Mace and Cal

Mace Windu woke to the deep chill of the night. The stars blinked high above, speckling the velvety sky like distant fireflies. He sat up slowly, the coolness of the stone crypt wrapping around his body. Being a vampire was nothing like he had imagined when he was a Jedi, after decades of walking this new path, he had grown accustomed to the stillness of his nocturnal existence.

The faint creak of the chamber door broke the silence. Cal Kestis entered quietly, his face lit by the faint blue glow of his saber : always a light in the darkness. It was peculiar for the young man to be to zealous about his saber.

“You’re awake early tonight, Master Windu,”

Cal said, giving him a respectful nod. Despite the years, Cal always regarded Mace as his superior.

His history a mere ghost of the past, though their bond had grown far beyond Jedi hierarchy. Mace stretched out, feeling the familiar strength of the Force and the new, alien hunger that tugged at him nightly. His days of meditating in the light were over, replaced by an unceasing craving for blood, a need he had fought to control. For Mace, discipline was everything.

“Something feels off tonight, Cal,”

Mace responded, his voice low but firm.“I sense... a disturbance.”

Cal’s brow furrowed.“Do you think the Inquisitors are still after us?”Mace shook his head. The Inquisitors had long since stopped being a threat. He and Cal had dealt with most of them, leaving them as shadows of their former selves.“No, this is different. There’s something darker, more ancient.”

The two of them had been running together for years now, since Mace’s fall from the Jedi Council. Surviving the Emperor’s betrayal had come ata great cost.The fall had left him broken, vulnerable… In his darkest hour, he had been turned into something else, something immortal.

“I think it’s time we find the source of this disturbance,”

Mace said, rising to his feet with an effortless grace that came with the vampiric curse. His senses were sharper now than they had ever been as a Jedi, though the curse weighed on him like chains he could never remove.

Cal adjusted his cloak, moving toward the exit.“Where do we start?”

Mace closed his eyes, reaching out into the Force, searching for the flickers of energy that could lead them.“There,”

he said finally, pointing towards the horizon.“It calls to me from the depths of the city.”

The streets of Coruscant were as Mace remembered them, though now they seemed darker, colder. The blue lights of the undercity illuminated their path, casting long shadows in their wake. The citizens moved about like ants, unaware of the supernatural presence walking among them. Mace could hear their heartbeats, feel the blood coursing through their veins. The hunger gnawed at him, but he resisted. It had been years since he last fed on the living, sustaining himself instead on the blood of animals or those who would willingly offer it.

Beside him, Cal was silent but alert, his hand never straying far from his lightsaber. Though younger, Cal had become a steadfast companion, balancing Mace’s brooding demeanor with a lighter touch.

“You think the Sith are behind this?”

Cal asked as they entered the bowels of the city.

“Not Sith,”

Mace said.“Worse. Something far older. There are creatures that even the Sith would fear.”

As they moved deeper, the air grew thick, almost suffocating. The stench of decay hung heavy, but there was something else… Foul and unnatural. Mace’s vampiric senses flared as they approached an ancient temple, half-buried beneath the city.

“It’s here,”Cal said softly.

The temple’s entrance was guarded by statues of forgotten deities, long left to rot in the shadows of the modern world. As they stepped inside, Mace could feel the energy pulsating: dark, malevolent, like the heart of some ancient beast.

A figure stepped forward, draped in tattered robes, its eyes glowing with a sickly green light. It was not human : at least, not anymore. Its body was twisted and gnarled, a vampiric elder, older than any Mace had ever encountered.

“You should not have come here,”

the creature hissed, its voice like the scraping of stone.“This is not your fight.”

Mace stepped forward, his lightsaber igniting with a snap-hiss, the plum purple, blade casting a glow that contrasted the darkness.“Everything is my fight.”

The elder laughed, a sound that chilled Mace’s very bones.“You cannot defeat me, Windu. You are but a child in the ways of our kind. I am the shadow that has watched over this city for centuries.”

Cal ignited his saber beside him, blue light reflecting in his determined eyes.“You’re not the first monster we’ve fought.”

Without warning, the elder lunged. Mace moved in a blur, faster than he had ever been as a Jedi. His saber clashed with the creature’s claws, sending sparks flying. Cal darted in from the side, but the elder was too fast, too ancient. It batted him away like a ragdoll, sending him crashing into the temple wall.

Cal groaned as he stood, rubbing the back of his head.“We really need to stop meeting monsters in the dark.’