His red lightsaber clashed with the enemy's blue, and the sheer strength behind his blows forced the weapon into the Monster's shoulder, eliciting a barely stifled cry of pain. "Orbalisk toxins are quite virulent."
...
Someone tried to push Angral out of the way, then. A feeble attempt from someone who could not measure up to him in strength in the Force. It was little more than a tug, like a child's attempt to get a parent to take them somewhere while out in town.
The memories it dredged up of Tarnis, the son whom the Monster had so cruelly murdered, when he was growing up only boosted his rage to new heights.
One blow sent his enemy's lightsaber back into his arm. Another sent it so far out of line that the Monster had to spin on the ball of his foot to keep it between himself and Angral. A third knocked it out of his grip for a second before he retrieved it with the Force.
"Sith! Now would be good!"
Three Sith Apprentices chose that moment to reveal themselves, all but throwing themselves in his way. One of them was a veritable mountain of muscle, and Angral chose him as his first target, if only because watching the strongest among them fall would strike terror into their hearts.
He did a half-retreat out of the big apprentice's first attack, doing little more than moving his back leg back a step, before surging forwards in a strike that carved through lightsaber and forearm both. The powerpack inside the weapon hilt did not appreciate being bisected by a blade of pure plasma and detonated.
Bellowing in pain, the apprentice was enveloped in lightning as Angral sent him flying off into the distance.
The other two apprentices were barely worth the time it had taken to dispatch them. The shorter male lost both hands when his thrust was met by a textbook parry. The female wasted her chance at a kill by blocking the blow that would have taken the other apprentice's head and was sent flying by a wave of lightning.
Sending apprentices after a Sith Lord.
What a joke.
"Monster?" Angral called out. "Done hiding yet?"
Rubble shifted somewhere behind him, the only hint that perhaps someone was trying something. Whirling around, he brought his weapon up in a reflexive guard that caught a blow that might have cut a lesser man in half. Red blade met red blade with a crackle of discharging containment fields.
Flicking his wrist, he delivered a riposte that the apprentice managed to catch, though it did knock her back.
This one had some measure of talent, it appeared. She even managed to catch the bolt of lightning he unleashed with her lightsaber instead of her torso. A shame she had fallen in with such a disreputable group.
Lamentably, Angral could not spare the three or so seconds it would have taken to finish her off. The Monster decided that the apprentice was worth saving as he threw himself at Angral.
He knocked the attack to the side, but was forced to twist at the waist to stop a crimson lightsaber thrust at his neck. The Jedi's padawan, now bearing a weapon he recognized as belonging to the apprentice whose hands he had taken, had tried to sneak in a blow from behind him. His neck now too far for her to cut, she swung the weapon down, trying to carve him open, and it took all Angral had not to laugh at the display.
Let them see what they faced. Let them see and despair!
His robes smoldered and burned where the red lightsaber cut through, but failed to penetrate the thick layer of orbalisks that covered his torso. The blade screamed as it slid off, and Angral was already moving to take advantage of the opening and thrust his blade toward her throat.
It was only the timely intervention of the Monster that saved her, a wave of Force energy that pulled her out of mortal danger. A flicker of movement off to the side triggered his duelist's reflexes, aborting his attack to knock the apprentice's attack to the side.
This was promising to be a tricky fight, but hardly as tricky as some might expect. Three-on-one was very rarely three times as difficult as one-on-one. People got in each other's way, couldn't coordinate effectively, and simply could not exploit openings as easily.
Angral liked his chances.
Even if could not stop all of their attacks and maintain his own offensive at the same time, he did not need to. The orbalisks could stop any blows that slipped through, provided they were in the way. Any wounds his enemies did open knitted shut in seconds, once again courtesy of the orbalisks.
As for those blows he did parry?
Every parry was followed by a riposte of his own. Not all of them connected, of course; some were aborted to parry another attack. Others were successfully defended against. But some did strike true. Some took their chunk of flesh in payment, though never enough to take one of his enemies out of the fights.
But each blow took its toll.
Each hit slowed them down.
Each strike brought Angral closer to his getting the revenge he deserved.
As was inevitable, his moment came. A parry from the Monster did not extend as far as it needed. His padawan extended to cover for her master. A feint towards the apprentice was interpreted as a blow that would take off an arm, and she moved to parry a blow that would not come.
Tragically, that was when things started to go wrong.
He took his left hand from his lightsaber for only a moment, barely moved it enough to point his palm towards the now-unguarded padawan. Lightning crackled in his palm, begging to be unleashed, when he got a flash of warning through the Force, a foreboding sense of danger that he should move.
The next instant, burning pain flashed across his left arm and his chest. From the elbow down, everything felt like fire, and his center of balance warped. Something hit his leg with a meaty thump, and Angral only barely recovered his balance before drawing on the new pain for strength.
Roaring with anger, he sent a wave of raw strength in all directions, sending four people back a few paces.
Four people?
Yes, four people. The short Jedi had entered the fray at an opportune moment.
"About time," the Monster muttered.
"I chose my moment," the short Jedi deadpanned, gesturing at Angral with a pale blue blade. "You've got to hand me that much."
A strangled laugh came from somewhere in the distance.
Glancing down at his arm, Angral saw what she had meant: he was missing half an arm. The red sleeve of his robe was smoldering, and his forearm was down by his feet, and it felt like the bottom half of his arm was on fire.
Of course the Monster's associates would have a sick sense of humor. Fortunately, the orbalisks were kind enough to pump him full of enough stimulants in response to the injury that the pain was already fading.
"I only need the one," he declared, before Angral got two warnings. One through the Force, telling him to move, no matter where. The other was the creak of straining metal. He could feel his lightsaber shift in his grip before everything go suddenly, horribly worse.
The sight of the three Jedi and the one Sith Apprentice in front of him disappeared, replaced by glowing red and orange and yellow and white as his entire body was engulfed in a brief wave of pain. More tricks? Hardly even a challenge!
Roaring in anger, he leapt from the flames and flexed both his hands in preparation to unleash a proper barrage of…
… of no hands.
He had no hands.
What had… oh, the destruction of his lightsaber. The rupturing power cell would have had more than enough juice to wreck his hand. Ah, he could deal with it. What was a lack of a lightsaber to a Dark Lord of the Sith? Enough lightning and all of his problems would melt away.
Simple problem, simple solutions.
Now why couldn't he move his arms? They felt… unnaturally stiff.
Angral landed, his arms still locked in the position they had been in when his lightsaber exploded. The rubble shifted beneath his feet, but he did not stagger, did not fall. He was better than that.
The man who was propping himself up on a pile of rubble, unable to even stand unassisted, was another story.
Clad in an outlandish outfit that was the antithesis of proper Sith robes, emphasizing his shoulders to give him a top-heavy silhouette, the Traitor stood bareheaded. His outfit was scorched, ragged, and smoking. His mask had been burned away by the lightning that had taken him out of the fight, revealing a pale and drawn face.
Pale golden eyes met his own, and the Traitor gave a jaunty wave. Taunting him. Oh, that was how he wanted to do things?
Lightning crackled to life around the stump of Darth Angral's left arm. Even if he could not aim it precisely, he could still produce enough of it in the right directions to cook the Traitor properly this time!
Wait.
Why was Nestor's belt empty?
...
if you want to read ahead of the public release, you can join my p atreon :
p atreon.com/Darkness013