To Ashes
Posted on Sat May 3rd, 2025 @ 10:32pm by Bomoor Thort & Mentis & Thane & Amare & Reave & Tolmin Voq†
5,113 words; about a 26 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter VII: Uprooted
Location: Elenca Settlement, Öetrago
Timeline: End of Week Five (After "Battle in the Grove")
OLD
Bomoor's gaze shot back to the cyborg, "How dare you come to this world, these people, and defile their culture? Long did I suffer the lie that the Jedi were my people and that I should renounce Öetrago, my true family and people. I swear, you will not take an inch more from this land. You shall not have my mother, you shall not have Mentis..."
He flicked his blade forwards, angling his body now fully towards Tolmin, "And you shall not have mercy. That time has passed."
"You hear that, mother dearest?!" Voq called out to Mumin as he drew his weapon. "Your boy threw away his Jedi title and still thinks he's a hero. Hahahaha! This is rich!" He ignited both crimson blades of his saberstaff and twirled them in a brief effortless flourish as he set himself in a modified Form-III pose. "I like you, Thort," he added to Bomoor with a sneer. "Fire in yer heart and hypocrisy in yer head. Just like the politicians. Droids! Deal with Mentis over there and anyone else that shows up. We'll burn this whole world to ashes when I'm done with this fool."
NEW
Above, the Red Raptor roared as it continued to lay waste to the enemy positions. But, a tremor now rattled Thane's grip, his eyes flickering to the viewport as he felt the surge of anger and fear from Bomoor. The bond between them, oft a source of strength and unity, now served as a conduit for the chaos unfolding below.
"Hey, big man, watch it!" Rex yelled as a blast from the ship's cannon grazed a building too close to the rebels. "You're getting sloppy!"
Thane gritted his teeth, wrestling with the controls, trying in his mind to drown his mundane companion out. Through their bond, the anger and fear coursing through Bomoor felt like a storm raging in his own chest. It was a tempest he had not anticipated, and it was seeping into his piloting. He derided himself for not anticipating Bomoor being compromised - how had he not!? - and he had to maintain focus.
"Kriff! Ease up, damn it!" Rex's voice slipped octaves higher as the ship swerved precariously.
Thane's knuckles whitened about the controls, a light metallic clacking as his artifical digits wound about them. Through the bond, Bomoor's flurrying emotions were like a living beast, clawing at the edges of Thane's consciousness, tearing at any semblance of control he sought to impose to control and harness them. He could feel the weight of his friend's burden, the desperation to save his mother, and the rage that threatened to consume him. The emotions began to swirl more and more haphazardly around Thane like a tornado, fuelling his own fiery determination to help.
Rex's voice grew ever more urgent as the Raptor jerked and swerved, narrowly missing a cluster of the rebels below. "This is bantha shit - you're too close!" He pointed at the display, showing a squadron of droids moving in on Bomoor, Mentis and the others.
Thane took a deep breath, trying once more to centre himself amidst the emotional maelstrom. He knew the Force could amplify his skills in the cockpit, but it was a double-edged sword. The cocktail of rage and fear he felt from Bomoor could overwhelm him, he feared. It was not internal, not of himself, and it did not answer to his desires or demands. He had to find a way to use it, to control it, or they would all fall. He tightened his grip on the controls further and closed his eyes for a brief moment, focusing on the cold steel of the ship beneath his hands.
"Silence, fool!" Thane hissed as he heard the start of another complaint from Rex, his voice tight, the attempt to centre and weaponise Bomoor's freely-flowing fury thinning his own patience and restraint. The sensation was so less refined than the personal rage he had come to know and cultivate under his holocron's tutelage, both as familiar and unwieldly as grasping the Ithorian's lightsaber for battle.
The ship's engines roared louder in his ears, a thunderous crescendo that seemed to echo the anger within his chest. The instruments beeped in a frenzied symphony of warnings, but Thane ignored them, his eyes snapping open with a golden gleam that seemed to pierce through the chaotic battle scene. The dark side was a siren call, seductive and powerful, and a part of him was now revelling in the anarchy that Bomoor's emotions brought forth.
He could feel the power surging through him, a force that could easily crush the droids and the settlement alike if he let it. The ship jerked and swerved as he gave in to the fury, the controls responding to his thoughts more than his hands. Rex's shouts were now a distant murmur, a pest that he would swat away once the battle was won.
The dark side whispered into his ear, whispering of power and victory, whispering that he could save them all without Bomoor's weaknesses getting in the way. He could feel the seductive warmth of it spreading through him, filling his veins with molten resolve. He had to get closer, had to feel the battle's intensity - had to be a part of it.
With a snarl, he sent the ship hurtling towards the ground. The ship's thrusters screamed in protest, but Thane's will was stronger. The droids below looked up, their cold, unfeeling eyes reflecting the fiery descent of the ancient freighter. They had no time to react, no time to flee as the Raptor's cannons unleashed a barrage, cutting through their ranks. The ground trembled beneath them, shaking the very foundation of the settlement as the ship pulled up sharply.
Thane felt distinctly alive, his heart beating in rhythm with the ship's engines, the power of the dark side pulsing through him like a raging river. Every building, being and rock below was plain to his superior senses, small and easily discarded or destroyed. He could almost taste the fear and anger of all the combatants, a delicious cocktail that fed his rage. He was the storm, the unstoppable force that would reshape this battlefield to his will. And as he sighted the tree where Bomoor and Voq squared off, the dark side hissed in his mind, urging him to unleash his full might, to crush his enemies and save his friend.
OOC: Music for the fight ahead: Bomoor faces Voq
On the ground below, standing atop the mobile command centre, the Ithorian and the Devaronian faced each other, weapons drawn and primed to strike. Bomoor could feel the beat of his mother's heart in his head as she gazed down upon him but he needed to stop Voq to save her, somehow without having him activate the explosives set around her.
Down below, he heard Mentis tackling the remaining destroyer droid and, as a blast rang out from somewhere on the battlefield, Bomoor found the moment to strike. He wrenched his hand back as though swiping an invisible tablecloth and the table behind Voq wrenched forwards, forcing the cyborg to react. The movement was too blunt to conceal and Voq deftly dodged to the side, but Bomoor was ready to jump forward, swinging his blade across to the Devaronian's hip, but found instead the crimson blade of the man's saberstaff in its place. Bomoor dipped back and submitted a series of firm but precise strikes directed at the most vulnerable sections of his opponent's body keeping his own body angled away so that the large saberstaff could only defend and not return his blows. This Makashi form was easy for Voq to match, even as Bomoor amped up the speed of his strikes.
Sensing little opportunity in this approach, Bomoor draw away, batting the red plasma weapon back with a strong strike. Voq smiled and stepped back himself, twirling his staff with a smile and readying himself for more, his form still quite open. The concerned son of Öetrago had a moment to look over the man's body, trying to see where this explosives trigger was but the various circuits and lights on the cyborg's torso, coupled with the scarf he draped across himself, made it hard to pinpoint the location. He would need to incapacitate Voq, rather than kill him if it truly was linked to his life signs.
"Need to catch yer breath, son? Heh heh heh..." Voq said with sadistic glee, feeling more alive than ever, or at least as much as he could in a mostly cybernetic body frame. An audible injection system in his chest whined slightly under pneumatic pressure as bacta and performance-enhancing chemicals began to surge through the parts of him that were still organic. "I was like you once. Young, and holding nothing back. Hoo, I can't wait to burn this place to ashes, starting with your kin."
He flourished his saberstaff with a pair of twirls that slashed the ground in front of him. He held his weapon behind him, hunched low in a Soresu stance, and beckoned Bomoor with his free hand. "A barbeque is about to start. Come and get it, boy!"
Sparing a glance towards his mother again, Bomoor felt a dread rising, feeling his hold on the situation slipping from his grasp. She looked back at him with an earnest hope and he summoned a little more composure. Keeping his form more defensive, Bomoor engaged Voq again, knowing he had to wait for that moment to breach the man's defences. The firm strikes from Voq were caught and parried by the Ithiorian dualist, all the while he looked for that chink in his armour.
The sounds of battle rose around them; a rousing cry from one direction and an explosion from another but it blended into white noise in Bomoor's ears as he kept himself in the present, mindful only of his opponent and the surroundings that might be used against him. But he was brought out of his trance as the pale visage of Mentis swooped up from the far side of the platform and shot full-force towards the tactical droid manning the station at the rear.
Without hesitation, Mentis cut the droid's beacon-like head off and he then proceeded to plunge his saber down through the droid's chassis, eliminating any residual connection the machine had to the central system. The droids on the battlefield would continue to fight, but their movements would be far less co-ordinated without the omnipresent oversight of their machine commander.
"There, you see," Mentis brandished his crimson blade to one side, defiant against the Devaronian, "You're losing control of the situation. Why don't you stop playing at being the master and run back to your own?"
"Still an idiot as always, eh 'Mint'?" Voq bellowed in retort while never taking his eyes off Bomoor. "Everything happening here is just the beginning. You can't stop it, and you certainly won't stop me!"
With a quick thruster blast from small jet ports installed on his synthetic feet and legs, he launched himself into a blindingly fast lunge straight for his new Ithorian rival with a brutal vertical slash, his technique instantly shifting from defensive feint to hard full-on attack.
Bomoor caught the force of the cyborg's full-weighted attack against him, once again locking blades and the curled grin of the cultist offensively close to his. Bomoor could feel the breath from what was left of the man's organic respiratory system and it offended him. He felt the anger rising and, for once, he saw no reason to resist. This monster of a man had threatened his mother for more than just exploitation, but just for the sadistic pleasure of it. Men like that had forfeited the Ithorian's patient restraint. His fingers began to tingle with that ethereal electrical energy he had practiced with Thane and demonstrated on the moon of Vaa.
They shifted slightly and Bomoor was able to cast Voq aside, taking the opportunity to match the cyborg's speed with his own fast paced Ataru form. He struck forwards, batting his opponent's saberstaff aside before performing a tremendous leap over to the man's far side, carving his viridian blade across as he did so, chipping off a small section of armoured shoulder plating as he did so.
Watching Voq's grin fade at the contact further empowered him and he came back with a fast paced series of blows, invigorated by the flow of the Force that allowed his muscles to act at a pace multitudes higher than his physiology would normally allow.
The gash in Voq's metal pauldron exposed the GalactaWerks-branded synthetic muscle fibers and articulating metal shoulder joint. He knew then that he had gravely underestimated Bomoor's versatility and skill with a lightsaber. His saberstaff had always afforded him and advantage no matter who he fought, but now it actually started to feel like a liability. He needed to change tactics.
With no hesitation, he launched himself backwards and Force-pushed a quick wave of telekinetic repulsion at the same time. It wasn't enough to knock Bomoor off his feet who deftly used his own power to keep himself on his footing, but enough to make the former Jedi slide back a few meters. Voq put about five meters between the both of them when he was back on his feet, then a pair of compartments on both sides of his torso slid open revealing a series of small caliber mass launchers.
Voq spread his arms out, hunched a bit low and forward, then fired a large volley of pencil thin sharp silver projectiles. They all fired to the sides of Voq then immediately acquired their target, instantly curved and homed in on Bomoor.
Bomoor held a hand outwards, halting the small projectiles in the air in front of him, as though they had all stuck into an invisible wall of treacle. They wobbled frantically for a moment before they run out of the small fuel reserve they held. Relaxing his shoulders, the Ithorian allowed the projectiles free and they all dropped to the ground before him with a series of clinks. He tilted his head and looked at his cyborg opponent, who had begun to grow another smirk in place of the one he had lost.
Failing to make direct contact, the tiny missiles deployed their true purpose: each popping to quickly fill the air in front of Bomoor with thick white phosphorous powder. Voq sneered and followed this up with a brief stream from a wrist-mounted flamethrower which violently ignited the powder. He began to laugh maniacally, pleased that he got to use an old tactic that had incinerated some of his most high-value targets from his old bounty hunting days. No one had ever survived it before, not even the young Jedi Knight he torched on the station near Korriban.
It was a clever slight and Bomoor brought his arms up again, feeling the sudden blazing heat surrounding him. He felt the air he breathed suddenly burning all his lips and down to his lungs. But with a furious shout of exertion, he cast up another wall, this time far stronger than the soft defence against the projectiles. With a faint shimmer of blue light, a spherical shell of Force energy surrounded him; not as cohesive as the Destroyer Droid’s artificial shield, waxing and waning as the flames lapped against it. For a moment, to those around him, it looks as though Bomoor had been completely engulphed in a ball of fire but, as the highly flammable chemical burnt away, the large man became visible again, now down on one knee with his arm still outstretched and a faint hint of his protection bubble still streaming from his palm before it flitted out and he dropped his hand, gasping for fresh air through his blistered lips.
After some running, leaping, slashing, and shooting, Amare and Reave left a wake of several dispatched droid guards on their way to the massive surface-to-air military-grade cannon.
"Now what?" Amare wondered partly to herself as she reached a large command and control console near the base of the cannon. "I don't have slicing tools, and no droid that can pop into this interface to turn this thing off." She looked down at her active lightsaber energy blade. "I guess we can just cut through everything...? Reave? Hey! Where did you go?"
Amare’s words were met with silence, save for the distant thuds of combat and the low, metallic whine of the cannon’s systems still running on standby. She glanced around in growing frustration - until she noticed the top of Reave’s wide-brimmed hat bobbing up from behind a half-melted supply crate.
The Jawa popped up into full view, his menacing, orb-like eyes gleaming with pride within the shadows of his face. In his stubby gloved fingers, he held three thermal detonators, each one brilliantly polished, but also affixed with additional, unknown components (including one of the mad Jawa's personal explosive cocktails, no doubt), and each gently humming with latent menace.
"So, you've been holding out on the me, and had no plans to cut me in on the fun, huh?" Amare feigned disappointment.
Reave tilted his head, utterly unbothered. With exaggerated flair, he reached up and tipped his hat forward slightly - indicating it had housed the bombs all along, somehow. Just how he retrieved them remained a mystery, and perhaps it was better that way.
Reave offered up some excited jabberimg and tossed her one of the detonators, fairly carelessly, and started jabbing his digits towards various segments of the emplacement. Despite the short tenure of his and Amare's alliance, he seemed oddly satisfied with the partnership and performance of the Sith apprentice.
"You know, if this Sith lifestyle doesn't work out," Amare began to genuinely offer as she gleefully set the bomb per Reave's direction, thinking of the last time she vengefully set big booms on Quesh, "I wouldn't mind going into business with you. I have contacts that could help us find work that pays very well."
Her words had been met with more silence, but she knew the Jawa was more than likely entertaining it as the charges went live with a countdown. Seconds later, they were bolting as far away as they could possibly get before the fireworks started.
Back on the command platform, Voq paced forwards towards his winded foe but stopped short as Bomoor’s head shot up and stared with deep, furious eyes at the cultist. There was a moment of silence in the air between them, neither knowing who would have the strength to end the other.
"Not bad!" Voq said with narrowed eyes, disappointed, but not entirely surprised his little chemical alpha strike had failed. "I would even say you're pretty good, but you already failed. Your mother's life is meaningless. Your presence here wasted. We wanted you here. Caused quite a ruckus to make the lure tempting enough so that I could entertain you and your friends. Even now, as you're about to die, the rebel base in Hopü is being decimated. Entire herds of your people being roasted like the cattle you are. That's justice, boy. That's the way it is. The strong and wealthy will reign, and the weak will bend and burn."
Hearing the words, Bomoor felt his blood boiling at yet another evil trick, leading to even more bloodshed and all to what end? Further lining GalactaWerk's pockets with his people's blood as payment, just as they had exploited Onderon's political situation, just as they had preyed on Bastion's political instability. Where did it end? Who would stop them and the likes of Voq and the cult that supported him?
Seeing Bomoor's reaction, Voq's smirk widened, re-gaining some confidence but the moment ended abruptly as an almighty eruption echoed across the battlefield, followed by the sound of twisted metal cracking and deforming. It was the sound of the great laser cannon toppling.
Both combatants heard it, but only one let it divide their focus. Just for a second, Tolmin’s thoughts were drawn back to the wider conflict. The loss of the tactical droid and now the destruction of their ground-to-air defences left him in a seriously vulnerable position, even with their certain triumph against the rebels in the north and even if he were to win his fight here with the wild Ithorian mage.
Bomoor, however, kept his burning gaze on Voq, thinking only of the rage he felt towards the cybernetic fiend. He rose to his feet and allowed the rage to flow, feeling that electricity crackling through him towards his fingertips until it erupted in a violet stream of electricity towards the metal of his opponent’s chest. Somewhere attached to there was this mechanism that threatened Mumin and he would break the circuit. Then he would break Voq.
The sudden barbaric ambush of the entirely unexpected Force Lightning cascading through him rendered Voq a wildly screaming victim of the dirtiest trick he'd ever fell prey too.
The ruthless cultist that had savagely exerted his lust for sadistic cruelty and violence lost control of himself as much of his cybernetics were not adequately insulated enough to prevent a cascade failure of his internals as he dropped to his knees before Bomoor and dropped his saberstaff.
"H-how did...no Jedi can--ghaaa!!"
His words were disrupted by a few electrical pops of circuits bursting from his back.
Bomoor paced forwards towering over the man at his knees, the Ithorian's deep eyes held a paler glisten than usual, making the small blood vessels visible in his usually void-like iris. He clustered his long fingers together and wrenched Voq upwards in the air.
"Disable that explosion this instant!" he growled.
Before the Devaronian could mutter a reply, Bomoor hear his mother's voice ring out.
"You can stop, Bomoor!" her voice cut through the din, "The connection is broken already."
He looked at her and his hold on Voq loosened as he watched his Mother close her eyes and a similar aura to his own protection bubble emanated from her. In an instant, the ropes around her wrists disintegrated away and she began to slide down the base of the magnificent tree, still littered with explosives at its base. Bomoor always knew his mother shared a connection to the Force herself, as a powerful healer, but she so rarely showed the extent of her abilities. She stumbled slightly as her feet hit the ground, still weak from her ordeal but she quickly recovered and held her gaze up towards the control platform.
Bomoor dropped Voq completely, allowing him to crumple down to the floor and the wayward son paced towards the edge of the raised platform to see her more closely. His heart still beat with adrenaline but his eyes began to soften at her presence.
His mother raised up her arms, "Oh, my dear," the warmth in her own eyes projecting to him, "I have felt you across the black of space. You have been through so much darkness but we can all begin to heal now."
"Mother," Bomoor's voice echoed back, uncertain of what to say, "I am sorry I spent so many years with the Jedi. I should have been here protecting our world."
Mumin shook her head softly, "There is no need for that, my Bomoor. Had you stayed, you would not have learned about the galaxy for yourself, with all its beauty and all its flaws. I knew you were strong enough to remain your own man and that I would see you again. The Mother Jungle and her Force showed this to me."
Bomoor let out a short gasp of air, stifling his impulse to cry as he heard her words.
"I will always...", he began before a frantic cry rang out from behind him.
"Bomoor, get her out of there!" Mentis' voice seemed to almost dilate in time as the Rattataki threw himself over the control panel he was camped at and shot full force towards Voq, "He's going to ignite it!"
The Ithorian, newly reunited with his mother, turned just in time to see a single red blaster bolt flash overhead from a small backup blaster pistol, and Voq's merciless triumphant glare, eyes wide with barbaric wrath.
An instant horrific incineration had occurred where Mumin stood, the well-placed shot from Voq's one good working hand detonating all of his carefully placed explosives. It was his final act of spite, believing it to be one last blessing from his master, one last stab of vengeance.
The inferno sent out a powerful blast in all directions, visible to all including those circling overhead in the Red Raptor. All on the ground were violently swept off their feet, ears and hearing canals ringing, disorientation all around.
The command platform had been torn apart, metal aching as it collapsed upon its own weight. Thrown back across the battlefield, Bomoor's head span. The feelings of relief, anger and panic he had been feeling all swam about him as the world around him spun. Even the Force felt wrong and he clenched his eyes shut, trying to cut out all the conflicting noise.
"Bomoor..." shouted an approaching familiar voice, somewhere muffled and distorted. "Bomoor! Wake up!"
A little bit further towards the centre of the explosion's epicentre, Mentis was getting to his feet, wincing as he felt the torn skin on his left side as he had skidded across the ground. He quickly came to and looked up at the flaming remains of the tree, literally cracked in two and instantly charred by the blast, it held on to the ground only by the merits of its ancient roots.
He padded forwards and hopped up onto some of the collapsed platform and froze in an instant as he looked upon the crater at the centre. Barely anything remained in the smouldering pit, but he immediately saw what little remained of Mumin's scorched body. A panic gripped him that he had not felt since he had fled from the cult: he felt the gravity of another violent action that could not be undone and would change everything once more.
Turning back, he saw the group beginning to gather around Bomoor and forced himself down towards them. As he got closer, he saw that the former Jedi's eyes were fluttering open and he was looking at the various faces before looking to him. His face was blackened and blistered across the whole front of his wide face, preserved from worse burning by his thick hide.
The Rattataki padded forwards and knelt down, not knowing quite how to deliver the news.
"The blast, it..." he faltered slightly as he saw some recognition returning into Bomoor's eyes as well as that growing panic, "It was quick and instant. She would've barely known anything."
Suddenly Mentis was toppled back by a large flailing hand as the Ithorian flung himself up, exposing great bleeding tears in his sides, stumbling slightly as he rose up, with likely many worse injuries under the surface.
"Where is he?" he boomed, leading some of the approaching rebels to halt in their tracks. He cast his gaze across the field; the remaining droids had stopped firing and seemed to be mounting a retreat, orders seemingly coming to them from an alternate, invisible location. As the noise continued to settle, Bomoor's eyes fell on a twitching mass of debris with a familiar Devaronian face poking out amongst various bits of metal both of the cyborg and from elsewhere.
With a purposeful fury, Bomoor pounded across the dirt, lit only by the hazy moonlight and smouldering flames. But when he finally towered over Voq, he looked down at him with blazing fire dancing across his eyes.
The cyborg clung to a hypospray in his one free hand, but it twitched and flailed, unable to bring it up to his neck to administer the dose. He was frantic but somehow managed to steel himself as he turned his attention to the furious humanoid bearing down on him and attempt a dry chuckle, although barely any air escaped his lips.
"That..." Voq began to say as he locked eyes with Bomoor, his body twitching uncontrollably, his speech synthesizer heavily distorted, his breathing extremely labored, "...th.at...t.ak.es..c.ar.e...of th.e..crem.at.i.on..."
Amare's eyes went wide when she heard those words. Twice she had said the same exact words herself, once on Yavin IV, the other on Quesh. It stunned her to her very core.
With no words left to exchange back, Bomoor grasped down and wrenched Tolmin's torso out from under the debris, leaving his lower half behind as though he was merely tearing off a sheet of drawing paper. He could see the agony in Voq's face, but he was blind to it. He saw only the unrepenting demon who had taken his Mother from him unjustly and needlessly. He held the man aloft between his great hands and, with a guttural cry of grief and anger, unlike anything he had uttered before, he ripped the metallic body in two and cast the pieces aside. Whether or not any life remained in the cultist or not, Bomoor cared nought, wanting to exact some kind of revenge, whatever tiny bit of justice he could control in this Galaxy upon the one who had wronged him. He looked down at the pieces and began compelling them to contract, crushing them under the power of the Force until there was little either Devaronian nor cyborg about them, save for the man's head with its one severed horn.
The Ithorian let out another exasperated cry, this time weaker and he felt the world begin to spin again. With no target to his rage, it all turned inwards and he felt every break, every bruise, every blister. He turned around, for a moment spying the silhouettes of the onlookers against the broken, fiery tree before darkness took him and he collapsed to the ground among the remains of Mumin's killer. As his eyes fluttered closed, a shadow loomed overhead and the sound of the Red Raptor's landing thrusters hummed him into a deep sleep.
END
AMARE
▬ Lightsaber: Form IV (Ataru) Increase
BOMOOR
▼ Dark Side Shift
▬ Melee combat Increase
▬ Lightsaber Increase
▬ Force Lightning Increase
▬ Protection Bubble Increase
THANE
▬ Piloting Increase
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