Private Orphiad: Unto the Breach

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Continued from Orphiad: The Resurrection of S.


Kaalia's simple statement of intent and fellowship calmed Ashin - and she couldn't allow that. Fear had a power all its own, a valuable strength. She nodded tightly and mustered a smile, and the current carried the boats along, down to the River's end.

AN AMBIGUOUS AMOUNT OF TIME LATER
THE GATE OF THE DREAMING DARK​

The gate looked like nothing so much as a shimmer, a soap-bubble wrongness surrounded by absence. This deep in the Netherworld, they were very close to being swept away, dissipated into the Cosmic Force. The realm ahead was something defiantly other but far more dangerous. Just being here at the gate challenged the reality of Ashin's existence - a tentative challenge, like the vertigo of glancing over a cliff. She knew from speaking with the ferrymen that the sensation and risk of dissolution would intensify past the shimmer, in the dark woods.

When she glanced back, she saw the boats far off, where the River rushed and faded into this absent void. The ferrymen would offer passage back to lucid lands, even to the few distant gates to realspace, if Ashin and her party reemerged from the Dreaming Dark.

She set her spine and turned to face those who had gathered and were still gathering - around two dozen, mostly Darksiders, who'd survived the journey here. To the uttermost edge of the Mist Beyond. To the place where all the strength they'd known and faced meant virtually nothing.

"We're often told that fear is a path to the Dark Side. If a Jedi says it, they mean fear is a weakness. If the average Sith says it, they're gloating about a weakened enemy, or considering fear a useful stepping stone to anger. But there are deeper Sith teachings that most Lords have never heard. Sidious taught Maul that fear, anxiety, and unease can be sources of strength in and of themselves - that fear is one of the weapons of a true Sith, and not just others' fear. Show me a Sith brave enough to acknowledge and embrace their own fears, right to the controlled edge of frenzy, when the tool is appropriate to the moment, and I'll show you a Dark Lord."

She gestured back at the shimmer with the Waythorne's dagger point. "That place terrifies me. Am I still going inside? Of course. To be a true Sith is to do absolutely anything for what you want most, and what I want most is trapped in there. But walking through this gate into the Dreaming Dark isn't a matter of ignoring fear. Controlling it, yes - without suppressing it. Fear is one of the core emotions that can unlock the power of the Dark Side. You can feel the connection my fear gives me - and I need it. I traded perceptiveness and insight for raw strength decades ago, but fear gives me eyes in the back of my head, puts my stunted senses on edge. It's like I'm young again, fighting through knee-deep muck in a brutal trench war on a world whose name nobody but me remembers. It's like creeping through no-man's-land with nothing but a knife. That's a state of power - the power to come back alive."

She faced the shimmer again, and stepped through.

​

The alienness of the Dreaming Dark slapped her in the face and hooked her guts. She'd thought she might feel dissociated from her body, whatever her body meant in this, the least rational and real plane of the Netherworld, but instead she felt unpleasantly grounded. Trapped in an implacable, even gleeful, reality. The Dreaming Dark had nothing to do with the dark side of the Force - it came from something infinitely beyond the universe she knew.

Spencer. I'm here.

Already the creatures of the Dreaming Dark rushed between the trees, circling and closing in. She drew Entropy, Rave Merrill's greatest sword, and lashed out to ward the enemy off while her followers came through the gate. She'd promised it would return to Dissero even if she never made it back to reality. The transcendent weapon could shear Force Light itself, or high Sith magic - anything that came its way.

Against the unnatural things of this place, it was only a sword.

Insofar as her heart was still real, her pulse spiked with tenacious, inescapable fear...and her lip curled with something else entirely.


Spencer Varanin Noelle Varanin Kaalia Pavanos Kal Arcturus Dinn Sargon Vynea Seydon of Arda

​

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Here, the clouds roiled like ink drops fed into clear water and wherever the lurid, gory overcast parted, malevolent pinpricks of distant, sentient, hateful light glared down. Seydon rolled his shoulders forward, feeling silty, wet ground give under his boot soles, scented the arctic, shrieking winds that sliced across the great recoiling forest-branch canopies sprawling across the terrain. In spite of his cat-eyes, his sight couldn’t penetrate into the deeper oaken shadows. The light here behaved differently. Mocking, ageless, sexless laughter broke alongside thunderous peals overhead. As elongated shades of unknown and unknowable creatures began capering forward out of the cover of the unholy treeline.

Seydon turned to the nethergate, loosing Razorlight out of its scabbard and planting its long curl of steel into the earth. His position now firmly staked, he gripped and drew Winterfang. Its alpine edge gleamed silver against the oily, ashen air. Brittle flecks of red rain began to fall, the droplets making almost no sound as they vanished on contact with the earth. Seydon exhaled and with it, all thought and consideration. Never mind that his heart was mixed where Ashin Cardé Varanin was concerned, when it wasn’t stretched and hollow, never mind the painful, lonely haunt of memories, reliving innumerable failures and shortcomings out of addictive habit. There was the task; killing, mean work. Nothing else. It was all Ashin had hired him out for in the first place.

He rose and clenched Winterfang up into a hanging guard. The shadowlings came. Seydon felled one with a joust through what he assumed was its skull, ripping downward through jabbering, knocking teeth. Stepped forward, hacking through attack-lines and killing vectors, slicing into arc-swings before reversing away and returning with throttling, bisecting cleaves. He cut a shadowling up through the bowl of its pelvis, pivoted on his feet and waist, angling Winterfang through a pair of glancing parries until the attacking beast-thing overdid its reach. The follow up counter-assault relieved it of its arm, its mist-like skull, and rent a harrowing diagonal gash through its skin-tattered rib cage. Acrid gouts of black, alkaline blood crystallized where it hissed into the air. Red-white lightning spidered and cracked through the overcast above. He flicked aside a clawed slash with a circle parry and dodged aside the oncoming body, pirouetting into a fast kill-stroke down across its shoulder blade through spinal gristle to what constituted its narrow, bough-like thigh. Reversed now, jabbing Winterfang back across his arm and shoulder, impaling an umpteenth shadowling through its sternal bone.

The battle-tempo echoed with the blood pulse drumming in his veins. Clinical Dunaan fighting temperance reined the rage welling up thickly in his marrow. Seydon whirled forward, crashing into thickets of rippling, almost immaterial monstrosities howling atonally. He grasped one by the trunk of its throat and smashed it down before his boots. He heard himself screaming. Another dire handful of nether-things fell in as many cuts, Seydon crashing his hand to the earth and loosing a cryo-kinetic burst of Force power. Creatures not flattened off their footing were frozen in place, then shattered apart in the following beat.

 

[Noelle Varanin]

Was this what Ashin was always like? Those times she was away, out there and not home, was Ashin always facing such stirring realities? Through the eyes of a child, it began to appear so. There was so little Noelle truly knew about her. Their connection felt so fragile, she often wondered if she'd notice Ashin passing in the streets.

She would, of course. But standing in the depths of the Netherworld, watching her mother corral dozens to face the inescapable... she didn't recognize her. Ashin was bearing the face of a leader. Of an empress. Suddenly it wasn't so hard to picture the life her parents had once lived-- still lived.

It hit her with cold shock to realize she was standing right in it.


Terror pulsed through her, a chilling waterfall through her nerves that left everything tingling. There was so much to be afraid of, but in that moment the thing she feared the most was herself.

If she was capable of this, what else might she do? A line to draw another time.

She stepped through, every ounce of her will used to raise her sword and meet a collapsing creature head on. She might not be Sith, or Jedi, but she was Echani. She felt what concept of muscles she had flex against the heavy weight of her borrowed sword. Any moment she could cease to be, but until then she fought for purchase.

She was, in the end, her mothers' daughter.

Mom!
​

Rang the mental call, a reach out for Spencer Varanin made. When lost in the dark, one only needed a spark of light to find their way home.

 

[Sargon Vynea]

Arriving first had given the Iridonian some time at the gate before Ashin's speech, and Sargon used it well. Every tendril of the force he sent through the gate was, thrown off. Even the air and ground around the gate seemed in turmoil. On a larger scale it was all simply a blurry feeling, an impossibly alien feeling. He'd learned though long ago, that sometimes what the big picture distorts the small shows in truth.

Closing his eyes he sunk into the ground among the pebbles and dirt as he brought his awareness down to a much smaller picture near the gate. At first it was nothing, albeit the Netherworld felt different naturally, but it was nothing odd for the place. Then over the minutes he began to feel the change, it wasn't subtle, but it was fast. The earth began to change into something closer to the feeling of the strangeness of the gate and land beyond itself. Then behind it he could see the force altering it back, changing the essence of it back into it's more natural form.

Over and over it happened, but never in quite the same pattern. Was this an effect of the corruption of the Dark, or something more? One thing was clear he was wrong about the nature of the Dreaming Dark. This wasn't dark side energy, or even force energy. It was something he'd never felt before, and something terribly alien. For the first time he was stirred with unease since arriving, this was something unnatural to all things.

Focusing on what he knew he let his senses flow through the force as they changed the landscape again and again. No healed the landscape, as well? Then as his senses sat too long on an area he felt it. A deep hunger that at his own senses before he pulled back. In horror he pulled away from it all as he realized what they were dealing with. As he felt the approaching group through the force he turned to Ashin and bowed. "My Lady, I don't think it's something that's trying to feed on her. I think it's the land himself."

Preparing himself mentally he reached out to Lief mind linking with her and sharing force energies. Do not think your part in this small, my friend. You will be the beacon of light home to us, and a source of strength. The Zabrak listend to his Queen's speech, but it wasn't for him. Perhaps many would consider him wrong for his acceptance of practitioners of the dark side, but that didn't matter to him. There was a seduction behind the dark side, but that very fear and anger it fed on had a place. One should fear places like this dreaming dark, and there were things worth being angry about. It was what you did from there with it that mattered. To hate a man because he fell to a seduction as old as time itself was wrong. Healing was required, not death and hate.

Stepping through the gate behind Ashin he felt them instantly, but even as his hands gripped his weapons his true weapons came to bare. Moving his mind into Ashin's for the hundredth time he offered up to her his vision. The shadows became sharp with the force inside of her, and the air around her pulsed with precognition as Sargon felt his body behind his Queen, following. All of his strength became one with her, and all of Asha's with it. He didn't know the others, but he knew his Queen. He felt no fear here because he found no reason to. His trust was greater then the fear of this place ever could be. Reaching out into the darkness as he his body followed barely aware of it's small movements he sought her out. My Lady, we come.

Ashin Cardé Varanin Noelle Varanin Spencer Varanin Kaalia Pavanos Seydon of Arda

 

[Kaalia Pavanos]

Back when Kaalia needed her strength to do what she needed to bring back Ishana from the netherworld, it was grief and desperation that had fuelled her. To the woman, there simply was no other path to walk. Whether she succeeded or failed, she knew she had to do everything within her power to rescue her wife's soul. Only when faced by the seemingly insurmountable challenges she had to endure did she begin to fear, but like many Sith before her, she had learned to channel it. Too many times had she had her back against the wall to not know how to use those primal feelings as a source of strength. She would have been long dead otherwise.

This time, it was nothing but that primal fear that could grant her strength. For as determined as Darth Avacyn would be in her endeavors, she was not invincible; and when the enemy is something that cannot be comprehended, all one had were their survival instincts. It didn't mean Kaalia's statement earlier had been an empty one, though. She had made her choice. Until the soul was saved or lost forever, she'd be here.

So there, Kaalia stood. Before the gate to a realm where nothing made sense. A realm she had once decided never to venture into. At that moment, she questioned why she was here again. She didn't know Ashin well, and certainly knew nothing of the one they were trying to save. Risking one's own life for someone you didn't know, it seemed outright stupid. Yet, she also remembered the pain. The agony. The fact that she too had people by her side when she rescued Ishana. Perhaps, this was a way of paying it forward.

The woman scoffed. She just let her emotions get to her. But she was here now.

"Feth it," Kaalia spoke as she took the first step forward towards the gate. With that all-too-familiar feeling in her stomach, she marched into the Dreaming Dark. Her ghostly form didn't hold here, and so she once more looked fully human.

The very moment she did, something leapt at her. She saw it in the corner of her eye and instinct took over, reaching for one of the lightsabers hanging from her hips and igniting it. The crimson blade swept towards it, cutting it in two and causing it to drop to the ground. She didn't take the time to inspect the creature, though. Her senses were occupied enough trying to adjust to a place where reality was fundamentally different.

The greatest trial had begun.

Ashin Cardé Varanin | Seydon of Arda | Noelle Varanin | Kal | Arcturus Dinn | Sargon Vynea | Spencer Varanin ​

 

[Lief]

The Force had been merciful when spitting her out into the Chasm as it had.​

​

Away from the darker, unrelenting biomes of the Netherworld the Lorrdian was able to uphold her peace of mind and inner strength. She could do as she had been bid, light the way back home, without the fretful shades drawing in; they were unable to stop her in full, though they paced the other side of the river she had last seen Sargon upon. Biding their time.​

​

She could feel them there, niggling on the edge of her mind; Asha ignored them.​

​

Far off, in the depths of that endless chasm, a presence all too familiar drifted up toward her. She did not open her eyes, did not dare break the illusion and find it to have been only that, she continued her internal ruminations in full. The only break in her composure came with the delicate lifting of her left hand, which in assured the rising of the teapot she so cherished. The remnants of the brew she and Sargon had shared was tipped into a third cup, before the ceramic was returned to its place upon the ground.​

​

"You're welcome to it," she breathed, voice hardly audible yet carried through the air toward that lingering presence. "May we sit in tranquility, like old times..."​

​

Nothing was said in response, and Asha returned her focus to the others unphased. If she was present she would join her, Asha knew as much. The Epicanthix would not pass up such an opportunity, even here. Even so far from the life they had once lived together.​

​

There was nothing for the longest time, too. From the depths of the Chasm, from her friend upon the boat. How much time drifted on she could not say for sure, but she remained steadfast until that moment came. And when it did, she was surely grateful for her continued focus. That the energy remained within her to do what must be done.​

​

For Sargon drew upon her, strength of mind and strength of body, and willingly Asha succumbed.​

​

Sargon Vynea Ashin Cardé Varanin Spencer Varanin Kal Noelle Varanin Kaalia Pavanos​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

As they came upon the breach, the boy could not help but feel like an outlier among them. Woefully unprepared for what was to come, unsure even of why he had followed the voice this far, without ties to any who were present. Some might have argued madness, there was no other excuse for what had gripped him. Led him on this far, through such grizzled and unforgiving surroundings.​

​

Though names had been given, they were strangers to him all. Who risked their life for a complete stranger?​

​

And yet he had not turned back. He had not broken away from the group, returned to the Spire and sought a way back through to Korriban. He was here, among them. And he would continue for as long as their journey continued. If nothing else, the voice willed it. And who was he to deny such a haunting melody its whims?​

​

He was not the first to enter through that cosmic bubble. He most certainly refused to be the last. Though barely steeled and ready for what was to come, he pushed on through behind the one who had flown across the Netherworld to be with them and felt the air fall from his lungs.​

​

There was no time to dwell upon it, though. No time to gasp for breath. They were accosted from the very off, the moment their feet touched to the next plane, and though armed with only a simple alchemized blade he felt the call to action and answered in like.​

​

He drew the short blade from its sheath, thrusting it toward that which pounced upon him, and pushed it back once impaled through the Force. Where one was, more came. Their path forward was a slow trudge by nature of that very virtue, insurmountable challenges lay ahead yet they were many, and among them there were powerful beings.​

​

Enough, though?​

​

Would that be enough against all that the Nether could sling at them?​

​

Ashin Cardé Varanin Noelle Varanin Kal Sargon Vynea Kaalia Pavanos Seydon of Arda Spencer Varanin ​

 

[Kal]

Wholly, fundamentally, wrong. The so-called Dreaming Dark was that and more, but despite what scatterbrained fools may think it was not part of the Netherworld. Not his Netherworld, not in the ways that mattered. It was alien and intrusive, corrosive by its very nature.

Opting to step through somewhere near the back of the formation, Kal felt an unpleasant tingle most distinct from entering Realspace.

Realspace was a second home, of sorts, albeit one which did not empower him. This place was different, the opposite of welcoming, and he was sure the others felt the same. Those not to busy fighting for their lives to give it any thought, that was. Unlike them, he did not rush to the front, instead opting to remain near the back of the formation, a spear-like tendril of shadowstuff forming from his will.

Lashing out with snake-like speed, he dispatched one creature - but many more waited beyond. Good thing there were Sith here, powerful Sith, ones able to rip through these fiends like a scythe through wheat. He could only hope they were equally adept against the things lurking deeper within.

Ashin Cardé Varanin | Noelle Varanin | Seydon of Arda | @Sargon | Kaalia Pavanos | Arcturus Dinn​

 

[Arthos Vynea]

There were places in death he hadn't traversed yet, and this was one. It was darkness of a different nature, but maybe different was what he needed. There were plenty of Sith spirits throughout the Netherworld trying to escape to absolutely no avail. They all avoided this area though, but maybe right now with the living invading it he could have a chance to find a path out from the inside. If not what's the worst that could happen? All this unliving hell just ended? He'd had enough with his eternity anyway, let true nothingness come.

The path though that was being plowed forward was held in part by his brother, and he would interfere with his plans. There was another though reaping his own path among the shadows, and him Arthos could follow. A more conflicted soul at that, as he stepped behind him he lit his tonfas off with a warm hiss as he cut one of the shadows in two. Spinning it in hand he planted it up to his elbow into the body of another shadow before turning to his would be living ally.

With a grim nod he said nothing before reigniting and going after the next group of shadows. A single wanderer in the one place even the dead feared to travel, what an interesting end to it all either way. At least as his adrenaline rose he got to feel alive one more time. It was time to finally roll the dice.

Seydon of Arda

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Once upon a time, for her own amusement, Ashin had arranged for a group of Jedi to take a survey. At one point they'd been asked to rate their lightsaber skills - average, a little below average, significantly below, far below, and so forth. The average response was 'significantly above average.'

Far too many people thought they were top-tier blademasters. Far, far too many. Having actually been one in her day, Ashin knew for a fact that she wasn't anymore. The decades hadn't been kind to her - and she'd split her attention in too many directions.

The years had only made Seydon Gunn more deadly. She'd feared him once in an abstract sense. Now, as he held the gate alongside her - even as Sargon's gift of two Masters' strength flooded her with energy - she knew that if they fought seriously at melee range, Seydon could end her. Not a doubt in the world.

The nature of this place's monsters admitted no fear. Anything that lived in the Dreaming Dark was, by definition, an apex predator. Today they were learning something new.

Red and orange light gleamed harsh off the solid blades - Kaalia's lightsaber and many others. The dark matte trees drank light implacably, and deeper in the woods, the sabers' radiance glinted on things Ashin couldn't name.

Spencer Varanin Noelle Varanin Kaalia Pavanos Kal Arcturus Dinn Sargon Vynea Seydon of Arda

 

[Noelle Varanin]

Noelle felt her skin split, weapons of unnamable parts finding ways beyond her guard. The longer they lingered at the gate's entrance, the large the horde's grew, drawn in by the promise of something to devour.

The training rooms had not prepared her for what it meant to face unconquerable odds. All the training her heritage had afforded her was nothing compared to the tempo she was driven into keeping-- her muscles always flexing, always moving, her form a blur as ends of her dress disintegrated off her. She felt her feet hit dirt, silk slippers leaving this plane, before reforming into shreds. Droplets of her own blood floated up, the red orb distorted the maw of a fanged shadowed as it leapt on her.

Reality meant nothing. Neither did the pain. There was only the terror and her determination, Spencer Varanin 's face framing her thoughts. Her back slammed into roots as she was brought down by the weight of the creature.


The tip of her mother's sword jutted out through the back of its neck, its dying sounds blending into the cacophony around it. Its body hit solid ground, its target no longer under it. Where there once was a girl, there was now just roots.

For a moment, a spare breath, Noelle ceased to be.

 

[Kal]

One down, one infinite horde to go.

Gliding forward to remain at the centre of their somewhat untidy formation, Kal lashed out once more, this time keeping one of Ashin's pet Darksiders from being bisected by a somewhat-cleverer-than-most monstrosity. So far, their progress forward had been steady, but their presence was to the natives what a pyre was to fireflies. If he had known they would be so loud he would have suggested bringing reinforcements.

A thousand and one Silent Knights would have been just right, but he doubted he could pull that without an ungodly amount of handshaking.

Something told him Ashin was unlikely to wish to wait for a lengthy pro et contra debate between ageless spirits while her wife was consumed.

Taking a moment to evaluate the performance of his compatriots, the Shadow noticed another stealthier monster, quickly relaying a telepathic warning to the nearest individual, the redhead from the boat. Suddenly twisting towards Noelle, his eyes glowed brighter for a moment.

Had she just done what he thought she had? If so, she might be better adapted to the Nether than he had initially assumed.

Arcturus Dinn | Noelle Varanin​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

It was difficult to focus on that which the others were doing while so engulfed in a constant onslaught directed his own way.​

​

The strange world around them seemed to bleed away, Ashin, Sargon, even Noelle, they ceased to exist for a time as they sluggishly made their way forward, cutting through shades and beasties as they went. Without a lightsaber his pace was even slower than he'd liked to have admitted, forced to recall his blade from within flesh every time he struck out.​

​

There the Force was his ally, though. To push the corpse, to pull his blade, it was the only way he kept up in truth.​

​

A voice upon the edge of his mind warned him of a threat he had not yet noticed. He used the pinprick of information, shooting back the briefest sense of a thanks to the shadowy figure of Kal, and hurled his little Sith blade through the air toward the stalking beast that hung out of sight.​

​

So far from its creator, the blade did as it had been designed to do and recalled itself right back into his palm. As though it had never been loosed at all. If the beast still stalked he could not tell for sure, but he kept it in mind as he thrust out toward another. He'd taken a few hits himself within the chaos of it all, blood dripped down the right of his face and would have threatened to impede his vision had his brow not redirected it across his temple.​

​

His arms, too, had felt the sting and bite of Force knew how many lashes.​

​

But he could not falter. Could not be that weakened link amidst their chain.​

​

Kal ​

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Time had very little meaning in the Netherworld, here most of all. They could have been fighting for an hour or a year to hold the portal's beachhead against creatures that had never been designed to die. Five minutes or a decade might have passed in realspace. Ashin had no idea and didn't care. Force help her, she didn't even really care that Noelle might be struggling to stay extant or coherent in here. More than one of the Pomojema's people had already fallen - ripped to shreds and dissipated into the Cosmic Force, or consumed in some deeper sense by the creatures they faced.

Ashin knew full well what all this apathy made of her. It was contemptible, but she didn't even have time for contempt. The Waythorne had led her this far, and now it led her deeper into the dark forest. And she could finally feel her wife clearly, feel their bonds drawing them together. After innumerable sacrifices, the end was in sight. Whatever the cost.

Entropy in hand and dripping with transdimensional ichor, scarred all to hell, she burst from the beachhead. Some would remain to hold the soap-bubble portal; others followed. She didn't care about that either.

Ten more steps into the pitch black. Five. Lightning sizzled around the red glove that covered her droid hand, her off hand - another sacrifice. The lightning offered zero illumination.

"Spencer," she said into the dark. "I'm here."


Spencer Varanin Noelle Varanin Kaalia Pavanos Kal Arcturus Dinn Sargon Vynea Seydon of Arda

 

[Noelle Varanin]

A visceral scream cut through the air, Noelle's voice findings its way back to the either. Her form reappeared, whisping like smoke as it teetered on the edge of dissolution. Her voice remained unwavering, reconnecting with the lips that parted in terror. She met Kal's eyes, urged on by his proximity.

They still had their deal.

Each step was a struggle, every waiver of her form brought to mind what could be lost. She forced herself to remember who she was. Every emotion, every desire, every fear--- She did not shy away from the truths. She took the pain and the joy and in it had a future worth fighting for.

Matriarch. Queen. Daughter. She had shied away from those titles for so long. Now her fear felt ... inconsequential. As she struggled to manage any semblance of existence, she could see it all so clearly. The only thing holding her back was a choice.

She picked herself back up. Strength flooded her limbs, her form solidifying. Ashin's sword returned to her hand.

"Kal, stay on me."

 

[Sargon Vynea]

Like the wind he flowed, and like the wind he saw everything and nothing all at once. He didn't think to block the strike coming in, he'd given his body to the force and it moved him before he knew the claws were coming. His blade swung without thought or reason as he existed inside of the moment. He was a master of sense, but he'd long ago found that could be easily misunderstood. He didn't interpret the information coming to him, and catalog it then make decisions. He simply accepted and followed the guidance of the force in combat.

Cut as he was between himself and his Queen his awareness of his own actions were mixed in with hers. One moment he was sliding a blade through some dark abdomen, and the next he was casting out lightning from a hand not made of flesh. She fought though, and he was not surprised. It was difficult for those so used to control to give in, to be guided.

He could feel her focus though, and for that moment he could see it all. He wasn't here to heal two people, but one. They were two halves to a whole, and when they were apart both wilted. One controlled and focused able to touch and move the galaxy in ways few could. The other was her light, the light hand that stopped the tsunami from consuming all. Was he saving them, or saving the galaxy from a grieving Ashin?

All of those thoughts were there for but a moment though as his awareness skipped ahead with her call into the darkness. Speeding ahead he searched for the light of Spencer unquenchable even in this darkness carrying the declaration of his Queen out into the darkness.

Noelle Varanin Ashin Cardé Varanin Spencer Varanin Kal Arcturus Dinn Kaalia Pavanos

 

[Kal]

As quickly as the thought formed in his mind, he realised his mistake; it was not that she had begun to master the ways of this less-yet-more-than-real realm, but that she was struggling to retain her individuality in the face of it. In hindsight, he should have seen it coming... but flesh-and-blood travellers were few and far in between. Most he had met were Valkyries or comparable specialities, or at the very least decent Sorcerers.​

<Focus on your sense of self. Your desires, your fears, your hopes. What makes you unique.> More than even the most hostile regions of Chaos, this vile place sought to break down the unwary; he could resist fairly well, but only due to experience in comparable but less extreme environments.​

<Unlike in Realspace, Will is as important - if not more so - than steel, however potent,> said Kal, lashing out once more with a shadowy appendage as if to emphasise the point. Not that he wouldn't have used an Item of Power if he had access to an appropriate one suitable for his form.​

Gliding nearer her, he directed a single concerned glance in Ashin's direction. Useful determination or dedication bordering on madness?​

Noelle Varanin et al.​

 

[Spencer Varanin]

Ashin Cardé Varanin
Spencer, I’m here.
​

The darkness had been everything that she had known. Pain and torment with the hellish beast that hunted the souls lost on this landscape. There were no others for the creature to devour, nothing to sate the thirst for the souls that reside leftover, and it continued to hunt. Spencer drew in herself, hoping to continue to hear the whispers of her conqueror, but they had fallen silent for some time. She wondered if this was only her subconscious trying to ease her for the final closure of death.​

Then she heard it, another whisper and another pull on their bonds. Lifting her head, she peered into the darkness and drew in a deep breath.​

“Ashin?” She paused, somewhat expecting the feeling to be the beast tricking her into giving up her position. She waited, wanting confirmation of the figure that called out to her. Everything told her it was what she had wanted to happen. Not only did she feel Ashin, but others reached for her. Another familiar feeling - one that she thought she'd never feel again drew upon their connection. Sargon. ​

“Is that really you?” Her voice wavered, so desperately wanting Ashin to be here. The essence that was Spencer Varanin took shape as she reached out towards the hand that called to her.​

Please be you. ​

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Entropy went back into its sheath still slick with blood that wasn't blood, more like shreds of things never meant to die. Barehanded, Ashin reached into the deepest dark and did what she did best: grab a thing and call it mine.

Spencer's hand felt tenuous but electric, like taking hold of a thunderstorm. On contact, the dyad they'd become flared out with staggering strength. All the sacrifices that had brought them to this moment had drained Ashin deeply, but that vanished in a heartbeat. Sargon's power catalyzed and clarified the renewed unity. Trees that weren't trees shattered, shoved back by something more grounded, real, a piece of this universe that defied the otherness of the Dreaming Dark. The light that blazed out was a cold blue fire, merciless and implacable. For the first time in a long, long time, Ashin saw her wife or what was left of her. In the Netherworld, the Cosmic Force tended to erode you; the Dreaming Dark did all that and more. But Spencer still existed. The vision had been true.

"You called. I answered."

She picked up her wife's shade and charged for the soap-bubble portal. A keening roar rattled in her soul as the creature - whatever it was - that had hunted Spencer came calling at last. The strongest Force shields Ashin had ever conjured wrapped around the pair of them, clung to them, drove them forward.

Pass through the breach, set foot in the real Netherworld, and Ashin could cast Spencer into a waiting clone body in realspace. She stampeded through the battlefield without even seeing the broken trees, the dying on both sides, the faithful allies. She ignored the possibility that Spencer might not be quite what she'd been in life - that her weathered, tattered, transcendent soul might not entirely fit in a normal body in a normal way. Nothing mattered but reaching that portal.

Spencer Varanin Seydon of Arda Noelle Varanin Kaalia Pavanos Kal Sargon Vynea

​

 

[Kaalia Pavanos]

Ashin Cardé Varanin | Spencer Varanin | Sargon Vynea | Noelle Varanin | Kal | Seydon of Arda | Arcturus Dinn

From a distance, Kaalia watched on. The sight brought back memories of the time when she was in Ashin's shoes, carefully cradling Ishana's soul. All she had wanted to do then was to return to the realm of the living immediately as she prayed for it to even still be possible to let the soul inhabit a new body. All of it became real again for a moment.

It sent a shiver down her spine.

A lump formed in the back of Kaalia's throat. Somehow, watching two people she barely or didn't know be reunited was getting to her. Emotions made no sense, they came from the most impossible of places, yet they held incredible power. Power that they were going to need to get out of here alive.

Ashin ran back for the portal as the soul-shaking roar of an otherworldly beast rang through the forest. Kaalia would run behind her, looking to hold off anything looking to get to Ashin or Spencer.