The Music Stops

Posted on Thu Feb 26th, 2026 @ 11:41pm by Bomoor Thort & Thane

3,548 words; about a 18 minute read

Chapter: Chapter VIII: Broken Chains
Location: Private Dining Area, Wyrd Estate, New Alderaan
Timeline: Day Seven, Early Evening

OLD

Wordlessly, knowing the time for talk was done, she sprung towards the doorway to the dining area. As she flung the door open, she heard the crackling snap of the Human's lightsaber igniting. Even in the heat of the moment, she sensed the blade's resistance and filed the thought away for later use. She didn't need to see to know that he would be upon her soon. She had mere moments to duck into the servants' tunnels; bolting across the table, she slid into the faux panelling that concealed the entrance, closing it behind her with controlled haste.

With that, she was away, secure in the labyrinth of tunnels that he would be foolish to pursue her through. He had shown his intent and she was glad: next time they met, there would be no need for words. She would end him.

NEW

The private dining chamber was smaller than the ballroom, but no less curated.

Lord and Lady Wyrd sat at the head of a long polished table. Bomoor occupied a seat along its flank, posture composed despite the intimacy of the setting. Select retainers stood along the walls, ceremonial guards positioned near the doors and the tall, arched windows overlooking the gardens below.

The doors opened without announcement and Thane stepped inside.

Conversations immediately stopped. The Sith did not hurry. He did not acknowledge the guards, and he did not look at Bomoor first. His gaze settled on the Lord.

The doors behind him closed. Not gently, but firmly. A muted thud echoed through the chamber as the locks were forced to engage by unseen power.

One of the guards reached instinctively for his sidearm.

He never drew it, however.

The weapon lifted from its holster as if reconsidering its allegiance. The guard stiffened as his arm rotated outward under invisible pressure, the muzzle aligning not with Thane, but with the man beside him. Across the room, a second guard felt the same compulsion. Two blasters rose in unwilling symmetry, aimed at one another’s chest.

No one fired - no one could, even has their hands shook ever so slightly in resistance and under the pressure.

Thane extended his will further. The tall windows shuddered. Heavy internal shutters slid down from concealed recesses, sealing the room from the night beyond. Light dimmed and sound from the distant festivities dulled to a distant murmur.

The chamber became self contained.

Thane remained where he stood. His hands empty of any weapon and when he spoke, his voice was level.

"You will sit," he said to the retainers that had started, not raising his tone. He opened further through the Force, and Bomoor could see now, with absolute clarity, the molten swirl of the dark side glowing eerily from his friend's eyes.

Only once they sat, largely unwillingly, did Thane step forward, standing before them. He looked first to Bomoor. A brief meeting of eyes. An understanding passed without words, but then his attention returned to Lord and Lady Wyrd.

"We are done with performance," he said calmly, and then his eyes drifted quickly back to the Ithorian. "I trust you're well, Bomoor?" The question was genuine, even as Thane was visibly focusing hard on his use of the Force to manage the room.

"Quite alright, thank you," Bomoor spoke as he arose slowly and pushed his chair in, casting a gaze between his friend and the Lordly couple at the head of the table, "I take it the time for a proper discussion is at hand, then?"

There was a satisfaction in his ever-melodic voice, as though he had slipped into more comfortable attire, although outwardly still garbed in his diplomatic finery.

The Ithorian then glanced at the other select guests at the table, "Shall we keep this a private discussion? We've had enough gossip for the evening already."

Bomoor lifted one hand, almost lazily, and the couple beside him slumped forward into deep, dreamless sleep. Across the table, the women opposite followed a heartbeat later. The last man wavered, blinking heavily, until a small, almost absent‑minded gesture from the Ithorian eased him under as well.

At the sight, Lady Wyrd shot up with a gasp, "You can't!" she shrieked.

Lord Wyrd did not rise. He did not allow Lady Wyrd's outburst to become the temperature of the room. His hand lifted slightly, not towards her, but in a small restraining gesture that asked for composure without asking permission.

"My lady," he said quietly, and the words carried in the chamber as if the stone approved of them, "enough."

His gaze did not go to Thane. It settled on Bomoor instead, as though the Ithorian were the only reasonable authority present, the only one to whom this could be spoken without humiliation.

"Master Thort," Caelric said, tone controlled, "this is not a forum for coercion. You and your companions were invited as guests under a private arrangement. I have extended courtesy in good faith. If this is to become an act of force, I must insist we end it here, for all our sakes." Only then did his eyes shift, at last, to Thane. The look was not fear. It was the measured disdain of a man who still believed his world ran on consent. "You have sealed my dining chamber," he continued, evenly. "You have compelled my staff. You have turned my own guards into weapons. If you believe this is diplomacy, then you are poorly advised."

Thane listened without interruption. He did not blink at the accusation. His hands remained empty, the absence deliberate, almost pointed, and the pressure in the room held steady as if he were choosing how much air everyone was allowed to have.

"This is not diplomacy," Thane said. "Diplomacy is the language of peers who still have the option to refuse."

He took one step forward, no hurry in it, but there was a contained heat behind the movement that had not been present a moment ago, something forced into restraint rather than absent. His jaw tightened and the words that followed were cleaner for the effort.

"Where is she."

Caelric's expression did not change. If anything, it grew more still.

"The Miralukan," Thane continued, and the controlled cadence of his voice did not disguise the anger beneath it. "The blind one who speaks for your house when it wants to pretend it is not speaking for itself. I want her brought here now."

There was the smallest hitch of something held back, and it was the only tell. Thane's eyes fixed on Caelric with a precision that felt like a blade's point.

Caelric's gaze flicked briefly towards the shutters, towards the doors sealed by power he could not contest, then returned to Thane without yielding ground.

"You speak as though you are entitled to demand the movements of my household," Caelric replied. "You are not."

There was no visible movement from Thane. He did not raise a hand. He did not shift his stance. He merely regarded Lord Wyrd with a stillness that felt increasingly deliberate.

"Entitled," he repeated softly.

Across the table, Lady Wyrd drew in a breath to speak and did not finish it. At first it seemed hesitation. Her mouth parted, but no sound followed. Her hand rose to her throat, fingers brushing lightly against skin as though adjusting a collar that was not there.

Caelric’s eyes flicked to her, irritation forming before understanding did.

"Elyce?" he said, the name controlled, then sharper. "Elyce."

She attempted another breath. It came shallow, thin, as if the air in the room had thickened only around her. The colour began to drain from her face, not dramatically, but steadily, a subtle blanching that no one at the table could mistake.

Thane did not look at her. His gaze remained fixed on Caelric.

"You mistake the situation," he said, voice level. "I am not demanding the movements of your household. I am correcting the fiction that you still govern it."

Lady Wyrd’s fingers tightened at her throat. A faint rasp escaped her, more reflex than voice.

From the corner of his vision, Thane saw Bomoor shift and felt a hint of his unease: a small, uneasy adjustment of weight, the kind a man makes when instinct urges him to intervene but reason holds him still. The Ithorian’s presence in the Force wavered, not in outright opposition, but in discomfort, a quiet ripple of concern that brushed against Thane’s focus. He did not look at his friend. He did not need to. Bomoor understood his intent well enough, but Thane also knew that killing the woman would mean more to his friend than it would to him, especially with the memory of his mother’s death still raw beneath the surface.

Caelric rose halfway from his chair without realising he had done so.

"Stop this," he said, composure cracking along a fine seam. "Release her."

Thane’s expression did not change. The pressure did not increase, but neither did it ease.

"Where is the seer," he asked again.

Caelric’s eyes moved between his wife and the Sith before him, calculation dissolving into something closer to fear. He reached for Elyce’s arm as though physical contact might anchor her back into air.

"This is madness," he said, the words no longer perfectly measured. "You presume to judge what you do not understand! You walk into a structure older than your title and speak of correction!"

Lady Wyrd’s breathing hitched, a thin, strangled sound escaping despite her effort to remain composed. Her eyes widened, not in hysteria, but in the dawning awareness that this was not theatre.

Thane’s jaw tightened, a flicker of something hotter passing behind the control. "I understand enough," he said quietly. "Enough to know that your stability is purchased. Enough to feel the distortion beneath your foundations. Enough to know that the blind woman serves as more than adviser." His voice sharpened by a fraction. "Where is she."

Caelric’s composure fractured fully then, not into rage, but into panic carefully contained.

"You would kill her for answers?" he demanded, though the stagger in his voice betrayed him. "In my own house? Before witnesses?"

Thane’s eyes hardened.

Lady Wyrd’s body trembled faintly as another shallow gasp failed to fill her lungs.

"Tell me where the seer has gone," Thane continued, each word precise. "And you will watch your wife draw air as easily as she did a moment ago." He took a single step closer to the table, and the room seemed to contract around the three of them. "Then," he added, colder still, "you will name your pact with Axion aloud. No more implication. No more stewardship rhetoric. You will speak it clearly, so that everyone here understands exactly what House Wyrd has bound this world to."

Lady Wyrd’s vision began to blur. Caelric gripped her arm, the mask of aristocratic proportion gone entirely now.

"She is not here," he said, the words breaking as he forced them out. "Glynt would have left the chamber. She'll have gone into the lower corridors. I did not - I cannot - summon her back!" His eyes locked with Thane’s, desperate and furious all at once. "Release her!" He was pleading now. "And we will speak!"

Caelric’s answer hung in the sealed chamber, thin with strain.

For a moment longer, nothing changed.

Lady Wyrd’s breath continued to fail her in shallow, soundless pulls. Her fingers trembled at her throat. Across the long table, the unconscious guests remained slumped in perfect, unnatural stillness, heads bowed as if in exhausted reverence. Along the walls, the two guards stood rigid, arms still locked by invisible constraint, blasters held in unwilling symmetry. Sweat had begun to gather at their temples. Their eyes moved, but nothing else did.

No one in the room could intervene.

Thane regarded Caelric without blinking. The gold that had once threatened his irises no longer hid beneath any of the false blue. It had surfaced fully now, not molten and diffuse as it often appeared, but sharpened, glinting, truly metallic. The colour did not look Human. It caught the low light in fractured reflections, as though something beneath the surface were refracting it back out into the room.

He did not raise his voice.

"You built this on fear," he said quietly and coldly. "You sustained it through transaction. You convinced yourself it was stewardship." Lady Wyrd’s knees buckled slightly in her chair. "And you dare speak to me of entitlement."

There was a fractional tightening in the air, one last invisible turn of pressure.

Then, Lady Wyrd collapsed forward, dragging in a ragged, desperate breath that tore audibly through her throat. The sound was ugly and real. Colour flooded back into her face in uneven patches as her lungs fought to remember their function.

Caelric was already moving. He caught her before she struck the table fully, pulling her upright with shaking hands, the mask of composed nobility gone entirely now. He pressed his palm to her cheek, then to her throat, as if confirming that air truly returned. His breathing had quickened without his permission.

"Elyce," he said, the name breaking despite him. "Elyce."

Thane's gaze remained fixed on Caelric, gold and unblinking, and there was no triumph in it. No visible pleasure - only certainty.

"I will not ask again," he said.

The room remained sealed. The guests remained asleep. The guards remained trapped in their own unwilling tableau.

"Name it," Thane continued, voice level once more. "Name your pact with Axion. Tell me what lies beneath this estate and why it was bound. Tell me what you have traded for this fragile imitation of Alderaan."

Bomoor finally stepped forward, the movement slow but unmistakable. Caelric flinched at the approach, a reflexive recoil that made the Ithorian halt mid‑stride and angle his head in a sidelong glance.

"I thought I might sooth her breathing," the Öetragan gestured towards Elyce before adding more sternly, "While you concern yourself with answering the question before I have to help you too."

Elyce rasped, words not yet finding shape. Her hand groped blindly until it found Caelric’s robe, and she pulled herself upright with trembling effort.

She took in a deeper breath now and lifted her gaze. Her eyes, bloodshot and wide with fear, fixed on Thane.

"Let them..." she managed, voice thin and raw, "Let them find her... if that's what they want."

Thane did not answer Elyce. He did not even look at her. His eyes remained on Caelric, the gold now unmistakable, bright and unnatural against the dimmed chamber. It was not a flare of temper. It was a presence, held and focused.

"Speak," he said.

Caelric swallowed. Elyce clutched at his sleeve, drawing steadier breath now, though her hand still trembled. Bomoor’s shadow fell across them both, immense and patient. The guards remained locked in their unwilling stances. The other guests lay collapsed in their induced sleep, faces slack, utterly unaware of the fracture running through the heart of the house.

Caelric’s voice came quieter than before, but clearer.

"It is not what you think." He looked past Thane for a fraction of a second, toward the shuttered windows, as though the gardens beyond might lend him strength. "There is no engine," he continued. "No machine humming beneath us. No twisted relic feeding upon prisoners, or whatever you've imagined. You search for something you recognise because that is how your mind categorises power." His gaze returned, steadier now. "What lies beneath this estate is an older magic. It is a seam. A place where the world never quite settles. When Alderaan was destroyed, and New Alderaan was raised from grief and desperation, and House Wyrd rose amongst the first. But, the land was infertile, weak. Crops failed. Alliances faltered. Friends and family turned against one another... We faced extinction." He tightened his hold on Elyce slightly, protective rather than possessive. "The Lord Wyrd, the one who made the pact... he did not seek dominion. He sought containment. The bargain was not conquest. It was binding. He offered will in exchange for stability - for just minor success. A presence to anchor the seam. A consciousness woven into the grief of our world - of our house's suffering."

Thane said nothing, digesting the explanation with cool interest and dismay.

Caelric pressed on, the words coming faster now, not from panic but from conviction long carried in private.

"You feel distortion because there is distortion. Yes, it grants influence. Yes, it tempers resistance. But without it, the ground beneath this estate does not merely shift. It dies. We die." His eyes searched Thane’s face for any sign of understanding. "You believe you are exposing corruption, but you are threatening infrastructure, security... Purpose! This house is not merely a family with an arrangement - it is the brace in a broken ribcage. Remove it without precision and the whole chest collapses!"

Elyce’s fingers tightened again in his robe,but Caelric did not take his eyes off Thane.

"You have your wars," he said, more firmly now. "Your strange philosophies. Your crusades against cults and monsters. Go and play lord, or Jedi, or whatever new title you are fashioning for yourself somewhere else. House Wyrd should be nothing to you." He drew a slow breath. "Axion should be nothing to you. A shadow that frightens provincial minds and whispers in old corridors. Do not mistake proximity for importance... This arrangement was made for New Alderaan - for us. It binds us here, gives us tiny comforts and a glimmer of power. It does not concern Caanus. It does not concern Öetrago. It does not concern the wider Republic, truly, unless you choose to make it so."

The chamber felt smaller now, a brief pause between them all.

"Just... walk away," Caelric added, his voice dry, the last of the aristocratic polish gone, replaced by raw appeal. "Forget what you think you have sensed. Leave the seam contained. Leave my house intact. If you interfere without understanding, you do not merely topple a family - you loosen something that has been kept in check for generations."

Silence followed and the guests slept on. The guards were still strained, powerless. Elyce leaned against her husband, breathing uneven but alive, and Caelric waited, knowing that the decision no longer belonged to him.

Thane did not move. His eyes held steady, cold and reflective.

"You mistake me," he said quietly. "I am not here to parade your sins before the Republic. I am not interested in your minor influence or your curated stability. If what you describe is true, then what lies beneath this estate is not gossip to be traded. It is something that must be seen - and destroyed."

His gaze shifted briefly to Bomoor, the edge softening by a fraction. "Please, come with me," he said, not as command, but invitation. "We should do this together, this time."

At the edges of the chamber, the invisible hold released not into freedom but into absence. The guards’ arms fell slack, blasters clattering against polished stone as their bodies followed, collapsing heavily beside the sleeping guests.

Bomoor looked around at the fallen guardsmen, nodding slowly in agreement and with some degree of approval at his friend's methods.

"Certainly," he announced his agreement, before edging away from the noble couple once more, "There is nothing more for us up here. I should have sensed the vizier's misdirection at once but she won't feel as confident answering to the two of us."

Thane's attention returned to Caelric.

"You are correct about one thing, my lord. Axion is nothing. A shadow in old corridors. His rule here ends tonight. If House Wyrd intends to survive what follows, you will accept that truth as well." He inclined his head towards Lady Elyce, almost courteous. "You will take us below - your husband remains here."

Lady Wyrd swallowed and steadied herself, one hand still clutching Caelric’s sleeve, the other pressed to her chest as though to reassure herself that she was indeed breathing. Her eyes flicked to her husband, then back to Thane's.

When her voice emerged, it was hoarse but proud, "Whatever you do or say... Whatever you think about what we are and what this family has done... you won't ever diminish my pride in this house."

She released Caelric's sleeve and brought herself to her full height, slight though she still was.

"These grand halls, these lush gardens, the rich lives of our patrons... none of it would have happened were it not for his sacrifice. It is his legacy and you will never besmirch it. I will take you to him and perhaps then you will understand that what you name as 'corruption', we call devotion, duty and love."

She stepped aside from Caelric, the movement small but decisive. He reached out a hand weakly before collapsing it into a fist defeatedly, his brow furrowed and his eyes to the ground.

"Come then, Thane of Caanus, Bomoor of Öetrago," she carefully strode forward, muscles still trembling with a radiating fear she fought to suppress, "Your truth awaits."

TBC

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