Chapter 51: Chapter 51

A Young Girl’s War Between the Stars

Alaris Prime, 39 BBY/961 GSC.

Qui-Gon frowned as his meditation was disturbed. A thrill of danger in the Force drew his attention and he felt Obi-Wan’s distress through the bond they shared. He opened his eyes, standing and brushing down his robes as he made for the exit to the tent. Making his way to one of the speeder bikes they had brought down, he climbed on and fired it up, taking off in the direction he sensed the girl to be, noting that it was coming from the mountain and the ruined temple they hadn’t had a chance to explore yet.

What happened? It feels like she’s in battle—

Qui-Gon’s holocom rang and he pulled it from his robe. Seeing it was Obi-Wan, he answered. “What’s happening?” he asked, not wasting time on pleasantries.

“I, I don’t know! We opened up the ruins and Tanya picked up a holocron. Now she’s just sitting there holding it and I can’t get close or it zaps me with Force Lightning.”

Qui-Gon resisted the urge to groan. “I’ll be there soon. Stay put. And…” He hesitated, knowing the potential danger he was putting his Padawan in. “If she tries to leave, stall her.”

“I will, Master,” she acknowledged, before disconnecting.

Qui-Gon pocketed the communicator and opened up the speeder’s throttle, pointing it upwards and blasting out of the canopy, forgoing any semblance of stealth for speed. Taking a breath, he forced the fear he felt away, leaving behind only concern and a sense of purpose. He held out hope that perhaps his hunch was wrong and this was simply some sort of trap. That his Padawan wouldn’t have to see him put down her friend today.

Alaris Prime flew by below him as Qui-Gon crossed the jungle and ascended the mountain to the top. Slowing the speeder bike, he spotted the entrance now open to the air. He shut the bike off and jumped off before it finished braking to a stop. Rushing inside, he drew his lightsaber, the green blade parting the gloom as he hurried deeper into what was clearly an old temple belonging to a dark side cult.

He found Obi-Wan pacing in quiet frustration inside a central chamber, the girl looking to him with hope as he stepped inside and took everything in. Tanya sat on her knees in the center of the room, a device that looked like a holocron in her hands. The Force danced and flared around her. Arcs of electricity, Force lightning, rolled up her arms, occasionally sparking off of the armor she wore. Dark energy roared out of the holocron and slammed into and over her, splashing off of Tanya’s much lighter energy—which, at the moment felt nearly purely of the light side. That is, until Qui-Gon looked deeper. Tanya, who had always felt to his senses as nearly balanced between light and dark, had somehow split the Force within herself into light and dark—effectively using the light to defend herself and the dark to try to fend off her opponent.

Closing his eyes, he could almost see the war taking place within the girl as the fought off the intruder. Tanya was dragging it out, making the intruder pay for every inch of mental ground it took, but… It was a losing battle. Slowly but surely, she was being driven back in her own mind. By forcing Tanya to split her efforts between defending her body on the outside and her mind inside, whatever—or more likely whoever—she was fighting had dragged her down to their level in using the dark side and was beating her with experience.

If something isn’t done, she will lose, and then it won’t be Tanya who comes out of this battle of wills. And if that happens— No. I won’t allow it to happen. We won’t lose anyone today.

Opening his eyes, Qui-Gon looked to his Padawan. “It’s trying to take over her mind and body. Tanya is fighting back, but she is losing.”

Obi-Wan looked pained for just a moment, before it was washed away by determination. “What can we do?”

Qui-Gon’s lips twitched into a brief, proud smile, then he looked back to Tanya holding the holocron. “I’m going to try to shield her body from the physical assault. That should allow her to focus fully on the mental battle. While I do that, I need you to wait. Use the Force. Sense when the time is right. Then strike that holocron with your lightsaber. Either it will defend itself and give us an opening, or it won’t, and you can end the attack by destroying it.”

Obi-Wan nodded, moving around in front of her friend and readying her lightsaber. “Ready when you are, Master.”

Nodding, Qui-Gon braced himself, then reached out and put his hand on Tanya’s shoulder. Then, he pushed out with the Force, lending her his strength as he worked to deflect the attack from the holocron. The reaction was immediate, as the Force lightning shifted and latched onto his hand, holding him in place like he’d grabbed a live wire. Gritting his teeth, Qui-Gon forced himself to breathe evenly, to let the pain pass through him and ignore it as he redoubled his efforts.

My vision wavered and spots blinked in my vision as I used Tutaminis to absorb another bolt of Force lightning, bolstering my flagging reserves. Other spells, things I had never encountered before today, streaked in from the side—glowing like blaster bolts in a multitude of colors, all radiating hate and malice. I knew better than to let them hit, because even having them splash off of my shields, I could feel how effective each one was.

The red ones exploded on contact into large fields that lingered in an area, causing pain and leaving my nerves raw even just being on the periphery. The green ones smoked and hissed when they hit anything solid, and I wasn’t sure whether that was supposed to be acid, poison, or both. Yellow worked much like the red, but left me feeling weak being anywhere near them. Black stank like death and had no visible effect on anything it hit, but my senses told me it would probably wither or rot whatever living thing it touched.

I moved, leaping and flying as I strafed to the side to avoid them. The witch matched my movements as we circled each other in the tiny room—and that moment when we both realized the other could fly had been a bit surprising for both sides. Unfortunately, she had adapted quickly. Our methods were clearly different and there were many differences in performance, but most of those were negated simply by the size of the room. It was really too small for my combat experience to really shine either.

Thankfully, it was still large enough to maneuver, allowing me to avoid the worst of the Force witch’s spells. Those few spells that tracked me persistently, I caught with shields before they got too close.

Unlike whatever the witch was using, my spells all tracked, or predicted where she could be and fired into her line of travel, and they all moved faster than she would have been able to dodge. My formulas were also more powerful than everything she was using save for Force lighting—with hers seeming like they were created with the goal of being able to cast quickly, back to back, and debilitate an opponent to leave them open to more and more spells and eventually allow the caster to finish them off, as opposed to mine which were made to kill other aerial mages on equal footing without wasting time trying to find or make an opening.

What her spells lacked in power, the witch made up for in shields, with hers being even better than my own—at least in terms of raw strength. She had learned very early on in our battle the consequences of failing to adequately shield against my formulas and had taken a laser through the gut when it punched through her shield like paper. After that, she had started overpowering the shield and now I was reduced to hammering away at them to try to wear her down.

On the other side, I had gotten good with my shield formulas back in the Empire, to the point of minimizing their area to reduce their cost as much as possible and save mana giving me more to throw into attacking—and against spells moving just as fast as my own. The Great War had been a literal bullet hell, and I was a danmaku veteran two lifetimes over. Her individual spells didn’t have the raw power required to penetrate my shields or the numbers to overwhelm them, but they lingered across areas that denied me valuable terrain, allowing her to force me into choosing between indirect lingering damage or more severe direct damage.

That lingering damage was starting to add up. And while these weren’t our real bodies—she didn’t even have a real body, except perhaps for that holocron—and I could only intuit that the damage was more spiritual in nature, pain still hurt. Exhaustion, mental and spiritual still applied. The Force was a limited resource I was quickly burning through, while it seemed like my opponent had tapped some kind of unlimited well of the stuff—I could use more at a time, but she seemed to be able to replenish hers without limit.

Also, to my dismay, while we had both appeared here in the clothes we were wearing—including my armor—there was something missing. Namely, my weapons. No blasters. No lightsabers. No staff. And while the witch was similarly handicapped, I was fairly confident at this point that she was very comfortable fighting without a weapon, while I had grown to rely on my tools—perhaps even a little too much.

I’m sure Obi or Master Qui-Gon would ask why I didn’t simply try to destroy the holocron with a mage blade or something since I was holding the damned thing. The fact was, I was trying! But just as I was trying to shield myself against it, it was shielding itself against me, and the witch had enough power to keep the blade away from the holocron and hammer away at my body with the Force.

And then there was the fact that I was being attacked directly outside of this mental realm. After pulling me in, the holocron I’d grabbed had begun physically blasting my body with Force lightning and raw dark side Force power. I’d had to split my focus and shield against it, countering it with the light side of the Force while I fueled my formulas with the dark side.

I would say I was fighting with one hand behind my back, but the truth was that my opponent was as well, since she had to maintain both the mental/spiritual attack and the physical one. Both were starting to take their toll.

I needed to end this quickly, because the longer it went on the more ground I lost in this battle of wills. There was just one problem with that…

After our first exchange, when I’d closed the distance between us and shoved my hand through where her heart should be with a mage blade that should have ended the fight, a wound that should have been fatal wasn’t andshe had learned not to let me get that close again. The witch had been desperately keeping me away, prioritizing keeping me from getting another mage blade in her, over everything else. She was dragging this out, turning it into a battle of attrition that she would win when I eventually ran out of gas. She had even started to slow down on using Force lightning when she realized I was simply eating her power and throwing it back at her in the form of more formulas.

Dodging another red spell, I tossed off a laser in response, then curved it around her shield, forcing her to switch it from an oval to a full sphere protecting her body as the spell tore into the witch’s hip. More spells filled the space around me, trying to hem me in, while the Force lightning hitting me from the outside increased in output. I felt my body tingling and aching all over as a quiet groan escaped my lips.

The witch grinned at that, pressing the attack. “Give up and this can all be over! I might even leave enough of you around to appreciate how much better things will be once I am in control.”

Ignoring her, I considered my options.

I could risk it all on a big attack and try to pop her barrier and kill her, but that had the problem of leaving me exhausted and vulnerable after and not being guaranteed to finish the job. I could try to bait her into using more Force lightning to try and turn the battle of attrition around, but I didn’t think she was going to give me that. I could wait for help to arrive, but there was no guarantee Master Qui-Gon could do anything. Or… I could use the computation orb. Open it up, draw on the Force stored within it. There was just the question of whether or not the witch possessing a holocron and trying to take over my body could tap into my own Force battery and use it against me.

Finally though, just as I was being herded into a corner and I could feel her building up for something big, something changed. My sense of the outside world changed, and I felt a hand land on my shoulder. A moment after that, the Force lightning running up my body redirected, and the Force presence trying to physically shove its way into my body slid off of someone else’s shield.

The witch froze, looking away as her eyes lost focus and she snarled.

Jerking in the Force I had been using to shield myself, I let it all combine back into its normal state, then launched myself at her with another mage blade as I spammed lasers, sending beams streaking in from the sides. She got a shield up around herself, stopping the lasers, but the bubble parted around the blade coating my hand as I drove myself forward. I felt my fingers touch her chest and rapidly extended the blade into and through her—

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There was a flash of warning in the Force and I had just a second to get a shield between me and the witch. An explosion of Force and lightning launched me backwards, bouncing me off the floor as the chamber blew up around us, blasting the top off of the mental representation of the mountain and leaving us under open sky. I felt the hand on me thrown off for just a moment, before it returned, grabbing on tightly.

“This has been fun, but I have no more time to play games with you, child,” the witch hissed, before raising a hand to the sky.

My body ached all over, skin tingling from the residual shock. I smelled ozone and scorched metal, even a faint whiff of scorched skin. I didn’t waste time or precious focus on witty quips. Instead, I gathered myself to make a last stand.

Above us, storm clouds gathered and lightning danced between clouds. “I didn’t want injure this lovely body too badly, but I’ll just have to make do.”

I blinked as what she was about to do registered. Surely not. Surely she couldn’t be that stupid…

No, not stupidity. She’s aiming to overwhelm me.

“Now, die!” the witch shrieked, and a thick bolt of blinding purple lightning ripped down from the clouds, to her hand reaching upwards, then out the other that she pointed at me.

Click! Ticktickticktick—brrrt!

—and opened up my computation orb, catching the Force lightning bolt with Tutaminis and sending everything she threw at me into the orb—an unbroken chain of Force connecting my orb, the witch, and her own Force battery in the form of that holocron. Songsteel grew warm against my skin as the orb sucked down Force like a black hole eating a star.

The woman’s eyes went wide and she tried to let go—but it was entirely too late for that. She tried to pull away, to drop the connection. She was caught, stuck between her holocron spewing Force out and my orb drawing it in.

No, I realized as her feet slid forward a step on the ground, being drawn towards me. Her body, which had been vivid and solidly real a moment ago began to come apart at the seams—color draining from her at the edges as it turned a sort of wispy blue and got sucked down the stream as well. Not just her power. She’s a Force ghost. She is Force. My orb processes and stores Force. It’s eating her too!

“Let go! Let go you wretched little thing!” The most update n0vels are published on novᴇlfire.net

“I won’t be doing that,” I denied, pulling harder on my end of the connection and bringing her a foot closer as she fought against the pull.

I pulled again and the witch slid a bit closer. Then, something from the outside caught her attention. She shifted the hand pointing up over a bit and sent out a bolt of Force lightning that disappeared into the ether—or perhaps into the real world.

Master Qui-Gon and Obi are making their move.

I would have loved that a few moments ago, but now? No, interrupting would ruin everything. I had to stop her. Focusing, I forced my body to crack open an eye and see what was going on.

Obi-Wan waited, watching as Master Qui-Gon worked. She didn’t quite understand all of what she was sensing, but what she did understand, she could tell was bad. It felt like something was building up, power gathering for a big strike—

She sensed it when the moment came and her body moved before her mind had fully processed it, bringing her lightsaber down on the holocron, only to get blasted across the room as a bolt of Force lightning arced out of the device and sent her flying. Obi-Wan’s body burned, feeling both strangely numb and tingly as she rolled to her feet and collected her lightsaber, coming back for a second try.

This time, she intercepted the bolt of lightning streaming out of the holocron, catching it on her lightsaber. Her arms shook as she slowly forced herself forward, one step at a time, getting closer and closer to cutting the thing in half and putting an end to this once and for all. The resistance got stronger the closer she got, but she was nearly there—

“Don’t destroy it yet.”

Obi looked up, seeing one of Tanya’s eyes cracked open, looking at her. “What? It’s trying to take over your body!”

“If you break it now, she gets out and can do more damage. I have to kill her in here before you can destroy it.”

Obi gritted her teeth, a frustrated sound escaping her throat. “So you want me to stop?”

“No,” Tanya grinned. “Keep threatening it. It’s forcing her to split her attention. Just hold out a little longer.”

“Nn! Fine! Hurry up though! I don’t know how long I can hold it!”

“I’ll stop! I’ll, I’ll go back into the vitalicron and you can leave!”

The witch had moved from anger to bargaining, it seemed. Unfortunately for her, I was just as locked in here as she was now. If I told my computation orb to stop, I’d get fried and she would take my body. If Obi destroyed the device, apparently a vitalicron and not a holocron, there was a good chance she would escape. And even if I could stop it, and she did uphold her end of any such bargain…

“And leave you to try this again on someone less prepared? Not a chance,” I denied.

The witch shrieked in frustration as she tried to send more Force lightning Obi’s way, but I had been waiting for that. As she did, I stepped forward, against the bolt that felt like it was simultaneously pulling the two of us together while pushing me away. She lost more footing and it immediately drew her attention back to me. She tried to throw more spells my way, but to her frustration they just merged with the bolt of lightning and were slurped down like the rest of it.

I pressed forward and panic set in as I crossed some sort of threshold. Like bringing two magnets into range of each other, the attraction overwhelmed the repulsive effect and we were yanked towards each other. Catching her in the chest with another mage blade, I held her in place as her body unraveled, the color draining away completely to reveal a blueish tinted translucent form. She couldn’t even speak anymore as her body quickly dissolved into something very much like mist and was sucked down into the orb with the rest of the Force coming in.

The lightning abruptly cut off with her death, her intent no longer shaping it into lightning, leaving only a stream of raw Force coming in from the vitalicron. Then, that too cut off as I felt myself ejected from my mind and abruptly back in the real world as an explosion of Force from the device Obi had just destroyed the moment the lightning cut off and she was no longer held back threw the three of us across the room.

I landed with a clank of metal armor hitting rock and just lay there for a moment, catching my breath. I heard and felt Master Qui-Gon get to his feet first, lifting his lightsaber and moving to check on Obi. The girl stirred with a whine, then allowed him to help her up. Pushing myself to my feet, I let out a sigh as my body ached and twitched.

Pulling my lightsaber, I ignited it as we moved back to the center of the room. Master Qui-Gon sent me an exasperated look as a combination of amusement and his patience being strained rolled off of him. “Tanya, I take it you are well?”

“Well enough,” I grunted.

“And have you learned something today?” he pressed.

“Yeah, next time poke it with a stick first.”

“Tanya,” Obi glared. “Don’t poke things you aren’t sure about!”

I waved her off. “Yes, well, now we know what they are.” Frowning, I looked around the room, counting all of the other vitalicrons and other objects that might also be possessed. “…We need to go.”

“I agree,” Master Qui-Gon nodded, and we hurried back down the hall we had entered through. “Those other devices are the same?”

“That’s my suspicion,” I confirmed. “We can’t just leave them there and they’re too dangerous to move.”

“I knew we shouldn’t have unburied the entrance,” Obi murmured.

I sent the girl an amused look. “Yes, and then the next adventurous explorer would have found it and had their brain hollowed out for some ancient pseudo-Sith witch or wizard to run around in, causing trouble. No, as close to disaster as we came, better it was us than someone less prepared to deal with it.”

We quickly left the ruined temple, emerging out into sunlight. Obi breathed a sigh of relief as we stepped out, a sentiment I quietly echoed. Turning, Master Qui-Gon studied the exterior of the ruin. “We can get some explosives from the wookiees and bring the entire thing down.”

“I’m not going back in there to set them,” I denied. “Not sending anyone in, either. No, I’ve got a better idea.”

Frowning, Obi turned to eye me skeptically. “You’re not going to…?”

“Oh yes,” I nodded. “We should clear out. I’m not sure what the minimum safe distance is going to be.”

“Minimum safe distance from…?” Master Qui-Gon asked.

“Orbital bombardment by kinetic weapon.”

The man made a face, before hurrying for a nearby speeder bike. “Obi-Wan, we’re leaving.”

Obi looked unsure, but after a moment, hurried after her Master and climbed onto the speeder behind him. She sent me a look over her shoulder and I waved her on. “I’ll be right behind you.”

The girl nodded as the bike took off with a whine. Making my way over to the tomb of the fallen Jedi, I bowed over it and said a quick prayer, before grabbing the lightsaber. “I’m sure you wouldn’t have wanted this destroyed in what’s coming.”

Attaching it to my belt, I pulled my helmet on and spun up a flight formula, before flying after Master Qui-Gon. Connecting my helmet to my holocom, I routed a call out to the ship above. The comms officer didn’t even bother to answer herself this time.

“Captain,” the lieutenant answered.

“Lieutenant, that structure I mentioned? Delete it from the map,” I ordered.

“Yes, ma’am.” There was a pause, then, “But you’re not at minimum safe distance.”

“Understood. I’m escorting Master Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan from the site. Track my signal and fire as soon as we clear the area.”

“Roger that,” he confirmed, and the line went silent, but my helmet’s HUD registered that it was still connected.

I quickly caught up to the two other Jedi on the speeder and drew alongside them. “My ship will fire as soon as we’re out of the blast zone.”

Master Qui-Gon nodded and fell silent as we raced away, putting miles between us and the mountain. About three quarters of the way back to the camp, the lieutenant’s voice spoke over the comms.

The three of us sensed danger in the Force from behind us. I rolled onto my back and looked back. A few moments later, the mountain went up in an explosion that briefly whited out my helmet’s optics. When they cleared a moment later, there was nothing left of the mountain but a dust cloud. A couple of seconds was all it took for the shockwave to hit us, trees bowing in its wake. I felt the thump of it in my bones and chest, as it nearly threw me head over heels.

“Target destroyed. Well done, lieutenant. I believe I’m going to be another hour or so in getting back. I’ll speak with you then.”

“Understood, captain. We’ll keep the lights on.”

I cut the comm link and flipped back over. We flew in silence the rest of the way back to the camp and, as soon as we set down, we made our way back into the other two’s air conditioned tent. I pulled off my helmet and took a seat as Master Qui-Gon sat across from me.

“What happened?” he asked.

I took a moment to organize my thoughts before answering. Most of what I had learned, the witch herself had told me as we fought—just because I didn’t let her words distract me didn’t mean I was ignoring her, and after what was apparently a couple hundred years stuck in that thing, she had been chatty. The rest was guesswork and a bit of using my senses and the Force to fill in the blanks.

“This moon was once home to a dark side cult called the Yallow Fellowship, more than three hundred years ago. At least, that’s when the last of them died and went into stasis for whatever reason. They learned a method of immortality that involved transferring their spirit and memories over to an unwilling Force sensitive host and taking their body, and growing stronger each time they did it. The method they used for that was the vitalicrons—a device similar to a holocron. They would attempt to physically rewrite the target’s brain with new memories, effectively turning the target into a mental clone of whoever resided within the vitalicron. Then, the person inside would move in, merge with their spirit, and take over.”

Sitting beside me, Obi studied me curiously before asking, “How come you weren’t affected?”

I sent her an amused look, before briefly raising my hands and wiggling my fingers. My gloved and armored hands. “That process requires direct physical contact with the skin, which it didn’t get. The witch inside jumped the gun when I poked it with the Force and when she discovered that I hadn’t been converted into a copy of herself, she decided to try to fight me for my own mind since the ruse was discovered and I’d have destroyed the device if she let me get away.”

A worried look crossed the older girl’s face. “So all of those other vitalicrons all contained…?”

“Every one of them was a cultist, yes,” I agreed.

“There had to have been dozens! And if we had touched one of them…”

Sighing, Master Qui-Gon asked, “How did you defeat her?”

“I fed her to my computation orb.”

“‘Fed her…?’” the man echoed, and I nodded. “You mean her soul is now in your orb? Is that not just as dangerous as being in the vitalicron?”

“It is, and no. She’s not exactly… intact.” At their confused looks, I explained, “It was a bit like pushing her through an industrial shredder or grinder. There’s not enough left intact to call it a soul anymore. It’s all just Force.”

Master Qui-Gon winced. “That’s a terrifying thought.”

“A more terrifying thought would be someone like that coming back as a Force ghost,” I murmured, and he nodded. “Thank you for your help, by the way. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

The man shook his head, smiling. “Think nothing of it.” His smile turned a bit mischievous as he considered me. “I believe fighting off possession by an ancient and powerful dark side apparition fulfills the requirements for the Trial of Spirit.”

I raised an eyebrow as Master Qui-Gon reached into his robes and took out his holocom, called a contact, and set it on the floor between us. A moment later, Master Dooku appeared between us, standing in his ship. Looking over us, he raised an eyebrow. “Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Tanya. To what do I owe the call?”

“Well, Master,” Qui-Gon grinned, “I called to inform you that Tanya completed her Trial of Spirit.”

The old Master looked to me, both eyebrows creeping towards his hairline. “Oh? Tell me more.”

I nodded and settled into a retelling of the story. As I did, a thought occurred.

Will the High Council even agree to a knighting, in my case?

I pushed the thought away as something to deal with later. While the rank came with more privileges, and more duties, I wasn’t in a hurry to get it. After all, it wasn’t as though being Master Dooku’s Padawan really limited me, considering how much latitude I had to learn and do things my own way.

If they did, that would be fine. If they told me to wait, I would be a bit irate at being denied a rank I had earned, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Besides, I don’t exactly have time to make a trip to Coruscant at the moment. I’m in the middle of an active conflict zone. I’m not leaving the field just to please my ego. The job comes first.