Terror & Hubris

[Matsu Xiangu]

It was the creaking in her bones that started it off.

It was funny - so much calcium and collagen the fulcrum for muscle and sinew, and yet in the face of the Force her skeleton had been little more than twigs. Ivory and beautiful, but fragile. Sometimes at night as she looked over in her dreams to see a halo of her scattered teeth, she thought she heard the creaking of branches in the wind only to realize it was her bones shattering under Siobhan Kerrigan’s concentration.

That was how she knew that she and Cerita were not alone with the assassins on that planet.
She heard them cracking.

“I need to go,” she gave by way of explanation, ignoring Cerita’s rightly confused face. But it was not only important to Matsu to meet Kerrigan in battle again, but to protect the deal that she and Cerita had come to broker with the assassins.

The rebreather she sometimes wore to cover the ruin of her face rose up high and covered her nose, sheltering her enough from the toxic atmosphere to allow her close to normal stamina. She’d brought her saber, the claws built in to her arms a knife she always carried with her. An armorweave bodysuit protected her from stray blasterfire or misplaced knife-cuts, but it would make no difference against the crush of gravity controlled by Kerrigan. For a while after their first meeting Matsu had considered a heavier suit of armor, but all that would have done was create the possibility of packing the Sith Lady like sardines within the metal grave of the suit. No - as before, it would come down to the mind and the body in perfect opposition.

She followed that unique brand of the Dark, flashing like the storm that had whipped in their vision on Dromund Kaas.

Neither of them seemed to be making a secret of their collision, though it was Matsu that crawled insectile down off the roof of a building she’d leapt to cut across towards that pulsing, infuriating darkness so different from her own. And yet she was drawn to it, a moth to some masochistic flame. (It’s the Way. Hurt me, make me stronger. And I’ll take you with me.)

“Where’s your friend with the green saber?” she asked as if she didn’t know the name of the man that had seen fit to mutilate her. She didn’t know if Siobhan could hear her telepathy, but something chaotic was battering in her ribcage, something that begged for destruction. She didn’t ask what Siobhan was there, or how. She didn’t believe in Fate but she believed in the Force, and she was destined to drain power from their conflicts. “Not here to even the odds, anyway.”

Lightsaber ignited as a red ward against some unexpected projectile, Matsu never stood still. She was the spider to the giant’s reach, a back and forth moving target. Such tactics meant little against a woman that practiced proficient telekinesis, but it was ingrained in the Atrisian to avoid being stationary in a fight at all costs.

The single advantage of Nantaris’ mutilation had been the sudden need for completely mental communication. Without a voice Matsu had no recourse but to occupy the minds of all those around her simply to talk, a forced habit that now made it increasingly simple to settle herself. Minds were more simple because they were all she had left for so many things. And she’d been in Siobhan’s head before.

She tried to find it again, digging viciously in to brain tissue in the split seconds of quiet she had to do so. Usually she employed subtlety, but that was of little consequence when Kerrigan already knew what Matsu was capable of. It would be a searing agony. She searched for anything at all she could use against her opponent - some memory, some weakness, something she’d buried that Matsu would in turn use to bury her.

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]​

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]


Hubris. The Ancients defined it as overweening presumption that led a person to disregard the divinely fixed limits on human action in an ordered cosmos. The one who succumbed to hubris cultivated a foolish amount of pride that ultimately led to their downfall. It was a common quality of both heroes and villains in tragedies. Force-users who bestrode the world like colossi were particularly susceptible to it. For it was easy to think of yourself as a goddess if you could warp reality through the power of your brain.


Here they were again. No zombie legions, no Firemane Gunships and artillery raining down destruction in an apocalyptic battle, no bearded Rogue Master to help even the odds. It was just the two of them. Siobhan Kerrigan and Matsu Xiangu. Both were women that wielded great and terrifying power.


One was the sledgehammer who could tear down skyscrapers or break every bone in your body with her mind, the other was the insidious spider who caught your mind in her web and shattered it, or defied the cycle of life by raising the dead as undead slaves. Both were supremely confident in their own power and more than willing to destroy any obstacles in their path to get what they wanted.


Much like the Zombie Queen was drawn to her, Siobhan was inexorably pulled towards her adversary's presence like a moth to a flame. Was it Destiny? The will of the Force, or perhaps of the Goddess? Siobhan did not believe in Fate, though at the same time it had been her niece's vision that brought her here. Either way, blood would be spilt.


Telepathy brushed against her mind, and she heard whispers from a voice that was not her own. However, the Firemane did not respond. It was an old rule of hers not to talk during combat. Besides, words were not needed. Now they were both joined in the embrace of death. Instead she followed the threads of power, trying to track the Necromancer.


As it turned out, the Mentalist beat her to the punch and struck first by unleashing a barrage of mental power. The onslaught was sheer brutality and ferocity. White-hot pain razors of pain tore through her, drilling shards of agony into her nerves. True to her reputation and known prowess, Matsu was trying to slice through her mind to dig up anything that could be used to drag her opponent down into the fathomless abyss and bury her forever.


Siobhan was not unprepared. Sweat dripped down her face and back, but the beskar-clad Force Mistress held her ground. A fortress of stone and steel with crenellated walls encased her mind. Within it stood a walled keep. Her mind was her life. She could be crippled, blinded and electrocuted, but her mind needed to be protected. Whereas the human body could be rebuilt, you could not heal a vegetable. Each assault made her walls shake and tremble, but they held. Using her might, she began to push back against the mental onslaught, viciously assaulting the mental talons.


However, though strong, every fortress has its weak spots. No citadel has ever been impregnable. Perhaps Matsu's barrage hit upon such a weak spot, perhaps her assault simply overwhelmned the mental defenders for a crucial moment. Either way, her digging paid off. Just before Siobhan could slam the beskar door shut, a mental tendril plucked a memory out of her mind. The walls were shored up, but the damage was there.


The memory she pulled out was a painful one. Siobhan, Tegaea and Galina had been out in Santaissa. Just a normal family outing for the two mothers and their adopted daughter. Then suddenly everything went dark, there were screams and Netherworld opened its massive maw and sucked her wife and daughter into it. Siobhan was...left behind. Alone, wracked with rage, despair and guilt. Her anger had been apocalyptic. She'd stormed the gates of hell, leaving epic destruction in her wake.


For a moment she was dazed, her vision began to blur as she was dragged back to that horrible day. Her heartbeat intensified, her breathing became ragged and she was baked in sweat. It was a memory Siobhan really did not want to relive. But...in the end she'd succeeded. She'd crushed legions and gotten her family back. Rage washed over her like a flood and she lashed out against the Daemon.


To stare into her aura was like looking into the core of a white-hot reactor. Power surged through her, then a storm of telekinetic energy rippled from her hand. Matsu was doing the smart thing by staying mobile, but Siobhan did not need precision. Moreover, the mental connection had gone both ways since the brief link helped her track her. What she unleashed was like a giant's hand trying to smite her opponent and crush her.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Matsu had never been particularly careful when it came to preserving herself. She’d left home young, off to find adventures that did little to prove naivete so much as plant the seeds of her burgeoning ideology. She’d lost her left arm (for the first time) before she’d even begun her training in the Force in any sort of earnest. From those agonizing days forward she had never shied from the potential for maiming or harm, believing such trial hardened her - made her a more formidable creature. This was never more evident than the way she clashed with a telekinetic titan with seemingly little thought to her safety.

It was no more than moments on the ground stalking towards the red-haired woman before Matsu felt something incoming over that self-same connection. All the warning gave her however, was the few seconds head-start to not be completely flattened beneath that metaphorical giant’s hand. The sharp wind of its invisible descent pulled at her back as she cut to the right, thinking herself safe only to hear the croaking rumble of pavement that had been more unlucky splitting and flying up in great hillocks behind her. Boots caught in duracrete ripple, the epicenter of Siobhan’s small earthquake sent Matsu flying towards one of the buildings lining the street, her body crashing through a wall to come rolling to a halt amidst the wreckage. A cough sent something creaking in the vicinity of her ribs. It was dark and the air was choked with dust, debris settling in loud thumps and soft dustings around her.

But she had seen something beautiful.

She may have differed from her Sith brethren in many ways, but she was no stranger to the drawing of power from negative emotions. It was hard to imagine Siobhan Kerrigan feeling fear, but Matsu hadn’t known she had family either.

Getting close to the powerhouse would be difficult. It would take power and patience. And frankly it would be wisest to bring her strength to bear against Siobhan’s, to crush with the iron grip of a mentalist’s prowess as she did with her telekinetic fist. But first she had to be sure the Dark one wouldn’t bring down a building on her and end her attempts before they began.

“Mummy?”

She hadn’t seen too much of the memory, not nearly enough to build anything convincing. But Matsu had dedicated her entire life to crafting illusions quietly and convincingly, and this would be one of her most important. She’d only gathered little things - the sound of a voice, a pet name loved, a glimpse of a face. She built.

“Mummy?”

Red-haired, delicate, and beautifully elegant, Galina stumbled out from behind Siobhan where she could ostensibly have appeared from. One hand was pressed to her stomach, blood disturbingly thick and crimson oozing between her fingers. A piece of the road was stuck, held between her fingers so it couldn’t tear at her insides more than it already had.

(Matsu extricated herself from the rubble, pulling herself from the building and dumping to the ground outside. She kept building.)

“I thought you’d need help…” she said, pain lacing her voice as she stumbled, nearly falling to her knees. “Mummy…” She sounded scared.

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]​

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]


"Mummy?"


"Mummy?


It was an innocent, child-like, frightened voice. One filled with so much pain. It was one Siobhan knew so well, for it was that of her little angel. Instantly, the Countess' attention was diverted from that of the Sith Witch. How could this be? Seemingly appearing out of nowhere, Galina stumbled out from behind her mother. One hand was pressed to her stomach, doing its best to keep blood from seeping out of a nasty wound.


"Galina? No, my angel! Goddess, what happened?" Acting on instinct, Siobhan rushed to the apparation that seemed so much like her daughter. How could her daughter be here? Who had dared hurt her like this? The Countess was trembling. Her entire body seemed to be shaking. It was like the stab of an icy knife to the gut. The worst wounds she'd suffered in battle were nothing compared to this.


"I thought you'd help," her voice was filled with pain and accusation as she stumbled, with Siobhan catching her before she fell to her knees. The Countess did her best to press against the wound and tried to summon the Force to help her. "Mummy." Her voice was filled with terror.


"I did...I will...I will get you out of...here. I'm so sorry," Siobhan stammered, pain, guilt and sorrow were strong in her voice. Guilt flooded her. "No...how can you be here?"


"I'm so scared. Please, help me. The monsters were everywhere. They killed everyone," the frightened redhead grabbed her mother's hand, pulling her close. By now the young woman was sobbing. Very realistic looking tears dripped down her face.


But Siobhan was no longer concentrating on the illusion. The seed of doubt grew inside her mind. The shape looked like Galina and felt like her. But...her daughter had not come with her on this quest. As a matter of fact, she didn't even know her mother would be going to confront the Zombie Queen. She was far away on Tygara and protected by a small army.


Ironically, a few years ago, a master illusionist called [member="Coryth Elaris"] had employed a similar trick against Siobhan. This one had not been meant to hurt Siobhan, but to teach her how to shield her mind by forcing her to confront her worst fear. Siobhan also possessed all of the short stack of fire's memories.


Doubt began to swell up inside Siobhan, as she studied the apparition. "Mummy...it hurts so much. Please...help me..." It was so painful to stay passive and look, but clarity slowly returned to her. Illusions lost their power to warp your perception of reality once you ceased to believe in them.


"You're not real. None of this is," she said quietly. By now, tears were dripping down her face. Tears of rage. Fury and anger filled her, a miasma of energy of the Dark Side. "You dare use her image against me!" Her cry blossomed into a deafening, thunderous roar that tore through the air around her, reverberating across the land. It was that of a lioness who'd been forced to bear witness to the worst a mother could ever experience.


She was incandescent with fury. She was not just angry, her rage was apocalyptic. The other side of Siobhan's boundless love for her family was her willingness to do whatever was necessary to protect them; no matter the cost to herself or anyone else. Woe to anyone who hurt them. Prior to this, she'd hated Matsu, but her hatred had not been personal.


The zombie apocalypse on Dromund Kaas had been atrocity, but she hadn't known the people who perished. But now her hatred had acquired a new quality. It was personal now. The Witch had laid hand upon what was the most sacred thing in Siobhan's life. Her fury burnt like a dark star in her heart and she pulled at the tangled web of power that was the Force, drawing upon the swirling miasma of dark side energy.


A pure, massive wave of unadulterated telekinetic energy shrieked from her, stronger than anything she'd ever unleashed before. Upon the passage of the shockwave, the pavement was warped and ripped apart, columns of dust rose up and the air twisted into strange shapes. It would hit with the strength of a tsunami. The building Matsu had been tossed against earlier would crumble and shatter. Ideally the Queen of Horrors would be smashed back into it and buried.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

i’m a slave, and i am a master,
no restraints in unchecked collectors.
i exist through my need to self-oblige -
she is something in me that i despise.
hard to say what caught my attention - fixed and crazy aphid attraction.
carve my name in my face to recognize such a pheromone cult to terrorize.
i won’t let this build up inside of me.
i won’t let this build up inside of me.

Much of her life thus far had been centered around learning to control her own emotions. Her prowess lay in the ability to manipulate others in to feeling what she desired them to feel and keeping it far away from her own consciousness. And yet something had changed when she had come back from a galaxy outside their own, in the space between her reemergence and that day on Dromund Kaas. Something had snapped when her face had been destroyed, when she’d writhed under dark storm clouds under the crush of Siobhan’s power. There they’d been connected by Matsu digging the knives of her mental clutch deeper in to the redhead’s brain and something in that moment had never left the voodoo-queen. (Certain if she just didn’t let go of the edge of the cliff she’d pull herself back over, dying as she clung to the only tether to the living.) Now she felt everything.

She was still thinking of Galina and Siobhan when she came to a stop, packed beneath rubble and dust, the sounds of civilians screaming ringing in the distance. No doubt they’d begun running long before the building had gone down, the two women battling outside bringing violence down to the ground long before the main cavalry began their protracted rebellion. But for them it was war. For Matsu it was now very personal.

Twisting to try and see how much room she had to move beneath the rubble, she let out a wretched hiss as pain shot white-hot up her insides. Reaching down she traced fingers over a sharp piece of duracrete that had lodged in her gut, a growl escaping as she touched her fingers to the blood seeping thick and hot from the wound and pain reeled up her again. Her core clenched around the debris, at once attempting to hold it in place and expel it, unsure which was the better decision. But she would leave it to hold together her insides - pull it now and she was sure her intestines would spill from the hole, dragging between her legs like a mockery of her frequent armies.

The words kept ringing in her head.
You dare use her image against me?

Oh she was fascinated by Siobhan Kerrigan, a spider plucking along the silk of her web, unwilling to go towards the center for fear her approach would stop delicious prey’s intricate writhing. She could watch her forever, somewhere between infatuation and hatred in a place she had no name for.

“Of course I did,” she answered from within the building though she was unseen, preoccupied with carefully extricating herself from rubble that threatened to crash down on her at any moment if she dislodged something critical. “She’s beautiful. So good - innocent, even. I had no idea you were so domestic, Siobhan,” she purred, the dark one’s name rolling from Matsu’s mind like the caress of a lover. “Perhaps I should FIND her…” She passed a body in the dark, animating it to crawl along behind her. Another. Another. Dead-dry skin slithering after her as they crawled. “You lost her once. You can lose her again.”

They rolled from cracks, from openings in the ruins of the building that had been standing tall and proud only moments before. Matsu hadn’t noticed until she was free of the darkness that her left fibula had torn right through her calf, sticking out ivory and brilliant in the lights of the street. Walking on it was enough to make her scream but she could see Siobhan again and her concentration was laser-set. Her momentary Children had already started sprinting towards the Dark one, and as Matsu continued her train of musing thought she bore a spell in her hands, letting it build as she drove her mind in to the ecstasy of what she might torture Siobhan with. The beauty of being in Siobhan’s head before was also the ugly part - it made it easier for Siobhan to anticipate her, but it also fed Matsu with every angry thing Siobhan felt, every negative emotion on which Sith thrived. Even better, such anger detracted from the concentration required to keep Matsu out. Like a parasite the Atrisian drew from the red woman’s hatred.

“I’ll search the rest of my life if I have to. Galina, Galina...imagine how scared she’ll be when I pop her guard’s dim brains in their skulls and steal her for my own.”

The zombies released a torrent of acid, shiny and vile as it sparkled like aerosol in the air towards Siobhan, oblivious to her armor but determined to burn through it for the flesh underneath. At once, Matsu released her spear, the metal of her arms hot with its hateful release.

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]​

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]


Compassion, kindness and love. There were things many darksiders avoided for a reason. Some believed it weakened their purity in the Dark Side and thus blocked their ascent to power. Others argued from a less metaphysical and more practical standpoint: In a dog eats dog galaxy, where the strong do as they will and the weak suffer what they must, having loved ones made you vulnerable and easily exploited.


Siobhan, however, had created a family. She had a wife, two daughters, and remarkable women like Tempest, Mirien and Coryth. The Countess was often a cruel woman, but her attachments were probably what kept her from completely losing herself to the darkness and falling into the abyss. The flip side of the coin was her extreme protectiveness. Anyone who threatened them or even appeared to was on the receiving end of apocalyptis fury.


Having lost Matsu, she'd activated her armour's jetpack when zombies came charging. Siobhan could not know for certain how many of these fiends the Witch had at her disposal, but she could probably easily replenish her forces from the civilians in the town. This made destroying her even more urgent.


Their salvoes of acid could not burn through her armour. In that regard, she was safe. Her bolter roared, blasting undead with armour-shredding rounds. Matsu's threats and her vile spell were another question. You will not hurt my angel. I will grind you into dust and tear you apart, queen, she projected through her mind. No one hurts her.


No one hurt her angel. Then Matsu's mental javelin was unleashed, striking at her mind. Siobhan's mental walls were strong, but she'd just unleashed two massive telekinetic shockwaves in quick succession and anger made it difficult to focus, at least for the purposes of defence. Her mental walls shook and shuddered, then began to crumble when the mental projectile was driven through. Agony surged through her being as white-hot pain flooded her, she lost concentration and tumbled to the ground.


Ouch. There was a broken rib. Actually more than one. Her leg was not happy either. Luckily her armour was reinforced against kinetic impact, but that was a small comfort. Pain wracked her rage-filled mind. In the brief moment of connection, Matsu might have seen all sorts of things, images of Sio's past being laid bare before her now that the Countess was unable to shield herself. Of loved ones, enemies, moments of triumph and moments of failure. Perhaps of her marriage to Tegaea, perhaps being spaced and almost dying due to the machinations of an evil Sith Lord, perhaps of racing to doomed Kaeshana to save Natoline from cataclysm, before the girl succumbed to insanity and abandoned her family.


Ravenous zombies sprayed Siobhan with acidic bile, then pounced upon her. Finally some clarity returned to her and, acting on instinct, she grabbed a zombie and ripped his head off with an animalistic growl and tossed the body into one of his brethren before blowing them away like ragdolls. She was breathing heavily, actually more like panting. Every step she made seemed to send waves of pain through her leg, but she persevered.


The Witch had threatened Galina. She could not be allowed to live. Her own pain did not matter, she would have to power through. Cold furry embraced Siobhan like an old friend. A shriek of agony escaped her when she shattered the mental spear inside her brain. Small mental splinters might remain embedded inside her mind, boring in like parasites and causing terrible sensations of pain. The scars the spear had inflicted ran deep, but her anger was equally strong and she fed on her pain, letting it fuel her in a perverse mockery of healing. Both Dark Ladies were like parasites, feeding off each others' pain and locked in a bloody, destructive struggle of annihilation. At least she could see Matsu again.


Taking a breath, she summoned a massive telekinetic vice and tried to pull it around the woman's torso and apply a giant's tight squeeze, putting all her wrath into an attempt to crush her like a bug. All the pain she felt, all her anger was thrown back at Matsu. There was no holding back anymore. She would not be satisfied until the Witch had been completely crushed. No words escaped Siobhan's mouth, nor did she broadcast any further thoughts via telepathy. She went cold, quiet and embraced her cold fury. Her eyes were twin orbs of obsidian, wells of nothingness.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

There was that horrid saying about the light being unable to exist without the dark, a trite and apocryphal aphorism that set her teeth on edge every time it was quoted. She supposed there was some truth to it, but those constant wars to keep one above the other were so tired and overdone. How many times had she faced a Jedi in the field? How many times had some Mando with righteousness and clan in his heart faced off against her? The struggle between the light and the dark was ancient and understandable, ingrained in their nature. But the connection borne through animosity and threat that unfolded between the two women was entirely new - uncommon, unknowable. It was the nature of the Dark Side to feed on everyone and everything; it was no stranger to the struggle between two practitioners. But they were cataclysmic, locked in some battle neither wanted to see the other walk away from.

The pressure around her middle was almost pleasant at first, though it quickly grew vise-like, her breath struggling to shove past the invisible fingers collapsing Matsu’s ribcage. She was struck by instinctive dread, the stomach-curling sensation of necessity juxtaposed with inability. She wasn’t strong enough to ward off Siobhan in some display of telekinetics, nor would something so simple as an illusion work - not when she’d already woven a singular horror and the other woman had managed to parse together the truth. The best mental artworks were crafted through a mixture of the currently available medium and a whole helping of truthfulness; working with what was already there was essential to the success of the mental attack. That had already been proven by Siobhan’s reaction when she pieced together that her daughter had no business on that planet, knew nothing of her plans to hunt Matsu Xiangu. Therefore the likelihood of Galina being there was small and Siobhan had wrested control. Pretending she was there wouldn’t work, but to go one layer deeper…

Pain was a means to perfection, that she knew.
Pain would make her illusion greater.

Giving in was almost her only option as the winch-like grip around her waist drew in so tight two of her ribs cracked under the pressure. There was some horrible crackling suck through her rebreather with each inhale as her chest tried to reach equilibrium and failed. Her bones must have pierced one of her lungs, a whistling sound accompanying every attempt for more. Gasping for air, she felt like she was breathing it in through a straw, letting the lightheadedness and agony channel to fuel her creation.

“Mummy!”

Blood was filling her boot as it poured from the open wound of her broken leg and she let her own animal panic make her someone else.

“Mummy, stop! You’re killing me! She’s tricking you - none of this is real!” Galina’s pleas were as loud as she could manage squeezed in Siobhan’s telekinetic fist. “Its me! Please Mom - please! It’s all in your head! You’re not hurting her, you’re hurting me!”

As another rib cracked, Matsu’s fury exploded outwards in a blast much like one might have been expecting from Siobhan. The dark side roiled outwards from her, an explosion of reds and purples that drew the sound from immediately around the Sith lady for a moment before blasting outwards. The zombies that had been rising were incinerated, their skeletons nightmarish statues of agony for the few seconds before they turned to ash in the heat of Matsu’s sorcery. There was no ‘push’ or ‘crush’ as with telekinesis - it was an outward burning of anything with a heartbeat in her general vicinity.

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]​

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]


“Mummy, stop! You’re killing me! She’s tricking you - none of this is real! Its me! Please Mom - please! It’s all in your head! You’re not hurting her, you’re hurting me!”


Galina's pleas were so real. The girl sounded so frightened and terrified. They were the worst thing a mother could ever hear. To hear them was pure agony for the Firemane matriarch. "No, you're not her!" she yelled. Her shriek was so loud and filled with pain that it made the ground before and around her tremble. She was so far gone and filled with rage.


She would not be swayed. She would crush the malevolent witch and make her pay for defiling the thing that was the most precious in Siobhan's life, her little angel. Her brave, gentle daughter, the apple of her eye. In her fury, Siobhan's storm-wracked mind did not perceive that this was just a distraction while Matsu drank from the fountain of the Dark Side and unleashed a spell as destructive as the tempestuous powers Siobhan so commonly called upon. The Zombie Queen's might exploded outward in a blast of bright red and purple. It was so bright that to look upon it was like staring into the white-hot reactor core.


Anything that stood in the path of the nightmarish blast incinerated. Rising zombies disintegrated and turned to ash. The same applied to any inhabitants of the town who'd been unlucky or foolish enough to end up in the crossfire. Not even skeletons remained, only piles of ash. Smoke rose into the foul air that by now was thoroughly permeated with the Dark Side that both titans yielded.


And what of Siobhan? To even attempt to protect herself, she had to release Matsu from her giant's grip. The Firemane pulled at the tangled web of power and wrapped herself in a protective cocoon that manifested as a shimmering force field, a protective barrier. It was tiring for her to summon such a protection and she only had a very limited amount of time given the speed of Matsu's attack, but she managed. So she stood there, like the eye in the storm. Then the Force blast impacted upon her barrier. The impact caused an explosion, an epic crash like a sound of the end of times. The eruption of light was all but blinding.

The protection bubble was burnt away, Siobhan was caught in the backlash and propelled into rubble. Ouch. Her head felt like it was spinning, her back howled in anger at the abuse it had endured, her heart raced. The Countess raised her hand and tried to grip her bolter, but the gun had been incinerated and only ash remained of it. Speaking of her right hand, it was very badly burnt, lacking a thumb and two fingers.


Feth. They had been blown off. Pain surged through ber badly mutilated hand. It took her another moment to realise that she could only see with one eye. Her left one was screwed since the bright flash had blinded it. Her body had been exposed to tremendous heat. It had not been enough to roast the beskar armour and disintegrate her body thanks to her protective bubble, but it still felt like she was on fire and terrible burns had spread across her. Her face was badly scorched by burn marks. Here and there, pieces of flesh had been stripped away, giving her a deformed look as bone was exposed. Smoke emanated from her right armpit, since joints lacked the heavy plating. The smell of charred flesh filled the air. There was a sickening crunch when she righted her dislocated shoulder.


She wheezed and coughed up blood, greedily sucking in oxygen, and got to her feet, though her body ached. Her breathing was more laboured and her kidney did not feel good. Her head hurt so much it was difficult to focus, but she forced herself. She affixed her one good eye upon the Sorceress and stretched out her hands, both the mutilated and the good one. Both hands were like talons as she channelled her pain through them. Dark, malevolent energies writhed inside her, then her fury exploded.


Her gauntlets retracted, the sky above seemed to darken even further as she drank from the fountain of the Dark Side, then a full-force cascade of scalding, area of effect lightning shrieked from her and surged towards Xiangu. Lightning everywhere! One of her hands might be a mess, but that simply meant increasing the intensity of the electrical onslaught. All her hatred was pulled into it as she harnessed the power of the Dark Side and unleashed it in a storm of the Force that resembled a tropical thunderstorm. The smell of ozone gathered in the air, dark clouds gathered and the roar of thunder could be heard. Forkings arcs of pure, dazzling hatred sprayed from Siobhan and clawed towards the Necromancer.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Death surrounded them both, casualties of those unfortunate enough to be unable to outrun or defend themselves from incineration. Their pain and fear was heady, a fuel more potent than any amulet or alchemy. The blocks surrounding them were leveled between telekinesis and sorcery, fires starting to burn and exacerbate the toxic atmosphere. Dust from crumbling buildings floated through the air, mucking visibility. But despite all that beautiful suffering, the effort of burning everything around her had taken its toll, her limbs heavy with exhaustion combined with the agony wracking her from all the wounds Siobhan had inflicted. She had never unleashed a Force blast quite like that and she could only blame the nature of the conflict. She’d been in countless invasions, faced dozens of opponents one on one and thousands in groups, and exacted revenge on more than a few very personal foes. And yet it was this dark-sider that drew rage and power from her so large it threatened to rip the planet in two.

The air was thick with smoke and dust but Matsu could still see what she’d managed, bone gleaming from under pale, flayed skin on Siobhan’s face. Through their connection she felt the emptiness of missing fingers, the agony of burns aching for soothing.

The sky folded in on itself above their heads, clouds sucking inwards to some great well of gravity that had not existed there before. Lightning flashed in their roiling insides and suddenly Matsu realized what it was she was about to endure. She reached out weakly for Siobhan’s mind, battering mental fists against her cage in an attempt to rattle the dark-sider out of her concentration, to stop whatever she was doing to the clouds overhead. But she was too exhausted to make any difference, the electricity reaching jagged and deadly from Siobhan towards the Atrisian.

This was agony. This was suffering. Had she been able to open her mouth and scream to the apocalyptic heavens above her she would have, but instead the sound escaped out through her nose as she fell to her knees and then her side, her body convulsing under the ceaseless onslaught of electricity. The claws within her cybernetic hands sprang and retracted uncontrollably, their circuits shorting out as electricity fried them. In her thrashing they struck her again and again, her flesh torn open by her own fingers, cross-hatches of crimson pouring out of the singed bodysuit. One particularly aimed convulsion found one of the claws stabbed in to her thigh, pulling through muscle and sinew as it retracted again and left her with an enormous hole. And just when that seemed like enough retribution the arms ceased working, the lightning burning through the circuitry and leaving them ruined. No amount of impulse would move them again, not that day. The surge of the electricity’s work burned over her shoulder blades and up the back of her neck where metal met her skin, her flesh shriveling and cooking until one of her shoulder blades poked through plastic flesh and the mess of her clothes.

When the onslaught finally ended she was on the ground, smoke curling lazily off her body. Every single fiber of her ached, each tiny movement a misery as she groaned and rolled enough to see Siobhan.

All she had left was her mind. Galina wouldn’t work. Illusions wouldn’t work. The simple tricks of overstimulation with sound wouldn’t work. So instead she went somewhere deeper - she had seen something of Siobhan, and now she gave something of herself to the dark-sider. It was her worst moment, the impetus that drove a girl with a cruel streak to become a woman that burned worlds to the ground. She’d trusted him and he’d taken control of her head and made her see things, made her burn, made her think she was dying and the only way to end it was to cut off her own arm before the flames reached the rest of her body. And she’d done it. There bleeding out in the snow she’d known shame and horror. She’d watched her blood pool outwards underneath her in the snow, lying underneath a mountain as tall as the sky. She burned. She burned. She burned. SHE BURNED. SHE BURNED. CUT IT OFF. CUT IT OFF. YOU’RE BURNING. CUT IT OFF. It was obviously nothing that the other woman would recognize, but it was entirely overwhelming, sound and sensation and the burden of emotion pouring out of Matsu towards Siobhan in an attempt to flatten her, to make her the same. Equal. Always equal.

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]​

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]


Once this was a town. Now it was little more than a hellground that had the dubious honour of being the site of an apocalyptic battle. Those unlucky enough to inhabit this place found themselves caught in the crossfire of a nightmarish contest between two titans. It was no surprise that so many people across the stars had good cause to fear and revile Force-users, for when Force Gods clashed, death followed.


Dark sorcery and telekinesis had levelled buildings, fires spread across the ruins and columns of smoke and dust billowed up into the air, further exacerbating the toxic atmosphere. An oily sense of dread and despair hang over the settlement like a pall, as did the smell of badly charred bodies. It was like something out of a Netherworld hell, but very much of this world.


For how long could both Dark Masters keep fighting? How many more would be pulled into the vortex of destruction and be torn apart by their might before one or both of the dark queens was finally slain? Pain, agony and fear permeated the town. All the smoke and dust in the air made it difficult for Siobhan to see anything, not to mention the fact that her own lightning was so damn bright and she had only one functional eye left. But she could feel that Matsu was being put through horrible agony and this pleased her.


Finally the Atrisian was on the ground. Smoke curled off her body. The Firemane Mistress tried to smile, but this looked more than a little ridiculous given that part of her face had been flayed and her bloodied lip split, giving her a grotesque appearance. Especially since bone had become visible. A cynic might say that now one half of Siobhan's face exposed her true self, displaying the features of a demon. Smoke coiled off her hands, even her good hand hurt and was burnt due to the intensity of the Sith Lightning she'd unleashed.


Siobhan dropped down to one knee, leaning against some rubble. She wheezed, coughing up blood. She needed to breathe, but the air was so clogged by smoke, dust and ash that the act made her cough violently. Her body felt like it was burning. No, she could not rest. Not when the Sith Witch was still out there. Was this obsession? Probably. One that increasingly promised mutually assured destruction. The type of blood feud that could tear apart planets.


Then the Countess felt agony when Matsu's mental onslaught connected. Siobhan had pushed herself as far as she could to resist the Zombie Queen's dark sorcery. She had come a long way from the girl who'd been an ancient Sith Lord's meatpuppet. However, Matsu was to mentalism what she was to telekinesis. Moreover, she was bloody tired and in an awful amount of pain. In addition, this particular method of attack was unexpected, though perhaps Siobhan should have known better.


She had given Matsu a portion of herself, now the Dark Lady returned the favour. It was more than a little ironic - and extremely morbid - how both were laying themselves bare before one another. Siobhan screamed in pain when the horrible images flooded her mind. It was not just images that were being transmitted, but also thoughts, feelings and so forth. In this moment, she did not just see Matsu descend into a viciousness that made her become someone who'd burn worlds, she became her.


She burned, she burned so badly. Flames seemed to engulf her body, then her arm was gone and she was bleeding out there in the snow. Shehad trusted him and he had betrayed her. Thus it appeared inside her mind. She tried to beat against the bars of her mental cage and break them, but it refused to give. Try as she might, she could not make the pain stop. She was trapped inside what seemed like an endless loop. So she screamed, like a cornered animal that lashed out in the only way it knew.


Her Force Scream exploded outward as the dark side rolled from her. It was a scream of agony and blazing hatred that made the ground tremble and blossomed into a massive, circular shockwave towards her enemy, towards anyone who might hurt her. Or rather anything and anyone that happened to be in the way. Going outwards, it would tear across the street, levelling anything within 50 metres as hit with the impact of a powerful bomb. Ordinary people so unlucky to be caught inside it would be completely torn apart. Those away from the immediate blast radius might go deaf, for a while at least.


However, her roar could not stop the visions. Her bloodcurdling howls stopped as her body went into seizure. Her abused limbs convulsed wildly on the broken ground and her mouth foamed. Her entire body seemed to tremble as her seizure worsened. Her hands turned against her as she tried to claw out her own eye...then all movement ceased. Before her she stood an apparition of Galina. Unarmed, beautiful and innocent. "I love you, mother. Be strong. You've always protected me. Rest." Siobhan stopped spasming and her body went catatonic. The last image that was imprinted upon her mind was the hallucination of her redheaded daughter.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

When the final blast shot outwards from Siobhan, Matsu had no way to stop herself from being propelled in its tsunamic wake. With no claws to dig in to the earth and barely enough energy to run her own body, she had nothing left except the sluggish persistence of her own mind. She flew end over end, back nearly folding in half as she caught on rebar that crumpled just as the brunt of the blast moved past her and left her broken in a pile on the ground. Her breathing was hideous through the breather set around the lower half of her face, a hollow sucking sound that whined through the otherwise eerie silence of the destruction they’d left in their wake.

She was trapped in a shell that was no longer willing, though her mind raged against the unconsciousness that threatened to take her.

Siobhan lay on the other end of the massive crater they’d blown in the planet’s surface, dust settling on her skin as she stared at the dark woman across the ashes of their wake. Hunger demanded she gather her limbs beneath her and finish it, paint herself in the dark woman’s blood - perhaps bind them, some dark ritual that would let her stay with Siobhan forever, hear her thoughts, torture her. They weren’t so different, were they? There had been something perverse in their shared headspace, the things they’d seen of each other. She thought - briefly - of those ever-so-human pleas of a parent when their child was taken by some deranged stranger. She loves to draw. She loves to dance. She has lots of friends. Personal things to make their victim seem more real, to make it harder for them to kill. For the most part Matsu never knew the people she’d brought low in battle, either one on one or in war. They were obstacles and lessers, creatures she could learn from and take strength from - but never more than that. But knowing something of Siobhan made Matsu hungry, some perverse need to chase an instinct opposite of nature, to maim her and kill her and devour her. Humanizing her didn’t make her harder to kill...but more appealing, some crime against the Force. Beautiful. Fascinating.

There was nothing living within the distance she could still feel save for the dark woman.
Alone.
Alone together.

Black was fluttering at the edges of her vision and she couldn’t hold it off any longer despite herself. Fires raged in the ruins of buildings, their heat warm at her back. The clouds that had roiled inwards against nature when Siobhan had called on the electricity in the air still hung above as if waiting to see what became of them, dumbfounded at the sheer audacity the two creatures had to destroy everything in their path for their own means. Forces of nature, indeed. Everything was green and black, a sickly death knell, a color like infection, like obsession. The gurgle of some wretched undead trapped beneath broken buildings called out to her but she couldn’t have responded even if she wanted to. Her mind spiraled outwards, chasing memories and idle thoughts as pain finally crept up and took her.

Matsu closed her eyes.

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"] | [member="Cerita Sarova"]​

 

[Elpsis Kerrigan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_VAL6tEnsQ​

The small town had been turned into something out of hell. It looked like a war zone, as if someone had detonated a baradium bomb inside it. Buildings had been reduced to ruins, fires raged and dark storm clouds loomed on the horizon. Clouds of smoke and dust billowed up into the air. The scent of death, despair and fear was strong in the air. So strong in fact that it hung over the town like a pall. How many people had been caught in the crossfire and perished in this apocalyptic battle? It was too early to tell at this point, but this fight would leave scars. The dark presence of both titans had been branded into the planet’s surface. Wherever the young Firemane looked, she saw only destruction, debris, ash and bodies. Thunder echoed in the distance and lightning flashed.


What the feth?! These three words were rather crude, but about the only coherent thought Elpsis Elaris could muster right now when she walked across the streets of this benighted hellhole. The young redhead had brazenly followed Siobhan, but obviously arrived too late.


The place was like a ghost town. Doubtless any inhabitants that had survived the apocalyptic battle were now huddling in the basements of their houses. Elpsis winced strongly when she felt all the pain that had accumulated in the city. It gave her a throbbing headache, for she felt it more keenly than many Force-users due to being a natural empath. Thusly, the pain was awful, agonizing even. Like countless burning shards being driven into your brain, being burned and frozen and ripped apart. She steeled her mind, fortifying it just as [member="Laina Silvias"] had taught her to deal with the empathic backlash.


A mantra to the heavens was on her lips as she built up her wall, seeking her mental safe place. Where, you might ask, dear reader, was it located? Why, in the Shadowlands, of course. Leave it to Elpsis to consider a shadowy realm filled with dangerous predators safe. But then the forests were honest in a way ‘civilisation’ could never be. Few beasts of nature were needlessly cruel. Bit by bit, she managed to shield herself just enough.


Her heart ached for those who’d perished today. This was obsession. Anger gripped her heart. Anger at the evil Sith Witch, anger at Siobhan and, finally, anger at herself, for it had been her vision that compelled her aunt to seek out Xiangu. In other words, in a way it was her fault. At least that’s how it felt like to Elpsis. The young redhead was clad in beskar armour and carried a lightsabre, but no one crossed her as she made her way through the ruins of the ghost town. Fething, stupid visions. Was this what you wanted, Force? she swore to herself in her mind. Anger rose inside her stomach like bile, but she also felt sorrow.


She whispered a quiet prayer when she came across the remains of civilians, whose bodies seemed to have been torn apart. Others were nothing but skeletons, for their flesh had been melted. Where was Siobhan? Her aunt’s Force presence was painfully weak at this point, but she could still sense her. There she was, in a very deep crater that seemed to cover a good portion of the planet’s surface.


“Siobhan!” Quickly Elpsis picked up the pace and ran towards her. She heard the gurgle of a zombie trapped beneath debris, but paid the undead creature no mind. If anyone tried to attack, they'd discover she was heavily armed. “You fething idiot,” she snarled when she saw her aunt’s broken body. “It’s me, Elpsis. I’m getting you out of here. I’m so sorry,” she gently rolled the armoured body over. She winced when she saw the flayed skin on Siobhan’s face, revealing the bone beneath it. There was no reply from the Countess, not even a pained groan. Indeed, her entire body seemed to be completely nonresponsive.


“Get a medical capsule, immediately,” she yelled at two Firemane minions who’d accompanied her and they quickly hastened away. “My turn to save you, auntie, even if you’re karking nuts,” she muttered. She bent down and her hand traced across Siobhan’s deformed face. She could not reach the woman verbally, but she could try and reach out to calm her apocalypse-wracked mind a bit. Many years ago, Siobhan had slain the monster that was Elpsis’ father. Siobhan and Tegaea had given the girl a home and welcomed her into their clan. She could not track down Xiangu and kill her, but she could extract her aunt from this self-constructed hellhole. Thus she held vigil over her, then picked up the body and loaded it on a repulsorlift stretcher when the soldiers finally returned. Firemane’s stealth ship, the Revenant, was close.


FIN for Siobhan

[member="Matsu Xiangu"], [member="Cerita Sarova"]

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Matsu Xiangu"] | [member="Elpsis Elaris"]

A lonely form picked her way through the rubble and chaotic madness of the remnants of their battlefield.

Clad in obscure and slightly unorthodox beskar'gam Sarova would be as safe as she could be, all things considered. This situation... was less than ideal in the larger sense of the word -- oh, the meeting with the assassins' guild had gone quite well, once they were placated and their anxiety (caused by the many explosions in the distance) replaced by clear-cut purpose -- but it was still an annoying situation. Sarova liked her operations to run smoothly, silently and above all with a general lack of continent-shattering events.

Unless that was what was called for, of course. Sometimes you needed a scalpel for a problem and sometimes... sometimes only a hammer would really do.

It took her a while to find the broken form of one Matsu Xiangu. In the distance she could just about see a gunship swooping down form the sky, before rising up again after precious minutes - she could only assume it was an extraction team for whoever Xiangu had been fighting, this assumption being generated by the proximity towards the 'apocalypse' here and the lack of anything else of concern on this planet.

Still, it was hardly her fight, so she did nothing about the gunship... not that there was much to do about it. Compared to the destructive force of nature that Siobhan was and the more insidiously sneaky, but no less apocalyptic power of Xiangu... Cerita... well, she had little in the way of potential of either.

"Tsk, tsk tsk." She gritted her teeth when she finally reached Xiangu's body. It had taken her much too much time, having to climb rubble and broken buildings, ignoring the cries for help of others caught in the wake of their battle. "This... hmm, well I suppose we can still work with this, after some... minor modifications."

The Sith Lord was out of it, clearly, so she was mostly talking to herself at this point.

Behind the visor and holographic heads-up display filling her in on Matsu's biometric data those green eyes roamed.

And what they saw was endless potential.

"Let's see if I can get you out of here at a reasonable timeframe, hmm?"