Chapter 53

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Chapter 53

Robb Stark

The instant the blade ignited, the forest quaked.

Each massive heart tree shivered as if wind coursed through this mind-born forest—yet there was no wind, only the dark side. Each engraved face twisted in abject agony, bleeding red sap from a hundred knot-like eyes.

Yet Robb's lightsaber hummed steadily.

'This mindscape is an artificial space.' He thought. 'An intentional feature that forcibly intersects both minds and forces a showdown.'

It wasn't the nature of the mindscape that needed to be kept in mind, but rather the implications involved.

'Naturally, for this ritual to work, this mindscape must have its own physical rules, one that mimics the real world.' That whole train of thought happened in barely a blink of an eye. 'That means any forceful changes has its price!'

Thorns hissed like a beast, black veins in his neck pulsing with a sickly green light.

"I will devour your soul like a man starved, cretin!" He spread his arms wide, and the ground itself split open, giving birth to tendrils of black bark. "You might as well stand still!"

The vines lashed toward Robb with predatory purpose.

But he was already moving, a simple sidestep, done with such speed as to leave a shimmer in his wake, left a giant onyx root hitting nothing but air.

His lightsaber carved a crescent arc—a clean, minimalistic swing, and another vine fell, smoking in eery motes of green.

Thorns roared, bark burst from his skin like armor, and Robb felt a veil of dark side energy envelop his form, twisting his body into an unbecoming monstrosity.

Dark crimson liquid that might either be his blood or sap surged forth from the crevices in what one might call his new hide, and Robb could sense the sheer agony he was subjected to as his body morphed.

"aaAA—————————————————" His wordless scream would have deafened lesser men.

While this was happening, the heart tree's roots and branches were relentlessly attacking him, their movements were erratic and had almost no conscious thought behind them, as if they were all charmed to despise him.

As Makashi masters oft seem to be, Robb gracefully dodged all tendrils before they could touch him, and those he could not dodge he cut, paving a path of green fog through the dark forest and closer and closer to the child of the forest.

By the time Robb became close, Thorns transformation was already finished. He towered before him and stood to be a head taller than the surrounding trees.

His back was arched, with a twisted bump on his back making him lurch forward. His mouth morphed into a snout—resembling a rat's, and his eyes glowed with a sickly yellow light, while his skin rippled with the same hue, sending agony through his being every time it did so.

"I wiLL KiLL y̵̙͂o̶̜͝ǘ̶̱ — and wear your soul like a crown…"

"I doubt that…" Robb finally spoke. "Especially with your mental strength waning just to keep yourself sane."

Indeed, the reason why this transformation wasn't used in their previous battle was due to the simple fact that it would have driven Thorns mad with grief. As of this moment, the child of the forest is expending a great amount of his mental fortitude warping his own mind to keep it intact.

And in this spiritual battle, no "physical" damage holds, only the person's willpower does. And any unnatural change—such as manifesting this forest, per example, depletes one's mental credit, one might say.

And the only such change caused by Robb is the manifestation of his lightsaber, all the maneuvers he committed during this time were things he was entirely capable of in real life, and therefore, held next to no mental cost.

A giant fist ripped the air at the speed of an arrow, its impact with Robb's previous position was so deafening and powerful, it had drilled a hole into the ground.

But Robb had already jumped even before that arm moved, and he'd swiftly landed on top of Thorns' giant hand.

Feeling the light side of the force flowing through him, Robb scaled up the arm with frightening speed. But Thorns roided out eyes were quickly able to catch up, and his palm surged with equally impressive speed, aiming to slap him down.

Robb elegantly pivoted sideways, it wasn't necessarily enough to get out of the strike zone, but it meant that instead of facing Thorns' palm, he only had his giant fingers to deal with. A swish and a buzzing sound after, and Robb cut off those fingers in totality as he was jumping over them.

Thorns screaming in even more pain, causing the surrounding trees to basically shudder.

While aloft, Robb began spinning to gather more momentum.

"For the pleasure of giving me the opportunity to reunite with this saber." A telekinetic push forced Thorns' hand to miss his grab, and Robb halted his spin in favor of sticking his lightsaber into his arm, sliding down while creating a gory wound throughout. "I shall grant you a quick death."

Finally, Robb reached his destination, and Thorns giant body fell down with a great thud, the lightsaber stuck gouged into his brain through his eye.

Robb landed softly a couple of feet away, untouched and unperturbed.

"But only should you let me." He turned abruptly, his hand extending to grab his assailant by the neck, and lifting him up.

There was the revived form of Thorns, a hand scratching at Robb's as he tried to pry away his hand away, while the held an obsidian dagger that was blown away by a telekinetic push.

Robb tightened his hold over Thorns' windpipe, watching lidlessly as his face grew bluish from the lack of oxygen.

"This is a battle of the wills." Robb said, ignoring the sharp tendrils cut down by his spinning, levitating lightsaber inches before they touched his head. "For someone who seemingly devised this ritual, you seem to lack knowledge of that fact."

As a final gambit, another dagger appeared in Thorns' free hand. A gambit that failed, as Robb slammed him to the ground with such strength as to cause it to crack.

Turning away from Thorns second cadaver, Robb stared at his newly resurrected form manifesting tens of yards away, looking at him straight in the eyes.

Robb detested employing such terror tactics, they were quite cowardly, and not really part of his preferred methods.

But this a mental battle, and while he disliked such methods, he was logical enough to recognize their use.

"I see you." Robb projected his voice through the force. "Hiding like the coward you truly were. Where is the so-called agent of vengeance? The person who so blatantly told of his desire to scour the world of those that brought him unending suffering?"

He could glimpse through the distance anger cloud Thorns features even as he shrunk further into himself, but more than that, there was a dark look that Robb could instantly recognize.

Terror.

"And here I stand." Robb's lightsaber was brought to his hand once again, and he began slowly, steadily walking toward his prey. "A Stark, THE Stark. I am what remains of the man who you hate so much, the man that ruined your plans and ambitions, and imprisoned you in this island."

Finally, an expression of sheer rage took hold of the child of the forest.

However, it was the cold sort of wrath, one that doesn't come with sudden outburst.

Eventually, Thorns must have come to a decision, as a sudden fog began appearing around the forest, both masking Robb's sight and his senses through the Force.

'The mental cost of manifesting such a great amount of mystical fog– one that Thorns certainly does not know the composition of, must be disastrous.' He thought. 'If he knew how to do so naturally, he wouldn't have bothered directly manifesting it.'

The less you know about what you're manifesting in the space, the more straining it is going to be to do so.

But even though the fog could cloud both his natural and supernatural perception, it didn't seem to dampen his precognition.

A blue circle lit up through the fog, a result of a lightsaber swing, and Robb turned to look at his assailant.

Their dead eyes stared back at him, attached to their cut off head.

"You… Killed me… Son…" Ned Stark's bloodied mouth moved on its own volition.

Robb had cut off his own father's head.