Never let the last words of a conversation be ones you’d regret. You never know when the conversation you just finished will be the last.
Words to live by. Words to face a do-or-die trial by. Jallira avoided the words ‘good-bye’, because no one needed to hear them. Instead, she stuck with hugs and ‘thank you’, all the way across the board. After the hugs were done, she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and nodded a little towards Aurrin in a ‘follow my lead’ sort of gesture. With that, she knelt in front of the Totem of Madish and focused, meditating on the pattern of Force-imbued crystals on the edges of the tablet.
A moment or so later, she slumped over sideways to lie prone on the stone floor of the cave complex, life signs to a bare minimum. Empaths in the vicinity could still find her, if they looked, but her connection to her physical body was faint and fairly incidental; instead of in the young woman on the floor, Jallira’s presence seemed to exist more within the Totem itself.
They could also feel it when the singular conflicted presence became two. One was sharp-edged, sly and more than moderately dark when left to its own devices. The other was Jallira - or at least the parts of her that shone through despite the shyness, the self-effacement, the nearly non-existent self-esteem and over a decade of emotional scarring. Some indication of how the ‘conflict’ was going would come through to anyone using Force-empathy, as well; the two were distinct enough from the other presences in the cave complex to be easily distinguishable.
However, only one person actually saw what happened. Her witness - her Paladin, and that of her House - saw and heard everything.
The setting looked to all appearances like a gladiatorial arena of some sort, though the stands looked empty to conventional sight. For a brief moment, Jallira stood alone in the centre of the space, looking just as she appeared in reality - bobbed red hair, black and white armour with the little silver-white wings that some armourer had added apparently for purely aesthetic value. Then she clutched at her head and, for the first time that anyone within the Marran had ever heard, screamed in pure agony.
There was no flash of light or other showmanship; the image simply changed quickly enough to cause vertigo. One second, Jallira stood alone, driven to one knee by pain. The next, two young women stood in the centre of the arena, facing each other. They were similar in appearance, but only on a surface level; for someone like Aurrin, they couldn’t have been more different. Both were small, slight, pale and red-haired; both wore veil-style masks falling just to the middle of the bridges of their nose, floor-length skirts and minimal duraweave armour. However, the one that was plainly Jallira as she should be - without the toxic garbage of her past and the dark interloper of her present - wore armour in the same style as her real armour, but it was mostly white, chased in places with Republic blue, and the pointless silvery wings remained. The other, the one that was plainly Gesh at the core and built past that with copies taken from pieces of Jallira’s own mind, wore simple black chased with purples and golds, not dissimilar to Merari’s usual armour. Her hair was a darker auburn, her face paler, and her body language spoke of arrogance and irritation. Jallira, meanwhile, was calmer than most had ever seen her.
The two young women faced off in silence for a moment, sizing each other up. It was the first time they’d been able to see each other from the outside. Finally, Gesh spoke up: “I am going to enjoy batting you around this place, Jedi.”
The question, plainly, honestly curious, derailed Gesh almost completely. “What do you mean, ‘why’?”
“Apologies; I … just don’t see where the benefit to you is in fighting to win.” Jallira spoke plainly, calmly and with a note of actual sympathy in her voice. “However it comes out, you will not walk away from this. Win here, and my fellows will strike you down. I imagine they’ll be a bit angry. You heard what Merari said he’d do to you - and that was before you called him names. At least standing down here means that Alasha will be able to return you to the Force with the other presences trapped here, which is more of a chance than you’d get with Merari’s methods. This doesn’t have to end in violence, Gesh. It’s over. You’ve lost.”
Gesh answered Jallira’s words with lightning. Jallira threw up a Force barrier which absorbed most of it; her armour took the rest, and Gesh’s lip curled in frustration as Jallira stood her ground. “You really think I can’t fool those sanctimonious Flame-wielding would-be heroes? The Mandalorian--”
Jallira shook her head. “You’re pinning your hopes for freedom on a non-Force-sensitive Mandalorian who’s known me for maybe a month. Also who you fooled once; he’s twice as likely to pay closer attention when this is over … if it’s even allowed to go that far. Also keep in mind the two natural empaths by virtue of species, one former Darth highly gifted in mental Force abilities, one Force-bond and various individuals who’ve known me for up to a year in some cases, many with Echani training. Plus a witness to all this. In that latter case, I think it’d be telling if ‘my’ first action on waking was to try to kill the best friend I ever had.”
Again, the response to Jallira’s calm, matter-of-fact statement came in purple lightning; again, most was met by a Force-barrier, with the rest sparking harmlessly off the little wings attached to her armour. “However this comes out, Moyval … you’re done. You lost the moment I began meditating in front of the Totem. The rest is just … pointless flailing that will only bring you more pain. For your own sake … surrender gracefully.”
“I think I’d much prefer to spread the pain around,” came Gesh’s reply; she was clearly trying to gather up some semblance of composure, but mostly she just sounded furious. “Or don’t you think it’ll hurt those meddlesome friends of yours when one of them puts a blade through your heart?” Gesh lashed out with lightning before she even finished the sentence, and this time Jallira did not defend so well; when the Force-lightning struck, she flinched and staggered backwards, but managed to keep her feet. Gesh pressed on, sounding far more confident than she had a moment before. “The Force-blinded foster with your blood on his hands. The meddlesome construct of a Paladin, failing in his duty and his ‘paying it forward’, having to not only watch you fail but watch another sister - or the closest thing to it - die at his feet. The Anzati squire devouring his foster in front of the bastions of light and good; and won’t that help the trust issues they have with him, that pretty little picture? And your siblings by adoption and by blood--”
Gesh tried another attack, but Jallira defended against it a great deal better this time and the lightning never touched her. Jallira apparently didn’t do angry - at least, not here and now. Instead, she sounded determined, calm and quietly strong despite the energy burns. “If it comes to that, they’re smart enough to know that what they ended was the thing that killed me and then dared to walk around wearing my face. You underestimate them.”
“And you’ve failed them.”
This time, Gesh went for a crushing attack, and apparently Jallira’s protective shield-bubble was no defense against it. She struggled briefly, but within seconds there was a visceral crunch as delicate bones cracked, and Jallira dropped to the floor of the arena, limp and still. Gesh prodded Jallira with the toe of her boot and allowed herself a smirk before going quite thoughtful and pacing across the arena, apparently trying to come up with some way of getting away from the Marran alive before finishing the job.
She didn’t seem to notice when Jallira’s body vanished, or perhaps she simply thought it was a natural part of the Totem’s function. Aurrin, however, could see differently - after all, it’s a poor witness who can’t see everything he needs to. It took a second to make out the silver-gold outline that marked Jallira’s position; it was only discernible to Aurrin when she slowly, painfully dragged herself to her feet and staggered as best she could in her current condition towards a portion of the wall near which Gesh was pacing. After a moment in which she apparently braced herself, a small flicker of light ignited in Jallira’s hand - like a lightsaber, but much smaller and far more precise. The scalpel, not the sword. With it, she slashed two parallel vertical lines, from as far up as she could reach down to the floor, and then joined the two with a horizontal slash at the top. Then she staggered back to the approximate centre of the arena floor, knelt and lowered her head, staying that way for a long enough moment to prompt questions about whether she could actually continue with whatever plan she’d come up with.
When the space between the lines Jallira had carved into the wall darkened to form the outlines of a door … that caught Gesh’s attention. The poor copy of Jallira with the Sith at the core stepped towards it, curious and a little wary, but not wary enough to stay away from what could well be her way out of the Totem of Madish.
She was bare feet away from the carved-out door when Jallira struck, popping out of stealth to send a telekinetic blast Gesh’s way. Gesh lost her footing and staggered, a flailing hand catching the ‘door’ frame by virtue of pure dumb luck. Voices could be heard from the other side of that doorway by then - dozens of voices, in dozens of languages. The doorway wasn’t a symbolic way out of the Totem; it was a way deeper in, opened deliberately. It made a certain amount of sense, all told - forcing the foreign or unwanted element of one’s self into the Totem somehow was a fairly logical explanation for all the presences the Totem already contained. Jallira had waited to try to figure it out until the last minute, trying to get some tactical advantage the only way she knew how when her opponent had, up until recently, known everything she knew.
Gesh opened her mouth to say something, but Jallira didn’t give her the chance this time; the talk had served as a distraction, and had outlived its usefulness. When Jallira struck again, it was with the Flames - it clearly cost her a great deal, given how badly she was already wounded, but she was just as clearly determined to finish it once and for all. Gesh flinched backwards and through the doorway on instinct to avoid the ball of silver fire Jallira threw her way. It struck its target regardless, and the last thing Aurrin heard from Moyval Gesh was a scream as agonised as it was cheated and utterly bewildered. No Sith Lord, not even one who was more a researcher than anything else, expected to be beaten by a young Jedi with the dust of Tython barely off her boots.
But Gesh had … although at great cost. Jallira staggered away from the door she’d made to slump against the opposite wall, looking not just pale but somehow faint, like a full-colour holostatue. All the same, she raised her head as best she could and managed a small smile for Aurrin to see before her breath hitched and she whispered, “...please take me home…”
As she slid to a prone position on the arena floor, Aurrin could hear, both within the Totem of Madish and without, when the Presences spoke again. One of the voices stood out to those with good aural receptors - young, female, accented with Sith inflections and antiquated Imperial. Moyval Gesh spoke with the rest of the Totem’s voices now, and she still sounded annoyed when she chorused with the others: “Witness … declare the victor.”
Then the vision went dark, and an eyeblink later, he could see the others around him, waiting for his answer.
