[i]“No lesson is truly learned until it has been purchased with pain.”[/i]

[color=4BD5EE][b]That Which Binds II[/b][/color]
[color=E5B13A][b]The [i]Aundus-Valay[/i], Above Zetrea[/b][/color]
[color=f7941d][b]Outer Rim[/b][/color]

[I]Rain roared down against the city, drowning it in an alum-grey veil that spoke of secrets and shadows. It whispered as it swept across the thin ceiling above them, and fell in great waterfalls down before the window which hung open, even now. The breeze was cold. It chilled Kujata to the bone, seeping endlessly into the room as if to devour all the warmth that once blazed in his flesh.

“Be as the river, swift and strong,” his master said, flowing from one pose to the next, the heavy blade in her hand moving with a languid but unwavering pace. Terzeh did not seem to feel the chill.

He met her first strike with his own practice saber. Then the next. “Course and surge. Confident and sure.”

Each blow grew stronger but felt no quicker. Simply gathering momentum, gathering weight. Each strike precise. Each strike an expression of her words. Following the cadence of her voice, of her movements, and the pulse of the world around them.

Until at last his defenses broke and her blade met the joining of his shoulder and neck.

“Do not cease at that which stands in your way. Overcome it.”[/i]

And so he fought, flowing into the oncoming storm, his blade sweeping swift and sure from one place, one moment, to the next. The dazzling crimson fire flickered and cracked with each blaster bolt it caught, calmly and unconsciously returning them to the place from whence they came. He paid no mind to anything beyond the immediate [i]now[/i], the circle that marked the maximum reach of the saber he wielded – nothing else mattered.

He was lost in it from the moment the enemy opened fire. Lost to the motion, to the memory of it. To those sleepless nights of swordplay in city after city, to the clacking of practice sabers on the mat to the squeal of clashing light in the darkest heart of the jungle. He knew nothing of the names or of the history of his stances. They did not matter. Each bore a mark of purpose but each was weak on its own, for none of them were complete alone.

Those he'd fought held nothing of themselves in reserve; what he was, how he fought, was a reflection of those he'd hunted, those he'd killed. Words on a page, voices in the dim light of holocrons – they spoke of perfect worlds and of proper ways but cared little for the practicalities of combat. And seemed to have cared even less for the core of what they were. They covered combat in the framework of a science and ignored the truth beneath the surface.

If all things were connected, then so too were all things. Each element of style, each form, was a current of the river. Each step, each breath, one piece of the whole. Kujata could not divide out the elements of its being and did not try; he surged, and coursed. He was his lightsaber, and the lightsaber was of himself, and it passed from one bolt to the next as if it knew where each would land, grasping them for an instant and flicking them back into the fray, for they too were a part of the whole.

[i]The Force is as much of death as it is of life,[/i] he remembered. [i]It is impossible to believe otherwise.[/i]

Whose voice had spoken those words?

His? Or hers?

But the thought passed over and through him, and he did not dwell. 

Here in this moment he found himself in a garden once more, a peaceful moment amidst the hustle and bustle, a state of mind that did not cease but rather flowed around, never stopping, for to stop was to succumb. Odd, how hard it was for him to feel this – this peace – when he was divided from the blade in his hand. It spoke volumes on who he was, but this too he relinquished. It had no place in the moment.

Other rounds joined the fight from somewhere behind him and he allowed them to pass. The mad screaming that accompanied them told the Jedi Knight that they were his companion's contribution to the fight, and thus they too had a place amidst the field of crossing fire. The Jawa's voice rose and his language joined the war-cry of the enemy, becoming a wall of sound that merged wholly with the retort of blaster fire to form the essence of conflict.

[i]I have missed this,[/i] he realized.

But felt nothing. In the hours to come perhaps he would glean some meaning from that thought. Perhaps it would strike him more surely than any blaster bolt, and perhaps it might be the one that claimed his life. To cast him into a pit from which he could not escape, mired in the taint of the Dark, swallowed by it. Utterly. Wholly.

That was not now. Nor here.

Now he fought. Now he passed from each moment to the next, recognizing only that which was within his sphere, thinking of nothing but the sweep of his humming blade and the brilliant ruby light that trailed in its wake.

And that was why he'd feared this.

He was about to let go. To surrender to the pumping blood in his veins and the breath that thundered in his lungs. Not to hate, nor to aggression – to the movement. To the absence of thought and the passing of each moment in service to the blade. Some of the blaster bolts he deflected ricocheted into the yawning dark above and around, but not all. Some met armor and flesh. Some struck and threw his enemies to the ground. Each simple twist of his blade … even at this distance … could kill. And it killed.

A few lives already stolen in service to the one life he fought to protect. All the rationalization in the world had led him to this. The wisdom of his peers and of those who had come before, leading him to this moment, this brink. And he could not bring himself to feel anything about it. Not a glimmer of trepidation. Nothing of reservation or better judgment. Only the flow of thoughts as they rushed from what was into what would be.

Time stretched out around him, expanding and flattening like the halo of some mad devouring black hole in the center of the universe. He reached out and the Force responded. He sunk his hands into the threads that bound all things that lived and he played upon them, created a symphony of motion from their resonance. It was deeper than a release; it was absence of everything. 

He lost sight of the shattered plaza and of its ruined marble and of the bending and twisting of steel high above.

Lost sight of the being who had driven him to act. Who had pushed him into the choice to join the fight. To relinquish the fragile self he'd constructed across the span of a decade and return to what he was. This … thing. This beast of instinct. Meditation in violence. The dance of light as it rained around him and ripped reality apart. It was as he was, for he was what it was.

They called it darkness. Too close to the edge. 

And perhaps they'd been right to push him away. The elders in their robes and masks of stern wisdom, speaking of things they knew nothing about. But they had not been there. They did not hold those memories in their heads. They could only see the aftermath, the result of what had happened. History resounding forth from action – an echo born of echoes. A chain of events that led from the beginning to the end, be it comprised of weal or of woe or everything in between.

More bodies fell.

But he did not think on them.

Instead he thought of the Council all but casting him out. He took that moment – his branding as a pariah, the stripping of privileges but not his title – into his hands and turned it round and round, observing it from all angles in rapid succession. Stripped of emotion it struck him as a simple event. There had been nothing to it. Perfunctory. Without emotion it was no different than any other event, no matter how deeply it cut. Ostracized not for a crime he'd committed, but for the dark deeds he'd done for the Order.

Removed from sight because they could not bear to face what they had sanctioned. They strove for the Light, but they refused to see it for what it was – it was truth. The Light was truth, and the Light was pain, no matter what prosaic Jedi wisdom posited. Kindness was born of agony, for how could one measure the weight of a good deed if in want of a shadow to contrast it with?

A lake of the Force swelled out in all directions, to the edge of his blade and beyond now. Another dead enemy in strange armor, and then another, each felled by their own aggression. And he felt nothing. They meant nothing. Was this the fall, at last? Was this the precipice and was he in the midst of leaping headlong over its edge?

Perhaps it was better this way. To lose himself completely.

Terzeh spoke often of causality as an expression of destiny. Of the will of the Force. [i]It guides all things[/i], she said. [i]If only one would listen.[/i]

Was it destiny, then, that led him here? To the choice he'd made? To save one life – and his own – and by doing so take another? And another? Was it destiny that led him time and time again into conflict with the core of the Jedi Code? That led him to commit terrible act to preserve the pristine sheen of the Order that bound him to these battles? It was not his to choose, not in the end. Was it?

In truth he often felt nothing of destiny, nothing of inevitability. Except in the darkest moments of his life. Except when faced with choices that were not choices at all. Causality, a chain of linked events that once begun cannot be undone. Destiny, the guiding force of a life that sets these things in motion. Two sides to the same coin? Or were they joined on a single face? For they both stank of the erosion of free will, and could both have been the reverse that undercut it.

How was he to know?

Even those amongst the Jedi who professed wisdom could only guess. They acted on their feelings and gut instinct and claimed that it was truth. Some clung to the teachings of those older and smarter than they, thinking that in the path of sycophancy lay the keys to elevation above the mundane, but they all fell away in the end. The Force was their lifeblood and it was born of life, but they failed to recognize that the balance of all things required that the Force be also of death, and thus their destruction.

What was the point of wisdom if it answered no questions? If it only gave pale comfort as the light faded and was swallowed by the longest night?

[i]Give me something,[/i] he thought, amused that he'd thought it. Was he asking this of the Force? Or the spirits of those who had fallen before him? [i]Give me anything. Show me that there is purpose. Show me which side of the coin life is meant to fall upon. Something real. Anything real.[/i]

Shouts from one of the enemy – the one in red, who barked orders and expected to be obeyed – commanded the soldiers to cease their salvo. Leej did not stop even as the enemy sought cover of their own. A pair of detonators came sailing through the air and Kujata caught them with a flick of his free hand, casting them out and away, trusting his instincts to lead them to where they needed to be.

Even as he did so one of the blue-clad warriors emerged from the remains of the enemy squad and closed with Kujata, wielding a bayonet affixed to the end of his blaster rifle. His red hair gleamed in the dim light of the ruined plaza.

The physical fight fell beneath the Jedi Knight's concern. Whatever the soldier's prowess, it was not enough to challenge one steeped in the Force. It was overconfidence, Kujata knew – and could be his undoing. But he did not bother to correct the course of his thoughts and instead let the moment, the fight, play out.

[i]Is it the chain? The Force? Or it is true absence, the void of intent, that rules me? Which is it to be? Am I to find purpose, or am I to lose myself entirely?[/i]

His lightsaber struck true and pierced the heart of the enemy before him. Smoke rose for a moment from the cauterized wound as he fell, and was still.

And in that moment there was … a tremor. Something that shook the balance of Kujata's mind. It felt as if everything he was, everything that supported his crude matter and tranquil mind, was suddenly tilted. At once the whole state of calm that he wore as a mantle was torn free as something deep and ponderous gripped the edges of his mind.

Cold chills filled every nerve and his stomach twisted in a sudden knot.

[I]“It is the spirit of the galaxy, and as it connects us, so too do we connect it, an infinite system of links, a grand and endless chain.”[/i]

Terzeh's voice came to him as the feeling grew stronger.

[I]“Honestly? I've no idea. Can't explain it. You just popped into my head when I was working out the details, and who am I to deny the mysteries of my own mind?”[/i]

Camana Xair, echoing in his thoughts as he raised his blade once more.

[I]“I don't care who you are and I don't care where you're from, you will have to wait.”[/i]

He was as the flow of water, but had not passed the obstacles in his way. He had been content and buried deep the anger and the storm where once he would have cut past it. Tempered by age, he had taken each simpler path offered to him, accepted each of the vagaries of the galaxy without thought.

One.

[i]“Kindly one looks like man in need of drink.”[/i]

After. 

[i]“Then voice in Leej's mind says 'Leej, this kindly sentient is sucker you are looking for!'”[/i]

Another.

His heart was racing. 

The feeling that thrummed in every inch of his body seemed born of the places around him where the Force was strongest, like some manner of immense wave that touched his edges before slamming fully into him. 

A vast chain drawing tight now. All things out of balance but plunging deep into a stronger truth, one that was not peace nor emotion, but more complex, a grander weave.

And in that moment another warrior leapt at him and nearly broke through his defenses as he reeled from his churning thoughts. A quick fighter, slim as shadow with a tattered sweep of raven hair and the emerald skin of a Mirialan, soaked in blood and gore. Missing much of her armor and drenched in sweat, riddled with exhaustion, but possessed of a fury he had not known himself in a very long time.

Two swords slashed out and wove through his sluggish defense like a vibroknife through bantha shit, slicing flesh and drinking deep of his blood.

And all around him surged the sensation that, for an instant, the whole of the galaxy fell silent.

[center]****[/center]

Ducar's body still smouldered as she lunged over him and closed with the Jedi Knight. 

Every fiber of Zeti's being was aflame with a flush of immense fear and incredible euphoria in one combined; one of the most dangerous enemies in all the galaxy stood before her and she would not allow this opportunity to slip through her fingers. Exhaustion was nothing, anguish was nothing, hesitation was impossible. She heard her father call out for her but she did not heed him, nor even really hear him.

All was forgiven, perhaps. Perhaps none had even seen her sin. Perhaps the weight of her burden would never really be sated and she would live in shame for the rest of her life. But perhaps that would be outweighed by the saber of a Jedi Knight hanging from her belt. Only one way to find out. Some might have shied away from this, but not her. Zeti was Mandalorian, as her father before her.

A feral grin escaped her – she could not help it. Here, with this foe, she had a chance to prove herself a second time. A second chance to blood, and against the most dangerous prey.

How many chances did one get at an opportunity this immense?

The Jedi seemed dazed as she reached him and impulse drove her blades in for the kill without pause, lancing through his slow parry and cutting deeply into his arm, pulling them free with a burst of blood. This was a Knight? This was what the elders spoke of around meals in the mess in the latest hours of the day? This was the enemy her father had warned her of and cautioned her against time and time again?

He had killed many of her brothers and sisters by returning their blaster fire with his lightsaber and they'd feared his defenses were impenetrable. He'd batted away detonators without even touching them, and for an instant she'd thought he was something more than human, more than any living sentient. And perhaps he was. But Ducar had gotten close and proved it could be done, and won great glory for himself and for his aliit in death.

And now she'd drawn blood. She knew that the Jedi could bleed.

Which meant the Jedi could be killed.

And if all she managed to do was wound him before finding her own death in service to Mandalore, then perhaps it would be enough to win her a glorious death of her own. Something that only minutes before had seemed so agonizingly far out of reach. The galaxy was an unjust place and it could be superbly cruel … but she was no coward. At the end of the day, at the end of her life, she would prove that to her family. She would die for Mandalore and his Crusade, and prove to the galaxy that they were no ordinary people.

That they were so much more.

In the instant her blades snapped back to a ready stance the Jedi seemed to come back to himself. His gaze fell upon her, but instead of anger or outrage he seemed … curious. Uncertain. But not immobile. His blade flashed out as if to test her defenses and she ducked low and swept aside, easily avoiding the weapon's deadly beam, dancing around him for a second strike to try to take him on his exposed flank.

But he was quicker than she'd expected, suddenly facing her direction even as she struck. The blades of her ancient swords slammed into the crimson light of his Jedi weapon and shuddered in her hands, vibrating as they threw sparks and acrid smoke on contact. The metal was old and worn, the weapons both veterans of countless battles, but it held; somewhere in their alloy must have been a thread of cortosis.

If she'd been truly smart she would have taken her father's knives before closing with the Knight, but it was too late for that now.

That the blades still held saved her life a second later when his counter strokes flared into her parries, a heavy but oddly calm assault which explored the reaches of her weapons with the precision of an experienced combatant. The same sort of testing strikes she would have expected from any one of her father's generation, blooded in war against enemies just like this. Was this where they learned it? Or was this a quality that all seasoned killers possessed?

A quick succession of strikes and counter strikes filled the space between them, Zeti's footwork proving itself as she nimbly swept across the range of the Knight's weapon, trying once more to open a gap in his attention to slip through and strike a killing blow. But he held firm, easily matching her speed with his confident positioning, switching stances rapidly as he kept up with her zealous assault. A strange cacophony filled the air as their weapons clashed, and some degree of heat began to flood the blades in Zeti's hands. But she would not let them go nor break off the attack; to turn away now would mean complete dishonor.

The other Mandalorians kept their positions behind the barricade, still wary of the tiny alien on the other side of the dueling ground who still had his ridiculous blaster rifle trained on their position. At least he wasn't trying to fire directly into the melee; it would likely have spelled Zeti's death, though the Jedi would probably have been able to deflect each bolt as he had before. In that light, it spoke to his honor that he did not order his soldier to take the shot.

Another fast exchange of strikes passed and Zeti used the momentary break in their cadence to slip beside the Knight once more, but instead of pressing in for the flank she doubled back and whirled into her next attack without hesitation, the tips of her swords whistling in through the sudden window her opponent presented. Instead of taking root in his now-exposed side the weapons met with a resistance she could not explain, and she was thrown back a few paces.

“You caught me in a moment of … unusual connection to the Force,” the Knight said, bemused. “On any other day you'd have probably killed me there.”

Wasting words in a fight for his life? He may show glimmers of honor, but definitely didn't posses a Mandalorian's sensibilities. Her heart was racing as she leapt back in, her swords a whirl of motion as she summoned what was left of her energy reserves. 

From the corner of her eye she thought she saw something close to worry on the Rally Master's face as he glanced up above the barricade, but it passed immediately and she could not have sworn it was there at all. It did not matter. He would respect her after this. He would feel pride in her. She would prove that her first kill had been a fluke, that the shame would not rest on the aliit, on him. She would take another life to expiate the sin of a dishonorable kill, and if the Jedi was not sufficient …

A guttural grunt escaped her as she put all her strength into the next blow, turning a finesse strike into one of brute force, hoping to overpower his one-handed defense. But he neatly flicked her attack to the side and stepped out of the way, raising his lightsaber and its blood-red incandescence up into something akin to a fencer's stance.

“Almost. You show a lot of heart, kid, but you lack precision. If you'd hit a little higher I wouldn't have been able to catch that one so easily.” He wiggled the tip of his lightsaber a little, almost playfully. “But really, not too bad. You have good instincts. Or … well, maybe it's-”

He was going to be playful? She'd be playful too. Mandalorians were all about fun and games, after all. As he mouthed off she slipped one of her blades into Ducar's corpse at her feet, and cut the Jedi off by slinging a swordful of blood towards his eyes. The Jedi flinched and stepped back, but not quite a full reversion into his fencing stance. She dipped low as he slashed out at her, and whipped her blades up to rend his stomach.

But he managed to catch the blades and this time put an immense amount of effort into it. The playfulness dropped from him instantly, like the shedding of a mask. He slammed his lightsaber down and sheared clean though the ancient swords in Zeti's hands then delivered a kick that threw her off her feet, stronger than anything she'd ever felt before. 

And once more she felt that odd sensation, that distant voice that seemed to echo in the cavern of her soul …

It came in waves, like an ocean storm. Ebbing and flowing. As she pulled herself up off the ground and readied the broken lengths of her vibroswords, the squirming in her stomach grew stronger and stronger, welling up until she was fighting the urge to vomit. [i]Weakness[/i], she thought. [i]Why do I show weakness now? Why do I feel dizzy? Why do I see the faces of the dead rising up before me?[/i]

But as she had done before, she summoned her anger. And it buried that sensation down, and replaced it with a sense of renewed vigor. Weakness? Never again. She would never again show weakness before her clan, nor her father. She would not let them down. Could not afford to be made a mockery. Could not bring shame down upon them. She would become the killer again, as a true Mandalorian must.

As the anger welled up in her she saw a look pass across the Jedi's face that she could not read. And then he shook his head. “I should have figured,” he said. And he brought his sword up again, readying for the next clash.

[i]What is that supposed to mean?[/i] Did he think her stupid for continuing her attack with broken blades? If that's what it was, then he was in for a rude awakening. A Mandalorian was rarely unarmed. And any who believed a Mandalorian at a disadvantage was easier prey did not understand the aliits of Mandalore's Crusade at all. Combat bred capability and adaptability; only the strongest lived to gain full rank.

The green stripes on a recruit's armor were there not a mark of shame, but rather to make them easier targets for the enemy. To force them to learn to survive. Any who had earned the right to live – who had proven capable and adaptable enough to blood themselves at a disadvantage – had also earned the right to remove the slashes they bore.

And the Knight would learn that the hard way.

He closed in and swung his lightsaber in lazy arcs as he did so, leaving molten trails in the marble below. Coming in for the finishing blow. Arrogant, and careless.

Every nerve and muscle fiber in her body coiled. Her vision narrowed to just what lay before her, to the dark-skinned man who wore a tattered coat and an expression of unwarranted serenity. She counted each moment by the beats of her heart and heard nothing but the rush of blood in her ears. He stepped closer, and closer … 

She would duck low again, a feint. He could react as he did before and try to take her with a full downward swing, but as he did so she could flinch back and snap in from above, using the remaining length of her blades in a reverse grip to kill him in a single strike. But she could not afford to miss. His blade might still twist out and take her in the gut. And if he did not sweep down …

Closer, and she could hear the sound of his lightsaber dopplering as it tore at the ground, inching closer, a wake of sparks trailing behind … 

One moment. It would be decided in a single moment. Whose reflexes were better, whose counter strike was surer. And she believed she could do it. She had to. Stoke the rage, keep focused, measure the breaths, focus, focus … 

He stepped into range and whirled his crimson-bladed saber into a two-handed grip, and she lunged low, but even as she did a horrific shirek of steel overpowered all other sound and attention in the plaza, the trellising that supported the ceiling of the damaged plaza finally giving way, collapsing in on itself as the wounds that sunk the chamber into darkness took their final toll. Chunks of twisted steel and duracrete came raining down upon them and the Jedi Knight leapt back, throwing his hands out as he did so.

Whatever sorcery he worked, whatever superhuman power he wielded, it hurled a massive punch of force into Zeti's torso and flung her backwards like a ragdoll, clear of the debris as they thundered down into the battlefield they'd only moments before occupied. More and more of the support structure of the room cracked and rent and howled as it all came tumbling down, and as a pair of red-clad hands gripped Zeti's shoulders and dragged her back into the light she watched the Knight scoop up his companion as he raced towards the hangar entrance across the room.

Unable to bear the frustration and without an outlet for her rage, she screamed at nothing, clutching the stumps of her swords in either hand with bloodless knuckles.

“Next time, Soldier Zeti,” Oleg growled. “Keep it in. Save it. A soldier is careful, not reckless.”

Another set of gauntlet-clad hands joined Oleg's as the strength left her body. Between them, they carried her the rest of the way to the command deck turbolift as the grand plaza, jewel of the [i]Aundus[/i]'s upper decks, folded in on itself completely and tore through the ground below into the lower reaches of the ship. 

A chain reaction that did not cease until the hull itself buckled from the stress, straining and groaning as it struggled to maintain atmosphere and began to lose the fight.