Chapter 89: Chapter 77: Scream Of Agony
This was bad. This was really, really bad.
In the precious few seconds I had before I was forced into a duel, I quickly ran through what I knew about how a double-bladed saberstaff might be used…and then how a Jedi on a Dark Side roid rage might use one.
Thankfully, I wasn't completely clueless as to the former. While I obvious had never used a double-bladed lightsaber, I had practice in staff combat for years as part of my martial arts training. The basic principles were at least similar.
Green hit red with a loud crackle, locking for just a moment before parting. It only took a slight shift of my lightsaber's positioning from right to left to catch the other end screaming in towards my neck. I had already been adjusting before the first strike disengaged.
As Kas'im explained in the Darth Bane books, it was easy to get tricked into thinking of the two blades as separate weapons and dividing your attention to watch both ends. The key to fighting it was to remember that it was a single weapon with set patterns of attack.
Employing principles of both Makashi and Soresu, I barely moved to block the flurry of blows that followed, just shifting my arms from left to right as I focused on maintaining a solid stance.
Most of the power of the double-bladed lightsaber came from the fact that it was an unusual weapon, so it seemed more exotic and powerful than it actually was. But in many ways, it was more limited and inflexible than a standard lightsaber.
With both blades ignited, all Garsh had was speed. On a staff, you could adjust your grip for more power. A saberstaff was limited in how far you could widen your grip, forcing you into "fast style" staff-fighting.
His attacks were quick, but there wasn't much power behind them. Mind you, it was still a lightsaber, so it was still dangerous, but not in terms of shattering my defense.
The two blades spun and whirled around us, dying the air green in their wake. Pointless flourishes that only served as an attempt at an intimidation tactic or a distraction.
It didn't work because I wasn't watching the blades. Instead, I was watching his hands, negating the trick.
In truth, this phase of the fight wasn't even about martial skill. It was a psychological battle to see who would back off first, a race to see whether his onslaught would run out of steam before my stonewall defense was overwhelmed.
His strikes were becoming stronger and coming in faster, a side effect of drawing on the Dark to push himself into a pseudo-berserker rage.
But it was also messing with his coordination and his strikes were less precise. Attacks that should have easily snaked around my blocks were caught and battered away.
I thought it odd that he wasn't trying to incorporate physical strikes into his sequences, but I figured that he decided there wasn't a point to trying to punch an armored opponent.
Nevertheless, had he not been hindered by the Sith Poison, Garsh would have easily overwhelmed me within the first few seconds of the engagement. Despite what he claimed, he was off-balance from the sudden rush of power. It wasn't enough for me to gain an advantage in pure skill, but I compensated in other areas to keep up.
Though my lightsaber never stopped moving even for a moment, my defense was far from perfect and strikes did get through, only to glance off the plates of my armor.
But my equipment was only lightsaber resistant, not impervious. Each time the green light touched, I could feel small lances of heat burning through the bodysuit as shallow orange lines were cut into the black metal.
Finally, the blades locked, crackling and sparking angrily as the opposing magnetic fields stuck together. For the first time, he could leverage his strength and I could feel him pushing against me strongly enough to threaten my balance.
Before he got the chance to push me off my feet, I dropped my left hand from my weapon, grabbed at the gap between his hands, and pulled him towards me at the same time as I surged forwards.
Something in his face crunched as my helmet crashed into it. Garsh only let out a slight grunt to acknowledge that he had even felt the hit.
For my trouble, he shoved me back and the other end of his lightsaber shot up faster than I could completely move my head out of the way. Green flashed across my vision.
Staggering back, I lashed out with the Force and only felt it hit him. Alarms in my helmet blared, signalling a breach.
It took a moment for me to realize what had happened. I could feel my heart speed up in my chest in instinctual fear.
I couldn't see.
My helmet had been the only piece of my armor that hadn't been enhanced. It was a replacement for the one I'd gotten and subsequently destroyed on Corbos. I simply hadn't had time.
But before fear could turn to panic, I locked it down, shunting every last bit of it to the back of my mind. I crushed the pain under as many layers of Crucitorn I could manage.
I couldn't afford to flinch. To show weakness.
Not now, not ever.
I needed the iron calm that had seen me through my trials thus far.
Grasping my lightsaber in both hands, I took a deep breath, forcing power to flow towards my damaged eyes. What dim light I could still make out was replaced entirely by blues and whites as Force Vision seamlessly replaced my physical sight.
The Quarren had just standing back up from where he'd been sent flying. His stance was still cautious, but there was a predatory edge to it that hadn't been there before.
As rationality set back in full, a plan formed in my head.
...
The Jedi…The Quarren watched Aldrex carefully, despite the blow that had been dealt. The edges of the cut on the acolyte's helmet were still glowing an angry orange and steaming in the cold, stale air of the tomb.
Wisps of smoke trailed as his opponent slowly turned his head from side to side, trying to determine where his opponent was as he held onto his lightsaber like it was a lifeline. His chest was rapidly rising and falling, the telltale sign of fear.
'Strike now.' A whisper crept into his skull, 'Allow his weakness to become your strength.'
He tried to ignore the hiss, but it was growing more difficult with each passing minute. Also, he could not deny that it had a point. While his hearing was still damaged from the earlier ambush, Aldrex's loss of sight was a much more debilitating injury.
The Quarren shook his head, though whether it was to dispel the lingering ringing in his ear canals or the whispering voice, he was uncertain.
He was familiar with the whisper, as it spoke with his own voice. Every Jedi had to face it at least once in their lives, multiple times for some unfortunate souls. It was the primal voice speaking from the subconscious present in all living things, the urges of all predators.
It was the voice of the deep, born when his ancestors still hunted for prey in the lightless oceans of Dac.
Aldrex's poison was not creating it, merely making it stronger.
'You never hesitated to move in for the kill before. Why now?'
The Quarren's facial tentacles twitched with irritation before he could suppress it. Clamping down on the voice, he managed to earn himself a moment of silence to think.
But again, damnably, it was right. He had killed dozens of Sith more powerful than this whelp during the war. Never once had he hesitated.
But never once had he been forced to draw upon the Dark Side to do it.
He slowly began to stalk forward, stirred into action by the reminder. The faster this battle was over, the less time the Dark would have to corrupt him before he could end his life as a Jedi.
The Quarren was careful to make his footsteps as quietly as possible, though there was nothing he could do about the persistent buzzing sound produced by his lightsaber. His only hope in that regard was that the room's acoustics would make telling the direction difficult.
With each step, he felt the pain from the multitude of injuries inflicted upon him since the battle began. Ribs creaked in his chest, limbs ached, and his lungs were on the verge of seizing. A shattered cheekbone caused the right side of his face to droop and sent shards of agony stabbing into him, threatening to disrupt his concentration.
He felt as though he were made of glass, ready to shatter if he made a wrong move.
'Perhaps I am.' He thought grimly.
Slowly, the Quarren flourished his lightsaber, causing its two blades to cut through the air and create more sound, to better obfuscate where each blade was.
But as he moved to make his strike, he realized that he had been fooled.
When the first blade began its descent and he was committed to the attack, Aldrex's head had shifted to look directly at him, his lightsaber snapping into a hard block. Red and Green collided once more...and green was forced to give.
No longer was Aldrex feigning feebleness. Instead, he pressed forward with a renewed ferocity and a sudden strength. More than once, the Quarren's grip on his weapon was tested by tremendous power strikes crashing through what defenses he scrambled to erect.
Hammerblow after hammerblow struck, driving him back. There was not a moment to use to gather power or regain control.
Eventually, exhaustion and pain would lead to a mistake.
All it took was a block gone wrong.
The Quarren's blade was forced aside. As he stumbled, Aldrex thrust a hand towards him.
He thought the acolyte was going for another grab…until a stinger shot out from his wrist and jabbed into his neck. Pain ripped through him as a fresh dose of Sith Poison flooded into his veins, causing his body to briefly lock up.
And that opening was all Aldrex needed.
Red lashed out, slicing his lightsaber in half. But it did not stop there.
He watched, almost as though it were in slow motion, as the blade continued through, glancing off his hip and cutting through his right arm just below the elbow.
For the first time in decades, the Quarren let out a scream of pure agony.
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