Duel Upon a Midnight Dreary - Kaila Irons vs Mystra Midnight

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Armor
Tag: Mystra Midnight

The gauntlet felt tight.

Anathemous had always thought that Beskar was nigh indestructible, that only a specialized forge could break and melt the sacred metal of a people with whom she'd once shared a home.

Until hers began to creak.

"nngh!"

The young sith opened her fist, gloved fingers clawing at the air, instinctively trying to wriggle out of her own gauntlet to no avail. She'd never faced a foe so strong, nor who cast through their weapon the way she did.

"Rise!"

And she was running out of time.

She fought through the pain and weakened laminanium in her bones with the help of her remaining Exo-muscle, planting her own spear into the ground and then raising her injured fist in the air. A crude metal was wrapped around her burnt wrist, a red and rusted looking thing even despite it's black paint. Cortosis, the last of her old armor.

Anathemous twisted the opposite wrist to lay flat before her, and slammed her cortosis gauntlet into the coiled lightwhip as if she were a great smith swinging her hammer in the forge, producing an ear ringing clash which echoed over the rumbling mountainside.

A sharp pain lanced through the remaining nerves soon after, as the doppelganger's spear tore through the already wounded flesh and ripped apart the nylasteel coils in her Exo-muscle, the ends splitting into dozens of threads like exposed wire. The young Darth was knocked to her knee by the impact.

She was bleeding, burnt, broken. she would die on Vanqor, unless she ends this two pronged attack immediately. She could not fail Tamsin here, not again, not when she was this close to an answer. She could not allow herself to be returned to Quinn in a bag, nor leave Kirie unprotected.

Anathemous looked up at Mystra, shaking with rage.

As the doppelganger sped towards her, the spear lodged in the Darth's arm began to sink deeper as she pulled her rage and pain inward. And as she took a deep breath through her teeth, even the spirits could feel their power being drawn into Darth Anathemous.

"RAAAAAAAGH!"

The power exploded outward in the form of several Darkshears which shot out of her body soon as the False Mystra neared, inky black spines sprouting out of her body like that of sea urchin, each twice the length of a saber and dripping with the nigh unhealable venom of the dark side.

Mystra was no longer fighting Anathemous the knight, methodical and brave,

But the savage beast for which she was named.

​

 

[Mystra Midnight]

​

Theme: The Wolf in your Darkest Room
Tags: Kaila Irons

---

The Lightwhip went slack, and the charge of its golden plasma fluttered and then died out as Cortosis struck it. As it went slack and slipped from the vambrace Mystra stumbled backwards, and the crushing force ceased.

For moment Mystra had, the young sith in her grasp but it was fleeting as she saw as she stumbled backwards. The ringing from the clash of crotosis against the Mandalorian armor reverberating through her ears.

She almost thought everything was lost until she felt it in the air the spear colliding into the sith. A faint smirk crossing her little face, as she reeled in her dead whip. She spoke once more as she did so in almost gloating tone through her heavy labored breaths.

"You fought well, but the dark consumes use all eventually. It takes back what it is owed, what was stolen from it by the will. You tried to steal my soul, so I am going to banish yours to the dark so it can never return."

She spoke as the child looked up at her in rage, her broken frame wanting to fight on but in Mystra's eyes there was a look of seeing this a million times. Like she had seen so many reach this point where they wanted to fight but couldn't anymore. There was an almost pitying look on Mystra's face as she looked at Kaila on the ground.

"Rest well."

She said as the doppelganger rushed the woman before Mystra. Then Mystra's eyes went wide, as the young sith rose and from her sprung spears of midnight black like a great puffer fish. Striking the Doppleganger that disappeared in a puff of violet ichor the red shoto saber dropping to the ground in a clatter as it disengaged.

Mystra could feel the shift and the power flooding into the woman. Feeling the rage, the pain, and regret of what would be lost if she died all flow into the woman. A rage demon, it seemed more then the sister was possessed by an earth-shattering monster. Mystra instinctively took a few steps back as spears flew in her direction as well. One slamming into her left shoulder and another into her right thigh.

It ripped through flesh and bone tearing muscle and shattering bone. Unlike the sith Mystra did not have metal to support her. Blood spewed from her leg and shouldered as she fell to the ground catching herself. She could have absorbed the spears but that would have cost her more than she had so instead she put an aura of protection around herself to keep the spears from obliterating her completely.

Her right hand dropped her whip and yanked the spear from her leg. "aaaaaaaaagh!" she screamed and seethed through her gritted teeth. Her leg trembled and quaked as she attempted to go back to standing using the spear to like a crutch.

"Why won't you just DIE!" As she screamed that another bolt of lightning was pulled from the sky and was shot at the creature that use to be the sith girl.

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Armor
Tag: Mystra Midnight

Darth Anathemous looked upon her with hatred in her eyes.

But just as Mystra no longer beheld that stubborn girl, Anathemous did not see Mystra as she was; only the enemy, a faceless avatar of everything she had fought so hard against. Fate, be it her own or her sister's, and the endless struggle therein.

She did not even acknowledge the fallen doppelgänger as she ground her teeth, nor as she ripped the bent gauntlet from her arm. She stood slowly, spines retreating into her body, and kicked her spear, disengaging the telescopic hilt which retracted into her hand in a series of rhythmic clicks. Never once did she take her eyes off the foe, relying on the force for awareness.

Even as the lightning struck, Anathemous acted on pure, bestial instinct. The force screamed at the edge of her senses, and just before it's baleful white glow touched her form, the monstrous knight flung her remaining hand skyward to intercept.

A thunderous ✱CRACK✱ tore through the air and deprived her of hearing momentarily.

The bolt had been intercepted just barely in time by a shimmering shield, the weight of which pressed into it forcing her knees and elbow to bend. She was Atlas, holding up the very sky, muscles shaking, chest heaving.

By her own strength, she would have died. She should have died. But the dark spirits shackled by writhing tethers of dark energy sustained her, just enough, some dropping to their spectral knees as she drained them dry.

"...I... refuse...!" she finally answered.

Each breath was a battle of it's own, and the shield was beginning to fracture above her.

"Because death is my GOD. Not yours!"

But she let it break. The center grew thin as lightning continued to strike in one continuous beam as if Mystra's god truly had ordained her execution. But as it broke, the lightning began to trickle in, forming a swirling funnel into her. It hurt, it hurt so badly, but in her pain and rage, and the power of this ghostly triumvirate, she absorbed it.

"Carnifex shackles me no more!"

The veins around her eyes grew dark, she was running out of time, out of power to hold it back.

It had to go somewhere, lest she perish.

"And no sister of mine will bow to the gods EVER again!"

She leveled her hand on Mystra, crackling electricity visibly coursing along her arm, and as the beam's tail neared the ground at last, her barrier shattered. Anathemous extended her index and little finger at Mystra, a foul tuning fork which began to channel the lightning. Purple, then sickly magenta as it reached them.

Thunder boomed across the land.

And from this tuning fork of flesh, she unleashed a piecing beam.

​

 

[Mystra Midnight]

​

Theme: The Wolf in your Darkest Room
Tags: Kaila Irons

---

"Your sister's maker has defeated death!"

Mystra screamed back through her pain and whirling winds leaning heavily on the spear. As lightning struck out like a righteous fury. The sith caught it though and as she did Mystra slumped a little more on the spear holding her up. Her orange fiery eyes flickering in and out.

Then she heard the name Carnifex….

The name itself meant little, of course she knew of his legacy and legend. Yet she did not care like her maker, she knew of his origins or rather those that led up to him. Those that crafted him into the failed emperor he was. Carnifex had been this sith's God once and just like the men that made him not one of them could challenge the maker.

"Just like those before you girl, you worshiped a self-proclaimed sith'ari. Yet you spit on the one true power, the one they dare not face. The one your former god's master's master exiled from the sith because they knew they could not beat her. Your former god's makers and your new god cannot defeat the Witch'ari."

She watched in defiant fury finally pushing herself up to full standing as the lightning swirl around.

"If you knew the maker you would know bowing is a death sentence."

The lightning spread through the air and Mystra closed her eyes. It struck into her, flowing over her body. The searing pain flooded through her nerves as she took the almost red shifted lightning head on. Her teeth clinched tight, and her jaw locked as the lighting burned over her blistering and burning skin. Nerve ending died and skin smoked and turned hard as it burnt, her robes melted into her flesh. The spear in her shoulder broke apart and crumbled to ash cauterizing the wound. The same with he wound in her leg.

The spear in her hand burnt away to ash and her legs gave out, dropping to her knees as her blacked burnt flash smoked. Her body was cold and numb as she could feel no more pain. As lightning began to subsided Mystra looked like a black statue kneeling on the ground before Kaila.

But then the eyes opened to and those eyes that had been flickering moments ago lit up like WHITE HOT supernova's. The left stump where a hand once been moved and slammed into the ground sending telekinetic wave through the ground cracking spinning out in a spiderweb pattern across the earth to Kaila's feet and beyond. As the ground cracked Magma started to spew up from the ground.

Then the statue that was Mystra's right hand reached up towards the sky. No words were spoken as her hand opened wide like she was reaching for an apple on a tree. As she did a swirling void started to appear in the spiderwebbed pattern on the ground in the magma pools forming. Tendrils of darkness rose up from them and began to reach out and grab at the malformed Kaila trying to grapple her and pull her into the magma.

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Armor
Tag: Mystra Midnight

The Witch'ari should have fascinated her.

It was the first indication of who Sokar truly was, and her powers therein. The implications of such a title on their own would have sent her mind racing with possibilities and such grand fantasy.

But she was too far gone now.

She snarled like a beast as the witch charred and smoldered before her very eyes in a near blinding flash until the last of lightning coursed through her being and into Mystra's. The sith stumbled forward as it passed through, chest heaving, face marred by blackening veins and paling skin.

But Anathemous did not wait. She marched forward, carried by the dark rage which sustained her even now. Her limp arm was given the barest of attention; dragging her lightsaber across the skin in one shaky, but practiced, and agonizing motion which cauterized her bleeding wounds with startling speed and only served to fuel the anger carrying her forward.

Mystra was alive, for however long that would last.

She held the blade aloft, ready to strike her down and end this once and for all.

Just as she swung downward, the witch unleashed a forceful blast which shook and cracked the ground below her feet, causing the young Darth to stumble, lightsaber leaving a trail of molten slag in the ash as she missed, then fell backwards.

Tendrils of pure malice made manifest rose from the shattering ground and coiled around her leg, leaving noxious coils of smoke in it's wake as it began to melt her rubbery bodyglove and sear her flesh, rendering the sith immobile on the floor. The pit opened beneath her in a red glow, and for but a moment, Anathemous wondered if perhaps this was what it looked like to enter the nether. Perhaps she had already died, and truly been banished to the dark as Mystra promised.

But it was not in her nature to surrender.

She kicked and screamed, swinging wildly at the approaching tendrils even as they began to drag her towards the boiling pit.

Until a moment of grim clarity struck.

The ember of Vahl burned bright in her eye as she looked up at Mystra in determined silence. She bared her teeth, face twitching with rage as she willed the fire to her side. Flames grew, then shot up like solar flares from the magma's surface, lashing out wildly to break the tendrils which ensnared it's master, and at Mystra, to disrupt her concentration on the spell.

All the while, her discarded shoto began to drag itself from the dirt.

​

 

[Mystra Midnight]

​

Theme: The Wolf in your Darkest Room
Tags: Kaila Irons

---

Her hand lifted to the stormy sky above Mystra's eyes flared like bright burning white stars. Her body felt no pain, only the cold numbness like the deep black abyss of space. Her death blow was approaching as her tendrils stretched out and turned her would be assassin away.

Her eyes did not flinch, or flicker just continued to look up into the storm past it deep into the black abyss of space. Like they were searching for something, an answer to a question that had not been asked.

Mystra did not look at the young sith as the tendrils began to pull her into the pits of the fiery entropy. She continued to look up at the sky, past it deeper into the universe itself. Reaching out the dark, offering up this one's soul as sacrifice.

"ᛁ ᚨᛗ ᛒᚢᛏ ᚨ ᛋᛖᚱᚡᚨᚾᛏ ᛟᚠ ᚤᛟᚢᚱ ᚲᚺᛟᛋᛖᚾ ᚷᛟᛞ ᛟᚠ ᛞᛖᛋᛏᚱᚢᚲᛏᛁᛟᚾ, ᛒᚢᛏ ᛟᚠᚠᛖᚱ ᛟᚾᛏᛟ ᚤᛟᚢ ᚷᚱᛖᚨᛏ ᛏᚺᛖ ᚷᚱᛖᚨᛏ ᛞᚨᚱᚴ ᚠᚱᛟᛗ ᚹᚺᛁᚲᚺ ᚨᛚᛚ ᛚᛁᚠᛖ ᚲᚨᛗᛖ ᚨᚾᛞ ᛋᚺᚨᛚᛚ ᚱᛖᛏᚢᚱᚾ ᛏᚺᛁᛋ ᛋᚨᚲᚱᛁᚠᛁᚲᛖ."

Her lips dry and her voice raspy and exhausted as she offered up Kaila's soul to the dark, the deep abyss from which reality spawn and would one day return too in entropy the heat death of the universe. He rears could hear the young sith screaming and continue to fight against the inevitable. Mystra though was lost in her concentration and offering to the unseen dark.

As pit's of the inferno flared up high into the haze and gloom of the sky with he sith's rage swelling. At first Mystra did not realize what was happening as her tendrils burned away to ash mixing with the volcano's ash. She felt her control waning which caused her to pull her eyes away from the sky above.

She did not feel the heat of the fire as she felt only cold and numbness. Yet as her eyes glanced at the fires raging before her horror struck her eyes. She wanted to move and run but she couldn't what use to be her skin was to tight to move fast enough. She thought for a split second and reached out her hand towards where the sith was.

"Uikitri het berolak Ci fidafah chu yidevysht shuree!"

A combo spell of Hassat-durr and Tempest she called on all the elements around her from the great storm she had already created to her aid to strike at the sith with an unholy wrath. The ground quaked the, fires raged even higher and all around them, lightning and hail stormed down at Kaila and the winds began to swirl into ashen tornado's all around the area they were in.

It was the last gasp, Mystra knew what was coming as the dark showed her in the vision of what was to be, when she called out to it. The storm would be her last call to the nature and destruction she controlled hoping to inflict as much damage as she could on the raging beast coming for her soul. Yet it wasn't her last cruelty to inflict upon the young sith.

As ash and fire obscured the unmoving Mystra from visual view of the young sith she casted one last spell.

"Chu meni azza Ci meni chu, lat'lah shuree kuk Ci meni rish azza rish. Melo shuree res pafefo het yot shar ficl hai bez, yot kaot Ci man meni."

She saw her death and for that her body shifted and contorted, her appearance changed and shifted into a younger youthful version of herself. Her wounds were not healed but masked by the new skin she now wore. A perfect Mimicry of who she use to be.

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Armor
Tag: Mystra Midnight

The tendrils burnt, there was still a chance.

The moment she was free, Darth Anathemous flew out of the pit, a shadow flanked by the hellish glow of what should have been her molten grave. But something blocked her path.

Ash and rain both swirled around them, obscuring all from view.

She put her hand up to shield her eyes, stubbornly pressing herself through the wind even as volcanic rock and debris scratched and tore at her freckled skin and whipped her tousled hair.

The witch continued to speak, but what was she saying? Taunting, casting a spell? Anathemous was answered with lightning, strike after strike, which stopped the enraged beast in it's tracks. Her artificial muscles seized and shorted, her very bones lit as the metal replacements coursed with electricity in and out, spreading throughout her body. She twitched and spasmed, but the pain only served to press her exhausted body forward, such was the darksided rage enveloping her soul.

Skin sizzled and half her face was veiled in smoke, her arms and shoulders became misshapen as armor melted into flesh.

Yet all she could think of in that moment was thus; who would teach Tamsin to resist the wraith? what knight would serve Quinn so faithfully as she had? How would her death shape the empire they sought to build?

There were too many people counting on her to stop now.

And so she willed her limbs to move, putting one stubborn foot in front of the other. It hurt, she screamed, but still she fought for control even as lightning traveled through her body like live wires, even as the ends of her hairs turned to glowing embers and the spirits around her began to fade away as she leeched all their power just to stand upright a moment longer.

Anathemous strained her drying eyes, seeing the faint outline of a figure through the storm, and summoned the very last of her strength, shakily reached out with twitching fingers. The fading sith shrieked and pressed her will into the force with such determined aggression that it sent cold ripples even through the fire, turning her breath to cool mist.

There was one last trick up her sleeve, a final daring gambit she had learned by facing Ko Vuto .

Her sabers ignited on their own, one crimson, one violet, both pulled from the ash by thought alone. They circled in a wide arc, slicing even through the storm to pincer the immobilized sorceress from both her flanks.

She would cut the witch in twain.

Or die trying.

​

 

[Mystra Midnight]

​

Theme: The Wolf in your Darkest Room
Tags: Kaila Irons

---

Dark eyes look forward through the strikes of lightning and haze of ash and smoke. She knew what was coming next through the storm of her making, she knew the fate that lay ahead of her. There was no illusion or trick this time, just an old being masked in the guise of her younger self.

Death never got easy the first time just a painful as the last, one never truly grew numb to its sting. All one could do really though was accept it and hope the next life would last longer than the last. Yet in this moment Mystra knew the truth she would not see life restored again, there would be no rising after this storm, it was her last.

Yet she would not get the peace she longed for, to rest with her children in the afterlife. That was never her fate, she bore the makers curse and until the dark consumed this reality this moment would be the closest, she got to true death.

The fog and storm cleared away for a moment so Kaila could see fully the face she was about to destroy. So, she could see the pleading eyes of the sister she desired to save. The same eyes Mystra herself once had when she was younger. Those same dark eyes that pleaded with the maker every time they asked her to bleed for them.

Mystra had survived the maker reaping because unlike those before her, she knew how to play the game. She knew the rules and tricks the maker like play with. She had studied every detail down to the use of the makers' simplest words. Unlike those before her she had become the maker's true image and outsmarted her. For her wisdom she had won her existence.

The pleading eyes, the outstretched right hand like she was reaching for safety. As the saber blades came flying through the air towards the face that was both Mystra's and Tamsin's. Both suffer the cruel fate because cruelty only begets more cruelty. It was both a message to Kaila the would assassin and a warning because to defeat the maker on some level you had to become them. To know who they were and why they became the way they did so twisted in malice for existence.

"Sister…."

She cried out towards Kaila with that innocent cry and soft voice both hers and Tamsin's. As the sabers sliced through her midsection. As they did tears ran down the mimicked face of Mystra and Tamsin.

"Wwwhy….." She pleaded.

It seemed like some cruel sick joke but in Mystra's eyes she was showing Kaila the truth. To defeat the maker, she might have to destroy the very thing she hoped to save. Mystra had to sacrifice herself and lost everything because of the makers' will, just to survive.

She knew that Kaila was coming for her soul next but this time she would not stop it or fight it. She would let the sin eater, eat her darkness all the pain and carnage she had caused in the makers name just to prove she deserved to live.

One last whisper left her lips.

"You cannot save that which you hate. Even if you defeat her, part of her will always exist in those she has made."

As the words finished Mystra took one last breath as her body collapsed in half. Her soul lingered as the body and mind faded into black.

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Armor
Tag: Mystra Midnight

Golden eyes shot wide as the storm cleared.

"No!"

The sabers struck her false sister with a sickening hiss, and by the time she let go, dropping her weapons lifelessly to the ground, it was already too late.

The dwindling force rage carried her but a few more steps, each shaky, lasting what felt like a lifetime.

"No no no,"

Until she collapsed on her knees right in front of Mystra.

The mysterious bond she and Tamsin shared was nothing like what she had with Quinn. She could not feel the girl's joy nor pain, but they always knew roughly where the other stood, and now that her rage was fading, she could feel that Tamsin Graves was close by. For but a moment, Kaila believed she truly had slain her own sister, the last of her kin.

"I'm sorry...!" she choked.

Kaila took her by the hand, her glove scorched and torn. It stung to even make physical contact, but she did not react to any physical pain. She felt only sorrow now, cold and empty, where there had once been fiery hatred. Not even the salty sting of tears running down her face in bitter silence could reach her overwhelmed senses.

Until the witch spoke again.

"You cannot save that which you hate. Even if you defeat her, part of her will always exist in those she has made."

And they were not words which Tamsin would have spoken.

Her eyes blinked open in confusion as the realization processed, and when it did, she leaned forward, whispering through trembling lips;

"...then I love a part of your god... that single piece that has become my sister... and I will cherish the whole of it..."

"...and you will help me save her... one way... or another..."


Even broken and burnt, leaning back tiredly, she had just enough in her to point a, unsteady finger. From it, a coil of violet light wreathed in swirling black would snake forth. It was directed by the last of her otherworldly awareness and those of the now ragged spirits who began to drift at her side one last time, all on the hunt for Mystra's soul. A being as powerful as her would surely live on in death as many sith had, and soon as the ur-spirits so much as whispered, Anathemous would find them. She had to.

And soon as she did, the coils would grow and multiply, closing her indomitable will around them like a vice even as her body failed, dragging it towards this living prison for however long it remained.

Even as her eyes became unfocussed, and the world adrift before her.

​

 

[Mystra Midnight]

​

Theme: Faded
Tags: Kaila Irons

---

The rage and fury poured into the storms slowly began to subside and the volcano began to quiet. The flowing rivers of lava began to slow, having erased away the last remnant of the family that once dwelled on these lands long ago. A legacy long forgotten, now completely erased from existence.

Just like so many things a distant memory only a few would remember. Just like all pasts the young would forget and move on, no legacy or legend last for eternity. No matter how hard you fought or how many statues you build it all eventually fades to black. Your name among the countless that no one remembered anymore.

A strange silence fell over the land as Mystra's spirit looked at what she once had, her family gone, her maker having chosen another, her coven scattered, and the last remnant of the life she lived was gone. As the spirits of the young sith came for her, to pull her into her knew prison to serve a new uncaring master.

For someone who wanted to see this reality destroyed to build something better than what the will had corrupted the spirit felt loss. Not because her life was snuffed out death was inevitable but because everything, she was in this existence was gone. She had nothing left of her children, grandchildren, or descendants beyond that. The inevitable in time she would forget them all a distant memory. As much as she hated this reality, she regretted that now it would be gone and nothing new and better would be built from its ashes.

The spirits Kaila called came forth and grasped her, but she did not resist or fight. It was all lost, it didn't matter anymore. For as much faith as she had in the maker's plan, she did not have faith in the maker herself. Reality would be torn asunder soon, the vision of the dark showed it to her, but nothing would change because of it.

She walked away with the spirits of the place that would now be her prison. Just like her maker in the beginning a slave, now was her end, always serving those that don't deserve it. Her spirit slowly faded into aether as she was absorbed.

The storms dying completely as she faded away and one last whisper in Kaila's mind.

"Things are about to change, if you live, I will help you."

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Armor
Tag: Tamsin Graves

Mystra's incorporeal form vanished from physical sight, pulled by coils of ominous light.

These tethers retreated into Kaila's necklace, each black kyber crystal glowed with spectral energy and chilled her burnt skin to the bone, almost a relief in this hellish place. But as the spirits faded, recalled to their crystalline home, the world began to still again.

Kaila threw her head back, hearing only her ragged breathes, and the final whisper of a dead foe.

"Things are about to change, if you live, I will help you."

Kaila did not answer.

She hadn't the energy to. The spent force rage had sapped her energy as much as the battle itself, pushing Kaila beyond her limits and then taking that bestial power from under her feet, leaving the young Darth with nothing. She was on her knees still, barely a step away from the charred and halved remains that could so easily have been her. She clutched her arm, which hung limp at her side, smoke still drifting from it's mangled form where nerves had since been severed.

All the while she looked skyward, watching the ash drift in soft silence, like blackened snowfall.

The skies remained grey but clear of smoke and debris now as even the rumbling mountain had stilled. Beside the shimmering barrier around a crystal ball which jut from the cooling magma, there was no other evidence that anyone lived here, or battled to the death.

It was over.

She could go home. To Echnos perhaps, or preferably Jutrand. She wished to hold her sister, to tell her that they were perhaps a step closer to curing her unliving ailment. And to rest beside her dear Quinn, to tell her that she had succeeded, that she was alright. Though as the falling ash began to blur, Kaila wondered if perhaps this was a lie. She tried to stand, taking but one step, only to collapse on her knee again.

"Ngh!"

She winced, and hung her head low in defeat. Everything hurt, and the need to close her eyes grew unbearable.

Until a sound caused them to slowly shift in a sidelong glance.

As a shape formed in the mist.

"...Are you... real... this time...?"

​

 

[Tamsin Graves]

​

Theme: Hold On
Tags: Kaila Irons

A hand reached out through the haze of smoke of volcanic smoldering. As she stepped over the charred corpse before Kaila. On her face hung a heavy sadness and worry as she looked upon her sister lying there. Tamsin had never seen Kaila in such a state as she yelled back at some of the soldiers with her.

"Over here I found her!"

She moved quickly to her sister's side glancing a moment at the charred corpse, whatever happened here was devastating. Looking at the state of Kaila panic washed over her.

"...Are you... real... this time...?"

"God damn you!" She screamed at her sister as she came to her side. "What the hell did you do?" She yelled not out of malice or anger but concern. Tears started to form in her eyes as she looked at her sister so broken.

"Hurry!" She looked back towards the soldiers screaming for them to move quickly.

"I'm real, it's me god dammit Kaila what have you done?" Her voice cracked as she looked over the damage to her sister's body. She wasn't sure what to do until one of the medics came. "Come on don't die on me. I need you." She curled up next to Kaila to try to cradle her. Despite the weight of Kaila's body, she held her there as the soldiers arrived with the medic in tow.

The soldiers surrounded them as a medic came up. Tamsin looked at the medic with begging eyes. "We need to get her out of here, we will have to take her Jutrand. They have better medical facilities." Tamsin tears running down her face nodded in agreement.

"Take her…" She gulped a hard lump in her throat. "Take her to the ship." She sat there holding her sister as the soldiers prepared a stretcher. As another soldier walked up to her. "Lady Graves, all we found in the area was this." The soldier held up a crystal ball.

"Take it with us, it might shed some light on what happened here." She said without looking away from Kaila. "Hold on, please hold on."

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Armor
Tag: Tamsin Graves

"...good to see you... too..." she tried to chuckle.

Yet it broke her heart to see Tamsin so dismayed, to hear the screams and desperation. It was easy in this line of work to forget one's impact on their fellows beyond such practical concerns, that each one of them counted on her emotionally as much as she did on them. It made her sister's expression as heartwarming as it was painful to look at.

"I'm real, it's me god dammit Kaila what have you done?" Her voice cracked as she looked over the damage to her sister's body. She wasn't sure what to do until one of the medics came. "Come on don't die on me. I need you."

Her ragged breathing slowed to something almost peaceful as Tamsin cradled her, or close as one her size could manage. She wrapped her good arm around her, holding her close in a weakened embrace.

A tear fell as she closed her eyes.

She wanted to tell her that everything would be alright and to share what she had learned her, and may yet discover, but she could not truthfully say, such were her wounds. Instead she leaned close and whispered;

"...Sokar was here."

"...we're so close..."​

Kaila held her close, much as her damaged nerves could manage.

All of this, she had done to rid Tamsin of her haunting spirit, and she would do it again if necessary. But the young Darth had bitten off more than she could chew it seemed, and must grow stronger if she ever hoped to stand against Sokar and her spawn again.

"I had to try. I'm sorry." she sniffled.

The Echnosian troopers exchanged glances. Tamsin had been the only one on all of Echnos allowed to see Lord Anathemous as anything close to human, rather than the indomitable commander they'd come to know.

"Take me to Quinn. she can fix this."

And as they pulled her onto the stretcher, she gave her sister an expression resembling a smile, knowing for certain now that she was real, alive, and now one step closer to freedom. She closed her eyes, finally able to rest.

Finally going home.

-~[Exit]~-

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