Solna expected to find many things when they landed on Selvus. A hostile welcoming committee seemed the most likely. The condemnation of her teachers and caretakers was all but a certainty. It had crossed her mind that an Expunging Rite in progress was not entirely out of the question either.

Instead what she found, what they all found, was chaos.

Goldie had touched down briefly at a starport named Dolos Station. Those who were intending to go ashore were promptly swept out of the ship, while those who chose to remain with Goldie as she rocketed off to pursue her parents remained clustered on the bridge.

Those who disembarked included Rassi and Solna, Tovos and his crew, and the Horizon Knight Monfi. Ravas and Kelda had expressed a desire to come with the shore party but given the cloaking field Tovos’ crew was still employing their ability to serve as messengers would have been severely limited.

“If you need us, you need only call,” Kelda said.

“Though you’ll want to make it a loud one,” Ravas added.

Everyone could sense that Nix and Ayli were in pursuit of the Enclave’s leadership and that a struggle awaited them. Kelda and Ravas would be the first line of support for that battle, followed as quickly as possible by Lasha, Nulo, Moffvok, Bopo, and, of course, Goldie.

Sali had opted to join the shore party since a battle with the elder Force Users didn’t seem like a good time to her.

Also there was the fact that Zin had contacted them as soon as they entered the planetary landing grid.

“Well my plan backfired,” Zin had said. “I specifically followed them in case they needed backup, but they never even made planetfall here.”

“What happened?” Goldie had asked.

“Apparently a ship broke the lockdown one of my Sisters had put on the port and Nix and Ayli followed them into hyperspace.”

Which was ridiculous. Everyone agreed it couldn’t have worked since you can’t simply jump after someone who goes to lightspeed. Without know they jump calculations, the chance that you’d even wind up in the same solar system were microscopic. 

“If Ayli did it, she had way to make it work,” Goldie said. “We just need to figure out where they went.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Kelda said. “Ravas and I can simply ask them.”

“Let’s do that then. Now,” Goldie said.

“We’ll need to drop our guests off on the planet first,” Kelda said.

“They’re getting a free ride. We can drop them off after we have Nix and Ayli back,” Goldie had countered.

“Except we won’t be able to come back here while their projecting their cloak,” Kelda said.

“And if they stop projecting their cloak, the Death Shadows will flock down on them and  us.” Ravas said.

Goldie sighed, which certainly wasn’t something she’d been programmed to do.

“Fine. Aunt Zin can you get us landing clearance asap?” Goldie asked.

“Already on it my dear,” Zin said. “You’re cleared for a landing on Pad C11 in ten minutes.”

Which was ten minutes longer than Goldie had wanted to wait, but it gave the shore team enough time to gather their stuff and collect what information Zin had to offer on the current state of the Silent Enclave.

Ten minutes and about fifteen seconds later though and the shore team was all on their own, with Goldie once more lifting off for orbit at maximum speed.

“We should go see how this Enclave of yours is doing,” Monfi said, hailing an auto-mover down that had enough space for them all.

“Sister Wenley is watching them still,” Zin said. “If anyone else had tried to leave she would have alerted us.”

“The others won’t be leaving,” Tovos said. “The Elder’s would have commanded them to stay behind when they left.”

“How long will those orders hold in the Elders’ absence?” Monfi asked.

“Until the Elders return or until someone in the Enclave grows old and skilled enough to be named a new Elder.” Tovos wasn’t saying anything Solna hadn’t expected to hear. The idea that the Elders were to be followed unquestioningly had been stamped in her since she was a able to understand words. Her current perspective on the Silent Enclave brought with it a new emotion in place of the desperate devotion she’d once felt.

Rage.

Beside her, Rassi blinked and pulled Solna in for a quick side-hug before offering her hand for Solna to hold.

Which was the right gesture. Holding Rassi’s hand was always comforting, and Solna knew that greeting the situation which lay before them with anger wasn’t going to lead to a good outcome for anyone.

“Let’s get you all back home then,” Sali said as she inspected the most obvious of the blasters she was carrying. Solna couldn’t quite sense where the other ones were, which was a feat in its own right, but the Force was quite clear that Sali, even after passing through the starport’s security was still bristling with more armaments than most New Republic fortresses possessed.

“I gather there will be some danger involved but this is an event which I need to record for the Order’s records,” Zin said.

“Which is why I’ll be right there with you,” Sali said. “Us pirates thrive on danger after all.”

Which wasn’t exactly true. Solna could sense that Sali was more unconcerned with the danger before her than thriving on it. She’d seemed reasonably happy to come along and corral Zin but beyond that a life of relative safety and ease seem to suit the pirate queen quite well.

That thought led to Solna ponder what it was she desired in her life.

Safety and ease always held their fascinations, but Solna wasn’t sure she was ready for either one. Not until she’d sorted out the Silent Enclave, or at least done her part to try.

What “that part” might be still escaped Solna. Even as angry as she was, the prospect of taking on the entire Enclave was daunting. For several reasons, not the least of which being that she could see how the Elders had done what they had, could see the techniques they’d used to manipulate the Enclave and if the Enclave fought back against her hard enough, she wasn’t entirely sure she could resist using those techniques too.

“The local security force should have the rest of the Enclave under house arrest by now,” Zin said. “After their ship blasted out of the port, the rest of them are being investigated for being part of a criminal conspiracy with a high flight risk level.”

“Security won’t find them,” Tovos said. It should have worried Solna that he was doing a field rebuild of his blaster rifle. That was standard procedure at the start of a combat mission, but they weren’t going into combat with the rest of the Enclave and Tovos knew that.

He believed it too which Solna found deeply at odds with the Tovos she’d known.

The Tovos she’d left behind at the Enclave was a bully and was among the least flexible of people when it came to the Enclave’s doctrine she knew. The young man who sat across from her in the auto-cab had found something important but at an unbearably high cost. What peace he’d been able to make with the loss of not only his crew member but the person he’d believed himself to be seemed to be based on anger at those who’d abused them as much as a love for his teammates he’d never let himself acknowledge before.

That Solna could reach all that from his stray thoughts was the most shocking thing of all though and the most absolute proof of how much he’d been changed.

Rassi squeezed her hand again, calling her attention away from concerns of the future to the reality which was rapidly approaching them.

“This is supposed to be the Enclave’s temporary berths?” Zin said as the auto-cab circled over an empty field where a few security enforcers remained milling about.

“Looks like they’re smart enough to falsify their landing coordinates,” Sali said. “Which means we do not want to go down there.”

“The auto-cab’s destination is already locked in,” Zin said.

“And you already have its controls hacked. So have it take us to the empty berths on the other side of the main terminal.”

“You have such faith in me,” Zin said as the auto-cab gently banked away towards another unused landing field at the outskirts of the starport.

No one asked why they weren’t going to land and talk to the security enforcers. Showing up at a mysteriously empty crime scene was a sure ticket to have all the blame for what happened pinned on you and while Zin’s contact could probably deal with the legal troubles for them, Security Enforcers were just as likely to shoot first and file charges against the corpses later since it cut down on the chance that their version of events would be challenged.

“We can find where they are,” Rassi said.

“They’ll be under a stronger cloak than we have,” Osdo said.

“And they have a lot more emotions to hide,” Rassi said. “Solna and I can find them, if we work together.”

“Should someone better with the Xah help her?” Felgo asked, not intending it to be a rude question, but simply still trapped in the impression he had of Rassi for the last decade or more.

“She’s much stronger than any of us,” Tovos said.

“I know Solna is. Everyone knows that, but Rassi…” Felgo said but Tovos cut him off.

“Rassi is who I’m talking about. Do you know why she was ‘always tripping up’? It’s because she’s so much closer to the Xah that it can’t help but resonate with her emotions. We were idiots not to see it.”

“And she wasn’t ‘always tripping up,” Osdo said. “She beat me at the last City Walk test we did. She was…she is pretty talented. But they never let us see that.”

“We never tried to see it.” Tovos had paused in the rebuild of the blaster with his head hung low.

“We could help them now though right?” Felgo asked.

“Why would they want us to?” Tovos asked. “Do you think they could trust us? Do you think they don’t hate us? We won’t do anything but disrupt their connection to the Xah.”

Solna had a free hand.

So she took one of Tovos’ hands from his blaster rifle.

“We don’t hate you,” she said.

Tovos shook his head and looked to Rassi, who had a far greater right to hold onto the animosity they’d both felt for him.

“I did,” Rassi said. “But I don’t want to anymore. You didn’t have to do the things you did to me. Or to Solna. Some of that wasn’t you. The Elders made us who we are, and so a lot of that is on them.”

“But some of it is on us,” Tovos said. “And we can’t ask you to forget that.”

“I’m not going to,” Rassi said. “But if you really are sorry for what you did, then I make out a lot better if I give you a chance to prove that.”

With her free hand, she took Felgo’s hand in her own to begin the circle which the children of the Silence Enclave formed with no more words.

Solna glanced over at Monfi who could have joined them as another Force user, but he shook his head with a smile. This was something he was an outsider to, and he clearly did not want to intrude.

Which was probably for the best. As the circle sank down into the silence of the Xah they swiftly passed the point where other Force Users could have easily quieted themselves. Unlike during a Silent Dance though, the ritual Rassi was leading them through was one predicated on supporting each other as they stilled the Force within them and cast their awareness outwards.

Solna had expected she and Rassi could cover the starport without endangering themselves. Together with Tovos, Felgo, Osdo, Polu, and Yanni though, they covered the planet.

Which was how they found the Silent Enclave.

And how they discovered the host of Death Shadows that were descending upon them.

The calm of hyperspace washed over Solna’s senses like an endless ocean to sink her worries into.

Which was good because she had a lot of them.

She was in so much trouble. She could never be forgiven. She had corrupted the Xah on a fundamental level.

And she was certain she would do it again.

Certain she had been right to do it.

Somehow though, despite the fact that she’d rejected the Silent Enclave and burned at thinking about what they’d done to her and Rassi, somehow she was still terrified of them finding out what she had done.

It wasn’t rational. She knew it wasn’t rational. No one needed to tell her that.

And so Rassi hadn’t said a word.

Solna could feel Rassi struggling with her own memories of the experience, though Rassi’s struggles felt markedly different from the ones within Solna’s heart.

They would compare notes. Someday. When the memories were more distant and Solna had some kind of handle on them.

Until then, Solna sat at the foot of Rassi’s bed and let Rassi work on braiding her hair.

The simple physical contact and the relative quiet of hyperspace made things bearable enough and part of Solna could feel her emotions following suite with each light year that passed.

“Can I come in?” Nulo asked from outside the door to their small room.

Rassi glanced down at Solna who nodded quickly. Nulo wasn’t silent in the Force, but she wonderfully calm most of the time which was also nice to be around.

“Sure thing,” Rassi said. “What’s up?”

Nulo floated through the door on her grav plate and settled it onto the floor to put herself at Solna’s level.

“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” Nulo said. “There’s a tradition among Horizon Knight apprentices that after each mission an apprentice goes on, the other apprentices are supposed listen to whatever stories they have to tell. I know it’s probably different for you, but you two filled us on on what the raid against the Lich was like so I thought you might have a tale to tell about this one too.”

“This one was rough,” Rassi said. “We found one of the Death Shadows.”

“Ravas said you killed it or something like that?” Nulo asked.

“He was already dead,” Solna said. She hadn’t expected to be able to find her voice but the words came easily anyways. “What we did was closer to…” 

She wanted to say ‘granting him peaceful silence, but that was an Enclave phrase, and not at all what they’d really done.

“He’d been killed by the Silent Enclave,” Rassi said. “We were able to call back the pieces of his spirit and let the Force take them.”

“Is that what happened to all the Shadows?” Nulo asked.

“We don’t know, but probably,” Solna said.

“Which is a problem since it means they’re drawn to the Silent Enclave by their basic natures, not any technique we can replicate,” Rassi said, gathering up another bunch of Solna’s hair for another braid.

Nulo gave a low throated chortle which felt something like a rueful chuckle in the Force and said, “So, they’re literally a dead end.”

“Somewhat worse than death,” Rassi said. 

“And there are a lot of them,” Solna said, painfully aware of what that said about the Silent Enclave.

“We’re not totally out of luck,” Nulo said. “Monfi managed to find some old records about a property transfer. He thinks it might be from where the Enclave was setup before the mining colony.”

“I’m not sure how that’s going to help us at this point,” Rassi said. “Even if we find the first place the Death Shadows attacked, all we’re going to discover is the first place the Expunging Ritual was used, and that could have been thousands of years ago.”

“I know the Enclave is really good at hiding in the Force, but part of what we Horizon Knights do is look for things that hide themselves in the Force,” Nulo said. “I don’t think any of us ever needed to try to find the Enclave – you’re not monsters.”

“That’s debatable,” Rassi said.

“Okay, well they’re not the kind of monsters we usually look for,” Nulo said. “That could be good though. If we can find enough sites the Enclave was at Monfi and Lasha might be able to pick up on commonalities they can use to find where they are now. The Enclave is used to hiding from the Jedi, so hopefully they don’t know the kind of things we can do.”

“If we can find them…” Solna started to say and stopped. 

What if they could find the Enclave again? Could she stand against the Elders?

Or more importantly could she stand against them without killing every last one of them.

They weren’t weak of course, but knowing what they had done could she really leave any of them alive? The Expunging Ritual needed to die and the people who’d used it need to die right along with it.

That did not feel good in the Force though and she was keenly aware where those homicidal impulses would lead her.

But the Elders did need to be stopped.

“If we can find them, we can expose them,” Rassi said. “The Silent Enclave was a mistake. They claim that they’re hiding away from the galaxy to be safe from the Jedi but it was never about safety or the freedom to live in harmony with the Force. It’s always been about control. It’s what they did to us and it’s what they’ve killed for, over and over and over again.”

“If we expose them though, won’t they just disappear again?” Nulo asked.

Which was the obvious problem. Even the youngest member of the Enclave could cloak themselves and pass unseen by non-Force users and those with even a bit of training we able to evade anyone who lacked exceptional sensitivity to the Force.

“It depends who, or what, we expose them to,” Rassi said

Which was a chilling though.

Rassi’s struggles with what they’d done were very different than Solna’s were.

The image of what unleashing the Death Shadows on the Enclave and ensuring that the Enclave couldn’t escape them this time was terrible.

And terribly appealing.

“We need a better answer than that,” Solna said, casting the idea out into the galaxy despite the fact that her imagination couldn’t grasp what that solution could possibly be.

“Crew to the cockpit,” Goldie said over the intercom. “There was a message payload waiting for us on the holonet when we dropped out of hyperspace and you’ll all want to hear this.”

Solna looked at Nulo to see if the Hutt had any idea what the message might be, but Nulo gave a wiggle that was the Hutt equivalent of a shrug and keyed her grav plate to lift off from the deck.

In the cockpit they found the other Horizon Knights, Lasha, Monfi and Moffvok waiting along with Archivist Bopo who was at the comm station, apparently decrypting the message.

“Is it really from them?” Goldie asked.

“The key’s one Ayli has used before, so I’d wager good money this is legit,” Bopo said. “Unless you Force users has secret message encryption powers?”

“We use pretty much the same encryption tech you do,” Monfi said.

“Though I suspect ours in a little older,” Lasha said. “We don’t have the time or credits to stay as update as a proper archivist would.”

“You would be amazed at how little time or few credits they make archivists get by on,” Bopo said. “Ayli has, or at least had, better access to encryption tech than I ever did. I only saw her use that a few times though. This message is more her typical style.”

“That’s nice and all but what does it say?” Goldie asked, her mechanical patience wearing thin about as quickly as a flesh and blood daughter’s would have.

“Let’s find out,” Bopo said and clicked a final few keys on the terminal in front of her.

From a project at the front of the cockpit the image of Ayli in translucent blue hologram light sprang to life.

“Hi folks. Hopefully you didn’t have to wait to long to get this message. Check the timestamp on it to confirm, but Nix thinks it’ll be no more than a day from now that you’ll pass through the Hydraken System. We don’t know where you’ll be heading – probably looking for us is our guess. We can save you some time if so – Goldie, we’ll be staying with your aunt’s for a few days.”

The lights in the cockpit flashed in a sequence that Solna could only read as delight.

“If we’re not with them when you get there it means we either found a trail to follow sooner than we expected, or we needed to get back into hiding as quick as possible.” 

Nix and Ayli could have been hiding from any number of things, but of course it was the worst possible option.

“We’ve got Tovos and his crew with us, and there are some things that are hunting members of the Silent Enclave. From what we can tell, they don’t seem to be hunting you girls, Rassi and Solna, and we’re not sure why. You’re either good enough to hide from them on your own, or you’ve broken away from the Enclave enough that they don’t consider you a part of it anymore.”

“Or we’re carrying an army of angry dead souls who whupped them so bad the jumped to lightspeed on their own last time we met them,” Rassi said.

“However you’re staying safe from them, keep doing it,” Ayli folded her hands together in a show of how serious she hoped her words would be taken. “We don’t know what the Death Shadows are, or what they ultimately want, but we’ve seen what they can do to someone who can’t defend themselves.”

One of Tovos crew had died. Solna didn’t need to hear Ayli say the words. The Force confirmed what her own intuition was telling her.

Part of Solna wasn’t unhappy about that.

Tovos had always been a jerk and had tormented Rassi on more occasions than Solna could count. 

Also, he’d been the one to kidnap Nix and Ayli.

So he’d gotten what he deserved.

Except it hadn’t been him the Death Shadows had targeted. 

Or maybe he’d been better defended.

Which raised the question of how Nix and Ayli had dealt with the attack? The Death Shadows weren’t terribly discriminant when it came to attacking people near an Enclave. 

“We’re going to find the Enclave. Tovos says they’ll be under the deepest cloak they can weave, but Nix is pretty sure Goldie’s aunts will have some options for finding people that the Enclave isn’t familiar with.”

“Who are your Aunts?” Rassi asked.

“A pirate and a nun,” Goldie said.

“An odd pair of aunts,” Monfi said. “I take it we’ll be visiting one and then the other?”

“Only if Aunt Zin is on the road,” Goldie said. “Otherwise they’ll both be at Aunt Sally’s fortress.”

“You have an Aunt who owns a fortress?” Nulo asked and Moffvok added a wuff. “And is a pirate.”

“Technically she’s a Pirate Queen, but she says that ‘Planetary Administrator’ is getting to be more accurate every day.”

“You’ve already laid in a course to them, haven’t you?” Lasha asked.

“Yeah. We’ll be coming up on the hyperspace lane we need in about a half hour,” Goldie said. “I could do a lightspeed skip to get us there quicker, but Mom will not like what it does to my drives and I’d rather be the one to scold her than the other way round.”

Solna could picture the moment Goldie had in mind. She could picture turning the whole problem of the Silent Enclave over to Nix and Ayli and any other adult who could be trusted to deal with it.

She could picture all of that, even though the Force was telling her clearly that none of it was going to happen.

There had been shouting. There had been harsh words. There had even been some violence. Nix had been surprised that none of it had been direct at her or Ayli.

Ayli had apparently been ready for that though and had pulled Nix quietly to the side of the cargo room and sat them near a stack of supply crates which were too heavy to be casually knocked over as Tovos and his crew fell into the sort of screaming that inevitably came when a crew was pushed past their breaking point.

Happily, said screaming was not punctuated by blaster fire despite the fact that everyone on the ship except for her and Ayli were armed.

“You can’t believe them. It can’t be true. There must be some other reason. There must be some lie there. Jedi lies. The Jedi always lie!” Polu, one of the two youngest crew members yelled through tears which Nix was sure he would deny shedding later.

“They’re not Jedi.” That it was Tovos making the assertion was surprising only in that he beat Osdo to it, since Osdo had already backed up Nix and Ayli up on that three time so far in the argument.

“But we are Silent!” Yanni’s statement held enough desperation to border on being a question. “The Elder’s speak with the Xah. The Primus…”

“There have been false Primuses before,” Tovos said. “Buchadi.”

The name meant nothing whatsoever to Nix, nor to Ayli it seemed, who shrugged when Nix glanced at her to check.

“That was different,” Yanni said. “He was corrupt from birth, and he corrupted Elder Miknel and Elder Chini before becoming Primus.”

“They are all corrupt,” Tovos said. “They use the Xah as a weapon, and they use it against us.”

Nix wondered if she should step in. The anger driving Tovos and the fear driving the others was being fed by their failure of their mission and their despair at the lives they thought they’d lost. Though they weren’t that much younger than Nix, they’d been so sheltered and fed so many falsehoods about the galaxy and their place in it that Nix couldn’t help but feeling like she’d become the den mother for a group of particularly Dark Side vulnerable and well-armed toddlers.

She started to rise to inject some sanity into their discussion but Ayli grabbed her arm and silently shook her head, indicating for Nix to watch a bit longer.

“Which of them are corrupt doesn’t really matter, does it?” Felgo said. “We’re never going to see them again, we are alone in our silence.”

“Can we let a corruption in the Xah like that remain though?” Polu asked.

“We let the Jedi exist,” Osdo said.

“The Silent do not seek out conflict. We allow the Xah to bring to us the same conflicts it brings to all,” Tovos said, speaking by rote a maxim Nix could feel he didn’t fully believe in anymore.

It was odd being able to sense his emotional state so easily. He was still little more than a whisper in the Force, but the whisper was clearly there and only as quiet as it was out of a lifetime of habit.

“Maybe we should be seeking conflict,” Felgo said. “I mean, they taught us to close our eyes to what they were doing right? Isn’t that what Nix showed us? That we’ve been trained to be damned sheep? That all of this, everything we’re supposed to be, it’s all so they can can control us better? Why should we be silent about that?”

Nix definitely wanted to join the discussion there. She clearly remembered where that sort of explosive anger had led her and she was not about to let the little band in front of her go down that particular path to the Dark Side.

Once more though, Ayli wordlessly held her back, nodding towards Tovos for Nix to focus on what was really happening.

“We could do that,” Tovos said. “We could throw off our Silence. Take the Xah in our hands and use it to make things how we want them to be. I’m sure it would feel right. Like something we had to do.”

The words he didn’t speak were the ones the rest of his crew heard the most loudly.

“Oh, oh that’s what they did, wasn’t it?” Polu said.

“When they overthrew Primus Buchadi. They Expunged him as the rightful punishment for his crimes.” Yanni had a look of fresh dawning horror on her face as the Force confirmed each word she spoke.

“Which involved Expunging people in the Enclave who spoke against him,” Polu said, sharing the same horror as Yanni.

“Which they then continued to do themselves against everyone who spoke against them,” Osdo said.

“Or who tried to leave,” Felgo added.

“My older brother…” Tovos’s voice cutoff and all of the others nodded as a fresh wave of horror swept over them.

Tovos’s brother hadn’t been trying to leave the Enclave. He’d been used to stop someone from leaving the Enclave. A sacrifice to the Expunging ritual against someone who’d tried, as feebly as they were able to, to fight back.

Ayli ran a calming stroke down Nix’s arm which had gone tense as steel at the fresh evidence of what the Elders of the Enclave felt they were allowed to do.

“We’re not going to become them,” Tovos said, the fire of certainty fully returned to his voice. “We cannot find them to bring them justice, and we will not corrupt the Xah in an attempt to do so.”

“How will we even know what will corrupt the Xah though?” Polu asked. “The Elders were always the ones to guide us. If they were corrupt, then how can we know if anything they told us was or was not a corruption of the Xah?”

“You listen to it,” Nix said, after glancing at Ayli who nodded in agreement.

“We’ve always listened to the Xah though,” Polu said. “And we never heard any of this.”

“You did,” Ayli said. “You just weren’t allowed to notice it or remember it.”

“That’s not possible, is it?” Yanni asked.

“It’s difficult to do on most people, but definitely possible, and I’m sad to say, easier on you because they never taught you how to protect yourselves,” Nix said.

“Can you teach us?” Polu asked.

“Yes, but I don’t know if I should,” Nix said. “Don’t misunderstand me, I want you to be protected. The idea of you wandering the galaxy like you are seems like a horrible punishment for a crime you didn’t commit.”

“Why not teach us then?” Yanni asked.

“A few reasons,” Nix said. “First, how we approach the Xah and the Force is different. I know you can learn how I do things because Solna was able to pick up some simple shielding techniques in and five seconds of Ravas showing her what to do.”

“Solna is a prodigy. You’re concerned what she can do will be beyond us?” Tovos asked.

“Not at all. I mean, yes, she’s exceptional, but in my view, you all are,” Nix said. “No, what I’m concerned about there, is that I don’t want to change your relationship with the Xah to be like mine, since the relationship you have is special and let’s you do amazing things that I either can’t or would have a staggeringly hard time replicating.”

“Okay?” Yanni said, clearly uncertain of whether Nix’s appraisal was correct or not. “And the other reason?”

“The other reason is that you’ve been taught since birth not to trust people like me, other Force users, and I think part of proving I can be trusted, is to respect the boundaries you’ve set. I don’t want you to wake up tomorrow and feel like I tricked you into anything,” Nix said, which also didn’t seem to convince Tovos’ crew, so she added the most important idea she had. “And, I don’t think you need me to teach you how I do it. Your Elders shield themselves just as strongly as I do. I think protecting yourselves is something you can learn to do, your way. All it takes is practice and someone to work with, and that, that I am more than willing to do.”

“So you won’t turn us into Jedi, but you’ll help us turn ourselves into Jedi?” Tovos asked, an odd little quirk at the edges of his lips.

“They’re not Jedi,” Osdo and Felgo said in unison, which brought a much needed laugh to everyone in the cargo room, even Tovos.

“I was thinking more that you could turn yourselves in Elders. Elders as you’ve imagined them to be. Leaders and councilors,” Nix said. “Which, I suppose is what the Jedi made of themselves, but you’d be smarter than them.”

“We would be?” Tovos asked, amused incredulity rising over the fatigued anger and despair.

“Yeah. The Elders can get married right? The Jedi wouldn’t let their members do that. Kinda surprised it took them so long to fall if they believed in that kind of nonsense, but the galaxy is a weird place with plenty of room for weirdness,” Nix said.

“Wait, hey, that’s right, why didn’t we notice that before?” Yanni asked. “These two can’t be Jedi, they’re already married!”

“To be fair,” Ayli said. “We know a Jedi and a former Sith who are basically married too, so that particular Jedi tradition is a little flexible I would say, but yes, we are definitely married.”

“Even if we don’t exactly remember all of it,” Nix said.

“How do you not remember getting married?” Polu asked Nix. “Especially to her?”

Nix had to smile at that. Ayli was indeed an astounding catch.

“Copious amounts of Silur Brandy,” Ayli said. “Or was it Rasdan Schnapps?”

“Both. And, uh, I think we went for a round of Rembral ‘32?” Nix poked at the memories but even with the Force’s aid they were little more than a happy haze.

“It was a good night,” Ayli said.

“It was a good beginning,” Nix said.

“Maybe this is a beginning for us too then,” Osdo said. “Without the intoxicants.”

“It will have to to be,” Tovos said.

“Should we let our Cloak drop?” Polu asked. “We don’t need to keep it up against anyone anymore right?”

Nix felt the silence which surrounded them start to peel away but it was Ayli who stepped forward first.

“No!” she said. “Keep the cloak up! It’s all that’s protecting us at the moment.”

“Protecting us from what?” Felgo asked.

“We’re light years away from where we encountered the Death Shadows in this world, but they can move through the paths outside this world and are so much closer to us in the Force than they should be.”

“But you defeated them, didn’t you?” Yanni asked.

“I…it wasn’t exactly a defeat?” Ayli said. “I gave it to the Force. The Death Shadows are something like voids where a person should be. There are echoes in them, I think of what or who they once were and the echoes in that one called out for rest. Giving it to the Force sort of filled the void in and unmade the Shadow, but I don’t know if I can do that with all of them. The ones who come for us next will be the ones with less loss and more anger remaining in them I think.”

“So we’re going to be hunted by them for the rest of our lives?” Osdo asked.

“Not necessarily,” Nix said. “The Silent Enclave knows other means to keep them away. Means I probably disrupted when I broiled Dolon. If we can find them, I think I can convince them to share those secrets with us and the rest of the Enclave.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in using the Xah to compel people to do your will?” Felgo said.

“I don’t, and I won’t. I don’t like what it does to the Force, or what it does to me,” Nix said. “There’s lots of other methods of persuading people to do things though.”

“We will not find them using the Xah, not unless we truly corrupt it, and we will not do that,” Tovos said.

“What if I told you we didn’t need the Xah at all to find your people,” Nix said. “All we need is a quick stop at one of my favorite pirate havens.”

Rassi wasn’t used to asking the Force for anything. All of her training had been focused on the exact opposite of that. When she felt Solna reach out to the Force therefor she had no idea what her best friend might be doing. When she then saw Solna plunge into the pit with the Death Shadow, or whatever it was, she figured out what was going on.

Solna had lost her mind.

Rassi sprinted forward to the edge of the hole, intent on leaping in after Solna but from the depths of the pit, she saw a light rising back up.

“We don’t have long,” Solna said, cradling a luminous ball of deep purple and blue light as wide as her torso in front of her.

“For what?” Rassi said, instinctively shying away from the orb in Solna’s hands.

“To call him back,” Solna said.

“There is no one there,” Ravas said.

“Yes, exactly, and we can fix that,” Solna said, her eyes focused solely on glowing ball as the illumination from it began to writhe and pulse.

“What do you need?” Rassi asked.

The orb was absolutely a corruption of the Xah. It was the definition of awful, an aberration which shouldn’t have ever been allowed to exist. It could and would hurt them, as surely as a plasma flare.

Rassi could only sense peril from it, but she chose to ignore that for one very good reason. 

She could feel what Solna was projecting as well.

Comfort, camaraderie, and the promise of an end to its rage.

Rassi had no idea how Solna was going to provide any of those things but that didn’t matter. She know Solna well enough to believe it was possible, and more importantly, she believed in Solna. 

No matter what they were doing, Rassi would be at Solna’s side. Being anywhere else simply didn’t make sense.

“We need to listen,” Solna said. “He needs to tell us who he was.”

“This is a bad idea,” Ravas said. “That thing is a hole in the Force. It is a manifestation of the Dark Side even I haven’t run across. All it can do is mislead you.”

“That’s why we must do this,” Solna said, looking up and making eye contact with Rassi. “Please.”

Rassi didn’t answer with words.

She simply stopped breathing.

For her, quieting the Xah within herself so she could perceive the deepest truths of the Xah beyond her was always a battle. Her Xah, the Force within her, was a tempest in its quietest of moments. 

Fortunately, she’d had rather a lot of practice winning that battle. Or at least winning it well enough to hear what she needed to.

In the silence, she could feel the joy radiating from Solna quickly retreat into silence as well. That brief glimpse was enough to fill Rassi with confidence in what they were doing while also allowing her to focus on something other than the delightful emotion resonance between the two of them.

“I am no more.” 

The words were voiceless, spoken by nothing, and nothing more than the faintest of whispers in the preternatural emptiness in the Force Solna was carrying.

But whispers, no matter how faint, belong to someone.

“Who are you?” Rassi asked, only imagining the barest of touches on the Force to convey the words.

“I am no one.”

“But you were someone once,” Solna said.

“You were Silent,” Rassi said, a fleeting glimpse of a kindred soul passing through her mind.

Rassi wasn’t used to asking the Force for anything, but Solna had and Rassi could feel the Force struggling to aid them. It wanted to know who had been lost.

It wanted them back too.

“Silent?” the voiceless whispers gained volume and the barest hint of depth.

“Like me, like us,” Rassi said. “You were part of the Silent Enclave.”

The heat which greeted Rassi’s words was not a friendly bit of warmth. She could have mistaken it for blinding rage but the undercurrent of loss and sorrow was too great to ignore.

“We were too,” Solna said. “But listen to us speaking. We are Silent no more.”

“Silent no more,” and the voiceless whispers were no longer voiceless.

“Silent never again,” Solna said. “Speak to us and we will speak for you.”

“I am nothing.”

“But you were someone. What you most lack is what they once were,” Solna said, and Rassi could hear depths in the void Solna carried, deeper losses and greater pains.

“If you can’t tell us, may we search for the answers ourselves?” Rassi asked, acutely aware of how intimate the contact she was contemplating would be.

“Yes. Find…find what was lost. Find me.”

With no movement and no greater sign that the shift in her focus, Rassi asked Solna if this was what she had been planning. Solna’s answering nod was motionless but all too clear to Rassi, and so they began.

In the distance, Rassi heard Kelda and Ravas shift, moving to prevent what the Solna had conceived of doing, but seeking down into the void’s deepest places wasn’t a realm either the former Jedi or the former Sith had been trained to explore.

In the first pit, Rassi found herself in a strange inverted world. Into the absent spaces she poured her awareness, her understanding, and the Force which flowed within her.

What formed from the mold was the picture of a man clad in the robes of an Enclave guardian and the moment when his losses began.

Rassi felt the pride the man had carried and understood it well. The Enclave’s guardians were tasked with protecting the Primus whenever he was required to travel outside the Enclave’s boundaries. Earning a position among their number was one of the highest martial honors a member of the Enclave could aspire to.

He had been honored beyond so many and he had failed.

In the tableau which was cast from the mold, Rassi saw a Primus not only slain but Expunged. Struck down by a technique only the Silent Enclave knew. 

“You couldn’t protect him,” Solna said and the void resounded with that truth.

Rassi saw something more in the tableau though.

“He hadn’t deserved your protection,” she said.

Revulsion, rejection, and confusion swept the scene away.

“What had he done?” Solna asked, and Rassi sought out another pit within the void.

A new scene took shape.

A trial. 

The dead Primus was there in effigy and behind him an impossibly high mountain of bodies rose.

Around the Primus, his guards stood, no longer armed or respected, each chained to their own podium as changes were read out against them.

“They held you responsible for what he’d done,” Rassi said.

“Had you known?” Solna asked.

Shame crushed the scene to dust and a new scene rose from the exposed wound in the void.

The man stood guard at a door. It was a sacred door and what was transpiring beyond it was more profane than words could capture.

But there had been orders.

And without seeing what was happening, it had been easy to believe that no abuse of power was happening. All the guard had needed to do was remain blind and his conscience was clear. Believe in the Primus. Believe because to do otherwise would mean the world was so much worse than he wanted to face.

Because not believing would mean that he was so much worse than he wanted to face.

“Was this your punishment?” Solna asked.

Anger and righteous indignation tore the scene apart and replaced it with another one.

Banishment.

A wife and a child he would never see again.

His position lost, his authority stripped away, his future gone.

Flames of rage crackled in the scene though.

This hadn’t been his punishment.

This was the punishment he was given, and the one he’d accepted. Not immediately, but when he saw what he’d been a part of, he’d known that it was what he’d deserved.

The flames licked at the scene, scorching and burning away the false facade, calling back the moment which had been hidden at the bottom of the pit.

The man who was no longer a guard and no longer Silent was rendered in midstride, leaving the Enclave behind. 

The flames swelled, consuming the scene and replacing it with one of the man alone on the road, walking to nowhere, and carrying the burden of the fate he’d accepted. 

And then he wasn’t alone.

New guardians struck him down.

And shackled him.

Into the mine they brought him.

Down empty passages.

To a room where his wife and child waited.

His wife a hostage not against his behavior, but as coercion for his child.

Someone was needed to bear the cost of the ritual.

Someone who he would not fight back against.

The scene became hot enough to sear flesh but the worst was still to come.

“Choli,” the voice was the man’s but the name was his child’s

The child who had survived the ritual. Who the man had sacrificed everything to spare. 

Who had been killed once the ritual was finished anyways.

“Why?” Solna croaked out and to Rassi the flames that surrounded them didn’t seem nearly hot enough.

There was no answer from the void, but Rassi heard the echoes from an age past in the Force.

“They wanted justice,” she said. “The banishment wasn’t enough for some of them. The people who’d lost their loved ones to the Primus’ Expunging rituals wanted more than blood. They wanted the scales to be balanced.”

“Not like this,” Solna said. “Horror can never balance horror.”

“No. It cannot,” Ravas said.

“Did you see all that?” Rassi asked.

“We saw it through you,” Kelda said.

“Why kill Choli though?” Solna’s voice was tight with the void’s anguish.

“They didn’t want any witnesses,” Ravas said. 

“They’d condemned the Primus for what he’d done. They didn’t want anyone to say they were the same as he was,” Kelda said.

“But the power was still too alluring to pass up, especially when they could pretend it served a righteous cause,” Ravas said.

“What are we going to do then?” Rassi asked, feeling entirely unmoored by what she’d seen.

“The Enclave left this world over a hundred years ago,” Kelda said. “Those involved in this are all long dead. There’s nothing that can be done to them.”

“This isn’t about them,” Solna said. “This is about him.”

“He’s gone as well,” Ravas said, her voice heavy with sympathy.

“We can bring him back,” Solna said. 

“No. Bringing the dead to life, it’s worse than you can imagine,” Kelda said.

“Not to life,” Rassi said, understanding Solna’s meaning. “We can bring him back to the Force.”

“To Choli,” Solna said.

“How would…?” Ravas started to asked, but neither Solna nor Rassi waited to answer her.

In the silence, they shared their fears with each other.

Neither had ever tried anything like what Solna was suggesting, and both knew it would be considered an unforgivable corruption of the Xah. 

The could be costs far beyond anything they were aware of as well. 

At best they would simply fail.

At worst they could drop into the void themselves, destroying everything they were in the effort to restore what a total stranger had once been.

And what he had been wasn’t anything wonderful.

He’d been a small and cowardly man, given authority and prestige to lord over others with. He’d been part of a series of atrocities. The people who’d known him and what he’d done hadn’t believed he could ever deserve forgiveness and was it Rassi and Solna’s place to offer the forgiveness he’d been willfully denied?

Rassi didn’t have a elaborate answer to those questions. What she saw before her was not justice though. 

And what she and Solna were going to offer was not forgiveness. 

The man would not escape the weight of his actions. He would carry them into eternity. 

Just like everyone else. 

Rassi wasn’t used to asking the Force for anything, and the Force wasn’t used to asking Rassi for what it needed. 

The wound before them needed to be healed though, and so Rassi opened her heart, and at last let herself be as loud as she could be as the Force crashed through her like thunder, filling her and filling the void to call back the scattered, forgotten pieces of the man who’d once been.

She only saw his spirit for a moment.

He had no place in the world of the living, and the Force was more than ready to welcome him back.

The Force and two spirits who’d been waiting for him for so very long.

Ayli was surprised when Nix returned to their “cell” both by the smile hiding on Nix’s lips and the company she was dragging with her.

“Got a moment?” Nix asked with Tovos and Felgo both in tow.

Ayli glanced over to Osdo who was studiously hiding his face from Tovos, despite that fact that both his expression and his presence in the force were entirely guilt-free/

“I have quite a few moments,” Ayli said. “Did you all want to join me in meditating?”

“Not exactly,” Nix said. “I need you to demonstrate something, and perhaps dance with me.”

Ayli quirked her head to the side, but listening to the Force told her that Nix was oddly serious on both counts.

“What are we demonstrating?” Ayli asked, intrigued more by the chance to get to dance with Nix, but willing to take things in the order presented. However Nix planned to win over Tovos’ crew probably involved one or more dangerous uses of the Force – it was Nix after all.

“Tovos says that the Xah doesn’ talk to them,” Nix said.

“Uh, I thought it was a point of pride that you can listen to the Xah better than anyone?” Ayli said, glancing from Tovos and Felgo to Osdo for confirmation.

“We listening but the Xah does not speak,” Osdo said. “Not to us.”

“What do you hear then?” Ayli suspected that the language limitations of Galactic Basic might be tripping them up, but working around those was often challenging. What a word like “speak” meant in one language might take a doctoral dissertation to explain to someone who spoke a different language. That everyone crammed their native languages down into the homogenized stew that was Galactic Basic was responsible for maybe a third of the conflict in the galaxy in Ayli’s estimation (with the other two thirds being split between willful stupidity, greed, and people simply being awful.)

“The Xah is the wind, it is a river, it is the beat of blood inside it,” Tovos said. “It brings us information, but it does not speak.”

“I notice you’re saying ‘it does not speak’, not ‘it cannot speak’?” Nix waited for confirmation from Tovos but Ayli could feel Nix’s attention drifting over the other members of the crew, both the ones present and the ones working elsewhere on the ship.

“It…” Osdo started to say, but Tovos cut him off.

“The Elders can hear the Xah speaking to them,” Tovos said. “It is what marks them as an Elder, and why they speak with one voice.”

“But they don’t?” Nix said, sounding as confused as Tovos was.

“Yes they do,” Osdo said. “The guidance of the Elders is always clear because they can hear the guidance of the Xah.”

“I had a few scant minutes of interacting with them and in that short time Honored Jolu and your Primus definitely disagreed about things,” Nix said.

“Then the Xah was conflicted,” Tovos said. “That is what you bring to us.”

“The Xah was fine,” Nix said. “Remember, I put up no resistance. When I saw how much a small leap had disturbed you, I made sure I didn’t ask the Force for anything. Think back, after I, somewhat rudely it seems, landed near you, did you sense anything out of the ordinary from me. It wasn’t until later that I got…I suppose loud is underselling it.”

“You destroyed a building,” Felgo said.

“I did. I really did,” Nix said sounding much too fondly proud of the accomplishment. “To be fair though, that was after Dolon tried to kill me like an idiot. And he was the only one in the building. I think I set him on fire too, didn’t it? I bet that was nasty. Generator fires can burn super hot, though the model you had was pretty middling. If it had been one of the good ones, I                                                                                         probably could have vaporized him. A good CrashTech 8100 or a 9200 even? That would have been a sight to see. Might have taken out some other buildings too though, which was not the intent. Of course if it had been a serious one like a PlasDrive 220A? One of those things could have cratered the whole tradeport. That’s why you only find them on the combat class capital ships. Sorry, where was I?”

Ayli chuckled at the looks on their “captors” faces. That particular mix of awe, revulsion, curiosity, and sheer confusion was one which only her wife could produce.

“That cannot be true,” Tovos said, shaking his head and rallying. “You attacked Primus Dolon unprovoked. He told us that himself.”

“He lied,” Nix said. “He does that. A lot, from what Rassi and Solna have said.”

“Jedi lie. The Elders cannot lie. Lies disturb the Xah!” Felgo’s declaration had all the rote certainty which was missing in Tovos’ silence.

“They do,” Nix said with a nod. “But if you tell the lie through the Force, the one you tell it too will have a much harder time discerning that. The Jedi used that to resolve conflicts peacefully, but it is still a violation of the people who are ‘mind tricked’ and the Force itself.”

“That is the Jedi,” Felgo said.

“And your Primus,” Nix said.

Felgo’s hand went to his blaster, but Tovos was oddly still.

“The Jedi lie and you cannot prove what you say.” That small traces of conflict showed on his face struck Ayli at last. Neither of the other Enclave members were displaying anything except blank, calm emotions. That Tovos wasn’t suppressing his, or wasn’t suppressing them fully was either the sign of extreme turmoil inside him or something even more serious.

“Yeah.” Nix sighed. “The Force said we’d get to this point. It’s great like that. Pointing out the incredibly obvious, even when I’d really don’t want it to be right. Stupid Force.”

“You hate your Force?” Osdo asked.

“No. I love my connection to it,” Nix said. “I’ve relief on it my whole life, way before I knew what it was. The Force is wonderful. And awful. And terrifying. And occasionally incredibly freaking smug!” She shook a fist as though something beyond the room’s ceiling was looking down on her.

“Smug?” Osdo asked.

“Smug.” Nix confirmed and brief in a deep breath. “There is something we can do that will prove what I’m saying.”

Ayli took a breath too and felt how disgruntled Nix was at what she was going to suggest next.

Then Ayli saw why.

“It’s okay. We’ll be okay,” she said, earning her a a nod of gratitude from Nix and looks of further confusion from the others.

“Your Jedi mind tricks won’t work on us,” Tovos said, a weariness in his voice.

“Sadly they would. None of you were ever allowed to develop the natural resistances to mental manipulation which most Force users possess,” Nix said. “But that’s not how we can convince you. Or its not how I’m willing to convince you. Subverting your will to my own? You would never trust me again, and if I did that I’d be proving that you never should.”

“Then what are you going to do?” Tovos asked.

“Dance. Ayli and I are going to dance.”

“And how would a dance prove anything?” Tovos was shading into irritation, a cycle he seemed to have run through repeatedly.

“You tell me,” Nix said. “If Ayli and I were to dance a Silent Dance, would we be able to have the strength to craft lies in the Xah? Or would what I showed you have to be what I’d witnessed myself?”

“You cannot silence yourself enough for it to matter,” Tovos said.

“But you would know that too,” Ayli said, knowing the answer before she asked the question.

“Your failure will prove nothing.” There was an air of uncertainty which was breathtaking given the repression the three Enclave members were capable of.

“Which is why we’re not going to fail,” Nix said.

“Dying will not change anything for us,” Tovos said.

“Which is why we’re not going to die,” Ayli said.

Tovos looked like he wanted to argue, and Ayli saw that he probably should. Her and Nix successfully conveying what Nix had experienced was going to shatter them. 

But sometimes, people need to break.

She certainly had.

Over and over again.

Each time losing bits of herself.

Or that’s what she’d thought. For the first time she began to wonder if what she’d managed to recover from those losses wasn’t every bit as valuable as what she’d left behind.

Seeking destruction, or worse, seeking to inflict it on others, wasn’t a path to growth, but neither was shrinking from the fear of loss.

Failure had to be more than option, it had to be a reality. If she’d never pushed herself far enough to fail, she wouldn’t be half the person she was.

And so, when everyone gathered in the small cargo hold, she danced.

Nix had been right to grumble at the Force’s suggestion that a Silent Dance would convince Tovos and his crew of Nix’s words. 

Not because it wouldn’t. 

Even as they started, Ayli could feel that it would work. 

But that didn’t make the dance itself even vaguely pleasant.

She followed Nix’s lead, quieting her breath, calming her blood, and eventually, stilling her heart. 

In the Rebellion, Ayli had heard countless remarks about ‘dancing with death’. More than once, she’d been the one to make them and had been perfectly accurate in her claims. Those had always been frantic, adrenaline fueled bursts of chaos and madness, where death had roared like blaster bolt and a plasma bomb and a scream to end all tomorrows.

The Silent Dance was none of those things.

Her heart’s final beat was long past and she was still stepping onwards, following, following, and ever following Nix down into a darkness so still that the call of the Force beyond it was almost undeniable.

Answering the call was her destiny. And the destiny of all others. It was the one mercy and kindness absolutely guaranteed to all who lived, that at the end there would be peace, and serenity, and a place in eternity with all who’d passed before.

But her soul wasn’t bound for eternity. She was set on something much more important.

With her last step, she followed Nix a pace further, rising back towards life even though she had left it so far behind. 

Too far for her life to be stretched.

Too far for her to return.

But not to far for the Force to carry her.

“Was…did we do it?” she asked, blearing and not quite able to see at first.

“She’s alive!” It sounded like Osdo said that but Ayli had a more pressing concern.

Where was Nix?

Opening her eyes and bringing blood back to everywhere that needed it, she got her answer. Nix was right beside her.

Laying on the ground.

Still and unbreathing.

“Away,” Ayli said, not that anyone had dared get close to either of them.

Though her ability to feel fear was muted still, the site of Nix unresponsive and not breathing did a fantastic job of lighting up Ayli’s limbic system.

“Breathe,” she whispered, lowering her head to Nix’s to begin rescue breathing. At her touch though, she felt the faintest echo the Force stirring in Nix and changed her plans. “Bring her back to me. There’s more for us to do.”

There was always more for those who passed on to do, which made that a less than compelling argument, but Ayli wasn’t arguing, and the Force agreed. It didn’t understand why Nix had pushed it away beyond a general sense of the need which had driven Nix’s actions, but it was more than happy to flow into her and Ayli was more than happy to help.

A moment later, Nix coughed weakly, twitched, and at last opened an eye.

“Ugh, yeah, that was just as bad as I thought it was going to be,” she said. 

“Lies,” Tovos said, anguish writ on his face and through his presence in the Force. “Everything we were taught has been lies.”