Book 2 Chapter 25

Anaïs and Senara had only a moment to take in the battlefield before they needed to move.

They’d come to kill a single Dreadwing, a bat-bird thing that could use the Force to hunt, one with a projected wingspan of maybe twenty feet across, and while they had found one, it had friends. Another of similar size, while the third Dreadwing was nearly twice as big as expected, and they were all very, very angry.

Think Anaïs, the Jedi told herself, one of the smaller creatures down with a cut wing, and then impaled through the shoulder with a mass of smoldering roots, but the other two were still airborne. On her side, she had her training under Master Lucian which, while not meant for this kind of thing, could easily be applied. She had her Force Adept friend, who could cast her ‘spells’ to do things with wood, hide using the Force, and shoot root fragments like shrapnel she could then control.

Additionally, both of them were empowered with elemental Fire, running through their Presences courtesy of the Force-imbued fruit they’d consumed a few hours ago. A fact that, the Jedi was sure, though she couldn’t say why, was going to make all the difference.

Not enough time to plan, we’ll have to wing it, Anaïs thought, telling her friend, “I’ll distract them, hit them when you can!”

Senara didn’t respond, but nodded, the white-skinned girl’s Presence fading slightly as she tried to match the stone around them both, and the Jedi, seeing the area starting to turn metaphorically red with Danger, leapt away, waving her saber to get the attention of their opponents.

The green blade was enhanced by Flame as well, just as much as the rest of the Padawan was, trailing ghostly fire as she started to circle around the flat area they’d prepared, halfway up the mountain. She watched the Dreadwings, especially the largest one, which had just let out a wide-ranging blast of compressed sound, enough to kill the unprotected, had almost killed them both, but it flapped backwards, letting the smaller one take the lead.

That attack took something out of it, the Jedi realized, feeling a bit better about this. Like a particularly difficult Force technique could leave one fatigued in ways other than the physical, these Force-using predators had similar problems, which also meant that, if the pair gave the lead Dreadwing time to recover, they’d have to try and weather another barrage of sound enhanced with enough force to shatter stone.

The smaller one inhaled, and Anaïs watched its Presence, which matched the creature exactly, as opposed to the metaphorical representation of humanoid Force-users, as it breathed in not only air, but the energy of the Force itself, compressing and shaping it.

Watching the danger levels around her shift in response, Anaïs stopped, setting her feet, Flame-enhanced Force Control pushing her body to heights of strength she had never before matched, though she also felt like she’d stepped into a desert, the heat just short of baking. Swinging her fiery saber out to counter the attack was even created, the Dreadwing shrieked, spitting out a compressed crescent of air, invisible to the naked eye, but bright to her Force-assisted vision.

Once again, she hit the attack, igniting the Force-imbued gas, pressed together until it was razor thin and ready to explode, tearing apart whatever hit, but she cut through it, the Flames that ran down her blade consuming the Dreadwing’s attack and shaping it into another emerald detonation of flame that was hers, and thus while it lit up the night, she was left unharmed.

Remembering what she’d done before, the Padawan reached a hand out, trying to grasp the creature with Telekinesis, a tendril of incandescence launching from her hand towards the bat, trying to grasp the creature, but the Dreadwing flew out of the way, the attempt to grab it missing, which wasn’t how Telekinesis was supposed to work, but she had no time to see what was going wrong with her use of the Force, merely noting the speed and accuracy of what she could do now, watching as another blast of air came at her.

Instead of blocking this one, however, she also felt a sensation of Danger from the side, a red streak in the Force coming from behind her, and to the right. Because of it the Padawan launched herself to the left as not only did another shrieking crescent of air come tearing in from in front of her, exploding rock when it hit the ground, sending shrapnel flying, but a second attack came from behind, so that it would’ve eviscerated her had she blocked the first.

Did they bounce the attack off the walls? the Padawan thought, as the largest, the Alpha, had done so with its Force-strengthened scream, but, glancing to the side, she saw the downed Dreadwing, the creature injured but still in the fight, having fired off one attack and getting ready for another.

Before it could, though, the smoldering root it was impaled on shuddered, a long tendril of burning wood shooting out from the ember-studded lumber and wrapping around the creature’s neck, wrenching it to the side and sending its attack wild as the growing root continued to extend, attempting to bind the creature fully.

“I’ve got zis one!” Senara called, and Anaïs nodded, taking off running for the cliffside, where the two remaining Dreadwings flapped, watching the two girls and surely preparing their next attack.

Taking a deep breath, the Jedi prepared the two-component maneuver of a Force-Jump, Control-enhanced muscles and a Push working in tandem, ethereal flames wrapping around her limbs as she dropped further into her focus, hitting the edge and leaping, motions guided by the Force.

And almost instantly overshot her target.

Not only was her strength enhanced, but so was the telekinetic Push, which was obvious in retrospect, so instead of a shove through the Force invisibly imparting as much velocity as she was used to on her form, she instead was carried forward on an sliver explosion of flame, like she was fired from a cannon, right between the two Dreadwings.

Thankfully, they both tried to dodge, which meant the smaller one darted, not quite into her path, but close, close enough for Anaïs to shoot out a tendril of Grasping Flame instead of a Telekinetic hold, to attach herself to the thing’s wing, the blonde girl’s shoulder wrenching, muscles straining in protest despite their enhancement, as she stopped herself while simultaneously yanking the smaller Dreadwing backwards in the air, the loud snap of one of its bones breaking barely audible under the screeching.

The large creature, easily a few thousand pounds, went flying for the Jedi who, operating on frantic instinct and direction from the Force, kept her grip on the Dreadwing, slashing out with a burning saber, flames streaming from it as she cut through the membrane of its wing, flying into the limb and out the other side, only to have to pull backwards on her connection to the creature as Danger blared to her senses.

The larger Dreadwing, furious, swooped in, sharp beak large enough to bite her in half gaping wide, but she used her hold on the now-leaving smaller Dreadwing to drag herself back just far enough to dodge, before letting go of the previous creature and slapping the larger one with a fiery tendril as it passed her by, inches away, hooking into it and gritting her teeth as she was pulled along its path.

The Alpha shrieked in pain, and she could make out the fur that covered its body starting to burn under her grip, but the Jedi could clearly see how, if she let go, she would die, the air all around her red with Danger in the Force. As the creature flailed back and forth, she drove her saber into its body, trying to find something vital, but it was just so large she didn’t know where to hit it, and while its flesh eventually gave way under her blade, she had to strain to burn her way through it.

The enormous Dreadwing flipped around, and started to fly right for the mountain, heading towards a point high above Senara, Anaïs realizing that it was going to flip and crush her against the rock, but, as it committed to the motion, the bright red metaphorical mists of Danger cooled to a warning purple, the creature less able to whip around and bite her if she lost her grip, focused as it was on its new plan.

Waiting for a moment, she felt something click, the timing just right, and reversed the Pull into a Push, silvery flame exploding around her as she was launched backwards, relatively speaking, still moving forward, but slower.

The creature slammed into the rock-face, a half second before it expected to, with a resounding boom, but saw she’d escaped, and shrieked in fury, physically leaping off the rock and coming for her, a sight that would’ve frozen her solid in fear, except she had the Force on her side, and she could do this.

Her best skill was her Force Barrier, but she hadn’t been able to secure it to herself to make a shield, something she still couldn’t do, not suddenly able to perform the skill like Jorel had said Jedi could sometimes do in moments of great stress, but, instead, she remembered a lesson she’d had with Master Lucian, as, if she could make floating Barriers that were stable in respect to the ground a few feet away, why couldn’t she do so from further and further out?

But Barriers didn’t work that way, or at least never did when she tried to do just that in the Temple. But she could feel a power other than her own boosting her, enhancing her abilities, and tried again, hoping this time it would be enough. And it was, as she threw up a flat, unmoving disk of what she meant to be force in front of herself, but instead a tightly packed silver conflagration blinked into existence, like a small star forming in the blink of an eye, and that was good enough.

Twisting herself around, she hit the disk, her own flames not burning her, the construct unmoving in respect to the stone clearing dozens of feet below them, where Senara was struggling to fully tie up the downed Dreadwing, the creature breaking free of its restraints as fast as the Force Adept could make them, and the Jedi could see that, in mere seconds, it’d break free completely, go straight for the white-haired woman, and kill her.

“No!” Anaïs yelled, anger filling her, but nothing like when she’d pulled upon the Dark Side, this was a feeling like a raging inferno, energy and drive that would not be denied, and she pushed herself off the Barrier, a second before the Alpha Dreadwing hit the construct, which came apart as it burned the beast, but she was already gone, flying downwards and dragging her saber forward, an emerald blaze in her hand as she took what she’d seen the Dreadwings do, and made it her own.

Without more than a second’s worth of thought, the emerald fires compressed, shot forward, as, with an ear-piercing shriek, the downed Dreadwing shattered its bonds, ripping itself free of its impalement, and, on legs and wings, charged the Adept, who tried to back away, desperately chanting.

More smoldering roots shot up, but the creature, berserk in its fury, ran through them, uncaring, ember-studded wood breaking off still stuck in its chest, and it leapt for the Force Adept, only for a crescent of bright-green fire to slam into its back with physical force, smashing it down to the ground.

It flexed its muscles, surging forward again, almost certainly knowing it was going to die but wanting to take Senara with it, when Anaïs landed, feet-first, on its head, her bones groaning in protest at the impact as her saber stabbed deep into the Dreadwing’s brain, its natural resistance negated by the power of her crashing thrust, her body almost bent in half to try and put every pound of pressure she could into the blow.

Underneath her feet, the Dark Side almost exploded with the violent, tortured, crazed death of the creature, and tried to surge up her Saber, but she held it back through force of will, letting the tainted energies find no purchase on or in her.

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Senara, who had fallen backwards, staff clutched to her chest, looked at the creature, and the Jedi, with wide eyes, before she shook her head, refocusing. Throwing a hand forward, the Force Adept took hold of the Dark energies surrounding the corpse and began to draw them inwards, strengthening herself, the pale wood of the girl’s Presence shifting from natural beauty to something almost sickly as it solidified and started to exude power. “Anaïs! Take its energies! With it ve can win!” the white-haired girl urged.

Taken aback, not having expected that from her friend, having rejected such ‘offers’ from the Dark Side before, the Jedi had to remind herself that the two of them came from different traditions, and her friend’s ‘Magick’ had no divide between Dark and Light. “No, it’s yours,” the Padawan told her friend, now not the time to talk about this, and while Senara shot the Jedi a questioning look, she didn’t fight it, Senara’s drain increasing as the Padawan realized the Force Adept had been trying to only take half of the energies released upon the Dreadwing’s death, to leave some for the Jedi.

Turning her gaze upwards, Anaïs could see the Alpha recovering from running into her Barrier, swooping up and around, fur singed and with a few burns on its face, while, behind it, the other Dreadwing awkwardly flapped upwards on a damaged wing, but still managing to get airborne.

Okay, one down, two- she started to think, only for the Alpha to breath in, the cone of red Danger spreading out in a wide arc in front of it as it prepared to Screech once more, obliterating everything in its path. Leaping beside her friend, the Padawan started to warn, “It’s going to-”

“I see,” Senara cut her off, almost snarling in anger as she, now standing, spun her staff, ash-white smoldering roots springing up around the pair and forming a dome around them as the sonic attack raced their way.

The entire defensive structure shook, but held, Anaïs watching, waiting, and a streak of red Danger shot through the side of the dome, ready to hit them both, the Padawan moving without a thought, stepping around her friend as she swung her saber, the compressed air attack shredding the roots but meeting the Jedi’s blade, setting off another emerald explosion that washed over her, and her friend, without touching either, but blasted away the Dark tinged roots around them in an instant, revealing that the wounded Dreadwing had circled around and landed to try and catch them off guard, and would’ve killed Senara if she had been alone, empowered by the Dark Side or no.

“Shrapnel!” Anaïs commanded, motioning towards the Alpha, needing her friend to keep it busy, and, though the white-skinned girl frowned at the order, she nodded, chanting as the dozens of roots she’d grown up through the rock across the battlefield twisted around and fired off a hundred glowing wooden knives, forcing the larger creature to back off, lest it have its wings shredded.

The Jedi, meanwhile, pulled upon the Force, hoping the Flame reserves she still had left would be enough, but did not have the time to try and carefully conserve them. Instead, she pushed herself forward with a burst of Force-Speed, her focus narrowing in on her target, moving far faster than she ever had in training, not used to having this much power at her control, which meant that she had better not miss. Flames licking around her feet, pushing her forward, the Jedi closed as the Dreadwing tried to take off, but was too slow.

Leaping up to meet it, not using anything more than strengthened muscles this time, Anais struck the creature blade first, holding it in both hands, head tucked down and twisted so, when that wasn’t enough to stop her momentum, she struck the creature shoulder-first, feeling its ribs break on impact and throwing it back, to hit the stone-wall behind it and bounce them both backwards.

The creature flailed, a wing hitting Anaïs, a line of pain telling her she’d been clawed, but she moved with the blow, hitting the ground and centering herself, spotting the still-covered tunnel entrance, smoldering tree-sized roots blocking it off, she had a plan. “Senara! Spike Wall!” she yelled, hoping her friend understood her, as the Padawan quickly toggled her saber off, hooked it onto her belt, and reached out with grasping tendrils of flaming Force with both hands.

Latching onto the shrieking Dreadwing, who was sending ill-formed blasts of compressed air in every direction, the Jedi didn’t flinch as one struck her, exploding into harmless silver flame, and she pulled, lifting the several-thousand-pound creature into the air only long enough to hurl it into the mass of burning wood, which was even now growing outwards-facing roots.

It hit, impaled on a hundred points, and shrieked, trying to pull itself free as the roots grew into its flesh, but Anaïs, pulling the Force to herself, gathering it, sent it hurtling forward with a single large Push that roared out of her in raging torrent of silver flame that struck the bound creature, forcing it back into the wall, and giving Senara enough time to bind it before, with a sickening crack, a pale white, red-ember studded branch burst through the thing’s neck, the tainted bloom of the Dark Side from tis death siphoned into the roots, and, through them, back to the Force Adept.

Turning to the last, the largest, of the Dreadwings, Anaïs felt herself flagging, her reserves of Flame starting to run dry, and, for a moment, she considered taking a bit of the energy from the previous creature’s death to fuel herself, to save both her and Senara against their last foe, but she refused to do so, even knowing her Master would be disappointed, but understanding, if she had.

Instead, she opened herself up to the Force, asking for its help as the Alpha Dreadwing screamed in mindless rage, its own Presence now shot through with the Dark as it dove down for Anaïs, forming and firing a dozen crescents of tainted air in front of itself, and she tried to do exactly what her Master had taught her.

No, not tried, she did it, with no time for thoughts of ‘what if’, no time for worries, reading the patterns of attacks and spotting their gaps, or where none existed, where she would make them herself.

Her saber sprung to her hand and she ignited it, side-stepping the first air-blade that passed her by, carving through the stone and leaving a long furrow, then stepping forward out of the path of another while she met a third with her saber, detonating it, but gathering the emerald fires she created in the process as she ducked under a horizontal attack meant to cut her in half at the waist, bringing it forward as she’d seen the mages do, not directing it as they did, but guiding it, not demanding, only requesting, and the Force, her ally, obliged.

A silver-tinged emerald inferno raged past her, almost alive, reminding her a bit of what she’d seen in Headmaster Draconis’ Presence. As if in response to her idle thought, it started to take shape, condensing with legs and wings, blocking a few key shots with its body before it struck the charging Alpha Dreadwing and solidified into a hard Barrier that the creature instantly crashed into, breaking bit by bit as it did so, slowing the predator, who, with mad abandon over what she now realized was the loss of its mates, tried to go for her as desperately as the first Dreadwing had gone for Senara.

Speaking of whom, the girl, wreathed in sickly green flame of her own, surrounded by the fiery figures of a dozen other women, finished her chant and slammed her staff on the ground, the Force, thick with the Dark Side, reaching below before spearing up through the Alpha Dreadwing’s chest, stopping the several ton creature cold as it got within a dozen feet of Anaïs before it was dragged backwards, and upwards, caught in the crown of a swiftly-growing tree.

Feeling exhausted, but staying aware, the Jedi watched the Alpha Dreadwing screech, shredding wood and trying to tear itself free, while her remaining flaming barriers still hung in the air, and the Force gave her a suggestion. Raising her own hands, and using up the last embers of the Flame within herself, she reversed what she had done before, turning the moving flame insubstantial, and pulled, the silver-shrouded emerald blaze twisting up as she pushed it forward with her flagging strength, thinking of Draconis, the roiling incandesce once more forming into the shape of a winged lizard, which flapped and leapt into the air, slamming into the Alpha Dreadwing as it finished freeing itself, and pinned the creature amongst the splintered branches, which then surged forward, seeing the opportunity, piercing the beast once more.

It took close to a minute for the damn thing to finally die, but die it eventually did, a death-bloom of Dark that put the other two to shame surging out into the Force, trying to tempt the Jedi to take what was her due, given her accomplishments, but she was done with this druk, thank you very much, and, as if in response her annoyance, and her relief at the battle finally being over, the silver and emerald dragon, on its own, threw its head back Roared, which made Senara flinch but just made the Jedi smile, feeling her spirits lift ever so slightly.

Unable to hold it in place any longer, the flame-construct dissipated, the night darkening once more.

“Did you have to make dat noise?” the Force user snapped as the Jedi walked over to her friend.

Blinking, Anaïs shrugged. “No idea why it did that. Are you. . . are you okay?” she asked, concerned, looking at her friend. The girl’s literally white skin now seemed the color of bone, the natural grey markings on her face having darkened until they were black, and her white hair looked limp, dirty, and yet somehow also stiff in the worst ways.

“I am perfectly fine,” the Force Adept almost snarled, even now drinking in the Dark Side released by the Alpha’s death.

In the Force, the girl’s Presence was strengthening, but the normally white roots were looking desiccated, almost dead, and were giving off a malignance that Anaïs vaguely recognized from her time meditating with the Sith Saber, and she did not like it.

“Maybe cool it with the absorption, you’re really not looking good, and,” Anaïs hesitated, “and that stuff can mess with your head something bad.”

“I do not need ze likes of ze Jedi to judge-,” the Adept started to shoot back, turning sharp branches the Jedi’s way, but the Padawan didn’t budge, and Senara blinked, looking confused. “I thought zat the Jedi. You have used what you call ze ‘Dark Side’ of Magick?”

Wincing at the memory, and glad that she’d gotten her friend to listen, Anaïs nodded. “Once. I, uh, realized the Temple had, well, lied about a lot of things and, um, didn’t take it well?” she more asked than said, sounding a bit like Jorel. “Not fun. And I’m not saying don’t. . . do whatever you’re doing, but, maybe be a bit careful. I’d say take a break and get back to it,” she shrugged, “but if you do that it’ll be gone, so, um, yeah?”

The other woman looked at the Jedi, and only now did the Padawan realize that Senara’s eyes were glowing with green light, shot through with thick black lines that twisted in unsettlingly organic ways, like midnight worms. Blinking, the glow lessened, and the black strands faded. “I. . . I should meditate,” the girl slowly stated, shaking her head, as if to clear it. “You ‘ave. . . more knowledge of zis than I thought. Zat is. . . good.”

“I’m tired, and I think I’m out of sparks, but I’ll stand guard,” the Jedi promised, smiling at her friend, a smile the Force Adept slowly returned, sitting on the ground, putting her staff, which looked as sickly as she did, across her lap.

Reaching out into the Force, Anaïs couldn’t sense anything nearby, everything having fled during the fight, and had healed her own injuries enough time she could do so without having to focus on them, which gave her time to watch what Senara was doing. The girl had started chanting again, but not with the forceful utterances of one of her ‘spells’. This time it was a calming mantra, like some of the visiting Masters used. The Dark Side, which had concentrated in the woman, was being slowly spun out, into the hands of six ghostly Presences that formed around the Adept, assisting her.

It took half an hour to finish up, but by the time she was done Senara’s Presence had been cleansed of the Dark, pulled out of her and sent. . . somewhere, along with the bits of Flame that had still been wrapped around her, leaving the white-skinned girl’s Presence diminished from what it had been when she started, but seeming far healthier, and still more solid than it had been before they’d fought the Dreadwings.

With her markings faded back to grey, and new life in her complexion, Senara sighed, opening now-normal eyes, and stood, using her pristine looking staff to assist her, stretching with a yawn.

“Feeling better?” Anaïs asked, channeling her Master to try and get the ‘We both know you made a mistake, now what have you learned?’ tone right, and, from the other girl’s sheepish expression, she’d gotten close enough.

“I. . . You have my deepest apologies, friend Anaïs,” Senara stated, bowing formally. “I have not. . . ze amount of. . . I did not zink that it would. . .”

The normally unflappable, sardonic woman struggled to find the words, but the Jedi waved them away. “Been there,” the Jedi said with a shrug. “Not on purpose. But I know. I. . . Your way is not my way, but. . . be careful?” the Padawan suggested. “You’re my friend, and I don’t have a lot of those.”

Looking away, the white-skinned woman nodded, smiling, and replied in a teasing tone, though one that carried an undercurrent of ill-hidden relief, “It vould be hard to replace me, vouldn’t it?”

“And I don’t want to,” the Jedi added with heartfelt honesty, Senara rolling her eyes, but smiling nonetheless, looking towards the three dead Dreadwing corpses. “So. . .” the Jedi said, unsure, “what do we do with these?”

The Force Adept turned as well, letting out a low whistle. “Ve will have to prioritize, but even doing so. . . Zere will be so much waste. It is almost criminal, after vhat we did to get it.”

Staring at the dead creatures, each one bigger than the two of them put together, Anaïs considered the problem. “Could you make a. . . a cylinder, eight feet wide, fifteen feet tall? It doesn’t have to be solid, but a. . . a mesh?”

Senara nodded, lifting her hands and chanting, a white latticework of roots branching up and out of the stone to make exactly what the blonde woman wanted. The Adept looked at it, shooting the Jedi a skeptical look. “Vhat are you thinking, unless. . . no.”

“Yes,” Anaïs smiled. “My Master’s training is. . . unorthodox, but I think I can make use of it here.” She paused for effect, “Except for the itching powder. That was completely unnecessary.”