Chapter 46: ED : Chapter 44: Actual Onscreen III
Sweating, my limbs quivering, I drove home a green-lit ball I'd caught with the Force atop a barely green remote I'd just fortuitously snagged with my left-hand. Driving the counter to "151" as the time-counter read 0:13.
I tried not to take that as a sign of things to come, as I jumped to the far left platform and out another doorway into blackness.
...
The next room was empty except for a large container full of spherical, polished dark gray meditation stones. When I reached the bucket of stones in the center of the square chamber perhaps fifty paces on a side, an image appeared in the air before me.
It involved twenty meditation-stones remaining equidistant from their two nearest partners and moving in a downward rotating spiral like the funnel of a tornado.
The inference was obvious, so I dropped to the ground, took a cross-legged seated position and concentrated on the bucket. It wasn't as easy as it normally would have been due to the mental fatigue, but I'd been using meditation stones for years.
Soon, a solid representation of the funnel took shape in the air before me. A green light came on high on the wall opposite me. About the same diameter as one of the stones, I had the sense it was a sort of completion-marker.
Fifteen minutes later, I completed the last of a sixty-four stone complex set of four interlocking circles of sixteen each. I wiped the sweat dripping freely from my brow as I walked from the room into blackness.
Thinking there just had to be rest periods between the different Tests. No one could do five series full of this madness. Not without at least a short period to meditate and refresh themselves.
Cin Drallig was waiting for me in the next room. I began to reach out for him with Force Sense, but his upraised hand made me pause.
When he spoke to me, it was in that deep tenor that would actually be pleasant. If, that is, his otherwise clipped and articulate manner of speaking didn't make him sound as if the Battlemaster was judging everyone and everything he came into contact with.
I'd always wanted to like the Jedi Master because of my great respect for his brilliance as an instructor, but he'd never given me a real chance, so I'd returned the low-road favor.
"I am no sort of Force Illusion, and this is no manner of trick scenario with multiple solutions possible. This I pledge, as Battlemaster of the Jedi Order."
When he saw that I understood him, the lean, long-faced man reached up and tied his long, sandy-brown hair back into a tight fold-over ponytail, then continued "The conclusion of your Trial of Skill is simple, Aspirant.
I will attempt to score five separate instances of the traditional Marks of Contact, excepting a vertical Sai tok because it can still be fatal with a lightsaber on low power while using live-combat levels of Force-augmentation. You must prevent me from doing so with what you know of lightsaber combat for a period of five minutes.
Alternatively, scoring two Marks of Contact on me will conclude the Trial of Skill in your favor. I caution you against taking this route, but it remains your prerogative as to which path you will essay. A fifteen minute period of meditation is customary before we begin, but we can start whenever you feel ready."
"With respect, Battlemaster, I could use the opportunity to replenish my mind and regain my focus" I said with all courtesy. Bowing crisply with my hands before me to the Jedi Master. Cin Drallig's face remained impassive as he nodded his assent, but I detected a slight trace of surprise from him and couldn't understand why.
I didn't like the man, true, but unlike Master Piell and his Thisspiasian echo-chamber, I had never failed to show the wiry, unattractive Jedi Master the respect due his station.
I dropped where I was to sit with my legs folded beneath me. Allowing my heart-rate to drop and my breathing to even as the world fell away. There was no extraneous thought as the light healing trance allowed the Force to do what it could to replenish my body in the time allotted.
I'd learned early on to find healing-trance as fully as possible given my Master's methods, so didn't squander any precious time "chasing the rabbit" as some apprentices did.
"That's fifteen minutes, Aspirant" Cin Drallig reported in a louder than speaking voice intended to rouse me.
From the look on his face, I could tell it was probably the second or third time he'd spoken, so when I stood I allowed my chagrin to show on my face and bowed once more. If there had been any chance of my being attacked unexpectedly, I never would have gone so deep.
Even so, I could tell that while my body was in pretty good shape, all the recent Force-usage had still left me in possession of less than my usual razor-sharp mental acuity. I'd done all I could, and would just have to hope I had enough remaining to get through this.
We took up opposite position in the bare box which was this chamber. It's four gray walls, gray floor, and equally unrelieved ash gray ceiling rather a lifeless place in my opinion. Not wanting to seem like a pretentious child in front of the traditionalist, I unclipped my lightsaber from my belt manually, bowed without taking my eyes off the Jedi Master, then waited.
Cin Drallig unclipped his lightsaber from his belt, and moved the unignited hilt up to hold it horizontally beneath his chin. It took me a moment to realize the Battlemaster was adopting Center of Being .
It was an odd choice from my perspective, with the onus to mark me once the five minute countdown which had just appeared on each wall began counting down.
I'd be damned if I was going to try and slide an attack I didn't have to past a Jedi Battlemaster in a quintessentially defensive stance. Eyeing the counter decreasing to 4:56, I wondered what in the Force's name he was doing.
Opening his eyes, he idly commented "I would have thought the Chosen One eager to show everyone he can best the Order's Battlemaster.
I mean, if you can't stand against the likes of me, boy, then how do you expect to destroy the Zabrak Sith Lord it took a Jedi Master and his nearly-Knighted apprentice to merely wound and drive off? You? Destroy the Sith, and bring balance to the Force? This is why the Jedi no longer put any stock in ancient prophecies."
His tone had grown more condescending as he'd continued, but I wasn't moving. It was a bit surprising to hear a traditionalist Jedi Master employing Dun Möch , but Cin Drallig was nothing if not thorough.
The timer read 4:21, but all I did was watch my adversary and wait for the Force to tell me what was going to happen. In a limited factor environment like this, getting around my Battle Precognition to surprise me wasn't going to be easy. It might sound anticlimactic, but I was here to gain my Knighthood.
Not settle some kind of pissing-match. If Master Drallig wanted to let the timer run out, I was quite content to accept a win-by-default. Weren't Jedi always saying the best duels were the ones never fought?
When he moved, he was a blur of beige and brown. I was accustomed to sparring all-out with my Master, but the painful truth of it was that Dark Woman was over seventy and relied on Force-augmentation the way that Dooku did.
Cin Drallig was more than fifteen years younger, a dedicated duelist, and the second-fastest Force-wielder I'd ever seen in action personally.
My lightsaber's blade was still perfectly on-line for his thirteen strike routine without falling prey to any of his three feints. One thing the movies didn't carp on because they wanted to play up what a preternatural prodigy with the lightsaber both Anakin and Luke were was this.
The clarity of your Battle Precognition was much like your absolute lift-weight with telekinesis. It was (once you had progressed in your training far enough to slip into it at will) almost entirely a function of how strong you were in the Force.
Anakin at twenty-three could fight a dedicated combat-monster like Obi-Wan Kenobi at his absolute peak on more-than-even terms, because Anakin could see the damned future more clearly! Oh, in objective terms the increment sounded like nothing. An addition second and a quarter, as near as I could tell.
Lightsaber strikes carried about by fully-trained Force-sensitives using significant amounts of Force-augmentation could happen six or seven times in 1.25 seconds.
Cin Drallig's Force-augmentation made his body faster than mine, but I could anticipate him better, and most importantly, overall speed wasn't the same as reaction-time.
Once he'd committed, he could race ahead of my movements (a little), but if he were forced to check and change that movement?
Now, we were in my bailiwick.
The Battlemaster realized this as we danced through a routine so complicated my eyes had given up on following it a third of the way through. I was riding the beat of the rise-or-die song of the savage garden, and my lightsaber was the wand of the conductor directing the orchestra.
It was a part of my arm, a part of my very being, and it answered my will before I consciously knew where I wanted it next. What would happen flashed through my nervous system, and reflexes honed by nearly twenty thousand hours of training reacted.
Bringing our blades hissing together again and again, so quickly and constantly it was more a steady hum than a crackling of clashing shrouds.
The disengage proved the Battlemaster had been sandbagging with regards to his speed all this time. His blade spun beneath mine as we blade-locked, and I began to bull him back, but he was suddenly underneath me.
The uppercut lifted me clear off the ground and then dropped me on my ass, as I felt the beginning of a blister forming on the right side of my throat.
"Two" was all the smug bastard said. Watching me with coldly assessing eyes, as I sprang straight to my feet like strings had pulled me up. I wasn't angry, I was thrilled by what he'd done.
I'd seen it before it happened, but the move had been so perfectly executed, and his position had been so perfect to take advantage of his "straight line speed", that all being able to see it coming had gotten me was a second front-row seat to getting schooled.
It had taken this long for me to feel the blister beginning to rise on the inside of my left wrist. The lean, hound-faced Jedi Master had essentially severed my weapon hand and beheaded me after his uppercut had sent me airborne.
I cracked my neck, became as deep a channel for the Force to flow through my body as I ever had before, then I breathed out calmly as I became the room around us. I was the scuff-marks our respective examples of high-speed footwork had made in the rough gray floor.
I was the subtle, minute irregularity on the ceiling just above and behind my position. I was even the motes of dust in the air being disturbed by the movements of a Jedi Master. I was in terrible danger of losing my Test of Skill right here, right now, but all danger did was wake me up and sharpen my focus.
"Again" was all I said in response. Raising my blade to the high guard Djem So's "falling avalanche" invariably begin with.
Cin Drallig snorted at what he construed as unfounded overconfidence, but I remained quiet as the clock clipped 2:30 and continued counting. When he came in with a lateral rush of speed, he blurred just a little bit like Yoda did, but my Third Sight tracked him through the future where my eyes lost him.
Vrmmm-mmm-crrsss. Our blades struck and rebounded three times in rapid succession as I came down from on high, stopped both his cross-cuts, and I boosted my strength enough to collapse an unaugmented fighter's ribs and shred the lungs.
Having bulled right through the blade-lock to ignore him raking his blade down my wrist as I raked mine across the side of his neck and completed the spin to drive the point of my elbow into the right side of his ribcage with everything I had. I heard two of his ribs crack despite his augmentation, and smiled thinly at the Troll.
"T- three" he wheezed, before drawing on the Force and seeming to almost levitate upright from where I'd tossed him a solid fifteen feet back.
"One" I emphasized as pleasantly as if we were discussing the finer points of the Jedi Code. Cin Drallig was fifty-six years old, and I'd just taught him I was willing to send him to a bacta tank without the slightest shred of guilt to win this.
If he tried that uppercut move on me again, he might well score a fourth point of contact, but he'd need to be Mace Windu to avoid me splintering the ribs I'd already cracked. My only ethical obligation here was to be able to truthfully say I hadn't purposefully attempted to kill or cripple him.
I also happened to know extreme Force-augmentation placed a strain on the body. Depending how badly I'd cracked the rib I'd actually struck with my elbow, he might well break it with more acceleration than it could bear. Again, I had Sith Lords to kill, and Cin Drallig was in way way.
Circling me like a prowling Vorn tiger, I turned easily in place and kept my warmest smile on my face. I wanted him to believe I'd genuinely enjoyed hurting him, because even a tiny bit of anger he was forced to suppress was one little bit less that his focus was perfect.
He'd tried Dun Moch with me, so this was nearly no holds barred. Truthfully, if I could get that clock to 0:00 I'd be the first one to offer him assistance, because I hated the necessity which drove me to use my youth and greater strength in the Force like a blunt instrument wielded by my ruthlessness. That hatred wouldn't stop me from doing it again, however.
Inside, I remained connected to everything about me. The Jedi Master was a small ellipse of not-me moving through my greater self in the Force. His blade was held high above his head horizontally, his body half-twisted inward, and his off-left hand across his body and pointed downward.
It was the opening position for Juyo, and it told me he was going to try with skill what I'd just done with brute force.
Calmly, because I wanted him to have a choice, I quietly told him "I'm at your convenience, Master Drallig." Slipping from Djem So's high guard to the "Jedi Ready" posture of Ataru.
The both of us circled the other around and around. The clock counting down past :60 as we did so.
My Third Sight reported his rib giving before the sound came to my ears, but he was his fastest yet as the pirouette like spin bounced him erratically across my guard in four places, burning it's way across my off-wrist as I deactivated my lightsaber, deliberately missed the parry, and reactivated it to draw it across his wraist as I spun front to back away from him.
My lightsaber in the off-hand I'd tossed it to while deactivated, reactivated in mid-toss with the Force, and completed the movement with all the speed I could muster.
The Jedi Master's lightsaber crashed down into mine three-quarters of the way across, but two-thirds was good enough to be accounted a Sai tok, and I could see in the Battlemaster's dark blue eyes that he knew it.
Furthermore, a hit on my off-hand wouldn't have stopped me even if this were for real, so this time he'd genuinely been outmaneuvered. Even if it was because his concentration had flickered as bone ground against something it shouldn't.
Deactivating his lightsaber, his bow was nonexistently minimal as he declared "Congratulations, Aspirant. You have passed the Trial of Skill."
Then he turned and limped away. Only looking back to shoot me an unwelcoming look as I started in his direction.
I'd passed one Test, but there were four more to go. I should have been jubilant nevertheless, but I just felt cold.
...
Hey guys can you throw some power stones to Elevate the ranking.
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