[LotS] Him and Sidious fight off hundreds of Lyleks

Vader enveloped himself in the Force, let it saturate him, and through it magnified and channeled his omnipresent rage and hate. Beside him the Emperor, too, unbridled his power and sank into the Force. As one they leapt down from the mouth of the tunnel.

The moment they hit the floor the lyleks swarmed forward, hundreds of them, a wave of spiked limbs and clicking mandibles. They raised their upper bodies as they charged, freeing themselves to use their spiked front legs like spears. They climbed over one another in their eagerness to kill and feed.

Vader extended a gloved hand and loosed a blast of power that blew apart two of the lyleks rushing toward him, showering those behind with gore and chunks of carapace. At the same time, his Master unleashed a destructive wave of power that cast three of the huge creatures backward and into the wall, cracking exoskeletons and leaving them broken, twitching, dying.

Vader rushed forward, blade held high. He ducked a tentacle, sidestepped the stab of a spiked leg, and with a crosscut severed the head from a lylek as it lunged at him. Crushing the skull under his boot, he used the Force to propel the headless carcass into a trio of the creatures behind it, turning them into a knot of legs and tentacles and chittering.

Feeling danger behind, he spun and lopped off the two front legs of another lylek that was poised to impale him through the back. He leapt atop its flailing, skittering body, riding it for a time while his blade slashed and stabbed at its fellows. He ended the creature's squeals of pain by driving his blade down and through its abdomen.

Bounding off its back, he rushed among the seething mass of lyleks, heedless now of their stabbing limbs and biting teeth, his lightsaber severing legs, tentacles, heads, mandibles, covering the floor in ichor-soaked body parts. Impacts from the tentacles and legs and hulking bodies barely moved him. None penetrated his armor, and what little pain they managed to inflict could not surpass the pain he carried always within him.

A spiked leg caught him squarely, slammed hard into his side, and drove him sideways into the tentacles of another lylek, which immediately wrapped around his legs and lifted him upside down from the floor.

While he hung there, another lylek lunged forward, mouth open wide as though to snap off his head. He drove his lightsaber into its open mouth and out the back of its head, and it fell dead to the floor. The creature holding him drew him toward its own mouth, but he simply bent at the waist and severed the tentacle holding him. He flipped in midair as he fell, landed on his feet, spun, and severed the forelegs from a lylek before him. It collapsed, screeching and spraying ichor from the stumps, its huge body thumping into him in its pained spasms. The impact of its bulk knocked him backward, but he rode the motion into a spinning crosscut that bisected another lylek's head. He'd killed dozens, a score or more, yet still they kept coming, the press of them restricting his movement, buffeting him, spiked legs slamming into the floor all around him.

Roaring, he dodged and jumped and spun through them, his blade slashing and stabbing, until a blow from a tentacle caught him flush in the chest and sent him careening backward. The creature that had struck him followed up, tentacles grasping, jaws clicking, the spears of its forelegs raised high. Meanwhile the spiked leg from another lylek slammed into his back. His armor prevented the limb from skewering him, but the impact drove him back toward the charging lylek.

Stumbling, Vader nevertheless held out a hand, channeled the Force, and loosed a blast of power that slammed the charging creature five meters backward into the wall. Wanting a moment to gather himself and check on his Master, he jumped high above the teeming mass of lyleks to a ledge five meters up on the wall, using the Force to augment his leap. The creatures he had just escaped gnashed their mandibles, waved their tentacles, and tried to climb over one another in their frustration as they scrabbled at the side of the wall.

From above, back near the tunnel mouth, Vader heard the shouts of the guards and the rapid whumps of repeated blasterfire. An explosion boomed-a grenade-causing the walls to vibrate.

Vader called on the Force, leapt, and propelled himself up to the mouth of the tunnel. Deez and the captain had both taken a knee, blaster rifles planted on their shoulders as they fired into the lyleks trying to advance down the tunnel toward them. Vader casually loosed a blast of power down the tunnel mouth, destroying the leading lyleks and pushing half a dozen more backward.

Seeing Vader, the captain shouted, "Where is the Emperor?" Deez just kept firing.

Vader turned and looked down to the floor below, where his Master, surrounded by a dozen or more lyleks, was spinning, whirling, leaping, his lightsaber moving so fast it blurred. He looked tiny amid their bulk but moved with preternatural speed, his blade stabbing and slashing and severing. He was laughing, the familiar cackle somehow audible above the sounds of the horde.

But then a score or more of lyleks lurched at him at once from all sides, leaping and climbing over one another, their tentacles a squirming net, their claws slashing, their massive chitinous bodies blocking him from Vader's view.

A thought flashed through Vader's mind, a stray thought, just for a moment: his Master dead, Vader ruling the Empire, the galaxy, unconstrained by the leash of an old man...

He killed the thought, leapt from the mouth of the tunnel, flipped in midair, and landed hard atop one of the lyleks. It bucked, tentacles squirming. He drove his blade down through its back and out its abdomen, killing it.

Tentacles reached for him from the left and right, and a third lylek reared up over its dead kin to get at him, but he vaulted from the carcass on which he stood and onto the back of another lylek a meter away. Again he drove his lightsaber down and through it.

"Master!" he shouted, still unable to see the Emperor in the press of the creatures.

A blast of power from somewhere under the throng of creatures drove four lyleks ten meters into the air, their bodies shattered by the force of the impact, limbs and tentacles showering down in a macabre rain. His Master stood in the center of the circle of surviving lyleks, his hair mussed, his robe torn, his lightsaber in hand, but otherwise seemingly unharmed.

Vader leapt down to his Master's side. They took position back-to-back.

"Master," Vader said.

"Lord Vader," his Master responded, and chuckled. "Enjoyable, no? Did you consider allowing me to die to realize your own ambitions?"

Vader didn't even attempt to lie. "I did, but only for a moment."

"Good," his Master said. "Very good."

As if on command, the lyleks surged toward them from all sides. As one, Vader and his Master channeled the Force and unleashed blasts of power that slammed into the advancing creatures, shattering several and casting six or seven hard against the walls. Still the lyleks came on, chittering and grasping and slashing.

Vader and his Master stood back-to-back in the center of the press, their lightsabers murderous red lines that lylek limbs and tentacles and bodies could not pass. The carcasses piled up around them, a mountain of the dead, and still they came on. Soon both of them were covered in gore, lost in the Force, in their unbridled ability to kill.

Vader sensed a new danger a moment before it materialized: a lylek from somewhere in the rear of the surviving mass sprang high over the others toward him and his Master, chittering, the spikes of its legs aimed forward as though to impale. Vader answered the creature's leap with a Force-augmented leap of his own, wielding his lightsaber in a two-handed grip, intercepting the creature in midair, and cutting it in two with the red streak of his blade.

He landed atop a dead lylek and immediately bounded back to his Master's side. He hit the floor in a crouch, expecting to be swarmed by the remaining lyleks, but instead found them backing away from him. He soon saw why-they were making way for the approach of the queen.

"You perceived the smaller danger but not the larger," his Master said. "Here it is now."