A Jedi's mind must be strong. Certainly, Mara's isn't soft. She's practiced like this before with the Emperor, knows the tactics, but her mind reels from the feeling of this strange new energy. It isn't the Force, responds unlike it, and has the same needs and wants. Her mind reels, trying to block it off.
Her throat slit. Dying in a second, before anyone noticed. Even afterward, they wouldn't care. Dying painfully, but worth, failing. Never getting back to Karrde. Never knowing what it meant to have a friendship in Skywalker. Never filling her debts, never getting revenge, never proving the Emperor wrong. Never finding out who Mara Jade is.
But this isn't death, or she wouldn't keep reliving it. Mara can't ignore the fear, so she uses it, opening up the link she knows she shares with Ilde, trying to send it back. Mara opens the link she shut tight since they met that first time, in the garden.
Fear floods through the link, looping round again, and against her will she sends an image of a withered old man, shrouded in a flowing black cloak. His eyes are bright yellow, and them seem to glow faintly in the darkness around him. He stands, reveling in the sickly fear his people feel for him, grinning madly. "And you know the price of failure, Mara Jade..."
Mara's eyes open. Her throat is unslit. Her avatar has barely been moving, taking hit after hit, and her score is almost depleted. She makes her avatar move, taking grudging steps forward, reaching out to grab the tongue hanging from the mouth of Ilde's avatar.
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Her throat slit. Dying in a second, before anyone noticed. Even afterward, they wouldn't care. Dying painfully, but worth, failing. Never getting back to Karrde. Never knowing what it meant to have a friendship in Skywalker. Never filling her debts, never getting revenge, never proving the Emperor wrong. Never finding out who Mara Jade is.
But this isn't death, or she wouldn't keep reliving it. Mara can't ignore the fear, so she uses it, opening up the link she knows she shares with Ilde, trying to send it back. Mara opens the link she shut tight since they met that first time, in the garden.
Fear floods through the link, looping round again, and against her will she sends an image of a withered old man, shrouded in a flowing black cloak. His eyes are bright yellow, and them seem to glow faintly in the darkness around him. He stands, reveling in the sickly fear his people feel for him, grinning madly. "And you know the price of failure, Mara Jade..."
Mara's eyes open. Her throat is unslit. Her avatar has barely been moving, taking hit after hit, and her score is almost depleted. She makes her avatar move, taking grudging steps forward, reaching out to grab the tongue hanging from the mouth of Ilde's avatar.