Avarhys: Beginnings

[SaiRen]

((OOC: This is the first installment in a series of writings showcasing important moments in the life of my character Avarhys.))

 

Avarhys took a deep, calming breath as she settled herself onto the cold durasteel floor of her space ship. She crossed her legs, folding them together as she laid her hands on her knees and straitened her spine. The storage bay was the quietest room of her ship, the only sound the gent hum of her ships engines. The low level of sound, constant and fluid, was soothing wen uninterrupted by anything else. It soothed her mind, set her at ease. She let herself close her eyes, closing out the play of shadow and light that poured in through the open hatch into the hall way. She needed no distractions. She had even remembered to put her droid on stand-by this time, assuring that he would not move, would not make a sound until she had finished her task.

 

With another deep, slow breath she settled into her own mind, preparing herself for the journey she must take. She had never taken it in whole, not on her own, not left to the solitude of her own reactions. The last time she had taken a trek through her mind it had been with the Mistress' touch in her mind, guiding, exploring, enhancing. This time she would be on her own.

 

Her fingers curled against the thin fabric of her dancer pants, and then flattened as she let her mind drift. It felt like a long way to the beginning of her story, the beginning of her journey. Perhaps it was, in both space and time. The first thing she remembered was the smell, the taste. Dirt and death. It surrounded her. The voices, the ever fluctuating cacophony of hundreds of thousands of voice cheering in booing and screaming all at once. Cutting through the constant raucous was the sharp, punctuated sound of weapons on weapons, bodies hitting bodies, the grunt and groan and growl of battle. The tear and cur of flesh, feet pounding the ground or digging in to the soil. She trembled with the anticipation, the fear, the sheer agony of knowing someone would die. Would it be someone she knew. Probably.

 

Her muscles screamed at the tension that ran through her, but she was no longer a part of her current body, she was just a child, hiding in the shadows. It was her first mass pit, and she clung to the edges. Pre-pubescent, she was small even for her age, her wiry form easily bent and bowed to hide behind any bit of cover, squeeze into any crevice. Her bare feet trudged the dirt without a sand, and she hid, just as her father had directed. It wasn't until she heard his unmistakable cry of agony that she rushed forward, clinging to the edge of shadow until she saw him fall, a blade through his chest.

 

An unfettered cry of anguish wrested itself from her unarmored breast just as her feet carried her into the light, into the mix of fury and fear. She had no weapon in hand when she started her flight, but when she ended it she held a short blade, more a knife than anything else. The handle was to thick of her hand, and her knuckles turned white around it. She spun ducked beneath her father's killer's blade as he attempted to bring it down on her head. There was no pity, no quarter given to the children of the ring. They would fight and die like everyone else. She understood that in a flash, her body moving as if by instinct, a feral growl ripping itself from her throat as she twisted around behind her much larger assailant. Her blade thrust forward, and she left across an unprotected calf, and just as quickly it was back against her person, the spring of her arm recoiled and ready to be sprung again.

 

She jumped back to evade a kick kick aimed at her chest, and weaved back into the fighter's personal space, to close for his large blade to be of any use to him. She felt no fear, only the hot, burning fire of her rage, the searing pain of her loss. The field, the entire pit narrowed down to her and her much older opponent. She was lost in his shadow, bunched down so that she barely reaches his waist in height. His towering form, large even for a rattattaki who had spent his life building muscle atop muscle, moved clumsily compared to her deft springs and swoops. She swiped at his other leg, above the armor that protected his shin, and another angry gash opened. It was slow work, cutting him down, but for her is passed all too quickly . . and yet each second lasted longer than a minute in her mind. She saw his movements almost before he made them, reacted before he could counteract, drove in when he meant to push her away.

 

Her pain and fury built as she circled him, keeping him always turning, her blade never rising above his waist as she worked to take his legs out from beneath him. It seemed as though each gash only amplified the tempest raging inside of her, and the bindings of her mortal form began to stretch and creak around it. And then, like a dam under too much pressure, it broke. A rush of power, foreign to her, exploded from her being. Her arms flung wide and a feral scream escaped the confines of her body as everything within ten feet of her was thrown from the epicenter that was her person. The gladiator closest to her took the brunt of her power, his body flying back across the pit, slamming into the wall wall beneath the stadium seating. She did not watch his body crumble, broken and lifeless, to the ground. She felt it. She trembled as she sank to her knees, her body falling in on itself as the silence both in her mind and in the world around her was suddenly filled with the roar of the crowd as they rose to their feet.

 

Avarhys shuddered as she came back to herself. A small timer connected to her comm link beeped. She opened her eyes, The shower of sound from her memories slowly faded into the quiet hum of her ship's engines, and she lifted herself. She shook off the memory, but not the emotion it brought. She let it fill her, let herself remember the way it had felt to release so much raw power. As he body unfolded, she stretched and re-actived each of her muscles. She had sat unmoving for nearly two hours, enveloped in her mind. She turned off the timer on her comm system and headed for the cockpit, setting herself in the pilot's seat and pulling up the galactic map. Touching the floating orb that was Nar Shaddaa, she set herself on a new path. For the first time in her life, it was one of her own making.

Edited August 25, 2012 by SaiRen
typo