Aaaand here's the second and final chapter of my story, Bloodlust!

This chapter features a lot of specialized Star Wars knowledge, so if y'all have any questions feel free to either ask about things in the comments or look them up at Wookiepedia.
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He soon passed the last of the hallways and stone protuberances, reaching a straight stretch of smooth hallway that seemed to stretch into infinity. The Sith Lord continued down it, the crude glowpanels on the walls illuminating the cruel smirk that stretched across his face as he neared his goal. He curled his right hand into a fist, flexing his injured arm as he walked on for what seemed like hours.

Finally, he reached a huge room. He could barely see the walls to either side of him, because of the poor lighting in the chamber, but he could tell that the path he was on continued down to a huge wall. To either side of him, the floor sloped downward into an inky darkness he couldn’t penetrate. The wall, however, was his goal, so he approached it, finally coming to a halt thirty feet in front of it and the two Jedi poring over the wall’s archaic markings, lit by a series of lights above the wall.

As he did so, he saw that one was obviously older, a stocky Twi’lek and Jedi Master, to judge by his robes. The other one, a light blue Nautolan, couldn’t have been more than seventeen years old, likely a Jedi Apprentice. The Sith Lord stood away from the wall, his clothing and the darkness around him cloaking him in shadow.

The Apprentice was visibly agitated, and he broke the tense silence with a sigh of frustration. “Master Komar, I told you, I sensed something! It feels important; at least let me travel back to the entrance to see what’s going on!”

This was obviously not the first time the Apprentice had said something similar, because the Master’s reply was delivered with an overly dramatic sigh. “Very well, Tal. I suppose if we must deal with this, then we must.”

With an eager grin, the Nautolan stepped forward, only to be restrained by his Master’s hand on his shoulder. “There is no need for that, my Apprentice. Our disturbance has had the good manners to bring himself to us.”

Figuring that the game was up, and always one for a dramatic entrance, the Sith Inquisitor stepped from the shadows, his sulphuric yellow eyes boring a hole through the pair as he slowly stretched and clenched his hands.

The Apprentice gasped and dropped into a combat stance, his single-bladed amber lightsaber snapping into full length. He dropped into a crouch, and then, ignoring his Master’s cry of warning, sprang towards the Sith, clearing the distance between them rapidly. The Inquisitor dodged two of Tal’s quick but unskilled attacks easily before contemptuously blasting the Nautolan backwards with the Force.

The Apprentice landed ignominiously at the feet of his Master, who sighed to himself before giving Tal a hand up. “You’re a fool, boy. That’s a Sith Lord, you can tell by the eyes. An Inquisitor too, by the look of his robes. It’ll take the both of us…” and with that, he ignited his own azure blade with a hiss, “…to take him down. This is what you’ve been training for, Tal.”

The Inquisitor watched, grinning, as the Nautolan regained his feet once more. The Sith Lord picked up Tal’s lightsaber from where it had clattered to the ground at his feet, and strode towards the two Jedi, who watched him warily as he paused before them with fifteen feet still left between them. He bowed deeply to them before throwing the Apprentice’s lightsaber back to him.

He caught it with a confused expression, and asked before he could stop himself, “Who are you?”

Komar nodded, repeating the question silently, and adding, “And why have you come?”

“I am the Sith Inquisitor Charden Kolas. And I have come,” he raised his left hand and curled it into a fist, leaving only his index finger pointing at the Jedi Master, “for your lightsaber.”

Tal gasped again, but Komar only nodded resignedly. “It’s the crystal you’re after, then. And should I assume you slaughtered every trooper and smuggler up there to get at me for it?”

Charden nodded on both accounts, his grin widening. “Almost. I’ll go back for the others on my way back up. I need that crystal, I’m afraid. You can give it to me peacefully, but to be completely honest, I’d rather take it from your corpse.” That said, he drew his lightsaber from his belt and ignited it, sweeping it in an elaborate salute towards the two Jedi.

Tal ignited his as well, and both he and Komar swept theirs in a similar one, before leaping towards Charden in the same instant.

And the battle was joined.

The Inquisitor caught both blades on his with a single block and drove both of his attackers a step back with a flurry of acrobatic Ataru slices and twists. His form was unaffected by his blaster injury; he had long ago learned to ignore pain completely. His opponents began heading to either side of him in an attempt to flank him, and he waited for their strike with patience.

However, that was something that the Apprentice carried in short supply, and he came in low at Charden, putting all of his strength into a tight Soresu slice ill-suited for lightsaber duels. The Sith Lord blocked it and almost took Tal’s head off with a Djem So counter-slice, but missed as he was forced to duck a wide Juyo swing from Komar that would’ve decapitated him in turn. He dropped back onto one hand to dodge a second swing and then shoved himself forward, kicking the Apprentice in the chest with both feet and knocking him backwards as he did so. The Jedi Master came at him with wide, ferocious movements typical of the aggressive style he had chosen to use thus far in the battle, and he spun to block, barely catching the first one in time. He realized as he did that there was no way to last against this Jedi Master, this Guardian, in close combat, at least not with the Apprentice to watch as well. Which gave him an idea…

He leapt back and spun in a 360 degree kick, knocking Tal over and leaping over him just as he had been regaining his feet. As soon as he landed facing the two Jedi, he stretched a hand out and loosed a blaze of Lightning at the Nautolan, which raced towards him as he was regaining his feet again. Komar was forced to use his blade to block Charden’s attack, and the Sith knew that that would be his weakness. As the Lightning crackled and merged into nothingness on the Twi’lek Master’s blade, the Inquisitor let out a throaty chuckle, crooking the index finger of his left hand in a mocking gesture.

The Apprentice finally regained his feet, and his fury with being knocked over so easily was written across his face, making him all the more likely to make more mistakes. He dashed forward, again ahead of his master, and Charden took the opening presented by Tal’s wide swings: he dashed the Nautolan’s blade to the side and smashed him in the face with his fist – it wasn’t elegant, but it would suffice. The Apprentice fell to his knees in pain, and the Sith Lord danced away as Tal’s Master came at him again.

This time, having learned the error of their ways, the pair of Jedi came at him together, their practiced movements evident of long years of cooperation, although Tal’s were sloppy with anger. Charden could tell that Komar was worried about his Apprentice, but that he didn’t have the time to do anything, which was exactly as the Sith Lord wanted it.

Still, he was hard pressed to defend himself as the two came at him in unison. Tal’s defensive Soresu style, normally a terrible choice for lightsaber duels, was an extraordinary counterpoint to Komar’s aggressive Juyo strikes, and Charden was being forced to give ground rapidly before the onslaught. He had to even the odds now, or his chance would be gone.

He dropped into a crouch, deactivating his lightsaber to confuse his opponents as he slammed both his hands into the Twi’lek Master’s stomach with the power of the Force behind his strike. The old Jedi flew backwards with a cry as Tal loosed a downwards chop, victorious now that the Sith’s weapon was deactivated.

Until the Sith caught his wrist, halting his blade in the air. With a sickening grin, Charden loosed a torrent of Force Lightning directly into the Apprentice’s body, illuminating his skeleton and torching his body from the inside out.

His laughter merged with Komar’s wail of dismay as the Nautolan Apprentice’s body fell to the ground, blackened and smoking. Charden bent over and retrieved Tal’s amber lightsaber, which he ignited reverse-grip in his left hand. He turned to face the Twi’lek and reignited his own in a normal grip, grinning insanely.

Master Komar came at him with a roar of rage, his mask of calm shattered by the brutal death of his Apprentice. Charden blocked his attacks easily now; since the Twi’lek’s Juyo style required explosive emotion on the inside, but calm on the outside, the eruption of his impassioned rage served only to hurt him. Indeed, his swings were wider and more erratic than they had been before. That, coupled with the face that the Sith Inquisitor’s quick Ataru forms were augmented by his use of dual-blade Jar’Kai techniques, gave the Inquisitor a serious advantage, which he wasted no time in pressing.

He drove the Master back against the wall and caught the Twi’lek’s blade between both of his, bringing his face up to Komar’s. “You had him learn a restrained, defensive form as a counter for your form, and for his own anger! You should have taught him your style. He could have used his anger, his rage, for victory!”

Komar shoved with all of his might against the Inquisitor, knocking him back a step, and then advanced with a complicated series of Shiak thrusts that drove Charden far back. Grinning at the Jedi, the Sith, continued backwards, slowly, deactivating both sabers as he stepped into the darkness outside the ring of light.

“Anger was not the answer!” yelled the Twi’lek, maintaining his position by the wall with a defensive stance. “With time, he would have set it aside, taken the higher path!”

From the shadows, the Inquisitor’s voice rang, his gravelly tone striking the Jedi as harshly as any weapon. “You failed him. You crippled him. You let him die.” A stream of Force Lightning arced out from the darkness, briefly illuminating the Sith Lord. Komar blocked it, blasting a ball of the Force towards where he had seen Charden. But the Sith Lord wasn’t there. “Your higher path is a lie, Jedi.” This time his voice came from the left, and Komar sent a wave of the Force in that direction, again to no avail.

Then the Twi’lek’s instincts flared as he heard Charden’s lightsaber ignite, and he looked up just as the Inquisitor came swooping down, his blood-red blade held in front of him like an executioner’s axe as he split the Twi’lek in half with a vertical Sai tok slice. As the two halves of the late Jedi Master fell to the ground, blood oozed from the half-cauterized pieces of his body.

Charden reached down and picked up the master’s lightsaber, grinning ferociously before slipping it into his belt with the Nautolan’s. His own he clipped to a hook on his belt before turning and walking back the way he had come, his mind heady with the rush of victory and the death of his enemies. Smugglers, troopers, civilians, they were nothing. But to kill a Jedi… that was a glorious rush.

His mind turned to the room full of sleeping people that had likely awoken, found the bodies, and then discovered that they were sealed inside the tomb; Force Lightning crackled across his fingertips with anticipation. As he headed along the long path back to the main chamber, he supposed that people like that had their place in the universe… as victims.