XVIII
The foxfire flew from Kun's hands. Swift!
Luke stepped right, pulled his lightsaber, and deflected the blue tangled nests of energy as he could bullets--slash, lunge. The not-quite-lightening energy crackled and caught along the green lightsaber's length.
Luke rose from the lunge with a fierce smile of unexpected success. He tightened what of his resolve was keeping the pure Force energy occupied with the escaping ions of the lightsaber blade. He took two steps, cocked the blade with the deep buzz next to his right ear, and swung at Exar Kun.
Kun's face exuded the fear of one who has given advantage to his enemy. He drew a long lightsaber haft of his own and leapt away with flourish and grace, but a flicker of--uncertainty, not fear--in his sense.
Beneath Luke's feet through the thick windowpane the Jedi saw people, lying on their sides in the changed gravity, dashing to hide behind their decorated walls. Kun still knew them, holding them under a remnant of sway, but he did not own the Force inside them.
"Only final rest will give you any fulfillment now, Dark Lord." said Luke. "You are a ghost."
"I will live!" screamed Kun, and he came for Luke with the same tangled energy coursing into curling existence along his own sword, eating up and deleting the blue blade-structure as it activated.
His attacks suddenly stabbed close for Luke. The Jedi stepped back, wrenching his breathing from the brink of shallow. He kept stepping back and making the lightsabers shriek with rare, careful contact.
Now Luke sensed that the borrowed energy in these blades could condemn with touch. The small hairs raised on the back of his neck and his arms. With a mental surge and battlecry he banished thought and snarled. Consciously now he dropped into the Force.
It whispered of where the lightsaber strikes would come and where his feet and balance should work with the geometric terrain on the side of the skyscraper. It whispered of for how long Exar Kun had been a whirlwind through its dark facets.
It screamed of confidence, of rushing-forward, of alone/together.
For a few beating steps they fenced with the lightsabers as if three-fourths of the conflict were not entirely unphysical. But Luke knew how the true battle would be won. He heard only one set of humming, and no clashes. Exar Kun knew too--
Kun reached in to Luke's thoughts and dredged up the fear.
This is too much for me...
At the same time Kun got hold of gravity and flung it almost-right.
Luke fell through the broken window of his own apartment and hit the main room's far wall with Kun hurtling down after him, above him, coming closer--
Luke stabbed out and the green-web lightsaber rent the Dark Lord's frame like solar wind through a nebula.
Master Skywalker's willpower and resolve flared into a diamond point which chased the dark spirit around and around the zephyrs of their battle.
Kun gasped in the back of his brain.
Luke cast out to the Force, How do I defeat this?
I send the spirit back to the Force. It would be a service.
On the physical plane, Luke lay slumped against the wall, expression twitching into occasional teeth-bare grimaces.
"I refute you," He whispered. His mind-power shouted and climbed through the metaphysical on the heels of the stab.
Master Skywalker felt himself peeling through layers of time as through the skin of an onion. The tears sparkled in inner-space.
Exar Kun would not die complacent. Even 'now', trapped in his shields of time, he threw lightning of pure emotion at Luke. Rage. Frustration. Yea, jealously poured from a personality which Luke dared not touch as more than this enemy.
In the parts of his thoughts which he would only review outside the battle, he feared knowing Kun's reasons to fight so long.