Character
Eadu: Old Imperial Outpost Ruins
Eadu did not whisper.
It screamed.
The storm tore across the cliffs like something alive, rain slamming sideways against stone and durasteel with enough force to sting exposed skin. Thunder rolled so deep it felt less like sound and more like pressure inside the bones. Even long after the Empire had abandoned this place, the planet remained what it always had been. violent, merciless, unwelcoming.
The Vigo-77 sat wedged inside an old cliffside hangar, half swallowed by shadow and time. Rust had eaten into the blast doors. The Imperial insignia that once marked the entrance was little more than a ghostly outline beneath corrosion and lichen. Whatever had once mattered here had long since rotted away.
Or so most people thought.
Rynar didn't believe in empty ruins.
He stepped through the skeletal frame of what had once been a reinforced blast corridor, boots scraping over shattered transparisteel and metal warped from age and bombardment. Water streamed down through cracks in the ceiling, tracing old support beams like veins. Somewhere deeper in the structure, something mechanical groaned. not alive, but not entirely dead either.
Cupcake padded behind him, cautious but steady.
"Tip better be good," Rynar muttered under his breath, though there was no real doubt in his tone. He'd chased worse leads.
The corridor opened into a larger chamber and he stopped.
A section of the roof had collapsed entirely, leaving a jagged mouth open to the storm above. Rain poured through it in sheets, turning the chamber into a churning basin. What had once been a control floor was now a waist-deep pool of dark water stretching wall to wall.
And it wasn't still.
Faint pulses shimmered beneath the surface, thin blue arcs dancing across the flooded floor like veins of lightning trapped underwater. Somewhere, impossibly, the outpost still carried power.
A hanging cable sparked where it dipped into the pool.
The hum wasn't loud, but it was there. A low, vibrating tension in the air.
Across the chamber, half-submerged under a collapsed gantry, a bank of intact equipment clung stubbornly to life. Faint indicator lights blinked against the gloom. Military-grade processors. Power regulators. Maybe even shield capacitors if he was lucky.
High value.
High risk.
Another crack of lightning illuminated the entire room in blinding white for half a second, and in that flash, the water looked endless.
Rynar crouched at the edge, picking up a broken length of metal conduit. He tossed it lightly toward the surface.
The moment it touched, blue energy snapped violently outward.
The smell of ozone filled the air.
"…Yeah," he murmured. "That's not happening."
Wind screamed down through the broken ceiling, rain hammering his shoulders. He scanned the walls, collapsed scaffolding, dangling cable lines, exposed beams slick with runoff. Maybe he could climb. Maybe he could cut the power, if the grid hadn't fused itself into some nightmare loop decades ago.
He exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing as he traced potential routes.
"We go across smart," he said, more to himself than Cupcake. "Or we don't go at all."
Thunder rolled again, closer this time.
And for just a moment, beneath the storm and the hum of old Imperial systems refusing to die…
…it almost felt like the ruin was watching him decide.
Nianuke cyt
Eadu did not whisper.
It screamed.
The storm tore across the cliffs like something alive, rain slamming sideways against stone and durasteel with enough force to sting exposed skin. Thunder rolled so deep it felt less like sound and more like pressure inside the bones. Even long after the Empire had abandoned this place, the planet remained what it always had been. violent, merciless, unwelcoming.
The Vigo-77 sat wedged inside an old cliffside hangar, half swallowed by shadow and time. Rust had eaten into the blast doors. The Imperial insignia that once marked the entrance was little more than a ghostly outline beneath corrosion and lichen. Whatever had once mattered here had long since rotted away.
Or so most people thought.
Rynar didn't believe in empty ruins.
He stepped through the skeletal frame of what had once been a reinforced blast corridor, boots scraping over shattered transparisteel and metal warped from age and bombardment. Water streamed down through cracks in the ceiling, tracing old support beams like veins. Somewhere deeper in the structure, something mechanical groaned. not alive, but not entirely dead either.
Cupcake padded behind him, cautious but steady.
"Tip better be good," Rynar muttered under his breath, though there was no real doubt in his tone. He'd chased worse leads.
The corridor opened into a larger chamber and he stopped.
A section of the roof had collapsed entirely, leaving a jagged mouth open to the storm above. Rain poured through it in sheets, turning the chamber into a churning basin. What had once been a control floor was now a waist-deep pool of dark water stretching wall to wall.
And it wasn't still.
Faint pulses shimmered beneath the surface, thin blue arcs dancing across the flooded floor like veins of lightning trapped underwater. Somewhere, impossibly, the outpost still carried power.
A hanging cable sparked where it dipped into the pool.
The hum wasn't loud, but it was there. A low, vibrating tension in the air.
Across the chamber, half-submerged under a collapsed gantry, a bank of intact equipment clung stubbornly to life. Faint indicator lights blinked against the gloom. Military-grade processors. Power regulators. Maybe even shield capacitors if he was lucky.
High value.
High risk.
Another crack of lightning illuminated the entire room in blinding white for half a second, and in that flash, the water looked endless.
Rynar crouched at the edge, picking up a broken length of metal conduit. He tossed it lightly toward the surface.
The moment it touched, blue energy snapped violently outward.
The smell of ozone filled the air.
"…Yeah," he murmured. "That's not happening."
Wind screamed down through the broken ceiling, rain hammering his shoulders. He scanned the walls, collapsed scaffolding, dangling cable lines, exposed beams slick with runoff. Maybe he could climb. Maybe he could cut the power, if the grid hadn't fused itself into some nightmare loop decades ago.
He exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing as he traced potential routes.
"We go across smart," he said, more to himself than Cupcake. "Or we don't go at all."
Thunder rolled again, closer this time.
And for just a moment, beneath the storm and the hum of old Imperial systems refusing to die…
…it almost felt like the ruin was watching him decide.
Nianuke cyt