Bastila did not rest easy that night, her meditations interrupted by the beating of a drum, and no matter how much she opened herself to the Light Side of the Force, it would not come to her, seemingly driven off by the warlike beating of that drum. It was very precise and very regular, as if meant to keep time more so than to be an instrument all of its own. In fact, it sounded almost like a heartbeat, rapping a rhythmic tattoo against the inside of her head, thrumming across threads of the Force as they began to grey and blacken until the temerity of the Dark Side superseded her call to the Light, and for a split second before she broke away, emerging from her trance in a cold sweat, short of breath and with a racing heart, she felt it brush up against her like some loathsome serpent, and she knew what that beating was—the sound of Revan's heart, the sound of the heart of Kylo Wren, beating across the Force. Was he that powerful that his very heartbeats cause reverberations throughout the Force itself? The thought was terrifying beyond belief, to be certain—what exactly would someone like him be capable of?
Such disturbing thoughts passed through Bastila's mind, and not even the recitation of the Jedi Code, typically a mantra against the Dark Side and formulated and metered for that task almost exclusively, could calm her inner turmoil. And so she walked. She left her chamber and walked quietly through the Enclave to the training area, her double-bladed lightsaber's hilt in hand. Activating the training droids, she ignited her lightsaber in time for all of them to charge her, practise foils raised high above their heads.
Several minutes later, the droids had been reduced to scrap, but Bastila hosted a score of new bruises and minor burns herself. The calmness of mind that allowed the Force to guide a Jedi's lightsaber had escaped her, so polluted with turmoil were the pools of life energy that allowed the Force to flow, and as such, her task had been far more difficult, having to devote her attention to all the droids at once, as opposed to allowing the Force to allow her to keep the pace. She tucked a stray lock of brown hair behind her ear, but yelped when she felt a familiar presence right behind her.
So, Bastila Shan—was this truly all the skill needed to defeat me? I must be getting soft in my old age that I might allow such a neophyte to strike me down… How very unacceptable, came Revan's voice into her mind, at once amused and disappointed. Come down to my chamber, child, and let me regale you with another tale of my childhood. Perhaps then you might find that your paradigm regarding the art of fencing has changed.
"...Revan?" Bastila asked.
She could hear him chuckling, which was a shock. She had no idea that he could laugh! In the flesh—after a fashion, came his response. Come down. I've just finished meditating, and your feelings of restlessness are most distressing when attempting to sleep. So, seeing as our link has caused us both to become insomniacs, we might as well make the best of it, hmm? Oh, and don't forget to bring your lightsaber. You will need it.
Bastila was about to protest, wishing nothing more than to go lick her wounds and nurse her wounded pride, but thought better of it when she realised that she was going to hear the story sooner or later, and that hearing it sooner might mean that she could part company with him sooner, given that they would be making progress regardless. "Very well," she finally agreed despite her exhaustion. Revan was a master storyteller, and so at least it would be interesting and perhaps give her some more insight into what made a half-Mandalorian boy into the most feared Sith Lord since the days of the Great Hyperspace War.
Bastila washed herself in the refresher, donning her Jedi robes and walking down to where Revan was held, his egg-shaped meditation chamber open, though with his hood still up, those horrible glowing yellow eyes staring out at the world, uncaring, unblinking, and calculating to the extreme, as if every twitch of every muscle of hers was planned and catalogued and accounted for down to the slightest impetus to motion. It sent a chill down her spine, doubly so when she sensed that in the strangely complete shadows of his hood, he was smiling. "Ah, Bastila—right on time. Come, come, sit," he said, gesturing to the ground in front of his transparisteel enclosure. "Now, where was I… Oh, yes, my first fencing lessons!"
The next day, as a Padawan, I had a lot to learn to live up to the title. At first, presumably to avoid suspicion, Master Kreia had me attending Vrook's classes with the other children my age, and I thought that I was finally going to be free to mingle, to learn, and to find new friends. Unfortunately, Vrook had never agreed with Master Kreia's...methods, and he took out his hate for her on me, hating me for having skirted the rules, hating me for associating with Master Kreia. Zhar and Vandar did their best to convince him, I'm sure, that hatred of me could well be dangerous—for while they were not so flippant with it as he, they, too, distrusted my blind master for her views on the Force and her knowledge of the nature of the Dark Side. And so Vrook took a rather particular pleasure in playing the part of the...disciplinarian, as it were.
I was excited, actually, the first day Master Kreia officially took me to the Enclave for my first lessons in the art of fencing. She accompanied me so that I wouldn't get lost, at least officially, since we both knew I knew my way around the Enclave. I'd always had that—that sense of direction, and only later did I discover that that was the Force at work. But appearances had to be kept, and so Master Kreia escorted me to the dojo where the class for Padawans, not younglings, sought instruction. This was by Vrook's orders, of course, and so I found myself amidst a group of people who were at least two years older than me, who had had instruction I had not, who had much more control over their Force sensitivity than I did, and it was, I think, supposed to be a way to humble me. Although, as he came to understand, I am not so easily cowed as he thought I would be.
When Master Kreia left with nary a word, it was not seconds before Vrook entered, dressed in those horrible orange robes he prefers to wear for some reason—they hurt the eyes they were so unbelievably garish—and his lightsaber clipped to his belt. That was something else I did not have—we were precisely one lightfoil short for the entire class to have one, and that someone was me. "Padawan Kylo Ren! Where is your lightfoil?!" he demanded as he walked in, a strange bald boy with grey markings on his head at his heels, acting as if he didn't know damn well where the practise sabres were.
"I do not have one, sir," I responded, trying to be polite. I wanted to make a good impression, you see, and yet Vrook's immediate hatred of me and all I represented, which was essentially my master's ability to act with impunity without the Council proper wishing to join him in reprimanding her, was easily felt in his Force signature. This was the first full Jedi I had met, and so it was he who shaped my expectations of the entire order. So knowing the old tosser, you should be able to understand why my opinion of your kind is so almost uniformly low. I can count the decent Jedi I have met on one hand out of the hundreds, thousands of you infesting the galaxy. Those aren't very encouraging statistics, you know. Not very encouraging statistics at all. But I digress.
"See here, Padawans. This is the product of negligence. Always be attentive, always be prepared, and never hasty, lest you indulge in this sort of remission," Vrook called out, stepping into parade rest as he continued to attempt to make a fool out of me. He took the lightsaber out of his belt and held it out to me, like a piece of meat to a kath hound you're trying to teach tricks to. "Here, you may use my lightsaber. In the future, have a lightfoil, or don't come to class. I do not tolerate indolence amongst my students, no matter who their masters are. Now, Padawans, break off into groups of two, and practise the first through fourth kata of Shii-Cho with each other. Padawan Kylo, you'll work with my Padawan, Alek. He should be well-qualified to give you remedial attentions."
Now you see, back then, when Alek was still a Padawan, before we became friends, he had been Vrook's student through and through. He was awkward even years later, and was always attempting to be the voice of reason, the voice of the Jedi Council, among Meetra and me when we went on adventures that either bent or outright flouted the rules. He worshipped Vrook, stern and taciturn and curmudgeonous, saw him as an idol of everything a Jedi, let alone a Jedi Master, should aspire to be, and so he eyed me with a grey gaze filled with suspicion and more than a little bit of fear. That's what Master Kreia instilled in the other Jedi around her with her studies and her intimate knowledge of the nature of the Force—fear; and that was a feeling that afforded her nearly complete impunity when, had she been anyone else, she would have had her connection to the Force severed long before ever meeting me.
Regardless, it was clear to me then as it is clear to me now that Alek didn't trust me, not even a little bit, and so when he ignited his lightfoil and I couldn't find the activation plate, wherever Vrook had put it on the damnable machine, he didn't believe me and kept his lightfoil at the ready, his guard up. It was a full minute of awkwardness with me fumbling for the activation plate before Vrook came over with a stern sigh, and ignited the lightsaber for me before handing it back. The grip was entirely too thick for my hand, not at all like the lightfoil Alek had, and so I had to hold it in a two-handed grip, despite the fact that the balancing and the weight and the diameter were ludicrously wrong for me. As such, my technique and kinesthesia when it came to the nearly-weightless weapon were all off, but I still saw the openings he left behind with his wide swings as he practised the simplest and, in my opinion, second most intrinsically flawed forms of lightsaber combat.
Now, had I been a normal child born on Deralia like the records say I was, I wouldn't have known what to do, and Alek would have trounced me quite soundly and perhaps even ended me rightly, then apologising when it became clear I had no idea what the kriff I was doing. As it stood, however, I was no ordinary child. The lightsaber was an unfamiliar weapon in my hands, but when I looked at it, I saw a blade, and when I saw a blade, I thought, 'cut.' So, I tentatively exploited the opening he made when he extended his arm across his body, unable to bring his arm back around in time to deflect the lunge I made for his exposed shoulder. The tip of the lightsaber sunk into his shoulder, perhaps a centimetre or four—I may be rounding down a bit… Anyway, Vrook saw what had happened as Alek cried out in pain, and rushed over and wrenched his lightsaber out of my hand before I struck bone. The look on his face, the barely-suppressed fury at me having the temerity to attack his Padawan, and it was clear without him even having to have said the words that I was no longer welcome in his dojo. And so I cleared off, trying to run back to the hut I shared with Master Kreia. I ran in and closed the door, breathing heavily with my heart pounding in my ears. I thought he would dodge or block or something, but no, he just stood there like a lame Vanqorian gundark and took the lightsaber wound to the shoulder.
A few hours later, Master Kreia found me in the middle of the hut, practising Mandalorian hand-to-hand forms so as to deal with my stress—I hadn't exactly learned to meditate yet by that point, after all—and she closed the door silently and stood there like a hooded phantom, waiting for me to notice that she was there. I jumped when I did, disrupting the soothing flow of what I was doing and putting me into a panic once again. Was she going to lecture me? Punish me? Reprimand me?
None of those things happened, though. After holding my eyes for a minute or two with her blank, sightless gaze, she sighed. "Calm down, boy. Fear is unbecoming of a Jedi," she chided curtly. "I have spoken with Kavar and Vrook. You will be learning fencing from me, now, as is Kavar's Padawan. You two are to be training partners, and you will learn to fight at her level, and in time, surpass her. This is not a request."
I composed myself quickly when I realised that Master Kreia expected some form of response out of me, and so I bowed. "Yes, Master Kreia," I replied, doing my best to hold to some small degree of dignity and etiquette even as my body had yet to stop shaking.
She nodded, stepping aside, and who should come through the door to the hut but the girl I had met earlier that week. "This is Padawan Meetra Surik. She is going to be your training partner."
I froze, taking her in. Her hair had been done into an elegant braid that hung down her shoulder, her face was alight with life and vigour, and she seemed to radiate warmth like a sun. She smiled. "Hey, Kylo! How's it going?"
"So that's how you officially met her?" Bastila asked, enraptured by the story, though she attempted to maintain decorum and not let the Sith Lord know his tale was gaining ground in what childishness she had left. There was never an idealist born, after all, who did not love a good romance.
Revan nodded. "Indeed that was. Kavar and Master Kreia were never really on good terms, and Meetra wasn't exactly an official Padawan, but she was Padawan enough to take private lessons with another Padawan. And Kavar, Kavar was a masterful teacher. It was watching him duel Master Kreia that got me interested in practising Jar'Kai variants of common lightsaber forms, and his way of approaching lightsaber styles helped me to perfect my own personal hybrid form and allowed me to integrate techniques that I wouldn't learn in the ordinary course into my repertoire."
Bastila nodded, attempting to keep her stately persona while simultaneously being nearly overwhelmed with excitement. "What was your first duel with her like?" she asked despite herself; having always loved stories as a little girl, this tale that seemed like a holovid romance come alive almost made her forget that the point of the exercise was to redeem the Dark Lord of the Sith by understanding the path he had taken to become such.
Revan chuckled, shaking his head. "Ah, to be young again…" he laughed. "Certainly, I can tell you the tales of how I came to learn to fight. But quid pro quo is expected here, Bastila. Come—I meant to help you with your lightsaber forms regardless. Up you get, quick as you like." His tone didn't change and he didn't move, and yet Bastila found herself standing without complaint anyways, taking her yellow double-bladed lightsaber into her hands, and awaiting further instruction. "Take your ready stance," he instructed, and once more, she obeyed, igniting her lightsaber with the familiar snap-hiss of the plasma blade igniting. Revan shook his head. "Your stance is far too wide. Too easy to take off-balance. Your legs should be no further apart than they are during parade rest. And your hands are gripping far too tightly. You're limiting your dexterity with the weapon by doing that, and that is a perilous prospect."
Bastila scowled. "I'm not a kath hound you're trying to train to jump through hoops, Revan," she snapped.
Though she could not see his face, she imagined that he cocked an eyebrow at her. "I never said you were. Now, please follow my instructions—I would hate to have you lose a leg or an arm due to an uncoordinated parry."
Sufficiently chastised, Bastila grumbled, but she obeyed, bringing her stance in and breathing deeply as she released her grip on her lightsaber degree by degree until she was in the relaxed, battle-ready posture Revan asked of her. Immediately, it felt better, lighter and more natural to her than what the Jedi had taught her for years now. She could feel that she was already more mobile than she had been prior, and by a wide margin to boot.
"Very good," Revan said as he nodded his approval. "Now, show me the six basic kata of your hybrid form."
Bastila looked at Revan incredulously, as if looking upon a raving madman, and Revan felt a wave of disappointment, irritation and frustration flow through him like a Mustafaran river, thousands of tonnes of slag and molten rock crushing his high hopes for the Jedi Padawan for the foreseeable future. I suppose I have my work cut out for me with this one… he mused to himself as he shifted his positioning, preparing to mimic the motionless teaching style of a particular Jedi, one Vandar Tokare specifically. "You did not think I won against you by simply using one form, do you? The forms are nothing more than the basics—meant to be used by peons, pedestrians, plebians and fools. Certainly not by Force sensitives of your calibre." He resisted the urge to smile as he saw that his words had hit home. She still had no idea how much potential she truly had, but she had an inkling as to how much she was being held back out of fear of her power—whatever miniscule fraction of her true potential of which she was aware. He sighed. "It seems remedial lessons are in order, if you would be willing? Entirely gratis, of course."
Bastila cocked her eyebrow, and he could feel her suspicion through the Force bond betwixt them twain. "Why? What do you stand to gain?" she asked, and Revan felt his respect for her grow substantially. An excellent question, and one any True Sith would balk at answering. Thankfully, Darth Revan was considered by the Dark Council on Dromund Kaas a heretic of the highest order, and would never be considered to be amongst the ranks of the True Sith—not in temperament, nor in bearing, nor in motive, nor in method.
As such, Revan decided once again that deception was utterly unnecessary, and elected to convey the blunt truth. "Bastila, I have been in this…cage for a month now with nothing but Jedi drivel and meditation to keep my mind active." And incidentally, I have enough annotations on the former to fill at least three volumes… "To be incredibly frank, Bastila, I am bored. I am utterly and entirely bored. Until two days ago, I was utterly alone down here with nothing to do, and had I been left alone for much longer, I cannot imagine how damaged my sanity would become. Please do not deny me this one favour I ask of you."
Bastila was still suspicious, but Revan remained unconcerned. In truth, he would be surprised and more than a little dismayed if she trusted him implicitly after so little. "What would you know of the double-bladed lightsaber?" she asked, a touch curt.
Revan waved it away. "Enough that had I returned from the Mandalorian Wars a Jedi still, I might well have become the Council's Battlemaster within the month. Now, allow me to explain the concept of a hybrid form—it is quite taxing attempting to devise a way to demonstrate without weapons or so much as the capability of movement necessary to use them…" He trailed off as he grumbled, more than aware that his complaining would not change anything around him, as he was working on rebuilding the stores of Force energy within him that allowed him to survive Malak's attack on the Dominator a month ago. "As I was saying, the basic forms work fine for the neophytes, and indeed, hybrid forms in their hands are rather disadvantageous given their myriad complexities. But a skilled lightsaber duellist can, with practise, bring out all of the strengths of each form in turn, and with more practise still, bring them out simultaneously. For example, my hybrid form is a merge of the Jar'Kai variants of Makashi, Soresu, Ataru and Juyo. I've been practising and perfecting it since before the Mandalorian Wars, and now I can say without boasting that in lightsaber combat, I am utterly without peer."
Bastila very nearly scoffed, but he could sense that she could recognise the truth of what he had said simply by looking him in the eye. It disturbed him, as his eyes reminded him that his face was still missing, which brought forth once more the feelings of guilt and anguish that had haunted him until Meetra had calmed them—and as a result of that thought, the guilt and anguish emerged once again, replete with the rising of the emotion that had brought Revan to the Dark Side. Darth Vitiate had not named him the Lord of Vengeance on a lark, after all. But he controlled himself, remembering to harness his emotions and focus their energy on the task at hand. "Disbelieve me as you like—you know as well as I that it was not your lightsaber that felled me, nor the lightsabers of any of your pathetic companions. It was by the treachery of an insolent usurper and the will of the Force that I was defeated, not by any craft that any of you here possess. Now, shall we get to it, or would you rather argue with me all night? I no longer need sleep, so either is fine with me, but in the end, it is your choice. Grow, or stagnate. Adapt, or be destroyed. Live, or die. The power to choose any of these is entirely in your hands."
Bastila held out for a time, but eventually assented. "Very well—please, by all means, show me what you know."
Revan smiled knowingly. "So, first thing's first. What would you like your base form to be?" Bastila cocked her head with a furrowed brow, and Revan grew even more dismayed. "Your base form? The form on which you build the rest of it? For example, my base form is the Jar-Kai variant of Juyo. I rely on speed, ferocity, and constant offence. One of the main drawbacks of Juyo, however, is that it lacks for control, restraint, and pacing. Pure Juyo will always lose if the enemy can turn the duel into a war of attrition. To that end, I incorporated Makashi. As you know, like a dance, the Makashi Form is excellent for duellists who prefer footwork and pacing, and as such, I painstakingly incorporated it into my own skillset and modified it to better serve the purpose for which I adopted it.
"But Juyo has a second, and much more pressing issue: that is, when your foe turns the tide of battle against you, what recourse have you than to die? To that end, I merged Makashi's dancelike movements and the defensive midset of Soresu atop Juyo, so that I had a form capable of offence and defence without having to sacrifice anything. Ataru was really just lopped in there because its inherent mobility make it the perfect response to overly defensive opponents. Vectors really are the key to confusion," Revan mused. "But now the task is yours. Your base form should take advantage of your greatest strength—for though it is a hybrid form, it is still very much as it began, merely—augmented. So, Bastila, answer me this: what is your greatest strength in a lightsaber duel?"
Bastila was visibly pondering the question for a moment that lasted into eternity. I was about to pose a separate question to lead her to the answer of the first, but she at last beat me to it. "Finesse," she finally replied.
Revan nodded in agreement. "Though your technique is unrefined, you seem to have a natural talent for deft manoeuvring. Very well—Makashi will be the base of your personal style. But Makashi lacks for power, both in attack and defence. You can either shore up your weaknesses, as I did, or play to your strengths. However, I would recommend the latter—Makashi is an excellent form and very well-balanced, and so adopting the extremes like Juyo or Soresu would run counter to your base aptitudes, hampering you. So I would, to that end, suggest that Niman be your second form, as each successive form you adopt into your personal style adds progressively less utility—you get diminishing returns beyond three, which is why in a lightsaber duel, you don't see me jumping around like an Ewok, do you?"
Bastila nodded her head, for there was wisdom in Revan's words, as oddly difficult it was to admit.
"Now put that weapon away and sit, please. I did promise you that there was more to this section of the story, did I not?" Revan asked, bemused and quite pleased that Bastila had so readily taken to his well-intentioned advice. After all, if there was anything Revan hated even half as much as the Jedi Order, it was waste. He hated wasted time. He hated wasted resources. He hated wasted words—but above all other kinds of waste, he hated wasted potential the most; and since the culprits for the waste of potential were the Jedi Council, he felt as if he could kill two shyrack with one stone here—training Bastila to the pinnacle of her abilities would most assuredly spite the musty old men so alienated from their emotions they knew not what it was to be sentients in a living, breathing, endlessly mutable galaxy anymore. Honestly, the insolence of them to hamper and stunt the growth of one of their own was absolutely unacceptable.
Putting such thoughts out of his mind at the moment, Revan once again took refuge in the shadows of his meditation egg as he prepared to relate his and Meetra's first training duel, as well as the successive weeks' events until Alek had come to join their little coterie. "Now, where was I… Oh, yes!"
Under the supervision of both of our masters, Meetra and I began to blossom as fighters. This was not altogether unexpected—Kavar was considered a fast track to becoming a Guardian back then, and Master Kreia… Master Kreia wasn't known for taking pupils; I was her first and only Padawan, actually. Regardless, on our off-time, Master Kreia would teach me but sparingly the nature of the Force, and most of the time I was to spend on my own, tending to the various things that needed doing around the hut and the surrounding area. I meditated weekly, practised daily, and spent the rest of the time sweeping the floors and cooking Mandalorian rice in hopes that Master Kreia would take a more active role in my tutelage. But it wasn't quite time for that.
Kavar and Meetra came by twice a week for six hours at a time. Meetra would receive her instructions from Master Kreia, and I would work with Kavar, and then we would spend the last two hours sparring with each other, Master Kreia having presented me with an actual, proper lightfoil shortly before Meetra and my first lesson with Kavar. We learned kata, certainly, but when it came time to spar, we abandoned them and simply fought—with the lightfoils, of course, and so it was not often that one of us suffered serious injury. Usually a few burns or contusions was the extent of the damage—though I suffered them much more frequently than inflicting them, at least at first. After all, Meetra had trained under Kavar for a while before I found myself on Dantooine, so she was obviously much more comfortable with the lightfoil than I was at that point. It was perhaps two months of training, when Kavar finally gave up on teaching me the Jedi-approved forms and instructed me in Juyo, that I was able to defeat her.
"Come on, Kylo!" Meetra jeered, holding her lightfoil at the ready. "Stop being kath shavit and get over here and fight me!"
By this point, she had not a scratch on her, and I was bruised and battered by her superior proficiency with Soresu, which at the time was her favoured form. I couldn't break her defence no matter how I tried, no matter what form I attempted, and I was growing frustrated. Indignation filled me, and so I decided to attempt the form I had only just learned for the first time—Juyo—and when I ignited my lightfoil, I threw caution to the wind and attacked.
Meetra wasn't expecting such an aggressive opening, shaken as I had been by what happened in Vrook's class with Alek. Until then I had been cautious, unconsciously moving slower and more tentatively than I otherwise would have, and now all that fell to the wind as I trusted for the first time in a long time my training, both as a Jedi and a Mandalorian. My blows were swift, fierce and almost frenzied as I finally managed to gain an advantage I could press, putting Meetra for the first time onto her back foot. Soresu is a wonderful form, certainly, but in the hands of someone like Meetra, whose martial training was entirely through the Jedi, the very Mandalorian mindset I was using to wield Juyo was entirely alien, and therefore unpredictable, which is the death knell for a form like Soresu, which, much like Makashi, requires an intimate knowledge of the flow of the duel, the rhythm running back and forth.
It was amidst this that I became aware of someone watching from the nearby brush. It was a substantial Force signature, filled with adoration of Meetra and resentment and distrust of me. Of course, my Force senses were not nearly refined enough to allow me to make the connection between this interloper and Alek, and so I simply trusted that if it was a threat, it was not nearly enough of a threat for Master Kreia to take notice and deal with the issue.
Anyway, I fought in a frenzy, going from moment to moment, attacking without pause for parry or riposte, no thought of openings, just continuing to beat down on her with brute force until the ruthless fighter inside me, the product of what little training I had received from my aliit before I was forced to leave, recognised the chance to upset the balance of power between Meetra and myself. As such, I struck like a vaapad and disarmed her, ending by putting my lightfoil to her neck as she yielded the bout to me.
Master Kreia came out clapping, though Kavar looked troubled. The reason, I later learned secondhand, is that it is extremely rare for a Padawan to take to Juyo so quickly, the most dangerous of all seven forms, and for one so young, it was exceedingly perilous, as Juyo's nature was very grey, and very nearly brushed shoulders with the Dark Side, to which, had I succumbed to its manifold and myriad seductions then, I would have fallen fully and completely, become a simple puppet of my emotions.
"Well done, my young Padawan," Master Kreia said in that enigmatic monotone of hers. "We may have found a style at which you excel at last."
Kavar nodded. "You have a lot to learn, young Ren. But I do commend your effort and express, however grudgingly, that Juyo seems to agree with you. However, your technique is sloppy and your pacing is chronically mistimed."
Master Kreia stepped in, seeming bemused by Kavar's words. "Then, my friend, why don't we give our young Padawans a demonstration of a proper lightsaber duel."
For a moment, Kavar favoured Master Kreia with a suspicious gaze; however, his questing eyes found no purchase in the enigmatic marks of age upon her face, and as such, he nodded and assented to her suggestion. "Padawans, clear the platform," he said as he unclipped the hilts of his lightsabers from either side of his belt, taking an unfamiliar stance as he ignited his matching blue lightsabers, and Kreia removed her green lightsaber from her voluminous brown-and-grey robes that smelled of ash and then took a Shii-Cho stance. It was merest moments before they rushed together in a clash.
Master Kreia brought her lightsaber up to block the twin overhead strikes that Kavar opened with, catching them and batting them to the side. However, when she went to riposte, Kavar's lightsabers were right there in a cruciform shape as Kavar parried. He forced her lightsaber away, and then both Jedi retreated to gain distance, and once they were away from each other, they began circling, lightsabers at the ready, each scanning the other and waiting for them to make a mistake.
At once, they both charged, and with an angry sputtering hissing noise, they clashed. This was my first time watching two Jedi Masters, or anyone, really, engaging in a lightsaber duel, and I was young, and as such, enthralled by the display. I memorised every movement, every strike and parry, every manoeuvre as Jedi Master clashed with Jedi Master. They broke apart, neither having gained the advantage, and gained distance to regroup. Seeing Kavar's flowing, elegant movements that still held all the ferocity of a krayt dragon, twin 'sabers whirling in their endless dance—it enkindled something in me, a sort of ironclad resolve to see that I was one day to master that which I now know Kavar merely dabbled in. Such was my first exposure to the style that I have since adopted and perfected.
Alas, I was not then aware of the costs and the risks inherent in asking Master Kreia to allow me to do that very thing—but I was made aware in short order…
"Now, I daresay it is past time you go to get some rest," said Revan, unexpectedly jerking Bastila out of the deep immersion and interest she had adopted in the process of listening to the story the Sith Lord was telling. "It will be dawn soon, and it will appear suspicious that you declined to come down here to talk to me today if you don't at least attempt to go to sleep."
Bastila bristled at being treated like a youngling, but calmed her frustration with a mantra of the Jedi Code, bringing her emotions into line. "Is there not more to your story?" she asked, carefully composed and calm, even as the turmoil within her, suppressed but not quelled, continued to buck against her attempts to control it.
Revan shrugged. "Perhaps, but that is a conversation, perhaps, for another time. Now, when you come to me tomorrow, please do not do so before midday. I mislike being woken up before that time when I have been conscious for more than twenty-four galactic standard hours."
Sensing that she would get no more out of the strangely polite Sith Lord, she decided to cut her losses and withdraw at last, and do as the half-Mandalorian former war hero suggested in taking a rest and pursuing more information when she was fresh and refreshed, so as to be more adroit in ferreting out opportunities to redeem him in listening to his story. She was close, or rather, such was her professional opinion on the matter, but she felt like she was missing something—something important. She nodded as she stood. "Farewell for now, then, Revan."
With that, Bastila turned on her heel and began to walk out of the prison block beneath the Enclave, but stopped at the top of the stair—she couldn't see his face, but she could hear the smirk in his voice as he spoke. "Sleep well, Bastila Shan."
She stiffened a tad, and then walked away.
To be continued...