You stand on the Sith World of Krayiss II, a harsh, brutal land of deserts and mountainous terrain. During the battle for control of the planet, one of the deserts received a name from the Dark Jedi who fought there: the Desolation... and it was named with good reason. You've heard the stories about the desert. Heard about the sand traps, the pitfalls, and the quick sands that are scattered throughout the Desolation. Jagged, obsidian formations—hidden by the natural black sands—are a health hazard for those who do not mind their step.

Darkness sweeps across the desert leaving the hazards nearly invisible. The black of night causes the temperature to plummet and the bone-shattering cold sweeping over the barren sands saps you of your stamina. But the hostile environment is not your only concern. Somewhere in the middle of the darkness, in the vast emptiness of the desert, your opponent lies in wait. You begin to move slowly across the black sands, narrowly avoiding a fall into a dark abyss, and force yourself to continue. Nothing is going to stop you. And by either nature or blade, another victim is going to succumb to the Desolation.

A trickle of sunlight began to bleed over the obsidian dunes of Krayiss II, illuminating the stark rock formations protruding from the surface. Glancing towards the horizon, the Knight Verse Theris shrugged her shoulders and exhaled, relieved that the bitter cold and limited visibility might soon be at an end. For the night, the Hapan had trudged through the Desolation, trekking miles while the wind swept away her bootprints. Cold and travel-weary, the Knight relished the the expanded opportunities that the dawn now provided.

Verse soon found use of the daylight as she crested another dune. Standing stoic against the wind, the figure of Aidan Kincaid faced the Hapan. While some thirty feet away, the dark figure loomed with menace. Verse stepped back in surprise, her visor concealing the twisting dread creeping across her face. Kincaid, however, remained passive, not showing any reaction to meeting the young Arconan. A gust of wind breezed past him, flapping the raised hood against his face as his open robe fluttered with the ebon sands.

“I wish to forfeit the match,” Verse struggled against her instinct to run as she called to the man over the whistling winds. The Hapan upturned her palms towards the Elder, unarmed. Features shrouded under the blackness of his hood, Kincaid remained in his statuelike state. Curious, the Knight wondered if the male was unable to understand her through her muffling helmet. Removing the headpiece and tucking it under her arm, the young Sith called out again. “I do not wish to fight, you may have the victory.”

Having made her intentions clear, Verse turned her heel to start back down the dune; even if Kincaid did agree to her forfeit, the Hapan doubted he would offer her a ride back to an Arconan ship in his shuttle. Perhaps even this had just been an illusion, Force trickery intended to distract her while the real Elder lurked elsewhere. However, as she turned away, she caught the figure bursting to life from the corner of her eye. With no thought the Sith sped to a dash across the sand, struggling to retrace her footsteps as the ephemeral prints were nearly lost to the wind.

Nearing a geometric rock formation jutting from the ground, Verse sputtered as all of the air left her lungs in one breath. A hand of Force energy knocked her forwards onto the ground, sending her previously-clutched helmet flying off into another direction. The Hapan did not even have time to spit the sand from her mouth before Kincaid was upon her, like a predator ready to devour his prey.

“Mmph!” the Knight exclaimed in surprise as another hand, this one now flesh, forced the Hapan’s head against the cool surface of Krayiss II with firm pressure at the nape of her neck.

The Knight scissored her legs desperately as either hand groped for purchase. Her left leg connected with her opponent in the abdomen, and while not a powerful kick, allowed her the space to wriggle her torso and press a gauntleted hand against the ground to push herself upwards. Verse heard the man grumble as his grip slid from her neck, continuing to grapple her struggling form as he grasped at her scalp.

The Arconan spat as her head lifted, prone body writhing to buck her opponent. “What is...the meaning of this?” the Hapan hissed, thrusting her hips backwards as she rotated on one knee.

With the sacrifice of a chunk of auburn hair, Verse wrenched her neck to break free of one of Kincaid’s hands. “I have forfeited the match!” she cried, twisting her wrist as the Elder locked the strength of a vice around her forearm with a finger and thumb. With a wide-eyed glance upwards, the young Sith gazed at the cold, meticulous features of Kinkaid underneath his hood. A shift in view revealed the hilts of his lightsabers stowed untouched at his belts. His lithe form still overtaking her, Kinkaid finally parted his lips in reply.

“Really? Even you should know by now, this is not about the match.”

Before the female could digest his statement, the Elder curled one hand into a fist and punched her in the eye. Verse wailed and turned her head back towards the sand, only to meet another closed fist thrust sharply against the back of her cranium. Her body slumped as spots flooded her vision.

As battered as she was, the scrappy Sith still found fight left within her as her opponent repositioned himself. With a thrusting kick of her leg, Verse freed the vibrodagger previously concealed within her boot and clutched the blade tight to brandish it in a wide arc. As Kincaid shirked to avoid the dagger, Verse seized the opportunity to take hold of another weapon her arsenal, her Relby pistol. Squeezing the trigger, she sprayed a wide hail of bolts all around her. As nimble as the Taldryan Elder was, Kincaid was forced to vault away from the random volley, twisting and spinning his way to the safety of a nearby dune. He crouched low with both hands free for balance. Not one to question an easy escape, the Knight left her queries behind as she trotted off along the sand.

Verse did not make it but to the next rock formation before she was suddenly seized by tendrils of energy weaving around her wrists. The Hapan shouted in frustration as she was levitated with her arms above her head into a painful strappado. Her boots dangled below her, barely sweeping the black sand. The Elder’s voice sounded behind her, in close range.

“Now, then… where were we?”

Kincaid didn't bother to wait for an answer. The question was rhetorical after all. Before the female Arconan could curse at him or plead further, he struck her from behind with a savage kick to the torso. The girl screamed. Kincaid withdrew the power holding her immobile and she fell face first into the ground. After spitting up more sand, she attempted to crawl forward, but Kincaid merely followed with another swift kick to the side. Ribs broke under the weight of his combat boot eliciting another agonized scream.

Lying on her side, the girl shakily pulled her blaster and tried to take aim at Kincaid. He dismissively gestured with his left hand and sent the blaster flying randomly into the desert. She seethed silently, eyes darting around in search of some way to turn the situation around. Kincaid ignored these desperate glances and drew a lightsaber from his belt. The amber blade welled to life with a snap-hiss, drawing the girl's attention. Fear flashed across her face.

Kincaid raised his right arm and thrust the blade straight down. His blade stopped mere inches from the girl's heart, held at bay by an invisible barrier. Annoyed, Kincaid glared at the girl and thrust harder. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she struggled against the pressure. It only took a few moments before his blade began to vibrate back and forth and then the barrier shattered like panes of glass. The girl screamed again as the point of the blade was driven into her shoulder. She was lucky to still be screaming. Her last minute defense had deflected the attack off its mark.

"Enough of this," Kincaid muttered.

He disengaged his lightsaber and picked the girl up by the collar of her armor. The girl's green eyes were filled with pain and rage. She was clearly beaten, but not quite broken… yet. Kincaid let the Force swell within him and channeled it to augment his strength and, with a vicious thrust, sent her hurtling backwards through the air. Her body struck one of the jagged, obsidian stones with force enough to shred her light armor and pierce through her flesh. A fresh cry of agony rang out through the desert.

Before he could move to follow her, a beeping stopped him in his tracks. Kincaid looked down to see a small, spherical device sitting in the sand at his feet. He felt a flash of emotion—vindication—from the girl. Willing strength into his legs, Kincaid jumped backwards as quickly as he could, but it was too late. The time-delayed grenade beeped twice and exploded. There was neither a flash of light nor an explosion of heat and flame. Instead, a white, gelatinous foam exploded out from the grenade and expanded at an alarming rate. The blast radius of the glop grenade easily caught Kincaid, who had barely managed to clear three meters with his late jump. The foam expanded over his legs and up his torso to encase his left arm. His right remained free, still grasping his lightsaber.

Kincaid cursed himself for falling into the trap. The girl was outside the range of his weapon and powers, and the adhesive foam merely shifted around when he tried to attacking it. He quickly accepted the fact he would have to wait for the adhesive to set and harden before he could attempt escape. He cast a glare at the girl, who must have realized the same thing. Still, she was hardly in any shape to put up a fight. Besides, even if she dared to move in to attack getting any closer would be fatal. Kincaid realized she could still attack him from a distance if she had any other weapons on hand. If that was the case, he would have to dig deep to hold her off.

But, it seemed the girl had no will to fight.

As Kincaid watched, she pushed herself to her feet, staggering and holding her right hand to the wound in her shoulder. She was clearly in pain. In a short time, she had suffered a number of brutal wounds. Kincaid knew that, even with proper training and skill, the Force could only alleviate so much. The fact of the matter was the girl was a novice when it came to real combat. She had neither the strength nor the resolve to overcome the agony Kincaid had inflicted on her. That left only one viable option: Retreat.

As if to prove him right, the girl turned her back and started retracing her earlier steps as quickly as she could. It was a cowardly, if expected, choice to make. Kincaid sighed as his opponent disappeared over a dune. It had been clear from the start that she had not wanted to fight him. He couldn't blame the girl—fighting a battle one couldn't win was basically suicide.

There had been no real reason for him to drag the affair out. However, this match was about more than personal glory. Since the fallout of Bosthirda, Kincaid—at the behest of his master—was trying to better serve the Clan of Taldryan. Demoralizing the Arconans was his current mission. After defeating the Aedile and the Proconsul, butchering a young, female Knight would surely push the Arconans over the edge. And those driven by rage were so easy to take apart and destroy. It was a tactic he employed often and knew was very, very effective. Which was why he had to continue this farce of a match.

Five minutes passed with Kincaid immobilized. The girl had been seriously wounded, but he believed she was desperate enough to push through the pain and run as quickly as possible. The looming threat of death was an excellent motivator. If she was smart, she probably obscured her trail as well. It was annoying, but there was nothing for it. He would track her down. As he thought this, Kincaid released his pent-up frustration and unleashed a raw wave of pure force. The brittle foam encasing him exploded outwards in tiny fragments of billowing, white dust. Free at last, he stowed his lightsaber and began the hunt for his opponent. It was time to end this.

Verse hobbled through the Desolation, klaxons blaring in her brain and vision tinged with red. The beating that she had suffered at the hands of the Elder left the Hapan senseless and feeble, unable to determine which direction she had come from within the vast, merciless desert. Nonetheless, the Knight tracked in a tortuous line, desperate to escape the Jedi Master whom had shown her such harm.

The Arconan labored to breathe as her boots stumbled over the twisting sands. She found herself fascinated by her moving feet, as if her lower half was disembodied from her mind, delirious with pain. Her gauntlet gripped tight at the clean shear through her shoulder, attempting to hold her own body together. Her limp arm flopped sickeningly as she ran.

The sound of a crack just barely reached Verse’s ears, bringing with it a fresh surge of adrenaline. No doubt her opponent had managed to loosen himself from the sticky grasp of her grenade. Before the young Sith had a chance to ponder the implications of Kincaid’s freedom, a rogue stone caught the toe of her boot. Helpless to right herself in her crippled state, the Knight stumbled overlong.

The Arconan would not be caught face-first in the sand a third time, however. As she fell, the black granules parted to reveal a dark void before her, a pit that had been disguised by a layer of sand only seconds ago. Without thought to the Elder trailing her, Verse yelped as she tumbled into the crevasse. Her head connected with part of a stony formation, forcing her to tuck her chin as her injured body flailed on the way down. Her vision flashed with white as she met the rock again, gravity connecting her with the jagged structure. Her body caught, held supine and partially curled within the pitfall, trapped against the mass of two natural stone columns.

Only a thin sliver of white sky remained visible above the Arconan. She attempted to move her legs and shift her weight, only to find her lower half now unresponsive to her commands. The wind howled, twisting eerily through the narrow pit in a low whisper. The seam of light darkened as sand started to pour into the void, steadily spilling over Verse’s head and face. She began to weep, eyes closed and body wracked with choked sobs.

The Hapan languished hopelessly in the pit as the sands shifted around her. While she could not pinpoint the specific injury in the darkness, the increasing difficulty of breathing caused her to imagine that she had received an impact to her lungs. Verse weakly channeled the Force to slow her respiration and heart rate, her mind lapsing into a state of foggy consciousness.

Minutes later, sound ripped through the cool sands of the void and snapped the young Sith back to alertness. A new shape of light had appeared towards the surface, obsidian dust hissing around the edges. Verse recognized the form of a leg and boot poking into chasm, wriggling frantically for purchase as the body to which the appendage was attached struggled on the surface. Another foot appeared and scuffed against the rock, quickly followed by the remainder of Aidan Kincaid. The darkness soon swallowed his form, and while Verse detected a soft thud against stone, his fall sounded far more graceful than her own.

Deep in the trench of the Desolation, Verse could not resist to call out to him. A wordless sputter declared her presence, the best she could manage amidst her rapt, searing breaths. Despite knowing that the Elder had caused her mortal wounds, Verse felt compelled to express her presence to him, hungering for him to know that she was alive. She cried the last stand of her shredded humanity, a shameless plea for succor.

A wave of current erupted from the center of the Elder, blasting the smaller rocks away from his body. Verse observed the silhouette crouching awkwardly against the rock as his amber saber snap-hissed to life. The light of the plasma cast a warm glow against the walls of the pit, allowing the Hapan to discern a sawtoothed protrusion of rock impaled through her abdomen.

She looked away, back towards Kincaid. Shifting shadows shrouded his features as he swung the blade, muscles tensing to keep balance. He shakily stood erect on an uneven plane of rock to leap further towards where Verse rested.

The tattered edges of his robe brushed over one of her hands, sprawled against the stone. She called out again. While the vocalization was similarly wordless as before, the intonation was far different. A wail of raw suffering left Verse. She never imagined that she would be so eager to beg for death.

The amber blade raised. Verse glimpsed the face of Kincaid as he readied his weapon without hurry, knowing that he would find no resistance this time. His brown eyes shone in the light, expression impassive. His brow was not knit in rage, nor was his lip curled with sadistic pleasure. As he brought his blade down over her, the Knight saw a man with the simple desire to complete his mission.

A curtain of darkness fell. Verse drifted, satisfied to have Kincaid as her executioner.

Kincaid stalked quickly across the desert, only pausing occasionally to look at a holographic map displayed from his wrist communicator. The blinding rays of the morning sun made each drudging step a chore, but he pushed on heedless of the heat. It was his own fault for being caught up in the machinations of a mere neophyte. Fortunately, given the wounds the girl had endured, she could not have made it very far in the few minutes she had to flee. Still, Kincaid realized searching this stretch of the Desolation was a fool's task, which was why he had pulled up a holographic map of the terrain.

The map indicated that the desert sands were hiding a cavern that was situated not far from where he had met the Arconan girl in battle. Considering how much time she had spent trying to run and avoid their fight, Kincaid believed that the girl had probably stumbled across the mouth of the cavern, and decided to hole up to try to hide from him. She was likely trying to bide her time until Arconan reinforcements could show up and pull her off the planet and out of the tournament. Fortunately, Kincaid was still able to sense the recent minute details made by the girl's passing. He was on the right track.

Finally, Kincaid located the mouth of the cavern and entered. Moving slowly into the darkness, he allowed his eyes adjust to the darkness. He couldn't see anything physically, but Kincaid was wary about walking into another trap and quickly reached out with his senses. Immediately, he could sense the Arconan and the hasty illusion she had erected to remain hidden and a handful of faint, inactive minds probably belonging to mynocks. Locking in on her location, Kincaid turned and dropped a hand to his lightsaber.

"It's time to end this," he said to himself, as much as to his opponent. The darkness around the girl flickered for a moment, then shattered completely revealing the bruised and bloody form of the Arconan, barely holding herself together. Kincaid smiled wryly. "At least you've chosen a fitting place for it to end." He gestured around the cavern. "You're already underground."

She didn't bother responding. Instead, she raised one hand to chest height and glared at Kincaid. He noticed the glint of metal in her hand.

"Really? I won't fall for the same trick twice."

The girl tossed the grenade. Kincaid raised his left hand in front of him and released a powerful wave of force to intercept the glop grenade and return it to its sender. As the wave of pressure and the weapon collided, the grenade suddenly intoned a soft series of beeps. Thunder and lightning exploded in the confines of the cavern.

A flashbang.

Kincaid cursed, and turned away from the source of the blast. But the damage was already done. The flash of light had all but blinded him, and deafened by a shrill ringing. Annoyed, he gritted his teeth and focused his will inwards. He wasn't about to let the girl escape again. This battle was already a waste of his time and his patience was wearing thin. He needed to end it so that he could move on.

The burning in his eyes faded first, then the ringing in his ears. Kincaid focused on pushing his body to quickly overcome the superficial damage. Sheer will deadened his nerves to the damage and forced his eyes to constrict against the oversaturation of light. As he mentally battled the effects of the explosive, he felt a tremor of pain in the Force and realized the girl had suffered the effects of her own weapon. She probably hadn't expected the grenade to detonate early after being hit with a blast of telekinesis.

But he couldn't concentrate on the girl for long. The life forms Kincaid had felt earlier had woken from their slumber, and they were definitely not mynocks. The unknown creatures were now rushing towards them at an alarming pace. The flashbang must have woken the denizens of the cavern and alerted them to the presence of the two Dark Jedi. The ground shook. Kincaid slitted his eyes and looked into the darkness, just barely able to see what was coming. A pack of desert-dwelling Wraids were hurtling towards them in a confused, panicked rage, bounding along on all fours.

The girl, still dazed by the effects of her grenade, couldn't react fast enough. The first Wraid came upon her and flung her aside viciously with one of his oversized forelegs sending her flying. She crashed into the cavern wall with bone-shattering force and fell limply to the ground. Since she didn’t appear to be moving, Kincaid turned towards the real threat.

Relying on instinct instead of vision, Kincaid activated his amber blade, locked it into place, and threw it in a spinning arc towards the nearest beasts. Shrieks of pain reverberated around the cavern as the lightsaber sliced through the midsection of two of the beasts in an instant. These were quickly joined by howls of anger, as the remaining Wraids became even more enraged.

Sensing a rush of movement, Kincaid leapt backwards to avoid a body slam. He quickly altered the path of his returning lightsaber to slam it into the chest of the beast that had just attacked him. Three down. Trusting his instincts, Kincaid switched into attack and leapt forward, calling his weapon to his hand in flight. He twirled his lightsaber in mid-air and slashed through the bulbous heads of the two remaining beasts.

Kincaid stood there, panting, as he took a moment to collect himself but the sound of quiet whimpering drew him back to awareness. He opened his eyes and turned to the girl. She was broken, lying in a battered heap as if she had been tossed aside like a box of rusted scrap. The impact from the Wraid throwing her into the wall had broken at least one of her legs, probably both, and her spine seemed to be misshapen. Kincaid guessed that she was probably crippled. He went to stand over her, the lightsaber in his hand humming threateningly.

"Why?" she asked. Despite the pain and the fear, both her face and voice remained impassive. Had she given in? "I surrendered... I didn’t want this! Why did it have to be like this?"

Kincaid stood there, staring down at her. The 'why' was obvious, at least to him. The girl’s death would enrage the Arconans. Their successive losses, the brutal assault on their Summit members, the damage to their vaunted pride… they were all small steps to push the Arconans into making mistakes. Their blind hatred would make them sloppy. They would be unable to stand the losses they had suffered at the hands of Taldryan in this tournament. And, their reckless rage would lead them to ruin. It had been seen. But…

"It's nothing personal," Kincaid explained. "You're just a means to an end."

Without giving her a chance to respond, Kincaid thrust his lightsaber down, impaling the girl through the chest. The job finished, he walked wearily out of the cavern. Under the blazing heat of the sun, he drew a communicator from his robes and activated it.

"It's done."