As the current of battle surged around him, Adonis felt it: something worse than the stench of decay or the pressure of fatigue. It was darker than rot, heavier than blood. It crept along the edges of his senses like an oil slick over water, cold and suffocating. This wasn't the mindless terror of the undead or the weariness of war. It was a presence- watchful, coiled,
hungry. And it didn't come from the horde.
It came from the others.
The warriors around him—Cordelia, Montello, even Jonah—moved like storms incarnate, red sabers and steel blades casting violent shadows through the smoke-choked air. They didn't fight like soldiers. They fought like predators. Like
gods on furlough. There was power in every step they took, and that power wasn't light. It was something older, darker. Something that made the Force feel less like a gift and more like a loaded weapon with no safety.
Adonis didn't fear them, not exactly. But there was an edge to it all. A wariness in his gut. Not just of being outmatched, but of being
seen. As though these Mandalorians weren't just measuring his strength, they were evaluating his soul.
The Jedi had never trained him. The Alliance had taught him tactics, rank, and policy, but not the mysteries of the Force. He'd heard whispers of the Sith, the monsters in children's stories who left fire in their wake, but those myths had never prepared him for the reality. And here, among the ranks of the
Great Heathen Army, such titles felt meaningless. These weren't Jedi or Sith. They were warriors of a creed that transcended binaries. Still, the weight of it lingered. He wasn't sure if he would ever be like them, and the question of whether he
should be gnawed at the back of his mind.
And yet… they were his people now.
Jonah's words echoed in his thoughts:
House Verd, my brother. That meant something. Even if their shadows stretched long, he would walk in them until he cast his own.
The hiss of movement to his left pulled him back to the present. A Twi'lek corpse lurched forward from the smoke, its mouth stretched in a voiceless shriek, teeth yellow with rot, lekku severed and swaying like snapped cords. Adonis reacted instinctively. One quick slash of his saber split the creature from hip to shoulder, the blade burning through sinew and bone in a burst of ash and steam. The stink of charred flesh joined the soup of smoke and blood already clogging the air.
He didn't have time to think...because the street
moved.
A shudder rippled beneath his boots, faint but unmistakable. It wasn't a tremor. It was
weight. Something big. Something
wrong. The horde shifted, like water around a stone. The moaning chorus of the undead broke as bodies parted, stumbling aside like worshippers clearing the path for something sacred, or
monstrous.
And then it came.
A figure emerged from the haze, towering over the others like a mountain raised from the dead. Its armor was rusted, misshapen, and bolted directly into its rotting frame- more iron coffin than protection. The creature's skin, once a deep blue, had curdled into a diseased gray-green, its flesh sloughing off in places to reveal the bones beneath. One massive arm ended in a grotesque club of fused durasteel and broken rebar, still wrapped in old battlefield chain. The other arm was simply gone, torn off at the shoulder, the wound blackened and festering.
A
Houk. Or what was left of one.
Adonis had read about them once, flipping through old Alliance dossiers. War-beasts. Brawlers. Near-indestructible tanks in humanoid form. Seeing one
dead was rare enough. Seeing one still walking after death, this wasn't natural. This was
designed. A perversion of something already violent made worse.
Its eyes found him across the blood-slick street- sunken, milky, but aware. The kind of gaze that spoke of memory, not instinct. As if some ember of the creature's rage had survived even death. Then it opened its mouth and
roared, the sound shaking dust from the shattered buildings above, splitting the moans of the horde like thunder cracking open the sky.
This wasn't just another corpse. This was a
fight.
Adonis tapped his comms, his voice low and steady despite the spike of adrenaline.
"I'll take this one."
He assumed no one would object. Maybe they trusted him. Maybe they were letting him prove himself. Maybe it didn't matter.
The Force surged around him, responding to his will like lightning to a storm rod. He drew it in, shaping it like a sling, launching himself forward in a blur of blue light. He reached out with one hand, pulling a lesser corpse toward him like a missile and impaling it on his saber. The body hissed, burned, and was flung aside, clearing a path for his approach. He sprinted hard, armor clanking, sweat stinging his eyes, heart hammering in his chest like war drums.
The beast raised its club, bellowed again, and
slammed it into the ground. The street buckled. Debris flew like shrapnel. Adonis had to adjust midair, veering left, landing in a tumble that brought him crashing into a knot of standard undead. He rolled, sprang to his feet, saber flashing as he cut a vicious circle around himself, clearing space.
And in that moment, he
grinned.
It reminded him of
Necropolis Prime, an old holo-game he used to play on Vaal as a kid. Pixelated graphics, cheesy music, impossible difficulty. He remembered the way the screen would dim, the soundtrack would drop into a deep, ominous thrum, and a massive health bar would crawl across the top of the HUD with some insane name like
"GORVAX THE WORLD-EATER" or
"THE ABYSS THAT WALKS." You always knew it was about to get bad. Real bad. The kind of fight where you weren't sure if you'd survive, just that you
had to try.
And now, here he was. No reset button. No save point.
Just one shot.
The creature started its charge.
Adonis wiped blood from his brow, raised his saber in one hand, the other reaching behind to grip the handle of his scattergun. The sigil of House Angelis burned bright on his chestplate, catching the firelight like a star in the storm.
He stood firm, just long enough to whisper:
"Alright, big guy. Round one."
And then he charged.
Jonah
|
Adonis Angelis IV
|
Montello Deshra
|
Manti Wyrvhor
