[center]~| The Jedi Temple, Fourteen Minutes After Impact |~ ~| Padawan Arix Vaas |~[/center] It had all happened so [i]fast[/i]. Twenty minutes ago, Arix Vaas had been smiling. Almost laughing, really, his straining lips trying desperately to keep clamped and prevent yet another victory by his well-meaning Master. He was too serious, she was always saying, too focused--as their footsteps echoed across the cold, quiet floors of the temple, he had looked up to her long enough to watch her eyes widen in the glimpse of premonition that likely saved his life. She whirled, fast enough to catch her padawan by surprise and thrust her hands for his chest in the familiar motion he'd only seen sent his way during their training sessions--the impact was breathtaking, literally, and he barely had enough time to process what had happened before it seemed like the world around him exploded. He hit the back wall before he could properly right himself, crashing hard enough against it to rebound to his knees. He felt numb, the old term 'shell-shocked' coming to mind. Oddly enough, his first thought came from that little wounded animal pride, a feeling of mild betrayal. She had attacked him! The force behind that push had been enough to throw him some ten full meters, rolling across the floor like some rag-doll. It was only after the ringing in his ears dissipated, the oxygen pumping back through his lungs in thick but measured gasps that it all began to filter through. There was such noise, such chaos, shouting, explosions, blasters, sabers, battle-- Battle. Like so many others, Arix had thought the Jedi Temple on Coruscant something sacred. Tucked away at the center of the galaxy, behind layers and layers of planetary defenses, he had imagined like everyone else that the war was far from here. It was absurdly jarring to see rubble fly past the smooth-pillar geometric architecture of the Jedi, to watch blaster bolts and shouting Jedi falling back from the Atrium with lightsabers drawn skid down the smooth concrete floors. And the Sith--Sith?! Black cloaks, lightsabers, the sharp crackle of Force Lightning, in the middle of the temple! For a single moment he had the absurd desire to shout at them, to demand they desist, before everything changed. They'd been walking towards the atrium when the assault came, and so Arix had been sent tumbling down a long hallway branching from what when the bulk of the assault hit. Not immediately in the line of fire, but as the Temple Defenders were over-run and the Sith branched out from the main room of their assault it was not long at all before they were racing past his impromptu hiding spot, appearing and disappearing quickly from sight only to be thrown bodily backwards by a familiar force. Master Sint was a force to be reckoned with, a powerful practitioner of Form IV and strong in the Force herself. Though Arix personally disliked the showy acrobatics of the style, he could hardly say that she wasn't proving it effective as she held her ground against the Sith that came her way. He watched her slide across the slick floor and whirl to her feet, taking out a pair of black cloaks with a slash to the back that turned gracefully into a parry, her green saber clashing against a red one to throw the swing for her shoulder aside. She rolled for a stop-thrust to bore through his chest, drew the blade out with a whirl to Push the body back to the doors... It was wonderful to watch her fight. To see what decisions she made, what options she chose. She was fearless, a woman of confidence who turned ease with herself into a moving force and assumed victory even in the face of overwhelming odds. Arix had known her through sparring, had learned her mind through meditations and their practice, but to see her on the actual field of battle, scrawling her self-statement across the Sith-- There was nothing poetic about the blow that felled her. He almost didn't see it, so out of place was it in the schema of her assault and defense--a lightsaber whirled past her, thrown from outside his range of vision while she was dueling another warrior, and that was that. It bit into her side mid-swing, freezing her in place, and as its owner rushed past to catch the errant weapon he spun and delivered strike to her back without even breaking stride. Her body slumped, already lifeless, and the Sith she had been dueling pushed it aside impatiently to rejoin the fight without ceremony. Impossible. It didn't make sense. None of it made any [i]sense[/i], he couldn't [i]feel[/i] her anymore. She was there--right there!--a minute ago, and now she wasn't. There was no goodbye, no cry of pain or agony, no warning, just... Gone. Whatever sound had come from his lips--scream, roar, cry, whimper, he couldn't have said--was enough to attract attention, to draw eyes to his little hallway, and it was the oblivious press of the attack by the Sith that came at him that somehow tipped him over the edge. His Master had just [i]died[/i]. Been cut down, before his eyes--here one moment, gone the next--and these warriors, these soldiers, these...[i]monsters[/i] came to mind, unbidden, couldn't even understand that. Had the gall, the audacity, to walk over her [i]corpse[/i] to try and kill him before he could even-- It was with instinct that he blocked the first strike, a sweeping blow meant to bully its way through his defenses and cut him down. He drew his curved grip with the Force and snapped it to hand, angled the blade away and watched the strike slide off it like rain from a roof. Carrying his saber with it and using his momentum to turn, a quick jerk and reverse of his hand position popped the blade up and across the Sith's shoulder, carving a line across it and pushing him back just enough that he was able to roll out of range of the padawan's thrust. Try as he might to remember his training, there was too much [i]noise[/i] going on. A student of Form II, Arix considered himself a poised individual, a duelist--this was a battleground, this was chaos. Though the weapons were live, he had never really watched someone before and known, without a doubt, that they would kill him if they could. And if he wasn't scared, if he had steeled himself that this day would come, it didn't help a slight shake of his hand... ...which only worsened as it became clear he was [i]losing[/i]. He was good, there was no doubt about that--on par with most knights and better than some, for his age he was an impressive combatant, and the hallway was narrow enough that he could keep them in front of him, worry them off. But there were two of them, which was hardly ideal, and he was running out of space to push back on. Though he tried to keep himself calm, keep himself serene, focus on the flow of the Force and the dialogue between him, all he could hear was their screaming lust for battle, their hunger for the kill--there was no communication, no dialogue, just fury and what they considered a foregone conclusion. He felt for guidance but couldn't hear past the throbbing in his temples that became louder the closer he got to the wall, his own realization that if he couldn't turn this around [i]he was going to die.[/i] Like she died. No, like she was [i]killed[/i]. By [i]them[/i]. He would never even get to say goodbye. Though he'd always known he could, always known it was there if he needed it, Arix had always assumed that when the time came he would have mastered himself long before needing to rely on that niggling little trump card he remembered with such trepidation. It was not, his Master had been careful to explain, strength--it was weakness, the success of base instinct and emotion over rational thought and skill. It was a failing to call upon it, but against these Sith he was [i]already[/i] failing, and it was that as much as anything else that stopped his retreat, that turned a carefully timed parry into a stop-cut that sliced at the wrist of one of the Sith. They had killed her, they were going to kill him, and they already assumed that he would lose. That he would just roll over and [i]accept[/i] that. Arix had never been very good at lying to himself, and so he had to admit it felt [i]good[/i], when his next attack raked a glowing line through the breastplate of one of their armor, to see the man's stance unsettle as he backed up from a slice he hadn't been able to see or predict. To capitalize on the advantage and spin, sword in close and along the back of his arm, upwards and into his guard and take the Sith at the leg with a blow finally strong enough to punch [i]through[/i] his armor, upwards and across his stomach to topple him. It seared as it cut so there was no blood, only bright glowing plasteel and charred flesh. The other Sith was better, a more skilled opponent, but as Arix stepped over his fallen enemy he watched the stance change from one of offense to defense. As he started to rain blows down on him with vicious speed, the echani found himself snarling, picking up the pace, diving more and more into that well of anger that propelled his arm into a blur that left his opponent doing little but evading, no opportunity to block the deadly, scything sweeps of Arix' saber. More than once his opponent tried to make for the main hall for reinforcements, but footwork was Arix' specialty and he corralled him with brutal precision. He didn't want him to get away, he wanted him to [i]go[/i] away. Fighting not to die hadn't worked, so now he was fighting to kill--like his master, like his foes, confident that each step and flick of his wrist was another step towards the end of his enemy. He pressed, pushed him back to ground, and when it finally came the man fell it was as disappointingly swift as his master's had been--he hit the wall, leapt over Arix' head with a jump fueled by the Force, and was met with a well-timed slash to the spine that battered through the defense of his reverse-hand Shien grip and had him land hard in a heap on the temple floor. Alive but incapacitated, Arix' Rage ended with the Sith's life as his saber punched through the face plate of the mask, leaving the padawan with a sudden feeling of loss. He was alive... but she wasn't. And nothing was changing that. With the rush in the hallway died down as the forces moved further in, it was all the silver-haired echani could do to walk for what was left of his Master, bright blue saber shedding shadows on the men he had managed to dispatch. The sizzling wound to his shoulder, the score at the edge of his calf... he barely felt them, back to that awful shell-shock nothing he'd felt when she fell.