Drew Karpyshyn - Darth Bane - Path of Destruction

They flipped to their feet simultaneously, mirror images, and their sabers met with another resounding crash before they disengaged once again. There were some whispers and mutters from the assembled crowd, but Bane did his best to tune them out. They had thought the battle was over… as had Bane himself. He was disappointed that he hadn't been able to finish off his fallen opponent, but he knew victory was near. Fohargh's survival had extracted a heavy toll: he was breathing in ragged gasps now, his shoulders slumping.

Bane rushed Fohargh again. This time, however, the Makurth didn't back away. He stepped forward with a quick thrust, switching from Form III to the more precise and aggressive Form II. Bane was caught off guard by the unexpected maneuver and was a microsecond slow in recognizing the change. His parry attempt knocked the tip of the blade away from his chest, only to have it slice across his right shoulder.

The crowd gasped, Fohargh howled in victory, and Bane screamed in pain as the saber slipped to the ground from his suddenly nerveless fingers. Mindlessly, Bane used his other hand to shove his opponent in the chest. Fohargh reeled backward, and Bane rolled away to safety.

Scrambling to his feet, Bane extended his left hand to the training saber lying on the ground three meters away. It sprang up and into his palm, and he once again assumed the ready position, his right arm dangling uselessly at his side. Some Sith learned to fight with either hand, but Bane hadn't yet reached that advanced stage. The weapon felt awkward and clumsy as he held it. Left-handed, he was no match for Fohargh. The fight was over.

His opponent sensed it, as well. "Defeat is bitter, human," he growled in Basic, his voice deep and menacing. "I have bested you; you have lost."

He wasn't asking Bane to yield; surrender was never an option. He was simply taunting him, publicly humiliating him in front of the other students.

"You trained for weeks to challenge me," Fohargh continued, drawing out his mockery. "You failed. Victory is mine again."

"Then come finish me!" Bane snapped back. There wasn't much else he could say. Everything his enemy said in his heavily accented Basic was true, and the words cut far deeper than the blunted training saber's edge possibly could.

"This ends when I choose," the Makurth replied, refusing to be baited.

The eyes of the other apprentices burned into Bane; he could feel them drinking in his suffering as they stared at him. They resented him, resented the extra attention he had been receiving from the Masters. Now they reveled in his failure.

"You are weak," Fohargh explained, casually twirling his own saber in a complex and intricate pattern. "You are predictable."

Stop it! Bane wanted to scream. End this! Finish me! But despite the emotion building up inside him, he refused to give his opponent the satisfaction of saying another word. Instead he let the all-but-useless saber fall once more to the ground. In the background he could see the Blademaster watching intently, curious to see how the confrontation would reach its inevitable end.

"The Masters cosset you. They give you extra time and attention. More than the others. More than me."

Bane barely even heard the words anymore. His heart was pounding so loud he could hear the blood coursing through his veins. Literally quaking with impotent rage, he lowered his head and dropped to one knee, exposing his bare neck.

"Despite this, you are still my inferior… Bane of the Sith."

Bane. Something in the way Fohargh said it caused Bane to glance up. It was the same way his father used to say the word.

"That name is mine," Bane whispered, his voice low and threatening. "Nobody uses it against me."

Fohargh either didn't hear him or didn't care. He took a leisurely step forward. "Bane. Worthless. An insignificant nothing. The Masters wasted their time on you. Time better spent on other students. You are well named, for you truly are this Academy's bane!"

"No!" Bane screamed, thrusting his good hand out palm-forward even as Fohargh leapt in to finish him off. Dark side energy erupted from his open palm to catch his opponent in midair, hurling him back to the edge of the crowd where he landed at Kas'im's feet.

The Master watched with an intrigued but wary expression. Bane slowly clenched his fist and rose to his feet. On the ground before him, Fohargh was writhing in agony, clutching at his throat and gasping for breath.

Unlike the Makurth, Bane had nothing to say to his helpless opponent. He squeezed his fist harder, feeling the Force rushing through him like a divine wind as he crushed the life out of his foe. Fohargh's heels pounded out a staccato rhythm on the temple's stone roof as his body convulsed. He began to gurgle, and pink froth welled up from between his lips.

"Enough, Bane," Kas'im said in a cold, even voice. Though he stood only centimeters away from the death throes of his student, his eyes were fixed on the one still standing.

A final surge of power roared up in the core of Bane's being and exploded out into the world. In response, Fohargh's body went stiff and his eyes rolled back in his head. Bane released his hold on the Force and his fallen enemy, and the Makurth's body went limp as the last vestiges of life ebbed away.

"Now it's enough," Bane said, turning his back on the corpse and walking toward the stairs that led back inside the temple. The circle of students quickly opened a path for him to pass. He didn't need to look back to know that Kas'im was watching him with great interest.

Bane felt the presence of someone following him down the stairs from the temple roof long before he heard the footsteps. He didn't change his pace, but he did stop at the first landing and turn to face whoever it was. He half expected to see Lord Kas'im, but instead of the Blademaster he found himself staring into the orange eyes of Sirak, another apprentice at the Academy. Or rather, the top apprentice at the Academy.

Sirak was a Zabrak, one of three apprenticing here on Korriban. Zabrak tended to be ambitious, driven, and arrogant, perhaps it was these traits that made the Force-sensitives of the race so strong in the ways of the dark side, and Sirak was the perfect embodiment of those characteristics. He was far and away the strongest of the three. Wherever Sirak went, the other two usually followed, trailing at his heel like obedient servants. They made a colorful trio: red-skinned Llokay and Yevra, and pale yellow Sirak. But right now the other two were conspicuously absent.

There were rumors that Sirak had begun studying the ways of the dark side under Lord Qordis nearly twenty years ago, long before the Academy at Korriban had been resurrected. Bane didn't know if the rumors were true, and he hadn't thought it wise to ask about it. The Iridonian Zabrak was both powerful and dangerous. So far Bane had done his best to avoid drawing the attention of the Academy's most advanced student. Apparently, that strategy was no longer an option.

The rush of adrenaline he'd felt as he'd ended Fohargh's life was fading, along with the confidence and sense of invincibility that had led to his dramatic exit. Bane wasn't exactly afraid as the Zabrak approached him, but he was wary.

In the dim torchlight of the temple, Sirak's pale yellow skin had taken on a sickly, waxen hue. Unbidden, it brought back memories of Bane's first year working the mines on Apatros. A crew of five, three men and two women, had been trapped in a cave-in. They had survived the collapsing tunnel by escaping into a reinforced safety chamber dug out of the rock, but noxious fumes released in the collapse had seeped into their haven and killed them all before rescue teams could dig them out. The complexion of their bloated corpses was the exact same color as Sirak's: the color of a slow, agonizing death.