The smell of ozone filled the air, acrid and angry, and screams echoed across the ground, across the radio, across the Force. She was on Balmorra, and the Republic and Empire had met in the worst possible place. An open field, the only effective cover provided by portable force fields, the lightsabers of Jedi and Sith, and the craters left behind when artillery or bombers hit a formation. Shrapnel from destroyed fighters rained from the sky, and all around Linora, people died. Imperial soldiers. Republic troopers. Sith. Jedi. Master Shan had vanished from her side, rushing off to break an Imperial armored charge against Republic infantry. She and three other padawans remained on the front’s left flank. There was little to do but defend, deflecting blaster bolts so that the trooper with the squad assault weapon could continue firing in relative safety. Then she felt it. The edge of her perception. The Sith was trying not to be perceived. Linora called out a warning to the others. In a hail of motion, three troopers fell, the crimson saberstaff slicing through their armor as if it were air and leaving them lifeless before they hit the ground. The Sith was a man, or perhaps one of the larger Pureblood women - nearly seven feet tall, broad, built for power but able to move with inhuman quickness and utterly silently. She wondered for a moment if that was assisted by technology or the Force - possibly both; the Sith did love their enhancements. The Sith’s mask was black steel, two slits revealing glowing red eyes. This was a Sith lord. He did not speak as he turned to engage the padawans. He shot left first, toward Master Orgus’s padawan. Human. Male. Dark skin, playful eyes. The weakest of the three of them. The Sith’s certainty of that washed over them all like a wave. But Orgus’s padawan got his lightsaber up in time, blocked the blow. Linora activated her second saber, its blue blade igniting alongside the green of her favorite, and moved to engage. Ashara, the Togruta with her yellow saberstaff, started to circle the Sith. The next few moments were a blur. The Sith was faster than any of them, terrifyingly strong, with immense reach, but three well-trained padawans were able to hold him at bay. Mostly. She could see Orgus’s padawan’s arms weakening, already exhausted from covering the SAW, and feel the ache in her own shoulders as the Sith drove his saberstaff again and again onto her defenses. They were doomed. She knew that. This was the moment they were going to die. Understanding made acceptance easier. There was need only to fear the unknown. There is no death. There is the Force. When her death could be accepted, so too could the pain in her arms, and she pressed the Sith with renewed vigor. Drove him back for a moment, before he changed tactics. She felt the darkness draw itself around the Sith an instant before he released one hand’s grip on his saberstaff. It was against Orgus’s padawan that he sent the lightning, purple bolts arcing around his lightsaber. Most of it was still absorbed by the weapon, but, weakened as he was, what remained was enough to throw him backward, to fling his lightsaber from his hand. He landed at an odd angle. There was not time to check him, even to spare a thought for sensing whether he lived or not. Having tasted blood, the Sith seemed rejuvenated, and turned his full attention to the remaining padawans. As much as her serenity allowed Linora to ignore the pain in her arms, she knew, in the part of her mind that was not full of the Force, that muscle and tendon would give way eventually. Soon. Even if the Sith’s superior skill did not allow him to find an opening before that. Ashara saved her, forcing the Sith to give up on breaking past her defenses with lightning instants before she would have been forced to lower one of her sabers. She saved Ashara, managing a glancing blow against the Sith’s side that slowed him just enough for Ashara to get her saberstaff back into position. Cleverness and desperation kept them alive, but they were well past the expected expiration date of those advantages, and they’d been fighting the Sith for less than three minutes. Then the world was wind and fire and light. The Sith reeled back, and a voice spoke in Linora’s mind at the same moment it spoke aloud to Ashara. Stay back. A single lightsaber, blue, flashed against the Sith lord’s saberstaff, and the Sith lord stumbled. Lightning shot from his fingers, but Master Shan raised one gloved hand, drawing the lightning in and snuffing it out. The Sith lord’s certain rage turned to fear when he recognized the face of the Grand Master of the Jedi Order. There was rage in Master Shan, but it was put aside. The Sith lord had harmed, tried to kill, her apprentice. Had severely wounded Master Orgus’s padawan. But that was not why the Sith would die. The Sith would die because it was the will of the Force that he die today. Master Shan swatted away another blast of lightning, caught a trooper the Sith tried to throw at her in the air and gently put him down, all the while never ceasing her advance. Each blow of her lightsaber pushed the Sith’s saberstaff downward, to the left, until it was entirely out of position. Desperate, his fear the only thing left to empower him, he tried to throw the ground itself at Master Shan. The Jedi master stepped through the cloud of rock and dust, and it did not touch her. An Imperial fighter screamed overhead, fired at them all. Master Shan’s lightsaber flashed again. The bolt from the fighter was deflected, ripping through the ship’s own engines. In that same motion, her blade sliced through the Sith’s neck, and he fell. The will of the Force was done. “Collect your friend,” Master Shan said. “Make your way to the medical tents. He is wounded, but should survive with treatment.” She started to walk away, paused, allowed her serenity to slip just enough for Linora to see her pride, her concern, her fierce affection. “You did well, here, but your work is done for now.”
