Remnant of the Aether

[Lord_S_Gray]

Chapter 27 — Rage and Shadow — By Scent of Blood — Part 1

Karintha

She did not need to ask, nor hear the words.

Karintha had known, they had both failed to protect Kiraea’s budding child.

Kiraea lay against Nyaea’s mercifully intact pod covered in dark black blood that had already coalesced into glistening streaks along the wounds that marred her fae, breast and abdomen – instinctive healing Rites and Spells occupied three of her conscious levels. 

Karintha was no less drained, a number of serious cuts concealed by tattered clothing, still poured energy into her niece whose eyes were now vacant as her womb.

At her hip two blackstone, and one bloodstone, orbs throbbed with distress and worry that had been sensed by their kin. 

In her sixth conscious level as she returned to normal metabolism from the state of Aephordaea’s grace Karintha worried that the orb to Yorna was silent.

How can Yorna not have sensed her sisters pain unless she is cut off….

That was a distress to be investigated another time.

For now she simply sat and stroke the blood matted hair of her niece, sword and rifle taken from the armoury on her way up at hand, while they waited for the ship to return to real space.

<<<<>>>>

Vzin Kree

He did not need to ask, nor hear the words.

Vzin had known since the moment it happened they had failed to fulfil the contract, and more importantly obtain the prey for him to feast upon.

Even still they came before him, their feet not disturbing the dust on the aged tiles, the large chamber designed with curved columns to amplify any sound remained silent as death as they moved.

Such was the entirety of the Fortress Monastery on Dyspeth that the Disciples of Twilight had once occupied until he feasted on their soup one by one – any motion, light or sound would becoming painfully obvious forcing every novitiate and master to utilize and perfect the Cloak of Shadow techniques to suppress all such means of ascertaining their presence.

Vzin had taken nearly 10 years to avoid the screeching flares of detection.  His two charges had taken less than 5 from the time he brought them here, and while they had not fully mastered it yet, they were painfully close…deliciously close

Even as the sister and brother knelt in contrition and silence before him he could feel their soup bitter with accents of defeat and shame.  It was sharp for it was fresh, but it would soon settle in making them ever more flavoursome when the time came.

One day – soon - he would feed on these two he had been preparing for nearly twenty years – theirs would be a Soup rich with experience of bloodletting and hunting, a meaty taste with sweetness of their twin bond. 

His proboscis tingled at the thought of his long marinating meal, it would have to be very soon, they were growing more in strength and ability, and though he knew the first would not resist such was their trust in him, the second might, he could not risk them surpassing him…

Yet there was the tension, the longer they lived the more delicious they would be, yet also the more difficult it might be to have them willingly submit.

“You failed,” he stated returning to the present, his breathing still as possible, metabolism cold as the stone about him deep in the Cloak of Shadow.

“You were seen,” he went on with an ice tone as they remained with heads bowed

“You were heard, you had to engage in combat,”

The last was the ultimate sign of failure, a true hunter struck once undetected – either fatally or to completely disable – any other outcome was failure, but in particular to have to engage in combat was disgraceful as every blow and every moment revealed more and more of the hunter to the prey.

“I am ashamed,”

Evyn felt a momentary need to respond, that the prey had been far more capable than they anticipated, but he held back, failure was always your own, it was incumbent on him to adapt to the situation and prey, not let it defeat him.

“You dare even think of excusing your shame!” Vzin snapped the words bouncing off the arched columns, incensed at the loudness and self-pity of the young man’s thoughts. 

Vzin’s true anger though was for the fact Evyn had chosen to save his sister rather than fulfil the contract – it spoke to a protectiveness that could…complicate…things when the time to feed on them came.

“No Sensei!” Evaea intervened the quickly healing bruises on her face just visible.

“Our failure is our own, we will correct it immediately,”

“You will not,” Vzin countered irritated at her defence of her brother, again he knew when the time came he would feed on her first as she was most likely to take violent offence to his feeding on her brother.

“Not only did you fail to fulfil the contract, but also denied me a meal, and I hunger,”

Swift motion in the pitch dark placed three tracer pucks before them without noise upon the ground

“We have these three contracts, you will redeem yourself by completing them all within 72 hours, the first two to be executed, the Nautolon you will bring to me to feed upon and whatever other specimens that have a rich taste you encounter,”

It was not much consolation, Nautolon Soup was often watery like their preferred habitat and the brine cleansing enzymes could leave a nasty aftertaste, but this target was a particularly interesting sex offender hopping between worlds and would likely have a soup with a delectable tang of anxiety and musk of perversity to savour.

Evaea brushed her hands over the pucks noting the last known locations…72 hours was very tight, hyperspace travel alone would be 60 hours assuming no detours or course corrections….

But she was determined to make up for her failure and ensure Sensei was fed.

She took up the pucks and left just as silently.

<<<<>>>>

Jarys

The wet of tears went through his hand woven shirt to his chest as he pressed Kiraea’s head as firmly to him as he could.

She was trembling in grief and pain as he stared vacantly into the distance, his own heart squeezing with the burning flushes of utter rage.

Milaea stepped gingerly toward him, his daughter the only one whom he was more protective of than Kiraea, making her the only one able to approach while in such a state.

She tenderly lay her hands on Kiraea’s back gently lifting her off

“Come, we’ll head straight to the caverns.”

That will be best he thought absently, a cold shiver running through his body as he noted with ice precision the shutdown of certain emotional centres in his brain as he entered a completely detached conscious state.

Kiraea gave him one final squeeze before falling into Milaea’s arms, Sofa not far behind.

They had come out of Hyperspace three jumps from Aethas where Selaena, along with Xanaea, Melron, Maeson and Jenaea had rendezvoused immediately having swiftly left on the Aephrodaea to meet them.

Out of the corner of his eye he noted little Xanaea, the young girl distressed already by the outflowing of grief about her, now tearing again as the men unloaded the pod containing Nyaea into the spacious hangar filled with grief and shock .

The Goddesses and the women would comfort Kiraea now as was fitting.

His duty was to avenge her pain.

Fist clenching he felt another cold wave as hormones rush through his blood stream solidifying a state of complete and utter focus, a state he had not felt since his fight against Lucovis and the Jedi – the product of their genetic engineering that let him keep the pure determination such trauma provided but switched off wasteful emotional excesses.

“Can we find them,” His words were clear as glass

Karintha could clearly see the state Jarys was in, she had been so recently in it herself, only her unrecovered state prevented its continuation.

“I have their sense in the Aether, and before they escaped I sprayed them with my blood…with a blood trace and the Obelisk array….”

Jarys nodded as the last waves settled to leave him in a perfect state of detached rage, keenly aware Xanaea was now staring at him in wonder of the strange mix of emotional high and strategic clarity. 

Karintha could help in tracking them, but she was too injured and at too early a stage of her larger recovery to be involved in the pursuit…and it was his Goddesses given role to avenge…not just his wife but…

It was too soon for that thought.

“Whoever has done this…manipulated two of our People into this sacrilege…”

His fists sparked with pure aetheric energy a signifier of a binding oath to the Goddesses themselves.

“…I will be the one to punish them”   

<<<<>>>>

Vzin Kree

Ever silent, ever suppressed he stepped through the echoing vast halls where even the collision of two mites of dust caused waves of sound to pulse. 

Through corridors once walked by the other Disciples of Twilight opening the always hidden doorways in utter darkness to the small equipment room where the Twins shattered Chameo-synth suits lay on the workbench.

They were extraordinarily expensive and were now damaged beyond repair, they had spares of course, but still the necessity of having to interact with the mundane world of credits and commerce added spice to the irritation of his hunger.

Hand hovering over the breached synth-skin he drew in a silent breath filtering out the sweat and blood of his own ‘children’ to take in the trace scents picked up from their engagement.

Unusual plastics, noble gases, Neon and Xenon that he could recognise…and then more of the Twin’s blood…no not the twins…

<FOOLS!> he seethed as he smelt the blood of their enemy upon the nanite fibres, the excitation of the Force in the dying cells.

Quickly drawing a Volkite pistol from the weapons rack - unused for years - he blasted the syth skin. The Deflagrating weapon projected a beam of thermal energy that ignited the stealth armour and thermodynamically combusted the workbench itself utterly destroying the blood that could be used to trace them.

The Twins had been in too much of a rush to return and not taken the proper precautions, Vzin Kree was well aware how potent a Force Blood trace could be.

But the memory of the blood scents lingered for its familiarity…it had been similar to the Twins…too similar…

<Can there still be others of their kind…>  his mind fell back twenty and more years to when he had bought them, the raving adult of their kind, a species of metahuman he had never encountered again not in the years since found any mention or information on.

The thought excited him.

If the woman responsible for the Night of Madness he had been contracted to eliminate was one of them….

Oh the delicious potential!

And yet…if these beings had the ability to lock a blood trail with their own sanguine fluids, they could undoubtedly track the Twins with their blood if left in sufficient quantity.

Vzin considered his options, already these opponents had matched the Twins once, an impressive effort he could not deny…whether they would pursue them was a question he could not answer.

Before the smoking ruin of the workbench he decided to watch and wait, a thin smirk on his face to adopt so…Anzati an approach. 

The twins could handle themselves, and if pursued by their co-species warriors even to Dyspeth well…

That just delivered even more delicious soup to him.

<<<<>>>>

Jarys

Everyone seemed to know well enough to stay clear of him as he strode eyes fixed ahead toward the armoury across the vast hangar.

Kiraea was soon vanished into the turbo lift with Sofa, Ari and Kassyndra, Selaena and Xanaea moving Nyaea’s pod to the Medical level via the service lift, Maeson and Melron recruiting Taryn’s knowledge of dirty tricks to look for any tracking devices on the Aethenaea while Adaea and Lydan assessed the breach damage.

These were important tasks, but as they performed them each eyed him from a distance wondering what he would do, tense in expectation that he would explode in rage.

He would.  When he finally stopped, when he finally thought on All that had just been lost…

Goddesses knew he would.

But not yet.

Now he moved with cold control into the armoury, hurled off his clothes and summoned the Mark 1 Oblivion Armour body glove to him, knowing he would not remove it until….

“Until what?” the quiet question was met with only silence as he slid into the form fitting dura-plas.

Behind him Milaea stood at the door, her face blank.  She ought to be with the other women.

“I won’t stop you,” she quickly explained as if he could ever be angry at his only child….

Not yet…he reminded himself before that thought grew.

Though he would always be more akin to an older sibling given the forced separation from her till already a young adult. Another coal that set the ice flames burning.

“This has to be…” she did not say ‘avenged’ or ‘punished’, words antithetical to her personality.

“…dealt with…but carefully, if these two are People then,”

Again she paused as the heavy blackstone plates locked hermetic seals with small hisses

“I just need to know you won’t hold them responsible and…”

He didn’t pause as the gauntlets clicked on, thin red lines indicating power from the pack on his back was reaching them.

Jarys could offer no promises.

Only the certainty of a cold inferno as his sword, infused with Kiraea’s flame and shatter point enchantments locked onto his back.

<<<<>>>>

Karintha

Her jaw clenched painfully in frustration.

“They’ve destroyed it…” she seethed in the crackling blue of the Obelisk array the vast towers of blackstone offering no consolation to her frustration.

“It’s alright…” Aresaea soothed from the control room

“We still have their blood and the tracking devices Maeson and Taryn found on the Aethenaea…”

She was right, a little psychometry and blood tracing and she would soon…

“I’ll do it,”

The entire room seemed to shake with the unnervingly and unusually deep tone she barely recognised as Jarys voice.

He was clad in full armour, sword and Hades Rifle crossed on his back, two Hades MASER Pistols on his hip, a Blackstone dagger on each thigh in tough Gormin leather sheaths imprinted with etchings of Aertemisaea, Kiraea’s drawing style evident along with the aetheric enchantments across all of his equipment.

Kiraea had never been much a one for handicrafts, too impatient compared to Yorna, that Kiraea had taken the time to craft so much for him spoke of a relationship that was more just producing the strongest possible offspring - genuine affectionate love.

It made the loss even more poignant.

“I can manage,” Karintha replied

“You were not yet recovered before the injuries you sustained, we don’t have time,”

She could not fault his logic, his tone carried no disrespect only facts, she was simply not in a physical state to assist in avenging her niece – Jarys was - leaving her place she put the small vial in which blood of the attackers recovered from the Nature deck and maintenance hall had been placed. 

As she passed she saw Milaea in the hall just beside the door to the control room, her green eyes quickly sizing up her injuries

“You should head back to join the others in the caverns, Kiraea needs you…” Milaea said

“You won’t be joining us?” Karintha didn’t hide her surprise.  She had not spent much time with Milaea, her different upbringing made her hard for Karintha to read, but she knew Kiraea saw her as a younger sister, her presence would surely help her recovery.

All such thoughts flowed freely between them

“Ari and I will help Jarys find and….”

Disquiet in her thoughts filtered through, Karintha understanding the complexity of concerns Milaea held in light of Jarys seemingly permanent state of Aephordaea’s Grace, his tight lid on his rage for the moment…and the likely resistance they would face from these two young adults given the precedent Taryn had set.

“Look after your father,” Karintha agreed 
“I will look after your sister,”

<<<<>>>>

[Lord_S_Gray]

Chapter 27 — Rage and Shadow — By Scent of Blood — Part 2

Milaea

They had only one more shot at this.  But one was all they needed.

Jarys stood immovable amidst the quickly shifted Orb consoles, one hand on the third Obelisk as she and Ari numbed their fingers with aetheric precision lighting programming the Orbs to be able to detect the trace aetheric presence lingering in the blood Karintha had obtained.

Milaea glanced toward Jarys who remained stone still, face utterly expressionless, no thought or focus but hunting those who had harmed Kiraea and….

She turned back to her work…

A sibling Milaea would never know.

She hadn’t even known Kiraea was pregnant, yet the loss was still as keen as if it had been any of the other People.

How Kiraea would cope when Milaea barely could…

“Finished,” Ari whispered beside her, placing a hand on her shoulder, warm and comforting, the grief lingering behind her half smile. For Ari it compounded on the recent move from Galtea and parting from her adoptive parents, yet it seemed she coped better with it.

“Me too,” Milaea replied, the Obelisk array would need a reset afterwards, but for now it would dramatically enhance their ability to trace and lock onto a single aetheric signal at the cost of disabling its usual broad range detection capabilities for a time.

“Did you speak to Valens?” Milaea asked

Ari shook her head,

“I couldn’t get through to him or Yorna…”

That was concerning. Milaea and Ari had sent them to investigate another signal from the array a few days before, intent on joining them until events had overtaken them. Between the two of them there were few threats Valens and Yorna should not be able to handle…yet…

The same could’ve been said for Kiraea and Karintha.

“Can I begin,” Jarys called across the chamber voice betraying no emotion, almost mechanical, Milaea wondering if he even noticed his brother and sister in law had been out of touch. 

Ari nodded and Jarys clenched down on the glass vial, the blood sample coating his hand amidst the shards as his right hand pressed on the Obelisk.

The thread of the aether in the bloods still living cells acted like a scent to a hound, he grasped the tendrils of it, breathed them in…then pushed out his senses through the Obelisk reaching across light-years to find the source.

Milaea felt the enormity of the energy he was using, the vicious probing of each sweep of his mind through the sea of aetheric presences galaxy wide as he sought to scry the attacker.

It would not be difficult all things considered, the fact the attackers were People meant they shared a number of easily identifiable Aetheric markers already, the difference to the Obelisks usual function was the heightened precision which was only possible with a specific individuals sample.

Deeper and deeper his mind plunged into the twisted net of luminous beings, seeking out the brighter red spars amidst blue, gray, green and colours that had no analogue in typical visual ranges.

The intensity of the power draw worried Ari and she quickly diverted a few aetheric circuits to overload orbs, glancing to Milaea with an unspoken worry that Jarys might pour out too much energy and collapse

That might be a good thing Milaea thought worried for her biological fathers frame of mind when he did find the attacker. 

Would he give into the primitive rage and kill them for harming his mate and unborn child, or given the attackers were lost People, would he try to understand what their motives were, what had happened to them since the Devastation to set them on such a path?

Milaea knew the latter was preferable, but in his ultra-focused state…she doubted Jarys could make such a choice…

I may have to make it for him

She well knew that she was the only one who could restrain him…if it came to it…by both raw power but also being his biological daughter, he could not even under the most twisted mental state overcome the protective hormonal need to protect her.

Milaea would not allow the attackers to be seriously harmed until she understood who they were, how and why they had attacked, even if foiling his need for revenge damaged her relationship with Jarys, she was resolved to doing what was right.

Ari stepped beside her placing a hand on her back to comfort as they watched Jarys eyes open and sharp as he gazed into the aether…inch by inch scratching out the trace of his prey.

Finally something changed in the emotionless glaze of his eyes, a sharpening of the muscles as his vision narrowed.

He’d found them.

<<<<>>>>

By Scent of Blood

The hum of the de-humidifier was the only sound.

Muddled green of the setting sun through gaps in the shutters the only light.

The blade through a throat the only movement.

She could’ve done it from a distance, but she needed to show herself and Sensei she could still achieve the closeness in stealth she had spent her whole life trying to perfect.

The body slumped as the blade left the neck followed by thin bubbling white haemolymph.

Their second target was dead, the last was the Nautolan they were to take alive. In addition they had found three beings that seemed somewhat appetizing based on Sensei’s usual preferences.

<We are done> Evyn thought across breaking the silence now the contract was complete

<We are….> she paused, his touch on her mind was firmer than normal

<Evyn what are…>

No it wasn’t Evyn…it smelt Male in her mind, but was not her brother…it was troublingly familiar…and it was growing.

<EVA> Evyn ‘yelled’ as another mind stabbed through like an open fist

It was rapid, intense and utterly without mercy, purely functional almost devoid of personality in entirety…and it wanted to grab her mind.

She physically dropped to her knees under the weight, erecting a quick mental guard she could – she had never fought in a mental battle before, only trained for it…how great the gulf between rehearsal and performance were.

Her resistance was hasty, sand bags tossed against crashing waves as a tsunami loomed on the horizon, no matter how many she pushed up it would never be enough.

Wetness fell onto her upper lip – her nose was bleeding.

Her skull felt cramped into a vice, eyes bulging as if about to explode as she gripped at the synth-skin over her head. 

Hyper alert and lethargic at the same time, the experience was horrific, and the tidal wave was getting closer.

Sounds spilled from her mouth – she was talking

“…43.55 degrees sub lane 3 at .6 past lightspeed….”

They fell but she didn’t understand them, they didn’t pertain to anywhere she was or had been.

And that was just as Jarys intended – he did not care where his Prey was Now while he was in the deep core, only where she would be.

He had a vector, now he needed a starting point. 

Hammering further into the psyche he gripped details of where she was…a green sun, humid conditions, repto-insectoid species…

<<<<>>>>

Jarys wasn't stopping...two to one he should retreat - instead following Vong tactics of relentless attack he doubled down.

Milaea couldn't sense through the twisting melee of minds what he intended...if he would draw back or press on till he effectively slurred both the attackers consciousness.

<The power draw is past safe limits> Ari warned as the two targets pressed back in a joint effort - not against the main thrust of Jarys thorns but against the slithering arcs he was using to probe weaknesses in their metaphysical flanks.

A good move she thought, not dissimilar to what Saani had advised - to look for such probing before responding to the prime force thorn in a mental battle.

Again everything Karintha had said of the attackers was confirmed...

Milaea could easily sense they were People, male and female, a few years younger than Ari but older than herself – born on Aethas toddlers at the Devastation...trained - well trained - but expertise in stealth, avoidance and illusion.

They were capable in open combat, mental or physical — against most other opponents the pair of them would succeed.

Unfortunately for them, in Jarys, they were fighting an Aethan guardian, Sons of Kessel guerrilla, Chiss Lieutenant and Extolled Avatar of War for whom the term 'veteran' scarcely did justice.

Their minds a united front were being worn down, both were on the floor, if Sensei had seen them he would cry in shame at their weakness. Yet all their energy had to be focused on the battle in their minds.

The waves crashed again, inevitable as the tide it would erode them both…or did it mask its limits behind vast shows of force.

No longer thinking as individuals the Twins twisted their defence to a circular ring of sentience keeping their higher consciousness thoughts tucked inside an area with ever less surface area to attack.

The ocean of rage tore around the ball seeking to overwhelm, but the twins sensed it was stretching.

Ari saw Jarys wreathed in lightning, the obelisks huge and dense trembling...it was not enchanted to propagate a cross galactic mind war...a shared look with Milaea indicated she realised it too, it was becoming dangerous for everyone.

Another rabid strike but the Twins kept firm their bond to each other - the constant of their lives - holding them against the predator hunting them.

A flicker of red, a crash of black water...

The obelisk crackled out and groaned, Jarys hand, smoking and singed flew off it as the connection shattered the make shift tracking device unable to cope with the type if not the volume of power unleashed through it.

As he fell to his knees frustrated and spent, a quarter galaxy away Evyn and Evaea rose on theirs.

<<<<>>>>

Mouth smoking, eyes still lit by blue glow Jarys stood.

“Glee Anslem in 12 hours." he stated with terrifying certainty.

Milaea was already beside him but he brushed off her attempt to offer a healing flow.

"That...will be difficult getting out of the deep core takes..." Ari explained even as she switched aetheric capacitors over to absorb excess energies for later use.

"I will find a way" Jarys emptily replied as he stood, without a word heading to the exit leaving Milaea still kneeling next to where he had been.

After a long pause, enough to ensure Jarys would not overhear Ari asked

<Did you do that?>

She had seen a flash of red energy, typical of Milaea just before obelisk overload.

Milaea stood up and walked slowly beside her.

<I want to protect All of my family> was her non answer.

<<<<>>>>

Gauze rammed up their noses, heads reeling with echoes of shattering glass the Twins sat in the only seats, the pilot and co-pilot of the Midnight Sun.

"This is dangerous now...and...Troubling...I know you felt it too...how familiar this man was...just like the target and the woman with her...as if they are...family from..."

"No,"  she replied sternly, Evyn backing away at the harsh rebuke...too harsh she realised, her annoyance at being traced and hit so hard should not be taken out on Evyn in anger but used to motivate her to improve.

She leaned forward to cup his cheek

"You, Sensei, are family, these are targets and now threats...if they come again we defeat them and give them to Sensei to feed on..."

Evyn did not look convinced, their sunken eyes and dried blood under noses evidence of their unpreparedness a second time.

"We cannot return twice in shame, we find the Nautolan, then return, we have 13 hours it should take less than 10."

<<<<>>>>

Jarys

On average it took twelve hours - on a good run - to leave Aethas and through torturous carefully plotted jumps between deadly novae and time crunching gravity distortions to reach the outskirts of Fresia to the Metellos Trade Route and the wider galaxy.

Jarys did not have that time. 

The route he took was outside sanity for most navigators to contemplate.

The Aertemisaea dagger like cut straight up perpendicular to the galactic plane the engines overcharged causing the vessel to tremble even more than the constant buffet of aching gaps in space time that peppered the deep core. 

The life and death of dozens of stars passed by him as so much pointless data and distortion.

There was only one life and death that consumed him.  A life that was never known, a death that was too premature. 

It had been his child too, even if still incompletely formed, something he had created with his mate, something of Life…and once again…as had happened so many time when he felt on the cusp of creating or building, the outsiders dragged him back into War.

Would he ever be anything but the Warrior, the Wrath of Goddesses made flesh.

He had no capacity to ask nor consider such questions now.

Mind cold as the Galactic void the ship reached toward, the place that was less place than mere vector relative to a pinprick abyss of compacted space time, he sought the blazing titans of the objects of his rage that loomed larger than the vastness of the Galaxy ‘beneath’ him.

Every star, every planet, the myriad lives of trillions meant nothing, were dust under his feet compared to the Absolute of the need to avenge his mate and her lost infant.

Hands firm, controlled and precise he slammed the repulsors and reverse engines to pivot the ship mid hyperspace, a doonium hull would’ve shattered, the Blackstone barely held. 

If he cared for the ship's integrity it was only because it was a necessity to attain his vengeance and protect the life of his living daughter.

Milaea watched her father from behind, he was aware at a base level of her concern, yet it held no useful content in his present state – her ‘status’ as alive was all that mattered.

Alerts sounded, systems began to turn from white to red as the brambly hedge of hyperspace anomalies surrounding the galaxy interceded with the faster than light travel. 

He surfed that bladed edge on a vector precise to the nanometer for a stretch of billions of kilometres that meant nothing to Jarys nor the senseless infinity of the universe.

Reaching a point of no note or meaning outside his rage he wrenched the controls and moved more in a direct line through the smear of stars to where those that must die lived.

<<<<>>>>

Evaea

Time was running out, short cuts were needed.

Rapid hacking that left a 13.7 per cent chance of detection into space port security archives that were mercifully largely complete to cope with Glee Anslems vast tourist numbers.

Further infiltration into local closed security systems isolated the target further and provided the detail to gain the ‘sense’ of their target as Sensei had taught.

To track one's prey one must understand its patterns, where it fed, watered, defecated, what it pursued and what it avoided, this built a nascent simulacrum in the mind that could guide the tendrils of the force toward the being that matched the patterns.

A shiver in her spine caused Evaea to paused in her rapid work crouched in an alcove beneath a communications and power panel outside a local police office on one of the endless tourist islands that peppered Glee Anslem, brine the base tone upon which lizard gulls, then Anselmi scent’s layered atop of, the harper notes belonging to the out of place tourists.

They would have to tell Sensei about the mental attack they’d suffered hours earlier, the dried blood still sitting heavy within her nostril.  Did this mean she was now the prey – had another predator caught her ‘Sense’.

It did not bare thinking about, they needed to find the Nautolon swiftly to ensure they made it back to Dypseth in time.

She could not let Sensei hunger for any longer.

<<<<>>>>

Aresaea

He looked more like a vorynx than a man, predatory curved posture, eyes wide and sharp, nostrils flared to pick up any scent, aetheric aura cold as the edge of a blade, keen and focused leading them to this small tourist island.

He had their scent, he would not let it go.

Jarys neck length hair glistened with oil from a lack of washing, a musky sweaty smell from his exertions since.

Everything about him Ari could see exuded animal ferocity to a level that - even though she knew he was dedicated to her protection - still made her uneasy.  Sofa had once told her how as a human female, human males could be physically imposing, Ari naturally had no such experience in a matriarchal society until this very moment.

The click-hiss of his helmet locking on removed some of her tension as she could no longer see his face.

“Search the docks for their vessel,” his words brooked no argument, male though he was he could command from experience if not his oath bound need to see this matter to the end alone.

“I hunt alone,”

Like black lighting he flashed from the transport ships hold into the increasingly grey clouded skies of Glee Anslem.

“A storm is coming…” Milaea noted just behind her

“A storm came with us,” Ari replied as Jarys vanished into the streets beneath the open air landing pads.

“Look for their ship,” Milaea went on stepping past her

“I’ll contain the storm,”

<<<<>>>>

[Lord_S_Gray]

Chapter 27 — Rage and Shadow — By Scent of Blood — Part 3

The Coming Storm

He didn’t run, or resist.  Simply slumped in the wicker chair of the breezy room.

He hardly had the time.

From the roof seven floors above she sent a Force guided needle thinner than a strand of hair through the open window and into his neck where it dissolved in the body heat to a fast acting tranquilizer suited to amphibian humanoid species.

Her target Nautolon would be unconscious for at least forty eight hours, she had six more to deliver him to Sensei and fulfil her task in a timely manner.

A delicate flip into the room, a sea of white waif light curtains over Anselmi carved wooden floors she checked the prey’s vital signs to ensure no adverse reactions, the table before him littered with triple Xesh rated holo’s.

Extraction would be simple enough once he was adequately wrapped in some of the gossamer seafoam coloured sheets.

A creak nearby drew her attention, it was out of place, humidity and temperature was stable there was no reason for any of the buildings materials to expand or contract, the low pressure zone of the approaching storm too distant relative to the resorts climate moderation system.

Any further deliberation was ended as the building side frontage of the apartment collapsed inward upon her.

<<<<>>>>

There were 307 vessels in the tall standing landing tower -  the aether and Chiss sensors were Ari’s tool to narrow the field.

The first guided her in threads Kazic would call the daen nosi, the lines of fate, though what she experienced was more precise than the daen nosi Kazic did.

The trade-off was she lacked the grandeur and subtlety his vision of the lines afforded, a difference she suspected had to do with their innately different ways of connecting to the aether. .

This narrowed the search considerably, her datapad linked to the Aertemisaea and Assault Transports scanners provided the rest with detailed mapping of radiation spikes, or in this case lack thereof, one of the bays showed far too little radioactive traces, either the ship had been inactive for several years – unlikely at a tourist island – or the ship was composed of materials designed to limit radiation leakage.

20 stories high with pads protruding like large flat leaves about a central trunk that featured a dozen turbo lifts, Ari dispensed with conventional means and leapt in aether bounds from platform to platform toward the target ship, the odd technician or visitor on the platform neither seeing nor hearing her deeply buried presence.

Her stealth skills were as good as her adoptive mothers –  that was considerable – sharpened further with Kiraea and Jarys training and given material enhancement with Oblivion Armour.

None of this was enough to avoid the gaze of Evyn who waited for her, he felt the barely existent tremors through the duracrete of the tower of her rapid ascent, smelt her mass, heard the distortions of her light sucking armour.

Cresting mid-air over the lip of the platform she saw the T shaped vessel, already considering how to disable it, a bolt of emptiness struck her square in the breast.

<<<<>>>>

The shock was harder than the blow, most of which had been taken by her now cracking breastplate.

Ari sensed nothing coming until after it struck her.

Relying purely on the aether to guide her motions to avoid further blows from weapons light as flimsi, sharp as nexu teeth was even more troubling.

The grey clouds obscured the setting sun, but she could still see hover-skis, make out the very expressions on the riders face on the horizon with her genhanced eye sight.

She could not see her opponent at all.

Karintha’s reports of their stealth abilities was if anything an underestimation, Ari clattered to the platform beneath her intended destination and swept up all the loose windblown sand she could to fill the air enabling her to see any further attacks by their displacement.

The mini-sandstorm writhed with nano weapons.   

Her shattering telekinetic wave to threw them all back as she righted herself in time to avoid invisible bolts of energy that melted the duracrete pad about her feet.

Technology for non-luminous blaster bolts was rare, exceedingly expensive, the energy-rich gases needed to create an effective penetrating bolt required intense processing at best she estimated they would have six to eight shots…

The snap-hiss of her twin sabers igniting in her hands allayed her concerns, the similarity to Saani’s own hilts comforting as she bashed back two invisible bolts following the momentum into a leap side then teleport shunt upward.

Her enemy had not expected the last motion, the shot went wide – leaving only up to three rounds.

Landing on another edge of the pad she took a strong defensive posture with Niman dual wielding high blade positioning but Shii-Cho footing.

Evyn rapidly realised a frontal assault would fail his options were….

BROTHER HE’S HERE!

...drastically limited by the danger his sister was in.

<<<<>>>>

Ice winds and adamantium avalanches signalled the living Storms path.

Half a resort floor was wiped out by the blast, durasteel beams left exposed like bones as the plascrete skin was torn off, Beachwood furniture splintered into straw shards to hurl at his prey.

Jarys understood his prey used stealth, misdirection and deception. By obliterating the environment he left it no place to hide.

Evaea dropped the Nautolon’s flabby flesh, its unarmoured body shredded by the cascade of shrapnel as the floor fell out from under her turned to dust by a telekinetic shatter beyond her power to match.

She was the prey now, bursting through walls and dodging entire lounge pieces that began scratching her synth suit as she fled the inexorable creature that sought her.

Jarys stood the centre of a Maelstrom of pure aetheric energy that crackled like lighting seeking the squeezing heart of his target. 

She attempted to conceal herself, but blinding flashes of aetheric light and hail of ruined furnishing denied her any chance to do so.

In her haste Evaea did not even notice how unusual it was there were no further casualties, ignored the throngs of lolling tourists and staff huddled insensate on the nearby beach under red coils on mental submission to a Merciful Goddesses will.

Milaea hovered above the carnage as the storm in the clouds met the storm on the ground, heavy monsoonal rain pelting down as Jarys turned an entire wing of the sandy coloured gently sloping resort to ruin.

At the edge of her senses she felt Ari perplexed and worried by her own opponent, Milaea’s head rapidly turned in that direction.

She found herself caught between whether to return to help Ari, or stay to possibly restrain Jarys.

Trusting in Ari’s abilities she followed the hurricane like force that now tore through carefully landscaped tropical garden paths and cabana tents.

To Milaea’s view the girl was gaining distance…until leaving behind the ruins Jarys hit the ground from his Aetheric hover, snarling under his helmet.

The waves of fierce intent coming from behind elicited in Evaea an emotion vaguely akin to what lesser beings termed fear.

The being behind shattered every poisoned syringe with Force precision her training told her required seated concentration - dodged every blast from her needle pistol with speed impossible for what her vestibular senses told her was its mass – kept her firmly in his view in spite of every attempt she made to sidestep and slip into the Cloak of Shadow fully.

She had made a mistake coming here, whatever the shame she should’ve returned to Sensei after the metaphysical attack

Now, as he began grabbing with clawed fingers and Force grips at her heels, she might never get the chance.

<<<<>>>>

On the snyth suit HUD Evyn switched the Midnight Sun drives from standby to half power as he lined up his aim for the next three shots, knowing the purple sabers the woman in light eating back armour wielded would block all three – the micro mines zipping along the ground with the Force were the real attack.

The second round began with screeching blaster bolt deflections and whirling purple blades.

The micro mine slipped through the kinetite barrier clamping to her frontal shin plate.

A stab of danger sense Ari hurled the plate away with the aether leaving the nano-weave bodyglove exposed. 

In mid-air the shin plate turned boiling orange with heat as the mine detonated – the ultra dense material did not melt fully, but it would’ve seriously burned her leg.

Both now attacked using their limited knowledge of the other.

Evyn knew he had the edge in stealth attacks and potentially physical strength.  Ari was better at open combat and her armour and weaponry far more durable than a stealth synth suit.

Evyn kept mobile, leaping onto the Midnight Sun’s hull raining shots from his own Needle pistol.

Ari responded with words she hoped were just as sharp as her sabers shattered the hair thin projectiles fired at several times the speed of sound.

“We don’t need to fight!”

Evyn closed his mind rapidly as he looked for a way through her seemingly impenetrable guard, with only one micro mine left and his other weapons expended

“You can feel we are kin!”

He peppered the air with the last of the needle pistols ammunition, rapidly jolting himself to the side to hit her flank as her blade sliced through the needles.

Barely in time she avoided the Phase-dagger thrust at her side, spinning out she continued her psychological assault seeking his mind to impose her matriarchal will.

“Lay down your weapons now!”

Thrusts and slashes came thick and fast as she wove to avoid them…something was wrong, she weighed more than she should…her precise senses able to tell 326 grams…the same weight as…

A buffet of telekinetic energy to gain distance she now had to hurl her back plate away as another magma-mine turned it to a scorching orange glowing weapon.

“Your cunning is of Aethenaea, strength of Aertemisaea!” Ari continued as she felt the stirrings of conflict in the aether – diffuse as he kept his presence concealed so tightly but no less real.

Evyn had been taught by Sensei that enemies would try to deceive him with words, calls of familial connection.  He had no difficulty blocking them out, especially as he sensed his sister in impending danger approaching swiftly.

“Yes…the compassion of Aephrodaea,” Ari seized lowering her guard ever so slightly
“Your sister…you want to protect your sister….she is in no dang….”

No…Goddess no…

Beneath her helmet Ari’s face dropped, this man’s sister Was in danger from Jarys, the need to avenge Kiraea was the very barrier that prevented Ari’s words getting through. 

<MILAEA Stop JARYS It’s the only way I can get through to them! They are Afraid!>

<<<<>>>>

She had already decided she would intervene if it saved lives.  Somehow that didn’t make it easier.

The girl was hurling entire tree trunks and speeders in Jarys path – they simply shattered from either his HADES pistol blasts or on his charging shoulder.

They were on the main road now, Milaea’s power taken up with the enormous task of sending civilians off the road and into the banks either side.

Her hair was drenched, even her red coat sagging on her as she kept herself telekinetically afloat over the pursuit.

The assassin girl was almost in his grasp, Jarys fist grabbing air millimetres from her arm, once he caught her…

Milaea couldn’t take that chance.

A flare of heated red flash evaporated the torrential rain and slammed Jarys to the side off the road.  He rolled and snarled quickly regaining his footing and continuing his pursuit only to find himself hamstrung as time itself seemed to prevent his motion

He glared through the HUD of his helmet at the glowing red form of his daughter even as he felt his prey escape and with the space and time afforded vanish with her incredible stealth ability.

He locked eyes through the temporal distortion with his daughter.

She was the only one whose intervention he could not resist, the only one whom he could not oppose or direct anger towards. 

She knew it. And she used it.

Now she just hoped Ari could make it worth it.

<<<<>>>>

“He’s been called off…” Ari spread her arms and deactivated both her sabers in the standoff as a show of trust as the man kept circling her the incessant rain a grim shroud about him that slicked the ferrocrete she stepped gingerly upon.

“…we can talk this through, there has been hurt on both sides, miscommunication and misunderstanding but we are one People, all can be heal…”

Red sharp experience flooded her back as something sharp sunk in just before she teleport shunted to avoid it fully.

Instinct sharpened by training kicked in and her sabers hissed in the rain to spark against the Phase Dagger aimed at her neck.

<Don’t listen to these predators! We leave now!> Evaea’s thoughts across the twin bond were piercing as the blade she had just sunk into Aresaea’s unarmoured back.

The Phase-dagger alternated between Baryonic and non-Baryonic states of existence several times per second enabling the blade to bypass conventional matter then reintegrate itself as it phased back causing extreme damage as the blades reversion displaced flesh before being pulled out in its non-Baryonic phase.

The red sensation of damage was quickly suppressed as Ari drew on her reserves of strength to teleport shunt forward to avoid a second blow, reminding herself she had faced down the seemingly immortal Revenant Banshee far more battered than this.

The icy glare across the gale force winds was broken as Milaea sensed Ari’s pain and despaired that she may have just broken her fathers trust and lost her…best friend?…

The temporal distortion holding Jarys slow in time was reversed with interest into an acceleration.  He needed no instruction to rush at twice his natural phenomenal speed to help Ari, Milaea by Force flight following close behind, but the fatigue from keeping thousands of civilians out of harm's way and covering their tracks with memory wipes was setting in, she could only act as support at best.

Through flurry’s of sparks and slashes of rain bouncing off pauldrons or hydro-phobically averted around synth-skin the Twins tried to move toward their ship, Ari would not allow it clamping down on the vessel with her telekinetic prowess, the hull buckling inward at the joins.

Desperate as she avoided a blow aimed at her ankles Evaea hurled her last magma mine – with graceful co-ordination born of their unique bond the tiny black octagon wove through the forest of saber and dagger, avoided the counter telekinetic waves and sparks of lighting to clamp onto Ari’s breast plate.

Once more Ari found herself having to divest a piece of her armour to save her body from being burnt.  Igniting a lighting shield the sparks coursed all over the landing pad lighting the silhouettes of the Twins in pure aetheric energy and blowing out lumens embedded in the platform.

With distance she launched her now searing breast plate at the Twins, the rain instantly evaporating on contact with the orange glowing armour, but realizing again they were outmatched in open conflict they flanked her on either side, breast and back now unarmoured inviting targets.

Ari found herself the centre of a whirling conflagration of purple and blue the air full of steam amidst the glistening anti-green of the Phase blades that struck at her even while the ship began to slowly lift under auto-pilot controls. 

She was gaining the measure of these two’s techniques – focused on delivering single fatal blows rather than winning a lengthy bout, their stealth techniques not as effective for Saani’s training, but the lack of armour and wound that crept angrily to her shoulder blades prevented Ari from gaining any ground and muddied her otherwise flawless Jar-Kai Combination technique.

Pressing the advantage the Twins readied to drive home for the kill, as astounding as their opponents defence was they could not escape while she lived.  Phase-daggers cut the very molecules of rain droplets apart as they sought between the purple saber blades for purchase behind a faltering guard.

Countenance firm Ari readied for her own surprise attack when the entire platform shook dangerously loose as a hulking shadow crash landed on the long front of the ship fist and knees shattering the plating and cracking the stygium crystals beneath.

Before the tremors had time to subside Jarys leapt into the melee, fists like wrecking balls sending the Twins’ flying away from Ari to avoid the impact that would surely shatter their bones.

They had to chance a run now, Evaea crimped and loosed a Trandoshan Nepenthe Mist sachet from her gauntlet, hoping the dark green acrid smoke would force them to keep some distance as Evyn rolled and tumbled to the hatch avoiding if only just the ferrocrete shattering grasps.

There was no way in which the Twins could win the fight now as Ari sought to pin them from a distance while Jarys near rampaged.  Rushing to the hatch Evaea leapt in beside a staggering Evyn, their united energy blasting the unstoppable predator back even as they flaked off Ari’s grips while slamming the hatch to shut.

Pushing through the constant buffering Jarys leapt forward, his fingers digging into the upper edge of the closing hatch, the hydraulics failing and grinding as he tugged it back open.

Evyn hit the thrusters and overdrive with the Force, an otherwise trivial task that diverted precious newtons from trying to keep the predators off them.

The Midnight Sun’s Engines pounded out as curls of metal peeled from the hatch as Jarys fought to keep the vessel - accelerating toward Mach 1 - on the ground with brute strength and force of will alone.

For a moment as Milaea arrived just behind it seemed as if he might actually succeed before the ship’s rear turrets opened up on him and Ari.

Shattering green plasma forced him to let go and Ari to cross her sabers to block the preternaturally precise shots as the vessel finally managed to break free, vanishing into the roiling dark grey skies bleeding smoke.

<<<<>>>>

[TheDutchman]

Once again we see the Beast.  The Twins are about to learn what Sarah Conner did in "The Terminator:" he absolutely will NOT stop until they're dead    Smart move for Mili and Ari, accompanying Jarys on his mission...if such a detached label could be ascribed to his absolute need/imperative for vengeance.  Not that I blame him; Jarys has experienced loss throughout his life the likes of which would break most, and that with just a single incident (first Celina, later Mili, and now his and Kiraea's unborn child).  Haunting...

I have to admit that I particularly enjoy the action in this Chapter: with Jarys and Ari engaging the Twins, Mili on "Damage/Mind Control," we can see the fine line between utter destruction and qualified restraint.  Without Mili's intervention, the Storm would annihilate everything on Glee Anslem.  I wonder just how long either Twin (for that matter, both of them) would last against the Beast.  Not as long as even their Sensei could guess...

AWESOME pics!  Special shout-out for For Tyeth's incredible rendering of the Aertemisaea; absolutely STUNNING 

Now, who will win out: Mili's sense of inclusion and forgiveness or Jarys' single-minded revenge?

[Lord_S_Gray]

Chapter 28 — Rage and Shadow — Of Anger and Betrayal

A Moment to Breathe

“It’s not bad…” Ari insisted as Milaea checked her back, copious amounts of healing energy flowing in

There was a sense of irritation in Ari’s voice, not at Milaea but at herself for having failed to resolve the conflict peacefully.

Milaea would’ve loved to have sensed irritation at her from Jarys in place of the cold emptiness as he stared into the sky helmet in his hand as the rain wetted his unshaven face and slicked his unkempt hair.

“I really thought we had a chance…I could feel him turning, listening…but…”

Milaea shook her head. There was no reason for Ari to try and justify herself, she had tried to do the right thing in a confused and twisted situation.

“Hopefully we’ll get another chance…” she looked to her biological father whose gaze remained distant for long second, before abruptly she twisted and leapt off the platform.

Her wound sealed Ari gave Milaea a look that said ‘we better follow’. They jumped after him.

Their own transport was not far, the distance made infinite by the silence between them.

Jarys was in the cockpit already by the time they caught up, powering the engines as if whether they got on board in time or not was mere luck.

“I’ll talk to him,” Ari said as the ship lifted barely a second after they had entered, the hatch still closing behind them.
“It was my idea to…”

“No, put some bandages and Obishi leaves on that cut, I stopped him…I…I’ll…”

Ari just nodded following her down the short corridor before entering the first door on the right to the medical bay.

Tentatively entering the cockpit just in time to see the clouds transition to vast blue then star sprinkled black she sat in the co-pilots chair.

“I’m sorry…I thought we could prevent a fight, if Ari could get through to him, if he didn’t feel his sister was under threat…”

There was no reply but the soft chimes and beeps of the controls.

On the viewscreen appeared the three dimensional map in white on blue hologram showing the docking trajectory to the Aephordaea in geosynchronous high orbit.

“When I punched through their Ships hull I dropped a Tracking Orb in,” Jarys voice was as it had been ever since Kiraea was harmed, empty, clear and cold.

“They won’t escape.”

In the aether there was only the same stern unrelenting focus, no anger or annoyance for having delayed his vengeance. 

Milaea didn’t know what to expect in all honesty, she had never seen Jarys angered – of course she knew very well the fury he could unleash, on Nar Shadda, Coruscant, Myrkr, Ord Mirit, but she had not been there to witness it up close.  If he was angry with her she could not tell.

Even through the cold calculation of Aephrodaea’s Grace the plaintive data of his daughters distress and uncertainty held potency.

“I’m not angry at you for stopping me,” He finally said as the docking bay doors on the underside of the Aertemisaea opened as his electronic and aetheric credentials were entered into the bespoke security system of the ship that combined quantum identifier code passes with Aetheric individualised pattern detection.

“Ari’s deduction was not unsound, but she overestimated her ability to persuade them, they are assassins - they strike first and do not negotiate…what saddens me…”

The ship cut its forward momentum and lifted gracefully into the bay.

“…is that you did not trust me…assumed  my anger could override the most fundamental of my instincts to protect People...all People - even from themselves….”

“…but they killed your…”

“I know what they did, and I will take my revenge for it…” his voice was barely a whisper

“But upon whom, when and how…that I won’t know until I’ve interrogated all the agents involved…I was about to catch her, pin her down, make her companion come to me as he did when Karintha near overwhelmed her before. There was precedent, evidence that is how they would react.  Instead she escaped and wounded Ari…because you did not trust me to have the fortitude to hold my rage in check.”

The ship settled on the elevated landing pads, small Chiss attendant droids began their work of post flight checks.

Jarys stood and swept out, no doubt headed straight to one of the Aetheric Nexus Chambers to begin tracking, leaving Milaea alone. 

”To be angry is easy…to be angry at the right place, the right person, the right time…that is hard…

Words Kiraea had passed to her from Karintha, a dictum Milaea had thought her own father too brutish to adhere to.

She sat still there long enough for the sensor lights to switch off from inactivity.

<<<<>>>>

Behind them the hatch was covered in blobs of emergency hardening sealants in eight thick lines where the Predators fingers tore through doonium and durasteel.

The entire Cloaking system was damaged beyond function from where the beast of a man that had attacked them mentally now physically had landed.

How many more of these beings were now hunting them? They knew of five, were there ten, a dozen more?  They could barely survive against one in an open fight.

And above all this they had failed Sensei again, would return in shame quadrupled as it occurred twice in a row.

Physically they were uninjured but psychologically.

“Sister…” Evyn broke the silence

“The things that woman with the purple Light sabers said…names from songs our parents would sing….”

“Sensei is our family,” Evaea said gently

“He fed us, clothed us, taught us…she is a Force wielder, likely drew them from your memory to use against you, Dun Moch Sensei called it, to make us doubt ourselves,”

“No, surely it is more, these beings…I know you can Feel how familiar they are…like they are…siblings, not as close as we are to each other but still…”

She turned sharply the red glare of the screens lighting her exhausted feature with harsh shadows that contrasted with her gentle voice.

“Lies, trickery, illusion, Sensei taught us to overcome such tactics prey will use to deceive a predator…and they are Prey…”

The word seemed hollow given twice they had – on a generous assessment – been fought to a draw, their enemies abilities in open combat exceed their own, and their preternatural senses denied the Twins the stealth one shot kills they preferred.

“Sensei will know what to do…we’ll take a longer route to ensure we are not followed, perform a Force-Blood bond cleansing to prevent them tracking us again…”

She had just as many doubts as her brother as well he knew, but Sensei was all they knew, their father, it was his guidance they needed now.

<<<<>>>>

Vzin Kree

The ship settled into the dust covered bay where even the slightest step on the actual ground would leave tracks forcing the Disciples of Twilight to telekinetically hover to avoid any path being left.

A small patch of dust was less thick in the far corner, Kree smiled at the memory of the man he had fed on there.

The Twins were nearly eight hours late, and the stench of defeat was even greater than last time.

The hatch clumsily fell open, patch seals evident, steam and acrid gases hissing from damaged sections of the cloaking field generator…more irritating expenses…

His two foundlings existed, their presence dull and scratchy, they had the sense to perform a cleaning this time before returning, a few minor injuries already healed by their enviably fast biology.

Their eyes were kept down on the wisping floor as the Force filled freely with their recent memories.

Their instinctive ability to communicate and absorb precise thoughts and memories in the Force had made their training so much faster, and post mission debriefing far simpler…there was an odd similarity Kree felt to how memories flowed into him when he tasted a beings Soup, as if the mechanism of their instinctual delving and deliverance had some kind of common origin.

He witnessed through their minds the beings that had ambushed and defeated them…

The Red Haired Angel Hovering above…bittersweet and richly indulgent…

A prodigy with two purple sabers, more auburn hair of unshakeable will and compassion…a more broad range of flavours from so many experiences…and lastly…

Dominating in every sense of the word, imposing and extreme, a true meaty main course that dripped delicious savoury juices to whet Kree’s appetite even at this distance.

Any irritation at the Twins second failure began to subside as he relished the three new meals they had found for him.

“My children…” he soothed at last lifting Evaea’s chin with his fingers

“Fear not, you have done well, drawn the prey to us where we may combat them on our own terms, in the depths of the Shadows of the Fortress Monastery…these favour the light and the clash of blades…here they will fall to the dark and the cloaked dagger…”

“Sensei we have tried to ensure they didn’t…” Evyn interrupted

“Oh they will follow my child…they will follow…” Kree paced along the ship, feeling out the Force…there in the midst of the ruin of the Cloaking Field Generator was a sphere of disruption only his sense tuned over centuries could detect.

The Twins following his example by osmotic absorption looked aghast they had missed it, Evaea quickly leaping onto the ship and plucking the small marble out.

She stared at it a little too long for Kree’s liking, the familiarity these prey were trying to build had just been re-enforced.

“Give it to me,” he snapped, the girl complied.

Only a handful of times in his centuries had he seen such material, only then as ornament for its high value or in collections of rare minerals…never fashioned to be functional...except.... 

There was something familiar, memories of myths told to him as a child, a warning that beings of Shadow would abduct the disobedient work house children who tried to flee offworld...

“Sensei, what is it?”

“A tracking device, nothing more,” he dismissed the foolish reminisces, a mere myth to keep the lowly druf caste from depopulating the nobles domains. He focused on his impending feast of at least three…

“Prepare the defences, they will arrive soon,”

…possibly five, the Twins time was drawing near, conflict was building in them, whatever the outcome of this battle they would be less useful to him once they saw their co-species fed upon.

Yes Kree resolved, at last their time too was come, a meal twenty and more years in the making would soon be his to savour.

<<<<>>>>

Jarys

Emitting dull blue glows along the side the Aertemisaea exited hyperspace at the edge of a sparsely populated system in the Varada Sector, what details they had indicated the region was owned by the Soro-Suub corporation, but the lack of traffic here indicated this particular system was absent mineral wealth sufficient for a colony.

The aether guided his gaze across the star speckled fields to a place invisible to his electromagnetic vision but thrumming in his aetheric vision.

It tried not to of course, any other Jedi or Sith would sense nothing untoward. 

No this vision was for him alone, for it was the shatter point lines of his…and his families…fate that drew him here a beacon unique to him enhanced by the orb he had planted.

He sought the tiny object, it sat warm in the grasp of a smiling assassin who waited for him.

Rising from the pilot's chair with a flick of his wrist he set the controls for a micro jump closer.

His armour unremoved for days felt over comfortable and melded to his skin as he strode the halls to the turbo lift, descending first to the workshops on level six for new power packs for his ranged weapons then the hangar.

Milaea and Ari were already there, the former down cast, the latter focused as they approached.

“Perhaps we should call the others, attack in force?” Ari suggested as the transports hatch opened with a hydraulic hiss.

“There is no time,”

Ari moved in behind him, Milaea just behind her.

Jarys stopped dead, but did not turn.

“Stay here, see that nothing leaves or lands upon this moon until I say so,”

Ari felt incredibly uncomfortable in between them - a no-man’s land between lines of trenches. 

A reply hovered on Milaea’s lips.

It never came. 

The hatch sealed.

<<<<>>>>

The moon was covered in wavering burgundy clouds, the composition barely breathable from the scans, thickly layered giving it double Courscanti standard pressure.  It mattered not, Aethan biology enabled him to go hours without drawing breath and could easily cope with ten times the pressure.

The craggy surface featured numerous impact craters that had preserved the planet below from hits, rivulets of acidic fluids where the gas clouds cooled and precipitated acrid drops depending on the moon's position relative to the sun and planet.

This intermittent dissolving had created in one region hundreds of large spires of less reactive stone.  Like a sharpened rugged city skyline the dull grey towers seemed to sway with the clouds that passed between them, looming over the smaller ones and endless black depths between their rain dulled tips.

It was into the abyssal gaps between the spires that he guided the ship, light vanishing with sound and heat, the clouds taking in all the solar heat high above them leaving the surface frigid.

A descent to the Rivers of the Dead, where in the times of the Goddesses, Orphaea had journeyed across to rescue her beloved Eyraea. 

But the lands of the Dead were not a place where the living should tread, and at the last instant she was lost when she looked back upon her.

For a moment he imagined he was crossing that river in search of the key to reviving what Kiraea and he had lost, in matching his might against the gates of the underworld to reach the plains of Aelysia where the Goddesses dwelt…to see there again his grandfather, mother, so many friends lost….

If Milaea could cross that river to return Karintha and Yorna why couldn’t he…

The thought passed quickly as in the fog an outline too straight to be natural came into view.  The Monasteries exact height was difficult to tell, at least 6 stories of large blocky constructs added at different times, spires and towers on the very edge of the column of rock it was situated upon, which in turn was surrounded by the frozen chill clouds of dense black gases, how much further the chasms went filled with that murk he did not care to contemplate.

“Limited heat and radiation traces…the clouds absorb it quickly…but a ship came through within the last few hours…” Ari noted her hands moving quickly scrolling through sensor readings

She looked up to the approaching Fortress, there was an aura of decay about it, render peeling, streaks and hold rooves…yet it seemed too…cliché, like a holodrama set piece. 

This may have been a ruin once, and the outer had been ‘preserved’ but she suspected within it had been remodelled for the assassin's needs.

“Perhaps we should just scan the area, the twins were strong combatants, two onto one I couldn’t defeat them…we don’t know how many others there might be…”

Ari did not doubt Jarys prowess, even among the Vhal’Dan there were only those that could offer him a match but none she could see defeating him outright.  But this was the assassin’s home ground, it would be well defended.

“There is only one other…”

“How can you know that? The Orb?” her question was not mocking but genuine

He didn’t reply, just glided the ship toward a larger rooftop, old once red ceramic tiles now faded splotchy.

“Wait here, if I need you, you’ll know,”

<<<<>>>>

[Lord_S_Gray]

The Assassins and the Unstoppable

With a deafening shatter he crashed through the roof raining tiles and already brittle durasteel with him.

He found himself in a musky dust choked room lit only by the hazy maroon clouds from the gap he had just made – even that light seemed to resent spreading further into the large area leaving it pitch black on all sides.

There were columns arrayed in a grid pattern, curved like the ceiling that echoed every sound a dozen times over.

This was a place where stealth was near impossible…or rather where one was forced to learn how to make it possible.  Even this brief glimpse explained much to him about where his enemies had developed their abilities.

And confirmed exactly how they would attack.

He strode into the dark undaunted.  

Aethan biology featured an impressive array of senses, electromagnetic radiation spectrum at far greater ranges than most humanoids through eyes, thermal sensory organs behind each eyebrows that overlapped visual input, anterior organs on their vestibular utricles at the head and hips that detected the mass of nearby objects.  

Absent only his olfactory sense behind his helmet, he strode through room after room, hall after hall, down winding stair cases and labyrinthine passages to the only beacon he had, the orb he had placed.

He knew at some point they would attack, knew they would be watching him.  If this was some kind of attempt to build anxiety through anticipation they clearly did not understand how People fought and thought.

There were ghosts in this place – fragmentary shadows of those that had died here, their aetheric echoes etched to the stone that hovered on the edge of making some motion in the real world.  He passed them without incident.

At last he came to vast lightless area that would once have been a courtyard, filled with the curved columns that amplified and repeated every step he made. He estimated he was in one of the lowest levels, they may be planning to collapse the entire place upon him.

That seemed ill fitting with their cautious style so far, and as he reached the rough centre of the plaza like area his spine turned cold with danger sense.

They doubled down on the tactic used against the woman with the purple sabers, hurling their full stock of two dozen magma mines already primed at his armour.  

It was expected he would deflect or detonate most, but even one or two lost pieces of plate would offer a vast area to fire their needle guns and send their telekinetically guided poisoned needles into.

Even as Jarys rapid draw of his sword and the rub of every joint in his armour echoed with noise that seemed anathema to this place, the first mines lit with dull orange as they began to rapidly heat even before he sent them flying away.

The weapons moved with unnerving silence and speed, as clandestine as Kiraea’s best shikkars, he shattered one on his blade as his pistol in his left hand blasted three more – light blooming only to be eaten away in an instant as more came at him in complex helixes of motion.

He knew this was only the start, and he sliced down to cut those crawling along the floor to his feet the second phase began.

Evyn leapt from the ceiling aiming for the neck join with Phase-daggers in both hands as Evaea came from the rear Phase sword and dagger to slice in at the arm pits, each with a drill of telekinetic energy as vanguard to shatter his instinctual kinetite shield.

Scrapes silent and loud filled the void like plaza as Jarys Sword deflected one Dagger, his pauldron the second with an unnatural twist even for Aethan dexterity, the aether broke apart with fragments of blade like telekinetic energy around him, Evaea weaving between them forcing Jarys to use all his flexibility to avoid one strike, but still suffer a second.

The tip of the phase sword pierced under his arm before he could turn his pistol on her, her aim was off, she’d fallen into a pattern of aiming for where ligaments and muscle were on a ‘normal’ humanoid frame – despite outward appearances Aethan bone and musculature was differently placed to enable a dramatically larger range of motion rendering her attack far less effective.

Even so the first pulse of red flared due to damage in his mind as he fired into where her back had been and pushed Evyn off simultaneously.

The pair rapidly retreated back into the shadows as the last few magma mines he was too distracted to deflect hit on his right shin and upper left arm plates – the blazing thermal energy too extreme to absorb he was forced to divest himself of the pieces as he scanned for where the attackers had gone.

His prediction of their tactics had been correct – they favoured a surprise fatal one shot kill, when this failed they would retreat back and use their cloaking abilities to reposition for another attempt, each time the secondary objective to remove more of his armour to increase the damage even a failed attempt would leave.  Attack, retreat, attack, retreat.

The dull glow from the molten armour was soon swallowed by black…and the next attack came instantly after.

Four more such assaults followed.  

Each time the pair would strike with a different method.

On the first they repeated their initial tactic albeit with fist sized hull breaching charges rather than mines – designed to blast holes in doonium each detonation shook the foundations of the place and light the whole area in yellow blooms against which his blade blade clashed on their daggers as they rushed to and fro in a series of cavalry like shock charges aiming to overwhelm.

He struck hard and fired back just as viciously.

On the second round one of them fired a powerful sniper rifle while the other attempted to flank, the bolts he bounced back while the melee attack he fended in three brief slashes, but in so doing missed a second rifle that damaged his right pauldron.

The Third attack hurled a veritable blizzard of rocks at him, intermingled with which were micro shrapnel pieces accelerated to several times the speed of sound that ground his chest plate and sword like eroding sands, as he held the storm back grenades rolled at his feet, some cryo-bang and other Glu-gel to try and pin his feet, as each he didn’t hurl back detonated they leapt past with spinning phase blades, two managed to take chinks from his helmet, his ripostes landed at least one groan inducing hit.

The Fourth began as he strode further into the black depths unable to hear anything but the echoes of all the previous encounters ringing.  he felt out the presence of dangerous ‘lines’ on the ground – laser trip wires and danced through them when they began dropping gas and acid grenades from above.
By now his armour was heated and pitted from the previous attacks giving numerous etches for the aerosol acids to fit in, though the majority were inert against Blackstone a few managed to hiss away on the far larger regions of exposed body glove.  

They struck again in their regular pattern, one charging from each flank to perform run by strikes with their blade, he deflected or blocked most, adding a fist, shot or boot in return, but more were scratching at him.

The Twins landed in controlled crouches back at the far edges of the room, the juggernaut of an opponent, despite the shabby state of his armour still stomping through the echoed filled courtyard.  They were safe here even on opposite sides, the prey was still unable to see them through the Cloak of Shadow.

A war of attrition was not natural for them - adaptation to the prey was - now at last they deemed his defences to be worn enough to use their needle pistols and toxin laced darts and shrikes.

Vzin Kree sat at the far end of the courtyard seated in a meditative pose observing all, tasting the sweat and rage upon the gusts of air the explosions brought to him, the delicious irresistible force of the meaty creature that strode toward him, and the desperate finesse of the Twins trying to prove their ability to him.

Truly they were mere appetizers to this main meal now, they lacked the depth of experience this walking feast possessed, but even still each one would be  richer meal than a hundred beings added together.

Jarys continued to stride forward to where he felt the orb in the slimy fingers of his true prey, as if the devastating attacks delivered by expert assassins were so much rain off his back.  Numerous cuts into his body glove exposed his skin to the still foaming acid gases, muscles had been torn where the phase blades had managed to hit.

None of it mattered.

The pits of Nar Shadda could not hold him, the legions of Hutt and Black Sun mercenaries could not restrain him, Jedi Sentinels could not withstand him, Sith Lords and their alchemical spawn were trodden on by him, these two young adults talented though they were could only be minor irritants.

Needle pistols loaded, phase daggers at the reach, anaesthetic laced syringes between each finger the Twins charged.

With all the speed and precision their Sensei had imparted the Twins struck with deadly fury, needles thinner than hair follicles streamed out in telekinetically guided broad sides, kinetic lances struck at every major artery – the twins finally hitting upon the need to target him based on their own anatomy – needle pistols fired cascades of drill like projectiles full of the most noxious venoms Evaea could concoct.

Everything struck him in a single instant intended to utterly overwhelm.

Jarys replied with a furious blade of a combined Lighting and Flame shield that vaporized half of the projectiles and rederend most of the rest useless.

His sword spun in rapid arcs blocking the phase daggers, the aetheric enchantments his wife had so carefully instilled fully active countering their technological novelty with aetheric counter measures.

All the echoing sounds in the chamber where overwhelmed by the new fury of clashing blades, ripping syth skin, stamping boots, shockwave spewing clashes, blinding arcs of aetheric energy and backwash of telekinetic impacts that blew chunks off the nearby columns and created a crater around the clash.

Some needles got through, Jarys body primed in a state of Aephrodaea’s Grace for days was more than ready to seal any breach deploying Z Cells to consume the foreign matter.  Phase daggers rent into the last complete plates of Blackstone armour as compensation for a miss to his neck or chest.  

The Twins unleashed all their skills, an otherwise unstoppable force that now met an immovable object and ground in sparking fury against it.

He took the damage, endured the blows, his mind flashed with innumerable red heated damage indicators, none could compare to the emotional pain his hormones were suppressing.  The suffering he could not protect his wife from, and the seeming loss of two children, one he would never hold, another who would never let herself be held.

His initial shields dying he began fighting back.

The suddenness of his movements comparative to his size still shocked Evyn, the ferocity of his blows was matched only by the control and expert timing that took Evaea by surprise as Jarys dropped his sword mid slash to grab her hand holding her phase dagger – with tremendous force he squeezed, her own fingers retching inward to crack the hilt within and destroy the complex machinery beneath rendering the blade and her hand non-functional.

Without missing a beat he caught his sword with the other hand millimetres from the ground, ducking under Evyn’s blow, the assassin in the midst of a leaping attack.  Before their bond could even register his sister's pain Jarys grabbed his blade and arced it round to slash through the boy's upper left thigh and across the body into his right forearm, the synth skin easily parted with the flesh beneath and he crashed down.

Jarys turned again to the girl who was more rapid to recover thrusting at his back, Jarys twisted on his heel to catch her arm under his, drawing her in then elbowing back to crack her in the face.

Her chin and right cheek broke, mouth feeling mushy.  Letting her drop Jarys drove his sword into the side of the young boy – for children were all they were manipulated misguided children – the blade dug through into the ground pinning him in place.

No matter what training and equipment they had, at barely over twenty they could not match a fully grown, nourished and experienced Aethan male past the second pubertal period aged 43 standard years who had known only constant war for more than 25 of those.

Evaea struck instantly in defence of her brother, gauntlet injectors jetting out as she punched and kicked in swift combinations that met nothing but durasteel blocks.  Using the Force to stay elevated she managed to land a kick to Jarys head, the helmet already damaged from previous attacks now more hindrance he discarded it with a head butt to her risen shoulder.

The sensation of damage mere fact rather than visceral sensation Evyn tore himself free and joined the fight once more, his side slick and meaty.  

They hit hard and firm, but against a wall of adamantium.  They could smack him in the head, and chest for hours and it would do no good, welts and bruises appeared only to vanish under heavy micro-shatterpoint healing that drained the life force from the twins to power it with subtlety they had not the experience to resist.

Within moments Evaea missed a beat and received a mag-train back hand sending her flying, Evyn instinctively pivoted to help her – a mistake paid for with a knee to the torso and hand round the throat lifting him up.

Coughing out blood Evaea’s eyes wanted to shut out the universe as she blinked away tears of fatigue and terror as her brother was held like a doll.

“Rest child…” Sensei soothed beside her only encouraged her drowsy state.

“Sen…ssen…” she tried to speak

Vzin simply smiled as he drew closer to the appetizer twenty three years in the making, the glistening lubricating fluids on his proboscis obscured by the infinite black about them.

It was time at last to begin the feast, sourness of defeat contrasted with familial devotion and sharp pang of betrayal overlaid upon all this girl had experienced over twenty three years would be a king’s banquet in any other situation – today it was mere appetizer.

Slick flesh tickled at her nostrils as all she believed shattered as much as her body as she became the supine meal for the man she had thought a father…

A flash of blue light seemed to signal her end…instead she felt only absence where Sensei’s heated face had been before.

For now was the time.

Days after he learned of the life and loss in the same instant Jarys allowed himself to fully parse the reality of the situation, to allow the full anger to fill his every cell with righteous vengeful fire.

Here was the place, here was the way, and that was the creature at whom to be angry in fulfilment of Karintha’s wise dictum.

Kree rose wearily last crackles of the lightning blast slipping from his body.

Irritation at the delay in his meal flared in equal measure to the aching hunger to consume this creature.  

The Twins lay broken apart in the darkness as Jarys less walked that loped toward the Anzat that would’ve had his wife killed, these two lost children horribly consumed, and had killed his unborn child with Kiraea, leading to discord with his daughter.

Upon this vampiric creature Jarys would have his vengeance.

<<<<>>>>

[Lord_S_Gray]

Chapter 28 — Rage and Shadow — Of Anger and Betrayal — Part 3

Reflections

The pool before her was still.  Kiraea sat much as she had the last few days knees drawn to her breast.

All around the rich blood red of the cavern seemed strangely mocking, a colour of life and fertility she could not provide.

Words, hugs, food and company were piled upon to her to little effect as Kiraea recalled over and over what she could’ve done differently, how she could’ve protected herself and her child better.

The power of the Caverns and osmotic healing flows from the other women had mostly repaired her body…but still the emptiness remained.

The others wondered why she didn’t rage, shout, scream, surely it was more fitting for her personality.

Only Karintha understood.  Family meant so much to Kiraea it’s loss was the only thing that could dull her fiery temper.

Sitting just behind her an ever present guardian as the others visited she did not leave her niece untouched, ensuring that physical bond to her family remained.

As she did Karintha wondered how Jarys was progressing, had he found the assassins, were they People, was he forced to destroy them?

She hoped not, if he could return with two Children of the Goddesses restored to the People and the heads of those who had manipulated them it might go some way to reigniting Kiraea’s flame.

A flame whose absence was strange on Milaea’s hip.  

The discrete pouch that held her four main link orbs seemed cooler for the lack of energy in the one connecting to Kiraea.

Colder still the dark depths of the planet below.  She could feel the echoes of a battle below, but no update or instructions were forthcoming.

Jarys had been right; she had thought he would give in to bestial bloodlust, had underestimated and scorned the control he could display even in such an instinctive state.  

She had judged him a savage with her actions if not words.

Why…when he needed support the most had she been suspicious of him…the answer reflected poorly on her.  

She still thought of the other People, Sofa even, as primitive, impulsive, vengeful and violent…Dark Siders..monsters...beasts...  


And the sad reality was they were toward anyone but their own.

<<<<>>>>

Beast and Monster

The Vorynx like curled fingers met only empty shadow as Vzin delved himself deeper into the Cloak of Shadow to avoid the indelicate fury of the meal.

The endemic echoes of sound would mask any noise he made in his haste, it was only unfortunate he could not feed on the Twins while so cloaked.

A sudden glare of purple broke the shadows as Ari lit both her sabers over the Twins she had dragged together.  Injured as they were physically it seemed nothing compared to the psychological shock of the Anzat’s attempt to feed on one of them.

Ari knew more than a little of Anzat biology and the hunger for the Soup from discussions with Kazic, how it could drive an Anzat, at the most extreme, into a feral madness, even at the lower end diminish judgement and increase impulsivity – attempting to feed on those who were - form all she had observed - defending him while a threat as deadly as Jarys was still standing evidence of how the Hunger overrode logic.

Vzin sneered at the second intruder as he shifted like the breeze away from the ferocious blows of the feral male creature, he still could not detect him fully under the Cloak, but like the Twins he adapted quickly.

Another missed blow had Jarys fist smash through the concave curve of one of the innumerable columns, spraying more echoing sounds through the vast chamber, Vzin moved deftly into the space Jarys was drawing back his arm and struck.

A long almost needle like sword coated in poison pierced Jarys chest but screeched against his inhuman elongated sternum, the Anzat’s blow lacking strength enough to penetrate Aethan adult bone that hardened to its final strength from the age of 35.  

Quick as lighting Jarys grabbed the blade before Vzin could retract it and hurled a tsunami of rage driven lighting with the other hand.  The cascade was intense and caught the fringes of Vzin’s light robe over Armoured Chameo-Syth-Skin.  

He allowed the loss of the weapon, knowing its toxins would soon spread through the body – they had been designed for use against the most powerful immune systems he knew – the Twins themselves.

An unnatural fire raged in Jarys chest.  Most toxins designed for humanoids were mere irritants for Aethan immune responses, this seemed different – automatic responses were insufficient he had to dedicate a level of conscious effort to telekinetically seal the area around the wound, constricting all blood and lymphatic flows to the point the flesh would decay if left for more than a few hours.

Glaring, seeking his enemy in the howling shadows the loss of 1/6 of mental capacity revealed itself as the real damage done, his ability to cut through the endless echoes and piece together fragmentary tremors in mass, aether and near absent light diminished.

He stopped still in the midst of the swirling sounds and dust.  Let the hunter hunt Jarys reasoned, to wait for your prey was often better than pursuing it – a fact Vzin was well aware of.

The Anzat smiled at the change in tactic from brash relentless attack to still surveillance.

It merely gave Vzin the chance to continue to finish the twins' efforts wearing the creature down.

Jarys parsed through every sound, charting the wavelengths diminishing strength in echoes, matching it his eidetic memory of all that had occurred, filtering out what was old, counting out how long before other sounds would vanish, taking in the only.  

He scanned through a somewhat smaller array of scents, much of it flaked stone, fallen skin and organic matter from what might have once been books kept here…the sweats and blood of the Twins.

He felt out the mass of all nearby objects, relative positions and density, again a smaller group than sound or scents to monitor.

And finally he sought presences in the aether, there were only four, himself, Ari a light purple intensity, two doleful confused muddy red twins, stable in their brokenness.

Each level of detection, Sound, Scent, Mass and Aether took one full level of consciousness to properly assess and monitor, one to keep his chest wound sealed left him only one more to protect himself, a fact Vzin might not be aware of even as he exploited it.

Elegant blades barely a fingernails thickness comprised of a cortosis alloy sang like the wind cut straight through the flesh on Jarys exposed left arm.  

He snapped quickly to try and grab the attacker, Vzin suppressed a chuckle as he rounded to the other side and spun low ducking to drive the forearm length waif like weapons into the right join between knee and hip.

Barely halfway through responding to the first Jarys swung to try and riposte the second attack with telekinetic hammers where the hands wielding the blades should’ve been, succeeding only in shattering more floor tiles.

Jarys felt no frustration at the failure - necessity of vengeance was forcing him to learn – the addition of new sound and additional particles – from the tiles and his own blood - allowed him to better tune his mental model of the immediate environment at the expense of his body.

Ari’s eyes darted ineffectually, she couldn’t make out events barely 20 meters from her for all the noise and darkness, she felt Jarys focused as ever, but the Anzat she had briefly sensed was gone.

Saani had taught her own personalised Buried Presence technique that was the envy of the Vhal’Dan Shadows, Ari had blended it with Aethan Cloaking methods derived from Vosis – Technocracy creations based on Hississ…yet the means of Cloaking being used here eluded her still.


Time to roll a hard twelve… as five levels of her mind remained alert to her surrounds she let one slip to gently probe at the barely conscious twins minds, pushing past the shock of their defeat and betrayal to find Aethenaea Cortices very well developed, no doubt due to their twin bond, and in those fragments Ari discreetly plucked snippets of their abilities.

Vzin was beginning to make progress…another blade shallow cut into Jarys, his minds straining with vast sensory data to sift.

One final strike and the Beast would be down, Vzin sneered, then the purple saber nymph…a true feast

<JARYS!> he may not of asked for Ari’s help - but it couldn’t hurt,

A mercury trickle of knowledge passed from the faltering twins through Ari to Jarys sealing the last minor gaps in his knowledge just as Vzin deep in the Cloak of Shadow thrust forward with the killing blow, his proboscis aimed directly at the Aethan man’s nostrils.

Through the last of the damaged armour plate the Cortosis blades drove into the chest either side of the poisoned wound, the facial tentacles reaching straight up at Jarys nose…

 The Aethan head butted down.

Over the myriad echoes was an audible crack as Vzin’s brow broke and the way to unleash all his pent up rage knitted in Jarys mind at last.

The Anzat barely had time to stagger before Jarys swept his arms up knocking the Anzat’s grip from the daggers still in his chest and threw his heavy boot into the Soup drinker’s chest.

Ribs broke as the Cloak of Shadow master tumbled back.  Vzin trusted in the Cloak of Shadow so painfully perfected to dart out of the way, but four savant equivalent minds analysing the environment tuned by Ari’s input gave Jarys the code to detecting the Anzat.

Like a Tornado of bloody red fury Jarys attacked, fist, tooth, nail, knee and aether.  

Vzin took blow after painful blow before he could even consciously register what was happening.

The Anzat’s most primal instincts began overriding reason and sentience – a reaction caused both by the imminent physical damage and danger and the utterly intoxicating wealth of Soup about him.

To Jarys astonishment the Anzat struck back with a heavy palm to the hilt of an already embedded dagger. It stoked Jarys rage further as depths of paternal protectiveness for two children lost were released as physical violence upon the body before him.

The two could barely be called ‘men’ that in the clash that followed, they tore and ripped viciously, the Anzat trying to pin the Aethan’s face and close to consume its soul, the Aethan trying to rip the head from the neck.

There was no longer any Shadow, only raw Rage as the truth of combatants were revealed in the ferocious display – a remorseless insatiable vampiric consumer of souls battering and being battered by a relentless thundering defender and avenger of his species.

On the floor the Twins slowly came to their senses, any worry Ari had they would try something was unfounded as they stared transfixed into the dark with her where their advanced senses gave them a hazy indication of the battle taking place.

The monster who had raised then betrayed them wild and rabid scratching and tearing, one arm now limp and broken, hip disjointed, foot unnaturally twisted as blood flowed from his face down in streams.

The beast - that had hunted them and now stood between them and being consumed just like all those they had offered at their ‘Sensei’s’ altar before - struck back cuts and daggers in his flesh, areas going necrotic where he had sealed away poisons intrusions from the rest of the body.  

As the bloodletting intensified Ari took one subtle step forward, her blades illuminating the scene of monstrous ravaging briefly, a wet quivering piece of muscle flung across the tiles to land at her feet, unable to tell who it belonged to she realised she couldn’t intervene without likely harming Jarys.

She didn’t need to.

Paternal instinct narrowly beat out desperate starvation, Jarys grinding the creatures face into the shattered floor, the sharp broken tiles shredding the skin from Vzin’s face.

More spasm than retaliation the Anazt sprang up to push the Aethan off, then spinning with a whirl of blood that splattered his ‘children’ lunged once more to get at the soup, ignorant of the grey skin barely being attached to his face.

The momentum hit Jarys and pushed him back, skidding till they reached a wall, Jarys back briefly touching the stone before he grasped the Anzat weary arms and spun him round, slamming the body into the ancient bricks, noxious gases breaking through the cracks.

Jarys let go of one arm and planted a hand on the creature's face, slamming it again and again into the wall while the proboscis wriggled around his fingers.

Bone broke stone - stone broke bone - the Anzat’s body sagged, Jarys kneeing the torso into the wall, then smashing each limb.

Blow after blow followed until a body shaped section of wall collapsed from the force Jarys had inflicted on it through Vzin’s flesh.

Not even thinking Jarys delivered another shattering punch that cracked the Anzat’s sternum and sent him flying out of the gaping crack and down half a kilometer into the rocky depths of the moon.

<<<<>>>>

Triage

Burgundy gases wafted in from the blood stained hole in the wall, a dim light streaming through, mercifully insufficient to make out the wounds Ari and Milaea now treated.

All three of the surviving combatants sat submissively as stitches were sewn and bacta patches applied, Milaea working on the twins, Ari on Jarys.

The echoes of the battle amplified by what few columns remained gradually died down over the hours until the twins were in a condition to move again.

Jarys breathing came in hard sharp rasps, his body almost completely covered in shatterpoint healing red from his own and Ari’s efforts, focused primarily on vaporizing the poisons from the Anzats dagger.

His eyes never moved from the twins and his daughter.

Milaea did her best not to look toward him as she patched the two would be assassins, covering them with her own prodigious healing powers. Though the physical damage was easily repaired, the loss of their ‘father’ was raw and deep.  

They had each other, and as soon as they were able grippied their hands together.

“You…”Ari’s voice of protest was dismissed by Jarys staggering up and hobbling toward the young Aethans.

Evaea gripped her brother hand tighter, looking for succour in his eyes then in the red haired woman helping them.

Milaea turned to face her father.

He brushed past, with a groan kneeling before the twins who flinched as his vast hand reached out to encompass them.

<I’m sorry…> he said telepathically, tongue far too swollen to speak as he dragged the two young Aethan into his embrace.

Shocked, tired, hurt, the pair simply flopped into his chest.

Ari watching the scene gently held Milaea’s shoulder. Milaea watched with a mix of joy, relief...and envy.

“Look after them…” Milaea said quietly looking toward the collapsed wall
“I’ll check the body,” she lied.

<<<<>>>>

The Final Betrayal

On wings of crimson fire she descended to the depths of the ravine, blocking her nose to keep black swirls of gases toxic to the vast majority of species.

There was barely enough left to constitute a body - broken bone and torn meat that housed randomly firing neurons which by some twisted curse patterned out enough to elicit enough moments of consciousness making sac of cells aware of its own suffering and wretched state.

The remnant of what had once been Vzin Kree slowly lifted from viscera coloured rocks it had fallen upon on fingers of red, leaving a good quarter of its fluids behind.

Careful jolts of energy restored a number of neurological connections common to both species, but nothing more than that.

She knew she could not truly heal a non-Aethan, and would offer nothing more than the absolute minimum.

Regardless of her intent it was sufficient to make the spurts and peaks of sentience steady enough to understand her words.

“You disgust me,” Her words were cold as the red energy trickling from her fingers warm.

“How you hunt…feed…what you intended for my family, for those who considered you family…”

Painfully Vzin felt himself held upright, gluggy fluids sloshing out of still open wounds.

“Not even my father, my other father who taught me compassion for all living things, would begrudge the Justice of ending your life.”

A tendril of red energy leapt from her index finger and stopped a cell walls width from Vzin’s still unbelievably beating heart.

“But Mercy is more important than Justice at times…for all your horrific plans, you did keep Evyn and Evaea from harm, feed them, clothe them, protect them…for that you earn this one…and by the Goddesses Only One show of mercy.”

The energy vanished back into her as Vzin crashed to the ground again.

Milaea turned away, cautious steps as the barely living thing that had been Vzin lay crippled in confusion and astonishment.

Tensing her legs to spring into Aetheric Flight she paused.

“If I, or My People ever see you again, I will turn you to dust,”

<<<<>>>>

[Lord_S_Gray]

Chapter 28 — Rage and Shadow — Of Anger and Betrayal — Part 4

Re-unity

By confluence of chance and circumstance the Aephrodaea, Persephaea and Aertemisaea all returned to Aethas within 2 hours of each other, their sister ship Aethenaea in dock undergoing final repairs.

It seemed almost planned that all the smaller Karintha class transports ferried the returning Aethans to the surface at the same time.

In the Cavernous hangar of Mount Aelia four new Aethans ‘met’ for the first time.

Nyaea, still sealed unconscious in a stasis pod awaiting a more peaceful time to be awakened.

Maekal, astonished eyes spinning on a medi-sled hovering above the ground pushed along by Valens, was attempting to make sense of his bandaged wound and incredible new surroundings in reference to the ramblings of isolated prophets dead three millennia on a backwater world.

Evaea and Evyn, gripping each other for support, fearful as the day they had been ‘purchased’ by Vzin Kree, the sting of betrayal sharper than their innumerable injuries - and yet tentatively seeking the warm embrace of their lost People.

Yorna rushed to her sister Kiraea who remained covered in a thick voursus cloak of calming aetheric resonance as she recovered from her loss, Karintha enfolding them both.

Valens looked over his beaten brother, a stab of guilt he had not been there to help him, or his adoptive sister in the first place, quickly dispelled as the pair locked arms after what seemed like an age apart.

While Ari spoke to Selaena, Lya, Ada and Lydan about the events, Jenaea and Maeson handed out hastily woven baskets of real foods to Maekal, Evaea and Evyn, Sofa noted Milaea still on the ramp looking over the scene subdued, Kassyndra sensing the same discomfort in her granddaughter.

They found Milaea unwilling to speak of what had happened, both could sense in addition to the strain between her and Jarys, another secret she was keeping.

With a nod to Taryn who had been commenting on his ‘right royal wreck of a face’ Jarys went to the twins, guiding them hand on shoulders toward Kiraea.

The assassin twins looked askance at their intended victim, not wishing to imperil the reunion, but knowing it could not be avoided.

In between her sister and aunt Kiraea felt a brief flicker of burning hatred above her empty - if physically repaired - womb.  She looked into her husband's bloodshot bruised eyes as he presented the two young Aethans to her.

A brief moment of tension drew all eyes, a risk of an ongoing violent animosity between People very real.

It drained away as Kiraea reached out to take a hand from each of the twins.

She didn’t blame them for what they did in ignorance, manipulated by outsiders.  As Kiraea embraced each in turn Ari glanced quickly to Milaea, the one change that was apparent was a further galvanizing of Kiraea’s hatred for Outsiders that leached to Yorna and Karintha.

Taking tight hold of her husband next Kiraea only half parted from him when she sensed the one wound he had gained since he had left to fulfil his sacred duty of revenge which might not heal.

Wordlessly she led him over to Milaea, Kiraea would not allow her husband and little sister to be in anyway divided.  She pressed their hands together.  Jarys was not angry, only saddened, Milaea guilty for what he did - and did not know.

He looked into his daughter's eyes, a hard thing  even without the pain of his wounds...in the end he couldn’t blame her for her doubts, they had met as enemies, spent all of four years together, most of which he had spent training how to be a better warrior. 

And she was his daughter.

She didn’t want to doubt him, and now...now she had seen the man he always was beneath the fierce protective Beast.

“I’m sorry, father,” she whispered to Jarys and Kiraea tearful embrace.

<<<<>>>>

“I need to tell you something,” Milaea whispered that evening after the impromptu feast was over. 

They sat beneath the cloudless sky, purple glow of the Persephaea Nova through green nebulae, a natural fireworks display on the hill overlooking Selaena, Lydan and Adaea’s long house.

The People clustered around three fires chatting, Taryn despairing at Maekals exegesis of events, Adaea furiously measuring the twins to make them their own Mark I armour, Yorna and Melron discussing a possible expedition to the Rakattan ship on Maekals world.

Ari leaned in toward Milaea feeling the warmth of her body.

“On Dypseth...When I found Kree I...I partially healed him and let him go,”

The burden of secrecy lifted off Milaea’s breast, yet settled in part on Ari’s. Milaea looked at her expectantly.

“Oh…” was the only reply.

“You’re not mad?” there was a hint of desperation in her voice.

“No, I mean it was Jarys and Kiraea’s vengeance that…” Ari shook her head
“I know why you did it...but ultimately...I don’t think it makes a difference - Dypseth is isolated, he’ll starve or burn internally from the gases on the moon - very slowly - Kazic once said feral Anzat can live for decades even without food - a more terrible death than Jarys would’ve delivered.”

Milaea had not thought of it like that, preferring the axiom ‘where there if life there is hope’.

“I suppose you’re right,” the red clothed woman said sadly.

“You know I was thinking…” Ari said to steer the conversation away
“Anzat are solitary creatures, rare in the galaxy at best...and yet twice now they’ve been drawn to care for Aethan children…”

“I’m not sure Kazic’s motives can be compared to Kree’s,” Milaea noted, grateful for a new topic.

“No, but still considering how few Anzat and People there are…” Ari elucidated

“I see what you mean… it seems like more than coincidence in a galaxy of trillions of beings and millions of worlds to happen twice in twenty five years…” Milaea agreed
“But I can’t imagine why Anzat would be drawn to us or vice versa…”

The thought occupied their silence for the next few minutes before Ari stood and offered her hand.

“Come on, let’s go get some more sweet-rolls!”

<<<<>>>>

[TheDutchman]

EXCELLENT action!  I have to say that I was worried that Vzin might've come off as a one-note, disposable enemy but was quickly assuaged of such: had Ari and Mili not been present, the Twins and Jarys would definitely ended up on the receiving end of twin Anzati proboscides 

My favorite part though HAS to be the collective Aethan forgiveness of the Twins once they've congregated; Family is always an important touchstone in the stories that interest me and to see those once lost returned--despite HOW they arrived--is emotionally rewarding.  Additionally, we really get to see the (growing!) Aethan characters mature, such an important development when you consider everything that they've been through.  Which is why the scene between Jarys and Mili is both tender...and tragic: he is no longer "The Beast" or at least not "just."  Instead, he is a husband/brother/father in pain (in more ways than one), able to reach beyond a reaction of vengeance and, instead, deliver justice to the true culprit.  It's this kind of characterization that separates the narrative from the norm, where "Star Wars" CAN have complex characters AND still be distinctly "Star Wars."

And poor Mili..another example of how the best of intentions can lead to hell: Vzin will die a very, very painful death given Dyspeth's conditions (I REALLY like how Ari was the one to point that out; kind of a counterpoint of Ari's pragmatism vs. Mili's optimism...yet I still very much want for Mili to KEEP that optimism alive  ).

...Yeah, those Anzati seem to turn up in the most circumstantial roles and instances...maybe a result of the daen nosi, perhaps? 

[Lord_S_Gray]

Chapter 29 — The Hunted and the Hollow — Part 1

Sofa

“It’s him….” Her voice barely above a whisper almost lost in the ever present hum of the air filtration system in the facility deep within the outer planet of Aeda that held the Black Obelisks.

Sofa wrapped her arm around the diminutive girl's shoulder.

The signal had been ambiguous at best, an echo of a call for help to anyone or anything, but featured just enough aetheric markers to get picked up by the ever more discriminating and accurate Obelisk Array.

It had been Xani who ultimately confirmed it was an Aethan signal much to her sadness.

It was her long lost father.

Burying her head against Sofa for a final squeeze Xani then broke off and ran into the arms of Selaena opposite, her adoptive mother covering her protectively as Sofa looked to Milaea.

“Nearly 10 years old, from somewhere in the galactic ‘south east’, mid rim, I’ll see if I can narrow it down further.” The younger woman said, giving Xani a supportive squeeze on the shoulder as she left the control room, clinical blue lights and panels unfitting for the occasion.

Xani’s quiet sobbing was the only noticeable sound for a few moments, the suddenness of the remembrance of her long lost father dragging out tears by the dozen as Sofa waited for some idea what to do next.

Before realising she would have to be the one to come up with said idea. 

Everyone else seemed to have some pressing task to fulfil.

Valens, Jarys, and now increasingly Karintha, the main ‘leaders’ were deep into reintegrating Maekal, Evyn and Evaea respectively.  Melron, Lyaea, Adaea and Maeson had taken Taryn, Lydan, Kassyndra, Jenaea and Aresaea to Csilla to start their induction into the CEDF as part of their alliance obligations.  Life moving on.

Selaena would never risk Xanaea on a mission...that left only Sofa herself, Milaea, Yorna and….

“Are we going to look for him?” Xani asked plaintively

“Sweetling it may be too dangerous,” Selaena said, while Aethans could did not experience ‘fear’ as humanoids understood it, their ‘equivalent’ wariness regarding avoiding inportune outcomes was grown in recent weeks. 

Though...more accurately, a pyre of confidence and determination that had always enthused the group mind the Aethan People shared to action had been hollowed out.

Frag it Sofa missed the familiar warm blaze of Kiraea’s rambunctious, if pathologically violent, enthusiasm in the background aura of the Peoples bond.

“I’ll check it out Xani…” Sofa assured
“First I have to gather a posse…”

<<<<>>>>

Yorna

The sequence of everyday for the last few weeks repeated.

Yorna would fill a small bowl with food,  take away the barely half eaten one from yesterday and place the new one before her sister who sat like an indifferent statue gazing into the cavern walls.

Neither she nor Kiraea had left the sacred cavern since her return from Maekals broken world to her emotionally shattered homeworld..

Kiraea had left only twice since she first arrived here just over a month ago.

Kiraea’s face bore thin pink traces of her wounds during the devastating events that had caused her depression, thicker dried red beneath the gossamer robe contraste with increasingly white sun starved skin.

“Please Kiri,” Yorna pleaded, kneeling before her sister placing Kiraea’s limp hands within her own.

“Try to eat a little more today,”

Aethan biology and the healing power of the caverns should’ve repaired all of Kiraea’s physical wounds by now had she been consuming enough nutrients.

The strange effects of the Rakattan ship on Maekals world had put Yorna and Valens out of contact in the immediate aftermath of Kiraea’s loss, she was now determined to make up for that by caring for her sister personally.

Said sister remained still, ice where there had once been fire, a contrast painful to witness.

With a sad sigh Yorna patted her sister's knee and went to see to the candles that lit the cavern with aetheric blue, each simmering low.

Soft footsteps drew an aura that was a curious mix of care and begrudgingly dramatic fatigue at having to do the slightest task.

“Sofa,” Yorna whispered in greeting, she still hadn’t worked out her new sister in law, and though happy Sofa provided great comfort and affection to Val, could not understand how two so variant personalities got along.

“Any change?” the dark haired woman asked
Yorna shook her head as she fed power into the aether candle.
“She ate 5 grams more yesterday but...still hasn’t spoken in days”
“We’ve got a signal, Milaea is tracking it, with everyone else busy I was wondering if you’d help me check it out, and I thought…” Sofa nodded her head toward the deeper cavern where Kiraea was becoming a permanent feature.

Yorna shrugged,
“We can only try,” she said as they headed back toward Kiraea.

The pallid, still, gaunt figure staring at the wall appeared the mirror opposite of the vibrant, pulsing woman Sofa had met five years ago, who had poked and prodded her after her full genetic realignment, and insisted on sharing every imaginable personal detail with as part of learning the appropriate ‘Rties’ to manage Sofa’s new reproductive systems.

Walking forward slowly but firmly Sofa couldn’t even smell Kiraea.  All Aethan women were taught in the Rite how to control their release of Pheromones to use strategically as another method of communication with women or to emphasize their control of men - unashamed of her own cyclical and arousal changes Kiraea rarely masked or managed hers at all...Kiraea always added a pleasant sweet tang scent to a room.

“Kiraea, the obelisks have picked up another signal, we need to look into it straight away, Xani is convinced it is from her father.”

Sofa kept her tone gentle but words direct, she doubted Kiraea wanted to be pitied, and knew from her counsellor training among the Jedi at a certain point it was better to start treating grieving person as though they were as they had been in situations unrelated to their trauma.

Kiraea didn’t make any obvious motions, and only gradually met Sofa’s gaze.

The former Jedi felt a chill at the emptiness of her sister in laws green eyes and aura.

“I think it’s a good idea Kiri,” Yorna supported, “A change of scene and who knows maybe another rescue” she tried to be upbeat

“Or even a chance to knock some outsider heads together,” Sofa said with a smile

Kiraea at last reacted with an brief incredulous sneer toward the dark haired woman, knowing full well Sofa wouldn’t countenance violence against outsiders just for being outsiders.

It was not a positive reaction, but it was a reaction.

“Where?” Kiraea’s voice was raspy from underuse and dehydration.

“Milaea is zeroing in, somewhere to the galactic south west,”

With a sigh and stiff joints Kiraea stood buoyed by the emotional insistence of her two sisters.

“Alright…I need to clean up first…”

Kiraea shuffled off to one of the annexes where fresh melt water constantly streamed in creating natural - if in Sofa’s opinion utterly freezing - showers, beside geothermal pools to warm up in afterwards.

“I’ve never seen her like this,” Yorna said to Sofa, still staring at where her sister had been sitting.
“...I haven’t been here, don’t understand all she’s been through these last twenty years…I don’t know how to help her,”

She turned fully to Sofa,

“Val said you know of such things from your time with the Jedi, is there anything you can do to help, Aunty and I have tried everything….”

“I learned counselling and psychological therapy for humanoids, and to be honest a lot of those concepts just don’t apply to People…”

Disappointment was evident on Yorna’s face

“I‘ll do what I can...I never thought I’d say this but I really miss the old Kiraea,”

<<<<>>>>

Kiraea

Things happened, patterns of motion and the changing of the physical environment about her.

She was in the familiar briefing room in Mount Aelia, a place she had been a dozen times before yet never truly seen.

Now every detail seemed to hold some strange novelty as she wondered if the chairs, lights, holo controls had always been there.  had she been in here before>  Had she sat in this room with life within her. Was this seat a mute witness that noticed the change in her weight?

Did it feel the absence as keenly as she did?

Milaea spoke about various things, intersecting lines, aetheric drift patterns, transaction records from Muunilist...words that flowed around Kiraea like oil around water.

The young woman brought up an image with little aurebesh symbols that read the Kashyyyk system of the Mytaranor sector of the Mid Rim.

Had that moon been there the whole time, before she was born, after her baby had died?

She saw the line of concern crease Milaea’s face each time she looked at her, and follow her out of the room as she drifted to the armoury.

Kiraea stood still for a moment as she looked at her suit, unblemished.  Blackstone plating and Dura-Kevlar weave over the torso both more than capable of deflecting a direct blow from a light saber…

Would it have resisted the phase dagger that had sliced into her womb?

She would always ask that question.  Always despise her foolishness to sit wearing only a gossamer chiton on the nature deck beside Nyaea.

Her hand reached out and took the under suit, muscle memory performing the tasks of arming herself behind the light eating plate without her conscious input as she let her mind return to the nothingness that was its preferred abode - the hollowness of what had been her hope and joy where the infinite expanse of nihilism could surround her with numb cold.

The Hollow she called it, though to give an absence a  name seemed slightly absurd.

She drifted in the nothing of the Hollow till a spark of blue caused her to realise she was on a destroyer's bridge watching the ship tunnel into hyperspace.

Yorna in the command chair to her front and left rattled off hours and minutes before arrival, turned and knelt before Kiraea as if paying homage to the goddess of the barren womb, imploring her to rest and eat before they arrived.

If Kiraea stepped out of the Hollow she would feel the hunger and thirst of her body, the bristling discomfort of her limbs, raw nagging phantom pains that reminded her so much of the loss.

So she stayed in there, as long as she could.

<<<<>>>>

[Lord_S_Gray]

Chapter 29 — The Hunted and the Hollow — Part 2

Sofa

“It’s the lack of effort I don’t understand….” Yorna huffed out as she passed under Sofa’s weaving sword in the gymnasium as they waited for the next jump to .

It had to be said Trandosha was an odd place to get a signal from, Milaea’s reasoning was solid based on the evidence they had from the array, but still Sofa held a slight hope it might be misdirected from Kashyyyk itself.

“Normally Kiri would be so animated, so determined to keep going even when she was chucking up from Gormin Flu!”

Yorna came round with her training saber, the lack of weight of the ‘lightsabers’ feeling quite weird to her, It crackled on Sofa’s blade with odd noises that Yorna disliked for their artificiality, but still she knew she had to learn.

“It’s like she is not even there…” Yorna pressed in the lock and jabbed her foot to try and trip the former Jedi, who responded in kind with a ‘slap’ like telekinetic womp on the side of Yorna’s face.  

Yorna largely ignored that, but couldn’t avoid the spiking telekinetic thrusts up from the ‘ground’ that forced her to switch footing, at which point Sofa pressed on the locked blades to wrong food her further, then suddenly pulled back, Yorna over corrected.  Sofa twisted out and elbowed her in the breast sending her skidding.

That hurt far less than the discomfort of seeing her sister so detached.

“Hnnnh...good one,” Yorna smiled as she crouched looking out for an in.

“It works,” Sofa shrugged her guard still up “Sometimes,”

Yorna moved low, fast and forward, then feinted to the left, catching Sofa slightly off guard, before pushing her own telekinetic attack, Sofa’s kinetic shield took the brunt but needed reinforcement to keep her from being knocked over.

Their blades clashed and twriled buffeted by the Telekinetic push and pull, their grips tightening to avoid the ethereal newtons spinning them off wildly.

Yorna was skilled to begin with and catching up fast to everyone else, her speed and dexterity much like Kiraea’s, her aetheric powers more focused but lacked the intensity of her sister so far as Sofa could tell.

It was still enough to match her blow for blow as he sparring session continued on inconclusively, Yorna’s beginning to mirror more of Sofa’s moves makin it feel she was fighting a reflection of herself, to the point they both spuns in wide open stances and into a pushing slash technique.

Once more both pushed against the  others power, stances wide, blades high behind their heads as their front hand opened out pushing a wall of kinetic energy at the other.

Evenly matched the hardened doonium floor began to creak as they slowly slid further apart on their heels.

Sofa’s mouth curled as Yorna’s eyes narrowed each trying to outdo the other.  Simultaneously both hurled their blades with unnerving precision that set the tip of Sofa’s sword grinding into the tip of Yorna’s Saber in between them, both weapons juddering and deconstructing in the kinetic confluence.

Crackling sparks of energy began to fill the repulsive gap between them, sky blue from Sofa, Yorna’s with a purple tinge.

“Call it a draw...or we might break something…” Sofa strained

Yorna nodded.  The tension released with a gush of displaced air that shook the equipment racks nearby.

Both quickly recovered,

“Pick things up quick,” Sofa complimented

“Val showed me a few things already, they are not so different from what I learned before…”

“‘Val’,” Sofa scoffed after a sip of water
“Never heard anyone call him that before you, you were close as kids?”

Yorna nodded
“Myself, Val, Jay, Kiri, Cori too - Taran’s nephew - though he wasn’t around as often and younger than Kiri,”

Sofa blurted out her drink
“‘Jay!’, frell…I never imagined Jarys looking like a ‘Jay’”

Yorna just giggled removing her sweat stained shirt, again Sofa saw Kiraea in perfect imitation in Yorna’s figure, only their facial features were different, each of the sisters could be said to emphasize certain aspects of their aunt Karintha’s features...or Karintha was a combination of both of them if one invented the generations.

“Oh he’s just a Voursus cub deep down…” her countenance fell at the thought of the uncomfortable parting when they had left half a day before.

As soon as Kiraea had left the caverns Jarys had been waiting outside to see her.  Kiraea barely paid him any notice, merely shrugging indifferently when he asked if he might accompany them.

“That must’ve hurt him,” Yorna went on

“He loves your sister as an Aethan male should,” Sofa agreed, being so dismissively ignored had to hurt.

“I thought she was feeling better when he got back, she forgave Evyn and Evaea, insisted Jarys an Milaea reconcile…” Yorna explained shaking her hair out
“She just went back to the caverns and...stagnated...didn’t care if he came or went....I just can’t explain it.”

If there was a reason Jarys hadn’t joined them it was he interpreted her indifference as instruction to leave her alone, to not intrude on women’s business.

There was more than worry and confusion on Yorna’s face, there was guilt - guilt she had not been there for her sister, not just in protecting her child, but long long before that.  

Yorna had missed 25 years of her sisters life, Kiraea had grown without and away from her in ways Yorna couldn’t catch up with.

A close family divided by decades of wounds.

“I think,” Sofa said, shuffling out of her own outfit as they headed toward the refresher
“She’s forgiven everyone, Evyn, Karintha, even Jarys for taking that Anzat dren lickers head without her...everyone but herself,”

<<<<>>>>

They entered the Kashyyyk system through a seldom used drop zone, stealth systems on the Persephaea activated immediately to mask their presence.

It had been a nearly three day trip all up, Kiraea still wandering aimlessly, Yorna still at a loss of what to do, and Sofa stuck between them - growing increasingly frustrated at Kiraea’ indifference and sad at Yorna’s guilty impotence to help.

They glided low along the systems plane avoiding the main traffic lanes to the forest world which sat in their aetheric senses tall and proud as the Worrshyr tree’s upon it.

As no one else volunteered it was up to Sofa to narrow the signal they held in the recording orb.  Locking it into a plinth in the Aetheric Nexus she scryd out the wafer thin echoes of a scream sent forth ten years or more before.

But something became apparent as she cobbled the remnants together, it wasn’t just one voice...but three…

<Girls can I get a hand in here,> she called

Unsurprisingly only Yorna arrived and added her mind to Sofa’s to help analyse the signals.  The nominally younger woman’s mind was focused and sharp, Sofa could tell she was concealing her more troubled feelings so as not to put Kiraea off if she wished to talk.

Yorna confirmed there were multiple threads, and between them they were able to find the rough location.

Three dots around Trandosha, the fifth planet in the system, in positions that perfectly aligned to the orbit of the moon Wasskha at different times of the year.

“They all came from that moon, but not at the same time or from the same Person…” Sofa said now leaning over the holo projection of the moon in the strategium.  

“Could they have taken refuge there?” Yorna asked as Kiraea stared blankly at the scene.

“Knowing Trandoshan’s, I doubt it, they’re hunters, vicious ones, almost as zealous as the damn Vong about finding worthy victims…” Sofa didn’t have any trouble putting two and two together, the worst possible scenario was often closest to reality after all.

“Does that note not say ‘nature preserve?” Yorna sought to clarify based on the text scrolling from the on board database - a collection of mainly Vhal’Dan records Kiraea had taken with her along with Ari from Galtea...using Kazic Ovarug’s personal codes to access the Galtean mainframes…

“Probably a euphemism for hunting grounds,” Sofa’s stomachs sank ever further as she put together the streams of data the myrian holo’s and screens were presented regarding the species, planet, intel reports from a kidnapping incident some thirty years before.

It appeared less a rescue than a retrieval.

The only good news was the moon was not defended in any systematic way, getting ground side undetected to continue their investigation would be easy in a transport ship, and as the moon was not permanently occupied, they shouldn’t encounter any opposition…

Normally Sofa’s main worry would be if they did find People had been hunted on this world Kiraea would be baying for blood and she’d have to wrestle her off firing Shikkar’s at Trandosha itself.

Kiraea was far from normal.

“Nothing more we can learn from this, suit up, we take a transport ground side in 4 hours,”

<<<<>>>>

Ins’skas

He knelt before the open fire that sat in the center of the Jagannath Chamber.

Around the dusty red stone walls sat the trophies that were evidence of Ins’skas horde of Jagganth Points -skulls, horns, dried hides, shrunken heads - the markers of accomplishment that the Great Goddess, the Scorekeeper, demanded be accumulated to gain a place of honour in the Jungles of the Eternal Hunt.

Unclothed, the Tranoshan held his leathery reptilian arms over the fire, a wookie pelt in his grasp.

His large nostrils flared as the scent of burning fur filled the room as he made his offering.  

Ins’skas always observed the Old Rite, to sacrifice one Jagganth to the Goddess after every hunt - even if he only took one pelt or scalp, still he gave it.  The young and foolish neglected the sacrifice, hoarding the Jagganth, not understanding it was the Scorekeeper who once appeased would deliver an abundance of Jagganth to her worshippers.

The fire did not burn his scales, they were already black from decades of such sacrifices, and the thick muscle beneath inured to the pain.  The Goddess had blessed him, his Jagganth doubling each decade, those of his spawn that followed his path also of great Jagganth.

The pelt slowly flaked to ash in his claws, the wordless sacrifice complete he buckled his most prized trophies to him.  Four pelts of Wookie Berserkers, the dried lekku of a strange single lekku humanoid, Beskar’gam chest plate of a Mandalorian, and more than all this, inlaid wherever possible on his armour, the Skulls and Bones of the three Davjäan Guage as he termed them in Dosh - Burning Alien.

Strong as wookies, and much faster, he had first encountered a Davjäan Guage on Zyggeria, frothing in chains, raving like mad, he had purchased it along with over two dozen others for his next season's hunt.

As always he scattered the prey upon Island Eight of Wasskah, moon of Trandosha, his Clan’s private hunting ground.  To his astonishment when he returned a month later to begin the hunt - as always allowing the prey time to prepare, there was no Jagganth in a mere culling - the Davjäan Guage had killed them all.

Glorying in the challenge Ins’skas had hunted the creature a full season, losing one foot and an eye - since regrown - to the create that had lit its body in an eldritch blue fire before it died earning it the moniker Davjäan.

The Jagganth he had felt in the black of his bones as he tore into the scorched flesh to pry out the skeletal trophy was euphoric, He pledged it all to the Scorekeeper despite his spawns misgivings, but vowed he would keep the next for himself.

It had been years but finally he found two more, another from the Zygerrians and a third, the only female, among a crowded vessel of refugees from a forgotten outer rim warzone one of his spawn had taken mercenary work in.

Delivered to Island eight he hunted each in turn, hard bitter nights deep in the monsoon against the second male, crippling humidity of the Growing Season against the female, both were successes.

He left the pyre to continue to burn as he exited the Jagganth chamber to find one of his spawn, third -eldest waiting him.

Ins’skas had many spawn, females were drawn to those of great Jagganth, he mated as opportunity arose, and when some of the spawn sought him he would permit them to join him on the hunt.  

He didn’t bother to remember the names of his spawn, so many of them died on the hunt, only their rank in age

“Blood-Giver,” Third-eldest sniffed, head jutted upward to expose his neck in a sign of submission as well as the formal title of paternity.

“A vessel, unknown to us has landed upon the Hunting Grounds of our Clan....you will give thanks to the ScoreKeeper to see what our spy droids have recorded of them,”

Third eldest was the most pious of his spawn, snivelling so at times, he would learn. Or die. Ins’skas cared not.

“Show me who petrubs our sacred jungles,”

<<<<>>>>

[Lord_S_Gray]

Chapter 29 — The Hunted and the Hollow — Part 3

Yorna

The ‘tracks’ from the Recording Orb stopped above one of the moon’s southern hemisphere islands as they cruised across the planet, stealth drives active, in a Karintha Class Transport.

Keeping high enough over the canopy to avoid ruffling the dark green frond like leaves Yorna couldn’t sense any more specific place where the People might have been.

It was as though beneath the tree tops her aetheric senses suddenly ‘stopped’.

“Do you feel that Kiri?” She asked to her left,

“hmmm…” Kiraea stared oblivious through the view screen that simulated a view port   

“The aether seems very strained near the trees, lime Gosalam null fields, but not as encompassing, have you ever felt anything like it?” Yorna tried to pry some conversation from her sister

Kiraea just shrugged.

“I’ll find somewhere to land, can you run me through the procedure?”

With a half Sigh Kiraea complied, speaking only occasionally mainly showing her the controls to land with all the enthusiasm of a dozing gormin,

Settling down in small rocky clearing just big enough for the transport, she checked the atmosphere and lowered the ramp, Sofa now joining them. 

The humid swelter of southern Waaskah hit them immediately, the air wet with humidity from evaporation of moist earth covered in thick leaf matter being digested by myriad insects, fungi and bacteria.  The majority of the larger flora were   Arecaceae, with large compound evergreen leaves atop enormous thick layered trunks, below them up to 5 meter high ferns and then an underlayer of smaller shrubs with prickly thick leaves ranging from orange to purple.

Most prominent of all was the absence of the aether.

Stepping onto the gluggy wet jungle floor Yorna felt the loss of the familiar power, so much a part of herself immediately.

“Whoa….no wonder we couldn’t sense anything lower down…hmmm…”

She pulled a shikkar and held it in front, reaching to grip it with her mind as easily as breathing. 

Releasing her grip the glass dagger however for a few moment as she tugged hard on the aether.  it warbled and wavered for twenty seconds, then fell, her swift reflexes catching it before it hit the ground.

“That’s gonna make things hard,” Sofa sighed as Yorna huffed from the exertion of levitating a dagger for merely a few seconds - the aether was not absent, but it was throttled in its flow.

Unclasping her helmet Yorna sniffed the air,

“Have to track using our physical senses…”

Ever curious and undaunted by any risk she knelt and scooped up a handful of rotted leaf matter and dirt. She rubbed it between her fingers focusing what aetheric senses she could with her thermal vision and sense of mass.  The closer she moved it toward her the stronger the choke hold on the aether was.

“Here...in the dirt...some kind of microorganism...its drawing on the aether itself, soaking it all up before anything else does…”

Sofa scrunched her nose
“Does that limit us to what we have within us?”

Every being held a certain store of Aetheric energy, the technocracy labelled it an Aeth value, of course generally the best way to use the aether was to draw on it directly from the environment all the time.

“I think so, Kiri what do you…”

Her sister was leaning against the side of the ship,

“Kiri!” Yorna leapt over unable to feel her sister in the aether as normal...and that she realized had to be the issue.

Without easy access to the aether, Kiraea was left without the subconscious healing and numbing effects it could provide, exposing her to the full force of the unstable mix of hormones swirling in her body.

While Kiraea was, so far as tissues and organs were concerned, healed, her body was still hormonally imbalance, having been flung from a reproductive state to heightened survival, then back down to repair in the space of mere hours - as efficient as Aethan biology was at tailoring their hormonal balances were to their environment, such dramatic shifts had caused over excitement and left her with hormone balances that were only slowly rebalancing.

Kiraea staggered slightly into her arms
“I...can feel it vanishing…”
“The aether? We’ll leave right now,”
“No...my...my...baby…”

Yorna’s eyes widened, was Kiraea truly so far gone she was only just realizing the fact?  She looked briefly to Sofa who stared just as intently.

“I feel her in my veins...but she’s going again!” Kiraea shuddered

Her veins…. Pieces fell together in Yorna’s head, it was quite possible there were still some traces of foetal blood in her system, especially considering her limited food intake recently, persistently trying to sustain itself, without the aether it would be quickly reabsorbed.

Desperate to stop the re-lived trauma Yorna was about to push Kiraea back into the ship when she stopped dead.

“Oh Vorynx…” painfully gripping her sister she hurled her with all her strength into the jungle then leapt to cover her before she’d even hit the ground.

A blinding white-yellow flare struck dead on the top of the Transport, sizzling overhanging leaves and frond.

The ground shook as the ship was hammered into the ground, the repulsors that levitated it over the soil only punching deeper in reflex.

A second and third blast followed seconds later, the ground sinking inot a crater as the ship was bored further down, the strange scent of superheated minerals in the air as the Blackstone hull was superheated by the turbo laser blasts.

Yorna hauled herself and sister up, treading through the broken foamy ground to gain distance as fast as she could, caching a glimpse of Sofa likewise making for a denser copse of trees.

Behind she heard the shrieking whine of energy cracking air as a fourth and fifth shot hit the ship.  The Fourth heated the blackstone and delivered enough kinetic damage to cause it to fracture, the fifth expanded those fractures to arms width.  resilient as Blackstone was even it couldn’t survive five direct hits from an Orbital bombardment capable Turbolaser.

As she felt the heat behind her and felt the spread of fire in the foliage, resisted by the humidity, she dove again on top of Kiraea as the sixth blast hit.

The transport finally succumbed slagged from the centre out, a blue white explosion lighting the jungle from the laser punched crater.

Heated chunks boiled down as shrapnel spat up, Yorna rolled to avoid a superheated blob of doonium that slowly hissed in the wet dirt till it settled as dead as their one way of getting off world.

With a groan Yorna rolled over, coming face to face with a hovering metal insect the size of her head with a glassy green eye.

 

<<<<<>>>>

Ins’skas

Three of them.

Three Davjäan Guage females had landed right on his Clans hunting grounds, as if begging to offer their Jagganth to him.

The Seeker Droids always alert for any changes to the biosphere had detected the landing, Third eldest had been observant in picking up the alarm and quickly positioned them to attack.

The closest droid stared into the face of one of them, the human like face gazed back through the screen with curiosity for a moment...then sweep of black static filled the screen as the droid went offline.

His tongue flickered from his harsh lips, the scales around his face cracked and chipped, but hard as durasteel.

The whine of the  Lllsssak’s - Consumer in old Dosh - turbo-lasers diminished as the cannon powered down, their intrusive vessel destroyed they were trapped on the surface, the other seekers would maintain a larger distance and track their movements.

“No other vessels detected Blood-Giver,” Second eldest, a more cerebral spawn talented with machinery said standing at the command lectern.

First, Fourth and Fifth eldest stood around the bridge, slathering over the prey that had come to them.

“Father, I will bring the head of one to the Scorekeeper, the second to you, the third alone for myself!” First eldest boomed with pride.

“Jetar madle” Ins’skas snapped at the arrogance more than the informality of the word ‘Father - meat maggot an insult to all Trandoshans to be compared to a creature that passively eats and does not hunt. That one’s Egg-layer had always been too prideful and it showed in the spawn.

“You would swear to take that which is mine to allot?”

First raised his neck in submission

“Forgiveness,”

Striding over Ins’Skar slashed him across the neck with his claws, drawing blood, albeit only thinly from beneath the scales in his admonishment.

“The Scorekeeper has blessed the Bloodgiver for his sacrifices,” Third sniffed haughtily
“He shall determine who, if any, hunt,”

Second and Fourth’s nostrils flared in indignation, their Egg-layer was ‘cosmopolitan’, a weakling thing that lived in a city now, her lack of respect for the old ways flowed in their blood.

What a variegated, disappointing spawn he had created over the decades, truly the Egg-layers ahd failed to transmit his strength untainted, none had the Jagannth to succeed him, only First and Fourth had Elder wookies Berserker shown on their bodies, the others only weakling warrior pelts.

Ins’skas could use this opportunity to weed out the weak.

“One day,” he finally hissed.
“Till next sunrise you have to hunt before I descend, he who claims a head I will honour with a name,”

The entirety of his spawn hissed in adulation,

“He who dies will be skinned and sent back to their Egg-layer labelled Jetar madle,”

The spawn growled at the thought of such dishonour, a death that would tear from them all Jagganth earned in life, leaving them no place in the Eternal Hunt.

They had sought him out to learn and find a place with their Blood-giver, they should have anticipated he would try them hard.

“You await what?” he hissed “Go! now, the prey does not sit idle!”

<<<<>>>>

Yorna

The first goal was reaching high ground. 

Communication orbs were offline due to the ubiquitous bacteria, conventional cooms struggled beneath the canopy.

She knew as soon as they missed their next scheduled check in with Aethas in four hours a ship would be sent to recover them...of course how long it took them to arrive could vary between 12 hours and four or five days depending on the endless nova storms of the deep core.

Still Yorna hoped she could contact home as soon as possible, the eclectic buzz of another droid nearby the key reason.

Pausing on a branch she was crouched upon, she spun in a single motion drawing and loosing an arrow that struck the glass green eye sending the droid tumbling in clanking spams to the ground.

She leapt down to recover her arrow, the lack of the aether denying her the ability to teleport them back. There was little to be learned from the droids, they transmitted their observations and followed ‘non native motive organisms’ but nothing more.

Something was watching them, the same something that had destroyed their ship.  The sooner they were away from that something the better.

Leaping across the jungle she continued scouting for a way to the lone chain of mountains in the distance, covered in green they showed only a slight rocky brown tip, barely 2000 meters high they paled to anything on Aethas but would have to do.

Her true hope was the effects of the Aether eating microorganisms would be diminished above the moss and vine line, enabling her to summon the Persephaea with the aether.

Some twenty minutes behind her Sofa had found a small hollow in which to wait with Kiraea who was struggling with the rawness of the direct experience of her body metabolizing the last of her pregnancy hormones without the aether to numb the effect.

<I think,> Sofa had thought privately to Yorna before she headed off
<she was keeping those hormones and foetal blood preserved with the aether...maybe it was subconscious, a normal protective mechanism…> Sofa gave a mental sigh

<Kiraea is the one I would usually ask about all this kind of weird hormone magic>

Yorna had to agree <Part of a babies development is in the aether, cultivating their aura, given the traumatic way the baby was lost the normal processes were damaged.>

Plucking the arrow out she continued on her journey, moving swiftly over the ground, her senses primed for any attack.  Even without the aether she was still possessed of a powerful suite of senses and abilities, more than able to avoid the few small feline carnivores she had seen and traverse the dense foliage with little difficulty. 

Compared to Aethas the jungle was tame, and to her scents somewhat imbalanced.  There seemed to be a lack of large predators, those she had caught in her peripheral vision were at most a meter long, and all seemed sleek and fat with food, somewhat lazy in their reflexes.  It was as if any large fauna had been culled to extinction.

Reaching the foot hills she paused in her swift leaps as something incongruous with the ecosystem caught her eye.

Slowing her approach she crept through chest high ferns and around trunks approaching it.

Hanging from a branch was the swaying frayed remains of some clothing, long since bleached of colour, the plastic sheen of artificial fibers obvious to her eyes. There was a stronger scent of decay nearby that she followed with all the confidence her curiosity could muster.

Parting a screen of leaves and vines overgrowing a narrow gap in between two large boulders she found the remnants of an old camp, a central area with charred dirt and stone circles where there had been numerous fires, discarded chairs and boxes...and all around the edge of the small clearing were bones tied to bamboo shafts rammed into the ground.

Hundreds of them.  None the same as another, differing numbers of limbs and cranial shapes - if indeed they had them at all - a galactic necro-zoo turning yellow, brown, and in some cases a weird blue - as they decayed.

It seemed like a hunting camp, but she couldn’t understand why the bodies were strung up like enemies, displays of enemy dead needed to be prominent, not hidden away, and if they were hunting they would take all the valuable bones with them for crafting into tools.

Wandering through the camp she searched for anything of use, always keeping an eye on the bodies that swayed listlessly as the wind picked up, clattering like windchimes as bones knocked together.

She quickly deduced a vast majority of the creatures here could not be native, were too ill suited for this island and the others on this moon…

Why bring these creatures here just to kill them?

Kiraea might understand, she knew so much more about outsiders...twenty five years more…
 
Finding only objects of novelty not practicality she turned to head on.

As she reached the narrow entrance three blaster bolts hit her in the back with red blazing anti-heat.

<<<<>>>>

[Lord_S_Gray]

Chapter 29 — The Hunted and the Hollow — Part 4

Sofa

She looked like a death stick addict coming off a high, face usually slightly flush with rage, pallid, a thin amount of sweat on her brow.

At least, Sofa thought, Kiraea was being compliant, though more in a mindless zombie way as they kept mobile, avoiding the hovering drones as best they could.

Sofa understood the need to take time to recover, to process grief and trauma in your own time.  With their ship destroyed, tracking drones following them and no access to the majority of their powers, there was no time. Sofa needed - for her own survival - Kiraea her usual fiery, violent and yes bitchy self.

With Yorna scouting a head, she might not get another chance to say what she needed to say.

“I know what it’s like...to feel like you’ve lost control of your body...to wonder over and over again what you could have done different, could you have fought harder, been somewhere else….and in the end you feel like you are the one who did this to yourself because you weren’t enough, and never will be,”

She didn’t bother to look back, just assumed she was listening.

“The only person you control is you, so you place all the responsibility on yourself for what happened,”

She snorted
“But it’s dren, you don’t control yourself, things happen to us all the time we have no conscious agency in permitting...”

Sofa glanced around checking her surroundings best she could in a strange place with no aetheric sense beyond an inch from her skin.

“But I know however much you get told, however much you know it intellectually you won’t feel it….I don’t either - I still blame myself for what happened when I was young, that I froze, didn’t say anything for so long after…”

Stopping she turned round to look her straight in the eyes

“The question is how long are you gonna let yourself feel only that emptiness? I mean come on, I know you, frell sometimes I wish I didn't, and this is not you,” she spread her arms with a dramatic twirl

“You should be ranting, raving to cut somethings head off or burn a city down, not just crawling into a ball and waiting to die,”

Kiraea’s mouth twitched in annoyance as words sharp and black pierced the vacant colourless realm of the Hollowness.

“You can’t understand, never felt life growing inside you, relying on you to protect it and then feeling your own organs digest the remains of the child I couldn’t protect,”  her teeth grinding with each word,  being dragged from the Hollow and forced to feel by this forsaken dump of a moon and the irritating psycho babble of Sofa

“Anger, that’s more like it, come on then how much don’t I know tell me all about it,”

“Shut up, I don’t owe you or anyone anything!” the Hollow filled painfully with sensation.

Time to be cruel to be kind

“Not your husband who feels you’ve checked out, not your sister who feels your more dead now than she was, not your baby who would be ashamed to have such a wimp for a mother,”

“BITCH!” the word was drowned out the grating crack of Blackstone on Blackstone as Kiraea punched Sofa in the head.

The rush of anger catalysing her metabolism only sped the painful recycling of what Kiraea’s body considered unnecessary hormones and partially foreign blood cells, shaving off ever more of the lingering cellular monument to her loss Kiraea carried with her.

It only infuriated her more as she lost her child over and over again in time with the blows she rained on the only figure nearby, balled up avoiding any major injury from her fury.

The reptilian double blinking eyes upon them could hardly believe their luck as they launched their ambush.

<<<<>>>>

Cumbersome as the Hades pistols were to Yorna’s aesthetic preferences, they were effective, her three shots as her body twisted almost in complete opposition to the direction of her legs blasting through the reptilian's body.

After the ambush in the hunting camp she had been on the run pursued by at least six, probably eight, creatures her HUD scanner identified helpfully as ‘Trandoshan’.

Their first volley of fire had mercifully been unable to penetrate her Blackstone armour, and she hadn’t allowed any more to connect fully since, only taking minor grazes and nicks.

Whatever Yorna’s advantage in speed, dexterity and equipment, it was more than offset by her hunters numbers and knowledge of the landscape.

They had hunted across every inch of the island, knew all the quickest paths over stable fallen logs, which patches were muddy and slow, where the path would narrow or broaden enabling them to position far better and unleash their controlled spurts of rifle fire.

As more shots hit, sheer Aethan physical speed began to gain her distance as she became more comfortable with the terrain and better able to spot the choke points and soggier patches of ground.

Ducking under a string of leaf covered vines then leaping over a fallen log she twisted mid air to fire four more shots, her physiology and neurology primed every second was experienced as almost ten allowing her to hit with three shots.

With each death she inflicted the others only became more zealous to take her head as her Jagganth increased by the rough value of the hunter she had just slain.

Bristling at the limitation her helmet imposed to her senses she judged with the greater distance the net benefit of removing it and increasing her olfactory, thermal, and visual senses exceeded the risk of exposure.

Her nose filled with scents and visual thermal overlay double in acuity as she locked the helmet to her back.  holstering the pistols she grabbed a large tree truck and spun round before rapidly vaulting herself to look down and see three vanguard hunters close by, five behind them. 

They all had a similar slightly rotten reptilian stench indicating familial relations.  They were followed by a swarm of tracing drones painted dull browns and greens for camouflage.

Her eyes narrowed on the artificial things as she pounced off the trunk drawing her bow whose aim she trusted far more than the pistols.  With uncanny precision she fired off all six arrows as she fell, each shattering a drone as she arced down straight onto one hunter.  He tried to dodge, she extended her knee to impact his long face on the horizontal, wrecking the jaw into a pulp of bloody teeth and gum.

She had barely landed when she spun to use the bow limbs to smack another across the knees then followed through a spin to crack the neck.  releasing one hand she pulled a shikkar and hurled the dagger into the third hunters right eye, it screamed as she closed the gap to finish it her bow used like a club.

The other hunters slowed their pursuit as they smelt the fresh blood of their own kind on the air.

Yorna wasted no time extending her lead.

<<<<>>>>

Ins’skas

The arrow was heavier than it ought to be, what it was made of he could not tell.  Regardless it had cut through the drone and a tree trunk before stopping in a solid boulder.

His spawn hissed joyously as they left him behind, already six of their number gone.

The weakness of arrogance adequately punished he thought.

The Jagganth of this one would be exceptional, the gear acquired from the corpses valuable. 

He doubted his spawns ability to attain it.

<<<<>>>>

Kiraea

They were a tangle of limbs in a downpour of projectiles and energy blasts.

She scratched and clawed through the bombardment that thumped against every limb through her armour, looking up to see the leering hideous faces of Transoshans,, half with ocular enhances that glowed red firing on her.

Indignation trickled up her spine at their interruption of her sisterly ‘disagreement’ with Sofa. 

The former Jedi was a bitch, unco-operative, self-indulgent and always brought the worst in Kiraea when they clashed.

Muscle memory more than conscious effort righted and moved through the literal fire as a spray of green tinged yellow spurted from the side crackling the soggy ground dry in an instant.

But for the fact she was already in an aroused state trying to get Sofa she might’ve taken too long to snap to attention to escape the fusillade - if she had at all…

Even as she ran, Sofa in parallel, she wondered if it was worth it at all.

Her legs moved, head ducked, torso twisted through vines and branches under the guidance of instincts that demanded she keep surviving.

The jungle flashed before her eyes as she sat a passenger in her own body, the body that couldn’t protect the most important thing it had ever created within…

“Snap out of it!” Sofa urged smacking her in the back of the head as they ran in before splitting to go either side of a vast trunk. 

Coming back together on the other side Kiraea could feel Sofa’s glare

“If you don’t get it together now I’m the one who’s gonna get killed!” Sofa added with typical selfishness. 

Without transport, deprived of the aether, being hunted, their only chance to survive was if they were all fighting to live.

The most defensible position, and only major land mark, were the mountains Yorna had been scouting, by instinct they raced that way in the hope of joining her.

As they flipped across marshy ground and over fallen trees Sofa fired the occasional blast backward with her pistol to take out the drone as they left their pursuers behind.

The Trandoshans did not care, for them the hunt had only just begun.

<<<<>>>>

As large as Island Eight was, there were a finite number of traversable paths through the jungle toward the mountains. 

These were lined by Ins’skas Spawn lying in wait for their prey.

Trip wires, motion sensors, mass detectors and thermal identifiers were all used in springing traps upon the women as they fled.

The mistake of the Trandoshans was slightly underestimating the speed at which their prey could move - even where a wire was tripped a bolt typically just missed as they moved faster than the 80 kilometers per hour previous Davjäan Guage had fled at.

Ins’skas assumed it was because these ones were well nourished.  The bones of his prior victims had all showed signs of malnutrition in small pitting and brittle flaking as they dried.

He oversaw the pursuit moving swiftly across familiar boughs and branches that still bore the indent of his scales from decades of hunts.  He was a feature of this jungle as much as any tree, having shaped it by his motion.

Electrical flares crackled, flame traps whooshed, no tool was off limits in pursuit of the Jagganth - excepting for the more purist of his spawn.  Even so as he aged he appreciated the closeness of hunting with his claws alone more.

The pery sped through the gauntlet, the pack began to form a new cohesive strategy.  Their armour was near impenetrable, and certainly not vulnerable to glancign attacks - they needed to penetrate those plated layers first with direct hits - such could only be achieved on a moving target by acceding to the blunt strategy of firing so many shots one was bound to hit.

Yorna was the first to endure the endless stream of slug rounds from an auto-load cannon wielded by the ever curmudgeonly Eighth Eldest and a handful of ‘teen’ eldests, thirteen, sixteen or some such. 

The projectiles gushed at 500 rounds a minute the sheer volume ensuring at least a dozen hit the ultradense plate - but the cannons size requiring two to keep it in place, a third to ensure the belt feed didn’t jam left them vulnerable when she turned on them, skidding under their arc of fire to come through with her blade slicing through the heated metal of the barrel then into the scrambling spawn.

Second and Fourth as Hatchmates hunted together with their auxiliary grenade launchers, lacing the path before the two  Davjäan Guage  with craters to force them to weave and jump while a las-repeater tore at them head on along a narrow path that forced them to move single file.

Sofa - perpetually in the lead in running away - had to coordinate her attempts to limit exposure as best she could without telepathic communication to Kiraea, trusting her to follow the lead of switching to a narrow shoulder profile as they ran, crouching forward as if to tackle so their shoulder pads took the brunt.

They pivoted at the last second into a narrow gap in thick mangrove roots Sofa spied, her right shoulder pad hissing as Kiraea followed, taking a few of the endless shots.

As soon as they entered the darkened maze of roots Trandoshan’s with vibro-claws sprang on them. 

Not heavy enough to knock them over they stumbled at the impact, fist and elbow responding to the slashing powered blades that ground against their armour whilst Second and Fourth hurriedly sought to reposition their repeater.

There was a brief flare of something approximating satisfaction as Kiraea cracked one reptilian muzzle into so much scale and bone with her hands before kicking another so hard it cracked through a root thick as her leg.

Sofa yelled to break out hearing the whir of the las-repeater back online, the red bolts shredding the fast growing foliage as they shook off the melee combatants as best they could.

Fifteen minutes and fifteen kilometers from where they started Sofa cough sight of Yorna lapping between fronds and hurling rocks she was sweeping up at drones pecking at her.

“There’s Yorna, that’s good!” Sofa called to Kiraea given they couldn’t sense each other as normal

Cold strategic insight came through in Kiraea’s deadpan reply

“If we’re intersecting it means they are herding us together,”

“That’s bad…” Sofa agreed
“But what choice do we have…”

Joining Yorna by pivoting low to take up a rock as they reached the foot hills Sofa hurled the stone as hard as she could into one of the drones, the impact denting but not disabling it as they caught up.

“There are caves ahead,” Yorna said without preamble

“And they want us to go there,” Sofa replied as they fell into a line, Yorna in front, then Sofa and Kiraea.

“But we’re getting there faster than they expected,”

With a huff of resignation they went on finding a narrow crevice that scraped their armour to slide into, the drones still hovering outside but for now, their real pursuers some distance behind.

<<<<>>>>

[Lord_S_Gray]

Chapter 29 — The Hunted and the Hollow — Part 5

Vacha

His thick nails tapped quickly across the comms board, locking in the ident codes written in the scratch like Dosh script.

Second Eldest was what the blood giver called him, a deliberate insult to his hatch mates lack of Jagganth so far as Ins’skas was concerned,.

Even now they were all on the moon hunting the Davjäan Guage and dying just as quickly.

The Blood giver had defeated three Davjäan Guage it was true, but Second eldest knew those three had been unarmed and unarmoured, the latter two all but starving.  These three were true representatives of their species and would not be so easily dealt with.

Naturally this only spurred his hatchmates to greater vigour, as they would provide even greater Jagganth.

He whistled low through his curved pointed teeth at their foolish desire for individual glory.

For Vacha was secretly a believer in the Contributory Jagganth Soteriology - that Jagganth could not be claimed by an individual as it was the entire Clan that facilitated the collection of Jagganth and so all earned a portion according to their contribution.

A pilot and mechanic such as himself contributed to Jagganth through his skills in delivering the hunters face to face with the prey and arming them with weapons and armour needed to succeed, and so the logic flowed to all others in a clan, the slough-herders, the artisans, traders, and of course informers.

It was in this capacity he was now acting.  His Blood giver never showed him due respect, sneered at his lack of Jagganth in his archaic ignorance. 

Vacha would achieve Jagganth in part on all three of the Davjäan Guage, by informing other hunters of the active hunt and its location.

His teeth clenched closer and he felt a satisfied rumble in his thorax as he forwarded more ‘invitations’ knowing full well they would clash with his hatchmates and Blood Giver.

For here was the inevitable conclusion of the related Accumulation-justification of Jagganth Theology  - part of every Jagganth earned from a hunt he had any hand in was allocated to him, therefore any actions he took to ensure maximum Jagganth, even Jagganth earned off other Trandoshans, was a right and just action that would endear him to the Scorekeeper.

If he benefitted by inheriting the Blood-givers vessel and reputation as well all the better.

As the final message was relayed he clicked his claws against his fangs satisfied that very soon dozens of deaths would fill his Jagganth.

<<<<>>>>

Sofa

“Well, what have we got….” Sofa asked as she kicked the detritus on the cave floor.  the narrow passage had led to a larger network of tunnels, filled with fungi and roots from the trees growing on the slopes above, it was lit with light bounced through clean water filled pools that featured speckled orange and white fish.

“One Rifle, five pistols, six implosion grenades, a dozen shikkars, two bows, six arrows, one lightsaber, three daggers, four short swords, and enough ration bars to last us weeks,”

“Not much...how many Leatherheads would you guess?” she asked Yorna
“At least twelve,”

“I saw about ten after the ones we cracked, so let's assume they have double that, forty maybe, double that again for those damn drones...frag...hopefully the others get here soon…”

“We can use the aether, but not recover it...these microorganism choke its availability, normally it takes minutes to draw on more energy to recover, here it would be hours if not days,” Yorna explained

It was basic aetheric theory, everyone had a certain level of Aeths innate to them, and a rate at which they could ‘draw’, hold and use the aether.  Of course once used it needed to be refilled.  A person's recharge speed another limiting factor, most Aethans could recharge their power in a few minutes - but only if the aether was widely available.

On this moon instead of drinking the aether from a jug to recover they could only sip it through a straw.

“So we only use it when we really need it, at least our armour is better than most of their weapons from what I saw, but if they gang up we’re in trouble.”

Aethans base level of  aetheric power was still substantial - Sofa estimated she had energy for half a dozen mid strength lighting attacks and eight or nine solid telekinetic hits as well as a very short teleport of a small object, Kiraea would be at a similar level, Yorna - naturally stronger than both - perhaps three more lighting shots and a larger teleport shunt.

“Our best strategy might be to stick to these caves, deny their numbers an advantage, maybe hunt them, what do you think Kiraea?” Yorna asked bringing her sister into the conversation.

“Whatever,” she shrugged arms crossed, slowly sinking back into the hollowness of her mind as the heat of pursuit died down.

“No,” Sofa said harshly
“Not ‘whatever’, I’m not indulging your grief when we have dozens of reptiles on our arse,”

“Sofa!” Yorna said, shocked “She’s just lost...”

“She’ll lose a lot more if she doesn't stop acting like a vuug moistener,” Sofa turned her eyes to Yorna

“Your a nice woman Yorna, you want to protect your sister, especially because you weren’t there when she was young and lost, but right now she needs a reality check, and normal Kiraea would agree with me,”

Sofa gave an amused huff
“Frell, she’s slapped me - literally slapped me - a half dozen times to get my head back in the game...it’s time I reciprocated.”

The perplexity on Yorna’s face had more to do with Republic axioms Sofa used that she didn’t quite understand ‘reality check’ and ‘back in the game’ foremost, but she understood the gist.

Sofa stared at Kiraea who remained glum in the corner beside a series of intent scratches in the wall from a previous occupant of the slightly larger space.

“Fine, sit there,” Sofa checked the power cell on her Hades Rifle, the Macro-maser based weapon whirring up with a red glow then falling eerily silent as it locked into an active state.
“I’m taking half the grenades and will set up some traps, see if i can find a place to get overlapping fire for when those scaled scum turn up.”

She stalked off into the tunnels silently.

Yorna sighed and approached Kiraea.

“Kiri...Sofa is right...we need you...and I...I don’t know how to help you…”

“How could you,” Kiraea sniffed never looking at her
“You weren’t there, you don’t even know me any more,”

There was no denying it, they had all said it, Yorna hadn’t been there when Kiraea needed her the most after the devastation, and had been absent more of Kiraea’s life than she had been part of it.  Being effectively dead was an ironclad reason that made Yorna feel no better.

“I guess I don’t...just who you were...fearless, curious...temperamental - and hated wearing shoes,” Yorna smiled at the memories of their childhood running around the near forests of Karintha’s house, their tree house, making parchment boats to run under the creek bridge nearby.

“I hope she hasn’t been lost too…” with a brief squeeze of her sister shoulder lost to the dense armour she left Kiraea to her thoughts and the quiet drip of the cavern.

<<<<>>>>

Ins’skas

“What is this violation…..” he hissed as drop ships bearing the Magclaw Clan and Sssar Jaw Brotherhood scraped the air overhead.

They were rearming after the pursuit ready to corner the prey in the caverns they had driven them to - while their numbers counted for less in the narrows, the Davjäan Guage were also denied their advantages of speed and acrobatics, and also likely unaware of the underwater passages - granting the Hunters and overall relative advantage.

That would be complicated by these intruders.

First Eldest was barking over the comm demanding to know why they violated the sanctity of his Blood Givers hunting Island.  The Magclaw responded they were invited by ‘Vacha’.

First eldest throat rattled indignation

Ins’skas vaguely recognized the name as Second Eldest.  He bared his teeth in amusement, the  Davjäan Guage were deadly, and with competing hunters there was a chance all his spawn could be slaughtered while Second Eldest reamined on the Lllsssak in orbit, standing to inherit all his possessions.

“He betrays us Blood-Giver!” First Eldest roared “Sharing the secrets of or hunt!”
Ins’skas growled in responses
“You consider these interlopers more adept at claiming Jagganth than you, you fear your siblings backstabbing?”

First eleset paused blinking quickly in thought, realising his mistake he exposed his throat

“Forgiveness...These hunters do not threaten me, nor my sibling...the insult to the sanctity of your hunting grounds anger me Blood -Giver, I will slay second eldest for this,”

Ins’skas had no interest in his pawns squabbling excepting when it benefited his Jagganth.  He did however have to ensure he lost no Face with the other clans should they believe he had no control over his spawn.

“I care not, tell the interlopers they are welcome to hunt, that I invited them here that the Scorekeeper may judge which of us is truly worthy of the rare Jagganth, but I offer no guarantee of non-predation of their own,”

First hissed the message across the slightly antiquated but hardy comm pack tat had served the island well for generations.

“They concur, to the worthy the Jagganth, to the dead disgrace,”

“Let them go in the caverns first, their tier scales adorn the shoulders of the prey and their souls add to the Jagganth tally of the Davjäan Guage, the more glory for us when we slay them,”

First Eldest hissed joyfully, the other spawn joining the largest in his exaltation of the Blood-givers wisdom.

<<<<>>>>

Trapped

Still as the stone about her Yorna peered at the scraps of clothing and bone that littered the ground, wondering again why these Trandoshan’s wanted to kill them so badly.  It didn’t seem an apt time to ask given Sofa and Kiri’s other issues.

The pool before her glittered with sun light reflected from some surface connection via erosion exposed quartz and other crystals.  Her thermal vision detected the minor shifts in the water as the temperature rose - not by more than a tenth of a degree, but enough for her keen senses to detect.

Her sense of mass also perked up as she felt bulky body shaped objects move toward her through the fluid. They would arrive, by her estimation, in 43 seconds.  she would arm the implosion grenade at 38.5, drop it in at 39, the four second delay it should kill whatever was in there, or at least cause excruciating pain.

She couldn’t take much joy from the thought, her mind still on her sister.  She wished she knew what to say and do, but Yorna just...didn’t have the experience - she wasn’t the older sister any more - and as the joyful jolt of their reunion had settled, the death of Kiraea’s baby had interrupted any time they might have had to develop a new relationship dynamic.

Yorna envied Sofa for knowing Kiri as she was today far better than she did - to that end she couldn’t argue against her ‘tough love approach’ - even if the situation didn’t imminently justify it, Yorna knew no better.

With a sigh she thumbed the activator and dropped the grenade then shuffled backward, idly staring up she noted ochre marking on the ceiling in a faded prot-aurebesh Miistra I Love You - Honour the Hansho Always it read.

She doubted Miistra ever received the message, simply living out her, or his, or who knew what alien gender -presumably ‘honouring the Hansho’, wondering what had become of their loved one.

With a bizarre warping sound the water vanished from the pool into the implosion core that dragged all matter and lightwaves inside and warped and mangled it beyond comprehension in random patterns of compacted matter interacting at several times the speed of sound.

A woosh of air into the displacement signalled the end of the main detonation...moments later the pool edges crumpled inward, chunks of water infused flesh and metal plashed out before settling back down. The pool collapsed further the floor ahead falling inward to seal it denying her enemy an entry.

By this time she was already a hundred meters away preparing her trap at the next pool.  not suing the same trick twice and wanting to preserve her remaining grenade she simply found a nook in the ceiling she could leap too and remain nestled within as the Trandoshans silently slipped from the water causing barely a ripple.

The Hunters of the Magclaw clan all possessed cybernetic enhancements, believing the flesh was weak comparative to steel in the pursuit of Jagganth.

Yorna oblivious to such cultural peculiarities simply waited for them to finish exiting the pool, relying on her light eating armour that exuded only minor traces of thermal radiation to avoid detection.

It was not enough for the Clan Seeker who was third out, the top of his head entirely cybernetic, a single thumb sized slit around his head offering 360 vision on almost every spectrum.

Hissing into his face grill the others swung to raise their weapons in what still seemed to Yorna’s senses slow motion.

She dropped, both pistols firing into the Seeker, maser rounds slagging the advanced sensor suite built into his skull as her weight was angled into her right foot and straight onto another's head.

Even without the aether she remained roughly twice as strong as the thickly muscled trandoshans, their mechanical augmentations made up that gap, leaving her only advantage faster reflexes.

Their augmetic bodies thrashed and struck at her, more leaping from the pool and coming in from a side tunnel similarly wet from their underwater insertion.

The raw scraping of durasteel on blackstone was incessant, the small cavern suffocating with bodies and swiping limbs.  Her dual Blackstone short swords sliced through the durasteel and flesh with ease, their aetheric enchantments still holding some charge to add a searing burn to the flesh - she juggled these with her pistols punching holes in chests and thighs.

For every one that dies the others became more desperate to earn her ever building Jagganth, the pile of bodies limited her movement, advantaging the slower Trandoshans whose replacements were ever more modified.

Surrounded by three creatures more sleek curved durasteel with resistant kortosis weave than flesh, she began taking more damage to her armour.  teeth clenched she had little choice but to flare up her lighting shield, the drain on her aetheric strength as instant as the crackling arcs that hit the machine-reptiles whose wires began to heat and surge protectors flashed warning directly into their minds.

It was not enough to resist the primal energy scattering signals between joints leaving them prey for Yorna’s swords.

The blue flare of Yorna’s lighting bounced through the glass like minerals in the cavern walls reaching Sofa’s peripheral vision just as she switched her Hades rifle to solid rounds.

The Chiss-Aethan prototype miniaturized macro-maser weapons featured a secondary fire mode that coated phirk bullets in MASER energy adding serious oomph.  Sofa had only two clips of 25 bullets - but when the first one shredded through one Trandoshan torso and into another's legs causing the reptile to hiss as its flesh was flash cauterized she realised that might just be enough.

At the largest entrance to the cavern network she had found she was pumping controlled shots from her rifle into any shadow that passed between the bright sky outside and her dank ‘fort’.

Her lightsaber, quickly tied into a tripwire using the remains of some kind of metal thread she’d found in a groove in the cavern snap-hissed on to sever the feet of a more sneaky reptile.

The Sssar Jaw Brotherhood were ‘traditionalists’ preferring to kill their prey with their bare claws, and believed Jagganth was earned not just by killing, skinning and making trophies of their prey, but actively consuming them.

However when an especially recalcitrant meal was encountered they were more than happy to pre-cook with heat seeking missiles.

A pause in the incessant tide of green creatures made Sofa worried, the woosh of a missile straight into the cavern justified her balling up.

The heat of the explosion was less damaging by the rain of shattered rocks that followed half burying her.

“Frag this dren....” she hissed as the tumble and crack subsided, the crunch of clawed toes over broken ground nearing.

Bursting out of the rubble she squeezed the trigger tight bursting eight hard hitting shots into three Trand’s shattering them into flakes of meat and scale.

Those behind hissed and fell back, but she was too annoyed to let them go, accepting a few hits from crossbow like weapons on her armour to shoot two mor in the back, her helmets auto-tint reacting as she got closer to the bright daylight outside.

She saw the carbon scored chippe holes of three flame thrower nozzles as her foot was bathed in sun.

“Shavit….”

Three plumes of horizontal flame chased her back inside as she fired handful of shots wildly behind her, a choir of hissing audible over the crackle of the flame as a contraption of three heavy flame throwers liked to a shielded dome thrown together from spare parts walked forward as six Trand’s lifted it from within.

The mobile ‘flame-shell’ scraped the sides of the cave entrance as it advanced intermittently gushing an inferno from one of its three nozzles.  Sofa retreating back fired off her last two rounds in the magazine, both put serious dents in the shell but didn’t penetrate the doonium.

“Shavit, shavit, shavit!” she spun down a turn and took a grenade hastily burying it under a pile of stones.

“Step on that you reptilian frell faces…”

<<<<>>>>

[Lord_S_Gray]

Chapter 29 — The Hunted and the Hollow — Part 6

Hollow Within

The familiar tension then release of another implosion grenade rocked the cavens and shook more dust onto Kiraea’s unmoving form.

Her sisters were out there, fighting to protect her, protect each other.

Where had they been when I needed them? When my baby needed them...Where had I been?  Where am I now

Maddening thoughts twisted and turned in her head absent the rails of logic or reason to guide them to resolution.

Her heart was squeezing faster, it knew there was a fight around her, pleaded to join it and let the lower level muscle thoughts loose to move her limbs to stalk and kill.

To what end. What use were a hundred, a thousand dead outsiders now when she had failed to protect the most precious thing she had ever held inside her own body.

For the first time she felt she understood Milaea when she had spoken about how empty revenge could be - loss could not be recovered by other death, whatever temporary satisfaction it brought.

She found herself in the Hollow physically now, this cavern incomprehensibly far from her home in kilometers she could never walk in a hundred lifetimes, yet incredibly closer than her child would ever be to her again.

The squeezing of her hearts and mechanics of her livers recycled the last handful of reproductive hormones and a single blood cell that did not fully belong to her leaving her completely alone as the caverns shook with the fight to which she was indifferent.

What could she do if she wanted to, if she couldn’t protect her own body, how could she protect others, how did she ever deserve to again be placed in a position of trust?

Her eyes adjusted again to the dank surrounds something in the corner, one of half a dozen piles of junk accumulated by others who had been herded heer for the slaughter over likely centuries caught her eye.

Without conscious effort she walked toward it, prying the small figure from the tainted rags, gnawed bones and refuse.

Imperfect as it was even when first carved, made near unrecognisable by the passage of years and swish of water when the cavern flooded during the monsoons Kiraea still recognised the idol of the Goddesses. 

Her Goddesses.

The memories of the signals that had brought them here melded with light piece of old wood in her hand. 

A Person had been here, carved this representation of three Goddesses standing back to back, arms linked, symbols of their powers in their hand, book, bow and leafy branch for wisdom, war and fertility.

And that Person had died here. 

The Goddesses had lost not one but Three children, in this place, based on what she had heard but not paid attention to at the time, between ten and fifteen years ago.

They had lost so many children, thousands, but the Goddesses had never succumbed to despair, only focused on protecting those they still could...and taking vengeance for those they could not.

Her body and brain cleared at last of the troubled mix of hormones her child’s death had caused, the remnants she had used the aether to so desperately cling to subconsciously for so long, Kiraea finally returned to herself.

The Vengeance for her child’s death had been had, her husband - Goddesses her wonderfully supportive and incomparably protective husband - had killed the Anzat with his bare bloody hands. 

Revenge for the Person who had carved this tiny thing in panic and desperation, lost so far from home, remained unfulfilled.

She swapped two ration bars with the totem, locking it away with due reverence as she consumed the bars in two swift swallows, already leaving the Hollow behind.

<<<<>>>>

The ‘Flame shell’ was a crumbled concave wreck of body parts and steel. A trail of corpses choked the approach down the winding caverns to an intersection where Sofa spun between the four different approaches kicking grenades back down, firing off shots where she could, and generally trying to ensure they didn’t trap her in a four way surge of flamethrowers.

While the Blackstone plate of her armour was in solid condition, the joints and lower layers were gradually wearing from repeated glancing shots and the heat.

Repeating her routine she went from entrance one, two shots, entrance two, kick back a flashbang, three….

Three was empty…

What are they planning now…

She pivoted quickly to Four where she saw in the dim light a Trandoshan on the ground trying to crawl toward her before being inexplicably dragged back round a corner followed by a wet grinding sound and a walking silhouette slinking along the wall.

 “Finally decided to join in?” Sofa jibed, Kiraea shrugged

“Well you weren’t going to save us,” She shot back sliding past her down corridor two, Sofa providing covering fire as Kiraea wall ran forward, curling into the makeshift barricades blades forward, dexterous as ever weaving into the smallest gaps to slip her swords into reptilian flesh.

“Glad you're back to your bitchy self,” Sofa smiled.

<<<<>>>>

The power fist shattered the rock above her head, a spiked knee forced her to pull her stomach in an odd position before hammering her fists into the thick plate.

Both Yorna’s swords were already stuck in the enormous Mech-Trandoshan’s back and neck, but apart from a spurt of fluid more oil than blood it seemed unaffected.

The mech didn’t so much traverse the caves as smash its way through, her sense of mass indicated it was pushing her toward another like behind two cavern walls that was bludgeoning its own path.

she was strong enough to dent the armour with her fists but not penetrate it, and didn’t get a chance to pry it off.

the wall behind her collapsing she rolled back and ran to the side, largely out of options she had to use her last grenade.  Using the height of this tunnel to her advantage she bounded between walls to gain elevation and leap into the swiping paint chipped metal claws, toward the metal dome that served as a head.

half landing she rammed her fist clutching her last grenade hard as she could into the dome, the indentation large enough to cradle the grenade as she immediately tried to disengage grabbing her swords.  A metal claw grasped at her leg for two previous seconds.  No other choice sh teleport shunted out of its grips a millisecond before the implosion grenade sucked in the top half of its body.

As it flopped over with a thunk the wall ahead of her burst open with another of the huge mechs.

With a sigh she took a running start she hurled her swords at the ‘head’ and pulled her pistols firing half a dozen shots with each step that even if not destroying, at least delayed the creatures advance.

A flare of blue erupted in its chest that was not the product of any of her attacks.  A Ghost like figure spun between its legs firing two hades pistols straight up into it.

The combined attacks caused the mech to spark and stutter.

Sofa pulled her saber from its guts as Kiraea came up in front of it, Yoran rushing to hug her.

“Kiri, are you alright?”

“No…” she said “But I will be,” she squeezed back.

“This place is a death trap, at some point they’ll just bring the whole place down on our heads, we need to get out,” Kiraea went on, gently taking out the totem.

“I found this here...our People were brought here...hunted like us, probably one by one…”

“But why?” Yorna asked as they started moving
“Do to these Traeanadashans...eat people?”

“Maybe, they are outsiders, even they don't comprehend their own insanity,” Kiraea said dismissively, idly putting a shot between the eyes of a Magclaw laggard.

“They’re hunters, for sport” Sofa more helpfully explained “They think killing tough prey gets them some magic afterlife,”

“For sport?” Yorna asked, not comprehending

“Uh...leisure, fun, not for food or anything,” Sofa tried to explain, Yorna was not simple, just still oblivious to the enormity of cultural differences in the galaxy.

“They hunted them…they hunted them for leisure...fun…” Yorna repeated.

As dull as their senses were on the aether starved ground Sofa could feel her anger building, mirrored and indeed re-enforced by her sister.

“We hunt for food, cull when needed to rebalance the population...but for pleasure…it’s despicable...wrong”

Her fists closed purple flames flickering in between her fingers before she clamped down on the instinctive Aethan reaction to disgust - violence.

“The Goddesses brought us here to punish them,” Kiraea explained as they caught the first glimpses of day light ahead.

“And we will not fail them,”

<<<<>>>>

Last Hunt

“Blood Giver they have left the….”

static followed.

The other Clans had spent gallons of blood in the caverns and still the prey fought on. 

Ins’skas could almost taste the Jagganth in the air.

Sixth eldest comm went offline, he peered at the operator, Seventeenth or something around there who adjusted the dials.

“...ring this you reptilian sleeze balls…” the distorted voice came across as First Eldest defiantly crossed his arms, Third eldest jittering scratching his throat in contemplation.

“...when I get hold of you I’m gonna turn you into a hand bag, and your little buddies into high heel boots!…”

The line cut out as Ins’skas hissed in amusement

“The Prey boasts when they fear most,” he repeated the axiom in old Dosh
“Prepare yourself Spawn, the Jagganth seeks us,”

At the other camp among the dead Yorna simply looked puzzled
“Sofa what’s a handbag, and why would you have high heels on boots?”

“Oh sweetie” the older woman sighed remembering the poor girl had no use for handbags or high heels in her simple life before the Devastation

“When this is over I have to take you shopping,”

<<<<>>>>

The Trandoshan’s made little effort to conceal themselves, not that they could from the thermal and mass senses of the Aethan women as they moved on from the first position outside the caves they had ‘cleansed’.

They congregated in a hunting encampment on the far side of the mountain from where the women had entered the previous day.  Nearly nine hours of fighting had not overly drained their genetically engineered stamina, it was rather the irritation of not having access to their full suite of Aetheric recovery mechanisms that prevented them from optimal recovery as they moved through the trees.

Their greatest limitation was resources in terms of armour, all but Kiraea’s at just on 40 per cent  efficacy, and equipment, two grenades only, no more projectile ammunition, though their guns charge remained at 75 per cent, and three arrows.

Kiraea looked up vainly into the mid morning sky for any sign of an approaching ship, knowing it could be days before any arrived.

Cresting a ridge they made out more of the camp, in a natural circle of hard rock and dense foliage, like the one Yorna had found earlier it was replete with old trophies.  This time however it was lusy with reptiles in strong defensive positions, the entrance to the caves at the rear of the camp blocked up with rocks in case the Aethans doubled back.

“Twenty two…” Kiraea whispered pointing to the largest in the most worn looking armour,
“That one is in…charge...”

She trailed off as Ins’skas turned, their telescoping vision zooming on the features of his armour.   

What would’ve been mistaken for human or miraluka by others was obvious to them as Aethan skulls and bones.  The porcelain like sheen of far denser calcium composites that resisted wear, the facial structures common to their entire race, the thicker set of jaws, the undulations in the femurs that linked to muscles groups and ligaments unique to Aethans that gave them so much extra strength and dexterity.

“He killed them…” Yorna whispered
“Then...then…”
Their reaction encapsulated their hypocrisy.  Kiraea and Yorna would not have even blinked had the skulls and bones been those of a wookie, or Chiss even, merely acknowledged them and indicators of rank and skill.  The bodies of outsider dead were all fair game.

But Aethan bodies were sacrosanct, they could never be submitted to such treatment by an Outsider.

Sofa saw the sisters' similarity clearly as they gazed with cold anger - both insatiable Furies sent to punish the wicked Outsiders, both burned with an aching need to manifest their rage, two sides of the same coin. 

Kiraea was vengeance, driven by xenophobia that needed no reason other than the inconvenience of Outsiders existence, Yorna was Justice, fuelled by indignation at the affronts caused to the People.

One hated Outsiders for what they Were, the other for what the Did - and together condemned the entirety of life apart from Aethans to death or servitude.

Ins’skas sentence was death.

“I’m not sure we can take that many...there will be more in the trees nearby too,” Sofa cautioned

“I don’t care if there are a thousand, we will kill them all,”

Astoundingly that was Yorna replying, her reputation as the ‘kind and quiet’ sister clearly reaching its limit.

“Not before we scale them,” Kiraea added establishing the balance of murderous intent in her favour again.

“The longer we wait the more their advantage grows in numbers, stamina and resources,”

Rolling her eyes Sofa gave in knowing she was outvoted, there was nowhere to hide on this island while they waited for reinforcement, and the best defence was a good offence yada yada .

“Alright...so how do we do this.”

<<<<>>>>