Private Sugar and Spice

[Pash]

There was something to be said about sunrises. Something hokey and beat to death in every bad romance novel she'd ever guiltily flipped through, but nevertheless true. That there was alchemy in the way the sun turned everything brass to gold, the way it cast honied sunspots on the sleeping rat nest comprised of her siblings, the way it made her feel like she'd done right by them, like she had a hand in all this peace. Pasha was a big fan of sunrises and how they allowed her to get a jump on the day.

Her horse did not share the sentiment.

"It's a comb Caramelo, it ain't gonna bite." Pasha passed a hand down his mane, splitting hairs and receiving a sputtering disapproval for her efforts. "You get a rise out of being difficult or something?" Caramelo turned his head, looked one beady eye down at her, then proceeded to snort in her face. Her pa' always said things grew from love, and if you were to spit and stomp and scream to expect nothin' but what you deserve. So Pasha held to comb up to Caramelo's throat and muttered curses in her father's native tongue that would make sailors blush. Speaking of her father...The faint kick of gravel and dust alerted her to a figure approaching on horseback. Pasha has spent long enough watching him come home from sick visits to place the emotion, a defeated trot or a full gallop after a miraculous recovery. This time it was urgency. "Pa?" There was no acknowledgment, just an instinctual fold of the body onto dusty ground. He didn't so much spare her a glance, face to his horse and fingers working loose the tack. Pasha let a moment pulse before she took note of the slight tremor to his hands. "Hal passed on, didn't he?" The words came small and gentle, a tone she'd only recently grown into. Her father's line of work was full of hard truths, it was the least she could do dignify them with understanding.

"I wasn't at Hal's."

"Oh?"

"He was dead when I got there." It was said flat and quiet, the same solemnity with which her father always faced life. "Did what I could, gave my condolences, and then left for the Rimenk's place." His hands suddenly stopped,"Two of their young'uns had taken sick. Passed as the sun came up within minutes of each other."

Dread. Deep, painful, picking at the scab of grief. She'd thought this was all behind them. No more dead moms or siblings.

"There's something deathly going round, ain't there?" A tilt to the brow, slight but wholly effective in removing accusations of naivety. That had all gone and evaporated somewhere between shoveling up earth for ma's funeral and burying her in it. The girl made a face, slouching back until tense hands made contact with the fence-- working yet another splinter into it.

"Fraid' so." He taken pause just long enough to say those words before devoting himself to removing the halter, as if that action required total unobstructed concentration.

Pasha chewed the inside of her mouth, "So."

"So?"

"What are we gonna do about it?"

Her father sighed, something heavy and exhausted, "Not much we can do Pash. I'm just one man with no cure or understanding of what exactly i'm 'supposed to be fighting here." He tightened the saddle on accident and muttered a curse. When ma' was still around, he never used to talk like that. Mincing and selective with his words, sure, but never fatal. It was like watching his optimism leak out a drop a day.

"Well, we could get you help. Have someone ride out to Kartheon's Reach, grab some supplies and helping hands."

Her father shook his head, "I doubt they'd survive the trip, much less the city."

Pasha agreed.

That's why she waited till it was dark again to lead Caremelo out the stables, negotiating his silence with a palm of sugar. She put thoughts of linen-wraps and flowers to the back of her mind, slung a leg over Caremelo's saddle and and held the reins in her hands. This was either heroic enough to gain her ma's approval or stupid enough for her pity, under the inevitability she'd be joining her on the other side soon enough...

Xerothan Valekorr

 

[Xerothan Valekorr]

The sands of Vagadarr Prime whispered like ghosts beneath her boots, shifting endlessly across the cracked stone and salt-hardened valleys of the desert basin. Twilight sank over the land in streaks of molten gold and bruised purple, casting jagged shadows from long-dead ridges and the half-buried skeletons of shattered monoliths. Jedi Master Xerothan Valekorr moved with purpose through the arid wind, her dark robes clinging to her tall frame like a cloak spun from shadow. Silver-white strands of hair flicked free from her bindings, dancing against the sapphire hue of her skin as she crossed a dune's ridge and paused.

The Force had led her here—not with thunderous clarity, but a whisper. Faint… elusive… but persistent. Somewhere across this barren world pulsed a signature in the Force, wild and undefined. A soul untrained. Powerful. Possibly lost. The Jedi had dismissed it as a mirage or decaying echo—yet Xerothan knew better. Vagadarr Prime, once touched by ancient civilizations, still held secrets buried beneath its sands. And one of them, she believed, might be the future she was quietly shaping.

But then came the cold. A presence—not the one she hunted, but something darker. A blade of instinct pressed against her senses. She turned, slowly, as the wind shifted and the sands rolled back to reveal a tall figure descending from the rocks.

"I finally found you," he hissed, voice metallic through a battered mask. "Jedi Master Valekorr. They say you walk untouched through darkness. That you speak with the Council. Killing you will make me worthy."

He stalked forward, cloak ragged from the desert wind, saberstaff gripped tight in his hands. Crimson light erupted from both ends of the hilt with a roar. "They'll have no choice but to grant me the title of Master!"

Xerothan regarded him with serene patience. "You chase illusions," she said softly, her fingers resting lightly on her belt. "Power without control is ruin. Is that truly what you seek?"

His snarl was answer enough. He lunged.

In one graceful, seamless motion, Xerothan drew her blade—a long, luminous streak of blue igniting with a whisper rather than a roar. Where his movements were fast, brute, wide, hers were honed and flowing, guided by calculated elegance. Each sweep of her saber countered his spinning strikes, redirecting rather than clashing, using the dust around them as cover and misdirection. She moved with unshakable poise—a spectral duelist, one whose footwork mirrored the shifting dunes: fluid, adaptive, and dangerously precise.

He pressed harder, driving his saberstaff in sweeping arcs, trying to batter her down. But she was never quite there. One moment behind him, the next beside, her counterstrikes impossibly efficient. A high parry turned into a downward spiral that nearly stripped his weapon away, and then she pivoted, letting his momentum slide past her again. She moved like a shadow cast by starlight, untouchable, yet always near.

Frustrated, the Sith hurled a blast of Force energy at her. Sand exploded into the air—but she did not resist it. She wove through it, her blade cutting through the debris like a wraith, her free hand guiding the Force around her rather than against her. The blast curved, scattering harmlessly into the cliffs beyond.

"You fight like no Jedi I’ve fought before," he growled, breathing hard.

"I fight like one who listens and learns," Xerothan replied, her voice like wind over stone. "You hear only yourself."

Roars escaped the Sith as he charged Xerothan, his saberstaff ready to strike, whereas the Jedi Master before him was ready to counter, evade, and move like flows in the wind. The two continued their dance of death, rich blue and crimson red lights creating flashes of colour in the darkness that has consumed this region of the world.

Pash

 

[Pash]

Pasha hadn't known what expect of Kartheon's reach. She'd barely pushed the outskirts of her own tiny cobble of town houses and ranch land in her life. And whether or not Caramelo could even handle a trip like this hadn't occurred to her until after clearing a good few pastures and watching as grass burned way to sand. But she was determined, suicidally so, to see this through--wasteland and imminent heat exhaustion be damned. She'd find a way to keep them alive.

A noble conviction, but made suddenly much harder to commit to by an eruption of light of the horizon. Not a sunrise, but something far meaner. Beautifully mean. Pasha went wide-eyed in sync with Caramelo, who (with sides heaving and head downturned) backed away in frantic, jagged movements. The girl shielded her face and squinted past stinging wind and rocks, all the while reaching a hand down to run it along Caramelo's mane for whatever pitiful comfort that was worth.

Her hand paused the moment they came into view.

There were two figures on the rocks. One vicious, enraged, burning like furnace and wielding straight fire from his hands. The other, somehow more god-like in the way she moved. Pasha felt breathless almost with every shift and duck and weave. Blue fire met red and another shockwave of heat rippled their way. Caramelo startled, something real and panicked this time, which gave Pasha no other option but to fall low, pull on the reins and whisper whatever soothing nonsense came to mind.

"Easy, easy there. Nothing' but some fancy magics tricks and melodrama. They ain't here for us."

But even as she watched she knew that that was pure crud. For some foolhardy reason she wasn't able to look away, even as her horse demonstrated far better reasoning and stubbornly yanked at the reins. It was easy to pick a side, instinctual almost.

Pasha felt herself pulled, dismounting from Caramelo and taking a step forward. He immediately made his disapproval known with a snort.

"Just getting a closer look is all." She muttered stupidly. One step, then another until her shuffling steps to her close to the ridge.

Xerothan Valekorr

 

[Xerothan Valekorr]

The battle raged like a storm given form—red and blue sabers carving luminous arcs through the dusk as wind and dust screamed around the combatants. The Sith pressed his assault, his saberstaff spinning in furious, hammering strikes, each one meant to overwhelm. Xerothan yielded and redirected, her movements patient, almost meditative. But the calm belied the tension coiled within her form, every strike calculated, every step measured for precision.

Suddenly, he twisted back and extended his hand—raw red lightning spat from his fingers, crackling with fury. Xerothan's saber snapped up, intercepting the jagged stream with a shimmer of strained plasma, her face tightening as the energy surged around her. Dust burst upward around her boots, and her robes whipped in the heat.

With a cry, she thrust out her free hand—The Force exploded outward in a pulse, breaking the lightning's grip and sending the Sith skidding backward, his boots digging furrows into the cracked stone. He caught himself, barely, and launched forward again with a burst of Force-enhanced speed.

Xerothan did not retreat. She stepped into him.

He brought his saberstaff around in a blinding arc—only for her to duck low, her hand rising with a subtle, spiraling motion. The ground beneath his feet shifted suddenly, a ripple of telekinetic energy disrupting his footing. As he stumbled, Xerothan leapt, her form cutting a sharp silhouette against the last light of dusk.

Their sabers clashed again—red screaming against blue—but this time, her strike was not meant to block. Her blade spun upward in a graceful half-moon, catching him just below the ribs. A single, clean stroke.

She landed behind him as he froze, still upright, still breathing.

"Emotion is not your enemy," Xerothan said quietly, her voice carried by the wind. "But without discipline... it devours you."

The Sith blinked, his saber still active in trembling hands. He turned slightly, as if trying to reorient himself—but then the saberstaff flickered, shorted, and finally died. A shudder ran through his frame. He staggered forward a step, then dropped to his knees, one hand grasping the cauterised wound as his body realised what had happened before his mind could.

"You—" he rasped, but the word dissolved into a breath.

"You hunted a ghost," Xerothan murmured behind him. "But it was the shadow within yourself that led you here."

With that, he collapsed fully, his form folding into the dust that had cloaked them both. The wind sighed once more across the battlefield—now silent, save for the distant howl of shifting dunes and the whisper of robes settling.

Xerothan lowered her blade. Its blue light retracted with a soft hiss, casting her once again in twilight shadow. Her gaze lifted beyond the fallen Sith, toward the vast horizon of Vagadarr Prime.

The presence she had come for—the untrained soul flickering in the dark—was still out there, yet closer now.

This fight had only delayed the inevitable, but no longer.

That’s when the force surged with a faint pulse. Like a rain drop in a large ocean. Only this minute echo in the force was noticed by Xerothan. Her head turned as she switched of her weapon, the sapphire blue blade of energy retracted into the metallic handle. The dust still blinded her sight from seeing who was there, but not for long, as the storm of rock and sand began to dissipate.

As the area cleared, Xerothan felt exactly who was there. She sighed as she saw the lone woman, and her mount behind her, as her curiosity had gotten the better of her. ”Hello there, traveller,“ Xerothan called, placing the lightsaber on her dark belt before placing her hands behind her back, “It’s safe now, this warrior of darkness has been quelled.” She could feel it, even at this distance. This was who she felt through the Force. Who she sought.

Pash