Graves

[Aela Talith]

Smoke rose from the distance, an acrid smell of scorched earth and burned forest clung to the air. Scorch marks hung on every tree, patched the ground, massive swaths of the forest floor having simply turned into a massive black from the orbital bombardment. There was a scowl on Aela's face, a tug on her lips as she surveyed the territory that lay ahead of her and her troops.

They were here in the face of the Final Order, assaulting a fortress that they held upon this world.

The massive structure lay nearly a click ahead, a huge bastion of a building that held an armory, factory, and main institutional headquarters in this sector. The Final Order had dug in, their forces had holed themselves away within the fortress, hiding themselves away in order to wait for reinforcements. Elements of the Galactic Alliance working with the New Jedi Order had forced the situation, and now they were quickly closing in on the fortress itself.

The fighting had been brutal, harsh, and bloody, but slowly the Galactic Alliance was making headway towards the fortress itself.

To Aela, it seemed that things were getting better. The Final Order was getting more desperate as the fighting went on, and with each battle won their powers began to wane.

“Marshall!”

A voice called out to her from the left, and Aela turned to face it. She frowned slightly as a messenger came rushing up to her. “Yes?”

She acknowledged the man quickly, seeing the urgency on his face.

“Marshall, the 17th regiment found something you should see, immediately.”

Aela looked at the man questioningly, but nodded. She motioned to the captain that lead her own unit, giving him instructions to head with the her to wherever the messenger was going to lead them, and also to bring a small squad of soldiers just in case. The small group broke out into a run almost immediately, heading half a click to the west until they stumbled upon the 17th regiment.

“Master Talith.”

The Commander spoke with a rueful voice, his tone showing weariness and a hint of disgust. “Commander.”

“We found something, we hadn't been looking for it, but as we moved up the hill towards the fortress one of my men stumbled into it, literally. You should prepare yourself Master Jedi, I haven't seen something like this since...Togoria.”

Aela eyed the man, but gave him a slow nod. The Commander lead Aela and her small squad through the 17th Regiment, a few men nodding in greeting or welcome, though each and every one looked as though they were going to be sick. They wandered for five more minutes, until they reached what the Commander wanted to show them.

For a moment she hesitated, seeing only a massive ditch. “Commander?”

She asked quietly, until the man gestured towards the ditch itself. Aela stepped forward to the edge of the bending earth, then let out a loud gasp.

At the bottom of the ditch, below a thing layer of earth and fallen wood lay bodies, hundreds upon hundreds of bodies. Aela's eyes grew large, her mouth gaped as she saw them all, laying there. She tried to count them, tried to identify them, tried to do anything that a rational mind should do, yet instead she went blank. Hundreds of corpses lay within the ditch, perhaps thousands.

Each one was mangled, altered in some way. Wires threaded out from their skin, glass sat within their eye sockets, alterations had been made to their arms and legs. They wore no uniform, carried to identification tags, nothing that would sign them as members of the Final Order. Aela found her eyes locked on the bottom of the ditch, pure horror carrying through her.

 

[Peyton Steele]

Peyton wasn’t much of anyone for the Galactic Alliance, an operative with a few years of experience, and a few missions under her belt from the Omega Pyre. She knew she recognized a few faces from that outfit here. It made her feel a bit better. But the woman, that was also a changeling, was a bit out of sorts. She was being called forward as an observer to the situation that was reported. The Final Order had a fortress and teams were dispatched to handle them.

Not quite the sniper, she was doing her best to steal data. Peyton was a great observer and had helped one of the sniper teams with painting targets, all the while breaking into a computer system. She wasn’t anywhere near [member="Spark Finn"], or even [member="Cryax Bane"] level, but she could knock down a firewall. Brute force attack.

Kind of like her weapons array. In a light armor, similar to the main armor used by the defunct Protectorate, she had a pistol and a light repeater, and was able to do damage, but on top of that? Two stun batons, reinforced duraplast, were what made her close quarters combat array. She should find some beskar and do some serious damage with them.

The blonde did hear the call for the Marshal, and her ears peaked up, blue eyes turning to where the call came from. She hurried over, nosy and it being part of her job to gather intelligence. Couldn’t [member="Fixx Kearney"] be here for that? She came over to where the commotion as. And the scene.

Her mind went blank. She… part of her felt she knew what this was… but no, this, this was a scene out of a horror flick. Who the feth…

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Kaili Talith]

“You’re related to Marshall Talith?”

“Yep, all my life.”

Kaili had followed her sister to many places before. From family trips to Onderon to accidental cases of getting themselves trapped in a heated battle over Crina. She had seen a lot, gotten to know her sister as a friend and an idol. Yet now that she had gotten the title of ‘marshall’ upon her Kaili could add yet another title to the bunch: a leader. To think Kaili wouldn’t be following her sister’s footsteps in a quite more literal sense was foolish.

At least one could have thought so at first. At the sight of her sister in what seemed to be a state of horror Kaili trailed along the elder’s line of sight until she too saw it. A gasp, a step back and a sea of horror much like the one her sister had shown. Kaili covered her mouth with her hand, but rather than remain still she took a step forward. Images of the crash with Micah flashed before her like a bad memory.

The glass shards sticking out of the eye sockets leaving a trail of blood, the wires sticking out of their desecrated corpses and the obvious signs of struggle. It wasn’t the exact same but death still weighed heavy on the young girl’s mind. The others seemed to have stopped and stared, but not Kaili. Her first step turned into another as she slowly approached the edge of the mass grave.

Death is a constant, Kaili. There will be others who will share the same fate as those in the ship crash and even if it hurts to admit it death is bound to follow in your footsteps more often than you’d want.

What you’re saying is, I shouldn’t think on it too much?

Exactly. It is for the best.

“Who could have done this?” She asked and turned back to Aela. “Do you think this is a message?”

“Actually...”

She descended into the grave.

“Just don’t think about it, Kaili.”

The examination of the corpses had begun and Kaili promptly let her fingers prod away in hopes of finding the cause of all this.

|| [member="Peyton Steele"] // [member="Aela Talith"] ||​

 

[Chevu Visz]

Chevu was a sensitive soul. Probably too sensitive to witness what she was about to. However, in the end, she would find that it had been necessary for her to see it first-hand. The abominable sight lacked the veneer of unreality offered by watching Sith atrocities on the Holonews or hearing about them second-hand. Her memories of this day would beat back any complacency that might infect her. That would be later. This was now.

And right now, Chevu was staring down into a mass grave with bodies that had been dehumanized and discarded. Hundreds of them. With a green-skinned hand clasped over her mouth, she gasped. As Chevu stared into the expansive pit, evil stared back. And it was laughing. Her stomach did a double somersault.

Chevu whirled around, suddenly afraid that she was about to lose her lunch, and smacked right into [member="Peyton Steele"]. Hard. Nearly knocked the woman over.

"Blast! I'm sorry!" the Mirialan said, her brown eyes looking deeply into the woman's bright blue eyes.

At least her embarrassment staved off her nausea. If she puked on the scene, Coren Starchaser would never let his student live it down.

[member="Kaili Talith"] [member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Doctor Azure]

Lorane was here. Why, he didn't know, but making a mess of the First Order seemed to be in his job description, lately. What was not in his job description was the sight he saw. Of course, as a doctor, he was more than used to seeing dead and mangled bodies. A sort of horrible fascination grew in him as he looked. So many experiments. His inner scientist was more sad about the failure than the deaths. Of course, he had a rather pragmatic view of the situation.

"Burn 'em. I'm curious to see what's left afterwards, and we need to get rid of the fumes besides."

That was Lor. He couldn't bring himself to get seriously worked up over this pile of unidentified bodies.​

[member="Aela Talith"] [member='Kaili Talith'] [member='Chevu Visz'] [member='Peyton Steele']

 

[Adder]

Adder felt more than a little out of place.

She'd been trained to work in small groups or pairs, and even though nearly a decade had passed since she'd abandoned her post on Coruscant, the practice was still very much ingrained in her. It had worked out well enough back when she'd first encountered [member="Aela Talith"] by complete accident on some forgotten backwater world in the outer rim. The Jedi Master was also the reason why she was here today, and not in some dingy cantina trying to pick out the next axe-murderer from the crowd of patrons.

No, this time, the axe-murderers were loud and clear about their nature, no detective work required. It was an odd experience for the redhead, who was used to judging and weighing every reaction of the other party to figure out who she was dealing with. Most people weren't keen on announcing their corruption to the world, but most people weren't Sith.

Or the Final order. Same chit in a different wrapper. Adder shuddered.

Coming planetside with a host of soldiers and Jedi was new and more than a little unpleasant to the woman, but most of all, it was confusing. She felt out of place, like a sore thumb sticking out, and not knowing what to do with herself, the ex-cop elected to hang in the back with her palm resting on the stock of her Westar. If a shady hooded individual popped up,she'd be ready to blow their knees out.

As it turned out, however, fate had other plans. Gruesome plans.

The icarii felt all blood drain from her face, and only years of experience with gang wars down in the seedy underbelly of Coruscant staved off the violent urge to retch that gripped her muscles once she joined the small crowd at the edge of the ditch.

She had never seen so many dead.

Not with her own eyes, at least. There were videos, of course, but the camera lens always acted like a dampener between the act and the viewer, making it all so very impersonal, and so much easier to bear. There was no layer of protection here, nothing to soften the blow to her gut as she viewed the seemingly endless scretch of poorly covered bodies.

They were stacked on top of each other like cattle, used and discarded. Expendable. Thousands of glassy eyes staring emptily at something beyond the impassive gray skies, something that only they could see. Were they at peace?

"We— we should get moving," she urged quietly, but firmly. There was nothing they could to for those poor souls now, save avenge their deaths by smoking out the bastards in the fortress. Adder set her jaw as her fingers twitched against her gun.

It was going to be hard, aiming for the knees.

[member="Doctor Azure"] | [member="Chevu Visz"] | [member="Kaili Talith"] | [member="Peyton Steele"]​

 

[Connor Harrison]

Black was the best way to dress for times like this - blend in, don't draw attention. Fixx had his heavy boots on, a thermal suit and blast vest. His Czerka 411 was snug in his shoulder holster, a dark brown holster over his chest with the pistol by his left side.

Walking through the crackling smoke that wafted over from a small fire of burning speeder, Fixx's hair was matted with sweat and dirt, his face a little streaked from the fire-fight. His order was to rendezvous at the grave recently exposed to find what he could - who did this? Why? Who were the victims, and what price had they paid to earn a place in such a disgusting place like that.

A few people were already on the lip of the grave, soldiers and peace-keepers alike he assumed. He came to a stop beside them and looked down into the grave. The casualties of war - this was when he had to turn his heart and emotion off. He had to act like cold-blooded bastard in order to be one who could get his hands dirty and do the job that only cold-blooded bastards could.

Fixx sighed. "It's a message. Somebody's not happy and they wanted us to know about it. Seems this could be a taste of what could happen more often if we don't do something fast."

He noticed one already starting to search the bodies. Fixx would help. Cold-blooded didn't mean cold-hearted.

[member="Adder"] | [member="Doctor Azure"] | [member="Chevu Visz"] | [member="Kaili Talith"] | [member="Peyton Steele"] | [member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Peyton Steele]

She didn’t know how to quantify all this. What she did know was that some people were a bit better at working through things than she was, or at least they had another way to go about it. Peyton swallowed hard as she watched as the others responded. She also figured she was magical, because there was Kearney, [member="Fixx Kearney"]. She looked over at the other agent and shrugged. The blonde had never seen anything like this.

As for the good doctor, that caused her to bite at her lip. “Burn them? I… I mean…” She shook her head, and that was the time Little Green stumbled into her. Peyton took a step back, blinked and made sure the other wasn’t going to topple over. The changeling had a few tricks that most wouldn’t suspect, but she was careful not seem like a mountain when people were nearby.

“Are you alright?”

[member="Adder"]
[member="Doctor Azure"]
[member="Chevu Visz"]
[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

She lingered at the edge of the ditch

Her heart was in her throat, her eyes sat on the corpses, trailing away only to inspect those around her. They had known the Final Order was like this, they had known they were getting desperate, they had known that they were bad guys. Yet this...it was something she herself had never expected. She had seen war, she had seen battle, she had even seen the brutality of the galaxy in the outer rim, but a mass grave?

It was something new even for Aela, even for most of the older Jedi here.

This was something that cut to the core, that bit at ones very soul. It was a horror show a delight that only a Sith would partake in.

A voice wandered to her, a familiar one, Adder. Aela frowned slightly, casting a glance towards the woman before looking down at Kaili. Slowly her head began to shake, her braid flailing slightly behind her back as she did so. "No. We can't leave, we have to..."

Aela trailed off as she thought, as she tried to think of anything.

"Document this." She said quietly. "Take pictures, identify the bodies, do everything we can to find out what happened here. It's not something we can ignore, it's not something that anyone should ignore. People should know about this, know what happened here."

She cast a glance towards the Commander, his head slowly dipping in acknowledgement.

 

[Jsc]

Nothing attracts like a crowd.

Roberts stood over the mass grave with a knowing frown. Glad that her helm could block the smell that the others must have been seething under. Mm. Mass grave. The Final Order must have enacted a Scorched Earth policy for this area. They'd likely find the local hamlets and farms burned and devoid of people too. After all. If they can't have it? Nobody would. They'd burn everything.

She passed two fingers over the mound. The Force confirmed it. No. No survivors down there. Not even a flicker. She nodded with disgust and shouted to [member="Aela Talith"] ,

"Marshall. Leave me one of your people and we'll get right on with this. I'll bring in some sensor probes and we'll blood ID all the bodies. Get you a head count too. Should only take about two hours. However... I doubt this will be the last grave we find out here. You'll need to stay focused. One thing at a time. This war ain't going anywhere, anytime soon."

Couldn't have everybody gawking now could we. Might as well get about it. Roberts touched her com and starting making the calls. Probes, staff, the aircraft in the works. She could delegate. Though, even Old Blue doubted that once they'd ID all the bodies that they'd find anything useful down there. Did this planet even keep modern blood records on it's citizens? Where would she find the paperwork to compare all the data in a timely manner? Would anybody out here still be alive enough to care? ...Mm. She doubted it. This was war. Just business as usual.

To note. There was one thing this event definitively confirmed to all of them. These Final Order bastards were going down the hard way.

 

[Doctor Azure]

Lor raised an eyebrow, first at the Steele girl, and then at the Jedi Master who'd just given orders out to the Marshall.

"There's nobody in the galaxy left who gives a damn about the people in this ditch, most likely. You don't live on a planet like this and keep long-range contact. Like I said, burning 'em is the best option. Could be anything in there, even failed technobeasts. It's more important to see what comes out intact after the fire. Alchemy, sorcery, bio weapons..."

He made a tsking noise with his mouth.

"And for the record, I can do it right now if I want to. I'm being polite by pretending I follow any of your orders."​

[member="Karen Roberts"] [member="Aela Talith"] [member="Peyton Steele"]

 

[Jsc]

"And we'd be pretending if anybody cares about your opinion. So shut up. ...There's nothing in there anyway. I've already sensed it with the Force."

She didn't even bother to look at the blue person. Wasn't worth her effort. She just put the phone back to her helm, continued talking to her staffers, and shook her head. Freelancers. Ugh. They gave companies like her's a bad name. [member="Aela Talith"] and the troopers would call the shots here. And if they wanted it burned, it would get burned. It they wanted it counted, it would counted. Hell, if Talith wanted to make a flower garden out of it? That could probably happen too. Right now, nobody cared enough to volunteer for that idea, did they?

No, at this point there was still an FO fortress to worry about. [member="Doctor Azure"] , or whomever felt so inclined, could worry about the graves later.

 

[Chevu Visz]

As she found herself in the arms of the other woman, which to be honest, wasn't such a bad thing, Chevu nodded.

"I'm alright," the Mirialan insisted, and flashed the woman a grateful smile.

It wasn't entirely true. She was shaken to the core by the grave site. The brutality of it was unfathomable. Chevu had freed prisoners, light sided captives of the Final Order. She wondered if those prisoners would have suffered the same fate. Once they were nursed back to health, they would be thoroughly questioned, but for now, all they had was this literal hell hole.

Chevu looked into intensely blue eyes. She didn't remember the woman from any of Coren's training exercises.

"What's your name?"

[member="Peyton Steele"]

 

[Peyton Steele]

She wasn’t sure how to handle the Chiss. Chiss were always cold, calculating. They were blue. It was… she wasn’t too comfortable around people like that. Hell, they might be the reason she was all messed up. What did happen to her in those months? The blonde didn’t want to think about it. Part of her was falling away, in her head, for the moment, from the task at hand. There were things to get done, this grave, that was the least of it.

She was going to make herself focus, after she helped Little Green. She put a stronger-than-expected arm on her shoulder to steady the other woman. Bright blue eyes that were not related to the Starchaser line, maybe, looked at the Mirialan for a second and nodded. If she said she was alright, who was Peyton to argue?

“I’m Specialist Peyton Steel, with the military.” Not a contractor. But also an intelligence operative.

Apparently she was really good at that.

[member="Chevu Visz"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Karen Roberts"]

Aela turned to the woman that spoke for a moment, then to the Chiss. For half a second she considered beating the man to a bloody pulp, then she realized that it would neither set a good example, nor be a benefit to anyone in this situation.

Her eyes lingered on the bodies within the ditch, the failed cyborgs that lay within, the decaying corpses that had been left to rot. Her stomach turned at the thought of what this would have looked like in a few days, a week, a month. She scowled, and then finally turned away from the scene. Her head shook from side to side and she wandered back towards the Commander, motion to Karen Roberts to follow after her.

"Commander, this woman has offered to document the bodies. I don't think they were a message, from the looks of them...experiments were conducted on them before their death. I want to know what was being...accomplished." Using that word hurt her, stinging her tongue. "I'll leave behind some of the MedCorps Jedi and anyone who wants to stay behind, the rest I'll take with me to assault the fortress."

She cast a glance towards the ditch. "We'll try to find someone who has knowledge of this."

It wasn't much, but it was all she could think of.

 

[Jsc]

That would have to do.

Roberts nodded to the GA Commander and to Marshall [member="Aela Talith"] . Karen would stay behind with a few MediCorps Jedi and work out a more scientific solution to this enigma. They'd start with the medical and minerals scans. Documentations in duplicates and secure the parameter as a warzone. Leave the rest for the biolabs to figure out. CSI style. As such, Old Blue returned to her phone to call in the staff she would need to see it done. The NJO could coordinate as it pleased them. They probably had the most Fleet resources available right now anyway. Good thing too. Karen hoped to have everything wrapped up in a few hours. The less time spent here, the better. Leaving the fortress for the troopers and the other volunteers.

Man. She was really gonna need a cold shower after this one. Ugh.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

Jacen's Jedi armour had been polished and immaculate at the start of this offensive. Now it was haggard and worn. A deep gouge ran down the front from a cultist's scarlet blade, smokey black lines covered one pauldron from a heavy blaster shot.

Right now it was the only thing that marked him as a Jedi Knight, and it barely fulfilled that role. As the squad rushed across the open ground, he kept his golden blade off. A saber was an amazing weapon, but igniting it on an open field was a death sentence. Guns across the enemy's walls would immediately turn in his direction and vaporise him and his squad.

The guns still pounded the walls, but they would fall silent soon. The dust that hung in the air was lit up by the bolts that flew in both directions. Each flash through up ghastly silhouettes. Jacen was a career soldier, he knew this routine well. They advanced squad by squad, one laying down suppressing fire whilst the others advanced. Soon they'd come close enough that such large movements couldn't be supported. Then it would be grim, hard going. Fire team by fire team until they breach the walls. The armour had been delayed by the sudden appearance of a pair of TIEs and that lingered in Jacen's mind as an overarching concern. The Force gave him a warning, and he shouted to his squad to hit the deck. Several shells hit the ground nearby, throwing up great plumes of dirt. There was something else in the Force he could sense. A concentrated outpouring of disgust and sadness. He hadn't the time to ponder the cause.

 

[Kaili Talith]

‘I’m staying.’ Kaili looked to Aela as the younger Talith sent her sister an unspoken message. ‘I’ll help with the documentation.’

She didn’t say it out loud. Aela would know what it meant and what kind of mood that Kaili had gotten herself into. It was obvious that deep down she didn’t really want to stay, yet another part of her forced her into it as if she lived under the false pretensions that forcing herself to cope with the reality of the galaxy would make things easier.

Kaili was upset, terrorized and angry but kept it under a lid. After all, the emotional reaction was what the Final Order had wanted and she was not going to let them have it. A small hiss sounded off in her pack. Henry was awake. The six-legged little droid unfolded himself from his compartment and crawled up her shoulder. His photoreceptors set upon the bodies in front of them and for the first time in what would seem like ever he didn’t say a word.

“We need to document these bodies, activate your camera. Prepare a recording for archival purposes.” She let the droid drop down onto the body. “You should also allocate enough storage space for at least a few images to be used in facial recognition.”

Seventeen and already working the dead pits. The Taliths started their careers young.

< “Kaili, you’re uh...” > Henry began. < “Are you sure about this?” >

“Yes! I am sure of this, Henry.” Kaili glared at her droid. “Now please, if you can, allocate the space.”

< “Certainly, you got it.” > The droid obeyed. < “But only because you’re asking kindly.” >

Kaili glared once more.

Henry tilted his chassi in regret. < “Right, sorry.” >

[member="Karen Roberts"]

 

[Chevu Visz]

As the grave site began to be scoured for evidence, Chevu's eyes stayed locked on Peyton's. Then, realizing her eyes had lingered a bit too long on the woman, she shyly turned away and backed up a couple of paces.

"I'm Chevu Visz, Jedi Knight," she told the woman, a green-skinned hand extended, a stiffer, more formal gesture.

Adrenaline and nausea roiled in her body. Suddenly light-headed, Chevu felt herself swooning again. The young Jedi Knight was coated in sweat and grime, and carbon scorched from some close calls with Final Order soldiers. Everything had been go go go since stepping foot on Javin. A rut formed in her brow when she heard Marshall Talith mention taking a team to assault the fortress. Her body protested, crying out for rest and food, but hell, she was too sickened by the carnage to even open a packet of rations. Buck up, Chev. Stopping is not an option. Blinking, she turned back to the blonde military woman.

"Are you going to the Fortress as well?" asked the Mirialian. Force knew they could use all the reinforcements they could get.

[member="Peyton Steele"]

 

[Placeholder 0133]

Rook was late.

Though he was wont to admit it, his wounds were starting to slow him down. He hadn't had the chance to slip into a bacta tank since the fighting started, and any offer to step to the sidelines was brushed aside. In his eyes, he'd been killed more times than any one man deserved; brought back from the brink of death when his brothers had long since passed on.

The Galactic Alliance needed every rifle it could get, and he wasn't the type to shirk that kind of duty. In that mindset, he'd eagerly volunteered to take down this supposed fortress. Sieges were absolutely miserable, so if there was a chance they could storm the compound before the Final Order's soldiers were ready to mount a defense, then all the better.

That was what brought him to this mass grave.

The first thing Rook did was check for FoF tags. Both from the Galactic Alliance and his old corps. His brothers all had implants embedded in their spines that were not so easily removed. If one was killed, the FoF tag could go completely unnoticed, and end up buried with the corpse. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case for the Galactic Alliance soldiers. He'd have to talk to Starchaser about that.

"Kind of like the pits on Balmoraa. Bodies aren't as decomposed though." He grumbled. None of those people in that pit were his. He had no skin in this.

It was just another show of the Final Order's lack of inhibition. They had nothing to hold them back; the alliance did. The Final Order was a big angry dog forced into a corner. If it had to eat some of its pack mates to survive, then so be it.

They're a lot more dangerous than we thought.

He turned away from the pit. Not out of disgust or any other particularly strong emotion. He'd seen this before. Hell, he'd helped make something like this happen to the Sith soldiers on Kashyyyk. Fox squad and its Wookie allies had lined Imperials and Sith alike up against the trunk of a massive wroshyr tree. Then they'd put them down, and tossed their still-warm bodies in the bottom of a ravine. It had been too costly keeping prisoners, and the beasts of the Shadowlands had something to gorge themselves on. So long as the beasts were fed, the Wookie outposts that were erected on the forest floor were generally untouched.

The Sith had forced them to do such things in order to win Kashyyyk back. The Final Order didn't have such reasons - they were just afraid. Rook could justify his actions, and he was sure the Final Order could too.

He was a bad man here to kill other bad men. That was how the galaxy seemed to work lately.

"Have a team tag 'em. The rest should move on," he reached up to remove his helmet and pin it under his arm. His gaze traveled toward the only person he relatively knew here - [member="Chevu Visz"]. He'd worked with her in a training sim, but nothing beyond that. Seemed that was going to change within the next hour.

"You ready to move sweetheart?" He made a point to soften his tone. Most folks didn't take too well to a genocide. Rook was just odd. He shifted his attentions to [member="Peyton Steele"]. He knew her, too, again from training. This one was something between a soldier and a spook, but she seemed to be made of sterner stuff. The former Dreadguard just nodded; he'd stick with these two on the assault of the fortress. He wasn't comfortable with anyone else.