Part III: Death and Rebirth

Chapter 11

Princess Murra struggled not to collapse onto her escorts as they marched her up the landing ramp of the ship that was to transport her to Coruscant, the non-Hapan planet of her choice. Almost as soon as she set foot inside the ship, she collapsed from the exhaustion of having to duel for six hours straight. Pain shot through the woman as one of her many fresh saber burns hit the cold metal beneath her feet. She wanted to scream, but her energy was already beyond spent and the Force seemed rather reluctant to aid the Jedi Master. Just when the red headed princess thought her physical agony was enough, the image of her traitorous sister came to her mind.

Damn the Force! Father told me about the Embrace of Pain, but I never thought someone would make one out of my own body and my own mind! Oh, why did I even attach myself to her? Murra thought as waves of emotional pain washed over her mind. She had the feeling that her sister would find the pain refreshing, but it did not matter, for Murra did not enjoy torment.

Murra's fingers fumbled for minutes before she finally convinced her lightsaber to revert to the dual-saber form. She momentarily wished that Ben was at her side, helping her with the machine. I paid off my debt to you for the lightsabers you helped me build; now you owe me for making me fight my own sister.

"How? Sil? How could you turn to the dark side? What happened to you?" The drowsy princess muttered repeatedly as her lack of strength overtook her and dropped her eyelids as if they were made of lead. Murra could only be glad that no one could see any more of her bloodshot, glimmering eyes. Blackness reigned for an indefinite amount of time before a vision, or a dream, whichever it was, took hold of the woman's eyes.

Vision

Two females crouched against each other, back-to-back and scared. An army of heavily armed pirates surrounded and outnumbered the women by a million to one.

"Why, what's this meaning of this?" The younger girl snarled as she jerked an attacker by his elbow and dumped him on the floor. "What do you want from us? I already gave you my right to rule!"

"Isn't it obvious, Your Highness? We need your lives. We need your bodies to present to the galaxy to show that Hapans don't allow Jedi in their royal family, especially daughters of the woman that abolished our monarchy. All of that, unless you surrender to us or give us back our men. We'd hate to see such strong and beautiful ladies wasted." One of the other attackers replied in a sneering tone.

"Never." Growled the younger female. "Witches don't surrender to men and I won't betray Mother."

The Ni'Korish pirates were not happy with their Jedi queen introducing full-blown democracy to Hapes and decided to make their point by attacking the woman's two daughters.

The younger of the two women was no older than fifteen. Having just finished her Dathomiri witch training, the girl wore a glittering green lizard hide armor. But unlike most Dathomiri warriors/witches, the girl, instead of growing out and braiding her red curls, wore them in a short, elegant, Hapan fashion. Her emerald-green eyes and colorless face glittered with a bitter determination to abide by the rules of the matriarchal witch clan of her mother's mother, Teneniel Djo.

The other woman very much contrasted the first. She had the physique of the average eighteen-year-old Hapan, but her granite-gray eyes glittered with centuries' worth of experience. When she was a mere infant, she was target to many kidnapping and assassination attempts because of her powers and her mother's rule over sixty-three planets. The woman was once a Jedi Knight, but one could only tell from her lightsaber. Her ankle-length hair was a shade lighter than chocolate-brown and three distinct streaks of orange provided some contrast. Sometimes all she had in common with the other woman were parents and Jedi potential.

The pirates all seemed to fire at once, causing the younger, more muscular sister to leap fifteen feet into the air and the other woman to slide aside like soap. As the redhead came down, she planted each foot in the chest of a man and brought her two targets to the floor. But that was not hard enough. They shot at her simultaneously and the girl was not agile enough to completely dodge both shots. One shot had scorched her leg and the girl had no choice but to drop to one knee for a second.

That one-second was all it took for many pirates to be able to point their weapons at the younger girl. As shots soared at her, the girl's hands flew to her sides and drew out shortened lightsaber studs. Two blurs of green then sent most of the blaster bolts away from the girl, but a few found their marks and made gashes on her arm. For a few hours, the girl seemed victorious against the rebels, but for every one that she took down, two more replaced him.

One of the replacements happened to be an alien with a distinct odor about him. Suddenly, the girl began to feel faint. Poison gas. She realized and using a Dathomiri technique that the Djos were renowned for, she summoned a mist in an effort to dampen the toxin. All the mist did was attach it to her skin and make the chemical more effective.

The witch never had her father and sister's talent for using the Force to keep the body free of poisons, so she began to suffer. She reached out to her sister and found the other woman dodging shots and healing her at the same time.

The girl suddenly felt a jowl of pain as the metal of her armor pierced her hip and brought poison into major blood vessels. Whatever chemical she was attacked with, it was specially designed to eat away lizard scales and skin. A few kicks and punches sent the princess landing hard on the floor with only a small trace of life left in her muscular body.

"MURRA!" The other female shouted as she sped halfway across the room to tend to her fallen sister. Being older and having far more experience with being attacked than her sister, the woman survived the battle with only a few major cuts and wounds.

"Sil… you've come to save me." Murra gave a barely audible moan as warm blood streaked from the corners of her mouth.

Sil's gray eyes and lips expressed anger and determination as her blade of almost pure white cut through the attackers amassed in the room. Her sister had not yet learned to embrace pain and now was not the time to teach, for if pain became Murra's source of energy, the girl would die within seconds.

When Sil reached her sister, the woman knelt down, allowing her flying, ankle-length hair to land on the floor and make an apparent tent. She used the Force to remove most of the gas in the area, then grabbed her sister's pale wrist and melded the two Jedi minds.

Sil could see the grim fate that awaited both sisters if they stayed in that room any longer, so she tapped into the energy of her surroundings. The energy was not enough, and frustration drove the young woman to go further. Jysella. The sisters thought in unison as they felt a third Force user touch them from afar. Sil smiled as she felt Jysella Horn summon and transfer massive amounts of energy through the Force.

What are you doing, sis? Murra managed to weakly think at her sister.

I'm taking you out of here. I'll be back and they'll pay for what they did to my love. Sil thought back. A wind came out of nowhere and whipped her face as the woman used the combined powers she and Jysella Horn had summoned to warp time-space. Sil was not physically strong enough to carry her muscular sister under normal gravity, and definitely not strong enough to pick up her sister and move out of the area by stepping on shoulders.

Levitating Murra with the little bit of strength she had left from trying to force her will upon time-space, Sil sent her sister into the vortex, only to have the girl exit somewhere the minute she was in. Sil wanted to step back and use her powers to transform the crowd of attackers into smoke and carnage, but the Force was out of her control.

Completely drained, the woman felt herself drifting through time-space and making unsuccessful attempts to exit and destroy her vortex. As she was on the brink of unconsciousness, the astral form of an alien Jedi appeared in front of the living Jedi Master.

"I don't want to die…" The feverish and tired Jedi muttered.

Suddenly, the feverish and engrossed Sil felt every particle in her mind burst with pain as she finally exited the vortex. Wherever, no, whenever she was, none of the things she had held on to for eighteen years existed. The woman was numbed to the point where she did not know whether she was drowning in a sea of liquid or falling through a gaseous atmosphere. She was just falling because her Jedi cloak whipped her skin hard. She tried to reach out and secure herself, but she did not have enough energy and the Force refused her its access.