A final step, a giant leap

[Kriel Firin]

His ship appeared to be dancing to some silent tune as it danced as much as rode the shifting currents of colour and light through hyperspace. And perhaps it did?

For the duration of the journey, Kriel Firin had sat rigid in his chair, using every meditative exercise he knew to remain in control. He wasn’t sure how the Ren Masters did it. They always looked so serene, so at peace even though he knew that their baser emotions raged within them. Perhaps he would eventually achieve such a constant state of confidence, the conditions that he suspected separated a Knight from a Master. But those were thoughts for another day. Now he had to prepare himself for the test that lay ahead of him. A test to demonstrate he was more than another Knight of Ren and worthy of the next level.

He reflected on his Knight trial – it was a long and arduous process and at the end it was about survival. If he lived, he was assured becoming a Knight. If he failed? Well nobody ever promotes a dead Ren, do they?

 

[Kriel Firin]

Under the light of the planet’s sun, Kriel Firin had landed the ship. He reflected on his name. His given name of Talon Ren. At times, he reflected on himself as Kriel – and he knew this must end. It was as if he’d accepted a secret identity, but constantly references both personas. Going forward, once this mission was over – and assuming he lived – he would be only Talon Ren.

He’d landed in what was supposed to be a bustling colony. Instead, all he could hear was silence. No one had come to greet him. The town square was deserted. When he reached out to the Force, all he sensed was sadness. All he felt was emptiness. And behind this emptiness lurked darkness.

For his foe was not a Jedi but a Sith. Whatever emotions Kriel could tap into to fuel his power, his opponent had the same advantage. It was a level playing field.

 

[Kriel Firin]

He’d seen the images. Men, women, and children massacred to appease the dark hunger and churning anger of the Sith he came to kill. The Ren served the First Order, not their own blood lust. Power for the Ren came through order – imposed order, their order. But order none the less.

Kriel committed the haunting images to memory. They would also fuel his anger and enable him to draw strength. His opponent had already sated on the fear and pain, this was Kriel’s way of balancing the situation. He as here to face the darkness – and meet it with equal darkness. And he know the Sith was close, his quarry. On this planet. Kriel could feel his presence in the Force. It was both one he admired and loathed in equal measures. He was in admiration for the power he sensed, but not how it was used.

 

[Kriel Firin]

“He’s here,” Kriel said out loud. He ignored the ship’s sensors, and was instead mindful for any vibrations in the Force. He knew it would tell him more than any computers would. You just had to listen correctly.

For Kriel, the Force was a constant sound that he’d known since he could remember. Once upon a time he had no idea what it was, or why he could hear it. But discovered by the Order of Ren on his home planet of Bespin, they had taught him to listen and to play.

Now it washed over him like waves of sensation that he knew few others could feel. It was an omnipresent melody that was at once grand and complex, simple and comforting, full of movement yet totally still.

And when his emotions were engaged, he could feel the Force resonate within him. And the constant nag of pain he felt from his burns ensured his emotions were always there. Initially it had overwhelmed him, the constant connection. But in time he had managed to keep the connection in the background, only tapping into the power when he wished.

 

[Kriel Firin]

Kriel closed his eyes, behind his mask, letting the Force guide his hands as they moved over the ship’s controls. The melody was one with his body, ever changing, ever guiding. Then it rose to a crescendo and it was thunderous and cacophonous. He could sense the Sith in the Force. His presence was full of anger. It vibrated with barely controlled rage.

He was coming. Coming for Kriel

 

[Kriel Firin]

The Sith slipped his ship into the Ren’s wake, riding the thrust of its sub-light drive like some sleek ocean predator angling for the kill.

If rumours were to be believed, a new war was about to emerge – one that pitted dark sider against dark sider. A new order had emerged from the shadows, one that served the First Order and that tolerated Sith as opposed to stood shoulder to shoulder with them.

The Sith knew which side of the divide he was on. Once upon a time it was light versus dark. Yes, some Sith factions crossed sabers from time to time, but they ultimately fell in line against the Jedi. This new breed was different. And the Sith did not like what he saw.

 

[Kriel Firin]

At least Jedi denied the dark side, and refused to harness its power. They made rules to try to stop others from accepting that strength if they so desired. Their sanctimony was hard to stomach – but the Sith could at least identify his foe.

This one, the Ren, had been hounding him for more than a month now. It was time to end their little game.

The Ren’s ship moved in a deliberate search pattern, sliding closer and closer to a small, uninhabited world. The Sith didn’t bother to check his nav computer; the Force told him that the unnamed planet teemed with life, none of it more advanced than a womp rat. He’d made sure of that. There was nothing left alive in this system to concern him. And it meant the Ren was alone, without any possibility of assistance. Soon, the Sith thought thought, he would be dead.

 

[Kriel Firin]

The Sith pushed his star-fighter into an attack vector and powered up his weapons system. His prey was in his sights – a slow, lumbering victim about to be ripped asunder by the fast predator swooping up behind it.

He would have preferred to kill the Ren in close combat, lightsaber against lightsaber, but the time for such contests had passed. He reached into the Force and pictured the Ren’s ship exploding into a thousand fiery shards. He let his anger rise within him, filling him with rage and power. Now the Force was a crimson sheen before his eyes, bathing the ship ahead in a targeting haze that would increase his accuracy and ensure the killing shot. He triggered the star-fighter’s laser cannons, and bolts of energized death streaked toward the unsuspecting prey.

 

[Kriel Firin]

The Sith had slipped behind Kriel like a shadow. The Ren felt his savage presence a fraction of a second before the cannons erupted. Kriel's hands danced over the controls, coaxing the sluggish ship to veer from its current course before the Sith’s lasers burned through his hull or sliced open his sublight engines.

Kriel’s ship shook and groaned. With stern resistance – and more than a token measure of defiance – it rolled slowly to one side. Kriel grimaced and hoped it would hold together.

The explosion that ripped through the ship drowned out Kriel’s thoughts. Then all he heard was the noise of the laser strike and the blaring alarms that warned him of a dozen imminent systems failures. His ship was locked in a spin. As smoke poured into the cockpit, Kriel frowned and fought the controls. Then, with a crash and a powerful jolt, the lights snapped out, leaving him in darkness.

 

[Kriel Firin]

The Sith felt his starfighter shudder as his laser fire erupted from its cannons. He used the dark side to aim true, pinpointing the precise spot where the lasers would rip through the ship’s engines. His joy was shortlived, however, because the ship had dodged the fatal fire. The Ren must have sensed his presence.

His prey evaded him and although he was able to inflict serious damage, it was short of the deathly blow he had anticipated.

And as the Ren’s ship fell into a spin, the Sith realised his star-fighter was too close. He had wanted to fly through the explosion, but there was none, and the Ren’s ship’s nose struck the star-fighter a solid blow.

The Sith’s consciousness fled as the star-fighter bounced away and fell toward the small planet below.

 

[Kriel Firin]

Kriel’s ship tumbled end over end, heading towards the planet at breakneck speed. Finally, it raked the treetops, cutting a swath through the leafy canopy before plunging into a sea of dense foliage. It hit the ground, bounced off its repulsor-field, and bounced again. Finally Kriel regained consciousness, just in time to see the forest and then he blacked out again.

 

[Kriel Firin]

The Sith’s star-fighter skimmed across the planet’s atmosphere. He struggled to attain a vector that would allow the ship to glide toward the planet’s surface in a more or less controlled fall. He saw the Ren’s ship as it plunged toward the dense forest canopy, then focused his attention on saving his own craft. The starfighter’s nose had been crushed, rendering its sensor array useless. He was certain that other systems had been damaged as well, perhaps beyond repair, but he had engines and steering. He flew the star-fighter toward the surface, looking for a place to set down.

Then he would head out on foot, locate the Ren, and either dance on his dead body or finish the job – up close.

 

[Kriel Firin]

Kriel could sense the Sith’s enormous power, and underestimating him would be a fatal mistake.

So he hid and drew his Force presence to as small a signature as he could. Hopefully the Sith would be so keen to find the dead pilot’s body, he would not be cautious. It was a calculated risk, but the Ren had to take it. His suit was torn in places and the air was already dehydrating his skin. If there was a positive, it was that the damage to his suit caused pain – and pain fuelled his access to the Force.

 

[Kriel Firin]

The moment the human passed Kriel’s hiding place, the Ren leapt, igniting his lightsaber as he flew through the air. For a moment he thought his first strike would find its mark, and he was almost disappointed at the thought of ending the Sith’s life so easily. But at the last instant the human’s own blade materialized seemingly out of nowhere to intercept the blow.

They exchanged a quick flurry of thrusts and parries. Kriel tried and failed to draw on his foe’s fear and anger – the Sith was too controlled, and it felt more like fighting a droid. Kriel forcibly thrust his own fears away and reached deep inside himself to find the fury he needed.

 

[Kriel Firin]

He had manoeuvred himself so that he was behind the Sith now – and for the first time he spotted a chink in the Sith’s armour. Ever since he’d denied him a quick kill, the human had seemed to be more obsessed with preserving his own life than killing his enemy.

So Kriel goaded him, taunting him to act.

The tactic worked as the Sith unleashed his rage as he drew on the power of the dark side, unaware that their anger was feeding Kriel, as well. Most dark siders only faced Jedi and were unaware of this flaw in their approach. Kriel had passed his Knight trial by defeating a Dark Jedi and was an old hand at facing all manner of dark siders.

The Sith came in high, his lightsaber slashing at Kriel’s head.

Kriel ducked under the blows, spinning to the side. But the Sith was relentless. So Kriel leaped over the Sith’s head.

For an instant Kriel was vulnerable; one quick cut could have ended his life. But the Sith was either inexperienced in duels or overconfident and not expecting the move. By the time the Sith reacted with a backhand swipe of his weapon, the moment had been lost. The lightsaber hummed by Kriel’s mask as he landed, but he emerged unscathed.

 

[Kriel Firin]

Having outfoxed his opponent, Kriel abruptly changed tactics, looking to keep the Sith guessing. He shifted from the defensive positions of the third Form to the acrobatic sequences of Ataru. Taking two quick steps to gain speed, Kriel leapt at a nearby tree, planted both feet on its vertical surface, then pushed off hard to launch himself in a spinning flip over the man’s head.

His opponent tried to turn and pivot to keep Kriel in front of him, but the furious burst of action was too fast for his lightsaber to track. He was late bringing his blade up to protect his head, once again exposing himself to a lethal strike.

But Kriel’s pace was an asset in one sense but also worked against him and he was unable to deliver a fatal blow.

 

[Kriel Firin]

The recent exchanges had buoyed Kriel’s confidence and he was sure it had sapped the Sith’s. Kriel could almost taste his fear; and it gave him a fresh burst of energy. He lashed out with the Force, striking the man in the chest hard enough to send him stumbling back several steps into a tree.

“Walk away now and I’ll spare you,” said the Sith.

Kriel didn’t reply. Instead he raised his blade and began a slow, advance.

The Sith laughed. Bravado or confidence? “Are you really that stupid, Ren? Has someone convinced you that you could defeat me? Have you been promised power if you take my life?”

For a split second Kriel wondered if the Sith had lulled him into a false sense of security – feigning fear just to regain the upper hand?

“I need no promise of power,” Kriel answered. “It is my duty to kill you.”

“Duty,” the Sith said with a smile, twirling his lightsaber at his side. “How quaint.”

 

[Kriel Firin]

Kriel stopped, suddenly aware that he didn’t feel any fear emanating from his foe. There was no anger, either. He didn’t get any sense of emotion coming from the Sith at all, and he realised the man was consciously shielding himself from Kriel’s awareness.

Kriel concentrated his focus, reaching out with the Force to pierce the veil the Sith had wrapped around himself, only to find nothing but a swirling maelstrom of dark side energy.

Kriel broke into a run, charging at his enemy the instant he understood the nature of the trap. The Sith had kept him talking while he gathered his power for a single, lethal attack.

In an instant, Kriel faced a storm of red lightning. Kriel instinctively used the Force to throw up an invisible barrier to shield himself. The bolts arced through the air, ripping through the shield with ease to engulf Kirel in electric agony.

But whereas for most people pain was to be avoided at all costs and when encountered was debilitating, Kriel had learned to live with permanent agony. And not only had he grown accustomed to it, he drew strength from it. So he channelled that pain and returned it with interest.

 

[Kriel Firin]

The Sith screamed, his voice rising above the hiss and crackle of the fiery energy now coursing through his veins. Every nerve in his body exploded in excruciating pain as the lightning seared his flesh, cooking him. He fell to the floor, curled into himself, his skin blistered and burned. The whole thing had taken only a few seconds. He was now experiencing what Kriel lived with daily.

Kriel stood over the fallen Sith and deactivated his saber.

“Let me live,” the Sith pleaded, “I have powers you cannot imagine and I can teach you all of my secrets.”

“Your words are hollow. Just like your power.”

The prone Sith brought his lightsaber up, but Kriel used his own blade to slap it aside with ease. The strength of the blow sent the weapon tumbling from the man’s grasp, the blade extinguishing as the hilt clattered onto the forest floor.

“But I’m promising you power,” the Sith repeated, his voice even more desperate now.

“Power?” Kriel spat his words out in contempt. “You can’t give what’s not yours.”

He slashed his blade diagonally across the Sith’s chest, slicing him from shoulder to hip.

 

[Kriel Firin]

Kriel Firin remained in that clearing in the woods.

Talon Ren left him behind.

And the Ren strode from the scene to find the Sith’s ship with a new found confidence and determination that befitted the newest Master of the Knights of Ren.