• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Bane was on her in an instant, his lightsaber slashing viciously, his heavy boots kicking and stomping at her prone body. Zannah thrashed and twisted on the ground, her lightsaber flailing desperately to parry Bane’s blade. She felt a sharp crack as the toe of his boot caught her in the ribs, but she rolled with the impact and managed to end up back on her feet.

Her vision was blurred with stars, pain shooting through her left side with each gasp as she tried to catch her breath. Bane didn’t let up, coming at her with a frenetic assault. The next few seconds were a blur as Zannah relied purely on instincts honed over twenty years to parry the wave of blows, miraculously keeping him from landing a lethal strike.

Zannah threw herself into a back handspring, flipping head over heels three times in quick succession just to put some space between her and Bane. Before the fourth one she suddenly stopped and went into a crouch, thrusting forward with her lightsaber like a spear to impale her opponent as he charged after her in pursuit … only Bane wasn’t there.

Anticipating her move, he had stopped several meters away.

Gritting her teeth against the pain from her broken rib, Zannah rose to her feet. Bane hadn’t killed her, but her survival had come with significant cost. She was tired now, the desperate scramble to escape after tripping on the grave had pushed her one step closer to physical exhaustion. She felt the broken rib with each ragged breath, and she sensed that the injury would make it harder for her to pivot and turn, limiting the effectiveness of her defensive maneuvers.

She couldn’t wait any longer. She’d wanted to surprise Bane, slowly gather her strength before unleashing it so he wouldn’t be able to properly defend against it. But she knew she wouldn’t survive another clash of lightsabers.

Opening herself up to the power of the dark side, Zannah reached out and touched the mind of her Master.

Bane sensed the attack, bracing himself.

He had encouraged Zannah’s training in Sith sorcery, knowing she might very well use it against him one day. If it turned out he wasn’t strong enough to survive, then he wasn’t worthy of being the Dark Lord of the Sith.

That didn’t mean he was unprepared, however. Dark side sorcery was complex; it attacked the psyche in ways that were difficult to explain and even more difficult to defend against. Bane had no talent for it, yet he had done his best to study the techniques. What he learned was that the only real counter was the victim’s strength of will.

Zannah’s assault began as a sharp pain in his skull, like a hot knife stabbing directly into his brain before carving down to slice the two hemispheres in half. Then the knife exploded, sending a million burning shards in every direction. Each one burrowed into his subconscious, seeking out buried fears and nightmares only to rip them free and haul them to the surface.

Bane let out a scream and dropped to his knees. When he stood up the sky was thick with a swarm of flying horrors. Their wings were torn and ragged, leather flaps of skin hanging from exposed bone. Their bodies were small and malformed, their twisted legs ending in long, sharp talons. Their flesh was a sickly yellow: the same color as the faces of the miners who had died on Apatros after being trapped in a gas-filled chamber.

Their features were inhuman, but their burning eyes were unmistakable: each creature was staring at him with the hate-filled gaze of his abusive father. As one, they swooped down on him, their mouths screeching out a cry that sounded like his father’s name: hurst, hurst, hurst!

Swinging his lightsaber wildly at the demon flock, Bane crouched low to the ground, his free hand coming up to cover his face and ward off the talons clawing at his eyes. As the swarm enveloped him, he caught a glimpse of Zannah standing a few meters away, her face frozen in a mask of intense concentration.

Bane knew it was a trick; the beasts weren’t real. They were just figments of his