Private Locked Rooms and Old Fires

[Allan Alhune]

She adapted fast. Light on her feet, fluid movements and precise strikes. She had talent, that was evident. The way she adapted made it hard to read her next moves, a technique he taught himself that usually worked well. He had to do away with it, at the moment all it would be doing is waste precious energy.

Her precise cuts were met with perfect response from his end. The blades clashing and slashing off each other sending sparks into the air. She was trying to force him to fight on her terms.

How entertaining.

Then her foot hooked for his ankle that was met with a strength that would not budge, nor did his balance. Of course she would never be able to sweep his leg.

A sharp pain ran up his spine causing him to sneer as the robes over his ribs were sliced open. Dark black ichor slowly spewed from the wound as her elbow came next.

He stepped back his clawed hand gripping her arm, claws dug into her skin through her shirt and with a quick jerk, a resounding pop reverberated from the walls as his other hand palmed her shoulderblade, dislocating her shoulder.

His hand flicked pulling one of her legs forward as his hand shoved her torso downward, shoving her to the floor.

“Valiant effort. But still, not enough.”

He stood over her then looked at Varin, slowly he stepped toward him, his hand outstretched, ready to claim his prize. Then a slight movement from the Chiss woman caught his eye, once again.

Shade​

 

[Shade]

The pop of her shoulder echoed through the cell, a hollow, sickening sound.

Pain detonated through Shade's body like a thermal charge. For a fleeting second, the world dissolved into a blur of white heat, her vision fraying at the edges as the nerves in her arm screamed in protest. Her fingers spasmed, a useless, involuntary twitch, as the joint slipped free of its socket.

But the pain did not stop her. It never had.

When Allan forced her down, she struck the durasteel floor with a jarring thud that rattled her ribs and stole the air from her lungs. Her dislocated arm hung at a grotesque angle, heavy and unresponsive, yet her good hand clawed at the cold floor. She began to push.

It wasn't fast. It certainly wasn't graceful. But it was movement.

Her crimson eyes remained locked on him, tracking every step he took toward Varin. Through sheer, practiced discipline, Shade forced herself up onto one knee. Her breath was ragged, hitching in her chest, but her focus remained absolute. Even with her arm hanging limp, the shoulder visibly ruined beneath the fabric of her shirt, the rest of her shifted with purpose.

Blocking. Again. Always.

She planted herself between Allan and Varin once more, though the effort cost her a shudder that rippled through her entire frame. Her working hand found the hilt of the knife at her belt. The blade slid free with a hiss of cold promise.

She didn't throw it. She held it low, a steady threat in a failing body. Blood from the claw marks on her arm began to seep through her sleeve, warm and wet, but her grip remained iron-clad.

"Then you will have to keep proving that," she murmured. Her voice was thin, strained by the agony of standing, but it did not tremble. "Because I am still here."

Her stance was brittle. Her breathing was a heavy, labored rasp. She knew, with the cold clarity of a soldier, that she could not win this fight, that the next exchange would likely be her last.

It didn't matter. Shade simply reset her footing, lifted the blade, and narrowed the path between Allan and the man behind her. She didn't stay because she expected victory. She stayed because she had given her word.

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

Allan's gaze flicked to Shade, a look of slight intrigue as a chuckle of amusement escaped him.

“Look at you. Already broken, yet you still think you can fight on.”

He lifted his arm where the wound from his ribs were revealed, the dark ichor slowly being absorbed back into his body as the wound seemed to stitch itself with muscle fibers and flesh.

“How long can you keep it up? Exhaustion and pain already threaten you. Even now, your body betrays you.”

He slowly turned to face her as the wound from his side fully healed, like nothing had happened to him.

“I said I was taking Varin, and unlike you, I will always keep my word.”

The smirk upon his lips lowered, an emotionless scowl as he looked at his breaking opponent.

“Normally I would be done with playing with my food by now, watching you hobble around like an injured animal, it sucks the fun right out.”

He slowly stepped closer, a predatory step that seemed to echo and vibrate around the walls as the Force within and around him flexed and stirred like a restless beast.

“But I won't kill you. Death is a release, a gift. Not something you have earned yet.”

He stopped just in front of her, his eyes looking down at the blade in her hand, held tight, trying so hard to remain composed, so hard to be in control.

But you can't control ruin.

“I will let you suffer with failure. You will look at his eyes as he watches you let him walk away with me.”

His hand slowly lifted palm up, his clawed fingers curling slowly into his hand.

She would feel a heavy weight over her whole body, slowly increasing in force around her. Her legs would buckle or break. She would feel just the very forefront of his power over the Force. As if gravity itself truly bent to his will.

Shade​

 

[Shade]

The pressure arrived with a deceptive slowness at first, beginning as a subtle tightening in the air that wrapped around Shade's body like invisible hands closing in from every direction. The Force pressed down upon her with a crushing, singular intent, the weight building steadily as though gravity itself had been dragged inward and focused entirely on the point where she stood.

As the atmosphere grew heavy, her knees began to tremble under the strain, and the floor seemed to fall away even as it grew more immense. Her muscles screamed against a force that demanded total submission, and her dislocated shoulder flared with fresh agony as the pressure radiated through her spine and ribs, pushing her already injured body far beyond its physical limits.

Despite the mounting weight, she did not drop immediately, locking her jaw and holding her ground while the knife remained gripped in her hand, even as the blade itself trembled under the immense atmospheric strain. Her breathing grew uneven and ragged, each inhale a desperate struggle forced through the invisible burden pressing relentlessly against her chest.

Throughout the ordeal, her crimson eyes never once left Allan, tracking the smug satisfaction in his posture and the absolute certainty in his belief that the outcome of this encounter had already been decided. While he might have been right about the tactical reality, Shade had never been one to measure victory solely by the metric of survival.

Eventually, her legs began to give way under the unbearable pressure, and one knee struck the stone floor with a sharp, jarring crack that echoed through the room. The impact sent a fresh wave of white-hot pain lancing up through her spine, but even as she sank, she forced her torso as upright as the crushing weight would allow.

The knife remained raised in her hand, though only barely, as she maintained her defiant stance. "Maybe," she said quietly, her voice strained and thin beneath the force bearing down on her, her gaze flicking briefly past him toward Varin before returning to Allan with lethal focus.

"But he will remember something," she continued, her fingers tightening around the hilt of the blade even as her strength continued to bleed away under the pressure. "He will remember I did my damnest to stop you." Even as her other knee began to buckle, and her body failed her, she refused to lower the weapon or look away from her tormentor.

Varin Mortifer

 

[Allan Alhune]

He smirked after she spoke, then his hand flexed, holding her body in place like a living statue.

“When I start with him.”

He leaned in close to her ear.

“He will not know what reality is. He will question everything, especially his memory.”

He slowly stood back up then looked at Varin still clutching his temples as pain radiated through his entire body.

“Varin…”

Allan spoke quietly.

“I have come to take you home.”

He watched as Varin reacted to his words, his eyes glaring at Allan as if preparing to incinerate him with a glance. The eye flared and Allan stood over him.

“You remember your home don’t you boy? The buildings, the faces…the garden?”

He stepped closer.

“Yes all visuals. When someone brings up your home you always tend to avoid it in the end, don’t you?”

He stopped just in front of him.

“Because you are ashamed that you forgot the sounds, the smells, the taste of your world. You know what it looks like, but you forgot its soul…”

His hand gently grazed his jaw.

“Didn’t you?”

He pulled back a strand of hair behind his ear to get a better look at his eyes as the eye dimmed.

“I can remind you of that. I can show you the garden again, Varin. I can take you to your home. All you need to do…”

He extended his hand.

“Is come with me.”

As soon as Varin’s hand touched Allan’s, there was a bright light that flashed into the room. The cell that once was full of three individuals, now lay dormant with only one. Silence once again enveloping the room as Allan and Varin both disappeared.

Shade | Varin Mortifer​

 

[Varin Mortifer]

VARIN MORTIFER

Equipment: Durum Mantle | Black Blade of Chandrila | Eye of The Dragon | Heavy Sith Mace​

Pain radiated through his skull, behind his eyes and around his temples, like a vice that kept tightening. A struggle from his throat pulled from him as he reacted to the pulses of pain.

Then, Allan spoke his name and the pain ceased. Cut like a cable with a sharpened blade.

He watched Allan as he spoke, stepping closer.

“I have come to take you home.”

Varin’s sharpened towards Allan.

Home?! The one he destroyed?!

His thoughts wrestled with him. Then his next question forced him to remember his home. The fields, the forests, the cliffs, the rolling waves at their feet. It was beautiful, and it was his.

Then, the garden. A soft warmth radiated from his chest as he remembered the garden. The massive garden that held flowers and herbs all within the throat of an extinct volcano, and at its center, the massive oak.

“Yes, all visuals. When someone brings up your home you always tend to avoid it in the end, don’t you?”

Varin’s gaze looked up at Allan as he stood before him, the thought of incinerating him, leaving his mind, not that he had the strength to do it.

His hand gently grazed Varin’s jaw as he brushed back some of his hair behind his ear.

He did forget about his home. He forgot what it was like to live there, and what it felt like. He forgot what home even was. A tear rolled down his cheek as he came to the realization, the feeling burning his eye but he made no move to cure it.

When Allan extended his hand, Varin looked at it hesitantly.

It was right there. His way back home. He could finally belong somewhere once again.

Slowly his hand extended as he looked at Shade. The small contact of his hand touching Allan’s and then within an instant…

Blackness…

Allan Alhune | Shade​

 

[Shade]

The pressure crushing Shade's body vanished.

One moment, the invisible weight of Allan's will had pinned her to the floor, grinding bone and muscle toward total collapse. The next, it was simply gone, as if the gravity of a planet had been switched off without warning.

Her body reacted before her mind could catch up.

Shade pitched forward onto one knee, her breath tearing violently back into her lungs. The sudden absence of pressure left her lightheaded and dangerously unbalanced. The knife slipped from her trembling fingers, striking the stone floor with a sharp, lonely clatter that rang through the hollow quiet of the cell.

For a long moment, she could only breathe.

Then, her head snapped up.

The room was wrong. It was too still, too silent. Her crimson eyes swept the space in a single, razor-sharp motion, but the place where Allan had stood was a void.

Varin was gone.

Shade pushed herself upright with visible effort. Her injured arm hung uselessly at her side, a dead weight that pulled at her shoulder, while the rest of her body screamed in protest. The fight had wrung every ounce of strength from her muscles, and the bruising force Allan had exerted on her bones still lingered like phantom gravity, making the air feel thick and heavy.

But she stood anyway.

Her gaze moved across the cell again, slower this time, searching for any sign of a lingering presence. There was no residual movement. No displaced air. No retreating footfalls.

There was only the silence of an empty grave.

Her jaw tightened until the bone ached.

"Varin."

The name was a whisper, almost experimental, as if the mere sound of it might pull him back into existence. It did not.

Shade's attention shifted to the doorway. The security officers lay exactly where they had fallen, their bodies slumped in the dim, clinical light of the containment wing. No alarms had been triggered. No reinforcements were rushing to the scene. There was only the aftermath of a surgical extraction.

Slowly, fighting the tremor in her legs, Shade stepped toward the center of the room. Her good hand flexed at her side as her mind replayed the final seconds with cold, obsessive clarity: the conversation, the manipulation, the hand extended, and Varin reaching for it.

She looked down at the stone where the light had flared. There was no scorch mark. No residue. Nothing but the cold, indifferent rock.

Shade exhaled slowly through her nose, forcing the rising tide of frustration back into the tight mental compartments she had lived in her entire life. Anger was a luxury she couldn't afford; regret was a distraction she wouldn't permit.

What remained was fact. Varin Mortifer had been taken. Allan Alhune had walked out of a Republic Intelligence stronghold as if it were a common thoroughfare.

And Shade had failed.

Her crimson eyes hardened as she straightened to her full height, ignoring the white-hot protest in her shoulder.

"…Understood."

The word was barely a breath. It wasn't an admission of surrender, but an acceptance of a new reality. Her gaze lifted toward the ceiling, her focus already shifting from the debris of the fight to the requirements of the future.

Allan had won the encounter. But the hunt had only just begun.

Shade turned toward the security console near the door, her movements slow but deliberate as she reached for the emergency comm panel. There were calls to make. Reports to file. Lines to cross.

Somewhere out there, Allan Alhune had just made himself the most important target in the galaxy.

Varin Mortifer Allan Alhune