Duel Galactic Kaggath Finals: Mercy vs Kyric

[Mauve du Vain]

x

"AND NOW... FOR THE MOMENT YOU HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!" roared the not-Marko Ragnos announcer, skimming through the air on his repulsorpod.

"
" Kyric , HEIR OF THE JEDI, SWORD-SAINT OF THE LIGHT SIDE."

He twirled his staff-a-phone.

"FACING OFF AGAINST Mercy , APPRENTICE TO EMPIRE, THE DARK SIDE'S GRASPING FIST OF AMBITION."

His staff slammed down.

"WHO WILL PREVAIL AND BECOME THE FIRST. GALACTIC. KAGGATH. CHAMPION?! WAIT. WHAT'S THIS?"
​

The ruins of the pre-fab city on the arena floor rumbled and quaked. Atop the arena stands, standing at six pinnacles, six Masters of the Bando Gora raised high their hands toward the dread heavens above. From their mouths rattled sorcery in the Sith tongue, vile speech that offended the very air, for see how it warped and undulated upon the center of the arena's great stage. They tested their will against the reality of this world, drawing upon the Font of Ruusan's nexus until they brimmed with energy, then with a sound as of the Universe itself sighing, they used that power to tear open the fabric of reality.

The dimension of the here and now tore asunder, its frayed edges rapidly receding, a great rending that blew apart the pre-fabricated buildings. Where buildings once stood, there was now only a field of sand the width of the arena, a hundred instruments of war buried point first and scattered throughout.

A field of blades.

The iron tang of blood hung thick in the air. Motes of embers danced as will o' wisps in the sky. At the edges of this field of sword-strewn sand crackled a layer of aphotic smog of Dark Side power, churning and crackling with lightning. Not so high as the arena walls enclosing the circle, but promising a possible end to those who strayed too far from the arena's center. An oppressive heat baked the ground, though it held no source - a thing fashioned from the hatred of those who dwelled in this plane of the Netherworld brought into the waking world. Just past the fog of Dark Side energies, the spirits of the dead shimmered to life, a host of fallen Jedi and Sith - forever caught up in the eternal struggle - some even drawn here from Ruusan's own burial fields. They formed a circle about the two contestants, who now floated into view, their repulsor platforms descending onto the sand in the middle of the arena. The ghosts stood waiting, watching.

As did the whole arena, every spectator fixed upon this colossal final battle: Jedi versus Sith, light against dark.

There was an intake of drawn breath. Not a one spoke. But for the crackling of the Dark Side energies at the edges of this rift in reality, one might hear a pin drop.

"BEGIN!"

 

[Mercy]

Nobody knew what to expect from the final round of the Kaggath.

They had fought on top of gargantuan tree branches and among lava. A city and a poison lake. Each a snapshot of a legendary battle or straight from a nightmare conjured by their hosts. When they once again appeared among the ruined city Mercy was surprised. She had fought Arris Windrun here, among the broken buildings, to date her best and only satisfying fight.

Her final opponent she didn't think much of, Kyric was his name.

A Jedi.

The sheer presence of him within the Kaggath was an affront that riled Mercy.

Something shifted, changed. She felt it in the air before the six Bando Gora began to scream in their vile tongue. The Ruusan Nexus was present at all times, but it screamed as the sorcerers forced the power to shear through the bonds of reality. All around them the old arena dissolved, scattered away like sand in a storm.

She breathed in and didn't taste the acrid sensation of industrial ozone anymore. It was copper, dried blood in its wake. It was oppressive heat radiated from a black sun suspended in the sky. Their platform descended. Her eyes widened slightly at the sight around them. Broken swords embedded in the ground, spirits in the distance clashing against one another, and a growing circle attracted by their descent.

Mercy stepped foot onto the sand. It crunched under her feet and she was about to meet the eye of her opponent, when something broke her stride without warning.

Suddenly it felt like lightning burst through her body. Her veins splitting open, her heartbeat magnified until she felt like it moved through and past her into the open. Mercy had always focused on the internal applications of the Force. As a consequence her presence in the Force was almost non-existent until you directly touched her. These barriers, consequential yet unwelcome, suddenly fell away. Ripped open as if they had never existed.

Pain and pleasure surged together in one unrelenting flood. Her knees threatened to buckle by the sheer wave of it riding through her. The Force wasn't just in her hands anymore. It fused itself into her bones, her blood, her breath. It was raw and perfect and it made Mercy bite her tongue hard enough to spill blood into her mouth.

She was whole, finally, utterly.

Her aura spilled outward unchecked, seeping into the Netherworld's air like smoke from a freshly opened wound. The growing circle of spirits reacted almost immediately. Sith leaning forward in hunger, perhaps seeing their ticket out of here. Jedi stepped back, forms flickering, knowing instinctively that this creature was wrong.

Every breath drew in more than she'd ever dared to take. She understood then that she had been shackled all her life.

Why would she ever leave this place? It felt like home in a way that home never had been. She felt alive. Bursting at the seams. Instinctively Mercy knew that if she wished, she could be here until the end of time. Ripping, tearing, reveling in a massacre that would never end.

All she had to do... was rip through what was in front of her.

She growled and her teeth were stained crimson, taking a step towards Kyric, then she broke into a run.

Tear him from side to side and the spirits here would welcome her like a brother lost.

Mauve du Vain

 

[Kyric]

The galaxy watched on with bated breaths each round. Some of the most dangerous, competent, and downright dirty warriors came to claim the title of the champion. Not one competitor walked away totally unscathed. Few had the chops to weather the storm of battle after battle. Even fewer found the resolve necessary to claw their way further up the ladder. With the likes of Koda Fett and Allyson Locke in attendance, many wrote-off lesser known competitors as dead and gone out of the gate.

Fortunately for Kyric, he numbered among those with the beginnings of a reputation at the start of this blood sport—one forged in his father's final sacrifice for the galaxy. No one let the Son of the Sword forget that fact. The weight of legacy hung heavily on his shoulders. It weighed him down far more than it raised him up.

The announcer's voice echoed over the arena to declare the competitors, calling the kiffar to attention in the quiet tunnel leading to the battlefield.

Sword saint, huh?

What would Master Inosuke have said hearing such a title bestowed upon his student in the likes of a Kaggath?

Kyric smiled at the thought of the old Jedi Master. If ever a warrior deserved such a moniker, it was the Dragon, not his student. But legends weren't forged by deed alone. No, they were dreamed into being. Granted permeance by those who believed so certainly in them that they became rooted in reality.

The trek from Kyric's locker room to the arena proper provided him time to make peace with his life. As strange as it was, the young Jedi Knight felt nothing in the way of regret. He dedicated himself wholly to this path—HIS path.

A loyal son; driven to preserve the galaxy in his father's absence.

A devout swordsman; dedicated to the union of his spirit and his blade.

A Jedi Knight; avowed to stand before the endless tide of darkness.

Serenity settled upon Kyric Karis like a mantle as he stepped out from the shadowy corridor into the roar of thousands of screaming sentients. A beam of bright white light traced his movement, following him from the arena's edge to his place across from his final opponent.

The kiffar traded out his tattered armorweave and ruined pants for a gray nagagi tucked into black hakama. His blade, Resolute, hung from his belt, tucked away into a wooden sheath the color of sand. No longer did he present himself to the viewers in the same audacious way his father did to the galaxy nearly two decades ago.

Even as the battlefield shifted around Kyric, twisted and warped by the combined might of six great sorcerers, the Jedi Knight stood with unspoken certainty. Deathly calm. Unafraid of what was to come.

Figures from beyond this reality manifested around the finalists in a ring of spectral might. Echoes of past heroes stood at Kyric's back, while specters of the vile dark stretched like a long shadow behind Mercy. Ethereal might pulsed with the vigor of a titanic heartbeat. Strength flowed from the incorporeal dead, waiting for either warrior to call upon them.

Mercy was the first to move.

She charged forward with the surety of an avalanche. Each mighty step propelled her closer. The topmost layer of sand vibrated underfoot, as if the very battlefield sought to escape the Leviathan intent on slaughtering her opponent.

Kyric dipped his chest forward and dashed directly for the Sith Lord.

Resolute roared from its confines. Silver streaked between them faster than the blink of an eye.

Reality appeared to bend to Kyric's will as the air itself curled into arcing crescents of razor sharp wind. They flew forward for Mercy in a broad wave, each one strong enough to shear through hardened steel.

By the time the attack began in earnest, Resolute was returned to its sheath. Poised to strike again. All the while, Kyric charged behind his opener, intent to close the gap.

 

[Mercy]

Mercy charged ahead with such ferocity that she did not even see the attack unleashed by Kyric .

But she did not need to see it to feel its effects.

It came down on her like a pile of boulders. The sword smashing into her from every side, a storm of blades that pressed down with crushing weight, as if gravity itself had turned against her. These ethereal blades were met by burning fire clinging tightly to Mercy's form. Ashin Varanin's technique, honed and perfected by years of use. It made her a tank that could absorb wounds that would have killed others many times over. They did nothing to stop the blunt force driving straight into her, bruising and fracturing her body as each strike landed head-on, absorbed instead of avoided.

It was that momentum which carried her forward as Mercy screamed in fury. Already unfolding her arm like a piston, drawing strength from her next step, pulling directly from the ground and moving hard to smash her fist into his stomach. A ghostly after-image tore ahead of her knuckles, her will outrunning her body to strike first with the weight of a real blow. The echo would land heartbeats before her fist itself hammered forward, two strikes for the price of one.

Only then did Mercy tear herself back to create space, breath ragged, eyes snapping to her fist in disbelief. She stared at it, then back to Kyric, baffled for a brief moment.

Then the grin returned in all its wide glory. It was as if she had punched so hard that an echo in the Force followed suit to meet her demand: break him in half.

Would she be able to do it again? With more than just a punch? Was this because of the Netherworld or something enduring? More questions than there were answers, but Mercy accepted it for now. In that moment she picked caution, not jumping into the fray just yet, letting Kyric come to her after she had so heedlessly launched towards him.

Mercy was paying for it now. Where his blades had struck her, she could still feel their outline. But her body wanted to move. It was as if she had swallowed a nuclear reactor and it was currently powering through her veins.

All that excess energy... it had to go somewhere and somewhere soon or she felt like she would explode.

 

[Kyric]

The tempest within Kyric howled. He felt the ethereal winds at his back guiding him onward into the promise of lethal danger. Fractures crawled across his vision, appearing and disappearing with each step. Premonitions of danger flashed across his mind. Every inch that vanished between him and his opponent shifted the battlefield as his mind understood it—a ceaseless dance, one born of an ever-changing reflection of their two wills, clashing together in mind, body, and spirit.

A stabbing cold pierced his stomach in warning.

Kyric pulled the still-sheathed blade up and across his abdomen to meet Mercy's blow with a simple guard. It wouldn't be enough to stop her. The woman's strength was unlike anything the kiffar had seen before. He hoped to turn aside the blow with a well-placed twist of his hips, but something strange happened. What appeared to be an afterimage raced ahead of her fist.

In the split-second the Jedi Knight had to gage the danger, he instinctively kept the guard in-place. When the spectral strike met the force-imbued sheath, the weight behind not one, but two, of Mercy's titanic strikes stopped Kyric in his tracks. It felt like he ran directly into a charging bantha. Her first hit trapped him, while the second thundered a heartbeat after against the sheath locked against his stomach. If not for the force-imbuement, he guessed the attack would've pierced his stomach entirely.

Instead, it lifted Kyric from his feet and blew him backward through the air. The wind whistled in his ears as he flew over the sands toward the edge of the pit. He snapped his knees up to rotate his body in a somersault. The added momentum guided his feet beneath him with only a second to spare. His feet carved grooves through the grainy earth, but he managed to keep his footing. The strength behind the two-fold assault carried him to the edge of the ring where an incorporeal hand pressed against his back to steady him.

Kyric released a slow, steady breath. He raised a hand to his abdomen where Mercy's fist should've connected. The flesh was tender to the touch. His entire torso burned with each breath, the very expansion of his lungs irritating one massive bruise.

It didn't take a genius to know a direct hit from this ascendant Sith Lord meant doom.

Mercy's strength overshadowed the kiffar's by such a wide margin it wasn't even part of the discussion; his durability paled in comparison. This wasn't a fight he could win through attrition. Kyric lacked his father's innate strengths in techniques like Force Body. The son's application gave him the means to fight beyond his limits, but not if Mercy punched a hole through his chest and ripped him in half.

The Jedi watched her for a moment, studying the ire which burned like an endless flame within her eyes.

He inched closer. His blade remained in its sheath, clutched tight in his right hand. If he couldn't cut her, how would he defeat her? Was there a limit to her endurance? Here in this arena, Kyric assumed no. The events of the day carried the weight of pain and suffering found only within battle. The presence of the Nether promised the Sith much higher heights than it did the Jedi.

Kyric needed a strategy that even this shattered reality could not break. But first, he needed more information.

He blinked across the battlefield and appeared in front of Mercy. Resolute swept out in a single vertical strike aimed to carve down her body from head to navel. More crescents formed around them, his single attack magnified into many, though not one homed in on the Sith.

---

Tags: Mercy

 

[Mercy]

One blink and suddenly the Sword-Saint was right in front of her. So close it might have been intimate, if not for the fact Mercy knew exactly where his heart belonged.

"I met your girlfriend before coming here." She purred, the words as sweet as poison, meant to worm into his mind and distract him in that split second when steel was already falling.

She stepped into him, sliding just out of the arc, and her hands snapped out with predatory precision. Her eldritch hand clamped tight around his throat, the other seized his non-sword wrist, twisting hard as if to rip the limb from his body.

The cost came quick. Where their flesh met, the blue fire that had armored her skin crawled across onto his as if to mock her. In that instant it left her bare. With his sword arm free, his blade bit into her shoulder, cutting deep, searing down through meat to bone. The lightside scorched her from within, an agony so sharp it made her vision flare white. It was an odd choice, since she could have grabbed his sword hand and prevented him from cutting so deep into her.

Mercy hissed through her teeth, a sharp breath of agony. Then the hiss cracked into laughter. The sound rose and rang across the field of blades, manic and triumphant. Each scrape of metal against her bone, each bite of the burning edge, only drove her grip harder into him. Tendrils tightened around his throat, her hand clamped on his wrist like iron. Kyric could feel the strength growing in her hold with every ounce of pain he inflicted. That is when he would realize it. She had purposefully let him cut into her deep, to fuel her power with the agonizing pain.

The imbuement of light burned her corrupted flesh, but strangely the metallic eldritch arm did not react the same. Instead it seemed eager, almost delighted, curling around the sword to pull its sharp edge deeper into her flesh. To torture her more. To fray the edges of her nerves.

The spirits reacted to the violence. Sith among them leaned forward in hunger, hollow eyes glittering with approval, whispering for her to finish what she had begun. Some of them howled with delight, others pressed closer, drawn as if her laughter had called them by name. The Jedi spirits were practically invisible to her hungry eyes, too translucent, too bright and good to be fully perceived by her.

Mercy pulled him closer, blood dripping hot down her arm, lips drawn wide in a grin that did not belong to the living. In this place, surrounded by the dead, she looked exactly where she belonged.

"Shame you will have to hug her with one arm by the time I am done." She cackled in pure mania, blood running between her teeth.

Kyric