X

The next day, almost unknowing of the events of his dream and unknowing of their ramifications in other people's social lives, Luke sat in the sun on a balcony like a long shadow.

He tried to relax, to soak in the heat.

It was almost a success--but being able to think of nothing reminded him of the source of all mortal nothing: purposelessness.

As he sleepily meandered the familiar currents of the Force just like his senses of touch, taste, smell and hearing functioned now, an ugly taint showed very much too close by.

Luke opened his eyes. The small, oval balcony held only the chair and footstool, and tan walls with a painting of a few faded avians--and from between the serene cracks oozed an inky black.

As Luke sat up and focused the black changed from a noun to an adjective; black cloak on a pale human form. A craggy, young face of a human male--and skeletal hands, smoky body, all residing still and semisolid under the cloak.

It said with an oily version of a formal Coruscanti or similar accent, "Found. Beacon--I have found the Jedi Master to slay."

Luke stared at the thing and waited. "I am no Jedi Master."

"Then you do not know your own potential. But I am in no mood for recruiting followers at this moment--"

Luke summoned his courage, his fight, but it all came out thus and crackly; "I am no Jedi Master."

The apparition raised spectral hands, jerked them down again, and spat iridescent Force lightning that caught Luke at the throat. He stood there against it and clenched his fists--his hair blew in a false wind. Thought remained; what is this? Who? When--?

The lightning subsided and Luke gasped, coughed sparks that fell into his hands.

"Interesting." said the dark one. "You resist your own powers? What have they done to you? What can they not do?"

Luke's thoughts surfaced only in his deep eyes; they can not promise me success, nor certainty of my friends'. He sensed an old presence, old old like things krayt dragons dug up in excavation of their lairs, and angry, and powerful.

"What do you want?" Luke rasped, stock-still, gallows still.

"Tell me this! Where are the Sith Lords?"

"Standing in front of me, unless some other faction likes black costumes and lightning."

"No more than myself?"

I killed-- "I watched the last two die."

'Then you are Jedi!" The old old presence crowed. "Fight me for your masses, Jedi!"

There are no masses. "No."

"Why?"

Luke did not have an answer beyond his previous thought of lack of masses, but somehow he was not worthy, somehow he had sunk there, to that he was not worthy to fight.

The dark one paced to an angle and engulfed him in shivering neon hurt again--Luke felt himself fall and braced wrists to elbows.

"Get up!"

Luke saw only the tan wall in front of him, his curled hand(s) supporting the failing rest of his body. "There are no Jedi Masters left to counter you."

Exar Kun opened himself up in his victory, and Luke closed his eyes as his last thought before the lightning jittered, lanced, through even the dead nerves already overloaded, even the midi-chlorians--

The heavy Utapauan-designed chair flew through the air in his peripheral vision and the old old Sith recoiled in his mind, trying to hold its body, even the look of its body, together. With proximity of the corpses in his dream Luke wanted to retch, and painfully rolled over onto his back instead.

"Hey!" Lando Calrissian shouted as his battle-cry various exclamations in various languages.

Exar Kun Force-pushed Lando and Mara Jade down the stairs behind Luke, and then dissipated--no, flew, left the pretense of body behind.

Luke's tears surprised him as they burned inside and then cooled tracks down his cheeks.