===Nira===
The Sorcerer stepped toward the boarding ramp, his robes whispering across the metal of his armor, the corrupted Jedi awaiting him with twitching reverence.
And that was when Anakin snapped.
He didn't speak. Didn't warn. Didn't think. He just charged.
Nira's voice rang out behind him, sharp and panicked — "Anakin, wait!" — but it was already too late.
Anakin's boots pounded against the ferrocrete as he closed the distance. Rage boiled in his chest like a storm, threatening to consume him. The image of Yaddle's disfigured face — of Sifo-Dyas reduced to a snarling husk — was seared into his mind.
This thing — this Sorcerer — did that.
Anakin's blade came in fast, the angle low, aimed to sever the Sorcerer at the waist.
But the Chaos Marine turned with uncanny speed — not in fear or surprise, but with interest, like a teacher watching a particularly bright student.
He raised one armored hand and caught the blade with his palm.
The lightsaber plunged straight through his gauntlet, hissing and spitting as it pierced flesh.
Or what should have been flesh.
Anakin stared, panting, confused.
The Sorcerer didn't cry out, didn't recoil, as he looked down at the saber jutting from his palm. He simply looked at it like it was a curiosity.
Then he looked back up at Anakin — and smiled with his nonexistent lips.
"You're angry," he rasped, voice dry and cold. "Good. That anger… it makes you strong."
With his other hand, he reached up — slowly — and wrapped his fingers around the burning blade.
Steam hissed from the contact. The air shimmered from the heat, And still he held it, unflinching.
Anakin growled and shoved the blade deeper, driving it fully into the Sorcerer's chest, the bright energy core vanishing into his torso with a crackle of molten air.
There should have been a cry. A collapse. Something.
But the Sorcerer only chuckled.
Low at first. Then louder.
Then it became a cackle — dry, echoing — like a tomb laughing at the living.
"You really don't understand," he whispered, voice vibrating through the air. "You think this will work on something like me?"
Anakin tried to pull the saber back — but the Sorcerer held it fast, impaled through the heart, and through the palm. Then — as if curious — he pressed forward, forcing Anakin's hand further against the hilt until the boy's own fist was wedged against his armor.
There was a pop, and a sound like shattering crystal.
Anakin's eyes widened as the Sorcerer's wounds opened wider — not with blood, but with something else entirely.
A stream of sand began to fall.
It was multicolored — each grain flickering between colors that didn't exist in nature. Red one moment. Violet the next. Then a color that had no name, that made the eye ache just to perceive.
It poured from the puncture like an hourglass cracked open.
The sand drifted in the air, refusing to fall in a normal arc. It spiraled upward, sideways, coiling like smoke — forming sigils in the air for an instant before dissolving into dust.
"What... what are you?" Anakin hissed, breath shallow.
The Sorcerer leaned forward, so close Anakin could see the swirling galaxies that seemed to spin inside his green optics.
"I am what happens when faith shatters," he whispered.
"When the mind breaks open and finds infinity waiting. I am the answer to the question your Order dares not ask."
Anakin ripped his saber free, slashing upward in a blur of rage.
The Sorcerer stepped back, finally — not out of pain, but as if bored.
The sand hissed louder now, coiling in lazy spirals around his form. Some slithered across the floor, seeking cracks in the plating. A few grains landed on Anakin's hand — and he screamed.
Images invaded his mind.
A burning star devouring a world.
A choir made of screaming children.
His own face — older, cracked, twisted, laughing as he stood over a field of burning Jedi corpses.
He staggered back, clutching his skull before Padmé caught him, trying to pull him away.
But Anakin's eyes never left the Sorcerer, who simply stood there.
"You'll understand soon enough," the Sorcerer murmured. "You'll see. They all will."
The Sorcerer turned his back again, stepping toward his ship with that same cold indifference.
Anakin roared, a sound somewhere between fury and terror as he tore himself from Padmé's embrace and lunged once more.
His saber was already in motion before the shout had left his throat, a brilliant arc of blue light slicing toward the Sorcerer's exposed back.
But the blade never connected.
Without turning, the Sorcerer snapped his fingers, and the very air between them fractured.
Anakin was thrown sideways like a ragdoll, hurled into the far wall with a crunch of metal and bone. He hit the ground hard, skidding, the wind blasted from his lungs.
Before he could rise, Nira was already moving.
"NOW!" she shouted.
Padmé took the cue.
Blaster fire screamed through the corridor, red bolts flashing past Nira as she sprinted toward the Sorcerer with inhuman speed, enhanced by the Force. Her blade became a blur, slashing high, low, sweeping toward his legs and neck.
The Sorcerer's response was lazily elegant.
He raised one hand — and the air around him shimmered like a heat haze.
Nira's blade halted mid-strike.
It stuck in place as if embedded in molasses made of light and thought. She strained, screamed, pushed with every ounce of strength — and her saber inched forward, centimeter by agonizing centimeter.
The Sorcerer tilted his head, finally turning to face her.
"You are children playing a game you don't understand."
He flicked two fingers.
A thousand screaming voices, her voice, layered in pain assaulted her, images of her homeworld burning, Jedi she'd trained with flayed alive, her own reflection with black eyes and chains of fire around her neck.
Nira staggered, dropping to one knee.
"Lies! I'm not afraid of your illusions!" she screamed, voice shaking as if trying to convince herself.
"That is good," the Sorcerer said, stepping closer. "Because you should be afraid of truths."
Crack!
Padmé's blaster bolt cracked the Sorcerer's optic, burning a molten scar into his helmet.
He paused.
Turned toward her.
Padmé flinched — not from fear, but because the lights behind the Sorcerer's helm flickered, and for a heartbeat, she saw something else.
Not a man. But a being.
A bleeding hole in reality tore itself open, and inside she saw what no mortal eyes should ever see. Subjected to what no mortal mind should ever glimpse.
Padmé screamed, falling to her knees, the blaster clattering from her hands as she held her face in absolute dread.
Then came Anakin.
He rose from the wreckage of his landing, face twisted in rage and confusion, saber blazing.
"ENOUGH!" he bellowed.
He leapt, full Force thrust, blade high.
And for the first time, the Sorcerer moved to intercept.
He stepped back, raised his staff, and parried the blow with a shriek of sparking energies. Warp tainted staff met Force covered saber and the room itself shuddered.
Cracks spiderwebbed along the walls. Machinery sparked and exploded. One of the dead experiment pods in the corner screamed as if reliving its own death.
The lights flickered, and other pods broke into hundreds of pieces of glass.
Anakin struck again, and again. Blow after blow rained down, each one more desperate, more erratic, more powerful, but none struck true.
The Sorcerer danced around them with supernatural grace, letting Anakin rage, letting the saber scrape his armor, carving meaningless scratches. He laughed, softly amused, and indulgent.
"Do you see now?" he asked over the clash. "You're not warriors. You're children."
He backstepped a slash, stepped past Anakin, and backhanded him across the floor.
Then he turned, caught Nira's lightsaber in his palm before throwing her arms wide and striking her with the butt of his staff in the side.
She crumpled to the ground before he thrust a finger down toward the floor.
A pulse of Warp light surged from the ground, racing through every wall and wire, illuminating the entire facility with screaming runes. The walls writhed. Metal bled. One of the cages tore open and something impossible crawled halfway out, only to be sucked back in by some unseen being.
"I showed you mercy," the Sorcerer said calmly. "Because I find you interesting. But keep testing me, and I will show you true horror."
His voice was calm, but something beneath it shifted, an undercurrent of contempt that thickened the air like fog. The lights around them dimmed. The Warp runes along the floor began to pulse, slow and hungry, like the heartbeat of a slumbering god.
Anakin didn't stop.
He couldn't.
The sight of Padmé broken, Nira slumped across the floor, the laughing monster before him, it shattered the dam inside him.
He surged forward, lightsaber gripped in both hands, howling with rage.
The Sorcerer made no move to defend at first, simply stepping aside, watching the boy flail.
Another swing. Another miss. Another roar.
"Fight me!" Anakin screamed.
The Sorcerer tilted his head. "You don't want that." He said playfully.
Anakin didn't listen.
He brought his saber up again, a powerful two-handed cleave, but this time, the Sorcerer caught it.
The blade hissed and spat against his palm, but it didn't cut. It froze, trapped, humming uselessly as the Sorcerer's gauntleted fingers squeezed.
"Such fire," the Sorcerer mused. "So loud. So lost."
Then his voice lowered, a growl edged in raw disgust.
"But that's enough."
With a snap of his wrist, he twisted Anakin's lightsaber free — and in the same motion, tugged on the boy's right forearm.
Crunch.
Anakin screamed as his arm snapped, bones cracking like brittle glass.
He barely had time to register the pain before the Sorcerer tightened his grip and ripped.
There was a wet tear of meat and sinew, a flash of white-hot agony — and Anakin's arm came free in the Sorcerer's grasp, still twitching.
The Jedi dropped to his knees, choking, blinking through a haze of red.
The Sorcerer held the severed limb up, examining it with mild curiosity. "You mortals never learn," he said quietly.
Then he kicked out.
The Sorcerer's armored foot drove into Anakin's chest like a meteor, lifting him off his feet and launching him across the chamber. The sound was like stone shattering. Anakin hit the far wall with a sickening impact, bounced, and crumpled in a heap.
Padmé screamed, though from her visions or from her panic was unknown.
Rage erupted in Nira, pure, unrefined. And the Force answered, helping her push herself to her feet.
Her saber trailed with green fire as she sprinted forward, the Force surging through her veins like rivers of lightning.
She launched herself into a spinning assault, saber lashing in unpredictable arcs.
The Sorcerer watched her come, and for a moment, he looked amused. Then, bored.
He raised his hand.
A ripple of Warp-energy exploded outward, not fire, or lightning, or telekinesis. It was raw chaos. A psychic detonation of impossible shape and color, screaming with the voices of a thousand broken minds.
It hit Nira like a tidal wave.
Her saber evaporated mid-flight.
Her body arched backward as the blast struck her square in the chest, every nerve lit aflame by the Warp's touch. Her mind shrieked in protest — too much, too fast — and her shields shattered.
She flew backward, limbs limp, and slammed into the floor beside Anakin with a heavy, final thud.
Unmoving, unconscious, smoke curled from her robes.
The Sorcerer exhaled, as if expelling annoyance.
At his side, runes dimmed slightly — the facility groaning as if tired of hosting such violence.
He looked to Padmé next — the only one still conscious, blaster trembling in her grip as she feebly raised it, tears streaking down her face.
"You're turn."
Her trembling hands still clutched the blaster, but she knew, truly knew, it would do nothing. Not to this creature. Not to whatever thing had just torn Anakin and Nira apart like paper dolls.
The air grew heavier. The warp pulses from the runes intensified, and from the crack of the Sorcerer's optic, faint threads of multicolored vapor leaked, curling like tendrils toward her.
He raised his hand.
Just as a terrible shriek echoed from the corridor they had come through.
The sound of something dying.
No — many things. Tearing, breaking, screaming. And behind that — the unmistakable crack of a lightsaber carving through bone and steel. Again. Again.
The Sorcerer paused.
He turned.
The corridor hissed — and the reinforced blast doors shuddered violently, as if something massive struck them from the other side. A moment later, they exploded inward.
Three figures stepped through the smoke.
Yoda, Dooku, and Qui-Gon.
The Sorcerer regarded them with that same maddening calm.
"I was wondering," he said slowly, "when the real ones would arrive."
He tilted his head, metal groaning softly. Without another word, he struck.
A wave of Warp energy howled from his outstretched hand — pure force, a scream of entropy aimed to crush their bodies like eggshells.
But it hit something else.
A wall of counter-force erupted from Yoda, rippling outward in a brilliant translucent wave that caught the Warp blast mid-air. Both hit each other, and disappeared in a detonation of power. The bunker shook. Lights flickered. Runes dimmed.
The Sorcerer didn't hesitate. He charged, his staff crackling as it shifted to be like that of a blade, warping reality around its edge. In an instant, he was on them — blade crashing down in a brutal arc toward Yoda.
The Grandmaster redirected it.
The ancient Master raised a hand, bare, unarmed — and the staff shifted to bury itself in the ground next to the small Jedi. His eyes locked with the Sorcerer's, glowing with primal fury.
"Strong in power, you are," Yoda said grimly. "But not invincible."
Dooku struck next.
Lightning-fast, his Makashi form slipped past the Sorcerer's defense, blade stabbing low, then high, piercing his armor, forcing him to turn his staff to parry.
Qui-Gon followed immediately, heavy, deliberate strikes that did little more than annoy the Sorcerer. . Their blades danced — elegant and precise — years of training harmonized like clockwork.
The Sorcerer snarled. Now he moved with purpose.
He spun away, hurling a barrage of Warp missiles across the chamber — razor-sharp shards of pain, memory and madness. Yoda caught them mid-flight, absorbing each with telekinetic mastery, then hurled them back in a single storm of repurposed death.
The Sorcerer roared as several struck home — not deep, but enough to sting.
He teleported, flickering into smoke, then reformed behind Dooku — blade raised to skewer him.
Yoda was already there.
The ancient Master leapt with astonishing speed, intercepting the blow with his lightsaber, and with a growl, forced the Sorcerer backward through sheer power of the Force. The Warp energies shuddered in the room. Machinery sparked. Walls buckled.
The Sorcerer staggered for the first time.
"This is new," he murmured, almost admiringly.
He slashed again, raw Warp power cascading from his weapon — but Yoda met him.
Their blades locked — not saber against staff, but will against will. The chamber vibrated as both forces collided. Yoda's face contorted with focus, his voice a low, guttural chant of Jedi mantras to shield his mind from the Warp's taint.
The Sorcerer laughed — until his laughter was cut off by a sudden, searing stab from Dooku's blade into his neck.
The armor cracked.
In that moment of astonishment, Yoda thrust both hands forward — and the entire room exploded in Force pressure. The Sorcerer was launched backward, smashing through layers of machinery, his form leaving a crater in the far wall.
He slowly rose, cape torn, breathing heavy at the humiliation.
"Enough. I've had enough!"
The Chaos Sorcerer raised his hands.. No incantation, no preamble — just pure wrath. The air howled around him as reality cracked, splitting like torn fabric. From his outstretched hands erupted a torrent of Warp lightning so vast it painted the entire chamber in violet light.
It screamed like the voices of the damned.
The Grand Master stood his ground at the center of the room, robes whipping violently in the gale. He raised both hands, gnarled fingers spread, and caught the lightning.
The impact shook the walls. Dust fell from the ceiling like rain. Warp-charged electricity slammed into him with all the rage of a black star, but Yoda held fast, his tiny form outlined in searing arcs of power.
The ground beneath Yoda's feet cracked. His eyes glowed white with the strain. Muscles locked. Breath caught. His body trembled.
And then—
With a guttural cry, he twisted the lightning in his grip, redirected the impossible torrent, and hurled it back.
The Warp storm curved like a snake made of power and hatred, reversing its path instantly and striking the Sorcerer full in the chest.
The bunker exploded with light.
The Sorcerer was thrown backward, screaming not in pain—but in shock.
He hit the ground hard.
Smoke rose from his armor. The Warp robes that adorned him flaked and peeled like ash.
Everyone stared, stunned.
But the victory came at a price.
Yoda staggered.
His breathing slowed to a wheeze. His body hunched, spine locking in place. He turned, tried to step back, but fell to his knees. His hands dug into the ground as his strength gave way. The backlash of redirecting such immense Warp energy through the Force had taken everything from him.
"Master Yoda!" Dooku cried, rushing to his side.
The Sorcerer, smoldering and bent, rose with a violent grunt. He looked down at his chest and saw the gaping hole in his armor, dust pouring from the wound in place of blood.
He staggered towards the ship before looking back at Yoda, kneeling and vulnerable.
"Impressive," he hissed. He then entered the ship, and its engines started.
Before the group knew it, the ship was gone.
And they were once more alone.
===
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