I let out a breath I did not know I had been holding when Jys shut down her saber. She sank to her knees, and started to cry.
I knelt in front of her, and drew her close, and kissed her. After we parted, I held her face in my hands, and looked into her eyes. They were filled with pain, sorrow, and worry; I stroked her hair and kissed her again. Then I told her once more, "I really do love you."
Then she said those words that I had been longing to hear ever since Tatooine. "And I love you."
Actually, let us be honest, I had been longing to hear that particular sentence, or some permutation of it, ever since the picnic I took her on.
We kissed. Our eyes were closed, our senses focused solely on the other. It was a great kiss.
And then she screamed in pain.
My eyes shot open, and behind Jysella stood Lumiya, holding a whip of all things, an angry scowl covering her face. "You have disappointed me my apprentice. Now you both shall die."
As Lumiya drew her whip back to strike Jysella again, I jumped up and tackled her. In the Force I could feel the pain Jysella was in, and it was driving me on, burning anything resembling caution from my mind.
As we landed, I drew back my fist and hit her on the side, right above where her kidneys should have been. My hand collided with steel-weave, breaking at least one knuckle.
She kicked me off her, and I touched the Force to allow me to flip around and land on my feet, with my saber ignited.
Lumiya smiled at me, and then did something to her whip, which bathed it in the coherent light of a lightsaber blade.
It was again time for one of those Corellian words; I just didn't know it yet.
With a flourish, she sent the whip at me, I tried to deflect it the way I would a saber blade, but the whip wrapped around my blade, and she tugged nearly pulling my saber away from me. I shut down my saber so that it would get disentangled and then re-ignited it.
I was trying my best to figure out how exactly I was going to be able to beat her.
I was drawing a blank.
I slipped into the Force, reacting, trying to get Lumiya within range of my blade, not able to due to the length the lightwhip gave her.
The result of all that was me jumping around the various platforms. Lumiya was always a step behind me, her lightwhip taking chunks out of the floors and pillars near where I had been moments before.
If I ever attempted to deflect or block the whip, it simply wrapped itself around my blade and she would try her best to yank my saber from me.
After her third or forth attempt at disarming me, I just kept my saber off, intending to ignite it if and when I was in a position to do so.
Finally, Lumiya outguessed me, and her whip was snapping in right where I was landing. Luckily, it was just a little shy of being able to bisect me, and merely left me with a wound running across my upper chest. And that wound burned.
I was just a little slower from that point on, her whip was able to land nearer and nearer to me every time, yet I was kept out of range for my saber.
The entire time this was happening, her laughter echoed throughout the throne room.
And I still had no idea how I was going to beat her.
"I grow weary of this Ben. Come face your destiny, or shall I go ahead and kill my wayward apprentice first?"
I stopped jumping and turned towards her, and saw the lightwhip snapping up towards my face.
I tossed my head back, trying to get it out of the range of the whip, but it still scored me, I could feel a burn going from my chin to my temple.
Lumiya laughed once again. "Your compassion for her is your weakness."
"Call it what you will, but my love for Jysella is anything but a weakness."
With that said, I rushed Lumiya. I had finally thought of a plan.
Yes I had thought of a plan, but it was one that would require a sacrifice. One I needed to implement, before reason and sanity interjected themselves into my thought processes once again.
Her lightwhip snapped out, and I threw my left arm up and let the whip wrap around that.
I later asked my dad how it felt to have a hand chopped off by a lightsaber. He said it was a quick thing, over almost before he realized it was happening. That the saber had sliced through his arm, as if it was not there. The shock and pain came after the fact.
Lumiya's lightwhip did not work that way.
Maybe it had to do with the solid core of her weapon, but at first my arm resisted the cut. It burned, don't get me wrong, the pain was excruciating, but it did not want to make the cut. It was wrapped two or three times around my arm, slowly cutting into it, but it was mainly just hurting. It was only when Lumiya yanked back on the whip that the lower quarter of my arm came off.
I nearly stumbled. I could see the edges of my vision going black. I felt the vomit burning in the back of my throat. I could feel my jaws aching as I clenched them shut tight, holding in my screams of pain. I knew I was going into shock.
I also knew that I had her in my range, and Lumiya's whip was still behind her from when she had pulled. She was effectively defenseless at that moment.
As I was pulling my saber I crashed into Lumiya again, as she was closer than my tunnel vision had led me to believe, and we went tumbling off the platform we were on, down to the bottom level.
Before she had a chance to recover from the shock of the fall, I placed my saber right above where her kidneys should have been and activated it, pulling the saber up through her body and out through her head.
I sliced through armor, electronics and finally through flesh.
Her death released an explosion of dark side energies, pulsing out, pushing me off her and throwing me halfway across the room.
I landed and rolled a few times, somewhat surprised to not hear something break this time. Then I finally let out the scream I had been holding in since part of my arm was removed.
I clutched the remains of my arm tight against my chest, as the darkness at the edges of my vision continued to creep in.
The last thing I saw before the darkness overtook me was Jysella leaning over me, with fear and worry in her beautiful eyes. In the distance I could hear a whispered voice say "Please stay with me."