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Post by YodaBreaker on Nov 13, 2006 18:16:53 GMT -5
After a four-month hiatus, here's the fifteenth installment (yes, this means the story's getting close to finished!):
Tyranus backed away from the encroaching white bulb, his eyes narrowing even as his pupils dilated with excitement – or was it fear? He swung his lightsaber slowly back and forth along the creature's rim of eyes to assess how it would track his weapon's path. Its eyes remained fixed on Tyranus, immobile in their sockets. However, it altered its trajectory, heading toward Tyranus with a more deliberate (if halting) gait.
Suddenly, one of the legs closest to Tyranus reared up and stabbed downward, as if to spear the Sith Lord. Tyranus jumped backward half a meter, able to evade the preternatural speed of the bulb's leg only by calling on the Force to aid his movements. Still, he probed the bulb's defenses, its attack patterns, its movement style, using the Unifying Force to understand the creature and anticipate its future actions.
The bulb's legs, in turn, continued their blindingly fast probing and slashing attacks against Tyranus, barely admitting the possibility of a counterattack. Its sharply pointed legs created a whirlwind of mud and water that caked Tyranus's trousers and tunic. Its mindless onslaught would not admit the Force to dissuade it from its murderous course.
Nevertheless, though he was forced to retreat time and time again from the tree holding Sifo-Dyas, Tyranus soon enough noted a number of weaknesses in the creature's attacks. Their unthinking, unyielding ferocity slowed the bulb's forward progress so much that a single burst of Force speed allowed the Sith Lord to put meters of space between him and the threateningly thrashing legs of the bulb. Once that distance opened, it was closed again by Tyranus's humming crimson column of light, which sheared off the three legs of the bulb closest to him. He used the Force to recall his lightsaber's hilt to his hand right before the bulb crashed flat into the mud, its remaining legs splayed out, flailing furiously for purchase in the sodden ground.
In a single fluid motion, Tyranus leaped across the distance separating him and the bulb, landing atop the bulb and swiping his lightsaber across its entire girth. With a sickening thud, the top of the bulb fell into the mud, the squish of its sticky bloodsap unable to save it from being cleft in twain. Tyranus gazed defiantly at Sifo-Dyas, eyes narrowing as he felt the Jedi Master's thoughts percolate into his mind.
You see? You should have listened to me, Sifo-Dyas taunted Tyranus through the Force. After all, I had to learn a bit about this planet's wildlife to survive. Too bad your insipid Sith pride wouldn't let you learn a little something from the insurance policy you were sent to kill.
“Enough of your prattle, fool Jedi!” Tyranus spat from atop the bulb's dead hulk. “Your body will soon enough be fodder for your precious wildlife!” With that, he sprang at Sifo-Dyas, his mad flight only able to drive him near the foot of the tree that housed the Jedi Master.
Oh, how quickly you forget your lessons, Dooku. As Sifo-Dyas thought those words, another bulb detached from the tree, and Sifo-Dyas nearly floated on top of it, riding it as its eyes and legs flashed to life much more quickly through the influence of the Force.
Ordinarily, the Dark Lord would have been ready for another attack from such an opponent and would have dispatched it with ease. However, this time the bulb's movements were more deliberate, purposeful, as if the Master of the Light and the bulb had joined their consciousnesses into a single mind, working together to bring Tyranus down. Each time Tyranus lunged to hack off one of the bulb's razor-sharp legs, Sifo-Dyas flopped his belly on top of the bulb, reaching down with his lightsaber to parry Tyranus's thrusts. The deflection opened up a corridor for the bulb's legs to sail through, shearing down the length of Tyranus's tunic at least once, though failing to draw his blood. And that leg then retreated with preternatural speed before Tyranus's blade could slice through it, guided back through Sifo-Dyas's mental efforts.
Tell me, oh Dark One, how will you ever explain to your Master that you were defeated by a walking tree stump? Sifo-Dyas asked through his mind as Tyranus lunged his saber vainly through the one of bulb's eyes, the bloodsap closing the wound even as it was partially cauterized by the intense heat of the lightsaber. The bulb responded to the wound by thrashing a leg out at Tyranus's body, knocking him to the ground and cutting a shallow but half-meter long gash down the length of his chest as he fought to regain control of his lightsaber.
This is the end for you, my friend, Sifo-Dyas projected into Tyranus's mind as the bulb reared up two legs to impale his head and abdomen. But the wily Tyranus tucked into a ball, rolled underneath the bulb, and ended up directly under its pincers. The Sith Lord thrust his lightsaber through the bulb's maw and cut a neat and wide cross through its buccal orifice and throat. The bulb let forth a hideously distorted scream before shuddering and then becoming utterly still. The lack of anticipated motion was enough to send Sifo-Dyas tumbling off the bulb and into the mire, his cloak acquiring a fresh layer of crime as he lay half-dazed on his back and heels, as Tyranus rolled out from underneath the bulb.
With a self-satisfied smirk, Tyranus rose slowly from his crouch, covered from head to toe in brown and green muck, which had a particular affinity for his formerly gray hair. He glanced at the bulb before pushing it back with a casual flick of his wrist, sending it toppling into the earth with a satisfying splat. As the Jedi Master clambered up from the mud beneath him, assuming a defensive Soresu ready position, Tyranus smirked and casually muttered, “You were saying something about the end of you? About insipid Sith pride?
“Indeed, it will be that pride and its bearer that will put an end to your miserable existence, once and for all.”
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awesomejedi
40 Point Warrior
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Post by awesomejedi on Nov 13, 2006 22:56:56 GMT -5
Very Cool!!! MC
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Post by YodaBreaker on Nov 19, 2006 14:00:44 GMT -5
Thanks, awesomejedi! I'm glad you're still able to follow and enjoy the story, even after I took such a long break from it. Here's installment #16:
Again, Sifo-Dyas let Tyranus take the initiative, the Jedi's sapphire blade parrying the Sith's quick, precise, rubied Makashi cuts. Slowly, Tyranus backed Sifo-Dyas toward a tree bordering the bog and crawling with the meter-long Force-sensitive lizards. The Jedi Master felt the attention of those lizards directed toward him and the Sith Lord, the violent clashing of their blades drawing the gaze of nearly all the animals with eyes in a twenty-meter radius. Sifo-Dyas also wondered what Tyranus had up his sleeve, even as his back thudded against the bark of the lizard-filled tree.
With a dramatic flourish, Tyranus slashed from left to right, as it to remove Sifo-Dyas's head from his shoulders. Sifo-Dyas anticipated the move and ducked out of the way of the stroke, stepping toward the bog on his right. You missed, he bored into Tyranus's mind. What is it that you've got against the trees of this world, anyway? he added grimly.
“And just what makes you think I missed?” Tyranus vociferously retorted as the top of the tree toppled toward the bog, sending a scurry of lizards into the bog and its banks. Frantically, they scrambled away from the water's edge, desperate to avoid the reach of the predators hidden under the water. Sifo-Dyas momentarily opened his mind to the lizards, joining in their group consciousness to guide them to the safest paths up the bog's shores.
But a handful of the lizards landed too close to the bog for even the Master of the Light's mental ministrations to be of use. The head of the bog monster jetted up from the surface of the waters, jaws gaping as it darted after the lizards, scooping them up in its jaws. The lizards that managed to clamber partway up the shores of the bog soon found themselves immobilized by its dark side Force probes of terror.
And those Force probes also doubled over Sifo-Dyas with fear, who was unable to sever his psychic link with the lizards' Force consciousness in time. Tyranus used the opening into Sifo-Dyas's psyche to force his own thoughts into the Jedi Master's mind. Now, my old friend, you will see just how much I have learned about the wildlife of this planet in my short stay here. Tyranus amplified the terror in Sifo-Dyas's mind, which slowly attracted the bog monster's attention to the Jedi's struggling frame. But once its attention had been captured, the bog monster's neck snapped toward Sifo-Dyas, meaning to make a meal of him.
However, Sifo-Dyas enacted a mental mirror through the Force, reflecting the terror being directed at him by the bog monster and Tyranus back to its sources. The bog monster shrieked in a most hideous and grating manner, its vocalizations assaulting the auditory sense organ of all organisms in a hundred-meter radius. The monster then slunk under the surface of the bog, the quickening waves and ripples lapping heartily at the bog's banks betraying the speed at which the monster fled the scene.
Almost inaudible under this cacophony were Tyranus's own cries of pain. He grabbed at his head, unable to believe that his own mental machinations were being perverted against him even as he reeled in horror at the abominable visions being forced across his mind. Sifo-Dyas staggered up, his gaze fixed on Tyranus's wracked form, continuing to turn the stream of frightening visions back onto the mind that originated it.
Abruptly, Sifo-Dyas shuttered his mind, allowing Tyranus's brain to recover from the waves upon waves of disturbing imagery that had been forced back into it. The Jedi Master regarded the Sith Lord with a measure of pity, though he still taunted Tyranus through the Force. So, what do you think of the terror that the dragonsnake forces into the minds of its prey? Do you still think that monster a worthy pet for a Sith?
Tyranus knew he had been bested, though he would never admit it openly. Far from withering away and decaying in the dank Dagobah climate, Master Sifo-Dyas had adapted to the bestial ways of the planet. The Jedi had come to live in harmony with the varieties of life on the planet, rather than trying to dominate it as a Sith would. He had learned to survive symbiotically instead of striving to remake the land as he saw most fit. Through every privation, the loss of all dignity bestowed by civilization's hallowing of rank and prestige, Sifo-Dyas had clung steadfastly to the light, rather than falling to the dark.
And that light had stood its ground in its battles against the Dark Lord. It had kept the Jedi Master's knowledge of the lightsaber fresh in the utter absence of a suitable dueling partner. It had kept him strong and nimble in the ways of the Force. And no matter what dark strategies Darth Tyranus attempted to break the Master of the Light, the light stood its ground. It overcame the dark, washed it out in a blazing glory. It refused to be extinguished, and its mere presence threatened to extinguish the darkness that had been festering in Tyranus for a year and a half.
But Tyranus felt Sifo-Dyas opening his mind again, creating a psychic breach through his Jedi defenses by his mockeries of the Sith lord. The darkness in him swelled at that opening, made him resolve to blow out the light by the one means that had proven itself successful in taming and dominating that light. Feeding the growing rage inside him, Tyranus attempted to take advantage of that opening in Sifo-Dyas's mind. He used his considerable mental powers to force his way into the Jedi's mind, just as he had done on Coruscant. Tyranus would make the Jedi pay for his insolence. For his unwillingness to be snuffed out so that the Dark Lord could complete his nefarious destiny.
And just as on Coruscant, Sifo-Dyas doubled over in cerebral pain, the waves of disturbing imagery flooding into his mind through the gateway he had opened time and again for Tyranus. However, this time, he had invited the Dark Lord's malign mental machinations, had goaded Tyranus into trying to overwhelm him again with the images that had enslaved him before. Slowly, Sifo-Dyas bore up under the tremendous psychic pain, his posture becoming erect again. Tyranus's eyes widened, unable to believe the resistance the Master of the Light assembled against his onslaught. The Dark Lord redoubled his efforts to dominate Sifo-Dyas's mind, hurling wave after wave of increasingly vicious and tormenting engrams into the Jedi Master's consciousness, designed to terrorize the body as much as the mind.
Yet Sifo-Dyas continued to rise, almost as if strengthened by the vile scenes Tyranus thrust violently into his consciousness. A pity that you didn't learn the first time, Dooku. Those words acted as a tremendous psychic reflector, mirroring the dark images away from Sifo-Dyas's mind and back into Tyranus's. Tyranus found himself unable to break the horrific circuit, held under the thrall of his own mind's baneful imagery as he collapsed to his knees.
For the first time since he levitated himself onto the branches of the tree, Sifo-Dyas spoke with his own voice to Tyranus, even as his face was obviously screwed up with great meditative effort. "You see, Dooku, your precious dragonsnake taught me many lessons about how to defeat your mental manipulations. I will never be your slave again. As you experience for yourself the horrors you forced into my mind, I will tell you how I set myself free from them forever."
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Post by YodaBreaker on Nov 27, 2006 22:37:07 GMT -5
Installment #17 of Sifo-Dyas lovin':
"For the first few hours after you dumped me here, I lay barely conscious in the Dagobah mud. The first thing I truly remember was the swarm of nudj around me - the tree lizards you used as bait for the dragonsnake. But they weren't interested in eating me - no, they were drawn to the Force within me.
"The nudj are apparently a species of Force-sensitive lizards. They survive this predatory environment by linking their minds together through the Force to form a giant consciousness that senses far beyond what any single nudj can. Their combined perceptive powers allow them to create a map that weaves visual, auditory, olfactory, thermal, and magnetic information into a unified tapestry that maps out hundreds of square kilometers of the planet's surface at once. In this way, they can all perceive predatory threats and move themselves to safety before the predator even knows any one nudj is there.
"Unless, of course, that predator is also Force-sensitive. That's where your beloved dragonsnake comes in: it detects the use of the Force and hones in on any concentration of Force energies it can find. However, sometimes it can't physically reach the nudj it has sensed through the Force. In that case, it reflexively uses its own type of Force power to disrupt the nudj communications network. This power seems to be dark sided in origin, as it floods the minds of all active Force users around it with horrifying, unspeakable sensations.
"Just like what you used to torture my mind into submission.
"And they work, too. When assaulted with the dragonsnake's Force blasts, the nudj either drop from the trees or freeze utterly, making them easy prey for the dragonsnake's ravenous jaws. It scoops up as many nudj as it needs to satisfy its appetite, then it dips itself back beneath the black surface of the water, swimming away to places unknown.
"Fortunately for me, the nudj crowded around me to provide a shield against the dragonsnake's Force manipulations. It was as if they could sense how vulnerable I was, and they took it upon themselves to protect me. They cloaked me under their web of Force sensations, and the first time a dragonsnake reared its ugly head toward me, over a hundred of them rolled me away bodily from the banks of the bog. Several of them sacrificed their lives to ensure I made it beyond the reach of the dragonsnake's neck, barely able to help them as I was.
"However, they could not keep me protected forever; they still had to forage for insects and moss to sustain themselves. Though they attempted to keep a rotating guard duty over me, as I regained consciousness, then strength - from the grubs and roots they pushed my way - I insisted through the Force that they go about their usual business. They had done quite a service for me, but I reasoned that their continuing presence near such a strong Force source would only make them more vulnerable to the ravages of a deeply hungered dragonsnake.
"And soon enough, my fears proved true. After regaining my strength, I wandered a bit too closely to the banks of the bog, my compliment of nudj bodyguards nearly swarming over me. Without warning, waves of horrific images flew through my mind, sending me to my knees and making me cry out with pain. The poor nudj, torn among their desire to flee, their perceived duty to protect me, and the assaultive nature of the images roiling through their collective mind, were frozen in terror and dread. I could do nothing but writhe with my compatriots, ready for the dragonsnake's strike to end us all.
"But obviously, that end never came. A behemoth sac of protoplasm called a swamp slug rose up behind the dragonsnake and devoured it whole. As the swamp slug approached, I felt the disturbing images bounce off my mind - they didn't leave me entriely, but it felt as if they were redirected from me back toward the dragonsnake. The swamp slug also detects Force usage, though it seems as attuned to the use of dark side Force powers as the dragonsnake is to the light side of the Force.
"The dragonsnake collapsed under the psychic weight of the gruesome images playing doubly back into its mind, leaving it defenseless as it slid into the swamp slug's maw. At that moment, I understood how to defeat those that would use such imagery to subjugate others. Instead of fighting it, trying to suppress it, to make it go away, I learned to embrace it - then shunt it directly back to its source.
"I realized that the use of any Force power opens the mind to any other Force user, to a certain degree. A skillful Force user with untoward desires - like you, Dooku - can widen that opening and break his or her way into the psyche of the person who first used the Force. He or she can read the first Force user's mind to the degree that it was opened to the Force in the first place, and then he or she can use that opening to take control of that mind.
"The problem is that the opening then goes both ways. The minds of both the original Force user and the one seeking to enter the original user's mind must be open for the Force to pass through. And if that original user can acknowledge - embrace - those Force currents that the other user is employing to place the disturbing images, the original user can then redirect those Force currents back through the mental opening of the other user.
"And so I quickly learned how to redirect the images the dragonsnake tried to feed into my mind through the Force right back at it. To be sure, it was difficult the first few times, and I barely walked away from one particularly ravenous dragonsnake's Force horrors. But over time, it became almost automatic, like reflexively throwing a lightsaber block or parry. And soon enough, the dragonsnakes all knew not to go near me, lest the horrors they sought to visit on the minds of their prey be returned back to them doubly, trebly, or worse!
"I tried to teach the nudj my defensive trick, to implant it into their collective consciousness. But they didn't seem to grasp it instinctively, and I couldn't use my words or the Force to drive it home to them. Nevertheless, I keep trying, as a way to pay them back for the care they showed me when I was defenseless.
"And I expand my teaching efforts to all the creatures of Dagobah, so that they may not live in fear of the ravages of the dragonsnake. The sleen - long, ground-dwelling lizards - the spotlight sloth, the gnarltrees in which I perched during our battle, the knobby white spiders that issue forth from the gnarltree roots when they wish to reproduce, and the bat-like bogwings that fly above and below the arboreal canopy - all have received my tutelage in how to defeat the dragonsnake, to varying degrees of success. But they all now know the Living Force's ability to turn back the darkness of the dragonsnake's Force powers, keeping them alive as the dragonsnakes starve. True, this means the dragonsnakes may grow hungry and mean before dying out utterly, but that is the price one must pay to eradicate their evil from this planet.
"But Dooku, as I have told you this, I have seen into the deep recesses of your mind. I see your fates, the possible paths your life will take, the threads of destiny that you have tried to hide from me so assiduously. And this is the moment, the choice that will decide your place in posterity. Will you be remembered as a valiant hero who turned from his sinister ways in his last days, or as a long-lived traitor, fated to betray and destroy all that he once held dear?"
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Ben Kenobi
40 Point Warrior
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Post by Ben Kenobi on Dec 3, 2006 19:20:19 GMT -5
It took forever to read, but I caught up on all of the installments. Great job on them, I must say. It indeed was worth the wait. Thanks for writing them.
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Post by YodaBreaker on Dec 3, 2006 21:42:47 GMT -5
Ben Kenobi, thank you so much for perservering through my long absence. This is the 18th and last main installment of this story, though a short epilogue is in the works.
At that, Sifo-Dyas closed his mind to Darth Tyranus, terminating the Force horror feedback loop that had crippled Tyranus. Tyranus's legs buckled and failed him, leaving him to splash chest-first into the mire. Slowly, painfully, he rose from the muck, even as it dripped from him anew, even as his mental faculties returned to him through the fog of utter exhaustion. Sifo-Dyas looked on him warily.
Tyranus's defiant, baritone growl broke the silence between the two men. "Oh? And just what has your fevered mind divined of my fate?"
Sifo-Dyas simply shook his head before replying. "I call you Dooku because I still sense the good in you. I can see how you can turn back from the ways of the Sith, how you can reclaim your Jedi heritage.
"But it will not be an easy road, and it will..."
Dooku testily interrupted. "Save your righteous prattle, Jedi. I will not have you attempt to 'save' me so that I can rejoin the decadent Jedi order and serve a tottering Republic. My destiny lies on a path toward remaking the galaxy's ponderous bureaucracy into an ordered, efficient, and responsive machine, servile to my will."
"That is one path before you, yes. But to follow it, you would have to fail in the mission that sent you here."
Tyranus thingyed a quizzical eyebrow. "How so?"
"We have battled back and forth, trading blows with both lightsabers and the Force. If we kept up our fight, you might find an opening and exploit it, striking me down for your Master. But if you do that, you will never forgive yourself."
Tyranus glanced askance at Sifo-Dyas. "I hardly believe I would need to forgive myself for ridding myself of the last reminder of what I used to be."
"Perhaps in time, that would be true. Given another five or so years of deadening your soul with the bludgeon of Sith teachings, you very well might be dead enough to yourself that you would be capable of such a deed without remorse. But your Master has not driven your humanity from you fully yet. More than a sliver of your old compassion remains in you, no matter how fervently you attempt to bury it.
"And because you are not yet inured to those feelings that the Sith consider 'weak,' my death would not have the effect you intend. Instead of ridding you of the last nettle on your conscience, it would solidify it. My death would become the grain of sand that your ruminative mind would coat over into a pearl of remorse and regret. And a beautiful pearl it would be to me, indeed, as it would force you to renounce your Sith ways when your Master makes one too many demands upon your nascent cruelty.
"You would rise up against Sidious and put up a noble fight against him, valiantly exposing his corruption of the Senate in the face of an unbelieving Jedi Council. Though your actions would lead Sidious to strike you down personally, the Jedi would finally be awakened from their slumber and would confront the Chancellor once and for all. The Jedi would lose a measure of prestige in the public's eye for their seemingly unprovoked aggression against the leader of the Republic, but the furor would be short-lived as the details of the conspiracy you would have unearthed became public knowledge, vindicating the Jedi's apparent assassination. And you would be remembered as the hero of the Republic, having sacrificed yourself to bring the dominion of the Sith to light - and to an end."
Tyranus scoffed at these notions. "Oh, such outlandish and romantic fantasies you conjure for me..."
Sifo-Dyas steeled his gaze and voice at Tyranus. "I'm not finished yet.
"Doubtless, you envision the future that results from your arrogant defiance of your Master, returning empty-handed from Dagobah and confronting your Master with your willfulness. You may even apply some of the techniques you learned here to force your Master into a stalemate. Your Master will respect your skills all the more, but he will become more wary of you, and will divorce himself from you. Both of you will work against each other behind the scenes politically - him in his role as Supreme Chancellor, you in your newfound role as the Senator from Serenno.
"Eventually, your Master will confront you. But this time, the confrontation will happen diplomatically on the Senate floor, and you will have behind you the full weight of the forces you two propose to array against the Republic. The Chancellor will have a vote of no-confidence leveraged against him, a vote your puppets in the Senate will orchestrate to avoid a costly, all-out civil war. And thus will you use your mentor's favorite political machinations against him, ousting him from his office to secure for yourself.
"Broken, Palpatine will duel with you in the Chancellor's office to repay your treachery. You will fight each other to a stalemate again - a fatal one. You will impale him through the heart, and he will sever your head from your body. Again, you will be regaled as a hero of the Republic, albeit posthumously.
"Either way, you die. And the ways of the Sith will die with you for a very long time."
Tyranus could do nothing but stare, broken at the erstwhile Jedi Master's hands. How could he have known? The competing visions that had bedeviled him for years, the futures he had suppressed from his Master's most intrusive mental probes - all laid bare, plain, obvious. The things he had struggled to block from his own consciousness, lest they deter him from pursuing his monomaniacal ambitions - forced to his consciousness, repeated to him, and followed through to their logical conclusions. For him, the way of the Force was but a cruel farce.
Sifo-Dyas gave his former friend a compassionate glance. "Apparently, your Unifying Force is good for something, after all. As much as I had complained that it seemed to do nothing in the moment, I now see how its revelations about the past and the future can influence your actions strongly.
"And by touching your understanding of it, I believe I have a third way for you to follow. One that will let you live a long life, albeit one that I would not ordinarily condone. You will still die at the hands of a Sith, but your years will be prolonged, and I will not have to suffer your loss until I have more strength to bear it.
"As much as I detest what you have become, the path to which you have apprenticed yourself, after touching your mind, I now recall the nobility and the strength you gave to the Jedi Order for so many years. I remember the support you gave me in my darkest hours, and how your sage counsel saved many a Padawan from falling prey to their passions."
Sifo-Dyas walked toward the felled tree by the bog, breaking off a branch with his bare hand. The sharpness of the bark made his palm bleed profusely, and he winced as he pressed his lightsaber into his bloodied hand. Then he tossed the lightsaber at Tyranus's prostrate feet. It made a marshy splash as it landed.
"Take this to your master. I have no further need of it - my strength with the Force now allows me to fight any adversaries that come my way. And I have seen how it will save your life. The blood on the hilt will convince your master that my body was lost to one of the myriad creatures of the bog."
Sifo-Dyas paused for what felt like hours. His eyes regarded Tyranus with alterate looks of pity, contempt, and nostalgia. Tyranus looked back at Sifo-Dyas, absorbing his gazes with increasingly pained expressions. Finally, Sifo-Dyas found the answers he was looking for written on Tyranus's face. The Jedi Master turned abruptly on his his heels and spoke his parting words to the wind.
"Now, depart from me, Lord Tyranus."
And with that, Sifo-Dyas strode away from the fallen tree, from the depths of the bog, and from the wracked body of Lord Tyranus. The form of the Master of the Light faded into the mists of Dagobah, leaving Tyranus to struggle to his feet - and to regain his composure. Amid the calls and cries of the Dagobah wildlife, he straggled back to his ship, thoroughly covered in that world's grime, the ruddied lightsaber of Sifo-Dyas clutched tightly in his hand.
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Post by YodaBreaker on Dec 10, 2006 11:11:00 GMT -5
And now, the epilog to close this story out...
EPILOG "As you requested, Master: his lightsaber." "And with his genetic material splashed over it. An excellent find." "Did the analyses reveal it to be of sufficient quality to permit its use in the cloning process?" "Yes. Take the lightsaber to Kamino. Have the cloners begin the quadruple-speed experiment. The donor's Force sensitivity should aid their work immensely. All we require is his body; all the better for us if his mind be left vacant." "Indeed, my Lord. His blood will serve many a purpose for us in the coming storm." "Quite so, Lord Tyranus. Quite so." ~~~ Ten years later...As the fires of the Clone Wars spread throughout the galaxy, the last member of a rogue sect of Jedi from Bpfassh splashed his pod into the turgid waters of Dagobah. He clambered up the side of the pod as its hatch opened, letting the swamp into its depths and swallow it. The Dark Jedi reached the tip of the pod while the waters ravaged the delicate electronics of the pod, sizzling and snapping them to impotence. Just before the last vestige of the pod's hull disappeared beneath the bog's surface, the Dark Jedi made a heroic leap from the middle of the water to its banks may meters away. Amid the surprised protests of the myriad denizens of the teeming world, his footfalls quickened as he fled toward the nearest glade of gnarltrees. Long after his form disappeared into the ground-hugging murk, a slight thud reverberated throughout the foggy cover, barely distorted by the cries of the wildlife. A second pod then touched down gently on the bank onto which the Dark Jedi had alighted. The pod's door descended gently to the marshy surface, and a wizened, green form waddled down to the planet's squishy surface. His gaze surveyed the scene intently, his head slowly swiveling to take in the new sights. His quarry would not escape him this time. Gingerly, he ambled toward the nearest vergence in the Force, taking care to tread lightly so that his opponent would not detect his approach. As his gimer stick tapped with each step, his long, pointed ears waggled in the air currents stirred by the beating of millions of wings, seen and unseen. But it was his eyes that detected the approaching Force sensitive, rather than his own exquisitely tuned Force sense. The nebulous form gradually took shape as it grew larger, revealing a slight stoop to the posture accentuating the aged appearance given by the form's grayed crown and beard. The form's dilapidated robes drooped under years of caked grime; its right hand shaking slightly with an arthritic gimp. In a husky rasp, it spoke to the interloper. "Master Yoda, I believe I've found the rascal you've been chasing. He shouldn't pose much of a problem, though I'd forgotten how much it hurts when you actually have to make contact with someone's jaw with your fist to stop him." The eyes of the Jedi Grand Master widened in disbelief, his gimer stick dropping to the ground unheard. "Master Sifo-Dyas?..."
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Ben Kenobi
40 Point Warrior
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Post by Ben Kenobi on Dec 16, 2006 11:37:56 GMT -5
Awesome story, YodaBreaker. I liked the ending; now I finally know what happened to ol' Syfo-Dias. Glad you wrote it.
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