...remains buried

Posted on Sat Mar 14th, 2026 @ 6:30pm by Thane & Bomoor Thort & Amare & Melliah Glynt
Edited on on Sat Mar 14th, 2026 @ 6:33pm

2,639 words; about a 13 minute read

Chapter: Chapter VIII: Broken Chains
Location: Beneath the Wyrd Estate, New Alderaan
Timeline: After "Price of Entry"

Dust drifted slowly through the red light of the braziers as Thane rose from the crouch of his landing. His violet blade steadied in his hand, humming softly as he took in the chamber before him.

The Miralukan stood poised with her crimson weapon raised. Amare knelt upon the stone between them, bent beneath an unseen pressure that Thane could feel pressing against the edges of his own mind. Beyond them, chained into the ancient rock of the chamber wall, the husk of a man strained weakly against iron that had long ago ceased to be restraints and had instead become part of him. The crystal embedded in the withered chest pulsed slowly, each dull flare sending that same unnatural current rolling through the room.

Thane’s gaze lingered on the thing for only a moment. His attention returned immediately to Amare.

"Step away from her."

His voice was quiet but absolute. The violet blade lowered slightly, its tip angling toward the Miralukan as he took one measured step forward, placing himself squarely between her and the kneeling Nautolan.

"Now."

Only then did his eyes flick once more toward the chained figure. He felt the thing in the Force as one might feel a wound that had been sealed badly and left to fester beneath the skin. The pressure of it crawled along the edges of his thoughts, heavy with the residue of devotion, fear and long cultivated belief.

"So this is your foundation," Thane said at last, the words spoken not in awe but in absolute disdain. "A corpse chained to a stone and called power."

The crystal pulsed again, faint light spilling across the desiccated ribs. A breath scraped slowly through the withered throat of the ancient lord, dry and uneven, as though the effort itself might turn him to dust.

"You… break… the quiet," the old voice rasped.

The crimson-robed cultist's lips parted, revealing gritted teeth as her full hatred boiled up. Thane saw her grip her ornate saber tighter, while keeping it motionless in the air.

"Once more, you barge in uninvited Caanan, disturbing the most sacred chamber of House Wyrd and the Lord himself," her head titled slightly towards Bomoor, who had his viridian blade firmly flared at his side and ready to act, "And I see that even Mr Thort has lost sight of his manners. What an utter disappointment."

Bomoor answered, low but fiercely, "Let's not speak of manners while you hold our blade to Amare."

"There's that name again," Glynt cut in immediately, "So that is the real name you go by, my dear."

Her sightless gaze drifted down and a sweetness seeped back into her voice.

"'Amare' was just learning all about the great blessings bestowed upon this house. The same blessings that have maintained the great Lord behind me for centuries and the same power that courses through me when I stand in these halls."

She addressed Thane again, although not even making the show of turning her head, "I offered that power to you, Thane of Caanus, but you chose to attack me instead. I would offer it to your friend, but I can clearly see how the Force flows between you two and I have no desire to waste my breath when I already know the answer. But, Amare here is different and she feels the weight of that power and desires to break your chains. Is that not right, little flame?"

Amare lifted her head slowly, her breathing heavy, her brain wracked with an agonizing migraine, hearts aching with a dangerously high blood pressure. Yet before she could say anything, the crystal from Wyrd's chest caught her eyes and pulsed once more, and this time all of its influence fixated yet again upon Thane's apprentice. She screamed as it tore into her mind once more and drove her close to the breaking point, reaffirming her doubts, demanding her obedience to Lord Axion. Sanguineous fluid began to seep out her nostrils and the tear ducts of her eyes.

"C-crystal...m-m-must--ahhhh---urrrghh!" She fought through the pain as rage tipped past her fear and despair flared through her from Axion's assaults. One hand grasped firmed on her forehead whilst the other reached up, palm open and made a weak attempt to telekinetically pull at the embedded piece of Kaiburr, but it wasn't enough to even make it budge. It pulsed in brutal retaliation, and she was knocked down flat on her back and rendered unconscious.

Thane did not move when Amare fell. For a moment he simply stood there, violet blade still in his hand, watching the blood run from her nose and eyes as the pressure in the chamber tightened. The pulse from the crystal struck him next, not as pain but as a persuasion. It pressed gently at the edges of his thoughts, suggesting stillness, suggesting surrender, suggesting that the struggle itself was unnecessary.

The feeling was almost familiar, not unlike the madness of that awful creature they slew on Tython.

The chamber now seemed to breathe with the old man. Each rasping inhale carried the same rhythm through the stone, through the sigils carved into the walls, through the crystal buried in the desiccated chest. The pressure thickened until it felt less like influence and more like gravity itself leaning upon his mind, perception of the room warping with the pulses.

Thane’s fingers loosened. The lightsaber slipped from his hand and clattered across the stone. He did not notice, one hand rising to his temple, as if the physical gesture could soothe the bending reality tormenting him.

"You carry… storms," the chained lord whispered, the words dragging slowly from a throat that had not spoken freely for centuries. The milky eyes shifted toward him without seeing. "Anger… like the old ones..."

The crystal in his chest pulsed again. Warmth flowed outward from it like incense from a censer, seeping into their bones and the stone and the metal. Beneath it lay another sensation entirely, almost welcoming.

It was rest - a compulsion to simply be still.

While he was unable to turn, he felt Bomoor falling into a similar paralysis, hearing his deep breathing become sluggish: a slow stereophonic whine as his muscles too began to slip.

Thane’s breathing slowed and for an instant the weight of it almost held him. Then, memory cut through it. An intentional decision from Thane, some small glimmer of his survival instinct and rage guiding him back to the familiar - to the struggle.

The burning sky over his childhood memory of Caanus. The screams of servants in the corridors... his mother’s voice breaking as the cultists came through the doors. The sound of his brother’s wails as he was dragged along the floor by an invisible force.

The warmth shattered and Thane’s head lifted slowly. The gold in his eyes flared bright enough to catch the low light of the cold chamber.

"No," he said, simply and venomously. There would be no more talking - no more posturing. There would be victory, here and now, and his apprentice would not be taken.

Many images flashed rapidly through Amare's mind as she lay unconscious. She saw the cruel yet charismatic face of Axion himself sneering at her; then Axion's lieutenant, Nala; her mother, Zenarrah; her violent clash with the Jedi called Rusasha; and then further back to Sleheyron; her bonding with the Azoth; her ride through the skies of Lorrd on the back of the giant flying monster; her persecution at the hands of Shadrak on Irrikut; and then that fateful moment when she healed Thane with that strange miraculous Force ability and saw Thane battle Darth Cabal. Her mind dwelled on the magnificence of his mighty dark power, drowning in her own awe and envy, and--unbeknownst to her--it would come to pass yet again.

Both of Thane's hands rose and blue-white lightning erupted from his outstretched fingers. The chamber exploded with blinding light as the torrent struck. It did not travel cleanly; it tore through the room like a storm unleashed in a confined space, crashing against stone and sigil alike. Arcs split and rebounded across the carved walls, blasting chips of volcanic rock loose and shattering dust into the air.

The chains of the ancient lord screamed. Bolts slammed into them, heating the iron until it glowed and snapped. Links burst apart and whipped against the chamber walls as the storm intensified. The lightning crawled across the glyphs themselves, racing through their carved lines like veins suddenly filled with fire.

The chained lord convulsed as the arcs spread across his frail, withered form. The crystal embedded in his chest caught the lightning directly. For a heartbeat, the red pulse within it brightened violently as the energy surged through its warped lattice - and then it cracked, still embedded. Light burst outward from the fracture, refracting the lightning into a mixture of red and blue wild, erratic forks that tore through the chamber in every direction, towards Glynt, Amare and back at Thane and Bomoor.

Glynt cried out, drawing her arms back reflexively away from Amare and into a shielded position as the lightning skimmed her crossing the stone chamber.

"No!" she cried, now unable to move herself, either from shock or her own connection to the Kaiburr shard now fracturing like the lightsaber crystal she had clutched before, "The master is not done with him yet!"

The ancient lord’s head rolled back against the stone and something like a dry laugh scraped through his ruined throat.

The shard now screamed, both in sound and through that warped presence in the Force. The fractured crystal blazed with violent light as Thane’s lightning tore through it, the pulse that had once moved steadily now spasming wildly. The chained lord’s body jerked against the failing iron - his head lolled forward and the milky eyes rolled blindly toward Thane. The skin that clung to his frame looked more like frail parchment stretched too tightly across badly-cobbled together fossils. And, now, the lightning stripped it away. Thin flakes lifted from the desiccated skin, like caught in an unnatural wind. They drifted loose in brittle sheets, breaking apart before they even touched the floor. Beneath them, the bone revealed itself not ivory but blackened and rotten.

The crystal flared again in protest, it's malformed facets barely held together under the onslaught.

The ancient lord’s jaw creaked open, wider than the fragile ligaments should have allowed. For the first time there was expression in the ruin of his face. It was not agony - but amusement. A vile smile stretched across the collapsing mask of skin as more of it sloughed away in fragments. The last of the chains snapped under the continuing storm, iron links whipping free from the wall as the skeletal frame sagged forward... and fell.

The impact shattered it entirely. Bone struck stone and disintegrated at once, the brittle remains collapsing inward as though they had always been nothing more than dust arranged into a man. The crystal tore free from the collapsing ribcage and slammed against the floor, cracking further as the skeleton exploded outward in a dry cloud that burst across the chamber, covering them all in a thin layer of the dust.

Where the ancient lord had hung for centuries, nothing remained but drifting grey powder and the broken shard still pulsing faintly upon the stone - but Thane did not relent. He turned to press the attack on the slave of Axion.

He found her already launching towards him in a blinding fury, blade already sweeping towards him. Thane's weapon was on the floor so he continued his barrage of lightning but Glynt's momentum carried her forward, even as she caught streaks of white hot electricity.

She was almost upon him when a large fragment of the broken stone balustrade impacted with her and she was flung away, tumbling into one of the braziers, knocking it down and spilling dark coals and crimson flame across the floor. Under their glow, her form flickered and, for a moment as she lay there, she looked like a pitiable victim. Helpless and alone.

But then her head shot back up, blood seeping through her cracked lips and her blindfold askew revealing a vacant divot where an eye could have been.

Bomoor, who had thrown the stone at her stepped forward, eyeing her, weapon drawn across himself as he knelt down next to Amare and held a hand close over her head, confirming she was okay before rising again and gripping his weapon tighter ready to round on Glynt.

"Crazed beasts!" the Miralukan screamed at both Bomoor and Thane, "You build nothing, only destroy greatness you don't care to understand. That woman there deserves better."

She propped herself up, summoning her blade again as he regained her form, shrieking, "Why don't you just skip to the end of this story and destroy yourselves?"

Thane did not answer her. He just regarded her with absolute contempt, sheer disdain creasing his pale features. The air around him then tightened. The lightning he had unleashed moments before had guttered out, but the echo of it still crawled along the carved sigils and broken stone. Dust from the shattered remains of the ancient lord drifted slowly through the red glow of the braziers as Thane took a single step forward.

His lightsaber still lay forgotten on the floor behind him, but both hands rose again and the lightning returned. It burst from his fingers in a blinding surge, brighter and far more focused than before. The bolts struck the Miralukan head on, splitting and crawling across the floor and walls as they tore through the chamber. The crimson blade lifted in defence but the energy did not meet it cleanly. It poured around the weapon in violent forks, smashing into stone, flaring against the shattered glyphs and rebounding through the narrow chamber in violent arcs.

The force of it drove her backward across the floor. The red blade wavered beneath the assault and then tore free from her grip, spinning away across the stone to vanish somewhere beyond the fallen brazier. The lightning did not stop, though. It hammered against her again and again.

It was then that they heard boots striking stone above them, echoing. The sound multiplied quickly as it descended the stairwell. The first of them appeared moments later at the mouth of the corridor, halting abruptly as the sight before them unfolded, electricity crackling all around, almost blinding them.

Lord Wyrd stood amongst them. His gaze moved across the destruction in stunned silence. At the centre of it the destruction, he sighted Thane of Caanus, arms still extended as the last traces of lightning crawled from his fingers into the Miralukan woman writhing upon the floor.

The lord did not give the order to fire, though. His guards held their weapons ready, but none raised them. Even in the chaos it was clear that whatever power had sustained this place for centuries had been torn apart.

For Thane, the presence of the armed men pressed faintly at the edge of his awareness - but he finally lowered his hands, the lightning withdrawing finally, the screeching echoing for a few seconds afterwards.

Silence rushed back into the chamber, and Thane stood motionless for a moment longer, eyes still fixed upon the broken servant of Axion. He stood where he was, breathing steady despite the violence of what he had just unleashed, the gold in his eyes still burning as he looked down at the smoke rising from Glynt's still-living form.

"There is nothing for us to discuss," he said coldly, although there was a dry huskiness to his voice. "Crawl back to Axion. His bargain is ended."

TBC

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