Private Radiant Reflection

[Calyx Sundrift]

S C A R L E T -W A S T E L A N D S
K L A T O O I N E

Dust swirled up behind the approaching swoopbikes, rising in great plumes that trailed across the Klatooinian wasteland. The riders made no effort to conceal themselves. No attempt to mask their approach. For stealth was not part of the plan. The hunt had reached its final stage. Their quarry was meant to know they were coming.

< She's here. The tracking fob confirms it. > A gruff voice crackled through the comm channel.

A second voice answered almost immediately. < Fan out. Surround the wreck. She doesn't leave this place alive. >

The order split the formation. Twelve swoopbikes divided in four pairs like practiced, arcing outward across the desert in widening circles. Engines roared against the wind as they spread around the crash site, each pair approaching from another cardinal direction.

At the center of it all lay the wreckage. A shattered cruiser half-buried beneath shifting dunes. It stretched across the wasteland for hundreds of meters, corroded hull plates jutting from the sand to provide reprieve from the harsh sunlight. Over the years it had been many things. A refuge for smugglers and the like. A base of operations for aspiring crime lords. And now, the shelter of a fugitive. A lone Jedi.

The Covenant had caught on to her scent two days prior, and pursued relentlessly ever since. To the overseers, this Jedi represented the perfect opportunity. Eight acolytes had been selected from the Academy on Thrantin and brought across the stars to Klatooine. Hand-picked by the three overseers directing the hunt. The objective of their trial was simple. Find the Jedi, kill them, and claim their lightsaber as your own. Those who distinguished themselves would earn recognition. Perhaps even consideration for apprenticeship. It was a fast track to power. Toward becoming Sith, as all acolytes were supposed to desire.

Calyx, however, did not.

Still, commands were commands. Disobedience remained a luxury reserved for the powerful. And so Calyx found himself participating in a hunt he neither desired nor believed in.

His swoopbike drifted to a halt east of the wreckage. Before him loomed one of the cruiser's colossal corroded thrusters. Another bike slowed beside him. Its rider swung off the saddle first.

“Think they're in there?” Calyx called out.

“Can't you sense them?”

Calyx turned his head slowly toward the masked acolyte. The expressionless faceplate offered nothing in return. “No.” He paused. “Can you?”

For a moment, silence stretched between them.

“C'mon.” The response was more like a growl, and avoided the answer. “We've got a Jedi to kill.”

The two figures began crossing the final dunes toward the wreckage as the sun sagged toward the horizon, stretching their shadwos impossibly long across the sands.

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

Lumiya had never liked the feeling of being hunted. It wasn’t fear in the dramatic sense. Not panic. Not helplessness. Just a deep, persistent wrongness sitting beneath her ribs ever since she realized the people following her were not going to lose interest. Most of her life had been spent passing unnoticed through the galaxy. Easy to overlook. Easy to dismiss. She had preferred it that way. Now someone wanted her dead badly enough to send others across worlds to accomplish it.

The wrecked cruiser groaned softly around her as desert wind moved through fractured corridors and hollowed bulkheads. Hidden deep within the ship’s buried interior, Lumiya sat very still beside the dim glow of a portable lantern, listening. Engines. Distant at first. Then closer.

Her fingers tightened faintly around the fabric pooled near her knees before slowly releasing again. They found her. The realization settled with strange clarity rather than shock. Somewhere above the layered durasteel and dunes, swoopbikes were carving circles around the wreckage like carrion birds preparing to descend. Lumiya closed her eyes briefly. The Force around the wasteland felt unsettled tonight. Too many unfamiliar presences moving with shared intent. Sharp edges. Aggression. Hunger mixed with uncertainty. Young, she realized after a moment. Or at least not fully formed in what they were trying so desperately to become. That frightened her more than certainty would have.

Carefully, she reached beside her and lifted the lightsaber resting near the lantern. The metal hilt looked unfamiliar in her hands despite how long she had carried it. She turned it once between her fingers, thoughtful, almost reluctant. “I really hope that I don’t need you,” she murmured quietly to it. And she meant it. Lumiya was not a warrior. Not truly. She knew enough to survive if forced into it, but survival and violence were not the same thing. Most of her training had centered around healing, guidance, mediation. Putting broken things back together. Not cutting people apart.

Outside, faint echoes carried through the wreckage; shifting sand, distant voices, boots against old metal. Closer now.

Her breath slowed deliberately. Running further into the cruiser would only trap her deeper if they cornered the exits. Staying still risked discovery. Fighting, on the other hand... Her gaze lowered briefly to the saber in her hand. No. Not unless there was no other choice.

Slowly, Lumiya extinguished the lantern, allowing darkness to swallow the small compartment entirely. Only thin lines of dying sunlight filtered through cracks in the ancient hull now, painting fractured stripes across the floor. Silent once more, she rose carefully to her feet.

The wreck became something different in darkness. Not shelter. Not refuge. A maze of shadows and narrow passages half-consumed by sand and time. Somewhere above her, metal creaked again beneath approaching footsteps.

Lumiya moved deeper into the corridor system with quiet precision, one hand brushing lightly along the wall to guide herself through the dark. Every instinct urged caution rather than confrontation. Avoid. Evade. Survive. But beneath all of it lingered one terrifying truth she could no longer ignore: If they found her, she might actually have to use the blade at her side.

Tag: Calyx Sundrift