The Shadows Under Mantell
Posted on Sat Mar 28th, 2026 @ 6:15pm by Axion & Amare
3,933 words; about a 20 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter VIII: Broken Chains
Location: Coastline, Ord Mantell
Timeline: Six weeks after New Alderaan / Three Weeks after Corulag
Ord Mantell's western coast had always been a place where rumours travelled faster than official reports.
The shoreline settlements clung to the jagged cliffs like barnacles, their docks extending into black water thick with trade vessels, fishing craft and smugglers' cutters. Cargo changed hands in shadowed warehouses and deals were struck in taverns that smelled of salt and engine coolant. The Third Republic rarely concerned itself with the details.
Over the past decade or so, however, something stranger had begun circulating among the dockworkers and fish merchants - stories of "The Church".
No formal temple and no sermons in the open squares... only whispers among the nets and the tide pools. Fishermen spoke of strange chanting heard beneath the cliffs during the night tides and smugglers claimed to have seen shapes moving far beneath their hulls in waters that should have been empty.
Others, however, spoke of the Leviathan.
A vast creature that rose from the depths when summoned; it was a god to those who worshipped it, or a weapon to those who commanded it. No one seemed entirely certain which was true.
The Red Raptor crew had followed those whispers for three weeks, tipped off, curiously, by rogue accounts from Caanan academics that were showing interest in such folk legends - and it had reached Thane.
Cargo manifests traced to certain night deliveries, whilst certain payments moved quietly through shell accounts, as well as a cluster of disappearances among dockworkers who had asked too many questions all married up with these queer tales. Piece by piece, the rumours formed a pattern that led to the tidal caverns beneath the old lighthouse at the edge of the coast.
The assault had begun shortly after midnight. The lighthouse itself had become the surface headquarters of the cult enclave; its beacon no longer guided ships but instead pulsed irregular signals into the dark sea below. Thane and Mentis had moved directly against it, cutting through the upper chambers where the cult's outer defenders had fortified themselves. The beam of the lighthouse now flickered intermittently as the fighting worked its way upward through the tower.
Along the waterfront, Bomoor advanced through the docks like a storm front. Crates were overturned and cultists fled through narrow alleys between warehouses, as the towering Ithorian forced his way through their ranks. Rex coordinated the assault from a commandeered signal shack near the harbour entrance, working in tandem with Reave to block outgoing transmissions and jam the cult's internal communications.
Several of the local dockworkers had risen alongside them, led now by the powerful Ithorian serving as their figurehead and vanguard.
Fear had ruled the shoreline for months. Nets destroyed and boats sunk. Friends had been dragged beneath the water by something enormous that answered the cult's call. When the Raptor arrived offering a chance to break the Church's hold, many had taken up whatever weapons they could find.
The docks burned in scattered places now.
And beneath the cliffs, hidden below the reach of moonlight and surf, another hunt had taken place.
The 'Deacon' of the Church had fled downward into the drowned sanctum from which the cult had first begun its rites.
And Amare had followed...
Cold seawater spilled from the cavern entrance in steady streams, draining back down irregularly to the dark ocean. The water surged through the passage with slow, rhythmic breaths that echoed across the stone chamber beyond.
The cave itself was enormous, accessible only via a series of underwater tunnels. Its ceiling vanished into darkness high above the waterline, where jagged formations of rock hung like teeth. The walls were lined with the immense bones of creatures long dead. Rib cages the size of transport hulls had been embedded into the stone like grisly monuments, and veterbrae thicker than pipes formed crude pillars around the perimeter of the chamber.
Many of the bones had been carved. Ancient markings cut deep into their surfaces. Spiralling shapes and unfamiliar glyphs that had weathered countless centuries of salt air and shifting tides. Some of the cave art stretched across entire sections of the wall, depicting vast shapes rising from black water beneath strange constellations.
None of it belonged to any modern civilisation, aside from occasional markings not unlike those in Cloud City or in the Wyrd Estate.
Closer to the cavern floor lay fragments of something else entirely - broken structures of blackened metal and crystalline latticework half buried in the sediment. Their design was angular and unnatural, as though the geometry itself resisted the natural curves of the cave around it. Several pieces still bore faintly glowing seams that pulsed weakly with dormant energy.
It was Rakatan.
The shapes carried the same unsettling design language Amare had seen within the Mind Prison on Korriban during their confrontation with the Bastard Hammer. The same impossible symmetry - the same sense that the technology had been built not merely to function but to dominate the space around it.
The pieces here were ancient beyond reckoning, yet someone had clearly been studying them.
At the centre of the cavern, a crude ritual circle had been carved into the stone floor. Blood filled its shallow channels, flowing slowly toward a jagged altar assembled from the largest fragments of the ancient technology.
The Deacon knelt beside it.
His robes had been cast aside somewhere within the chamber. The creature that remained scarcely resembled the Quarren he had once been. One of his eyes had long since rotted away, the empty socket crusted with layers of calcified barnacles that clung to the flesh around it. His remaining eye shone with feverish devotion, tainted by the dark side and glowing ah unnatural violet. Patches of his skin had hardened into coral growths that crept across his shoulders and spine. Where his left arm should have been, the limb had twisted into a mass of writhing tendrils that flexed slowly against the stone, slick with seawater and blood.
In his good hand, he held a blade. The Deacon dragged the edge of the ritual knife across his own flesh, slicing away another strip which he dropped into the blood channels carved into the floor. His voice rose and fell in guttural chants that echoed through the cavern like the calls of some deep sea predator.
The water outside the cave mouth began to churn and a low vibration rolled through the stone beneath the ritual circle.
The Deacon lifted his head slowly. His single eye found the figure standing at the cavern entrance. What passed for a ragged Quarren smile spread across his mutilated face as he rose to his feet.
"Ah." His voice gurgled with seawater and devotion, as he spoke in a sarcastic Nautila drool, chosen specifically for his guest. "The daughter of darkness comes to witness the awakening."
He dropped the ritual knife and a new weapon appeared in his grasp. The lightsaber's hilt appeared to have been grown rather than forged - branching coral structures wrapped around a central emitter node that glowed faintly beneath layers of calcified shell. The coral lightsaber ignited with a harsh snap-hiss.
A blade of deep red light spilled across the cavern walls as the Deacon raised the weapon toward her, the writhing tendrils of his mutated arm lashing slowly through the damp air.
"Or, perhaps, you have come to join me in salvation, to bask in the glory of Master Axion's event horizon?"
The intruder's cerulean appearance was clad in a wet black single-piece halter swimwear with gold piping and a slim utility belt. The difference between her near unblemished Nautolan beauty and the Deacon's grotesque mutations could not have been more stark.
"Yes..." she answered in her formal Nautili dialect with emotionless edge as she reached behind her, and a ribbed grip bronze-finished metal lightsaber hilt with engraved gold electrum near the emitter and pommel leapt into her hand.
She held it up for the Deacon to see clearly in the faint crimson light of his blade.
"...I even brought an invitation," she added which accompanied the screech-hiss of Glynt's lightsaber. She lowered it and positioned herself into a classic mid-stance Shii-Cho position, hoping her target would recognize the Cult weapon in her possession enough to distract him, but she didn't count on it. Her conscious choice to bring it along for this brutal task was simply for the irony of using it to extinguish Cultist lives, but unconsciously...
"All power and glory to the Master," she mockingly concluded as she shifted into a high-guard Soresu form. "May His will be done."
The Deacon’s single eye lingered on the weapon in her hand. For a moment, the cavern seemed to still. The distant churn of the sea pressed faintly against the stone, the low vibration beneath the ritual circle deepening as something vast shifted far in the depths. Candleless shadows flickered across the carved bones and Rakatan fragments as the red light from the Deacon’s blade stretched and warped against the uneven surfaces.
He tilted his head slightly. The tendrils of his ruined face twitched, tasting the air, the Force, the moment.
"Ah..." The sound dragged through his throat like something pulled from the depths. "A relic." His gaze fixed upon the hilt, and contempt bled from his voice, still speaking Amare's tongue. "The instrument of a lesser prophet. A poor herald of our Master's truth. Wrapped in shining metal, bound to dead tradition."
The writhing mass that had once been his arm lifted slowly, tendrils unfurling outward in a grotesque imitation of reverence. They flexed and coiled, slick with seawater, catching the red light of his blade as though they were alive with their own intention.
"This..." His voice softened, almost reverent now. "...is true power."
The tendrils spread wider, revealing the full horror of their mutation. Veins pulsed beneath semi-translucent flesh. Barbed growths protruded irregularly along their length. They moved not with the clumsy weight of a limb, but with a fluid, unsettling autonomy. The Deacon’s eye burned brighter, violet light flickering within the socket as his devotion sharpened into something feverish.
"Power is not taken from crystals, matrices, metal... It is drawn from the living... From consumption... From rot and decay... From the breaking of form and the constant birth and rebirth of something greater in its place."
The cavern then shuddered. A deep, resonant pulse rolled through the stone beneath their feet, followed by a distant, echoing roar from the ocean beyond the cave mouth, from something that sounded ancient and vast. It was a presence shifting in response to the ritual that had been set in motion.
The Deacon inhaled sharply, as though that sound itself was a sacrament.
"You hear it, do you not?" His voice trembled with something close to ecstasy. "The tide answers." The tendrils of his mutated arm drew inward slightly, coiling with sudden tension. Then he raised them in a mocking salute. "Behold, then! My holy form..."
For a fraction of a second, everything held. Then, the Deacon moved. The tendrils snapped downward against the stone with violent force, propelling his body forward in a sudden, unnatural burst of speed. His form blurred across the cavern floor, closing the distance in an instant as the coral lightsaber spun into motion.
The red blade carved a wide arc through the air, its movement far faster than his ravaged body should have allowed, his body flying with relentless, spiraling aggression.
Only Thane's training gave her a fighting chance to live as her focus and body reacted with almost supernatural reflexes. The Force gave her the ability to anticipate the Deacon's surprise lunge just barely enough to let herself bend backwards, the lightsaber missing her nose and forehead by mere centimeters in a slash that had been meant for her neck. Her backwards fall morphed smoothly to an evasive roll away from the Deacon and she was back on her feet like a competitive gymnast, weapon back to defensive ready.
"If you wanted a hug so bad," Amare goaded the Deacon, "you could've just asked."
She could hear Thane's words thumping in her mind like a drumbeat, recalling how he took away her weapon and forced her to learn how to fight and evade unarmed.
The Deacon did not answer. Whatever mockery or wit might once have lived within him had long since been stripped away, replaced by something purer. More focused. His expression did not shift. The violet light in his eye burned steadily, fixed upon her with unwavering intent.
The cavern seemed to contract around them as the tide continued its slow, monstrous stirring beyond the stone. Water surged against the entrance in uneven pulses, each impact sending faint tremors through the bone-lined walls - as another distant roar rumbled through the stone and seawater. The ancient carvings flickered in the red glow of the Deacon’s blade, their spiralling forms seeming almost to move in the shifting light.
He advanced without hesitation and the coral lightsaber came again with a clean, precise sweep. The blade cut low across the space where she had stood, the motion faster than before, tighter, more controlled. It forced movement, and the red light skimmed dangerously close as it passed, close enough to sear the air in its wake.
He did not pause, as the strike flowed into another and another. The Deacon’s ruined form moved with a terrible efficiency, his twisted body compensating for its own deformities with unnatural bursts of motion. The tendrils of his left arm dragged and snapped against the stone, assisting his balance, anchoring him as he shifted his weight through each attack.
Then, one of the tendrils shifted and it struck fast; it coiled low across the cavern floor, slipping through the shallow water and blood-slick stone with predatory precision before snapping upward. It wrapped around her leg tightly, and the force of it was immediate and brutal.
The world tilted for Amare - stone met flesh with a hard, unforgiving impact as the cavern floor rushed up to meet her.
The Deacon did not hesitate as he stepped in, hilt rotated in his grip, its shimmering blade drawing back above him in a single fluid motion. The weapon aligned with her centre mass, its glow casting harsh light across his petrified features and the writhing mass of his mutated arm. From deep within his throat, a guttural roar tore free that was not entirely Quarren, as the blade came down.
Heavy reliance on physicality had been the doom of many arrogant Sith throughout ages past, and so it was that Thane had recognized his apprentice's shortcomings in raw strength to be easily overcome with blessings she received from the Force. With Amare's past demonstrations of using her Force Drain power in one hand, and a lightsaber in the other, she was trained and tested in the basics of the sixth form of Jedi lightsaber techniques: Niman, the Moderation Way.
Amare's teeth were grinding fiercely through her intense focus and deep desire to live. She struggled mightily to hold back her fear, and pressed desperately with her power through sheer grit as death approached with no immediate means to evade yet again. And so it was that the Force answered her call, and it was her free hand directing its power to stop the Deacon's falling blade. However, her adversary was quite strong in the Force, and her telekinetic push was not enough to cease the downward blow, but only enough to slow it down dramatically. She bought herself four, maybe five seconds tops.
Her hand lowered slowly as the Deacon pushed harder through Amare's resistance, the blinding white core of the Cult-crafted red lightsaber blade growing closer to Amare's body. With the Deacon's attention firmly on overpowering Amare's pathetic attempt to defy his god's divine might, what he didn't notice until it was too late was the brutal severing of the snaring tendril that had seized Amare's leg. His blade came down as the pain registered and met nothing but water and stone. His quarry had barely rolled from his coup de grâce scrambling and splashing through the shallow water to get back to her feet with less fluidity and control as she had only a moment ago.
A sound tore from the Deacon - a raw, guttural bellow that seemed to drag itself from somewhere deep within his altered form. His torso twisted sharply, the coral growths along his spine flexing as his ruined arm snapped upward. The severed end writhed - not merely spasming, but reacting. The remaining tendrils lashed outward violently, striking the air, the stone, the water, each movement erratic and furious as though the limb itself had lost something vital and could not comprehend its absence. Dark fluid spilled from the wound, the lightsaber had not cauterised it, thick and sluggish, mixing with the blood already slick across the ritual floor.
The Deacon staggered a half step back then steadied. His eye burned brighter suddenly - not with pain, but with delight, his attention snapping back to the entrance. Water surged violently at the opening of the tunnel, no longer the slow, breathing tide that had filled the chamber before. It rushed inward now in uneven waves, slamming against the stone walls, dragging with it a foul stench that rolled through the cavern like a living thing, of rot and decay - of something long dead and newly risen.
The low vibration beneath the floor deepened into a sustained tremor. Bone structures groaned faintly as ancient pillars shifted against one another, and the Rakatan fragments embedded in the ritual circle flickered erratically, their dormant seams reacting to the growing disturbance.
The barnacles that clung to the Deacon's flesh began to move. Small clusters along his shoulder and chest cracked open, their interiors pulsing faintly as though responding to a distant signal. Others followed, spreading across his form in irregular patterns, each one reacting to the same unseen presence drawing closer.
Another sound rose from the depths, deeper before, more like a call than a roar.
The Deacon inhaled sharply, his entire body shuddering with the force of it.
"Yes..." The word escaped him in a breathless rasp. "Yes...!" His voice climbed, swelling with fervour as he raised his remaining arm, the damaged limb still writhing beside him like a wounded thing refusing to die. "It comes." The tendrils lashed outward again, this time not in pain, but in exultation. "The Deep answers."
His gaze snapped back to her and the warped facsimile of a smile returned, split and terrible across his ruined face.
"You are not too late." The words carried a certainty that bordered on reverence. "Not too late to prostrate yourself before us and join the glory!"
But, before Amare could answer in any way, the Quarren cultist moved again. It was not the sudden lunge from before, but a relentless advance, each step driving forward through the shallow water with controlled force. The coral lightsaber came alive once more, its red blade cutting through the dim cavern in tight, efficient arcs. There was no wasted motion as he struck in tight arcs - more akin to the Makashi flow Amare was familiar with from her own master.
A strike came from the right, precise and immediate, followed by a reversal that snapped back toward centreline with brutal intent. Each movement forced space to collapse around her, the Deacon adjusting with unsettling awareness as her defence held. He pressed again and again, but as he realised her guile matched his speed and power, he shifted his rhythm. The strikes became less predictable, angles changing mid-motion, the damaged limb now compensating in new ways as the remaining tendrils dragged, anchored, redirected his weight across the slick stone.
The cavern trembled harder around them as Amare held the line. Water rose further across the floor, reaching to their ankles. And, somewhere beyond the mouth of the cave, something vast drew closer to the surface.
Amare was barely able to maintain her composure as the angles of the Deacon's strikes became more difficult to foresee and adapt to. She had the talents for lightsaber combat, but lack of experience continued to hamstring her potential. She did, however, see an opening at a critical split second. She deflected a low strike, feinted a midsection riposte, and morphed the motion to a strike for his face. The counter was caught in such a way that their lightsabers were caught in an extremely lock.
What took her two arms to keep up a perilous struggle, the Deacon only needed one, his raw natural upper body strength and corded muscles outstripping Amare's feminine frame, and this time he had her fully distracted. He shoved her stumbling backwards and immediately followed with one of his tendrils seizing her right wrist, coiling around and applying painful crushing pressure on it. She yelped in agony and dropped her weapon into the rising water. Another tendril independently whipped out and wrapped around her throat and hoisted her high up towards the cavern ceiling and he began to choke her. The Deacon decided if Amare would not bow willingly, he would humble her with divine power and offer her as a worthy sacrifice if she continued to resist. Such was the inevitable judgment of an all-powerful god.
What he didn't count on was the perseverance of a Sith whose young mind was exposed to the ancient ways of Lords and Ladies that knew true power. One of Amare's hands turned crimson from within, the bones and chitin of her digits faintly visible in silhouette beneath the blue skin. Amare had gripped the tendril choking her with that hand and she aggressively used it as a conduit to transfer the Force energy from within the core of the Deacon's body. As she did so, she felt a greater ease of doing so, the flow of dark power requiring less effort than her past uses of her signature power.
Even as she was losing breath, the several seconds of stolen essence kept her conscious. Her dark eyes became lit with the Deacon's spiritual vigor, and the veins in her face were bulging with intense strain through her fear being consumed by her rage and her lack of oxygen. The influence of the power she absorbed caused the subtle gyrus formation in her brain to deepen further as new neurons formed. Not merely Nautolan neurons...
...but rather a hybrid that was close to being...
...Human.
The Deacon recoiled as the current between them shifted, his tendrils loosening instinctively as the Force bled from him into her, his violet eye widening not in pain but in sudden, reverent recognition as he felt it take root and change within her.
"You carry Him!"
Amare was released and she tumbled down into the water, wheezing as she rose up and struggled to catch her breath. Her vision was blurry and she couldn't see where Glynt's lightsaber was. Unable to sense the weapon's crystal due to her lack of bond with it, and with her every instinct to survive screaming desperately through her mind, she realized she had failed and it was time to go. She used the moment of weakness the Deacon suffered and staggered back to the cavern opening where she threw herself back into the murky Mantellian sea, heedless of the Deacon's prior declarations of the approaching Deep.
What she didn't count on was what awaited her there in the open water, and suddenly all hope for escape was vanquished.
TBC
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