Cold. His opponent felt cold in a way that gave Bril pause. It reminded him of the detached, brutally efficient minds of the Collective's cybernetically-augmented soldiers. Was he like them?
No. This felt different. It reminded him of Foxen, his ori'vod and the one who had adopted him into the Erinos. His first time sensing his adoptive brother's emotions (or lack thereof) in the Force had unnerved him when they first met, too. But it didn't bother him anymore, and that familiar thread was enough for Bril to steel his resolve in the face of the threat standing before him.
Bril's eyes drifted to Titius’ injured arm. He'd popped it back in place without so much as a flinch. Since he lacked a notable connection to the Force, Bril surmised he must have possessed some kind of natural or artificial pain resistance. Regardless, Titius wouldn't be making efficient use of that arm for the rest of their bout, a fact made clear by the way it hung loosely at his side. With his one good hand, Titius rotated the spherical objects idly.
More explosives, Bril suspected.
He hated explosives.
“Test Cresh,” Titius intoned before chucking the three denton charges toward Bril.
The Zabrak reacted by flexing the fingers of his free hand to redirect the charges’ momentum upward with the Force. Two of them went wide and disappeared beyond the arena’s electrified perimeter, and the third stuck to the top of the glowing sign above their heads. He uttered a silent curse as he watched two of them fly outside the Pit. How could he have been so careless?
As Bril stared a little too long at the stray explosives, Titius grinned beneath his helmet. There it was – the chink in his armor. His concern for the voyeuristic imbeciles in the crowd would be his undoing, as compassion often was for Jedi. A single tap on his vambrace detonated the first of two denton charges that went outside the fighting pit, rocking that section of the crowd with an explosion.
Scattered cheers gave way to screams of horror and agony. A wave of anguish and death rippled through the Force, hitting Bril’s heightened senses like a hovertruck. The first person he checked to ensure was safe was Minnow, his fiancée; relief washed over him when he felt her through their bond. Thank the Force. His gaze snapped back to Titius. “What have you done?” he asked, though his biting tone ensured it rang more as an accusation.
Titius didn’t say a word, and instead moved his hand to detonate the second charge.
Seeing this, Bril’s hand shot out in desperation. “Wait! Stop. Please . . . don’t do this. Your fight is with me. Leave these people out of this.”
Titius’ finger stopped, looming dangerously close to the button, mere millimeters from extinguishing the lives of dozens more in a flash of intense light and flame. “You can save them,” he began, words dripping with a twisted amusement, “if you disarm.”
Bril’s jaw tightened. As much as he knew it was a bad idea to do so, he couldn’t stand the feelings of terror and suffering spreading through the crowd. What kind of person would he be if he allowed more innocent people to die when he had the power to stop it? He deactivated his saber and tossed it aside, sending it clattering against the floor. The crushgaunts came off next.
“So noble,” Titius said in a mocking tone. Then, he pressed the button.
Bril braced himself for another wave of death that never came. Instead, the boom of an explosion overhead drew his attention in time to see the arena sign plummeting toward him. Tapping into the Force again to bolster his speed, he dove to his right, narrowly missing the sign that smashed into the spot where he stood moments before.
But as he came out of the roll, his eyes shot wide when he saw another charge sailing past him, its red light blinking angrily.
BOOM!
The explosion hit Bril hard and sent him skipping across the ground like a stone. Each impact produced a new contusion, a new wound for his growing collection. A horrid ringing filled his ears, his vision blurred, and his pulse thudded between his ears with the weight of a hammer. But he was alive. He owed that to his armor’s thick durasteel plates and kiirium coating. Bril’s shaky hands ripped his helmet off his head, and he gasped for fresh air while struggling to press himself off the ground.
Titius advanced quickly, launching a hard kick to the side of Bril’s head to pay him back for the one he’d received earlier. His opponent reeling before him like a wounded dog was an image he would remember fondly when this was over. “You Jedi are all the same,” he said. “Always trying to save people. It makes you predictable. It makes you weak.”
Another kick ripped a groan from Bril’s bloody lips, flicking a spray of blood across the duracrete floor.
As the blows landed, Bril’s mind drifted to the crowd again. So many flames that once burned brightly in the Living Force had gone out, abruptly ended by the machinations of a madman. And what would he gain from it? Demented satisfaction? Were these lives nothing more than tools to further his “experiments”?
He couldn’t stand it. Anger smoldered in his core like hot coals. He felt his old friend the Dark Side whispering in the back of his mind, beckoning him to accept its gifts once again. It’d be easy to just let go, to give in as he had so many times before. It’d be worth it to save himself so he could continue to protect and save others. But he’d fallen for that trick too many times before. He was on a new path, now, one led by the Light.
“Compassion doesn’t make me weak,” he retorted while pushing up against the cold ground again. “It makes me strong. Stronger than you can imagine.”
Bril suddenly forced his arms upward, pointing both fists at the human as he approached. Twin spouts of orange flame roared from his vambraces, forcing Titius backward. This bought him enough time to rise to his feet, as unsteady as they were.
Titius responded by deploying his smoke grenade, enveloping the area in thick smoke that obscured Bril’s vision. After switching his helmet’s viewplate from visible light to thermal, he unclipped Viper Fang from his belt and clutched its hilt tightly, stalking . . . waiting for his opportunity to strike.
Robbed of his vision, Bril opened his senses to the Living Force again, but the chaos in the crowd faded into the background as his focus centered on his opponent’s lifeforce. Electricity arced between twitching fingers as he took two deliberate steps backward. Then, when the Force screamed a warning of danger behind him, he turned and thrust his hand forward. Brilliant white lightning surged and leaped from his fingertips, catching Titius in a net of burning, crackling energy that briefly lifted him off the ground before throwing him backward into the far wall.
Titius nearly screamed when the lightning lit every nerve and muscle fiber in his body on fire. His collision with the distant wall barely registered as painful in the wake of the chaos the lightning wreaked on his nervous system. He collapsed into a charred, smoking mess.
“You brought this upon yourself,” said Bril, before firing a second blast of lightning.
The second bolt hit harder than the first, causing Titius’ muscles to seize. When the crackling of electricity faded, he heard a familiar beeping sound that made his blood run cold. The denton explosives kit strapped to his back had suffered catastrophic damage in the attack, inadvertently activating them without his detonator. The veneer of dispassion he’d worn for the duration of the bout melted away as he frantically clawed at the restraints with one hand, but his karking fingers disobeyed him with every attempt.
The charges went off, and as Bril was blown backward by the concussive force of the resultant explosion, the last thing he saw was Titius vanishing within a ball of fire. And in the Living Force, Titius’ flame extinguished just as his victims in the crowd had. Bril hit the ground hard, and a sharp pain shot through his side when he landed with almost all of his weight on one of the broken sign pieces. His injuries were serious, but he’d survived, at least.
With the threat neutralized, Bril’s mind returned to the people in the crowd. Helping them was the priority now, more important than treating his own wounds. Then, he would have words with the Mandalorians of Clan Vizsla. If this wasn’t enough to justify a meeting with them, then nothing was.
