Star Wars - Darth Plagueis

Master,” Plagueis called from the other corridor, but he stopped to surrender the lead.
    Closer to the surface the tunnels opened into caverns the size of cathedrals, smoothed and hollowed by rainwater that still surged in certain seasons of Bal’demnic’s long year. In pools of standing water darted various species of blind fish. Overhead, hawk-bats took panicked flight from their roosting places in the stippled ceiling. Natural light in the far distance prompted the two Sith to race for the grotto; but, even so, they were a moment late.
    The gas explosion caught up with them just as they were entering the light-filled cavity at the top of the escarpment. From deep in the tunnel resounded a squealing electronic wail, and at the same time, almost as if the cave system were gasping for breath, a searing wind tore down from a perforation in the grotto’s arched ceiling through which the ship had entered. A muffled but ground-heaving detonation followed; then a roiling fireball that was the labyrinth’s scorching exhalation. Whirling to the tunnel they had just exited and managing somehow to remain on his feet, Tenebrous conjured a Force shield with his waving arms that met the fireball and contained it, thousands of flaming hawk-bats spiraling within the tumult like windblown embers.
    A few meters away Plagueis, hurled face-first to the ground by the intensity of the vaporizing blast, lifted his head in time to see the undersideof the domed ceiling begin to shed enormous slabs of rock. Directly below the plummeting slabs sat their starship.
    “Master!” he said, scrambling to his feet with arms lifted in an attempt to hold the rocks in midair.
    His own arms still raised in a Force-summoning posture, Tenebrous swung around to bolster Plagueis’s intent. Behind him, the fireball’s final flames surged from the mouth of the tunnel to lick his back and drive him deeper into the grotto.
    The cave continued to spasm underfoot, sending shock waves through the crazed ceiling. Cracks spread like a web from the oculus, triggering collapses throughout the grotto. Plagueis heard a rending sound overhead and watched a fissure zigzag its way across the ceiling, sloughing layer after layer of stone as it followed the grotto’s curved wall.
    Now, though, it was Tenebrous who was positioned beneath the fall.
    And in that instant Plagueis perceived the danger Tenebrous had foreseen earlier: his death.
    His death at Plagueis’s hands.
    While Tenebrous was preoccupied holding aloft the slabs that threatened to crush the ship, Plagueis quickly reoriented himself, aiming his raised hands at the plummeting slabs above his Master and, with a downward motion of both arms, brought them down so quickly and with so much momentum that Tenebrous was buried almost before he understood what had hit him.
    Stone dust eddying around him, Plagueis stood rooted in place as slabs interred the starship, as well. But he gave it no thought. His success in bringing the ceiling down on Tenebrous was proof enough that the Bith had grown sluggish and expendable. Otherwise, he would have divined the true source of the danger he had sensed, and Plagueis would be the one pressed to the floor of the grotto, head cracked open like an egg and chest cavity pierced by the pointed end of a fallen stalactite.
    His race to Tenebrous’s side was informed as much by excitement as charade. “Master,” he said, genuflecting and removing his and Tenebrous’s respirators. His hands pawed at the stones, removing some of the crushing weight. But Tenebrous’s single lung was pierced, andblood gurgled in his throat. Ragged tears in the sleeves of the envirosuit revealed esoteric body markings and tattoos.
    “Stop, apprentice,” Tenebrous strained to say. “You’re going to need all your strength.”
    “I can bring help. There’s time—”
    “I’m dying, Darth Plagueis. There’s time only for that.”
    Plagueis held the Bith’s pained gaze. “I did all that I could, Master.”
    Tenebrous interrupted him once more. “To be strong in the Force is one thing. But to believe oneself to be all-powerful is to invite catastrophe. Remember, that even in the ethereal realm we inhabit, the unforeseen can occur.” A stuttering cough silenced him for a moment. “Better this way, perhaps, than to perish at your hand.”
    As Darth Bane would have wished, Plagueis thought. “Who supplied the mining probe, Master?”
    “Subtext,” Tenebrous said in a weak voice.