Laphisto had long since grown accustomed to the Diarchs' individual styles, but this… this was something else entirely. The way they moved together now, how their wills seemed to fold seamlessly into one another, was a force of nature unto itself. It was more than coordination it was amplification, each brother feeding the other until their strength became something greater than the sum of its parts. It was remarkable, even beautiful in its own grim way, and yet it stirred a question in the back of his mind. Why was it, then, that they so rarely fought side by side? Every time they crossed blades in the past, the Diarchs had been apart, separate flames burning in different battles. Was it deliberate? A strategy to keep the galaxy blind to what they could do together? To mask the storm until it was too late to prepare for it? Perhaps. The thought lingered like a thorn in his mind but only for a heartbeat.
Because the storm had already come. A guttural groan ripped from his throat as Rellik's lightning surged into him, crawling over his body in jagged webs of blue fire. His armor hissed and smoked beneath the current, sparks leaping across the blackened plates as if trying to burn through to the flesh beneath. His teeth clenched hard enough to ache, every muscle pulled taut against the searing torment. His wings convulsed in pain, muscles locking and spasming so violently he could barely keep them spread. Flight was impossible under the storm's grip he was trapped in its coils, bound to the ground like a beast under chains.
Through the haze, his sharp eye caught it: the storm's heart. The spear. Every crackle, every vicious arc, pulled strongest there, the weapon blazing like a lightning rod in the Crucible's dark. A low rumble built in his chest, fury and focus tempered together as he turned back to Reign only to meet a sudden explosion of motion. The elder Diarch was already upon him.
The headbutt slammed into his helmet with brutal force, the impact rattled him. The daze had no time to settle before the Force surged a tidal shove that slammed into his chest with crushing weight. For any other warrior it would have been ruinous, ribs shattered and breath torn away. But the Kov'dra interwoven through his armor drank in the brunt of it, the ancient alloy parting the Force's tide, dulling its fangs. and he was still rooted in place. Without the kov'dra he might have been able to move out of this trap using the momentum of the force push.
A guttural hiss rattled from his throat as the lightning tore its way through him, every muscle seizing beneath the storm. His limbs felt heavy, slow, as though he were wading waist-deep through molten iron. Each twitch of his claws, each movement of his wings was fought for, stolen from the current trying to lock him rigid. His armor shrieked under the arcs, blackened plates glowing at their seams. He was trapped in the heart of the snare, and every second it held him burned deeper.
Reign came on like a predator unleashed, his orange saber cutting in relentless slashes. Laphisto's broadsaber met them in fits of shrieking light, his slowed reflexes forcing him to catch blow after blow at the last possible instant. He turned aside enough to survive, but not unscathed plasma slipped through, searing smoking trails across his battered plating, blistering heat biting into the flesh beneath. Each strike pressed him lower, harder, the weight of it amplified by the crackling snare holding him down.
Inside his chest, the twin gods roared and writhed. They recoiled from the void, thrashing against their bindings, yet still anchoring him. If not for their presence in his core, shoring him against the tearing absence of the Force, he would already have been gutted. The void clawed at him, seeking to hollow him, but the gods burned in his chest like a second furnace, keeping him upright when he should have collapsed.
Still, he knew he couldn't endure long. The storm was designed to bleed him dry. He needed distance, he needed freedom. But distance could be made another way.Snarling under his helm, his lone ear twitching with strain, Laphisto leaned into the bind. His movements were slower, heavier, but still deliberate his broadsaber shunted Reign's plasma aside just far enough to open a window. His free hand snapped forward, not with speed, but with brute inevitability. Talons curled for fabric, for flesh, to seize the elder Diarch in a vicious grapple.
If he dragged Reign into his chest, into the very heart of the storm, then Rellik's lightning would become his brother's cage as well. The younger Diarch would have no choice but to break his ritual or risk burning Reign alive. It was a gamble Laphisto embraced with a growl. If he had to suffer the storm, then he would make them share in it.
With a guttural snarl, Laphisto surged forward through the haze of crackling pain, returning Reign's earlier headbutt with one of his own. The impact rang inside his helmet like a hammer striking an anvil, the sharp thrum reverberating down his neck, but he refused to falter. His broadsaber hissed into silence as he killed the blade, the weight of the hilt reversing in his grip. He drove the emitter forward like a dagger, aiming the capped point for Reign's flank. It wasn't elegant just brutal, improvised, and meant to force his opponent off balance.
His free hand lashed out, digits tightening and digging into the skin of reigns shoulder/ the crook of his neck, bunching the fabric in an iron grip. Even slowed by the coursing lightning snaring his limbs, his strength was undeniable. He grunted with each of Reign's slashes that bled through his guard, the heat of saber energy biting against his armor. Sparks flared across his plates where the robes burned away, each impact feeding his anger, each hiss of molten metal stoking the primal fury deep in his chest.
Using that fury like momentum, he forced his body forward, shoving and twisting, dragging Reign step by step toward the spear that anchored the storm of Rellk's lightning. His vision flared white around the edges, but he held fast, teeth bared and lips pulled back in a feral grimace. The air reeked of ozone and scorched metal, the storm wrapping around them like a furnace. If the trap was going to roast him alive, then so be it but he would not burn alone. He would drive Reign bodily into the spear, force him into the direct channel of the lightning's wrath, and ensure the Diarch felt the same searing torment clawing through his veins.It wasn't about grace anymore. It was survival, stubbornness, and sheer bloody willpower. his head reeling back to give the man another headbutt time and time again.
Diarch Reign
Diarch Rellik
Aknoby
Iandre Athlea
mooney
Lyssara Thrynn
Tertius C. Nargath
