The air in the throne room grew heavier - a suffocating pressure radiated from Gravik's towering figure.
His dark violet armor pulsed with runes similar to those in the corridors, and his mask gleamed in the dim light.
With a slow wave of his hand, Gravik spoke.
Gravik: "Let's make this... interesting."
Suddenly, the floor beneath him cracked open like a black void, and from it, a horde of monstrous creatures emerged - their bodies twisted amalgamations of shadow and bone, with glowing violet eyes.
There were dozens - perhaps hundreds - of them.
The Resistance soldiers tensed, raising their weapons immediately.
Commander Varn: "Hold the line!"
Blasters roared to life, plasma bolts cutting through the air. Some monsters disintegrated upon contact - but a moment later, their broken forms reassembled, the dark energy knitting their limbs back together.
A soldier (panicked): "They're... they're not dying!"
Gravik chuckled softly from his throne.
Gravik: "These are my Eternal Beasts... bound to my essence. They live... so long as I do."
Sheila gritted her teeth.
Then after sometime...
Sheila: "Listen up - the beasts are linked to Gravik. If I take him down, they fall with him!"
Commander Varn's jaw tightened. "We'll keep them off you - just focus on him!"
Sheila's eyes locked onto Gravik. Without another word, she dashed forward - a crimson blur - her sabers igniting as she charged straight at him.
Gravik didn't move until the last second, his massive greatsword flashing to life. He parried Sheila's attack with brutal force, sending a shockwave through the room.
The battle was on.
_ _ _
While Sheila and Gravik clashed, the Resistance fought desperately to hold back the Eternal Beasts.
Commander Varn led a tight formation - using coordinated blaster fire and energy shields to push the monsters back, though they kept regenerating every time they fell.
A squad of sharpshooters focused on slowing the beasts down, aiming for their legs and wings to restrict their movement.
Engineers in the group worked on creating barriers, using portable plasma walls to cut off portions of the horde.
But it was an uphill battle.
Every time they destroyed a beast, it reformed - a brutal reminder that their only hope lay in Sheila's fight against Gravik.
Sheila's plasma sabers clashed against Gravik's greatsword in a series of rapid, brutal strikes. Sparks rained down as their weapons collided - Gravik's strength was overwhelming, each swing forcing Sheila to use both sabers just to hold her ground.
Gravik (mocking): "You're strong... but you rely too much on speed."
He suddenly unleashed a shockwave from his blade, sending Sheila flying back. She tumbled but caught herself mid-air, landing in a crouch.
Before she could react, Gravik teleported behind her, swinging his greatsword down in a vicious arc.
Sheila twisted at the last moment, barely avoiding the strike - but the blade grazed her arm, leaving a deep gash.
She hissed through gritted teeth.
Sheila (thinking): He's faster than I thought.
Gravik didn't let up. He pressed forward - a storm of relentless, heavy blows. Each swing of his sword seemed to warp the air itself, laced with dark energy.
Sheila dodged, parried, and countered, but it was clear Gravik was a brutal powerhouse.
Meanwhile, the Resistance soldiers were fighting for their lives.
A beast broke through the line, leaping toward a group of injured soldiers - only for Commander Varn to intercept, cleaving it in two... though the pieces began reassembling immediately.
Another squad tried to buy Sheila time by targeting the runes on the floor, hoping to weaken Gravik's power, but the runes only pulsed brighter.
Soldiers were falling - not killed, but overwhelmed and knocked unconscious, their defenses wearing thin.
Commander Varn (to his team): "No one breaks through! Protect the Commander at all costs!"
_ _ _
Sheila, bleeding from multiple wounds, took a shaky breath. She realized that fighting Gravik head-on wasn't working. His strength outmatched hers, and his beasts were slowly overwhelming her troops.
Her eyes narrowed.
Sheila: "Time to change the game."
She activated a hidden feature in her sabers - a resonance mode taught by Jeromy. The twin sabers flared brighter, vibrating at a frequency designed to disrupt dark energy.
Sheila: "This ends now, Gravik."
She dashed forward, aiming not for Gravik's body - but for the glowing runes on his armor.
Her plan was clear: Break his connection to the Eternal Beasts.
Sheila lunged forward, sabers blazing in resonance mode - but just as she closed the gap, Gravik vanished in a swirl of dark energy.
Before she could react, he reappeared behind her and swung his greatsword down.
CRACK!
The blade tore across her back, sending her crashing to the ground. Dust and debris flew into the air as Sheila skidded to a stop, blood dripping from her new wound.
The Resistance soldiers gasped, their focus wavering for a brief moment - enough for a few of the Eternal Beasts to push closer to Sheila's position.
Commander Varn: "Hold the line! Don't let them through!"
The soldiers snapped back to attention, their weapons roaring once more.
Gravik loomed over Sheila, his grin growing wider behind his mask.
Gravik: "Is this the leader of the Resistance? Pathetic."
But then-
A smile crept onto Sheila's face. A soft, almost playful laugh escaped her lips.
Sheila: "Heh... I haven't felt this excited in a long time."
Gravik's grin faltered for the first time.
Sheila slowly rose to her feet, her body bloodied, broken, and bruised - yet her aura flared brighter than ever. The resonance in her sabers grew stronger, the vibrating blades humming at a pitch high enough to make the air tremble.
Her eyes burned with fierce determination.
Sheila: "Alright, Gravik... no more playing around. Let me show you what happens when I stop holding back."
She launched herself at him again - this time faster, stronger, and more precise than before.
Her sabers moved like blinding streaks of light - each strike targeting not Gravik's weapon, but the runes embedded in his armor.
She aimed at the cracks in his defenses, weaving through his attacks with a lethal grace honed through years of battle.
Gravik roared in frustration as he was forced to dodge and block frantically, no longer toying with her but struggling to keep up.
For every strike he parried, two more found their mark - burning gashes across his armor.
Gravik (snarling): "Enough!"
He suddenly gathered a dense sphere of dark energy in his palm - a final resort - and hurled it directly at Sheila, the attack warping the space around it as it flew.
The Resistance soldiers froze - they could feel the sheer power radiating from the blast.
But Sheila didn't flinch.
With a smirk, she slashed through the orb mid-air using both sabers in unison - causing it to implode instantly.
The force of the blast was nothing compared to her power.
Gravik's eyes widened.
Sheila: "Was that your trump card? Cute."
Before Gravik could process what happened, Sheila vanished in a flash of crimson light and reappeared at his side - both sabers aimed directly at the glowing rune on his chest armor.
Sheila: "Found it."
With a ferocious strike, she drove her sabers into the rune.
A violent shockwave of energy erupted from Gravik's body, and the glowing runes along his armor shattered into fragments.
The Eternal Beasts froze mid-battle - their glowing violet eyes flickering before crumbling into dust, disintegrating all at once.
The Resistance soldiers stood in stunned silence for a moment... before a victorious cheer erupted through the throne room.
Gravik stumbled back, clutching the smoking hole in his chest armor. His once confident aura now flickered weakly.
Sheila stood there, her sabers at her sides, her own body covered in deep gashes, burns, and bruises. Blood dripped freely from her wounds - yet she looked almost amused, like none of the pain truly mattered.
She glanced down at her broken form and chuckled softly.
Sheila: "Guess I got a little too carried away."
Her legs trembled, and she steadied herself with one of her sabers.
Sheila (smirking): "If I make it back in one piece... Aron's definitely gonna scold me."
Her mind wandered briefly to Dr. Aron's worried face, his voice telling her not to get hurt too badly.
She imagined Darren and Maria clinging to her, asking when she'd come home.
Sheila wiped the blood from her mouth, keeping her sabers pointed at the weakened Gravik. His once confident smirk was gone - now replaced by a look of quiet fear.
Sheila: "Where are the people of this planet?"
Gravik staggered back a step, his injured body barely holding itself upright. He let out a shaky breath before pointing a trembling hand toward the far end of the throne room.
Gravik: "Th-They're... in the prison quarters. Hidden beneath the fortress."
Sheila's eyes narrowed.
Sheila: "Show me."
Gravik nodded frantically and limped to the side of the throne, pressing a concealed panel hidden behind a piece of jagged metal plating. A soft, mechanical click echoed through the room, and suddenly, a portion of the floor slid open - revealing a dark, spiraling staircase that descended into the depths of the fortress.
As the opening appeared, Gravik suddenly bolted toward it - trying to escape into the shadows.
Sheila: "Oh no, you don't."
Before Gravik could make it even halfway down the first step, two Resistance soldiers tackled him to the ground, pinning him against the cold stone floor.
Commander Varn pressed his boot against Gravik's back, keeping him immobilized.
Sheila (calmly): "Running away? I thought you were a proud commander of Dark Void."
Gravik (panicked): "I-I'm a coward, alright?! I only fight when I think I can win! I just want to live!"
Sheila stared at him for a moment - his desperate, pitiful form trembling beneath Varn's boot.
Her jaw clenched.
Sheila: "I'm not going to kill you."
Gravik's eyes widened in shock.
Sheila: "But you're coming with us. Lead the way."
The Resistance soldiers forced Gravik to the front, and the group descended the hidden staircase.
The air grew colder with each step, the smell of damp stone and rot filling the corridor.
When they finally reached the bottom, what they saw made their stomachs turn.
A massive prison chamber stretched before them - dark, cramped, and filled with suffering.
There, 20 to 30 people were huddled together in a single cell - their clothes tattered, their bodies emaciated, and their eyes hollow. The cell was no larger than a small room, and yet they were packed in like animals - a ghetto of despair.
The sight was haunting.
The prisoners flinched at the sudden light from Sheila's saber, their thin arms raising instinctively as if expecting more pain.
Sheila's heart tightened in her chest.
Sheila (softly): "They kept you like this...?"
Gravik said nothing.
Resistance Soldier (whispering): "Commander... there are so many of them..."
Sheila approached the nearest cell and, with one clean swing of her saber, sliced the lock in half. The door groaned open, but the prisoners didn't move - too afraid to believe it was real.
Sheila: "It's over. You're free."
A frail woman stepped forward first, tears slipping down her cheeks as she stumbled out. The others followed, their knees shaking from both fear and exhaustion.
One by one, the Resistance soldiers broke open each cell - revealing more of the same.
2000 prisoners.
Most were too weak to walk. Others had visible scars, their backs lined with marks of whips and punishments. Some whispered prayers under their breath, thinking they were hallucinating.
But not all of them survived.
Amidst the rescue, they also found piles of lifeless bodies stacked in the far corners of the chamber. The stench of death was overwhelming.
Sheila's heart grew heavier with every step she took.
Sheila (quietly to Gravik): "How many...?"
Gravik didn't answer.
Varn pressed his boot harder into his back.
Varn (furious): "Answer her!"
Gravik (trembling): "There... there were originally 5000... but Dark Void only cared about those who could work or be experimented on... the rest... they were... disposed of."
Silence.
Sheila gripped her saber so tightly her knuckles turned white.
But she forced herself to stay calm.
Sheila (to her troops): "Get everyone out. Prioritize the weak. Get them onto the Resistance ships."
The soldiers immediately obeyed - carefully helping the prisoners up the stairs, some carrying those too weak to move on their own.
Sheila's voice softened as she spoke to the prisoners.
Sheila: "You're safe now. The Resistance is taking you somewhere far from here."
The prisoners clung to the soldiers for support, weeping quietly as they were led to freedom.
As the last of the prisoners were loaded onto the Resistance spaceships, Sheila stood at the planet.
Captain Varn saluted.
Captain Varn: "All survivors are accounted for, Commander Sheila. We're ready for departure."
She nodded.
Sheila: "Good. Take them back to base - give them medical attention, food, whatever they need."
Varn hesitated.
Captain Varn: "And you, ma'am?"
Sheila's gaze darkened.
Sheila: "I'm staying."
Varn blinked in surprise.
Captain Varn: "Commander...?"
She gestured toward Gravik, who was still bound and under guard.
Sheila: "I need to investigate this fortress. There's more going on here than we've seen."
Varn looked conflicted but ultimately nodded.
Varn: "Understood, ma'am. We'll take care of the survivors."
The Resistance troops saluted one last time before boarding the ships.
The engines roared to life, and the fleet of ships ascended into the sky - disappearing into the clouds.
Now, it was just Sheila and Gravik in the dark corridors of the fortress.
She activated her sabers again, its red and blue glows illuminating the stone walls.
Sheila (to Gravik): "Now... let's find out what other secrets Dark Void is hiding here."
Gravik gulped.