The Rebel Faction

As Ithron moved closer, he could tell the figure was in the process of getting to its feet.

Hold!

The figure activated its lightsabre. Ithron carried on walking.

In the name of the Light, I command you! Come no closer! This is sacred ground, and you will not defile it!

"You... command... me?" Ithron replied, his voice radiating puzzlement. "And what's more, you command me in the name of the light? Here and now, when you can feel the dark reaching out to smother what's left of your order here? What power do you think your light has?"

Ithron stoppped now he was no more than twenty metres from the other man and laughed. He could sense the power of the Jedi in front of him, but surrounded by the gathering dark of the Sith invasion, he felt no need for fear.

"You'll forgive me if your command doesn't fill me with terror." He turned to the soldiers. "Kill him."

As the soldiers clattered passed him and began to open fire on the Jedi, Ithron shrugged the black cloak off his shoulders to allow him to move more freely. In another instant, he had activated his lightsabre. He held it at his side.

"You'll have to excuse the cliché of black clothes, red lightsabre and ordering my soldiers to kill you." He shouted as the Jedi reacted to the blaster bolts flying through the air. The soldiers of the Inquisition, in fact, were performing admirably. As their training cut in, they spread out and covered the plaza in laser fire. The theory went that because each soldier was so far from his neighbours, it would be more difficult for the Jedi to kill any of them - he would be shot as soon as he took his attention away from defending himself, making it impossible to strike out. That was the theory, at least. Ithron doubted it would work.

Still, it's interesting to watch, he thought. I wonder if any of those goons called for support.

That old, familiar dance.

Laser blasts hammered the Temple staircase all around him. He glanced down at his lightsaber, almost as if noticing for the first time that it had already begun to deflect any shots on the path to strike their intended target. He returned his gaze to their leader, now quite obviously the Sith. Did the man have any idea how many times Zark had done this before?

“You'll have to excuse the cliché of black clothes, red lightsabre and ordering my soldiers to kill you.”

As the last word left the Sith’s mouth, Zark arched his saber, sending a blaster bolt flying back toward the Imperial who had fired it. The man crumpled to the ground, felled by a shot right between the eyes. His placement was precise, mechanical. One eye saw the staggered formation of Imperial troopers standing, and falling, before him. The other saw the face of every innocent victim he had ever taken the life of. In the middle, they blended, and the Jedi was at peace.

For every Imperial life he took, the pain lessened. These men had come to burn Naboo to the ground. And though some of them might have good inside them, just soldiers following orders, they made up one piece of the pendulum swinging in the direction of the Darkside. There was no other way, he knew. Their lives must end for his to go on, and for the first time in a long time Zark wanted his life.

The whirlpool of emotions he had felt within the Temple, during his trial, faded away. All that was left was serenity, as if a storm raged all around him and he was the eye of it. He was no longer the troubled spirit, no longer the Fallen Jedi. He was no longer the sinner, the parasite. He was Zark Ekan once again, Arix Askrima at long last. He was Jedi.

Another aimed deflection, another trooper dead. He began to descend the stairs. As the blaster fire intensified, so too did the calculated saber strikes, and soon the Imperials were ducking and dodging as they had expected him to. His arms moved in a blur, faster than any human being was capable of. Another trooper fell to his retaliation.

He reached the bottom of the stairway, and halted. His saber continued to work its dance, deflecting blaster shots, but they became less precisely redirected. The Imperials no longer had to duck in fear of returning laser blasts. His concentration left his arms and redirected itself within his mind. He gathered himself mentally, and finally…

His maw opened unnaturally wide, a beam of the purest white light spewing forth from within him. His eyes glowed white, and soon they too lanced out in beams. The Imperial troopers, staring at him as they fired their weaponry, caught the beams full on. Their retinas overloaded, causing no physical damage but blinding them temporarily.

Several screamed, confused and unable to see. Some stumbled and fell. The blaster fire continued, albeit sporadically and not with any direction to it, and then stopped. Zark charged forward, blinking away the blurriness of his own vision after unleashing such a magnitude of raw Force energy from his own pupils. He made a dash for the Sith, hoping to compensate for his blurred vision with the element of surprise.

Lightsaber swinging, he lunged.

His eyes burned and stung, blurring and refocusing sporadically. The hazy form of his Sith opponent was just about all he could make out. Squeezing them shut, he called upon his sixth sense to aid him, and the Force replaced his eyesight. It was a sensation that was difficult to describe to anyone who hadn’t before experienced. Zark saw the incoming lightsaber slashes in feelings rather than eyesight, his opponent’s movements were reverberations in the world around him that translated somehow into a sort of perception.

He could feel the rage burning within his enemy, for the most part wild and uncontrolled, but on a more base level harnessed into strength and power. Shuddering to himself, he vaguely recalled the feeling of giving into that hatred, although he still could not place exactly when on the still jumbled timeline of his life. It echoed out of the apprentice’s body in pulses, clashing invisibly with the pulses of calm Zark’s own presence in the Force, his own aura of sorts, emanated.

As Zark slowly regained his sense of balance, the desperate blocks he had been offering in response to the Sith’s concentrated attack subtly morphed into more precise, skillful deflections and parries. He maneuvered his opponent’s weapon with every connection, offering little in retaliation but making it more difficult for the apprentice to continue his successive strikes, slowly but surely lengthening the time it took the Sith to recover from each parry in order to strike again.

Zark’s eyes opened, blinking away the last of the blurriness and adjusting to taking in both visual and Force-enhanced perception. None of the Imperial soldiers around them had yet recovered from his assault. Most of them, in fact, were out of the fight for good, unconscious or near it. He had underestimated the power of his own abilities. He would only have to worry about his Sith opponent for a while yet, perhaps enough time to finish the fight, depending upon how skilled in lightsaber combat his enemy truly was.

He didn’t have much time to draw things out with this particular Sith. There were bound to be more of them in the area, and he had no way of knowing when reinforcements of any sort would arrive at the lone Force user’s aid. He could not afford to be reckless, but he would have to end this combat quickly. There was much to be done on this day, he knew.

His artful deflections of his opponent’s assault continued, but he knew that he would have to strike again soon. First, however, he would have to test his enemy. The Sith came in with a hard thrust, intended to pierce Zark’s stomach if he did not prevent it. Slashing across with his own weapon, the Jedi knocked his enemy’s lightsaber off wide to the side. It was not enough time for him to score a hit with his saber, even an apprentice would recover too quickly for a successful strike to occur, but he wasn’t looking to strike with his saber.

Lashing out low with his right foot, he aimed a slamming kick at the Sith’s kneecap, hoping to either take the leg out from under the man or, at the very least, knock him off balance enough for Zark to capitalize on a moment of weakness and find an opening in his opponent’s defense.

Ithron was being pushed back and all his attempts to strike his opponent were being thwarted. The frustration was starting to set in and the Apprentice's mind began to cloud with the familiar red fog of battle-rage. The Voice, ever a companion to all Sith, began to speak for the first time since his duel with Mira, back on Xa Fel.

Release Me.

The voice was a mere whisper, an echo of his concious thoughts, but impossible to ignore.

His Jedi opponent knocked Ithron's lightsabre off course and the Sith prepared his own retaliatory strike. Seconds before it happened though, Ithron was aware that the enemy was going for his knee. The Sith moved, but too late. The Jedi's kick had connected to its target and connected well. The second's warning had, however, been enough for Ithron to come up with something: Absorbing the energy of the impact as best as he could. he launched himself into a Force-assisted forward flip over the head of the Jedi.

Ithron sliced his sabre below him, aiming for his opponent's shoulder, before landing on his feet. Now facing the temple with his back to his enemy, he had no idea if the blow had hit home, but didn't wait to find out. As he spun on his feet, he became aware that the Voice was fading - the Voice, the controller of raw aggression, was quietened by Ithron's use of controlled skill in his dodge.

You'll need me again soon; you'll call...

Taking a pace forwards, towards the Jedi, pain shot up through Ithron's right leg. Mentally blocking it out as best he could, Ithron brought his sabre to bear on his opponent, intending to launch a series of rapid strikes to break through his opponent's defences.