Dominion Two to Tango | SO Dominion of D'Qar

[Lirka Ka]

TAGS: Nova Ka Kaila Irons Tamsin Graves

Nova was her masterwork, in many a way. The refinement of Lirka’s monstrous form of yesteryear into something infinitely more stable…at least physically. Mentally, could any Ka really be considered truly stable?

Still, briefly she barked out to her daughter in response to her enraged bile directed towards the young Sithling. Tamsin had saved herself from Lirka’s blades, to some minor extent. Now the Once-Sephi merely needed to relay that fact to her kin.

“I need that one breathing, Supernova! Break all you wish, but I need her alive.”

Lirka knew better than to deny such an aspect of herself bloodshed, simply sadism would have to suffice just as well. Though Lirka’s “mercy” was rewarded with the sharp feeling of pain through her leg as the apprentice found time to cut through some of the weakened plate, the chemical stench Lirka’s foul blood burning growing stronger as she monstrous slaver stumbled some: though, perhaps by the miracles of Rhand - stayed on her feet.

Yet, Lirka was given little time to respond as Anathemous went in for the jab. The saber too, broke through weakened blade with enough effort. Though it was not entirely the Darth’s own. For once the blade made contact, Lirka’s metal claw lashed out to grab the weapon’s shaft. Forcing the thing deeper into herself in an attempt to pull the two warriors closer together.

A guttural, mechanical noise of pain pierced through Lirka’s helmet as she felt flesh sear, and her repugnant form beginning to writhe and try to fix damage that it could not. It was miserable. It was agony. It was enlightening, and it was beautiful. Pain was a reminder of life, after all. It would take more than a mere stab to lay Lirka low, she had suffered far, far, worse in her long life.

Kaila was lucky, as Lirka gave another tug to bring the two together. She too wished to speak, hushed words to be shared between a would-be-assassin, and their would-be-target. And while she may have wished to talk about Lirka’s cruel masters, the Once-Sephi had matters far more pressing on her mind. Cutting through the murderous haze of being proven right in her paranoias.

“The girl. She speaks the name of holy Rhand. Why?”

Rhand was ever present in Lirka’s mind, always. The cruelty of the Nihil Retreat called to her at times, and to see it here? In the Empire? It was enough to almost make her shudder.

 

[Tamsin Graves]

Location: D'qar, disembarking
Theme: Back From The Dead
Equipment: Twin Omens | DE-10 | Combat Knife | Multi-Tool | Circlet of Projection | Trench\Hazard Armor | jetpack
Tags: Kaila Irons | Lirka Ka | Nova Ka

Tamsin nodded to herself hearing the words in her head from her sister to fight well. She watched as the Star of Thustra whizzed by the oncoming Nova her other weapon drawn. She felt her own saber bite into the leg of Lirka as it released it ionic pulse and she pulled it free.

"Oh, I am afraid." She openly admitted to Nova who yelled at her with her mocking tone. Then she heard the Lirka yell not to kill her, break and shatter her but not to kill her. They needed her alive. It confused maybe as Kainite leverage, she didn't know why she needed to be alive. "But I am not afraid of you now."

Wounds could heal and bones could be mended. The pain was a weapon that could be used, and death was not in the cards. "I know a monster far scarier than you."

The sweeping blow came low really low for the giant Nova that faced the diminutive Tamsin. Tamsin's saber came across to block, but the Star of Thustra came back in her direction to block it. The star slammed into the saber sparks flying as the two weapons collided as the other blade went for her leg.

Tamsin did the only thing she could think of in that moment she jumped into a side roll over the sweeping blade. However, it wasn't high enough and the blade glanced of her leg armor causing her roll to be thrown off balance her small frame went tumbling to the ground on her side. She barely managed to keep hold of her saber as she did so.

Pain from the blade glancing her armor throbbed through her leg and her side hurt from the collision with the durasteal battlefield. She was in a realty bad position as she looked up at the towering elf. She swung out wildly towards the elf with her Saber though there was no way she could reach the elf from her position. Instead, as she swung her fingers switched grip and the saber split into two a white saber pulled from the violet saber.

The white saber broke away tumbling end over end for Nova's midsection as she pulled the purple blade back in to try use for defense for the next coming attack.

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Armor + Mask
Tag: Lirka Ka Tamsin Graves Nova Ka

"Touch her, and I'll end you both!" Anathemous growled in warning.

It was not so much an idle boast nor arrogant delusion, in fact Kaila was unsure if she could manage both opponents in the event of Tamsin becoming wounded. Rather it was the understanding of the great lengths a mother would go to avenge her child, or an older sibling to defend their sister, even it cost her life.

Yet to her horror, the saberstaff did little to stop her foes. She tugged and dug her heels into the soil, yet the cyborg pulled her inch after inch all the same, even as her own blood bubbled and spoiled, assaulting the young Darth's nostrils.

"Ngh!" she hissed and grit her teeth.

“The girl. She speaks the name of holy Rhand. Why?”

Kaila looked up at her, faceless steel to faceless steel, a thin angular slit of crimson staring into the green, almost claw-like markings where Lirka's eyes should have been.

Behind the mask, her own narrowed in confusion.

Tamsin had never mentioned Rhand before, nor could she think of an opportunity in which she'd have been in that mysterious place without her knowledge, a place even her own studies had told her little of.

That means it must be the spirit speaking through her again.

"She is a prison." the knight answered at last.

"For something far worse than any of us."

"We both are."

As she spoke, a violet glow began to flicker behind the visor, dark energies swirling around the Darth as she unleashed an ancient power on the battlefield, fueling her own, such that the very air seemed to cool around her. All the while, it began to collect in her fingertips, faint arcs of electricity channeling within, waiting for purpose if this little chat did not go according to her design.

"What interest is it to you, slavemaster?" she spoke with genuine curiosity, and perhaps something more.

If Lirka knew even a morsel about that thing in her sister's head, than she just might be the most useful person in this entire empire to Kaila.

"What know you of Rhand?"

​

 

[Darth Strosius]

Objective: Obtain Autocannon Schematics
Tags: Serina Calis
------------------------------------------

One blast should have been the end of her, of the annoyance and frustration that she had embodied and caused with each damnable flourish and motion. Then He'd be free to return His attention to the task at hand and secure the Fulminatrix as planned. While far from His full strength He had poured a fair bit of power into the blast, harnessing every ounce of anger that she had caused Him and coalescing it into a devastatingly physical explosion. More than enough to reduce her into a pile of ash in the wind.

And yet, it didn't quite go to plan. Nothing seemed to be going to plan as of late really, but this one especially stung at the moment. Both figuratively and literally. The moment that the blast loosed from His fingertips His tendrils receded in order to avoid the explosive aftermath of it connecting with His opponent. Soon enough they curled and twisted painfully as He recoiled in surprise when something was summoned forth to defend her from the blast.

As the blast threw her back some strength was brought forth to stave off the destructive power it intended to unleash, something that for a brief moment felt not unlike the tainted Light that the Jedi drew upon. But that moment was brief and what followed it was far more dragged out and painful to witness. It was unnatural, blasphemous even, but it happened far too quick to interrupt. Too quick for Him to throw out lightning or one of His blades to try and cut her down physically so that the experience ended sooner.

The masked Sith found Himself stumbling back and clutching His head, His tendrils writhed as the Force shivered briefly. He withdrew His presence from her, not caring how she flew through the air or even if she was recovering quicker than He was. He needed a moment to think. To breathe. To dismiss whatever disturbance she had caused before He could even think about managing some response or counter. The headache that she had caused soon became first among His concerns for the moment.

Darth Strosius opened His eyes, not quite realizing that they had been screwed shut by His wincing and recoiling, and hissed a breath through clenched fangs. His head throbbed and ached as the Force itself seemed to wretch, the ever flowing stream diverted in her favor so that she could rise to her feet even after bouncing off the side of the shipwreck in a manner that would leave others irreparably broken. Nothing too out of the realm of possibility, but even He would have needed a few moments to recompose Himself after having such a crash.

His hidden gaze narrowed into a vicious glare as she called out His name, still taunting and disgustingly confident even after being flung across the battlefield. As she laughed He splayed His free hand wide before curling His fingers around an almost translucent dark shape, one that solidified into a more visible and wickedly sharp weapon as He raised it above His head before chucking towards her. Yet despite the dark spear still traveling, He didn't remain still Himself.

The ground He stood on cracked beneath His boots as He launched Himself forward, the jets on the bottom of them igniting and sending Him hurling towards His opponent in a blur of robes and metal tipped with a crimson blade. He was only slightly slower than the spear itself as both bared down upon her.

 

[Lirka Ka]

Her warning was met with little regard. She should've considered that fact when she had decided to attempt her assassination, Lirka mused. The Once-Sephi never much understood such protectiveness; the bond between her and Nova Ka was far from such a thing. Her spawn had said it herself, she was here to take Lirka's life when the moment came and she stumbled in her grand designs. Perhaps that was their love, in its own twisted way. Like the love Lirka gave to Carnifex, the love of murderers and tyrants, of beasts that feasted upon each other when they were at their weakest. The love that came from beings that had felt the melding to become one.

Pain filled Lirka's being. But she welcomed it. Pain had become a holy thing, it was a reminder of life in the face of death. It enlightened the mind, it offered clarity. It reminded Lirka of her goal.

And right now, her goal was piecing together whatever information she could get out of Kaila Irons

It was woefully little, and in a grunt of exertion Lirka was able to hide her frustrations. Prison was a rather open term, subjective in many ways. The ignorance of Rhand and its powers, well...maybe that was a good thing. It gave Lirka time to do what she did best, stall in the veneer of peace. Yet, she would not lie. There was enlightenment to be found in knowledge.

"How...poetically vague."

Lirka noted the glow, briefly. She knew little of its meaning, but she had spent enough time around Dark Siders to know that such a thing was never good. She wished, ever so slightly, that she was able to channel the powers beset upon her by the Butcher King at will like that. Throw some great blast of dark energy like she had upon Woostri, it would have made this whole thing much easier. But alas. Today was to be a day of pure wit and knowledge instead.

"Many a year did I spend upon Rhand, in pilgrimage once the Old Empire fell. It is a world of evil, Darth. Pure evil. Malign mutations of the natural order of things."

As if in ironic parody, something foul seeped from Lirka's wound. Black. Viscous. It clotted and congealed the longer it sat. Was it whatever this disgusting creature counted as blood?

"It is a place of power. Foul powers. Where cruel Sorcerers exist in a state between life and death, rotting corpses channeling their magics to enslave entire worlds to their whims, pulling the strings of fate to create apocalyptic annihilation. It was Rhand that helped birth those who brought about the end of Csilla, who maimed our Galaxy. It is a power that should be locked away, it is dark truths that belong only in the Perann Nebula."

Lirka let her voice seem erratic, crazed even. Fear coaxing her words like oil. Of course, it was all an act. But how could this would-be-assassin know what she truly thought? Lirka's void had made sure to keep her mind a thing sealed away. Lirka's lenses moved some, looking not at Anathemous. But past her, off to the horizon. Perhaps at some unseen force of malign cruelty.

"Tell me, Darth. Do you hear it? Do you hear it out there, just past the horizon?"

 

[Serina Calis]

Two to Tango.
Location: -
Objective: 2.
Allies: -
Opposing Force: Darth Strosius
Equipment: Ebon Requiem, Tyrant's Kiss, 3 CV-1 Gas Grenade's (The Choking Veil)

"Power is not found in the ruins of dead empires—it is claimed by those with the will to take it before lesser hands dare to reach."​

The pain was everywhere.

It lived in her ribs—cracked and protesting with every breath. It curled in her fingers, trembling from the sheer voltage that had torn through her. It radiated through her spine where she'd struck the wreckage, a bloom of agony spreading across her nerves like wildfire.

But more than the pain, Serina felt power.

It licked at her skin like flame, coiled beneath her tongue like a secret, seethed behind her eyes like a stormcloud. She had grasped the Force—twisted it, bent it, violated it—and it had not fled.

It had yielded.

And now it whimpered for her.

Her body shook as she rose, unsteady and bloody, her silhouette limned in an unnatural haze of shifting purples and pinks—colors that had no place in the Light, nor in the Dark. Colors born of something else. Something that should not exist—and yet did, because she willed it so.

The very air warped around her, not with heat or pressure, but with devotion, the Force now tethered to her not as an ally, but as a leash she held, as a creature finally beginning to love its mistress.

And across the battlefield, the sky split open again.

The spear came first.

A jagged, translucent weapon of hatred and will, flung like a thunderbolt from the hands of a wrathful god. It shrieked through the air like a banshee, and Serina's knees nearly buckled at the weight of what followed it—Him.

Strosius, a blur of crimson and wrath, bore down on her with the fury of a star collapsing, the air cracking around him with each pulse of his boots. His lightsaber was a comet's tail behind him, his presence a tidal wave of rage given shape.

Serina didn't flinch.

She couldn't.

There was no time.

Her breath stuttered in her lungs as she raised a hand—not with strength, but with command. The Force responded with a sound like a chorus of shattered glass and humming silk, swirling into a half-formed veil of crackling lavender and glowing blush. It wasn't a shield. Not yet. Not properly. But it was hers.

The spear struck first.

It ripped through the veil of energy, shattering it with a sound like a scream caught mid-moan, and grazed her side with such force that she gasped, her body twisting with the impact as blood sprayed in a spiral of pink-lit mist.

She collapsed to one knee, barely upright—when the storm arrived.

Strosius came crashing down like divine judgment, his blade a strike meant to end her—finally, definitively.

Serina moved as the Force moved. Not with agility. Not with speed. But with the worship of a thing bound to her. The air itself took her weight, dragging her sideways with a hiss of kinetic force just as the lightsaber cleaved the space she'd been in a heartbeat before. Sparks exploded beside her.

She hit the ground hard, rolling once, twice, and then slammed a hand into the dirt to steady herself. Her fingers dug deep into the soil, carving into the world like claws. The pink glow bled from her wounds, faint trails of corrupted energy slipping into the air like perfume, and through cracked lips she exhaled:

"You're very good at making messes, Strosius…"

Her smile was weary now—no longer smug, no longer cruel. It was something else. Something terrifying in its softness.

"But I am divine. And divinity… does not die in the dirt."

She reached for Ebon Requiem—not to fight, but to call it. The halberd shimmered into being behind her in a swirl of glittering pink dust, only half-formed, as if reluctant to fully take shape. She gripped it anyway, and as she rose to her feet once more, battered and bleeding, the Force gathered beneath her like a lover rising from the bed.

It held her upright.

She had nothing left to prove.

No strength left to win.

And so—she chose to withdraw.

Not as a coward. Not as a failure.

But as a goddess retreating behind the veil, her worship unfinished, her revelation incomplete.

"You'll chase me, of course," she said with a tilt of her head, the blood in her teeth turning her grin into something feral. "That's what you do. That's what they always do."

The Force surged. Not light. Not dark. But hers.

With a flash of violet flame, Serina vanished into the trees, a streak of corruption that left the battlefield stained behind her—not with ruin, but with reverence.

 

[Kaila Irons]

Location: Scavenger camp
Wearing: Armor + Mask
Tag: Lirka Ka Nova Ka Tamsin Graves

Anathemous could no longer tell if her heart pumped for battle or twisted revelation.

It seemed as though Rhand had offered to Ka what Dathomir had offered her in the empire's brief absence, though it had not been her choice alone. The rotting cyborg rambled like a mad old crone, but like all crones, wisdom and truths bled through and Anathemous had long since learned to take heed of those ignored by those of greater sanity.

What that said of herself, she hadn't time to think about.

Ka spoke of Csilla's destruction, and she knew in that moment The Maw had sunk it's fangs into this mystery. Darth Sokar, that thing haunting and speaking through her sister, seemed exactly the type to fall in with such wicked cruelty, as did the rotten sorcerers of Rhand, from what very little she'd gleaned.

Her decision then was... foolish. But Anathemous was desperate to learn all she could, and taken greater risks to become who she was now. She could not sense the truth nor lies of this woman, and so put her trust in her own instincts.

She deactivated the lightsaber.

"Tell me, Darth. Do you hear it? Do you hear it out there, just past the horizon?"

Only gunfire and the shouts of battle filled her straining ears.

"I... I do not know of what you speak."

And that frustrated her.

Was she merely insane or did Ka truly hear something which the sith could not? She needed to know, so, so badly.

"But I am willing to learn! Tell me, how far would you go, to ensure that power stays in the Perann Nebula?"

"Help us. I will call off my men, you call of yours, and we can leave this place as allies again!"

It was a lot to ask of the one she had so readily turned upon, she knew, but the young Darth had new priorities now.



"We can put Her back where she belongs."

​

 

[Lirka Ka]

Kaila Irons had moved wisely, and stupidly all the same. Lirka had dangled the metaphorical carrot of foul knowledge, and it had worked just as well as the Once-Sephi had wanted it to. Lirka felt the “relief” of the blade leaving the now gaping hole in her chest. The liquid that must have passed for blood in her wretched form dribbling from the wound in thick clumps. A debilitating injury to most, but Lirka seemed to pay it, and the agony it brought no mind.

Her words hummed out, not quite gloating but still the ever so slight hint of foolhardy superiority blanketed each one.

“No…I didn’t think you would. The Sith are too blind to see what I see, hear what I hear.”

Lirka had heard Darkness compel her, once, in that twilight realm between life and death. It had driven her to Rhand, it had heralded butchery on a scale seen only in the worst among Carnifex’s menagerie. Yet, despite that fact. She was lying. Stalling. She merely needed a few more moments. Her suit clicked, and clacked, as if it were a living thing responding to the wound bored into its chest.

“You may be willing - but dark revelation does not come so easily. Yet, assassin, I offer you a little truth. How far would I go, how far should you go? Further than you think, always. There is no limit. Push. Push forward, always. Understand, in suffering you will find the transience needed.”

A microcosm of Lirka’s own foul beliefs. As she so often sprinkled in. It was true. Lirka knew no limits, there was always another pit to fall down. Another dark and depraved step to take on the path of power. Yet she did not expect anyone but Nova Ka to understand.

Then, finally. Lirka’s prattling gave her the time to see a message pop in front of her eyes.

AUXILIARY POWER SYSTEMS RESTORED

She let a smile, toothy and cruel appear beneath her helm. Her suit began to rumble ever so softly, there was always another trick hidden in her armored folds.

“Ah…help you? But Darth, would-be-assassin, can’t you hear it? Can’t you hear it echoing out across this very planet?”

Lirka smiled wide. Hungry for bloodshed.

“It’s the sound of my head in your teeth.”

With the pair so close, Lirka could do one of her classics. Throwing her head back for a second she slammed helmet against helmet, what fear did Lirka have of rattling something around in there? She was already crazy as it were. It was crude, savage fighting. Befitting of a monster both crude, and savage.