The deal I made with the Nightsisters was the only thing holding me back from turning this entire swamp into a parking lot.
I pride myself on being a man of my word. In the cutthroat world of galactic commerce, a reputation for honoring contracts is worth more than a fleet of destroyers. I make good deals so I do not get messed with, and when those deals go bad, that is when I go nuclear.
The best part of this entire charade was that the Nightsisters did not know that I knew. I kept the deal going, playing the role of the eccentric off worlder, while casually dodging my pupils' lame assassination attempts. They did not know what they had let themselves in for. They thought they were studying a rich fool. They were actually locked in a cage with a apex predator who was simply biding his time.
"Again," I said, my voice bored.
Kael, my Zabrak apprentice, lunged at me with a vibro knife. It was a sloppy thrust aimed at my kidney. I didn't even use the Force. I simply pivoted on my heel and let him stumble past me, tripping him with a subtle hook of my boot. He face planted into the mud with a satisfying squelch.
"Your anger makes you heavy, Kael," I lectured, sipping from a flask of water. "You telegraph your intent like a beacon. If you want to kill me, you have to stop wanting it so much."
Vesper, the female apprentice, stood by a twisted tree, her hands folded in her sleeves. She radiated a cold, calculating hatred that was far more dangerous than Kael's hot rage.
"Master Bee," she said, her voice dripping with faux sweetness. "Perhaps if you showed us the higher forms, we would be better students."
"You haven't mastered walking without tripping," I countered. "We stick to the basics."
I could tell they were holding back. The Nightsisters were supposed to be teaching me their secrets in exchange for my tutelage, but the information was trickling in slower than sap in winter. They were stalling. They wanted me to train their weapons while they kept the ammunition for themselves.
That did not matter anymore. During the day, I played the teacher. But when night rolled over the misty canopy of Dathomir, I acted.
My natural talents in the Force lean toward being sneaky and unseen. I am able to disguise my Force signature and physical shape, causing an almost perfect camouflage. It is a technique I refined over centuries of avoiding Jedi audits and Republic tax collectors. The only thing I leave behind is torn plant fibers, as even my footsteps are silent from practice.
With a little telekinesis, I am able to skip off the ground without leaving a single footprint. I can use the Force to fly, technically, but it is a strain on me. Gravity is a law of physics that is too much for me to overwhelm for long periods without exhausting my reserves. Gliding, however, is efficient. It is just business.
But I did not need to fly to do what I wanted. My job for tonight was to test the Nightsisters.
I moved through the swamp like a shadow. The air was thick with humidity and the smell of decay. I needed to see how deeply they used the Force. I decided to take indirect action.
I found a nest of venomous swamp vipers, nasty little things with scales the color of dried blood. Using a delicate touch of the Force, I levitated three of them. I drifted toward a lone Nightsister sentry who was standing guard near a ritual circle.
"Go," I whispered.
I dropped the snakes on her.
I watched closely. If she could react before the snakes touched her, that meant she had precognitive abilities, the Jedi danger sense. If she got bitten, then she was a prime target for a light bit of kidnapping.
The snakes fell. The Nightsister didn't flinch until the first one landed on her shoulder. She screamed, thrashing wildly as fangs sank into her neck.
"Pathetic," I murmured.
She was not a seer. She was prey.
I can not be sure how good the Nightsisters are at fighting generally because of how they use the Force in different ways, but it is a nice little test. It tickles my darker side that I am using the planet's own animals against its so called masters.
Before she could raise the alarm, I was on her. I wrapped her in a telekinetic cocoon, silencing her scream, and dragged her into the deep brush.
The Dark Side of the Force has a nice little ability called Drain Knowledge. I am really good at it. Usually, this ability uses the Force to not only read surface thoughts but also rip out deep memories at the cost of excruciating pain to the victim. Pain is loud. Pain leaves scars. I have worked out how to use the skill without the pain part by mixing the ability with a different Dark Side Force ability called Force Drain.
I knelt over the unconscious witch. "This won't hurt a bit. In fact, you are going to enjoy it."
By using Force Drain and my extensive knowledge of medicine, I was able to stimulate the pleasure centers of her brain. I pulled a small amount of her life force, causing a euphoric rush of endorphins. While the victim was paralyzed with good feelings, floating in a dream state, I extracted the knowledge. This was all thanks to the Sith holocubes I had studied years ago.
This Nightsister had no clue why I was on the Nightsister's kill list, but she did have knowledge I could use.
"Show me," I whispered, diving into her mind.
Images flashed before me. Chanting. Green mist. The manipulation of life itself. She had a deeper understanding of how to Alter the Force than I did. The Nightsisters should have taught me this stuff weeks ago, but I could see in her memories that the Matriarch had forbidden it.
"Thieves," I hissed. "Well, I am taking what is owed."
I left the Nightsister where I kidnapped her. I put up mental barriers in her mind to block her memories of the last hour. It would not last forever, but unless a deep mental shock happened to her, it should be fine for a while. She would wake up thinking she had passed out from the snake bite and had a strange, pleasant dream.
I slinked back to my ship, ready for a light sleep.
For the next three weeks, I repeated my nightly crawl. I ripped my reward from the minds of lesser Nightsisters. I was learning their magic faster than they could have possibly imagined.
However, the planet was taking its toll.
Training during the day was becoming annoying. My apprentices were becoming increasingly violent toward me. They were not even hiding their emotions anymore. Even Vesper, with her controlled mind, had hate rolling off her surface like heat waves.
"Your stance is wrong," I snapped, slapping Kael on the back of the head.
"My stance is lethal!" Kael shouted, spinning around with his hammer raised.
"Lethal to whom?" I growled. "Yourself?"
I could feel the Dark Side of my own emotions triggering nasty thoughts. A voice in the back of my head cheered me on to choke out the little shits. Crush their windpipes, it whispered. It would be so easy. So quiet.
I controlled myself with reason, but I was not above hurting them. A sly little jab to the ribs here. A Force assisted black eye there. A split lip during sparring.
The people were getting to me. Dathomir is a Dark Side focus point. It soaks into your bones. It makes you arrogant. It makes you hungry.
I could feel the rage, and with the rage came stupidity. I was becoming restless. I was making poorer choices. My nightly kidnappings had become daring. I was taking stronger foes. I was staying inside their minds longer. I was leaving physical traces.
I had forgotten, or perhaps arrogance had made me ignore, that even though the Nightsisters did not use the Force in the same way as the Sith or Jedi, they still were able to glimpse into the future.
A lucky Nightsister had some inkling. She saw a shadow in the swamp. She set a trap.
I was moving through a dense thicket of thorns, my mind focused on the next target, when the trap sprung.
"Abomination!"
A scream tore through the night. Three figures dropped from the canopy, landing in a triangle around me.
It was an ambush.
"You dare steal from us, male?" the leader hissed. She was older, her face painted with the sigils of war. "You defile our minds!"
"I am just collecting my tuition," I said, my voice calm despite the adrenaline spiking in my blood. "Your Matriarch is behind on her payments."
"Die!"
What followed was a hard fight. For them.
All three of them ran toward me with blades raised, ready to slice me apart. The leader came straight down the middle. In my arrogance, or perhaps simply because I trusted my gear, I did not dodge.
I allowed the blade to cut into my ribs. The vibro sword sparked against the weaves of my hidden armor. It cut the fabric of my fat suit, but the alloy underneath held firm.
The Nightsister's eyes widened. She had expected to feel flesh part. Instead, she felt the jarring impact of metal.
"My turn," I snarled.
I offered a punch filled with my spite and anger. It was not a mystical strike. It was a brawler's haymaker, backed by the hydraulic servos in my suit and a burst of Force augmentation.
CRACK.
The blow caused the Nightsister's bottom jaw to disconnect from her skull. If it was not for the Nightsister's special magic that weaved throughout the planet and themselves, reinforcing their bodies, her jaw would have been turned to pulp. Instead, she was lifted off her feet. I kicked her away while she was still airborne. She twisted in the air like a cat, landing on all fours, spitting blood and broken teeth.
The other two Nightsisters attacked from either side of me. Their swords were playfully stabbing with caution now. They had just witnessed their sister taking a boot to the chest and surviving only by magic.
Double blades tested my defenses on either side.
"Flank him!" one shouted. "Cut his tendons!"
It might have been a problem for a normal man. But I had been training with droids for centuries. Droid attacks were heavy, fast, and relentless. Back in my training room, there were five specially adaptive Asura ranked droids with four arms each. Each one could contend with a Jedi or Sith if they did not use the Force.
These droids had trained my fists into killing machines. My once weakness toward close up combat had disappeared. Now I was an all rounder fighter.
I moved with a fluidity that belied my bulk. I parried a strike with my forearm, the armor deflecting the blade, and snapped a backfist into the nose of the second attacker. I spun, sweeping the leg of the third.
The Nightsisters' blades danced and poked while my arms and fists redirected and deflected.
Then, the third injured Nightsister recovered and joined the fight. She dropped her sword and raised her hands. A soft green smoke snaked around her body, oozing from her pores. It consolidated at the end of her fingers.
"Burn," she gargled through her broken jaw.
With a speed that shocked the Nightsisters, I turned on the spot and sandwiched the incoming stream of green magic between my hands.
The green smoke twisted around my hands. It took the form of a viper's head, trying to bite me. It was acid. It was poison. It was pure malice given form.
"Is that all?" I laughed, the sound harsh in the quiet swamp.
Red ribbons of lightning danced off my hands. It battled the smoke. It was a fight between the Nightsister's magical Ichor and my Red Force Lightning. The air crackled with the smell of ozone and burning sage.
The other two Nightsisters did not let up. They swung their weapons, trying to take advantage of my distraction.
"Get away from me!" I roared.
My Red Lightning jumped out of my body. I no longer needed to point it. Thanks to the Domain skill I had learned from other Force users, my entire body was a conduit. The lightning exploded outward in a sphere.
The two attackers shrieked as they were blasted backward, their robes singing.
If the Nightsisters were shaken by my speed, then they were spooked by my defensive lightning. I must admit, the sight of red lightning rolling off my body like water must have been an epic sight to behold. One that no one had seen before. No one alive, that was.
The group of three Nightsisters pulled back. Before, they had run into the fight ready to attack. Now they were cautious to the extreme.
"Together!" the leader choked out.
The green smoke that a single Nightsister had used was now joined by the other two. They combined their power. The smoke grew, twisting and thickening until it formed an enormous, translucent green snake the size of a speeder bus. It reared up, hissing with the sound of a thousand dying souls.
The sister might have gloated. She thought she had won.
But a long overdue change in my understanding hit me. I had spent weeks studying this. I had drained their minds. I had felt the texture of their magic. And now, witnessing the green smoke in a life or death fight, the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place.
It was not magic. It was Alteration. It was simply willing the Force to change states, using emotion as the catalyst.
My Red Lightning fluctuated. It melded. It consolidated.
"You play with smoke," I said, my voice resonating with power. "I command the elements."
The red electricity shifted. It turned into a roaring purple fire, hot enough to melt durasteel. Then, with a thought, I shifted it again. It became a torrent of aqua green water, glowing with bioluminescence.
My weeks of stealing knowledge and witnessing the Nightsister's abilities allowed a quantum leap in understanding. I finally managed to do it. I was now a Master at Altering the Force.
The Nightsister's green smoke snake dived to attack.
I raised my hand. Thin lines of aqua green water shot from my fingertips. They wrapped around the smoke snake, binding it, solidifying it. I dragged it to the ground.
"Burn," I whispered, echoing the witch's earlier command.
The water Altered instantly into purple flames. The transition was violent. The steam explosion alone knocked the trees back. The green snake screamed as it was burned into nothingness.
I pushed my hand forward. A wave of Force pressure cleared the last vapors of the sickly green smoke.
The fight had been somewhat easy before. Now it was a joke. The Nightsisters were at Jedi Knight level, perhaps. But I was a Master.
The three of them stood there, their eyes wide with terror. They realized too late that they were not hunting a man. They were hunting a disaster.
"Please," one of them begged.
"Class is dismissed," I said.
The follow up attack caused the three Nightsisters to disappear. A surge of purple fire consumed the clearing. When the light faded, the only thing that was found was a severed arm and a leg.
I picked up the arm with a grimace.
"Messy," I critiqued myself.
I walked over to a nearby creature pit, a sinkhole filled with carnivorous worms, and dumped the remains inside.
I adjusted my suit, smoothed my hair, and began the walk back to my ship. I felt lighter. The deal was done, as far as I was concerned. But I would stay a little longer. After all, I had just unlocked a whole new curriculum, and I was eager to practice.