Star Wars_ Darth Bane 01_ Path of Destruction - Drew Karpyshyn [48]
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,