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The low hum of the lightsaber as its crimson blade passed just over her head made her ears ring, even from within the confines of her buy'ce. A second blade came from the side, swung in a wide arc that would have cut a lesser warrior in two—but Addilyn Theron’s reflexes were sharp, honed from years of training, a lifetime of conditioning, and she brought up her forearm to take the blow. Her bracer blocked the pulsing energy saber’s path, the impact causing sparks to fly. The carefully crafted beskar’gam resisted the searing heat, the steel glowing a dull orange as the ancient weapon’s gentle hum became a loud hiss.
Addilyn grunted beneath the force of its wielder’s swing, digging her heels into the dirt as she fought to hold her ground. He was strong. Powerful. Angry. And she could feel every bit of that anger in each swing, in every thrust and parry.
It was unfortunate that she should be both the source and target of such fury.
“Blood-thirsty savages,” he spat, pushing harder, causing her entire arm to ache with the effort to hold back the crimson blade. “What could he have possibly seen in you lot.”
With a surge of strength she wasn’t sure she could manage, Addilyn shoved the lightsaber’s energy beam off as she sidestepped her opponent, circling around so he no longer stood directly before her.
In a single, long practiced movement, she drew her own weapon: a sword of pure beskar, the emblem and heirloom of Clan Theron. With the blade now in hand, a certain measure of calm came over her, and she took full stock of her opponent.
“I don’t know who spat in your stew, darjetii,” she snapped, her breathing more labored than she would have liked, “but I don’t need much prompting to carve the heart from a jetii—fallen or not. So I’d consider your next words carefully.”
The man chuckled, strands of his long blond hair framing his handsome features as it escaped from a loosely tied ponytail. A scar ran diagonally across his face, from above his right eyebrow, over the bridge of his nose, to nearly the middle of his left cheek, his derisive sneer making the long healed wound all the more apparent.
“Your bluster would almost be amusing if it were not so grating,” he said, his arms now resting at his sides. The tips of his twin lightsabers hovered a mere hair’s breadth above the ground, causing it to sizzle and blacken. “And I’ve no patience to pretend to indulge your people’s misplaced pride in your barbaric ways.”
He came at her in a burst of speed no normal being should have been capable of, the lightsabers raised and poised to strike. Addilyn brought her own blade up, catching the swing only just before it came down. A pained grunt escaped her as the shock of the impact traveled down her arms and into her shoulders, but she maintained her hold on her weapon.
She stepped back, dipping the point of her blade downward as she did so. The movement caused the lightsabers’ blades to slip down and away from her torso, giving her a bare moment to bring her sword up and over her head in a swing toward the fallen Jedi’s shoulder.
But he was too fast, catching her attack with one of his blades as he parried, pushing her back another step.
Addilyn ground her teeth as she let out a frustrated growl, a dull ache forming at her temples and along her jaw from the pressure.
“What’s that, Mandalorian?” he sneered, bringing the lightsabers down for another blow. She parried the strike, but was forced to give another step. “I thought you wished to carve the heart from my chest.”
He continued to advance, his black cloak billowing outward with the force of his thrust. She brought up her left forearm, the lightsaber glancing off the beskar as if it were a mere vibroblade.
“A shame that your prize has long since withered and died.” He stood before her, the light from his blood-red blades illuminating his features. From this proximity, she could see that his eyes seemed to glow a bright gold, the smallest flecks of scarlet rimming the irises. “And now your people add insult to injury and fill the cavity with soot and ash.”
He struck again, the power behind the blow nearly causing her to stumble. Her hands were almost numb from the death grip she had on her sword hilt, each strike of the lightsaber causing the steel to shudder violently in her grasp.
“We’ve done no such thing,” she gasped out, resisting the urge to sag where she stood. She was so tired. It was taking everything she had to just defend against his strikes, and he left little time for her to find an opening to land one of her own, much less actually exploit it. “As much as I would love to claim otherwise.”
The fallen Jedi’s gaze darkened, his teeth bared. “You had no claim to him!”
In a flash of red, his lightsabers came down upon her. The first glanced off her bracer, but the shock of the blow made her recoil, leaving her open to the second. The blade cut through her kute, along the unprotected section of her bicep, the tip of the blade seering the skin beneath it.
Addilyn staggered, barely managing to choke back the cry that sat at the back of her throat. The wound burned worse than any blaster fire she had ever taken, the pain almost causing her to drop her sword—but she held on, bringing the blade up just in time to catch his follow up attack.
She didn’t bother to hold in her pained yelp as the strike reverberated up her arms, her muscles flexing to push against the strength he put into the swing.
“You plunder, you pillage, you conquer,” he said, his voice low and menacing. Resentful. Furious. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? You take what isn’t yours. Credits, homes, planets, lives.”
He spun suddenly then, landing a roundhouse kick to her unprotected side. Her armor took the brunt of the blow, but the force behind it knocked her off balance, nearly pushing her to the old and cracked asphalt.
“And you don’t just kill them, do you?” He advanced, his lightsabers held at his sides. “You take them for yourselves. Make them yours. Make them forget anything from before.”
He kicked out again, this time toward her abdomen. A low gong filled the air as his heel made contact with her abdominal armor, the beskar blade falling from her grasp with a loud clatter.
“That’s not how it works,” she choked out, gasping for air. She blinked a few times in rapid succession, and her HUD lit up, arming the small blaster built into her left bracer. “That’s not what happened.”
“Then why did he leave me behind?!” he roared, moving in a blur of black robes and glowing blades. Addilyn raised her arm and fired, the blaster bolts ricocheting off of the lightsabers harmlessly—but it made him hesitate, a split second in which he faltered, allowing her a moment to arm the wrist rocket installed in the opposite bracer.
He must have heard the device’s soft whine, the slight click as the rocket slid into place, as he threw his weapons to ground, their dull hum abruptly silenced.
And raised a hand toward her.
As if someone had wrapped a noose around her neck and pulled it taut, her throat suddenly constricted. She reached up to claw at her neck, her instincts reaching for whatever was attempting to strangle her—and yet there was nothing there, not even the hint of a rope or cable.
But the fallen Jedi was, his hand outstretched and clenched into a fist, a malicious smile painted upon his lips.
“He never would have left me behind like that, not if he had a choice.” His voice was low, a dangerous edge to each word. She struggled to hear him, to focus on that dark baritone rather than the black void that began to rim her vision. “Not if you hadn’t tricked him—no, forced him into treasonous acts of assisted desertion.”
Every breath was a wheezing gasp, each one weaker than the last. Addilyn felt her limbs begin to go numb, her chest burning with the need for oxygen. She grappled for something, anything—but she couldn’t concentrate on the needed pattern of blinks to arm a weapon, couldn’t focus on where the button was on her glove to fire the blaster.
The inside of her helmet seemed dimmer, the fallen Jedi’s voice more muffled. Everything was fading…
But she could still hear him, however far away he seemed to be. “He was my brother. My brother! And you took him for yourself. Like the barbarian you are.”
There was a moment of serenity, of peace, as Addilyn felt her body slacken, the weight of her armor pulling her hands down and away from her neck. That darkness at the edge of her vision called to her, promised her relief. She wanted to fall into it, to escape this airless prison, to breathe deeply and uninhibited …
And then, as if the noose around her neck had been cut, she was suddenly released, and she fell in a heap to the hard ground. She ripped off her helmet, gasping and choking as she grasped at her throat, struggling to take in air with each wheezing breath.
Addilyn felt someone next to her, a gentle hand at her back. “Breathe, Add’ika,” a familiar voice said, soft and calming.
She fumbled for the hand on her back, her voice a quiet rasp as she clung to her sister. “Beth’ika.”
A shadow fell over her as she retched, a pair of armored boots blocking her view of her attacker. And as her mind began to clear, the fog of death parting to allow her passage back to the world of the living, she forced herself to look up and fully take in the visage of her savior.
Duane Adelier—the banished Jedi, forgotten and abandoned by the Force—stood between her and her adversary. He wore beskar’gam of his own, the metal painted a deep forest green. His helmet was nowhere to be seen, leaving his anguished expression exposed and open for all to see.
“Lemuel, stop this!” he commanded, voice booming.
A dark, derisive laugh echoed throughout the abandoned city streets, and Lemuel Adelier shook his head, as if in disbelief. “You’d protect them? These warmongers? Have they so easily bled the Jedi way from you, brother?”
The agony carved into Duane’s face only deepened, his hands held out before him. Whether it was an entreaty of peace or the restrained desire to embrace his younger brother, Addilyn couldn’t tell. “Lemuel, what’s happened to you?”
Another chuckle. Lemuel tilted his head back, looking up toward the gray, darkening sky. “You’ve left me. Truly. Utterly.”
“Left you?” Duane shook his head, taking half a step forward before stopping himself. “They banished me. Severed my connection to the Force—”
“And you left me!” Lemuel roared, a new agony born upon his own features.
Beth helped Addilyn to her feet as she continued to gasp for air. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Addilyn wheezed, pushing off of her sister so she stood straight. Another violent coughing fit wracked her body, doubling over as she gagged. Her throat burned with a searing pain, the muscles along her neck spasming with each heave. It felt like a steel cable had been wound around her throat, the skin and tendons bruised and ravaged—all without ever having been touched.
She felt Beth place a hand on her shoulder, the simplest comfort she could offer. Were it not for the fact that her buy’ce lay discarded at her feet, Addilyn would have wept at the overwhelming relief the contact provided.
“I couldn’t take you with me,” Duane said, almost pleading. “They wouldn’t let me. How could you think—”
“And so you go to them?” Lemuel pointed an accusatory finger toward Addilyn and Beth. Addilyn couldn’t help the snarl that pulled at her lips. “You find a new family? A replacement for the one you abandoned to shoulder the weight of war and death alone?”
Duane fell silent, his hands now hanging limp at his sides. “Lemuel, I swear to you—”
“Swear all you want,” Lemuel cut him off, “I’d have preferred you dead to this betrayal. I had hoped you dead, killed by this lot rather than this.” Another laugh, this one far more broken, far more ragged. A strange sensation pulled at Addilyn’s chest as she watched his shoulders slump. “You are lost to me, either way. At least in death, there is no further torment left to endure.”
“I am not lost to you.” Desperation laced Duane’s words, his voice cracking. “Just as you are not lost to me. Even now, even after—”
“After what, Duane?” Lemuel snapped. “After persisting in the wake of your absence? Overcoming the Purge? Joining their ranks in the name of survival? Finally tapping into the potential the Jedi were too afraid to unleash?”
Another laugh, this one more sinister, more bitter. Addilyn shivered.
“I make no apologies for who I am. Who I’ve become.” Lemuel opened his hands where they hung loosely at his sides. The hilts of his lightsabers shot up from where they had laid discarded on the ground and into his palms. “Not when I survived while countless others were cut down and slaughtered. All alone, all while my brother played house with savages.”
“Say another word against us and I will have your head, aruetii,” Addilyn rasped, taking half a step forward before Duane held out his arm, blocking her path.
Lemuel tilted his head to the side, the anguished fury on his face melting into a malicious amusement. “Had my dear brother not so rudely interrupted us, pet, your neck would be in splinters and your armor mounted and displayed on my ship. I’d not go around making such bold threats, were I you.”
A deep, all consuming anger took root in her abdomen as she lurched forward, only just barely held back as Beth latched onto her forearm.
“Not now,” she hissed. “Not now, Add’ika.”
"Yes, little she-Mando,” Lemuel intoned, “listen to your handler. It’s time to go back into your cage.”
An enraged howl escaped her then, her blood pumping hot and fast beneath her flesh as she fought to escape her sister’s grasp. She felt her face flush with shame, with the indignity of defeat, and, worst of all, with the baseless slander this hateful darjetii dared to sling at her clan.
“Lemuel, stop,” Duane begged, moving to help Beth restrain Addilyn. Lemuel only chuckled anew. “There’s no need for this.”
“I disagree,” he said, clipping his lightsaber hilts onto his belt. “But, then again, it doesn’t seem we’ll be agreeing on much anymore, does it?”
For but a fraction of a second, Addilyn would swear that a deep sadness dulled the bright golden glow of his eyes. As if, for that briefest of moments, whatever mask he had donned to survive in this ruthless and cold galaxy had slipped, revealing the scared younger brother that still hid beneath its surface.
But then it was gone, and his golden eyes were as sharp and deadly as a hidden dagger. “Mark my words, Duane. This new family of yours will die by my hand. One by one, they will fall to my blades screaming and begging for a mercy I will not deign to grant them. I will not rest until you are left as broken and alone in this damned universe as I was.”
Addilyn stiffened, her fingers flexing and curling into tightly balled fists. Such boldfaced threats could not go unanswered, could not go unpunished. She went to pull herself from Beth's grasp again, prepared to knock her to the ground and dive straight under Duane's outstretched arm—but her sister grasped at her elbow, her hold tight, her wordless plea as clear as if she had spoken it.
Not now, vod'ika. Not yet.
Addilyn stilled, her jaw set. Duane had told them of his brother, of a young Jedi he had left behind in the wake of his banishment. He spoke of his easy charm and talent in battle, of his undying loyalty and love for his older brother. He had seemed a decent man—for a Jedi, at least.
But none of these pleasant memories Duane had recounted to them seemed to hold true, the man standing before them the antithesis of a loving brother and charismatic general.
No, this was not the man she had thought they would one day meet. Neither in character nor strength.
Addilyn sighed deeply and unclenched her fists, grinding the seething anger surging within her into submission as she silently yielded to Beth's council.
“Lem—” Duane tried, but Beth reached out a hand, shaking her head. He looked stricken in a way Addilyn had never seen before. Even when he had shown up at their compound, deaf and blind to the universe for the first time in his life, he had not looked so defeated, so devoid of hope. It made her heart ache.
A dark smirk pulled at Lemuel's lips, the handsome scar upon his features stretching slightly with the movement. Almost imperceptibly, his golden gaze flickered toward Addilyn, and their eyes met. She felt her muscles pull taut beneath her armor, her heart quickening where it lay within her chest, her every instinct pushing her to either fight or flee.
But he only allowed his smirk to widen, and offered her a low, mocking bow. “Until then, pet. May my shadow haunt your every step, and may you live in fear of the day it appears at your door.”
As he straightened, he pulled up the hood of his black cloak before strolling off into the looming darkness, vanishing as if absorbed by the shadows.