Briza witnessed the bounty hunter Qaton collapse on the ground, then almost immediately after saw him rise, as if strings were attached to him like a puppet. The sight gave her the chills and she began to feel dread. With his head dangling from the neck like a dead person, Qaton spoke in a dry and hollow voice. "So you are the one responsible for my minions demise, interesting."
Despite no physical changes, Briza could feel the darkside infest the bounty hunter in red. Gathering her courage, she asked. "You are Psiron I presume?"
Qaton looked up at the sith lord in front and smiled. "Yes, I am the one called Psiron. I must admit, you are very hard to kill, I sense you have so much more potential than your ignorant sith master."
The spoken words didn't come all that surprising to Briza. "In a sense, I should thank you for killing my master. But you are an enemy of the empire, thus in the name of the Emperor, you will have to die."
Qaton gave a displeased look in return. "You are serving a system with a madman at the helm. The being you serve will erase life as you know it and you will die for nothing."
"We are all going to die some day." Briza commented, more irritated than intended.
Qaton laughed dryly. "Poor little child. You know nothing of the force."
"Let's see if that holds any truth!" Briza retorted and ignited her lightsabers.
In Qaton's body, Psiron sighed and spread his arms and fingers out wide, in an inviting fashion. "Very well, I shall reveal my power to you."
Briza didn't have more than a fraction of a second before she had to use her blades to block an onslaught of darkside lightning that lit up the dark forest in a purple-ish blue light followed by a crackling sound. The sheer pressure from the deadly lightning was so powerful that Briza struggled to remain on her feet and was at a constant threat of being overwhelmed.
The lightning was followed by massive trees uprooted and thrown at her one after another in rapid sessions, to Briza it looked like the forest itself wanted to crush her. Despite her excellent athletic skills, she had to fall back to gain more ground in between them. She dodged the enormous trees by somersaulting over the low ones and throwing herself below the high ones, at multiple times she sprang from side to side vertically. Occasionally she had to force push some of the flying trees away, but this was taxing on her energy, something she knew she could not keep on doing indefinitely. "Where is my family when I need them!" Even in this cold weather, she was beginning to sweat heavily from being constantly on the move to stay alive.
The body of Qaton stopped the deforestation of the forest all of a sudden. Briza wasted no time and attacked head on, she was imitatively grabbed by her neck by an invisible hand and pressed up in the air, her windpipe being painfully squeezed. Fueled by rage and frustration, she pushed out with a pressure so powerful that Psiron was blown backwards and nullified the grip he had on her.
Even though staggering a bit she dashed forward, got within striking range and lounged at him, but her sabers connected with thin air... the body of Qaton had completely vanished. "He is messing with my mind!" Briza concluded infuriated, as she scanned the surroundings, trying to anticipate from where he might strike.
"You would be correct." Psiron replied in Briza's mind, sounding as if it came from every direction. "Impressive, your former master would have been killed twice by now. I offer you this, join me as an apprentice and I can show you how to live on after death."
Briza was puzzled for a moment, she could sense an almost arcane force-presence radiating from the possessed Qaton. She knew she might never get a better chance to learn such powerful abilities. But she had too much at stake, to just cast it all away for power alone... and something about this Psiron being, felt outright repulsive to her. She rejected the offer with a single word. "Never."
As soon as the words had left her mouth, an extremely painful headache, a blistering migraine erupted in her brain. "Mind shard! I freaking hate YOU!" Briza snarled in pure lividness.
"You chose to deny me. Now you will pay the price." Psiron declared in a sinister and dry voice.
She struggled to remain conscious under the immense torture attacking her mind, whilst hearing the driest laughter she ever had the unfortunate displeasure of listening to, echoing a thousand times inside her skull.
As she neared her breaking point, Briza suddenly heard another voice. It sounded smooth and soothing, "Empty you mind, focus only on my voice, he is using your anger and pain against you. Deny him access." Briza sensed that the force-link she had with Tikala was overflowing with energy.
Briza summoned the energy from her link and energized her force bobble to repel the mind dominating intruder. She glanced around to spot the body of Qaton, however, she spotted not only the one, but a dozen of Qaton lookalikes in the woods all around her.
All the Qaton individuals looked at the Zabrak Sith lord with surprise and amusement. "Masterly! What an unusual force connection you have. Dark... yet I sense a mysterious aura of light shining through you." They all said in unison.
Drawing on her force-link, she reached out with her senses, then she sprung into action. With the force enhancing her speed tenfold, she landed right in front of one of the Qaton beings and pierced her crimson blade through his heart. "Found you creep!" She hissed, as all other Qaton's disappeared, the enhanced force sight had revealed the truth to her.
With no hint of pain nor any disabilities, Qaton just casually raised his hands in front of Briza and fired red life draining energy into the Zabraks body, leeching on her force energy and threatening to drink of her very life essences.
Briza was horrified, she thought she had killed the person being possessed. Instead, she could feel the very life flowing out of her by this very same person. Gathering her energy quickly before it would be sucked out of her, she used force repulse to blow Psiron backwards and halt the draining. Briza was breathing heavily, confusion visible on her face. "What is Psiron!? Can he control the dead?"
Despite the hole in his chest, Psiron just looked at his enemy with amusement and curiosity. "Oh I see! You chose a jedi knight over my offer... A strange choice for a sith lord... Or rather, you chose someone you have an unusual strong connection with."
Briza could sense Tikala would be here shortly, so stalling seemed the best option. "I see now. That I have vastly underestimated you. You ought to be dead, yet the body still stands before me. How do you do such a feat?"
"My dear little child, in the force, death is not the end. Not to those who can mark a being's soul and transform them into an eternal slave." Psiron laughed dryly in return and stared right at his prey continuing in an even more menacing tone. "Because of your persistence in denying me, I will put a mark on you to insure your complete obediences. You will only feel the torment of being killed and tortured as the pitiful slave you are."
As she listened to those words being spoken, she felt utterly fatigued and helpless, like the words themselves were causing her harm. If it wasn't for the force-link she shared with her family, she would either have attacked in sheer instinct for survival or collapsed in defeat, begging for mercy. "SHUT UP!" In a fit of rage, Briza unleashed force lightning at the possessed Qaton, hoping to at least silence Psiron for a short moment.
Psiron held out his left hand, easily repelling the lightning right back in the face of the sender.
Briza quickly used both her lightsabers to block her own lightning, she staggered a bit before regaining her fighting stance, she was starting to feel tired. At first she thought her stunt had stopped Psiron in his Dun Möch approach, but then she noticed that he was looking away from her and spotted a speeder coming right towards them.
While she had sensed them through the force for some time, it was only now that Tikala could finally see them. In her desperation to stop the speeder, she smacked the rear of the bike into a tree, jumped off of and landed beside her sister.
Briza could only shake her head as she noticed how battered the speeder bike was, with several parts broken off or missing. "What took you so long?!" she firmly complained.
"I'm sorry, can't really get the hang of these speeders." Tikala apologized, while she ignited one side of her saberstaff in a defensive position.
Psiron smiled as he took a good look at the newcomer. "So this young jedi is the one who empowers my opponent. You are an interesting one, such a powerful bond you have created. Your master never mentioned such a feat."
Tikala eyes widened at the words. "If you have my master, return him to me and you will be spared."
Briza wished Tikala was lying, but knew well enough, that she would spare even a dark side monster such as him.
Psiron laughed loudly and replied in his dry voice. "No, I am not yet finished with your former master, you can have him when there is no longer anything to be learned."
Tikala felt a chill come over her as he spoke. Sensing Psiron in the force was bad enough, seeing and hearing this corrupting monster made for an entire new way of feeling unconformable.
With no hint of a warning, Psiron unleashed force lightning onto the two siblings. Briza used her blades to defend against it, while Tikala used her blade to redirect the lightning and her off hand to absorb the electricity. She channeled it into a ball of dark energy and fired it right back at Psiron, who had to interrupt his ongoing attack to deflect the ball.
"Together we can take him." Tikala proclaimed with some confidence in her words.
"Let's murder this psycho!" Briza angrily snarled, as they both charged head on.
As a response, Psiron once again began to throw trees and other objects, including the unfortunate speeders which didn't survive the crushing impact on the ground. But the Zabrak females were too fast on their feet and nimble enough to dodge whatever object came their way. Before he could even defend himself, a green blade burned through his left shoulder, with simultaneous blue and red blades inches from decapitating the head from the body. In an instance, he surrounded himself in static darkside electricity and detonated in a surrounding shock wave, sending the two zabraks flying backwards.
Both Tikala and Briza collided with a tree and felt the pain from the lightning. "We need a strategy," Briza stated as she and her sister recovered from their impact with the woods.
"We might be able to drive Psiron out of this body." Tikala suggested, as she tried to sense if there was still a living mind inside the body, but she only sensed a twisted maelstrom of darkside corruption.
"That's stupid, I already killed the body." Briza came to the only logical conclusion. "We somehow have to disintegrate the body."
With a heavy heart Tikala agreed with a nod. "Let's see if we can find a weakness."
As they could feel Psiron was concentrating energy, they charged again, this time ready to deflect whatever came their way.
Psiron was once again smiling. "Let's see if you can survive the horrors of the darkside." As he uttered those words, he raised his arms up in the air, summoning a purplish-red field of death that centered around himself and expanded outwards a quarter mile.
Both Briza and Tikala had to abort their charge, as the area itself was attacking them with life leeching energy. They witnessed the green surroundings withering and dying, as Psiron's deathfield expanded rapidly, consuming more and more life force from the forest itself. The sisters could only try to shield themselves from the corrupting energies threatening to drain them too, a task that became increasingly more difficult.
Briza found herself in a pinch, she was becoming too tired to keep this up for long. "Any ideas jedi! I'll become a dried up corpse if we don't do something fast!"
Though Tikala did have a much better handle on her situation, she too knew this wouldn't last for long. "Briza linkup with me! We need to be as one." As she uttered these words, she lay a hand on Briza's shoulder.
Both in the physical world and in the force, Briza could hear Tikala speaking to her in a soft voice, "Trust me."
Psiron suddenly became very aware of the strange force presences merging together to become a united being. "Fascinating, I want to study you further," he said with a hint of excitement in his voice.
Combining Briza's knowledge on how a darkside deathfield is created and Tikala's natural awareness of force energies, they were able to feel the nuances in the maelstrom of death and finally see the center point of Psiron's energy flowing into the body of Qaton. Instantly Briza fired a small and precise burst of lightning into Qaton's body, the center point became unstable for a short moment, just enough time for Tikala to use a force technique, that she never thought she would use on a humanoid being, she intensified that point and ignited it with force combustion.
The body of Qaton exploded in a cascade of fire and lightning. Tikala had to use force barrier to shield them both from the infernal, that had turned the surrounding trees ablaze from the intensified heat of the blast.
As the dark corrupting energies of Psiron were lifted from the area, both zabraks felt a great relief washing over them. Like they could finally breathe properly again.
Briza collapsed on her back in sheer exhaustion. "We won." She muttered in a satisfied voice, as she looked up at the sun rising over the treetops.
Though still standing, Tikala too felt very worn out. At first, she thought of carrying Briza with the force, but her combustion stunt had taken all she had, she just felt so weak at the moment. Her second option was to carry her sister over the shoulder... but she quickly realized that she was way too small to carry her much taller and heavier sibling by physique alone.
"Tikala, call the ship for a pickup." Briza muttered a request, as she lay flat on the scorched ground.
Tikala nodded and took her comm unit and called the Silent Fang, but a bit to her surprise it was Terrow who replied. "I read you Tikala. Are you in need of a pickup?".
"We are, I'm engaging my tracking signal now. Look for a ring of burning trees. We are located in the desolate center." She added for further directions. Then she asked in a worried voice, "Terrow. How is Mathorn doing?"
"He is doing fine, I gave him a kolto injection, he is now resting in a bunk." Terrow reassured her, he followed up with a question of his own. "So did you catch the bounty hunter?"
After Terrow had listened to a quick rundown on how his sisters blew up the possessed bounty hunter, he replied in a surprised tone. "It sounded like you have just fought against something similar to a Darth. The previous reports from Darth Imperious seems much more plausible now. What do you think our odds are against Psiron in person?"
Tikala thought a bit before answering, "It's difficult to say... let's discuss this later. We are tired out."
"Understood, we will be with you shortly." Terrow uttered in a more professional manner.
