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Before he could find his balance, Mace was on him. "Impressed yet?"

Standing toe to toe, the top of Mace's head barely came to the level of Vastor's chin, and you could have tucked Mace's whole thick-muscled upper body inside Vastor's chest with room to spare. And even hurt, lurching drunkenly, Vaster still could whip his arms in blindingly fast raking slaps at Mace's head and wounded neck. But where Vastor's speed was blinding, Mace's was invisible. Not one of those slaps connected.

Before Vastor could even focus his eyes, Mace had hit him six times: two thundering hooks to his short ribs, a knee slamming hard into the same thigh he'd hit before, an elbow snapping up to the point of his chin, and two devastating palm strikes to either hinge of his jaw.

An ordinary man would have been unconscious. Vastor seemed to be getting stronger.

Vastor fired another of those blinding slaps. This time, instead of ducking, Mace countered with a whirring hook that met the lor peleKs swinging arm directly on the nerve that ran up the inside of the biceps.

Vastor threw the other even harder-which only made the inside of that arm connect that much harder with Mace's coun-terhook.

Vastor's mighty arms spasmed and dropped limply to his sides. "This is called Vaapad, Kar." A fierce light burned in Mace's eyes. "How many arms do you see?"

Then he hit Vastor twice in the nose before the lor pelek could even blink.

Vastor howled in pain and raging disbelief, falling back against the akk dog's flank once more, twisting and turning to try to find some way to avoid the Jedi's flashing hands.

Mace stayed with him, pinning him to the akk's flank, fists whirling through Vaapad flurries, striking not to disable or to kill, but instead to hurt: stinging flicks to soft tissue, smashing ears and nose, stabbing up under the chin.

The akk dog suddenly lurched away from them, giving Vastor half a meter of clearance. The lor pelek sprang sideways, diving away.

Mace let him go. "Go on and run, Kar. This is over. You lose. I'm the big dog here-"

Vastor turned his dive into a roll and spun to face the Jedi Master from one knee, and before Mace had even finished speaking the Force whirled around him and Mace found himself wrenched off the ground, hurtling backward through the air to slam against the smooth-barked gray trunk of a meter-thick lammas tree. The whole tree shivered with the impact, and a spiral galaxy birthed itself inside Mace's head.

He thought, I was wondering when we'd get to this part.

Vastor's face tightened. Strength must have been returning to his nerve-punched arms already, because he managed to raise one and gesture as though throwing a stone; Mace was whirled forward from the tree to crash against the skull of an astonished akk dog.

The impact folded him over the dog's head and blasted the breath from his lungs; the dog's crown spines gashed Mace's abdomen, and when it tossed Mace aside with a twitch of its head like a Nymalian water-ox, his blood ran down the black outer shells of its eyes.

Jedi Padawans learn to counter Force kinesis before they even begin lightsaber training. Still in the air, Mace sensed the flow of power that held Vastor's grip upon him; with a sigh, he allowed his center-Vastor's point of Force contact-to relax and ground Vastor's power back into the jungle around them...

And that jungle came to life.

A gripleaf trailer snaked down from above and seized one of Mace's ankles in its unbreakable clutch. His airborne tumble became a wide-swinging head-down arc.

Gripleaf trailers only grew tighter as their victim struggled, and their fibers were nearly as strong as durasteel cable; they could not be broken by mortal strength. This one squeezed his ankle, drawing blood with the edges of its sharp waxy leaves. Another trailer reached toward his other ankle, and from his upside-down vantage he could see a thick blade-thorned length of brassvine curving toward his neck.