Umbrous - Shadow of the Force
Part 1 - Awakening of Shadow
Chapter 8
Each pair of Inquisitors had duelled in the training room with all the other Inquisitors watching from a viewing port in the lobby.
The first pair was the Gran and the Zabrak. The Gran wielded a single-bladed lightsaber with an ornate metallic hilt, while the Zabrak wielded a plain wood-hilted saberstaff, both blades humming.
The blade looked large in her small hands and was held at an angle so it wouldn't touch the floor. They assumed positions on opposite sides of the room, and when the Ninth Sister gave the signal, the Zabrak leaped across the room in what looked to Kaan's screen as a blur.
The Gran assumed a defensive position, bracing herself for the Zabrak's lightning-fast assault, and for the first minute seemed to struggle to block and dodge the Zabrak's quick blows, rolling around and evading without making any attacks of her own. Kaan wondered how the Gran had not succumbed yet, before realising she was using the Force to foresee when and where the small Zabrak would strike next.
Suddenly, the Gran's movements slowed, and she planted her stubby hooves on the ground and closed her middle eye, while the other two remained fixed on her Zabrak assailant. The Zabrak, for her part, did not seem to be tiring, instead she kept on trying to attack the Gran, sometimes almost saber-locking her, before the Gran swiftly pulled her blade back to herself.
At one moment, however, the Gran appeared to not put enough force into a block, and the Zabrak's blade came centimetres away from severing an eye stalk, scorching it instead.
Seemingly envigored by this achievement, the Zabrak turned her full attention to the fight before her, not realising that the Gran had concentrated and pulled a climbing frame towards her. Just as the bulky metal object was about to strike her, the Zabrak appeared to sense it and used the second blade of her weapon to slice expertly through it, and a small Force push to divert the parts away from hitting her.
The Gran used this opening to unleash a furious flurry of attacks, almost knocking the Zabrak off balance. But Kaan could already see that this Zabrak was most comfortable with saber combat, and he curiously studied her saber form as the Zabrak began to feint, and pretend to make mistakes, only for the Gran to become overconfident, and as she lunged, the Zabrak swiftly twisted to the side, expertly using one side of her blade to pin down her opponent's weapon while using the other half to slice her head in half at the jaw. The Gran managed to get half a bleat out before her body slumped to the floor, dead. The Zabrak was breathing heavily as she looked down at the slowly spreading pool of red blood with her jaw hanging open and bloodlust in her eyes. The Ninth Sister laughed in delight at the gory scene, as the called the Zabrak into the lobby, and sent in the second pair.
Kaan had personally thought that the next pairing was somewhat unfair, what with the Besalisk having four lightsabers and towering over the woman and her two blades.
They again took up positions at opposite ends of the room, the woman adopting a classic Jar'Kai stance, with her left blade held at waist level and angled upwards, and the other held parallel in her upstretched stretched right hand.
The Besalisk tried to replicate this, before apparently deciding that it was too unwieldy, and opted to simply stand upright and point all his blades menacingly at his opponent's face. Kaan saw a flicker of fear in the woman's eyes as the Ninth Sister once more gave the signal to begin.
The woman began to creep forwards, as the Besalisk began to swing his arms, making the sabers go in rough circles in front of him. Kaan was confused for a moment, and he leaned back in his chair, before seeing that the sabers were speeding up, forming a sort of translucent red wall, through which the Besalisk's menacing grin flitted in and out of view.
Kaan's eyes widened as he realised this Besalisk was, purposely or otherwise, replicating an infamous saber-wielding technique first used by the Separatist droid General Grievous. Grievous had famously used this technique to scare the Jedi he attacked, and then slowly approach them as he unleashed a barrage of mechanically assisted attacks. Kaan had, through extensive digging, found horrifying holovids of Jedi being torn apart in a whirlwind of green, blue and grey.
The Besalisk's wrists were not nearly as flexible as Grievous' motorized claws, however, and the circles he drew were hazy, but they were no less terrifying, and his opponent began to creep backwards, seemingly unsure. She half-closed her eyes, seeming to meditate in the Force what to do next.
Suddenly her eyes snapped wide, and she used the Force to pull the pieces of the discarded climbing frame around to hit the Besalisk from behind. He sensed this, and tasked his upper arms to move backwards and, without looking, sliced Kaan's climbing frame into pieces. His lower sabers stopped circling, and instead assumed a defensive stance as the woman began to assault him with her own two sabers.
The Besalisk's four arms moved in unison, and they appeared to make cages around the woman, but she was flexible, and used his arms, chest and even face as springboards to leap away and attack again.
Slowly, however, he began to speed up his attacks, and the woman grunted with effort as she sprung off his chest, only for one of her sabers to be cut in half, almost taking her hand with it. She quickly retreated and used the Force to summon the dead Gran's lightsaber to her, but the Besalisk anticipated it, and planted a massive foot on the moving hilt.
The woman's eyes widened as the Besalisk's three-toed foot curled around the hilt, and with a swipe of a blade he cut off the emitter, tossing away the now uselessly sparking hilt. The woman now openly panicked, calling out for help, and raising her singular blade vertically before her as the Besalisk ran towards her, and using all four of his blades in a single sweep to cut her body into a bloody heap.
He used the Force to toss her remains into the side of the room and walked out into the lobby. Kaan looked up from the screen and felt sick at the sight of the woman's remains, and turned off the recording, feeling the dark side sicken him, and beginning to truly fear encountering these Inquisitors.
Cold and detached as he may be, he is still a seventeen-year-old (because this is still a flashback chapter) watching other people around his age massacre each other. Also, it gives me a nice excuse to draw this Inquisitorial encounter for just one more chapter.
Also the Besalisk grabbing the saber in his foot is a reference to Grievous in 2003 Clone Wars, for any nerds watching.
