Goldie was not happy and Rassi couldn’t blame her.

“This is Bantha Puddu!” Goldie grumbled as they watched the Corvid-1256 leap to hyperspace carrying Nix towards a rendezvous no one was sure she was going to survive.

“How could none of us talk her out of this?” Solna asked. “Did she use some Jedi trick?”

“Those don’t work on me,” Goldie said.

“Us either,” Nulo, one of Lasha’s apprentices, said. “Even if she was powerful enough to influence us, she couldn’t do so without bending the Force so much that we noticed that disturbance, and the Force is pretty calm here at the moment. The space battle out the excepted.”

Rassi had never met a Hutt in person before, and guessed Nulo wasn’t a typical member of her species being fairly tiny still and softer spoken than Holonet vids typically depicted the gangster-species being.

That not all Hutts (or even most) were gangsters made more sense that the Holovid depictions of them, which left Rassi itching to quiz Nulo about what being a Hutt was really like except that they had a rather more critical matter to deal with.

Moffvok, Lasha’s other apprentice, gave multisyllabic Wookie growl in response to Nulo’s comment.

“Oh, that’s true,” Nulo said, translating for Rassi and Solna. “She wouldn’t be as effective a distraction if any of us were along.”

“Maybe for you, but Paralus wouldn’t even have known I was there,” Goldie said.

The adults and the Force Ghosts were off in the cabin in their own conference, discussing strategy for how they would approach the Lich’s phylactery. A strategy which they had been crystal clear would not include either the apprentices or Nix’s wards.

No one was under any illusion that the object which was the most precious thing in the galaxy to the Lich would be unprotected. Ravas had made a compelling argument that there likely wouldn’t be guards around the phylactery given the Dark Side’s complete absence of trust or faith in others, which meant there would be other, likely far worse, traps and protection in place. Which was why Monfi and Lasha were determined to retrieve and/or destroy it themselves.

Moffvok growled again, which Nulo translated once more.

“We can sense you, so it would be a bad gamble to assume the Lich couldn’t.”

“Yeah, but what is he going to do to me. I’m a ship. I had guns,” Goldie said.

“Destroy you, and drive Nix to enough rage that she corrupts the Xah within herself and becomes the kind of monster who falls under his control,” Solna said.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Goldie said. “If she was that angry, she’d never work with him. She’d just want to destroy him.”

“That’s logical,” Solna said. “But descending into enough rage to corrupt your Xah involves losing yourself to it.”

Rassi could tell it still wasn’t making sense to Goldie.

“What we were taught if that if anger strips away all your limits of reason and morality, you also lose the barriers which prevent others, those whose Xah is already corrupted, from controlling you. A corrupted can’t make you murder someone, but if you’re angry enough to kill blindly then they can make see and believe whatever they want you to see and believe. Nix could wind up ‘killing’ Paralus over and over and over again, each time slaying someone who stood against the Lich or was trying to bring her back to her senses.”

“Oh,” Goldie said and was quiet before adding, “Well that sucks.”

“I think she’ll be okay,” Solna said, surprising Rassi with the vote of confidence in someone Solna had been so deeply distrustful of mere hours earlier.

Of course, Nix had also danced with them and it was hard to ignore what she’d claimed for them, or to believe she had anything but their best interests at heart.

Which was why Rassi could understand Nix leaving them behind. They would have been not only in serious danger, but a serious danger to her since at least Solna and herself didn’t seem to have the same resistance to Force powers that even the non-Force using citizens of the galaxy did.

Goldie was right too though. It sucked to be left behind. Nix had supported her and Sola since the moment they’d met. Had that been Solna’s doing? No. Rassi could believe that Solna had unwittingly drawn someone to them who was willing to help, but talking to Nix for even five second was enough to prove that she was not being controlled by a corrupted Xah manipulation.

“I know she’s smart and all,” Goldie said. “This just seems really stupid. I don’t understand why Ayli gave herself up. I mean, sure, she had to save the people she was with, but she also had to know that she was going to put Nix at risk too doing that.”

Moffvok growled again.

“Maybe she was counting on that,” Nulo translated. “From how she spoke of her wife, maybe they feel more comfortable confronting the Lich together.”

“That would be just like them,” Goldie said. “She could have at least taken the ghosts though.”

“We would have been a similar liability,” Kelda said, appearing in the ‘kiddy’ room. “Though it would have been more challenging for Paralus to endanger us, it’s not impossible.”

“And our talents are much better spent on making sure he’s dealt with in a permanent and irrevocable manner,” Ravas said.

“Have you worked out a plan then?” Rassi asked, a small part of her hoping that there might be a place for her and Solna in it.

“Not as such,” Ravas said.

“We’ve agreed that we need to find the phylactery’s location first and that we’ll go there immediately once we do,” Kelda said.

“Monfi was suggesting we research whatever the location was so we’d know what we were getting ourselves into,” Ravas said. “Which isn’t the worst idea, but has certain problems associated with it.”

“Namely that we don’t know how long Nix and Ayli have,” Kelda said.

“And if they fall to Paralus, then he’ll know we can find his phylactery,” Ravas said.

“So he’d move it,” Solna said.

“Or be waiting for us there,” Nulo said.

Moffvok growled.

“If he can defeat two Jedi like Ms. Nix, he can probably handle us too,” Nulo answered. “Remember Master Lasha’s training. We don’t win by being stronger. We win by turning our opponent’s strengths into weaknesses.”

“That’s a very Jedi-like philosophy,” Kelda said with a hint of appreciation.

“The Jedi and most other martial systems in the galaxy,” Ravas snorted.

“How can we help?” Rassi asked.

“By being patient,” Kelda said.

“Because other people know what’s right to do,” Solna said and Rassi heard a strange anger in her tone.

“That’s often the case,” Kelda said. “This time however it’s because until we know what we’re up against, we’ll only tie ourselves in knots trying to plan for what might be.”

“But what about when we get there?” Rassi asked. “Are they going to let us help then?”

“There are many ways to help,” Kelda said.

“Like by staying quiet and out of the way.” Solna was in full on sulky mode, which Rassi knew was going to be challenging to get her out of. Even more so because Rassi suspected Solna was right. 

They’d just escaped a life where they were always told to be quiet, to stay out of the way and exactly what they were supposed to think. Rassi didn’t want to be part of the Silent Enclave anymore, and didn’t want to be part of a group who treated her like she was.

“How better to strike at you enemy when they least expect it?” Ravas asked, seemingly puzzled by Solna’s declaration.

“But, they’re not going to let us strike at anything, are they?” Rassi asked.

“Are you there apprentices?” Ravas asked.

“Well, no,” Rassi said.

“Do you need to do what they say then?”

“Well, no.”

“Should you disrupt their plans, or make their work harder?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then where’s the harm in allowing our Horizon Knight friends from doing their job, and aiding them as you see fit?”

“We are their apprentices though,” Nulo said.

“And I would not advise you to disobey your Master’s orders,” Ravas said. “I had at best a fifty percent success ratio when I did that after all.”

“Oh, it was higher than fifty percent,” Kelda said. “They just punished you fifty percent of the time because they didn’t want the rest of us getting ideas.”

“You seem to get them anyways,” Ravas said.

“Yes, but it took much too long,” Kelda said. “Imagine if I’d had the sense to run away with you when you left?”

“Oh, I have,” Ravas said. “Probably best you didn’t though. If we’d both been Sith apprentices, we would have had to fight to the death.”

“We could have become Horizon Knights?” Kelda suggested.

“Or perhaps Witches of Dathomir?”

“Or applied to the Silent Enclave.”

“I think I prefer being a ghost,” Ravas said.

“There are certainly worse fates,” Kelda agreed.

“You know, there is something we can do,” Solna said. “Something that wouldn’t even violate your orders to not interfere with the phylactery hunt.” She was looking to Nulo and Moffvok.

Moffvok growled and Nulo added, “We would both like to do something if we could but what is it that we can do from here?”

“And will I be able to shoot it?” Goldie asked.

“No, no shooting involved, I think,” Solna said. “But we could try to get a message to Ms. Ayli.”

“But we don’t…” Rassi had been about to say ‘know her’, except they did. Nix had shown them who Ayli was. All the needed to do was listen for her in the Force.

And then ask the Force to change.

“Are you sure?” she asked Solna, the weight of the suggestion hitting her all at once. They were going to ‘corrupt the Xah’. It wasn’t much of a corruption to whisper a message to someone, but Solna’s old life was falling away like a crumbling building for her to have even suggest it.

“No,” Solna said. “I know it’s wrong, but what we’ve been taught was wrong is wrong too. This isn’t going to hurt anyone, and we’re not doing it because we’re afraid or angry or any of the other things that can truly corrupt someone, so maybe it’ll be okay? We’ll see right?”

“Pardon, but I don’t understand something. Why would sending a message to Ms. Ayli be wrong?” Nulo asked.

“You all should compare notes on what you think about the Force,” Ravas said. “Especially before trying to work together.”

“Indeed. The relationship you have to the Force or the Xah will likely be very different from each other and any issues in communication may cause far greater problems than they solve,” Kelda said. 

Rassi hadn’t thought there could be that much for them to talk about. The Force and the Xah were just different names for the same thing after all, and Horizon Knights were just Jedi with a focus on hunting specific targets.

Four hours later, she was just beginning to appreciate how wrong she’d been about all of that.

Were the Force and the Xah the same things? Yes. Absolutely. Did someone’s understanding differ with them based on what they’d been raised to understand? Also, yes, absolutely.

Moffvok was the one who gave them all the key to understanding why there was a difference by relating it to the difference between Basic and Shyriiwook, his language. You could say the same things in both, mean the same thing, and both languages were simply tools for communicating ideas, but even “identical” sentences carried connotation and implied meanings the other lacked. And each had ideas which were difficult to express in the other. 

After another couple of hours, Rassi felt like she had enough of a grasp on the core beliefs of the Padal Horizon Knights that she would be able to work together with.

And that’s when they got dangerous.