Star Wars_ Darth Bane 03_ Dynasty of Evil - Drew Karpyshyn [120]
He knew how to defeat these demons, and he struck back. Unleashing a primal scream, he channeled his terror into pure rage and lashed out with the dark side. It tore through the swarm in a burst of searing violet light, utterly obliterating them.
Zannah watched as Bane huddled against the ground, his lightsaber flailing wildly at invisible ghosts, but she didn’t let her concentration falter. Bane’s mind was strong; if she let up even for an instant he might break free of the spell.
For a second she thought she had won as Bane let out a shriek, but the burst of energy that followed sent her reeling backward.
Regaining her balance she saw that Bane was on his feet again, and she knew he had resisted the spell. But she still had one more surprise for her Master.
Again she opened herself up to the dark side. This time, however, she didn’t attack Bane directly. Instead, she let it flow through her, drawing it from the soil and stone of Ambria itself. She called to power buried for centuries, summoning it up to the surface in wispy tendrils of dark smoke snaking up from the sand.
The thin tendrils crawled along the ground, reaching for one another, twining themselves together into writhing tentacles each several meters long.
Then, in response to her unspoken command, the tentacles rose up and lashed out at her foe.
* * *
Bane saw the strange black mist crawling across the dirt and knew this was no illusion. Somehow Zannah had given substance and corporeality to the dark side, transforming it into half a dozen shadowy, serpentlike minions rising up from the ground.
Suddenly the tendrils flew at him. He slashed out with his lightsaber to chop the closest one in half, but the blade simply passed through the black mist with no effect. Bane threw himself to the side, but the tip of the tentacle still brushed against his left shoulder.
The material of his clothes melted away as if it had been splashed with acid. A chunk of flesh beneath simply dissolved, and Bane screamed in agony.
Once, orbalisks had fused themselves to his body with a burning chemical compound so intense it had nearly driven him mad. Ten years ago they had been removed when Bane’s flesh had been literally cooked by a concentrated blast of his own violet lightning. During her interrogation, Serra had pumped him full of a drug that had felt like it was eating him alive from the inside. But the excruciating pain he felt from the mere touch of the dark side tendril was unlike anything Bane had ever experienced before.
The damage was far from life threatening, but it nearly sent Bane into shock. He fell hard to the ground, his jaw slack and his eyes rolling back into his head. His mind was reeling from the brief contact. The pain radiated through every nerve in his body, but what he felt went far beyond any mere physical sensation. It was not the raw heat of the dark side but rather the empty chill of the void itself spreading through him. It touched every synapse in his mind, it clawed at the core of his spirit. In that instant he tasted utter annihilation, and felt the true horror of absolute nothingness.
Somehow he managed to stay conscious, and when the next tentacle coiled in he was able to scramble to his feet and roll out of the way.
His wounded shoulder was still throbbing, but the hollow darkness that had threatened to overwhelm him had faded, allowing him to ignore the pain.
The tendrils were massing for another assault, moving faster as Zannah fed them with a steady stream of power. Bane unleashed violet lightning from his fingers, but when the bolts struck the sinewy black forms they were absorbed with no apparent effect. They were made of pure dark side energy, and there was no way he could harm them.
That left him with only one