Ajira Cardei vs Darth Voracitos

[Ashin Varanin]

The eye-searing dome, living and not, protruded from the earth where her citadel had stood in another lifetime. She'd known, intellectually, that the Mandalorians had leveled it when they took Dromund Kaas -- over and above the asteroid bombardment that choked the skies and froze the swamps. Now years of environmental reclamation had brought Dromund Kaas back to something like viability, like a green shoot driving up through the last snow of spring. She tasted life on the air. She'd have to spend more time in Ke'dem's sanctum, deep inside the ruins of Jurgoran Prison, public identity permitting.

And yet for all that appeal, here was a fething zit on the face of her old throneworld. A hemispherical piece of alchemy like a plump fruit with teeth the size of skyscrapers. It reeked of the familiar, of two men who'd served her back in the day. Far more of one than the other: Voracitos, leader of her Dark Council, the man who'd betrayed her and cost the Sith Empire the Battle of Roche.

The Sith Empire was long, long gone, and harsher betrayals had come her way. She'd made worse enemies. But from time to time she'd felt Voracitos' hate search her out across the stars. Perhaps now was the time to stare back.

With a slow breath in and out, Lady Ajira Cardei of Naboo became Ashin Varanin once again. The same new face and body, to be sure, but the disguises fell away from her Force signature. That alone should be enough to let Voracitos know she'd come. If not, she didn't mind tackling this thing the hard way. She carried only a simple sabre, and wore a formal, flexible robe of deflex and shell-spider silk; it didn't look like armour. Apart from that, she had only a certain glove.

[member="Darth Voracitos"]([member="Triam Akovin"])

 

[Darth Voracitos]

Peace.

For once, the man known as Darth Voracitos knew what peace was, what if felt like. What it meant to him. A long time ago, while still trapped within this boil, a man had come to this Asylum and begged him to waken. He invoked the name of Ashin Varanin, the source of all the fat man's perceived woes. An Emperor's hatred for a predecessor who continues to live unauthorized, is a hatred that lasts forever.

It feels illegitimate. Wrong. Incomplete. That naturally human thing to believe, that something must meet completion. His entire life, was a lie so long as that woman had lived, and she did live for a while. Though the Dark Lord had not actually been around to notice, for he slumbered in a scenario not unlike this one.

In the Garden of Thorns, while the manifestation of his Jealousy rampaged across the galaxy and tarnished his good name. The fragments of his soul that encompassed all the inferior traits of his personality, rested within the nine shards of his Holocron, as it feebly attempted to influence the politics of the galaxy. It gathered Warlords, and attempted to infiltrate the Mandalorians in a bid to use them for conquest of the worlds he had lost and beyond... even further, it had attempted to proclaim it had seen something beyond the force, and divine, deeming it necessary that the fragmented Sith must adhere to it in unification.

All these things feeble, unfulfilled, and ultimately shameful. That is not how a Dark Lord, of the Shadow Emperor's magnitude, operated. Thus, it faced the ultimate punishment: to be consumed by the very manifestation of the voracious unending desire to devour. It was more than a hunger, ravenous or otherwise... for Voracitos had never known hunger, only the desire to consume more than he needed or deserved. It was a game, he had become a master of...

... in all but one, very special, infuriating case.

Ashin Varanin. The one that got away. One of the only two beings he knew who were capable of defying his will. The other one, had put him in this Asylum of his own Gluttonous pursuit of control.

Then she was killed by Sage Bane. He saw it. He felt it. There was no doubt, his consciousness awakened for that moment alone outside this body of decay and suffering. When it happened, he became at peace with his life. Learned to accept that now he could exist, and lie and wait until such an age came that he could awaken.

That peace was a lie.

A raging, crackling, violent shaking overtook the land surrounding Voracitos and the Asylum of Gluttony. The dust that rose seemed to coagulate in the air nearest to Varanin, as if some invisible massive force approached her in a wave. At two points above the ground, exactly next to each other, spaced a nose width apart from one another, the sand particles that had rose to the air pressed against each other so tightly they began to glow, burning in a passion of hatred. The particles rained over the fat apparition, the ephemeral power burning the sand with a red glow. In the distance, the magenta blistering boil began to churn and writhe, but moved no more.

"YOU DO NOT EXIST." A clattering thunder echoed across the skies, serving as his voice. It was a statement, not a question. This was a fact that he knew in his heart, and could not believe the presence before his own. A finger of accusation rose in the air, composed of burning sand.

"YOU ARE A LIE." More and more sand coagulated into the molten glass that had composed his pointed finger, and glaring eyes, his mouth releasing a fire into his face which cause the air to generate a mirage. The ground beneath him, cracking in heat, and almost melting.

"I WATCHED YOU DIE, HOW DO STAND BEFORE ME?" This time, it was a question... genuinely incapable of comprehending how she existed. Now before Ashin, there stood a pile of burning sand, that only vaguely resembled Voracitos, containing only the recognizable girth of his stomach, his massive arms, and that unmistakable bloated face. He bothered not to care for legs. This would not be the Avatar which he would combat Ashin by any means, but it remained his only means to communicate to her until freed.

Suffice to say, Voracitos was awake... and he was extremely displeased.

[member="Ajira Cardei"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Voracitos"]

A very large Sith Emperor made of molten sand took form. Ajira blinked, but didn't step back or draw her blade.

"I have the ability to survive death," she said, as if explaining to a small child. "As for being a lie, I assure you I'm quite real."

She glanced past his glowing shoulder at the alchemical creche. "I assume you're over there," she said, and walked past the avatar, heading for the sphere. Nonchalance was just about guaranteed to infuriate Voracitos; she remembered that much from their intermittent contact over the years. In reality, she stood ready to pulse her Force defenses to life, should he decide to throw hot sand at her back or something.

 

[Darth Voracitos]

Growling with the thunder of the clouds, the molten sand churned slowly around continuing to point the finger of accusation. Slowly, the heat died from the structure, cooling into a blackened hateful glass. The eyes continued to glow, the mouth opened in closed in mock speech, while the thunderous skies which began to swirl around the Asylum grumbled.

"PERCEPTIVE..." The Lord of Gluttony was not always prone to sarcasm, but in this case of frustration he had little other power over the respect she showed him, and was reduce as low to use it. She had the walk of an Empress, and he despised it. It was unnatural. It was wrong. It must be extinguished from this world and next. He could not live without her soul tossed to oblivion, or locked away in a trinket of his own.

The glass statue which remained of Voracitos, stood slowly inanimate behind Varanin as she made her last walk to the foot of the Shadow Emperor. Roiling rage, now took the form of dancing light in the skies above, reminding the budding jungles below of a past once utterly dominated by the lightning of the skies. A funnel cloud crept ever closer to the highest teeth of the Asylum's ensnared maw.

"TO SURPASS DEATH IS NO DIFFICULT TASK, 'EMPRESS'. I SIMPLY DID NOT KNOW YOU WOULD BE SO LOW TO STOOP TO MY LEVELS." A tremor could felt underfoot as she approached closer, though it was soft. As she approached him, her nauseating presence made his oceanic stomach roil in rage... and when the boom of lightning did not sufficiently shake the land... it became unsatisfying. Thus the ground began to shake under his weight to better reflect the magnitude of his displeasure.

"TRUE POWER EXISTS IN THE FORM OF OBLIVION... YOU WALK CLOSER TO THIS POWER."

In the distance, a new maw began to burn a bright white-magenta within the boil... before molten alchemy seemed to sweep away as if curtains being pulled.

An entrance.

[member="Ajira Cardei"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Voracitos"]

"I'm not one to fear proximity, Voracitos, but I'm also not inclined to put myself in someone else's power voluntarily." She turned her back on the distant alchemical crypt and faced the molten-sand avatar again. Some corporeal variant of a Force Phantom, perhaps, or at least that was the closest equivalent she could name. Regardless, Voracitos' body and full power might not be here, but his attention was. His attention, and maybe something more. She'd made her share of phantoms and doppelgangers; there was always some kind of a Force-bond involved, either between projection and creator or linking the shadow to some other anchor. This thing was manifestly him in nearly every way that counted.

A door gaped open in the back of her mind, and she threw it wide. Hunger roared through, the addiction that had ruined her quest for redemption. Webbed tendrils of crimson lightning sprayed from her hands, seeking to latch onto the glass avatar. Force Drain relied on Force-bonds in complex and dangerous ways. By attempting to drain the molten-sand presence, Ajira -- Ashin -- aimed to drain energy and life from its distant creator. Dromund Kaas' blasted ground cover withered and died around her feet.

 

[Darth Voracitos]

A shooting pain erupted within the dull throbbing heart of Voracitos, suspended in time, becoming once again aware that his center laid with his body; time moved forward once more, if only at a crawling pace. The pain spiraled outward in a network of spider-like threads. Tendrils of his energy pulled closer towards his center, drawing energy from his entire body. The life force of his very being being sapped in the bond manifest with the black glass of his avatar.

The funnel above the zenith of the Asylum faltered slightly, being to lose its cohesion with the clouds, showing signs of rupture at any moment. The lightning intensified, webbing the sky in representation of the torrent of pain which filled him. The thunderous roar of the skies, recolored the clouds in a sickly iridescent green bathing everything beneath it in that color of envy and greed.

That statue became more animate in response, the ground cracking beneath it with the increase of tremors, the glass composing itself beginning to chip itself apart. The face reflected the onslaught of devouring pain, and the rapid reflexing of his ceramic face cracked and shattered in layers, burning eyes melting the charcoal flesh around his face. The finger of accusation closed as the arms were brought to press into the glowing head of his avatar. The colorful tendrils of Ashin's power glowed in a beautiful miasmic pattern within the transparent body of the avatar. The cacophony that followed the writhing pain was deafening. The alchemical "zit" suffered under the tremors of pain.

Suddenly, powerful winds would assault Ashin Varanin towards the Asylum, and with them it would carry suddenly hundreds of glass shards that were intentionally shattered off of the stomach of the avatar, leaving behind a slowly growing crater within his massive bulge of a stomach.

The drain appeared to be working, as dust fell from the outskirts of the Asylum.

[member="Ajira Cardei"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Voracitos"]

It was well within Ajira's specialization to anchor herself into immobility, and surround herself with layers of Force protection. As she needed to switch her attention from the drain, though, she opted for the latter and not the former. Shards of glass whined harmlessly off her full-body Force shields, inches from her face, but the wind bowled her off her feet. As she tumbled, she wrapped herself into a ball and maintained those shields, comparable to the Force Weapon protection one used to fight a lightsabre with a cane. The hot-glass debris ricocheted away, but the gale drove her on, away from the collapsing avatar.

THAT IS QUITE ENOUGH OF THAT.

She uncoiled and skidded to a halt near the molten door in the Asylum. The wind still shoved at her, but she withstood it. She cracked her neck and examined her condition -- somewhat bruised, her Naboo robes ripped, but no blood so far. A nearby chunk of the Asylum's outermost carapace shattered to dust on the dead earth.

The same defensive nimbus surrounded her as she walked into the Asylum's door. Alchemical constructs melted around her, shrank from her as Voracitos opened the way. Maybe he'd try and close it around her, and she'd play the sand-grain to his mollusk. Maybe he'd actually face her.

 

[Darth Voracitos]

Dust would shudder and fall over the first door, clinging to the cooling molten interior of the frame, pouring into the cavity it had created and snuffing out all light within the massive structure. Darkness would temporarily descend over Ashin.

A low frequency groan seemed to travel through the various cavities that made up the interior of the Asylum, appearing as if she were looking at the cut away of someone's flesh, with all of their veins sticking out and leaking a bit of fluid onto the sloshy floor. Except in this case, only dust poured from these cavities, and only when a tremor shook them loose.

In a moment, magenta light would fill the room before her as once again the alchemical flesh lifted itself away like a curtain. Molten drips would fall to the floor, white hot and volatile. As it slowly broke away, a moan-like rumble reverberated against the walls, slowly becoming a voice.

"YOU ARE A TOUGH THING TO BE SWALLOWED, VARANIN." Laughter then characterized the rumble. Voracitos' smiled somewhere, as his invasive presence molested hers... as she did likewise. What vitality she had stolen from him, however small, he could feel it. He could feel himself inside her, a nasty thing that did not quite fit. It was a ravenous desire she absorbed from him, a taste of his persistent desire to consume.

"BEING DEVOURED WAS AN UNPLEASANT EXPERIENCE... I SEE YOU'VE LEARNED NOTHING." The voice was mocking. He was buying time, yet had all the time in the world while he remained in destabilizing stasis. He did not innately control the innards of his own Asylum. There were things he could do on the outside much like a human could move their arms, but there was only so far he could open doors for her, in the same way that a human could not consciously cease his own heart, or halt his own digestion.

There was a way, however, that through her he may break free...

Suddenly, there would come an obstacle in front of the former Empress, that would not open. She would encounter not a door, but a face. He was nearing a point at which he could no longer control the body of his Asylum. The face she saw, was his own. Similar to the avatar he had used outside, it contained a bond between phantom and creator.

Hands would suddenly reach up to grasp her feet, and more hands still that would reach for her waist and arms. It was an attempt to limit her options of what else to do, because there was only one way he knew of that was thus far capable of destroying the asylum around him... and only one way he knew of that could allow him to enter her mind without her immediate knowledge.

"You think you can starve me?" The voice was soft as it came from the walls mouth, but no less coated by voracious arrogance. In a moment, the maw would expand to disproportionate sizes, and red tendrils would crawl out of its mouth like a miriad of eldritch tongues, slowly reached for her, intending to drain the vitality out of something... though they would not reach her truly, as it expected her to act in such a way that would help him destroy the Asylum. If they did manage to reach her however, something interesting would happen to them both...

Shall we find out?

[member="Ajira Cardei"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Voracitos"]

Massively wasteful flows of energy were at play around her; that much was clear. Clear, too, was Voracitos' lack of intention -- or ability -- to face her in person. This wasn't the place of his power so much as his prison. The avatar suggested that. So did the invitation into a close-quarters fight, a range where she excelled and where he had certain limits. She gnawed on those details, then, abruptly, stopped as the walls shone and melted with magenta light.

"Think as you will of me, Voracitos, but remember that I was a Jedi Master. I'm not such a battering ram as you might think." Her eyes shut as she repelled his mental probe and ignored the face before her. She knelt in the middle of the passage, amplifying the shields that surrounded her. "I remember action through inaction, and I've waited by the river until my enemies' bodies float past."

For years, now, an inextricable part of her specialization had been an ability so rare it lacked a name. Like Luke Skywalker of old, she could anchor herself so firmly that a black hole itself couldn't dislodge her.

Hands reached up to grab her feet, and that was fine; they latched on the nimbus of just-about-impenetrable Force protection that surrounded her. More hands reached for her waist and arms. She was sitting on her heels, palms on her upper thighs in a sword fighter's meditative posture, so the third set of arms gripped her above the outthrust elbows. She didn't contest the grab, not even as tongues or tentacles wrapped around her shielded form. None of it touched her robes or flesh, just her shields. Immovable and immobilized, cocooned as tightly as Voracitos, eyes shut, Ajira burned cold and waited.

"You should know I'm uncomfortable with the imagery here."

 

[Darth Voracitos]

Without much effort, it would seem that the imitation-flesh constructs were able to grasp her, nimbus or otherwise. It had been so long since he had come within so close of contact with the Empress. The last time either of their flesh had graced the other had been many years ago, within the former throne room of Emperor Moridin. The last time he truly had contact with her, was directly before his betrayal at the Battle of Roche. All other encounters between the two had been dances with a shadow.

It had been so very long, and he relished every second of it. It was clear to them both, that neither really changed. One might have a different face, and new experiences far fouler than himself. The other might have undergone severe mental switches and extreme bodily transmogrification... but at their core, their spirit, they were essentially as they were all those years ago.

Only now, Voracitos had gained wisdom in his defeats. Wisdom to which Varanin, would not be able to expect out of him. When dealing with such a pinnacle of arrogance and waste, wisdom is not a virtue that comes to mind.

The fat man had expected her to initiate once again, a drain upon the intrusive face, yet no debilitating feeling of a loss of vitality followed. It would be significantly more difficult without her cooperation, but he would make due with what she gave him. Even with its mouth full of intangible eldritch tendrils, the face was able to laugh.

"GOOOOOOD!" In a moment, Voracitos attempted something which he was not familiar with. The intangibility of the dangerous bonds would likely penetrate the nimbus, and then would violently attempt not to drain Ashin... but Voracitos. Vitality would reasonably be expected to course through the former Empress, the wasteful energy stored in the entirety of the Asylum would be coursing through those tendrils... cracking, turning to dust, shifting and turning. It was his intention that she would begin to feel the true weight of his crushing presence, as he injected it into her own... though the dreadful lack of efficiency of reversing something so natural as taking... almost pained Voracitos more than literally sacrificing his own life force.

His bulbous form wished for nothing more than to move out of the stasis his prison imposed, and obliterating parts of himself seemed the only solution that had thus far worked, given that he and the prison were intrinsically linked together by flesh.

[member="Ajira Cardei"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Voracitos"]

Circumstances had focused her defenses on the physical and the mental. The ethereal was a largely separate plane of attack, and though her defenses were strong enough to keep it out in most circumstances, she slipped. The incorporeal tongues lashed around her, some sinking through her aura, and brushed her skin. She braced herself for a Force Drain assault or something comparable, but instead, sickening energy flooded into her. Like a fighter who'd leaned back in anticipation of a grab, then reeled from a blow, she found herself caught flat-footed. Her physical defenses dissolved, and the hands snared her body in earnest. She could manage that in any number of ways, but not while devoting so much of her attention to the influx of power. The half-corporeal tendrils burned away under the stress of the transfer. She realized that he was draining a great deal into her, either from himself or this prison; she didn't yet grasp the nature of their connection.

But there was more to it than energy. His presence was moving in, or pressing down, maybe in preparation for an essence transfer. If she'd been much of a laugher, she'd have chuckled at the idea of Voracitos trying to take her body.

"All right," she snarled, eyes squeezed shut. She was well and truly trapped from all directions now -- for the moment. "You want in? Come on in."

Force Drain had been her addiction for so many years, the power that had derailed her chance at redemption. Her last chance, no matter how hard she'd worked at it. She and Odium had fought in a mutual death field, and a Force wound still marked that place on that world whose name she'd forgotten. In the back of her mind, the door opened again, and cold hunger lashed out, grabbing the energy he offered, gobbling it up. In some ways, the flow was comparable to the half billion souls that Moridin had shoved into her mind once upon a time. The strategies she'd employed in the ensuing months and years would stand her in good stead now.

As the hands and arms and breaking tongues and walls faced the brunt of her Force Drain, she lashed out to grab the part of his transfer that wasn't simply undifferentiated energy. And she lashed out with her power and hers, according to the protocols of Ergast, the rites of Kallig. Force Walk, it was called: yet another example of abilities whose formal names conveyed no impression of their nature. But what she sought wasn't just some Sith formalism, but a function of will, the same will that had let a crippled old Jedi Knight confound the soul of the most powerful Sith Lord to ever live.

Ashin knew how Palpatine had died for the last time. She remembered the name of Empatojayos Brand.

 

[Darth Voracitos]

Addiction was the most powerful motivation a human being could suffer from. It was intrinsically tied to all of them, within their own natures. If any should understand addiction, it would be Voracitos. A beast of a man by his own right, whose question to devour had gone far beyond hunger... the man hungered for nothing, but even as he was filled with food, or power, or respect, it didn't matter; he wanted more.

Ashin, though? She had only understood hunger, and now he would teach her the true reason why he was known as the Lord of Gluttony.

At one point in his life, he had been compared to the Ancient Sith Lord Darth Nihilus, a figure Voracitos in his youth had often looked up to in awe... and disgust. As an adult, Voracitos had often fancied himself as having grown to be superior to that living wound in the force. Granted, the fat man had never devoured all life upon a planet, but when his maw did open, it sought no substance, and it completely absorbed whatever it attached to, until literally nothing could be gleaned from it.

Where Darth Nihilus "Lord of Hunger" had become enslaved to his desires, his body deteriorated into the very thing which he consumed. He had become the Lord of Starvation, and suffered for his addiction.

In contrast, Voracitos would never allow such a thing to come to pass, and instead became master of his desires, never ceasing to consume something simply because it offered nothing to him. He devoured for the sake of the act, not because he needed to. Nihilus only scratched the surface of what could be consumed out of desperation, and scratched every surface to glean some substance from it. Voracitos shattered the surfaces he came upon, and if life was a plate by which vitality rested upon, not a crumb went un-turned.

Force sensitivity did not play into what Voracitos considered palatable.

Nonetheless, to be consumed himself did bring up that itch which ever-presently existed in the back of his throat. A desire to unleash as easily as the desire to speak. He swallowed that addiction though, for the sake of a different kind of gluttony: indulgence in the dramatic.

In the moment, the Dark Lord felt a restlessness in his breast, a palpable tug towards the woman whom he shared his presence with, crushing down upon the earth and upon her. It wasn't immediately apparent as to what she attempted to accomplish, though nonetheless one thing was true: Voracitos was no ghost.

Returning to the Galaxy from the Garden of Thorns had granted him new life: actual life. This was no false body, no Avatar of his Jealousy, this was the real deal. This literally was, Voracitos, in the flesh. If she wanted his soul, she would have to rip it from his newest cadaver.

And that, would be no easy task.

Like an eggshell, quakes on the surface of the gigantic maw which composed the Ayslum, cracked the teeth which had sealed the Darth to his fate. Pieces of that alchemical flesh fell from great height and disintegrated as it fell to the air, and letting through behind it a ray of light onto the deformed and ugly face of the Shadow Emperor. Stasis had now become an illusion, and his body writhed against the agony of his predecessor's hunger to defeat him, to defeat his rule and supremacy.

Within the Asylum itself, the hands which grasped Varanin trembled under her power, and recoiled from her hunger, they too vaporizing into dust. The eldritch face which had served to draw out her hunger, quavered and disintegrated into an ashen pile at her feet, revealing before her a crumbling passageway deeper into the prison...

... where Voracitos waited, famished for her presence.

[member="Ajira Cardei"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Voracitos"]

She knew her way around Kallig's rites. When nothing happened, then, she could come to only one conclusion. Despite his integration with this place, he was embodied again. Useful knowledge.

Her bonds shattered and eroded away, and she stood. She'd expended a good bit of energy between the shielding, the Force Walk, and the Drain, even if the latter had brought her significant strength in its way. Though it behooved her to keep eyes in the back of her head, Ashin took this opportunity to rest for a few moments. When she walked down the passage, bits of alchemystuff raining around her, she did so at a casual pace. She kept her sabre lit and raised, trusting its light more than the occasional stray beam from above. The air was foul; she breathed through her collar rather than placing energy and focus on a Force technique, like the adiabatic shields she knew so well.

If Voracitos was incarnate, and if he wanted her to come to him, he had to have some kind of game plan, some ace up his sleeve. He knew she specialized at close-range work, especially defense. She'd seen him fight well at those ranges, but good was not excellent. So he'd stack the deck somehow, if he could. That much seemed clear. Maybe some sort of very long fall awaited her.

 

[Darth Voracitos]

"Behold," A weak and feeble voice carried through a massive cavern as the former Empress walked herself into the very heart of the Asylum. The occasional ray of light illuminated a fat, tall, spire decorated by the mutilated torso of a grotesque being. A single luminous, magenta eye glowed dimly in the darkness which shrouded the nearly unrecognizable form of the monstrous lord.

Though his word seemed to convey he had more to say, for many moments it was followed only by silence. The word itself seemed to convey all that it needed to for Voracitos, he needed only his predecessor to observe all that had become of him. Then, he broke his silence.

"Ironic, is it not? An asylum composed of my greatest strength, made incarnate. Finally, it seems, my opulent weight has rendered me immobile." Once more the uncharacteristically tired voice, let out a soft and lonely laugh, accompanied by neither further laughs, chuckles, or even a single jeering tone. It was muffled as well, as Ashin might learn, his mouth was sealed. The voice did not come from his throat by the whisper of the winds themselves... the dry and still air made to movement by his whim.

His control over the Asylum itself had grown a thousand fold, now that his body no longer was rendered immobile by stasis. She had effectively freed the Dark Lord from his prison. He could leave almost at any time. It was a matter of will. It was a matter of closure. This prison had become more than a physical one, more than one bound by the force. It was a mental prison; a true asylum. Leaving this place was not an option until he died once for all, or if the woman standing before him submitted to a death she would never return from.

"I suspect you have come to end me?" The voice now grew more sinister, more baritone and ingrained with power. Dust fell from the mutilated maw that silenced him with nothing more than a slurred muffled voice. The tower vibrated slightly, anticipating movement.

Then without warning the ground surrounding the tower, and beneath Varanin would begin to collapse, a darkness below them that seemed unnaturally deep...

[member="Ajira Cardei"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Voracitos"]

She'd expected a fall, tensed for it even, and when the ground dropped out from under her she was already preparing to leap on some level. Her lightsabre snapped up in a firm double grip. She let go with her right hand, the one that wore the Glove of Darth Vader, and made her fingers into claws.

The pillarstuff was organic, chitinous, no match for the beskar crushgaunt. Her fingers speared into the substance of the pillar beneath the boundary of his torso. An instant later, her boots and knees struck the pillar with bruising force. The glove held her weight, for the time being. Gravity would win eventually...but gravity was more his enemy than hers, and that long fall could be lethal to him.

To that end, she started sawing briskly at the pillar. Her current sabre was a simple thing, no match for the advanced cutting power and complex features of her previous weapons, but a lightsabre was a lightsabre. Cut enough, up at a slant, and the broad pillar ought to tip and fall into the abyss. Slanted cuts, wedges removed: it was just like cutting down a tree.

With the minor exception of the Sith Lord whose bellybutton(s) protruded from the pillar about two metres above her head.

 

[Darth Voracitos]

"Urrmph!" The Dark Lord made a muffled grunt as the brisk and tenacious movement of his enemy leaped across the cavern as it gave way to an impossible cavity. She quickly went to work with her lightsaber, cutting into his flesh, which was both organic and not. The grip of her gauntlet against his form was unnervingly powerful, but second still to the power of the force, and third to that of the pure and adulterous power of the dark side. Quickly, the situation would change for Ashin.

With surprising strength, Voracitos grasped his muzzled face with ceramic claws, pulling down with his own voracious ferocity as he tore open his own jaw. From it, an explosion of debilitating disease and red mist began to fill the chasm like a noxious hot gas, cackling within it the corrosive power of the dark side. The roaring volcanic plume stuck to every surface of the alchemical prison like a hot poison sludge, sliding down with great viscosity, simultaneously acting as both a deterent, and as a cement to repair what had been damaged by her meddling.

It had once been said that Voracitos was a master of area of effect, but suffered in personal confrontations. That was only because they had never seen anyone face him without others present. There was no distraction here for Voracitos, there were no other targets he could draw strength from, but also no other targets he could waste his energy on. This draining energy spewing out from his mouth may encompass very quickly the entire cavity of his prison... but Ashin was the only target here, and she would face his full and unbridled attention. All energies were focused, and directed towards her so long as she remained within his domain, and so long as she was his only source of attention.

Like a great fiery dragon, Voracitos continued to spew out his deadly sticky mist down at Ashin, hoping she would leap to her doom, or otherwise become trapped within the corrosive and sapping mists. This was by no means energy efficient for Voracitos, and was incredibly wasteful. But in an Asylum of unbridled and unchecked waste, his toxic gaseous vomit had plenty of energy to draw from to compensate.

There would be no reversing his energy flow this time around.

[member="Ajira Cardei"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Voracitos"]

Ajira stopped cutting and focused, and her shields sprang up again, but not before droplets of corrosive vomit spattered on her. Some hissed and fizzled against her robes of shell-spider silk. Smoke rose from the back of her right forearm, where the Glove of Darth Vader ended and the robe's sleeve had slid away. A glob slopped against her cheek and burned down the side of her neck. She gritted her teeth against the pain and kept up what shields she could muster, both defensive and adiabatic. The shields held -- barely. She prioritized the adiabatic one, the weaker one that filtered air, so she could breathe without scarring her lungs. Chemical burns seared her skin regardless, and to her fury she felt him snaring a measure of her power.

Caustic red ooze flowed down around the Glove, still embedded in the pillar. The slime, like quickset cement, plugged hissing, steaming slices she'd taken out of the pillar with her sabre. It set around her embedded crushgaunt, fixing her in place. With a hiss, she resumed chopping.

The goal, at this point, was to take more wedges out of the left side of the pillar, cut away its substance faster than the cement could fill it. Even filled, those gaps would lack the structural strength to support Voracitos' bulk. She was hacking in earnest now, quick convergent angles that took slices out of the pillar. She reached the center, at a guess, and spun left around the anchor-point of her painfully torqued wrist. Her sabre lashed out behind her, as far around as she could reach, to slash deep into the pillar's right side.

At a guess, the whole thing would fall to the left, taking both of them with it.

 

[Darth Voracitos]

A wicked smile would form at the frothing maw that had become of Voracitos' lower face, a broken black jaw drooling out the acidic red mists in slow trickles down his body, his magenta eye gleaming bright seeing the woman become virtually fused to the body of his pillar. A deep rumbling shifted deep beneath them in the chasm below, and began to reverberate upwards as Ashin Varanin seemed to make great progress in 'cutting off the head' of this dragon of greed and foremost gluttony. She was a knight caught in the jaws of a monster, trying merely to cut out its tongue. It was all a useless gesture to him, and he would show her the error of her ways. Had she forgotten she had freed the monster upon herself? Opened him up into a place so marinated in the very essence of excessive consumption? This Asylum had been his prison for nearly a decade, but open once more to the flow of the force coursing through the twisted veins of this alchemical monstrosity, it had become an Arsenal.

Suddenly, the pillar shifted and moved, twisting itself around. It became seemingly alive under the guiding hand of the Dark Lord of Gluttony. The chitinous alchemy shifted out of place, and her progress in creating a wedge became distorted. Not wholly reversing the progress exactly, but stretching and contracting it in ways that made it less of a gash than it had been. Further more, Ashin would find her body now hanging above the chasm, while the obese torso of the monster dripping his noxious drool into the abyss with a look of possessed glee seemed to defy conventional logic in regards to gravity.

Then, his hands came together over his great stomach, utilizing the remnant of his jaw seemingly as a fuel source, vaporizing it into a ball of viridian energy cackling with electric charge. The hands quickly expanded outward, bringing the energy into himself. The effect was brilliant in its display, as the chitinous material seemed to carry the destructive charge within himself for a short distance, as he roared in agony. The electricity composed of jealous hatred ran to the source of his wrath, prioritizing passing out of Ashin Varanin's body rather than the quickest path through the pillar, an electrocution guided by hatred which may circumvent her exterior protections given her embedded relationship with his 'body'.

However, this was a two pronged attack, as the self inflicted electrocution also acted as an instigator for inducing a beam of viridian destruction to escape his hands which now pushed forward towards Ashin. Even the best walls and best defenses had their limits, had their point of no return. A piece of granite shall not crack in the face of a droplet, but a thousand droplets, hundreds of thousands of droplets shall cut through even the strongest of these materials.

Voracitos was far more than a droplet, far more than a river or sea... Voracitos had become an ocean. But the question remained:

What was Ashin Varanin?

[member="Ajira Cardei"]