Ahsoka, chapter 5: Broken and Break Through

A/N: Just for fun to include it, written in bold is the Fictober 2023 prompt #1 on tumblr included in chapter 5: "It's not too late, let's go." prompts23.
I am not participating in the challenge, saying that I don't re-post a link on tumblr. If someone appeared there with this story / chapter, it was not me, regardless the person's name. Then the person plagiarized my idea and in that case, please inform me via private message on FanFiction.

Having cleared said things, let's continue with the story and its fighting, shall we?

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She ran towards the other direction. After about a dozen steps, Sabine felt as something was odd. Again Kanan's words echoed in her mind: Learn how to listen to people, to your surroundings and to the Force. She could not use the Force to move things, even could not use it to detect a picture of her surroundings. But her training and meditation had let her to recognize changes of atmosphere and mood, combined with her warrior's instincts. It takes time, Ahsoka had assured her, start small (ep. 3, 11:48).

Although she could see scattered flares of red and white light ahead, she could not make out details of the fighting going on in the fog, but could hear a nonrhythmic humming. Sabine felt highly alarmed and her muscles tensed. She slowed to come to an abrupt halt. Not a second to late, as her eyes could trace an all too-well-known deactivated but locked-into-place vibro knife flying pass her at the height of her upper chest and found an aim in a tree trunk to her right, blood-stained hilt extruding.

A heavy breathing followed. Although her normal seeing eye saw the wounded woman in front of her, the other one looking through her infrared eye could not.

How could this woman even have survived?, Sabine thought. Aloud, she chose words of teasing:

"Do you wanna kill me now or are you gonna thrill me? Let's find out!" She took an expecting basic and defensive stance with the lightsaber in both hands and waited.

How can I start small during such a fight, Ahsoka? Sabine could not contemplate this any further because a whirlwind of orange and red leaves started to circulate around her, confusing her vision. She heard the familiar sound of an igniting lightsaber and instinctively took two steps of backward retreating, lashing forward with the blade in defense guided by the sound. Orange and green lightblades met while the leaves suddenly calmed and rained down on both of them. Some leaves got singed by the vicinity of the blades, tracing thin smoke lines in the air and smelling of a comfortable log fire before touching the damp ground.

As they both tested their strengths in pressuring their crossing blades, Sabine felt the other woman succumb and wobble to hold her stance with her feet.

"At least", Sabine began, looking into her eyes, although the visor of the helmet prevented vice versa. She simultaneously shifted her own hilt to put some weight onto the other woman's hand which held the orange blade, "you have tried."
Having put some more distance between their bodies and their blades, the movement made them go up and down alongside a bit. Sabine used the distraction to change swiftly from a two-handed grip into a single one, using her free right hand to grip her opponent's wrist and twist it to the outside. The orange blade made a downward half-circled swoop between them and instantly burnt some more leaves. Then it switched off and fell to the ground a few steps away.

To Sabine's utter surprise, there was no try in reacting. She still held Ezra's ignited blade in her left, and the woman's twisted, upheld arm in her right. No force push, no physical attempts to brake out.

The woman just gave in and knelt side-ways before Sabine, thus avoiding a dislocated shoulder joint, and breathed heavily. The weight drew Sabine a bit down and slightly forward for not letting go of the grip. Something was going on totally wrong, but Sabine could not name it.

Within moments, the remaining color of the woman's face before her had vanished and her muscles went limp. Sabine felt a sudden foreboding of horror of which she hesitated to immerse any further, and switched off Ezra's blade on pure instinct.

"Avenge … the witches' foul … conjurations", the wounded woman hissed with interrupted and labored words.

"What? What do you …", Sabine still tried to figure out.

"Promise me!"

Sabine could feel the life leaving the body she held and relented: "I promise."

With that, the woman nodded once, closed her eyes and exhaled one last time. Because Sabine still held her wrist, the body plummeted to the side, half falling to the ground and half leaning against her lower legs. Sabine gentle turned the upheld arm of the corpse and slowly laid it by. A few moments long Sabine stood in shock without moving or knowing what to do.

A flash of white and red light through the fog together with a familiar humming brought Sabine back to her senses and why she was here in the first place. She strode a few steps aside to retrieve the woman's lightsaber and fastened it on her belt, where usually Ezra's would be. This one she still kept in her left and spurted forward. This time it only took her a few strides until her infrared eye clearly showed her the figure of her master together with the two lightsabers. What's up here about the lack of body warmth?, she thought.
The answer was presented to her on arrival of the two other combatants.

Sabine knew that her master had fought against a whirling, now unclasped circular double-lightsaber before and had won. She did not interfere in her master's fight, did not need to do so. As she stopped a few steps away, Ahsoka found the gap in this whirling shield, quickly acting and attacking from the side, leaving a glowing line on the veiled man's chest. Instead of a singed wound, black and grayish dust erupted from the opening of the opponent's chest, whose remains disappeared into black dust with a shriek and eerie sound, his weapon falling onto the ground.

As Ahsoka turned off the blade of her lightsaber, Sabine removed her helmet to look at her master from face to face: "They are able to hide their presence."

Ahsoka turned to her and nodded, stopping Sabine's scrutiny at the lightsaber the Mandalorian woman wore at her belt. "What has happened?"

Sabine swallowed hard. "We fought. I surely react to being attacked with my own weapon, after I hit her and she disappeared. Then she lost", Sabine paused before continuing, "her life."

"Show me."

They ran back to the former second fighting scene with the corpse still laying there as being left before.

Ahsoka knelt down to lay her palm on the dead woman's cheek, while Sabine stood guard.

"May the force grant you a place to rest in eternity", she murmured.

The Togruta unfastened her gray cape and covered the corpse, using the hood to hide the face.

Rising up, Ahsoka stood in her gray tunic to look at her padawan. "Why do we have to be confronted with each other, instead of finding a way to preserve what remains? In these times, more than ever. We're losing so much of what few has left."

"One more reason to go and find Ezra," Sabine stated and wondered: "What about the card and its coordinates?"

Ahsoka nodded again. "It's not too late, let's go." She answered.

"Shouldn't we check with Huyang? Although, …"

"… we don't know if they are trying to hack or interfere in our communication." Ahsoka completed.

Sabine exhaled. "So, let's hurry up!"

They both ran towards the direction they initially had suspected to be their opponent's ground base, three switched-off lightsabers in their hands.

Morgan Elsbeth felt that the Jedi was somewhere out there and was up to disrupting her conjuring for detaining their plans. On the one hand, she also felt something was going terrible wrong. On the other hand, she had to stay within the control room of the circular Eye of Sion, controlling the data download of the coordinates which would lead them to the galaxy of Grand Admiral Thrawn's abrupt and unintentional flight, revealing to them the so called 'Pathway to Peridea'.
She reached to contact Baylan Skoll.