Chương 91: V.1-C.91│Welcome to Hell I│
Darkness had consumed him.
All around him there was no light, the screams and howls he had heard before taking the plunge were not heard anymore.
Anakin was trying to make sense of his surroundings but none of his implants would help him in this situation, his physical capabilities dont really matter here because he is just a corporeal being. A spirit that could only affect things around him through the Force.
Of course within the confines of this dimension he should be able to physically in a sense interact with whoever he comes across because they would also be spiritual in nature as well.
Nothing that has a living body could come down here and that was why Anakin was only down here as a spirit, which really limited him but just because it did, it didn't mean all of his physical manipulation was for naught.
Some capabilities would still be able to access, in particular his baseline physical strength or speed should be above the average joe down here. 'That is if there are any average joes located down in this hellhole.' Anakin thought to himself.
Still falling Anakin decided to stop and used the Force to do so.
Upon stopping he was finally given the ability to see and what he saw was an environment caked in brimstone and flame. 'Just like what I would have imagined Hell to be like.' He thought to himself.
"You there." Someone spoke to him. "New to these parts, aren't you." An athletically built woman of average height, with long, blond curls of hair and eyes yellow with the dark side.
"And you are?" Anakin asked the very alluring female.
"It is quite rude to ask me of my identity without stating your own." She raised an eyebrow as she said this.
Deciding to take on a more elusive approach Anakin clouds himself with the dark side, which was especially present within this dimension. His eyes which were a glowing violet had now turned to the burning yellow and red of the Sith.
"State your name." He decided to start playing on his Vader persona more. "I will not ask again." Aware of how cruel and insidious a Sith could be, he decided to not be nice.
"A show of dominance then?" The woman asks before getting into her own stance despite Anakin being physically much more imposing. "Come at me then."
The two didn't have anything to use against each other, other than the Force itself and their physical forms but it would be suicide for the girl to attack Anakin physically. So obviously she relied on the Force and her connection to the dark side to make sure she pulls through and emerges victorious.
Anakin decides to rush her, but unfamiliar with his new environment is thrown for a loop when she is easily able to create distance between the two.
"Experience matters the most around here and your brute force wont work here." The woman taunted.
"No matter, your efforts to escape my grasp are futile." Anakin said as he drawing on the dark side rather easily, but it tried to corrupt his mind, much more than it had when alive. 'What the hell is this?'
No pun intended, but Anakin was having a hard time controlling the untempered dark energies flowing through his corporeal form.
She pushed and pulled with the Force to further distance herself and try and cause some form of damage. It was successful in doing so as those who were ghosts were much more susceptible to the energy-field known as the Force.
Anakin could only come up with the idea of creating Force lightning around himself, and it worked. The scale of powers and abilities within this dimension was as if it had become a battle between gods.
Not that the Force technically didn't already elevate people like this but this was on another level that Anakin hadn't experienced before.
"You learn fast, newbie but dont think your attempts to defend yourself will help you." She started to generate her own Force lightning forming an arc that went across the distance between the two and struck him.
'Damn!' Anakin had sustained damage but not to the extent he wouldn't be able to heal from. 'This is dangerous.' He thought to himself as he remembered Force Shmi's words.
'Die in here and my entire being would be erased, expunged and purged.' He revised to himself what she basically meant to convey to him.
"Well!? What are you doing?" The woman continued to taunt him which was an attempt to make him do something stupid.
Anakin didn't reply and just sent out his own concentrated pushes into the Force, manipulating the latent residual energies to create a large area of impact.
Seeing this coming the woman creates an energy shield around herself to protect her spiritual form. Her efforts were only slightly useful but Anakin had actually managed to break her shield and decided to close the distance between the two.
He wanted to finish this fight as soon as possible because who knows who else is here, his precognition hardly works and only allows him in increasing his reaction speed to things happening around him.
He cannot actually spread out his sense within the Force as he could when within his living body.
He went into a full on sprint which he used the Force to aid him in getting closer while bombarding the woman from all sides to make sure she doesn't try and do what she had done before. Lightning started to crackle from his palms.
The woman wasn't able to handle the situation as there were multiple pushes and boundaries within the Force, forcing her to stay in place. Otherwise she would have been able to create some distance again.
Forced to stay in the same spot was hard because if she moved she may be harmed and possibly destroyed because of Anakin's onslaught.
"No! Wait!" She yelled out as he closed the distance between the two. "You dont know you are doing!"
Anakin didn't care because his instincts didn't alert him to anything dangerous and while Anakin doesn't always completely trust the Force, it is still something he is apart of and will continue to use. His senses within the Force also didn't alert him of anything as well.
He was just in front of her, he reached out his palms covered in lightning that coursed up and around his arms where the energy raised his hair as if he was a Saiyan.
Upon making contact with the barrier, it broke down and he continued his path to grapping the woman.
She tried to utilize this opportunity to use the Force and create a push of her own but it was useless because Anakin saw through this and had already reinforced himself.
"No!" She yelled out one last time before he touched her, and as he did it created a weird sensation between the two.
A bright light was given out which lead to Anakin being confused, as he was now within a different space.
'Where am I now?' He thought to himself.
[]
"I know why you went to Prakith. I know you went after Andeddu's Holocron. I know you were searching for the secret to eternal life." Anakin experiencing the point of view from the woman he was just fighting with and she was speaking with someone.
"I did that out of necessity. I taught you everything I knew about the dark side. I waited for years for you to challenge me. But you were content to toil in my shadow, to remain an apprentice until the ravages of age robbed me of power. You are unworthy of becoming the Master, Zannah. That is why I went to Prakith." The man she was talking to responded.
"Your time is over, Bane." The woman now identified as Zannah spoke before engaging her Master, Darth Bane.
Their engagement was short before they departed from each other, where one had escaped while the other chased then his point of view changed again, now outside in the open space. A camp of some kind
Structures were seen throughout and in his view, or Zannah's view she was only looking towards the cloaked figure known as Darth Bane.
"I wondered why you chose this place to meet. I thought it might have some symbolic meaning for you." Zannah said reminiscent about the past.
"The last time we were here you were too weak to even stand. You were helpless, and you thought I had betrayed you to the Jedi. You said you would rather die than be a prisoner for the rest of your life. You wanted me to take your life. But I refused." Zannah continued.
"You knew I still had things to teach you. You swore you would not kill me until you had learned all my secrets." Bane said in response.
"That day is here. I have surpassed you, Bane. Now I am the Master." Zannah said.
"Then prove it." Bane continued before they both ignited their lightsabers.
Bane then attacked Zannah, quickly pushing her back with the ferocity and power of his blows. He used several new techniques that he had never taught her before or used against her in their training sessions.
Nevertheless, her defense stayed strong, and Bane soon settled into a pattern of feints and quick thrusts. As he continued to drive her backward, Zannah began to gather her power, preparing to unleash her sorcery against him, hoping to bring the duel to a quick end.
However, Bane circled to come in on her left flank, and Zannah, her focus split between Bane and preparing her spell, failed to notice the freshly dug grave of Serra behind her. She stumbled on the grave and fell, and Bane immediately set upon her with a series of furious attacks, kicking and stomping at her, cracking one of her ribs.
Zannah rolled with the impact, landed on her feet, and threw herself into a series of back handsprings before finishing the jumps with a thrust meant to impale Bane. Bane, however, had stopped several meters back, letting her tire herself out with her extraneous flips.
Zannah quickly gathered the Force and attempted to overwhelm him with her sorcery, focusing on imprinting images of Bane's worst fears into his mind in an attempt to drive him insane.
Although the ploy began to work at first, Bane had conquered his fears years before; he successfully summoned enough willpower to defeat the spells with a powerful blast of Force energy that sent Zannah flying backward.
As Zannah rose to her feet, Bane charged at her once more. Desperate to end the duel, Zannah drew upon the power within Ambria itself and summoned tendrils of pure dark side energy from the ground around them.
She thrust the tendrils at Bane, who attempted to dodge the attack as he advanced on her.
One tendril clipped Bane's shoulder, causing him to fall to the ground in excruciating pain, greater than any pain he had ever felt before. Rising again to his feet, Bane charged Zannah, dodging the tendrils and realizing that his only hope was to cut her down before more tendrils hit him.
When he was in range he struck out with his lightsaber, and Zannah, her focus split between the tendrils and defending herself from Bane, barely deflected the blow, but her lightsaber was knocked from her grasp.
However, as Bane went for the final, killing blow, his sword arm was cut off by one of the tendrils. Bane collapsed to the ground in pain, and, realizing he had no other choice left, he grabbed Zannah's wrist and began the ritual of essence transfer.
Bane's body was immediately destroyed, turning to ash as his consciousness transferred over to Zannah's body.
However, he could still feel her consciousness within her as well, and she fought back. They engaged in a battle of wills, Bane seeking to obliterate her identity, while she attempted to force him out of her body.
They were matched evenly for a moment, but Zannah finally defeated him, banishing his consciousness from within her. Nevertheless, part of Bane remained imprinted upon Zannah.
"Who are you?" Anakin was now face to face with the figure known as Darth Bane, a shadow of who he once was. A shadow within the consciousness of Zannah.
Anakin now knowing who he is dealing with knew that he was probably going to fight this man. "Well, I guess I am here to destroy you permanently."
Anakin knowing now that he is within the subconsciousness of Zannah imagined his lightsaber and it appeared within his hand.
Bane seemed to not want to talk either as he also summoned his own. "You will not destroy me, Zannah is unworthy." Bane spoke.
"It seems to me old man that your time has come." Anakin replied taunting the Sith Lord.
"Shut up! I will destroy you." Bane replied.
Bane lunged at him with deranged madness and lunacy but Anakin saw this coming and started to adjust to his new environment once again. The same environment that Zannah last fought her master in.
Anakin had disconnected his dual-bladed saber and was now holding them separately. He swung multiple times with such force it created impacts in the imaginary environment.
Bane slowly but surely being pushed further and further back onto where he was originally showing Anakin's physical capabilities and his influence on the Force but given this was just within the mind of someone within the Hell dimension, it was better to rely on the dark side.
The energies of the light was especially small within this place.
"Hahaha! You are strong. Much more brave then my cowardly apprentice who waited until I was old, decrepit and dying before trying to strike me down." Bane spoke as he coughed up some blood like an old Chinese cultivating ancestor.
"Don't worry, your apprentice may have been unlucky but I know of the tricks to try and transfer ones essence into another. You will not be living, in fact you wont even be an existence within the Hell dimension." Anakin said.
"Do you think I am afraid? I was destroyed long ago and am just a shadow of my former self. That is why you were able to defeat me so easily." Bane said.
Anakin replied. "That may be so, but this is a pathetic existence you lead. I shall have mercy and put you out of your misery."
Anakin approached with his sabers, both blue and red and was just about ready to take the plunge before Zannah appeared and stopped him.
"Why?" He asked.
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