Terror on Terax

[Elpsis Kerrigan]

[member="Laira Darkhold"]


You know what happened when you went toe-to-toe with a Krayt dragon? That's right, it cut up your abdomen with a wicked talon. Blood caked her shirt, and more dripped onto the sand-covered ground. Narrowly evading another strike as her precognition kicked into gear, Elpsis ducked, then slashed at the beast.


The dragon roared in anger when the energy sword cut across one of its legs. The tunnel's roof dropped heavy rocks, and mountains of sand. This had the effect of trapping the beast, but a large stone crashed into her and she tumbled to the ground. Ouch. White-hot pain flooded her. The sand cushioned her fall somewhat, though it also cut into her flesh.


However, the rock would not budge. She could not shake it off. Shaken and breathing heavily, she tried to stretch out with the Force and raise her lightsabre, which had fallen out of her grasp, from the ground. If she could levitate it, she could throw it at the beast. Perhaps right into its skull. The great beast's massive jaws came for her, seeking to at least swallow her if it could not move.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Laira pulled on the stomach's wall, feeling liquid rushing out of the stomach. Her ribs burned with pain as stomach acid leaked through her sandy armor and clothes, touching the bare skin beneath. With great effort, she pulled herself out of the beast's stomach and into its abdominal cavity. Now to find something important.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

That sounded like and important thing to the Redhead, but it was very far away and very difficult to locate. What she needed was a spleen or lungs, those would still get the job done and weren't as far away. But what did a spleen feel like on a creature this size?

The redhead crawled through the creature's body, hauling herself little by little like some sort of redhead parasite, until something hit her in the face as it expanded. "Oof. Stupid lizard." She muttered, her face burning from the acid still caked in her sand armor. "Take this schutta." Her blade jabbed into the lung the next time it expanded as the beast filled its chest with air, driving the tip into it. A second later a loud explosion erupted from the lung as both High Explosive Coinshot shells fired off inside the lung. It almost imediately collapsed and deflated, blood pouring into hundreds of small tears and holes.

The dragon was still very much alive, but it would die in these tunnels. Hopefully not with Elpsis or Laira, though.

[member="Elpsis Kerrigan-Alcori"]

 

[Elpsis Kerrigan]

[member="Laira Darkhold"]


Elpsis was doing a good job bleeding. Part of her body was beneath a rock, part of it was sort of inside the beast's mouth. Her right arm did not feel right. In the moment when the great beast sought to wrap its enormous jaws around her, Laira struck. Her spear pierced the dragon's lung. Ouch. That was...extremely unpleasant. Then the lung collapsed when the High Explosive Coinshot shells exploded.


Bleeding and cursing violently, Elpsis threw her lightsabre into the beast's mouth. "Eat this, queen." The glowstick travelled until it hit something soft. The dragon roared in anger, and Elpsis rolled out, managing to dislodge the rock. Crawling, she managed to get to her feet, swaying.


She sensed Laira was close...and still inside the beast. That would obviously not do. "Laira, I'm coming!" Gathering the last of her strength, she conjured a blazing, thermic lance. Then she thrust it into the beast's stomach. It ought to make a hole.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Laira found herself far more trapped than she had hoped. Suddenly the krayt dragon was no longer holding itself up, it's muscles relaxing and pressing down on the redhead with enormous weight. Furthermore she was holding her breath now and in utter darkness. Panic was beginning to set in.

She heard a muffled shout from outside, then a wave of intense heat flooded past her, the smell of burnt meat tingling at her nostrils and the acrid smell of charred bone in the air. The redhead started scrambling like a mad woman, rushing to find an exit.

From the outside one could have seen her pressing against the thick hide of the beast near the hole Elpsis had made.

Laira's breath escaled her chest as she struggled, blood and sand and gore filling her mouth as her body tried to suck in air. The tiniest hole of light caught her eye and she pulled herself with all her might towards it. Her hands appeared in the charred wound, flaping helplessly until her face emerged. Laira vomited and coughed, gore and her stomachs contents spreading on the sand while she fought to catch her breath. "Elpsis!" She called, her ragged voice filled with concern.

Her face bore a burn scar on her cheek and left eye, her left side and both legs burned from stomach acid as well, her pants in ruins and shirt almost nonexistent by this point.

[member="Elpsis Kerrigan-Alcori"]

 

[Elpsis Kerrigan]

[member="Laira Darkhold"]


Under other circumstances, the view of Laira...not wearing much, would have been appreciated. However, given the condition she was in, there was no fanservice involved. Elpsis was blind anyway. "I'm here!" Quickly she grabbed Laira's hands and pulled her out.


Some of Laira's stomach contents ended up landing on the empath. But Elpsis had more important things to worry about. Like getting her girl out. "C'mon. Let's get you out of here." Elpsis herself was not doing too well. Little of her shirt remained, she was bleeding and had suffered several bruises. Still, they were alive.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Laira, covered in blood and sand took the offered help from the witch to escape the fleshy trap, her chest heaving to catch her breath. As soon as she was free she pulled Elpsis into a tight hug, clinging to her friend, not even considering the mess she was going to make on her.

"I was so afraid I would never see you again." She whispered, tears welling in her eyes. She was relieved, clinging to one of the few people she had genuine feelings for like her life depended on it. Laira wasn't hiding her emotions either, her hands gripping the witch's shirt until her bloody knuckles turned white.

"Take my necklace for your wounds." She whispered refusing to let go without being pushed away by the blind redhead.

[member="Elpsis Kerrigan-Alcori"]

 

[Elpsis Kerrigan]

[member="Laira Darkhold"]


After all the excitement, danger and adrenaline, Elpsis was more than a little overwhelmed. She looked and felt like crap. But they were alive. "I got you. I got you. I was...so scared for you," she said, her breathing ragged. Holding on to Laira, she planted a kiss on her. "You sure don't need the necklace more than me?" As it was, Elpsis still had a nasty head wound.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Laira was slowly catching her breath, the moments of panic now behind the two redheads. For a moment, Laira had been unsure of her own immortality, afraid for not only her own life but for Elpsis's as well. Her bubbling feelings for the blind witch causing her discomfort at seeing the woman injured. "No, you take it sweetie," she said, followed by a comforting but short kiss. Her tight grip on Elpsis relaxed, if only enough to pull the healing amulet off and place it around Elpsis's neck.

Smiling weakly, Laira proposed a compromise, "We can both wear it all tonight, if you'd like. But right now, we should get what we came for and tell the locals the body is down here. They might want to cut meat from it." But they had come for a few different reasons. Partially for the pride at being able to say they had slain a beast of such grandeur, partially for its pearls. And for Laira, because Elpsis had suggested it and the redhead had a weakness for anything she said.

Laira pulled two of its Teeth out, both about as long as her forearm, by digging around in its gums with her vibro-blade until they came loose and slipped off in her hands. With those tucked into her belt, she cut two large pieces of its hide from the throat of the creature. She had to dig around in its bloody throat to find the enormous gizzard, but eventually had it torn open and pulled out the only two pearls from within. One was pure violet in color, and the other was still bloody but waiting for Elpsis to clean and discover its color. Bother were small, able to be fit within the palm of Laira's hands. "I think we have what we came for. I'm gonna see about getting us some daggers forged from the teeth. I don't know about the skin, but I wanted it."

[member="Elpsis Kerrigan-Alcori"]

 

[Elpsis Kerrigan]

[member="Laira Darkhold"]


Elpsis looked reluctant, but nodded. "Ok, but don't play the 'tough girl' and try to hide how badly you're doing, kay?" she stated firmly. "We wear it together." At long last, the great beast had been slain. Elpsis breathed in deeply, standing shakily. Luckily, the amulet was starting to work its magic. It probably kept her from collapsing. What was left of her shirt had been coloured scarlet.


She leaned on the carcass while Laira dug around in the dragon's mouth, retrieving two teeth and two pearls. The empath's bruised, bloodied lips curled into a smile as she retrieved the offered crystal. "Thanks...babe," she ran her fingers over it. Once cleaned, it would turn out to be scarlet. "Let's go. Probably getting dark now. I don't want the nomads to leave without us. Y'know...we're real badarse together."

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Once everything had been gathered and claimed, Laira stumbled over to Elpsis wrapping her arms around the Redhead to help stabilize them both and so that both their heads could be slipped through the necklace's chain at once. The necklace was the same kind she had worn on Onderon, a simple crystal and leather strip that induced the same healing powers as being submerged in a tank of bacta. The cooling feeling flooded into Laira's burns and as she inspected herself she realized her knuckles and palms were almost without skin due to being submerged in stomach acid and scrapped by sand.

They were able to find the locals with relative ease, directing the worried Cathar towards the corpse of the Demon Dragon Lizard, who were quite impressed. They had several mating proposals from some of the Cathar which Laira turned down with embarrassment across her features. "No, no thank you. I'm more of a one at a time kind of gal. Maybe next time." She smiled, patting the Cathar's paws but was otherwise content to cling to Elpsis.

"There is the speeder sweety, I'm all stick and gross and need a shower. You need some bacta patches and nurse Laira to pamper you some. You drive and I'll call for Di to come pick us up in the outcast?"

[member="Elpsis Kerrigan-Alcori"]

 

[Elpsis Kerrigan]

[member="Laira Darkhold"]


Mating requests! "Uh...nothing against you dude. But ain't my type. Don't get me wrong...I like the fur, but I just...don't do, guys." Elpsis tried to diplomatically fend off the attention of a rather big, muscular Cathar male who really wanted to get frisky with the blood-covered huntress.


"You on the other hand...you're more like it, cutie," she added with a smile when a female Cathar wrapped some sort of necklace around her and gave her a kiss. "Maybe we can have some alone time...uh...later." She was certain that Laira was glaring at her.


Then she finally got around to replying to the other redhead after managing to get some breathing space. "Oh, sounds good. Catch you later, guys." Before she was able to disentangle herself from the nomads, she paid those among them who'd been so kind to set up the traps. They got shinies Elpsis was ok with parting with.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Laira was indeed a little possessive and a little attached to Elpsis, but she managed not to glare daggers into the Cathar female by sheer force of will. The redhead knew that things between her and Elpsis wouldn't be what she considered ideal, but she was hoping they would be able to work out something she could be comfortable with. Eventually.

For now Laira was more concerned with getting Elpsis to her med-bay and doctoring on her injuries than she was with pestering the wounded witch about how their relationship was going to evolve or turn out. "She wasn't all that cute," It came out despite Laira's efforts to hold it in. She just had to say something about the cathar female to make herself feel better as it turned out. Laira bit her tongue however and managed not to say anything else about it.

"Come on, I need to get you back to a medbay. You are still bleeding." Her hand touched warm red liquid on Elpsis's stomach, which could have been hers. Laira herself needed a good bacta scrub and several other treatments over the next few days to fully recover. Her legs burned and ached painfully, but she tried to ignore it and move past the pain long enough to get her companion some help. She revved the Speeder and pinged off a message while Elpsis got comfortable. No time for anything fancy, just stay low and hit top speed as quickly as possible.

[member="Elpsis Kerrigan-Alcori"]

 

[Elpsis Kerrigan]

[member="Laira Darkhold"]


"So you'd say no if I suggested the three of us have...fun together?" Elpsis asked innocently, bumping Laira's hip lightly. She had the feeling that said fun would not be on the cards. She found Laira's apparent possessiveness a bit cute...but also hard to understand. To her, life was too short to get hung up about things like this.


However, she did not want to sour the mood. Anyhow, Laira pulled her along to the bike and Elpsis was neither inclined to resist nor in any state to do so. "Yes, ma'am. And I'm not bleeding that much." For someone who'd earlier told Laira not to try and hide her injuries, she was doing a bad job following her own advice. Her head still hurt and she was swaying more than a little. Her stomach was coated in warm scarlet liquid. Still, she managed to sit down on the bike and get it started. "I think we...best not go top speed this time," she muttered before they took off.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

"I don't even know her!" Laira started, not offended by the comment but more embarrassed at the suggestion. She took a moment to breath in and calm herself so she didn't come off as snippy or angry, wanting to be certain she wasn't giving off judgmental tones or seemingly dismayed at the suggestion. In truth, she wanted some kind of commitment out of a relationship or at the very least a deep emotional connection, she didn't want to sleep with someone because of how they looked. She could have started that years ago if that was her goal. "I'm just not as open as you are, I guess." It shouldn't be that hard to believe considering Laira had put the brakes on their physical relationship after their first date.

In most scenarios, Elpsis and her shared an emotional connection and understanding of one another as far as the redhead could tell, and the object of Laira's affections. It wasn't just a simple crush to the princess anymore, not after she'd thought she was going to die in the Krayt Dragon and one of the regrets she had was not having told Elpsis as much.

Laira snuggled against Elpsis for the flight back to the ships, making sure to keep close to her so they could share the healing amulet with one another. At least that would slowly work its magic on their wounds, and it would certainly help them feel more comfortable. Laira grinned to herself, thinking of some of the stories she had been told or heard around the palace about her Mother and Father, how if she used the right tone with him she could ask for something as simple as emptying the dishwasher and he would still leap up and carry her off to the bedroom. She wanted something like that, and she didn't want to live with competition all the time.

Maybe she could think of a way to have her cake and eat it too, but for now, she was just focused on having it.

[member="Elpsis Kerrigan-Alcori"]

 

[Elpsis Kerrigan]

[member="Laira Darkhold"]


Laira's reaction caused Elpsis to giggle a bit. "Roger. I won't drag you into threesomes or foursomes. Promise! I guess we think a bit...differently on stuff like this. Still, it's kinda sweet that you think of me that way," she smiled slightly. Both girls kept close during the drive, enabling them to share the magic of the healing amulet. This necessitated driving the bike rather slowly, but that was probably necessary either way since given Elpsis' present state, she would have assuredly crashed something otherwise.


The sun had already set by the time they left, and soon darkness descended upon the desert. With it came a mild chill as the temperature cooled down, causing Elpsis to shiver. Normally she could have used her powers to stimulate her own body heat, but she was pretty drained. Fortunately, they did not have to wait for long before the Outcast came into view, swooping down upon their location.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The Outcast swooped low, landing in the arid desert long enough to collect the speeder bike and the two redheads before taking off to go back to the base camp they had set up with Elpsis's ship and the Ranger supplies strewn around on a sandy plateau.

Laira took Elpsis immediately to the small medbay, pulling her along to set her into a bacta bath and have the surgical droid see to her large cut from the Dragon's talon. "Here you are sweetie, just get undressed and get comfortable." Laira kissed Elpsis's nose thoughtfully, wondering if she should say anything just yet or if she should let it hang over her mind a little longer. She ended up deciding it best not to trouble her wounded friend at the moment, wanting to let Elpsis relax without anything to trouble her. "I'm going to get cleaned up then I'll be back to check on you."

The princess excused herself reluctantly, worried about her friend, and retreated to the refresher next door with a handful of bacta salves to scrub at her acid burned skin on her legs and left side in a hot steam shower. She found her ankle swollen and bruised, adrenaline having kept her from noticing, but it was certainly broken somewhere. Probably a hairline fracture that was bothering her muscles. Once she had taken care of herself, which was not all that well, but enough that she'd live and heal given enough time and was now clean, Laira eagerly returned to Elpsis.

[member="Elpsis Kerrigan-Alcori"]

 

[Elpsis Kerrigan]

[member="Laira Darkhold"]


And so the two violence-loving redheads found themselves back on the Outcast. It did not take long before Elpsis found herself in the medbay and was submerged inside a bacta bath, while a surgical droid saw to her wound. Droids were useful for that kind of thing, yet Elpsis always felt more than a bit awkward around them.


Given her reliance on Force Sight, she had trouble seeing them, for they blended into background noise. She could get an idea of their presence by tracing heat signatures generated by their oil, but she did not really have the energy to focus much. So she could hear the machine move about and feel it work on her stomach, but could not really see it. Clamping down on her nerves, she managed to relax a bit inside the soothing bath.


The bacta began to slowly work its healing magic on her bloodied, injured body, washing away the blood and closing her stomach wound. Adrenaline had kept her from realising how much blood she'd lost. Now that it had worn off, she felt tired. "Laira?" she asked when she heard footsteps approaching. Her voice sounded a bit weak. Her difficulty using her Sight also affected her ability to see Laira.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Laira had went for simple, cotton short shorts and a similarly small cotton shirt, when she returned to her injured friend. "Yes Elpsis. Is there anything you need?" The redhead's hand reached into the viscus liquid and took hold of Elpsis's hand giving it a reassuring squeeze.

Elpsis would be able to feel the roughness of burned skin on Laira's knuckles. Such burns covered the woman's legs, working their way up her left hip to her ribs from where virulent stomach acid had eaten through her sand armor and clothes, searing her muscles and skin. Laira would be fine with a few days rest and regular bacta treatments to the affected areas, but for now the skin was tender and her flesh hurt with just the touch of clothing upon it.

"I," Laira had tears welling up in her eyes from seeing her friend, no someone she cared much more deeply about than a friend, so injured and seemingly weak. "I thought I was never going to see you again, sweetie. I was so scared I wouldn't get to say how I felt, and I've been trying to find the right way to say it, but I haven't figured it out. And I just wanted you to know how much you've meant to me since we met. I don't know what it is, but I get excited to see you, I feel comfortable with you, I like everything about you." Droplets from her cheeks struck the bath softly, "I, I know we don't want the same things from each other, but I'd like to think I mean a lot to you too."

[member="Elpsis Kerrigan-Alcori"]

 

[Elpsis Kerrigan]

[member="Laira Darkhold"]


"Just needed to know you're there. Can't see well," Elpsis said quietly, looking a bit embarrassed. She did not try to keep up the tough girl act to the extent Siobhan and [member="Tempest"] did, but she still did not admitting that her disability hindered her a bit in her daily life.


Then the other redhead made her confession. "Laira...I...," for a moment Elpsis had lost for words, stammering slightly. Various emotions swelled up inside her. Anxiety, fear, affection. Part of her felt like running. Metaphorically at any rate sice she was obviously in no state to actually run. She was also touched. "I, uh, didn't think you...felt that way about you. Guess I'm a bit dense...sometimes. You're real great to be around and a very kind, brave girl. I care about you as well...a lot."

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Laira was a bit relieved to have admitted out loud that she had feelings for Elpsis, and also that the blind witch had some affections for her in return. Her senses knew by Elpsis' body language and her tone, that while truthful she wasn't exactly comfortable. Perhaps Laira had chosen a bad time to confess her side of things, since Elpsis was a little at her mercy.

Regardless, the Redhead was quite pleased to her Elpsis claim to have feelings for her. She squeezed Elpsis's hand once again, "Thank you hun. I think," She paused to collect herself and calm down, put her words in the right order, "I think once you are stitched up and comfortable, I'll help you to bed. Maybe give you a nice massage to help you relax."

[member="Elpsis Kerrigan-Alcori"]