Ravens of Eternity

It snuck into her the same way that the ship’s oppressive darkness did as well. That feeling eroded her slowly, as though she was surrounded on all sides by something intangible, and it chipped away at her bit by bit by bit.

The drogar focused on herself for a moment, then pushed out everything that didn’t define her. Or rather, what she wanted to be defined as. At the same time, she threw off the growing fear and anxiety and pushed away that which seemingly pressed down on her.

“None can break the blood of the drogar!” she cried aloud. “And I’ll prove it with my own!”

She poured excess energy through her muscles then launched towards Freya with unfettered speed and power. But before she could take more than a few steps, before more than a second could even pass, Freya counter-charged.

To everyone watching, it seemed almost as though Freya took a step into the shadow in front of her but leapt out of another. She seemingly spanned the distance between her and Orsethii in a single moment and with only a minimal amount of effort.

It was almost as though she took a single step and traversed a dozen meters with it.

Orsethii was taken completely by surprise by Freya’s counter charge – it was beyond a speed she could imagine or comprehend or even see. In fact, she was taken off-guard so fast that she barely had the ability to react in time.

.....

She raised her arm up to block, but it was already far too late. All she could do was take Freya’s left hook right on her jaw.

The blow was devastating to say the least – it felt as though she was hit head-on by a slab of hardened titanium. Orsethii’s jaw was completely shattered from the strike, and the drogar was herself flung half a dozen meters away. Blood spurted out of her mouth as she slammed into the screen behind her, then fell to the floor onto her hands and knees.

Her mind was in an absolute daze, and her vision was unbearably blurred. The sound of ringing dominated her hearing, as though she had just taken an explosive to the face.

And the pain she felt from her shattered face was beyond excruciating. She could feel some of the shards piercing through her scales. Most of all, she could both feel and taste her blood, as it flowed all around her wounds in and out of her cheek.

“Blood is meaningless,” Freya replied as she walked slowly towards Orsethii. “It doesn’t matter how well we shape it or grow it or build it up. It’s as meaningless as any other part of our bodies, whether it’s our bone or muscle or organs or skin. It’s all the same in the end.

“Dust.

“You seeking revenge or validation or whatever it is you want… it’s meaningless. All of it is. Everything you wish for and love and revere will be wiped away as though they never existed at all.”

The words echoed through Orsethii, but they hardly wore her down. Instead, she used them to gather up her strength so she could pick herself up. And after a cough and a groan and a little difficulty, she found herself back up on her feet, somehow. Though her mind was still plagued by dizziness, it was fading as the moments passed.

She quickly poured the rich energies of her Ancestral Blood through her body and repaired her jaw as quickly as she could. Sharp chips and slivers of bone slid back together, and fused back into place. While they did so, any of her torn muscles and scales stitched themselves back together.

Any of her cells that had been ripped open brought their disparate parts back together. Organelles and nuclei and cellular fibers all came back together and refilled the torn cells.

Orsethii’s vision returned soon enough, and quickly raised her arms defensively. She began to circle around Freya with much more caution in her step.

It was foolish of her to charge in the first place – she allowed her own emotion to get the better of her and poured it into an attack she wasn’t even sure would work. It dawned on her that it was this same hot blood that brought her to this very moment.

Every single choice she had made in the past few years all culminated in this. Was any of that pointless?

“What, so you’re saying everything is meaningless, and everyone oughta just give up and die?” Orsethii countered. “Since it’s all headed the same way, then we should all simply throw ourselves into your fire and burn? Did I get that right?”

Freya turned and took a half step towards Orsethii, which caused the drogar to jump to the side defensively. She sensed a shift in energy, as though the bridge around her turned sharply cold.

Then she watched as the ink-black lines on Freya’s face seemed to flow away. They shrank down and receded behind her pressure suit as though they went elsewhere, downwards. It was only a second later when Freya’s fingertips appeared to lengthen to sharp, blackened scythes that tapered down to needle-like points.

Orsethii swallowed her saliva then raised her beltknife defensively.

It was clear that she needed to observe Freya’s combat style first before she could make a real move. It had been years after all, and both their fighting prowess and skills had grown and matured significantly.

What she needed to do was prod her into an attack, and simply look for opportunities to counterattack. She moved further to the flank and began to circle around Freya yet again. The drogar probed her defenses with small advances and adjustments along the way.

And of course, she hoped to provoke her into an attack.

“You know what else?” Orsethii continued. “You’re a hypocrite. If you’re saying it’s all inevitable, that everything is dead, then tell me… Why are you even out here, huh? Is it infamy? Justice? Riches?

“Or maybe it’s all about revenge, right? You and your fleet all lost someone so now you gotta make everyone else lose theirs. Did I hit the mark? Yeah, I’ll bet that’s exactly what it is. So spare me the nihil.”

Freya leapt straight towards Orsethii without responding. Like before, she took a step forward into a shadow, then appeared out of another. But the drogar was beyond ready and swung her beltknife right across her opponent’s head and left a bloody gash on her cheek.

And at the same time, evaded her talons in the process.

But, despite being just barely out of their way, pain swept through Orsethii anyway. She screamed in abject pain and toppled to the ground. It felt as though Freya’s talons had raked all the way through her body, and literally sliced her into pieces.

She rolled on the ground out of sheer instinct, then went to grasp her wounds… but found none.

The drogar even poured her focus on physical self again and inspected where the pain was emanating from. And confirmed that she had suffered zero physical damage.

It wasn’t just her cells signaling to her pain receptors erroneous damage, but the pain lingered even after she forcibly dampened them. Her mind reeled as she tried to reason what was happening – how she was wounded but not wounded.

To her it seemed like a nightmare that had turned into reality. Like falling to your death and waking up, but only to hit the ground anyway.

Orsethii found the pain agonizing. It felt as though her insides were being corroded or torn apart, as though every cell and molecule that Freya had ‘struck’ were on fire. She felt herself literally get ripped to shreds from within.

Alarm shot through her when she saw Freya launch another attack, and quickly evaded in response. This time, she leapt back as far as she could – all she needed was a few moments to recover. And to figure out Freya’s attack.

But despite the distance between them, Freya’s talons ripped through her body once again.

The pain seared her to such a degree that she fell to her knees and screamed bloody murder. The new wounds laid over top the old wounds and echoed all throughout her body. It felt torturous to say the least, and Orsethii’s sight began to darken.

It was far more than she could ever bear – she felt as though her body was threatening to tear itself apart, even as it burned from deep within.

She had become so blinded by it that it just barely registered when Freya slashed at her again from across the bridge. Her body was again wracked by the black talons and compounded her psychic wounds even further.

Orsethii heard a scream which sounded incredibly far away. It was piercing, even heartbreaking. Then she realized it was hers.

She felt her heart beat heavily, faster and faster until it too added to the pain she felt. A signal that told her that the end was near. That everything she was had turned out to be meaningless. As Freya had said it was.

In a last-ditch effort, she poured every ounce of energy she could muster through her Ancestral Blood. She flooded her entire body with it in an attempt to purge herself of the pain and heal her body of whatever wounds she was suffering from.

Orsethii pushed out everything from herself, and removed her consciousness from the present, ever so briefly. She simply needed the reprieve of a still mind and a still body.

And for that split moment, she felt that stillness.

It was a kind of quiet where nothing else in the universe seemed to matter, and she herself felt light as a feather floating out in space.

When that moment passed on by, Orsethii returned to herself. And with a long exhale, slumped down in exhaustion. Her heart beat furiously after using so much of her energy.

But it worked – her body was no longer wracked by unbearable pain and seemed to be at peace.

Of course, she was now completely defenseless. All she could do was breathe heavily and watch as Freya walked closer and closer.

“The Republic and the Empire are two different things,” Freya said as she neared. “One of them gives freely while the other takes brazenly. One of them is forever worth saving, while the other is forever worth burning.

“That’s what I mean about your actions being meaningless. In the end, I’m gonna bring your empire down and it hardly matters if you’re alive to see it happen or not.”

Freya drew her arm back slowly with her hand straight and flat. Her impossibly sharpened black talons gleamed like obsidian against the dull glow of the wraparound screen.

“But don’t worry, you’ve earned yourself a warrior’s death,” she continued. “If stuff like that even matters to you.”

Then, she thrust her arm forward.