Ayli was glad she already had her lightsaber in her hand. It didn’t feel like it was going to be enough, but it was a damn sight better than being unarmed. That thought sent her stepping in front of Nix, who, notably, did not have a lightsaber to defend herself with.

“It’s always adorable when one of them volunteers to die first,” the Ancient Specter said.

His appearance suggested that he was the shade of a departed human, tall and fair haired, in the prime of his life.

Except that what stood before Ayli was not and never had been human. She wasn’t even certain that she was really seeing it. It felt more like a projection from the Force rather than anything that held memories of breath and blood.

“If you’re so eager for the dying to start, why don’t you come a little closer,” Ayli said. The lightsaber could hurt the specter. It’s blade wasn’t magical, or imbued with the Force, it was simply very good at disintegrating things and for all the specter’s incorporeal creepiness, it’s presence in the world as anything more than a patch of bad feelings was dependent on the ectoplasm it seems to be composed of.

“The food thinks it’s not worth playing with,” the Ancient Specter said, rising from the chair it had been lounging in to pace across the control room. “Do not worry food. We will not rush your suffering. We know you cannot linger here as long as we have, but we have much time together.”

The lightsaber could hurt the Ancient Specter but Ayli could feel the power radiating from the monster. A part of her wished she hadn’t been training with Nix, hadn’t been honing her awareness and senses. Without some ability to sense the Force, she wouldn’t have known anything about the Ancient Specter, wouldn’t have had any sense of just how overmatched she was.

“You don’t want to do that,” Nix said. “You don’t even want to try.”

Ayli risked a glance back, expecting to see Nix offering her hand in peace to their adversary.

Nix did not look peaceful.

Her features were cast harder than durasteel, and any traces of mercy were hiding too well for Ayli to detect them.

“Oh, we assure you, we have spent countless time desiring nothing more than this day when we may feast once more,” the Ancient Specter said, pausing at one of the desks to pick up a ceremonial ribbon with a phrik disk medallion hanging from it.

“You won’t,” Nix said, her voice flattened into a knife edge.

“But we will let you live, or whatever you’re doing, if you find someplace else to be,” Ayli said, knowing the bluff wouldn’t work but surprised by why it failed.

“No we won’t,” Nix said, spoiling a negotiation which hadn’t ever held any real chance of success.

“How delightful,” the Ancient Specter said. “Descension in the ranks. Perhaps we shall start with the one which thinks it knows how this will turn out?”

Before Ayli could react, she heard a gurgle from behind her and spun to see Nix floating two feet off the floor, clutching at her throat.

“Fear not, at least not yet, we promised to take our time and so we shall,” the Ancient Specter said.

That was enough for Ayli. Remembering the things Nix had taught her, she charged forward, letting the Force guide the stroke of her blade.

And she missed.

The Force was so snarled within the specter that  it only needed to casually wave one hand and Ayli was sent tumbling off course into one of the walls. Blood burst from her nose as an unseen hand ensured that she smashed face first into the wall and then bounced hard off the ground when she fell back.

She felt a growl building inside her and shot back to her feet in time to see the Specter rotating Nix in the air like a pinwheel tool.

Movement wasn’t as easy as it had been the moment prior but Ayli pushed herself forward, keeping her steps careful and centered.

It didn’t matter.

The Ancient Specter waved its hand again as Ayli flew back into the wall, impacting it like a fall from orbit.

“Don’t give up,” the Ancient Specter said. “It’s ever so boring when they lose hope soon into the proceedings.”

Ayli had not lost hope, but her control over her rage was definitely starting to slip.

Which wasn’t helping Nix, who was still gulping for air.

“If you want me to fight, then leave her out of this and I’ll give you the fight you’re looking for,” Ayli said, hoping that if Nix got free for even a moment she might be able to escape.

Escape to where was an open question, but anywhere that wasn’t near the Ancient Spectre had to be an improvement.

As Ayli fought to move forward, Nix was fighting too. As she spun around, NIx dragged one of her arms painfully forward. She’s raised it no more than a hand’s breadth before flew backwards, crashing into a wall of her own. 

Nix rose with fire in her eyes, and Ayli saw it hadn’t been the Ancient Specter who threw her away. Nix had done that to herself in order to break free.

“How very clever,” the Ancient Specter said. “Keep it up. Keep looking for trick that will save you. That will let you escape. That will buy you one more breath.”

Nix collapsed to her knees, driving downwards by a terrible blow to her back.

Desperate to do something, anything, Ayli hurled the lightsaber at the specter.

The blade froze in mid-air and began slowly twirling, as under the specter’s control as everything else in the room was.

“How sad, now that one’s disarmed,” the Ancient Specter said. “Here, let us give the food its tool back.”

Ayli barely had time to duck as the lightsaber shot towards her, point first. At the speed it was going it should have struck the wall and shattered into a million tiny fragments. Instead though, it dropped down lightly to clank on the floor beside her.

“Go on,” the Ancient Specter said. “Take it up again. You might get closer this time. Maybe you can distract us. Maybe the other food can. Maybe we will peel the skin off of her and stew you in a marinade of her suffering. Or does her agony not touch you?”

Ayli’s fight against the emotions swirling within her was as losing a battle as the one against the specter. She could feel the yellow rings Nix had spoken of starting to cloud her vision.

You’re still you, and you still get decide who that is, no matter how strong the temptation to be someone you don’t want to be gets. Nix had said those words while they practiced together. Had believed in her. 

Still believed in her.

Ayli drew in a deep breath and thought of the calm she’d felt working with Nix. Thought of the calm she felt flying, even through the tightest of scrapes. Thought of the peace she would feel again in the future that waited for them.

It wasn’t much, and it didn’t drive away the rage and the fear that was threatening to overwhelm her, but it was enough for her to rise to her feet again and call the lightsaber to her hand once more.

“Yes, yes, try again. Try harder. Give us everything you have and more,” the Ancient Specter said.

“No.”

It wasn’t Nix or Alyi who had spoken, and for a moment Ayli didn’t recognize the voice, charged as it was with an unnamed and unfamiliar emotion.

“They are not yours. They’re mine,” Ravas said, her voice disembodied and echoing from all the points around them.

“I beg to differ progenitor,” the Ancient Specter said, it’s voice filled with an all too nameable and familiar anger.

“Good. You’re begging. Now leave them. They’re mine.” Ravas said, her voice closer than it had been, though still without a particular location.

“You hold no sway here, progenitor. Your time is past. You are weak and we shall feast!” the Ancient Specter roared, turning left and right ever more frantically.

Ayli jerked backwards as a hand burst through the specter’s chest, carrying a mass of pulsing purple slime that had been its heart.

“I said, they’re mine.” Ravas shoved the specter forward, it’s body crumbling to dust as she crushed its heart into a bright gemstone.

The overwhelming pressure from the Force faded and the sense of snarled wrongness diminished as well.

“Thank you,” Nix said, through a choking cough. “Thank you for coming.” She grasped onto the nearest console to steady herself as she rose to her feet. “I didn’t know if you would.”

A series of complicated emotions raced across Ravas’ face too quickly for Ayli to catalog or sense, before the dead Zabrak woman school her features back into their usual vaguely-annoyed expression.

“I came to protect my legacy,” Ravas said, turning to Ayli. “You can still be of much use to me.”

Ayli wondered about that.

On the one hand, she clearly was not in Ravas’ league when it came to manipulating the Force. The ease with which Ravas had dispatched the specter aside, there was also the small issue that Ravas seemed to have discovered how to live on indefinitely after she died, a trick which Ayli was certain she could not replicate.

“What did that thing mean by calling you ‘progenitor’?” Nix asked. “I got the feeling that it was a lot older than you are, wasn’t it?”

“Indeed,” Ravas said. “It had existed through millenia long before I trapped it here.”

“You brought that thing here?” Ayli asked. “Why?”

“My master commanded it,” Ravas said. “It was not our intention to capture a creature such as that specifically, merely to sanctify this location and enhance the energies which it naturally gives rise to. The arrival of the specters was both of a result of that process and a boon to it.”

“Killing that one isn’t going to break the hold the Dark Side has on this place, will it?” Nix asked, sounding like she already knew the answer.

“The Dark Side’s shadow will be weakened,” Ravas said. “Over time it may even fade back to its natural levels.Or perhaps one of the other specters will consume enough of its fellows to rise as the new Ancient. I never studied how a Dark Side nexus might be cleansed.”

“Would Kelda know?” Nix asked.

A tremor ran through Ravas’s body, but again, she reasserted control over herself.

“The Jedi were arrogant fools who would tell you they knew everything of how the Force worked,” Ravas said. “In her case however, maybe.”

Ayli had roughly one hundred thousand questions she wanted to ask, at least half of them hanging on the tiny wistful note at the end of Ravas’ words. With too many of them to sort through though, a silent moment passed before Ravas continued.

“She was always a good student,” Ravas said. “The attentive one. If anything in the Jedi texts had anything of actual value to say about this place, she might have known of it.”

“Thank you,” Nix said. “She’s not here. She’s almost always distant,” Ravas snorted at that but didn’t interrupt. “But this place feels like a world apart from the rest of the universe. It feels, is ‘cut off’ the right way to say it?”

“It is just the opposite,” Ravas said, in a far more pedagogical tone than Ayli would have guessed the ghost would ever adopt. “This is a nexus of the Force. It is more connected to the universe than almost anywhere else.” There was pride in her words, but it faded as she continued. “Those connections are not ones which would speak to you though. They are bound within and around themselves. Strong. Unbreakable.” Pride leaked out leaving only sad regret. “Inescapable. And limiting.” She turned and paced away. “It was not the working we should have made.”

“Why didn’t you undo it then?” Nix asked.

“Time. It ran out of us,” Ravas said. “When she killed me.”