Her lightsaber was in her hands. 

And she’d reclaimed her body.

Well, perhaps not her body, but a body nonetheless.

Hot, wrathful glee surged through her.

Everything was right at last.

Though there was a woman crumpled on the floor in front of her.

So perhaps not everything.

It didn’t matter though. The woman was…

That was Nix!

Ayli ripped her thoughts away from the cloud that had fallen over them, though not her heart away from the rage that burned within it.

She was surrounded by creatures that were three meters tall at least and built like they ate Hutt’s for breakfast.

She did not care.

Gewla and Vronmo had tried to instill in her the idea that even life forms which were very different from her own could be people and were worthy of respect and understanding.

Ayli understood that these pieces of bantha pudu had hurt Nix and what they were worthy of was a violent and painful death.

Her hands swung in an arc all on their own and the nearest Smoke Wraith lost the upper half of its torso. It started to reform and pull itself together but the lightsaber jerked and pierced through the purple crystal at its core.

Ayli was happy with the result but she fought for control her limbs anyways.

Something wanted to puppet her? Too bad. Her rage was her own, not anyone else’s.

There was a presence inside her. A voice and a will that was not her own. One that had waited for so, so terribly long. One that would not be denied!

One that absolutely was going to be denied. One that could shut the hell up, because Ayli had her wife to rescue.

Don’t be dead Nix. Please don’t be dead.

Of her own volition, Ayli spun the lightsaber in a tight series of arcing swipes.

Did she know how to fight with an energy blade?

Of course not. Blasters were better in every circumstance.

Every circumstance except the one where she’d lost her grip on them and only had a stick of plasma to work with.

To it’s credit though, the stick of red plasma was a pretty decent substitute for a blaster. People seemed to think they were hard to use but it didn’t take years of practice to work out the basic mechanics of “swing death beam through monster” and the crystal hearts of the beasts had the resiliency of spun glass in terms of resisting the lightsaber’s blade.

From what Ayli could recall that was true of most things when they met a lightsaber’s blade. Except fro Phrik and a few other materials. Which was probably why Ravas Durla’s post-death cult had been so keen on it. 

One of the Smoke Wraiths lunged for her, trying to tear the lightsaber from Ayli’s hands and Ayli stabbed it reflexively though the head.

Which was bad.

Head wounds did nothing to the Smoke Wraiths, and the reflex action hadn’t been hers.

The presence inside her was a tricky little thing.

It couldn’t control her.

Not exactly. Not if she didn’t let it.

What it could do, apparently, was nudge her thoughts along pathways they were used to taking. Send her down into memories of history and making connections with the present and Ayli was a lot less mindful about what she was doing in the here and now.

Even that moment of introspection cost her and she had to check her hands as the swung the lightsaber towards Nix.

The presence seemed to think Nix was what was allowing Ayli to resist its influence.

“Hurt her and I will end both of us,” Ayli said and opened the absolute sincerity of her      intentions for the presence to see.

Surprisingly, the presence retreated at that and released the lingering hold it had been exerting over Ayli’s limbs.

That was when the Smoke Wraiths really started dying.

If unnatural abominations of crystal and Dark Side power could be considered to be alive in the first place.

Ayli didn’t care what the answer was. They were a deadly threat, and so they were going to get dead. Her years as a Rebellion brat had taught her that hesitating to protect yourself never led anywhere good.

Her rage at being reminded of that fact wasn’t quite sated by the time she’d slashed apart all of the Smoke Wraiths.

In the process, a few of them had landed cuts and bruises on her. That was inevitable in any close quarters fighting. 

In fact it should have been inevitable that one or more of them would have speared her like they had Nix. A lightsaber is probably the fastest melee weapon imaginable, but sheer numbers should have given the Smoke Wraiths the openings they needed to put Ayli on the ground with her wife.

Except she’d known where those openings were.

She’d used them, baiting the Smoke Wraiths into making attacks she’d known were coming. Taking limbs off which opened them up for thrusts through their heart crystals.

It had been like a dance.

An angry, hateful, brutally violent dance.

Which was what the Smoke Wraiths had deserved.

She wished one or two of them would rise again. She needed to hurt them more.

No.

No she didn’t.

Her rage shattered when she saw Nix again.

Curled up.

So small.

And still.

Terribly, terribly, still.

Ayli dropped the lightsaber and flung herself to the ground beside the woman who had crept so much farther into her heart than Ayli could have imagined.

The woman who was still breathing.

The woman with an empty Bacta Gel pack in her hand.

“You beautiful idiot,” Ayli said through tears she hadn’t been aware she’d been crying the whole time.

Ayli knew Nix’s weight. She knew she could hold and lift the human woman with ease. Lifting the human woman and all of her gear on the other hand was noticeably more difficult. At least at first. After a moment’s struggling though the burden grew much lighter. Ayli checked to see if Nix’s gear had fallen off, but no, something was giving her more strength.

Cradling Nix in her arms, Ayli reached up and tapped the communicator to signal the drop ship.

“Oh, uh, you two still alive?” a disheveled sounding Sali said amidst the sound of cloth ruffling.

“Nix is hurt. Get the drop ship up here. We gotta get back to the Goldrunner. Now,” Ayli said relying on the imperative tense to convey that she was not in the mood for delays or banter.

“Up where?” Zindiana asked over the sound of the drop ship’s engine’s kicking to life.

“There’s a hole in the wall at the top of the tower. Bring the dropship up to it and I’ll hand Nix over to you. We don’t have time for me to bring her back downstairs,” Ayli said.

“We’ll be there,” Sali said, with no playful banter or questions at all.

Ayli started walking towards room’s newest egress.

The presence within gave a mild tug on her attention though and Ayli cast an eye back towards the cenotaph.

The symbols on it weren’t just decorative.

They were a map.

The historian in Ayli wanted to stop and take recordings of all the imagery in the room. 

Nix needed her though.

The Bacta Gel pack was not the same as full immersion in a Bacta healing tank, or even the work the Goldrunner’s medical kits could do. Nix had bought them time. Ayli wasn’t going to waste a moment of it.

And she didn’t need to.

She wasn’t going to forget where the map showed her to go.

The presence was all too reassuring that it would be there to remind her.

True to her word, Sali was there with the drop ship by the time Ayli arrived at the hole leading out to the storm beyond.

“Let me take her,” Zindiana said, unburdened by the controls Sali was parked in front of.

The transfer wasn’t easy, even with Sali’s expert hands on the controls, the storm battered the drop ship but neither Zindiana nor Ayli risked letting Nix go until they were sure she was secure.

Without really considering it, Ayli turned back to the room before jumping into the dropship herself. The Smoke Wraiths were good and dead. No threats remained. Ayli was carrying the deadliest thing in that room within herself already.

She reached out her hand and the lightsaber flew into it.

Might as well take the second deadliest thing too. It had come in handy. Probably would again.

It wasn’t until she noticed Zindiana’s quizzical gaze and Sali’s surprised one that Ayli registered what she’d just done.

“Don’t often meet someone who knows how to use one of those,” Zindiana said.

“First time I’ve ever held one,” Ayli said. “Let’s get going. Can you handle those orbital guns?”

“Pfff, the ones with the gunners who couldn’t hit a Star Destroyer if it was docked with them?” Sali said and hit the engines for a full burn out of the atmosphere.

Nix whimpered at the acceleration, but she was still breathing and that was all that mattered to Ayli for the moment.

Sali, it turned out, did have some trouble with the orbital gunners. Which struck Ayli as odd. Of the two of them, she wasn’t sure which was the better pilot, but she was certain that Sali could give her a run for her money even on Ayli’s best day. 

So why were they taking ten times the fire on their deflectors than they had coming in? Had the orbital crews woken up their better gunners while Ayli and her crew were down on the planet? Had they installed new tracking software?

Or was it because they weren’t following Nix’s flight plan this time?

Ayli could fix that.

Or the presence could.

Flying past long range fire was child’s play.

All Ayli needed to do was go to sleep. Yes, sleep. Just for a little bit. Just till they were safe. Just till Nix was safe. 

Ayli felt the cool solidity of the lightsaber’s hilt in her hand.

She calmly, and carefully raised it and placed it directly under her chin.

The presence got the message and retreated, sulking into the dark corners of Ayli’s mind.

Ayli had zero interest in self destruction. She’d survived too much and fought to hard to stay alive to give up no matter what her state was. She was at the same time however absolutely unwilling to be used as a tool to destroy the people she loved. Whatever had happened to her when she took up Ravas Durla’s lightsaber, she would deal with it. She simply needed to set certain ground rules up with whatever the presence was, the foremost of them being that even in the scenario where Ayli didn’t win, they were both going to lose.

Strangely the presence seemed to respect that, at least if the grudging feeling of admiration that bubbled through Ayli’s subconscious was anything to go by.

“What happened back there?” Sali asked.

“The room at the top of the tower had guardians,” Ayli said. “We didn’t expect that. Nix had already disarmed some nasty traps. They got me, then they got her, then I got them.”

“Didn’t seem many bodies left in the room when we were hovering outside it,” Zindiana said.

“I believe in being thorough,” Ayli said. “Also they were constructs of some kind. I wasn’t sure if they could pull themselves back together, so smaller pieces seemed better than big ones.”

“They were made out of the crystals that were on the floor?” Zindiana asked.

“Were, yes,” Ayli said.

“Sounds like we left a small fortune behind there,” Sali said.

“That’s fine,” Ayli said. “I know where the next trial is. A small fortune will be nothing if we can find the big one at the end of this nonsense.”

“It’s always the big fortunes that keep people the poorest,” Sali said. “Plenty of money to be made knocking over the easier targets.”

“Pirate,” Zindiana laughed and bapped Sali on the back.

They were past the orbital defense stations and Goldie was en route to meet them in another few seconds. They’d made it to safety.

Ayli stroked Nix’s hair, a tight knot in her heart hoping that they’d made it in time.