The Unchronicled Adventures Of Ahsoka Tano, Book Ten

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Fading Light

LUX BONTERI

It all happened in the space of an instant.

Lux watched as Ahsoka made a flying leap across the ancient riverbed, her lightsabers blazing white in her hands. Her gaze was fixated on a point just past him, as if zeroing in on some sort of threat Lux couldn't yet detect.

She soared past him; bearing down on a vine that he realized was covered in spikes and twitching its way towards him as she cut it in half. Immediately, two more shot out of the bushes to take its place, but Ahsoka soon took care of them.

"I think I just figured out why we haven't seen any animals around here!" Ahsoka yelled, darting back towards him. But she was intercepted halfway as another group of vines flew into action from where they had been hanging innocently between trees.

Lux reached instinctively for his belt, but his fingers met only empty air. He remembered in a flash that he had left his lightsaber with Janira. He could only watch as the vines attacked Ahsoka from all directions, and she did her best to cut them down before they could reach her.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, Lux berated himself. Seriously, how are you this brilliant at messing up?

Finally, what few remained retreated into the shadows to regroup, and Ahsoka ran over towards him. As soon as she was close enough, Lux stretched up to take her face in his hands.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

"No. I'm okay." She gazed down at his leg, biting her lip. "Are you sure you can't Heal yourself? Because we kind of need to run."

Lux nodded. "I can try."

Taking a deep breath, he reached out and braced his leg into the right angle with both hands. He was a fairly good Healer, but not as good as some of the other Jedi, and he didn't want to mess up and have the bone knit the wrong way.

Lux opened himself up to the Force, calling upon it for assistance and relief. But he soon ran into an obstacle. Try as he did, he couldn't see past his thoughts of his stepfather and everything he had learned that had yet to fully sink in. His emotions were clouding his connection to the energy field that had always come so easily to most other Jedi, so much so that he couldn't channel it properly.

"It's no use. I'm spent. I can't do more than a temporary fix."

"You're out of practice," Ahsoka said absentmindedly. "Well, I guess it'll have to do for now. Come on."

Lux nodded and stood up, mostly without her help. He was pleased to discover that although he was probably just making it worse on himself in the long run, he could put some weight on his injured leg.

Ahsoka passed him one lightsaber with a nod to her dislocated shoulder. Then, just as Lux was bracing himself to run, more vines surged out of the forest, followed by a great lumbering shape he didn't want to stick around to see.

His fight or flight instincts kicked in immediately. He and Ahsoka took off running down the old riverbed as fast as the temporary Healing job on his leg would allow, hoping to outrun both the growing darkness and their pursuer.

Suddenly, a creature that looked like a giant mutant flower smashed through the tree line and into the ravine after them. It was carried by countless stubby roots and branches that seemed to serve as legs and long, vine-like tentacles – some of which still steamed from cuts by Ahsoka's lightsabers – that would latch onto nearby trees and rocks to help pull it along.