V

Maybe this is what it's like to be a spirit. I do feel corporeal, but more fluid than ever. The landscape us a long black corridor with walls and ceiling obscured by shifting smoke like liquid curtains of cobwebs. I breath heavily.

The being is out of my head, thank the Force! Now he's standing in front of me. Bent, shrouded, a plethora of Sith-fuel emotions, and he raises sun-colored eyes in an alienly patterned, lean human--no, Zabrak--face. I know that he is fully alive, nearly animal instead of mastermind or fleet commander; a young acolyte of the dark side only.

Dizzy a little, from the floating insubstantial reality and the intensity of the Sith's stare, I say, "I can fight you out of my consciousness again. What do you want."

He flexes his gnarl-gloved hands but I think both of us are rooted to the ground. "I am alive." His voice has a thick, sibilant formal accent; I can sense desperation or denial in it. "My Master deserted me!" All anger, hate, concentrated down into his glare.

Confused, I decide to just speak it. "You are dead."

"No! It cannot be."

"Tell me then who this master is." Confidence from unknown/familiar source, not second hand rage, shouts from me.

"Lord Sidious." He hisses. The Force tell me that this is just an alias of one Palpatine.

I allow a small smile." He was killed, by another apprentice."

"Now I know you lie!" At the final exclamation he lunges forward; I step back just dancing with defensive footwork. The landscape changes; an infinity of obsidian with silver tracking the Sith and I now makes space around us, both free, both unarmed like in a dream.

"I saw his death." I say. "I was there."

The specter jumps toward me like a hungry sandpanther. I know in a split second that such power has infected my mind, taken my knowing self to his twisted half-real plane where--it hangs, between life and death because somehow the spirit knew how to implore to its former Master, who rejected it? The physical cannot affect me here, or has here become everything? But I am no innocent.

He jumps, I step aside, I seek the Force that is slightly far away here, not so much a complimentary partner sense than a tool. It comes, sturdy and knowing.

I am not sure which of us wills it, but old lightsabers appear in our hands.

We come together like any other battle, too much like any other in fact; no new weapon-chatter and variable noise as if I am just remembering how a blue or green lightsaber feels against a red.

I get an idea just as his weapon/technique spouts another blade and I've never dealt with this before-martial arts(/dance)/swordplay-but I can deal with it now, just ramp up to his level and block catch block parry catch cut

I worm the Force into the little bits of his mind that I can know and track back through the conduits to a sure memory, where I spin and settle (somehow here my body is easier to leave to its own designs.)