Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
"Wha…you…." she gaped, unable to get over how Arris's feminine cadence had shifted into Solipsis' grizzled drawl. Between this, and the flickering visage in her head…
She paid little mind to the girl's shock, though she admittedly felt small pleasure at provoking a reaction, as there was little else in the room to extract joy from.
Arris had been arrogant to any intrusions from Gerra; either he didn't call to her, or she wasn't receptive to it. She raised a brow when Amoun grabbed his head, and was even more confused by Eurydice's reaction, turning to watch the frightened girl wail at seemingly nothing. A wiser Arris might've suspected the trickery of battle meditation at play, but that too was beyond the scope of her imagination.
"What are you on about?" Arris called down from a raised platform, stern but not loud.
She turned back to Amoun, about to explain who the girl was (as far as Arris understood her, which was little), but it seemed their moments of interruption were not over.
"Yes," she spoke impatiently, "To the Throne Room." Every idle second ticked a thought to kill them both, and it was so hard to hold that bloodlust in check while the Dark Side ate at her resolve.
It wasn't entirely her fault - See, Windrun's brain had a droid computer lodged in it that spoiled itself rotten on the raw power of the Force, transforming her and it both into something akin to a technobeast. That was to say, it was less Arris Windrun who wanted to kill them, and more a perversion of synthetic nature that knew nothing better than to kill people.
The cyborg made sure Eurydice followed with another wave before walking step-by-step in stride with Amoun. When they arrived at the command room, Arris paused to inhale the massacre. Her face, as often, was flat. Her eyes drifted to the visage of an older woman who looked oddly defiant in death. Arris drew a sluground from her belt and dropped it beside the corpse. Her idea of respect.
She walked across the other bodies without care on their way to the Throne Room. She regarded Amoun's dry witticism and grating laugh only with a thought: He was exactly the kind of person Mercy would rope into this.
Enough of that - she returned to practicing that speech in her head.
Her flesh burned, her meat lacerated, armor dented and torn, but Mercy remained in top form.
That was the issue with fighting her.
She was having fun.
At all times, even while in agony, or while succumbing to the effects of Hatred, Mercy fought with a smile. These moments of battle mixed together into a fine cocktail. Even as she smashed her skull right back into Da'Razel's, Mercy grinned with sharp and bloody teeth. But few things could keep her, if she didn’t wish to be kept, the Fire Prophet was not one of them. She ripped herself free, which may have caused even more damage inside of him, even as it caused more burns across her arm.
The next moment Krasskorr’s jaw crunched under her fist before he flew back, and Mercy sensed Srina at her back.
Mercy gasped before she had time to say anything, jerking suddenly as power coursed back into her body like a live-wire. Every sinew burned again as the power of the Phobis entered her. She'd have to remind herself to thank Quinn Varanin
for unleashing that monstrosity into the area.
She loved the way it made her feel. Even if she was unaware how that same damned thing was trying to get her killed by influencing Arris.
"Oh... darling, come now. I promised to get you back home by midnight, you can't blame me for doing just that."
Krasskorr was starting to recover from his daze after he flattened the stormtroopers send by Meliant
. Rather rude, if you asked Mercy. Then Srina whirled around, her back pressing into Mercy's, because Da'Razel
had returned to the fold. Mercy's attention was squarely on the reptile as the Empress and the Warlord swapped opponents.
The heat had returned though, that much was clear.
"I never stop, Srina, you should know that." Then the lizard threw a pillar. She stepped in, feeling the Empress follow along, so not an inch of room was between them.
Mercy's hands caught the stone, and the force of it vibrated through her arms, down to her spine, and she felt her bones crack and split, even as it drove her back. Feeling the vibrations through her thick arms, causing her spine to almost creak with how she forced herself to stabilize in that moment.
She shifted the momentum, traveled with it rather than against it, and threw it off to the side. Then again with the second pillar, only now with a hungry pained growl.
Its stonework was cutting into her arms, shards rending her face.
The third pillar Mercy couldn’t grab fast enough. Too fast, but luckily Mercy didn’t need to, as she instead stepped into it. Powering through as the heavy duracrete smashed into her, making her step back, but Mercy remained rooted and did not falter.
“My turn.” She hissed and then exploded back into movement. Reaching the reptile took no time at all, between one and two breaths, she was already upon him.
Sudden darkness reigned and the only lights that tore through the night were caused by the storm or tools of war: sabers, blaster bolts, fell Force energies screaming through the sky, and so on. The opposition had failed to find the rat in their machine and now she, along with her helpers, were enforcing a horror motif upon them all. All systems were down, save for those entirely unconnected to the grid.
Now only the flames from Da'Razel kept things relatively lit. Nice, but unnecessary.
They wouldn't escape. Not now, not ever.
Mercy had given them the option to flee, but now she was running out of patience. She had the taste of blood in her now. Already something ancient was stirring inside of her, desperate to rip them to shreds.
Even as shadows and flames cloaked them, Mercy felt Krasskorr the Maw
, and slammed into him. Eagerly, full of murderous intent, as her fists tried to pound into him. These were the arms that shredded metal like paper and now they were attempting to tear into flesh.
To rip the reptile apart, to skin him alive if possible.
"Vengeance is all I have, and in its fires I will consume you."
Plasmatic blades, the sheen of freshly spilled blood, scorched the air as it cut through wall and floor, leaving behind molten rivulets of liquefied metal. A blade that shined like brilliant sun-gold flashed to meet it wherever it swung, orange sparks splattering off when they connected. Small fires burst into being as tapestries and banners caught alight amidst their struggle.
Daella Apparine twirled backwards, soaring through the air right as the Sith Lord's carved through where she had just been a moment prior. Ruthlessly, he pressed her back, always advancing and attacking. The Dark Side swelled tumultuously around him, like a roaring tsunami that threatened to drag everything down into the dark depths of an endless abyss.
Yet, he was no berserker, he'd not lost himself to rage. To his own surprise, he was marvelously calm. Certainty and clarity of thought unburdened his mind of blinding anger, and he fought with the surety of a well-honed machine. Even so, Daella Apparine was not to be out-matched, and she met him blow-for-blow without fail. There was a reason she was a Master of the Jedi Order, yet even in the midst of battle there was something beneath the surface that tugged at Vornskr's curiosity.
Their blades met, sparkling and crackling. Daella smiled, lips curling to reveal the faintest shine of her white teeth. "It seems so small-minded and self-centered to go all this way to fight me." Her expression darkened, brow knit in determination. "This is my territory, though."
Vornskr's expression was stricken with confusion, though obscured by his horned mask. What did she mean by that? There was more to this than he understood, and the hair on the back of his neck straightened as the whisper of the truth began to dawn on him.
"And I have a duty to fulfill," she snapped with another grin, "I do not take kindly to obstacles."
She deactivated her blade and rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding the Sith's blade as it suddenly swept down. Vornskr, unbalanced, righted himself with the Force before he could fully tumble face-forward. When he whirled back towards Daella, she was already full-sprinting away from him, back towards the main atrium of the Temple. Before she was out of ear-shot, she looked back and called out to him.
"Pity, Vornskr, that vengeance is all that you are. If you seek something higher, then hold your tongue and watch."
Then she was gone, disappearing further down the corridor.
Vornskr had no choice but to pursue.
Down the road to destiny.
Carnifex walked through the gaping wound in the Palace's side, His shadow stretching far into the ruined interior as alarm klaxons screamed in all directions. The betrayal which had transpired mere moments ago cut deep through all levels, the signs were everywhere. Loyalists and traitors lay side by side, entwined in mutual destruction.
Fighting still occurred sporadically, the two sides of the Faithless killing one another amidst the ongoing siege. The Dark Lord made no effort to avoid their fighting, but neither did He actively seek it. Had the Faithless kept their suicidal bloodletting to themselves, then He paid them no mind. When their weapons, loyalist or traitor, turned against Him, then there was little recourse other than to destroy them.
Long gone was the needless and performative cruelty of His youth. Vornskr might have made it into a demonstration, but Carnifex only cared for results. He killed them quickly; crushed, diced, electrified. The weakened forces within the Palace would prove little challenge, not when they were so busy purging themselves.
As always, Darth Isolda followed behind the Dark Lord. She'd forgone the protective bubble during the initial assault, having viewed it as unnecessary now that they were inside. From what her visions detailed, those who could even pose a threat, as meager as it was, had already been moved outside of the Palace to fight the Covenant. Undoubtedly, whoever had orchestrated the betrayal had seen to the quiet dismantling of the Palace's most robust defenses.
The Dark Lord suspected that whoever it was hadn't anticipated Him arriving alongside the Covenant, but then again He'd never made His intentions known to anyone but the Sith Empress. He believed there was a connection to be found between the traitor Faithless and the Covenant, but Isolda's prophecies had nothing to do with the intricacies of such things; they'd only focused on the general course of the battle. Had they known what to look for, then it'd be a different matter.
Nonetheless, despite the ongoing Faithless schism, Carnifex and Isolda had but one destination in mind.
The Throne Room.
Seat of the Faithless.
A den of idolatry.
Several destinies converged there, fewer than initially anticipated. One had been cut short, visions of an older woman standing defiantly before the empty throne swam at the forefront of the Dark Lord's mind. That future no longer existed. Instead, her lightless eyes stared up into nothingness, snuffed out by a traitor's edict.
What would come next was unknown even to Isolda. Prophecies only revealed so much, and the future was always in motion.
The dry response was lifted by the wintry sarcasm the Empress exuded through teeth that ground so tightly together they might crack. She kept the focus of the Fire Giant while they moved in tandem, as if they had fought together for years, rather than a singular mishap over a tobacco pipe in another galaxy. Srina maintained, deadpan, that the offending object had simply leapt out of Mercy’s hand and into the waiting valley below…But that was neither here nor there.
Things were moving quickly now…From the defection to an explosion that was a little too close for comfort, she could no longer distinguish individual deaths from the masses that perished in waves. Srina shifted smoothly to adjust when the Warlord was driven back by a renewed assault from the crocodile, the line of her form covered, always, so that she could keep drinking down the power the living fire offered without interruption.
The sheer heat should have driven her to her knees…But she refused to break, palm out, pointed toward the towering, shambling entity that Da'Razel
had dragged into being. Metaphysical fingers crawled along the surface of the creature while she wove herself into its structure, searching for seams, threads, to pull on and exploit. It was a slow process…
But she didn’t have time for slow.
Her fingers curved, turning, and her chin raised while her hand formed a fist and she peeled away even more tendrils of cosmic fire. It streamed toward her, stronger now, and it was about then that Krasskorr the Maw
recovered from a bone-shattering punch to the face, plus a sudden assault by his own stormtroopers. The crocodile was very likely…Not having a very good day. Unfortunately, it was about to get worse.
When Mercy
started to throw the first pillar to the side, Srina reacted swiftly, as if they had communicated, but no words were spoken. Her free hand twisted, not to form flame, but to use the energy that she was collecting in spades. The longer it remained on the field, the more she could take in…But she could already feel it clanging around in her body, violent, trying to find a way out. So…The pale woman would let it free.
A ring of ember-bright sigils snapped into existence, hissing like a furnace, with an edge of rotating molten-gold lines. Another ring ignited a breath later, offset—Paired.
The nearest pillar rose and shot itself through a portal that was just large enough to accommodate it. The second had opened high in the sky, partially obscured by the storm, and she returned the duracrete Imperial property to its most religious supporter. Not directly… But from a space high overhead…One, then the other, one-way portals opening and closing to jettison objects that would fall like kinetic bombardment.
When she heard Mercy
shout from the weight of the stone tearing her muscles apart, she thought the behemoth might have finally taken it too far…But alas, no. There was a displacement of air from behind her, and she instinctively knew that the Warlord would go after the lizard which left her the loud, loud, very loud priest.
Sudden darkness reigned and the only lights that tore through the night were caused by the storm or tools of war: sabers, blaster bolts, fell Force energies screaming through the sky, and so on. The opposition had failed to find the rat in their machine and now she, along with her helpers, were enforcing a horror motif upon them all. All systems were down, save for those entirely unconnected to the grid.
Srina did not slow when darkness fell, even though it did leave her at a distinct disadvantage. Part of her strength lay in Echani eyes that were keener than most, seeing what no one else could. She could need to be careful of her blind spots, but the Dark Side did not require illumination to be effective. Her gaze found the Firedancer by the pressure of his faith. He was flashy, exhausting, but incandescent. He obviously wanted to be seen.
Who was she to deny his wish?
Once more…The ring on her finger began to vibrate, but this time, she wouldn’t have to rely on her own reserves. Between the amplification by the Phobis Core and the might she was stripping from the Fire Giant, there was no need. Stolen fire did not remain fire. She inverted it, and the temperature around her collapsed in a violent shockwave. Frost raced across the broken floor, climbing slag and broken stone, before snapping outward in a sub-zero surge.
It wasn’t the wave she sent before.
This was new.
Jagged spears of ice tore into existence, but they weren’t thrown blindly. They tracked—Drawn to the Firedancer’s heat signature. The attack howled through the dark, shrieking, while they sought to impale the priest, and Srina’s gaze never left him. Her head tilted, and another volley appeared, then another. Sronias flared…
Still…It was not enough.
More spears arrived in rapid succession, each emergence marked by a concussive crack, hammering the space Da'Razel
occupied. Where he stood, where he might move, where escape would tempt him. She used the darkness like a weapon, driving the assault down without pause to breathe. The Empress advanced with every summon, relentless, while the Fire Giant shuddered as more of its essence was ripped away.
She spent the power the instant it touched her skin, striking again, and again, and again—Without mercy, without hesitation, without end.
Her voice slipped through the air, a low, ominous growl.
As he dragged his enormous body over the twisted remnants of the 551st traitors, he glimpsed through the smog the Empress Srina Talon
starting to weave the very essence of the battlefield itself. The pillars he had thrown, powerful as they were and intended to bury her, were being consumed by molten-gold rifts and ejected as kinetic meteors targeting the Saint.
Then, the last flickers of light in the palace extinguished, engulfed by a void that would have unsettled a weaker being. However, Krasskorr was a hunter, accustomed to navigating murky swamps with poor visibility on the fringes of the Galactic Empire. With scent taking the place of direct vision, he could detect her presence in the shift of air before he even heard her footsteps. Mercy
was heading straight for him, a freight train of golden malice and torn armor.
He waited for her to land the first blow, as the Warlord exploded into his space her fists aiming to tear him apart. Instead of backing away, he absorbed a vicious hit to the shoulder that made him reel, forcing him down into the ground.
However, he leveraged that downward force to stabilize himself. He coiled his powerful, muscular tail, its hefty thagomizer at the tip shimmering with a subtle dark-side energy. "Fool.." His mangled jaw hissed, with a guttural roar that sprayed blood across the floor, Krasskorr pivoted his entire three-ton weight.
Channeling the destructive energies swirling around them into his core, swinging his tail in a devastating horizontal arc. It wasn't just a physical strike but a localized earthquake. The spiked tip of his tail, reinforced by the surge of the Dark Side ensured that Mercy
could not potentially avoid it without being shredded by the spikes crossing motion.
Krasskorr didn't look to see if it worked, immediately thrashing with his claws in wide arcs to make the hunter into the prey.
The rest of the trip was nothing special. A few more checkpoints, a few more remarks from Hasuras Na-Amoun followed by his peeling laughter. Eventually they came to the audience chamber, which was strewn with the corpses of sovereign protectors and stormtroopers. The embellished reliefs were pock-marked, scorched, and torn in the same confrontation that killed them all. There was nothing left alive here.
So it was only Arris and Eurydice who witnessed Amoun throwing open the heavy doors to the throne room, exposing a stark, imposing circular chamber. A great vaulted ceiling vanished into darkness. Great banners sat dusty and undisturbed. A sinister metal chair dominated the center.
"Behold, the Imperial seat!" Amoun declared, spreading his hands wide as the doors opened. "Empty, as per usual. They could've installed a wax figure at least."
Simple consoles lined the walls. These were tied to a vast array of communications equipment. enabling the Emperor to transmit his pronouncements directly to the whole of the Empire. Just what Windrun required.
Amoun strolled in, pausing just after passing the threshold to incline his head one way - as if listening to something. He heard the voices of his Tribunes, reporting on the unfolding battle and the approach of Darth Carnifex. They, in turn, heard his orders. Amoun shortly returned his attention to the present moment.
"Make whatever it is you're doing quick. Carnifex is walking here and I'm not planning on waving my lightsabers at him."
Carnifex wasn't part of the deal at all. He was far above Amoun's paygrade and would probably remain that way for a decade or so. So the up-and-coming Emperor Amoun posted himself up against a nearby console, arms folded, and waited impatiently for Arris to execute her routine.
Darth Carnifex
Inconsequential though it may have been, the soldiers of the 551st and the auxiliaries they commanded troubled Darth Carnifex no further. They absented themselves from the hallways he traversed, returning only once he had well and truly passed. No hope in stopping him, no point in making the attempt.
Outside, the artillery strikes against the Blackblades finally ceased. The palace courtyard - save for the uppermost steps and breaches where the 551st were conducting their savage purge - was now absent of Imperial forces, either dead or fled.
St. Thomas Barran
The same could not be said of the surrounding city blocks. Amoun still held command of the battalions embedded within the rest of the Federal District. Rattled and tested by skirmishes with Covenant soldiers, but still in fighting shape. Their officers were enthralled to Amoun, just as the Tribunes of the 551st were.
Transmissions went out quickly: Barran was attempting a coup against the Empire. He had rallied the citizenry of Coruscant to his mad cause, armed them against standing policy, and was now leading an insurrectionist mob towards the palace.
Barran and his units were to be destroyed.
The Maw-Khan and his forces would be subjected to the same onslaught of artillery that had been previously directed against the Blackblade Legion. Every centimeter they advanced towards the palace was contested by stormtrooper checkpoints, marksmen nests, minefields, and wire. Not to mention the armored units that blockaded the avenues.
A flight of gunships - surplus left over from the days of the Dark Empire - suddenly peeled out from the palace hangars under escort of atmospheric strike craft. These would doggedly strafe the more lightly armed elements of Barran's cohort whenever they happened to rear their heads.
The soldiers of the Empire had been drilled into unthinking obedience. They did not question orders from the palace. Amoun delighted in wielding this blind loyalty against its architects. They would fight on, even as the Federal District was consumed by darkness, storm, and bombardment. It was a war fought in hell.
Untold numbers of Imperial soldiery now died for the sake of an empty throne, either to keep it that way or to see it filled by a rank and despicable traitor.
The skies above the imperial palace were black as pitch. Gerra could see nothing through the forward viewport as the Hysten churned through the Force Storm save when crimson threads of lightning flashed, threading between the grim clouds.
Gerra seethed with a hatred and a fury. He loathed cowards, given honors and position without merit. Now he could come to judge them, and Vahl would revel in the destruction he wrought.
Lightning from the Force Storm struck the Hysten and Gerra held up a hand against the blinding light. The shields failed, cleaved dry by the raw power of the Storm. In that instant, lightning struck again, forking in a half-dozen arcs as if it despised the presence of this vessel which dared to tread through it. It blasted the hull, frying electronics and melting durasteel to slag. The Hysten groaned ominously and tilted, engines sputtering.
"Great Qhan, we should turn back," cried the helmsman.
"No, no. I can sense him. He's just below us."
More tendrils of lightning rained down and smote the Star Destroyer. Two of the massive ion engines failed entirely.
"We are losing thrust, Qhan!"
Alarms blared inside the bridge. Then the anti-gravity repulsors failed and the Star Destroyer tilted toward the ground.
"Fire consecrate us," whispered the helmsman, "We are falling."
Gerra snarled, staring out the viewport. He could still sense the presence of St. Thomas Barran just below.
"Bring us down on top of him."
"Qhan?"
Shoving aside the helmsman, Gerra seized the controls and guided the mighty Star Destroyer in its implacable descent toward the ground. He strained at the controls and the active repulsors flared.
With an almighty crunch of durasteel, the thousand meters of Star Destroyer came down upon the surface of Coruscant, crushing everything in its path as it ground through the High Flats and toward the steps of the Imperial Palace. Whatever lay beneath it would surely be obliterated instantly.
The impact flung Gerra against the bridge's viewport and he toppled out the shattered front, flying free and landing against the hull of the Star Destroyer far below. His armor bit into him and he felt a rib snap within him.
The Star Destroyer's wreckage came to a grinding halt.
The Qhan of the Vahla groaned, then let out a bellow as he drew upon the Dark Side for strength. I am the Flame of Vahl. He rose to his feet and with great bounding leaps aided by the Force jumped from the prow of the Star Destroyer to the ground far below, where waited his hated foe.
The Khan of the Maw, whose assembled forces were surely obliterated beneath the weight of the falling Star Destroyer.
No more would the Khanate contingent elude their enemies, and with air-to-ground bombardments lessening to noticeable extreme, Barran, Katis and Kryze had a freedom of movement they initially lacked at the start of the assault; and with that same amplification of mobility, the newly-grown agglomeration could strike all the more quickly at their desired targets, especially with hindrances between objectives diminishing to a new, and still-descending low. Much worse for those who remained to slow their advance, as there would be more than scions of Yesteryear's Trinity to face by then, and with the local Coruscanti element still rallying to their defenders, more yet still would step forth to fire upon the planet's assailants.
Along the way, the lights briefly flickered as power fluctuated throughout the city. It seemed Riffraff managed to turn out the lights after all, good for her, but the Imperial Palace - as expected - had its own power source, and thus the lights within remained on.
Amoun threw the Throne Room doors open and proclaimed upon an empty seat. Lack of use was evident from the amount of dust that accumulated. When the traitor mentioned the approach of Carnifex, Arris only paused to look at him for a moment's consideration. Was that another of the Dark Side Elite come to stop them? Mercy, naturally, failed to mention him by name. Of course, it wasn't to the Dark Lord's discredit that Windrun was unfamiliar. She was just truly ignorant of Sith Order politics and spent most of her life living in the gutters of Talus or Narsh. Not the places where Dark Lords were discussed.
She looked back at Eurydice, which was becoming something of a recurring activity at this point as the girl followed along. "Find something to do."
Realizing how that might be taken out of context, she recorrected. "Meditate."
Then, Arris approached the communications consoles and inserted her cyberjack and got to work...
ELSEWHERE. Across the ecumenopolis, it was lights out under a dark crimson sky. Flashes of lightning and turbolaser illuminated a capital under siege. Whole skyscrapers collapsed, burning like a great forest against the dusk. Among the sound of thunder and battle, PA systems had been repeating a single phrase one second after the other.
Arris spoke - emulating the Emperor's voice just as she practiced. Already, the vision of him was burned into the minds of thousands or more. Perhaps some smelled the ruse, but would the soldiers under the duress of battle? Would the ordinary people in their panic? A personality cult was a difficult thing to shake, and in all likelihood, hearing his voice radiate from the Emperor's own channels was enough for even officers to believe.
She continued, letting her Hatred seethe coldly into each word.
"You thought you could imprison me."
A pause.
"You thought I wouldn't reclaim control of my empire. You should have killed me while you had the chance. I don't care that you tried. I care that you failed."
All across the ecumenopolis, in the streets, along official imperial challenges, his voice was heard.
And finally, an order followed, going out across all imperial channels. With the Palace under Amoun's control, this meant the jammers would not stop the transmissions from going out all across the Deep Core, to imperial stations, garrisons, fleets, and beyond.
"Purge... Everything..."
The transmission cut after that, and Arris stepped away from the console. She turned back to Amoun.
Making the assumption that what worked against his usual foe, would ever work on someone like Mercy. His spiked tail lashed out, but she did not try to dodge.
The tail slammed into something, just as Krasskorr wished, but the reptile didn't look to verify.
So he would have no idea knowing what was about to happen until it was too late. Mercy had caught said tail in golden arm. An inhumane force moved to seize him as he began to thrash, allowing Mercy to stay out of reach... as she yanked with that monstrous strength behind her. There were those that could use the Force to yank down Star Destroyers with Telekinesis.
Compared to that, three hundred tons was nothing that Mercy couldn't handle on an average day. On a day where the gifted power of Phobis coursed through her veins? It was like lifting a pebble before smashing it into the ground once, twice, shattering it against the floor. Which is exactly what Mercy tried to do, using Krasskorr's weight against him to break every bone in his body.
Irrespective of if she succeeded she called out to Srina over her shoulder.
"Let's wrap this up, darling. I tire of wasting my time on these servants. I have a throne room to settle in."
The world suddenly titled as the golden claw of the War-Titan sought to clamp around the end of his tail. Krasskorr experienced the nauseating crunch of bone as her inhuman grip penetrated his tough hide, crushing the smaller vertebrae near the thagomizer. He had anticipated her being torn apart by the spikes, yet he felt the impossible tug of a being that appeared to defy the laws of physics.
Three tons of Saurton muscle and armor were lifted into the air like a child's plaything. Krasskorr emitted a strangled roar of disbelief as the ground rushed up to meet him. CRACK. He collided with the glassed duracrete, the impact jarring his brain and fracturing ribs that had already been compromised by the Empress's sonic bellows.
Before he could even take a ragged breath, she lifted him up once more. The one aspect that Mercy
underestimated about him was that a trapped beast is at its most powerful. As he was lifted for the second slam, he did not resist the momentum as expected. Instead, he leaned into it, curling his body towards his own tail.
Her hand was both golden and monstrous, yet it was small. She managed to grasp the tip of his tail, but she couldn't encircle her palm around the thick, muscular base where his strength was greatest. Given the urgency of this situation, he would need to activate his secret weapon to ensure his survival in this confrontation.
As Mercy swung him down for the final, bone-shattering strike, Krasskorr reached out with a clawed hand, not for her, but for the manual release valves on his combat harness. He waited until his body was inches from her face, the momentum of her own throw bringing them into a violent, intimate proximity.
HISS.
He triggered the canisters secured to his belt. A dense, opaque burst of Karrak spice erupted creating a fine, sparkling dust that enveloped the area between them. This was a powerful force-suppressor lasting up to forty-eight hours, a genuine terror for anyone depending on the currents of the Dark Side to sustain their claimed divinity, and no source indicated that it required injection.
The effect was instantaneous. The roar of the Phobis Core in his mind dimmed to a distant static, and the supernatural strength Mercy was drawing from the Empress stuttered. The sudden vacuum of the Force felt like a physical blow, a chilling silence in a world that had been screaming.
Krasskorr hit the floor with a wet thud, the breath leaving his lungs in a pained wheeze. He was a broken mess his tail mangled, his jaw shattered, and his vision fading but he watched through the haze of the spice as Mercy was engulfed in the dust.
Without the Force to anchor her or the Phobis to swell her veins, she was just flesh and bone.
And Krasskorr was mightier in terms of raw strength. He lunged through the suppression cloud, both fists curled into an uppercut toward her throat in a desperate, primal bid to take the Titan down into the dirt with him.
Atop his visor warning light blinked rapidly in crimson strobes, blaring, urgent, insistent.
His vision was blinded, but returned as if he emerged from dark depths into the light, breaching its surface.
Where am I? What is this?
The sky was blood red. The clouds shredded and flayed, heaven's flesh torn from its bones by the claws of war.
Higher still, in the darkness beyond the bleeding atmosphere, rained ships. Their hulls bore the black and crimson of the Kainite fleet, their outlines illuminated by the drumming strikes of nexus-charged lightning that arced between them.
The world crumbled around him. Broken by one dozen deities. God-like in their destruction.
Coruscant was swallowed by literal darkness.
Yet everything stood in ruin and flame. Nothing was spared the fire's brutal bite. In the distance pyre poured from the Siegemother's carcass, whilst it spilled its molten innards across the Federal District.
Hub-blocks across entire districts stood ablaze, rhythmically beating fire-tongues that licked at the sky with hungry devotion. A heat so intense it made the stone pop and bubble like flesh aflame.
The palace was blown open, wearing a terrified expression as it bore witness to its own unmaking. Columns lay shattered like broken teeth.
There was no sacred marble floor. There were just bodies. Drifting among small rivers of blood that carved their own tributaries through the rubble. Shot. Torn. Sliced open. Beaten. Burned. Murdered. Limbs without owners. Faces without names.
There was no stopping them. The Sith deities of the Order and the Covenant had delivered catastrophic destruction upon Coruscant.
In this absent-minded moment, pictures hushed across his vision like haunting ghosts. The Father, bless that mans soul. Cademimu V, where he found his faith. Those golden piercing eyes, Vireth where ever they may be, may they be safe. The Church of Saint Korvan. He thought back to other night skies over Coruscant, he had surely seen its last. Then Empire Day. The God-Emperor's shadow falling across a galaxy brought to heel. The Furnace atop the temple. His furnace. His congregation…
He remembered it all.
The crash. The Sith Empress. The Lord of the Kainite. The Warlord Titan… Meliant
that name a curse, a brand of treachery seared into his mind.
His congregation was dead. The souls burned no longer, their last fire spent, embers scattered among the uncaring void.
At the speed of thought, neural downloads of recovered reports and telemetry flooded his consciousness. Casualties scrolled past his cracked visor. His shoulders sank beneath their weight.
The Zherach was screaming. Screaming in his head. It was dying.
The expulsion of the stored djinn of living fire, the conjuration his cult had wrought on Korriban, at the black mouth of Tulak Hord's tomb, summoned through the same ritual with which the Blackwall had been assaulted, siphoned from the billion souls sacrificed upon Atrisia's burning face, could not prevail against Srina Talon
Its living seams of Force-fire were torn and shunned. Flames recycled into the Empresses own brand of power. A living incarnation of his worship reduced to kindling by the witches winter.
The Saint had remained a moment frozen. Tormented. His visor split, long gashes carved through his faceless visage. Mercy
had broken him with her counterstrike.
He stood there, his gilded armor a spectral liquid mirror reflecting the searing heat of the hellscape in which he stood.
A crater. The edge cooled to a black glass. In its midst bubbled a puddle of duracrete, molten into a glowing basin of slag, glinting embers dancing across it like red fireflies courting oblivion.
Ahh yes… Coruscant.
He suddenly understood the meaning of the blaring red warning lights on his shattered visor.
Combat.
His view went dark as concrete pillars shuddered and collapsed over and about him, tumbling into the crater with the loud shattering of stone. Burying him under a never-settling pile of debris, as fine dust speckles were carried away by the storm.
The Zherach's screams echoed further in his pounding head. A child crying for a father who could not save it.
He tried with his left hand to push the rubble away, and had to come to terms that there was no left hand. Nothing remained but a metallic whirring stub sparking at the joint, cables dangling like severed arteries, the fingers that had gripped the Kotjontû scattered somewhere in the ruin.
The same could be said for synthetic components of his torso, ruptured cables and whirring servos exposed where armor plating had been ripped away.
Da'Razel whispered the Ur-Kittât invocation. The last protection rune on his Lignan tank faded. The emergency protocol overwritten.
The crystalline powder whirred in his lungs, pushed through oral tubes by a painful whirring. The compound burned as it metabolized, searing his airways, flooding his bloodstream with liquid purpose.
He breathed again.
Light flooded his veins. The birth-fires of worlds. His core became a lowly smelting furnace once more. Sundered roars, the war songs of a weaponsmith, echoed through his broken frame.
Light fractured through the cracked helmet, spilling out in jagged beams.
MOOOOORE!
A fire of wrath and fury. Righteous fury.
The colossus exploded, a violent outburst of flames erupting from the rubble. A phoneix tearing itself from the ashes. He emerged among the shattered stone to witness the Empress of ice slaying his living fire golem, gorging herself upon its flames as she tore it apart with crystal sharp claws.
So he snuffed it out.
Murdered his creation.
Strangled it whilst it sought refuge in the arms of its Fire Father. The Saint could not feast upon energies as his peers could, but he was fire and the fire was him and his to control.
His pinched white-gleaming visor stared back at the Empress Srina Talon
with murderous intent.
And in his wretched white-gleaming fury, he seared himself in the heat of his creation. Consumed the Zherach's dying essence. Made its death part of his resurrection.
The icicle assault that ensued was held back with a fireburst, flames roaring outward in a defensive corona, vaporizing crystalline spears before they could find purchase in his ruined form.
He stood. Broken but burning. Diminished but defiant.
MOOOOORE!
He drew the Gehinnom Divinatus from his back.
The holy great bow, relic of the forge-world, emerged into the hellscape like a sliver of divinity. He beheld its stellar beauty, even now. The gilded residue of the worldship's hull trailed from its limbs in molten golden droplets, baptized anew in the heat of this crucible. Sacred metal wept tears of liquid gold, each drop hissing as it struck the slag beneath his feet.
He held the bow's belly in his remaining hand. Fingers laid around the grip, in reverence, accepting martyrdom.
His left arm was tucked at the elbow, as if about to pull the lace back on the fire-born longbow. A phantom motion. A muscle memory that reached for a limb no longer there.
Until it was.
Living fire mimicked the lost appendage, flames coiling and shaping themselves into fingers, wrist, forearm.
The glowing giant drew a long stable beam of plasma across the bow's chest, the string of light singing with barely-contained annihilation.
The endless onslaught was a bladed blizzard given murderous purpose. Each one dying in the heat-corona that surrounded the Saint.
Bursting into hissing vapor in angry bursts of steam. But they were chipping away at him. Eroding. Finding purchase in the gaps of his failing defences.
He did not have long.
MOOOOOOOOORE!
He pulled, pouring himself into the beam. Embedding his wishes. His hopes. His conviction. Every ounce of faith he had left, threaded into that single bolt of annihilation.
He knew better than to fire a blast of this magnitude at such close range. The backfire would be catastrophic. The heat-bloom alone would cook what remained of his organic systems. The plasma discharge would tear through his own armor as surely as it would tear through her.
He did not care. His people dead and betrayed, his god elsewhere.
"For the Emperor" he uttered calmly.
Then, he let go.
A scream like the wretched culling of a Sith Wyrm roared across the plaza, the bow's release, a death-song given voice. The Saint's own life-force fired in the bolt, a massive crackling lance of plasma that shrieked toward the Empress of Ice as if hurled by the fury of a sun-god.
But he never saw its result.
For moments later, with the sound of a city spilling its guts, the world roared.
The ground heaved. In pain. In agony.
The sky split. Reality itself seemed to flinch.
Hasuras Na-Gerra
had plunged the iron leviathan trailing fire and ruin.
It shook itself and tore asunder as it clashed with ten thousand more souls that were extinguished in a single impact.
A second Star Destroyer-class vessel made landfall.
Closer even than its predecessor. A second Damocles sword descending to decapitate Coruscant.
An earthquake of such magnitude to fell the very foundation upon which the palace stood.
The skyline drowned out by the new mountain-range of metal and madness.
Barran?
The name flickered through his mind, a half-formed question, a recognition of the Maw's own brand of madness that would surely descend upon them. Save them.
The world erupted in fire.
And the Saint of Fire was swallowed by it.
Comes to after Mercy's headbutt
Has concrete rubble dropped on him
Absorbs his last Lignan tank
Sacrifices his Zherach, living fire golem
Protects against the icicle onslaught
Fire his bow
The 2nd SD crashes into the Palace
Name: Khar-Vorn(Deceased) Health: 0% ░░░░░░░░░░░░
Force User: No
Appearance: Devaronian male, heavily scarred, lower jaw replaced with a brass restraint frame, back and shoulders branded into overlapping furnace sigils
Appearance: Human female with vitrified burn-scarred skin, and iron nails driven through spine and collarbones; wears a scorched modular assault cuirass with ritual markings
Strengths: Jet-assisted close-quarters executioner, fearless under fire, highly mobile ritual enforcer
Weaknesses: Short-burst jet systems strain her damaged body, armor inferior to true Mandalorian gear
Thank every deity there was and wasn't. She hadn't been brought here as some form of blood sacrifice.
Eurydice found a not-so-cozy spot near the throne to settle down against. Legs crossed, eyes closed, she reached into the weave of the Force. Her touch was gentle but sure, like a virtuoso plucking the strings of a harp.
The Seers of Ukatis - among whom her education in the Force had begun - were not warriors. Their touch was softer, and far more subtle; whispered suggestions and nudges helped to shape the world they lived in. Novice though she was, it was a familiar art - and one that, underneath the tutelage of Darth Nefaron
, had grown more potent.
Her will leant a measure of gravity to the false Solipsis - the graveling baritone of his voice resonated with more depth, and the quiet breath between each cold declaration lingered with a more organic control.
Thought it all, the girl was fueled by her own fear. Solipsis' presence, conjured by the memory of his voice, frightened her.
Arris cut the transmission, and that was that. Until Coruscant itself trembled beneath the gargantuan impact of the Hysten.
Even the sturdiest of walls began to sway. Eurydice's eyes popped open, throughly pulled from her meditative state.
"Wh-what was tha-"
One of the great stone pilasters gave warning as it groaned, then crashed unceremoniously over the vacant throne.
Eurydice choked on her own gasp while attempting to scramble away. Fortunately, she managed to clamber out from the column's shadow as it fell, but a rogue chunk of debris found its mark at the side of her head.
The girl collapsed in a heap of dark fabric, mercifully unconscious.
Darth Vornskr watched from above, standing at the edge of a balcony overlooking the Temple atrium. He'd chased Daella Apparine from further within the Jedi Temple to here, and this was where the pursuit had ended. The Jedi Master had leapt into the fray, putting herself between another Jedi, Ben Watts, and the hulking Maelibus, Darth Shara, whom Vornskr had come to know and respect in recent weeks.
Yet, something kept him from leaping to Shara's aid. A dark feeling that tugged at the edge of his perception, that this was all ordained.
Orchestrated.
"Master Apparine," replied Master Watts, twirling his azure lightsaber as he settled into the defensive posture of Soresu. "I will stand with you any day." He inclined his head forward, resolute in the faith he now placed in his fellow Jedi Master.
Daella's eyes briefly looked away from Master Watts, her only reply a soft whisper.
"I see."
In response to this new threat, Darth Shara stretched forth his claws and let loose bolts of swirling blue and purple bio-electricity. The air distorted around the crackling energy, its existence a perversion of the natural order. In response, Master Apparine extended her own hand out to meet the oncoming maelstrom of hate. Just as the bolts made contact with her, they dissipated entirely as they were drawn into an intricate black tattoo that spanned the length and breadth of her hand.
"A moment, Shara," was her response.
"You know my name." This was not a question, it was a statement. No living Jedi should have known the Maelibus' name, for he had never known life beyond the purview of the Sith. The hulking Sith stretched to his full height, nearly ten feet of scintillating metallic silver hide, clutching his lightsaber with near enough strength to break it.
Uneasy, Ben Watts looked from Shara to Daella, confusion etched plainly across his face. "A moment for what?" Vornskr could nearly empathize with the Jedi, this was just as much of a shock to him as it was for the two Sith. "How do you know him?" The Jedi Master's urgent tone wavered close to accusatory, surely she would have divulged the existence of a Sith like Darth Shara to the Council had she known him prior.
Daella straightened, all the tension flowing out of her posture in an instant. She didn't look at Master Watts immediately, rather her gaze looked off further into the fight which had consumed the Temple. Beyond, near the point where the Sith had first made landfall into the Temple itself, was the Dark Lord of the Sith.
Darth Sortis.
She pointed a finger at him, marking him out from all the other Sith amongst his ranks. When she spoke, each word quivered with warring emotions.
"You see that man? That is the Dark Lord of the Sith."
When she looked back at Watts, he visibly recoiled. Her eyes, once as shining and brilliant as clear ocean waters, were now horrifically yellow; sulfuric and rancid with hatred.
"I am his apprentice." A warm smile, mocking in its sincerity, spread across her face.
"Since before the first time I walked into this Temple."
The doors to the throne room buckled inward, the metal groaning under extreme protest as an immense force pressed against them. As they fell backwards, so too did the whole of the Palace rumble with great tumult. Fissures spider-webbed up the wall and across the floors, exacerbated as the heavy doors slammed into the ground with a resounding thud. Loose masonry toppled over them, great clouds of dust rising as the whole structure continued to jostle and shake.
Amidst the destruction strode Darth Carnifex, Dark Lord of the Sith. About Him was a cloak of shimmering Beskar scales, each stamped with the device of a Mandalorian clan laid low; a field of desecration and ruin. At His back came Darth Isolda, Prophet of the Dark Side's infinite mysteries. Her ardent mirror-like eyes saw far greater things than anyone could ever hope to comprehend, but for now they stared forward; fixated on the Faithless throne.
A throne already crushed beneath a fallen pilaster.
The Dark Lord took a brief account of the woman sprawled out near the throne, struck into unconsciousness by part of the throne's debris. He recognized Windrun only from intelligence dossiers His agents had compiled, and the other He knew not. The Dark Lord reasonably assumed the man was responsible for the schism that had sundered the Palace's defenses, and had thrown his lot in with the Covenant which explained Windrun's presence in the throne room.
He walked as far into the throne room as He deigned, stopping about somewhere in the middle between the entrance and the throne itself. His left hand came to rest on the hilt of His lightsaber, safely tucked into the holster at His hip; a gesture He made sure everyone could see.
"An amusing turn of events to be sure," when the Dark Lord spoke, all other sounds briefly deafened. "What now is to be done with the Faithless rabble, disemboweled by their own hand? Perhaps this world should burn, and all those who followed the Faithless Emperor made to kindle its flames."
His words hung in the air, the meaning in them clear and unmistakable.
There was a moment when she foolishly thought, perhaps, that this flame caller might stay down. When the pillars dropped from the sky, she hadn't expected it to do much more than distract, to place him on the back foot, but he took them head. For a breath or two the wintry woman felt the battlefield exhale. It wasn't with peace, never that, but the startling lull that came when something finally stopped moving.
But then…The small crater coughed up a resurrection.
Flame tore up through the debris in a violent spray and a corona of heat snapped into being around him that met her ice spears head on. Despite the fact that they were imbued with the black might of the Dark Side, they were melted with ease, hissing away as if they had never been. Her eyes were full of light from the Fire Golem but they hardened as she watched the complete ineffectiveness of her efforts…So she doubled them.
Watching…Watching while his heavenly halo ate her sub-zero attacks again, and again, and again. Srina's jaw clenched until the muscles in her face ached.
It was work. Real work, ugly work, to keep hammering Da'Razel
like this. To summon, shape, throw, and correct her spears repeatedly, while keeping his flame avatar on a leash was exhausting in a way she didn't have the words for. He stood tall inside the defensive burst of light and endured, focused on something, but Srina didn't intend to give him any quarter. She adjusted the angles of every projectile on instinct, not by sight, reaching through the Force to test the subtle give of his barrier.
Her mind could feel where it thinned and where it flared to deflect and protect. It was like trying to break down a locked titanium door with her bare hands.
Then…This man, this priest, chose to kill his own beast.
She was cut off from the energy well with a jolt and she felt it acutely. The Sith Empress could fell him buildingtoward something with the way the heat deepened. Even though the Flame Giant had crashed down into nothing, absorbed by its maker, the area still felt like a furnace. It was probably only because of the frost she created that the air was even breathable without burning away the soft skin of the esophagus. Her ring began to vibrate against bone, hard, and it only made her teeth clench harder…Her will, firming.
Sronias was not a gentle ally. It protected her, fought for her, and enhanced her cryo-related talents but it also demanded of her. The metal bit into her finger. The cold bled into her joints until her knuckles stiffened and her palms began to ache with the slow, creeping wrongness of frostburn. She looked down once, unable to see through her armor, but she knew the cost of prolonged use. She did not stop. Her breathing didn't hitch, didn't shake.
Victory…True victory, required sacrifice.
The Priest needed to die.
Not because she hated him, or his rhetoric, but because he an obstacle between her and the palace's heart. Because Mercy was still out there, trading blow for blow with a mutant crocodile, and because Srina refused to let a man in an armored dress with a god-complex stand in their way. She sent another volley, another. The spears arrived with concussive cracks that were like frost-born artillery firing in a blizzard. They bit at the perimeter of his shielding, testing the edges, trying to make it waste itself… It would give.
It would crack.
But then he drew his weapon of choice, a great, glowing bow—And fired.
Through the chaos and mayhem Srina could feel the threat a second before it erupted. Her yellow-gold eyes narrowed to slits while the bolt came screaming toward her with annihilation. She moved without thinking. Her hands rose, too slow for what her mind wanted, to stiff from the ring's bite, too numb at the fingertips…But she caught the incoming ruin with the only defense that might keep more of their people, especially Mercy, from being blasted away with his holy fire. They were all too close…It requiredcontainment.
A dome snapped into existence around the incoming attack, made of ice, and made architecturally sound with telekinetic barriers. She tried to swallow the fire before it could make contact and for a heartbeat…
It worked.
She could feel the pressure in her teeth, her wrists, in the bones of her forearms. The strain of holding back when felt like a super-nova inside a shell that had no right to exist. It was like trying to hold the entirety of an ocean in one, tiny tea cup. The dome trembled and screamed, creaking as it strained, but it held. It held…Until the wind shifted.
He triggered the canisters secured to his belt. A dense, opaque burst of Karrak spice erupted creating a fine, sparkling dust that enveloped the area between them. This was a powerful force-suppressor lasting up to forty-eight hours, a genuine terror for anyone depending on the currents of the Dark Side to sustain their claimed divinity, and no source indicated that it required injection.
The effect was instantaneous. The roar of the Phobis Core in his mind dimmed to a distant static, and the supernatural strength Mercy was drawing from the Empress stuttered. The sudden vacuum of the Force felt like a physical blow, a chilling silence in a world that had been screaming.
Just a whisper combined with the faint scent of something unusually sweet. Spice?
No. No…Not now. Not in thismoment. She didn't have the Flame Golem to draw from and she was already pulling as much as she could through fear, through agony, and it caused her to release a ragged breath. The whisper on the wind didn't erase her and it didn't turn off the Force like a light switch…But it did press an invisible, metaphysical thumb down on her focus. It dulled her on the edges, muddled her precision. A poison perfume…
Srina's pupils blew wide.
The dome, her dome, shivered. A fracture raced across it like lightning dancing across ice.
"..No.."
The shell cracked open and fire lashed out through the seam like a hungry, snapping tongue, and Srina's head snapped toward Mercy on instinct. Not to plead for help—But in warning.
"Mercy—!"
It was all she had time to give.
The attempt at containment failedand for two horrifying seconds the world became a flash of white heat and screaming pressure. Her body was thrown backward like she'd been shot out of a canon, armor ringing from impact, with her ring, flaring in panic as if it could somehow compensate for a literal sun going off in her face.
She couldn't stop her inertia, though, she tried to recover through the blistering, burning blow back of savage heat—It was too late. Her shielding had broken and it was sending her careening back toward Mercy
and Krasskorr the Maw
with a vengeance. Her bones felt like radioactive water, more importantly, her head was unprotected and the ground was coming up fast.
The fists came up and crashed into Mercy's jaw, causing her head to snap back and stumble backwards.
Krasskorr might have thought he finally had her. He wouldn't be the first. There were others before him, who had tried the same. Who realized that they couldn't come out on top while she held the Force and so tried to deny her the gift that was buried so deep in her flesh. They attempted it with yslamiri, bio-weapon grenades and sand among other things.
Each one of those had been a lesson to Mercy.
Her head suddenly snapped forward again. Several teeth had lodged out from her mouth because of the punch. She spit them out. Blood adding to the bloody mess on her face already.
And in the fire's light he'd realize.
Her chest wasn't moving, at all. She was holding her breath with a smirk. A touch of it had been dragged into her lungs, but the warning from Srina had been enough for Mercy to simply stop breathing entirely. The part of her that was Firrerreo was already killing the foreign particles trying to weaken her connection to the Force.
All of this was to say... that Krasskorr, already wounded, hurt and battered from his battle with Srina and now with the Warlord in front of him... was extremely close to a figure he had assumed was helpless in the face of his brute strength.
Her golden hand morphed into a blade. Once upon a time it had been a Jedi's weapon before she had corrupted it utterly. Murder in her eyes, she would cut him up, piece by piece, until there was nothing left. That was the plan, that was the desire of the Warlord.
But then the explosion boomed and a crash rocked the floor.
Out from the corner of her eye Mercy suddenly saw the bullet movement. She assumed it was a threat, Da'Razel
coming back with a vengeance while she was occupied with Krasskorr the Maw
.
"I dismiss you. Go play with the servants." Mercy snapped at the reptile, instead of skinning him alive, moving to throw him out of the palace with a kick that could break a reinforced wall. Then she whirled around to deal with the prophet... raising her arms to rip him in two and instead Mercy's eyes widened behind the specticles when it was the shape of Srina flying towards her.
She gasped, trying to reshift her position to actually catch the woman, rather than rip her to shreds.
It made her stumble back again as Srina collided with her, her arms trying to go around her to support her. Dropping down to a knee. Not realizing in the moment that most people... were far more fragile than she was, when they didn't have the Force to shield them.
"Hey, I got you, darling." Mercy murmured with a laugh. "This is the second time you are in my arms, we can't make a habit of it." Softly stroking Srina's hair, pulling her head back from the floor. Then she looked down at her, frowning.
"Darling?" Her hand felt warm, sticky. She pulled it away from the Empress' hand... and saw blood.
"...Srina?" Leaning in there, Mercy attempted to feel her pulse, her breath. But already, somewhere, behind Mercy's eyes, under her flesh. A white noise was coming up. "Come on... this is nothing..."
If you had not sinned so greatly,
Vahl would not have set a scourge like me upon you.
A figure in gilded armor strode up the steps, one hand clutched to his side. Tall was he and his hair streamed out, whipped by the winds of the storm. Red as blood. Red as flame.
In his other hand he held a Sith sword, blade dripping with gore.
His eyes like twin suns looked upon the bodies which lay scattered all about the palace steps like so many crushed leaves. Dust to dust. Ash to ash.
Behind him loomed the shape of the crash landed Star Destroyer. And in his wake were piled corpse after corpse of his enemies, slain to reach these steps.
He passed across the plaza, shouldering through Blackblades and troopers of the 551st, until he entered the palace itself. Heavy footsteps thudded upon the floor as he made his way toward the throne room.
The Karrak spice was intended to even the odds, or so he thought, transforming the demigod in front of him into nothing more than a mass of flesh. As his fists struck Mercy
's jaw, he relished the sound of crunching bone and the splatter of her blood on his knuckles. For a brief instant, the hybrid perceived triumph in the stumble of the red-haired woman.
However, her head suddenly lunged forward, her eyes radiating a light that didn't need the force directed at him. She wasn't inhaling the substance due to an early warning from the Sith Empress; instead standing resolute with lethal intent, her golden arm morphing into a jagged, corrupted blade that hissed with malice.
Krasskorr saw the kick coming, shifting his weight onto a warped part of the palace floor that had been disturbed by the fierce battle. As Mercy's foot approached his chest, he let his center of gravity adjust to the uneven marble. He moved to the side, the kick merely grazing his heavily armored hide rather than striking anything crucial.
The impact still sent him spinning, his mangled tail dragging through the dust, but he was alive. Then, the world turned to white as Da'Razel
emerged from his icy prison. The shockwave cleared the spice-laden fog in a heartbeat, but it was quickly replaced by a deafening roar of searing pain.
His remaining eye narrowed into a thin slit as he observed Srina Talon
soaring through the air like a cast-off doll, a flash of silver and crimson racing towards the warlord. Mercy's focus shattered as the predator who had been seconds away from skinning Krasskorr alive suddenly became a protector, kneeling to catch the descending Empress.
His breathing turned shallow as he scrutinized his reflection in the dim light of a stained-glass window, one eye entirely swollen shut, his jaw a wreck beyond belief, yet still functional enough, his strength waning as the adrenaline from the battle could no longer sustain him.
"The True Emperor will take her life, I will ensure he takes yours as well" Krasskorr's remaining eye sharpened, hand circling around the Lightclub, using its size to push himself up from the floor. He looked at the Warlord's back, then at the scorched hallway behind him that led deeper into the Imperial sanctum.
He could try to run away while they were both distracted but the Dark Side Elite had sworn an oath to fight to the death for the True Emperor. There was no movement from his spot, swinging the three meter long blade downward to slice them both in half with one clean stroke.
The man's speech was as impactful as any man of Thomas' caliber could muster. It was the words of a man that had seen countless battles, and more death than any could possibly comprehend. It was the sort of speech that got one yearning for some home they had never seen, or a sense of belonging to a brotherhood one might never know. A true speech for those to rally behind. Khamul, however, simply found himself waiting, his fingers tapping against the hilt of Mandalore's Lament as he waited for the green light to kill those that stood in their way.
As the Heathen Saint finally finished his speech, Khamul's hand wrapped around his blade, drawing it and letting the black and crimson tear itself forth with a snap-hiss. He raised it into the air alongside Thomas, prompting the faithful members of Death's Hand to throw their fists in the air. They let out a cry of wrath and fury, carried across the air together in a cacophanous howl.
His masked gaze drifted in the direction of the palace, his heart pumping with the fury of a thousand burning stars, his eyes fixated upon his objective as if nothing else existed in the galaxy.
This was what they were made for. This was their purpose. In this moment, Khamul remembered why he had set out on his own all of those years ago...
The galaxy would remember this day, and would shudder.
"Noelle's been walking for a week now, glad she caught up…"
Figures disappeared from my sight, and my vision settled on a woman. Her face radiated, smiling at me. I had done something good, I laughed, and she laughed with me.
She's warm… like mama… but better…
But now it's cold…
"I did not say you could leave, pitya min…"
I didn't, though. I came home… like you asked, I always come home, because you're there…
…
…
…
Where are you?
Where did you go…?
Mama…
Don't leave me…
You can't… YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME…
I NEED YOU…
Destruction swallowed the battlefield. What had once been a living city was reduced to broken spires and ash-choked streets, its voice silenced beneath the weight of war and conquest. Coruscant burned, in flame and despair.
The Force answered her — violently.
Through the draining nexus and the Phobis Core bound to her soul, Quinn remained standing. The defense reacted instinctively, lashing outward, shielding its vessel with obsessive devotion. It would not allow her harm. It could not. Without her, it would cease to exist — and it knew it. Their survival was the same thing now.
The storm fed on the world's terror.
Above, the clouds tore open like a vast and screaming wound. They rolled and collapsed inward, devouring anything that dared to move beneath them. Buildings vanished. Bodies were swallowed. There was no escape, no sanctuary from the fate the Echani Queen had unleashed.
Quinn grew eerily still.
The Nightmare that rode her presence feasted freely, bloated on death and fear, its influence unraveling minds by proximity alone. Sanity became a fragile luxury — one the storm stripped away without mercy. Sweat traced down Quinn's brow as her body strained to cycle the darkness through the Core, refining it into something sharper, more lethal. The power threatened to tear her apart.
She welcomed it.
More.
More.
More.
Then —
Something broke.
A single thread snapped.
Quinn's head turned slowly, her gaze fixing on the distant clash where the Empress and Mercy fought. Titans colliding. Power meeting power. She felt the spice ignite, saw the light flare — and instinctively bent the storm, hurling screaming winds through the space in a desperate attempt to scatter it.
Too late.
The warmth vanished.
The steady, grounding presence that had always been there — the quiet certainty of her mother's love — simply ceased. No warning.
Just gone.
The Force went cold.
"Mama…?"
The word slipped from her lips like a child's plea, barely louder than breath. She didn't need to see Srina to know. The bond told her everything in its silence. Quinn reached out blindly through the Force, clawing for anything.
Nothing answered.
Her body lurched forward. The ground trembled with each step as the Core surged, reacting violently to her grief. Every movement carried another vision, another certainty of loss. Her mother's death replayed itself in a thousand unbearable ways.
"I am with you…"
The memory struck like a blade.
Her heart thundered in her chest, too fast, too loud, threatening to tear itself free. The world tilted, spiraling into a screaming abyss that answered her panic with cruelty.
"Don't leave me!"
The raw and unrestrained scream ripped from her throat. The Force convulsed in response. The storm howled, lightning detonating in brutal arcs around the palace as thunder split the sky apart. Another scream followed, Force-wrought and devastating, as the scepter in her hand elongated with a sharp snap.
The unstable core glowed brilliantly, swollen with stolen power, desperate for release. It needed a target. A sacrifice.
Quinn's vision bled red.
Hatred flooded the Phobis Core, and it drank deeply, urging her forward.
She moved.
In a blur of crackling energy, Quinn surged past Mercy and her mother's fallen position, red static pouring from her form as the scepter found its mark.
The Saurton.
"Disgusting creature…"
The voice that spoke was not entirely hers as the weapon screamed, unleashing a needle-thin beam of darkshear toward the towering beast — grief and rage focused into a single, merciless strike.
The lights flickered as Arris did her thing, then the generator kicked in. There was more ruckus as things variously exploded or crashed outside the palace. The Tribunes whispered in Amoun's ear, telling him of a star destroyer crashed by his brother - felled right on top of some mob Thomas Barran had whipped together.
Yes. That sounded like him.
Despite everything, the hysterical broad calmed down enough to assist Arris, which amused Amoun slightly. Then the palace shook again, and she took a piece of plaster to the dome and was out cold. A pillar crushed the throne, too, but that was only a chair. Gerra had the spare on his flagship.
Amoun strolled from the wall he had been leaning on and peered over at Eurydice, heedless of the rumbling and falling debris. He nudged her face with the toe of his boot.
"That's rich. Clocked by debris. 'Skill issue', I've heard it called. Ha, ha, ha." He looked back at Arris. "The local planetary governors could fall for that, but if you think the simian hordes screeching outside will… Wait a minute."
No sooner did he trail off did the Dark Lord make his entrance, trailed by a fierce looking sorceress. Amoun froze. Carnifex was radiant - steeped as he was far above the eyes in the awesome power of the Dark Side. This was a man well-acquainted with death. Indeed, merely being in his presence, Amoun understood instantly he had been killed a million times over.
Yes, he had not sensed so much power condensed in a singular frame since he last stood before Darth Solipsis. Perhaps they were equals. Perhaps not. A Dark Lord less than ten meters away from you is more important than a million more elsewhere.
Amoun would have liked to run, but that would have meant he would abandon Eurydice. Normally not a consideration at all, but he suspected that would upset Arris. If he upset Arris, he could upset Mercy, and that math did not pan out in his favor.
So he prostrated himself, immediately, thinking this would at least keep Carnifex from grouping him with the 'faithless rabble' and converting him into dust. An exit strategy could be arranged later.
Amoun hit the floor too fast for it to be a dignified. His descent was nearly uncontrolled - such that there was a loud clang when his head smacked the ground. Still, Amoun made no comment or groan.
Mercy
|
Quinn Varanin
|
Srina Talon
|
Darth Carnifex
| Aelissandre |
Vesper Thrace
Da'Razel
|
Krasskorr the Maw
|
Remowa
Meliant
|
Eurydice
