"Bow down before me, and I will make your deaths . . . quick."

Everyone just froze, unsure of what to do. Kari was the first to say anything.

"Oh, no. That's not her AT ALL." Through the years, Kari had learned that she could feel Dianiss' presence when they were near each other, but this . . . this felt completely different.

"Oh, I am every bit the one you have always known," Dianiss replied, "but now . . . I am . . . FREE."

As Dianiss reached out her hand, Kari could feel herself getting lighter and lifting up slowly into the air, moving slowly across the chamber towards Dianiss. "Oh, crap . . . I'm flying."

By now, Galadina was in full battle-ready stance, lightsaber drawn and activated. She, as she always did in combat, used the Force to peer into the immediate future, to be ready for what will come next. Though the future was heavily clouded by the Dark Side, it was still clear enough to know that Kari was about to be killed in a cruel way.

Throwing her lightsaber at Dianiss as a distraction, Dina leaped head first toward Kari, twisting her body in mid-air so as to land on her back directly underneath where Kari's body was floating. As she did, she saw a sphere of static electrical energy surrounding Kari, and whispered a quick Thank You to Denevee even though she knew it would go unheard. With as much power as she could muster, she did a massive Force Push directly upward against the bubble (rather than Kari herself, so as not to crush her), just as Dianiss was using the Force to throw her downward--hard--at the stone floor.

Galadina is known for being powerful, but nothing like Dianiss. Kari still came crashing to the floor directly on top of Dina, with Denevee's Static Barrier and Dina's own body breaking Kari's fall. The collision hurt--a lot--and knocked the wind out of both of them, but their injuries were minor.

As Kari started to get up, Dina grabbed her head and pulled it back down just in time to NOT get hit by two light-red-bladed lightsabers passing directly overhead, followed almost immediately by Zedemm leaping over them both.

As Drellik threw a medical pack at Kari and Dina, Denevee cast a protective energy bubble around Zedemm. Denevee heard Zarvell's voice once again.

"Lucifer Protocol. Tell them."

Denevee's heart sank. This meant that she would have to use the ancient Death Strike ritual on Dianiss, leaving herself vulnerable to attack during the invocation, and completely drained of Force power if successful.

And even if she can successfully cast it, Zarvell had told her that it still would NOT kill Dianiss.

As she began to summon her power, she called out to the others. "Lucifer! Now!" In fifteen seconds, she would unleash a massive torrent of dark side energy designed to utterly destroy an enemy, down to the cellular level.

Dianiss had already responded to Zedemm's attack with the same powerful protective barrier that she'd used on Ilum, but the distraction wasn't enough to keep her from noticing what Denevee was doing.

"YOU DARE?!?" Dianiss shouted out while looking directly at Denevee, and angrily pushed Zedemm away with a powerful wave of Force power, followed up by a series of electrical attacks that left him burned, and unconscious.

Ashara, Zash, and Khem were all simply backing away, not sure WHAT to do now. HK-51 waited motionlessly at his position behind one of the humanoid statues at the side of the room for orders from Sianid, who, still unconscious and lying on the floor, would not be giving any in the immediate future.

Drellik had moved to Zarvell's side, removing the dart from his neck, administering some emergency anti-toxins, and taking a quick blood sample in hopes of making an on-the-spot determination of what he'd been hit with. "Zarvell, can you speak? If you gave the order for Lucifer Protocol, I'll take that as a sign you're not dead yet."

Zarvell, now rolled over on his back rather than his chest, was able to open his eyes a bit. The blurry image was more confusing than helpful, as he could still sense the surroundings well enough using only the Force. "Yes." he said. "Yyyyuuusshhh." is what Drellik actually heard.

"I understand." he replied.

Having eliminated Zedemm as a threat, Dianiss set about casting the same Death Strike ritual against Denevee.

But, somehow, Dianiss was able to cast it faster.

Much faster.

With Zedemm having been hurled across the room, Kari did an acrobatic half-jump/half-roll to move as quickly as she could toward him, hoping to quickly stabilize his condition and get him awake again (plus get clear of the middle of fighting).

That left Galadina as the only one capable of acting. She remembered Kendsel again. It was her presence here, he'd told her (and, additionally, not wearing her clothes, which was also the case right now), that would make the difference between victory and defeat. Dianiss' attack HAD to be interrupted and it had to be NOW.

Too close to leap, she reached out with the Force as she had done countless times before to slow the passage of time around her, and ran toward Dianiss with all the speed she could muster while summoning her lightsaber back to her hand. Just before she got close enough, she prepared to deliver a spinning kick towards Dianiss' head.

Zarvell observed the three of them all locked into a desperate race to be the first to complete their respective attacks. He estimated that Denevee was about 9 seconds away from completing her attack. Galadina's attack would connect in less than 3 seconds.

Dianiss' attack would complete in less than TWO.

Behind the Scenes:
* Again, I try to use actual game mechanics as much as possible. This short battle features no less than TWELVE actual in-game abilities: Saber Throw, Guardian Leap, Static Barrier, Force Push, Twin Saber Throw, Force Leap, Medical Pack (Drellik), Scamper, Force Barrier, Overload, Force Lightning, and Force Kick. Can you spot them all?

Notes from the Future:
* Looking back, the fight "choreography" of this chapter and the next few was the most difficult thing to write because I was agonizing over the correct order of events and where everyone was positioned so that I wouldn't just be creating a ton of plot holes.  I think I got it right, but there's always the nagging feeling that I forgot something, even all these years later.
* In the Behind the Scenes sections I'd been making extensive use of a special URL from a site called torhead.com that allowed me to make those references to the in-game abilities into hyperlinks that have pop-up text that is (I think) the same text that appears in the game when you hover the mouse over it.  That site later shut down but someone else had kept the pop-up-on-hover links working.  Sadly, none of that still works today so the dozen references above aren't NEARLY as cool-looking as they were when originally published.