Mace stayed with him, pinning him to the akk’s flank, fists whirling through Vaapad flurries, striking not to disable or to kill, but instead to hurt: stinging flicks to soft tissue, smashing ears and nose, stabbing up under the chin.

The akk dog suddenly lurched away from them, giving Vastor half a meter of clearance. The lor pelek sprang sideways, diving away.

Mace let him go. “Go on and run, Kar. This is over. You lose. I’m the big dog here—”

Vastor turned his dive into a roll and spun to face the Jedi Master from one knee, and before Mace had even finished speaking the Force whirled around him and Mace found himself wrenched off the ground, hurtling backward through the air to slam against the smooth-barked gray trunk of a meter-thick lammas tree. The whole tree shivered with the impact, and a spiral galaxy birthed itself inside Mace’s head.

He thought, I was wondering when we’d get to this part.

Vastor’s face tightened. Strength must have been returning to his nerve-punched arms already, because he managed to raise one and gesture as though throwing a stone; Mace was whirled forward from the tree to crash against the skull of an astonished akk dog.

The impact folded him over the dog’s head and blasted the breath from his lungs; the dog’s crown spines gashed Mace’s abdomen, and when it tossed Mace aside with a twitch of its head like a Nymalian water-ox, his blood ran down the black outer shells of its eyes.

Jedi Padawans learn to counter Force kinesis before they even begin lightsaber training. Still in the air, Mace sensed the flow of power that held Vastor’s grip upon him; with a sigh, he allowed his center—Vastor’s point of Force contact—to relax and ground Vastor’s power back into the jungle around them …

And that jungle came to life.

A gripleaf trailer snaked down from above and seized one of Mace’s ankles in its unbreakable clutch. His airborne tumble became a wide-swinging head-down arc.


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 12