The Fog of War/Part 18

An Acolyte rushed forward, confident in their strength of numbers, and died. An adept stood his ground, blade held in a conservative guard, and died. Another, seeing the distraction of his comrades' fall, tried to come in from the side, and died. A fourth lurched back, eyes wide and scrambling for an escape, but he died too.

In the time it took for three breaths Sil Kadych whittled the half-dozen guards Vaszas had left at his door down to two. One panicked, and Nikodon charged him with both blades blazing; he overwhelmed the adept before he could really reassemble his guard and ended him with a slash through the rib cage. The hulking brute on the other side stood his ground against Darakhan's assault, though it bought him only a few more seconds of life before Darakhan's sai tok split him from groin to skull.

Sil gave their handiwork a critical glance, then waved a hand and blew open the doors. The legislative assembly room beyond had been kept in relatively good order, row after row of curved, polished wooden desks in progressively smaller semicircles with a dais at their center. The walls climbed high around the circular room, but Sil sensed no guards or waiting lackeys to be thrown into the fray, no snipers lurking in the small observers' gallery. Darth Vaszas had clearly turned the Assembly President's presiding chair into his own personal throne, because he was still rising from it as the three Jedi made their way down the center aisle. Beside him towered the hulking Darth Kra'all, who bared his feline fangs and snarled. And on Vaszas's other side…

Sil stopped halfway down the aisle, Darakhan and Nikodon framing him on either side, though they began to fade away, just as Vaszas and Kra'all were relegated to background noise in his mind, the Force keeping tabs on them. He only had cold eyes for the last man in the room. "Well, well. We meet again at last, my lord."

Darth Hokhtan arched one eyebrow. "So we do, Jedi."

Vaszas made some empty comment, a threat Sil didn't dignify with a response. He advanced slowly, immersing himself in the now, sharpening himself against the Force's whetstone until he was honed into a weapon of the light. Darth Kra'all took the lightclub from his belt and called forth the crackling red blade, wide as a Human's arm. "Kill the Togorian," Sil instructed without taking his eyes off Hokhtan. "Leave the others to me."

Some part of him was aware of Darakhan and Nikodon following his instruction; the Force translated the squealing screams of plasma on plasma and the flashes of blue and red on the periphery of his vision into a duel. He left them to it as he mounted the dais, his mind mapping out the battle as it always did. The President's desk would be an obstacle; the Force of the now felt the cramped movements and jarred shin of the Force of thirty seconds from now and swept the desk away, nearly crushing Vaszas until he flattened himself to the ground and the desk smashed to splinters against the Great Seal of Milagro on the wall. The light would get in his eyes in a few seconds and turn a strike just slightly off course, so the Force dimmed it now rather than cope with it then.

Vaszas pushed up to his feet, ripping the lightsaber hilt from his belt and calling forth the blade. Hokhtan moved more slowly, his scarred face devoid of emotion even as he swept back a strand of his gray hair and took the lightsaber hilt from his belt. Vaszas was in control of himself, Sil knew, but Hokhtan was waiting for total control—of himself, of Sil, of the duel to come, even of Vaszas. The warlord's mind made the duel a microcosm of war, allocating resources, assessing terrain, analyzing intelligence on enemy and allied forces.

The Force had sung the song of battle to Sil more than enough times for him to recognize the mind of a master at work, and he knew the best way to ruin such a tactician was to force him to engage before he was ready. Knowledge was decision, decision was action, and his blue blade was in his hand and cutting at their faces, slashing for their wrists, whirling in a hurricane of plasma at the two Sith Lords as they parried and lunged and slashed as well.

The world shrank to the battle, to this moment. The Milagroans did not matter, nor did Vedya Gasald and her armada above. Darakhan and his apprentice did not exist; Darth Kra'all was a dream that vanished as Sil's mind woke to battle. Even Hokhtan, Vaszas, and Sil himself did not matter, not really. The red blades, the black robes and charcoal armor, the Falleen pheromones and Human sweat and the beings beneath them all were just the latest incarnations of the dark side, the newest sores of a rotting disease infecting the galaxy. The atoms and molecules, cells and tissue, muscle and bone that were assembled into a being called Sil Kadych, named master and Councilor and Jedi, were just a channel for the light, the triumph of peace and life over chaos and bloodshed. The scalpel that would cut the rot away and leave the rest of the galactic body to heal.

Light and dark ebbed and flowed, and Sil's physical form moved with their rhythm, surrendering to the Force and its will for the light to triumph, the thrill of victory over the enemies of life. His ear heard the hum of a lightsaber blade passing a handsbreadth away, but the Force told him there was no danger and he did not flinch. Lunge here, it seemed to say, as if a phantom Sil traced the outline of the motion for his physical self to copy; he lunged two-handed and utterly destroyed Vaszas's offensive, the Falleen falling back into a hasty defense. Turn. He turned, following the gentle pull of the light on his wrists, and met Hokhtan's blade before it would have sheared through his knee. Stand your ground, the Force urged, and as blue-white lightning filled the air with the scent of ozone and the Force with the stink of hate, Sil raised a calm hand and the bolts twisted harmlessly away, cutting black scorch into the light wood of the dais and igniting a tapestry on the wall.

The Force smoothed away fatigue and bolstered strength, so time became fluid, seconds and minutes blurred into the one single moment of light and dark. Thus it was that Sil could not say how much time had passed, how long into the duel they were, when the Force showed him the change. The two Sith came in as one and Sil met their attack with the knowledge of the Force as his ally. He knew when Vaszas would cut high, and he knew that Hokhtan would follow up low. He knew when it was best to put them both before him and when he could dare to dart between them. He knew that Vaszas knew he had overcommitted to a downward strike, but followed it through in the confidence that Hokhtan would divert Sil to one side and allow Vaszas to complement from the other.

And he knew when Hokhtan saw that plan and the angle of attack, and ignored it.

As Hokhtan fell back into a defensive guard, Sil spun and swept his blade up Vaszas's spine, opening him from tailbone to skull. He met Hokhtan's attack before the Falleen's corpse hit the floor.

"Thank you for that, Master Kadych," Hokhtan said.

"No trouble at all," Sil answered in the same courteous tone. "I'm happy to say I have more to give you."

And with Vaszas removed, Sil had at last the duel he desired. Darth Hokhtan, the right hand of Darth Saleej himself. Architect of Sith victories and atrocities, Sith Lord, Darth…a weeping, festering sore in the Sith infection. A disease for the light to burn away.

His nose inhaled the smoke in the air, his face felt the first warm tickles from the flames, but the Force told him they did not matter. He gave ground under Hokhtan's assault when the Force told him to retreat, then renewed his onslaught when the Sith Lord faltered. He sharpened his focus to this one duel, this one enemy, and knew that he would defeat Darth Hokhtan.

Weakness, the Force noted for him when his eyes might have missed the subtle signs; the way Hokhtan brought the majority of his blows' strength from his right arm, the tremor in his left wrist and the tic at the corner of his mouth when he caught one of Sil's power blows in a full-on block. Some injury, incompletely healed, sapped the warlord of the fullest extent of his powers. It was a tiny thing; most Jedi would still have assailed Hokhtan and died for their trouble. But most Jedi were not Sil Kadych, the Bane of Darths. Between masters, any weakness could be fatal; a scratch on the lens distorted every observation.

Now the Force said, and Sil feinted a retreat only to throw everything into an Assured Strike. Hokhtan met the blow, but his left arm buckled just a little under its force, and Sil twisted his wrists to sear Hokhtan's right shoulder. The Human gasped in pain, and Sil slipped free into a whirling slash down. Hokhtan managed to jerk back enough that the blow cut his kneecap in half instead of taking his leg all the way off, but he still screamed and fell, landing hard on his side and raising his left hand to cover his face.

Sil started to come back to himself, the infinite now of combat expanding into the innumerable nows of the world at large, but he tried to hold his focus; a man like Darth Hokhtan was only safe when he was dead. He heard his own breathing, heavy from exertion, and felt the sweat dripping down his neck and sticking his robes to his body. He stood over his fallen enemy, lightsaber tip pointed at Hokhtan's face.

The Human grunted, propping himself up on his right forearm even as smoke curled from his shoulder. "Well fought, Kadych."

"And you," Sil said. "But you erred in betraying Vaszas."

"A tactical sacrifice," Hokhtan said. He eyed the lightsaber that had fallen from his hand; Sil channeled the whole galaxy down to the one man, alert for the Sith's every move. He could feel Hokhtan planning, that calculating mind racing for an escape. There was still danger, Sil knew it. "The advantages in the larger campaign outweighed the risk here."

"It's useless to position yourself for the campaign if you lose the battle," Sil noted. Danger the Force warned. He glanced at the lightsaber at the same moment Hokhtan did. Would the Human dare to try?

"This is why you're an assassin, not a general," Hokhtan remarked. His pockmarked mouth twisted into a smile. "Focus too much on one engagement and you forget to read the rest of the map."

He touched the Force, the dark side rising like a hissing serpent to strike, and Sil started to lunge. Then all he knew was pain—hideous fire eating his insides, breaking him out of the moment, taking away the clarity of the light. He stared, trying to comprehend, but Hokhtan had not moved, nor had that cold smile left his lips. But as Sil gasped his mouth and nose filled with the smell of charred flesh, and he looked down to see the two red blades protruding from his stomach. Intestines and kidneys burned in their fire, and his legs turned to water.

They burned on the way out, too, and their fire was so hot the impact of his head on the wooden dais barely registered. Distantly he was aware of someone screaming, of an enormous feline form sailing through the air. His hands fluttered over the ground as he tried to push himself up; where was his lightsaber? It was not in his hands anymore, though he was sure it had been.

A hand caught his collar and dragged him off the ground; his feet hung limp. He struggled to focus his eyes, and they cobbled together the visage of a man with a broad nose, waxy gray skin, and cold blue eyes. Something was wrong with his face, cuts in his cheeks like open wounds that did not bleed. Tendrils were protruding from them, brushing along Sil's chin and lips.

"VANDAK!"

The Force amplified the scream, made it mental as well as physical, and Sil caught it like a lifeline, latching onto the just fury of the light. Three desks ripped from their moorings in one large piece and flew toward the dais. The Anzat turned his face away and raised his free hand, and the desk shifted off course to scrape across the far side of the platform, ripping up floorboards.

Focusing, gritting his teeth against the pain of his debilitating wounds, Sil saw Mali Darakhan storming down the aisle, blue blade in hand. From somewhere nearby Hokhtan said, "Kill him first, Vandak. I'll keep Master Kadych for you—a meal like this deserves to be savored."

The gray face turned back and Darth Vandak smiled at Sil. "Just so."

He dropped the Jedi Master on the dais and strode to meet Darakhan's attack while Sil struggled not to black out from the pain. Darakhan and his apprentice both looked worse for the wear than when they had come in, but Darakhan centered himself, lightsaber hilt held before his face, channeling the light in his own way. When Nikodon came to his side, though, Darakhan shook his head. "Get Tirien."

"Master—"

"Aldayr, now!"

"Stop the boy," Vandak ordered lazily, and Sil was vaguely aware of other forms moving from the dais, ghosting around the perimeter of the hall as the Jedi Knight and the Sith Lord met in the middle.

Dragging himself forward, willing his lower torso to get some control through the haze of agony, Sil slapped one hand down only for Darth Hokhtan to grind his boot into it. The Human was obviously in pain as he stomped with his bad leg, but Sil's gasp as his fingers broke seemed to take the sting out of the moment for Hokhtan.

"Oh no, my dear Jedi," Hokhtan said. He slumped to the floor, face rigid with pain, but managed a deformed smile in the midst of it. "Your part in this is done."

He raised his hand, and Sil saw the blue-white crackle between his fingers just before the agony began.