Public Tendrils of Darkness || SO Raid of Vassek

[Itzhal Volkihar]

The bark of Itzhal's blaster tore through the ringing silence of the vibroblade's destruction. Like a marionette torn asunder from its strings, Likra's head snapped backwards; for a second, Itzhal expected the rampaging monster to fall, powerless to the weight of gravity and soon swallowed up by the raining tides of blood splattered against the muddy ground.

Such was the lie of false hope.

With sickening suddenness, as actuators rattled and pistons crunched with the movement, Lirka's neck snapped back into place, vivid green light crawling across Itzhal's armour as she gazed upon him. The fear settled upon his back, a leering creature that breathed thick and heavy across his neck, ready to tear into him the moment he faltered. Behind the visor, Itzhal's gaze settled upon the scorched mark of his first shot; the faint sound of charred ozone crackled and hissed, a mocking whisper in the air.

His hands desired to shake, an errant trait of facing something that dared to look death in the face and mock its failure. He willed them to steady. To defy instincts and that which would damn him on a planet where abominations and horrors rose, a new threat not akin to anything he'd faced before, though he'd heard the rumours.

Nothing really prepared you to watch the dead rise.

Perhaps, if he'd been surrounded by anything other than enemies, he might have faltered as the juggernaut of silver began to move instead; with his blaster already raised and pointed towards their head, he fired a shot, then another, twin flares of red sparkling like auroras, bright as the sun in the bleak darkness.

Desperately, he tried to slow her down, tried to stop her.

The blade of war screamed through the air, falling blood evaporating in its passage. Itzhal stepped backwards, angling his body as plates of beskar were turned to face the foe. Encased in sickly fire, the hauntingly beautiful shard of songsteel met the firm and defiant shell of Mandalorian Iron, their clash a hollow ring of two distinctly different metals, the former whistling its corrupted tune across the field as the latter hummed and held firm, leaving the blade to scrape upwards across the paint, scorched even darker than before, before the impact carried through and even with his backstep, Itzhal was launched backwards knocked off his feet as the mud beneath his feet failed to provide traction.

With a thud that muffled a harsh gasp, his back crashed into the soft mud, one hand grasping for purchase as the other kept a tight hand around his blaster, clenched in a death grip. Around him, the pitter-patter of rain continued to sink into the farmland, dragging down everything and everyone, including himself, as strands of mud clung where he tried to rise.

"You talk a lot," he hissed through pained ribs as he pulled the trigger, firing a shot at the right side of their helmet and the green glare of her visor.

Tags: Lirka Ka​

 

[Lirka Ka]

What did Lirka have to fear? She had tasted death once before, its sickly embrace on a forgotten world, in a forgotten war, with a different face, and in a different time. She had been forged in conflict, and drank from the succor of annihilation as lesser beings did water. Lirka had surrounded herself with death longer than many of her foes had lived, such was her devotion to her beloved Primordial Darkness.

She loomed, and approached. She could taste the vague licks of fear from Itzhal Volkihar in the air. It was a sweet, beautiful, thing. It oozed the nostalgia of a world torn apart, of distant Moridinae long departed. Of a monster sitting upon a throne of black iron and the skulls of the innocent watching the toil and misery of those who had dared to stand against the onslaught of Carnifex and his Empire. Lirka tried not to be a particularly sentimental woman, but one never forgot their first genocide.

The dead rose around them, but Lirka did not care. Her warriors died, but they were strandcast freaks: utterly replaceable. All that mattered was him, reminding the Mandalorians she still lived, that she was still a thing to be feared, reviled, scorned. The beautiful clang of metal upon metal, Lirka let out another thunderous laugh as the warrior was sent flying back from the raw force of her mechanized limbs. She continued her advance, she wasn't going to let this opportunity escape her: this rat needed to suffer

Her voice bellowed out again, oozing mockery.

"And here I thought the Rats of Mordinae were great warriors!"

He was right, she did talk too much. Preparing to strike, his blaster rang out once more in the chaos of battle. Lirka staggered back, a pained roaring escaping the vocalizer of her helmet. The glass of the lenses shattered, and Lirka felt the plasma bolt scorch and vaporize the flesh of her eye. A lesser soul would have dropped dead right there, a bolt through the head. But...Lirka was not lesser beings. The beastly metal creature stumbled for a minute, before finding her footing once more. What should have been a cauterized wound, was not, the air smelt of burnt chemicals as something, black, viscous, and foul, leaked from the new hole of her lenses.

While her depth perception may have been fried, that didn't stop Lirka from letting out a savage, bestial, roar and throwing herself at the downed figure of the Mandalorian. Yes, he would suffer dearly for his slights. She'd make sure poor Itzhal would never forget Vassek, and more importantly never forget her

 

[Itzhal Volkihar]

Arm raised as he fired the bolt that tore through Lirka's right lens, Itzhal didn't falter even as the towering figure scrambled backwards in agony, another shot following in behind, though it did little but leave further scorch marks across their helm and side. She didn't even notice. He recognised the dull, resounding thud of an energy bolt colliding with the sacred essence of Mandalorian armour. The once-mighty alloy, cherished for its resilience, now betrayed its own people, a shield for the tyrant in a way that fragile transparisteel could never accomplish. The sound echoed like a bitter betrayal, reverberating through the air with each shot that clanged against the titan as Itzhal tried to rise.

Scrambling for support as the mud roiled over his body, sinking between the plates of armour and clinging to the bodysuit underneath, Itzhal had reached to one knee by the time the monstrous beast turned back. Her scream of uncontained rage roared across the battlefield, unhindered by his offence, offended by his defiance.

In that fleeting moment, he realised with a heavy heart that the mud had entrapped him, a chain he couldn't break before the charge arrived. Not unless he stopped her now.

With his arm still extended, Itzhal unleashed shot after shot, the blaster's crackling retort echoing in the nightmare of battle. As the charging berserker bore down on him, Itzhal's blaster-wielding hand suddenly darted toward the enemy's legs, a swift twist of his wrist misaligning the blaster but not the whipcord thrower affixed to his gauntlet. His other hand, cloaked in mud and stained crimson at the tips, came crashing down onto the control panel with a resounding thud. In an instant, he activated the device, sending forth a thick, sinuous sliver of fibercorp—slithering across the field like the vicious strike of a serpent—towards the armour-clad stretch of Lirka's mechanically enhanced legs.

A desperate attempt to buy the Mandalorian time.

Whispered words followed, shrouded by the rain and chaos as the jetpack on his back fluttered to life, the twin flames spluttering over the clog of mud and dirt.

Tags: Lirka Ka​

 

[Lirka Ka]

Pain, sweet, delicious, pain. It drove Lirka, it motivated her. The searing agony where her eye had once been pushed the Once-Sephi forward like a blood-crazed beast. Even as the wound already began to clot from the foul liquid oozing from the wound. The resounding ring of blaster fire helpless against beskar plate let a sickly grin rise underneath Lirka’s face plate. The beautiful irony of turning their sacred metal against the Rats, it truly brought joy to her hearts.

Each shot that pinged against her armor slowed her none, with each scrambled step he took back, Lirka made a murderous footfall forward. The dread of her visage looming higher and higher backlit by the bleak, dark, skies of Vassek. Pain was a thing to be shared, and she was far from satisfied with how much the Mandalorian had suffered.

Prepared to lash out again, she heard the hiss of fibercord heading for her legs. Letting out another snarl, Lirka let her blade hack down towards her legs violently: half blinded meant she kept none of her former grace, nothing but pure brutish savagery to free her legs as the thing coiled around her. She wouldn’t let a cheap trick like that slow her down, no, she would not leave Vassek without some sort of prize.

Hearing the sputtering flames of a jet pack coming to life, Lirka let out another roar. She wouldn’t let the Rat run, she couldn’t. Blood begets blood. With the snap of the fibercord finally free, Lirka threw herself at him: intent to grab onto whatever she could and try and drag the flying warrior down with her sheer bulk. She would not be content till the bloodrain thundering down from the sky was mixed with the blood of Itzhal Volkihar in the mud of this wretched planet.

 

[Itzhal Volkihar]

Just as the fibercorp ensnared the berserker's legs, Itzhal yanked his arm back towards his side with a swift and deliberate motion, feeling the surge of adrenaline course through his veins as firm muscles prepared to destabilise the charge of the beast. A vicious strike, which cleaved down like the parting blow of an executioner's blade, tore through the wire, a mocking twang separating the piece in two as what remained slivered back towards Itzhal's gauntlet.

Behind the visor, the Mandalorian's expression twisted into a scowl. His gaze narrowed to the target in front of him, their relentless momentum unhindered by the ruined visage of their eye from which foul ichor, unnatural in colour and consistency, dripped over the ground beneath them, mixing in with the blood and glass. Yet, still, they approached. As if they no longer bothered to pretend they were something natural underneath the grinding plates and cracked pistons, rather than the twisted concept of a person sealed beneath the armour.

With another surge of power from the jetpack, a wave of blistering heat and raw force erupted from behind him, violently scattering the remnants of muck and grime that had suffocated his thrusters.

There was no attempt to escape, however, not now.

Instead, as Lirka lunged forward with fierce determination, her hand outstretched in an attempt to seize him and hurl him into the foul, stagnant muck of this desolate planet, Itzhal pivoted sharply, turning his left shoulder towards her. With a final burst of momentum from his jetpack as her hand wrapped around his arm, he charged forward.

The air cracked with the force of their collision.

His right hand rose purposefully, the barrel of his blaster pushed through the resistance of tired muscles and the chaotic twist of limbs, its slow progress leaving a shimmering distortion in its wake like a mirage. He cared not for the sight, only that it made its way forward, his other hand trying to push aside Lirka's own arms in whatever position they found themselves as he brought the weapon closer to her scarred visage.

Closer to finishing the job.

Tags: Lirka Ka​

 

[Lirka Ka]

In pain, the real Lirka Ka came to life. The Lirka Ka that was a monster, grown in a vat, put under the knife time and time again to be molded and warped into something beyond the natural order. A monster of Sith design, Carnifex's monster. A repugnant creature born of endless malice, a sadistic desire to simply hurt

And it was poor Itzhal Volkihar that had become the icon of her rage today, for while he scowled, she smiled in the sickly glee of a murderer chasing the thrill. His jetpack roared to life, splattering Lirka with muck and mire. What visage of a "proud" Imperial warlord disappeared in the gore and darkness of Vassek. All that remained was a hunger, clambering, aberration. As the speed of the jetpacked roared out, the Once-Sephi let out a snarl as she lost grip on her machete.

The weapon splatted to the ground, but Lirka remained undeterred. Armored gauntlets, sharped like hands of razor blades, they clawed at Izthal's form. Scratching and grasping onto whatever grip she could get onto the man's armored plates, it was as if fighting some sort of animal rather than a person. Her one good eye lense seemed to acknowledge the rising form of the Mandalorian's blaster, and with a laugh a metal fist lashed out to try and knock the thing aside.

Finally, the monster spoke once again, her words now only half-modulated and the thick Sephi accent shining through the mechanization. There was glee in her voice. There was a vile eagerness. She hummed in near elation. And so did Lirka declare herself.

"Oh, Mandalorian. Haven't you heard!? An eye for an eye!"

She redouble her efforts, clawed hands trying to grasp onto the man's helmet as best she could. All the while throwing around her metal bulk to try and bring them both back to the ground, to try and swing themselves in such a way so that Lirka could try and put herself atop the man and pin him back in the goreslick mud of what-was-once-Vassek.

 

[Itzhal Volkihar]

In the ferocious clash of armoured frames, a desperate struggle for survival and dominance unfolded. Lirka's gauntlets, dipped with gore and tinted a gleaming red that stained the silver armour beneath, lunged and probed with menacingly sharp dagger-like fingers that struck with a relentless intensity, seeking to find a gap in the sacred plates of Itzhal's beskar'gam.

Undaunted by the fierce assault that slammed against his chest plate, finding nothing but noble beskar to blunt its aggression, Itzhal's right hand ascended with unwavering determination, the deadly blaster in tow. His left hand slapped aside an attempt to disarm him, the momentum of the strike adjusted with a skill that spoke of years of practice and training as the enemy's remaining eye seemed to realise his intention, her full weight came down in a blow designed to knock the weapon in time.

He pulled the trigger.

Lirka's tightly clenched fist crashed upon it with a force that reverberated through the air even as the weapon itself fired, the bolt leaving the barrel just a heartbeat too late as it was driven into the ground, smoking and bent from the impact. Inches away from the initial impact, his fingers flinched away, the wave of pain trembling upward like a shockwave as he tried to take a step back. The ravaged surface beneath his feet slowed his retreat, barely a stumble but enough for claw-like hands to slam across the sides of his buy'ce, their terrible presence visible in the corners of his visor as the vice pressed down around his head.

Beskar held, faithful as always.

The veil of transparisteel, however, pressed inwards where sharpened blades pierced the corner of his visor, tiny fissures spiderwebbed across the surface, shimmering and delicate where they caught the red light from the sky above as his head was forced upwards. Face to face with the monster that cackled with joy and victory.

Behind the visor, blue eyes stared down the gaping hole he'd left behind in her visage.

Calmly, as the looming spectre of death approached and no other emotion mattered, Itzhal wrapped his right gauntlet around Lirka's opposite wrist, his fingers inquisitively searching for a chink in the armour. An opportunity that he might turn to his favour.

"If that is what you wish," Itzhal whispered, his voice barely audible over the cracking sound of transparisteel as he twisted his gauntlet towards the space between them. His fingers searched for something: a dent in the bracer or a misaligned piston weakened in the chaos.

The truth was he knew little of his foe or her history with his people, the Galaxy as wide and terrible as it was. He did not know of her deeds or the terrible fates enacted upon his people at her hands. But he knew what type of monster he faced; he'd listened to her taunts, and he knew that Beskar only came from one source. He knew his people would not tolerate it. He knew they would die for it.

It was a story as old as time.

"Mandalore has much to reclaim from you, demagolka."

With a fierce snarl and a word cloaked in malice, the slightest of embers, a mere flicker waltzing at the tip of the nozzle attached to Itzhal's right gauntlet, suddenly swelled with a roar of gas screeching from containment as it dragged the fickle flame, cursing and screaming into a firestorm that consumed everything in its path. A soft warmth turned to a blaze of unrestrained fury. In the air, dripping blood was scorched and purified under the oppressive heat that seeped through the cracks in Itzhal's visor.

With his other hand, Itzhal swung towards Lirka's grasping hand as a vibroknuckler unsheathed itself with a violent hiss on its way towards the titan's left hand, where his fingers had traced along the armour, searching for a target that would crippled the limb and allow his right gauntlet to turn the fire entirely upon the monsters form.

Tags: Lirka Ka​

 

[Lirka Ka]

No matter the bravado, no matter the nobility, this is how it always would end for people like them: warriors, clad in armor that once shined, fighting in the muck and mire of a world the Galaxy didn't care about, in a battle that would be lost to the sands of time. Lirka relished it. She relished the meaninglessness of it all, this is what the Primordial Dark had bid for her, to exist in this madness and make it her home. To be a warrior fueled by hatred, spite, and boundless petty narcissism.

The beskar of their armors whined and clanked as the duo scrapped. Lirka's bestial sloppiness fueled only by the desire to inflicting some lasting wound upon Itzhal Volkihar with true victory becoming nothing but a second thought: she wanted him to hurt, to know, to understand the wickedness that overfilled this Galaxy. To know that evil would always exist, and its name was Lirka Ka.

She felt the cracking of the transpirsteel in her hands, a thunderous, sadistic laughter rumbled out of the monster's form. The climax of their scuffle, the wound Lirka so desperately craved on this Mandalorian rat. As his hands grasped onto her wrist, he would indeed find the weakness he so sought: just as it always was with metal brutes like this, the joints. The gap where metal could not meet metal and the black of her undersuit shined through.

She didn't even hear him speak, entirely too focused on the grim task in front of her. It was a thankful thing really that Lirka was unaware of the man's ignorance - this brawl would have quickly become a self-aggrandizing monologue of Lirka's many deeds on long departed Moridinae. But really....sometimes the history spoke for itself. It did not take a genius to ponder what foul miserable things Lirka did on Mandalore.

His declaration she did hear, Lirka's words hissing out with a humored, and dismissive, malice.

"Wretched Mandalore will reclaim nothing but dirt, and ash."

As if to punctuate her words, the flamethrower came to life: dousing the metal monstrosity in fire as she let out a thunderous roar of pain, metal heated, parts of her undersuit began to melt and fuse with her skin: a feeling Lirka had become all too familiar with in these long years . Yet she was not undeterred, even as the vibroknuckler found the chink in her armor and sliced through repugnant flesh. Lirka did not fear the pain, nor the maiming. She welcomed it. A reminder that she was still alive, for now at least. Yet, in her roaring rage Lirka knew she still had one good hand. A clawed metal finger lashed out, one last attempt to ram the thing into Itzhal's eye and leave the wound Lirka so desperately craved.

Behind them, Lirka's warriors finally had disposed of the dead as best as they could: a beleaguered and bloodied bunch of murderers. One of them cried out, desperation trinkling into the strandcast's voice.

"Slavemaster! They report the monstrosities have risen on the Warship!"

An unfortunate thing. If that ship were to fall, Lirka would be stranded once again. And she had spent long enough stranded already. Letting out a frustrated roar she wretched herself from the Mandalorian. Now uncaring if her wound had even landed, she quickly reached down even as the flames continued to wash over her: quickly grabbing onto her blade and pulling it from the muck. The torrent of fire pushed her back, the metal of her powersuit slowly but surely beginning to turn the bright orange of heat. Her warriors watched on, waiting, and with one thunderous command Lirka quickly revealed just how little she actually cared for matters of honor when her skin needed to be saved.

"DISPOSE OF HIM!"

Her minions obeyed, turning their blasters upon the Mandalorian in a haze of random fire: Lirka's bulk made a good shield, but quickly was the Once Sephi beginning to retreat. Vassek was a lost cause for all but Nefaron, and well...it paid to live to fight another day rather than die on some forgotten world in a forgotten battle a second time around.

 

[Itzhal Volkihar]

Separated by mere inches from the searing inferno that flickered in the reflection of his visor, Itzhal strained to lean back, feeling the oppressive heat radiate through the spider-web cracks left behind by Lirka's nails, even as the trail of flames roared over her tarnished armour, consuming them almost entirely under a red and orange blaze, which left only her outstretched hands, twisted and sharpened into monstrous hooks that gripped along the edges of his helmet, visible ahead of the glare that burned across his vision, uncaring of the damage that must have been dealt to the figure cloaked in smoke and fire.

Itzhal's final attempts to escape became increasingly ruthless as the relentless grip tightened around his visor. Tiny fissures stretched across the glass, starting as delicate threads that splintered outward from the titan's touch. With each strained push of her razor-like fingers against the transparisteel, those fragile cracks widened, tearing their way towards the center with a dreadful sense of inevitability. Unhindered even by the hissing blade that slipped beneath flexing plates to tear into the joint and tainted flesh, Lirka's assault pressed down one more time, her right hand punching through the remaining space between them as suddenly the visor exploded into a cascade of shimmering fragments, each shard catching the crimson light of the rain above as what resistance the transparisteel provided vanished in an instance.

The warmth of the flamethrower, only inches from the Mandalorian's exposed face, was barely a wick to the searing heat that tore across his forehead as flesh peeled apart, the silver blade followed by a trail of blooming blood. Skin parted even as Itzhal leaned back, the sudden shattering of the visor and only one hand on his helmet allowing him to pull away, though not before jagged metal carved its way further down across the Morellian's face, through the ridge of his eyebrow as he stumbled away.

The pain was all-consuming for an instant, a heated line that was both unavoidable yet so much larger than the flesh carved through as the heat radiated along the wound. Blood dripped down across his face, covering the eye, in a dreadful moment where radiating pain left Itzhal uncertain of just how deep the finger had cut. The remnants of his visor clung to his face, with the lower half spearing upwards in fragmented pieces and the cracked remains across the upper left just barely hanging on, unwilling to completely abandon the Mandalorian even as blood continued to flow down, torn from skin by the relentless grasp of gravity as they pooled through the holes and seeped into the mud below.

"DISPOSE OF HIM!"

In a heartbeat, the atmosphere shifted dramatically; the rules unravelled as Itzhal strained to lift his weary head. Despite the weight of exhaustion dragging him down, he fought to focus, his uncovered eye catching sight of the slavermaster striding away, each step echoing the finality of their confrontation as blasters were raised and energy cells clicked into place for a flurry that would tear him to shreds.

No words were needed to display his displeasure; his hand flickered to his other holster, the blaster pistol drawn in a flash that his first target didn't recognise as he put a bolt through their visor—the second flinched, pulling the trigger as Itzhal's shot took them in the neck, their own sent over his shoulder as he forced wary limbs to move.

His jetpack flared, a roar and a challenge as he spiralled upwards, away from the hail of blaster bolts that tore into the space he'd once kneeled. His response followed a moment later, blaster bolts falling upon them like the bloody rain. Bodies fell with each streak of light, a scorching screech of vengeance, leaving those who remained to contend with the hollow things that rose in their place.

With a twist and another extension of his right arm, Itzhal turned his gauntlet upon the battlefield, loosing a hail of missiles that promised death as he spun around, ready to...

...his head throbbed, the sudden impact of the mud jostling his head even as Itzhal tried to figure out how he'd landed, the confusion beating at the path of his temples as he reached for his blaster pistol discarded in the muck.

Tags: Lirka Ka Stevru Klamat​

 

[Itzhal Volkihar]

[Accidental repost]

 

[Lirka Ka]

With the sensation of her finger slicing through flesh, Lirka felt the elation she so desired. Vassek had been a complete and utter failure for her and her minions, perhaps the other teams had done better but she sincerely doubted that. Itzhal Volkihar would remember her, he would remember the suffering, he would remember the darkness of Vassek. And that little victory was enough for her, the Mandalorians needed to be reminded that the Butcher of Mordinae yet lived. She wasn't done tormenting their people quite yet.

Yet, Lirka too suffered: even as she pushed herself back from the torrent of fire her armro still shined with heat: the flesh underneath burnt as her undersuit metaled against her repugnant flesh. The agony was immense. But it was liberating all the same, a reminder she had escaped Vassek alive. At least, was beginning to escape. More of her warriors pushed up, even as the first two of their lot fell to the ground dead: the rest remained undeterred in their assault, even as their first two fallen fellows began to rise from the muck and were quickly put down in a hail of blaster fire.

Lirka ignored the entire debacle, stumbling her way behind her living wall of strandcast minions. The sky thundered as the shape of a gunship flew into view, the thing thudding into the muck as its doors opened up to herald the return of Lirka and her fellows. Lirka believed rather heavily in "live to fight another day", honor be damned. She had more pressing things to attend to than finishing off one Mandalorian...and yet

As the armored brute thudded her way into the vessel, more and more of her warriors fell and rose back in their new wretched forms. Forms blasted into the dark as missiles cracked in the air, foul and broken bodies rising coated in mud as they tried to feed upon their fellows. It was a wasted effort, let the dead rule Vassek. Lirka cared little for creatures made only to serve. The doors to the gunship thudded shut as she left those warriors who had not be wise enough to fall back with her to die in the darkness.

But she'd offer them at least one, small, mercy.

The gunship hummed to life, hovering into the air with its dark cargo. Missile batteries unfurled, and soon a hail of firepower spat across the area where Itzhal and Lirka had spilt eachothers blood. Her remaining warriors on the ground disappeared in a hail of blaster fire and explosions as the vessel blindly unloaded its entire payload upon the battlefield, the village, and the general vicinity. Lirka did as Sith do best, destroy, blindly, and without mercy.

She turned to the pilot now, her voice pleased but hoarse. Vassek had drained her.

"Take me to my warship, warrior. Let us leave this damnable world."

With that, the vessel flew off into the darkness. Their work here was done, though the Kainate would not be fed today. And Lirka contemplated just how long of a bacta-bath she was going to need this time around...