Location: Royal Academy of Bastion,
Ravelin, Bastion
Objective: Defend the Royal Academy, ensure Acolytes escape and information does not fall into the hands of the New Imperial Order
Allies: The Sith Empire |
Enemies: The New Imperial Order |
Lunafreya Solidor
Equipment: “Twin Dancers,” (Dual Lightsabers), “Apostasy’s End” (Lightstaff),
Sarassian Iron Platemail,
Telis’s Legion, a handful of brave Sith Acolytes, and a whole Academy’s worth of information
Post Number: I
”When the dead walk for Bastion, let them find only winter and ruin as their profit.”
The words left Aagenti’s mouth with a bitterness that surprised the acolytes and commandos around him, lacking the shallow chill of his normal demeanor, and instead ringing with a hollowness, like glass against steel. There was a shift in him, a coldness that’s reflected in his very skin and eyes, a crystalline blue instead of the normal gold or red. This was a Telis that was haunted and haunting, focus as clear as daylight and intentions as cold as hoarfrost. In the purposefully dimmed lights of the academy, Darth Aagenti looked gaunt and ghastly, a ghost of machine and ambition and cold intent. Even with every tremor felt from another orbital strike and heavy artillery assault, the man did not flinch, staring into the gloom with an unerring calm. He was a statue, demeanor like stone and as translucent as glass: his thoughts were laid bare for all to see, a rarity in his lifetime.
Aagenti was not the leader nor the shrewd tactician that he often showed himself to be. He was something darker, something colder. There was an edge to his voice, not often present, and no time was spent on presentation or aesthetic or anything glorious. There was no glory here, only necessity, and if he had to gauge out the eyes of those that came for the Academy by hand, he wouldn’t hesitate to do so. Blood had been spilled, and Aagenti’s had been let so much that only the faint residue of his life’s energy was seen in his frame. He stood beside men named after death, and nothing but darkness overtook the inner halls of the academy, gloom already growing outside from the beginnings of the bloody fray overtaking Ravelin.
Deep within the halls of the Academy, what men Aagenti could spare sought desperately to steal away what they could from the school, taking with them Acolytes and Information, guiding them to safety - the future of the Sith Empire rested in them. Aagenti would not allow an imperfect genesis of an age of Sith, and to that end, though the Academy may fall, its histories and its disciples must not. Many of them had already escaped, left long before the war reached the front, but those that remained now waited within the gloom, locked in hidden halls and awaiting transportation away from Bastion when the skies cleared… if the skies cleared. At the forefront of the school, right within the first antechamber, Aagenti stood with those now under his intention. A handful armed with crimson blades, and the other hundred or so lining the walls outside and holding a tight grip on the interior armed with weapons meant for devastating those that dared to get close.
Aagenti himself held his sabers by his sides, one grasped in a reverse grip in his metal claw, the other held forward with metal-embedded fingers, ending too in those crude, cruel claws. Lightning danced between the conductors, sometimes tracing up from his hands and onto the blackened Iron armor he wore, half-plate and greaves emblazoned with no iconography other than the symbol of the Sith Empire worn on a shawl over the shoulder. Sleepless nights had begun to show on his frame, with the slightest hint of unshaven scruff forming on his chin and face, razor-edged. Bags were heavy under his eyes with the work of managing an impossible war, and yet Aagenti never felt more ready, adrenaline beating through his veins like the sound of his drum, to the point where the sound of his heart and the sound of the battle outside were one and the same.
In that moment he had become war. Cruel, cold, unflinching, and a machine with no master but his own intention.
He would bring those that dare to tread before him nothing but
ruin.
”Captain, take a force outside and set up in the courtyard. Take positions in the amidst the pillars and force them to come through the pool. Ensure that it is their only direct entrance to get into this building.” Turning to the decorated Legionnaire commando beside him, Aagenti would grab the man by the wrist, the officer doing the same with a nod of his head, as he raised a finger, and began to rally the auxiliaries of the Legion, moving outside without a word, only one saying following the soldiers out to their stations:
”Do not fail. For the Empire.”
Seeded through the whole of the Academy were small pockets of Aagenti’s legion, spread out enough so that the only true entrance was right through the front. To go another way would be to risk getting caught in a hellfire of heavy blaster fire and between having to break through heavy metal barricades. There would be little room to maneuver, except for the largest of open spaces - and so that’s where Aagenti stood his main defense, just past the main plaza of the school, ready, waiting, eyes set for the first moments outside and ears set for the first sounds of blaster fire and calls of distress. Aagenti turned the Academy into a funnel, leaving all other avenues as trap-infested warrens, and yet the main pathway clear of all obstacles but him and the few dozen commandos he had remaining at his sides and poised to shoot down from above and from off in the eaves. There would be nowhere for the enemy to hide, and Aagenti would meet them without falter. They would bleed for every drop of blood they’ve spilled, and if they were to take Bastion, there would be nothing but ash and slaughter for their harvest.
Within the heart of the Academy, while the last vestiges of what can be recovered and stolen away were being transported to the hidden passages and rally points, there was a stillness to the air, a cold presence that reached deep into the minds of those around him, stemming fear and only filling them with a cold focus. Outside, the skirmishes began to coordinate at an approaching foe, the first signs of fighting beginning as commandos launched grenades from their rifles, tools meant for use against vehicles, and instead their focus set on infantry lines. Each passing moment the explosions drew closer and closer, the commandos beginning to light up their communications with the signs of the battle approaching, until hell broke loose.
All outside, heavy fire filled the air, blue bolts firing upon the ranks of the enemy forces moving towards the Academy. Moving between platforms like wraiths in the gloomy day, they fought like savages, backs to the walls and fingers pulled on triggers, sometimes precision aim making the better hand of a marksman and other times completely unloading into the thick of the masses, hitting and missing in equal parts, before dodging to reload and return again. It was dance without subtlety or grace; effective, brutal, the Cadavarii fought not to win but to force a certain path forward, knowing that survival for them was not the goal of the mission. One by one, they began to be hit, blows traded in turn, slowly dropping and dwindling as they suffered from the strikes of the enemy, but still they pushed, driving the enemy down the most central paths, either through the water or being forced to split and thus be in each part wounded and overwhelmed.
Within, the sounds of the fighting did not go unnoticed, and soundlessly, in the midnight interior, the small squadron of Acolytes paired with Aagenti took caution. Seven sabers lit up, two paired as dancers in the hands of the Machinist, Pillar of War, not a master of it but an avatar of its brutality. There would be no victory today, and as Aagenti spun the paired sabers in his palms, he would take a single step towards the door, isolating himself at the front, cold condensation dripping off of his metal hand. His brow set and his eyes squinted as he stared towards the door.
Outside the beginnings of the battle continued, the commandos forcing their would-be attackers to funnel straight to the mouth of the school, skirmishing, assaulting, trading blows, falling back and pushing forward, again and again, a microcosm of the battle waging around them. One by one the commandos began to falter and fall, forced to continue their feverish assault with less and less, slowly waning and still fighting as though they were a thousand men strong. They had been told not to fail, and by the Emperor, they would not - death before failure, fealty before honor. That is what they lived by, what they fought by, and what they would die by, and as the beginnings of the fighting grew louder and louder, Aagenti offered one message to those outside, steady, emotionless:
”Let them come.”
The dead shall not have Bastion.
