//------------------------------//
// Chapter Seven: How to (Not) Kill Goddesses 
// Story: STAR WARS / FiM: Realms of the Heavens 
// by Tathem_Relag 
//------------------------------//

Location: Canterlot Castle Throne Room
Local Time: 11:54
Coruscant Standard Time: 23:53

Inquisitor Valerious propped himself up on one elbow, shoulders protesting against the movement. Staring up at the two furious Force entities before him and hearing the guards pounding on the doors, he realized that he couldn’t afford to drag this out. “All right, all right,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “I yield to your superior might.” He started to slowly lower his hands, then suddenly extended them toward the white alicorn and spread his fingers. Celestia, not educated in the abilities granted by the Dark Side of the Force, was caught off-guard and sent flying across the room by the burst of lightning, smashing through her throne.
He quickly rolled out of the way of the inevitable retaliatory strike by her sister, turning the movement into a cartwheel and landing on his feet. His lightsaber flew into his outstretched hand. The double-length hilt gave him a leverage advantage over opponents with a standard saber, though he had to make it out of expensive phrik in order to prevent attacks against it. One end was capped in the common Jedi conical pommel shape, while his scarlet blade emerged from a very Sithly emitter, surrounded by four triangular metal blades.
A burst of Force Speed brought him within range of Luna before she could fire another beam at him. She barely dodged his first strike, and he kept up the pressure with a relentless Ataru offense. After an overhead swing, he used his momentum to twist into a kick that caught her in the throat with an audible crunch. She fell to the marble floor – the alicorns might not have needed to breathe, but getting her windpipe crushed still hurt like all Chaos.
Malen flipped his lightsaber over in his hand and prepared to finish off his fallen enemy, but he was forced to jump out of the way of a beam of golden energy launched by the recovered Celestia. A gesture shattered the thrown room’s stained glass windows, and another sent the razor-sharp shards hurtling towards the sisters. While Celestia managed to throw up a Force shield to protect herself, the Inquisitor smiled broadly at the sight of half the fragments embedding themselves in the prone Luna.
Of course, this also had the side effect of throwing Celestia into a screaming rage. He desperately dodged the flurry of beams directed toward him, putting all of his Force energy into his precognition and augmenting his agility. When an opportunity presented itself, he leapt over one of the beams and lunged for his foe, only to be knocked back by a Force Repulse. As he rolled to his feet, the door finally broke open, and guards streamed into the room.
He knew that he had no hope of winning this fight. His Force reserves were draining, and the sheer number of guards would have posed a near-insurmountable challenge even at his full strength. However, he would not surrender. He had enough power left for one last trick.
Before becoming an Inquisitor, he had been a Shadow: a member of the Jedi Order’s officially nonexistent branch of assassins. The Shadows had many obscure skills intended to aid them in their quest to destroy anyone or anything the Council of First Knowledge decided was corrupted by the Dark Side. He had found one of those abilities particularly useful.
With a wave of his hand, he disappeared in a Force Cloak. Celestia looked around in shock for a moment, then turned to her guards. “Scour the castle grounds and put Canterlot on lockdown! He couldn’t have teleported far.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” they responded as one, then hurried out of the room.
Malen was confused. Force Cloak was a rare ability outside of the Jedi Shadows and the old, disbanded Sith Assassins, but teleportation was hardly much more common. For her to come to the immediate conclusion that he had teleported, at least one of two things had to be true: either teleportation was an unusually common skill here, or cloaking was entirely unheard of. Still, whichever it was, he was grateful for her inaccurate conclusion.
If teleportation worked here like it did in the rest of the galaxy (not necessarily a safe assumption, based on what he already knew of this world), teleportation was restricted to locations the practitioner could see, at the very best. Most users of the skill couldn’t travel more than a few meters. The guards would probably heavily reinforce the highest towers to deprive him of a good vantage point for a long-distance teleport in case he was one of the ability’s masters. However, what he’d actually be looking for would be lower locations in the wall, where he wouldn’t have to divert too much of his energy from the Cloak to cushion his landing.
He was drawn from his musings by some unexpected movement in his peripheral vision. Turning toward the activity, he almost lost the concentration needed to sustain the Cloak when Luna staggered to her hooves. Impossi- No, quite possible. Remember the second resolution. These are Force entities. They’re only marginally constrained by the laws of physics. Their physical forms are probably highly malleable. In all likelihood, they’re shapeshifters, too. Anything less than an instantly killing blow will be insufficient to do more than momentarily incapacitate them. He wasn’t even slightly surprised when she pulled the shards of glass out of her body and her wounds began healing before his eyes.
She stumbled over to her sister and spoke in a voice that was gratifyingly strained. “I think we ought to pay the humans a little visit.”