The “official” training session was over, and the attendees had begun filing out. Erinyes leaned against one wall, having been catching her breath after her bout with Aiden. Whew.
Bril stepped onto the platform while stretching his arms out above his head.
“Got it in you for another sparring match?” he asked.
“Mmm, why not?” She wiped the sweat from her brow and pushed off the wall. “You held your own against Tahiri. I didn’t know she taught you.”
Erinyes had seen parts of Bril’s bout with Hector last time, too, and had noted how the Zabrak liked to mix unarmed combat in with his lightsaber strikes. This could prove interesting.
Bril nodded. “Thanks! Yeah, Tahiri was my first teacher. She was the one who told my parents that I was Force sensitive. Taught me how to control my senses, because they’ve always been very … loud.”
“Oh? She must have found you when you were pretty young. I didn’t realise she did the whole ‘scouting for young recruits’ thing.” Erinyes took a sip from her flask—it was water-based, good enough—and joined Bril in the training area.
“We found each other by accident,” he explained, “My siblings and I were on a research expedition with my parents. I had wandered off, as I often did at that age, and sensed someone in the Force. Someone powerful. I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing at the time, but Tahiri sensed me, too.
"She took me back to where my parents were and, after talking with them, helped us all realize just how much potential I actually possessed.”
“I’m glad it was Tahiri who found you, instead of someone like… well, me.” Erinyes chuckled. “She’s an awful Sith, but a good person. We had too many decades of evil caricatures ruling the galaxy.”
“Is there anything in particular you’d like to practice? Any rules you’d like to set?”
“Like you? You seem pretty nice to me. And if you weren’t, I don’t think Master Ruka would be okay with us knowing one another,” he replied, a curious if not somewhat incredulous note in his voice.
“We can do lightsabers only, if you’d like? Or if you have suggestions, I’m willing to go with whatever you think would be good. You’re more experienced with this kind of thing than I am, after all.”
“Ruka hasn’t seen every side of me—not to make myself out to be some kind of monster or something. I’m just a lot less forgiving than he is, because the galaxy isn’t a forgiving place.”
“As for our match… you train the way you fight. Anything else is setting yourself up for failure. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve seen someone waste a perfectly good killing blow because they were in the habit of pulling their attacks.”
Bril’s face suddenly took on a more somber look. “You’re right, it isn’t,” he replied, reflecting on all the hardships the galaxy had thrown at him thus far. He forced a smile. “But we keep going in spite of it all.
"I don’t mind having a proper knockdown, drag-out fight, then. It’ll probably do me some good to really let loose for once.”
“I like your confidence. It makes a difference.” Erinyes took her main-hand saber in her grip and ignited it. Her ready stance was almost Makashi-esque, with her blade side leading and her saber in a one-handed grip, but with free hand covering her face and upper body instead of held behind her back.
Bril’s crystal blue eyes took in everything they could about Erinyes’ stance — how she held her blade, the distribution of weight between her feet, how it resembled his own preferred style of Makashi. This was going to be difficult. But all things worthwhile were, and even if he didn’t win their spar, he would at least learn some valuable lessons from it. That being said, he liked his chances. Dueling people stronger than him was not an uncommon experience.
“I think I’ll try something different this time,” he announced while reaching to his left beskar vambrace, “I haven’t had a chance to actually use this in combat yet.”
At first it looked like he was grasping air, but the telltale crack-hiss of an igniting saber revealed that it had been hidden on the vambrace in a shadowsheath. A chorus of ominous whispers in an ancient tongue heralded the blade’s release. It sported a short (12 inches) green blade that wept not tears but smoke with a putrid odor that coalesced into thick rings that circumnavigated his armored form.
Holding Njoka in a reverse grip, Bril settled into a staggered southpaw stance with his lead (right) hand positioned across his midline so the lightdagger’s blade was angled in Erinyes’ direction. The other hand, balled into a fist, remained on guard at chin level.
Erinyes quirked an eyebrow at the glowing green dagger and the miasma it left in its wake. “Interesting choice. Confident, or preparing for the worst?” He couldn’t possibly have thought the reach disadvantage was a good idea, right?
“We’ll see.” Bril offered a serene smile. Game face on, apparently. No matter; if the Zabrak wasn’t up to par, they’d both find out soon enough.
Erinyes’ first attack was a quick, sharp, straightforward stab to Bril’s side. It shouldn’t have been a difficult blow to parry, but it was aimed below where his dagger could easily reach, to force the young Zabrak to choose between leaving his upper body open by parrying or dodging out of his own striking range.
The answer, it turned out, was neither. Half-conscious insight flashed through the Force in the same instant Erinyes’ lightsaber deflected off of Bril’s waist armour, alerting her to the Zabrak’s intent. Bril pinned Erinyes’ lightsaber against his side, using Njona as a hook to keep the weapon in place while his free hand shot out to lock Erinyes’ arm.
The Emissary twisted her body to extract her lightsaber from beneath Bril’s elbow. Her movement gave her just enough room to bend her elbow beneath Bril’s hand and escape the bar. Njoka still hooked the upper third of her lightsaber, so Erinyes stepped past Bril and pushed her lightsaber against his hip. However, the Zabrak’s Force senses and experience with a hybrid fighting style saved him from being dropped when he simply untangled his blade from Erinyes’, allowing her lightsaber to draw a harmless line around the outside of his hip as she moved past.
The two combatants turned to face each other as distance opened between them. Erinyes’ mind took a beat to absorb what she’d seen of Bril’s fighting style, but her body didn’t stop moving. She darted in for another attack.
Erinyes closed the distance between them faster than Bril expected; in fact, her natural speed combined with the frightening accuracy of her strikes were enough to put the Starosta on the back foot. Tracking her attacks with his eyes alone wasn’t going to cut it, so he also chose to rely upon instincts honed by countless hours in shockboxing arenas and in training with his myriad masters to aid in mounting a defense against her relentless onslaught.
The first strike was a probing thrust aimed high, which he blocked by raising his lightdagger in its path before her blade’s tip struck his face. But before he could reply with a strike of his own, she flicked her wrist to reorient her weapon to deliver a diagonal cut that swept across his thigh — the amethyst blade sparked and crackled against the alchemically enhanced cuisse. She was faster than him, more powerful in the Force, and more skilled with lightsabers. The only thing he really had going for him was his lightsaber resistant armor, his martial arts, and his mind. They were all powerful tools that had proven invaluable to him before, but he nonetheless wondered if they’d be enough for him to rise to the challenge presented by General Ténama.
He continued to retreat, using a combination of fluid footwork and hand traps to either redirect or outright block another string of cuts with his beskar vambraces. When she stepped in for a final diagonal cut aimed for his torso, Bril suddenly stopped retreating and instead advanced to meet her where she was. By stepping forward as far as he did, he effectively nullified the impact of the strike by ensuring that its original target was too close to strike, causing her arm to crash against his shoulder. At the same time, Bril thrust the palm of his free hand toward Erinyes’ chest, an action that fired a concentrated burst of telekinetic energy toward her from close range.
Erinyes sensed the telekinetic attack coming, and was faced with a dilemma: stop the attack and stay within arm’s reach of a skilled grappler, or take the hit but let the momentum carry her to safety? Neither seemed like a great option, but instinct and habit said to keep moving. Erinyes applied just enough telekinetic force to blunt Bril’s invisible strike and compress it into a ball of kinetic energy, waiting to explode outward.
Then she hopped upward and released her mental hold.
Between his solid stance, his sturdy frame and his heavy armour, Bril easily absorbed the force of the impact. Erinyes, meanwhile, sailed several metres backward, then thudded against the training hall’s floor before rolling to a crouch. Without a moment’s pause, she lunged for Bril again, lightsaber cutting an amethyst streak through the air.
A streak of amethyst descended upon him like a pouncing vornskr, but Bril was ready. He would catch her saber’s blade against his beskar vambraces like he had before. A confident smirk appeared on Bril’s face as he threw his arm upward in an overhead block; however, it quickly dissolved when the Erinyes’ blade vanished from view!
She deactivated it?
The momentum of her strike carried her down into a crouched stance, below him and in the perfect position to attack the gap in his defense left open by his outstretched arm. Her saber roared to life again and sprang forth to impact the armor plating covering his midsection. Although it didn’t pierce it, the feeling of vulnerability born from his mistake (and her capitalization on it) was enough to make him scramble backward in the hopes of refortifying his defenses.
“What was that?” he asked, evidently unfamiliar with the technique.
“What was what?” Erinyes held her innocent expression for a second or two before breaking into a grin. “‘That’ was Tràkata, which is ancient Sith for ‘people who say deactivating your lightsaber doesn’t work are doing it wrong’. The Jedi used to condemn it as… underhanded or something? I don’t know, I think they were just being sore losers.”
“Anyway, Tràkata is why I don’t rely on blocking. Blocking makes people complacent.”
“Trakata, huh?” he repeated, mulling it over, “It’s impressive. I’ll have to read up on it more later.”
Bril stood upright and deactivated his lightdagger, tucking it back into the shadowsheath on the inner side of his left vambrace. He removed his mask and clipped it to his utility belt.
“I think this is good for today. Thank you for sparring with me, and teaching me today, Erinyes.” He lowered himself into a bow.