Revenge of the Jedi/Part 47

Tirien and Lord Brascel charged Gasald as one, but she spread her hands and the Force repulsed them. Lord Brascel steadied himself, and Tirien felt the old man pull the Force deep inside, flooding every cell with energy until he might have run a kilometer in a minute. But Gasald sped herself to match, and she dodged around each of his cuts, weaving under them, flipping over them, and finally blasting him skidding across the dais with the Force.

Tirien thrust out a hand, willing the Force to smash her against her own throne and shatter every bone in her body, but she resisted his powers, only digging in her boots until they squealed on the floor. She cast lightning at him, but Tirien caught it on his blade and pressed against her. For one second, Tirien thought he saw uncertainty in her narrowed eyes, but then she tore down one of the floor-to-ceiling tapestries and wound it around him.

Smothered, suffocating as the fabric pressed to his face, Tirien twitched his wrist until his lightsaber cut a hole in the tapestry and he forced the hilt through. Now, the Force advised, and even as he sensed Lord Brascel renew his attack, Tirien manipulated the lightsaber telekinetically to split open the tapestry. It sheared his tunic and trousers, too, but left his skin barely singed. His lightsaber hilt came back to his waiting hand as he pushed through the shreds of fabric, but he had to drop to the deck at once as an activated lightsaber pike pierced the tapestry bundle and knocked it across the dais.

He looked for a White Guard, but none were visible. Somehow, even as she warred against Brascel with the Force, Gasald had found the concentration to attack him too.

They needed help, but there was none to be found. Amaani Wisté was dead, and Gaebrean and Yan were nowhere in sight. Raven dueled one of the Sith Lords on the far side of the dais; they could hardly leave an enemy like that at their back. Jarkun stood atop the conference table on the other auxiliary dais, along with his own Sith enemy; as he watched, Jarkun blocked a stab, backhanded the Sith hard enough to send a tooth flying, then kicked him and sent him off the table, tripping over a chair, and over the railing. The Sith just caught the rail by his fingertips.

"Jarkun!" Tirien yelled.

The Devaronian glanced. "Be there in a minute!"

He hopped down from the table and raised his blade over the helpless Sith as Tirien turned back to Gasald and Brascel. She focused some terrible dark energy on the old man, and though he took no injury, he grunted and dropped to one knee from the strained of resisting her powers. Tirien seized a scrap of the ruined tapestry with the Force, sending it forward like a streamer and wrapping it around Gasald's throat. He jerked both ends tight and she choked, clawing at her neck, as Brascel gasped and put a hand to the ground.

"Chiron!"

"Forget me, finish her!" he urged.

Tirien turned back in time to see the strand at the center of Gasald's white throat turn black, smoke, and part as if it had been held to an open flame. She sucked in a huge breath, and her eyes promised murder. Tirien ran for her, and she screamed.

The pure burst of rage was a rancor kick to the chest, knocking him off his feet, across the dais, and almost over the edge; he caught a railing and hauled himself up even as his ears rang and his vision blurred. He felt blood running down his face; had she struck him with unseen projectiles, or had her fury actually opened wounds of its own?

He got to his feet and heard the crackle of lightning; Lord Brascel parried her attack with his blade. Tirien raised a hand, and blinding light swept over the dais; for a single second he saw all the Sith mosaics and monuments to Gasald's vainglory in perfect color. She snarled and squeezed her eyes shut, but even blind, the Force guided her to Brascel. She held her hands together, running lightning between them until the crackling energy swirled and swelled into a ball. She thrust her hands toward Lord Brascel, and the globe of lightning streaked toward him. He swung his blade as if to swat aside a sports ball with a racket.

The lightning exploded, and multiple tendrils of dark side energy grounded themselves on Brascel's lightsaber hilt. The metal superheated and exploded, taking most of Brascel's sword hand with it. As he howled, clutching the charred stump at the end of his smoking sleeve, Gasald struck him full on with lightning. His skeleton showed through his flesh, so Tirien could see his back arch so far that vertebrae dislodged and burst. She seized the old Jedi with the Force and threw him into Tirien, knocking them both to the ground.

Tirien landed on his stomach and saw a railing behind a conference table still glowing from a lightsaber's passage; he heard running feet and saw Jarkun throw himself on Gasald. Rolling Brascel off him, Tirien held up the old man's head with one hand. His skin had blackened, his lips cracked and burst; smoke curled from underneath his eyelids, and Tirien knew he was blind. His arms hung limp at his sides; Tirien felt the shards of vertebrae in the old man's back crumbling in his hands.

"Tirien…" he whispered in a papery voice. "My…tell my…"

He coughed a puff of smoke and charred flesh—a cough that turn into a wheeze, into a sigh, into silence. Tirien laid the body that had been Chiron Brascel down.

Jarkun swung at Vedya Gasald with both hands, and Tirien felt his rage in the Force. She fell back into her throne to avoid a decapitating strike, but she raised one hand, levitated Jarkun off the ground, thrust her other palm out, and sent him flying over the stairs and into the far wall above the entrance door.

Tirien got to his feet and heard Zaella scream. He looked down and saw a White Guard falling, Narasi's lightsaber embedded to the emitter under his armpit; across the way, Gaebrean Kaivalt was dying too, and Kobold Baliss drew his lightsaber from Gaebrean's chest. Narasi and Zaella charged, but then Narasi screamed. Gasald gazed at the combatants below; Tirien did not know what she was doing to Narasi, but his Padawan was clearly next on the Sith Overlord's list.

Not Narasi, he thought, and fury filled him, burst him, and flooded out into the Force. I led so many to their deaths here, but not Narasi.

On Pelagon it had been a test, a faint jab to explore defenses and find places for practices, but here there was no time for practice or holding back. He drove a spike of his wrath into Gasald's mind, striking her so hard and with so little warning that her knees gave out. Shrieking as if she was being flayed alive, she dropped and clutched her head, as below, Narasi fell too, gasping in relief. Raven leapt down to her aid, and Tirien breathed again.

He felt his powers impact a sudden wall of willpower, and Gasald shielded her mind again. She spun on her knees and back to her feet, her red-and-yellow eyes vivid from across the dais. "You want to play mind games with me, Jedi? Let's play!"

It was brisk in the city of Azreigia—fall, Tirien thought, it usually gets nippy in the fall.

The Pantoran city sat well up the mountains, overlooking the plains and red marshlands below, as well as the distant, glimmering jewel that was the capital city, Isalius. Birds crowed overhead, and Tirien saw them flying in V formation for the lowlands—definitely fall, then. He stood in Azreigia's central square, beneath the famous fountain. Built over a hot spring, it bubbled all year, even in the depth of winter; Pantoran children would come to giggle as they stuck their faces in the steam, while young lovers sat beside the warm water so they might take each other's ungloved hands.

But the fountain had run dry. Tirien frowned, brushing a hand through the basin; his blue fingers came away white from chalk and dust. Apart from the birds, he heard no sound, and sensed no life around him. As his eyes went up his hand to his wrist, he saw he wore nondescript prison garb instead of Jedi robes.

"You brought this on them."

He whirled to see Vedya Gasald smirking at him from across the square, dressed in a golden gown, her long hair loose around her neck. Tirien reached for his lightsaber, but he wore neither the weapon nor the belt.

Gasald laughed, a high, tinkling mockery. "Do you still think you're in a position to fight me, Tirien? After all these years, do you insist on forgetting?"

"Forgetting?"

"They're dead, Tirien—everyone you loved. After I defeated you, I took your Padawan captive.  She kept screaming for you to save her, day after day, week after week; I suppose that's what drove you insane, in the end—drove you into your own mind like this.  Every time I force my way in here to give you a new development—when we burned Pelagon, when Aresh killed your friend Darakhan, when we finally captured Coruscant and destroyed the Jedi Temple—each time I have to start fresh.  It's almost not worth the effort…except I do love hurting you so."

Tirien stared, appalled. "You're lying."

She rolled her eyes. "You will tell yourself anything, won't you? Perhaps this jogs your memory?"

She waved a hand, and Tirien saw Amaani Wisté's body, the Knight's neck bulging and his shoulder imploded where Gasald had broken them. A snap of her fingers, and Chiron Brascel's charred, twisted corpse lay on the square's cobblestones beside it.

"Is that enough?" Gasald sighed. "No, you're still repressing, aren't you? Fine, if we have to do the whole thing…"

Each snap of her fingers brought a new victim. Snap. Gaebrean Kaivalt, slashed through the heart by Kobold Baliss's treacherous blade. Snap. Raven Kaivalt's body, less its head. Snap. Zaella, her lekku torn off, her face a picture of anguish.

Snap.

Tirien's mind recoiled, and he knew at once that he would do anything to protect himself from this sight—Narasi, broken and mutilated almost beyond recognition, but her big blue eyes left intact to show every facet of the agony she had endured.

"You remember now?"

"I…"

"And now we're here," Gasald said, strolling into the heart of the plaza and spreading her arms wide. "We've dominated the galaxy, so no target is too petty for our wrath. I'm not sure your people really believed I'd destroyed you, honestly, even when we spread it over the HoloNet—even when I showed them what you've become."

She pointed skyward, and as if from the heavens, Tirien heard his own voice, an octave higher than normal and whimpering over and over, "It's not real, they're all okay…it's not real, they're all okay…it's not real…"

"They kept insisting that you'd emerge from hiding to topple the Sith Empire and restore the Jedi." Gasald rolled her eyes again. "I had to destroy Pantora just to shut them up."

Tirien looked over the plains again; how had he not noticed the plumes of smoke curling up from Isalius's ruins before?

"I think I'll leave this intact, though," Gasald mused. "Azreigia, is it? I exterminated the populace, obviously, but I like this fountain, it's pretty.  I could have a summer palace here…"

Azreigia and his fellow Jedi—the family of his birth and the family of his choosing—all gone to ashes and dust because he had challenged a Sith far beyond him. As Gasald had said, he had led them to their deaths…

"Yes," she agreed. "All because of you. What's happened here, you brought on yourself."

Tirien looked from her twisted smile to the ruins of what had once been his Padawan, and he had never hated anyone as much as he did Gasald in that moment. The breeze died and the sun shone brighter, but its heat was uncomfortable on his skin—the itching sting that preceded the burn.

Gasald smiled up at the sun; Tirien noticed she was wearing her ruby necklace again. "Ah, that comfortable warmth…"

Gasald has to die—that had been their mission's mantra, however long ago it had been. Tirien had failed his friends and his Padawan in life, but his failure was not yet complete…and it need not be. Gasald had imprisoned him in his own mind, but in so doing, she had placed him in a cell of his own design. He squeezed his hands into fists and closed his eyes, and as he choked down his rage, the harsh sunlight's glow on his eyelids dimmed as clouds swept into view overhead.

"Ah well," Gasald said. "But in any event—"

She trailed off, frowning, as the mountain wind picked back up. Tirien thought of his murdered apprentice and the countless other Jedi slain by Gasald's hand, and the wind became a gale. Gasald shivered, her teeth chattering, and the clouds thickened overhead.

"Enough," she said, clasping her necklace. Tirien felt pain behind his eyes, and the howling wind quieted, but that was all right, for the theory he had been nursing was approaching a hypothesis.

"Do you think I should fear you?" he taunted her. "I, who survived Darth Vandak himself? I, who imprisoned Chelshgodru Brokkodd's spirit to formless, voiceless torment for all eternity?"

A wave of rage swept over him, and Tirien dropped to one knee, but Gasald gasped, drawing her hand from her necklace as if it had been burned. For a second her image flickered—first golden in Azreigia, then white-robed aboard the Kiss of Death. As she screwed up her face in concentration, Tirien knew, and he rose lightly to his feet.

"You thought to imprison me in my own mind?" Tirien sneered, and the wind picked up, harsher and colder. It knifed through his thin clothes and made him shiver too, but he snapped his fingers and wore Jedi winter gear; his lightsaber materialized on his belt. "You attack me at my strongest point? Your arrogance may know no bounds, Vedya, but now you'll pay the price for it."

Lightning flashed overhead and snowflakes appeared, blown in with hurricane force so that the cobblestones vanished beneath the blizzard in seconds. Gasald choked, her breath misting before her cracked lips, and Tirien pointed at her. Snow swirled around her, burying her to her knees before she even realized what was happening, to her waist before she began to resist.

"Stop this!"

"Die here," Tirien said, and the ice that lashed her flesh and froze the blood of the wounds was in his voice. "Die and become nothing but a fading echo in my mind, and a broken shell in the world."

"NO!"

Gasald seized her necklace and screamed, and at once Tirien was back aboard the Kiss of Death. Gasald fell to the deck, but for a second all Tirien could process was the feeling of Narasi—worn down and in mortal danger, but blessedly alive. The next instant Jarkun raced past him toward Gasald, hurrying to bring his orange blade down on her before she could recover.

Tirien made to follow, but Gasald's telepathic assault had left his limbs twitchy and he stumbled. The stumble saved him; with only an instant's warning, he felt a terrific pain in the back of his head, one that would have crushed the base of his skull had his numb leg not thrown him off. As it was, he still pitched forward, vision going black from the pain; he came back just in time to catch himself on the dais floor.

Rolling onto his back, he saw one of the surviving White Guards looming over him shift his lightsaber pike and stab. Tirien rolled his shoulder and the stab melted the marble beside him. Rather than slash through it, the White Guard retracted and stabbed again a second later; this time Tirien scooted his whole body the other way, and the stab passed so close it opened the sleeve of his black tunic. The White Guard pulled back for a third stab, but Jarkun was alone against Gasald, Narasi faced who knew how many enemies, good Jedi were dead, and Tirien Kal-Di was out of patience. He raised one hand and the White Guard froze, the lightsaber blade pulled up short centimeters from Tirien's chest, his whole body trembling against the Force hold. Lips pulling back from his teeth, Tirien cupped his other hand and slowly brought his fingers and thumb together. Whether the guard was roaring or screaming, Tirien could not tell, for his helmet's vocoder dropped everything into the bass register even as the helmet itself buckled inward. Fissures and cracks appeared as the durasteel crumpled, and streams of red filled the new-made canyons. When Tirien sensed the guard die, he pitched the man aside, filled himself with the Force, and rolled to his feet.

Gasald slapped Jarkun to the dais deck with the Force. Tirien pushed the Force at her, but she stabilized herself and blasted lightning at him. Unable to draw his lightsaber in time, Tirien had to protect himself with the Force alone; he kept the lightning from hitting him, but the fury behind it still knocked him down.

Jarkun seized on the instantaneous opening, catapulting back to his feet and onto the attack once more. Gasald dodged his blows, and he tried to Force choke her to root her in place. She reversed his power back on him, and he clasped his throat with his free hand, suffocating on his feet as he swiped one-handed slashes at her that grew weaker by the blow, until at last the brutal strength turned limp. She dodged three swipes, then caught his wrist, bent his elbow with her other hand, and impaled him with his own lightsaber. As he shuddered, she took the lightsaber from his spasming fingers and cut off his head for good measure.

Tirien felt only a numb fury as he watched Jarkun die; the cold in his heart was armor against blind rage, freezing it and coating it with ice crystals until it sparkled with a thousand sharp edges. As Gasald threw Jarkun's lightsaber aside, she met his gaze, and they circled one another twenty meters apart.

"I suppose I should thank you," he mused; the cold made it easier to speak calmly to her.

She raised an eyebrow. "Not a friend of his?"

"I barely remembered he existed before he didn't, but that's not what I meant." Tirien considered reaching for his lightsaber, but decided against it. He looked down in thought, unafraid; she remained in his peripheral vision, and the Force stared right at her for him. Background cries and screams, the sizzle of lightsaber blades connecting, the embers on burned tapestries and melted marble…all faded into so much meaningless scenery. "As long as I've been a Jedi—ever since I was a boy—I've always been told what great potential I have, what a marvelous Jedi I could be someday, how strongly the Force is with me. And I suppose I've always known it, but more as a feeling, a sensation—never something proven.  Because a Jedi leads a life of restraint, you know; a Jedi applies no more force—or Force, if you'll allow me the bon mot—to any given problem than it requires.  And whether it's evidence of my capabilities itself or just a reflection of the enemies I've faced, I've never quite needed to reach for those limits."

He stopped revolving and looked back up. "Until now."

Gasald smiled and batted her eyes. "Why Jedi, I think I'm flattered."

Tirien nodded. "You, Vedya…I can't really hold back with you, can I? You're too powerful, much too dangerous.  If I give anything less than everything of which I'm capable to this, that lie you crafted for my mind might become the truth.  And that will never be.  So here, at last, is the fight that demands I unleash all the power the Force has given me…and you and I find out together exactly what I can do."

He raised a hand, but the Force knew his will and wrapped an iron hand around her throat even before his real hand was in position. Gasald choked, both hands flying to her neck, but she struggled against him, pressing those fingers back and opening her airway. Tirien bore down harder on her grip, and their wills contested as the Force roiled and rocked between them.

"Is that all the power the Force has given you?" she taunted—breathily, but without a cough. "You think you can overpower me with the dark side?"

"No," Tirien admitted through clenched teeth. "But it makes a good distraction."

He glanced over her shoulder and smiled, and she could not stop herself; ignoring her own senses, she glanced back at the stairs too. In the single instant before she realized he had suckered her, Tirien shifted that crushing, obliterating power off her neck and down just a few centimeters.

The ruby blazed with light, but the Force was too strong, and Tirien felt the lattices expanding into hairline fractures just before the whole thing exploded in shards of red, leaving the golden hssiss to clasp nothing but its tail. Ghastly blue light shone amidst the shower of red, expanding into humanoid form. Gasald's eyes widened, but the form was already losing its essence; an invisible hand smeared and blurred it before it faded into nothing with a single, agonized wail.

"I'm sorry, Lady Brokkodd," Tirien said, "did I neglect to mention we attended to your tomb as well? Without your sarcophagus or Lady Gasald protecting you…I suppose that leaves you nothing to bind you to this world at all, doesn't it?"

Gasald pulled the ruined necklace up in one hand, staring at it for a long moment.

"And now, Vedya…"

She tugged the miniature dragon and snapped the chain, flinging the necklace aside. Looking up at Tirien under her eyebrows, she grinned. "Was that supposed to be the end of me? Did you think I'd fall down screaming?  Waste away to some withered old hag without my magic glamour to sustain me?  Did you think Ragathna Brokkodd was the power behind my throne?"

Gasald threw back her head and laughed, and the dark side carried the cackle to every corner of the room. "I bound her to my will, Tirien; I enslaved a Sith Lord of old and broke her to my desires. Oh, she gave me a little extra power here and there, I won't deny that—a little boost at critical moments—but I've manipulated all the events and beings that brought me here.  I mastered Sith magic even she didn't know and couldn't control.  I grew beyond her years ago; you've done me a favor in ridding me of her, I think.  And now, my poor, deluded Jedi, you can learn everything I can do."

At last she drew her lightsaber from her belt, and the curved golden hilt let loose a golden blade. Tirien drew his own blade to meet her, and they exchanged salutes before Tirien dropped into a fencing stance and Gasald stepped to his left.

She also stepped to his right.

She also stayed right where she was, smiling.

Three Gasalds faced him, all weaving golden blades in serpentine motions, all smiling. Tirien grimaced and focused the Force around his mind, concentrating on shielding his thoughts.

The left Gasald laughed and kicked Amaani Wisté's corpse. "Poor baby."

"He doesn't yet understand," the right Gasald said, shaking her head. She toed the dead White Guard's lightsaber pike out of her way.

The center Gasald swiped her blade down; the marble dais melted under the blow. "But he will."

He stepped forward, but there was another Gasald, and another, and the golden teeth of her jaws snapped shut around him.