Duel The Dance of Blades (Razh vs Issar/ Spectators allowed)

[Razh Sho]

Coruscant, Jedi Temple, Training Hall

The training hall's ambient hum softened as Razh Sho stepped into the center of the polished circlarium floor, the cool glow of overhead lights glancing off his curved-hilt saber. He let the bustle of other duels fade from his awareness, drawing the noise of the Temple into a single point of calm focus.

With deliberate slowness, he drew the saber from its belt—his left hand sliding around the pommel as if greeting an old friend—and raised it before him in one smooth motion. The blade ignited with a crisp snap‑hiss, its blue arc ascending in perfect vertical alignment, bisecting the air like a line drawn in light. Razh held the saber's emitter plate level with his sternum; his right arm locked, elbow slightly bent, wrist firm yet relaxed. His left hand came up behind his back, fingertips grazing the base of his opposite lekku, completing the Makashi salute in which the blade was offered not as threat but as invitation.

He paused there, blade humming in measured resonance, every muscle and joint aligned in patient attention. His shoulders were square but not stiff; his head tipped just enough to acknowledge Master Issar Rae'Velis across the ring. In that moment of stillness, Razh's silver‑grey eyes drank in the four‑armed serpent‑bodied master before him—and the Force pulsed between them, ready to flow.

Then, in a single seamless shift, Razh Sho transitioned into the Form II ready stance: his rear foot pivoted inward, front foot stepping out to create a strong L‑shaped base; hips angled to minimize target area. His blade dipped low and forward, tip tracing a deliberate line toward Issar's heart, while his left hand remained poised, palm lightly open, fingers curved as if balancing an invisible sphere of energy. His torso turned laterally, weight distributed evenly but ready to spring; eyes cropped the subtle tenses in Issar's coils.

The chamber fell silent. Razh Sho's blade hissed in soft invitation. He exhaled once, and in that breath lay the promise of a duel not born of conflict, but of precision, balance, and the timeless dance of blade against blade.

Issar Rae’Velis and anyone who wants to watch. PS: Remember, it's in the Jedi Temple. Only those with permission to be inside or who are guests in good standing can be here.

 

[Tilon Quill]

Fresh from several rounds of punishing Soresu with an old friend, a Selkath of the New Jedi Order, Tilon rested on a bench and let his heart calm down. His friend had to hurry to some briefing or other, which worked out well. Tilon was tired.

He raked sweaty violet hair out of his eyes and drank electrolyte fluid that hit his stomach with an acidic wrench of leftover tension. These seemed to be dangerous times. More and more, 'good enough' wasn't, not with a lightsaber and not with so many other skills. You couldn't be good at everything, true enough, and yet he felt that his own unique skillset left him so far behind the curve in so many ways. He'd made Jedi Knight years and years back, but only barely. The auxiliary corps life would have been a better fit, if he'd been the institutional type.

Some of that mood was just a product of getting his tail handed to him by a hundred-pound Soresu practitioner five times out of five. Tilon leaned back against the wall, sipped his electrolyte drink, and watched people gather for what looked like some kind of Masters' exhibition duel. Not a bad example to watch if you wanted to really get into the spirit of the thing.

 

[Braze]

TAGS: Open

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Braze practically lived in the training halls when he wasn't busy on a missive. He often watched others, drinking in visual information about many of his jedi Peers and betters.... and occasionally the young ones too. Today was no different.

He was interested in learning new tricks, some like he had been pleasantly surprised by the old dog Garric Wrennar . Perhaps He would gather some interesting new ideas from watching Razh Sho .

If not... well... Tilon Quill still looked cute. He leaned over the banister of the second floor's observation balcony, resting a cheek against a hand, curious to see how things un folded below.

 

[Issar Rae’Velis]

Issar Rae'Velis did not bow. He did not ignite his blades in answer. For a long moment, he simply breathed.

Coiled low, the Hysalrian Jedi looked more like a guardian statue than a man. Four arms rested in deliberate stillness, two crossed over his chest, two palms down at his sides. His lower body curved behind him in a loose spiral, each layer of scale positioned with subtle precision. He did not 'rise'. He unfurled.

With one fluid exhalation, his body uncoiled upward like a living spiral. Robes marked in mystic embroidery flowed around him in time with the movement. Four hands reached outward in harmony, each drawing a saber hilt from within the folds of his belt. Four curved violet blades hissed to life in a rising cadence, forming a pattern like turning constellations around him. No blade mirrored the other exactly; their positioning followed not symmetry, but balance.

He took no formal stance. He simply began to move. Each motion flowed into the next, not choreography, but a spiral unspooling with perfect calm. Two sabers rotated in sweeping outward arcs, slow and patient. The other two remained tighter to his centre, weaving the space around his form into a silent geometry of defense.

He circled once, never rushing, never faltering. A coiled cyclone not yet released. The training hall watched. The Force grew hushed. At last, the silence broke, not with movement, but with voice. It came low and slow, as though rising from beneath still water. Each syllable carried the weight of deep places and deeper time, shaped by the rounded vowels and strange cadence of a Hysalrian tongue. Issar Rae'Velis did not speak loudly. He did not need to.

"We move not for victory," he said, his purple lightsabers humming in quiet orbit around his form. "But for those who have yet to move."

And just like that, the silence returned, richer now. Filled not with expectation, but invitation, as he awaited his opponent's first move.

The turning of the spiral had begun.

Razh Sho​

 

[Razh Sho]

Razh Sho did not blink. He stood rooted, lightsaber poised in its perfect line, his free hand steady behind his back. The stillness of his body masked the activity of his mind, which followed every ripple of Issar Rae'Velis' movement like a scholar reading sacred text—absorbing the language without speaking, noting the subtle weight of every uncoiling gesture.

This was not flourish.
This was philosophy in motion.

His eyes narrowed slightly—not in suspicion, but appreciation. Issar's form was not shaped by posture, nor trained for display. It was born of something older than Forms, older than stances. This was the Spiral Way—a tradition that did not break lines but flowed around them, turning structure into breath.

The twin arcs of violet light swept past like orbiting stars. Razh felt the pull of them, not physically, but in rhythm. Four blades. No redundancy. No waste. All purposeful, all woven into the calm tension of a living storm.

He breathed in through his nose, then exhaled slowly through parted lips, grounding himself not in the past, but in this moment.

And then—his voice came, quiet but honed.

"Your spiral turns in harmony, Master Rae'Velis. I wonder—" he shifted his footing slightly, blade drifting into a sharper angle, like a brush readied at canvas "—if it bends… when pressed."

He inclined his chin once, faintly.

Then moved.

Not with speed, but with definition. A single, precise step forward, blade extending in a minimalist thrust—not to strike, but to speak, to announce the duel's language: timing, control, elegance.

Makashi did not demand the center. It claimed it only when the opponent had given it away.

The match had begun.

And Razh Sho, the long-sleeping blade reborn, was ready to see what the Spiral would reveal.

Issar Rae’Velis

 

[Tilon Quill]

Tilon forgot to drink with the bottle against his lower lip. The two Jedi Masters, with five blades among them, had started moving. Communicating, frankly.

An idea struck. He had a knack for comprehending speech with the Force, was developing it into a speciality, and he drew on that skill now. He got the immediate but vague sense that they were tacitly announcing heritages and values as much as posturing. He felt he'd like to communicate like that, but after five failed bouts in a row it seemed as far away as fluency in Shyriwook.

 

[Neriamel Loraya]

Neriamel sat quietly, as she would to meditate, among the Jedi who had convened to witness the practice duel between Masters Sho and Rae'Velis. It was only natural that as Master Sho's Padawan learner, she should be here and observe his technique.

She had not had the chance to do any research beforehand and looked with interest at the strange Master Issar Rae'Velis. He was not of a species she had hitherto encountered.

A four-armed Jedi was a frightening notion to consider. Most beings with hands had two of them. Some of them chose to use both of them to wield a lightsaber, and Neriamel had never felt that it gave them an outsized advantage. She had sparred with practitioners of this technique many times and found that each of their two blades was individually much less threatening than that of a fighter with a single blade. It was almost as if they were wielding two half-blades that just about happened to add up to a full one. The problem, she surmised, was attention - the mind was not capable of attending to two lightsaber at one time with the same clarity that it had when directed only at one. Whether they coped with it through rapid switching or simply operated with a fuzzier view of things, it put additional strain on the practitioner and led to inevitable sloppiness in execution. Sometimes, she found, these people positively tied themselves up in their own nets, struggling to coordinate more than they were made to coordinate.

But that was the thing: it stood to reason that the mind of a being with four arms was organised differently. Perhaps he could not use all four arms at the same time, but it was likely that where a human could only use one hand at a time to full effect, this one could at least use two. And that would make a world of a difference. He would pose a wholly new kind of challenge. Not the same one as fighting two opponents at one time, either: two fighters could position themselves independently, but they could coordinate more or less well and never perfectly. If her hypothesis was correct, this fighter would have perfect coordination between more than one lightsaber acting in unison, while occupying one position - which was, on the one hand, a compensating disadvantage, but on the other hand, it meant that you couldn't even isolate any one lightsaber, as you would in a duel with two opponents.

She would certainly have to do some reading about the man and his species afterwards.

When the masters began to move, Neriamel noted with interest and not small amount of surprise that Master Rae'Velis approach was something very unique and altogether different from anything she had expected. He appeared to have an altogether different mode of thinking. The motion of his arms, and of his blades as their extension, was neither independent - it was interwoven. It formed a highly complex whole - and no doubt it was a powerful unity, ready to envelop or roll over any resistance. But did that mean one could poke it and cause it to fall apart? How would it cope? There was no doubt that Master Sho must be having the exact same thought.

She looked on expectantly.