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“Like the dead.” Sorrowfully, Ithia shook her head. “No, Master.”

The Hidden One stood on his platform, breathing hard, and then stepped down to the stone floor. “I see. I cannot let these humans remain among us even for the time it would take them to suffocate. Their influence is too strong.” He raised his hands. Little crackles of electricity flickered between them. “I will show you life. I will show you the Force.”

“Ben,” Luke whispered. “Stand back.”

It happened all at once: the Hidden One gesturing toward Luke, Ben leaping away, lightning flashing from the Hidden One's hands. It was not the purplish lightning of Emperor Palpatine, which had so nearly cost Luke his life nearly forty years before; it was all brilliant whiteness.

Luke had his lightsaber activated and up in time. The lightning crackled against his glowing blade. The strength behind the attack, of the Hidden One's energy and anger, took Luke off his feet and threw him backward. He slammed into a pillar, feeling jolts of pain in his spine and the back of his head.

But the lightning did not reach him. His blade kept it at bay. And, bracing himself with the Force, Luke took a step forward.

The Hidden One tossed his head. It was not just a gesture of anger; Luke felt the motion as a ripple in the Force. The air in the chamber responded, a wind springing up and roaring around the walls of the chamber, gaining speed and strength. It tattered the robes of the Kel Dors near the walls as it went. It veered from the wall over the throne and howled down at Luke, engulfing him, trying to drive him backward.

Luke gritted his teeth and rooted himself. Then, against the might of both wind and lightning, he took another step forward.

The Hidden One's eyes widened. His head rolled around on his shoulders, and the roar of air across Luke intensified. It tore at his robes, causing them to stand out from his body, shudder, and snap in the wind.

Luke took another step forward. It was slow going, for the Hidden One's power was great, but Luke now felt sure in his footing and in his own strength.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kel Dors retreating, some of them streaming out through the blast door, Ben waving them onward.

The Hidden One's face, flushed fully red, was contorted in a mask of anger. He flicked his fingers and the lightning ceased. He moved his now freed hands in circular gestures. Luke felt the wind increase in ferocity. Most of it still whirled around the chamber before battering at him, but some, a diverted flow, spun in a tight circle directly in front of the Hidden One. As Luke watched, that errant stream of air swallowed up dust from the floor and walls, defining its outlines as a miniature funnel cloud, a few centimeters wide at its base and broadening to two meters at the ceiling. It writhed like a mortally wounded serpent.

With a gesture, the Hidden One sent the whirlwind straight at Luke.

Luke lunged at it, visualizing it, wrenching at it with the Force. His exertion was like a physical blow as he stepped into it. He felt the wind intensify for a bare moment, and then his telekinetic attack flung the whirlwind free. It rocketed off to the side and hammered into a pillar to Luke's left.

Luke took another step forward. He was more than halfway to the Hidden One now. He deactivated his lightsaber. He could turn it on again swiftly enough if the Hidden One brought forth his lightning a second time.

The whirlwind moved from pillar to pillar as if leaping. When it was directly behind Luke, it lingered there. Luke kept his senses, both the physical ones and that of the Force, alert to its movements. It hammered at the pillar itself, and Luke could hear and feel the permacrete mounting at the summit begin to crack.

The mounting at the base broke, too, and the pillar toppled toward Luke. He heard Ben's warning cry. He raised his left hand backward, using the same exertion he'd made a moment earlier against the whirlwind itself, and the pillar stopped, frozen in midfall. He gestured