Eclipse

Chapter 6- The Cycle

  six months later...

Fire.

Smoke. The stench of thick ash invaded their nostrils by the smoldering breezes of inescapable heat. The molten lava bubbled angrily beneath his charring black boots. Eruptions of magma shot up to shamelessly singe his golden waves, too close for comfort at unpredictable times. 

The darkside laughed at him here. It ridiculed his attempts to run, to hide, to fight. It is useless to resist. It was anxious to remind him, but he could not stop now. It couldn't stop here, not now. 

But it could. 

On Mustafar, anything of the darkside's whim was accomplished, and right now, it wanted him to die. It was only a matter of time. 

The version of Hell he stood on, fighting for his life with every suffocating inhale, was a place he came to often now. It was familiar...

The Chosen one was no stranger to war. The brutality of blows to both mind and body was no longer a shock to him. He had met death before, then politely excused himself only to awake in a sterile room of blinding artificial white, his rescuer usually sat beside him, utterly relieved.

But here no one wanted to save him. Here there was no friend watching his back for an enemy. Here there was no one to pick him up if he fell down. If he fell down, he would always fall. He knew this. He knew about fighting impossible opponents, he knew the art of retreat, and he was well aware of the sense of crippling defeat. 

But this, was no ordinary war. This was not a typical opponent whose demise he would orchestrate with unfathomable finesse, genius and expertise. There was no foreign darkness he, within himself he had to fight. The blue lightsaber he wielded, mocking the color of his burning eyes, could not slice up a new victory. 

Here there was no victory. 

Here there was only survival. 

In his mind, he could never win. It was a foreign terrain he avoided like a plague. One where red and blue fought tirelessly, one of fear, the other of hate, one of fear and one with love. It was endless; the reoccurring dream was just that. 

A dream. 

A duel of dreams which the unbeatable Anakin Skywalker, was always beaten. 

The duel was of dark and light within one body, a shell for one of the corruptions to rule, to dig their influence into the brain and never let go. Their sparring area was that of Hell. It was over a geographic paradox; a lake of fire. 

This was a daily occurrence for Anakin Skywalker, and it was this daily defeat that slowly crushed his spirit. His adversary knew this well. 

The Sith relished in his despondency, guffawing along with the planet at the Jedis futile attempt to live. With every strike more powerful than the last, there was no way evil will die. The light is stereotyped as good, but only those of evil know the blind side of the light. It's this he reminds the foolish Jedi of as he clashed hard with the opposing blue, forcing the weapon of defense away as the yearning for attack fueled him. 

The Jedi was able to block only barely as the loop of death traveled across precarious height and ultimate doom, the complexities of each move was that of an intricate dance. The eruption like that of a solar flare from the suns fiery core shot up to swallow the light, the planet and it's entitie's bellowing laughter chilled the child of light. 

The yelling of voices inside his head were much louder here. Obnoxiously so as they swerved in and out of melting rooms, alarms blaring as if alerting them to the warning of death that was ironically everywhere. Each blow conjured a face he couldn't recall but knew all too well, each one cried at his feet. Flashes were so rapid it was the speed of light in the darkness.