Level 1138 – Coruscant Undercity
The hiss of depressurization was the only announcement Qor received as the shuttle door groaned open. No welcome committee. No peace. Just the city’s rotting breath—hot, chemical, and stained with old blood. He stepped onto the platform in silence, the neon flickering above casting him in pulses of crimson and blue.
Behind him, BB-0Q rolled off the ramp with a quiet whirr, matte black casing absorbing the sickly light. The droid said nothing—its optical lens swiveling once to log the environment. Qor didn’t need a scanner. His discipline taught him to read a battlefield, even when the war was already over.
“Stick close,” Qor said flatly. The droid chirped once, then fell in behind him.
The descent into Level 1138 was a short drop through layers of industrial neglect. Steam hissed from vents like dying lungs. Gangs of gaunt-eyed locals loitered in doorways, eyes flicking to Qor, then quickly away. Even down here, danger had a scent—and he wore it well.
It didn’t take long to find the first body.
A young woman, no older than twenty. Her torso was opened in a mess of shredded synth-fabric and wet red. Claw marks—deep, reckless, curved upward. Not surgical. Not smart. Just hate. Qor crouched beside the corpse, cloak brushing against the slick duracrete.
His eyes flicked over the scene: the angle of the wounds, the spray of arterial blood, the flattened trash underfoot. “He’s not just killing,” Qor murmured. “He’s chasing. She ran.”
He stood and followed the faint trail—scuffs, a smear on the wall, cracked holo-glass underfoot. BB-0Q whistled softly, uncertain. “No scan needed,” Qor muttered. “The chaos is the map.” They passed another body further down—this one armed, a street tough with a cracked skull and missing arm. Vedmat had torn through him without slowing. Qor lingered just long enough to note the direction of the blood spatter before pressing on. He didn’t need a thermal trail. This was rhythm. Pattern.
And it told him everything he needed.
The trail led to a collapsed corridor, half-eaten by corrosion and fire. The air here buzzed faintly—an old generator limping along somewhere nearby. Qor stopped, sensing it. Vedmat wasn’t sprinting blindly. He was circling something. Luring someone in. “This is bait,” he said aloud. “He wants to be followed.”
He turned to BB-0Q and motioned to a derelict terminal built into the wall, still flickering with low power. They moved toward it, and Qor ran his fingers across the cracked interface. No slicing, no spike—just a simple override, leveraging the still-active civilian protocols.
The screen blinked, recognized local network access, and Qor tapped in a short message.
TO: J’Kast He’s close. Loud. Sloppy. A reply pulsed back moments later, lines of stylized script forming J’Kast’s voice in Qor’s head: You’re early. Claws fresh? REPLY: Fresh enough to hear from orbit.
The line faded.
Next: TO: Carmen Trail’s live. Trandoshan wants a fight. Join me. There was a delay, then a brief text reply: On my way.
Qor nodded once, then gestured at BB-0Q. “Mark the last kill. Upload coordinates to their nav systems.”
The droid chirped and pulsed the location data across the city’s fragmented grid.
Qor stared down the ruined passage ahead, one hand brushing the hilt of his alchemic dagger beneath his cloak. Vedmat was here—close, angry, and overconfident.
Good.
“I’ve bled on darker floors than this,” Qor muttered, stepping into the gloom. “Let’s see if he deserves the fear he’s spreading.“
And with that, they disappeared once more into the shadows of Coruscant.
Carmen stepped carefully through Coruscants backalleys, more akin to hallways this deep in the big metal ball that called itself a planet. Usually, he would have preferred to be on the surface, the only slightly dirty and shady streets that still sat in the shadow of the spires and skyscrapers that, he had heard, could reach to space in some places. He wasn’t sure if he believed that. Either way, he moved carefully, not because of fear of any backstabbings or robberies, but because this place was filthy. He didn’t consider himself a germaphobe, and he never brought anything he was too worried about ruining on a job, but this place was worse than Tattooine.
A notification drew his attention to his datapad, a message from some public terminal with… one of the others ID number. The Quarren, it looked like. With a sigh, Carmen typed out a response and turned to pathfind to where the signal had come from.
“Half these people treat tech from a thousand years in the future like it’s stone age, and the other half scribe magic symbols on the stones themselves still. Would a commlink really ruin the image of ‘sneaky evil assassin’ that much?”
“Who could say, sir!” Came a peppy voice from behind him, raspy with the cheap vocalizers that came with all standard Baktoid combat droid models, “at least he doesn’t spurn technology entirely-y-y-y-y.”
Bebe, Carmens custom, hulking B2 droid, stomped behind him, keeping most of the inhabitants of the area behind closed doors. Plenty of the older residents probably remembered the Republics old propaganda of the Clone Wars, after all.
“Sounds like your language models degrading again. Remind me to get that checked when we return.”
“Aye, s-s-s-sir!”
Carmen stopped and looked up. A standard man door stood in the way, but the local maps said it should be at the very least unlocked. Pulling out some of his tools, he began inspecting the hinges, pneumatics, and the pad of buttons and dials that should be lit.
“Looks like the primary power got shorted from the other side,” he said as he stepped to the side and jerked his thumb towards the door, “open it up.”
Bebe stepped forward and crouched before hammering the bottom of the door to give a dent large enough to grip. With a shudder and a few creaking joints, the droid lifted the unpowered door into its ceiling recess. Stepping into the wider area on the other side, he looked around to find the source of the problem. Blaster fire had bored a sizable hole in the panel on this side.
“Well that’s your problem right there! Jam it open and come on Bebe. If any techs bother to come down here, they can fix it later.”
Carmen turned as Bebe hammered on the door again, before freezing at the sight of the rest of this alley. The blaster hadn’t been aimed at the door, of course, they were chasing a crazed murderer. Three bodies were splayed out here, two apparently armed.
“Kark. Well, if we were looking for someone playing with new toys, this certainly looks like a trail,” he said before raising a finger to his earpiece, “I’ve found the trail, mister Kast. Waiting right in front of where Qor should be showing up soon. Looks like one of the bodies is still smoking.”
Taking its hands away from the door to test if it was truly stuck fast, Bebe moved to the middle of the pathway and raised its arm to the standard B2 alert pose, elbow bent and closed fist pointing upward.
“Stay alert from here on out, Bebe,” he warned, a relaxed pose belying his general nervousness, “we appear to be drawing close.”
A sleek, obsidian-shining shuttle, its wings folded neatly against its tapered hull as it came in to land, pierced through the grimy atmospheric layers of Coruscant. Unlike the rough-and-tumble transports that frequented the lower levels, this vessel hummed with a quiet, contained power. It settled with barely a whisper onto a designated landing platform that J’Kast had arranged in advance through connections his Clan had provided.
A ramp hissed down, extending until it met the ground with a soft thud. A hooded figure moved from the ship’s chassis to the platform. J'Kast moved with an almost languid grace, yet there was a coiled tension in his posture, like a predator entering unfamiliar territory. His hooded cloak obscured his features, but perceptive observers would see the white-pale of his face revealed under the hood in flickering lights. His white eyes were a faded white from their once blue to be cloudier than usual. Behind him floated a small swarm of intricately designed probe droids, their multifaceted lenses whirring softly as they formed a murmuration to absorb the landscape.
J'Kast paused at the edge of the ramp, his gaze sweeping across the dimly lit platform. The air was thick with the familiar stench of what he considered as good as the Undercity–a stark contrast to the sterile environments he usually frequented. A faint smile, more a baring of teeth than a sign of amusement, touched his lips. “So this is where the vermin scurry,” he murmured to himself, his voice a low, resonant hum that carried an undercurrent of dark authority. His small swarm of microdroids tightened and flew near his hands, projecting a holographic map onto the grimy durasteel of the platform, highlighting the coordinates received from Qor. J'Kast studied it for a moment, his brow wrinkling slightly beneath his hood. “Efficient, as always,” he commented, a hint of respect in his tone. “Though his definition of ‘loud’ and ‘sloppy’ may differ from my own.”
As he stepped off the ramp, his eyes caught the faint shimmer of residual energy clinging to the air – the echoes of violence recently enacted. He extended a hand, his fingers twitching slightly, as if trying to grasp the lingering tendrils of fear and aggression. A flicker of understanding crossed his face. “A creature driven by instinct, then. Unrefined. Interesting.”
He moved with a deliberate pace, the swarm of probes gliding silently around and about his path. They occasionally emitted soft pulses of energy, analyzing the environment for unusual bio-signatures or disturbances. J'Kast, however, relied on his own senses, honed by decades of training and study. He could feel the subtle currents of the dark side that clung to this place, amplified by the recent bloodshed, and used them to fuel flashes of insights into the future. Rounding a corner, he spotted Carmen standing near a blasted doorway, his hulk of a droid sentinel beside him. The air crackled with a nervous energy around the mercenary. J'Kast inclined his head slightly in greeting. “Carmen,” he acknowledged, his voice smooth and careful, low and quiet but easily heard and with crisp diction. “Qor’s message was… succinct. We’ve found the trail?”
His gaze then drifted to the several bodies sprawled nearby, his pale eyes narrowing in assessment. “Indeed. A rather… enthusiastic and sloppy display. Our target lacks subtlety, it seems. Or perhaps,” he mused, a hint of dark amusement returning to his voice, “he wishes to make a statement.”
He gestured towards the still-smoking corpse. “Tell me, then, what can you glean from this carnage? Does it speak of desperation, or merely a crude enjoyment of violence?” J'Kast’s presence seemed to subtly shift the atmosphere, a palpable weight of dark power settling over the grimy alleyway and sending searching tendrils through the veins that emanated away from it. The hunt was on as the group gathered to begin their chase.
The air on Level 1138 was rank with smoke, dust, and the metallic sting of blood. Faint, stuttering lights flickered overhead, caught in the twisting beams of debris that jutted out like skeletal remains from the undercity’s bones. Fires still burned in deep orange pits far beyond the corridor, casting light over the aftermath of Bhoc Vedmat’s rampage. The Trandoshan had passed through here recently. Qor could smell it—an acrid trail of scorched ozone, ruptured hydraulics, and the coppery tang of spilled vitae.
He stood in silence just beyond a ruined doorway, cloaked in the Force until the familiar signatures of his allies neared. Carmen’s presence was steady, tinged with calculation and latent fury. Beside him came the sharp pulse of droid logic—his B2 unit, stomping methodically forward as if oblivious to the carnage. And then there was J’Kast, the shadow in robes, whose dark aura moved like oil in water: sleek, composed, and quietly lethal.
The trio had made it to Level 1138.
A moment later, Qor moved. Like a whisper of shadow, his form emerged from the gloom beside the blown-out frame of an old bulkhead. The durasteel door itself had been pried upward and propped with bent plating—clearly the B2’s work—and now it sagged under its own weight like the limb of a dying beast. Qor stepped into the broken light and lowered his cloak. His features flickered into view, the tendrils of his face twitching slightly as they read the auras around him. No words at first. Just a subtle nod of greeting. He stood barefoot in the grime, draped in worn, close-fitting black robes tailored for movement, stained by soot and scorched oil.
“I followed him here,” Qor said quietly, voice like gravel underfoot. “Vedmat went west through the maintenance corridors. He is moving slow. Too slow. I think… he wants us to find him.” He crouched briefly, fingers brushing the blackened smear of blood on the floor. Not fresh. Maybe five minutes old.
“He’s playing a game.”
A low hum passed through the corridor from somewhere deeper in the level—heavy footfalls, the subtle drag of claws on metal. Far enough not to strike, but close enough to warn. Vedmat was hunting too.
Qor rose again and glanced to the others, his dark eyes flicking from Carmen’s poised stillness to J’Kast’s brooding silence. “We don’t have long,” he muttered.
He turned back to the corridor ahead, watching the firelight flicker across broken walls and twisted piping. And then he spoke again, this time louder, with a little more urgency, as if the plan had only just crystallized in his mind.
“I have an idea,” Qor said, stepping forward slightly.
He gestured to the steelwork above them—the catwalks, the torn support beams, the ducts barely wide enough for a slender figure to pass through.
“I go high again. Cloak myself. I wait until he commits—until he believes he’s won. Then I drop and strike for the kill.”
His gaze moved to J’Kast. “You… start the engagement. Force Lightning, loud, aggressive. Make him focus only on you. Let him think it’s just you. Let him think he has the advantage.”
Then, to Carmen: “You set the trap. Explosives. If he breaks through us… he runs into your wall of fire.”
Qor paused, tilting his head slightly. He raised one webbed hand, curling the fingers loosely in front of him.
“And while all of that happens,” he added slowly, “I can make him see others. Force tricks. Illusions. Let him believe there are more of us than there are. Sith from the shadows. He will strike at nothing. Waste his strength.”
He fell quiet after that, the tendrils along his face twitching slightly, betraying the flicker of nervous energy beneath his calm. Strategy wasn’t his strength. He understood stealth, surprise, biology, fear. But not the elegance of war. He knew how to end a fight—not always how to begin one.
His voice softened.
“It’s not perfect. But it might work. What do you think, J’Kast?” Qor turned toward the robed Sith, deferring with the barest dip of his head. There was no ego in his question—just the unspoken trust that, when the time came, each of them would strike with deadly unity.
Somewhere far off, Vedmat growled.
And time was running out.
The Sith sorcerer lowered his hood and nodded slowly. “Cunning,” he acknowledged. He stretched his hands and folded them slowly, taking a deep breath to still his presence and focus on the plan, picturing a dart of passionate intensity as the action.
“Wise and a good use of each of our utility.” He nodded again. “This will work.”
Carmen pursed his lips as he glanced back at the two black clad warriors of darkness before pulling out his pad again and tapping away.
“Unless you plan on me somehow running through the undercity to get ahead of him, I don’t have nearly enough explosives to ‘set a trap,’ not to mention the fact that detonating that many hallways and support struts might cause a bigger problem than the Shadows have already.”
Finding what he was looking for, he spun the datapad around for J'Kast to look over, “if he is trying to be found, like you say, then he is heading somewhere. Ambush, bunker, something that makes him feel confident he could deal with pursuers. There’s a warehouse here that’s been for lease since before the Empire took over, and multiple potential buyers have been ‘convinced’ not to buy in the years since. Sound like a safehouse?”
He moves his finger around on the pad to illustrate his points, showing where the modern entrances would be as well as some noted service pathways.
“Qor, if you can get there and confirm that’s where he is going, we can spring the trap in a way very inconvenient for him. There’s likely traps, support, and a bolthole, but we can deal with that when we deal with it. I just doubt it is likely to be a simple straight up brawl.”
Qor’s gaze sharpened as Carmen spoke, and he stepped forward, voice low and clipped.
“You misheard me, Carmen. The explosives aren’t for a trap ahead—they’re for behind us. A failsafe. If he cuts through us or slips past, we don’t let him escape clean. Detonate the path behind. No structural collapse, just controlled denial.”
He glanced at the datapad, his brow furrowing as he considered the warehouse. “You might be right—he could be heading to a bunker. But if he wants to disappear, why stir up the undercity? Why draw eyes and provoke us just to crawl into a hole? No. He’s flaunting something. Either bait, or confidence.”
Qor’s tendrils twitched with thought as he scanned the paths Carmen displayed. “If it’s confidence, then that warehouse is more than a safehouse. It’s a staging point. A trap for us. I won’t wait to find out.”
He turned toward the side passage, already tracing the dark lines of access vents and service shafts with his senses. “Plant your charges. Quietly. If we need them, we won’t have time to argue.” He looked back just once.
“If the warehouse is his nest, I’ll be there before he roosts.” With that, Qor slipped into the shadows, his form swallowed by tunnel and steam.
“Aaand he misheard me,” Carmen said as Qor vanished. He turned to J'Kast, looking exasperated, “did he just skip over the ‘I don’t have enough bombs to cover every alley in the sector?”
Carmen sighs and begins taking the more normal path towards the warehouse, Bebe clanking softly as it follows, “something tells me we’re going to have to pull Qor out of a fire, I’ll see what demolitions are possible on site,” a small grin spreads across his face, “I have an idea involving a plasma cutter that might be interesting. Lets try and push him hard enough to not bother with slashing random civilians.”
The metal walls of the ventilation shaft groaned softly under Qor’s weight as he slithered forward, tendrils twitching with each distant clang of machinery. The humid air of level 1138 was thick with rust, ozone, and the unmistakable scent of blood long dried into the durasteel grates.
In the darkness, Qor was nothing. Wrapped in the veil of Force Cloak, even the faint hum of the city’s guts couldn’t find him. His heartbeat slowed. His breath was measured. The predator hunted. He paused at a junction. Below him, through the grime-smeared slats, sat a warehouse—barely lit and crudely guarded. Broken holosigns flickered over the loading dock:
“Nexu Imports – Closed for Renovation.”
A lie. The Quantum Shadows didn’t renovate; they consumed. Qor reached out—not with hands, but with the Force. He felt it like static: aggression, anticipation, bloodlust. Trandoshan. Bhoc Vedmat was close.
He dropped silently into the shadows below, landing behind a stacked row of spice crates. The cold scent of processed narcotics mixed with oil and sweat—signs of recent use. He crouched and exhaled, refocusing his mind. The wounds from his last mission throbbed faintly beneath his robes. He called on the Force, and warmth bloomed in his gut as his body mended itself slowly. Control Self numbed the pain, but not the memory.
Then—footfalls. Heavy. Confident. Intentional. Bhoc Vedmat emerged.
He didn’t walk—he stomped. The floor shook beneath his weight. In his clawed hands, a massive Arg’garok scraped along the warehouse floor, carving deep lines into the permacrete. A Z6 riot baton twitched in his other hand like a live wire, while a Sonn-Blas F-11D rifle bounced against his armored back.
Bhoc’s yellow-green scales shimmered beneath the harsh strip lighting, his blood-red eyes scanning the space with slow amusement. His mouth curled in a bloody grin, revealing rows of dagger-like teeth. Every breath he took was a growl.
Qor narrowed his gaze. The Trandoshan radiated rage and power—but also overconfidence. Perfect.
From his perch in the shadows, Qor remained unseen. He was not a warrior. He was a whisper in the void. One wrong move, and Bhoc would rip him in half. But one right move… and the Quantum Shadows would fall tonight.
He waited. Studied. Not to strike. To learn. The trap was already closing.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but according to your maps, did we not pass this warehouse two streets back?”
Carmen led J'Kast and Bebe along streets wide and thin, eyes always scanning the sky, or what passed for the sky this far beneath the surface.
“There is no need to correct you, we did in fact pass the warehouse a few streets ago.”
J'Kasts eyes narrowed at the flippancy, “I have not enforced the respect I am due, boy, but do not think that just because we are-”
“Alright, alright, calm down. Come here I’ll show you what I was looking for,” Carmen turned his head and gave an embarrassed smile that almost defused J'Kasts growing annoyance. Almost.
Turning the corner, they came to a large metal box nearly completely cocooned in wires old and new, the whole thing a mess of slap-dash electrical work.
“Ta-daa! These old developments inevitably consolidate their power grids to one location. We switch this thing, we shut off any cameras, locks, or traps not powered by internal generators. Cool, huh?”
J'Kast looked utterly unimpressed.
Carmen tried to play off the Seers growing annoyance with a small laugh as he began to untangle the wires and crack open the front of the box.
“Alright, well, I’m just going to be setting up something here before I head back to the warehouse, no need to stick around if you want to wait for Qor! Bebe! Grab that wire off the side of that building over there! No not that one, that’s the powerline. Yes, the grey one.”
“No, I think I will wait here and watch you… fiddle.”
J'Kast crossed his arms and loomed over Carmen who was now working ever so slightly faster than he would like to be. First, he reached back and depressed a pair of buttons on the side of his pack, deploying two disk shaped explosives into his hand. With a tool, he pried off the tops and undid a few wired connections, pointing them outwards. Taking the wire from Bebe, he attached them together and ran the wire out, closing the door and replacing the earlier tangle. Running the cable over towards a wall mounted public network console, cracked and covered in graffiti. Popping open the lid and performing some more solders, it was only a matter of jacking in his own pad and performing a simple slice before he loaded all his tools back up and motioned for J'Kast to lead the way.
“All done! I hooked the bombs up to the local net so I can detonate it anywhere within a few miles. All that remains is to meet up with Qor and actually finalize a plan of attack.”
The sorcerer just gave a disapproving huff before turning and moving back down the way they came.
“The tinge of fear in your voice serves you better than you realize, whelp.”
J'Kast shook his head slightly, his eyes closing as he exhaled and continued, “But this will do.”
He gathered his hands in front of him inside his sleeves and continued ahead before bringing a communicator closer to his wrinkled mouth. “Qor,” he began. “There is… something in place now, and we should rendezvous to set it into motion. Are you in place?”
Inside Bhoc Vedmat’s warehouse, the air was thick with coolant vapors and the scent of scorched metal.
Qor moved like smoke between stacked cargo containers marked in faded Huttese. Overhead, flickering lumen strips cast pale halos over old durasteel walkways. Somewhere deeper in the shadows, the guttural growl of Bhoc Vedmat echoed—a Trandoshan temper building toward violence.
He slipped past a rack of old fusion batteries and paused near a dusty wall terminal, bolted between two support beams. Its interface flickered—dim, half-functional, patched into some ancient logistics grid that no one had maintained in years. The kind of tech people walked past without noticing.
Then the voice came—soft, fractured through static, broadcast on background Holonet noise:
“Qor,” came J’Kast’s voice, faint and deliberate. “There is… something in place now, and we should rendezvous to set it into motion. Are you in place?”
Qor glanced toward the mezzanine. Vedmat was still pacing. He looked back at the old terminal. No need for slicing. No complex response. Just presence.
He reached forward and pressed a single gloved finger to the terminal’s grime-coated display. The screen dimmed, then pulsed back with a slow flicker of corrupted light.
An intentional touch. A subtle shift in the grid. He held it for exactly four seconds.
Enough to register on any linked surveillance logs. Enough to be seen by anyone—like J’Kast—who knew to watch this feed. A low-tech signal, just as they’d agreed, years ago on a job far from here.
I am in place. Proceed.
Then his hand withdrew. Qor turned, vanished between crates, and was gone—leaving the terminal to buzz quietly in the dark.
Finally approaching the warehouse in question as Qor gave his… status report, more or less, Carmen stretched his back as he began to split off.
“Right then, we’re going to go trap the side and back entrances, then. Stay out of sight, but when the lights go off feel free to… blow down the doors or zap ‘em or… whatever it is you do. Ciao!”
He slinked off before J'Kast could respond, not wanting to stick around these people any more than was necessary. He didn’t much fancy getting his hair singed because one of them though him “uppity.”
“Okay, Bebe, grab the imploder and get to the loading dock around back. Blow it up if any besides us three come out, but don’t turn to other weapons unless you need to, I’ll come then.”
The large droid unhooked the thermal imploder from his backpack and easily carried it under one arm, taking the offered detonator.
“Roger roger!”
“Ehh, leave that one to the B1 units, they don’t have much.”
“R-r-r-aye sir!”
Bebe went trotting off as Carmen finally rounded a corner to find the side door, lit by a single overhead light, it was probably locked and blocked from the inside. That suited him just fine, let the passion cultists do their violence and pain stuff, this guy deserved it after all.
Carmen casually pressed his detonator, causing a blast in the middle distance, followed by the lights and fans all around to flicker and die. Not reacting, he then pressed another four charges to the door and frame before moving to a safe distance and settling down to watch, holding his canteen.
Some sirens had started up here and there, but it wouldn’t be a problem. This far down they likely went weeks without power sometimes, and he definitely didn’t plan on being here that long.
“Oh,” he said to himself before pressing his comm again, “in case it wasn’t obvious, that was your cue.”
The sudden plunge into darkness was J'Kast’s signal. The warehouse, moments before illuminated by flickering strips of dim illumination, became a canvas of deep shadows, punctuated only by the faint, angry growls echoing from within. He didn’t hesitate. The subtle currents of the Dark Side he had been allowing to simmer and fester within him intensified, resonating with the nearby Trandoshan’s rising fury.
With a swift, silent movement, J'Kast raised both hands, his pale eyes now glowing with an inner light that pierced the gloom. A low crackling sound began to emanate from his fingertips, growing in intensity until arcs of raw, blue-white energy danced between them. The air around him crackled, and the sharp, metallic tang of ozone began to fill the structure.
“Bhoc Vedmat!” J'Kast’s voice, though still low, now carried a resonant power that cut through the darkness and the Trandoshan’s enraged snarls. “Your hunt ends now!”
Unleashing the Force lightning, he sent twin bolts of pure energy tearing through the warehouse. They snaked and writhed, illuminating the cluttered space in brief, violent flashes. Cargo containers were surrounded by cages of lightning chains, and coolant vapors shimmered as the energy ripped through the air. His attack wasn’t aimed randomly. Guided by his connection to the Dark Side and the echoes of Vedmat’s aggression, the lightning lashed out toward the Trandoshan’s location, seeking to shock, to incapacitate, and to punish.
The roar that answered his attack was one of pain and fury, followed by the sound of heavy objects being thrown aside. J'Kast maintained his focus, feeding more power into the lightning, the ozone smell growing stronger, almost acrid. He would not allow this prey to escape. The lightning set small fires that began to spread around the warehouse, and the sorcerer lowered his hands with an effort, ending the chaos–for now–to allow the rest of the plan to unfold.
The power died with a groan.
Qor felt it more than heard it—a shift in pressure, the stillness of air gone stagnant, the subtle quiver in the metal catwalk beneath him. The warehouse plunged into near-darkness. Ventilation fans stuttered, then fell silent, leaving only the crackle of exposed wires and the growing hiss of fire.
That was Carmen’s work, no doubt. Explosives planted with a mercenary’s precision. Lights out. Heat rising. Confusion blooming like mold across every rusted corner of this place.
Perfect.
Below, chaos had a name—Bhoc Vedmat.
The Trandoshan’s bellow shook the ribbed walls, half-roar, half-scream. Lightning had found him—Qor had seen it, the arcs dancing along Bhoc’s scaled form as J’Kast’s fury lashed out. The beast’s howl had come next, and now his shadow lumbered through the smoke like a wounded predator, smashing crates and tossing debris as if rage alone could bring clarity.
Qor didn’t move. Not yet.
He crouched on the upper catwalk, shrouded in the thick curtain of smoke rising from the warehouse floor. Sparks rained intermittently from a ruptured conduit above, each one tracing a faint arc down into the gloom. Fires burned in patches—bright little wounds opening across the metal body of the facility. He studied Bhoc.
The Trandoshan was wounded, certainly. Angry. But not dying. Not yet. And that was where Qor came in.
His fingers brushed the dagger at his belt—the one blade he trusted. Forged through Sith alchemy, its edge shimmered faintly in the gloom, kissed by the oily sheen of poison. A mixture he’d refined himself. Not meant to kill, but to confuse. To corrupt the mind. A hallucinogen, slow to clear, quick to take hold. He slipped the dagger free with practiced ease.
The catwalk groaned underfoot as he moved.
Bhoc’s rampage below had left a path of destruction—a trench of overturned crates, sparking loaders, a leaking coolant pipe.
He was unpredictable now, dangerous in his confusion, lashing out at anything that moved. But he was distracted. And the fire would only make that worse.
Qor descended the access ladder silently, each step deliberate. Heat wrapped around him like a shroud. Smoke clung to his robes. He let the warehouse swallow him, let its confusion mask his presence.
He stalked between crates, low and silent, like a venomous current beneath still water.
Bhoc wasn’t far now.
The Trandoshan’s heavy footfalls echoed nearby, accompanied by the guttural rasp of his breathing. Qor glimpsed him between gaps in the cargo stacks—his outline broad and monstrous, shoulders rising and falling as he turned one way, then another.
Looking for enemies.
Looking for clarity.
Finding none.
Qor waited until Bhoc turned.
Then he struck. A burst of motion. A flash of steel.
Qor’s dagger found the soft flesh just beneath Bhoc’s left arm—an exposed seam in the scavenged armor plating. The alchemical blade pierced skin and muscle, just enough to draw blood and leave behind its gift.
The Trandoshan roared. Qor was already gone.
He ducked low and slipped between stacked containers as Bhoc’s claws swung wildly behind him. A crate exploded overhead. Another clattered to the floor in a shower of splinters. But Qor was a shadow again—vanished in the storm.
He crouched behind a scorched support beam, chest rising and falling in silence, and watched.
It didn’t take long. Bhoc stumbled.
One clawed hand dragged along the wall for balance. His head twitched. Eyes darted. A low growl escaped him—confused now, uncertain. He turned sharply, then again, spinning toward phantoms only he could see.
The poison worked its magic.
Hallucinations weren’t predictable. Qor had seen victims speak to long-dead friends, strike walls they believed were enemies, curl into sobbing heaps in corners that didn’t exist.
Bhoc, though… Bhoc fought. Fought nothing.
He threw a cargo crate across the aisle, roaring at shadows. He fired his blaster into the smoke, bolts splashing harmlessly against support struts. He shouted names Qor didn’t know—maybe old rivals, maybe ghosts of prey long gone.
Each scream was a confession. Each attack a cry for help.
Qor watched, silent and still, unseen behind a haze of fire and metal. He made no move to intervene. He didn’t need to. The Trandoshan was unraveling.
No need to confront strength when one could sever the mind. Bhoc reeled into a stack of barrels, knocking them loose with a crash that echoed up the walls. Sparks burst again overhead. One fire spread into an open crate of wiring, belching black smoke into the rafters. Soon, the ceiling might give.
Qor backed away, already retreating into shadow. The kill was not his to claim. That was never the point.
His work was done.
Let the madness take Bhoc.
Let the fire finish what poison began.
And when the warehouse came down in sparks and ash, let it bury the Quantum Shadows’ leader under the weight of his own unraveling mind.
Qor vanished into the smoke without a sound.
Carmen sat in his spot, watching the little patch of black that defined the recessed doorway among the simply very dark grey that made up everything else. Normally, the bombs would be pulsing with red light to show they were armed, but he had long since deactivated those, expecting himself to know which ones are armed or not by his memory. If he forgot what he did with a bomb, maybe he deserved to lose a hand. Regardless, his job now was just to wait. The other two seemed much more the fighting type, even if they were more a scholar and an assassin than true warriors. At least they didn’t seem the “take him back to base and torture him for weeks” types, Carmen was only a Jedi in title, but he still didn’t think he could really let that happen.
He frowned as he looked up at a growing column of smoke coming up from the warehouse. An assassin with poisons, and a burning building. Clicking his tongue he touched his earpiece.
“Hey, how’s the fight going? Make sure to grab the body so we can verify him, alright? Dont just… cut off his legs and let him burn, or he’s going to come back in ten years, half-droided up and a master of the dark side.”
He considered leaving it at that, but sighed again, hating that he had to work with such touchy people as Sith.
“Listen, I haven’t heard any explosives or blaster fire, so I’m guessing no ambush. Either he is just stupid, or he’s got some body double thing going on. We need to make sure we got him before we move on, or… or this will… hurt your reputation? Or something?”
Carmen looked up at the flames beginning to show through one of the high up windows. He really hoped he didn’t get sent out with these two for someone dumb enough to get killed so easily. Not that he liked doing Brotherhood work, but surely he was worth more than that, right?“
The tunnel groaned again, its ancient durasteel plates echoing the chaos above. Faint vibrations from the warehouse fire made the dust dance along the walls. Somewhere behind him, half-heard through memory or madness, Qor could almost make out Carmen’s voice — distant, distorted, unreal.
Alive.
They wanted the Trandoshan alive.
Qor narrowed his gaze, tendrils twitching. That changed things. He looked down at the hulking lizard writhing in the smoke-heavy corridor, its claws raking lines into the scorched metal. The dagger wound festered, not from blood loss, but confusion — the poison was doing its work. The Trandoshan’s eyes no longer locked onto Qor. Instead, they searched the ceiling, the floor, shadows that weren’t there.
But hallucinogens alone wouldn’t hold a beast like this.
Qor hissed softly and took stock. No stun cuffs. No binders. Just the ash-stained robes on his back, a dagger slick with madness, and his mind running on fumes.
He reached into his pouch and retrieved the last of his alchemical thread — spider-silk laced with cortosis filaments. Not meant to bind, not really. It was designed to stitch the dead for burial, not wrangle a living weapon.
And he couldn’t push it with the Force — it was inert, resistant by design. All he had left were fingers, patience, and intent.
Qor knelt beside the Trandoshan and began the old motions. The thread resisted him, stubborn as tendon, but he worked it through scale and claw with practiced, surgeon’s precision. Each coil was a calculation. Each knot, a compromise.
The Trandoshan howled.
“Shh,” Qor muttered. “That scream wasn’t meant for me, was it? You were promised something. Glory? Freedom? A pardon?”
The lizard snapped its jaws, but the poison had dulled its mind.
“Do not worry,” Qor said, leaning close enough that his breath stirred the creature’s frill. “You will live. My allies insisted. But how you live… that part’s still mine to decide.”
Smoke crept toward the corridor’s edge. Time was short.
Qor rose, dragging the bound body into the cold shadows. He glanced back toward the warehouse blaze, then whispered into the silence, “You better still be listening, Carmen. He’s breathing. Dying would’ve been easier for him.”
No answer came. Just firelight and the weight of choices.