...but not quite as much as she had the first few times. She was bored, wanting more. And she would have just that. Rising to her feet, unconcerned about the blood that stained her clothing, she quickly caught up with Kieran as he approached one of the gates in the great wall that made an entrance to the tower. As they continued to near its threshold, she stretched out, mostly with the Darkness that was now part and parcel of her but also with other talents she possessed long before her descent into darkness. They gained entrance into the courtyard with no hindrance, for The Tower already knew her.

And it knew other things as well, and as she stretched out with her talents, It shared them with her. Shayla smiled darkly, reaching out further with her senses as her Darkest turned to regard her.

"We are not alone," she purred, sensing at least two others...one whose spirit was nothing but utter darkness, as though it was darkness itself, and one whose spirit was dangling just a breath before death.

Shayla was intrigued...

...so she stepped closer along the nonwalls surrounding the Tower, sensing about, for the moment ignoring Kieran entirely. It took her little effort to find him...

...once a proud Sith, chained and now dehorned and defanged, his body ripped and shredded to the point that Shayla didn't even recognize who he was...at least not for the moment. His lids had fallen in exhaustion, however Shayla sensed he was far from resting. Barely alive, yet still alive enough to feel utter pain and agony, Shayla suddenly found herself longing to
partake in his torment.

Stepping in, she stretched out her pointer finger and at first lighly touched his bared and battered chest. The touch alone drew a flinch, yet his lids remained heavy, his eyes unopened.

"I would have the Master suffer in such a manner, at my hand," she stated over her shoulder, sensing Kieran's presence nearby, for the moment dismissing the other she yet sensed.

Then, returning her attention fully to the chained one before her, Shayla opened her hand, outstretching her finges, then curled her them and, finding a deep wound, dug in with her nails and quickly moved her hand down. The being groaned, his roar gravely and pathetic...

...and his torn lids snapped open, revealing dull, turquoise eyes. Even so, Shayla recognized them...

...and she suddenly longed with every fiber of her being to torment him further...

...and for the Master to join at his side.

[ 01-16-2017 09:42 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Graysith ]

--------------------

...back to Home, back to the lovely pools of her birthing, back to the place where no mortal might live other than This One who it-was-commanded-to-live...

"Oh, my dear, dear Grampy!" she gushed as she rose up from the non-ground, her eyes as oiled as that from which she spewed. She was brought up short then, her attention diverted to the pair who rounded a handy corner to confront the tormented Sith...

...as well as her.

"Hello there!" she offered, smiling brilliantly, her fangs fully exposed, her dark tresses tumbling about her shoulders, her eyes wide and beguiling...

...and her very being very, very dark.

Shayla at first only slit her eyes in disgust at this distraction. But then they widened with a new intrigue as she sensed outward, not only with her human talents but with those she had gained in her death at Kieran's hand.

The one before her was pure and utter darkness...

...and part and parcel of these Realms.

"Who are you?" Shayla asked simply, seemingly innocently, but the question was anything but.

And what are you...? came a final mental addendum.

--------------------

"I am IllaAnda," she replied simply, her glowing eyes moving between the pair before her only to settle on the chained form of the hapless Sith. Letting her tongue now peep from her elongated canines, she licked her lips delicately, and ignoring the others approached the imprisoned Dark Lord.

"Oh my dear, dear Grampy," she murmured softly, letting her eyes go soft and wide as, utterly ignoring the One so new to her realms she suddenly, and with quite vicious intend, plunged her claws into his stomach and gave a might tug.

Quite suddenly his entrails were... out.

She cocked her head to one side, letting her soft pink tongue now moisten her lips as she watched the life's force within him battle to keep him just that...

Alive.

"Why are you here, in my home?" she suddenly asked, the query going out to both Shayla and Keiran... even though she knew well and good just who the latter was, and why he was here in his current permutation.

Such knowledge is provided only to those truly of the Realm.

She whirled, fixed Shayla with a dark eye, oozed up to her side and placed both arms about her shoulders.

"I like you," she said softly, reaching out now to bestow upon the young woman a gentle kiss... one that grew in ferocity until with a rending tear she pulled off the female's lower lip. Standing back then, she chewed thoughtfully as the wound took it's sweet time to heal itself.

She nodded, and flung her arms out to either side.

...then once more returned her attentions to this one who called herself IllaAnda.

"Indeed," Shayla commented flatly. For she was already dead, and could really care less about dying again.

Still, she did care about something. For this one was not Sith demon, but she was most certainly of the Realms, perhaps another expression of it. A puzzle, for certain.

"And how did you come to be?" Shayla asked her pointedly then, sensing that the other would understand the meaning behind her words clearly.

--------------------

There was something so very familiar about her.

“She came to be when the Realm decreed her to be,” he said. He stepped forward, past Shayla, and boldly took the dark one’s young head in his hand. He turned her head gently to the left, then to the right, carefully perusing the young one’s features.

And as though it was threatened by the answer.

"Oh bother," Shayla spoke up, the tone in her words actually somehow oily, and utterly [i]disinterested.

It might have actually been anything but.

"The longer we waste time in this, the longer the Master escapes that which he is owed..."

--------------------

"Who are you, to come between me and my--"

She cut herself short then, her eyes returning to their normal hue as they flicked Keiran's way. Straightening slowly then, she moved over to his side, and turning round to face Shayla once more leaned sideways into his comforting darkness.

Shayla rose, cocking her head at IllaAnda, and met her piercing gaze. "I am your Queen chosen by these Realms to rule, and chosen by your Daddy to reign at his side."

She paused, eyeing the quiet Kieran, whom she felt was way too silent regarding all of this. She shot him a piercing look. "Since you will say nothing, My Lord..."

With the flick of her wrist sent IllaAnda's sailing suddenly until her body hit the non-stone ground. Before she could recover Shayla was upon her, her fingers around her throat, pressing in with great strength.

"You will not speak to your Queen in such a manner any longer,' she snarled, waiting a few more moments before releasing IllaAnda and regaining her own footing to then step back enough to regard both she and Kieran, ready for however either one would react, her own body now centered and balanced should IllaAnda choose to attack once more.

--------------------

It seemed important.

“Daddy?” he asked again.

He closed his eyes, unaware that the sounds behind him had subsided and silent footsteps had sidled behind him. Images took shape in his mind – dark, swirling and delectable. He saw a body – curvaceous and innocent, ripe for the plucking. So young, so beautiful, so…

His eyes snapped open. He spun around and took a step, stopping abruptly as his body pressed immediately into IllaAndra.

So angry... so proud... so...

Helplessly unaware...

Blood began to ooze into her eyes then, and her moist red lips curled into a smile of innocent viciousness. Slowly she began sliding toward the glowering Shayla, who, despite all her glowering, unbeknownst to herself, only became weaker and weaker, not only quite obviously to the Darkling Daughter, but indeed to the very Realms itself.

Oh, this one is amusing; she does not understand; bereft of the lip which has given me sustenance she still spouts pointless yammering, annoys my Daddy, and because she does so she indeed so makes me want to laugh...

She came up to Shayla again, and placed her arms on the woman's shoulders, her hands now playing with her silken hair.

"Halfling?" she finally answered, sensing her Daddy in this new form might not be as forgiving to her as he had been in his former one, but refusing to remove her gaze from it's connection with Shayla's. "Oh, I don't know; what does this mean, anyway, 'halfling?'

"Do you know?"

She peered more deeply into Shayla's sea-green eyes, searching into their shadowy depths, knowing the question that she asked was meaningless, at least as far as she herself was concerned; looking far down into what might be left of the woman's very soul, digging deep, looking, searching, hunting for the last speck of remaining humanity that might be yet hiding there.

She was hungry, and could in fact use a little something to eat. Humanity was a savory morsel; at least those small bites of it had been that she had managed to taste here and while she and Allaria had been out and about in the other dimension. Something in her sensed that same, weak humanity yet struggled to exist within this female; if her Daddy wasn't going to do anything about it, and if this blonde pretender didn't accept the fact that she was dead and kept trying to hang onto it, well...

She, IllaAnda, for the sake of her Birthright would most certainly -- and quite eagerly -- close the covers of this particularly sorry book and free the female of her remaining chains, thus releasing her to the pure glories of the Dark Realms.

In that same moment, Shayla eyed IllaAndra blackly, sensing the threat...

...and finding herself uncaring. For she who now existed snorted in derision at the old self, seeking instead for the True Power death held.

Nooooo.....

Shayla responded ot IllaAndra by leaning forward, and whispering into her ear.

"Do it."

Deep within, that remaining shred of humanity trembled in terror, hoping for its call to be heard, and not just by those who sought to destroy...

(((OCC: Cross-posted in A Rose So Sweet in this same forum.)))

--------------------

..."Our link, it is back!" she exclaimed, not ignorant to the questions such an exclamation would raise, as cryptic as that announcement appeared to be. With anybody else; by now her easy familiarity with Lord Aelvedaar assured her that not only was that comment superficially understood, but also in relationship with everything that had transpired in her life pertinent to and leading up to it this very moment.

Such was the strength of the Link they had shared since she first discovered his presence in the Great Temple, when that temple was under the not-so-tender auspices of Darth Wicked.

"She is in great danger!" she followed with, albeit unnecessarily. Indeed the Dark Lord of the Sorcerers could feel Shayla's terror as easily as if the link the two women shared included him as a third member.

She gave Aelvedaar an agonized look, unclenched her fist and positioned the fingers thereof into that unique pattern needed to open a Portal... but his time into a different brand of improbability. Something made her stop; she cocked her head a bit to one side, reaching back along the slim tendril snaking between that which was real and that which was not, sensing out, pushing aside the sharp thorn-ridden daggers of fear that she could see through Shayla's eyes that which was tangible about her, differentiated from that which was distorted by the tumult of terror.

Here eyes smacked into another pair, a pair of brilliant turquoise...

A pair which felt somehow... natural to her.

Quickly she yanked back...

[ 11-12-2012 01:36 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Graysith ]

--------------------

...and whom she longed to be with once again even now, as in the past, a past that she had never been able to let go of, a past which she blamed herself entirely for losing.

And it was she, after all, whom she had done this all for anyway. There had been the vision of Graysith, with a babe in her arms, stepping off the side of a cliff as Phalomir's hands rose in triumph. But it was at this very moment that the last shred of what was Shayla saw fault in her interpretation of events. For as it had been with Anakin Skywalker, whose actions to protect his wife had indeed lead to the demise he had forseen instead, perhaps the babe in Graysith's arms had not been one born of her and Phalomir after all...

A jolt shook Shayla's very being, a jolt that she somehow knew could be felt across the link she yet shared with Jharmeen. But it was, perhaps, too late. For She who was in Control sensed this as well. And, staring into the darkening eyes of IllaAnda, the Shayla that was becoming wanted the Power now offered...

...especially considering He was merely standing there, doing absolutely nothing but querying stupidly about the Halfling.

What did She matter anymore, anyway? And why didn't he know about her? Shouldn't he?

Shayla's greeny blue eyes darkened, slipping away from IllaAnda's to cut through Kieran.

"The Halfling is the daughter of Graysith..."

She trailed, a black smile forming her her lips as one arm reached backward, pointer finger extended, to indicate the chained, barely alive form behind her. That unworthy, nearly unrecognizable being groaned, perhaps sensing and fearing what was to come next from her lips. "...and Dark Lord Ankrist Roan."

With nothing more than that, she turned her attentions back to IllaAnda. "Well? she asked her, her eyes darkening even further as she tossed her head to the side, her dark blonde tresses falling back to expose her neck, as though she was offering it up. And perhaps she was at that, for what was buried deepy within her had sensed a pull in the last remaining shreds of a connection that she had with the the Other...

...and She who was Now Shayla so very clearly sensed a threat...

--------------------

...Shayla! My Adept; oh my dear Sister -- in danger!

For a moment she remained thus, her knees pressed into the cold stones of the corridor, one hand holding her there, the other clamped to her temple, letting the surprising and otherwise welcoming knowledge that the Link was back, it was no longer broken, she had connection with her beloved Sister again fight battle with rising, gut-wrenching panic that Shayla was in the greatest danger of her life.

Moments passed while the battle raged. Then she jerked her face up, her flaming hair flinging about like some fiery nebula, and rose to her feet like the warrioress she knew she was going to have to be.

Again.

"I am coming, my Adept," she whispered to no one. Then with no further ado she reached out with her talents and rent open yet another portal through the very interstices of space and time, and taking a deep breath, stepped through...

... and stepped forth into the only place in the entirety of this miserable realm which held any true meaning for her. A weird sort of non-wind lifted the tendrils of her hair as she stood there on the non-rock, high above the non-ground, where she had found ShaRhylla to wrest her from the hands of The One who dared masquerade as her first and greatest love, Darth Wicked.

She knew fully well that her actions then hadn't destroyed the Thing, but had merely incapacitated it long enough for her to flee back to reality with her daughter. She wasn't stupid, after all.

Oh, but I am!

Stifling a gasp of anger directed at none other than herself, she quickly reached inward and snikked off the Link which had so suddenly and inexplicably opened up between herself and her Adept. Then she knelt, hunkering down, waiting to see if there was any reaction to her momentary slip-up.

Curse me for my error! she berated herself, for in her distress at discovering Shayla to be in dire danger she had forgotten to close up the Link before stepping through. Now, although she knew they hadn't been joined long enough for the Evil holding Shayla to get bearings on her position, there was a possibility that it had been given notice that she was here.

She drew in a strengthening breath, knowing the battle ahead was going to be a dangerous one. Yes she had retrieved ShaRhylla from this hideous place... but only by taking the Evil by surprise. Again, she wasn't stupid; she knew that by her previous actions she had more than likely only succeeded in angering it, and teaching it.

K'aandon alone only knew what it might be capable of now...

So be it.

Still hunkering there upon the non-rock she let her senses stretch out, quiet little tendrils of calm in an otherwise horrific place, seeking with a gentleness she knew its inhabitants wouldn't recognize, let alone respond to. Those questing little tendrils reached out, finding ghoul after ghoul, slavering beast after slavering beast, all minions to the Evil, all brought into being by the simplest of evil thoughts or deeds back in the dimension that Man terms Real.

If only I could show them...

Snipping that momentary wandering thought in the bud, she continued sensing, reaching out, trying to find the one living thing in this place of dead, the One Living Being within it she loved as much as she did her daughter and her Lord: her Adept and Sister, Shayla.

But no living being was to be found...

Shivering there, she pressed on, and at length slipped from the rock. There was at least one place she could go to where some sort of answer might be found, and that was to the Tower.

A single, slim, slivery questing tendril diverted its focus from life to non, from flesh to stone. Finally she found it, incorporated the direction into her very being, and then like some migratory creature following the simple beauty of magnetic field lines slipped from the non-rock and began her shadowy, stealthy journey to the ominous Tower of Black...

...where she knew she would find Ankrist Roan.

--------------------

...the sense of anyone familiar snicked into oblivion once more. Shayla shrugged, dismissing this thought...

...her interests primarily on something much more enticing at the moment. Bored with the waiting game she had been playing with IllaAnda and Kieran, she finally decided it was time to act on her darkening desires...

...and turned to creep back toward the surrounding wall, moving in upon the barely-alive being chained, hanging to life by a thread Shayla knew would remain.

She smiled blackly, and lowered herself to his level. While he may not have been able to see clearly, Shayla knew he could yet hear...

...and she wanted him to know just who she was. She leaned in and whispered darkly into his ear, her heart blackening.

"This is for my dearly departed son..."

And in that instant, her hand jerked forward, fingers extended to then lay upon his chest, directly above his heart. And with her own physical strength, combined with that of the Realms and of her innate abilities, she began to rend and shred...

[ 01-16-2017 09:46 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Graysith ]

--------------------

One slender hand crept upward, grasped a length of her raven tresses, toyed with it a little. She nudged against Keiran... only to be apparently ignored. Drawing away a bit, she looked up into his face, saw the lack of awareness skating over its features, lurking in the bottomless pools of his eye.

"Oh, not that again!"

She humphed to herself, for quite often the Evil would depart in this manner. To where, and for what purpose, she had no idea; Entaris never made her privy to his little "spates," and neither, she believed, would he in this permutation.

Bored herself, she pulled laconically away from the supportive blackness, and followed Shayla's scent. Coming upon the great courtyard wall, she found the female hard at work upon the hapless Dark Lord Roan; having rent the flesh away she was now in the process of ripping muscle into shreds, the intensity in which she rent and tore and ripped spilling over into a growl which oiled from her lips.

IllaAnda let her smile ooze greater.

"Oh come, we can have more fun than this," she announced her presence as, stepping forth, she approached the animalistic Shayla. Holding out her hand to her, she turned slightly sideways, nodded her head outward.

"Come with me," she enticed, visions of the fun and games and terror and death she and Allaria had produced during their short visit to Tatooine dancing before her eyes... but stopped. Those eyes narrowed, squinted, and sudden knowledge flooded her being.

"You cannot leave this place now, can you?" she asked, cocking her head to one side again as she leaned against the noisome non-wall of the ruins they were in.

"A pity."

Her response was quite simple, and innate. Her greeny-blue eyes arrowed into the other's. For the idea of being chained to this dimension at Kieran's beck and call appealed to her as much as mynock milk.

"You can?"

--------------------

"Of course I can!" she replied, giving the tendril of hair between her fingers a flippant little toss.

"So can my... Daddy. So can our pets. And so you should too.

"Unless..."

Sliding forward she approached Shayla, came up to her, reached out and before the young woman knew what she was about yanked up her hand, took it to her mouth, and ripped off one finger, gore and all. Letting it then drop, she chewed thoughtfully, contemplating on the juicy morsel, only allowing a minute portion of her awareness watch as that finger rapidly healed itself on Shayla's hand.

She swallowed, cocked her head, and nodded.

"But of course you cannot leave here. You are not of our delightful home."

Taking a step back, she stretched out both hands on either side of herself, encompassing the entirety of the Darker Realms in that one gesture.

"I am born here. Our lovely pets are as well. There have been others, long gone. Daddy is our home.

"But you..."

She came up to Shayla again, cupped her chin in the palm of one hand and drew her face close so that they peered deeply into each other's eyes.

"You are like my mother. You are not of here, you are for here. As he will one day be, should he ever become tired of hanging on a wall and decide to join us.

"Daddy likes him, you know. And I think he--"

...as well as with others. If of course, that had even been him at all...

...for she was also aware that there was a doppelganger who had acted as the Dark Lord for some time.

But not before the conception of ShaRhylla, apparently, for if she was like Shayla, as IllaAnda had spoken...

...she was of Sith and humankind only, as the Halfling had at least once wondered.

Shayla cocked a brow at IllaAnda. "And if he is liked, then why is he in such a demeaning position now, unless he has been found to be untrustworthy..."

[ 07-10-2013 01:18 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Shayla Stargazer Petrolu ]

--------------------

What it was...

The movement sharp and sudden, she released Shayla's chin, moved away to come to a halt before the hapless Dark Lord, stood there staring up at the torn and broken body... and let herself become filled with rage, sheer innate rage, rage inherited from her father, but most of all rage against his stubbornly unbroken and defiant spirit.

"We should just take you..." she whispered, before suddenly regaining her former aspect and turning round to face Shayla again.

"He is here because he doesn't like us!" she glowered, her hands now fisting at her sides, her eyes returning to oil-shot pools of blood... but not really seeing Shayla standing there at all.

"He does not deserve the bliss of death," Shayla growled, her eyes once more looking to the disgraced Dark Lord. Then she turned her eyes back to IllaAnda, whose look was still dark.

"He was allied with you once," she stated then, clearly recalling that he had the demonic familiar from the very start of his introduction into the Sith Temple. She wondered what had changed...

...and suddenly had a suspicion of just what that something could have been. "It is because of her," she then whispered, not really even realizing she had spoken aloud.

--------------------

"Perhaps it was due to... Her," she whispered silkenly, letting the final consonant continue in a drawn-out purr. "But perhaps it was due to... Himself."

She darted a look Shayla's way. Waved a delicately clawed hand toward the misery hanging on the non-wall.

"Thus reflects the... gratitude given to those who... persist in refusing our offerings."

Now she turned fully away from the broken form, her eyes returning to their prior turquoise hue, and smiled sweetly upon Shayla. That delicately clawed hand now reached out and laid itself directly over the young woman's heart.

Her dark smile sweetened, deepened.

"You understand, don't you my..."

She paused a moment, cocked her head.

...but that pathetic business was summarily slapped into silence and submission. Shayla returned the sweet smile IllaAnda directed her way look for look.

"Of course, My Sister, she purred.

That which was within, although choked into some semblance of submission, let out a brief, heart-wrenching moan.

That term of endearment, until this moment, had only been attached to one other...

--------------------

Daddy…

No, she was jesting. It was a ruse, somehow, like the vision of the Halfling. This… ShaRylla? The daughter of this pathetic living being that hung from the wall, and of some other insignificant being.

Graysith

That name was also familiar to him.

Feelings of longing, of knowing, of… love? No, that was not possible.

I am Kieran. I have come into being from the Realm, from the Darkness, risen from nothing into the Lord of the Darkness. The power within is mine, none other’s, and all that I am is from my own spirit.

Yet a quiet, insidious chuckle seemed to echo within his mind. Then a clear, distinct whisper that was clearly not his own followed in echoing mist.

“Vessel”, it inked. “Only a vessel…”

Kieran closed his eyes and bowed his head forward. All thoughts of the flame-haired stranger named Graysith, all thoughts of the Halfling, and all lingering doubts of who he was and why he was here, were set aside. A darkness filled his soul once more, a power older than time, weakened but recovering bit by bit. It still did not have complete dominion over this body, but that was a temporary problem. The Master did not deliver the true vessel, but this would make do for now.

His eyes opened, blurred by a shimmering darkness that glistened in the non-light.

“My Queen,” he called forth. “And my daughter,” he said, slower, his arms reaching out. “Come give Daddy a kiss.”