Except the Last (Slightly Violent)

[Lanuria]

((Note: My husband wrote this story, I am posting on his behalf in hopes he can get some criticism or just someone other than myself saying they enjoyed the story. I am posting his comments and the story!)

 

This story goes had some violence in it...torture, etc. I don't think it is too gore-y or triggering, but if you don't want to read about death, torture, mutilation and Force Users discussing the Jedi and Sith Code while going through all that, please, tread carefully. If this story is against ToS, please let me know and I will remove the post.

 

Thanks for reading. Please, let us know if you enjoy the story!))

 

Alia Trypt was in a bit of a spot.

 

Her master had said nothing about a Jedi being here on Ffann. It was supposed to be local militia and maybe the odd Republic soldier scurrying about after the bombs fell. Perfect command and combat experience for a young apprentice like herself. She was grateful for the chance to get out in the field and out of the shackles of her master.

 

Lord Gannar’s shackles had been metaphorical, though. The shackles this Jedi had put her in were literal. They were crude, chains and steel tied to the blocks of duracrete that had used to form this city - she forgot the city’s name. A large piece of the duracrete was beneath her, with chains and ropes over her head, neck, waist, and very tight around the arms and legs.

 

The Jedi himself was sitting in a crouch a few meters from her feet in the shadows of the ruins that surrounded them. The faint sounds of continuing battle battle leaked in from the gaps in the duracrete and echoed through the evening sky around them.

 

“Consider the Sith Code,” the Jedi said.

 

Alia tried to crane her head up toward the Jedi, but the rope on her neck and forehead prevented it. Here was a Jedi, one of the people that had destroyed her ancestors and driven them to the fringes of space, one that had disarmed her in combat like a bolt of lightning and knocked her out, only for her to awaken in bondage like this. Her fear could fuel her, the stark expanse between her situation and comfort a distance from which to draw power. Still, she would not show the fear.

 

“What about it?” she spat.

 

“It follows a very specific pattern, doesn’t it? ‘Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength,’ and so on. If you rewrite the first line as ‘Through rejection of peace, I gain passion,’ the entire thing follows this pattern,” the Jedi said. He stood up and turned toward Alia.

 

Alia rolled her eyes. “Congrats, you’re as smart as an eight year old on Korriban.”

 

The Jedi approached, and Alia got the look at his face she hadn’t had the chance to when he was trouncing her in combat. He was older, human like herself, skin weathered from… weather, and sun, and age. He had blond hair, shaggy bangs and a part down the middle of his head. He also had a beard, a some what ratty goatee around his thin mouth. He evoked the holos she’d seen of Belth Allusis, though this Jedi was more feminine and somewhat younger and clearly not rallying this planet’s defenders into a heroic last stand.

 

“Except for the end.”

 

Alia furrowed her brow at him. “Except for the end?”

 

“Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall set me free.”

 

“The Force shall free me,” Alia corrected.

 

A look of sudden, repressed rage came over the Jedi’s face, but it soon fled and his calmer countenance returned. “Either way. You’re still a student, aren’t you? A mere apprentice to a Sith lord,” the Jedi said, not bothering to wait for an answer. A sudden light sprang up beside the Jedi as he ignited a lightsaber. The blade was yellow, though she couldn’t see the hilt from her position. “Student, I think it’s time for a lesson.”

 

The yellow blade plunged down into Alia’s right side, and she screamed. She craned instinctively away from it, but the Jedi held the blade still and she simply dragged her body across it. She was bound too tightly and couldn’t shift fully out of the way of the plasma blade, and it didn’t open up out of her side, simply remained a centimeter from the edge of her stomach. Her strength gave out and she slumped back down, and the saber seared away more flesh on the edges of the now elliptical cut.

 

Alia kept screaming, but the Jedi was not moving his weapon. It simply stuck through her in searing hot agony while he stared at her. She started to muffle her cries, even though the pain did not want to abate. She stared fiery death at him, but his own face was calm, the grim calm of a tribal leader watching an exile leave, of a judge that has just passed a sentence.

 

“The Sith Code is a lie.”

 

“You’re a monster!” Alia yelled, shivering and feeling her body get carved away cell by cell as she did, though the Jedi didn’t move.

 

“The Sith Code is entirely a lie, starting with its rejection of passion and proceeding. Passion does not grant strength. You are passionate, I am calm, and here you are, broken. Your passion has not granted you strength, or power, or victory. It has not broken your chains.”

 

Alia groaned as the Jedi deactivated the blade on his lightsaber. It hissed away and the two were left in the relative silence of her panting in pain and moaning, shaking her head back and forth.

 

“C-c-congratulations on your ability to mutilate teenagers,” Alia managed to stammer out.

 

“Oh, you’re not the first I’ve instructed. I’ve spoken to apprentices and lords alike, male, female, and otherwise. I taught an aged gentleman of a Darth this same valuable lesson in a battle above Kuat. So please don’t think I’m picking on you.”

 

The calm on the Jedi’s face lulled Alia for a moment until he reignited the lightsaber and she felt the blade pierce her left side this time. Her body convulsed involuntarily once more and she screamed once again as her shifting movements dragged more flesh through the cutting plasma loop. Once she slumped back down onto the slab of duracrete, she opened her eyes and saw the Jedi looking down at her with the same calm, grim look on his face, and Alia began to cry.

 

“The Sith Code is a lie,” the Jedi said, “except, as I mentioned, for the end.”

 

Alia was weeping loudly, and did not try to respond.

 

“‘Through victory, my chains are broken.’ Then a full stop before stating that ‘The Force shall free me.’ A bit of a change in tone, and in wording, and this is for a good reason. ‘The Force shall free me’ - that is truth,” the Jedi said to her.

 

Alia couldn’t keep her eyes open enough to see that grim, calm face anymore. The pain was too strong, the tears stung her eyes and flowed too freely.

 

“We must go to the end of the Jedi Code for the matching truth. Do you know your Jedi Code?” When the Jedi got no response, he reached up with his free hand and wiped tears from Alia’s eyes so he could stare that grim calm stare down into them. There was no tenderness in his movements, just the necessity. It wasn’t a grieving mother arranging a body, it was a mortician.

 

Alia refused to open her eyes up at him. She squeezed them shut intently.

 

“There is no death, there is the Force,” the Jedi said as if answering a riddle. “There is no death, there is the Force,” he repeated. He paused, then spoke once more. “There is no death, there is the Force. The Force shall free me.”

 

Alia slowly opened her eyes at this and saw that hated calm of his. She wanted to vomit but wasn’t sure she could, and didn’t dare move her torso that the lightsaber still seared.

 

“There is no death, there is the Force. The Force shall free me.” he concluded. “Repeat that for me, student.”

 

Alia remained silent. He demanded it again. She refused. When he twitched the lightsaber toward her spine for a moment, she screamed again, and he recentered the blade. “You can still speak. Repeat your lesson.”

 

“T-t-there is no death, t-t-there is the Force, the Forcesh’l free me,” she managed to get out between chatters of teeth.

 

“Again.”

 

“There is no death, there is the Force. The Force shall free me.”

 

“You understand?”

 

Alia tried to nod and coughed out a yes. There was haze at the edge of her vision and she was losing feeling in her body. Everything but the impossible pain and heat in her left side was starting to leave her.

 

“Good. Extend your senses, dear. Feel the Force, how it connects you and I, you and the galaxy. Feel its oneness,” the Jedi said, “and reject passion and feel its peace.”

 

Another lightsaber lit in the Jedi’s other hand. This one was not hot yellow but blue, a cold, icy blue, the blue of soothing water and pristine arctic skies. And though Alia knew it was plasma, that it would burn as hotly as the yellow saber still piercing her stomach would, as the periwinkle blade swept down through her neck, it felt almost cool.

 

(The Paladin and Forty Kilometers to Point Anduul also written by my husband! Check them out!)

[Zantergog]

I enjoyed that, was gruesome but given the warnings it's an adult nature and that's fine. The writing itself was well done and felt natural to read. Perhaps overuse of the 'duracrete' but that's my only small Crit. It left me wanting more of the story of this fallen Jedi great stuff !