Crash!
We slammed our blades into each other and fell backwards. I landed at the edge of the imperial cog mosaic, Yiaso landed in the middle of the carbonized Inquisitors, crunching one of them into proper dust and bones. Yiaso snarled and the shadows trailing in his wake bent to his command, forming into abyssal tentacles. The tentacles writhed erratically and they swiftly smashed the remaining carbonized Inquisitors into piles of ash and charred bones.
"Legendary!" Yiaso screamed again as he charged forward.
I met his aggression with my own and then we danced on top of the imperial cog. Yiaso was aggression, aggression, aggression and I was swiftly forced on the defensive, my lightsaber weaving a tight defense around my body as Yiaso hammered away at me with powerful two handed strikes and slashes. The Force nudging and warning me of danger and surely did the same for Yiaso when I tried to riposte him.
He sent an overhead blow that I met. Our blades shrieked as they were ground against each other. I let Yiaso press the saber lock back towards me. As the searing glow of where the two sabers were pressed against each other, Yiaso's yellow eyes darted down to my hands.
"A new lightsaber won't save you." He gloated as he strained forward, slowly but surely.
"Shut up and die!" I retorted. Snap-hiss! I ignited my second blade and stepped into Yiaso's guard. The saber lock passed over my shoulders as I swept my second blade up to cut Yiaso's left arm off.
The Force shouted a warning and then I was flying through the air and my ribs hurt. I rolled midair and landed on my feet, skidding backwards. I stabbed my lightsaber into the floor and came to a quick stop. Just in time too. I looked up and hurriedly jerked my head to the side to avoid the bone cracking strike of a shadow tentacle. Then I shimmied over to avoid the follow up whip strike. I avoided it but my cape did not.
"Motherfucker!" I cursed, having managed to see the fist sized hole the tentacle's whip strike had punched through my cortosis-weave cape. My free hand zipped up to my collar and unfastened the cape, which went fluttering to the ground.
I brought my lightsaber up, both crimson red blades ignited, and started defending. Shadow tentacles came at me from all angles and at breakneck speed. I felt the Dark Side burn in my veins as I ducked, twisted and sidestepped out of the way of the strikes I could not bat aside with my lightsaber. I grit my teeth in anger. These things hit like an AT-AT!
I was pinned in place and Yiaso had all the momentum, I needed to take it from him. When the next attack came, two tentacles snapping at me from the left and the right. I deflated the right tentacle into the ground and sliced it's tip off with a spin of the wrist. At the same I pushed the left tentacle up, where it smashed into the audience hall's ceiling, dust floated down. Then I jumped over the tentacle that whip snapped at my ankles and I was moving.
Yiaso was standing motionless, face twisted in a grimace and his clawing hands thrust forward at me. The shadow tentacles lashed out at me with every twitch of a finger. I charged forward, the power of the Force flowing through me. I closed the gap in seconds, my double-bladed lightsaber rising and falling as needed in order to divert the shadow tentacles when they attacked.
I thrust a hand out and pulled. The ashes of the dead exploded upwards, whipped up by my will alone into a tornado. If I was right and Yiaso was focused on controlling his shadow tentacles, then all that dust would….
"Achoo!" Make him sneeze.
Immediately the tentacles lost cohesion and they shrunk back to orbit around Yiaso's immediate person. I ran into the ash cloud -not sneezing due to my helmet- and swiped at Yiaso, aiming to bisect him while his sinuses still burned from the carbonized flesh. Snap-hiss! Yiaso reignited his lightsaber just in time to block my strike. But the momentum was mine. I pushed forward, stabbing and swiping at Yiaso. The staccato of lightsabers meeting came faster and faster as I blurred forward. Both of my blades attacking keep the pressure on Yiaso's defense. Now it was my turn to attack, attack, attack.
Yiaso stumbled backwards, out of the ash cloud. I followed him, cutting downwards. Yiaso caught the strike with a horizontal block and his face screwed up in concentration. A shadow tentacle suddenly slammed into my left thigh and I wasn't braced, so I went sprawling to the floor, instinctively turning my lightsaber off to prevent a self-stabbing.
"Oof." I wheezed as the impact knocked the breath out of me.
Danger, danger! The Force warned.
I scrambled backwards, just in time to avoid the slash from Yiaso. I rolled some more to avoid the second and third swipes. Then I got my hands under me and moved. I jackknifed to my feet and jumped over Yiaso. I ignited my lightsaber midair and swung at Yiaso's head. His blade came up to defend. I landed with my back to Yiaso and instinctively blocked his riposte.
I sank down, ignored the slash that buzzed over where my head had been and kicked at Yiaso's knees in a Teras Kasi strike. Yiaso shied away and I attacked. The Dark Side was blazing in me, dreadful power obeying my will. I fell on Yiaso like a comet.
We were retraining Yiaso's steps now, running up the staircase he had descended from at the start of the fight. I kept his lightsaber busy with an onslaught of stabs and flicking cuts while I aimed kicks and punches at him.
Ignato of Lettow had taught me Teras Kasi. A martial art that he himself had learned in his own time from the Followers of Palawa in antiquity. Teras Kasi, also known as the Steel Hand, was the art of making your body a living weapon. Masters could break a man in half with a poke, Ignato had told me. I was not a master, far from it. But I had commanded the powers of the Force for many years before the first katas of the Steel Hand was taught to me. While I might not have the skill of a Teras Kasi master, I had the power of one.
The air cracked as I sent a flurry of kicks at Yiaso's lower body while I warded his lightsaber away from his body, exposing him. Yiaso was preternaturally dodging my kicks and stabs, but that divided his attention. My left hand lashed out and I managed to really dig my knuckles into his ribs before I had to pull away to avoid a spinning lightsaber.
The crack of my punch rang out through the audience hall. Yiaso was in front of his throne and I was standing on the edge of the dias. I flexed my left hand. It didn't feel broken. I noticed that I was panting heavily and my muscles were aching from the exertion. That alarmed me. I hadn't been fighting for that long. Those shadow tentacles hit very, very hard. I was lucky the hits that had been landed hadn't broken bones.
Yiaso, on the other hand, should have broken bones. Yet, aside from a hand clutching his side and his face flushing red, he looked ready to go for round two.
"Teras Kasi." Yiaso spoke. "How novel. I must say that I hadn't expected to see that art in action again."
He was breathing deeply too. "Where did you find your teacher for that, boy?"
The audience hall was silent except for our breathing and the humming of our red blades.
"Here and there." I said. "Why worry about it, Ja'ce? You're going to die today, remember?"
"Arrogant." Yiaso sneered. He shrugged out of the scarlet zeyd-cloth robe he had been wearing. It hit the ground with a muffled whump. Far louder than it should have. Armor weave then. That was smart of Yiaso, I had to give it to him.
We had started to circle each other, slow step by slow step, around Yiaso's throne.
"Normally I would appreciate that in a servant. But from a barely weaned pup like you? It's an unattractive trait." Yiaso sounded more composed than he had before. His Coruscanti accent was back.
I laughed through the anger his insults caused. "Did anyone ever tell you that you're trying too hard?"
"What?"
"The accent." I explained. "You're trying too hard, it makes it obvious. Just like a filthy alien playing at command. You wanted soo badly to be bigger and badder than any Grand Inquisitor before you, the power behind the throne, that you missed your underlings plotting behind your back. That's why you've lost."
It wasn't my best needling but it provoked Yiaso well enough.
"Ohh." He took a shuddering breath. "I am truly going to enjoy killing you, boy."
He dashed forward, propelled by the Force. With a single blow he cut the backrest off his throne and then flung it at me. I hurriedly bisected the flying chunk of durasteel and managed to fling the two pieces at Yiaso. Only for him to cut the two pieces into four and send them back to me. I managed to make four into six and sent them back to Yiaso. He repeated and sent a withering hail of diced, superheated durasteel flying towards my face.
Very quickly things got worse from there. I managed to redirect the metal back at Yiaso and beat a retreat back down to flatter ground. On my way down, I cut up two more thrones and telekinetically threw them at Yiaso. He caught the cavalcade of debris, twisted it around his body and thrust it back at me. It was spinning like a drill now , all the superheated edges concentrated in the front.
"Oh fuck." I breathed in shock as the drill of death bore down on me. I thrust both hands out, instinctively trying to halt the deadly mass. Only to be immediately pushed back several feet as Yiaso's strength out powered mine. With a cry of exertion, I swung my arms to the side and felt a powerful wind tug at my clothes as the spinning death drill missed me by the skin of my teeth. Not even the noise filters in my helmet could mask the painful shrieking the drill was making.
But Yiaso had seen my struggle and he capitalized on it. The super death drill swung back to Yiaso with a deceptive slowness. I got my feet back under myself and sprinted to the left, trying to get inside a stream of rocks so it couldn't turn on me.
I wasn't fast enough and had to hurry to leap backwards to avoid the blow. Then I had to jump over the death drill as Yiaso, impossibly, made it about-face in a microsecond. I spent the next frantic minutes desperately racing around the audience hall, trying this trick and that trick to break Yiaso's concentration on the death drill.
Force blasts, Force pulls, I even tried a rushed mind trick to make his focus shake. All of them were brushed off. I tried throwing more things at Yiaso. He managed to catch them and add them to the death drill. I tried throwing things at the drill to break up the drill. The death drill obliterated anything I sent at it.
In short order, I was out of things to throw and Yiaso was boxing me in. In between frantic dodges, I glanced down at my left hand. I needed to throw Yiaso off his game, and fast. Time for the big guns.
Immediately I changed direction and ran at Yiaso, who was standing still as a result of having to concentrate on directing the death drill around. He sensed my approach, or maybe saw it. The death drill spun around and charged at me. I gathered the Force and leaped over it, matador style. Then my feet clipped the top of the death drill, turning my landing roll into a tumble.
I slid forward on my knees and hurled my lightsaber at Yiaso. He stepped out of the way of it with a smug smirk on his face. Yiaso swung his arms in the air like an opera conductor. In concert, the death drill rose up into the sky, leering down at me.
"Ahahahah!" Yiaso crowed in triumph. His smirk had become vindictive. Every part of Yiaso projected assurance, confidence, self righteousness; victory. He thought he had won. I hated him.
I threw my left hand forward and mustered that Hatred. My Hatred came up from my stomach and gurgled into my mouth, resting on my tongue. My hand curled into a fist. All I had to do to unleash my Hate was speak the right words.
"Sutta Chwituskak!" I roared. In the blink of an eye, a hand sized ball, colored a toxic yellow-green, manifested in front of my fist and shot forward to the target of my Hate.
In spite of the suddenness of my attack, Yiaso still almost managed to dodge it. Almost. I watched as the spell hit one of his forearms. Yiaso's screams of pain were music to my ears.
Jagged spears stabbed into Yiaso's forearm and pulsed. A shimmering haze of green-yellow wrapped around the forearms and quickly contracted around it. Yiaso's screams intensified.
Burning.
I choked back my own scream as I felt one of the four rings I was wearing on my left hand suddenly heat up. I looked down and saw the glow of hot metal through the fabric of my glove, along with a few strands of smoke. That was the trick I had figured out for that spell, Sutta Chwituskak. Preload the spell onto a ring and when the time came, all I needed to do was push the dark side into the ring and say the spell. It was hilariously messy enchanting, the very essence of quick and dirty.
But it worked. Yiaso's entire arm was hanging limp, dark smoke coming off of it. I could see his wrist, it was shriveled and dry like a raisin.
I reached out with my other hand and summoned my lightsaber back to me. Yiaso contemptuously moved his head out of the way just in time. I rose up from the crouch I had landed in.
Snap-hiss! Yiaso reignited his lightsaber, which he held in his good hand. He adjusted his stance, tucking his bad arm behind his back and slightly crouching into a fencer's stance.
I moved into a Soresu opening stance.
"I must admit, Andorak. You have impressed me." Yiaso suddenly admitted.
"How so?" I panted.
"That kind of magic should be beyond you." Yiaso said. "But clearly it is not. I was treating this as a chance to satiate my anger before, but you've shown me the error in that."
"It's time I took this duel seriously." Yiaso's lightsaber rose in a salute before he pointed the blade at me.
"Now die, Inquisitor."
Above us, the death drill suddenly exploded in a shower of deadly metal and a wall shaking boom!
A/N - Pushhhhh! Trying to work on these chapters as fast as I can guys.