From his knees, Tydeus shuddered as a glowing red energy pulsed from the newcomer's fingers and into him. The blood leaking from his ears and nose stopped. His blistered cheek grew warm. Tydeus reached a gloved hand up and touched at the cheek, felt no pain. Bruises and aches he didn't know he had left him, melted away before the power of the Force.
The boy looked at his gloved hands, then over to Quinn, blinking his eyes as he remembered that charred visage. His mouth felt dry, his throat tight.
"I..." What had he done?
Then he looked past the woman who had healed him toward the wreckage of the Iron-Blood training facility and the bodies of dead Kainates scattered like fallen leaves.
His gaze hardened. Fingers sought his vibrosword, but he'd lost it in the storm.
"I am Tydeus, Prince of House Tion. Heir to the Dawn Moon and the Marches of Gravid." The boy rose, drying blood spatter slick on his face, no mercy in his eyes.
"Your Emperor autoclaved my inheritance, my family, . . . my world. And now I am here to erase his legacy from this galaxy." '
"Suwi maridrosar ichisudz oksh tuti mumtsil," came a voice from behind in the ancient tongue of the Sith.
Tydeus spun. Before him loomed an image of death - a Sith of absurd height striding through the wreckage of houses and trees, girded in black and scarlet armor, emblazoned with the symbol of Kaine. A sable cape fluttered behind him. His helmet bore sigils in gold, written in Sith, telling of Jedi felled, battles won, and campaign victories.
The commandant of Darth Carnifex's legions on Dromund Kaas unclipped a lightsaber from his belt. It flared to life, a crackling bar of crimson.
Tydeus' heart fluttered with fear. He took a step back.
"Wretched Tionese, abandon your ignorance. I shall torture your body... to free your mind"
The rage of a billion ended lives flared up within Tydeus and he charged at the Sith, weaponless, moving with the speed and power of the Steel Hand. He ducked under the lightsaber's sizzling blade and came in close to the commandant, his fists striking like pistons, pummeling the Sith's breastplate. The blows rained down, but the Sith barely moved as the beskar strengthened plating did not shatter before Tydeus' hands. The commandant held up his hands to either side and let out a laugh into the sky above.
The emotionless helm tilted down toward Tydeus.
"I am of the Dark Lord's chosen. Behold his teachings."
The off-hand of the Sith whipped around with outrageous, blinding speed, propelled by the Force itself. The armor-backed hand smote Tydeus in the gut, unleashing a kinetite shockwave built into the glove. The Dark Side-enhanced blow lifted the boy off his feet and sent him flying backward.
He landed on his feet, nearly doubled over with blinding pain, and vomited blood onto the permacrete.
In an eyeblink, the commandant surged forward and landed another punch, then another. Tydeus felt his ribs shatter, couldn't draw breath, and panic set in. His arms flew out, but the Sith slapped them aside, then gathered his hand back and slammed it forward, palm flat. A blast in the Force rippled out, picking Tydeus up and flinging him flying through the air and across the street, tumbling onto the roof of a house. The Sith leaped across the intervening distance in a single bound and landed on the roof, then struck him with another push in the Force. Tydeus went flying, skipping across roofs like a ragdoll, his body a mess of cuts. He slid off a roof and into an alley filled with foliage.
Atop the now distant roof, the Sith reached out his fingers and curled them inward. The buildings to either side of Tydeus trembled, then collapsed in on the alley in a tumble of permacrete, burying the boy.
"Thus ends a traitorous line," the commandant announced, before striding off in search of another, more worthy foe.
* * *
Hours later...
Amid rubble, something stirred.
