Private The Crucible at Dusk

[Iandre Athlea]

The doors of the Academy parted with a low hydraulic hum, and Iandre stepped out into the cooling Bastion evening.

Her hair was braided in its usual regulation pattern, dark and precise, falling neatly down her back. There was nothing softened about her appearance tonight. She wore a fitted dark coat over her uniform layers, the cut practical and the lines clean. There was no ornament and no deviation from the standard she held for herself. Behind her, the Academy stood in disciplined symmetry against the fading light, its sharp architecture etched in shadow and gold against a sky beginning to bruise with the coming night.

She took a few measured steps forward, her boots clicking softly against the stone, before she sensed him.

It was not a surge in the Force. It was not a flare of light or heat. It was simply a presence approaching with intention, a ripple in the cooling air that spoke of a destination already chosen.

Her gaze lifted calmly to meet the arrival.

A man moved toward the entrance. His stride was steady, neither hurried nor uncertain. He did not look lost, and he did not look like the Academy staff she saw every day. There was a deliberateness to his movement that caught her attention immediately, a weight to his presence that suggested he was well aware of where he was and why he had come.

She slowed her pace. She did not stop outright, but she allowed the distance between them to close naturally, measuring his rhythm against her own.

When they were near enough to acknowledge one another without raising their voices, she inclined her head in restrained courtesy. The movement was slight, a gesture of professional acknowledgement rather than warmth.

"The Academy is closed to casual visitors after this hour."

Her tone was even, neutral, and entirely controlled. It was not a challenge, at least not yet. It was a statement of fact, delivered with the practiced poise of someone who lived her life by the clock and the code.

She held his gaze, composed and unreadable. The end of her braid shifted faintly against her shoulder as a sharp breeze passed between them, carrying the scent of stone and high-altitude air.

And she waited for him to speak.

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

He moved with a quiet that seemed to deflect the sound away from him rather than generate it, walking up towards a quiet temple, one he remembered from years prior.

He had heard of some company that had moved in and wanted to get a look at it for himself.

His hands were in the loose sleeves of his brown robes, his white dreads hung loosely over his shoulders and upper back, decorated with some jewelry that latched to the midsections and the very ends, giving a slight ring to his presence.

His violet eyes fell upon the face that stood before him.

His steps stopped a good distance from her, but close enough to hold a normal voice and still be heard.

“Academy?”

His eyes sharpened as the violet flared in his eyes, he looked into her. He looked into her very bone structure, the highway of veins that circulated blood to her arteries. She was well fit, she trained. He could see that.

“Last I was here…”

He spoke slowly drawing the last word like a breath as his gaze fell upon the building.

“This was a rather important temple, and something of mine resides here.”

His eyes fell back to her with a cold calculation that would make most shiver as if he were picturing the very many ways he could rearrange her bones.

“I very much would like it back…”

He offered a smile, one that seemed to be infested with bloodlust of a predator, stalking its prey.

Iandre Athlea​

 

[Iandre Athlea]

The doors of the Academy remained a silent backdrop as Iandre held her ground, refusing to move even when his gaze sharpened with sudden intensity. She did not shift when his presence pressed outward against the cooling air, nor when a violet flare of intent slid across her like a blade testing for resistance. If he was attempting intimidation, it met something deep within her that did not bruise easily and would not bend to mere theatrics.

She let him finish his thought in entirety, allowing the word mine to linger in the air between them like a challenge left hanging. She let the implication settle into the stone of the courtyard, and only then did she speak.

"It is an academy."

Her voice was perfectly calm. It was not dismissive, nor was it defensive; it was simply precise. She studied him in return now, looking past the jewelry and the dramatic posturing to see the structure beneath. She noted the stillness in his stance and the coiled patience of his frame. He was the kind of man who did not rush into violence, likely because he enjoyed the anticipation of it far more than the act itself.

"Whatever it was before, it no longer functions as a temple."

A faint pause followed her words. Her tone was not argumentative but factual, stripped of any emotional weight that he might use as a handhold.

"And nothing inside belongs to you."

There was no heat in the statement and no attempt to provoke him. It was just a clean line drawn where reality began, separating his desires from the truth of the present. The faintest breath of wind moved through the courtyard, stirring the hem of her practical coat but leaving her rooted. She did not acknowledge the way he looked at her bones and her veins, as though he were already imagining the specific ways they might break under pressure. She had seen that look before on the faces of many men who confused cruelty with power. It was not new, and it was not impressive.

Her eyes remained steady on his, unyielding and clear.

"If you believe something of yours is housed within these walls," she continued evenly, "then you will state what it is and how it came to be here."

Her weight shifted subtly. She did not move backward or lean forward; she simply found her center, becoming perfectly balanced.

"You will not claim ownership by implication."

There was still no flare in the Force and no movement toward the saber at her side. There was only quiet authority. Behind her, the Academy loomed as a monument of silent stone and rigid discipline, a physical extension of her own resolve.

"And you will not walk through those doors without permission."

She did not threaten him because she did not need to. She simply held his gaze, unblinking and unreadable, and waited to see whether he preferred the path of conversation or the heat of the crucible.

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

A low chuckle escaped his throat as he stepped closer.

“And who would stop me?”

His eyes pointed back to her, gauging her stance.

“You?”

The breeze blew between them as if the planet inhaled its breath to hold, a heavy feeling clung to the air as he stepped forward.

As his foot made contact with the ground she would see he blinked from her vision, appearing behind her, facing down on her as he stood upon the steps.

“The youth today. Always feel as though they are above themselves.”

He spoke quietly, yet the voice seemed to carry to her.

“You see yourself as a guardian, yet you have cracks in your shield, little one.”

He stepped down towards her, hands still within his sleeves.

“I stepped past you. Now what will you do to stop me further? Use words?”

His face became emotionless, she would not feel hatred or aggression, but rather an emotional void where there was nothing but cold numbness upon a vast expanse of nihilism. There was no elevation in his heart rate, there was no sweat that drew from his brow, there was no sign of excitement.

Just a walking cold statue.

Iandre Athlea​

 

[Iandre Athlea]

The air pressure shifted. A sharp, sudden displacement that registered a heartbeat before the sound of boots met stone. Blink-tech. Rapid. Not unfamiliar.

Iandre did not spin. To spin was to concede to his tempo. Instead, she drew a breath, letting it settle deep into her center as her weight shifted by a fraction. Her boots rooted firmly into the masonry, knees softening and hips balancing with the practiced grace of a commander who had stood her ground against Magnaguards closing the distance.

As she exhaled, the Force moved. It wasn't a flare of aggression, but a deliberate thickening of the space between them. The same subtle resistance she had used to stall commando droids during rapid flanking maneuvers. It wasn't a bind or a trap. It was simply drag.

CIS blitz tactics had always relied on the marriage of panic and momentum. If you stripped away the momentum, the advantage dissolved. Only then, once the rhythm had been reclaimed, did she turn.

Her gaze met his, her expression as unmoving as the stone beneath her.

"You stepped past me," she said, her voice a calm, even current. "But you did not pass."

The breeze stirred between them, lifting a stray strand of her hair before letting it fall.

"I spent years fighting units engineered for the sole purpose of speed," she continued. "Magnaguards. Commando droids. Tactical formations designed to overwhelm the mind before thought could catch up. Speed is meant to provoke panic."

She allowed a measured silence to hang in the air.

"I do not panic."

When he spoke of cracks in her shield, she didn't offer the satisfaction of a reaction.

"You mistake restraint for weakness," she replied. "It is a common error among those who mistake silence for ignorance. You stepped behind me to test a reaction, and that tells me far more about you than it does about me."

Her hand rested near the hilt at her hip, a gesture of readiness rather than a threat.

"You ask what I will do?"

She shifted her stance, a minor adjustment that erased the vulnerability of the steps behind her. The Force didn't flare from her; it compressed. It became disciplined, battle-ready, and dense.

"I will adapt. Blitz tactics only work once."

Her eyes sharpened, the only sign of the fire beneath the ice.

"Try again."

She neither advanced nor retreated. She simply waited, grounded like a Jedi General who had survived a hundred battles not by being faster than her enemy, but by denying them the advantage of speed.

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

“The cracks I speak of are not of restraint.”

He slowly took another step, but as he drew nearer the drag of the force around him seemed to ripple as if it recoiled from him.

“Everyone has their weaknesses. You?”

He stopped, his hands still within his sleeves.

“You overanalyze. You overcomplicate, and then you oversimplify.”

His gaze fell to the hilt of her saber then back to her.

“I leave you with one final warning, young one. I would hate to send any loved once the broken resemblance that was once you.”

The air around him seemed to flex and writhe as if the air wished to retreat from him, a vibration in the air could be felt like a mighty bass thrum of a drum.

“Step, aside.”

He spoke slowly, concisely, his voice like the sharp edge of a blade. Cold and relentless, cutting through the air as he stood in front of her.

A whispering breeze flowed between them once again as it whistled past them.

He waited in silence for her response, but he already knew what she would respond with. His body was prepared. Loose, and relaxed. But the muscles were prepared for an offensive counteraction.

Iandre Athlea​

 

[Iandre Athlea]

The ripple in the air met the subtle resistance she had laid into the stone and parted around it. It did not break or yield under the weight of his intent; it simply moved differently, flowing like water around a rooted pillar.

She felt the shift in her marrow, a physical manifestation of the psychological game being played between them. After a heartbeat of sustained pressure, she let her own influence recede. The drag dissolved from the ground between them, not in a gesture of surrender, but in a deliberate refusal to turn the moment into a clumsy contest of wills. She had watched too many officers fall into that trap during the height of the war, men and women who mistook escalation for strength and bled for the error.

Her gaze remained unnervingly steady as the vibration in the air deepened. The atmosphere itself seemed to groan, straining against the density of his presence as the bass-like hum rattled the loose dust on the floor.

"The cracks you speak of are not unfamiliar to me," she said, her voice cutting through the thrum with a crystalline, unshakeable calm. "Every commander who survived the Clone Wars carries them. We are all mosaics of what we lost."

She did not shift her footing as the tension mounted. She did not tighten her posture into a defensive coil. Instead, she kept her stance loose and fluid, balanced perfectly through her hips and legs. It was the same way she had stood in the narrow, airless corridors of venting ships when Magnaguards advanced in pairs, their electrified staves testing the air for the slightest scent of panic.

"Overanalyzing kept my battalion alive when the Separatists favored blitz tactics," she continued, the rhythm of her speech mirroring the steady beat of a drum. "Overcomplicating prevented droid commanders from ever truly predicting my response. And oversimplifying ensured that when the critical moment came, the order was clear and the execution was absolute."

Her eyes dropped briefly, noting the subtle shift of muscle beneath his sleeves. He was a predator preparing to spring, but she offered no reaction to the threat yet.

"You mistake deliberation for fragility," she said, her tone devoid of heat or ego. "And you mistake the discipline of control for the paralysis of hesitation."

When he spoke of sending her broken remnants to those she loved, her expression did not harden. It did not flinch or betray a flicker of the protective fire that lived beneath her skin. She merely watched him, her silence lasting long enough to let the cruelty of the statement hang in the air like a foul scent.

"You speak of loved ones as leverage," she said quietly, her voice dropping into a lower, more dangerous register. "You speak of them as if they are shields to be shattered or weights to be used. It is a common tactic for those who find the truth of a person too difficult to reach."

The air flexed again around him, a physical pulse of Force-weighted pressure that pressed outward against her chest. She did not counter it with a flare of her own power. She simply stood within the storm, immovable, her presence anchored to the very foundations of the hall.

"If you intended to pass me," she went on, her voice steady and unforced despite the crushing atmosphere, "you would have acted already. You would have moved while the air was still."

A faint pause followed, not intended to provoke, but to state what was becoming increasingly evident to them both.

"Instead, you are attempting to unbalance me before you move. You are looking for a crack that hasn't already been tempered by fire."

Her hand remained near her saber, her fingers relaxed and ready, but she made no move to draw the blade. She would not be the one to shatter the final remains of the peace.

"I will not step aside," she said, the words falling with the finality of a closing tomb. "If you choose to advance, then advance. But understand that I have spent years facing opponents who believed that the threat of fear would make me easier to break."

The hum of the air reached a fever pitch, and the tension between them stretched to the point of snapping. Her gaze did not waver, her emerald eyes locked onto his with an ancient, weary certainty.

"It never did."

She did not invite him forward, nor did she command him to move. She simply remained where she stood, a silent sentinel in the dim light, leaving the weight of the next choice entirely in his hands.

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

He remained silent after she spoke. The words pelted and rolled off of him like rain on stone, unaffected and unchanged.

His still demeanor remained as his hands remained in his sleeves.

He let out a sigh.

“Disappointing.”

He spoke quietly as his eyes dilated, what came right after was a hard blow to her torso as if the wind had sharpened itself to carry her back.

A massive invisible palm that had flown forth impacting her and pushing her towards the bottom of the steps.

“You aren't facing a droid, nor are you facing some soldier.”

His voice was deeper now, slow and patient. Like the rumble of thunder that announced an incoming storm.

He stepped forward once more towards her, the air vibrating once more as he took his step, the stone beneath him cracking under his footfall.

"My words are not going to be what breaks you. Your choices will dictate that."

Iandre Athlea​

 

[Iandre Athlea]

The strike arrived without a single moment of warning. It was not the rush of wind or the displacement of air that signaled the attack, but the sheer, raw impact of the Force. The invisible blow slammed into her torso with the concussive weight of artillery, and for a split second, her boots lost their purchase as her body was lifted backward toward the precarious edge of the steps.

Yet, Iandre did not panic. She did not flail against the sudden loss of gravity. Instead, the Force wrapped inward first as she braced her spine and ribs with the same calculated focus she had used to survive CIS gunship strafings on urban fronts. As the blow drove her back, she refused to resist it head-on. She redirected the momentum, angling her body so the kinetic energy bled down through her legs rather than shattering her center.

Her heels struck the stone at the very edge of the step. She did not fall.

The ground seemed to answer to her presence. It did not react with explosive violence or dramatic flair, but instead, it shifted in a rhythmic, low tremor that ran through the masonry beneath her boots. She drew upon the lessons Laphisto had been teaching her, favoring communion over domination. The stone appeared to thicken beneath her stance, rooting her firmly in place as the remaining momentum dissipated into the earth rather than carrying her down the stairwell. A soft ring of dust rose around her as the energy settled.

When she straightened, her movements were slow and deliberate. Her breathing remained steady even though the impact had left a deep, throbbing bruise against her chest.

"No," she said quietly, rolling one shoulder back to test the integrity of her ribs. "I am not."

The stone at his feet responded to her next breath. It did not erupt or explode upward in a display of violence. Instead, it reached out to try to bind him. Hairline fractures began to spider outward from beneath his boots, subtle lines racing across the surface as she tried to make the thick slabs of stone flex and rise. She was not seeking to crush or impale him, but rather to find a grip that might anchor him to the spot.

Her eyes met his through the vibrating air as she posed a question with measured comparison rather than mockery.

"Do you think you are some new Count Dooku?"

She watched him closely, her gaze unwavering. "Because I have faced a man who could shatter stone with a thought and still lose."

The air continued to writhe around him, but she kept up the pressure, trying to make the ground itself resist his every movement. At her hip, she adjusted her balance with a natural motion that concealed the movement of her fingers. Her thumb found the edge of her compact comm unit and activated the silent beacon coded to her assigned security detail. There was no audible signal and no flashing light. It was just a pulse sent outward into the network.

She did not look toward the direction of her reinforcements, nor did she telegraph their inevitable arrival. Her attention never left him.

"You are correct about one thing," she continued, her voice growing lower and steadier. "You are not a droid."

She maintained the effort to keep the stone tightened fractionally at his boots.

"Droids are predictable."

Her lightsaber remained unlit at her side because she did not feel the need for it yet.

"You, however," she said calmly, "are choosing to escalate."

The tremor she sent beneath him deepened just enough to test his balance, a final silent nudge before the situation changed.

"Be certain you are prepared for what follows."

She did not advance or retreat. Iandre simply held the line, rooted in stone and silence, waiting to see if he would attempt to break free or try something far more reckless.

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

Stone seemed to grip at his ankles as he stepped, cracking beneath his steps as they struggle to shackle his ankles. His gate slowed a fraction as the stone continued to build, the stone reached up his legs, but he remained calm. Devoid of emotion. When his footfall refused to move, his gaze looked down at the stone that had taken hold of his feet and shins, his eyes flared as he gazed at the fault lines and a slow breath escaped him. The earth, like ash in the wind, flaked off his legs and feet.

“Count Dooku. Such a legendary name. Someone I have not seen in ages. I told him of his eventual downfall. He did not listen. I knew him before he was a Sith, as an aspiring padawan. Such potential and yet...such a waste.”

At her words of escalation he stopped his movements.

“I have not begun to escalate.”

Like a violent explosion of stone, the slabs of steps seemed to reach for Ian, cracking, crumbling, breaking, taking the form of hands reaching for any part they could get a hand on.

“But I can show you escalation if that is what you wish.”

A dark smirk appeared on his face as he stood, demeanor still calm, unmoving. He spoke his voice quiet, and calm. She would almost not hear it from the violent outrush of stone toward her, but he seemed to speak it within her head.

“I will show you what an insignificant speck truly is.”

He watched as she would react to the outburst from the ground that so tried to hold her in security.

Iandre Athlea​

 

[Iandre Athlea]

The stone that had risen at his feet shattered like dust under a gale. It was not forced apart; it was simply dismissed.

Iandre felt the shift in the earth before she saw it, noting the sudden inversion of pressure as the ground beneath her own boots began to answer him instead of her. The slabs of the steps groaned and split, rising in violent shards that twisted into grasping shapes.

But his words struck harder than the stone. Count Dooku. Before he was Sith. Before the war. Before the fall.

For the first time since he had appeared behind her, her composure flickered. Her eyes narrowed in disbelief rather than anger.

"How did you know him?"

The question slipped out before she could cage it, and in that fraction of distraction, the earth surged. Stone hands closed around her legs and waist, rising faster than her counter-gesture. Fractured slabs clamped against her torso and pinned one arm against her side as the steps buckled beneath her.

She did not cry out, though the shock registered. Training answered before fear could. Her breath dropped deep into her center and expanded outward in a controlled exhale. The Force tightened around her like a second skin, not as an explosive outward burst, but as something layered and inward.

It was a barrier, invisible but present. It was a technique taught in the chaos of the Clone Wars by her first master, Aisha, for when artillery rained, and debris fell faster than reflex. The shield was not meant to stop everything; it was meant to endure long enough.

The rising stone struck the invisible field around her and slowed, grinding instead of crushing. Pressure mounted and cracks spidered through the slabs, yet the barrier held between her ribs and the crushing force. Her breathing remained measured despite the strain while dust drifted across her shoulders.

"We are all insignificant," she said, her voice quieter now but carrying through the rumble. "That is not revelation. It is a fact."

The barrier flexed as another surge of stone slammed against it.

"Dooku believed he was shaping destiny."

Her gaze locked onto him through the chaos.

"He died believing he was indispensable."

The ground trembled again as shards clawed upward to test the limits of her shield. She did not try to overpower his control of the earth this time. Instead, she centered herself.

"If you knew him as a Padawan," she pressed, strain threading faintly into her voice as the barrier absorbed another violent impact, "then you are either lying or far older than you appear."

Her eyes sharpened as shock gave way to calculation.

"And if that is true, then you already understand something he never did."

A breath. The barrier pulsed once, steadying.

"Power is not permanence."

Stone continued to writhe around her, trying to swallow her whole, but she stood encased in layered resistance. She was not free or dominant, but she was enduring. Her gaze never left him, even while pinned and pressured, as she waited for him to decide whether to escalate further or answer the question he had not expected her to ask.

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

Allan watched as the stone seemed to writhe and constrict around her force shield crumbling the stone and preventing it from constricting her. A hum escaped his throat as he slowly approached her.

“Power will always remain. No, those who wield it are not eternal, but their essence, their signature will always remain.”

He stopped just in front of her as the stone beneath his feet shifted to create footholds for him, the sound of shifting and grinding stone filled the air as they rearranged themselves.

“Dooku was always a fool, even when he was older and wiser. He always thought that he was indispensable, yes, but he only thought that because of the influence he held.”

His hands slowly pulled from his sleeves, his right hand and arm shimmered as the light refracted off of dark metal that made up his arm, both arms stretched out to his sides.

“The moment he obtained information that could damn his master, he was dead. He just did not know it yet.”

His gaze fell back to her as his finger slowly drug along the surface of her force shield, a scratch that slowly developed a crack almost like glass. The cracks began to spread like a web throughout the surface of her shield.

“Just as you.”

He spoke softly.

“You do not realise yet, that you are dead on the inside. Suffering.”

His eyes dilated as a grin started to split his face, the sound of the force shield started to crumble.

All the while she felt an intrusion into her head, pain flooded her mind as the feeling of claws seemed to dig into her mind.

“You believe these people you have are your family, Iandre.”

The pain radiates once again in her mind.

“That you could for once not feel alone.”

His lips cracked into a smile as visions of her floating in a dark void full of stars but no sun, no planet, no surface or anything flashed within her mind.

“But the truth is, you can never escape the void, those you love, those you care for.”

One by one she would see bodies of faces she grew to care for or even lead float past her.

“They will leave you.”

Suddenly the feeling of pain washes away to a deep feeling of cold, loneliness and emptiness.

“You are but a hollow shell.”

His hand dropped as she is released from his grasp, struggling for air.

Iandre Athlea ​

 

[Iandre Athlea]

The first impact struck her shield like a hammer against crystal.

As Allan's hand dragged across the barrier, the stone that had risen to protect her cracked and burst apart under the strain. Iandre felt the tremor through the Force a heartbeat before the sound followed: a spiderweb of fractures racing across the surface, splintering outward from the jagged line his metal finger carved into the invisible shell.

Then, it shattered.

The shield collapsed in a violent rush of displaced air that slammed into her chest, driving her back a half-step. Her boots scraped harshly against the stone as she fought to absorb the impact, her breath leaving her lungs in a sharp, unstoppable gasp. She did not fall, but the impact was real—and it was merely the herald for the intrusion that followed.

Her hands rose instinctively to her temples as the first wave of pressure clawed into her mind.

"N—"

The sound died before it could fully form as darkness swallowed her senses. The void he forced upon her awareness expanded endlessly in every direction—there was no ground, no sky, and no warmth. There was only the infinite cold of empty space stretching beyond comprehension.

As her breathing faltered, she tried to center herself the way she had been taught, reaching for that quiet place in the Force where fear could not take root. But the visions came faster than she could find her focus.

Faces drifted through the dark. Familiar faces. People she had known, fought beside, and protected now tumbled silently through the void, lifeless and distant. Her fingers pressed harder against her temples, a desperate, physical attempt to hold her fracturing thoughts together.

"No…"

The effort failed. The cold pressed deeper, wrapping around her awareness until it felt as though her lungs were filling with ice. Allan's words threaded through the visions like claws tearing through memory: They will leave you.

Her breathing broke completely then: shallow, uneven, and suffocated by the weight of the emptiness. The silence was a terrible certainty, a promise that she would remain alone while everyone else vanished into the dark.

Then—it stopped.

The crushing grip vanished as suddenly as it had come, and reality snapped back into place with brutal clarity. The void was replaced by the stone steps beneath her boots; the infinite silence replaced by the wind moving across the open platform and the faint metallic scent of dust and fractured rock.

Iandre staggered as air rushed back into her lungs. Her hands slowly lowered from her head, though her fingers still trembled with the aftershock of the invasion. She did not speak. Not yet.

Behind Allan, armored figures had begun to emerge into view, weapons held ready as they moved into position. Behind Iandre, more troops had arrived, forming a cautious line along the steps. Their presence was unmistakable, yet Iandre's attention remained fixed solely on Allan.

Her breathing was still uneven as she fought to steady it, the echo of the fear he had forced upon her lingering in the back of her mind like frost that refused to melt. For a long moment, she simply stood there, trying to remember how to breathe.

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

As she struggled to fight, as she struggled to speak and as she struggled to breathe, a sense of hunger fell over his eyes.

“Let me release you of such pain and suffering. Let me offer you…peace.”

His hand slowly fell to the hilt at his hip then it stopped, his eyes sharpening as guards behind Iandre started to form towards them. The retina forming a sharp vertical line as he could hear their heartbeats, and the ones of those approaching from behind him.

His gaze then fell to her.

“You are helpless to save them all.”

A dark smile cracked his face as several fangs started to carve their way out of his gums.

“Allow me to show you.”

In that moment, within the blink of an eye, he pushed forward and around her like a blur. His lightsaber ignited with a bright white blade. A quick motion and the guard he appeared behind was instantly bisected as his hand reached out for the second, his claws digging into the next guard’s throat tearing out chunks of flesh and muscle.

The third guard pointed his rifle towards Allan firing all he could towards him, but he seemed to just walk through the bolts, dodging at a speed that seemed nearly imperceptible. Then he lurched forward. His bloody hand wrapping around the guards throat as he reared his head back to look at Iandre once more while the guards on the other side moved to formation.

He then looked back at the last guard in his grasp, gasping for air as he quickly brought him closer, sinking his fangs into his neck. The scream that the guard tried to let out was quickly suffocated as his lifeforce quickly drained from him. Blood seeped to the ground from Allan’s chin, then he pulled back. A lifeless husk within his grasps which he unceremoniously tossed to the side.

Iandre Athlea ​

 

[Iandre Athlea]

The world was still spinning from the remnants of the assault on her mind when Allan moved. Iandre barely had time to draw breath before he vanished from where he stood in a blur of motion and white light. Then, the screaming started.

Her eyes snapped toward the carnage just in time to see the first guard fall, hewn in two. The second barely had a chance to react before Allan was upon him, claws tearing through flesh as though armor and muscle were nothing more than parchment. When the third guard attempted to fire, his frantic stream of red blaster bolts did little to slow the advance; Allan moved through them like wind through tall grass—fast, precise, and lethal. The fangs followed, and the screaming cut off into a heavy, suffocating silence.

For a brief, horrific moment, Iandre stood frozen. The echo of summoned fear still clawed at the back of her mind, fighting the reality unfolding before her senses. Three lives had been extinguished in heartbeats. As the shock receded, her jaw tightened, and decades of training surged to the forefront.

"Form up!"

The command snapped through the air with sharp clarity, and the five armored figures moved with practiced instinct. Moose stepped in first, the heavy trooper planting himself like a bulwark between Iandre and Allan, his rifle already raised. Childs and Night slid into position to her flanks, their weapons locking forward in disciplined precision, while Shifter and Crash circled wider to close a tightening half-ring around their position.

Then the air erupted.

Crimson bolts poured forward in controlled, overlapping bursts as the squad opened fire. They filled the space around Allan with a dense storm of energy that lit the steps in violent flashes of red and orange. The rapid-fire thud of blasters echoed across the platform as the soldiers coordinated their arcs, forcing the shadows back with sheer volume of fire.

As quickly as it had begun, the barrage ceased. The sudden silence was punctuated only by the whine of cooling power cells and the drifting scent of ozone.

Iandre remained at the center of the formation, her breathing finally beginning to steady despite the lingering tremor in her hands. Her eyes never left the spot where Allan stood, the bodies of the fallen guards lying scattered across the stone between them like discarded dolls.

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

The rush that he took in as the feeling of power that flowed through his veins caused him to live a moment of euphoria. His eyes closed, a slow breath exhaled.

The sounds of the incoming volley did not escape him. A smile came to his bloodied lips as one by one her squadron formed up to take a defensive and an offensive stand.

His eyes passed over each member as they stepped forth, bringing his hand up to wipe his lips with his fingers then suck them clean.

He made no hasty movement to avoid it all. His reflexes were fast enough it almost seemed as though he could read moments into the future.

They fired a maelstrom of heat and bolts in his direction. Blaster fire rained down on his position kicking up dust and battered stone. The barrage did not take long to developed a massive cloud from ruined ancient stone. Soon the hissing of cooling cells and the whirling of slowing barrels from automatic blaster fire was all that could be heard.

They all seemed to wait with bated breath, as the dust started to settle. Within the cloud they would see his silhouette, and the dust seeming to roll off of an unseen blend force that surrounded him.

His hand slowly dropped from in front of him as the force shield fell.

“So you bring me more food I see.”

There was a flash of white light where he was then he was gone, having appeared behind the group.

“Though there is too many for me to feed off of at once. I will just have to save some for later.”

A toothy grin split his face as he held out his hand and a violent gust of wind rushed onto the crew, strong enough to counteract balance and knock most off their feet.

Iandre Athlea​

 

[Iandre Athlea]

The sudden blast of wind hit the formation like a physical wall.

Moose staggered first, boots grinding against ancient stone as the gust fought to rip the rifle from his grip. Childs and Night were shoved back, and Crash nearly lost his footing as the gale tore through their line. But they did not scatter.

Iandre felt the surge a fraction of a second before the impact. Instinct, forged in the fires of battlefield command and tempered by Jedi discipline, snapped into place. Her hand lifted. The Force surged outward. Not to counter the wind, but to anchor the men behind her.

Boots stopped sliding. Armor steadied. The gust hammered them, but the formation held.

As Allan materialized behind them, her eyes tracked him instantly.

"Turn line!"

The command snapped like a blaster crack.

Moose pivoted on instinct, the LO-20D weapons platform swinging around its stabilizing harness as the targeting array shrieked to life. Childs and Night dropped to one knee, bringing their LO-22S rifles up in a synchronized arc of practiced discipline. On the flanks, Crash and Shifter fanned out, their LO-12S carbines sweeping wide to box Allan into a tightening kill zone.

The moment the line locked, the air erupted.

The LO-20D thundered first. Its heavy rotary emitter spun with a rising mechanical whine before unleashing a relentless storm of crimson bolts that cut through the dust like a solid beam of energy. Childs and Night followed a heartbeat later, their rifles barking in disciplined bursts—volleys designed to saturate the space and deny movement rather than chase a single target.

To the rear, Crash's LO-10M launcher barked. The heavy concussive round detonated against the stone behind Allan, collapsing the terrain to choke off his escape.

The plaza dissolved into a chaos of light and thunder.

Iandre did not fire. She stepped forward, the Force coiling around her not as a shield, but as crushing pressure. The broken stone beneath Allan's feet shuddered before the ground itself rose in a jagged cage, fragments snapping upward to snare his legs and steal his momentum.

One second was all the squad needed. Her voice cut through the roar of the heavy weapons.

"Sustain fire!"

Moose leaned into the LO-20D, the heavy system vibrating as the suppression intensified. The intent was clinical: they weren't here to duel him or play at swordsmanship. They were here to bury him in a rain of fire until there was no room left to breathe.

Iandre's gaze never wavered. The Force gathered in her palms, a coiled spring of readiness. He would move again—she knew it. And when he did, she would be the one waiting.

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

Allan watched with mild amusement as Iandre seemed to brace her men from falling and breaking their line. Once she gave the order he had already moved, leaving behind but a ghost of his visage to be fired upon and bound by the ground itself.

Allan stood atop a smaller building watching the spectacle as the crew fired upon a being who was no longer there. They always seemed to fall for the same tricks, they may think they were special, but they were not. Not to him.

His arms crossed over his shoulders watching for a moment longer as they shattered the ground beneath his visage. A nearly impressive display of attempting to overwhelm him.

As they fired he walked down the side of the building, calm and sharpened by the thirst for combat. He slowly walked behind one of the members firing, ghosting past him like a breath of wind, a shadow that he thought he saw something move, but could be mistaken as a trick of the mind.

Though he was very confident in himself and his abilities, with all the noise these people brought, it is evident they would attract more attention, if they hadn't already.

It is possible he would have to back out and reassess.

Foils of bended light shifted around his figure, mirroring the world around him as an unseen entity. The invisibility granted to him from the force allowed him to blip from sight.

Iandre Athlea​

 

[Iandre Athlea]

The roar of the squad's heavy weaponry continued unabated, their fire focused with punishing intensity on the dust cloud where Allan's silhouette had last been seen. Moose leaned into the harness of the LO-20D platform, its rotating emitter flooding the plaza with a thundering storm of red energy, while Childs and Night maintained disciplined bursts from their rifles. Flanking the perimeter, Crash and Shifter held their angles with unwavering focus, pouring fire into the phantom target still lingering amidst the smoke and pulverized stone.

Iandre, however, did not fire.

The moment Allan vanished, she felt the truth of it: not through sound or movement, but through a definitive shift in the current. The Force rippled with a different texture than the static illusion he had left behind, and her gaze had already lifted toward the surrounding structures before the first stone had even settled. She caught the slight, oily distortion of bent light as Allan began his descent down the side of a nearby building, his cloaking tech straining to maintain the deception.

While her soldiers remained locked onto the afterimage, Iandre was already in motion. The Force surged through her legs, propelling her forward in a blur of grey robes and impossible speed. The stone beneath her boots cracked under the sudden, violent application of power as she crossed the distance in a heartbeat, reappearing on the far side of the approach lane directly in Allan's path.

She brought herself into a controlled slide, her boots biting into the grit as she turned to face the warped air that betrayed his position.

"Enough."

The word was spoken quietly, yet it possessed a resonant clarity that cut through the chaotic din of the blaster fire behind her. She didn't call out to her men or correct their aim; her focus was entirely on the barely perceptible shimmer only a few meters away. As she settled into a low, stable stance, the Force tightened around her like a drawn bow, and the ground between them began to tremble.

"You move quickly," she observed with a terrifyingly calm gaze, her eyes locked precisely onto the point where his chest would be. "But you do not move quietly."

Small shards of fractured stone began to drift upward from the plaza, hovering in the air around Allan's concealed form like a cage of jagged teeth. They did not strike, not yet, but the invisible pressure gathering around Iandre made it clear that the shadows were no longer a sanctuary.

"You will have to do better than shadows."

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

The shimmering air around him unwound itself from his body, first revealing his violet eyes flaring with the brightness of a predator. Vertical slits that looked like knife wounds within his pupils looked as if they could tear her to pieces as well.

“Only loud enough to draw you to me, Iandre.”

His hand enveloped from the cloth-like air that clung to his being as he seemed to step out from a bent reality. His hand flexed, the stones around him fell to bits of rock as he shattered them with a flick of his wrist.

His hand then came up as if an invitation to her, a flex of his finger and the muscles within her body locked in place as the air seemed to shimmer around them. A bubble of silence forming around them.

With a speed that seemed like a blur he appeared behind her, his mechanical hand wrenching it behind her back, his other hand wrapping its fingers around her throat, a claw from his thumb slowly digging and tearing the surface flesh, drawing a small drop of blood.

The bubble of silence surrounded the both of them as his grip tightened on the back of her neck, the claw dug further into the flesh, his mechanical arm holding her other arm to her back as he breathed in over the side of her neck, taking her scent. The sweet scent of the life water that flowed within her veins. The nectar of life.

His voice was but a whisper, but cold.

"Look at them, Iandre. They follow your orders and never once look at you. I suppose that would bring you comfort."

His grin cracked his lips.

"They would not see the shame in your eyes when they see you fail them."

The claw pulled out with a droplet of blood.

"Scream for them if you wish. They can't save you and you can't save them."

His whispered voice spoke quieter in her ear, words meant only for her.

“I have what is mine now. You just don’t know it yet.”

His jaw unhinged as a snap of a second drew by and she would feel white hot pain on her neck, and a slow enveloping of coldness creeping into her body. His hand tightened over her throat, suffocating back any struggle she would attempt to fight back.

Iandre Athlea ​