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

 

[Kyric]

The mention of Kyric's 'girlfriend' was enough to steal his focus in that crucial moment.

A crush-gaunt-grip tightened around his throat and left wrist as his blade cleaved into Mercy's shoulder. The force-imbued steel bit into bone and stopped, trapped by the eldritch abomination and enhanced physicality that made up the Sith Lord's indomitable strength. Much like his blade, the Jedi couldn't escape this cruel trap through physical strength alone. His vision darkened at the edges, blurring around Mercy's face in such a way as to limit his line of sight, and more importantly, his ability to blink away.

Kyric abandoned the idea of escaping this trap unscathed. Emerald lightning burst into being around his right arm. It sheathed the limb like a blade, momentarily channeled through the sword before he released Resolute. His arm blurred between them even as Mercy drew him closer, shearing through his own elbow as she wrenched back with every intention to do the deed for him.

Blackened vision turned red at the explosion of pain at the now cracked and bloody stump where his arm used to be. Her words dripped with a manic hate that summoned a cold fury within him.

The momentum of Mercy's movement, now pulling back on the unanchored limb, saw the Sith pitch back enough for Kyric to leap up. Using her hand on his throat to maintain his balance, the kiffar planted both his feet against her abdomen and an explosion of telekinetic force burst outward from his feet. The strength of the blast tore Kyric from her grip and again sent him flying backward. Only this time he slammed into the sand an unbalanced mess and tumbled for several feet before he kicked off the floor and rose unsteadily to his feet.

Resolute remained trapped within Mercy's shoulder, out of reach, but Kyric was not without options. He thrust his remaining arm out to the side. His fingers curled slightly and he reached out for a broadsword half-buried outside the ring of ghosts. The blade flew through the ethereal form of a fallen Jedi Knight and the specter disappeared into the weapon. Rusted steel began to glow a silver-blue color, imbued with the essence of the Warrior of Light. The light washed away Kyric's pain, clearing his mind of the haze which beset him.

"If you hurt her, I'm gon' split yer skull in two and deliver it to yer Master, ya' freak," he spoke each word like he wasn't missing his arm. His confidence bordered on insanity, but the certainty with which he began the fight hadn't wavered.

This time he didn't charge headlong into her.

Blades from outside the ring of ghosts rose up from the sand in unison. They turned within the air and steadily began to circle the two combatants in a tornado of steel. Without warning, one shot through the air for the Sith, followed by a second, and then a third. Within seconds, blades rained downward on Mercy from all directions.

---

Tags: Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Mercy hissed, but her grin never disappeared, even as blood trickled down her jaw.

She reached across her body and wrapped her fingers around the hilt of Resolute, currently embedded in her shoulder. The Lightside burned her from the inside out. It seared its way down to bone, smoke rising as skin cracked and split. Mercy did not so much as flinch. Instead she pulled the blade free inch by inch, savoring the torment, until it tore loose with a wet rip and her voice rang joyful across the arena.

"Why would I hurt her? She was so nice to me... but you know, she had no faith in you at all. She begged me to throw the fight for you."

She dangled the burning sword from her scorched hand, blood dripping down her arm as smoke curled from her palm. Every heartbeat scorched her further, and she only seemed more pleased by it. Then Mercy dropped Resolute into the waiting maw of Thronegrasp. The mass of eldritch tendrils immediately swallowed it whole, wrapping its corruption around the silvery metal. The presence of light muffled first, then completely drowned as veins of shadow raced through it.

Steel warped, blackened and finally grew in size. Until the sword was barely recognizable, now part of Mercy's arm, a grotesque abomination instead of the symbol of light it had been a moment ago.

The dark spirits clawed and howled toward Mercy, drawn by her presence, their mouths twisting in hunger as they were reminded of what they no longer had in death.

The storm of blades screamed around her. Surprisingly she didn't try to tank it. Instead she charged ahead, straight on through. Sand sprayed beneath her feet as she sprinted into the torrent, sparks flashing against her newly minted sword-arm, blood marking every step. She vaulted over one blade, spun under another, the jagged weapon carving arcs of black light. Each deflection threw a shrieking sword back toward Kyric. Others she let slice into her flesh, the cuts painting her in crimson and driving her frenzy higher.

In that moment Mercy was a hellish wave, absorbing pain and washing everything else away in her wake. Her laughter echoed with the howls of the dead. The Sith screamed with her, while the Jedi cried warnings to Kyric. The Field itself seemed to pulse with her madness.

She broke through the storm at last, eyes blazing, aura wild and unrestrained. With her momentum she swung the corrupted blade-arm in a savage top-to-bottom cleave, a strike meant to tear away what little he had left to fight with. A ghostly after-image of the strike tore forward ahead of the physical swing, an echo from elsewhere that would rend and rip.

That echo would let her correct her physical strike, making it all the more likely she'd finally carve his flesh.

Kyric

 

[Anja]

A hole ripped into the sky, from it sang a choir of eldritch whispers, and a figure of a woman descended.

She fell gently as if gravity found her precious. Her feet left no impression as they touched the otherworldly ground, between and off to the side of two challengers. Unlike the ghosts of Jedi and Sith trapped in eternal battle, she walked with serenity, calming the Force with each step. It was a sleepy aura, a sinister darkness not drawn from hate or anger, but absence itself. An echo of the end times, when the universe recoils into singularity, and all become One.

With slow, deliberate steps, she walked forward with an outstretched hand - aimed at that eldritch arm of Mercy's and claimed it through the Force. Whatever the Sith Lord intended to do that moment was denied.

"The work is crude."

Her voice ethereal.

"But I see... it calls to them... from out there in the beyond."

An invisible touch sent warmth into eldritch flesh. The crude symbols carved into Mercy's arm began to animate, they took on shape, and danced around the fighters like ghosts to a song. Fiery hot lines tore across the skin until another symbol formed.

Spoiler: symbol

From within the symbol opened an eye, iris as black as its surroundings, and from it manifested Chaos, joined with Mercy's fury.

Should the Sith Lord channel her hate - her warrior's adrenaline - into the eye, it would amplify and project it in the form of a destructive heat capable of inflicting pain and decay upon anything touched by the deadly sight. Including Mercy and other unintended targets.

The invisible hand departed, the dancing ghosts slumbered back into the ink, and the otherworldly woman, too, seemed short for this world.

However, before she faded, her gaze turned to the Jedi. Not at him, but through, to something deep inside him.

"Forget death." Final words before she rippled away like a mirage.

Perhaps a gift, perhaps an omen, perhaps... nothing.

Mercy | Kyric

 

[Kyric]

Kyric knew Mercy's words to be a poison meant to weaken him, to shatter his resolve and force him to question the very foundation he stood on. His strength was forged not for himself, but others. He dedicated every painstaking swing of his blade to a better, brighter galaxy.

What did Capris' lack of faith say about those efforts?

It spoke volumes to Mercy and he knew it. His stoic mask finally broke, but it wasn't pain or frustration that rose to the surface. A smile found its way to his face, instead.

Even as Resolute disappeared beneath the mass of primeval power, a full belly laugh erupted from Kyric and echoed out across the arena. For a moment, it appeared as if madness may have overtaken him. Down an arm, eye, and ear, abandoned by the one person he loved above all else, watching his devout companion consumed by an eldritch power, it was fair to think despair had conquered the light that shone so bright within the Son of the Sword. But when he leveled his cerulean eye on his opponent, his defiance burned hot.

Mercy's defense saw a tide of steel turned his way in her wild charge. The very arena howled alongside her, driven to new heights of depravity in the afterglow of the ritual which birthed this Field of Blades.

Spirits of the Jedi whispered their warnings. Tiny beads of light manifested within Kyric's vision and stretched between the Sith Lord and the Jedi Knight; warnings carved into reality in what he determined to be the path by which each sword would travel.

Kyric leaned left to avoid the first whirling weapon, pivoted the same way and circled off course of a second. The glowing broadsword swept up and shattered a third in a single strike. His movements were fluid and without any wasted movement. The total opposite of the juggernaut stampeding toward him, caked with blood, sand, and malevolent hate.

The corrupted sword descended upon its former master behind a projection of Mercy's strike. Her intentions thundered over Kyric. He saw the attack for what it was—a distraction meant to trap him no differently than the earlier assault. Unfortunately for the Sith, such a trick wouldn't work on him twice. Fractures formed along the projected assault, carving a tangible weakness within the projected weapon for him to abuse.

Starlight streaked sidelong into the projection. The Jedi-infused broadsword, wreathed with light, caught the retroimage at the exact point to shatter it entirely. Behind it, the second blade descended upon Kyric like a headsman's axe. He manipulated inertia itself, freeing his borrowed weapon from the bonds of this reality, and it flowed into place to parry Resolute aside.

The broadsword fractured under the primeval weapon. Kyric dropped the hilt and blurred backward. His outstretched hand found another blade upon his retreat, a single-edged sword forged in the atrisian style. He prepared to meet Mercy head-on when he noticed the entity descending from above.

Her presence heralded a void unfelt by Kyric at any point before. Rather than push forward, the Jedi remained still and watched the evolution of Mercy's eldritch limb play out in real time. Some part of him knew it was a terrible idea, but another part of him yearned for the challenge—as if the plethora of handicaps weren't enough. Mercy's taunting had ignited a desire to crush her ceaseless confidence and prove to those watching every single word she uttered amounted to nothing more than madness.

Kyric dipped his head at the spirit's words as she vanished, then turned his attention back to the marauding Sith Lord.

"Right here, right now, Mercy," he slipped his right foot back, holding his blade out to the side. "I'll surpass my limits and win this fight." It was a downright stupid thing to say, but the fire in Kyric's eye confirmed that he believed it with every fiber of his being. "And I'll prove to the galaxy just what it means to be my father's son."

---

Tags: Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Whatever the Sith Lord intended to do that moment was denied.

Her blade-arm hitched mid-swing, slowed by some unseen grip. Mercy's snarl tore loose, fury burning hotter at the thought that something dared hold her back from splitting this newcomer into two. Inch by inch her arm still pressed forward, teeth bared as if sheer rage could force it through Anja's throat.

Then the phantom vanished. The pressure snapped away and Mercy's body lurched forward into empty air, the strike cutting nothing. Her howl echoed across the arena, more wounded pride than pain, the sound of someone denied their kill.

Instead her gaze locked on the only prey left in the arena, the one body still hers to ruin.

"Right here, right now, Mercy," he slipped his right foot back, holding his blade out to the side. "I'll surpass my limits and win this fight." It was a downright stupid thing to say, but the fire in Kyric's eye confirmed that he believed it with every fiber of his being. "And I'll prove to the galaxy just what it means to be my father's son."

"That's why you are lacking, father's son." Mercy growled, stepping toward him, the tip of her corrupted blade heating to a molten red under her seething rage. "If you were meant for glory, you wouldn't need to prove a thing. You would just be."

Her arm moved before she could question it, guided by the same madness that had seized her since setting foot in the sand. The sword-arm plunged into the ground, driving deep with a hiss of steam.

For a moment it seemed pointless, almost clumsy, until the arena began to tremble. The sand at Kyric's feet shivered, shifting like something alive beneath the surface. A low hiss bled up from below, heat radiating through the soles of his boots.

The warning lasted only a heartbeat.

Shards erupted upward in a violent spray. Jagged blades of broken steel and corroded metal, fused with her corruption, all glowing red-hot as if fresh from the forge. They lunged for him from below, a forest of impaling spears. Each shard carried the same heat as her sword-arm, as if the Field of Blades itself had been bent to her will and turned into a weapon.

Kyric Anja

 

[Kyric]

All Kyric offered his opponent in return was a simple "Tch."

Glory was never the goal, merely a welcomed outcome in the event he claimed the title of Champion. Did he want to win? Of course. His many opponents had lit that fire within him from the very beginning.

What began as a means to find those missing from his life had quickly shifted into an opportunity to achieve something far greater. Fear had ruled him since he lost his eye on Coruscant two years prior. The sting of Creuat's crimson saber left Kyric half-blind and nearly dead; a fragment of the man who first took up his father's saber in service to the light. The Kaggath had demanded endless courage every step of the way. And where courage did not suffice, tenacity prevailed.

Kyric watched Mercy drive her blade into the sand, though the movement seemed... wrong. He couldn't tell who was in control anymore, the woman or her arm. The endless flood of power projected from the nexus and the Nether rift alike masked the flow of energy pumped from the eldritch limb into the arena floor. It wasn't until the sand shifted beneath his feet on a rolling wave of heat that he understood the nature of the danger.

He took to the air in that split-second.

Superheated metal ascended from the field in a storm of blades after Kyric. His blade danced rapidly around him, his body a whirlwind of imperceptible strikes. The borrowed katana carved through molten metal unfettered, and for a moment, it appeared as if the Jedi would escape the assault untouched. But he had no such luck.

Spears of razor-sharp metal sliced the flesh of his remaining arm along his forearm and shoulder, tearing through fabric and cauterizing the freshly made wounds faster than Kyric could register the pain. His left side burned hot as it nicked just beneath his charred stump. In the moment before a jagged metal rod burst through his chest and put an end to the fight, a marking hidden beneath his nagagi, carved into his collarbone, glowed with blue light. The rune gifted to him by Capris within their shared dream encased his body in a defensive aura that nullified the threat of extreme heat and cold.

Kyric rotated in the air and kicked off the makeshift spear. His body rocketed forward in a blur, his glowing blade carved a trail of light left streaking behind him as he roared through the air for Mercy. The nagagi, now torn and shredded from the assault, was ripped away by the speed of the kiffar's flight and left to descend like a fallen leaf to the sands below. Kyric, on the other hand, vanished from sight and reappeared on the Sith Lord's side opposite of her eldritch arm.

He kept his space, standing exactly a sword-length away. Merely the tip of the blade would reach Mercy, aimed to carve through her kidney rather than become trapped like before.

Blood oozed down hard-packed muscles and jagged scars now exposed to the audience. Strangely, every inch of Kyric's torso and arms—what remained of the left one, anyway—were covered in runic markings newly familiar to the Sith Lord. Each one promised an unknown power pilfered from his 'lover.'

---

Tags: Mercy | Capris Halcyon

 

[Mercy]

Kyric

He moved fast, but not fast enough. Several of the superheated spears carved through his arm before he managed to take to the air.

Then the runes lit up and Mercy smirked. She knew those shapes, because Capris Halcyon had pressed them on her, a bargaining chip to make her drop this fight. It was fitting that even here Kyric bled with someone else's strength.

Her own beginning had been no different: Skeevi Merrill 's needle carving corruption into her skin, the first whispers of the eldritch etched in ink. But Mercy knew she had forced her gift to break and bend to her will. Yet to her, Kyric wore his like a borrowed cloak, almost wrapped in a protective layer of bubblewrap made by his lover.

Oh, how she longed to see Capris Halcyon again after this. It would be even sweeter now, no matter if she won or lost, to know how much she had made her man bleed and hurt.

She was about to press her advantage and cut him down, when he blurred again. She knew the trick now and braced for the flicker. Still, when he returned at her side, sword in hand, Mercy only had an instant to pivot and couldn't help but be impressed by the sheer speed. Not impressed enough to dampen the desire to bite his throat out and enjoy the heat of life seeping out of him.

Her blade-arm lashed out, dragging his point just barely aside. It wasn't fast enough. The katana slipped through the weak mesh at her hip, burying deep into meat and scraping bone. Mercy's scream ripped raw from her throat, jagged and primal, the sound enough to set the air trembling. Even the Sith spirits leaned in, shadows fattening on the agony.

Steel cut bone and the eldritch limb suddenly convulsed.

Thronegrasp split open in a frenzy like shards torn from a living tomb. Black-gold tendrils ripped free, writhing, wet and violent, spraying droplets of corrupted ichor as they burst outward. Each ended in a gnashing, fleshy maw lined with teeth that had no right to exist. They lashed out and burst toward Kyric, eager to feed. One darted for his face, another for his throat, others clawed for the bleeding muscle of his arm. One in particular angled for the stump of his ruined limb, eager to burrow into nerve and marrow, to root itself where his body had already failed him.

Every bite echoed with decay. Hungry to tear, rend, to swallow his meat whole and feed the host.

 

[Auteme]

It's a tug -- the 'weaving' part of mist-weaving is literal, in the sense that the mist-weaver can weave constructs and such, but so too is it figurative, in the way the weaver's sense of the Force is shaped. It is blindingly obvious; the Force is connection. Threads in a garment, woven together. You are a node in a network, an anchor, a regular meeting point for a dozen warps and wefts in the fabric.

Auteme was not at the Kaggath. She didn't watch from a distant world. She barely knew it was happening; perhaps she'd heard a mention of it here or there, someone watching on one screen or another, but her inclinations of entertainment had never been towards bloodsport. Thousands upon thousands of light years away, she slept soundly in a quiet room, oblivious to the galaxy's latest fixation.

The tug wasn't much, closer to a breeze brushing against a wind chime. Yet the note woke Auteme instantly, eyes searching uselessly in the dark for him -- decades now without so much as a sway, a touch, and she felt him move for the first time since he'd died.

He wasn't there, of course, but the breeze swept her attention elsewhere. Kyric. That thread, looser than she'd liked, bounced and swayed, moving frantically. It was hot to the touch -- no, merely warm. Warm like fresh blood. She pulled,

And suddenly she was there, surrounded by darkness, facing one less person, more force of nature- force unnatural. She fought to destroy, an unbound cry, a pure and wretched desire for violence and death. And there he was, focus unbroken, yet body failing slowly.

And there he was -- on the front lines of a new battle, one more subtle yet more essential for his son.

Why do you fight?

Tenacity and will kept Kyric afloat, but in the moment his opponent's power reached new and brutal heights, a new hand came to support him.

"Live," came the whispered command, and suddenly light burst from the stump, tendrils raw and writhing for a moment before binding themselves together. It was no match for Mercy's, but Kyric's arm was returned, glowing white with the dulled light of a misty morning. Bleeding stemmed, pain soothed.

And then she was spent, gone from the field.

Kyric | Mercy ​

 

[Kyric]

An explosion of fanged tendrils wasn't high on Kyric's expectations for this particular match. Or among them at all, really.

A spray of ichor splashed haphazardly against his chest, and for a moment, the Jedi expected the liquid to begin eating away at his skin. When he realized it carried nothing more than a rancid scent and viscous texture, he quietly thanked the Force he faced merely a swarm of gnashing tentacles. Great.

Kyric withdrew from the arm's assault rapidly. He ducked beneath the lash-like appendages aimed for his face and throat, but couldn't avoid the third as it bit down on his oozing stump. It tore through his flesh like paper, ripping into bone to lock him in place as it pulsed with eldritch corruption. The light emitted by his blade crashed into the malignant power over and over again, stopping the spread of the corruptive power up into the rest of his body. Yet, it wasn't enough to dislodge the thing entirely.

"Gah. This is fethin' gross!" the kiffar growled through clenched teeth, pain evident in his remaining eye. He angled his blade upward to parry another incoming strike, then drove the hilt of the weapon down directly into the fangs of the next. Teeth shattered on impact, but it simply whipped around and slammed against his shoulder.

Runes flared up across his body to soothe the pain away and clear his mind as Kyric felt an influx of strength through the bond he shared between himself and Capris. Smaller lacerations slowly knitted themselves back together. Darkened bruised lightened. He concentrated on the tether, drawing more of the power inward in an effort to counteract the pain inflected by the sensation of being eaten alive.

And then the presence of another wreathed Kyric in brilliant white light.

Mist woven together in the form of his missing limb scorched the insides of the tentacle, forcing its thrashing mouth open impossibly wide before it popped like a meaty balloon. Viscera splashed both competitors.

Kyric dropped back faster this time and tore another jagged blade from nearby. The glow from his arm coalesced around the weapon akin to the first, strengthening the ages-old steal against the Leviathan's fury. Both swords weaved an intricate defense against the starving tentacles. With each strike, familiar crescents of cutting force formed around the Jedi, only these bore the same radiance gifted to him by his adoptive mother. They arched around Mercy and coiled down for the Sith Lord, while Kyric pressed forward, both blades carving out to dismantle the tentacles and lock the monolith in place.

---

Tags: Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Kyric Auteme

Things seemed to be improving for Kyric. Bolstered by his tether to Capris Halcyon and now by a spectral hand weaving him whole, he was beginning to look like himself again.

A shame Mercy was devious.

In the Netherworld it was impossible to miss the flow of power. The moment Auteme touched the weave, Mercy felt it ripple through the air. It was like a bright thread tugged tight and spun into something new. In a way it was pretty and Mercy didn't try to stop it. In fact, she welcomed the challenge it would provide, to fight him whole.

"Tattoos from your lover. Now your mother too, interfering to give you a fighting chance." Her smile was all bloody teeth. "Tell me, father's son... is there anyone left who thinks you can stand on your own?"

Before the new limb could strike, her presence shoved into the tether. They would feel it at once: wrongness bleeding in, oil into clear water. The woven light blackened at the edges, obsidian, fraying the weaves and forcing them to rebind with something else. What was meant to soothe and bind instead burned cold, crawling under the skin like a swarm of insects.

Every attempt to move the limb was forced through her stain first. The Light dimmed behind it, unreachable without swallowing the corruption that coated it. Like drinking from a pool, but only after choking down a mouthful of putrid oil.

"My gift to you." Her drawl dripped venom. "You are weak. Relying on others to heal you, to keep you in the fight. But in the dark you can be your own man... and perhaps then you will have a chance to bring me down."

The brilliance was still there, but Mercy had planted herself in front of it. She was the shadow between him and the light. Constantly tempting him to take the easy way out. He could avoid it, of course, but then taking advantage of his mother's arm would be quite difficult. Not impossible, perhaps he could find a way around it.

But time was not his ally, Mercy never gave her prey long.

 

[Kyric]

What power Kyric sought—no, hoped—to deploy vanished in a spray of glittering light as Mercy's corruption warped the mist-woven arm into a facsimile of the gift bestowed upon him by Auteme. The gleaming razor-winds were nothing but mist falling like snow around the Jedi. The second blade thudded uselessly to the sand at his feet as the ethereal arm fell limp at his side.

"You sure run yer mouth a lot for someone who's entire schtick is havin' a special arm, no?" He asked through gritted teeth. "Unless yer gonna tell me yer ma was sleepin' around with somethin' freaky from other space?"

Kyric lifted his stump and flexed, banishing the newly forged arm into the aether. What hope his mother bestowed upon him twinkled faintly and vanished alongside the slow-falling mist. What strength remained came from the reminder the kiffar wasn't alone. Though Auteme was not here with him now to face this monstrosity, she had not forsaken him.

Capris' was still out there, too. The borrowed knowledge of the very runes etched into his body promised a wealth of power, but not if Kyric allowed himself to falter in these final moments. He needed to think not like himself, but like her. How would one practiced in this art face the creature before him now?

Step by step...

"Every one of ya' like to pretend its yer strength at yer back, but mama ain't raise no fool. Yer arm. Yer master. Even yer fears. It all stems from somewhere else. But its nice to play pretend, ain't it? To smother that truth in pretty lil' lies that make ya' feel like yer in control."

Kyric released a steady breath. "I accept the truth fer what it is. I fight fer my ma, the woman I love, and my family back home. They've always given me strength, even in my darkest moments. And win or lose, I won't turn my back on that and pretend otherwise." He drew a line in the sand with his blade, carving an intricate pattern across that singular line until it glowed with the very same light infused into the sword.

The marking burned with the intensity of a sun, then exploded in a spiraling windstorm around Kyric. He stood within the eye of a churning storm that kicked up sand into a thick haze over the battlefield. Under the cover of his smokescreen, the Jedi Knight flicked his blade out for his opponent. A beam of cutting-force flew forward, splintering into three fast-moving projectiles aimed for the void carved into Mercy's limb.

Just as quickly as the wind appeared, it vanished. Kyric dashed out into the haze, dragging the blade in sweeping arcs across the battlefield, listening to the whispered warnings of his fallen allies trapped within the Field of Blades. He knew his power shone no differently than a beacon within the preternatural senses afforded to those like Mercy and himself, but the screen was nothing more than a ploy to allow him to carve more runes into the sand.

---

Tags: Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Kyric

Her eyes flicked to the fresh stump, brows lifting a fraction.

Jedi were noble to the point of suicide, but watching him shrug it off still surprised her. Much of what he said carried weight, yet Mercy did not care. Hypocrisy had never stopped her before. Words were weapons, whether true or false, and all she needed was the smallest crack in his focus to rip him open.

"Noble words…" Mercy murmured, her tone almost thoughtful. She gave a little nod, as if conceding. Then the smile widened, all blood and hunger. "…especially from a Jedi brawling for blood money in a Syndicate arena."

There was no higher ground here. This was not a fight for love or the light instead it was just blood sport, simple spectacle for profit. She thought of Ishida Ashina , who had at least met her blade to blade in defense of something real. Or Corazona von Ascania , wicked enough to cut her arm clean away. By contrast this Jedi fought for an audience. Which Mercy didn't fault, she loved the spotlight herself, but she also did not pretend it was anything else.

He sketched with his sword.

"Boy, are you drawing in the sa-" The words cut short when light erupted. Mercy threw herself forward, lunging to interrupt him, but it was too late. The ritual was already sealed, a sun bursting to life beneath his hand. The blast struck her head-on. Pain blossomed through every nerve as the force hurled her across the arena. She screamed as she flew, body battered, crashing through sand until she skidded to a stop at the edge.

Mercy barely had time to rise before the next attack streaked toward her: three cutting projectiles. Her aura flared up, fire rushing across her arms as she raised them. The first was slapped aside with a sweep of her hand. The second punched into her shoulder, driving deep. She growled, seized the third mid-flight, and with strength from beyond hurled it back at Kyric. The projectile spun through the air, slick with her blood, dripping decay.

She tore the embedded blade from her shoulder with a roar, hot streams running down her side. Corruption seized it at once, shadow-veins crawling across steel until the weapon blackened and twisted into something jagged and cruel. With all her weight she slammed it into the ground. The arena shuddered, cracks racing outward, shattering sections of his careful lines and tearing the floor beneath them. From the ruptured sand, swords and shards of metal erupted in a forest of blades, far larger than before, each glowing with her corruption. At the height of their climb they split apart, bursting into shrapnel that rained down in a storm meant to shred anything caught too close.

 

[Kyric]

Of course, there was no way for Mercy to know Kyric's words were more than moral grandstanding. With Damien missing and BD-8 in Razmir's clutches, the kiffar's only chance at finding them came at the cost of victory in the Kaggath. But such details were tucked into the back of his mind; hidden away from the prying mind of his opponent, who used his kinfolk against him at every opportunity.

Victory blanketed the forefront of his thoughts. Both sword and shield against the corruption that assailed him with each word she uttered to break his spirit.

By some miracle, the explosion caught Mercy and sent her rocketing across the arena in a smoldering heap. Against any other opponent Kyric may have smiled, but each wound that didn't outright destroy the Sith Lord merely served to strengthen her. Already her destructive power eclipsed his. Every offensive maneuver he deployed absorbed by her pain and redirected twofold back at him.

The corrupted razor-crest caught Kyric just beneath his eyes, cutting a bloody line across his face in his hurried attempt to dodge the attack. His body hit the sand no differently than his opponent a moment before. He pushed up onto his knees as the ground quaked at her malignant call to arms. Fissures spread out from the Sith's position in an erratic web. The largest among them separated the floor beneath Kyric and he found himself in a temporary freefall into the depths of Ruusan.

Or so he thought.

Arcing blades tore upward from the depths.

Kyric thrust his blade forward and a barrier of translucent light encircled his body. It bounced between each of the rising skewers until he found the spherical shield carried high above the arena, pinned between half a dozen jagged, superheated chunks of metal. If not for the symbol carved across his collarbone, the heat alone may have done the Jedi Knight in. But it shielded him long enough for the rising blade storm to falter.

The barrier dissipated and Kyric found himself sliding haphazardly down a spiraling hunk of dull gray steel. His body blurred as he dashed across a branch-like appendage between two risen monoliths. Remaining stationary wouldn't provide him any advantage in the event Mercy manipulated the spear-forest further. A quick glance at the battlefield revealed most of it to be a mess of arched steel and fissured stone. Very little of what was there at the start of the fight remained.

All at once, the spirits of the embattled Jedi rose in unison from the ring. They shifted into tiny balls of icy-white light and drifted upward toward the Jedi, dancing on unseen winds to flock to his aid.

In the meantime, Kyric moved across the branches with the surefootedness of a primate. His blade carved away metal in strong strikes and he sent them spiraling down like falling stars for the grounded Sith.

---

Tags: Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Kyric

It felt as if even her nerves were crying out. Mercy's body was a map of wounds, carved by her habit of taking every strike head-on. The katana's bite still leaked down her hip, ribs groaned from the blast that had hurled her across the sand, and scorched flesh smoked at her shoulder where light had burrowed deep. The pain was beautiful, purifying. From an early age she had learned that while others faltered in agony, it only sharpened her focus. And focus was what she needed now, with falling stars of carved metal streaking down from above.

They carved into her anew. One slammed across her back with bone-bruising force. Another split her jaw, painting crimson across the twisted forest of steel. Mercy staggered but did not yield. The damage only stoked the furnace within her, burning hotter, brighter.

White-hot pain so exquisite it verged on joy.

Her madness was drawing in the dead in the same way that those spheres of light were drawn to Kyric, but their purpose was different. Where the Jedi found a champion to rally behind, to assist and try to preserve... the Sith spirits saw a vehicle for their own freedom. They pressed in close, leaping at her three at a time, to devour her flesh and sink into her skin. A ride out of this endless nightmare back into life.

They clawed at her side, throat, desperately trying to find an entry to crawl into.

Thronegrasp erupted before they could. Tendrils tore free, punching through spectral skulls that had grown solid in this nightmare. Heads burst apart in sprays of black fire and shredded memory. Their shrieks split the Field further, rattling the unstable Bando Gora-made reality. Mercy dragged the broken souls into herself mid-motion, wrapping their twitching remnants around her body like a ragged cloak. The grafting was violent, obscene, every stitch a defiance of nature itself.

Much like Mercy.

The cloak convulsed, then snapped wide. Wings. Jagged, shuddering things, faces half-formed and screaming against the void. Shadows veined through their span like rot, threads of corruption binding them together.

Mercy hurled herself skyward. She ripped through falling debris, her sword-arm scattering shards aside in arcs of burning shadow. Midway, the wings lashed forward and loosed a gust that reeked of decay. It crossed the distance in a single breath, carrying with it the psychic shrieks of the enslaved dead. Their howls clawed into the mind, tearing at thought and dulling focus, while the sheer force of the blast struck like a wall of rot-laden wind. Sand and steel shards tore loose under its weight, towards Kyric's body even as the voices rend his spirit.

Through that storm of anguish Mercy burst upward like a missile of steel and blood, aiming to crash into Kyric with all her weight and drive her corrupted blade through living flesh.