Sʜᴀᴅᴏᴡ Lᴏʀᴅ
Battle Buddy: Korar Murrak
Foes: Varin Mortifer Naamino Zuukamano
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FIELD ARSENAL ☰ ACCESS EQUIPMENT RECORD
Unfortunately for Varin Mortifer, he would find that a far greater presence had already laid claim to the battlefield's energy.
Braze had already reached across the breadth of the industrial quarter, drawing upon burning fuel, ruptured conduits, grinding machinery, straining engines, and the thermal violence of war. He had gathered it into himself, converted it, and returned its absence as merciless cold.
Flames had collapsed into blackened embers. Molten runoff hardened in mid-spill, leaving frozen waves of metal clinging to fractured walls. Frost sealed machinery beneath pale armor, while durasteel contracted with sharp, deafening fractures throughout the hollow factory. The air had grown painfully thin and dry; every breath emerged white before crystallizing across masks, weapons, and armored plates.
When Varin reached toward the burning column, his will met another already fastened around it.
Braze's presence tightened at the intrusion, closing around the remaining heat and destructive energy with jealous force. What Varin sought had already been claimed, stripped from flame and ruin, then drawn beneath the young Echani's dominion. The pressure of Braze's will bore down through the Force, staunch and unyielding, contesting every current Varin attempted to seize and refusing to surrender so much as a thread without struggle.
Opposing currents strained through the Force, each seeking dominion over the same dwindling reservoir of heat and destructive power. Braze held staunchly to what he had claimed, refusing to surrender so much as a thread without contest. The brat who constantly sought power beyond his own would find little to nothing left to steal, forced to contend with the paltry sum of his own reserves.
Nor had the Sith found the factory defenseless or easy to dominate. This simply just wasn't the case.
The Mandalorians hadn't arrived as a disordered rabble chasing glory into the smoke. Seasoned warriors occupied a defense in depth throughout the industrial complex, arranging overlapping firing positions along corridors, gantries, loading floors, and ruined assembly lines. Each barricade supported the next, turning every apparent opening into a route already measured by waiting weapons.
Slugthrowers denied the Sith the ease of conventional deflection; disruptors threatened flesh and Sithspawn alike, while cryogenic weapons robbed the plague of the heat it required to spread. Mines, grenades, and heavy emplacements transformed every approach into another obstacle beneath sustained fire.
When the defenders relinquished ground, they did so deliberately. Squads withdrew by measured intervals, drawing the Sith away from secure exits and deeper between reinforced positions. What might have appeared to an overeager attacker as progress was merely the closing geometry of a prepared kill zone. Sealed armor guarded the Mandalorians against poisoned air and hostile terrain, while disciplined units divided the attention of Force-users and punished each and every exposed flank.
More CryoBan weapons were already being distributed throughout the city. Above and beyond the factory, unnatural cold continued to gather as Tytos Saxon worked to drag a blizzard across Abregado-Rae itself. The plague was being frozen from the streets, Sith formations were losing momentum, and the Mandalorian counteroffensive pressed steadily forward.
Varin Mortifer and Naamino Zuukamano weren't carving through the factory as effortlessly as they might have imagined. They had been permitted to advance along a path chosen for them, each apparent victory drawing them farther into the defenders' reach. Minds clouded by delusions of grandeur were seldom reliable witnesses to their own failures… and the trap had been tightening long before Braze and Korar breached the wall.
And now the terrifying renegade Jedi had come for them… an Echani prodigy raised amid wars waged beneath the Sith's shadow, carrying death in hands far too practiced for his years.
The difference between youth and inexperience had been paid for across far too many battlefields to count. Braze wouldn't charge blindly through the falling debris, nor answer the collapsing ceiling with the panic expected of an untested Padawan. He had survived this lesson too many times to mistake destruction for danger without purpose.
Somber jade-green eyes traveled once across the room, measuring load-bearing supports, lines of fire, failing machinery, the Graug pressing upon the reinforcements, and the two retreating Sith beyond them.
Every moving piece found its place within his sphere of awareness: each faltering machine, strained support, shifting combatant, and current of energy resolving into a single, intricate field beneath his attention. Nothing moved within that vast reach without entering his calculations.
One hand rose toward the descending wreckage.
Telekinetic pressure met the falling durasteel and broken ferrocrete, seeking to wrench the collapse aside and drive it into the Graug formations crowding the breach.
Nothing belonging to his enemies within the vast reach of his influence escaped his attention. Braze's awareness expanded across nearly half a kilometer of frozen industry, passing through fractured walls and ruined machinery to locate every concentrated source of power still burning against the cold.
He consumed all he could with naked greed, feeding every stolen current into the frozen reservoir gathering within him. Heat, charge, and mechanical power vanished into that ravenous depth, converted into strength for whatever his will demanded next.
Mechu-deru carried his will into the mechanical architecture surrounding him. It sought the sophisticated armor of their enemies first: power cells, shield projectors, energized underlay, sensor networks, strength-enhancing systems, and any scrap of metal that drew upon energy.
The Technomancer was a distant cry from the image of a slicer fumbling with foreign code. He pressed upon it through the Force, testing connections and command pathways while attempting to force its many systems to compete for dwindling power.
The cold surrounding Naamino Zuukamano offered another avenue. Cryokinesis pressed against the armor's vulnerabilities, seeking to stiffen articulated joints, burden climate controls, and force its heaters to consume more of the energy Braze intended to take for himself. His influence reached for their lightsaber power cells and communications equipment as well, tracing regulators, conduits, switches, and containment systems through Mechu-deru.
Whatever energy those devices surrendered was drawn away through Tutaminis, their electrical charge and lingering heat consumed into Braze's waiting grasp.
He did not presume their personal equipment would yield without resistance. His will pressed against shielding, reinforced systems, and whatever countermeasures their makers had devised, testing each defense with the practiced patience of a lockpick turning within a stubborn mechanism.
Every bit of power they protected demanded their attention, just as every bit they failed to protect became his~
Beyond them, Braze's awareness ascended toward the Glaivewings prowling above the factory. Their ion engines, solar arrays, laser cannons, sensors, and shared combat intelligence opened beneath his mechanical perception.
Mechu-deru entered their network and fractured its coordination, severing each autonomous predator from the collective intelligence guiding the swarm. Contradictory commands flooded their systems as targeting solutions collapsed and flight paths dissolved into disorder. Tutaminis seized the energy held within their engines and weapon capacitors, drawing it down into the frozen reservoir within him.
The Graug themselves offered little to consume, but their equipment readily fed the voracious appetite of the renegade Jedi. Braze pressed into jump packs, shield generators, flamethrower ignition systems, and powered weapons, draining their reserves until Carnifex's advancing forces found themselves burdened with dead machinery.
The Hyal'Sethi remained creatures of flesh and alchemy, so they received no such careful consideration.
Braze gathered the Force into a host of invisible spears. Nothing marked their formation within the frozen air; no shadow betrayed their alignment, nor did any visible point offer warning of where they had been aimed. Only those capable of perceiving the currents of the Force might recognize the lethal shapes assembling around him.
He held the Darkshears suspended for one measured breath, his open hand reaching toward the advancing horde. Then his fingers curled inward, slowly at first, before closing into a merciless fist.
The unseen spears surged forward in staggered succession, each following a separate trajectory to envelop the formation from every angle. Some descended from above; others curved around shields and intervening bodies, while the remainder drove low through the crowded formation. Invisible points tore into flesh and alchemical bone, punching a ruthless path through the Hyal'Sethi screening the Sith's retreat.
Braze advanced behind them, small beneath the frozen architecture yet commanding a presence that pressed through every corridor he had claimed.
"Look how they run, Vod... Cowering behind the Butcher King like children beneath their mother's skirts… Carrion crawlers, no better than worms."
"I already knew you were dumb~ But deaf and blind too? Or is that little shoulder dragon doing all the talking and heavy lifting for you?"
Braze glanced toward Korar Murrak before adding another barbed little remark.
"What's the matter...? Can't devise your own maneuvers, Varin? I know imitation is flattering, but copying the ~LEGENDARY~ Braze will do little to impress your fleeing boy toy~ Relying upon your betters will only carry you so far, little Sithlings."
The feeble imitation had not escaped his notice~ If Varin and Naamino wished to flee rather than face him, Braze would waste no strength begging cowards to remain. He would merely send them running without their teeth.
"If we're going to be copying each other…"
Braze's jade gaze settled upon Varin Mortifer briefly before his attention dipped toward the rubble scattered across the frozen factory floor.
A fist-sized chunk of ferrocrete rose from the debris beneath an invisible telekinetic grasp. It hovered beside Braze's shoulder, turning slowly in the frigid air as he recalled what Saram Kote had once mentioned of the pair...
He plucked the stone from the air with a gauntlet clad hand and the stone snapped forward.
It cut through the factory air in a hard, direct line toward Varin, not thrown with enough force to end the fight, but with more than enough to make the point clear.
"…then I suppose I should honor tradition~"
"Go on, then…" Braze called after them. "Run whilst you can~"
