The natives see it as an obstacle to their lifestyle, whilst outsiders perceive it as a diamond in the rough. Regardless of the opinion, Menat Ombo is the most technological settlement on New Tython. Crammed with tall and slim towers, alleys and market squares have randomly developed where the necessary room is. You might turn a corner and see a vendor selling smoked meat from the indigenous animals, and the next corner could be a home. The merchant stalls are almost always temporary, folding easily with several clippings or a really good show of strength. Above the awnings of the stalls, buildings of various shapes and sizes crafted of sand and stone and earth create a set of interconnecting rooftops in some parts with wide gaps in the others.

It is easy to get lost in the crowds of people. As you leave the central market, countless alleys splinter out and lead to quieter sections of the city. The streets are kept tidly by maintenance droids. and the air is clean. At night, the city and marketplace are well lit, and the lights from the scattered inns create a welcoming ambiance to the twilight air.

Even without the Force, the Visulu Marketplace could have been described as an assault on the senses. Sights and sounds of all kinds permeated the air, and every food vendor seemed to have dozens of flavours available.

The Mimosa-Inahj family pushed their way through the crowd. Kooki had, as usual, strapped the twins to her own body with a black and purple sling. Poppy, on her mother’s back, was staring at anything or anyone that moved, whilst her sister appeared to be relaxing and snuggling into Kooki’s chest.

“Why are we here again?” Andrelious queried. He hated New Tython. He had only been twice before, both times to fight, and had insisted on keeping his lightsaber and blaster with him. He had also covered himself with a cloak, keeping its hood up so as to obscure his features. He did not trust the Jedi of Odan Urr, even after having fought alongside them.

“It was here, or we go back to Selen. We can’t get the girls’ favourite teething gel anywhere else,” Kooki answered. She pointed down a crowded thoroughfare. “I was told we can get it there,”

Andrelious followed the line of his wife’s finger, spotting a small, but busy stall.

“Let’s get what we came for and get off this wretched rock. The longer we’re around those holier than thou Jedi bast-“ the Warlord began, suddenly cutting off. He could sense a presence, almost as light as many of those belonging to Odan-Urr, but tempered with the occasional fleck of darkness. He’d come to expect such a thing from the Brotherhood’s light sided unit, but this presence felt more familiar.

“I can feel it too,” Kooki declared, looking worriedly at Etty. To her horror, her fears were confirmed. The tiny child moved her hands to her eyes. Behind her mother’s back, Poppy had, too.

“Atttt” the twins cooed.

“She’s in the cantina over there. I just hope she’s not got Marick or that frakking Ryn with her. You take the girls and go,” Andrelious stated, gesturing over to a brightly lit building whose sign proudly declared itself as serving the coldest beers in all Menat Ombo.

For once, the Alderaanian didn’t argue. Whilst she felt that her husband was going to need her, especially given the identity of who they had sensed, her first duty was to their daughters. Kissing the ex-Imperial gently on his cheek, she turned to resume her shopping. Andrelious smiled lovingly at the female, and stroked each of his daughters’ jet black hair gently.

“Time for a drink then,” the Warlord muttered to himself, entering the cantina.

Inside the cantina was a cacophony of noise not too dissimilar from the one outside. However, the diversity of the clientele was a little reduced. Gone were the elderly limping along, and the families of children playing happily among their parents. In their place were small time smugglers, bounty hunters, and even the occasional off duty member of the KUDF. Fortunately for Andrelious, he could sense only one other Force user. He could have spotted them from a mile off, having immediately recognised the long, braided almost white hair and the turquoise cloak.

Atty.

The Warlord considered fighting his way through the crowd, but quickly decided against it. His deeply dark presence probably already stuck out already, and any hostile action would likely draw unwanted attention from Odan-Urr’s Jedi. Instead, Andrelious spotted a nearby fire alarm. He quickly smashed it. An alarm rang loudly and a number of sprinklers began to rain water onto the throng of people, who began to panic and charge for the exit. Atyiru, however, stayed seated by the bar. The Sith started to approach, unsure as to what he should do, or say.

Turning, the Miraluka smiled. “Andrel! How are Clan Taldryan treating you, my friend?” she asked, her unrelenting warmth catching Mimosa-Inahj as off guard as it always had.

“I see my attempts to conceal my defection failed,” Andrelious observed.

“You forget. I know you too well. There’s no way you’d have let anyone blow your home up. I’ll admit it took me some time to find out where you went. Someone silenced the DIA’s agents on Karufr,” Atyiru stated, arching her brows accusingly at the Warlord.

“I merely provided the Consul with their names. It was by his order that they were executed,” the former Imperial replied, knowing that it wasn’t going to wash.

Atyiru’s eyeless stare remained fixed firmly on Andrelious. “If Marick was still Consul, he’d have sent a team after you already. I didn’t, and won’t do that. But I can’t let you remain on Karufr, Andrel. You know too many of our secrets. And you’d let people, even those you once called a friend, suffer as a result of that. I didn’t become Shadow Lady to allow suffering,”

Andrelious summoned a bottle of Ebla beer to his hand. He took a large swig of the drink, finding the cantina’s claim to cold beer was perhaps justified. “So what do you intend on doing? Forcing me and my family to come back? I’m never coming back. Arcona is my past,” he hissed.

The Miraluka sipped from her own drink. “Andrel. You know as well as I do that the only person who can make you do anything is the mother of your children. Come with me, now, my friend. I’ll make sure you can just retire quietly to raise your twins,”

“If this is you trying to arrest me, Atty, you’ll have to do better than that. I’ve told you. I’m staying with my new Clan. And so are my family,” the Warlord snapped, arming himself with his lightsaber.

“Ashla and Bogan! Why does everything have to turn into a fight with you, Andrel?” Atyiru sighed, activating her own weapon.

“You’re acting like I have a choice. You could have let me walk away. But no. Still an obstinate little Journeyman.” Andrelious replied coldly as he moved forward to engage his former Consul.

With a shower of sparks, angry crimson met serene white as the two lightsabers clashed.

“Three years, Andrel, and somehow you’ve still managed to learn nothing.”

But I’ve learned how to play this part.

Tst-tss-tsts-tss, came the dying hiss of sparks spraying across the wet floor, the stools, the bar top, again and again. Some landed in a forgotten glass of alcohol, sending it roaring into a cannibalistic flame.

Atyiru flicked her wrist, turning away the Warlord’s blade with another flash of plasma that sent his arm pinwheeling backwards. Her glass of water joined the puddles on the floor with a crystalline scream as she vaulted onto the bar, pointing her saber down at the short Human. Rivulets ran down her face, dripping from her bangs, and she spat at him as if having risen from the sea.

“You’ve always had a choice, and always you were too obstinate, pushed too far, saw too little. Ashla and Bogan, why can’t you ever learn, Andrel?”

“It’s you that never learned, Atty. Pairing you with Etain was a mistake. You weren’t sufficiently trained. My one failure as Arcona’s Rollmaster was not seeing—”

“Not seeing? You don’t know the meaning of it,” Atyiru snapped, cutting him off. “You’re blinder than I am! Again and again we’ve fought like this over one thing or another: my faith, your prejudices, my family, your family. Again and again I’ve tried to help you despite all you do, the insubordination, brutality, and opposition, and it was never enough. You had to keep pushing, until you pushed too far.” Her tone turned cold as the Void. “Until it was defection or death by Arconan law.”

The Imperial’s features twisted, repressed fury surging up in the Force like that flame in the glass. “You and the Arconae are—”

“No! We are not going to debate this again!” the Consul commanded. “I am trying to give you this last chance. Take it and be happy!”

Take it, or force my hand, she thought.

“I already told you,” Andrelious sneered. “My family and I aren’t going anywhere.”

He splashed forward, scarlet saber snapping in a tight arc. The Miraluka spun her own blade to meet it, her four-fingered grip on the slick hilt clenching and relaxing like her pumping heart. A beat passed and his blade tore away, leaping back to slash at her legs. Another beat, and her grip reversed, weapon whirling to crash into his.

Tssssstsss...

Miniscule tendrils of steam and smoke alike rose from their locked sabers as the edge of her soaked cloak steadily blackened. A droplet beaded on the tip of her nose, and Atyiru clenched her jaw around a grimace as the Taldryanite’s saber inched closer to her boot, slicing straight through the muddied, earthen countertop of her perch.

Tssstttst-sstsss...

She opened her mouth and kept painting pretty lies for him to swallow.

“Poppy and Etty can grow up with fields of flowers to run in and trees to climb. They can start dying their hair purple when they get old enough, tie ribbons in it if they like. They could play with other children and sing cradle-rhymes about mynocks and nexu and starships, and never know the faintest shape of war,” the Seer murmured, slow and river-deep. She gathered the Force with an errant thought, pulling it to her as if to embrace an old friend. “You and Kooki can watch them grow up smiling. Have your arguments, drink your caf bitter, enjoy your winter seasons. Perhaps have more children. A son. A brother for the girls. You could name him Jongstram.”

“You...I...We...we can do all that on Karufr,” Andrelious huffed back, breath sounding strained.

“No, you can’t, and you know it,” she retorted, weaving saccharine tendrils of the dark side around her former clanmate. “You’ve always known it. Look at yourself. At Kooki, Saskia. At me. At those DIA agents you slaughtered. At the oceans of blood and slag we’ve left in our wake. The Brotherhood is no place to raise a family.”

“We’ll find a way,” he snarled.

“You don’t want that.”

“You don’t know what we want!”

“I do. And do you know how? Because for three years I’ve been here, I’ve watched, I’ve seen.” She felt the pressure against her saber lessen as his arms grew slack, felt his hesitation as his enmity lulled under her touch. She made a perfect mask of a practiced smile. “You have two good eyes, Andrel. Open them.”

Tssst—

His lightsaber withdrew, just a hair’s breadth, the hum of their warring blades falling into silence. Her muscles coiled. There.

Andrelious shook his head, first slowly, then vigorously, the jowls of his sallow cheeks flapping. He stumbled back and glared at her with yellowed, beady eyes, a whirlwind of seething emotions clamoring up from him. “No,” the Sith hissed. “You’ve always spouted the same drivel as the baby-snatchers, and I won’t hear it. You’re the Arconae’s puppet and you’re too foolish to realize it. But I won’t let you use me, and you’ll not use my family either!”

But I already am, and — like always — you blind yourself to it…

The grave-calm thought washed away as the dark side surged around the Warlord, who leapt into the air as sparks crackled in his palms. Her nerves lit with fire. Ice spilled down her spine. The Force screamed. Atyiru gasped.

And then all the world became a storm as she and every dripping wet surface in the cantina lit with lightning.

Andrelious was stunned by just how much the sprinkler water had affected his lightning. He quickly withdrew from the attack as he landed, fearing that he too would be hit by wayward current. Atyiru had been the unfortunate recipient of almost a full dose of the Sith’s electric fury, but the Force had largely shielded her from injury. The area around the Miraluka had not been spared the same protection, leaving the floor strewn with broken glasses and spilled liquids.

“I was wrong. Etain and I didn’t completely fail. You’re capable of manipulation, and you’ve clearly got a lot of passion. But you won’t see the whole picture. You almost seem afraid of the power that the Force has bestowed you with. It’s a shame,” Andrelious spat as his opponent climbed to her feet.

“No, Andrel. The only thing that’s a shame is your bullish adherence to that ancient Sith code! Can’t you see what you’re losing? What you’ve already lost? How long before you can’t control your own anger and hurt someone you care about?” the Consul responded, her tone only increasing in harshness as she spoke. The Warlord remained a little distance away. “I control my emotions, Atty. Think back to when the twins got kidnapped. From your care, nonetheless. You can’t stand there and tell me that seeing Kooki and I kill that bastard made you feel sad. No, I could sense the hatred you felt towards that man. And I was truly scared of what it turned you into. Scared, but proud. And then you slipped back,” he replied.

Atyiru wasn’t quite sure how to respond. The truth of Andrelious’ words stung a little. On the day that Sephilios Braxant had snatched her goddaughters at gunpoint, things had been markedly different. Korriban had changed everything. Andrelious, who Atyiru had noticed was beginning to turn his back on the ever taking nature of the dark side, had slipped straight back into its clutches. And now, he served Taldryan, even after a decade of fighting against them, and the other Clans, all in the name of Arcona.

“You mistake the dark side as being this incredible cancer on the universe. You think it takes people, and controls them. But that’s not the case. The dark side gives me clarity. I can see the whole picture, Atty. And until you do, too, you will remain little more than a pawn in someone else’s game. You’re Shadow Lord now. Can you truly protect Arcona without the emotions you so desperately seek to eschew?” Andrelious continued.

“I will protect them from anyone that threatens them, Andrel. And for frak’s sake, it’s Shadow Lady!” the Miraluka snapped, charging at her opponent. Andrelious grinned, blocking the attack before arcing his blade around in a single fluid motion. The Warlord wasn’t sure if he had genuinely riled the Consul, or whether she was again trying to manipulate him, but he decided he wasn’t go to take any chances. He aimed his slashes in a way that indicated he was trying to disable, rather than kill.

Ducking out of Andrelious’ attempt to force another lightsaber lock, Atyiru neatly jumped up and over the Warlord’s head, thanking her stars that he was so short. As she landed behind her opponent, she thrusted forward with her blade, trying to insert it into Andrelious’ shoulder blade. However, the Sith had clearly been listening to the Force – he spun on his heels, allowing himself to deflect the attack away. Atyiru cursed audibly, but kept her defence solid. She couldn’t afford a mistake now.

As she backed away to avoid an aggressive move that would have robbed her of both saber hilt and hand, the Consul went to move back in to resume the apparently non-lethal duel, but instead felt herself knocked back by what felt like several tons of durasteel. She managed to arrest her own fall by twisting gracefully in the air, landing among the debris from the earlier lightning attack.

“Lots of broken glass. Just like an Arconan party in the old days,” Andrelious stated, his tone indicating he was not sure what message he was trying to convey.

“You enjoyed those, Andrel. Think back. That’s how you met Kooki. Not on a field of war. Why not stop, right here, right now? Just disappear from Brotherhood space. Go and find somewhere new to have those parties,” Atyiru answered.

The Warlord lowered his lightsaber for a moment, as if genuinely considering the Miraluka’s words. “You’re not my superior anymore,” he said, finally. “It’s almost a shame. You’ve been trying to make me see all this time. And I have done the same for you. The Force made us clanmates, but you made us friends. That’s why I’m giving you this chance, Atty. Leave, now. Forget you saw me. Forget what happened here. Let the masses back on Selen think I’m dead,”

Atyiru frowned. “No, Andrel. I can’t just leave. Not just like that.”

“Then I’m sorry for this, Knight Eight,” the Warlord responded.

“But I must make sure you forget,”

His eyes a storm of red and yellow, Andrelious ran towards Atyiru, lightsaber above his head and primed for a fight.

Foolish girl…

Spires of celeste and crimson danced over a stage of broken glass, their furious glow dimly reflected by puddles too shallow to be a danger to anything but the sparks that died in them. The embers hissed as they fell, accompanying the ceaseless screams of colliding plasma blades.

“I’ll never forget,” the young Miraluka spat at Andrelious, her face cast in a garish hue from the locked sabers that crept closer and closer. Her left foot shifted back through liquid and debris, digging into the ground as she pushed back against his weapon. Tiny swirls of blood mixed with the water and whiskey, scarlet stains appearing at the soles of his opponent’s white boots. “I remember, and I won’t turn my back on my promises. What about the promises you made, Andrel?”

The Sith scoffed as he leaned closer, pressing his advantage. “Arcona betrayed me first with that ludicrous trial. You and your summit branded me a traitor — it serves you right that I become one.”

“I’m not talking about the Clan, you ignorant bumblefluff!” Atyiru cried, blade shoving against his as her body twisted away, pirouetting out of their lock by the barest of breadths. The stink of singed hair followed her. “I am talking about your family! When you married Kooki, you swore to do what was best for her, through good and bad. When your girls were born in a bar just like this one, by my hand, you swore you’d see them safe and happy. What about all that?”

She struck at him, blade scintillating in a circular arc that met his parry in another shower of sparks. Her saber bounced away, carrying smoothly into another spinning strike that he again deflected with a flick of the wrist.

“I’m doing exactly that,” the Warlord sneered, turning away another stab aimed to disable his knee. “And nothing you spout is going to change that.”

The Seer frowned and took two steps away, twirling lightly on her cut feet, saber brandished wardingly before her, stance passive. “Andrel, if you just—”

The familiar chirp of a communicator came from her belt, four times. Her jaw clicked shut around whatever she’d been about to say.

“Fine,” the Arconan stated coolly, angling her body. Her brow furrowed as if in great concentration. “No more trying, Andrelious. I gave you a chance to leave peacefully. Now you go the hard way.”

“The Serpentine Throne has gone to your head, Knight Eight,” Mimosa-Inahj snapped, lifting his saber again, angled away from his form, and readying himself in the Force. “You’ll not accomplish anything here but defeat.”

He charged once more, saber arm whipping upright in a tight slash. She stayed utterly still even as the crimson of his blade lunged for her throat.

And then it...slowed...before it reached her.

Andrelious blinked sluggishly, feeling in that single instant like he was moving underwater, his limbs heavy. He could see as his arm kept moving, his clenched hand carrying his saber towards his opponent. He could see as she moved one step, ducking around the strike and into his guard.

The heartbeat passed, and time seemed to snap back into clarity just as her hand reached for his extended one, so close their cloaks brushed. Her fingers clamped down around his thumb and wrist and gave a very precise, very sharp, Force-fueled twist.

Crack!

Andrelious gave a shout as pain lanced up his right arm, his saber falling from his numb fingers. Atyiru’s grip changed, and she yanked him forward as she side-stepped, sending him face-first to the muddled floor. The old Imperial caught himself on his injured hand and collapsed in agony as it gave way beneath him, his entire arm throbbing.

The menacing hum of a lightsaber filled his ear, held so close that the left side of his face prickled uncomfortably from the heat. He turned his head just enough to save some of his skin from burning while peering up at the woman, the Shadow Lord, who stood over him, face cold and unforgiving.

And he felt from her, then, the same icy hate he’d seen directed at Sephilios Braxant.

=x=

Two beeps. A heartbeat. Two beeps.

It had been the signal she had been waiting for, the call to end this little farce of a dance she’d been leading the Taldyranite through. Everything was in place, everyone in position.

A small, quiet part of her regretted the necessity. But the rest…For all that you’re wrong about me, you were right about one thing. The Dark gives clarity just as the Light does. I won’t kill you, but I will use it to protect those that I must.

Holding her lightsaber carefully to her former clanmate’s neck, the Consul knelt down and placed a knee squarely in his back, over his kidneys. With her free hand, she plucked up his discarded saber and removed his blaster from his belt, tossing them aside.

“Listen to me very carefully, Andrelious Mimosa-Inahj,” Atyiru murmured, pitching her voice low and enunciating each word. “At this very moment, Timeros — you do remember him, don’t you? — and his agents have disabled your wife and taken your youngest daughters. Saskia is already in our custody.”

”What?!” gasped the Imperial, face twisting in a rictus of rage, pain, and panic. She dug her knee in sharply, drawing a strangled hiss from the man.

“No talking, just listening, or I give the kill order here and now.” She lifted her comm from her belt, waving it in front of the eye that glared up at her. “You will find Kookimarissia in the warehouse two streets east of that little shop you sent her to. Now, here is the very important part: you and she are going to meet your eldest child at the spaceport, and you are going to leave Brotherhood space, in silence, and never return. Your twin daughters’ survival depends on this.”

“You baby-snatching whor—”

Atyiru pressed a button on her comm. A voice on the other end, emotionless, immediately responded, “Orders, my Lady?”

“You have the children?”

There was a crackle, and the sound of infants crying somewhere in the background supplied an answer. She arched an eyebrow.

Andrelious made a sound like a choking growl and hissed out, “Please, no.”

“That is all for now. Proceed as planned,” the Miraluka said into the device, lifting her thumb and cutting the line. She turned her attention back to the Human in her grasp. “You and your family will be monitored. If you ever so much as breathe a word of shadows or think of Dajorran space, the girls will die. Remember that when you wake up.”

Embracing the Force, she drew her arm back and snapped it forward, fist cracking into the base of the Human’s skull. She heard a small, cartilaginous crunch as his face — and nose — smashed further against the ground, and gave a grimace. Waiting a moment, the medic checked his breathing and then rolled him onto his side so that he wouldn’t suffocate in his sleep on the blood draining from his sinuses.

Standing with a wilted sigh, Atyiru deactivated her seraphic blade and returned the hilt to her belt clip. Tabbing her comm again, she stepped delicately over the unconscious Imperial and starting wringing water out of her braid with her free hand.

“Yes, Lady Consul?” the familiar, stoic voice on the other end answered once more.

“Brother Caesus, dear, are you still in place?”

“Yes, Sister.”

“Good. Inahj has been taken care of. Make sure one of your men makes it over here to clean up. Maybe two. He’ll be heavy.” Exhaling another sigh, she went on, “How are the girls?”

“The infants are unharmed.”

“Good, good. You know what to do. Just leave them at the Praxeum’s doorstep when dusk rolls around. If anything goes wrong, Sorenn is in the know and can help, but I suspect it will be just as well. They’ll just be another pair of orphaned Jedi initiates.”

“As you command, Sister.”

He cut the connection, and she frowned briefly at the lack of goodbye. Shaking her head, the Miraluka turned from the ruined taproom and walked back out into the sunlit market street, drawing her cloak around her.

Ashla and Bogan keep you, my little goddaughters. You’ll be safe in the Light.