Acme: Allure
Posted on Mon Apr 13th, 2026 @ 11:59pm by Nala Sao & Bomoor Thort & Amare & Melliah Glynt
5,078 words; about a 25 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter VIII: Broken Chains
Location: Undervos Holdings Factory, Wastes, Sleheyron
Timeline: After "Acme: Pressure"
The sound of steam and metal filled Bomoor's senses as he charged after Amare. She had stopped drifting and had begun to run, forcing him to exert himself to make any ground, all the while controlling his breathing to avoid pulling in too much of the toxified air.
He reached an access port just in time to see the last flicker of Amare’s silhouette vanish into the dark. The hatch itself hung half‑open, its locking mechanism warped and blackened. Someone had forced it deliberately. As he drew closer, the reason became clear: a cult glyph had been burned into the metal beside the frame, the edges still faintly warm and exuding that dark essence only visible within the Force.
"Amare!" he called, but the only answer was the low hum of coolant lines and the distant churn of machinery.
He ducked inside.
The air changed immediately. It was colder here, but thicker too, carrying the chemical sweetness of the additive in a way that clung to the back of his throat. The tunnel sloped downward in a series of sharp turns, pipes running overhead like exposed veins. Amare’s footsteps echoed faintly ahead - still fast and increasingly frantic.
"Amare! Stop!" he tried again, pushing his heavy frame into a run. His voice bounced off the metal walls, distorted, swallowed.
He heard an unintelligible string of Nautilia words followed by the iconic humming passage of high-energy plasma blades arcing through the air and clashing. It was only a few seconds later when a shocked yelp of pain was heard clearly that was almost certainly from Amare. The ominous sounds of lightsaber combat ended as swiftly as it started.
Bomoor rounded a bend and nearly collided with a cluster of workers blocking the passage. They stood shoulder‑to‑shoulder, swaying slightly, eyes unfocused. One reached out a hand toward him, fingers twitching.
He didn’t slow.
A sweep of his arm sent the first two crashing into the wall. A pulse of the Force shoved the others aside like loose debris. He did not strike to kill but he did not allow them to impede him either. Their bodies hit the metal with dull, hollow thuds, sliding out of his path.
He pressed on.
The air shifted again and a faint breeze brushed against his cheek. An exit ahead? As the whirring and humming of machinery continued, he found it hard to still pick up on the Nautolan's footsteps until he heard them transform into a sudden scramble of boots upon the metal floor.
Something was wrong. He pushed himself harder.
The tunnel curved sharply to the left. Bomoor swung around the corner at a great pace, only to find a blade of magenta light slashing toward his chest.
He jerked sideways, the heat of the plasma grazing the edge of his robe. Sparks hissed against the wall. His hearts hammered as he planted his feet, skidding and bring out his own blade an an unbroken motion
Nala Sao stood before him, her spotted green lekku were coiled over one shoulder, eyes sharp with predatory focus. Her stance was relaxed, almost casual, but her smile was anything but.
Beyond her, further down the tunnel, Amare was on her knees, one hand braced against the floor, the other clutching her head. Glynt approached her slowly, almost tenderly, his presence a cold pressure in the air.
Bomoor’s breath caught.
"Nala…" he bellowed, lowering his centre of gravity, readying himself.
The cultist did not yet advance. Her activated magenta blade remained low at her side, held in one hand with effortless control, its light tracing a thin line along the contours of her form as she shifted her weight. The stance was narrow, balanced, almost elegant. She appeared firmly assured.
Her eyes settled on him, dark and unreadable at first glance, but as the light caught them there was that faint, unnatural tint beneath the black. A pinkish-red not unlike her weapon.
Amusement creased her lithe features.
"You made it further than I expected." Her voice was soft, unhurried. She did not try to project; she clearly believed space belonged to her already. "Jericho," she then continued, tilting her head slightly, the movement controlled, deliberate. "Do you remember that moment as well as I do? The way you grasped the shard, despite your mediocre power and vision, a lumbering brute suited for little more than soothing decaying plants."
She shifted then, just a half-step, the blade turning in her grip with a subtle rotation. Not a flourish - more a test of line. The tip angled slightly inward, guarding without appearing to. A careful Makashi test, not unlike those Bomoor had seen Thane use multiple times over the years.
"Yet, it answered you anyway," she added, almost thoughtfully. "That must have felt... validating." Her eyes narrowed, the faint colour within them catching the glow. "But it wasn’t yours. You don’t command power, Bomoor. You borrow it... imitate it. A Jedi trying to wear something he doesn’t really believe in. Of course, you couldn’t even save your mother from that fool, Voq... and you won't save her, either."
She raised her blade slowly, its tip pointed toward Bomoor's face.
Bomoor swept his blade up, quickly, casting Nala's blade to one side as he rose to his full height, allowing himself a slightly deeper breath as the air here was a little less thick with the contaminant.
"That power," Bomoor glared at the cultist, "Is slowly slipping from Axion's grasp. We defeated you on Jericho and many times since."
He brought his blade forward in a powerful angled strike, which Nala twirled to avoid and deflect herself, leaving them once again facing each other down while Amare fought to resist Glynt's manipulation in the background.
"The power we now have is more real than anything Axion offers," Bomoor continued, eyes burning into Nala, "I think you are the one borrowing power that was not yours. When it is stripped away, you be a purposeless wretch, while I will still have the power I have earned for myself."
Nala's smile did not falter. If anything, it sharpened, a pale crescent of private delight at the words he chose and the conviction with which he spoke them. The magenta blade rolled once through her fingers and settled into line, her body turning slightly sidelong as she let his height and mass fill the tunnel before her. It was almost affectionate, the way she looked at him then, as one might regard some impressive beast that had briefly mistaken noise for understanding.
"Still you confuse persistence for worth. You and the others scurry from wound to wound and call it victory. You survive encounters with your betters and mistake that survival for ascent." Her dark eyes flicked backwards for only an instant, toward the shape of Amare further down the passage, before returning to Bomoor with renewed contempt. "She hears something greater than you. That is why she ran. That is why you are here, standing in my way instead of at her side."
Then, she moved. Her one-handed thrust came straight for the centre of him, narrow and elegant, forcing his guard inward as she stepped across his line with liquid precision. The magenta blade hissed down, then turned sharply in her grip into a vicious returning cut that drove him back a pace and opened the passage she wanted sealed. Every motion was slight, controlled, economical, giving away the fact she was placing him, keeping his blade, his body, and all that great earnest strength exactly where she wanted it - between her weapon and the path to Amare, while Glynt continued her slow work beyond.
Glynt, for her part as the Ithorian and Nala duelled, had retrieved her personal lightsaber, delivered conveniently back to her by Amare's covetous liking for it, and had also taken possession of the songsteel hilt. Amare, still on her knees, was Glynt's hostage, entirely at her mercy, or so she believed.
"That's right," Glynt's voice drifted in and out of a dreamlike haze in Amare's mind, "Give yourself over and embrace his gift."
Through the paralyzing torment gripping her mind, there came a stirring within, the Azoth gradually flowed up Amare's spinal cord, and, as it touched and converged at the base of her brain, her breath hitched. From faraway, deep beyond the black of space, hidden by pulsars and nebulae, a faint connection was made through the Force from the place of Amare's birth. There was no voice, no surge of energy, just a recollection of the truth...
Her memories were focused on that horrific night again from several years ago, the night her late Nautolan husband, Jett Versetto, was murdered by her mother, Zenarrah. Amare was convinced that she had ended the life of her newborn, Shar, barely a tadpole in the spawning pool, to spite Jett for his violence abuse. Then she saw Zen take her hands.
"Focus, my child," Zen had said in the memory. "You can save her."
Amare saw it just as it had happened on Vaa, when she healed Thane in the cave from his grievous wounds.
"Touch those small points of light with all of your love...she needs you...there, yes, like that," Zen guided her gently. "Good...it is done. Your daughter..."
"...she lives..."
The Azoth did not allow that memory to settle. To fuel its power, it fully absorbed the revelation of the daughter's spared life as a price for what it would restore. For what had been seemingly lost on Vaa.
It could not heal the mark Glynt left on Amare's neural tissue, for Axion's influence was mighty indeed and could not be stopped entirely, not without help from the Human lord and the Ithorian sage. It adapted and improvised, acting as if it had a consciousness of its own, drawing upon the esoteric threads of cosmic life-giving essence, and gave Amare back her single greatest power, if only partially and diminished in its scope, but it would be just enough to make a difference.
Strength began to return to Amare as an aura of surging indigo light became visible around her. She held her hands in front of her, looked upon her palms, and saw tiny pinpoints of circular light on them. She clenched her hands into tight fists, and her breathing became deeper, more deliberate as an unbridled rage began to fully consume her.
Wrenching back slightly, Glynt's mouth dropped from a sickly smile to a disturbed grimace.
"What apparition is this, child?" she snarled, igniting her retrieved blade and testing it against the glowing aura. The plasma met with a subtle resistance, like a weak magnetic field resisting its polar opposite.
"Your resistance will only damage your mind further," the Miralukan cultist brought her own hands forward, still clasping the blades, almost mirroring Amare's own stance, "But if I have to deliver Axion a mindless thrall, I will. You will still be useful as a weapon, like that brain-dead Caanan boy."
And with that, it came to Amare in a converging pair. First, came the echo from Mustafar of a man filled with power beyond imagination, a nascent Sith with hands soaked in Jedi blood. His heart was broken. His brother had to die.
"You will try..." Amare said, her tone low and edged with bloodthirst.
Next, came the memory from Vaa. She channeled the last remnant of Darth Cabal's will through the power she had absorbed from his key on that fateful day. She remembered exactly what he had tried and failed to do to Thane. She saw Cabal's mistake and learned the lesson. The healing influence of the Azoth made the memory of how Thane countered Cabal with Coda's help fresh as if it had only happened yesterday. Amare would refine and surpass beyond where the old dark lord had failed.
In this moment, henceforth, she no longer sought at being a mere dark-sider trying to play warrior with a lightsaber whilst denying her true talents. She earned the right to fight back, savored the power, and expected no compliments or accolades, only unanimous control and supremacy. She was not powerful simply because the Force was with her by a twist of fate. True power was claimed with struggle. Triumph was taken with tireless training, courage, and relentless effort. Victory was appreciated with rage and pain, blood and loss, never to be taken for granted. Always learning. Always growing. Ever evolving.
Amare's fists opened and she thrust forth her open hands, all digits pointing severely at Glynt, and, with a ravenous scream, cascaded the ambient dark side power around her into a concentrated surge of lightning at Glynt's lightsaber hilt and the hands holding it, just as Darth Cabal had done, but with more focus heightened by her rage and hatred. Amare did not desire a weapon. She hungered for power. She sought to murder Glynt. The Cult had tested her and, in so doing, sowed the seeds of a rising storm, and they reaped a new sorceress. And yet, in spite of Amare's violent retaliation, it was entirely within the bounds of Axion's expectations. All according to His vision.
Melliah was agape as she not only held back the unexpected assault from Amare, but her Force sight was overtaken by a blinding light of emotional energy that blotted all else from her vision.
Igniting the smaller songsteel hilt as well, she shielded herself as best she could from the onslaught.
Nala's expression shifted as she clearly sensed the surge of what happened behind her - raw, unfocused, newly claimed power.
"Good," she murmured under her breath, almost to herself.
Then Bomoor was upon her again. His strength came down in a heavy diagonal cut, the kind that would have crushed lesser opponents through sheer mass and intent. Nala did not meet it head-on. She stepped inside it. Her blade snapped up in a tight parry, catching his strike not at its fullest extension but just before it could fully commit, turning it aside with a precise redirection that bled its power harmlessly into the wall behind her.
In the same motion, she pivoted. Her grip shifted, the hilt rolling into a brief reverse hold as her body twisted, the magenta blade carving a sharp returning arc toward his flank. It was not meant to land cleanly. It was meant to force him to turn, to reset, to keep him reacting rather than advancing.
"Do you feel it?" she asked, her tone almost curious now as she flowed around him, never quite where he needed her to be. "She will be His!"
There was a shift in the Ithorian's demeanour, not at what Nala was saying - he had shaken off worse threats during his time as a Jedi. But a dam within him was threatening to burst. The stream of thought and emotion that he had been supressing from Thane was threatening to burst forth. Something he had not felt from his friend for some time: he was holding back.
Nala dove at him again and he twisted, catching her strike with his blade. This time they held, locked in as his viridian light bit against her vicious magenta. While, behind her, she saw a great shimmer as Amare's power continued to shimmer and distort so he could no longer see the blind cultist.
Bomoor felt himself buckling, his will waning.
"Axion is not inevitable," he grunted, "You can still resist him. That's what real strength looks like. Mentis showed it. He does not simply 'persist'. He is truly living now!"
Something in Nala’s expression soured at the name. Not anger - something sharper, more immediate and personal. It was disgust. It pulled at her features as their blades held, her magenta edge grinding lightly against his viridian with a controlled pressure that forced him to feel it, to hold it.
"Mentis?" she echoed, low and incredulous, as though the word itself offended her. With a precise twist she broke the bind and slipped free, already moving, her one-handed form tightening into a series of fast, needling thrusts that drove Bomoor back a step at a time. "He did not escape anything. He traded purpose for emptiness!"
She circled, turning his size against him, keeping him angled away from the tunnel beyond as her blade flicked high, then low, forcing his guard to stretch and recover under pressure.
"You call it living, Jedi," she went on, her tone flattening into something colder, more certain, "but he is still defined by the same thing he fled. Still orbiting Him, whether he admits it or not."
A sharper strike came then, forcing him back another pace before settling once more into her poised, economical line. Her eyes held his, utterly assured. "That is all you are doing, Ithorian. You and your little Human. Just circling something greater than you, pretending distance is freedom."
And then, the dam burst.
It wasn’t a thought, nor a sensation he could brace against. It was a wound: a great, tearing rupture through the centre of his being. Thane’s agony slammed into him with the same terrible clarity as the moment he had watched his mother die on Öetrago. Grief, fear, and a raw, primal anger flooded through the breach before he could stop it.
"No!"
The word tore out of him as he surged forward, all restraint obliterated. His blade swept across his body in a brutal guard, smashing into Nala’s poised Makashi line with such force that her weapon nearly rebounded into her own face. The heat of the clash singed a streak across her cheek, and she stumbled back, her composure fracturing for the first time.
"No!" he roared again, the tunnel vibrating with the sheer volume of it. "You and your cursed brethren have taken everything from me! You will not take another soul! Axion’s time is finished!"
Nala rolled aside just as his blade came down, carving a molten gouge into the metal floor where she had been. But Bomoor was already on her again; faster than his size should have allowed, driven by a furious, unrestrained Ataru that was nothing like the elegant form it was meant to be. It was wild, heavy, and terrifyingly direct. Nala could only slip, weave, and deflect, each dodge bringing her closer to the wall.
She felt the cooling pipes at her back. The tunnel narrowed around her. Bomoor’s silhouette filled the space like a charging beast, his breath ragged, his eyes burning with something she had not seen in him before.
This was not the Kaiburr shard’s influence. This was him: his fury, his grief, his breaking point.
With a guttural bellow, Bomoor kicked out. The blow landed squarely. Nala’s body slammed into the wall with a sickening force, her limbs folding as she crumpled downward, barely managing to keep her blade between them as a feeble ward.
It didn’t matter.
Bomoor struck her weapon aside with a single, devastating sweep. The magenta blade spun from her hand, clattering across the floor and extinguishing as it skidded away.
Before she could recover, his massive hand closed around her throat.
He lifted her effortlessly, pinning her against the wall. Her feet dangled. Her fingers clawed at his wrist. Bomoor's eyes met hers: they were shifting. Fine crimson veins threading through the dark sclera, his irises paling slightly, as though a thin mist had settled behind them. His own lightsaber fell from his grasp, clattering to the ground as his free hand rose, palm open, trembling with power.
Violet lightning crackled between his fingers; the thin, unstable strands snapping in and out of existence.
"You should share my pain, witch," he snarled, his voice warped by the strain tearing through him. His hand reached for her scalp, lightning crawling up his arm like hungry veins.
And then...
He convulsed.
A strangled cry ripped from him as he recoiled, clutching at his face. The lightning sputtered out. Nala dropped to the floor in a heap, staring up at him with a rare, genuine horror.
Bomoor staggered back, wild and disoriented, his breaths coming in broken gasps. His right eyestalk twitched violently as he gripped it, dragging his fingers down the slanted plane of his face as though trying to tear something unseen away from him.
He collapsed to his knees, shaking, spasming, the factory lights flickering across his trembling form.
For a moment, Nala did not move.
She lay where she had fallen, breath shallow, limbs slow to answer her, her throat burning where the Ithorian's grip had crushed the air from her. The composure she wore so effortlessly had fractured, if only slightly; there was a stiffness to her movements now as she pushed herself upright, one hand braced against the wall, the other trembling just enough to betray what had just passed through her. Her eyes remained fixed on Bomoor, watching him convulse and collapse, something unfamiliar threading through her focus - a thin, unwelcome edge of fear.
Her hand lifted and her hilt tore itself from the floor and snapped back into her grasp. She steadied it, fingers tightening, posture correcting by degrees as she forced herself back into control. The magenta blade had not yet ignited, but its presence alone seemed to anchor her. She stepped toward him, slow, deliberate, raising the weapon, angling it cleanly toward his chest.
Then, she was thrown back hard, her footing lost as she crashed against the opposite side, the weapon slipping in her grip as the structure screamed around them. The explosion tore through the facility with a violent, concussive force, the tunnel shuddering as pipes burst from the walls and a wave of heat and smoke slammed into her. A second detonation followed, further off but no less severe, the deep, rolling impact echoing through the metal like a death knell.
Nala hissed through clenched teeth, forcing herself upright again, the last traces of disarray burned away beneath rising focus. Her gaze snapped not back to Bomoor, but past him, deeper into the tunnel, toward the shifting currents she could now feel through the Force. Something had changed - something dangerous.
Her grip tightened around the hilt as she turned her full attention toward Amare and Glynt.
Amidst the duel between Nala and Bomoor, Amare had breached Glynt's defenses with her lightning, divorced her of both lightsabers, closed the distance, and got directly kinetic with the clashing of bone and sinew. Glynt tried to defend herself, but Amare performed a rare display of her ability to throw hands and easily overpowered her. Amare threw light Force-enhanced punches, quick, nimble, and striking frequently at the chest, focusing around the solar plexus, along with a backhanded slap across the face, and a fierce front kick to the Cultist's gut staggering her back to a fenced off section of industrial piping. Amare summoned her songsteel weapon to her left hand, ignited the amber-hued blade, and telekinetically pinned Glynt against the fence with unrelenting pressure against her ribs and sternum.
Not so far away, Bomoor had been bellowing at Nala during their struggle, but it did not faze Amare one bit.
"My master...m-my...my divine Lord...He shall reward me greatly with your sacrifice!" Amare stated with a hint of confusion overshadowed by malicious zeal as a devious initial shift began to write itself into her personality. She used her free hand again to blast more lightning just past Glynt's head at a pipe behind her and ruptured it. The structural weakness Amare saw instinctively inspired her to pull with the Force at the pipe, broke it, and twisted it in Glynt's direction, briefly burning her adversary's face drawing out a cry of agony. Amare used the Force to drag Glynt along the ground towards her. The Nautolan was upon her almost instantly holding her saber's energy blade to just above Glynt's throat, while the other hand, engulfed in red-orange light, was on her sternum, draining the Cultist of her Force essence.
"Now, hold still," Amare said quietly with a ravenous, almost demonic wide smile. "The essence flows so much easier when the prey is calm and still breathing. Mmm...yes! Such power! How I've longed for this again!" Her laughter laced with ecstasy and dominance was sinister, then she added, "Bomoor has likely ended Nala by now. It's a shame I have to settle for you. I would have preferred to have feasted upon her soul instead."
A soft laugh answered her.
"Such certainty... for something so new. The Ithorian is dead, or as a good as."
Nala stood just off Amare’s shoulder, her presence revealed not by sound or movement, but by the sudden, invasive pressure of her will pressing into the moment. Her lightsaber blade remained unlit at her sids, as her dark eyes settled upon the younger Nautolan with open disdain.
"You taste a fragment of it," she continued, her tone almost indulgent, "and already you think yourself worthy to feast." Her hand rose and the air tightened.
What Amare had drawn began to slip. It was not torn away in some violent wrench, but claimed, redirected with terrifying finesse - despite the small wounds and injuries she could spy on the older Nautolan. The flow of energy Amare had begun to consume stuttered, fractured, and then recoiled, the current bending sharply as Nala’s will cut across it like a blade. A surge of red-lit Force energy burst outward from her palm - not at Glynt, but through the connection itself, shattering Amare’s focus and blasting her backward in a violent discharge.
Amare struck the ground hard, the amber blade skidding from its poised execution line as the siphoned power collapsed in on itself.
Nala stepped forward immediately, her hands now glowed with her own deep, pulsing crimson, the air around them warping faintly as the energy coiled and stretched outward in thin, invasive threads. There was no elegance here now, no measured precision. This was something more direct - hungrier, as Amare had been moments before.
"You do not take this," she crooned, advancing, her voice tightening just slightly beneath the growing tremor of the facility around them, distant explosions echoing through the structure. "You are given it." The red glow extended further, brushing across Amare like unseen fingers, probing, testing, beginning to draw. "You are not yet the predator," Nala added, her expression sharpening into something colder, more severe. "But you could be..."
Another figure stumbled up beside Nala: Glynt's face coverings drooped as the heat of the pressurised steam had warped the exquisite crimson thread and seared her face almost the same hue.
Her brows furrowed over invisible eyes as he focussed down upon Amare on the ground before her.
"How DARE YOU feed upon me!" her boot came furiously down Amare's head tendrils at the peak of her exclamation.
The pain of her sensory organs being crushed shot through the younger woman and she curled her body instinctively like a foetus, but no azoth came forth to cradle her this time. No motherly voice floating across time.
Glynt came at her again, this time twisting her heel in, puncturing the flesh and drawing an ounce of blood. The Mirilukan drew a ragged breath, the burned flesh around her jaw tightening as she leaned in over the curled Nautolan. Her voice came out low, shaking with pain and fury.
"I misjudged you…" she hissed, summoning her fallen hilt to her hand with a sharp flick of her wrist. The crimson blade snapped to life with a violent hiss, "I thought you understood your place."
She raised the weapon, angling it toward one of Amare’s tendrils, but before the blade could fall, the tunnel convulsed.
A deafening explosion tore through the structure, the floor bucking beneath them as a shockwave ripped along the corridor. A cooling pipe overhead sheared loose with a shriek of metal and crashed down across Bomoor’s collapsed form, sparks and steam erupting around him. Glynt staggered slightly, looking back at the Ithorian for a moment before turning back to Amare with a cold, decisive clarity settling over her expression.
"But you had poor teachers," she he deactivated her blade with a snap-hiss, "And you will learn. Axion will bend you. Mould you. Make you whole."
Another section of the tunnel ceiling groaned, beginning to sag.
"But not here. Let this place bury the one called ‘Amare’… and the fools who shaped her."
She did not turn her head, but her invisible gaze shifted to her fellow cultist, "Nala dear," she spoke sweetly, "Put my bold little flame to sleep, would you?"
"With pleasure."
Nala did not rush. She stepped forward slowly, the red glow about her hands dimming, not fading -but tightening into something far more controlled. Her gaze settled upon Amare’s curled form, watching the rise and fall of her breath, the faint tremor in her limbs as the remnants of that stolen power still flickered through her system.
"Look at you," she murmured, almost gently now, crouching beside her. "You don’t even understand what you're holding."
Her hand came down to rest, two fingers pressed lightly at the base of Amare’s skull, just beneath the crown, where spine met mind. The contact was almost delicate.
Nala closed her eyes and the Force shifted.
What Amare had drawn did not vanish but answered. The wild, ravenous current she had called upon surged once more, but this time it did not flow outward. Nala caught it, shaped it, and turned it back in on itself, and Amare's body seized.
"You take too much - just like your masters did," Nala whispered, her voice close to Amare’s ear. "And so it breaks you all."
Her fingers pressed just slightly harder and Amare’s body went slack beneath her hand, the last traces of energy dissipating into nothing as her consciousness gave way completely.
Nala opened her eyes again, and looked upon the blue-skinned woman with a sort of twisted affection now, even as the factory around them audibly and visibly shifted and died.
"But unlike them, you have a part in His glorious vision."
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