The Master's Mercy, Part Four

Posted on Thu Oct 22nd, 2026 @ 8:41pm by Kelderesh jai Nektus & Mange & Hollow

2,439 words; about a 12 minute read

Chapter: Chapter IX: The First Verse
Location: Refugee Station, Bothan Space
Timeline: In the days after "Hollow Pursuits"

Hollow landed lightly amongst the devastation of the upper observation level.

For several seconds, there was nothing but blood, shattered transparisteel and frightened movement. A medical technician lay curled beneath a console clutching both hands against a neck wound whilst another dragged herself weakly towards a side room, leaving a widening red trail behind her.

Hollow passed them without slowing. The architect droid's presence was not difficult to follow now that she knew what she sought. Gnayuh possessed no presence in the Force, but everything around him moved according to his passage. Doors closed and lifts changed destination. Security shutters descended unexpectedly across adjoining corridors.

'Lantern Protocol', she deduced.

Hollow reached the first sealed door and thrust out one hand and it buckled inward - but the second door had already opened before she reached it.

Not for her, however. This Gnayuh had simply decided that delaying her there was apparently less useful than directing her somewhere else, but she pressed forward. Ahead, the ancient droid crossed an intersection with an awkward but surprisingly rapid gait, narrow limbs carrying its mismatched body towards another service passage.

Gnayuh's head rotated almost completely around whilst the rest of his body continued moving as he detected the Muun's proximity.

"Oh," was all that he said.

"Stop." Hollow's rusted-orange blade ignited.

The droid considered that for a fraction of a second before replying. "I would prefer not to." And with that, the droid disappeared around the corner, and Hollow followed.

A maintenance shutter slammed down between them. Hollow's lightsaber punched through immediately and began carving a molten circle through the metal.

Gnayuh's voice came very faintly from the other side.

"Your emitter assembly is incorrectly seated," he calmly explained.

Hollow stopped cutting.

"What?" She mildly surprised herself by asking.

"Your lightsaber," he reiterated. The droid sounded almost offended that clarification was necessary. "The focusing array is approximately three degrees out of alignment - possibly three point two. Difficult to determine whilst you are attempting to bisect the door."

Hollow stared at the glowing circle she had cut into the shutter. "It functions," she replied.

"Many poorly constructed things function," Gnayuh returned.

The circle fell inward and Hollow stepped through. Gnayuh was already halfway along the next corridor, but she maintained her pursuit.

"The chosen masters constructed it with me," she explained, despite her better judgment at engaging her target in conversation.

"Then," the machine insisted, "I am sure your masters possess many admirable qualities unrelated to precision engineering."

Hollow's eyes narrowed as the architect droid continued moving.

"The alignment is not immediately dangerous," Gnayuh added conversationally. "Although it will produce uneven wear upon the focusing assembly and, over sufficient time, a fractional instability along the lower third of the blade."

Hollow looked involuntarily towards her own weapon. The orange-red plasma appeared perfectly stable - but Gnayuh clearly noticed.

"Yes. That is why it is called fractional."

For the first time since leaving Verse, something resembling irritation disturbed Hollow's composure and she surged forward. The Force carried her down the corridor far more quickly than the ancient machine could move. Within seconds, she was close enough to reach him.

Gnayuh stopped and Hollow slowed with him. For an instant, there was silence between them - and then another lightsaber ignited. Its light spilled across the corridor from an adjoining doorway.

Hollow's head turned slowly towards it and a figure stepped into her path between the Muun and the architect droid.

Gnayuh inclined his head. "Ah." He turned back towards Hollow. "I suspect our discussion regarding preventative maintenance will need to wait."

The vibrant cyan light of the Jedi's blade illuminated the face of a female Falleen as she drew the weapon up in a vertical guard. Her skin was light, probably green although difficult to identify in the bright blue light. Her eyes flicked back towards the architect droid.

"No discussions Gnayuh, get moving," she spoke with a slight lisp in her voice, perhaps made worse by a tightening in her chest as she prepared to hold the line against Hollow.

Gnayuh looked from the Falleen to Hollow, then inclined his oddly-shaped cranial unit towards the young Muun with impeccable courtesy.

"My apologies," he said. "It appears our discussion shall have to continue at a more convenient time."

With that, the architect droid turned and resumed his hurried retreat into the deeper wards, articulated limbs carrying him away with considerably more urgency than his tone suggested.

Hollow did not attempt to follow.

The knight moved over slightly to block the corridor more completely.

"I know of your cult," she spoke directly, voice still wavering, "A year ago, my friend and her master were killed investigating one of your covens on Qualai. Thanks to your brothers and sisters, she never took the Trials and I faced them alone."

Her grip tightened upon the cyan blade, "So believe me when I say that I have every reason to hate you."

Something in her expression softened, the fear making way for a disturbing serenity.

"But I do not."

The bright blade remained steady.

"Walk away. Leave this station. Leave the droid. Whatever grievance brought you here, it does not have to end in another death."

Hollow's dark eyes remained fixed upon the cyan blade before her as the Falleen spoke of her fallen friend and the master who had died beside her. The Muun listened without interruption, her expression betraying neither guilt nor hostility. She had never seen Qualai. She did not know the cultists responsible, nor what purpose their deaths and killings had served. They were nevertheless her brothers and sisters beneath Axion, and if their actions had fulfilled His design then there was little more to be said.

Yet, something about the Jedi's final words seemed to puzzle her. Not the offer itself - but the mention of hatred.

Hollow tilted her head slightly. "I do not hate you either," she replied. There was a pause as her long fingers tightened around the curved black-and-bronze hilt of her lightsaber. "I merely love the Master."

She said it with such quiet sincerity that there was nothing resembling a threat in the words. To Hollow, it was merely the simplest explanation possible.

"He desires the machine - but you desire that I should not take it." Her gaze briefly passed beyond the Falleen, towards the corridor into which Gnayuh had disappeared. "There need be nothing else between us." Hollow considered her for another moment. "But you ask me to abandon His will." Something faintly curious entered her expression. "I do not understand why you believe that is mercy."

The rusted-orange blade rose as Verse's instruction returned to her with greater clarity than any prior lesson she had received within the enclaves, and she reached. She could feel the tension beneath the Falleen's composure, the tightening in her chest and the fear still present beneath that peculiar serenity. Yet instead of feeding upon it, instead of drawing it inward and allowing it to become rage or strength, the Jedi appeared to be doing something quite different.

She was letting it pass through her, and Hollow found that strangely fascinating. Her feet shifted into position almost unconsciously. One slid back whilst her narrow body turned slightly side-on, the orange blade settling into the broad and uncomplicated guard of Shii-Cho. There was nothing elaborate in the stance. There was no flourish or attempt to imitate the brutal aggression of Mange or the sorcerous elegance of Kelderesh.

"You may still move aside," Hollow added softly. "I have no need nor desire to kill you." Her free hand opened slowly at her side and, for the briefest instant, thin veins of crimson light crawled between her fingertips before disappearing again. "But I will not fail Him."

The Jedi's eyes widened slightly, whether it was anticipation of attack from Hollow's change in stance or whether she was taking something else in about the Muun, it was hard to say. Yet, the fear still trickled off her like water off a quadduck's back, leaving something serene behind.

She held her position.

"I see I am unlikely to convince you," her voice soft, barely a whisper over the thrum of their two blades, "Your master has taught you a worldview where his will matters above all else, until the ethics of the acts committed in his name cease to matter."

Her footwork shifted slightly, blade still held in perfect balance like a beacon into the sky.

"If I am not successful in stopping you this day," her brow fell, determination settling in and that serene glow crystallised into something that resembled the power that Hollow knew, "Then I only hope that some day you see something that shows you that some evils are too much to ask of someone, even when you love your master as you do."

She drew back, readying for the attack, "Now, make you move or be gone, lost one."

Hollow's brow tightened, not in anger, but in something closer to pitying confusion. "I do not understand," she admitted softly.

Then her free hand snapped forward. A narrow lance of crimson lightning struck the deck just before the Falleen's feet, bursting across the conductive plating in a jagged spray before whipping upward towards her body. The Rift Jedi barely brought her cyan blade down in time, catching the sudden discharge as red energy crawled violently across its surface.

Hollow moved with it. The instant the Jedi's guard dipped to contain the lightning, the Muun drove forward with startling speed, both hands closing around her curved hilt as Shii-Cho's broad simplicity became brutally direct. Her blade swept in a fast diagonal cut from shoulder towards opposite hip, not elaborate, not deceptive - merely timed to exploit the fraction of a second she had created.

The Falleen Knight managed to wrench back fractionally but gasped in agony as the swipe connected across her left upper arm and she sunk down, barely maintaining the strength to prevent it connecting with her lower body. There was a flash of sparks as their two blades collided and Hollow was surprised at how quickly her opponent pushed away the pain and summoned a burst of energy to thrust her blade up and to the side.

The pair twisted, still knotted together by their blades but now with Hollow being pressed towards the wall of the corridor. The Falleen's face was now close to hers, still contorted into the wincing form of someone in great pain. Hollow's eyes fell briefly on the wound just below her opponent's shoulder. It was deep, likely into the muscle tissue, yet the Jedi was summoning all her strength to compensate with her other muscles and keep Hollow pinned upright.

Hollow did not possess the strength to win the bind. She realised it almost immediately; the Falleen had driven her back until the Muun's narrow shoulders touched the wall, cyan and rusted-orange plasma shrieking together only inches from their faces. Hollow's arms trembled beneath the pressure, but rather than forcing herself harder against it, she remembered the simplicity Verse had tried to impress upon her.

Do not fight strength with strength. Hollow abruptly relaxed the resistance. Her blade rolled sideways beneath the Falleen's and she twisted with it, long body slipping away from the wall in a lithe half-turn. The Jedi stumbled a fraction forward as the pressure she had been fighting suddenly vanished. Hollow's first answering strike was almost embarrassingly simple: a short horizontal cut towards the wounded arm, the kind of basic Shii-Cho attack she had repeated countless times until movement no longer required thought.

The Falleen saw it and tried to withdraw, but she was not quite fast enough. There was a sharp hiss as her left arm separated cleanly just beneath the shoulder and struck the deck.

For a heartbeat, Hollow simply stared. The success seemed as unexpected to her as her opponent. There had been no elaborate deception, no overwhelming fury and none of the brutal power she had watched amongst the Cult's masters. She had merely seen an opening and moved through it.

Then, her training returned. Hollow flowed another pace sideways rather than pressing recklessly into the wounded Jedi, bringing her rusted-orange blade back into a simple two-handed guard. Her expression remained composed, though her dark eyes had widened slightly.

"I am sorry," she said quietly, her tone sincere.

The woman shrunk to the ground, falling indelicately to one side as her entire body weight suddenly became wrong, yet never ceasing to clutch her weapon tight in her other arm. Her eyes clenched shut, teeth clamped together tightly in a silent scream of anguish.

As Hollow stared at her, unable to look away from the sight, she saw that the Falleen had begun subtly shaking her head.

"No..." she groaned through her teeth, "Do not tell me you are sorry."

Her hand tightened around her lightsaber, even if it brought a tremor to her body as she did so.

"You held the greater will today," the trembling in her body brought a shudder to her voice, "But the Force brings balance to all things and it remembers... my friend.... her master... every innocent your cult has harmed."

She tilted her head up slightly and forced one eye back open.

"Your master has accrued a great debt in his own name." She drooped slightly, but caught herself, "And one day, someone will come to collect it."

Hollow regarded the Falleen in silence.

Her expression carried neither mockery nor discomfort. If anything, there was curiosity there as she considered the dying woman's words. A Force that remembered, that weighed deed against deed and accumulated some invisible debt to be repaid in a distant future was not a conception familiar to her. The Force was power, life and revelation; something that flowed through all things now and would, in the fullness of eternity, be understood entirely through the divinity of the Dark Master. Whatever balance the Jedi believed awaited Him seemed to Hollow little more than another faith competing with her own.

Still, she found herself strangely reluctant to dismiss the woman entirely.

"You have been most compelling," Hollow said softly.

The Falleen's cyan blade trembled weakly in her remaining hand.

Hollow stepped forward. There was no flourish. Her rusted-orange blade moved once in a short, precise stroke across the Jedi's neck, ending the woman's suffering before she could attempt another defence. Hollow remained there for a moment as the body settled beside its severed arm, looking down at the fallen Knight with the same thoughtful expression.

Then, she extinguished her lightsaber. Gnayuh was getting away.

TBC

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