Engines of Heaven: Consumption

Posted on Sun Aug 9th, 2026 @ 5:38pm by Darth Serus & Bomoor Thort

7,307 words; about a 37 minute read

Chapter: Additional Stories
Location: Cathedral of the Firmament
Timeline: After "Ascension"

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This post takes place in 1,213 ABY, around four years before Thane and Bomoor encountered the Cult of Axion on Nar Shaddaa, during their earliest years as Jedi Knights.

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""And in the final days of the Waning Light, Her Glare shall fall upon the people and the people shall be found wanting. As the righteous ascend, the unclean shall be purified in holy fire and their lifeblood shall rise into the heavens to fill the Faithful.""

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The choir was screaming now. Barely any semblance of the melody remained, just that shrieking, awful harmony of voices as one that resonated with the durasteel like a struck bell. The air trembled with it. The columns trembled with it. Their own bones trembled with it.

Then the floor lurched.

A violent jolt threw Bomoor sideways, and Thane’s hand shot out instinctively to steady himself as the Cathedral shuddered like a living thing in pain. The vaulted chamber seemed to contract around them, the towering ribs of the structure bending inward as though the entire space were inhaling.

The Force pressed down on them - thick, suffocating and claustrophobic.

Ahead of them, the Proselyte swayed and convulsed, fed by an unseen ecstasy.

The ancient figure’s limbs jerked and swayed in a grotesque rhythm. His tattered robes whipping around him as though caught in a storm that touched no one else. His golden eyes blazed with a feverish light, reflecting the rising glow from the great window as Ord Yutani’s surface buckled and tore below.

Contispex had already retreated to the altar. He knelt in perfect stillness, cane laid before him, lips moving in silent prayer as the world died beneath his ship.

Another quake hit - harder this time, causing ancient dust to dislodge from cracks in the structure untouched in a millennia.

The choir’s shriek fractured into a wild chant that clawed at the edges of sanity.

Bomoor snapped.

His viridian blade ignited with a crackling roar, the light trembling as the cathedral about them shook.

"Thane!" he shouted over the cacophony, his twin voices raw with a barely masked panic, "This ship isn’t just flying away, it’s tearing the planet apart! I can feel it stripping the surface. If it digs any deeper, Ord Yutani will collapse!"

He swung his lightsaber toward the Proselyte, horror twisting his tones.

"And him, whatever kind of Jedi he once was, he’s feeding on it. It’s perverse!"

The Proselyte did not even look at him. His arms rose higher, fingers trembling as though drawing invisible threads of power into himself.

Bomoor turned back to Thane, desperation and resolve burning through the fear.

"We must stop him, Thane. We must shut this whole thing down."

The ancient man laughed softly beneath the screaming choir, the sound almost lost amongst the groaning of the Cathedral as it clawed into the earth below. There was no triumph in it - only a weary amusement that suggested he had heard the same objection countless times before. His gnarled fingers continued their slow movements through the air before him, tracing patterns that seemed meaningless until the Force itself shifted and coiled around them.

"You still think destruction and creation are opposites," he said. "That is because the Jedi teach restraint before understanding. They teach fear before mastery. They hand a child a torch and spend the rest of his life warning him of fire."

The Proselyte's molten gaze drifted beyond them, towards something only he seemed capable of seeing beneath the layers of metal and atmosphere. The world below trembled through the Force. Entire regions were already being stripped, oceans and mountains being rendered into figures and calculations by machinery older than nations. Yet the old man regarded it with the same detached fascination a gardener might reserve for pruning a tree.

"Look at what your Republic has made of the galaxy," he continued. "Thousands of worlds administered by men and women who cannot perceive the consequences of their own choices beyond the span of an election cycle. Every generation inheriting the failures of the last and calling the arrangement civilisation - a 'golden age'. Every crisis managed, every wound bandaged, every decline prolonged. You call this stewardship because the alternative frightens you."

Bomoor felt the pressure increase again, not upon his body but somewhere deeper, where thought became conviction. The old man's attention was not truly upon him, though - it was upon Thane.

The focus was subtle enough that it might have gone unnoticed by anyone else. Thane still stood where he had stood moments, yet his expression had become strangely distant, his focus struggling to settle as the Proselyte's words spread through the chamber.

The young Caanan seemed oddly detached from the chaos unfolding around them. The Jedi still held his lightsaber hilt firmly in one hand, yet the blade remained unignited despite the threat standing plainly before them. His posture was neither relaxed nor defensive. Instead, it carried the uneasy rigidity of someone attempting to concentrate through a sudden illness. The colour had drained slightly from his face and his eyes struggled to settle, shifting between the Proselyte, the stained-glass glare and some distant point Bomoor could not identify. It was not fear or indecision. Rather, it was as though Thane were listening to something that nobody else in the chamber could hear, straining to separate one voice from another whilst the entire Cathedral screamed around them.

Bomoor staggered as the pressure shifted again, feeling less the intensity of the destruction below him and now, more, the Proselyte’s attempts to invade his mind. The Force around him warped, not in the wild, chaotic way of battle, but with a terrible precision, as though the Proselyte were plucking at the strings of his mind one by one.

He gripped his blade tightly in resistance. Yet, as he looked towards the aged Human, he saw a flicker of frustration in the old man’s eyes; not at Bomoor, but at the resistance itself, as though the Ithorian’s mind did not yield in the way he expected. Had the man’s humano-centric worldview made him less adept at intruding on the mind of one he would deem as alien? Had the many years of surrounding himself with his own kin lessened his understanding of the mind’s outside his narrow view?

Yet, even though the deeper recesses of his mind remained closed, the effort of resisting still held him in place.

“Stop…” Bomoor rasped, but the word fractured as he was forced back into his own mind. Memories flickered at the edges of his vision – a lush homeworld of rolling grasslands and a smiling Herd, the marble Temple walls and long hallways, Thane’s face in a dozen moments of triumph and failure, all flashed before him as if they were being dragged to the surface for examination.

The Proselyte scowled, still holding his grip on the Ithorian, yet his head turned away, towards Thane.

Bomoor drooped slightly, his weakening physique now becoming clearer to all those present. His twin voices broke into a strained, discordant harmony.

“Thane!” The name tore out of him, raw and desperate, trying to draw his companion back from his own daze, “He’s in your head too. You must fight him!”

Thane did not answer. He did not even blink. He simply held his eyes up towards the dazzling lights of the Cathedral’s stained glass illuminator.

“No!” Bomoor growled, forcing his thoughts into a single, anchored point as his body tried to steady itself against the ancient vessel’s floor.

The choir screamed. The Cathedral groaned. The planet below buckled. The pressure intensified, a crushing weight behind his skull. His vision was blurred and yet he slowly gripped his blade tighter as he felt the man’s attention shifting further and further from himself and towards Thane.

With a great bellow of energy, Bomoor broke free. The shockwave of his voice tipped the Proselyte backwards and the Ithorian took the advantage to sweep forwards and drive a heavy blow towards the ghastly former-Jedi. Yet, he found himself met with a shimmering white line of defence. The Human had produced his own hilt from somewhere in the blink of an eye and caught Bomoor’s green-hued weapon. Despite his age and the Ithorian’s advantageous angle of attack, the man slowly straightened and pushed back until they were both upright and staring across the sabre lock into each other’s faces.

“You shall not have our minds!” Bomoor held firm, “You shall not have this world!”

The Proselyte regarded the locked blades for scarcely a heartbeat before disappointment creased the corners of his ancient eyes.

"So little understanding," he murmured, though whether the observation was directed towards the Ithorian before him or the Jedi Order itself was impossible to tell.

His movements changed. Gone was the ponderous, almost skeletal stillness that had defined every gesture until now. The old man flowed forwards with startling speed, white robes billowing as though caught within some invisible current. The crossguard lightsaber became a wheel of pale fire, its blade hissing as it twisted through an intricate sequence of cuts and feints that bore none of the brute aggression so common amongst Dark Jedi. There was an elegance to it, not unlike his own duels against Thane or Thurius. Every movement was precise, efficient and utterly without wasted effort. Age seemed simply not to apply.

The white blade flashed once, twice and then a third time.

A sharp scent of scorched cloth and flesh briefly cut through the incense that hung throughout the chapel as he landed a grazing blow against Bomoor's upper arm, scraping away fabric and searing the flesh beneath.

The Proselyte allowed the momentum of the exchange to carry him clear before settling once again into an almost casual guard, the point of his blade hanging low as though the brief display had required no effort whatsoever.

Bomoor continued the fight, wincing has he dropped one hand from his blade to hold over his wounded shoulder and keeping his viridian blade at a wide defensive angle as the ancient-looking man continued to strike at him.

However, with Thane still frozen in place, he could not press the attack and found himself defending against blow after powerful blow until one particularly sharp angle of defence had him lean just a little too much and the Proselyte's sharp elbow ploughed back into his face, swinging him back awkwardly and allowing for a burst of furious Force energy to send him hurtling back towards the steps, dazed as the light from the great stained glass emanator settled upon him.

All the while, the Proselyte's attention had never lingered upon the exchange. It drifted immediately beyond it - to Thane.

The immense pressure that had settled upon the young Caanan's thoughts returned with renewed intensity. It was no longer probing, but inviting. Patient and almost compassionate.

"You see?" the old man said quietly. "The body is fragile. It always has been."

Another tremor rolled through the Cathedral, causing dust to rain from the vaulted ceiling as the choir's impossible hymn climbed another agonising note. Beneath it all, Thane could still feel the world dying.

The Proselyte took another measured step.

"You grieve because you believe suffering is failure." His voice seemed to come now from every corner of the vast chamber. "But suffering is merely the furnace in which purpose is revealed."

The pressure within Thane's mind deepened, stripping away distraction after distraction until uncomfortable questions remained naked before him.

How many wars had the Republic truly ended?

How many had merely been delayed?

How many thousands had they already failed simply by arriving too late?

His fingers tightened unconsciously around the hilt at his side and the Proselyte saw it. A faint smile crossed the weathered face.

"There..." he whispered. "You have begun to ask the correct questions."

Then, Thane's gaze shifted. For the first time since the Proselyte's assault upon his mind had begun, his attention was dragged wholly back into the present by what had just occurred within the chamber. The haze fractured and his breathing caught sharply as clarity returned in a rush, blue eyes hardening beneath furrowed brows as he looked upon his injured friend, just feet from their adversary.

The Proselyte's smile did not fade.

"Yes," he said softly. "There you are."

With a violent crackle, Thane's crimson blade burst into existence, its violet light cutting across the chapel and washing over the ancient Human's deeply-lined face.

The Proselyte met the attack without surprise. White and violet collided with a crack that echoed throughout the chapel, sparks showering across the polished stone as the ancient Dark Jedi absorbed the blow with impossible ease. His wrists barely shifted, the white crossguard angling aside before whipping back in a blur that forced Thane immediately onto the defensive.

The Proselyte's eyes never left him.

"You chose."

Thane answered with another attack, as he saw Bomoor moving forward to rejoin the fight. Thane's blade swept low before rising sharply towards the old man's centre, forcing the Proselyte to pivot gracefully aside. Their blades scraped together once more before separating in a shower of white-hot sparks.

"You..." Thane's jaw tightened as he pressed forwards again, "...hurt him."

The ancient Jedi yielded only inches, turning each strike aside with minute movements of his wrists rather than great sweeps of his arms. Every defence became a counterattack and every opening became a trap.

Yet Thane did not relent, whilst the questions still echoed inside his mind - the doubts remained. But, each glance towards Bomoor only hardened his resolve.

Whatever truth this man possessed - it had curdled into something monstrous.

Movement flickered at the edge of his vision as viridian light rejoined the fight, forcing the Proselyte's attention to divide for the first time.

Before either Jedi could press the advantage, a harsh tremor rolled through the chapel, and several dark shapes flew past the window - the outlines of starfighters firing upon the ancient superweapon just about visible.

Contispex lurched upright, his prayer collapsing the instant he sensed the new arrivals outside.

"No! The heathens are at the gates!" he shrieked, stumbling toward the wall. His cane clattered across the stone as his trembling fingers scraped at the carved reliefs until a hidden panel hissed open beneath his touch, "But they will not have this world. Its purification is at hand."

He slammed his palm against the comm switch.

"Shurley! Accelerate the process. Burn them up!"

Bomoor and Thane could not hear what answer came back, only that the Cathedral responded moments later.

A deeper tremor rolled through the chamber, violent enough to rattle the stained‑glass illuminator in its ancient housing. The Force convulsed and the planet’s scream surged upward like a tidal wave of pain.

Bomoor felt it hit him like a blow, the sensation overriding the pain in his wounded arm until it became little more than a dull throb. He clenched his blade tighter and drove harder at the Proselyte, feeling a renewed purpose in the dance of blades.

He surged forward, viridian blade rising in a wide sweep as Thane pressed the Proselyte from the opposite side. The ancient man’s white crossguard flashed to meet them both, but for the first time his movements lost their effortless grace. His footwork tightened. His blade angle narrowed. His attention flickered between Thane’s fury and Bomoor’s renewed advance.

The Ithorian’s strikes had the desired effect: they were strong but never wild, each one carrying a resonance drawn from the agony below, channelled through him by instinct rather than technique. Each blow carried the resonance of Ord Yutani’s dying heartbeat. The Proselyte’s guard shuddered beneath the pressure, his blade forced higher and higher as Bomoor’s strength bore down upon him.

The old man’s eyes narrowed, clearly not expecting this degree of resistance. Yet, he kept shifting his gaze towards Thane and Bomoor could sense him still trying to probe his friend's mind. If Thane weakened again, the ground they were gaining would crumble.

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Several hundred kilometres away, beneath skies that had before been bright and cloudless, three farmers stood together in silence upon the edge of a broad field of scrubroot.

None of them had ever travelled beyond Ord Yutani. None had ever seen the Republic with their own eyes, aside from suffering their guns during the Second Conflict. Yet all three had being living their recent lives beneath the promise that one day the Goddess would look upon Her Faithful and raise them into everlasting glory.

That day had come.

Far across the horizon, so distant that the Cathedral itself could scarcely be distinguished from the shimmering atmosphere surrounding it, a pillar of brilliant white radiance had pierced the heavens. Even at such impossible distance, the light dwarfed mountains. Now, great concentric rings rippled through the sky around it, faster and faster, scattering the clouds into vast circular formations that stretched from horizon to horizon.

The eldest of the three quietly removed his broad straw hat. Without speaking, the others did likewise. They stood together beneath the warm wind, watching the holy light climb ever higher.

"The Glare..." one whispered.

"The Glare," another repeated reverently.

The earth trembled beneath their boots, like the heartbeat of some sleeping giant beneath the fields.

The oldest farmer smiled. They had stayed behind, older and chosen for this moment.

"She's calling us."

The crops had been moving since it started. LAt first only the leaves trembled, but now entire rows bent together - upwards. The dark soil between them now began to loosen, and pebbles skipped across the ground. Even dust rose into the air.

The eldest frowned.

A single clod of earth drifted upwards before him, breaking apart into countless glittering particles that spiralled lazily towards the distant column of light. Another followed, and then another and another. The trembling beneath their feet deepened. All at once the fields erupted.

The ground split apart with a deafening crack that threw all three from their feet as a wave of invisible force swept across the countryside. Ancient trees tore from the earth root-first, spinning helplessly into the sky alongside entire curtains of topsoil. Great boulders rolled like toys before shattering into clouds of pulverised stone.

The light on the horizon intensified until it became painful to behold, like a new sun beaming across their world.

The oldest farmer clawed desperately at the earth, but it crumbled beneath his fingers. Every handful dissolved into streams of glittering matter that were drawn inexorably towards the impossible radiance.

"What..." His voice faltered and around him the world screamed.

The distant hills split open in lines of molten orange as volcanic fire burst skywards. Rivers abandoned their banks, twisting upwards into vast spiralling columns before vanishing into the heavens. Black storm clouds formed with terrifying speed, circling the growing pillar of light like scavengers around a dying beast.

The youngest of the three, middle-aged at best, but leaning heavily on his mismatched cybernetic leg, stared at the devastation.

"This..." His voice broke. "This isn't..."

He could not bring himself to finish the sentence.

For the first time since learning of her radiance, he doubted Her Glare. The thought lasted scarcely a heartbeat, though, as the earth beneath them finally gave way.

The world consumed them before another word could be spoken.

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The Proselyte yielded another step beneath the pressure of two Jedi blades, before his expression settled once more into that same ancient calm. His glimmering eyes drifted briefly between them, measuring distance rather than intent.

The old man then pivoted beneath Bomoor's sweeping Form V strike, his robes spiralling around him as the white crossguard flashed upwards in a tight ascending cut. Thane reacted instinctively, violet blade turning to intercept in a targeted Niman manoeuvre, but found only empty air before the Proselyte seemed to appear beside him instead.

A brilliant line of white swept across his face and pain visibly exploded behind Thane's right eye.

The Jedi Guardian recoiled violently, stumbling backwards as the blade scored across his brow and cheekbone in a single glancing stroke. The lightsaber had not taken the eye, but the heat alone left his vision awash with white light as the scent of scorched flesh filled his senses. His free hand flew instinctively towards the instantly cauterised wound.

The Proselyte did not even watch him fall away.

A pair of crimson-and-gold Glarist guards then surged towards the wounded Jedi, electrostaves crackling to life as they sought to capitalise upon the opening, having been wordless summoned. Thane barely had time to recover before the first weapon came driving towards his shoulder, forcing him to raise his violet blade defensively as another thrust followed from his blind side.

The ancient Jedi had already turned elsewhere. His attention settled once more upon the Ithorian. But, for the first time since the duel had begun, distance opened between them.

The Proselyte glided backwards with astonishing agility, the hem of his tattered robes scarcely touching the polished stone as he retreated towards the great pulpit where Contispex delivered his sermons. Bathed in the golden radiance pouring through the immense false stained-glass illuminator, he appeared less like an old man than some dreadful prophet risen from forgotten scripture.

He lowered his lightsaber and the white blade extinguished with a sharp hiss.

He raised both hands and the air itself seemed to tighten. Golden eyes fixed unblinking upon Bomoor as ancient fingers curled into claws.

"So determined, my alien boy..." his voice echoed unnaturally through the vast cathedral, "...to preserve what cannot endure!"

Blue-white light burst from his outstretched hands. It struck with horrifying precision, a continuous torrent of Force lightning screaming across the chapel, its branching tendrils illuminating every pillar and vaulted arch as they surged directly towards the advancing Ithorian.

Bomoor had never seen true Force Lightning outside of the highly restricted mentions of it in Jedi literature as a power of the Dark side. If there had been any doubt that the aged Jedi had fallen, this snuffed them out. With wide eyes, he brought his blade up across his body and caught the lightning. As it struck him, he had to tighten his grip: the energy had more weight than he was expecting, not unlike the plasma of a lightsaber blow. He widened his stance, the brilliant light blinding him as stray tendrils scorched his skin like a thousand lashes.

To his side, he could see Thane, downed but still defending against the approaching guards, one knee still on the ground as he batted away his attackers. He could not make out the wound clearly from this side, but saw the red pocked blistering of a plasma burn across his face and Bomoor winced as he realised just how grave their situation was. Escape seemed an ever more impossible goal but, as Jedi knights, they should and would lay down their lives if it meant saving this world.

He turned back to face the blinding fury of the lightning onslaught and called back through the haze.

"Have you forgotten the oaths you took as a Jedi?" he gritted his gums together as he pushed back with as much might as he could muster to direct the lightning down and get a view of the white-haired man casting it, "To be a guardian of the people, not to sit in judgement or, worse, exploit them to your own ends! You have used these people, this religion, to take what you want and you will discard them too once you find an even better base of power!"

The Proselyte regarded the struggling Ithorian through the blinding latticework of his own lightning, the terrible brilliance reflected in his ancient eyes. There was neither anger nor triumph upon his face, only the quiet disappointment of a teacher watching a gifted pupil cling stubbornly to a comforting falsehood. Bomoor's accusation seemed not to wound him, but to confirm something he had concluded decades before.

"I am more Jedi than any other Knight alive in this time. I alone understand what must be done; I alone recognise the purity and purpose of our power," he said, his voice carrying effortlessly above the shriek of crackling energy and the cathedral's dying hymn.

His gaze drifted briefly towards Thane, still embroiled with the crimson-clad guards below the pulpit, before settling once more upon the Ithorian.

"You have strength, and conviction enough to impress me, but your mind was never fashioned to perceive what lies beyond this age. Humanity must lead what comes next. He may yet come to understand that." The lightning surged anew, the old man's expression remaining serenely composed. "You, however... were never part of the future I seek to build!"

Bomoor felt the intrusion return almost at once. Even as the torrent of lightning battered against his lightsaber, he sensed the Proselyte's presence worming once more into the edges of his consciousness, searching for a way through the tangled pathways of his mind. It was different this time, more forceful, probing rather than persuasive, yet it still faltered against thoughts and memories that seemed to resist being unravelled. He could feel the old Dark Jedi pushing harder, as though sheer will might succeed in conquering the Consular.

Bomoor’s twin voices rose above the crackling storm, raw and resonant:

"You really think so little of my mind?" he bellowed, pushing against the torrent, "Then come in, Proselyte. See how your narrow thoughts fare inside mine!"

He collapsed his mental shielding inward; not breaking it, but folding it like a trap. The Proselyte’s consciousness, already clawing at the edges of his mind, slipped suddenly and violently into the depths of the Ithorian’s psyche.

The old man grunted, the lightning faltering for the first time as his attention was wrenched almost entirely toward the unexpected plunge.

It was a dangerous ploy. Bomoor knew it. If the Proselyte gained a foothold, he could tear through the Ithorian’s mind like a wildfire. But Bomoor had a plan - it was crude and desperate, but held just enough hope: drown the Human in alien thought. Overwhelm him with everything he had spent a lifetime rejecting.

The shimmering white silhouette of the Proselyte appeared in Bomoor’s mind’s eye, drifting through the first layers of memory like a trespasser in a sacred grove. Bomoor swept him deeper, forcing him through recollections of distant worlds, strange tongues, unfamiliar scents and tastes; a vibrant kaleidoscope of a life lived alongside species the Proselyte had dismissed as lesser.

But the old Jedi had travelled once. He had seen some of these things, even if he had rejected them. He pushed on.

So Bomoor went deeper.

He conjured Öetrago - not as a place, but as a feeling: the herds, the great plains, the reverence of Mother Jungle, the thunderous harmony of four lungs and two mouths calling across the wide green world. The sensation of belonging to something vast and ancient and communal; a concept utterly alien to the Proselyte’s rigid, Human‑centric worldview.

The lightning weakened. Bomoor felt it. He stepped forward through the storm.

But the Proselyte still burrowed, trying to twist the Ithorian’s thoughts, trying to seed xenophobia and self‑loathing in his mind. Bomoor felt the pressure, the attempt to reshape him into something small and obedient.

He answered with more personal memory: his mother’s gentle wisdom, his father’s steady fairness. Faces he had not seen in decades, suddenly vivid and sharp as he held them up like shields. Strength drawn not from power, but from belonging.

The Proselyte recoiled. The lightning dipped, sputtering as his fingers trembled.

Bomoor knew the moment had come.

He charged through the fading storm, skin burning as the last tendrils of lightning lashed across his face and trunk. He swung his blade in a tight, controlled arc; he could not see the man through the blinding flash but he did not need to. The Proselyte’s presence in his mind made him unmistakable.

Then came silence.

The connection snapped. Bomoor’s mind was his own again, quiet and contained.

As the blinding lattice of lightning faded, his vision cleared enough to see the aged man stumble backward, his crossguard lightsaber slipping from his grasp. The white blade stuttered and died. His hand clutched at the great plasma burn seared across his chest, breath hitching in a wet, choking gasp as he collapsed sideways onto the long crimson carpet. One trembling arm held him upright, barely.

His golden eyes flickered.

The change was immediate; the suffocating pressure that had settled across the Cathedral since the Proselyte first revealed himself fractured like thin ice beneath a hammer blow. It did not disappear entirely, but became ragged, uncertain. The terrible certainty that had filled every corner of the chamber faltered for the first time.

Across the chapel, the crimson-and-gold guards pressing Thane's defence hesitated as though waking from a dream. Their coordinated assault dissolved into uncertain strikes, each man suddenly forced to rely upon his own judgement rather than the terrible will that had quietly guided them. Thane wasted no time. His violet blade swept low, knocking one electrostaff spinning across the polished stone before its owner collapsed with a cry. A sharp reverse cut sent another weapon flying from numb hands. The third guard barely managed to recover before the flat of Thane's hilt crashed into his temple, leaving him sprawling unconscious beside the altar.

Thane's breathing remained uneven. Blood trickled from the fresh burn that crossed his right brow and cheek, already blackened around its cauterised edges, yet his eyes were elsewhere. They settled first upon Bomoor, still standing, and then upon the fallen Dark Jedi Master. Satisfied that his friend held the advantage, Thane turned instead towards the only man who could still doom the world.

"Contispex!"

The name rang through the cathedral. The aged priest had scarcely looked up before an invisible force seized him. His robes billowed violently as he was torn from his feet, his cane clattering away across the marble. He hurtled through the air towards the young Guardian before stopping abruptly, suspended helplessly above the floor, boots kicking futilely against nothing.

Thane's uninjured eye blazed.

"Stop the machine."

For the first time, the self-assurance in the man's eyes had been replaced with fear. He looked from his spiritual leader downed by the Ithorian to the Human who now held his life in the balance.

"But... this cannot be..." he stammered, inching himself away from the Jedi Guardian with trembling hands, "This was to be our moment. What was written in the scripture... he promised me..."

He shook his head and stared pleadingly past the red, scarred face of Thane, as though to acknowledge him there would have itself been a blasphemous act. His voice dropped to barely a whisper as he began reciting the words of his faith.

"Even in times of long shadow, where Her Glare is obscured, though knowest Her light still shines. When mortal eyes fail to see, open your spirit vision and thou shalt see Her light eternal..."

Thane's expression hardened as Contispex retreated into scripture, the man's words sounding increasingly distant beneath the groaning of the Cathedral. The young Jedi tightened his invisible hold and drew the Archprelate closer, enough that the man's feet no longer touched the floor at all.

"I didn't ask what your scripture says," he said through clenched teeth, his ire rising.

His bloodied face was only a short distance from this so-called Contispex now, the fresh line of cauterised flesh beside his right eye making his stare harsher than the priest had seen before.

"I asked you to stop this machine..."

Yet, the prayer continued. Contispex's lips moved through verse after verse, retreating further into the certainty of his faith whilst somewhere beneath them Ord Yutani continued to come apart. Thane stared at him for several seconds before something in his expression changed. There would be no reasoning with him. No argument, threat or revelation was going to penetrate whatever the Proselyte had helped build inside this man's mind. He would stand there and recite scripture until the Cathedral had stripped the last mountain from his world.

Thane's jaw tightened.

"Fine."

His hand snapped sideways and the Force struck Contispex like a physical blow, hurling him across the chapel and driving him hard into the polished floor. Thane watched him fall without apology, sore, half-blinded and plainly beyond any remaining patience for the zealot's sermonising, the pontiff left unconscious. His attention had already shifted elsewhere, towards Bomoor and the crumpled figure of the Proselyte beyond him.

Across the way, the former Jedi Master scarcely heard them. One trembling hand pressed instinctively against the blackened wound across his chest whilst the other clawed into the crimson carpet beneath him. Yellowed nails scraped uselessly through the ancient fibres as another violent cough wracked his body. The breath that followed came wet and shallow.

"Impossible."

His body had obeyed him for decades. It had endured wars, purges, despots and younger men, Jedi and soldier alike. Now, with every laboured breath, he felt strength bleeding away from him like water through broken stone.

His molten gaze lifted towards the Ithorian. Disbelief slowly curdled into fury.

"Killed... by a boy. An alien..." the word caught in his throat and his dry lips trembled.

"You... presume to condemn the future?" He drew another ragged breath, every syllable becoming harder to force into the world. "You think...your Republic has prevailed..." His eyes burned with desperate conviction. "It has merely delayed its decay... Greed... commerce... machines..."

His gaze drifted beyond Bomoor entirely, as though already seeing years yet to come.

"They surrender themselves willingly... to men untouched by the Force... and call it prosperity..." His voice had become little more than a rasp. "Your Jedi watch... powerless... complicit!"

Still he tried to rise - his pride demanded it - yet his limbs no longer obeyed as they once had.

Thane stepped across to them now, Contispex left behind, one hand still held near the cauterised line running from his right brow to the edge of the socket beneath. With a sharp gesture, the fallen crossguard hilt tore itself from the floor and snapped into his waiting palm. He stood over the Proselyte in silence, the violet light of his own blade throwing hard colour across the raw wound on his face as he regarded the broken figure beneath him.

His eyes lifted towards Bomoor.

"What should we do with him?"

The question hung strangely between them. Jedi did not execute prisoners - not even the Reborn Jedi, for all their severity, would have called this justice. Yet, Thane did not lower either weapon.

Bomoor drew himself up more fully, though still gripped his blade tight in his hand, his eyes feeling the heavy weight of the terrible wound he had inflicted on the Proselyte.

"He will not survive this wound," he observed, "But while breath remains, he should witness the undoing of what he set in motion."

His eyes rose to the far end of the room, ignoring the now silent choir, whose members had either scattered or stood in stunned witness to the Jedi and their defeat of their leaders. He strode towards the access panel Contispex had revealed before.

He punched the intercom button and bellowed into the receiver.

"Engineer Shurley. The Proselyte lies dying and Contispex is detained; they have failed and the Republic will soon take this vessel. Shut down the machine now or this world will soon die for nothing."

For a moment, there was no reply but the monstrous grinding of the World Devastator churning the planet below.

Then, a simple reply:

"Alright then."

A deep shudder rolled through the Cathedral as the decision was made. The tremor beneath their feet softened. The scream in the Force thinned. Far below, the catastrophic pull on the planet’s crust slackened, the awful tearing replaced by a low, uneven rumble that slowly began to fade.

Bomoor held his finger on the button a moment longer.

"Thank you, Shurley," he spoke earnestly, feeling a sudden tension escaping his body along with the words.

The Ithorian turned and called back along the great chamber.

"It's finished," he spoke mostly to the withering life force of the Proselyte, "Ord Yutani will not be consumed today and this crusade will go no further."

The Proselyte remained where he had fallen, one hand still knotted into the crimson carpet as though he might anchor himself to life by force alone. The terrible wound across his chest had blackened the remnants of his robes and the flesh beneath, yet he stubbornly refused to yield to it. Within the Force, his presence had become markedly diminished, but it had not disappeared. Thin, uneven threads of power still crawled from him like the legs of a dying arachnid, reaching blindly outward for anything upon which they might fasten. They found nothing. The choir no longer sustained him, the faithful had scattered, and the great machine beneath them was winding down. What remained was simply the will of an ancient man who had forgotten how to die.

Thane watched him for several long moments, the white crossguard hilt still resting in his hand. With the immediate threat subsiding, the young Jedi's breathing had begun to steady, although the newly-seared line beside his right eye still throbbed with every heartbeat and distorted the edge of his vision. He glanced towards Bomoor, then back to the ruined figure upon the floor. "We should keep him alive," he said eventually, the words sounding almost reluctant as they left him. "The Council will want to know how long he has been here, what he has done to these people... and the Shadows will want everything he knows."

Before anything further could be decided, the hidden communications system above them crackled violently to life. The first voice was distorted almost beyond recognition, but the urgency behind it was unmistakable.

"Cathedral command, respond. Sector Four has collapsed. Judicial fighters have broken through the upper screen and our interceptors are withdrawing towards the planetary limb. We require immediate reinforcement."

Another transmission cut across it before the first had finished.

"All vessels, maintain formation! Maintain formation! The Faithful are ordered to hold the line until relief-"

Static swallowed the voice, followed almost immediately by another.

"Republic cruiser entering weapons range. Forward batteries disabled. We cannot maintain position. Repeat, we cannot-"

The channel dissolved into overlapping reports, calls for instruction and increasingly desperate invocations of the Goddess. Whatever unity had bound the Nea Glarist fleet together was failing with remarkable speed. Without the Proselyte's unseen pressure and with the Cathedral no longer devouring the world beneath them, conviction alone was proving insufficient to hold together a fighting force assembled from fanatics, converted civilians and ageing veterans.

The old man heard them.

His head lifted by degrees.

The change in him was startling. Without the Force sustaining the illusion of vitality, Olr-Ohm Wiseld seemed to age before them, his skin loosening against his skull and his shoulders sinking beneath the weight of his tattered robes. Blood darkened the corner of his mouth as another cough shuddered through him, yet those golden eyes still held their furious intelligence.

"They scatter..." he rasped, disbelief souring every syllable. "Because they have... cannot... to command themselves."

Another faint tendril of his power reached outward and failed, vanishing almost as soon as it formed.

Thane's expression tightened. He had seemingly heard enough of the old man's reasoning to recognise fragments of truth within it, and perhaps that was what made the sight before him so infuriating. The Republic was complacent and the Jedi were imperfect. Entire worlds had been failed through indecision, corruption and political convenience. He and Bomoor had seen that plenty of times already in their young careers - yet none of that had required this.

None of it had demanded that farmers be consumed beneath their own fields, that species be ranked by birth, or that minds be hollowed out until obedience masqueraded as faith.

The Proselyte looked up at Thane.

For one instant, the two Humans simply regarded one another.

Then, Thane's fingers tightened around both hilts. The motion was small enough that it might have passed unnoticed. His own violet blade continued to hum at his side, whilst the white crossguard remained dormant.

The Proselyte's lips twitched faintly, perhaps recognising the decision before it had been made.

Thane stepped closer.

There was no declaration and no formal judgement - no final appeal to the Code.

The white blade erupted from the Proselyte's own weapon and drove directly through his chest.

The old man's body went rigid. His eyes widened once, not in fear but in pure astonishment, before the light within them vanished. Whatever remnants of power still clung to him disappeared instantly, those last thin strands within the Force snapping away into nothingness.

Thane withdrew the blade and Wiseld collapsed in upon himself, the ancient body folding into a loose heap of white-grey robes upon the crimson carpet.

For several seconds, Thane did not move. The crossguard lightsaber remained ignited in his hand, its pale blade humming beside his own violet one as he stared down at the man he had just killed.

There was perhaps no true necessity in what he had done - Bomoor had already claimed the victory and ended the threat. There had been no immediate threat and no battle reflex to excuse it.

The Proselyte had been helpless.

Slowly, the white blade extinguished.

Thane looked away from the corpse and towards the great window, where the flashes of the Republic assault continued to illuminate the darkness beyond.

Something in his expression had settled. The faintest trace of satisfaction had entered the silence where hesitation should have been, and he turned his injured eyes towards the Ithorian.

As Bomoor descended the steps, the orange glow of the great window cast a fiery halo around the Ithorian’s silhouette. In his grasp, Contispex sagged like a discarded marionette, tall hat bent and drooping, his trembling breaths shallow and mechanical.

Bomoor stopped beside the fallen Proselyte. His eyes lingered on the corpse, not with triumph but with a weary sorrow.

"Even with all that power," he murmured, "He was unlikely to have made it back. Still... it is not our place to decide when another’s final moment should be."

His gaze shifted to Thane, steady but without accusation, "I suppose, in this instance... it is cleaner."

He nudged Contispex forward. The old man stumbled, staring only at the floor.

"And I sense this one," Bomoor added, "Will be more forthcoming with answers anyway."

Contispex said nothing. His breaths came in trembling, shallow pulses, like a droid running on failing power pack.

Thane's gaze passed briefly over Contispex with something approaching contempt before settling once more upon the loose heap of white-grey robes at his feet. His eyes then dropped to the ornate crossguard hilt still resting in his hand, the dead Proselyte's weapon seeming strangely small now that the terrible presence which had wielded it was gone.

He clipped the hilt to his belt beside his own.

"We should signal Master Dunrar and the admiral," Thane said simply, looking towards the great window and the distant flashes of battle beyond it. "Tell them the Cathedral is ours."

TBC

 

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