• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Running at a full sprint, she dashed down the hall and around the corner, nearly barreling into the Huntress. The Iktotchi stepped quickly to the side to avoid the collision. At the same time Lucia pulled up short, throwing herself off balance so that she stumbled and fell. Her knee smacked hard into the floor and skidded across the rough stone, tearing a hole in her trousers and scraping away a layer of skin.

“Have you seen the princess?” she asked as she got back to her feet, ignoring the warm blood already welling up from the deep scrapes on her injured knee.

“She knows what you did,” the assassin said. “She knows you betrayed her.”

The unexpected accusation caught Lucia off guard; she didn’t even try to deny it.

“How?”

“I told her.”

Lucia was stunned, unable to fathom how her secret had been exposed. And then she remembered the rumors that claimed the Iktotchi could see the future and read minds. She was on the verge of asking why the Huntress would let this happen only to tell Serra of her betrayal after the fact, but then she remembered whom she was dealing with.

She did it to hurt her. She’s as much a monster as any Sith.

For a moment she thought about going for her blaster. She wanted to kill the Huntress. She’d be doing the galaxy a favor. But despite her outrage, she knew she had no chance of killing the assassin. Attacking her would result only in Lucia’s own death, and it would do nothing to help the princess.

You can still find Serra. Even if she knows what you did, maybe you can still convince her to get away before Des finds her. You can still save her.

“Which way did she go?” she asked, wondering if the Iktotchi would even bother to tell her.

“She ran off that way,” the assassin replied, tilting her horned head to indicate the direction.

Lucia’s mind flashed back to the blueprints of the complex, and she knew where Serra was heading. The princess was still determined to kill Bane. She was going to the control room to detonate the Stone Prison’s self-destruct sequence.

Not bothering to waste another second on the Huntress she turned and ran off down the corridor in pursuit, her gait clumsy and uneven because of her bloody and rapidly swelling knee.

The Huntress watched the princess’s bodyguard rush off down the hall. She knew what lay at the end; in her visions she had seen the walls of this prison come crashing down in a series of explosions.

For an instant she had thought the bodyguard was going to try to kill her. She was somewhat disappointed when it didn’t happen. Yet she knew Lucia’s end was inevitable: she had seen it.

She turned and made her way with purposeful strides in the other direction, heading for the main hangar bay: a large cavern where she and the mercenaries had landed their shuttles. There was no point in sticking around, not when she knew the self-destruct sequence was going to be activated in a few minutes. Yet when she reached the hangar, she hesitated.

The prisoner’s escape hadn’t surprised her. She knew he was not destined to die chained like an animal. She had seen him too many times in her dreams, locked in battle with the blond woman from her visions on Ambria. Her subconscious mind was obsessed with them, and the Huntress suspected she finally knew why.

Her life had become stagnant, hollow. She moved from job to job, but she had no real purpose, no greater goal. Despite her ability to see visions of the future, she had never sought to shape it. She had always felt a greater destiny awaited her, yet she had made no effort to pursue it.

From her pocket, she drew out the lightsaber hilt and the small pyramid she had taken on Ciutric. These were instruments of power; she could feel the importance of them. They had significance and meaning. They had purpose.

She knew the Jedi claimed the light side had triumphed over the dark. They claimed the Sith were extinct. Yet the Huntress also knew this was a lie. The Sith still lived; she had tasted their power. And she had found it intoxicating.

Securing the lightsaber and the pyramid back under her robe,