Visendakonur

"Visendakonur" is a [SEASON NUMBER] thread started on [IRL DATE] and finished on [IRL DATE].
==Summary==
[Write a summary of the thread's events here, including spoilers and important plot details. Check the Order of Threads to see if the thread you are placing already has a summary, to make less work for yourself.]
==Full Text==
“Hello, darling.”
Darien shut his eyes tightly, already knowing what was behind him. He could feel the presence push in behind him like the clouds of a thunderstorm, wind buffering, already seeking for a way inside his head. He locked up his defenses tightly, familiar with her tricks, but not familiar with the unexpected strength of them, the oppressive darkness closing in on his senses.
"Kezia," he managed to growl, deep in his throat. "I didn't believe corpses could talk."
She hummed, the sound still buzzing with strange resonances and whispers. "Let's say that my death was...an exaggeration." Fabric shifted over stone as she stepped closer to him from behind. "But oh, how I missed you and Brion during a period of such rumors. It gladdens me to know we're still on a first-name basis."
"We are on no such terms. I'm fairly certain you hated us."
She chuckled, and her thoughts twisted around his, not yet prying, just toying, like one would play with their lover's hair or sleeve. Darien flinched at the feeling. Her footsteps started pacing to his left, and he could now smell something acrid, almost rotting. The sounds of her feet were heavy, strangely paced, like a creature's. "And yet you still missed me, didn't you?"
He chose not to answer, turning his head to the side, away from her. He could sense that Kezia was now standing in front of him. She had always been half a head taller than him, even without any ceremonial headdress, but her voice still shouldn't be level with him, given his elevated position. "Come now, you wouldn't have approached me if you didn't," she coaxed.
"I need more answers," he said harshly, his hands curling into fists. His fingers were tingling with lack of circulation. "You haven't told me about any of the things we've encountered. Tezz is half-demon--"
"I knew you'd be worried about him. Prototypes are always the roughest form of perfection, are they not? So difficult to force into shape. But he has been instrumental in my progress. Our progress."
Her experiments. So long ago, when he was barely nineteen, she had asked him to build the Skyshock Dungeon...of which there was only one remaining survivor. One successful project. "It's not possible."
"Oh, but you know it is. You spoke with Vidar, you seemed to believe in his advancements. The Jarl was under my instruction long before the Battle of the Jaw. Long enough that he tried to take his knowledge and backstab me with it. He thought he could double-cross me–his plan to capture the Warden is proof of that. He used my secrets against me, and he paid for his mistake by dying in irrelevance at the hands of subhumans. His worst fear." A painful pressure was building in Darien's temples. He felt fingers tracing the lapels of his coat and brushing his breastplate, the horrible sound of a sharp instrument scraping over bone ringing in his ears. “Oh, he truly believed that he could become more powerful than me if only he could convince the Warden to bond with him. If only he could give her anything she wanted, all the food she could ever eat, all the destruction she wished to cause, then maybe he could trigger her full potential. Maybe she could surpass me, and reach her last evolution, her final state of being.” 
Catalyzed. Second. Darien's mind continued racing while he feigned indifference, still refusing to look at her.
“His mistake. But he was useful in plenty of other ways.” The hand gripped the neck of his armor, pulling him in with a rattle of metal chains. "Just as you will be."
"Get it over with and tell me what you want."
"Dear, you're still acting like I don't want you on my side. That door remains open." As she spoke, it was like the blade of a scalpel literally began carving the doorway she spoke of into the front of his mind, and he lurched in pain, thrashing against her grip, tendons tensed like he was infected with tetanus. "In fact, it would be recommended. It will be the only way to get this to stop."
"You haven't--even told me--what--to do--!" he managed to ground out, panicked at how quickly she was breaking through. It felt like surgery on his very nerves, lightning strikes down through his head into his neck and through his spine.
"Without your...cooperation...I find it would be easier to convince you to see things my way, first."
Darien gritted his teeth and threw all of his remaining energy into gripping her mental lance and stilling it, stopping it from continuing. It shivered to a halt, vibrating halfway in, halfway out, as the conflict came to a standstill.
"You always--were--an unskilled negotiator," he said, sweat pouring and cooling across his exposed skin. "Too--impatient--too--greedy..."
In the struggle, his eyes had cracked open, and he saw the lower half of a once-beautiful face stained by grime, and its lips pursed in displeasure. Her torso was clad in a bodice sewn from dark, broad dragon scales, dark fabric all the way up to her jawline, and cascades of matted, curly blonde braids fell around her shoulders all the way down past her hips. She was adorned with fine jewels and chains, as though it would mask her obvious inhumanity. Her outstretched hand was mostly sleeved, but her exposed fingers and palm were darkened, malformed, far too long and with viciously sharp nails. Darien's heart dropped as he saw her other hand held the beacon.
"Rebels are careless with their toys," she said softly, noticing his gaze. She held out the beacon, and it began to hover between them, the air rippling and bending underneath it. "Throwing them away like toddlers in a tantrum. You've gotten the same treatment, you see. You let them maim you, wring you of use, walk all over you, blindly trusting you to let them continue doing so. Only for them to hand you over to me when the time is right for them." The beacon floated closer to him. "You don't have to [live/die] with this. All you would have to do is help me call down a few...participants, shall we say. You and this complicated contraption of yours. I never was very good at understanding the finer details of your brilliant plans, after all." Her canines and lateral incisors were sharp as she smiled, charming even through cracked lips. All he could sense was her, like a drowning void; there was no other mind to be found even with the beacon so close by. The lance pressed deeply into the center of his consciousness and his senses went dull, perhaps he had screamed, or maybe just whimpered. His thoughts asked who she sought before his throat could, and she understood. Faces flashed in his mind. Liam. Jari. Faysal. Alesha. There were others, but these were the primary, the most important.
Second Catalysts...
"Please..." Darien wasn't even sure what he was pleading for. Relief, acceptance, forgiveness, mercy? Kezia was unwilling to grant any of it. The colors of his vision inverted as she pierced his mind through completely. He tasted ozone and fruit, smelled the sea, heard flames roar and partygoers laughing. He should be laughing too, right? Or should he be furious? Then why was he crying?
"Open the beacons."