed from the distant source of light. Faint footsteps clacked against the stone, a soft echo, carried slowly through the winding tunnels.

Oath slipped from the rest of Itzhal's sheath, the grey frame of his blaster pistol exposed to the underground air. With a flick of his thumb, the soft click of the stun selector carried only a few steps in all directions, concealed beneath the sound of louder footsteps, and what gradually sounded like a jaunty whistle.

Tags: Siv Kryze​