He’d been too late to save Terrel, but in the bunker there were four other Balawai children whom Vastor could reach with a single stride.

Still in the air, Mace drew back both lightsabers and whipped them forward and down with the full grim intention to carve Vastor into pieces so small it’d take a bioscan to tell they’d ever been human.

The lor pelek cast aside the boy’s corpse with one flick of his massive wrist and whirled, shields flashing in the lightsaber glare as they flicked upward and met Mace’s downward strokes. Mace used the Force to drive the blades; he would cut through the shields, through both of Vastor’s arms, slash deep into his chest to quench the blades’ fire in Vastor’s smoking heart—

But the shields did not cut, and they did not give way.

Their singing whine hummed into Mace’s hands, up his arms, to shiver in his chest and buzz in his teeth.

Then he was past, flipping over Vastor’s head. Keela and Pell and the two boys shrieked and clung to each other on their knees, cowering back from his path. He landed and whirled to face the lor pelek, his blades crossed in the defensive X.

Vastor stared at Mace from a motionless fighting crouch. His eyes smoldered; his growl said, We have gone to considerable trouble to bring you here, dôshalo. Must I kill you?

[...]

Mace ground his teeth together, panting harshly. “Leave this place, Kar Vastor. I won’t let you harm these children.”

Vastor lifted shields that still shone mirror bright; Mace’s lightsabers had not even scarred their surface. Blood fever surged in Mace’s heart. Vastor moved toward him with the ponderous menace of a hungry rancor. I see flames in your eyes, Jedi Mace Windu: jungle green and stormcloud purple. I hear echoes of blood’s thunder in your ears.


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 8