Raid Litanies of the Dark Side: Head of the Snake

[Desmundor Alcademon]

@Lyanna Starborn
​

The Civil War spread. Ever since the initial onslaught of the Dark Crusade which carved an unhealable wound in the Sith Worlds, the Starborn Sect remained as a major rival to the Athysian void supremacy. After losing his flagship to @Lyanna Starborn 's Migrant Fleet, Desmundor Alcademon, Hegemon of Athysia and commander of the dreaded Raider Fleet planned a daring incursion to settle the score with his mortal enemy. As Minos Sector burned in the fires of Darth Eosfor's wrathful rule, the Athysian fleet split from the armada.

After sailing through treacherous territories, tracing paths through uncharted, or even feared sectors in the Unknown Regions, the Athysian spearhead finally arrived in Sector 7G. The foul warships of Athysia spread, breaking in splinter flottilas led by Princes of War to pursue various objectives that would deliver Death by a thousand cuts to the Starborn Sect and the surrounding lesser factions, perhaps yet untouched by the carnage in the Trailing Sectors.

Desmundor, and the Hemstagon corsairs emerged in realspace, heralded by a twist in the Force so vile it carried the scent of the Nether as the Netherdrive engines of the foul warships pushed through the dimensions to plague Realspace once again. This time, they brought war farthest than ever before, adorning the skies of Ilum, once a holy site of the Jedi Order, now defiled by the Dark Side. Their spiked hulls shrouded with miasmatic taint of the foul rituals that bound them. Their durasteel intestines filled with horrors meant to be unleashed upon Illum.

The Kyber deposits of Illum were the main objective. Resource capable of elevating the Athysian war machine to even bleaker efficiency, if claimed...
The Hegemon's prize, far greater:

Darth Fauste.

A Kill to compete deeds of Gods.​

 

[Lyanna Starborn]

The cold on Ilum was not the kind that stung the skin. It burrowed deeper, worming through flesh and bone, searching for weakness. Lyanna Starborn stood on the observation platform of the Kyber Spire, the crystalline latticework of the mined caverns glowing faintly beneath her boots. She wore no cloak against the chill; she had long since learned to let the Force warm her from within. Cold was a state of mind, and hers had long ago crystallized into something far more enduring than flesh.

She could feel the tremor before the alarms began their hollow howling. The Force twisted unnaturally, like a scream through oil, thick and wrong. Then came the scent—not air, not matter, but the psychic stench of the Nether, like burnt bone soaked in brine. The skies above Ilum cracked.

Desmundor Alcademon.

She saw his hatred long before his fleet emerged. Felt it as a pressure in her chest. A blade aimed at her throat, honed by vengeance, tempered by humiliation. He remembers the Battle of Minos Gate, she mused. Good. So do I.

“All batteries to readiness,” she said into the comlink. Her voice was calm. Detached. But those near her flinched at the edges of it. “Activate the prism shields. I want ion dispersion fields up around the bunkers and refraction pulses keyed to any incoming bombardments. We don’t stop them from landing. We kill them once they do.”

The Kyber facility wasn’t a fortress. It had never been built to withstand a full Athysian siege. Flak cannons spun to life, autocannons trained skyward, and particle turrets whined as the capacitors charged. Beneath her feet, thousands of personnel braced for war—scientists, engineers, pilgrims who had joined the Sect in search of purpose—and soldiers. Not all were Force-sensitives, but all were believers.

Lyanna turned her eyes toward the dark silhouettes tearing through realspace. Spiked leviathans, bloated with the arcane filth of the Hemstagon. Their hulls breathed, warped with the same sacrilegious rites that had corrupted the man’s own planet. He dares bring that rot to Ilum, she thought.

“Open the catacombs,” she said. “Collapse every tunnel that leads too close to the Kyber veins. If we cannot hold the surface, they will find only ruin.”

One of her attendants—an Echani, her silver hair bound in tight braids—stepped forward. “And what of the civilians?”

“They are not civilians,” Lyanna answered without looking. “They are Starborn.”

There was silence. Then the woman bowed.

Lyanna drew her saber but did not ignite it. Her fingers traced the hilt—elegant, curved, inlaid with fragment kyber from Ilum itself. “Prepare the House of Starborn and the Special Forces. We meet them where they land.”

A cold smile curved her lips.

“If Desmundor wants my head to prove himself a god, let him walk through Hell to take it.”

Tag; @Desmundor Alcademon

 

[Desmundor Alcademon]

Wind of Life...

Shadow of Death...​

The Eyerhea's body was bent, standing on her knees before bowing deeply for her masked eyeless face to kiss the onyx ground. Her hands stretched forth, palms reaching out as if willing to extend her reach beyond the flesh. The priestess found herself in the very middle of a Seven-Pointed Star carved on the onyx, washed by blood that dripped from the hooked bodies above. Some of them, still twitching, unknown whether that was the result of life scaping away, or muscles not yet aware of the lifeless husks they yet inhabited...

Silence of Serenity...

Whispers of Madness...​

The reverberation of the engines barely sensible, for the temple was far too deep inside the monstrous ship's intestines to be inflicted such remembrance of the voidfaring ark it was in. The priestess coughing, gasping as if the mockery of air fed to the chamber by the life support was found lacking. Her pale skin shivering. She screamed, echoes that openned herself up in the Force in such a manner she caused the hanging chains above her to motion ever so slightly. Another drop befell the Star...

Frost of Loyalty...

Fires of Defiance...​

"The Migrant Fleet is not here, lord Hegemon. The skies are ours...." The bridge had little to no light to illuminate it, save for the dim blaze of the monitors, operated by the pale-skinned Athysian crew. At the very centre of the bridge, stood he; Tall and proud, in the embrace of his blood red chlamys, made of heavy fabric, long enough to conceal the armour beneath. Desmundor's eyes were hollow. His breathing steady. His mind so fixated on the task ahead, as if serving as a pre-battle meditation, he heard none of the words spoken to him.

"Lord Hegemon." the warrior spoke again. His voice harsh and loud, moulded by over a dozen wars in over a dozen worlds. His mouth grinning teeth, deprived of lips. This time the warrior was demanding, loud enough for the Hegemon to tilt his head in acknowledgement. He refused to take his eyes away from the view beyond the transparresteel of the bridge. Ilum. The battleground-to-be.

"She is there. I can feel it."

The Athysian warrior could recognize the motive of his master. He did not comment. In response to the Hegemon, he turned his shadowed gaze and looked, eyes lost in darkness, into the world spanning before the fleet.

"What are your orders, then?" he asked. His each vowel boiling with anticipation. Desmundor, was not the only one who had scores to settle with the Starborn Sect....

FLAMES OF DEFIANCE​

"Kyber is the heart of Ilum!"

Chains dragged, poisoned with sorcery and flame alike into life of destruction. The hands pulling them covered by crimson scales. The hollows of the Athysian warships a hive of chained beasts made of maws and teeth and horns. Gaping wounds blistered by foul poisons made to inflict nothing but pain adorned the horde, ritualistically engraved on them to form the devilish glyphs those alien horrors viewed sacred. Fumes clustered the ceilings, coalgulating in thick black miasma that dripped back into the hordes below. Horrid savages, wielding archaic weapons carved in stone and obsidian, infused with sickening spells and black will.

The Hegemon beheld his summoned champions, weighting in the back of his mind the unspeakable pacts made to bring such a force together, oh not too long ago. His gloved hands gripped on the barring of the rails, as his eyes bursted aflame. This would be his moment. His triumph. By decree of the Dark Lord, the Red Herald, he would bring upon the battle most memorable in retribution for the losses suffered without victory, in the Battle of Minos Gate.

Athysian Hoplite swarms and orbital bombardment was not enough for him. Oh no... This time, he would unleash the Devil Hordes upon the Starborn Sect... He would claim his glory...

"Ilum has a heart of Kyber. Living crystals of Light and Life."

His voice a spell against the fabric of the Force, twisting it enough to echo beyond where sound would reach. His veins swelling black to each of his roaring words.

"You will bleed the skin of ice! You will carve the flesh of stone! You will pluck Ilum's heart and feast in its beating pieces!"

The Marskha horde revelled, overtaken by the stretch of Darkness that consumed the fleet in echoes of damnation ringing like bells in the Force, showering the planet below with Desmundor's foul determination.

"KILL ALL WHO DRAW BREATH! CARVE EVERY STONE WITH YOUR WRATH! THE WRATH OF EREVOS! THE WRATH OF ATHYSIA! THE WRATH OF EOSFOR! TODAY, ILLUM BURNS IN FLAMES OF DEFIANCE!!!"

Desmundor's eyes bled fire. His gloved grip so tightly wrapped around the metal rail he deformed it.

"I am coming for you, Lyanna-Fauste... I am coming for you."

As the Force wept to the coming of the Athysian Raider Fleet, the skies over Ilum cried of flame. Myriad lights illuminated the colourless heavens, as dropships were shot from the bellies of the hulking warships like rainwater from the heaviest of clouds, vowed to drench the land beneath in a crimson flood...

 

[Hyara Hemstagon]

Like descending winged predators making their way inbetween the heavy downpour, the Quadrent Destroyers of the Hemstagon Corsairs danced in wide spiraling descends, as if racing to outrun the locust of dropships. Bloodlusting and craving for the coming carnage, the Imvonvol, engulfed in atmospheric flames resisting her Witch-Captains coming to the once holy Jedi world, pierced through to ever increasing speed, giving off the impression she had already been shot down before even the first ground artillery had fired a shot...

"Get the cannons ready!" the Nautolan barked to the crew, who each struggled to load the broadside cannons of the narrow vessel, while at the same time grasping onto anything remotely stable, not to be cast sternward by the excess speed the Imvonvol achieved, contesting the capabilities of the artificial gravity onboard. In the bridge, lightning of red shined, as the Witch-Captain danced over the half-melted consoles, her fingers almost fused with the torn tableau. Her pale braided hair lashing back and forth by the non-stop banging of her head, as if she was crowned by chains she cared not to cast away.

"FIRST blood FIRST blow FIRST of the THREE yet ONE SHALL LIVE!"

The One-Eyed Vulture cried in derangement and excitment. Her eye blazing by fire, rolling up as she befell to her ship's sensor systems, invading the ship's own gaze for the price of her own. As the Imonvol descended vertically, effectivelly bypassing the dropships by far, becoming itself a spearhead of the Athysian invasion, the four plasma cannons ahead of the forecastle charged with energy.

"ONE for the glory TWO for the prize! THREE for the FOE I bring YOUR DEMISE!"

A blinding blue beam of light errupted from the Imvonvol, aimed vertically down to the facility's highest point. Almost before the very beam fell silent, the Imvonvol turned for a sharp climb, her belly crashing against high antennas from the facility, casting shrapnel down the ground.

 

[Lyanna Starborn]

The sky screamed.

The blast had struck the upper spire of the Kyber facility before the alarm klaxons could even reach their full wail. Light—not like fire, but like the dying gasp of a star—bleached the observation deck in blue-white brilliance. The beam cored straight through crystalline scaffolding, severing a communications pylon in a burst of molten ore and spun alloy. Shrapnel shrieked as it fell past her view, and for a moment, the whole structure sang in its agony, echoing through the Force like a dying bell.

The strike had not been random.

Lyanna did not flinch. She had been waiting.

From her place on the shattered balcony, scorched wind whipping her hair into serpentine strands, she looked up to meet the descending vessel with her senses, not her eyes. The Imvonvol. Ancient, cursed, and alive in some vile, blasphemous way. A soul-bound predator with a witch lashed to its heart and blood in its belly.

The Witch-Captain’s madness licked at her mind like fire on silk.

“I see you,” Lyanna whispered. “You scream to the stars, but I do not burn. Not yet.”

She stepped back from the edge. “Activate the void anchors. No ship lands without crawling.”

“Ma’am!” came a soldier’s voice, breathless as he raced down the spiral stairs from the comms post. “The Quadrent destroyers are entering attack descent! The dropships are pouring in behind them!”

“Let them come,” she said. “Seal Spire One. Begin evacuation into the Vein Complex.”

Below, the House of Starborn moved like a river of shadow. White robes. Crimson blades. Their meditation chambers had already opened, their armor fitted in moments. To some, it was ritual. To others, it was vengeance. She watched them converge at the eastern hall, fifty strong, each a child of the Force in their own right. A dozen more already took to the high ridges, sabers deactivated, but fingers ready to call the storm.

Beyond them, the Special Forces were already entrenched.

The bunkers came alive—shields roaring to life, flak launching in spirals of thunderous wrath. Particle guns spat streams of gold into the sky. They wouldn’t down the Quadrents, not all of them, but they’d bloody the mouths of anything hungry for an easy kill.

“Section Twelve: Lay proximity mines across the lower ridgelines. I want those beasts tasting death before they draw blood.”

She turned to her aide. “Begin The Litany.”

The Echani bowed and raised a black comm-device to her lips, chanting the code-phrases that would ignite the deepest security rites—purge systems, data wipes, flame protocols for labs not yet evacuated.

Then Lyanna closed her eyes.

And she felt Desmundor.

His voice tore through the Force like claws through silk. He howled of fire and vengeance and wrath. Of killing stones and plucking Kyber hearts. But it was not just fury. It was obsession. She tasted the rot in him. The madness.

“You made pacts with things you do not understand, Desmundor,” she whispered into the void. “You’ve thrown your soul into the abyss for the hope that it will listen.”

And then louder, for her warriors to hear:

“He comes with Devils. But we are no less.”

“He brings chains. We bring the storm.”

“He comes for my death.”

“Let us make it difficult.”

The Kyber beneath their feet hummed, as if hearing her.

She stepped down from the ruined platform as the mountain shook again.

Today, Ilum would bleed. But not alone.

Tag; @Desmundor Alcademon @Hyara Hemstagon

 

[Desmundor Alcademon]

The hulking Athysian warships loomed above the atmosphere. The absence of the Migrant Fleet offering dominance over the skies not welcomed by their warmongering masters, who craved to even the odds of their past engagement with glory engulfed in fire and blood. To subject the planetside to orbital bombardment would be to inflict casualties enough that a ground assault would be rendered pointless, in their eyes. Without the bloodletting, without the struggle for a victory hard earned, this very operation would be a mockery to the Athysian Gods of War.

Desmundor would have none of it.

Hundreds of dropships descended like a rain of light, suddenly entering a tempest of flak and particle beams that bled many of the dropships to a deluge of flames and steam of blood as if they were amidst a meteor shower, cracked by the opposition of the atmosphere as they entered. Regardless how the flak blackened the sky into starless night, or the precision of the artillery, the dropships kept comming, the first crashing against the sharp stone of Ilum's hills.
The durasteel bent. Monstrous roaring heralded the walking doom that craved release from the deformed dropship. Another strike poped one of the hinges of the blastdoor. Another roar shook the crashed dropship, loud enough to melt the snow that had engulfed the craft in its crater. And then, it happened.

In a swift strike of wrath and fire, the arcane weapon carved the durasteel of the blastdoor like vibrowblade through butter, setting free the Devil buried within. Wings flapped, colossal and marked by wounds earned from numberless battles before, chest adorned with bronze and silver occult sigils affixed upon an armour of steel. The skull crimson, clad by horns bent as much as the Force to its presence, illuminated by fiery eyes and heralded by a gaping maw filled with teeth. The Marskhahir stood up, towering over six meters in height, wielding foul weapon and will of destruction, almost innately taunted by the very existence of Kyber near it.
As the flaming eyes of he Marskhahir turned to the valley, it glared to the crimson monsters popping out from the numerous crash landed dropships. The Marskhahir brought its weapon aloft, making itself a banner around which the horde rallied. Its wings spread, flags in their own right. Its weapon an ill-omen for the coming clash.

Blass of light cast the Marskha across the valley in scattered limbs and dismembered torsos. At irregular intervals, the valley shook as the horde gathered. The Marskhahir looked up, to the facility, to see no cannons nor turbolasers targeting them, as of yet. The blasts did not come from above... They came from below...

Mines.

Deafening roars of rage followed, as the Marskha came to the realization of the weapon employed to bleed their march. And yet, the more they stepped on the scattered triggers of the minefield buried beneath snow and ice, the more dropships crashed overhead, spilling more members of the foul race into the fray. Their advance a tidal wave, mounted on monstrous beasts of war or sprinting with no sign of fatigue, driven only by hallucination and unfathomable rage.

The Marskhahir flapped its wings, lunging itself up in the air to land directly onto the facility's upper superstructures. Its weapon swung with deadly precision, cutting any and all that found themselves in its path of destruction. Killing soldiers was of no interest to it. That, it left for its lessers. The Marskhahir had eyes for the large artillery emplacements. The Particle cannons, turbolaser turrets and orbital defence lasers. Towering almost above the very barrels, it thrusted itself against the deadly machines in taunting roar, facing each like a foe in and of itself. Its axe thirsting to mark the durasteel casing with fire.

"I shall make your Death legend."

Desmundor's heavy steps carried him out the dropship. The black boots sinking in the snow. The crimson chlamys still wrapped around the man, as if it offered protection from the cold, besides its symbolism of his stature. His eyes now graced by the Dark Side, letting himself delve in thoughts most foul. His armoured hand unclipped the bronze needle that held the chlamys in place. As the fabric slithered down, held only by the binding behind his neck, his armour glazed with reflections of explosions and laser beams fired in the distance.

"Your name will be written in the brightest Kyber, planted atop the highest tower of Bassilicor."

Desmundor walked forth. With each of his steps, his determination cementing still. His hand reaching for the pommel, unsheathing the black blade. His pale skin disturbed by the swollen black veins inflicted by Dark Side corruption, tense and twisted beholding the carnage he had brought to Ilum. He was no fool. He was aware the ease with which his hordes made planetfall was not attributed to a mere foolish decision from Fauste, leading to her seemingly helpless situation. Oh no, she was smarter than that. The Athysians had not broken into the surface. They were allowed on it. Part of schemes he had yet to realize their impact, as he counted she had not yet understood the weight of the horde he had brought to bare, for her name alone.

"I shall see you a Soulgrinder, to fight again when I walk the hollows of Death. And all the Dead shall know. That, is Lyanna-Fauste. Desmundor Alcademon's greatest kill."

His voice a ripple in the Force. Targeted. Precise. Meant for only one mind to hear, as if he knew her place simply by the sheer will to face her.

 

[Lyanna Starborn]

The words twisted their way into her skull like a dagger of black ice.

“Desmundor Alcademon’s greatest kill…”

They echoed with the resonance of challenge, yet beyond the taunt she heard something deeper—certainty. It was not a boast, but a prophecy he carved for himself, a fate he dared brand into the Force. And the Force wept in reply.

Lyanna stood at the center of the inner sanctum beneath Ilum’s sacred facility, bathed in the luminous hum of the Kyber veins that ran like arteries beneath her feet. Her eyes were closed, but her perception swam with light. Crimson flares from orbit fell like apocalyptic omens. Every footfall of Athysian warbeasts above sent ripples through the Force that crashed like waves against her skin. Still, she stood silent. She listened.

And the Force answered her in whispers.

The House of Starborn knelt behind her, silent in their vigil, attuned to her breath, her pulse. Their lightsabers were unlit—there was no need for blades when one stood in communion with power beyond reason.

“He brings his horde to bleed Ilum…” Lyanna murmured, her voice as calm as still water. “He thinks I wait for him. He thinks this planet is mine.”

She opened her eyes, silver turned to molten gold.

“He is wrong.”

She turned, facing the assembled forces of the Special Forces Division, her most elite. The fiercest tacticians of the Migrant Fleet, the most gifted duelists of the Starborn, and the few Operatives who had learned not only to kill—but to know what must die.

“Ilum does not belong to the Starborn Sect,” she told them, her voice magnified not by comms but by the Force itself, cascading into every mind within reach. “It belongs to the Light. To the crystal and the flame. To the memory of those who bled for something greater.”

She stepped forward. Her breath was slow. Measured. A gloved hand reached for her hip—and her saber rose to her palm with a slow, silent pull.

“And the Light…” she hissed, igniting her saber with a crackling snap-hiss that bathed the chamber in violent red, “…has tolerated darkness long enough.”

—

ABOVE.

The Marskhahir tore through turbolaser emplacements like paper, its infernal axe cleaving into defenses that had barely finished orienting themselves. Then, one such cannon exploded—not from within, but from behind. A silhouette dropped from the upper structure, lightless at first, landing on the creature’s extended wing with impossible precision.

Darth Fauste.

Her cloak billowed in the shockwave of her descent, her golden eyes locked on the beast’s massive skull. She raised her saber. No words. No flourish.

The Force sang.

And she moved.

A blur of red light wove around the beast’s claws, her blade finding every weak point in the armor, every exposed joint. It howled—but its roars were met by silence.

Not weakness. Not fear.

Disdain.

Similfuturus.

—

Elsewhere, Special Forces engaged in precision strikes. Portable Kyber-nullifiers bled fields of Force-interference into the Athysian ranks. Mines were just the beginning. Glyphs etched by Starborn sentinels burst open with concentrated stasis-fields, locking even the most berserk monsters in frozen time long enough to be gunned down.

The House of Starborn flowed like living flame through the outer corridors. Saber to saber, the Force roared with every clash. They were few. But they were enough.

And below the mountain, in the buried vaults where ancient Kyber hummed in meditation, Lyanna heard Desmundor’s voice again.

—

“I shall see you a Soulgrinder…”

She replied not with words, but with a pulse of presence.

She was watching.

She was waiting.

And she was no longer alone in her body.

The walls of reality shivered.

—

“You do not yet understand what Ilum guards, Desmundor. But you will.”

The voice—her voice—carried not only across the battlefield, but within his very chest. A presence that smiled.

Tag; @Desmundor Alcademon

 

[Desmundor Alcademon]

Ilum wept. The fires of the Athysian Darkness collided with the durasteel will of the Starborn, turning the once holy world into a battlefield like no other. The Marskha horde kept descending upon the facility, though the Raider Fleet above loomed, hulking hounds craving to bite, omens of the carnage that would be if the Migrant Fleet dare contest their orbital superiority. Savage tides of Marskha warriors threw themselves against the walls of the facility, clawing their way up with no use of siege equipment but their own, forming aggers of flesh against the relentless barrages of the defenders.

Atop the highest spires, the roaring of the Marskhahir loud enough to send ripples in the very Force around it, as its wing bled of black pitch. It turned, its hooved legs pushed against the durasteel. Its infernal eyes searching for the champion who challenged him, only to see her. Clad in light strong enough to cause the Marskhahir's eyes to narrow, radiant blaze against the flame of Defiance.

A Champion proper.

The Marskhahir's wings tattared banners of darkness, now defiled by the will of Darth Fauste. In an act of retaliation, the Marskhahir bellowed, towering over the she-warrior, accepting the challenge posed. Before it brought its mighty weapon, a warhammer of witch-metal, drenched in darkness, seeded by eons of carnage, the Marskhahir spread its wings as if raising its own banners high in pride, for all to witness the crushing of the foe. The Warhammer descended upon Fauste in a wrathful strike, strong enough to bend the very durasteel of the platform, in a brutal release of kinetic energy. The beast's eyes ever following its prey, locked in a deadly dance of supremacy.

You do not yet understand what Ilum guards, Desmundor. But you will.

Desmundor's black hair danced in the winds of war he himself had brought to Ilum. His armoured hand curling into fist against his chestguard. His eyes fixated on the high spires, where he could recognize the Marskhahir fighting. He knew within him, there was only one brave enough to stand against such terror. Only one to match the skill of century-long initiation in blood. Only her. Only Lyanna-Fauste. His prize. The only prize that had brought him to this forsaken world.

"I am careless of it, Lyanna-Fauste." he smiled. His lips motionless as he openned himself up in the Force, his will reaching her like hungry tendrils bound to wrap around her in an embrace of violence. "Kyber is plunder for those who seek it. I am here for you. This time, there will be no barren moons to keep you from my grasp. This time, one of us leaves with two hearts."

BOOM.​

The sudden quake shook the very walls, as if they struggled to contest the kinetic force unleashed by the blast. Limbs and torn bodies instantly charred by the explosives were cast from the walls like shrapnel, raining down the besieging horde. The Marskha agger had blazed in blood and flesh, torn down by the efforts of the Special Forces. Across the field, from within the shadows, gun barrels emerged to spit plasma once before again vanishing in the hollows they knew far too well, inflicting casualties otherwise negligable, save for the frequency of the attacks. Regardless the size of the Marskha horde, the Starborn were bleeding them in perfectly orchestrated incisions, killing the beast with a thousand cuts.

Desmundor was forced to turn his gaze and behold his sea of crimson suddenly losing momentum; The barbaric Marskha disoriented by the efforts of the defenders. The Hegemon's eyes turned up. His head shaking in defiance.

"Bring down the rain, Hemstagon. Punish the savages!"

 

[Hyara Hemstagon]

The deck shook with each of the cannons firing. Empty shell casings cast across the catwalk as the crew pulled the back of the cannon open, to reload. Steam bled from the life support. Another sudden quake, as the Imvonvol's spine bent by the direct hit from the ground's defence batteries scoring yet another hit upon her. Chunks of the spiked hull fell down the sky, flaying the vessel more in replacement of the black spots caused by the particle cannons.

"Get the Bow Plasma at the ready! Prepare to FIRE!!!" the Nautolan shouted. His shaky hand barely holding his own weight against the cane. Blue clothes covering his body, now stained by black marks from the frequent firing across the deck. The first-mate did not care. He was the one to keep the crew on the task. He was the voice of the Witch-Captain, when the flames of war engulfed the Imvonvol.

"The ship won't hold! We need to pull to the orbit!!" one of the gunners cried out. He was a Duros, one of the many lost souls who found themselves bound in servitute of the Witch-Captain corsair crew. The surrounding crew were too invested in keeping the ship going, either loading the cannons or pulling additional ammunition crates from below deck.

"Don't, Doleth!" a younger member of the crew urged, reaching out with his hands to the Duros.

"Who the FRAK spoke damn you!??" the Weequay quartermaster barked in fury, jumping down from the nearby hatch.

"This is pointless!" Doleth insisted.

The First-Mate glared at him. He turned his gaze to the Weequay.

"Is this your deck, quartermaster?" he growled.

Without really offering time to process, or even care to acknowledge the Nautolan's words, the Weequay pulled a vibrowknife from his belt and stabbed the Duros behind the knee, fast enough the latter failed to react, but scream, as the knife burned his vein.

"DID I TELL YOU TO QUIT, MAGGOT!?" the quartermaster roared, proceeding to pull the knife out and punch the pirate with its pommel again and again. Doleth fell on the ground, covering his bleeding head with his hands hopelessly trying to avoid further injuries, while his one leg brought against his abdomen.

"THIS IS WAR, DAMN YOU!" the quartermaster roared. "WE DONT QUIT ON THE IMVONVOL!!!!"

The quartermaster stepped back, catching his breath, before nodding to the nearest crew members.

"Throw this filth out of my deck...."

"No... no PLEASE NO!!" Doleth pleaded, yet to no avail. The quartermaster simply climbed back to the hatch, where he continued whatever repairs he initially did, while the First-Mate glared, holding himself against the cane, saying nothing as the crew grabbed Doleth and dragged him towards one of the broadside cannons. None gave in to the alien's cries and pleas, forcefully shoving him inside the cannon barrel, pushing a new shell in, before sealing the hatch.

The quartermaster shook his head.

"Fire."

The Imvonvol spinned as she took yet another dive over the facility. Her broadsides spitting fire in reckless barrages, as light charged to the four cannons protruding beyond her bow. The Witch-Captain stirring the ship more and more to a vertical course, aiming to the highest spires for a hit that would mark the facility across the battlefield.

Bring down the rain, Hemstagon. Punish the savages!

The pale braids of the Witch-Captain lashed like chains, as the One-eyed Vulture was possessed by a maniacal laughter. Hate and wicked thoughts flooding her mind, while her fingertips vomited lightning as if chained by it, against the consoles.

The Imvonvol peaked speed, her belly adjusting course sharp enough for it to caress the platform of the spire, casting aside the turbolaser turrets once carved open by the Marskhahir.
And so, the Imvonvol fired.

Blue beams of blinding blasma descended upon the horde, digging deep craters as it desintegrated dozens of savages in a single sweep. Each of their deaths another moment of dark ecstasy to the One-Eyed Vulture.

"One for the Weak, TWO for the Wicked! HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAA!"

 

[Lyanna Starborn]

She stood beneath the ice.

The world roared above her—screaming metal, split stone, the thunder of descending war. Yet within the buried sanctum, Lyanna was still. Her breath was shallow, her limbs unmoving, encased in the cold embrace of Ilum’s ancient stone. Around her, the ring of Force-sensitives trembled in trance, their minds locked to hers, their strength feeding the Similfuturus she had cast into the sky.

Darth Fauste.

She was not flesh. She was will—armored in starlight, fueled by sacrifice. And she burned.

Above, Fauste met the Marskhahir’s fury with the precision of a creature made for war. The warhammer descended like an execution, darkness bleeding from its cursed iron—but Fauste twisted, boot skimming the cracked durasteel, and her saber—red, brilliant, pure—howled to life. It clashed against the hammer’s edge with a flare of hellfire, skimming it aside, the impact hurling molten debris into the void.

And still, the beast loomed.

The Marskhahir’s scream tore the sky.

But louder still was the whisper that slithered through the Force. A voice. Familiar. Intimate. Unwelcome.

“I am here for you… This time, one of us leaves with two hearts.”

Her saber did not falter.

But below the surface, Lyanna’s breath hitched.

One of the Force-sensitives collapsed. Blood frothed at his mouth as Lyanna drew on his essence, feeding it into her echo above. Darth Fauste’s blade flared—its edge screaming with stolen power. Her strikes grew faster. Heavier. No longer bound by mortal strain. The champion in the light now burned like vengeance incarnate.

Above, the sky cracked.

The Imvonvol had arrived.

Hemstagon’s cannons rained blue death from above, indiscriminate and joyous. The Witch-Captain howled with laughter, lightning arcing from her fingers like a puppet strangling its own strings. The plasma strikes hit horde and stone alike, a storm too wild to claim allegiance. Desmundor’s forces suffered alongside his enemies.

Lyanna felt the shift. Saw through it.

He did not seek conquest. He sought her.

“Punish the savages,” he said.

But savagery did not beg for punishment—it demanded it.

She opened her eyes.

A flicker—just that—in the tomb beneath Ilum. But the Force answered in a surge. And above, Fauste’s red blade snapped wide, casting a beam like a brand across the clouds. Her body turned upward. Not to the Marskhahir. Not yet.

To the ship.

The blade turned skyward.

And she leapt.

A blur of speed and fury, Darth Fauste shot past the scorched spires, through the plumes of falling stone and steaming plasma, until she struck the hull of the Imvonvol. Her impact cratered the blackened durasteel, and the red saber carved deep as she dragged it in a molten arc across the dorsal plates.

The ship screamed in return.

Consoles exploded. Lighting shorted.

Fauste rose amid it all. Cloaked in war, red blade crackling in her grip.

“You want my heart, Desmundor?”

Her saber ignited again, held high—its crimson glow staining the smoke-choked sky.

“Then come take it.” Her voice cut like the saber she held. “But know this—”

She raised the blade to her face, eyes aflame.

“The hand that holds it remembers everything.”

And far below, Lyanna smiled.

The Similfuturus was only her voice.

Her will had yet to rise.

Tag; @Desmundor Alcademon @Hyara Hemstagon

 

[Hyara Hemstagon]

The very hull, crimson with spikes of bronze and durasteel, protested Fauste's presence as if the Imvonvol had a will of her own. The moment the she-champion landed upon the cursed hull, the air surrounding the ship turned thick; Reddish, as if blood had sprayed in red mist, freezing in time, forming an ethereal tissue of gaping maws and wrathful jaws craving to bite upon the one who challenged the Imvonvol. Every particle of the arcane effect carrying the brand of the Witch-Captain that stirred the Imvonvol from its bridge, a castle proper protruding by the stern, fortified by layers upon layers of durasteel spikes and automated turrets. The flow of Dark Side energy surged through the electronics, possessing each and every of the turrets, meant to serve as anti-air defence. The barrels quick to turn to Darth Fauste's side...

"One for Death, Two for the Witch. Three for thee, most brave BITCH"

In unreal synchrony, all barrels spat plasma against the Sith on the ship, while the reddish energy twisted, invading every shard of exposed tissue like a locust of cannibalistic insects. A thousand bites pierced like needles, instants before the plasma made its mark. The explosion blinding and loud, yet the durasteel unyielding. The autoturrets having not enough energy in their payload to truly inflict any damage on the Imvonvol's armour.

Suddenly, the ship spinned, as if going through an invisible rifled tube like a bullet, meant to cast Fauste overboard like a flee that failed to grasp on fur. The Imvonvol climbed vertically, ever continuing spinning, carving a path to the upper atmosphere.

 

[Desmundor Alcademon]

The Hegemon walked. His pacing steady. His eyes fiery, fixated deep within the facility. Gaze piercing through rock and durasteel, fully commited to a single presence. A fountain of Force energy blazing beneath the Hegemon's carnage. She was his', this time. There was only the will of the Force contrary to his own, to separate him from his prize.

Cannons roared, contesting the Marskha horde's advance against the walls. The burning fury of the Marskhahir atop the spires cleaving through blastdoor and turbolaser alike. The massive champion of the Athysian League making its bloody way through the defences, towards the inner side of the main gate. Few could stand to challenge the malice engraved in the Marskhahir's soulless body. Few to match the strength with which the warhammer delivered Death.

And Desmundor knew...

The Hegemon walked with the witch-blade at hand, ignorant of the many mines, cannonfire and energy shocks blazing left and right. Carried by the wickedness of his will and the determination of his cause, he pierced through the ocean of Marskha, becoming a beackon for all of the primitives to rally behind. And they did. The horde grew to shape, an arrowhead heading straight for the main gate, as if his mind had already seen the massive structure openned.

The Marskhahir cleaved through, battling anything and anyone who stood an obstacle. A war machine of breathing malice, a champion of the Athysian War God worthy of legend.

Yet this, was not all the devils Desmundor had in store...

Adorned by gold and chained by durasteel, the Beast cracked the stone and ice on its wake. Pulled by the bravest of Marskha, the Beast resisted, casting many across the valley with a single swipe of its deadly gore-drenched claws. The Marskha pulled, kiting even the Markinimach Beast ever closer to the walls, until the very sensation of carnage drove it pure into a battle amok. The Dark Side revelled, ever stronger within the foul flesh of the mutated abomination dressed in elaborate armour and polished horns.

The Markinimach Beast finally was set free; Chains still attached, yet abandoned by the Marskha, as it entered a feral sprint, casting ice aside in its wake towards the walls. Its hulking shadow drenching the Hegemon in darkness, yet his eyes never abandoned their fixation. The Markinimach Beast grasped upon a sharp boulder, plucking it off the ground as its roaring echoed disturbing and mayhem-promising.

"Athysia is Unleashed." Desmundor reached out in the Force, calling upon each and every mind in the battlefield to join his revelation.

"Now you perish, under the Crimson Star!"

The War Beast thrusted itself against the gates, casting the boulder over the walls to crash any defending troops or machines alike under its weight, while the Beast itself pushed against the durasteel of the gate.

All Hail, the Gods of Pantheon!


All Hail, the Hegemon or SUFFER!​

 

[Lyanna Starborn]

Beneath the Ice.

Lyanna’s fingers twitched.

The pain came first. Then the voices.

The Force split itself across her senses—anguish, madness, hunger. It surged from the heavens, a maelstrom of old gods and broken war machines, screaming in tongues lost to sanity. The Similfuturus above trembled beneath the fury of it all.

Fauste’s balance broke for a heartbeat.

A heartbeat was all it took.

---

Above, upon the Imvonvol.

The hull groaned.

Not from damage—but defiance. The ship knew her. Not her name, not her station, but her stain. She had been marked. And now the bronze-and-blood spine of the Imvonvol flexed like a living thing beneath her boots.

The mist bled around her—a shroud of half-formed mouths and screams without tongues. Ethereal tissue surged in waves, binding the air into a phantom ocean of clawing, hissing rage. Fauste’s saber sang red in reply. But she was not alone.

“One for Death, Two for the Witch. Three for thee, most brave BITCH.”

The voice cackled from every gunmount. The turrets moved in perfect unity, possessed by a will not their own—gargoyle faces twisting as the cannons shrieked, belching streams of violet plasma into the fraying air.

The Force rippled.

The red energy turned to teeth.

Fauste dropped, twirling through the barrage. Her cloak seared away—skin kissed by the thousand biting threads of possessed energy, each a parasite of hate. She pushed forward through the blinding burst, her saber drawing a circle around her—a ward against the phantom swarm.

Then, motion—gravity broke.

The Imvonvol spun.

The world twisted around her, the horizon snapped to a spear, and she was flung as if the ship itself had rejected her presence. A castaway, hurled from the blood-slick hide of a beast-goddess drunk on war.

Fauste twisted mid-air, calling the Force to her limbs, burning through the sky as the Imvonvol spiraled toward orbit. But she wasn’t done. Not by far.

Her hand reached out.

And the Force reached back.

She caught onto the tip of a turret as it rotated, her arm nearly torn from the socket, and with a snarl of rage, she ripped it clean from its housing, flipping herself atop the dorsal fins.

She landed in a crouch.

Blood dripped from her arm.

She looked up.

“You want war?” Her voice echoed across the sky, down into the valley.

“Let me show you the ones who never stopped fighting.”

---

Beneath the Ice.

Lyanna gasped.

Desmundor was near. Too near.

His will pressed like a knife to her temple. He knew where she was—not precisely, but close enough. His blade beat a rhythm upon the world. Every step he took twisted the Force like a branding iron.

She felt the horde now—the Marskhahir atop the spire, shattering through the gates with his warhammer’s song. The others followed. And at the center of it—

That thing.

That Beast.

The Markinimach was not alive. It was wrought. A construct of pain and rage given bone and form. She felt its mind—a child’s scream echoing in a temple of slaughter.

She trembled—but not in fear.

In clarity.

The Force was speaking. Loud. Louder than it had in years.

“Athysia is Unleashed,” Desmundor roared.

“Now you perish, under the Crimson Star!”

Lyanna’s lips parted.

“So be it.”

One of the robed figures near her collapsed—his body dissolving into light. Another wailed, taken by the strain. But Lyanna did not look. She rose—eyes open now, hair drifting in the tomb’s chill wind. Blood dribbled from her nostrils beneath the strain.

The ice cracked.

The Similfuturus split in two.

Above, a second Fauste stepped from nothing—cloaked in dark flame, her saber no longer crimson but black. Its edge shimmered like obsidian wrapped in grief. She descended upon the Beast from the heavens.

The Marskhahir looked up—

And saw two Faustes.

One falling from the sky.

The other rising from below.

Tag; @Desmundor Alcademon @Hyara Hemstagon

 

[Desmundor Alcademon]

Light

Blazing. Burning. Blinding.

In a single moment of heavan-sent wrath, an explosion of light and fire consumed the facility's baily, as if a commet struck true behind the gates. Wings twitched, torn and charred limbs brought aloft, the warhammer fiery by the impact. The Marskhahir made ready to strike. And then...

Crack. Crack. Crack.

Black pitch spilled from its intestines, as the foul titan broke open, carved vertically in a near perfect swipe of Fauste's blade. As entrails spilled, the giant fell on the ground in a loud demolition of pride and bloodlust. Loud in sound, producing a quake to its demise as a final spite against the Starborn. Loud in the Force, a syphon of black rage suddenly silenced, a wound carved shut in a single pulse of light, as if the soulless hollows of the beast were revealed.

Desmundor saw it. His eyes did not, but his mind did. Clear and warped in time and space, Desmundor's wrath boiled within him.

"Break it... Open it... TEAR IT DOWN!"

In a swift motion, the Hegemon unsheathed his witch-blade and leapt on the Marktinimach Beast that kept battering the gates, before hurling himself once again over, high enough to present himself above the very rampart.

His hands extending, his eyes burning red. A storm of red lightning blasted from his very core, showering over the rampart to purge any and all who stood in its defence.

"Trickstery and Deceit shall not but postpone the inevitable, Lyanna-Fauste..."

The Witch-Blade burning in lightning, as the Hegemon stepped forth, lifting his weapon in provocation to the Similfuturus in the Bailey. His mind fixated to the task. His voice no longer caring to speak through tongue, for he only wanted one to listen, and she did so through the unspoken.

"I shall cleave through oceans of Fallacies to reach you. Each I slay, another nail on your skin. Another Soul, for the Black Lord."

---

The veins swole. Many of them breaking open, causing bulging wounds beneath the skin where the blood parted skin from tissue. Their hair were sticky by the washing of blood from above. The coalgulating blood burning on the cold obsidian floor, emitting smoke of foul energies into the artificial air of the chamber. The mask, pale and marked by red tears, covered the eyeless face of the Eyerhea, weeping in her seemingly perpetual torment, as shadows danced around her. Chains of bronze twitched, as the chorus of debauchery below rung in her mind, pushing her very will to the very edge of endurance.

Her essence drained. Pain reigned, demanding of sacrifices she had ran out of. The corpses hooked above her turned into dehydrated pieces of flesh, no longer offering.

Kill

She cried out, her voice a vomit of blood, septic and foul.

KILL

The cries echoed across the decks, a demand stretching far beyond the physical boundaries of Realspace.

Black bogs stagnant and craving, gradually following a flow made of false wind, leading to the black shadow that stood above them, as if stirred by an invisible will that lurked deep in the Netherworld...

Craving to break into Realspace once again...

KILL

 

[Lyanna Starborn]

The Bailey burned.

Fauste stood in the crater where the Marskhahir had fallen, steam rising from her robes, her saber humming its basso song—red and relentless. Blood clung to her armor in arterial streaks, black smoke curling from the gashes along her arms and legs. Around her, the ground was scorched clean by light and heat. Even the darkness had retreated, for a moment.

The moment passed.

Then the world screamed.

Desmundor.

Lightning—true Sith lightning—tore the sky open, raking across the ramparts like the claws of a god flaying the skin of mortals. Screams. Fire. The scent of burning hair and flesh. One of Fauste’s guards—Haran Tal—was turned to ash before her eyes, his body twisted backward as if crucified by the Force itself. Two more, sisters of the Order, died shielding another.

Fauste looked up.

And met him.

High above the battlements, the Hegemon stood. A figure of apocalyptic will, his body crowned in hellfire, his witch-blade like a curse given form. Words no longer needed breath. His thoughts slammed against her psyche like boulders through stained glass.

“I shall cleave through oceans of Fallacies to reach you. Each I slay, another nail on your skin. Another Soul, for the Black Lord.”

Fauste’s knuckles went white around her hilt.

“Then come, Desmundor. And know what it costs.”

Her voice was quiet. Not because she feared him. But because every syllable was soaked in control. Rage came easily. But discipline—that was the crucible that forged a Sith worth fearing.

Around her, survivors of the initial strike regrouped. Commander Nelyra staggered forward, armor cracked, a burn across her neck where her helmet had melted at the edge. A dozen more formed up behind her—some wounded, some limping, none unarmed.

“We’ve lost the turrets. Eastern perch is rubble. The gates—” Nelyra coughed blood, then spat. “The Beast’s making progress. But they’re holding. Just.”

The ground beneath them heaved, stone fracturing with a thunderous groan as the Marktinimach Beast slammed its monstrous bulk again into the doors. A hiss of hydraulics and tortured durasteel whined through the bailey.

Fauste narrowed her eyes. She felt it.

The gates—forged on Dxun, blessed in blood—were faltering.

---

Far below, in the obsidian vault…

Fauste’s twin self—Lyanna—screamed. Not aloud. Not in any way the crew could hear. But in the Force, her anguish burst like a dam.

The Eyerhea.

A node of agony in the web. She felt her. Tortured. Depleted. A wound screaming from the shadows, pouring filth into the lattice of reality.

And worse—

Something listened.

Black winds stirred where there were no winds. A tide forming beneath the deckplates. A whisper made of desire and rot. Something hungry, waiting to be called by a dying priestess and the chant of kill, kill, kill.

Fauste’s breath caught.

“Contain it,” she hissed. “NOW.”

---

In the Bailey.

“Ravik, Durael—form wards at the western arch. Do not let the shadow breach the faultline.”

“Yes, my Lady!”

“Nelyra—signal the fleet. We require orbital support. Mark the Beast. If the gates fall before I kill Desmundor, burn the valley.”

Nelyra hesitated. “That would kill—”

“Everyone.” Fauste turned. “Yes.”

A long silence.

Then Nelyra nodded once, blood trickling from her lips. “Aye, Lady Fauste.”

Fauste turned again to the walls, her saber raised, red as vengeance.

High above, Desmundor still stood—his will as vast as any storm. But she did not blink.

He would come.

And when he did, she would break him.

Not for glory.

Not even for vengeance.

But because in this moment, in this battlefield of fire and shadows, only one of them could reach the gate in time.

And only one of them was Lyanna Starborn.

---

Above the Ramparts.

Desmundor raised his burning blade in provocation, lightning arcing from his frame, the gates below groaning beneath the weight of the Marktinimach Beast. His rage had become scripture. His will—a doctrine carved into the bones of the dying.

And then—

She landed.

A second figure fell from the sky, slamming into the stone behind him with a shockwave that scattered the dust of the dead. Armor black as obsidian, cloak trailing like the shadow of midnight itself, and a lightsaber—black as tar—lit in her right hand.

Her face.

Fauste.

But not the one below, standing at the heart of the bailey like a goddess of judgment.

No.

This one was colder. Sharper. Her presence, a deep gravity of wrath and certainty.

She straightened slowly, rising like a blade drawn from the scabbard of war, and spoke in a voice that echoed not in sound, but in soul.

“Desmundor. Your war is a relic. Your hatred, a monument to nothing.”

He spun to face her, momentarily caught between two suns of the same star—one rising, one setting.

Before him, Lyanna-Fauste, wreathed in light, the crater at her feet still steaming with holy fire.

Behind him, Darth Fauste, shadow-clad and crimson-eyed, her saber humming like a death knell beneath the weight of her silence.

Two faces of the same storm.

Two Faustes.

Tag; @Desmundor Alcademon

 

[Desmundor Alcademon]

Silence.

Desmundor knelt, his witch-blade brought aloft. His eyes narrowed, possessed by feral rage contained in an urn of torment and Defiance. A single purpose the seal for the tomb never to open. His black hair yet to settle by the aftermath of the shockwave produced by Darth Fauste, barely farther than a sword's reach from the Hegemon. His breath turned heavy. Controlled and intentional, he did not allow any shard of wrath to escape him in vain. It was all for her. It was all for the Crimson Star... His gaze journeyed in the narrow moment of peace, as if enduring the tranquility in the storm's eye. He looked at Lyanna-Fauste, down at the bailey.

The ground shook as the Marktinimach Beast slammed once again against the bending durasteel of the gate. The refusal of it to open infuriated the monster. The cacophony of turbolaser turrets and war cries from the Marskha horde below a white noise. Desmundor had little care to indulge to the disturbance caused by a mayhem of his very own making. In many ways, in such moments of chaos, he felt an inexplicable sense of purpose made true. Irresistible. Unchanging.

"Hear them, Lyanna-Fauste. Hear their cries. Feel their rage."

His words echoes in the Force, casting terror to all but one. He cared little to face the weak. He cared little of lesser prizes.

"You are blind, still, Lyanna-Fauste."

Lightning summoned to the witch-blade. Its black crystal edge adorned crimson, screeching the omens of the battle to come.

"My War, is Rite. My Hatred, Prayer. And Death, my Sacrifice!"

His weapon thrusted forth, against Darth Fauste's chest, the lightning trapped in the blade cast forth in a ray of energy. His intent to force a block, only to divert his blade and strike a low sweeping blow, to open her from above, so his hand could reach for her throat.

---

From behind the walls, the Marskha had finally started clawing their way over the walls. The first of the champions stepping their foul hooves on the ramparts. Blood-thirsting and driven by the blasphemous rituals performed in the intestines of the warships looming above, they rushed to jump down in the Bailey, craving for the coming clash in matching fury as their overlord.

The Marskha were adorned with symbols of foul worship and histories of carnage. Their gear matching to their barbaric appearances, scarce and defiant of any reason on protection or practicality, serving only to further stimulate the already savage nature of their breed. In many ways, the Marskha resembled deformed devolved versions of the ancient Massassi, as if the two shared a common lineage lost in time before the reign of the Sith Emperor on Dromund Kaas.

Teeth of spikes snarled in gaping maws of thirsting rage. Unlike the Hegemon, they had no intention of holding back. There were no codes of honour, or pacts to be made save the blade and the running blood trailing their path until they too joined the unforgiving soil seeded with souls.

The Marskha champion, first among those who jumped into the Bailey, growled, uttering words that would drive many a mind to insanity simply by hearing. A perverted version of the High Sith tongue, spoken over the dual-faced axe made of black metal, with shards of broken kyber planted on it as if representing trophies of the Marskha's past victims. Lightsaber crystals.

"Kûts tadti', Misini nirtsi"

The Marskha jumped onto Lyanna-Fauste, his axe swung in diagonal cut, wielded by both hands to deliver a crushing blow.

 

[Lyanna Starborn]

Lyanna-Fauste (Light)

Her silver eyes flared—calm, cold stars eclipsed by battle’s fury. She turned as the Marskha Champion descended, his axe swinging down in a meteor of metal and malice. But her expression did not change. Her red lightsaber snapped up in a blur of red light, not to block—but to redirect.

Metal kissed plasma, and for a moment, the Force split between them like a cleft in reality. She pivoted, letting the axe slide past in a controlled fall, her left palm rising to meet the Marskha’s chest.

“You speak in stolen tongues. I reply in truth.”

From her hand, a blast of radiant Force energy surged forth—a wave of kinetic Light meant to shatter bone and halt his momentum. Her blade reversed in hand, brought to bear as she aimed to impale the abomination through the gut in a single, purposeful thrust.

---

Darth Fauste (Dark)

Blood sang in her veins. The black-clad doppelgänger snarled as Desmundor came at her with lightning and blade. She saw the feint the instant he committed—his posture screamed it. She let the arc of lightning strike her blade, absorbing the current in a deflective parry, her booted foot anchoring her as she leaned back with a sweep of her black cloak.

The low sweep came—she twisted, one hand guiding the blade downward as her other hand caught his reaching wrist. Her grip was vice-like.

“You always reach, Desmundor. And never grasp.”

With a grunt, she brought her knee upward, aiming for the gut, the lightsaber in her hand igniting to full length behind her as she struck—not to kill, not yet—but to injure. To punish.

---

Lyanna (True Self, Within the Caves)

Watching from within her prison of fractured sight, Lyanna stirred—her essence suspended between twin flames. One clothed in Light, the other in fury. But she saw them now, reflections of her will divided. One spoke with the voice of her lost innocence. The other, her vengeance and resolve.

Desmundor’s presence filled her with a cold, ancient dread. He was the harbinger. The wrong note in her galaxy’s symphony.

“They fight for me,” she thought, weak but unyielding. “Then I must endure—for them.”

---

The Starborn (Bailey Defenders)

All around them, the Bailey had become a storm of fury.

Captain Velyssa Thorne, her pauldron scorched and her arm bandaged from a bolt of Desmundor’s lightning, shouted over the din.

“Hold them! Buy the Faustes time!”

The remaining Starborn rallied to her cry, rallying behind half-fallen barricades, plasma halberds igniting. One trooper, his armor scored with claw marks, raised the banner of the Starborn high over the chaos.

Marskha poured in from the ramparts, but the Starborn met them with unwavering defiance. Gunfire and screams filled the air, but their line did not break—not while Fauste still stood.

They would not let her fall. Not again. Not to him.

Two Faustes. One War.

Tag; @Desmundor Alcademon

 

[Desmundor Alcademon]

Blood by the Bailey

The Marskhan axe descended. Brute strength and wrath of eons hammered down upon the false foe. In a single moment, as the axe buried into the stone in flame and shrapnel, the red blade hissed. Blood, black as pitch and thick as oil vomited from its torn chest. Bones revealed from beneath, the heart barely visible by the severity of the wound. A deafening screech cast the champion back, his hand twisting, yet denying to let go of the axe beside him.

His glare piercing, his maw foaming of rage. He picked his mighty axe once again and hurled himself against his adversary. As the weapon rose again, the Marskha was cast against the durasteel of the gate by the blinding light that poured from her hand. Before the very body of the Marskha bounced back from impact, the plasma of his foe's blade pierced through, nailing him against the metal. His hand reached, to grasp on Lyanna's hand and hold her in place, defiantly pulling the blade deeper in him.

His mouth flooding...

In a moment of wrath and of retribution, the Marskha surrounding the bailey charged against the she-warrior who had slain the champion, possessed by the tension of the moment. axes brought aloft, chains lashed like whips, adorned by spikes of black iron. Blades, curved and rusty, thrusted, hurled and swept, the savage aliens caring little of their personal safety in the process.

The One who Holds the Keys...​

The Marktinimach Beast slammed the gates. Roaring and fire blazed from outside, as the Hegemon pushed against Darth Fauste. The flames born of the siege, of burning turbolaser turrets and piercing plasma from above, an allegory of his blind rage brought forth, restrainned by unfathomable resilience and determination. A will to destroy. A will to dominate. A will to survive...

Unbroken.

Unchanged.

Unyielding.

His muscles swelling beneath the armour, pushing against Darth Fauste's grip. His witch-blade bleeding flames by the plasma bound on her. Neither of the contesters offering an openning. Two flawless machines of war bound in perpetual struggle.

An attempt in vain. Fauste's knee pushed against his abdomen only to strike against armour, layered over beast leather, layered over cloth. Desmundor's left boot planted further back, his other pushing onward in a cemented position. His body tightened by Force spells and decades of hardship, making a warrior true in body and soul alike.

"Diyij Athys Kûtji, Mis Zudyti"

"When an Athysian Bites, He Kills" ​

His Witch-Blade twisted, quick to restore the bind of the two deadly weapons, this time inbetween Fauste's and his face. A deadlock enforced by pride and preserved by sheer Defiance. Desmundor pressed on the more the challenge presisted. Suddenly, he offers a most-malevolent smile, in a sudden, almost unnatural shift of emotion.

"Your deception will not save you, Lyanna-Fauste..."

In a single moment, his immense pressure against Darth Fauste was yielded, the change rapid enough for muscles not to calibrate their effort in due. Using her push, as well as his own, he took a step back, leaping backwards over the Bailey as if whirled by the Force herself, passing above Lyanna-Fauste, to land farther back in the Bailey, by the entrance in the facility.

As soon as his boots made landing, his Witch-blade swung in a sweeping cut against any who dare hold against him.

Desmundor would enter the caves, and he would face his rival true.

Determined.

Demanding.

Deranged.

The Marskha died by the dozens, their brute force barely enough to pierce through the defences, though their flooding numbers bound to carve enough wounds to the defenders to bleed them into attrition. It mattered not. Nothing mattered, for the Hegemon, for his quest on Ilum had never been of strategic importance. The Marskha themselves, slave-race bound to his will by the sheer horror he managed to inflict upon their barbaric breed, not so long ago, in a demonstration of attrocity and power bestowed by the Gods of Athysia.


Tag; @Desmundor Alcademon

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[Lyanna Starborn]

Lyanna – Within and Without

The gates gave way.

A scream—not of a person, but of metal—ripped across the bailey as the Marktinimach Beast crashed through at last. Fire and shrapnel surged inward, sweeping the last of the barricades into cinders. The Starborn defenders died screaming, fighting to their last breath. Velyssa Thorne, the banner still in her grasp, burned away in the shockwave of the blast. Her mouth moved in silence as fire consumed her—a final curse, or perhaps a prayer.

Lyanna saw it all.

Through the eyes of her twin selves, she bore witness to her followers’ last stand. Saw them overrun, outnumbered, crushed beneath muscle and metal and brute hate. The Marskha flooded in. Her lightsabers tore them apart with clinical precision, blades flashing faster than thought—but they were infinite. They were legion. She was only one.

And Desmundor vanished, leaping into the depths like a wraith returning to its tomb.

A signal chimed through her intercom.

“Commander…?”

It was not from the surface. It came from the Migrant Fleet above. They had arrived. From the bridge of the SS Machiavellian, the command dreadnought that served as her home.

The order had been coded. A failsafe.

“The gates are breached.”

“The last of the surface forces are lost.”

“The Rite of Ruin must proceed.”

Her hand trembled.

Far above, the Starborn stealth vessels—silent daggers—pierced the skies unnoticed. While the rest of the Migrant Fleet engaged the Athysian battleline to delay their retaliation and fulfill the Rite, the fighters dropped payloads over the complex, their descent unannounced, undetected… unforgiven.

The sky burned.

The surface died.

All of it—a pyre.

And below, in the deep… she felt it.

The Similfuturus that bore her name, cloaked in light, staggered. The one dressed in shadow collapsed to one knee, coughing blood, eyes wild with pain. The balance shattered. The Force itself recoiled, crying out through their shared soul.

Darth Fauste—Lyanna Starborn—stood surrounded by corpses.

The chamber, cold and vast, once sacred to the Starborn, now reeked of burnt flesh and spilled dreams. Her Similfuturus had been drawn from them—volunteers, zealots, lovers of the cause. Now they were husks, pale and silent, faces contorted in awe or agony.

Lyanna’s hands were coated in their sacrifice.

And the Force…

…was screaming.

It tore through her, soundless but deafening. Blood poured from her nose, thick and heavy. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her fingers quaked. Her knees finally buckled, and she collapsed in the center of the circle, red and white robes soaked in crimson, her saber long extinguished.

She could hear them.

The dying.

The dead.

Her people.

And she wept.

A single, broken sob tore from her throat, more honest than any battle cry she had ever uttered. It was not Darth Fauste who cried now, but Lyanna Starborn—daughter of Eshan, exile of the stars. The warlord. The prophet. The failure.

“I failed them…” she whispered, voice cracking, lost to the void. “I failed you all…”

And in that moment—on bloodied knees, in a tomb of her own making—she felt something else.

A breath on her neck.

A warmth on her skin.

A voice. Gentle. Loving.

Cruel.

“No… no, my darling child. You have not failed.”

“They were always going to die.”

“Let me help you… give you what you deserve.”


“Let us avenge them. Together.”

Lyanna’s breath caught in her throat.

Something curled around her thoughts. A presence older than the Sith. Older than war. Sweet as honey. Soft as rot.

And for a moment… she almost said yes.

Tag; @Desmundor Alcademon