Bril Teg Erinos, Starosta of House Galeres – the Shield of Arcona, stepped onto the platform of the Lunar Training Facility’s simulation room. He was wearing his usual outfit: a pair of sharply tailored tunics with asymmetrical tails, modeled after Jedi of the High Republic era and tied with a belt bearing the signet of the Erinos Mandalorian clan.
When Erinyes arrived, he turned to greet her with a smile and a nod. “General,” he began, “thank you for agreeing to train with me today. Your voyage was okay, I hope.”
“It’s gotten me out of the office, which is enjoyable enough for my purposes. How’ve you been? I don’t think we’ve met up since…” She paused to think. “The festival on Kasiya a couple years ago? Has it been that long already?”
“Certainly doesn’t seem like it,” Bril replied while putting his hands on his hips. “Though I suppose that tends to happen when things are so busy.
"I’ve been good. Adjusting to being a diplomat, trying to keep the Dajorra System safe. Trying to keep the peace and to enjoy it while it lasts … which I suspect won’t be much longer given everything that’s happened recently.”
He sighed and shook his head, then smiled weakly at her. “What about you?”
“Many of the same things, on a different scale. Adjusting to being a diplomat. Learning to make friends when I’d rather not, for the sake of the Brotherhood. It’s tiring sometimes, honestly. Nice to have an opportunity to get away.”
“You can say that again. Being stuck behind a desk all day has really done a number on my sanity.”
He unclipped his main saber, Vigil, from his hip. “This, though. This is where I feel most at home. Been too long since I’ve had a proper duel.”
“Indeed,” Erinyes said. Training lightsabers jangled from her belt as she stepped into the ring. “Is that what you had in mind, testing our skills against each other? Or was there something in particular you wanted to practice?”
Bril walked a short path along the ring’s perimeter while making a minor adjustment to his saber, turning down the energy output until it glowed a much paler yellow color - a visual indicator that it’d been switched to a nonlethal setting.
“A sparring session would do,” he said, “it’ll help me determine of my skills have diminished as much as I worry they have.”
“Well, the only way to really test that is in true combat. Being able to handle yourself on the battlefield isn’t just about how well you can swing a lightsaber.” Erinyes ignited one of her amethyst blades, flicked a switch on its hilt, and slapped it against her gloved palm to show that it was likewise set to the power level of a training blade. “It’ll work for a friendly duel, though.”
“What else would you say it’s about, general?” he asked. As he adjusted the position of his saber to hang at his side, tip pointed toward the floor, he began to traverse a wide arc around his zeltron companion. His eyes never left her, watching to see her reaction. “Tactics? Will? A fair bit of luck?”
“All of the above. You have to be able to adapt to changing circumstances, including ones a lightsaber can’t solve.” Erinyes twirled her lightsaber and shifted her feet into a neutral guard stance. “Ready?”
That not everything could be solved with a lightsaber was a lesson he was reminded of nearly every day; his duties to House Galeres and the Dajorran Confederacy required the use of his wit more than anything.
Bril spread his feet, keeping his weight distributed evenly between the two, and held his saber with his right hand, its tip angled slightly off center. Makashi was his best style, and he’d see how it’d fair against Erinyes’ renowned skills. He narrowed his eyes a tad before nodding. “Ready. You can make the first move.”
“Very Jedi of you,” Erinyes quipped. With very little wind-up, she launched herself towards Bril. Her lightsaber lanced through the air like an amethyst spear in front of her, point aimed for the centre of the younger man’s chest.
He quirked a brow at that, then beamed. “You think so?” Evidently, more of his pantoran master’s mannerisms had worn off on him than previously thought.
But the proud smile disappeared from his face when he witnessed how quickly Erinyes closed the distance between them. He took a half step backward and the world slowed – Force amplification allowed for many wondrous things, including enhancing one’s perception of events around them. A quick flick of the wrist bid Vigil to move. Amber met amethyst with a crackling howl, painting their faces in mauve light born from their blades’ clash.
From the hanging block, Bril shoved against Erinyes’ blade to force space between them, just enough for him to reposition his own and deliver a sweeping cut that sailed above her saber’s blade and toward her upper chest.
Erinyes twisted aside the blow, and rather than parrying it exactly, she cut upwards with the aim of Bril’s weapon arm with the aim of knocking the lightsaber out of his grasp. The move didn’t exactly work on the stronger Zabrak, but it did give Erinyes a gap to slice low, forcing Bril to reposition himself if he wanted to evade the cut now directed at his knees.
Erinyes’ cut forced Bril to backpedal, but he didn’t hesitate to reply with a quick flourish that sent the blade on a downward path meant to provoke a committed overhead block. If she acted as he’d hoped, he’d respond with a quick wrist rotation meant to redirect his saber’s blade just past her own, striking to the chest while she blocked the previous feint.
At first, Erinyes did respond as Bril had hoped—sort of. His saber did indeed loop around hers, but wasn’t quite quick enough to reach the Zeltron before her precognition and Marauder speed carried her out of the way.
Now, Bril had a dangerous problem: Erinyes’ lightsaber was between him and his weapon, and dropping for a strike across his torso.
She was fast. Instincts honed by years of training and combat, no doubt. The present gulf between their precognitive abilities aside, Bril’s own was honed enough to warn him of the danger her blade posed – the distant whispers of disembodied spirits urged him to move, and that’s about all he could do. The zabrak’s image suddenly blurred like a malfunctioning holo as space itself warped, only to vanish entirely right as the blade reached the end of its arc.
His image appeared just a few feet behind and to the right a moment later, with him holding his saber in a hanging guard. “And here i thought I was fast,” he said, a notable hint of awe in his boice.
“You are fast. I’m just faster,” Erinyes said, rather unnecessarily. “That’s why you can’t rely on speed alone. Well, one reason, anyway. Imagine if I’d decided to throw you around with the Force instead.”