Nieraan Onin v Tesok Baranar

[Rugs]

Biddly doo-bop.

Took a bit of liberty to get things set up. Lemme know if all's well with you on that front and we can roll along


Image credit to Nele-Diel

/-- --\

A chill wind blew down the ravine. It was an odd thing, bringing the frosty touch of a distant mountain tops down to a dank, dreary ravine. The wind caught in Nieraan’s hair as it passed, teasing the black-and-blue locks with a moment’s fleeting presence before it continued on following the ravine to wherever it led.

Nieraan wrinkled his nose slightly as the wind blew by. A strange scent rode the air with it, the dusty, earthen smell of a fresh-opened tomb. Word was that ancient burial grounds were scattered beyond the ravine; reminders and memorials to some battle long past that left scores of thousands of bodies scattered across the plains above. Local legend went that the ravine itself was born during that great and terrible battle, as the world itself suffered from the final clashes of its people.

But now the land was quiet. Its ghosts, if any remained, hid and watched silently from their shadows. The ravine had become something a holy site, and metal half-arches guided the occasional pilgrim to bare, Spartan way stones that littered the path to a quiet altar. Sections of the land had been archaeological sites off and on through the years, and would be again, he was sure.

But for now, save for the quiet squish of the boggy ground beneath his boots, all was quiet.

“Just as well,” he muttered to himself. “Won’t be for long.”

It was fitting, he supposed, that events turned to lead him here, to this place in particular. It was fitting that this hallowed ground, created from an incredible clash of wills and ideas, would once more play host to another struggle.

“Beneath the arches,” he called, loud enough that he knew the other might hear. “The last before that holy place.” He chuckled softly, stopping and letting his arms hang loosely at his sides as he looked up at a cloudy sky. “It’s a funny thing, that altar. Just some rocks propped up against each other and a set of lights.

“What would the spirits say if another clash destroyed it, I wonder?” He let the question hang in the thick, murky air that was stirred again to stillness after the wind’s departure. “Would they rage at losing their monument? Or would they weep to be joined by a newcomer?” Nieraan’s head came down, his gaze suddenly distant. Thoughtful. “Can spirits weep, anyway?” He decided the question unimportant and shrugged.

There was more important business at hand, anyway.

He’d arrived to this quiet, barren world some days ago to take care of other matters. Minor matters. Yet, in the midst of his work he’d noticed a certain something; the certain unmistakable scent, in the Force, of a Jedi.

Nieraan didn’t hate Jedi as many other Sith did. But he did like a hunt.

And so he’d hunted. But it became apparent to him that the other — that this Jedi — was just as aware of him as he of them.

So the days went by and they circled ‘round and ‘round each other, coming close but never touching like two leaves caught in a whirlpool.

Eventually, he’d led the other here, or the other had led him; it was hard to say. But this would be the place where they met, and most likely faced off. That certainty was as thick as the humidity in the air.

“They’ve waited a long time,” Nieraan said, drawing a deep breath as he stopped beneath two asymmetrical half-arches. “Watching pilgrims go by and scientists dig. Boring. But now… now they have a chance to see something lively — something real.”

The Firrerreo smiled a predator’s smile, golden eyes glinting in the dull light as his grin exposed his canines.

“I just hope the excitement will be worth the wait.”

[Pembleton]

Tesok Baranar was pressed against the gray stone wall of the canyon, shielded from both wind and sight by the mossy heaps from which sprouted the tall metal arches which lined the path. As he had drawn closer to this place and the mysterious other who shared the space with him, he had weaved a web of Force energy around himself, muffling the sound of his steps and hiding himself from sight. He knew that, for all his efforts, the marshy ground would still mark his entrance into the canyon and eventually lead this man to his hiding place. Accordingly, he had dropped the Force Cloak to save his strength and allowed the environment to hide him until he chose to reveal himself. He would not be caught like a cowering animal, trying to avoid the oncoming storm that had been looming ever since he had arrived at this place and sensed the presence of his enemy.

The Barabel suppressed a hiss of distaste. He had initially thought of this other as simple prey, to be tracked and dispatched like any other target. But as they danced around each other over the course of days, he had come to realize that this person was not prey. He was as much a hunter as Tesok himself. They had managed to follow each other across the continent even as they avoided the confrontation they both knew was coming; Tesok suspected their game was more a test of each other than a true pursuit. If the man had truly come for him, he would have proved himself the weaker hunter, rushing towards an enemy he did not understand. But like the Sentinel, the dark opponent seemed to know that the most important step was to know one's foe before engaging.

Over time, he had come to a grudging sort of respect for the one who was traveling with him, if indirectly. They had led each other here, neither daring to show their hand, and as their meeting finally drew close, an understanding seemed to have been reached. This would not be a quick and silent ambush in the dark, or a deadly surprise attack from above. They were equals in their tracking skills, and so the only way to resolve their enmity would be a real confrontation.

The other began to speak, and Tesok listened intently. These last few seconds before they engaged would be his final chance to learn about his enemy, and he intended to take as much away from the dark figure's words as he could. Words were tools he could use to judge his foe's personality, and a skilled swordsman could use this to anticipate how another would present himself in combat.

He had often found that those with the most to say before a fight were those who put up the least resistance when it came down to it. Somehow, though, the casual poetic nonsense that echoed through the canyon made Tesok wary. The other side of the villainous-monologue sword was the enemy who spoke as well as he fought, and knew it. The man had already proved himself as a hunter, and as silence fell once more, Tesok could not help but wonder if his combat abilities would be on par with his rhetoric.

Still, there was undeniable confidence in the speech, and where there was confidence (even justified), there was an opportunity. A prideful foe could be counted on to underestimate his enemies, so Tesok would indulge his conceit. Releasing the hiss he had been forcing down, the Barabel tucked and rolled into view, some 15 meters from the other, and his green blade snapped to life as he rose. The move was impractical, and frankly even clumsier than it was intended to look on the boggy terrain. Settling into a basic Shii-Cho learner's stance, he called out in as obliviously self-righteous a voice as a 7-foot carnivorous lizard could manage to feign.

"That's far enough! I am a Jedi Knight, and I will not be intimidated by your ravings. Identify yourself, or I will engage you!" The unfamiliar pronoun, 'I,' felt awkward in his mouth. He only hoped that it would come across as uncertainty and further add to the impression he was trying to give.

[Rugs]

Silence hug for a few fleeting moments in the valley. The wind tried to break it, teasing Nieraan’s thick hair as it swept south from the mountains, but its quiet whisper seemed only to enhance the valley’s soundlessness, rather than blunt it.

Then he heard motion. Boggy soil squelched. Vegetation rustled, protesting with moist, rustling sighs against being disturbed for the first time in ages.

Nieraan almost smiled. It wasn’t that he needed to know the other was there—he’d known that from the beginning. But the Jedi was finally revealing himself, and that meant they were both a few moments closer to letting their little game come to an end so they could confront each other as warriors. AS men.

A few heartbeats closer to an inevitable end, one of them. It was enough to get the blood pumping in his veins.

The Jedi revealed himself, with an awkward, if well-intentioned roll into Nieraan’s line of sight. He a Barabel. Interesting creatures. Large and imposing, with armored hide that Nieraan supposed might be a hindrance if they fought with normal weapons, or fist and foot.

But he had no intention of fist and foot, nor were his lightsabers or the Force normal weapons.

"That's far enough! I am a Jedi Knight, and I will not be intimidated by your ravings. Identify yourself, or I will engage you!"

Nieraan smiled. It was a predatory smile, showing his sharpened canines before he laughed softly at the Jedi’s introduction. “A brave, noble Jedi,” he remarked, voice thick with false awe. “Come to cleanse this hallowed ground of my tainted presence, no doubt.”

He inhaled deeply through his nostrils, drawing on the Force as he did. It flooded into him as though it were some unseen fog responding to his inhalation. It filled him to the point of pain, to the the point where the Dark Side howled and tore at his soul, like some rabid animal trying to tear it away. It filled him with life, so pure and sweet that he lacked the words to describe it.

Then he exhaled, and the Force, as if it were smoke, receded somewhat. It did not leave him—it never did — but it waited, like storm waters held back behind the levees of his will.

“And if I do identify myself to you, Jedi?” he asked, half-arching a black brow. His hand fell to his waist and neatly unclipped the lone saber of his three that didn’t match the other two? “What would you do then? Let me go on my way?”

He lifted the hilt and looked at it, as if studying it. “I am Nieraan Onin,” he answered casually. If he’d wanted, he could have answered with his Sith name, or tried to scare the Jedi with the fact that he was a Sith Lord. But that name was as good as any other, and he gave either, depending on his mood — firmly rejecting a core philosophy that many of his people clung to.

The blade ignited, throwing pale, verdant light onto Nieraan’s subtly silver face. “And what will you do now, hm? I am a Sith, you know. Defiling this place — disturbing the dead with my presence.” He looked up at the Barabel Jedi, smiling maliciously. “Besides, I’ve killed some of your brothers and sisters, you know. This lightsaber belonged to one of them, some time ago. So are going to let me free, now that you know my name, Jedi? Keeper of the peace that you are?”

[Pembleton]

Tesok tensed as he suddenly felt a wave of Dark-side energy flow into his opponent. He opened his stance slightly wider, preparing himself for a sudden attack, but was unnerved when his enemy instead released his energy. The move had likely been meant more to demoralize him than anything, but it had the opposite effect. With the full sense of his enemy's power and corruption revealed to him, Tesok knew there was no way that they would both be alive in a few minutes - no chance for a surrender or an arrest. They would fight to the death. Tesok would simply have to win. He steeled himself, aware of his enemy's every movement, prepared to block and counter instantly at the first sign of an attack.

The Sith, as he now revealed himself to be, did not reveal his rank, which would have given Tesok a formal estimation of how they matched up. However, his telling demonstration of Force energy and the admission that his lightsaber had been taken from a slain Jedi gave the Barabel reasonable confirmation of his earlier fear; if they were not evenly matched, odds were that this Nieraan Onin was a much more capable fighter than Tesok.

He pushed the thought from his mind. There was no room for self-doubt now. It was time for clarity, emptiness, determination and resolve. Thankfully, Tesok's mental preparations would not break the impression he was trying to give off, of inexperience and clumsiness. The techniques he had studied for years to let go of his thoughts and open himself to the guidance of the Force were not nearly as showy as the Sith's flashy intake of Dark-side power. Hopefully, they would prove to be more effective than his counterpart's preparations.

"The Jedi Council is not at war with the Sith Empire or the Sith Order. My duty as a Jedi is to stand between evil and the rest of the galaxy, not to kill Sith. However, it is also my duty to strike down evil when it tries to get through me to the innocent worlds and peoples I protect...As I will strike you down, if you do not disarm and leave this planet. This will be your final warning. Engage me and be cut down...or go in peace back to whatever dark home is waiting for you."

He thought he had played the role of the oblivious, dogmatic, fresh-out-of-Padawanship Jedi quite adequately. If the Sith chose to engage, hopefully he would be expecting a pushover, and hopefully he would decide to play with his food, giving Tesok an opportunity to quickly and efficiently end the fight. His mind was free of anger and fear. He was ready for conflict, if conflict was inevitable.

[Rugs]

[Keeping it short for this'un]

Nieraan chuckled. “Your duty to strike down evil…” He said, obviously amused. This Jedi, despite his intimidating scaly appearance, seemed to fit well with preconceived notions about the order. A slow, careful group. Ponderous. Reflective.

All of those things were well and good, he supposed, working with someone that played by the same rules.

The Sith, unfortunately for the Jedi, did not play by the same rules. The Galaxy was a place that was fluid, wild and alive. Just as creatures in nature needed constantly to move to stay alive and thrive, so too did an order and its members.

Yet the Jedi waited while world after world fell to the invading Sith. “How long do you wait before a threat becomes more than just that, Jedi?” Nieraan asked. He lifted his lightsaber, not to take a stance for battle, but to look at the viridian blade as he turned it thoughtfully before him. The gentle green light in the swamp’s own wan light cast a green, sickly pallor across Nieraan’s silver face.

“Consider this Jedi,” he said. “You allow me to leave. I go. Kill more Republic soldiers. Kill more of your brothers. Kill the countrymen you’re supposed to be protecting.” A brief, dark laugh slipped from his mouth, twisting it to a lopsided grin. “And here you are, with a chance to stop me. Instead, you’d give me license. Without lifting a finger…”

[Pembleton]

Tesok was no longer even listening to the Sith's words. He knew there was nothing more he needed to learn for the moment. He had ascertained through words, rather than combat, that his opponent was indeed one to play with his food rather than finish quickly. That was all Tesok would need him to do, make a lazy move and suffer a simple, deadly counterattack. It made no difference that the Barabel would have to be the first to engage - Nieraan was moving much too slowly, and he was wasting no energy, only time.

He also had to concede that his desire to attack first might be a product of his instinct to always be on the attack, but justified himself in wanting to end their conflict to end sooner, rather than later. It was the Jedi way - if one had to fight, one should do so quickly. He drew himself up, taking a one-handed grasp on his lightsaber and extending his other in front of him, palm outward.

"That is enough! You have not disarmed yourself or departed, and I must now engage you!" With these words, he sent a Force push out in front of him, directing the energy in a column towards the Sith. The attack had a dramatic effect: a haze of boggy water and soil rushed along, slightly concealing the Barabel charging ferociously at him.

The attack was perhaps telegraphed slightly by his body language and words, but this was deliberate. Even on the attack, he could still play the foolish Jedi. Even his technique of charging was not fully revealed - he chose not to augment his speed with the Force. The opponent would think he had played his trump card, trusting on his unaltered speed and strength to end the fight. However, if he had to withstand a protracted battle, Tesok would still have tricks up his sleeve to surprise the enemy, or in the worst case, give him time to set a distress beacon for the Jedi to follow. Still, he had to say he was proud of the effect the Force push had on the environment; it had not occurred to him that the swamp water would react so, but it served to make his attack deadlier and seem a little more intimidating at the same time.

[Rugs]

[Has it really been this long? ._. Where’d the time go? Almost time to go back to work, so short, buuuuut it’s something]

"That is enough! You have not disarmed yourself or departed, and I must now engage you!"

Nieraan smiled a lopsided smile, baring his fangs at the eager. “Some Jedi you are,” he jeered, letting his viridian blade fall to his side.

The blade wouldn’t be needed. Not immediately. Nieraan had a finely-honed ability to feel the Force and listen to its currents. And if he did not quite possess the body-reading precognition the Echani people prided themselves on, in matters of the Force and feeling intent, he came close.

His foe loosed a blast of the Force that sprayed boggy earth before him. Nieraan answered with a lazy wave of his hand. The Force rushed from him and met the Jedi’s attack head on. The waves of energy collided, and Nieraan’s own served its purpose and neutralized the Jedi’s blast.

Some of the soggy earth and foul water flew wide, parting around the clashing energies. The rest fell to the ground as the momentum that carried them died away. In their place was the lizard Jedi, whose charge was hardly a surprise. Still, the Barabel was deceptively quick for his size. Nieraan’s smile broadened as he began to move for the attack.

As the barabel closed in, Nieraan flashed his blade out, trying to meet the Jedi’s to divert it away. The hope was to provide a moment of contact, a moment of resistance before he tore it away and quickly sidestepped around the large, charging creature, blade suddenly low and licking out at a scaly leg.

[Pembleton]

((I see your short post and raise you a shorter one.))

Tesok had not expected his enemy to meet the charge head-on, and he did not. The move would have been ludicrous, allowing him to bat the Sith's guard straight in and likely end the fight there. Instead, he was forced into a short leap as the foe's blade lashed out. A charred smell drifted up as the lightsaber took off the bottom edge of his Jedi robes rather than separating his thigh from the rest of his body.

After landing in a crouch behind Nieraan, he whipped himself around as he rose. His blade went high, towards the man's neck, even as his tail lashed out at the enemy's ankles. The move was perhaps more revealing than he would have liked; it was one that was practiced and instinctive, moreso than one would expect from an inexperienced duelist, who would not have executed it so quickly or effectively.

Still, he hoped that he had played his part convincingly enough before the fight that Nieraan would be fooled. If he raised his blade to meet the deadly attack, he would be dragged to the swampy ground by the force of about a hundred pounds of metal cracking against his shins. If he turned his blade low...Well, it would not be the first time Tesok had lost a tail, and his enemy would be dead regardless. He only hoped that the Sith was not clever enough to have seen through his ruse - another swift sidestep would bring the enemy out of range of both attacks, and the Barabel was most vulnerable in this split-second of disorientation from his wild whirling.