Fighting with Monsters
Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2
a fanfic by Sisiutil
Chapter 9
Axel only hesitated a moment, then fired a half-dozen blaster shots at the Sith. His target's hand moved faster than Axel's eye could follow; before he even squeezed off his first shot, the man's lightsaber came to life and each subsequent blaster bolt was deflected with a flash of the bright red-hued blade.
"Do not try my patience, Mister Bergeron," the Sith said, casting a menacing glance at Axel.
The freighter pilot knew he was outmatched. He lowered his blaster until it pointed at the floor, but did not return it to its holster. Its weight in his hand was his sole source of comfort at the moment--that and the presence of Kilu only a couple of meters away from him. The Sith turned his gaze away from Axel and back to Kilu, then deactivated his lightsaber.
"M-Master?" she asked questioningly. Even during the brief firefight, she had not torn her eyes away from the Sith standing only a few meters in front of her. "Is--is it really you?"
"Ah, Kilu," the man said, his lips curling into a smile that could only be described as predatory. "What a delight it is to see you again. And to hear you call me Master. Yes, it is I."
"I... I saw you die," Kilu stammered.
"My dear girl," the man said, "have you remembered nothing of my teachings? Your eyes can deceive you; don't trust them."
"But..." Kilu said, her head slowly shaking from side to side, "Master Vax... you-you've gone over... over to..."
"The dark side?" he replied, briefly flashing a wolfish grin at her. "Yes, you can feel it, can't you? The power, Kilu--the power! It's incredible! But you'll find out for yourself soon enough. Oh, and please don't call me by my former name. Cylus Vax is dead. I... am Darth Mostrus, Lord of the Sith," he said with a slight bow.
"No..." Kilu said, her voice very nearly a whimper. "Not you... not you..."
Oh, this is SO not good, Axel thought as he watched the scene unfold with growing trepidation. Here he was, once again confronted by a Sith, and the only Jedi within several thousand light-years appeared to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The fact that the Sith in question was Kilu's former Jedi master and probably knew more about her than almost anyone else in the galaxy only made it, oh, a thousand times worse, give or take. And unlike the last time, Axel doubted that this Sith was going to walk out and obligingly position himself behind the Nomad's sub-light engine exhaust ports. His mind was whirling, trying to think of a plan, something, anything... But he silently acknowledged that he was just a freighter jockey, not a tactical wizard or anything close to it. The sweat he felt covering his body was no longer there just because of the jungle planet's oppressive heat.
"Kilu, really, don't be so childish!" Darth Mostrus chided her. "You've come so far, I really expected better of you. I've been truly impressed by how you've made it through all the trials I set in your way. Even if you did need a little help," he added, casting another glance at Axel. "Yes, a crude but effective gambit on your part, my dear," he said, still staring at the freighter pilot in a way that uncomfortably reminded Axel of the way a nexu looks at a prospective meal. "One of the oldest tricks in the book, really. Using your... feminine whiles, shall we say, to bring this... lesser being under your thrall."
Kilu blinked rapidly in response to her former master's words. "W-what...?"
"I should warn you," Mostrus went on as he placed his hands behind his back--further conveying his disdain for Axel's shooting skills--and paced slowly towards his former student. "Such crude gambits will likely no longer be as effective once you have the Sith tattoos adorning that lovely face of yours. But you'll be so powerful then, you'll have no need of them." He cast another dismissive glance at Axel. "Though I suppose he may be useful if you have an itch to scratch every now and again."
"What? No!" Kilu said, her head shaking rapidly. She turned to look anxiously at her companion. "Axel... it isn't like that!" she said plaintively.
"Relax, Kilu," Axel said in a voice that was steadier than how he felt. He kept his eyes on their adversary as he spoke to her. "He's a Sith. Lies, deceit, spreading discord--they're this guy's bread and butter. Like those old Jedi records you were told about. That was bait to draw you here."
"Oh, he is a clever one!" Darth Mostrus said, favouring Axel with a condescending grin. "I can see why you've adopted him as a pet. But despite his amusing, periodic flashes of insight, he is nothing more than a distraction," he went on, returning his full attention to Kilu. "And you must not allow distractions to interfere with your training. Which we will now resume."
"T-training?" Kilu, her mind still whirling, stammered. "No... no! I'll never train with you. I won't... I won't go over to the dark side!"
Darth Mostrus shook his head. "Kilu, Kilu, Kilu... I had hoped you would have lost some of that naïveté. You have no idea how powerful the dark side can be. But you will."
"No," Kilu said, "I won't!"
Axel, seeing that the Sith's attention was now wholly focused on his former pupil, began to quietly back away. He wasn't Force-sensitive, he couldn't see the future, but it didn't take a Jedi or a genius to see that a lightsaber duel was imminent. He wasn't sure if Kilu was a match in such a fight for her former master, even if she managed to shake off her current state of confusion. But if she could just distract the Sith long enough, Axel thought, then maybe he could sneak in a shot. Failing that, if worse came to worst, there was that curiosity in the floor that he'd noticed. He slowly, surreptitiously moved towards it.
"Yes you will," Mostrus told her, biting off each word, his dark eyes alight with zealous ferocity. "You will be my apprentice once again, Kilu Branon, and together we will return the Empire to its rightful ascendancy in the galaxy. The Force is strong in you--the dark side of the Force. Just as it was strong in your great-aunt. And in your mother..."
"NO!" Kilu said. "Th-that's a lie..."
Tears were shimmering in her eyes. Her entire body was rigid. Her hands were clenched into fists. Sweat covered her pale skin, matted her auburn hair, soaked her clothing. Even from several meters away, Axel could see her trembling. He had no idea what the bond between a Master Jedi and his apprentice was like, but he imagined it was a very close one, and seeing this perverted form of her former Master was obviously taking a toll on her. Come on, babe, pull yourself together, Axel thought as he continued to slowly, cautiously move towards the crumbling stone walls of the ancient inner building.
"A dark Jedi master died here long ago," Mostrus informed Kilu. "Quite violently. Now, ask yourself: knowing this, why would your mother bring you here as a child?" Darth Mostrus posited rhetorically. "To this place that is so redolent of the dark side? Unless it was to imbue her daughter with its essence..."
"No," Kilu said through clenched teeth. "You're lying. Shut up." Tears were running down her cheeks now.
"Think it through, Kilu," Mostrus said softly. "It's the only plausible explanation." He raised his voice. "Going somewhere, Mister Bergeron?"
Axel froze in his tracks. He should have known, he reflected, that he'd never be able to sneak by a Sith Lord. He swallowed hard. "Looks like you two have some issues to work through," he said as nonchalantly as he could manage. "Thought I'd give you some space."
"Or sneak around and shoot me in the back?" Darth Mostrus said, a mockingly amused smile on his tattooed lips.
"Leave him out of this," Kilu told her former master in a tremulous but increasingly determined voice. "This is between us. It doesn't concern him."
"Oh, well, then," Mostrus said with mock innocence, "if Mister Bergeron is no longer our concern, then he's no longer required, is he?"
The Sith reached out with his left hand towards Axel, or, more correctly, towards the decrepit stone walls of the ancient inner building that loomed behind him. There was a rumble, and then the walls began to fall over, falling towards Axel, threatening to crush him flat. Axel, no novice to reading people, had understood Mostrus' intent and was already in motion. He couldn't get out from the heavy stone's path in time, so he launched himself towards that anomaly in the floor he'd noticed earlier, his one chance, his one hope...
"AXEL!" Kilu shouted, her eyes wide with horror as she saw the walls crumbling and falling towards him with a roar like that of some ferocious beast. A thick cloud of dust arose as the crumbling, eons-old mortar was released into the air along with water vapor and plant material. With an ear-splitting crash, the thick stone wall smashed into the ground. Then an oppressive silence hung in the air of the ancient temple. Kilu ran towards the cloud of dust and steam, waving her arms to clear it away, looking for a sign, any sign of Axel, some indication that he had survived. The debris cloud began to settle, and as she scanned the rubble, Kilu saw nothing, no sign of him at all. "Axel... NO!" she yelled.
"Yes, you feel the anger, don't you?" Darth Mostrus said from behind her. As if in confirmation, Kilu whirled around and glared at him. "You feel the fear and the fury. You feel their power!" he said, clenching one fist in emphasis. "Give in to them, Kilu. Use them to strike at me!"
"You bastard...!" Kilu snarled at him.
Kilu drew her lightsaber and activated it. The bright green blade leapt from the hilt with a hiss and hummed threateningly in the quiet of the temple. Her teeth were clenched, her lips peeled back in an enraged grimace. Her chest rose and fell as she panted her breaths. Her dark brown eyes looked at her former Master with a murderous glare.
"Yesssss..." Darth Mostrus hissed at her, smiling broadly as he used the Force to sense and savour the furious rage building within her.
Somehow, through the sorrow and the fear and the anger swirling through her mind; somehow, through the emotional turmoil that threatened to pull her to the dark side from the knife's edge where she now stood; somehow, for some reason she could not begin to fathom, she heard Axel's voice. Not speaking to her through the Force, but through memory. A memory of only a few days earlier, when their lives had yet again been on the line. A memory of his hand touching her shoulder. A memory of the adoring, confident look in his eyes. A memory of the certainty in his voice when he'd spoken. And especially a memory of the words themselves.
You're a Jedi. I believe in you.
And as Kilu heard the words again, those simple words that had meant more to her than she'd been able to tell him, her years of training came back to her in a rush. She closed her eyes and took one long, deep breath. She felt her sorrow, and her fear, and her anger... and she let them fall away. Then she opened her eyes and regarded the Sith Lord with an impassive expression and a look in her eye that was as cold as ice, and every bit as hard.
"Kilu," Darth Mostrus said with a sigh. "I just want you to know, I'm not angry. I'm just... disappointed."
He drew his lightsaber and activated it. The bright red blade threw its light upon the dark, dank inner walls of the ancient temple, turning them the color of blood.