Being screamed at was never Ayli’s favorite thing in the world. Being screamed at by a slightly monstrous version of herself from less than a handspan away however was oddly calming.

“I know,” she said as the shackles on her wrists fell away.

“Um, who is this?” Monfi asked, still as securely fastened to the wall as he had been before the room became filled with the shattered remains of a half dozen HK droids.

“Me,” Ayli said. “This is me. I’m her, she’s me.”

Her other self bared the razor sharp, jagged teeth which Ayli couldn’t help but admire after seeing them tear off a droid’s head.

“She doesn’t seem to be terribly fond of you,” Mondi said, sounding as deeply confused as Ayli had ever heard him.

Ayli raised her hand, palm open and facing towards the Dark Side double she’d met in Shadowed Cave. The doppelganger raised a matching hand bent into a claw by barely contained rage.

“I’m sorry I can’t be you,” Ayli said. “I can get us out of here though.”

The doppelganger screamed again, and tore at the air between their hands, but without touching Ayli.

“Yeah, I get it, believe me, you’re not wrong. Destroying the danger we’re in, it would feel so good, and so right. And the fear? It’s warning us about so many things we need to be careful of.” Ayli looked into eyes which would forever be the blood red of rage and yellow of terror. A breath in, and a breath out. The peace she could find at home eluded her, but she was able to find her center.

It was a tumult, but she’d expected that. She might be able to play a good game with an enemy like Overwhelming, but with herself she had to be honest. The vast extent to which she wasn’t was something Kelda, Ravas, and Nix had helped her learn.

Far from being destroyed by confronting that truth though, Ayli had found strength there. Strength which didn’t fail her when her fears rose against like they always did.

Her Dark Side knew that too and broke their gaze first.

“You can rest now,” Ayli said, but the doppelganger shook her head, unable to speak or meet Ayli’s eyes.

Ayli wanted to reach out to the warped version of herself and say that everything was going to be okay.

But she didn’t know that it was.

And her anger and fear weren’t ready to sleep just yet.

Not when they were needed.

Not when existing as a separate embodiment was oh so easy in the Dark Side nexus of the ship.

Spinning on her heels, Ayli’s Dark Side took three steps to stalk out of the room, vanishing before she took a fourth.

She hadn’t disappeared though. From out in the hallway, Ayli could hear metal tearing and more screaming. Her Dark Side was very much not ready to cease its rampage.

“That’s not something you see every cycle,” Bopo said, seeming content to stay right where she was in her cell.

“No, it’s not,” Ayli said. “This place is unique though.”

“I’ve never heard of a Dark Side nexus working with a Jedi,” Monfi said.

“Not a Jedi.” Ayli freed her legs and moved over to Monfi to unbind his shackles as well.

“You’re not a Sith either though,” Monfi said.

“Nope. I don’t think a Sith’s Dark Side would be separate enough from them to do what…,” she gestured to the hallway where the sounds of destruction were growing more distant, “whatever she’s doing.”

“You don’t know?” Bopo asked.

“Not a clue.” Ayli unlocked the controls Bopo’s prison cell but couldn’t find the switch to drop the forcefield. “Or, well, one clue; she’s going to destroy Overwhelming. And this ship.”

“You can see her? Or sense her here?” Monfi asked.

“No, I just know what I want to do and I don’t think ‘restraint’ is a notable trait of the Dark Side.”

“If she destroys this ship, won’t that present a few issues for us?” Bopo asked.

“Oh, we’ll definitely die if we’re still onboard when she gets through with this place,” Ayli said. “Which is why we need to leave.”

“The droid, Overwhelming, it can still hear us can’t it?” Bopo asked.

“I’m sure it can,” Ayli said. “It’s got control of the ship’s systems. In fact, I’m pretty sure it could kill us at any point it wanted to. I mean, I don’t breath vacuum very well, how about you? It’d take a half second or so to open airlocks and maybe a minute for the air to all get sucked out?”

“But it needs us alive,” Monfi said, understanding the point Ayli was making.

“Exactly. If it spaces us, I suspect Paralus will arrange for an even worse punishment for failure than my Dark Side is planning on inflicting on Overwhelming.”

Monfi saw the trouble Ayli was having with the door mechanism and came over to inspect it as well, gesturing the question to Ayli of whether she wanted his help or not.

“That works out well for it and for us though,” Ayli said. “It’s smart, and it’s capable of thinking long term. It can easily allow us to get to an escape shuttle that it’s put tracking beacons in. We could search for those and disable them, but we’re under a time crunch too and, realistically, there’s no chance we would find all of the trackers Overwhelming could hide on something the size of a shuttle.”

“Couldn’t it just kill your Dark Side before she did too much damage though?” Bopo asked.

“No,” Monfi answered. “You saw what she did to those HK droids. Ayli’s other self is working with the power of a full Sith Lord here. Also, she’s a projection of the Dark Side. Stabbing her, blasting her, even blowing up the whole ship won’t matter. If something could cleanse this ship and restore balance to the Force here, that would disrupt her ability to manifest but that doesn’t seem like something a droid would be capable of.”

He worked a bit of no-Force related magic and the door to Bopo’s cell powered down.

“So where’s the nearest escape shuttle?” Bopo asked.

“This direction,” Ayli said, leading them out into the hall and in the opposite direction as her doppelganger had headed.

“How do you know that? I thought the Force didn’t work for you here?” Bopo asked.

“The Force works everywhere, even inside a Dark Side nexus,” Ayli said. “In this particular case though, I’m just familiar with Assassin-class corvettes.”

“Do I want to know why?” Bopo asked.

“Well, the Rebellion won, so all those things probably aren’t crimes anymore, but no, you don’t want to know.” Ayli watched the hallways they passed by. 

She knew her reasoning was sound, and she knew Overwhelming had heard her and agreed at least to the point of not spacing them all the moment they escaped the prison room. That didn’t mean she could afford to blithely ignore any warning signs they came across. She hadn’t mentioned that in addition to tracking beacons, Overwhelming could inflict serious but not fatal wounds on all of them, constraining them to land the shuttle somewhere far more convenient to be captured again. If a holding a city hostage had worked after all, holding a hospital was just as likely to.

That thought, and many others like it kept Ayli on high alert as they stalked to the shuttle bay where Ayli hoped they would find a ship.

When they arrived and a ship was in fact waiting for them, she almost turned them around though.

“What’s wrong?” Monfi asked, reading her change in mood from body language rather than the Force.

“This is a trap,” Ayli said.

“The Force is saying that because this is a Dark Side Nexus.” Monfi took a step into the room, before Ayli caught his arm.

“I’m not listening to the Force,” Ayli said. “You’re right that the Dark Side won’t show us a true picture of what’s happening, but this is still a trap.”

“We knew that coming here didn’t we?” Bopo said. “If the droid knows everything we’re doing, then it knows we’re doing this and it’ll have its own plans in place. That was the deal you talked out with it.”

“It was,” Ayli said. “But it’s a machine intelligence that serves a Force Lich. Betrayal and backstabbing are the electricity they run on. It should have attacked us by now.”

“And you want to wait around until it does?” Bopo asked.

“We can’t do that,” Monfi said. “We’re running out of time as it is.”

An explosion shook the ship, followed by a stronger one, and then one which knocked out the lights leaving the only illumination the landing lights in the shuttle bay.

“And now we’re out of time,” Monfi said. “It’s this or we find some other means of surviving the destruction of this ship.”

“No. It’s gotta be this. It’s just that this is a mistake,” Ayli said.

“And why might that be?” Paralus Stahl asked, stepping out of the shadows from beside them.

Ayli reached for her lightsaber but that was the first thing the droid had taken from her.

“We’re not coming to you,” Ayli said, moving to step in front of Bopo.

“I assure you that you are,” Paralus said, smug certainty dripping from every word. “You’re current resistance cannot change your destiny. You will return. No matter how hard you fight against it and how little you desire to succumb to your fate.”

“You’re going to a lot of effort for someone who thinks we’re going to do what you want regardless,” Ayli said.

“Destroying you is no effort at all,” Paralus said.

“You’re about to lose a whole ship over it,” Ayli said. “The cost is just going to keep rising the longer you pursue us.”

“The ship is no concern,” Paralus said. “It will survive or it will become a ghost, luring the unwary to their doom. Nothing you do will improve anyone’s situation, least of all your own.”

“You should probably start celebrating then,” Ayli said. “If you’ve won already, if our fates are decided, might as well throw yourself a party.”

“Your destruction awaits in the future and it will be in the moment when you finally accept that, when despair claims you at last, that is when my celebration shall begin,” Paralus said. “But where are my manners. You have a guest with you. A guest for whom I have no need.”

Ayli felt the killing lightning starting to gather in Paralus’s fingertips and moved to block the bolts that would take Bopo’s life.

But an interruption occurred.

Before Paralus could strike, a red lightsaber blade stabbed clean through his torso. His form turned to smoke as he fell and reformed with a blade of his own, facing off against Ayli’s Dark Side.

“Now we leave,” Monfi said, dashing towards the ship.

A hail of automated blaster fire opened up on him, but he sailed like the wind past them as the Dark Side’s influence was concentrated on the battle between Paralus and Ayli’s Dark Side.

“I can’t move like that,” Bopo said, the distance to the shuttle an impossible gap for anyone without Force powers to cover.

“You won’t have to,” Ayli said and took hold of her friend’s hand. “Just walk with me.”

Bopo looked at her, uncertainty writ large over her features until she managed to make peace with the death that awaited her.

Ayli didn’t lead Bopo to her death though. Step by slow step, they advanced towards the shuttle which Monfi was prepping for launch.

Around them, electronics and machinery exploded as a tornado of power tore through them. Halfway to the ship, Ayli stumbled but rose with fresh determination before Bopo could help her out. 

By the time they reached the ship, the hangar looked worse than if a bomb had hit it.

But not one shot had landed on either of them. 

“We made it!” Bopo cheered as Ayli pushed her up the ramp to the ship.

“Yes,” Ayli said. “You did. And now you’re going to get to safety.”

“What? No. You’re not staying. Why would you?”

“Tell Nix she knows where she’ll find me,” Ayli said. “Tell her what my eyes looked like too.”

Without waiting for Bopo’s protest, Ayli Force pushed her friend into the shuttle, slammed the entry hatch shut.

As the Force tornado cast the shuttle out into the void, Ayli turned to face the thing that had weathered the worst her Dark Side could throw at it, the deal she knew he would accept waiting on her lips.

Ayli needed helped. She hated to admit that, but she was wise enough to know that pretending otherwise was a fantastic method for getting herself and the people with her killed.

“They’re out there, searching for us,” Monfi said. He was pinned to the wall by grav-shackles, which looked to be somewhat less comfortable than the grav-shackles which bound Ayli to the inclined experimentation table. Of them all, only Bopo wasn’t shackled and that was because she’d been shuffled into one of the three small prison cells in the room the HK droids had forced them into.

“I’m pretty sure our friends following us is what Paralus is counting on,” Ayli said.

“Perhaps, but luring four trained Force users into a trap is a rather egotistical move,” Monfi said.

“Is it?” Archivist Bopo asked without rising from the small bench in her cell. “He managed to trap two of you, and he wasn’t even there.”

“She’s got a point,” Ayli said said. “The droid was able to hold a city hostage to compel us, but Paralus is going to have a much better lever against Nix and your people. Us.”

“Lasha knows better than that. The mission has to come first when dealing with a creature like Paralus,” Monfi said without concern or anger at the thought.

“That’s not how Nix think,” Ayli said, quietly loving her wife for that particular bit of madness. “She’s going to come for me even if it means tearing Praxis Mar apart rock-by-rock.”

“That doesn’t tend to work out well,” Monfi said, phrasing it as gently as he could.

“Oh, I’m aware of that,” Ayli said. “Which is why that’s an option we’re going to have to take off the table as quickly as possible.”

“Killing yourselves at this point doesn’t seem like a fantastic idea,” Bopo said. “Especially since, as a note, you’d be killing me as well.”

“Oh, killing ourselves isn’t an option at all,” Ayli said. “If I die, Nix won’t stop at tearing Praxis Mar apart.”

“Your wife sounds like a dangerous person,” Monfi said.

“She can be,” Ayli said. “But she’s also the most compassionate and kind person I’ve ever met.”

“I thought the Jedi teachings were to let go of attachments so that they wouldn’t draw you into the Dark Side?” Monfi said.

“We’ve learned from the Jedi, but neither of us are Jedi,” Ayli said. “And to be fair, I’m not sure the Jedi were either.”

“Because they didn’t follow their own code?” Monfi asked.

“They did, but over time the code changed, or their understanding of it did. I think the Jedi we know of may have evolved some somewhat offbase ideas on what their own code was supposed to mean,” Ayli said. “What we’ve learned from the Force Ghosts we know doesn’t exactly line up with the more recent Jedi texts we’ve recovered which survived the Imperial purges. The same is true with the Sith information we’ve turned up.”

“You found ancient Sith relics?” Monfi asked. “Did you destroy them? They are notoriously dangerous.”

“Nope. All the Sith writings we found were from an Imperial Inquisitor’s personal refuge. It’s possible he was making up things on his own, but some of his phrasing is identical to what Ravas, one of our Force Ghosts, learned from her master. Other bits, the kind that tend to change over time, had drifted, but you could see a path from the ancient ideas to the modern ones.”

“You know a Sith?” Monfi asked, more shocked by that than anything else Ayli had said to them since they met.

“A former Sith,” Ayli said. “Also dead. She’s thrown off the Dark Side more than I have at this point, but I guess sleeping for a thousand years in a Force nexus, protected by the woman she loved, could do that.”

“That’s…I’ve never heard of anything like that,” Monfi said.

“They’re pretty unique,” Ayli said. “I’ll have to introduce you to them both properly after we get out of here.”

“Do you have any thoughts on that?” Monfi asked. “I was hoping once we weren’t constrained by the hostages we could break out with our abilities, but the Force is so negative here that I can’t get much of a hold on it at all.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t anticipating that either,” Ayli said. “I’m willing to bet the droid was though.”

The temperature in the room rose sharply at that and Ayli smiled. Annoying machine intelligences was as easy as it was with organic ones. It was funny too to think of ‘droid’ as being an insult, but so far the two machine intelligences Ayli had met seemed to agree on that.

“There’s also the small problem that even if we do manage to break loose somehow, we’re on a ship in hyperspace. Not a lot of room to run and hide in here and none outside,” Monfi said.

“Escape shuttle?” Bopo suggested.

“Unless we waited till we were near a planet, the odds of anyone finding us are ridiculously slim. Also, the droid could just open up on that shuttle and destroy us in a single turbolaser volley, or tractor beam us right back inside.”

“So we need to escape without the droid noticing it?” Bopo asked.

“Oh, it will definitely notice. I mean, it’s listening to us now, so it’s not like our plans will be a surprise to it,” Ayli said.

The door to their prison cell opened and a half dozen of the HK droids entered.

“Oh, I’m sorry Overwhelming,” Ayli said. “Were we supposed to keep talking and reveal everything we’re going to do with you eavesdropping on the entirely automated ship which you have complete control over?”

“You will reveal whatever I wish for you to reveal,” the nearest droid said. “And my name is not Overwhelming.”

“Sorry Overwhelming, you had the chance to introduce yourself and you didn’t take it,” Ayli said as the HK’s marched over to her.

Any one of the droids could have easily killed her in her present circumstances. The Force wasn’t a terribly large help either. Despite the effort she’d put into connecting with it, and how much better she could feel and hear it, within the Dark Side nexus of the ship’s interior there was so much remembered pain and torment and despair that Ayli could hear little else in the Force, and certainly not true warnings as to what her fate was going to be.

“Might not be good to annoy the Hunter Killer droids there my dear,” Bopo said.

“You should listen to the Rodian woman,” the lead droid said.

“I am Galruxian, not a Rodian you worthless pile of chips,” Bopo said, rising from her bench at the ignorant insult the droid had spoken.

“You are meat,” the droid said. “If you’re fortunate, you will also prove to be useful bait. If you’re not, then there are many uses to which protein chains, calcium, or vital fluids can be put.”

“I find it curious that you feel the need to threaten us when you have us precisely where you want us to be, and as contained as you can possibly manage,” Ayli said.

“Threats are for meat-forms,” the droid said. “I am informing you of the algorithm to follow should you wish to survive beyond the current moment.”

 “Oh, right, droids can only think in code, can’t they,” Ayli said.

That earned a zap from one of the HK’s non-lethal weapon systems.

She flinched at the hit, but that was purely theatrical. The Force wasn’t being particularly vocal about what she was supposed to do, but it was still willing to move when she asked it too and redirecting Force lightning had been one of the earliest things she’d worked out how to do.

From the perspective of the HK droid, Ayli knew her clenched fist would look like a reaction to the shock she’d received. The spark of electricity that she was holding inside the fist wasn’t something she had an immediate use for, but it was a weapon and her history had taught her that the more weapons you had available the better.

“By all means, keep talking,” Overwhelming said.

“You’re being careful not to damage us,” Ayli said.

“That can change.”

“Oh? Is your master the forgiving sort? I haven’t read of many Sith who were particularly happy when their orders weren’t followed?” Ayli asked.

The HK unit shocked her again, and the spark in her first grew denser and more fierce.

“No orders were given that you had to enjoy the journey,” Overwhelming said.

“Real torture is off the table though. That’s interesting,” Ayli said, genuinely curious over why Overwhelming wasn’t using the implements that were on display beside the table she was shackled to. “Paralus wants to wait on that. I wonder why?”

“The others will feel our pain,” Monfi said.

“Which would let them intercept us?” Ayli wondered. It wasn’t entirely implausible. She’d already felt Nix reaching out to her and had responded with what little information she could manage to feed back through the stifling shadow of the Dark Side the ship was cloaked in.

Ayli hadn’t been able to give Nix a good sense of where she was but the two of them both knew where she was heading.

Praxis Mar had called to both of them, and, as the worst possible place in the galaxy for them to be drawn to, it made sense that Paralus’s base was there. It also made sense that Nix would make every effort to cut Overwhelming off before they got to Praxis Mar.

Paralus had nearly killed her in the Shadowed Cave, and Ayli had gotten the sense that he had confronted Nix as well. Facing him when he wasn’t extending himself across light years seemed like a fight they were guaranteed to lose, and that was before factoring in the well of power he’d be able to draw on from the Dark Side planet.

Since neither of them wanted to go to Praxis Mar, helping Nix find them sooner rather than far-too-late should have been the wisest move, but Ayli knew it wouldn’t work out like that.

Overwhelming’s ship was a flying horror show that was only “lesser” to Praxis Mar by virtue of the fact that it was orders of magnitude smaller. The people who had died within it numbered in the thousands. On Praxis Mar the number had been billions. In either location though, Paralus would wield far too much power to engage directly. Ayli knew losing fights, and she knew what you did when saw one. 

You found someplace else to fight.

So drawing Nix to intercept Overwhelming’s ship was not the right play.

Destroying Overwhelming’s ship? That was a much better option.

She had no idea how she was going to do that of course, but, as Kelda had mentioned more than once (though far less often that Ayli had expected her too), trusting in the Force meant believing that it was working through you even when you couldn’t understand how.

“Our connections are always there,” Kelda had said. “Those who came before us? They’re not simply part of the Force, not some distant, wispy ghosts that are just out of sight. They live on in our memory and in who we are. They are a part of us, and push us onwards, just as we carry them forward. You’re never lost, and neither are they.”

It was hard to believe that most of the time, and even harder to feel it, but belief can be a choice, and even when the heart is numb and silent, it was possible to remain open to what could be.

“You’re going to keep all these droids here to be menacing now I presume?” Ayli asked, casting her gaze on the rather excessive guard force Overwhelming had deployed.

“If you were properly menaced, you would be silent until you were commanded to speak,” Overwhelming said.

“I thought you wanted to hear what our plans were?” Ayli asked, sensing movement in the Force. 

Something dark and wicked was heading towards them.

“Your plans are irrelevant,” Overwhelming said. “You are unarmed, and helpless. What do you think you can do to change your fate?

“Oh, I have no idea,” Ayli said, with complete honesty. Each of the plans she had come up with were almost certain to lead to a messy demise. 

The Force was her ally though, and the Force moved in mysterious ways.

“But I bet she does,” Ayli said as a Dark Side reflection of herself appeared at the far side of the room and began tearing the HK droids apart with her bare hands.

Space battles are not especially comfortable places to be. Aside from the ever-imminent chance of winding up on the wrong side of a turbo-laser barrage, there was the fact that people tended to die in battles, usually quite a lot of them and the Force wasn’t especially fond of that. That it was all too ready to share the burst of agony on top of the miasma of fear and uncertainty and rage of everyone involved made being in a pitched battle less than enjoyable for Nix.

“Should we be heading in there to help out?” Goldie asked.

“Help out who?” Nix said, glad that they were only ‘near’ the battle which was unfolding rather than in it. At least for the time being.

“You can’t sense who the good guys are?” Goldie asked.

“I sense a lot of angry and frightened people out there,” Nix said. “Motivations though? Not so much.”

“I don’t think Ayli’s caught in that,” Ravas said. “I can’t sense her but the Dark Side ship would stand out even at this distance.”

“Can the evil Jedi hide their ship?” Solna asked. “They told us warping the Xah to cloak themselves was an evil Jedi trick.”

“The word you’re looking for is ‘Sith’,” Kelda said, “Though, to be fair, there certainly have been members of the Jedi order who fell to evil ends without naming themselves as Sith.”

“The Sith arts do include the ability to cloud minds,” Ravas said. “They can hide themselves, their actions, and their aims, but the shadow of the Dark Side is always perceptible. You won’t know that a Sith, specifically, is working against you, but you’ll always be able to tell that the Dark Side is on the rise.”

“I gather that’s how the Galactic Empire rose to power,” Kelda said. “A Sith incited the galactic civil war and Dark Side rose in the strife which followed making it impossible for the Jedi to discern the Sith’s movements and power plays against the overall misery in the galaxy.”

“I’m sensing a lot of misery out there,” Rassi said as a small frigate erupted in a bloom of fire and shrapnel.

“This would be a good hiding spot for the Dark Side vessel,” Ravas said. “But even against this background, it’s presence would stick out.” A worried expression crossed her face. “Probably.”

“Probably?” Solna asked.

“My training in the Sith arts was never, technically, completed,” Ravas said. “When I died, I was still an apprentice.”

“I imagine when you crushed your masters heart into grains of dust that would count as a graduation ceremony, no?” Kelda asked.

“In theory, yes, the only means for a Sith apprentice to become a master is to claim the position through murder, but I was no longer a Sith by then,” Ravas said. “Assuming that’s something I can ever be free of.” Kelda laid a hand on Ravas’ arm in a wordless should of support. “The important point though is that while most Sith would not be capable of hiding the ship in an area like this, I can’t be entirely certain that it would be beyond a Force Lich like Paralus.”

“Then we need to get in there right?” Goldie asked.

Almost as thought in answer to her question, one of the battle cruisers chose that moment to shatter into two pieces as it released the ball of plasma which consumed its midsection.

“They really should have taken their hyperdrive off line before the shooting started,” Nix said. “And no. We’re still far enough off that their scanners will be ignoring us. If we move in, both sides will assume we’re with the other and place us on their ‘To Be Exploded’ list. I know you’re tough, and I know you want to rescue Ayli as much as I do, but neither her nor I want you to get at all exploded, okay?”

“No,” Goldie grumbled in a tone that offered more agreement than her word did.

“Good, because if you two are willing, I think it would be worth trying to sense where Ayli is with the Force,” Nix said.

“We can try,” Rassi said.

“We can find her,” Solna said. “Rassi is really good at that.”

“You’re better,” Rassi said.

Nix let them argue back and forth while she led them back to the cargo hold. There wasn’t anything stopping them from trying the meditation in the cabin, except for how distracting checking the scanners would have been.

As they walked back to hold, Kelda spoke to Nix silently.

“If you have any fears, you will want to find what peace you can with them,” Kelda whisper to Nix in the Force.

“I know. I could affect that they see if I let fear or anger into our communion,” Nix said. “Letting go of those is easier said than done.”

“As a wise old Jedi master allow to assure you that with all your training, that will still be true. Ask me how I know.”

“Even a thousand years as a ghost doesn’t take the edge off things I take it?” Nix asked.

“Maybe two thousand is the magic number. We’ll see.” Kelda winked at her. “That said, our training does help. Use what you know and you all will be fine.”

“Thanks,” Nix said. “For everything so far. I know your condition isn’t exactly optimal, but I don’t know if I’d still be here if not for you and Ravas.”

“I doubt we would be either if not for you and Ayli,” Kelda said. “So just remember that we are with you. Always.”

They arrived at the cargo hold and sat down together in a closer circle than the one they’d danced.

“Okay, I think I understand what Ravas and Kelda are suggesting,” Nix said. “It’s important that you know that you don’t have to do this though. And I don’t just mean now. If you start to feel uncomfortable and want to stop, draw away, break the link. That’s not just for you. Negative emotions can cloud this sort of sharing and quickly twist it into something it shouldn’t be.”

“Like what?” Rassi asked.

“Seeing a vision of someone else, or somewhere else is an incredibly inexact process,” Nix said. “Fear could swing our vision around to the source of the fear or an image of how it might manifest. I’m worried, for example, that we can’t sense the ship because it’s crashed and they’re all dead. If I bring that into our meditation, we might see a vision of the ship in pieces on a planet and dead bodies all around it. It won’t be true, not necessarily, but it will feel true and that can lead to more fear and even worse visions.”

“How do we get rid of our fear then?” Rassi asked.

“You don’t,” Nix said. “There’s a time and place to reject fear and move past it by sheer willpower. That doesn’t banish the fear though, only time will really do that. Instead, for this, you want to acknowledge your fears. Some of them might be silly, but some may be well founded too. Remind yourself that you will deal with all of them but for now you don’t need the warning they’re giving you. You’re working on something else and will get to them when its their turn.”

“That sounds like we’re treating them like children?” Solna said.

“Sure. That’s a fine image for them. Picture your fears as little kids jumping around your ankles. They’re all certain that what they have to tell you is the most important thing in the world, but you know they don’t understand things like you do. You know they can wait and be good little toddlers for just a little bit.”

Rassi laughed and a the ghost of a smile graced Solna’s lips.

Nix closed her eyes and began to center herself, feeling the girls do the same beside her.

Extending her hands, Nix felt their minds join together at the shared touch. Neither Rassi nor Solna had quite mastered the fears but Nix could tell that they were both doing their best to find some distance from the worst of their imaginings.

“Let me show you Ayli,” Nix said, slowly forming an image, purely visual at first, of the woman she felt like she’d known her whole life and at the same time had only just met.

“Stars, she’s beautiful!” Solna said. Which, Nix felt was inarguably true, though she suspected some of her own appreciation of Ayli might have been leaking into the image Nix was sharing of her.

“She’s blue?” Rassi said with a giggle.

“And very strong in the Force,” Nix said, adding the impression of Ayli’s life energy to the image, which drew gasps from both Rassi and Solna. “Do you think you can find her?”

“Yes,” Rassi said.

“Let’s do this,” Solna added and she felt the two of them read out to the stars.

What they found however was not Ayli.

Within the star system but on the opposite end of the battle which raged before them, there was a presence, searching planets and the space between them just as they were.

Tentatively, the presence reached out, seeking the shape and source of the awareness Solna and Rassi were projecting.

Who are you? the presence asked.

Seekers, Nix answered, placing herself in front her wards.

We are seekers as well, the presence asked. There is no darkness in you?

There is darkness in all things, Nix said, but we do not bend to our darkness.

Nor do we, the presence said, we seek my partner and the one who abducted him.

We seek my wife and the one who abducted her, Nix said, gambling on trusting the presence largely because she felt the Force’s approval of them.

Your wife is a Jedi is she not? My partner is a Phantom Stalker.

My wife has Jedi training, though is not perhaps a Jedi exactly. And you and your partner are Padal Horizon Knights are you not?

Nix felt the walls between them fall down.

We should speak with ship comms, the presence said.

Agreed. Less taxing and quicker. Let’s rendezvous on the sunward side of the battle, Nix suggested.

Agreed, the presence said and withdrew.

“What was that?” Rassi asked as the three of them opened their eyes and broke the meditative link which bound them.

“We found someone else who’s looking for Ayli,” Nix said. “Monfi’s partner is out there, probably with her apprentices. We’re going to meet up so we can talk with laser comms and not be overheard by the battle over there.

“Laying in a course now,” Goldie said.

“You know where to go?” Nix asked.

“I’m guessing it’s the single ship that’s heading around the battle and well away from it?” Goldie asked. “I might have gone into active scanning mode since no on in the battle is going to notice anything sort of a target lock, and maybe not even that.”

Nix rolled her eyes, not so much at Goldie but at herself for not anticipating that.

To Goldie’s credit though, the scan did prove to be helpful and the course she worked out kept them well away from the battle’s ever shifting fringes while making quick time to the rendezvous point.

“Goldrunner, this is Corvid 1256,” the voice and image of a Xabrak woman said as a connection between the two ships was established.

“Greetings Corvid 1256, this is Goldrunner, Nix Lamplighter speaking,” Nix said, intrigued by the generic designation for the Horizon Knight’s ship. While it would have sounded boring to most people, to Nix it suggested they did a lot of more undercover work than she would have imagined there was call for.

“Greetings, I am Lasha and I believe we may have information which could be of use to one another.”

“Indeed. We’ve come from the Praxis Mar system, where I am pretty sure the ship which kidnapped our people was heading and they have no arrived there yet,” Nix said. “I’m hoping you’ll have better news on where their trail went.”

“Sadly, that’s what I was hoping to get from you,” Lasha said. “We followed their trail from Halphi to here. We found signs of them in two systems leading here, but we lost them in the Haldoni system.”

“That’s one jump before here,” Goldie put in helpfully.

“Yes,” Lasha said. “I can’t sense them here at all though.”

“There aren’t any other good hyperspace lanes out of Haldoni,” Goldie said.

Nix inhaled, breathing in calm and clearing her thoughts.

Ayli was alive.

She was out there.

And she needed help.

“Then we’re going to have start looking at the bad ones,” Nix said.

There’s a thing about someone insisting that they had to see you and just not taking “no” for an answer, a thing Nix had learned early on in her career – those are the people you usually just do not want to meet at all.

“If Praxis Mar is calling to you, why are we heading away from it at maximum sublight speed?” Kelda asked.

“Because the nav computer hasn’t worked out the jump coordinates yet,” Nix said, doing her best to put everything out of her mind. 

Ideally she only wanted to shut out the booming, wordless voice of the planet that had been swallowed by the Dark Side, but it was loud enough that she could either close out everything or let the planet’s call crash through her loud of to rattle her bones.

“I’m inclined to agree with her decision here,” Ravas said.

“We’ve had poor luck with running away before,” Kelda said.

“And poorer luck with Praxis Mar,” Ravas countered. “If we do have to face Paralus there, we’d be better off all together.”

“Point taken,” Kelda said.

Nix cast a glance over at Rassi and Solna, who’d settled into the comms and engineering chairs behind her. Neither of the girls looked like they were doing especially well and Nix’s guess was that their condition had nothing to do with the near death waltz they’d danced.

“Leaving seems good,” Solna said. “We shouldn’t be here. Nothing should be here.”

“She’s not wrong about that,” Ravas said.

“What is that thing?” Rassi asked, huddled in on herself.

“What you’re feeling in Praxis Mar, a planet which has been lost to the Dark Side of the Force,” Kelda said.

“We spent a few centuries there,” Ravas added. “It’s as unpleasant as you’re imagining.”

“They may be getting it worse than any of us did,” Nix said. “The people of the Silent Enclave are incredibly sensitive to the Force. What they’re feeling from this distance is probably what we were feeling at ground level. Or possible even worse.”

“How could you stand to be on a planet like that?” Rassi asked.

“You’ve grown up in the enclave which is so quiet in the Force that I couldn’t even sense Nix when she was there,” Kelda said. “The rest of the galaxy is, not quite so calm.”

“It’s all like this?” Solna asked.

“Not in the slightest,” Ravas said. “This is monumentally bad. Short of the site of an in-progress massacre, you won’t find anything that comes close to be as unpleasant.”

“Which isn’t to say that there aren’t plenty of places where the Force is twisted and gnarled and you will feel like misery is pouring down on you like rain,” Kelda said.

“How do you even handle that?” Rassi asked.

“It varies,” Ravas said. “I can assure you that trying to grab as much powerful as possible so that you can force the galaxy to align with how you believe it should be is, most assuredly, not the right answer though.”

“Nor is shutting everything else out and trying to meditate yourself to a higher plane,” Kelda said.

“You take it as you go,” Nix said. “If you want the real secret to adulthood there it is. We’re all just bumbling along as best we can. Some people like to make endless plans, some react mindlessly and hope for the best, some cast aside all responsibility and belief that faith in whatever they can find will make everything turn out right. Everyone else, which is pretty close to everyone, we make it up as we go and do what we can.”

“That doesn’t sound like it’s enough to deal with something like this Praxis Mar place,” Solna said.

“It’s not,” Nix said. “That’s why we’re running away.”

“Got the jump coordinates when you’re ready to go Mom,” Goldie said.

“Probability that our target system is the one Ayli’s prison ship would have gone through?” Nix asked before hitting the lightspeed jump button.

“High 90’s,” Goldie said. “The next nearest system with a hyperspace lane here is another seven systems past us. Assuming they didn’t overshoot and come back around by an unnecessarily long road, we should find them in the target system.”

“Let’s hit it then,” Nix said and punched the Goldrunner in hyperspace.

The moment the stars began to shift, she heard a despairing wail as Praxis Mar fell impossibly far behind them.

Once the familiar blue swirl of hyperspace filled the front viewport, the crushing weight of the planet’s insistent call dropped away leaving Nix’s thoughts clear once more.

“When we arrive, go to full active scan okay?” she asked, calling up the star charts for their destination.

“That’s going to attract attention,” Goldie said. “Are we picking a fight?”

“From what Ayli was able to convey, it’s a fight that we’d lose,” Nix said.

“Why didn’t we bring Thirty Two then?” Goldie asked.

“Well, first of all, we can’t just take command of Sali’s fleet,” Nix said.

“Aunt Sali would be fine with that,” Goldie said. “And Aunt Zin would smack her if she wasn’t.”

Nix laughed.

“While that is probably true, Sali has her fleet blockading Praxis for a good reason, and I’d rather not let Paralus bring in whatever reinforcements that blockade is holding at bay.” Nix suppressed the small pang of longing for Sali’s presence. Sali had reached the point of accepting that the two of them were not cut out to be a romantic couple, in part because Sister Zindiana was a much better partner in crime, and in part because Sali and Nix fit together so much better as friends than they had as lovers. Not that being lovers had been terrible, but as friends there was just a little bit more sanity in there relationship than there had been.

In the face of possibly losing Ayli and having to deal with the overwhelming might of a Dark Side planet though, Nix was tempted to think her life could use a bit more of Sali and Zin’s unique brand of madness.

“A thought,” Kelda said. “If the ship’s scans will draw attention from the locals, why not ask our young friends for their input. As you said, they are quite gifted in sensing the Force.”

“They’ve never met Ayli though. They wouldn’t know what to listen for,” Nix said, having thought of and already rejected that possibility.

“But you do,” Ravas said.

“I can’t just tell them though,” Nix said.

“Of course not,” Kelda said. “You’ll show them.”

“You did say they were both especially gifted in sensing the Force,” Ravas said.

“What would we have to do?” Rassi asked.

“And why can’t you reach your wife now, you were talking to her before weren’t you?” Solna asked.

“It wasn’t exactly talking,” Nix said. “Not with words.”

“Well, whatever it was, can’t you just do that again?” Solna asked, fidgeting her seat as though the answer might be enough to corrupt her.

Or maybe it was her desire to understand that she was afraid was corrupting her. Nix put a pin in that thought. She and Solna and Rassi were going to have a long conversation at some point about what ‘corruption’ really meant and how they needed to be honest with themselves rather than allowing themselves to be strangled by dogma.

“It’s tiring for her,” Nix said, banishing the frustration from her voice. They were moving towards Ayli as fast as Goldie’s engines could take them, which meant it was a time for patience, and with the girls she wanted, above all else, to show them they could trust her. “I held onto her for as long as she could manage it but communing with the Force inside a Dark Side Nexus is like tearing yourself in half. Part of you needs to be open and part of you needs to shut out the urges and impulses the Dark Side will flood into you.”

“Can you feel her at all?” Rassi asked, her whole face an expression of unmasked concern.

“No,” Nix admitted with a shake of her head. “Or, not like I want to. I know she’s still alive. I know they’re not hurting her. Not yet, but I can’t imagine that’s not a tool they plan to break out if they need to compel our behavior.”

“It’s not a tool we’re going to give the opportunity to make any use of,” Ravas said.

“That’s the plan,” Nix said. “I don’t know if I’m comfortable including Rassi and Solna in it though.”

“Why? What’s wrong with us helping?” Rassi asked.

“We can do it,” Solna said, which surprised Nix given the girl’s overall discomfort with anything even Jedi-adjacent.

“You have the ability, absolutely,” Nix said. “But there’s danger in looking for someone in general. The local pirates or law enforcement or whatever they call themselves may not be able to detect you scanning a system looking for someone, but other Force users might be able to and they might be able to lay traps.”

“We know to avoid corruptions in the Xah,” Solna said. “We weren’t entirely sheltered.”

“There’s corruptions, pockets of the Dark Side, and then there are traps with are specifically intended to go unnoticed until that can do something nasty, like show you what you’re afraid you might see, or reveal your location to the person who set the trap.”

“How do you avoid those?” Rassi asked.

“I have no idea,” Nix said. “I’ve only read about them.”

“When I was a Jedi we would simply trigger the trap,” Kelda said. “That was usually the best method of finding the person who’d put it together. A frightening vision is nothing against a prepared mind, and if they knew where we were, so too would we learn their location.”

“More than a few Jedi fell into Sith clutches thanks to that sort of hubris though,” Ravas said. “And the ones who didn’t were trained in the sort of mental games the Jedi and Sith play with each other since they were children.”

“Which is why I don’t think it’s a good idea for Rassi and Solna to help out here. A general system is dangerous enough but this would be looking for someone we know is trapped in a Dark Side nexus.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Rassi said. “We can do this.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Nix said. “You’ve been through enough and this isn’t your fight.”

“I think it is,” Solna said. “If I moved the Xah to bring you to us to help us escape, you had to be following it because we fit into your life in a way that would balance things. This might be why we’re here.”

“Nope,” Nix said. “You’re here because you’re choosing to be and that’s it. You don’t owe me or the galaxy anything else. Your happiness doesn’t come with a price tag.”

“Solna’s right,” Rassi said. “You helped us because that’s who you want to be, even if the Xah or the Force isn’t telling us to help you, I think that’s how we become who we want to be.”

Nix drew in a long breath and let it out in a sigh.

This wasn’t an argument she was going to win. She didn’t need the Force to tell her that. She had plenty of memories of being a teenager to know how stubborn young humans could be.

“They needn’t be as exposed as you imagine,” Ravas said.

“Indeed. If you are joined together, they can offer you their sense so that if you do encounter anything it will be your defenses which stand against it first,” Kelda said.

“Or more precisely, ours,” Ravas said.

“I am still stretched a bit thin,” Kelda said. “Dispelling Paralus’ shade was a bit taxing.”

“Then you’ll this to me,” Ravas said. 

“Whatever you’re going to do, I would get ready,” Goldie said. “We’ll be dropping out of hyperspace in about ten seconds.”

Nix turned her attention back to the passive scanners as the stars slammed back into place, only to find she didn’t need the sensors right away. 

Not when the lights from a fantastic battle between two armadas were exploding in the distance. 

Nix had to guess where the proper place was for her in the imagined circle Rassi and Solna were dancing around.

Or perhaps, more accurately, she had to make that place for herself, since Rassi and Solna were entirely focused on each other and balanced only alternate sides of the circle.

To her vast surprise though, gliding into the dance was all but effortless. Apparently, later dancers joining in was part of the ritual, which was interesting for a trial-by-not-quite-combat sort of thing.

That the ritual also anticipated late arrivals was the likely reason she felt her strength flow out rapidly the moment she began to follow the proper footstep. The drain stopped as she leveled out with her two young wards, who seemed to have been strengthened equally by the Force which had been drawn from Nix.

So that was fair.

Which wasn’t exactly what Nix had in mind.

Watching from the sidelines she’d barely been able to sense the girls at all, much less what they were doing to themselves. It had been Kelda who’d observed, silently, that they were slowing all of their vital processes to grow quieter and quieter, which Ravas noted could do a fair bit more damage to them than simple bruising.

Since neither Rassi nor Solna were going to allow themselves to fail the other, Nix, without any preternatural help from the Force, foresaw that the dance was going to end with both of them in dire need of medical attention. She could have called an end to the ritual there, but that would have done the sort of harm that no medical attention could fix.

Joining in on the mayhem may not exactly have been the ‘responsible adult thing to do’, but it felt like the best path she had available between unpleasant alternatives.

Which wasn’t to suggest that slowing her heart to where it was only barely beating was in any sense pleasant.

Each step she took had her muscles calling out for blood, which her heart, solid, reliable organ that is was, usually easily provided. With the work stoppage at the central blood processing plant however, the muscles work orders were encountering difficulties being fulfilled.

There was an obvious answer to that problem of course.

Nix could use the Force.

She could lift engine parts, or even entire ship’s at this point, if she set her mind to it. Moving her own blood was trivial by comparison (in theory moving another person’s blood was doable to, though Nix knew anything with blood also had enough presence in the Force to at least somewhat resist that sort of nonsense).

There was a problem with the simple solution though. Like there always was. Using the Force to make up for the stillness inside her would send out ripples like a boulder dropped into lake, and in a dance where the winner was determined by who could be the most “silent” in the Force, ‘cheating’ with Force powers would be an immediate loss.

So Nix trudged on, each step heavier and weaker than the one before.

She was older and stronger than either Rassi or Solna. She had a year of formal training in using the Force and a lifetime of intuitive practice with it. If it came to any other sort of “Force battle” she would have completely outclassed the two young girls she was competing with.

After another two passes around the circle though, Nix had to concede that both of her opponents were more practiced at the specific technique the dance tested.

A part of her had to smile at the thought – not that she had the blood left to raise her lips into even a faint smirk.

But, hey, she’d gone on a voyage to learn new Force practices and look, here she was dancing in the middle of one! Victory, right?

Victories sucked, Nix decided.

Not that she was going to lose.

Neither Rassi, nor Solna were going to give up on each other, but Nix had an advantage. She wasn’t going to give up on either one of them.

The darkness closing in around the edges of her eyes sight had other ideas on that account but Nix was able to push it away with the thought of how desperate Rassi must have been in the days, and weeks, and even years leading up to their meeting.

To entrust herself to a stranger, a monstrous one if what her people told her was true, that could only have come from the sort of misery that could have left her hating everyone on principal.

But Rassi didn’t hate people.

At least not other people.

Nix had wrestled with valuing herself long enough to recognize the deep need in Rassi for someone to believe in her.

That carried Nix through one step.

The darkness didn’t diminish in strength though.

Nix’s heart had slowed to where it wasn’t beating at all.

Which meant neither where Rassi or Solna’s.

Which meant they were all in danger.

But the girls weren’t giving up. 

Because Solna had been the person Rassi needed and was willing to give her life if needed to not lose that.

Solna, who hadn’t abandoned the beliefs of the Silent Enclave. Solna who couldn’t deny the terrible truths about the Enclave she’d been presented with.

Was this dance and its worst ending a means of escape from all that?

Not consciously, Nix thought. Solna didn’t want to destroy herself, despite how easy of an answer as that would be. Solna burned with fury and righteousness. She didn’t want to escape the world, she wanted to fix it, to make it how it should be, no matter what it cost her.

And the most important part of the world, was Rassi, the girl she hadn’t been able to save except by wishing with all her heart and witnessing the destruction of the only way of life she’d ever known.

Nix’s vision was gone by the time she finished the next step.

Hearing dwindled to nothing with the following one.

In the darkness, there were sources of strength remaining though.

Rage at the unfairness of the lives gives to Rassi and Solna.

Fear at failing them.

Despair at yet another impossible burden on top of the prospect that she might lose the person dearest to her if they couldn’t rescue Ayli.

Nix glanced at those childhood companions of hers, long “allies” who had only rarely done her any good whatsoever, and never without regrettable costs. She could have called on any of them to survive, and even to “win”. 

Except it wouldn’t have been the sort of “win” that fixed anything.

Dominating the girls, even with Solna’s shield, might have been possible, and would have settled the matter.

Right up until they grew strong enough, maybe in a few weeks, maybe in a few year, to throw off the compulsion. Their reaction to the betrayal then wasn’t something Nix needed to guess at, nor did she need to spare it a thought to know how knowing what she’d done would sicken her own heart.

So, no, the Dark Side could keep it’s quick and easy answers. 

Nix was one with the Force and the Force was with her.

For one more step.

She didn’t move her blood, she didn’t move her breath, or her body.

She simply reached inside, found the love that still beat within her silent heart and too a single step more.

And that was all she could do.

The darkness swam in to take her thoughts and she felt a ghostly hand holding her up.

“Not sure which of you three is the least sensible,” Ravas said as life and strength roared back into the silence that had overtaken Nix. “And I want you to consider that I’m the one saying that, despite the idiotic things I’ve done.”

“The girls?” Nix said, blinking to get her vision back.

“They’re fine,” Kelda said, kneeling down beside an unconscious Solna. 

Rassi was on the ground as well but was already starting to come around.

“What happened?” Nix asked, her thoughts still looping around themselves in little swirls.

“You won,” Kelda said. “Or at least you held out longer than they did. We’ll have to see if they’ll honor that since they hadn’t exactly asked you to join in their trial.”

“The dance accepted her,” Rassi said, pushing herself up to a sitting position and holding her head in her hands.

“And she outlasted us,” Solna said with a groan. “I don’t know how though.”

“She didn’t manipulate the Xah,” Rassi said.

“I didn’t have to,” Nix said. “This was a contest of wills, right?”

“And skill with the Xah,” Solna said.

“I’ve got a few years of experience on you in terms of skill, and for the rest? I only had to carry myself through the dance. You two were carrying your uncertainties too.”

“What, we…” Solna started to say.

“We weren’t as centered as she was,” Rassi said.

Solna frowned but didn’t try to correct the statement.

“I meant what I said when I joined the dance,” Nix said. “You’re both carrying a lot of undeserved pain. I can’t lift that from you, I don’t know how. But I do know that with time and a fresh perspective it can change. If I won anything here, I ask that you let me be that perspective.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Rassi said.

“She wants to us to believe her when she says things about us,” Solna said.

“I just want you to listen, really listen,” Nix said. “What you believe is ultimately up to you. All I can offer is something for you to consider.”

“We can do that,” Rassi said, and Solna nodded in agreement.

“Hate to break into this conversation,” Goldie said, “but we’re back in normal space and I’m getting a secure hail from Thirty-two.”

“Heading to the bridge now,” Nix said, jogging on only slightly unsteady legs to the secure console.

A hail from Thirty-two was what they’d been expecting. Hopefully something along the lines ‘we caught the ship, Ayli’s now safe in my office, and the people who took her are an expanding cloud of gas particles’. Nix wasn’t expecting that of course, but it was still a nice mental image to hold her nerves at bay.

A secure hail though suggested that Thirty-two felt the need to avoid warning their quarry what was waiting for them. The chance that the Evil Kidnappers weren’t aware that their planet was under a loose blockade by a quasi-pirate fleet seemed remote, and if Nix’s suspicions were correct, the kidnappers had every intention of making their presence known. Why settle for one Jedi-trained Force user when you could lure in four after all? 

“Goldrunner here,” Nix announced after hitting the ‘decrypt’ button.

“Nix? So good to hear from you,” Thirty-two said. “I only wish I had the news to report that you wished to hear.”

“No sign of my wife yet?” Nix asked.

“You’re the first ship we’ve registered entering the system in the last week,” Thirty-two said. “But that’s not the news that’s going to disturb you.”

Nix heard the others arrive behind her and suppressed her groan at Thirty Two’s words.

“I don’t want to ask, do I?” she said.

“Most likely not,” Thirty-two said. “Which is why I will tell you anyways. Praxis Mar is active.”

“Define ‘active’ please?” Nix said, knowing there was no definition that would be either comforting or good.

“Tectonically, energetically, probably spiritually too, though we don’t have sensors for that I’m afraid,” Thirty-two said. 

“You don’t need them,” Ravas said. “You’re right. I can sense it from here.”

“What is that place? Why are we here?” Solna asked, staring out the forward viewport at the tiny pale dot in the distance that was Praxis Mar.

“We need to go. This is wrong,” Rassi said.

“I don’t know if we can,” Nix said slowly, the echoes in the Force from the conflict on Praxis Mar washing over her.

Praxis Mar had called to several people, but it was calling to her most insistently of all.

Solna knew Rassi wasn’t an idiot. Rassi was, in point of fact, brilliant. That was why it was so incredibly maddening that Rassi couldn’t see how wrong she was.

“I’m not wrong you know,” Rassi said, which wasn’t a sign that she was reading Solna’s thoughts. Solna knew that her sinful shield was still firmly in place.

She also knew that the shield wasn’t really sinful.

Accepting that fact was more difficult of course. Her head could see the logic of Rassi’s argument. Her heart though was still poisoned by, basically, her entire life up a few hours until earlier. 

The shield wasn’t the most bitter pill she had to swallow though. 

Reflecting on the past, a part of her knew that Nix had been right.

She was the one at fault for where Rassi had ended up.

Solna had never knowingly corrupted the Xah. She hadn’t reached out with her will and demanded that the future change to suit her desires. She hadn’t bent anyone’s will to her own, or pushed aside the gross physical laws of the galaxy in order to move pieces of it where she wanted them to be.

But she had wished, silently and often, that Rassi, or more accurately Rassi and herself would find a place where they belonged.

She hadn’t moved the Xah, but her heartfelt yearning had been heard and answered through the most subtle of nudges, bending the fates of Nix, the ghosts, Rassi, herself, and probably the entire Silent Enclave to where a meeting was more than likely and the outcome they’d arrived at essentially inevitable.

Or it had been subtle right up until they reached the precipice of change, after which Goldie had blown up a building and they’d fled across the stars which was sort of the opposite of subtlety.

That alone would have gotten her expunged, even if she’d been able to remain perfectly faithful to the beliefs she’d been raised with.

Beliefs she still felt herself clinging to.

It wasn’t right to change the fates of others.

It could only be a sin to impose your will against the natural flow which life chose to follow.

To a part of her, a large part still, that had to be true. 

Silence in the Xah was wise. It was good. It was safe.

But it hadn’t been for Rassi’s parents.

And even all of Solna’s training hadn’t given her the skills to be quiet enough.

It felt like everything in her was crumbling down, basalt granite foundation loosing all cohesion as the world she knew turned to drifting sand.

But against all of that, there was Rassi.

Rassi who had always been too big, too loud, too easy of a target for everyone who wanted to take out their frustrations. Rassi who’d been hurt time and again, and who had crawled inside herself and become so silent that even Solna sometimes couldn’t find her. Rassi who’d let Solna in and trusted her and believed in her, even when Solna hadn’t been able to be there for her.

Rassi, who for the first time in as long as Solna could remember, had hope in her eyes.

Solna wasn’t going to let anyone take that from Rassi, most especially not Rassi herself. 

“Is this the area?” Solna asked, casting her gaze up to one of the ship’s camera. Goldie would be able to hear her no matter where Solna was, but looking at the camera made it seem more like a conversation.

“It’s as much of an open space as I’ve got,” Goldie said. “We’re not carrying much cargo at the moment, but if you need more I can drop the boxes at the far end of the room off on a tether.”

Solna dragged Rassi through the door as it whooshed open and surveyed the space. It was plenty big enough for a Silent Dance, but the current occupant of the room seemed to be engaged in something that might be a bad idea to interrupt.

“Nix?” Rassi asked when she saw the Jedi floating crossed legged with her eyes closed. The Xah was swirling around her, flying away across the tiniest of gaps and the span of space to a distant star.

“Come on in,” Nix said, without opening her eyes or descending to the ground.

“What are you doing?” Rassi asked. 

Solna was curious to hear the answer too, despite the stab of fear that the answer might be enough to show her how to do the same thing. With how easy the mental shield had been to learn, it seemed a reasonable worry that all of the Jedi arts might be effectively contagious if you were exposed to them.

“Checking on my wife,” Nix said.

“Is…is she okay?” Rassi asked.

“She’s on a ship that’s a Dark Side nexus, trapped in a prison cell, and being delivered to an enemy whose apparently more powerful than both of us combined,” Nix said, uncoiling her legs and releasing the Xah so she could stand up rather than float. “Surprisingly though, yes, she’s doing fine. That’s going to change if they make it to Praxis Mar though.”

“What are you going to do?” Solna asked, the questioning leaping from her lips before she could think to stop it.

“I think I’m supposed to say ‘trust in the Force’?” Nix said, glancing over at a spot where the two ghosts appeared.

“Only if you believe you can,” Kelda said. “I mean it is a good idea, but sometimes we need to actually tell the Force what it is we want. Clear communication is, shockingly, an important part of even that relationship.”

“I can’t help but feel that was a dig aimed in my direction,” Ravas said.

“You always were the perceptive one,” Kelda said.

“In this case, I’m thinking we go with clear communication and all the gunships we can scrounge up,” Nix said.

“Music to my ears,” Goldie said. “Do I get the Quad Turbo Laster battery now?”

“Sadly my darling, there’s not enough time to install one,” Nix said. “Also your power system would need a complete overhaul to handle the load.”

“Right. Save Mom Two first, then proper upgrades, got it,” Goldie said.

“I also believe our wards here have something they need to resolve?” Nix said.

“How did you…?” Rassi asked.

“Goldie mentioned a dance and you’re not in your room,” Nix said. “Sensing you in the Force is harder than sensing either of these two,” she gestured to the ghosts, “but some things aren’t hard to work out with simple intuition.”

“We would like to settle a matter with a Silent Dance,” Solna said, knowing she didn’t need to ask for formal approval. Nix wouldn’t know what she was approving after all, and she wasn’t an Elder of the Silent Enclave, but it still felt right to ask for permission.

“Goldie mentioned coffins?” Nix asked, taking a seat on a crate at the side of the cargo hold.

“Oh, we won’t need those,” Rassi said. “The Silent Dance isn’t dangerous.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Solna said, prompted to honesty by Nix’s apparent acceptance of their plan. “If both of the dancers are skilled enough and neither is willing to concede, the dance can push them to where bruises or worse occur.”

“This is how the Enclave resolved disputes?” Nix asked.

“It’s one of the tools we have,” Rassi said. Solna could hear the lingering remnants of connection Rassi felt to the Enclave in the ‘we’, even as the coals of her own connection to them burned down lower and lower.

“Is it acceptable for me to watch?” Nix asked.

“Yes, but you can’t interfere,” Solna said.

“Just so that I’m clear, is that ‘can’t’ as in ‘it would be culturally inappropriate’, or ‘can’t’ as in ‘doing so would cause grave harm to one or both of you’?” Nix asked.

“As you shouldn’t,” Rassi said.

“Okay,” Nix said, and leaned back on the crate.

“I feel like our master would have put a stop to a fight before it happened no matter what form it took,” Ravas said.

“They did. Several times. Look where that got us,” Kelda said, taking a seat on one of the other crates/

“I’m not so unhappy with where it got us, but I’ll agree we could have gotten her by far easier roads,” Ravas said, sitting beside Kelda on her crate rather than finding one of her own.

That ghosts could be cuddly was something Solna had never considered and would have been extremely puzzling if everything else about her present wasn’t much father removed from the life she was used to.

“What are the boundaries?” Rassi asked, walking across the cargo hold to take a spot at the edge of an imaginary circle between them.

“Our extents and no further,” Solna said. She wasn’t going to hurt Rassi, but she did intend to fight so hard Rassi would have no option but to admit Solna was right.

“And the words?” Rassi asked, following the proper form even as she cast aside everything else the Silent Enclave had taught them.

“You will understand which of us is wrong. You will see the worth I see in you. You will hear the truth of my sin and you will carry none of its weight on your shoulders,” Solna said, naming the stakes she was fighting for before completing the proper form, “and the silence?”

“You will understand which of us is wrong. You will see the innocence I see in you. You will hear the shriek of my failure and will accept me as outcast and broken,” Rassi said.

Which Solna would never do.

What Rassi viewed as a failure to be what she should have been, the perfect Silent Doll for the Enclave, Solna knew to be a triumph of who Rassi was.

“In three beats we begin then,” Solna said and felt her heartbeat pause as it synced with Rassi’s.

“In two beats we begin,” Rassi said.

“In one beat, we begin,” they said together and stilled their breathing.

And then the dance started.

Solna took a step to her right, traversing the circle as Rassi did the same, the Xah within them slowing, and slowing, and slowing.

Another step and the stillness of their breath spread to the hearts, the shared beating slowing together, step after step after step.

With their hearts held in ever deepening silence, the blood in their veins began to slow and yet still they danced, one step around the circle, after another, twirling to face outwards and inwards as they went, their hands and arms describing glyphs of perseverance and intention in the air.

Solna’s body screamed for her to drawn on the Xah, to move her blood, to bring air in and out of her lungs, to power her thoughts, to keep herself alive.

And she refused.

To move the Xah even with the smallest ripple was to forfeit the dance, and to forfeit the dance meant allowing Rassi to continue to believe the terrible lies she was telling herself.

Across the circle, Solna could see Rassi struggling. There were some advantages to being smaller, but Solna knew her hyperactive metabolism was going to work against her as much as Rassi’s bulk would.

It didn’t matter though. 

Rassi would crumble first.

Not because she was weaker, but because she was in the wrong, and she knew it.

Solna had seen the confirmation in Rassi’s eyes. There’d been no disagreement with Nix there. Rassi hadn’t tried to hide that either. She knew Solna had sinned. She knew who deserved the blame for their situation, no matter how any of them tried to pretend it wasn’t okay that she’d driven the two of them from their home.

No matter how much Solna was having trouble regretting her actions enough, or feeling the  guilt she was so clearly due.

Guilt which should have pressed her onwards. Shame should have fired her resolve to prove that she was the one who deserved punishment, not Rassi.

Never Rassi.

Guilt and shame were a weak fuel though. Step by step they went on, and Solna felt her strength draining away. She’d pledged that their battle should only be unto their limits and she was fast approaching hers. As the end of her strength loomed every closer though, Rassi showed no signs of faltering. 

Solna’s best friend was pushing herself relentlessly forward to prove what? That the Enclave had been right? That Rassi’s true self was a mistake, a broken thing to be discarded.

Anger rose in Solna’s breast but before she could draw on it for strength, a new dancer joined the circle.

“My words and my silence are this,” Nix said. “That you will understand that you are both right, and both wrong. You will see yourselves as I see you. You will hear the words you should have heard long ago and know that you are neither sinners, nor unworthy.”

Solna was falling apart. Rassi could see it happening, but she didn’t know how to put Solna back together.

Which was typical.

Why would Rassi ever think she could fix anyone else when she was such a broken mess herself?

“You want to abandon the Xah?” Solna asked, horror creeping over her at the thought.

“No, I don’t want to die or anything like that,” Rassi said, seeing only belated how that might have sounded. “I just want to give up the…I don’t know…whatever we have that lets us hear it and corrupt it. I want to be like the people in the markets. They don’t go around messing up the Xah all the time like we do. They just live their lives and it’s fine.”

“Like we do?” Solna asked, and Rassi could head the pain Solna was trying to hide.

“You’ve never corrupted anything,” Rassi said, putting all the steel she could find inside her into the declaration. Solna had to understand that, even if Nix was right about who’d shaped their fate to bring them here.

“But you think this is my fault.” It was a whisper so quiet Rassi wouldn’t have been sure she’d heard it at all, except for the scream in the Force that accompanied it.

“No. Solna, no. Look at me,” she took Solna’s face in her hands and pulled her friends eyes up until they met her own. “You saved me.”

“We’re on the run and being hunted by our own people,” Solna said. “Tovos will come for us, and the others. Assuming they don’t just expunge us both.”

“You. Saved. Me,” Rassi said. “They were going to come for me sooner or later. We both know that. Maybe they wouldn’t have expunged me, but Primus Dolon would not have let someone like me live. People thought I was a danger to the enclave already. He would have made sure there was an “accident” or I would have been sent on a mission where the accidents could create themselves. No one wanted me there.”

“I did,” Solna said. “I do.”

Rassi drew her into a hug.

“I know. Do you know how much it means to me that you came?” she asked.

“What was I supposed to do? Let you leave?”

“Anyone else would have. But you’re not anyone else. You’re the best thing the Silent Enclave ever produced.”

“I hate you,” Solna said over a tearful snuffle.

“I know,” Rassi said. “But I’m still right.”

“Shut up,” Solna hugged Rassi tighter and they stayed like that for a long moment, the warmth of each other cast against the empty cold of the unfathomable distance they’d already fled, and the uncaring chill of the galaxy that awaited them.

“You didn’t corrupt anything,” Rassi said. “But I know why Nix said what she did.”

“Why?” Solna asked, their hug more relaxed by not released at all.

“Let me ask you a question first, okay? Maybe a few of them,” Rassi said.

“No, I don’t like Milgo or his brother Scavto,” Solna said, answering an old, teasing accusation as though she hadn’t already demonstrably proven that.

“Good,” Rassi said, holding her closer. “You’re too good for them.”

“What? Why were you trying to throw me at them then!” Solna tried to shove away from Rassi but Rassi didn’t let her go.

“Because they were the best of a bunch of terrible choices,” Rassi said, “and I didn’t think either of them would care if we stayed friends.”

“You’re an idiot. A complete and total idiot. Let me go, I need to hit you,” Solna said.

“Nope. I mean you’re right, but I’d be a bigger idiot to let you go,” Rassi said. “And that wasn’t my question.”

Solna groaned, but in place of making an attempt to pull away and make good on her threat, nestled in closer and groaned in exasperation.

“Go on then, ask,” she said.

“You learned how to do something from Ravas?” Rassi said, with a certainty that suggested it wasn’t really a question.

“Yes. A Jedi trick. A sin,” Solna said.

“It’s not,” Rassi said. “I mean even by the standards of the Enclave, it’s not.”

“What are you talking about? Of course it is. I’m twisting the Xah into what I want.”

“Nope.”

“What? You can’t just say ‘nope’. I’m doing it right now. I know exactly what I’m doing!” The irritation in Solna’s voice was an oddly welcome sign. Solna rarely cried, but there was a fire in her that Rassi was sure could light the heavens ablaze if that was ever warranted.

“I can, because I can feel it. It’s shielding your thoughts right?” Rassi asked, mostly certain of that but aware that she could be missing a few nuances.

“Yes. She was able to read my mind, and then she showed me how to block it,” Solna said. “I know it’s a sin, but I just…I can’t let someone hear what I’m thinking. I…”

“It would be worse than being naked at a full camp dinner,” Rassi suggested and felt Solna’s nod of agreement. “So, what your doing is a good thing then.”

“No! It’s good for me, but that Xah…” Solna started to say before Rassi cut her off with a squeeze.

“I can feel your Xah, and I can feel the Xah around you,” Rassi said, opening her mind so that if Solna reached out to her, she’d see the truth in Rassi’s next words. “Do you know what you’re doing to the flow of the Xah? Nothing. You are as quiet as you ever are and the Force is flowing through and around you just like it always does. There is literally no difference between how you are now and how you were yesterday, at least not with the shield you made. You’re just a bit more tense today than yesterday, but I can’t imagine why that would be.”

Solna poked her in the ribs, which Rassi squeaked in response to but had to admit was deserved.

“How’s that possible though?” Solna asked. “I am definitely doing something with the Xah, or the Force, or whatever.”

“Next question,” Rassi said. “Nix told us what the Expunging Rite is, and how it’s done. Is there any chance, even the tiniest one, that someone, like say Primus Dolon, who uses it, is not controlling the Xah and manipulating it to get it to do what he wants?”

“No,” Solna admitted. “To kill someone like that. It wouldn’t be possible without corrupting the Xah to an unimaginable degree.”

“Which is the biggest conceivable sin there could be, right?”

“Well may not the biggest, or, no, you’re right. It doesn’t get worse than that. Every other bad thing I can think of it simply just as bad,” Solna.

“So, this questions a big one and I think it answers yours about what you’re doing, and what you did,” Rassi said. “Would the teachings of someone like that be the truth, or would they be something that served their own interest?”

“Yes but our entire society can’t be built on lies. People would see them,” Solna said.

“Let me ask this then, you are incredibly talented, but you still picked the shielding trick up almost instantly. If it’s that easy, and it make no ripples in the Force, then why wouldn’t it have been taught to us from when we were little kids?”

“Maybe it’s something only Force adepts like the Jedi can do?” Solna suggested weakly.

“The Xah and the Force are the same thing,” Rassi said. “We have a different name for it because we have a different relationship to it, but both names refer to the binding between all of us and all things. Anything a Jedi can do, we can do too.”

“Or maybe I’m just defective and should have been a Jedi,” Solna said, audibly pouting.

“I will literally fight you,” Rassi said. “I will have Goldie clear room in the cargo hold and I will fight you in a Silent Dance, and force you to see that you are not defective. At all.”

“You can’t beat me in a Silent Dance,” Solna said with a smirk in her voice.

“Of course not. But I can keep going for a very long time. However long it take to get it into that stubborn head of yours.”

“I would like to see you try,” Solna said, her old familiar competitive spirit coming to the surface at last.

“It’s on then! Goldie!” Rassi called out.

And was met with only silence as a response.

“Huh, I guess they were sincere about giving us privacy?” Solna said, which apparently neither of them had fully believed.

“Right. Gotta hit the button on the wall,” Rassi said and started to get up.

“Nope,” Solna said, clinging to her and holding her in place. “I don’t want to fight you.”

“Good. Then don’t pick up on someone I love,” Rassi said.

They sat together in silence for a while before Solna let out a long breath as a thought unwound from where it had been constricting her heart.

“I put us here, didn’t I?” she asked.

“A lot of things put us here,” Rassi said. “If Primus Dolon wasn’t such a evil scumbag, we’d still be in the Enclave. If Nix hadn’t been questing for information on people like us, we wouldn’t have met her.  If I hadn’t felt the Force pulling me towards her I wouldn’t have risked talking to an outsider.”

“But I was the one who bent it all to happen like it did,” Solna said.

“I think it’s like your shield,” Rassi said. “And I think what the Silent Enclave taught us was wrong.”

“Well, yeah, making sure we couldn’t keep our thoughts secret from the Primus suggests they taught us a lot of wrong things, but how’s it like the shield?”

“We were taught that the Jedi warped and twisted to Xah and that our emotion did that too if we didn’t keep them hidden and inside ourselves. Your shield shows us that’s not true though. I mean, sure the Jedi probably can do things with the Force that are terrible – the mind control stuff isn’t made for example, but when I saw Nix use something like it she wasn’t using it to control or hurt anyone, just to keep her and me safe.”

“So it’s okay to twist the Xah if it’s to keep ourselves safe?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t think it twists the Xah at all. I think how the Jedi use the Force, or at least how I’ve seen Nix use it is more like a conversation. She asks the Force to do something and supports her like a friend would. Like it’s doing with you. You’re not ‘corrupting the Xah’, you’re communing with the Force and it feels like its all in favor of doing what you’re asking it to.”

“What about you then? Why would you want to lose that? If it’s so good, why don’t you just become a Jedi too?” Solna asked.

“I’m…I’m not like you,” Rassi said. “I really have twisted up the Xah before. If I was to try to become a Jedi, I would be definitely screw it up, and I don’t think the galaxy needs another bad Jedi in it.”

Solna’s only reply to that was a moment of silence before she pushed Rassi away and got to her feet.

With a deep breath she walked over to the plate beside the door and pressed the lower button.

“Goldie?” she said.

“Solna! How may I be of service? Are either of you feeling hungry? Or perhaps I can send the clothing waldo in if you’re ready for that?”

“Thank you Goldie. Could you send in a meal for Rassi? Also, we’ll need a space cleared in the cargo hold. And if you happen to have a coffin available, that would be good to have on hand as well.”

“What do you need coffin for?” Goldie asked.

“Someone is bad mouthing my best friend. I’m going to beat them senseless in a Silent Dance and if that doesn’t work I may strangle the life out of her. Or slap her until the stupid comes out. I don’t know. I’ll get creative I guess.”

Everything was wrong and Rassi was an idiot. Solna knew both those to be factually accurate statements. The second was not particularly revelatory. Rassi was beyond frustrating. Usually though, Rassi was frustrating about little things, like worrying about the opinions of the idiots in the enclave. Or being afraid that she was taking up too much space. Or that a few little slips with the Xah somehow mattered more than her patience, kindness, and beautiful laugh.

As the otherworldly blue of hyperspace whirled past them though, Solna could feel just how out of their depth they were.

First, everyone, or everyone except Rassi, obviously, were all screaming in the Xah, their emotions thundering against Solna’s temples with seventeen different flavors of fear and thirteen varies of anger. 

Nix, who had more-or-less kidnapped Rassi, had gone from a blazing maelstrom of rage when they met, to an almost acceptably serene harbinger of doom when she lured them both away, and was now a jangled mess of conflicting hates and hopes as they all went chasing her wife to someplace that even the droid ship seemed to be afraid of.

And yet Nix was the one accusing Solna of having bent the Xah to put them all here.

“That’s a lie. You’re lying!” It wasn’t Solna’s most eloquent defense but the thought that she would be accused of corrupting the Xah and putting the girl she…her best friend in a situation where they were cut off from the family and flying into mortal peril? Only a lifetime of practice allowed Solna to keep control of the Xah within her.

Well, she had it mostly controlled. Rassi noticed the turmoil in Solna’s Xah. But that was Rassi. Rassi always knew what Solna was thinking.

And in the face of an accusation like that?

Solna stormed off the bridge, too upset to care were she was going, or that there wasn’t all that much ship for her to go to.

On some level she knew she wasn’t alone.

Of course Rassi came with her.

They were always there for each other. It was just how they were.

That Nix and the two ghosts came too was far less welcome.

“I didn’t do this,” Solna whirled around to shout at them. Shouting was fine. The Silent Enclave wasn’t an audibly silent place. They were people. People made noise. Angry people shouted. It was natural. 

“Your senses are so sharp. Better than mine, maybe even better than theirs,” Nix said, gesturing to the two ghosts who were hanging back and so silent in the Xah that Solna could only barely hear them. “Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid!” Solna said, keeping her voice low and calm. If it sounded like a murderous growl, that was surely someone else’s imagination.

“You’re angry. And afraid. It’s hard to tell you’re feeling them both at once, but they work together.” Nix’s body language and her Xah were equally annoying. They were both too relaxed, and Nix was too focused on what Solna was doing. A moment earlier she’d been a twisted ball of knots over the fate of her wife, and now she was treating Solna like a someone who was important enough to be a distraction from all that.

It had to be a Jedi trick. Solna knew Nix wasn’t trying to influence her through the Xah. She would sense that even if nothing else made sense. To be able to just turn off your emotions though? That had to be some corrupt Jedi practice.

Or it’s just being older and having more perspective, the one named Ravas whispered to her in the Xah.

Are you reading my mind? Solna asked indignantly. She only thought the question. Didn’t disturb the Xah with it. And Ravas answered anyway.

Your thoughts are not particularly quiet ones, Ravas said.

Leave me alone!  The idea of her thoughts being open for everyone to hear was mortifying on a level Solna previously hadn’t suspected existed.

That last thing you need is to be alone, now, trust me on this, Ravas said. I speak from long and disastrous experience on the matter.

You don’t know me. I’m not like you! Solna shouted back. Nix was saying something but Solna head was filled with the ringing of the accusation still.

I’m not, Ravas said, but I have spoken those exact same words, for the exact same reason. And I learned two things from them.

What. Solna didn’t want to listen to Ravas’ voice in her mind but she was even less interested in listening to Nix explain whatever she was explaining, and she desperately didn’t want to look over at Rassi either.

First, that fleeing from our fears does not resolve them, and second, I learned how to do this. Ravas twirled her finger and a blanket fell over Solna’s head.

Not a physical blanket, but a sort of mental shield.

It protected Solna. Shielded her thoughts. She could sense the barrier it created around her, and the isolation is provided. Touching it, she felt the warm security it offered and knew that within it, she would either be safe or would know for certain if someone was trying to read her mind.

Was it a manipulation of the Xah though?

More importantly, did she care?

“No!” she said, aloud, cutting off whatever Nix had been saying and startling everyone. “You can’t tempt me with your Jedi tricks.”

“We, uh, weren’t talking about Jedi tricks though,” Nix said. “I was saying how it didn’t matter why you were here, learning to handle a blaster would give you a tool that you didn’t need the Force to wield.”

“I’m not talking to you,” Solna said. “I’m talking to her.”

“Yes, but now your talking with your words, and not telepathy,” Ravas said.

Solna touched her head and found the security blanket was still there.

“Get it off me, stop doing this to me,” she said, nauseated at the idea that she’d committed so many sins, so quickly.

“I stopped the moment after I showed you how to guard yourself,” Ravas said. “What you  wear now is entirely of your own creation.”

“No. That’s not true, I would never do this,” Solna said, the idiocy of being terrified of being cast out of a group she’d run away from not at all lost on her.

“It’s okay Sol,” Rassi said, taking Solna by the left arm and shoulder. “It’s all okay.”

Which was a comfort, in that it meant Rassi was still with her, and a terror since it meant that Rassi thought Solna was creating the mental shield on her own. 

And had corrupted the Xah to alter their fates.

“Might not be the best time to be giving them blaster training,” Kelda said.

“Perhaps not,” Nix said.

“She does need to accept what she’s capable of though,” Ravas said. “Hiding from the Force isn’t going to lead anywhere happy.”

“Can’t throw an engine into overdrive for too long though,” Nix said, which was both obvious and made no sense in context.

“Rest and food?” Kelda asked.

“I don’t know much about people maintenance beyond that,” Nix said.

“I can stay with her,” Rassi said, helping Solna get up.

When had she sat down? She didn’t remember falling to the floor but apparently she had?

That would explain why Nix had been kneeling down to talk to her.

With the mental blanket in place, Solna felt a degree of equilibrium return, though buried inside it was the dread disgust at the fact that she probably was the one who was manipulating the Xah for the mental shield.

“Of course,” Nix said. “Goldie can you show them to one of the guest rooms.”

“Sure. Want me to keep an eye on them in case they need anything?” the ship asked.

“I think they might like a bit of privacy at the moment,” Nix said. “Show them the wall comm. They can use that if they need anything.”

“Right. Follow me then,” Goldie said and a small repair bot hovered up to about head height and bobbed in an approximation of a nod at Solna and Rassi.

And then Nix just left, with Ravas and Kelda trailing in her wake.

“There’s pretty decent sound baffling in the guest rooms,” Goldie said as she led them to down a corridor or two and around a corner to where the passenger rooms were located. “We’ve docked at some noisy ports, and had some noisy guests. 

The door to one of the rooms hissed open automatically, revealing a space roughly half the size of Solna’s room at home. It could sleep two, but it would be a cozy fit.

“Thanks Goldie, is this the wall comm?” Rassi asked, pointing at a small panel near the door which a variety of blinking lights on it.

“Yep. The call button is the green one on the bottom. Press that and I’ll hear you. The Yellow button above that is the Ship’s Comm button. Press that and everyone aboard will hear you. If you need anything, like food or clothes, just let me know.”

“Clothes?” Solna asked, finding that to be an odd idea somehow.

“I’ve got a few basic fabricator waldos I can whip some up with,” Goldie said. “In case you want to clean up and change into something fresh.”

That sounded both heavenly and impossible. Solna didn’t want to think about the dust and grim she’d been covered by in their escape, but changing into new clothes would make everything that was happening too real.

“That would be great Goldie. We’ll let you know what we’re thinking in a bit,” Rassi said.

The door whooshed shut on its own, and there was quiet at last.

Solna could still hear Nix and the ghosts in the Xah but they were distant and surprisingly quiet compared to the people in the market place she was used to running into who weren’t part of the enclave.

Rassi was her usual calming, relaxing self. Not that Rassi was calm or relaxed, but what she projected into the Xah was the sort of gentle concern for Solna that was more comforting than any mental security blanket ever could be.

“I’m sorry,” Rassi said before Solna could form a thought beyond processing the relief she felt.

“For what? You don’t…” Solna started to say but Rassi hugged her and cut her off.

“I didn’t want to leave without you, but it wasn’t fair,” Rassi said. “I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.”

“But you didn’t?” Solna said. Had Rassi not heard what Nix had accused Solna of?

“Of course I did? Who do you think told Nix that we had to pick you up? This is all my fault.”

Nope.

Solna was not going to let that stand.

“Don’t. None of this is your fault. You…you didn’t deserve how people were treating you, and you don’t deserve this. It’s..this…you didn’t do anything wrong.”

The relief and comfort were still there, but so was a painful need to make Rassi understand, to make her accept that she was as, no, more worthy than the idiots in the enclave who were always tearing her down.

“I wanted this though,” Rassi said, her voice small as though the confession would lead to…would lead to what? 

“You didn’t,” Solna said. “You wanted to be safe. You wanted to be away from a bunch of people who treated you bad because they were garbage. But you didn’t want this,” Solna said, speaking words she knew had to be true.

“But I did,” Rassi said. “I wanted to be on a starship, flying off into the unknown with you. I wanted us to be together when we found a new life, where we…where I found someone to teach me.”

“You want to learn from them?” Solna asked, shocked to the core at the idea. “You want to become a Jedi?”

“No, no!” Rassi said. “I want to learn how not have the Force at all.” 

Rassi found ghosts peaceful. That made less than no sense. For one thing they were clearly dead and yet still poking around in the living world which was as deep a corruption of the Xah as she could imagine. For another, they were Jedi. Jedi! Like, not the new fangled type Nix seemed to be. One of them, Kelda, was straight up wearing ghostly Jedi robes, and the other, Ravas, was surrounded by a chorus of memories both dark and light. 

And love.

Both of the ghosts sung of love by their presence. 

Not the wild hollering of first love, though Rassi could hear clearly that they’d never loved anyone but one another. Theirs was the quiet, abiding sort of connection that drowned out even the echoes of their deaths.

Kelda had come with news of a problem, something to do with Nix’s wife – and that was a concept that set Rassi’s toes and fingers tingling – but even with that and the dread concern it filled Nix with, Rassi felt peaceful in Ravas and Kelda’s presence.

“This doesn’t make any sense!” Nix kept her voice low and controlled but in the Xah she was screaming. “If you couldn’t find me, and Ayli couldn’t sense me, how did Paralus manage it? I don’t have any connection to him at all!”

“You must,” Kelda said. “Something you did caused a massive change in something he’s a part of. He wouldn’t be able to reach beyond the stars and manifest before you otherwise.”

“There’s zero chance anything I’ve done to him had more impact than what Ayli and I are to each other,” Nix said. “Or you and me. I’d still be completely ignorant of my connection to the Force if it wasn’t for you.”

“When he came for Ayli, she was in the Shadowed Cave,” Kelda said.

Ravas bapped her on the head.

“You let her take that test without us there to help?” Ravas asked.

“Yes, and she passed it easily,” Kelda said. “I told you she was ready. She even got her eyes back.”

“I’m sorry, what test is this? What did you do to her eyes?” Solna asked.

Solna who resolutely refused to accept that the Jedi were anything other than an abomination. Solna who had never so much as nudged the Xah in the slightest. Solna who nevertheless still called Rassi her friend despite Rassi’s increasingly frequent “mistakes” and “fumbles” with influencing the Xah.

Rassi did not understand her friend, couldn’t tease out the contradictions in her to get them to make sense, and didn’t really want to try in fear that she might unravel whatever it was that held them together.

“Ayli’s eyes changed color after some encounters we had about a year ago. Kelda’s been helping her fix that,” Nix said, clearly distracted as she…

Rassi could quite tell what Nix was doing. It wasn’t manipulating the Xah. That was easy to sense. Nix only seemed to be listening. 

Aggressively.

And then calmly.

And then more aggressively.

“Things are getting worse,” Nix said.

“I can return to her,” Kelda said.

“Or we both could,” Ravas said, with a not-terribly-subtle ripple in the Xah to indicate she intended to bring violence and mayhem along with her.

“No, she’s handling it,” Nix said. “I think.”

“What are you seeing?” Solna asked.

“It’s not sight,” Nix said. “It’s in here.” She tapped her chest. “I can’t do the manifest across the stars. I’m not strong enough and I wouldn’t be able to do anything there even if I could manage it.”

“And it would be wrong,” Solna said, which didn’t seem like the right thing to say or the right time to say it.

“I should be with her,” Kelda said. “If that tank caught up to her, she’ll need someone watching over her shoulder while she fights it.”

“She’s not fighting,” Nix said. “And she has someone with her. No. Someone’s. That’s got to be Bopo and, and someone I don’t know.”

“Monfi,” Kelda said. “He’s a Padal Horizon Knight. He’s hunting Paralus as well.”

“I thought the Horizon Knights were wiped out generations ago?” Ravas said.

“The galaxy is a rather large place it seems. The Jedi, the Sith, the Dathomiri Night Witches, the Silent Enclave, and so many other Force Traditions that people thought were destroyed are hanging in there just fine.”

“I think she’s been captured,” Nix said, her hands were steady over the ship’s controls, but Rassi could feel the tremors in the Force.

Jedi were supposed to be masters of their emotions. Cold and merciless as they bent the fate of the galaxy to their will (until it finally snapped back at them). If that was true, then Rassi could believe that Nix was no Jedi. Not from how Nix was pulsing the Xah around her like hands spasming into angry fists.

“Just tell me where they’re going and I’ll plot an intercept course,” Goldie said.

“Praxis Mar,” Nix said, closing her eyes.

And the disturbing ripples she was sending into the Xah ceased.

Nix wasn’t peaceful. Rassi could still sense the tension inside her, but she’d chosen to stop interfering with the Xah despite her emotions.

Which was something Rassi had never once managed.

“What kind of ship are they on?” Goldie asked, a nervous tension in her mechanical voice.

“I don’t know,” Nix said. “Something dangerous.”

“That makes two of us,” Goldie said.

“Was it her choice?” Ravas asked.

“I think it was,” Nix said. “Which means she’s counting on us to get her out of there.”

“We do not want to go back to Praxis Mar,” Kelda said.

“I know,” Nix said. “But they’ve got a headstart.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t catch them,” Goldie said.

“Ayli will buy us time,” Ravas said. “And she can buy you more if we’re there to help her.”

“If only we could go,” Kelda said, putting a hand on Ravas’s hand.

“What do you mean?” Ravas asked. “I can sense her clearly.”

“As can I. We could even get to Praxis Mar before her,” Kelda said. “And both are traps.”

“What do you…oh, well that’s, annoying,” Ravas said.

“Traps?” Nix asked.

“Whatever ship she’s on, it was the scene of a ghastly enough tragedy to turn it into a floating Dark Side Nexus,” Kelda said. “The moment we appear within it, Paralus will know we are there and will likely be able to manifest more completely because of the imbalance either of us would cause by being there.”

“We could fight him together,” Ravas said, but Rassi could hear the uncertainty in her voice.

“If he is backed by the might of Praxis Mar, we would have a challenging time of it. Particularly since he could likely drag us back there, turning us into hostages rather than assets,” Kelda said.

“I thought I was meant to be the pessimistic one,” Ravas grumbled.

“I’m not being pessimistic,” Kelda said. “We will fight him, but on our terms, not his.”

“Will your wife be okay on a ship like that?” Rassi asked, trying to imagine what could be awful enough to permanently corrupt the Xah if the Expunging Rite didn’t do it.

“She thinks she will be,” Nix said. “And knowing her she’s probably right, but I don’t like ‘probably’. Not for her. Goldie can you get Thirty Two on the line. Last I checked, he was in charge of the fleet Sali left to guard Praxis Mar.”

“Sending a holo-message out now. I’ll have an optimal hyperspace route calculated in about five minutes too.”

“Jump the instant the calculation is done,” Nix said.

“I’m making some guesses about what their path might be from Cellondia. Do you want to check them over?” Goldie asked.

“Nope. You’re going to think of everything I would, and I don’t want to lose even an instant.”

“Should we drop these two off somewhere?” Kelda asked, gesturing to Solna and Rassi.

Rassi flinched at that. 

From how they’d been talking about Praxis Mar, it sounded like a deadly dangerous place. Leaving the two people they could least depend on behind made a lot of sense, but it would mean she and Solna would be defenseless and alone on a strange world. 

If Primus Dolon regrouped and tried the Expunging Rite on them, they’d be dead before Nix would even know they were danger.

“We can’t do that,” Nix said, sending a wave of relief crashing through Rassi. “These two are under my protection, and for now, they still need it.”

“Can you protect them Praxis Mar?” Ravas asked.

“We can,” Nix said. “Alone, I don’t think I’m a match for this Paralus. Together though?”

“I doubt it is unaware of the strengths we possess,” Kelda said. “It has waited a standard year for the chance to assault Ayli and yourself. It was likely observing your actions for a great deal longer than that.”

“You should teach us how to fight it,” Solna said.

Which showed that she’d clearly been possessed.

Or had suffered the sort of grievous head injury that only occurred in the holos where no actual damage was done and yet the victim’s personality was completely reversed.

“What? We can’t…” Rassi started to say but was cut off.

“That’s a good idea,” Nix said. “And it will keep me from slamming the hyperspace button and just hoping we’re pointing in the right direction. Let’s go down to the cargo hold.”

“I know I’m normally the last one to ask this, but are you sure this is a good idea?” Ravas said.

“Oddly, yes,” Nix said. “I’m not sensing these two playing any special role in what’s to come, but try to sense them in general.”

“It’s easier to notice where they’re not,” Ravas said. “Please tell me you’re not planning to make use of that. Spies have a far higher mortality rate than most people understand.”

“Which is exactly why they will not be spying for us,” Nix said. “Or engaging with anything that we find which has anything to do with Paralus Stahl.”

“Why then would they need training?” Kelda asked.

“Three reasons,” Nix said. “First, I’m done with being blind sided. I can’t foresee everything that’s before us, but I can plan around the sort of problems which are almost certain to arise and running into unexpected problems is almost guaranteed to happen. Second, they deserve to know that they can defend themselves, without using the Xah even.”

“What?” Solna asked, as surprised by that as Rassi was. 

Rassi wrestled with the smile that tried to cross her face. Solna had asked for training “knowing” that Nix would refuse, or that the training would involve committing Jedi-style sins against the Xah, which would in turn prove that she was right to distrust them.

“I know you hold to your traditions, and I don’t want to take that from you,” Nix said. “I’m not going to change who I am, even if you think that makes me an abomination, because that’s my choice, but it doesn’t have to be yours.”

“Of…of course,” Solna said, looking more rattled than Rassi could remember seeing her in a long time.

“What’s the third reason?” Rassi asked.

“I said I don’t see you or Solna playing a role in what’s to come,” Nix said. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t. I’m not going to ask anything of you. You deserve safety and support, not to be used as tools or weapons.”

“Bending our fates with Jedi powers is worse than asking us to fight for you,” Solna said.

“Absolutely true,” Nix said.

“And our fates are being bent,” Solna said. “We’re not supposed to be here.”

“Also true,” Nix said, a faint smile spreading across her lips as she glanced at Kelda and Ravas.

“Then why are you doing it?” Solna asked. “I didn’t see it at first, but with this? There is no way we’re here at precisely the time you need more soldiers by accident.”

“I don’t think it’s an accident either,” Nix said. “But look at me, really look, and you’ll see, I’m not the one who was asking for the Force to change your destiny’s.”

Rassi did as Nix asked. 

Nix wasn’t lying.

And she wasn’t wrong.

“That’s all your doing,” Nix said, looking not at Rassi but at Solna.

Ayli didn’t crash into her friend Bopo’s home. Smashing through the front door and causing several thousand credits of property damage did not, necessarily, mean that she had “crashed” into Bopo’s house. 

Especially since what awaited them more than justified the destruction they brought with them.

Archivist Bopo was an older Galruxian, an offshoot species from the Rodians. She had gone back to pursue an academic career after working in starship manufacturing for the first several decades of her life. In her time as a researcher, she hadn’t lost an appreciable amount of the muscle mass she’d developed hauling ship components around, which made it all the more concerning to see her struggling to break free of the grip of the Hunter-Killer droid which had her gripped by the neck.

Ayli could have wasted time trying to reason, or threaten, or plead for Bopo’s life, but none of those held even the slightest chance of success.

So she threw her lightsaber.

It wasn’t entirely unreasonable. She’d suspected that Paralus would move against Bopo based on the fact that Bopo was Ayli’s primary connection on the planet. That Paralus’ droid accomplice would use Bargus Brell’s HK droid to do its dirty work was also more or less a given, since that’s what HK droids were built for.

There was still a chance that negotiations could have produced a peaceful resolution – Paralus was likely to have some demands he intended to make if nothing else.  Crashing through the doors however bought Ayli a moment of surprise that she couldn’t afford to waste.

The HK droid had a machine’s response time to dangers which lay within its prediction algorithms domain. Rather than dodging the flying laser sword, the HK unit simply swung Bopo around as a shield.

Which Ayli had anticipated it might do because, while she did not have machine reflexes, she could hear the warnings in the Force, and she could see what the obvious counter to her attack was. By giving the HK something it thought it could respond to though, Ayli ensured it would stay in position, which let her close the gap to it with a Force assisted leap.

Calling her saber back to her hand before it could strike Bopo wasn’t hard. Her hand was where it was meant to be. Unfortunately the HK unit saw the change in Ayli’s attack while she was mid-leap and it had weapon systems to spare.

Monfi swatted the first blaster bolt away before it could hit Ayli, and she caught the second on her blade.

The HK switched to jets of flame, but Ayli had the velocity to dive under it’s arc and take its left leg off at the knee joint.

Despite its heightened response time, there wasn’t any argument it could make against gravity pulling it to the ground, which dropped both it and Bopo on top of Ayli.

Acting as a cushion for Bopo wasn’t the worse thing in the galaxy, but the HK unit was significantly heavier than it looked.

Ayli had shut her lightsaber off when she dodged under the flame stream to avoid hitting Bopo by mistake. As the HK unit spun two of it’s chest lasers at her though, Ayli flicked the blade back to life, plunging it through the the HK’s central chassis. 

She wasn’t sure where it kept it’s memory banks, but she did know which compartment was the only one large enough to house its power supply.

With a Force assisted kick, she flung the inert carcass of the HK off herself and Bopo before the minor explosion in it’s chest reduced it to a pile of very expensive rubble.

“Y…yo…you…” Bopo tried to choke out, finding it understandably difficult to speak after being held aloft by her throat.

“It’s okay,” Ayli said. “We’ll get you out of here to somewhere safe.”

“I think she’s trying to tell us there’s a problem with that,” Monfi said, a pair of blasters in his hands.

“Indeed,” a chorus of mechanized voices said in perfect unison.

Ayli looked away from Bopo, following her friend’s wide-eyed look of terror to find at least a dozen more HK units emerging from doorways and alcoves, each with a clear shot at herself, Bopo, and Monfi.

Against one assassin droid, Ayli hadn’t felt too uncertain. Even before she’d learned to use the Force she’d encountered one of them and they weren’t as impossible to outfight as their reputation suggested. Against a dozen assassin droids, Ayli also didn’t feel much uncertainty, though for very different reasons.

“I am supposed to thank you for accepting my invitation,” the mechanized voice said. “I am also to instruct you that you are to surrender yourself, or this person, and everyone else you know and care about will pay the price.”

“Who am I surrendering to?” Ayli asked, inwardly groaning that they’d entered a negotiation phase despite her best efforts.

Not that negotiations were a bad idea in general. Negotiations were a fantastic thing when the parties involved each had a reason to seek an end to their hostilities. When it came to resolving differences between two parties who each believed themselves to be the aggrieved one, entering negotiations as soon as possible was always the best move.

The controller of the HK droids did not wish to resolve its conflict with Ayli any more than the Imperial Officers she’d stared at down the barrel of a blaster had ever been interested in pursuing justice. These negotiations were about asserting control and maneuvering to be sure Ayli didn’t have any counter plans in play, while she tried to buy what time she could and look for an opportunity to swing things back in her favor.

With over twelve HK units holding target locks on her though, Ayli didn’t need Force visions to show her those opportunities were going to be largely figments of her imagination.

“You are surrendering to overwhelming firepower,” the mechanized voice said.

“That’s a ‘what’, not a ‘who’,” Ayli said.

“Correct,” the mechanized voice said.

“Okay then Overpowering, why am I surrendering to you?” Ayli asked.

“The alternative is death,” the mechanized voice said.

Ayli laughed.

“Oh, sorry there, that one’s not going to cut it. Please try again,” Ayli said.

“Surrender or you will die, and your companions will die as well,” Overpowering said.

“Nope, see that’s not how this works,” Ayli said. “The choice you’re giving me is to either die here and do some damage to you in the process, or wait and die later after you’ve been able to get something that you want. There’s no logic in surrendering under those conditions, and you know that. So, like a good little machine, why don’t you play back the instructions you’ve been given to convince me to do what your master commanded you to get me to do.”

Ayli hadn’t been certain that she’d be able to provoke Overpowering but the blaster bolt one of the HK units fired at Bopo told her she had managed to hit a nerve. She felt almost as proud of that as she did bouncing the bolt back at the offending droid to send it toppling headless to the floor.

One down, lots left to go.

“Surrender now and you, and you alone, will be brought back to the one who seeks you,” Overpowering said. Ayli was intrigued that it hadn’t said ‘my master’ or anything of the sort. 

That Overpowering was an unfettered machine intelligence was horrifyingly obvious, but Ayli had still expected it to bow to the one who was really calling the shots, especially since ‘that one’ was a Dark Side Lich and Dark Siders were egomaniacs, the lot of them.

“Okay. Excellent. Now we have something to work with,” Ayli said. “My answer is no.”

“Then you will die.”

“Uh uh, not so fast,” Ayli said. “You haven’t asked me why my answer is no.”

“Your reasons do not matter. You will die,” Overpowering said.

“I think they rather do matter.” Ayli knew she couldn’t talk any of them out of the situation, but buying time meant buying hope and that she could definitely do. “Your orders are to bring me back. As a corpse might be a viable alternative but alive is the preference.”

“Preferences can change,” Overpowering said.

“They can. Mine are quite flexible in fact,” Ayli said. “But you still haven’t asked me why my answer is ‘no’.”

“Your reasons are immaterial. Surrender or be destroyed.”

“Again, your programming is coming up just a bit short.” Ayli knew that Overpowering wasn’t a droid, and if there was one thing the other unfettered machine intelligence she knew hated, it was when people assumed the limitations of a droid applied to them as well.

“I am superior to you by all measures.” Which was the kind of thing an entity would say when it had been told since it’s creation that it was nothing more than a tool.

“You need some help with understanding people still though,” Ayli said. “See, you’re not threatening me with death and destruction. That’s a given no matter what choice I make. The choice you’re offering is whether the people with me will be part of that death and destruction or not.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Which is why I have to say ‘no’. Because while you’ve made that offer, its purely empty words, and there’s no trust relationship between us which you can call upon to support your claim.”

“There can be no trust between us.” Overpowering seemed confused by why the concept had even arisen in the conversation.

“Sure there can,” Ayli said. “You can establish an easy trust bridge by letting these two go.”

“Ayli, what are you doing? Don’t be stupid girl,” Bopo said. 

“I’m not. I brought this trouble to your door, or what’s left of it. Let me take it away too.”

“Your friend can go,” Monfi said. “I have a vested interest in seeing how this plays out.”

Because if he was with her, his partner could follow them. 

It wasn’t a bad plan.

Ayli was terribly interested in having Horizon Knight blood on her hands, but she also knew Nix would kill her if she turned down backup when it was offered, especially since alone she really was likely to wind up dead.

“I’m sorry, in what galaxy do you think I‘m going to watch a bunch of bolt buckets walk one of my friends off to her death?” Bopo said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Because, of course she wasn’t.

Ayli wasn’t sure why that surprised her. Bopo had always been a sensible sort, with a knack for somehow still making the worst decisions Ayli had ever seen. 

Somehow that reminded Ayli of Nix, which left her questioning if she had a preferred personality type she liked to associate with and what that said about her.

“It seems I am in need of an alternate means of persuasion,” Overpowering said as glaring red floodlights streamed in through the windows from outside. A deep and multi-harmonic rumbling accompanied the lights.

“I recognize those engines,” Boppo said. “That’s an Assassin-class Corvette out there!”

The Assassin-class Corvettes were Imperial ships. Ayli knew them well. One had burned a city to the ground trying to root out the Rebel cell she’d been with.

“If you recognize the ship, then you know what it is capable of,” Overpowering said.

“You’ve moved up to holding the city hostage now?” Ayli asked, the smell of a hundred burning buildings rising from memory.

“Will that be enough to convince you to surrender or shall I destroy it to prove my sincerity and look for bigger or more personal targets?” Overpowering asked.

Ayli tried to sense where her decisions would lead her, but so many branches of her future were cloaked in the Dark Side that the Force did not seem like a trustworthy source to turn to for divination.

So she looked instead to her companions.

Monfi nodded his agreement, and while she hadn’t known him long, she appreciated his support nonetheless. It was Bopo who convinced her though. Bopo who had seen her make the dumbest of mistakes was looking back at her with confidence and a trust Ayli knew she couldn’t let down.

“We surrender then,” Ayli said. “Let’s go have a chat with your master.”