Coruscant, Jedi Temple [22 BBY]
"Your presence is requested in the Trials Chamber, Padawan Skywalker." Opening my eyes, I saw the high, piping voice which had ended my deep meditative focus belonged to a female Czerialan Initiate perhaps nine or ten years old. Rising smoothly to my feet from a cross-legged position, I was conscious of her electric blue eyes on me as I focused on gliding to the doorway she stood just to the right of with all the grace I could manage. This close to what my body very much considered peril, my mind was already in that cold, crystal-clear place, but I could detect a deeper tension already building in my muscles. My body wanted to fight or flee, but unable to yet do either.
"Thank you for delivering the message, Initiate." My reply was simple, if not automatic. I sensed the girl's excitement tinged with envy as she considered me. One on the cusp of becoming a Jedi Knight in her eyes, whereas she wasn't very far along the Jedi path in her own mind.
"I promise that the physical exertion will not seem so trying next year, Nithanelle. You're in a transitional period, right now. Come this time next year, and what you strain to do now will seem like last year. When you were always the one praised by your instructors during physical segments." I quietly yet intently advised the young girl as she padded along gracefully beside me. Suppressing the urge to smile as I felt her start of surprise. I sensed her speculative deliberation. Silently betting she'd ultimately find the courage to ask the question in her mind, and wishing she wouldn't.
"Did, did you see me doing better next year? I overheard-" The girl's snow white skin flushed a deep pink beneath the thin crest of bone-white hair running from her forehead to the curve of the back of her head as her thin pink-lipped mouth clamped shut. "-Master Vilbum and Master Koon talking about your having had more accurate visions of the future than any Jedi in living memory!" I heard the thought in her mind almost as clearly as if she'd spoken it aloud.
"This is as far as you go, Initiate, but to answer your question: You'll find the future that you make for yourself. I believe that Nithanelle is well able to meet and overcome any challenge she encounters, but it isn't my belief which is central here, now is it?" I answered as we came to the nondescript doorway to one of the most important rooms in the heart of the Temple.
The thin Initiate bowed as she turned to take her leave, and once again I had to suppress a smile as her mildly disgruntled thought jumped out at me from the surface of her mind. "Don't know why they need to put this one through the Trials. He already sounds like a Jedi Knight."
Tap-tap-tap. I glanced to my immediate left past the doorway to the Trial Chamber and into the four-way intersection of corridors as a distinctive sound pulled my attention away from the departing Initiate. Slowly turning the corner to head down my hallway was the Grandmaster of the Jedi Order. Immediately, I suspected something was amiss and reached out with Force Sense to get a feel for the approaching figure's Force-presence. Bumping awareness-first into the high series of sustained wood-flute like notes which had always "sounded like" Master Yoda to me.
Surprise to find him away from the Mimban Enclave at such a tense time for the galaxy must have shown in my face as he approached, but all the great Jedi said by way of either greeting or explanation as I bowed with respect in greeting was "Compelling advice, to the Initiate, you gave. Belief in these words, you possess?"
I could see a parallel with my own situation, so I nodded my agreement. I opened my mouth to provide a more complete and respectful reply, but Yoda surprised me by raising his walking-stick and pointing it's tip at the Trial Chamber's doorway. I had the sense this meeting was significant, and that it was the fact these were my Trials commencing which prevented him from saying more, but I couldn't be sure of that.
Still, as I opened the door and stepped inside, I was simultaneously reassured and unnerved by the great Jedi's presence. I couldn't imagine any funny business occurring with my Trials beneath the ancient Jedi Master's gaze, but something about the diminutive green alien's unanticipated presence caused me to suspect things had just grown more difficult for me nevertheless. I had nothing to base that feeling on, but it persisted as I stepped into inky black darkness.
----
The details of the cavernous chamber became apparent as the illumination level slowly increased until it was what I'd consider an average amount of ambient light. There was a great abyss stretching out in every direction except the now door-free perfectly smooth off-white wall right behind me. While dozens of tall bamboo-like shafts of varying heights rose up out of these inky depths. The top of each of these shafts ranged in diameter from about the butt of a pool-cue at the smallest, to the size and general shape of a tea-saucer at their largest. On the far side of the huge square chamber in it's left-most upper corner was an open doorway with a similar half-circle of stone just before it to the one I was presently standing upon. A glance upwards revealed still more shafts, but these hung downwards from a ceiling somewhere overhead and out of sight like stalactites.
It seemed rather obvious this was intended to be some sort of leaping and balancing exercise, but that was actually my initial impression. Seemed. I reached out slowly yet intently with Force Sense. Searching for the hidden x-factor which would make this an actual test, rather than merely an unremarkable but time-consuming feat. The Force's song was strong and steady, yet lacking the trill or keening I associated with imminent peril. The pit's blackness momentarily lightened and began to suggest depth. Only to immediately darken into impenetrable blackness an instant later.
"Gotcha, they can alter this environment to maintain parameters they wish to persist" I silently considered with interest. Carefully and incrementally lifting my eyes from the depths to consider the portions of the shafts which rose above the blackness. I still couldn't see anything else, but gradually, I came to "see" levitating gray spheroids hiding behind the thicker poles. Not simply floating spheres, I realized after a moment, but blast-deflection remotes. Set to what intensity or rate of fire I couldn't yet tell, but I was guessing it would be enough to disrupt my leaping traversal of this room if I got hit.
Worse, I realized after a moment that simply igniting my lightsaber and deflecting any shots taken away randomly wasn't likely to cut it. Not if all the remotes got a fix on me at once. My defense, especially on the move, would grow saturated and I'd get hit. Causing me to fall, and ending the Trials just that quickly.
I was momentarily tempted to grow disheartened. There were nearly a hundred of the bolt-firing remotes hiding among the foothold-poles. At my very best and very deepest immersion in Battle Precognition while parrying remote-fire on the move, I might hope to keep pace with twenty-five incoming shots at once for a very brief span. Thirty for ten seconds, if I experienced a near-mythical moment of complete oneness with the Force. Long enough to cross maybe sixty percent of the room, if everything went absolutely perfectly and the Force smiled as never before.
No good. I knew I needed a better plan, and just like that as I allowed the current of the Force to wash through me, I had one. Yet instead of beginning to move, I went to my knees, closed my eyes, and pushed out everything except my awareness of the Force. Forcing myself to relax, as I eased deeper and deeper into a meditative state. Even when the stone beneath me began to vibrate as if warning me it might fall away at any moment, I paid it no mind with my senses. Instead, giving myself over to the Force through my Force Sense.
My lightsaber hissed to life before my first twenty-foot horizontal leap carried me a sixth of the way across the chamber to land with my right foot atop one of the widest pole-tops. Vrrmm-rmmm-rmmm my saber flashed three times out before me and to my left. The sudden warning trill of the Force urging me into a front somersault for the nearest pole even before my weight had fully come down atop the last one. That pole had already dropped three feet or more straight down by the time I was arcing forward to land left-footed on top of a pole no thicker than a pool-cue. Two of my three parries with Shien sending reflected bolts to strike another pair of rising remotes as the third bolt narrowly missed another sphere. The two I'd struck with my parries dropped silently into the blackness, but I was already blocking another half-dozen shots before my five senses even registered more remotes had fired their thing yellowish white beams at me. Four more remotes dropped into the black as a Force Leap was the only thing that got me moving again from a balance-point so small. It only carried me twelve to fifteen feet, and now remotes were firing on me from three different directions. My lightsaber was a streak of silver and blue as I made a stand for a couple of moments atop a thickest-width pole which had turned out to be "safe." Above, at my feet, to either side and back again it's humming shroud flashed. Dropping sphere after sphere into the darkness as my protected zone of reflective parries further thinned the number of attacking remotes. I was noticing a distinct lessening in the rapidity of fire now, but didn't drop my guard as I leaped again.
Finally missing a bolt, as I landed on one of the second-to-thinnest width pole-tops one jump from the ledge. The shot hit me in my off right arm's bicep, and instantly that limb hung as limply beside me as if I'd slept on it for hours. It unbalanced me a little as fear tried to surge past my immersion in the Force, but I was a perfectly struck note in a symphony. One front-flip lead into another as I parried while descending, and my final front-flip transformed into a rolling passage through the shining doorway as bolts tzz'd-tzz-tzz'd a soft electric staccato beat on the stone behind me. A last great cluster of doubly hidden remotes I'd only sensed three-quarters of the way across.
Coming to my feet in darkness, I could feel the numbness in my right arm already all but gone. Which was extremely encouraging, given how difficult the very first portion of what I thought was probably the Test of Skill had been. Now, as the lights came up once more, I moved from "thought" to "certain" as I spotted a half-dozen two meter high cylindrical gray stones about as thick around as a big man. Each one would easily weigh a thousand to twelve hundred pounds, if they were solid, and I suspected they were. The room was otherwise featureless, with no door or anything which could be construed as a portal in need of opening anywhere in sight.
Looking closer, I noticed faint lines running up and down, as well as left and right. Breaking the room up into ten rows of squares each six squares wide. The cylinders were all in the room's two middle rows and set in pairs at the second, third, and fourth square of those rows. The obvious move would be to levitate the cylinders either individually or (with more difficulty) as a group to check beneath them.
"Yeah, I think I learned my lesson about obvious moves in the last room" I silently considered. Reaching out with the Force to carefully sense the cylinders themselves. Closing my eyes, I allowed myself to sink deeper into the steady beat of the Force's song. Letting my expectations and desires be washed away by the movement of the song's low individual notes.
There were bundles containing a dozen devices looking a great deal like sonic grenades attached to the bottom of cylinder #3 and #5. They were smaller than standard grenades, and I was betting scaled down to the point where their sonic pulses would only knock me out wherever I was in the room. I couldn't get a sense for any trigger-mechanisms, but guessed they were related to lifting the cylinders. Especially since I'd detected a hole beneath Cylinder #2 large enough for me to fit through.
Touching each of the cylinders in their turn, I was suddenly certain of two things. One, that this was a matter of lifting the cylinders in the correct order. Two, the squares throughout the room like the one I presently stood on were somehow linked to the cylinders. I didn't second-guess these revelations, and further guessed the link would cause the stone squares to fall. I didn't know if that meant all at once or in some specific pattern, and that made this conundrum all the more dangerous.
It did occur to me to wonder how an aspiring Knight not fortunate enough to have chanced upon such a revelation in the Force was to have any chance of solving this morass, but soon went back to trying to determine what order I'd need to lift the cylinders in.
Frowning, I realized I might well have hit upon a flaw in the puzzle. Perhaps I was simply overthinking things, and this was simply a test of determining the way out and subsequently accessing it, but it had come to me I could simply crush the grenade-bundle beneath Cylinder #2, then lift it enough to slip through before the floor could drop out beneath me.
I considered the problem awhile longer, and still didn't see a flaw in my logic. Perhaps it was due to most Padawans needing longer between two uses of telekinesis than I did, but now that I'd thought of doing this, I didn't see the actual challenge here. I'd gathered my will, and was on point to telekinetically grasp and begin lifting the cylinder when the Force keened a sharp, shrill note of warning to me.
Suddenly extremely wary, I immediately reconsidered my decision. Of course there wouldn't be any free lunches in the Jedi Trials. Going to my knees before Cylinder #2, I closed my eyes and listened to the Force's song more completely. Searching with all of my focus and attention for anything which didn't feel right, and slowly reaching out first to what was closest to me, before expanding my ring of awareness ever so slowly. My breathing and heart-rate slowed as I blotted out even thoughts of the puzzle's solution. Giving no thought to anything except the Force, as I found myself on the verge of a deeper meditative state than I'd ever experienced before.
With my eyes closed, I didn't exactly realize when my slow expansion of my awareness began to exceed the dimensions of the chamber. I was too intently focused on nuances in the Force within my locale I rarely troubled myself with. That was how I abruptly came to realize why the Force sounded so peaceful and serene to me despite this entire Trials setup posing a sort of peril for me. Somehow, a second "counterfeit" song was overlaying the deeper and more excited, rapid beat with spiking trills and bass-valleys which was the Force beneath the first.
Standing as I slowly sussed out the meaning behind what I was feeling, I began walking straight ahead. Keeping my eyes closed as I did so, because they could only confuse and deceive me at the moment. Make it more difficult to stay in tune with the Force as I moved. Angling a little to the left while crossing the room.
Walking through a doorway I couldn't yet see, I opened my eyes and looked back the way I'd come with them closed. There, where I'd been so completely convinced there had been a stone cylinder in need of lifting to expose the way out, stood a single turret similar in height and width to the illusory cylinder. Alone in an otherwise empty room, even from here I could see the turret was covered with sensor-pads similar to those you'd apply from a med-kit to do a diagnostic scan in the field.
"Those sensors are undoubtedly pressure-sensitive. If I'd tried to lift it; thinking it was a cylinder covering the way out, the turret would have stunned me" I thought to myself. Needing to suppress a shiver when I considered the near-perfectly convincing nature of the Force Illusion, and how close I'd come to failing.
"Two challenges, and two near-misses. I have to do better, if I'm going to show them my Master's methods are superior" I murmured in a low tone. One which was nevertheless filled with all the passion and conviction I allowed myself to feel for a moment. Thoughts of my desire to vindicate my teacher and make her proud of me swirled in my mind, before I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then released all those many-layered emotions into the Force as I strode into darkness once more.
Next, I free-climbed an ever changing rock wall which kept rising out of the floor of the chamber's left wall, before disappearing into the ceiling. Illuminated spots would appear somewhere on the wall's face, and it was my job to reach them before they were carried into the ceiling. The hand-holds were more like finger-holds, and many times as the challenge advanced, I was required to jump from hold to hold if I wished to reach a light-spot in time. Yet this was one exercise for which the Matukai teachings I'd continued to develop all these years had perfectly prepared me. I put a giant tree-frog to shame, as I climbed and leaped upward or laterally. Easily touching any and all lights to appear. Even when they began arriving two and three at a time. I wasn't the least bit winded when a door finally rolled up out of the wall as it finally came to a stop.
"There might not be any free lunches, but everyone has their particular strengths, and physical Force-augmentation is definitely one of mine" I quietly reflected to myself. Feeling a surge of pride when I considered my Master's expression at seeing that.
Stepping into the next room, I discovered I was standing on one of eight circular stone platforms. Each about two meters in diameter, and set some five or six meters apart. A seemingly bottomless blackness awaited below, but in the exact center of each platform was a perfectly circular hole about the size of a grapefruit. I didn't understand the purpose of this set-up immediately, then an apple-sized remote dropped out of the ceiling and began flying quickly and erratically about the room. The remote was presently covered in rows of green lights, but after a few seconds, those lights turned yellow, and it began flying even more quickly. Starting to change direction, and altering it's present velocity seemingly at random.
A clock with a ten minute countdown appeared on each of the room's far walls, as a voice spoke to me in a neutral tone from a source I couldn't discern. "You may catch and deposit the remotes into one of the holes in each platform by any means at your disposal, but five seconds after a given remote's release, it's lighting will change from green to yellow. This will reduce it's capture value from three to two, while simultaneously increasing it's ability to evade you. After an additional five seconds, the remote's color will change from yellow to red. Again reducing it's capture value by a point, as it's speed and capacity for evasion increases once more. Fifteen seconds after a remote has been released, it will drop into the darkness. If or when this happens, your present score displayed beneath the time-count remaining will be penalized by three points. You must accrue a score of one hundred and fifty to pass this challenge. Begin!"
I leaped for the remote as it passed in front of me and snagged it with my left hand. Slamming it down into the hole at my feet before it could turn red on me. A white "2" appeared beneath the timer reading 9:55. Noting with some annoyance the speaker having said nothing about how many remotes would appear at once, as three green-limned orbs shot out of the ceiling to replace the one I'd just grabbed. A Force-Leap carried me to the furthest right corner platform. Snagging the sphere with telekinesis as I landed, and thrusting it into the waiting aperture before it could turn yellow. Turning, I saw both of the other remotes were now yellow and sighed under my breath. Reeling one of them in as it began to struggle, and pushing it through the hole at my feet. The last of the three was red now, and had just begun to drop when I caught it with TK, dragged it to me, and slotted it. The score now read "8", with 9: 32 on the clock.
Soon, as the number of remotes increased first to five, and then to eight, I realized this was a test of endurance. I jumped and caught those I could with my hands while they were green, because my Matukai training meant this conserved the most energy, but catching the yellow orbs by hand was extremely difficult given the footing. Catching the red ones manually required precognition. I jumped and Force-pulled, as I recognized some would invariably fall into the dark below. I had to move as fast as possible, because I needed a green just to cancel out each drop. Once I had a good sense of the distances involved, I countered with touches of Force Speed, but it was still a mad dash and bound about.
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.