Built from the shell of an ancient foundation, the Arx Colosseum has undergone renovations to allow multiple new configurations for battle. Its spectator setup remains largely the same, with high walls, tall enough for even the most savvy Jedi to find unscalable that lead up to spectator chairs which are divided into nearly organized sections to accommodate several thousand people. At the center, an elongated platform “box” contains a central throne of stone with various seats of smaller scale lined beside it in both directions. Two large holo-projection screens are set up on each side of the Colosseum, offering different angles of the match bia holocam drones.

Today’s setup is known as The Bridges.

High-suspended walkways cross and weave through multiple levels of platforms. Some are solid, metal and duracrete crafting an unmoving foundation. Others are mere rope and wood, swaying with even the most gentle of breezes.

Below the walkways is a void filled with mist, the ground unseen for combatants and spectators alike. Periodic ripples of electrical energy can be seen through the mist, hinting to the deadly nature of the arena floor below.

“Is that a rancor?” Dacien mused, inching forward on his throne and leaning towards the railing. Down in the Colosseum, near the far wall, he could just make out a small armor-clad figure that appeared to be trying to coax a black-skinned rancor onto one of the larger bridge spans crisscrossing the arena.

“Yeah, that’s a rancor. Interesting choice,” replied Idris Adenn, Voice of the Brotherhood and the man responsible for organizing the current tournament. “Not much room for that thing to maneuver, but then again there’s not much room for an attacker to get around it.”

Dacien nodded idly, still taking in the scene. “Who is that?”

“Uhhh… looks like a Jedi from Odan-Urr. Creon’s his name,” Idris said, briefly consulting a datapad.

“A Jedi decked out like a Mandalorian. With a rancor. On a bridge.”

“Yes, that’s him.” Idris glanced over at the Grand Master. “You want to fight him, don’t you?”

A few minutes later, the Grand Master of the Brotherhood strode into the arena from a door opposite and onto a bridge slightly below Creon. The rancor loomed in the distance, the armored Jedi assuming a combat stance. Dacien could sense a healthy dose of fear from his opponent but also a stubborn resolve. Time to play, Dacien sent to the Jedi, easily impressing the thought on Creon’s mind.

At the same moment, Dacien burst into a run and jumped several meters, over a yawning chasm, onto the higher bridge shared by Creon and his pet monster. A blood-red saber ignited in his right hand with a snap hiss as he landed. Slowing to a steady, deliberate stride, Dacien whipped his left arm out to his side and, with a dramatic flourish, crushed his hand into a fist.

The lower bridge he had just leapt from screamed and groaned under immense pressure, bolts warping and popping, until it collapsed into the darkness blow—all except for a roughly five-meter square segment which rose, suspended in the air, to float beside the Grand Master. With a wicked grin, Dacien hurled the segment toward the rancor.

It is here I stand amongst giants Creon gave thought in knowing his mind was open to both his opponent and spectators with telepathic prowess. From when the Grand Master first entered the arena his presence was sensed. The sheer magnitude of the Force that walked with him was like a great pressure to Creon’s mind. Fear instinctively brought the Jedi’s heart rate to an elevated rate. He tried to reason in his mind to overcome this feeling, remembering that fear lowers one’s pain threshold, and interferes with the rate of reaction. Though this rationale did little to dissuade his emotions. A Grand Master was simply beyond Creon’s pay grade. He expected to die this day. From the attempt to resolve away his fright, Creon was unfocused to the hurl of metallic debris launched by the Sith Lord’s hand. It struck the rancor and threw it off the ledge of the bridge. Creon leaped back with aid from a short burst of his jetpack. With one vambrace he deployed whistling birds, with the other a fibercord grappling line at the edge of the bridge. He swung underneath and looked down below to find his partner.

Dacien waved his hand as if swatting away an insect, and the whispering birds all diverted their path away from him. He walked towards the edge and looked below to see the rancor being telekinetically guided to a bridge, but with no trace of the Jedi in sight. He looked at the grappling hook and threw his lightsaber at it. The slash tore the hook from the line, and Dacien heard once again the sound Creon's jetpack. When he turned around, he saw the Jedi rise above and with both arms hurl a hammer towards him. It only took but a simple sidestep for the whirling mace to miss, landing with a distinct tink sound upon meeting the metal near his feet. Creon landed across from Dacien with a barrel roll and drew his lightsaber with a reverse grip. The blade was purple, a fusion of both blue and red. A kyber of this color was not handed out lightly, as it symbolizes a Jedi that is strong with the light side of the Force but isn’t afraid of tapping into their inner darkness. Indeed, the master sensed within the Force Creon's moral uncertainty, potentially able to twist the emotions under his will if deemed desirable.

Invigorated Creon dashed forward with a horizontal cross slash easily dodged but followed with a cone of flame projected from his vambrace. This forced Dacien on the defensive; he stepped back and waved his cloak to shield him from the fire. The Jedi’s follow up was a fusion of the familiar dance of lightsaber combat but with a deceptive interjection of Mandalorian tactics by means of usage from his vambraces. During clashing combinations, the blaster or repulsor would fire, and where one would normally parry with a blade, he instead blocked with his vambrace. This unconventional method was amusing to the master, but with no surprises so compelling to bypass his own defenses. An arc of lightning from the Sith’s fingers turned the stance from defense to offense but was shielded by the Jedi’s shield generator. The master recognized his foe’s defensive pattern, with movements akin to his own form. It was rare for Vaapad to be mirrored so skillfully, and Dacien led Creon in a dance on display for the audience. Creon followed along, asserting his enemies’ ego would play this out and allow more time for his companion to return. The presence of his rancor felt closer by the strengthened frequency of their bond in the Force. Dacien felt it too, as if he had sight of the neural oscillating waves between the two minds. Creon tried to maintain the state of mind taught to him from Aurora, derived from the principles of Master Windu. Yet each interjection for an opportunity to use Mandalorian tactics known to counter Force sensitives brought his mind out of the flow, and he had to start again after Dacien diverted each attack. Dacien’s face went from amused to agitated, with a dark shadow over his eyes and the gnashing of his teeth, “This is getting annoying.” Creon foresaw Dacien's kick to the chest but was too slow to dodge it. The impact not only threw him off his feet, but some few meters back. The wind escaped his lungs, but his feet caught him instead of landing on his back. When he looked up, he saw before him a phantom of the Dark Side.

Through Force Sight one could see the swirling black and red motions of smoke surrounding him. These clouds of the Dark Side engulfed his spirit, with the austere glow of blue at his hands that permeated with lightning. A flame-like aura of malice was behind him with arcs of electricity coursing through it. Its waves of energy flew like the wind through the Jedi, almost giving him a heart attack by the rush of fear that invaded his mind. With a deep breath and charging scream, Creon returned in kind with his own aura. Adrenaline and testosterone coursed through the blood throughout his nervous system to seeped into his muscle fibers. The volume and pitch of his roar blasted throughout the arena, and the rancor echoed its own howl in tandem from afar. Creon converted the fear pressed upon him by the Sith Lord into fury. With Force Sight one could see that the aura produced by Creon was not just his own. With it was a greater, more primal rage, that no one human could manifest alone. Dacien realized the Jedi’s bond with the rancor transferred its own anger through the Force.

Come was sent from Dacien to Creon’s mind. Both combatants returned to their respective battle stances almost simultaneously. The heightened attunement to the roaring energies of chaos burned between them in the Force, and all within range who watched from above sensitive to it felt within them a great disturbance.

“Very good, little Jedi,” Dacien taunted with a smirk on his face, “feed on that rage. It might save you yet.”

The metal of the bridge screamed in protest as Dacien reached out with the Force to drag Creon’s discarded war hammer from where it lay behind him to rest between the combatants. Then in an instant, the hammer collapsed upon itself, crushed into a near-perfect sphere of metal, glowing faintly with heat.

Dacien launched the sphere at Creon without so much as a twitch of his finger. The young Jedi barely had time to react, saved only by his instinctual connection to the Force. He raised his vambraces to shield his face and upper body and tried to step out of the way, but the compressed phrik sphere struck a powerful blow on his right arm, hitting hard enough to damage the mechanisms in his beskar bracer and break the bone.

Creon cried out in shock and pain but retained the sense to drop into a defensive stance and bring his lightsaber up in his offhand. The Jedi’s eyes betrayed the hate and rage bubbling, barely contained, beneath the surface.

The Grand Master began to walk calmly towards his opponent, hands at his side, lightsabers secured to his belt. Creon futilely fired saberdarts from his functioning vambrace, but Dacien froze them midflight with a thought and let them drop to the ground. With a roar, Creon charged the Sith Lord, channeling his rage into every saber swing, but his form was off, his right arm a dead weight. Dacien smiled sadly as he easily dodged attacks or arrested Creon’s saber mid-swing with a trifling use of the Force, as if he had choreographed the fight in advance.

After a few minutes of this dance, Dacien growled in frustration and froze his opponent in place. “It’s not enough,” Dacien said, his eyes tinting sallow as he allowed the dark side to suffuse his very being. “You need more motivation.” The Grand Master stepped back and walked to the side of the bridge, looking down at Creon’s rancor on a lower bridge.

One more shove… Dacien thought to himself grimly.

The sith alchemical armor dispensed its bio-support bacta reserve, numbing Creon from the pain of the broken arm. "I know what you're thinking. But the Jedi have conditioned me to balance fury with tranquility. Killing the beast will not incite vengeance, for it would be folly from what I sense of you. I would suffer a deeper depression, but master please tell me if that's truly the way to know the Force?" Creon shouted.

Let us see came the telepathic projection from Dacien to Creon.

Lightning flowed to the rancor. It's pain was felt in Creon's mind.

"I wonder if a rancor can take more volts than a human can. What do you think?" Dacien asked.

"Such Strife," Creon screamed in pain with tears welting in his eyes.

The hand of the rancor fell into the arena floor with its life lost. Tears welted to Creon's eyes behind the mask. He fell to his knees.

The master finally started to pant. The thermal imaging in Creon's viewplate revealed to him Dacien's elevated heart rate. Without moving Creon concentrated on using Force Slow on the target. Dacien cognitively felt this concentration preemptively but had to take an extra breath before the body could react to counter it. For a sheer second his body couldn't move, yet still motioned through the heart a heavy volume of blood. His aura of fear ignited further. When Dacien tore away the hold on his body, Creon switched to concentrating on suppressing his target's remaining power in the Force. In sensing this, Dacien mirrored suppression at the same time. The two contested their wills. Though Creon had a mighty push, his mind could not win the contest. He felt the Force empty out of him like blood draining from the head. A mighty push followed, one that crashed Creon into a bridge below. He lost consciousness. Lightning shocked his heart and re-awakened him.

A section of the bridge with Creon in the center was ripped off from the rest. It fell below into the misty shadows. There was a loud crashing sound of steel and then silence. Dacien sensed Creon lose consciousness again and let loose his hold suppression, and turned to leave the arena.

An unexpected shock from below brought Creon back once again.

"WAIT!" he shouted with the Force, making the mists part before the projection of his voice. "I am NOT finished yet!"

It seems you're too proud to admit when you’ve failed, telepathically entered Creon's mind.

Creon replied with a normal tone, “I’m just still working on something and didn’t want to use it until I was sure it was time. Honestly I didn’t think I’d try it until after this tournament.” He brought back his rage and the Force followed. Like how a flame becomes blue when compressed at higher temperatures, his energy became condensed and ignited a deeper resonation. The Sith sensed this control of power channeled with calm and focus.

You're more dense than phirik and beskar combined if you think that’s going to work.

Creon pulled from his memory a technique taught in legends by Jedi Master Shatele Shan recorded in the Odanite library. He mimicked the movements of forming a ball with his good arm, centered around his core. Those with Force Sight witnessed his energy taking shape. It swirled and gathered as Creon took in a deep inhale. At the pinnacle point in which he could maintain the stress, his arm rushed forward, fully extended, and palm facing his target. A surge of telekinetic energy burst from within and rocketed above at Dacien. Creon screamed once more with the Force projecting through his lungs.

Dacien reflected the same attack wave but with greater energy. Sensing its incoming, Creon pulled the Force to his legs and jumped out of the way of inbound impact. He rose high enough to escape the mist and just before losing momentum his jetpack activated. Its sound snapped the master’s attention. WIth an ascended precognitive perception he took an approximated mental measure of the rocket man’s acceleration. By sight at the edge of his peripheral vision he was able to apply the Force to match Creon’s speed with a dash off the bridge. The two were coming to collide with the Sith’s fall and the Jedi’s rise. The Grand Master’s weapons flocked to his side telekinetically and was about to flurry them forward but had to blink from the distraction of a holo-shroud projection of a rancor masking Creon from his view. It mattered little to Dacien, for the calculated point of strike was already honed into his focus. He sensed no use of the Force by his opponent within that time. At the moment he passed through the large holo-image he saw Creon’s arm extended releasing a bag of blinding dust. Dacien still followed through with his attack. His blades stopped short of a plasma shield around Creon’s armor, though it was almost immediately shortened thereafter by the cut of his lightsabers. One blade ran across his masked helmet, and the other tore at his jetpack. He detached from it magnetically with the flick of a wrist and landed on the surface of a bridge. He watched his opponent disappear below the mist.

If what seemed for a moment looked like a hallucination, fear struck Creon again by the gathering of lightning in the misty zone forming the patterns in the likeness of two mighty serpents split from the same source. They snaked its way in rising towards Creon, each one on the either side of the bridge from which he stood. Creon raised his left arm and emitted a third energy shield. A storm of deadly sparks showered upon him, but sacrificed the shield instead of taking his life. The Jedi had a moment of respite before the Grand Master made his way back to the top. He waited in a meditative state, focused on the controlling and healing of the wound through the Force. His rest ended at the sound of an ignited lightsaber in the distance. Through the thermal view of his helmet Creon couldn’t tell if the blinding dust had worked, but he did see that Dacien’s heart had increased even further. As Creon rose and drew his lightsaber, Dacien sent a combination of two bolts of lightning from his thumb and pinky approaching Creon from left and right with a followed-up force slam from above. He was able to block bolt one with his blade but had to take damage from the other. The slam took him to the ground face first, with the landing of his armor making a distinct tink sound. It reminded Dacien of the phirik sphere and he retrieved it with the Force. When it arrived he pitched it at Creon at the speed of a cannonball. Creon was able to catch it with his lightsaber blade, but Dacien’s hold still pressed it forward. Creon held with all his strength, long enough to begin heating the metal. However the press of the ball pushed his feet back, scraping the metal of his boots across the bridge floor. At the push of his finger along the handgrip of his saber sent forth a purple blaster bolt. Dacien easily deflected back at Creon, aimed at the left hip between the breastplate and cuisse. It painfully proved to Creon that the blinding dust trick did not work. He jerked to have the uninjured side of his hip face the opponent.

The phirik ball eventually had torn in half under the heat of the lightsaber, and grinded intensely into Creon’s armor. The two halves each carved across his breastplate and backplate, with the edges around his exposed flesh exposed to heated metal. It burned his flesh, causing him to scream from the burn. Dacien then rushed forward with enhanced speed and sent a flurry from his blade. Creon’s defense held for a moment until Dacien was able to stab into his chest and through his back. Then with but a push the Jedi fell back into the shadows below the mist.