The Mistress' Mercy

Posted on Wed Nov 4th, 2026 @ 7:15pm by Axion & Hollow & Verse

2,243 words; about a 11 minute read

Chapter: Chapter IX: The First Verse
Location: Refugee Station, Bothan Space
Timeline: Concurrent with "The Master's Mercy, Part Three/Four"

OLD

Yet the Nautolan slowed; the droid's damaged chassis seemed to hold her attention for only a moment. Hollow looked back at her. Though the droid had collapsed, the Nautolan remained momentarily still. She sensed something else.

Then came the screech of tortured metal: a blast door on the adjoining corridor suddenly groaned and parted itself to reveal a line of soldiers set against a hazy white backdrop of smoke. The Bothan Defence Force soldiers advanced through the drifting smoke, rifles shouldered and aimed. Unlike the panicked volunteers and security personnel they had butchered thus far, these warriors moved with discipline. Their formation immediately spread to cover the junction.

And behind them stood a single figure: armour-clad and motionless. A yellow lightsaber ignited with a sharp crackling hiss, tinting the smoke into a great golden haze.

[...]

The Nautolan remained where Kelderesh had left her, framed against the drifting smoke of the junction whilst the yellow blade of the advancing Rift Jedi cut brilliant arcs through the haze beyond. Blaster fire flashed between them and several lesser cultists were already spilling forward to meet the newly arrived defenders...

NEW

The yellow blade vanished briefly into the smoke. Something struck metal with a hollow clang; then a cultist came tumbling backwards out of the haze, his weapon skittering ahead of him across the deck.

The Jedi followed above him. One armoured foot found the edge of a wall-mounted service cabinet, and he sprang from it, clearing the fallen man to land beside the junction. His lightsaber swept low, shearing through the supports of a damaged cargo trolley. Before the frame could settle, his free hand opened and sent it sliding sideways into the path of the cultists advancing behind their Herald. Blaster bolts hammered its underside as the Bothan soldiers adjusted their positions.

“Wounded through the rear passage,” he instructed them. “Keep that hatch clear.”

Closer now, the figure within the armour was unmistakably Verpine. Dull grey plates enclosed his narrow torso and long limbs, their overlapping joints marked by repairs and small, mismatched replacements. His helmet accommodated the elongated shape of his head, leaving his mandibles exposed beneath a pair of dark compound eyes. Two antennae projected through flexible sleeves above its brow, turning slightly as another distant impact shuddered through the station.

He glanced towards the ceiling. A ventilation grille rattled in its housing. His three-fingered hand made a small pulling motion. The grille tore free, trailing a broken fastening, and swung down across the junction. He arrested it before it struck the deck. For a moment it hung beside him, slowly revolving.

Beyond the smoke, a Bothan corporal hauled an injured soldier towards the passage. The Verpine moved with them for two short steps, placing himself between their retreat and the Nautolan. His blade settled into a slanting guard.

"My master says a pilot must always leave herself somewhere to land." His Basic carried a dry, clicking undertone, the words carefully articulated. "Ithink she would disapprove of this corridor."

The corporal disappeared through the hatch. The Jedi’s attention remained upon Verse and he advanced. The suspended grille drifted ahead and to his left, its shadow passing over the scattered wreckage. His feet avoided the centre of the passage, finding clear patches of deck amongst the fallen cables and spent power packs.

His free hand closed. The grille shot towards the Nautolan at waist height, turning edge-on as it crossed the intervening space. Almost simultaneously, he sprang onto the fallen trolley and launched himself from its buckled frame, yellow blade poised for a descending cut towards her weapon arm.

Verse took a calm pace back with what little room she had to work with and with her left hand used her command of telekinetic influence to curve the trajectory of the grille around her where it slashed and grinded at raw metal. With just one hand on her lightsaber, she deftly caught the Jedi's brutal chop, yet she did not buckle or stagger under the pressure and momentum. The Jedi did not show it visibly, but the disciple of Axion could sense in close proximity that the dark side had clouded the Jedi's preternatural expectations and did not foresee her uncanny strength, a power that not even as Amare had she enjoyed.

Delighted was she that manipulated the Force in that sudden instant such that the electromagnetic fields between saber blades had not repulsed as they should have, but became locked.

"I sense your pride," she mocked with an aberrant grin as the Jedi pushed his weight forward to vainly attempt to overpower her. "Your arrogance drives you. Righteousness gives you focus!"

With her free left hand, palm up, at her hip whilst speaking, she stimulated a high-voltage conveyance at her fingertips and thrust them forward simultaneously with a telekinetic push and heavy discharge of electrons directly at the Jedi's torso.

The Verpine tried to disengage. His blade held fast, and the realisation had scarcely reached him before lightning crawled across his breastplate. His limbs seized; then the accompanying shove hurled him backwards into the trolley with a crash of buckling metal. Yellow light carved a wild furrow through the deck before he managed to release the activation stud. For a moment he lay amongst the wreckage, mandibles working soundlessly, smoke rising from the seams of his armour.

"Yes," he managed. "I mistook the headwind."

He planted one foot beneath him; the other leg trembled and folded. Beyond the evacuation hatch, a child began crying. His antennae turned towards the sound, then slowly back towards the Nautolan.

"They have already lost their world. Must you come hunting through the lifeboats?"

His free hand fumbled at a warped fastening until the scorched breastplate came loose, exposing the blackened padding beneath. He flung the plate towards her face with a sharp telekinetic impulse. At the same instant, the trolley lurched beneath him, its surviving wheels shrieking as he drove it sideways across the polished deck. He rode it crouched, favouring the shaking leg, and reignited his saber. This time he kept his distance: a quick slash towards her forward knee as the trolley carried him past, his wrist already turning to withdraw the blade before it could be caught again.

Verse had deftly sidestepped both the plate throw and the swipe at her leg, but the sound of the child had stabbed clean through her fanatical determination and dark bravado. A conflict within had snapped, and the momentary hesitation it caused came dangerously close to costing her a knee by mere inches.

"No...no, no, NO!" Verse...nay, Amare screamed, the glow in her reddened eyes fading to black momentarily, the words mostly hurled at herself, asserting momentary control against the weight of the influence that bore down upon her. "Soldiers and apostates I gladly fight, but this cannot involve children! Lord Axion, please!"

She felt a sharp, agonising wave of torment spring from the point of incision that had been cut into her by Nala. She staggered back and shouted, "If you persist, Jedi, I will be forced to kill you and the innocents here. Or, you can save the younglings and leave! Make your choice quickly! Nnnahhh!" The pain overwhelmed her as she mentally wrestled impotently against the Cult leader's indomitable grip upon her psyche. She began blasting at the brave Verpine knight with quick and wild searing strokes of Sith lightning, all the while keeping her guard up as Verse began to resurface. Amare, slipping back beneath the aether of her mind, issued one last warning, "I have slain a Jedi Master and his apprentice without a lightsaber before. You will be no greater effort for me! For her..."


The first stroke caught the trolley and flung him from it. The Rift Jedi struck the deck shoulder-first, rolled, and brought his yellow blade across the next discharge. White fire snarled against it; a stray fork lashed his forearm, wrenching a sharp click from his mandibles. He dragged his failing leg beneath him as the soldiers withdrew. His antennae angled towards the Nautolan, and his mandibles grew still.

"Guardian Dakris Nakomo. Recruit Equivis." The names came with sudden, exact articulation, as though her boast had supplied the missing component in some intricate mechanism. "The Silver Sigil. Last contact - Lorrd." His head tilted slightly. "Zaracoda?" Another flash illuminated his scorched armour; he tightened both hands upon his saber. "Whoever has the controls, you are still aboard."

He backed towards the narrowing hatch, keeping himself between her and the retreating soldiers. His injured hand shook upon the hilt, and his damaged leg dragged with each step. With a jerk of two fingers, he pulled the abandoned trolley across the approach, its buckled frame grinding over the polished deck.

"You warned me. Hold your course a little longer. Let them get clear." The hatch closed behind him, leaving the yellow blade reflected upon its clean metal surface. "Then tell me what happened to our people."

Amare felt the white hot pain in her head beneath Nala's incision, and she groaned and winced and collapsed to her knees. Her hearing was ringing deafeningly loud with tympanic irritation. She tried to look up, her vision heavily blurry and shaky, and for but a fleeting moment, thought she saw herself approaching, then, the sum of her fears became manifest.

Axion.

She knew he wasn't physically present, but his influence over her was strong indeed. His spectre stood over her, imperious, judging, omniscient. There was no hiding anything from Him for He knew the mercy she had shown the Jedi knight.

There was no sound to accompany His arrival. Beyond the apparition, the Verpine remained beside the hatch, his yellow blade wavering slightly in his injured hands; neither his dark eyes nor his searching antennae followed the figure now standing between them. Axion looked down upon His Herald. His features held the grave disappointment of one who had entrusted something precious to a beloved child and returned to find it broken. For several moments He said nothing. His gaze rested upon her face, then passed towards the sealed hatch.

"You have heard them," He said at last, softly. "And forgotten Me."

He knelt before her, bringing that ancient but young Human face level with her own, ethereal blue eyes discerning.

"They have taught you to recognise suffering only at its smallest. One voice. One frightened child. They would have you spend your life answering each cry, whilst the ages turn and breed a thousand more." His hand rose towards her cheek, its outline unwavering amidst the smoke. "I have heard them all, Verse. I have carried their voices longer than these knights have possessed names. And still they would bar the way... still they raise their little swords and call the postponement of salvation mercy." His expression softened with an affection made terrible by its certainty. "You are My Herald - the first of My congregation. You have seen beyond the walls they have built around existence. Why do you kneel before their fear?"

His fingers passed beneath her chin, and He rose slowly, drawing her upwards with Him; whether there was substance beneath that touch or merely the remembered certainty of obedience, His hand offered no purchase by which the two might be distinguished. "Nothing given to Me is lost. Nakomo. Equivis. The soldiers beyond that door. The children." Each name and promise received the same measured tenderness. "Each soul enters the tapestry. Each thread has its place in the glory already woven. They shall have meaning beyond hunger, beyond grief, beyond the brief and bewildered lives to which their protectors would condemn them."

Behind Him, the Verpine shifted his stance, watching the empty space before the Nautolan with an increasingly pronounced tilt of his head. Axion's hand remained beneath her chin.

"You need not bear the whole design. You need only trust the hand that guides you." His eyes held hers. "Rise, My Herald. Bring them to Me."

And with that, there only silence as Verse rose back into prominence. Her weakness and agony extinguished, but so was the inner glow of her now soot black alien eyes. It was as if they had returned to normalcy as she was before her days as Amare, but this time there were no fluidic swirls. The Nautili language of the eyes was vacant and ran cold without care or testimony. Her new master's influence squelched the joy and passion within. There was only the decree; the value of life be damned.

"You should've heeded my warning," she spoke in a low tone to the Verpine and reignited her lightsaber. "He who dwells aloft has spoken. Let His words echo in your blasphemous soul. Ruination is come!" She strode forward swiftly with razor sharp focus, blade raised, and lunged with a merciless slash.

The Verpine raised his yellow blade, bracing his ruined stance before the sealed hatch. His mandibles moved once, but whatever words remained to him were lost beneath the approaching hum of her weapon. His service ended there, upon the clean decks of a station that had offered sanctuary to the survivors of a broken world; neither his ingenuity nor his strange, earnest appeals had sufficed to save the woman before him or the children behind him. When the hatch opened again, red light reached into their refuge, and the small lives sheltered there guttered into the fire.

Verse, Herald of Axion, won the day.

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