Duel Galactic Kaggath Finals: Mercy vs Kyric

[Kyric]

Each mote of light to reach Kyric coalesced around in a tiny aura of rotating stars. They soothed him in a way, numbing pain's clawed grip as it tore at his body. Even with the aid granted to him by the others, he knew from the beginning a battle of attrition wouldn't go his way. His opponent specialized in such things; accustomed to pain and strengthened by its touch, Mercy ate his every attack with a sadistic smile on her face. She met every technique with something new, devious, and downright destructive.

It felt like marching directly into an endless storm.

Kyric paused to watch the spectacle below, transfixed by Thronegrasp's ravenous hunger. The eldritch abomination conquered even the dead. Their spirits were twisted to its host's whims, forged into the likeness of two wings ripped from the very depths of the Nether.

In a matter of seconds, the Sith Lord shifted before Kyric's eyes to something far more vile than ever before. He tightened his grip on the chipped blade held in his bloody hand. Thoughts of victory or defeat slipped away, forgotten in the wake of the truth made manifest by the creature now rocketing through the air to claim his life.

BD-8 would survive. The droid had a knack for such things. Damien, too. The kiffar's brothers were stronger than him. He knew that better than anyone.

Whether or not Kyric won the day, they would escape whatever trappings laid out before them. No longer was it his responsibility to look after them. And truthfully, it never was.

The Jedi Knight bore a different sort of burden.

Wind ripped across his flesh, slicing bloody lines across his body until the first mote of light coalesced around him. It wasn't enough to shield him completely. Not with the power behind Mercy's assault. Kyric steadied himself. He lifted his blade, unmoving beneath the storm as blood splattered on the rusted steel beneath his feet. His single cerulean eye burned with unspoken purpose in that moment, even as the razor-wind cleaved through it—blinding him in totality.

If Mercy intended to kill him, then she would die alongside him. His spirit burned with that unspoken truth.

Howling shrieks of anguished dead pierced his mind and ruptured his ear drums. In answer, a second mote encircled his head and silenced the hellish screaming. The Jedi remained strong in his stance. Pain washed over him like a great wave, numbed by a third mote of ethereal starlight. His blade rose overhead into a striking position that would deliver the might of the Heaven's above in answer to the Nether's champion soaring up from below.

A spectral wind of his own rose between them like a wedge and diverted the storm of sand and steel, providing the perfect path for Mercy to deliver her strike. Just before her body crashed into his and her blade exploded through his chest, inches from piercing his lung, the Light of the Sword Saint manifested around him in an aura of clarity. The chipped blade shifted into her path, aimed to pierce her very heart in their clash.

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Tags: Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Kyric

She saw what he intended halfway through the lunge. A clever plan, bold, but flawed. Her sword-arm was longer, stretched by eldritch growth, its tip already shadowing the space between them. She could have ended it with a single thrust, skewering him before his blade reached her.

But shallow cuts were not enough, not anymore.

Mercy was Sith and a true Sith did not play at half measures. They carved their own reality out, even if it meant drowning in their blood to do it. She saw him broken on her arm, felt his body rip open around her blade, envisioned her fist punching through his back like the birth of something profane. That image was too beautiful to resist for her.

So Mercy welcomed the exchange. She committed to it, to a thrust that would carry her deeper, allowing her to push through his depth and in return accepted it would mean sweet agony.

The lunge carried her forward into his strike, a collision born of that hungry conviction. Her blade tore for his chest as his sword met her flesh in return. Grafted spirits screamed around her, wings of pale faces and gnashing mouths deflecting just enough to drag his strike away from her heart. Even so, steel plunged into her ribs. She gasped, then laughed through clenched teeth, the sound raw, animal, an offering of agony to the Field itself. Pain rushed through her like molten fire, only she could savor a purity so sweet.

Her wings unfurled in the same breath, no longer shreds of dead things but vast monuments of corruption. Faces pushed against their surface like drowning men beneath ice, mouths locked in eternal screams. They tore wider and wider until the sky seemed to vanish, every remaining Blade in the Field rattling and singing as if welcoming their new master. Shadows spilled from them in rivers, crawling over the arena, drowning everything in pure obsidian. Even the dead in the stands fell silent, cowed by the spectacle.

And if her strike landed true, her corrupted arm would spear through him. It would tear through muscle, bone and lung as his sword buried deeper into her own body. A perfect exchange, one where its pact was written in blood and pain.

Blood poured down her, painting her in crimson. The wings convulsed and screamed, their chorus of damned voices echoing across the broken arena, until it seemed as if the whole Field itself was howling with her. In that instant she was no longer just Mercy, no longer even Sith. She was nightmare given flesh. A monstrosity rising on wings of the dead.

This was perfection. Whether she fell today or decades from now, she knew she had already claimed her place. The Field of Blades would welcome her, not as kin, but as sovereign. Its steel would sing for her. The last song she'd ever hear and Mercy would be home finally.

 

[Kyric]

Silence enveloped Kyric in its serene embrace for the first time in his short, troubled life. Blessed by a proficiency in drawing out echoes left imprinted by the emotions of others, he often found himself an unwilling passenger to lifetimes not quite his own. It was why he favored the thick bandaging wound tight around his flesh. Every vision he saw burned itself into his subconscious until his eidetic memory dredged them up from depths better left undisturbed.

The simplest sights and sounds had a tendency to trigger these psionic episodes. His only peace found in the midst of blood and battle, dancing down the fine line between life and death. But even the threat of his demise couldn't quiet the overactive mind which drove him forward. Its cursed call demanded action. To defend his kinfolk. To honor his father. To live a proper life as expected of a Jedi Knight. His mind bore down on him like a torrential rainfall, ceaseless in its demands. The galaxy needed him. He couldn't stumble, or so he often chastised himself when left to linger in the dead of night, separated from all but that damned voice drifting up from where he tried fruitlessly to bury it.

While Mercy took reality within her demented grip and bent it to her whims, Kyric surrendered himself to the grand empyrean. No longer burdened by stimuli responsible for the storm—numb even to the blade held within his scarlet-stained hand—the kiffar's body moved in tandem with the currents, guided by the core tenets of the Ashina'kai instilled into him by Master Inosuke.

Countless times before this moment Kyric had thrown himself against the barrier within his spirit. Wrought from his doubts and forged in the fires of all that he lost, the grand gate separating him from oneness of his body and his blade had never once budged. It taunted him. A constant reminder of the potential he failed to reach. The teachings of Ryv Karis, Dagon Kaze, and even Inosuke Ashina weren't enough, the little voice whispered in Kyric's mind. Wasted efforts one and all, better spent on a more deserving student.

In what may have been his final moments, the Jedi Knight found himself thrust before that barrier once again. He stared up at it with perfect clarity. Images carved into its surface depicted the kiffar's lifetime down to the finest detail. Every victory and defeat greeted him, intermingled with moments of great joy and the deepest despair.

Kyric pressed his hands against the monolithic door and pushed.

And it swung open.

The threshold radiated with an unmistakable warmth—his warmth. Power flooded over him in a smooth current, reinvigorating his spirit with wave after wave of certainty. The voice vanished beneath the rushing roar and Kyric smiled.

Across his life, he dedicated himself wholly to the study of the blade. It was his solace in the absence of his father; the promise of untold strength found at the end of a long, arduous path.

Mercy wasn't the first of his foes to declare his efforts as those of a lesser. Others before him had pontified about their greatness, declaring every ounce of his training worthless. But the kiffar knew better than that. Talent was a blessing, and determination the foundation by which Kyric attained true mastery. Ten thousand sword swings hadn't been enough. He pushed further with each day, until his hands bled and his arms were numb from overexertion.

The Man and his Blade had become One with the very Force. The currents guided the sword into Resolute's oncoming path. It caught the corrupted weapon by the edge and sent its larger, bulkier frame off course. Steel bit into Kyric's torso, carving through his kidney and intestines before it burst through his back. The borrowed katana, infused with the very soul of a fallen Jedi trapped within the Field of Blades, burned with purifying light as it plunged into Mercy and out the other side. The momentum of her charge carried them both out into the air and over the field of jagged metal.

Kyric stared silently forward, his features a mask of harmony in the face of Mercy's ravenous joy. What remained of the motes orbiting around him shifted between them to the tune of ethereal bells. And without warning, the twinkling orbs exploded in an eruption of white-hot light.

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Tags: Mercy