Michael, Gabriel, Azrael, Sariel, Raphael, Jeremiel, Seraphim
[Any text in brackets signifies comm-link usage and not face to face conversation]
Objective II — Shadows in the Shell
Location: Kelada Subsurface — Access Shaft to Foundry Delta
Scene: Midnight – One Day Later
Steam rose like breath from the world’s throat.
The squad stood on the edge of a massive elevator platform, half-rusted, half-operational, suspended over a vertical drop so deep that even Vanagor’s senses couldn’t find the bottom. The shaft groaned under its own weight — the old bones of a factory repurposed for hell.
Far below, lights pulsed — deep reds and sickly yellows. Shapes shifted in the shadows.
Not droids. Not walkers.
Something else was moving down there.
Something…
watching.
A chime flicked across Gabriel’s HUD.
LEVEL IDENTIFIER: OSSUARY – 07
“Resurrection Protocol Active.”
And then, in the faintest edges of the Force,
Connel heard them.
Whispers.
Names.
Memories.
Cries for help.
Hundreds.
Maybe thousands.
Each one still
trapped.
And in the center of it all — a voice like broken glass wrapped in velvet:
~“You shouldn’t have come, Jedi.”~
~“But since you did… stay a while.”~
Darth Illicitus had been waiting.
And
Kelada(at least this section of the spine) had just begun to wake up.
Location: Kelada – Subterranean Level 7: Ossuary-07 Access Corridor
Objective: Infiltrate Foundry Delta, Identify Resurrection Control Node, Avoid Detection
The platform descended into silence.
Not mechanical silence —
unnatural silence. The kind that pressed against the ears like a vacuum, muting not just sound, but thought. Every meter downward felt like slipping further from the galaxy itself. At the base of the shaft, a single hatch opened.
Beyond it: a corridor not built by the Empire, but
after it. Dark alloy. Red-glowing seams. The walls pulsed faintly — like veins.
We go dark. Comm silence unless urgent. Gabriel, map the network. Sariel, overwatch priority. Connel…
This was his show, and he knew it.
I know. I’ll lead.
They entered in
two-by-two formation, the way they had a dozen times before. But this wasn’t like before. The temperature dropped. Breath misted. The Force
twitched like it was trying to speak, but someone had it by the throat.
Gabriel moved like a shadow, tapping into auxiliary access nodes hidden behind plated wall segments. His face reflected a glow of code, encrypted in Sith architecture. It snarled back.
This isn’t just a control system. It’s a containment field. The entire floor is a hive.”
Sariel peeled off, scaling silently into the rafters and nested on a beam high above. His scope tracked movement — droids, but not standard. No footsteps. They
floated, headless and humming in a near-silent frequency, scanning in tight patterns.
SarielContact: Sentinels. Three, patrolling in 60-second loops. Connel, you’re up.
Vanagor didn’t ignite his saber, or even reach for any weapon.
He didn’t need to.
He moved like a myth. A quiet glide of armor and will, slipping past the first patrol with barely a ripple in the Force. The second came too close — but by the time its sensor pinged an anomaly, his hand was already on its throat unit.
A twist. A snap.
No sound.
He laid it down like a sleeping child.
Jeremiel and
Azrael ghosted after him, planting magnetic breach charges in the foundations of the corridor —
quiet, pressure-triggered failsafes for when this op inevitably went loud.
Raphael trailed rear guard, his hand resting calmly on his sidearm, but never drawing it. His eyes were closed. He wasn’t watching for movement — he was
feeling for the one pattern the others couldn’t see:
A heartbeat… that shouldn’t exist. They breached the inner sanctum of Ossuary-07.
What they saw froze them.
Walkers… droids… and
people. Bodies half-fused with machinery. Soldiers —
clones, even — suspended mid-integration. Faces contorted in agony. Some still
alive, barely. A few whispered
names. Others screamed silently behind locked jaws. Dozens of black-cloaked technicians moved between the rows, muttering incantations under breath masks, guided by floating Sith holocrons glowing violet.
In the center: a pulsing black crystal, suspended over a convergence engine — the beating heart of the facility. And standing beneath it…
Darth Illicitus.
[Confirmed. It’s him. Crystal's a resonance core. That’s the brain. We go loud in 90 seconds. Raphael, hit the flank. Sariel, take the high kill zone. Azrael, blow the fuel arteries at my mark. Gabriel, isolate the crystal’s field. Jeremiel, on evac detail. Connel…]
He didn’t need to finish.
Vanagor was already gone.
As the countdown ticked, Omega Squad moved into place.
Every heartbeat brought the hammer closer.
But this time — the
shadow would strike
first.
Location: Ossuary-07 – Core Chamber, Moments Before Assault
Connel Vanagor had already vanished into the dark.
He moved without sound, without ripple — not as a man stalking prey, but as a
presence the Force itself refused to notice. Not even the Sith alchemy saturating the air could sense him. Not yet.
The core chamber opened like a cathedral of death.
Towering stasis pods lined the walls, their contents fused to mechanical frames — limbs twitching, heads trembling in locked suffering. Massive pylons arced with crimson energy overhead. The heartbeat of the facility pulsed in rhythm with the crystal suspended in the center: a black shard surrounded by red-glowing chains, hovering like a captured star.
Beneath it,
Darth Illicitus stood with his back exposed — long obsidian robes marked with silver stitching that resembled chains and teeth. His helmet was unlike most Sith lords; it was delicate, sharp, more akin to a ceremonial funerary mask than a warrior’s helm. His hands moved slowly over the control runes as if conducting a choir only he could hear.
And Vanagor could feel them — the
souls trapped in the machines. Their pain. Their yearning. Their fading
identity. He was here to end it.
Quietly.
Vanagor crept forward, navigating around a ritual circle — old blood still drying at its edge. One wrong step and this chamber would turn into a tomb.
He was three meters from Illicitus.
He reached for the saber — not to ignite it. To
prepare. The kill would be clean. Fast. A mercy.
He exhaled once, channeling the Force into absolute stillness—
Illicitus: “Clever. Very clever.” The Sith’s voice cracked through the silence like glass breaking underwater. He didn’t turn. “Even the Jedi’s sharpest shadow walks with footsteps... if you teach the floor how to listen.”
Connel froze. Eyes narrowing.
Illicitus (softly): “You came alone. Noble. Expected. Futile.”
Now he turned.
The mask gleamed under the bloodlight. His eyes were not visible — but Vanagor
felt them. Not probing. Not mocking.
Studying. “You’re not here to kill me, Vanagor. You’re here to
understand me.”
Connel stepped forward, abandoning stealth. Calm. Centered.
I already do.cHis saber ignited, gold and blue flaring to life, his shortsaber followed… the violet blade vibrant.
You’re a coward hiding behind the dead. He was learning more and more each day about the actions and mindset of a true “Shadow”, not just a Guardian with Special Forces training. However there were times that his Father’s (Do you really need to ask who his father is?) influence shined.The influence shined. Connel’s grip tightened on his saber, his resolve unwavering. Illicitus’s mask betrayed no emotion, yet the air grew heavier. The clash of ideologies loomed as inevitable as the rising sun, each moment sharpening the tension between them.
Illicitus raised one hand — not in fear, but
welcome. Behind him, the crystal pulsed harder. The floor vibrated.
“No, Jedi… I am
what happens when death no longer answers to the Force.” He flicked his fingers. The chains surrounding the crystal
snapped.
Alarms screamed.
Sirens wailed.
Gabriel’s voice cut across the comm:
[Vanagor! Core’s destabilizing — it’s waking up! We’re blowing the charges early!]
[Connel, get clear! This whole place is going to—
But Vanagor didn’t move.
He advanced.
The duel had begun.
Location: Ossuary-07 – Core Chamber / Upper Control Circuits / Failsafe Corridor
[CORE CHAMBER – 00:00:00]
The lights cracked red.
The resonance crystal shattered its containment field — a burst of Force backlash flattening stasis pods and shrieking across the chamber like tortured memories set loose.
Vanagor launched forward, saber raised high — not a warrior charging, but a weapon
unleashed. His golden blade collided with Illicitus’s scarlet plasma, the impact sparking white as Force and hate collided.
Their first clash shattered air.
Illicitus twisted, robes swirling like smoke. He fought not like a brute, but like a ritualist —
calculated,
elegant,
inhumanly efficient. His saber was less a weapon than a scalpel.
Illicitus: “You still believe the Force is your ally. It pities you.”
Vanagor parried low, ducked a reverse slice, and answered coldly:
The Force doesn’t pity. But it remembers.
[UPPER CIRCUITS – 00:00:32]
Meanwhile,
Gabriel sprinted along a shattered conduit, uplinking into the foundry’s fusion bypass.
[/COLOR]
Override’s buried under ten levels of Sith encryption. They coded the logic tree in Old High Rylothian. Who does that?!
Sariel, from above on a precarious steel beam, calmly sighted a corrupted sentinel climbing toward Gabriel’s position.
One down.
CRACK.
The droid dropped into molten coolant below.
[FAILSAFE CORRIDOR – 00:01:09]
Michael,
Jeremiel,
Azrael, and
Raphael punched through the inner perimeter, cutting through possessed defense droids that moved like possessed monks — silent, fast, and twitching as if they were dreaming someone else's nightmare.
We're getting boxed in.
Yeah, I noticed. Want me to introduce them to some loud friends?
Not yet. Raphael, clear left flank. Azrael — hold the detonators. Raphael was getting angry, and for him, that is saying something. Stepping up with “Bertha” his rotary blaster, the “heavy” swept the room.
Left’s open. They’ll try to loop behind us.
Let them.
[CORE CHAMBER – 00:02:42]
Vanagor and Illicitus were a blur.
Sparks rained down from above as the catwalks fractured. Illicitus hurled Vanagor back with a blast of kinetic Force, sending him skidding across the cracked platform.
Illicitus (advancing): “Do you hear them, Jedi? They’re not screaming. They’re
begging to serve. The dead no longer fear me.”
Vanagor rose slowly, jaw clenched, sabers at his either side.
Then maybe it’s time you remembered fear.
He surged forward again, ducking an overhead slash, driving his saber into Illicitus’s thigh armor — a glancing blow, but
enough. Connel had training with a saber (be it real, or training, or even wooden) since he could stand, he knew what he was doing in ways that few could fathom.
Illicitus staggered. And in that pause—
[FAILSAFE CORRIDOR – 00:03:15]
Azrael — now.
BOOM Baby!
He clicked the remote.
The floor erupted.
Three blast points caved in the hallway behind them — taking half the pursuing enemy force into a fireball and tearing open a long-sealed bulkhead
leading deeper down.
[CORE CHAMBER – 00:03:19]
The blast rocked the chamber.
Illicitus reeled. Vanagor leapt.
Their blades locked midair. Connel spun, striking Illicitus across the mask — cracking it.
The Sith screamed. But before Vanagor could finish it, Illicitus hurled himself into a Force-fueled backward dive — landing atop a rising lift platform.
Illicitus (mask flickering): “You’ve seen the top layer… but the tomb goes
deeper, Jedi.”
He vanished down the shaft.
[CONVERGENCE POINT – 00:04:01]
Omega Squad regrouped as smoke poured from the ruptured blast doors.
Behind them, wreckage. Ahead —
a yawning spiral staircase descending into the dark, with the mark of the Sith carved into every inch of the wall.
The air was colder now. The Force…
quieter. Like something
below had swallowed its voice.
That wasn’t the core. That was the lure.
Connel (quiet, lightsaber humming as he approached):
Illicitus is still down there.
Then so are we.
TAGS: @
Valery Noble
Vess Sadragen
