Private Eclipse, whatever that means

[Isildor Laskaris]

ECLIPSE
"Everything under the sun is in tune…"

LEXRUL

The safehouse sat low against rain-slicked ferrocrete, windows blacked out — the kind of place built to look like nothing.

Isildor took his time with the perimeter. Twice around, no more; a third pass and he'd become a shape someone remembered. He noted the sensor cluster over the service door, the dead angle beneath the drainage vent, the gap where a camera should have been and wasn't. That last one he circled back to twice.

The lock gave in without much hesitation. His picks did the honest work; something quieter did the rest. He didn't linger on it. Didn't need to.

Inside, the air was wrong before anything else registered. Something about the tidiness snagged at him. His patron expected a criminal syndicate. This is too clean even for the most equipped cartel.

He moved along the wall in a low crouch, weight rolling heel to toe, one hand trailing the furrowed metal like he could read the building through his glove.

A crate line, stacked and strapped. Ration tins, untouched. The disgraced Sael’da crouched beside it a moment, fingers hovering an inch above the blanket without quite touching it, then drew back.

He straightened slowly, shoulders loose, jaw set in a way his face never quite showed, a habit he had fostered from an early age.

He let the silence sit a moment longer, listening past it, knowing deep down that he hasn’t missed the transit; that there’s something hiding beneath the still facade.

Cortana Jade​

 

[Cortana Jade]

For nearly three weeks, Princess and soon to be Queen Cortana Djo has vanished.

Officially, her household claims she is away conducting diplomatic business. Unofficially, panic has begun to spread through her retainers. She has missed council meetings, ignored encrypted transmissions, and even her closest attendants have no idea where she has gone. Without informing the wider court, one member of her household quietly hired an independent mercenary, investigator, or bounty hunter to locate the missing princess before the disappearance becomes public knowledge.

The expectation...A terrified princess waiting to be rescued.

The reality....

The trail lead through abandoned factories, bribed dockmasters, dead informants, and it ends at an anonymous safehouse.

In the dark...he could hear more blasterfire as the guards stationed outside doubtless tried to halt something. Surely, their stalker would be tired from the fight against so many. Then the door slid open. Silence. He heard a strange noise and, shifting in his stance, caught a glimpse of a blur of light off which the others' blaster bolts seemed to be ricocheting back at them. A lightsaber?

Suddenly there came two flashes of white. A woman—dark hair, with olive skin, clad in red leather and expertly wielding twin lightsabers, appeared. Cortana -- her lightsabers had sleek and slightly curved hilts, resembling a traditional Ashiga tachi, with plasma blades like a katana -- she needed to wield them in a slightly different manner from the standard, straight lightsabers.

She nearly ran him through. One glowing blade searing through his weapon arm, and a well placed kicked to his chest sent him flying backwards into the solid stack of crates.

She sauntered over, slowly removing one of her gloves. She knelt before him and cradled his hand in her bare hand; he convulsed at her touch. She had, without much push on her own, reached through the empyrean just as he rapidly loss his physical strength.

Isildor Laskaris
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