Nix knew they were going to get into trouble. It was probably impossible to leave eight Force-users in one place and not have them draw in problems like a galactic sized black hole. Despite that though, she was able to trust that they would be okay.

Which was progress!

Once upon a time, she would have insisted that the Force tell her what she could do to keep the people close to her safe.

And it would have.

And more than once that had been enough to drive them away.

She had to admit that it was a little ironic that she was the one who was flying away faster than light, but they all knew the truth. Nix wasn’t flying away from Goldie and Rassi and Solna. She wasn’t leaving them at all. Not like she’d been left behind.

Out there, beyond the swirl of hyperspace, Ayli was waiting for her.

Searching the Force wasn’t as useful as Nix had imagined it would be though. She could feel her connection to Ayli pulsing like a shared heartbeat, but wherever Ayli was, she was cloaked in deep shadows.

Which might mean Paralus had already brought her back to Praxis Mar. Or she could still be on the Dark Side Nexus ship. 

“I’ll never find the ship,” she said to no one in particular, not at all lonely after spending nearly a year with her new family.

“That is likely his intent,” a skeleton said from the copilot’s seat beside her.

Nix hadn’t seen a skeleton there a moment earlier, nor had she sensed one’s arrival, but she was able to sense him in the Force as clearly as she could see him.

That he didn’t feel like a threat at all was surprising. That she detected no greater shadowing by the Dark Side on him was even more so.

“You’re not here are you?” she asked, as she sketched out more of his presence in the Force.

“As in death and in life, I am never quite ‘all there’,” the skeleton answered and then somehow turned more serious. “Apologies, I know our time is short, but it has been a rather long time since there was anyone I could offer a humorous turn of phrase too.”

“You’re from Praxis Mar?” Nix asked, the Force showing her conflict on a planetary scale when she searched for the skeleton’s origin point.

“Currently, and for quite a bit longer than I’d have preferred, yes,” the skeleton said. “Believe it or not though I spent most of my life on Feldar Station. Praxis Mar was only meant to be a brief trip. A brief and survivable trip. I turned out to be zero for two on that score.”

“Feldar Station? I spent a year there when I was growing up!” It had been a particularly formative year as well, to the point where Nix found herself dreaming she was back there fairly often even still.

“Which, I suspect, is why I am able to appear before you.” The skeleton looked down at himself. “Or what part of me is able to appear before you.”

“What’s your name?” Nix asked. “Maybe if we have more of a connection we can more than just bare bones acquaintances.”

She hadn’t exactly meant to make a joke of the question, but it was sitting right there, just begging to be said.

And was apparently exactly what the skeleton needed.

He started off with a surprised giggle, which he wasn’t able to suppress from turning into a guffaw and then a full bellied laugh (which was impressive given his lack of anything resembling a belly).

It hadn’t been that funny of a joke, but Nix found herself chuckling in response to the skeleton’s mirth.

“Sorry, sorry,” the skeleton said, wiping eyes from which no tears could flow. “It’s been even longer since I’ve talked to anyone else with a sense of humor.”

“Praxis Mar doesn’t have much night life?” Nix asked. 

She could have tried a more meaningful or relevant question, but a talking skeleton had appeared beside her while she was alone on a ship in hyperspace. And that wasn’t even the weirdest part of her day so far.

“It feels like it is always night there,” the skeleton said. “Or at least it did until you came there.”

“Me?” The thought that she’d had any noticeable impact on a Dark Side Nexus on the scale of Praxis Mar was ridiculous from what Nix knew. A million Jedi meditating on the most peaceful dreams in the Force for a million years might have disrupted Praxis Mar’s Dark Side for a few minutes. 

Or they would have been swallowed whole by the planet within minutes.

Probably the swallowed one, Nix remembered the Beast of Praxis Mar all too well, continent sized monsters tending to leave an indelible impression in one’s memories.

“You spoke to us,” the skeleton said. “You offered us a new future. Do you have any idea how many others have tried to do that?”

“In thousands of years? A lot I would guess?”

“I have the official count. Are you ready for it? If we add all the people who tried immediately after the planet was scoured of life, and then toss in the ones who arrived in the early period looking to take control of it, plus the ones who showed up after the Beast woke up and round that total off with the ones who showed once we were long dead and were only interested in drawing power for us? Checking the official register we keep for these things the grand total comes to one. One person, ever. In all that time. Only one ever thought of us as people. Only one ever suggested that just because we were lost in endless suffering, we didn’t have to stay there.”

“What?” It wasn’t the most well reasoned question, but Nix was feeling a bit overwhelmed at the thought of the singular position she seemed to hold.

“You have us hope,” the skeleton said. “Did you serious think there weren’t going to be repercussions to that?”

“What kind of repercussions are we talking about?” Nix asked, the Force reassuring her than the skeleton wasn’t here to inflict said repercussions on her but rather to warn her about them.

“You’ve felt the turmoil Praxis Mar is in. You almost returned to us,” the skeleton said.

“That was the whole planet though,” Nix said. “Nothing I did could have done that.”

“Why?”

“I’m too small. I’m not that important.”

Nix wasn’t sure how a skeleton could give her a disbelieving stare, but he managed it nonetheless.

“Ever caught a cold?” the skeleton asked.

And Nix saw what she’d done with crystal clarity.

The spirits of Praxis Mar hadn’t been offered a better future in thousands of years. Whatever immunity they’d had to hope they’d long since lost.

And it had spread among them like a virus.

“Why is the planet in so much turmoil then? Is that why Ayli and I are being drawn back there?” Something seemed very off about their present circumstances if so.

“Well, see, there are those of us who would like to sign up for your newsletter and maybe get an official membership card for the Future Doesn’t Have to be Miserable Club,” the skeleton said. “And then there are those who I really do not want to name, or even refer too all that much, who are rather unhappy with the status quo being threatened. An entire planet consumed by the Dark Side is a somewhat unique resource I gather and they’re blaming you for taking that away from them.”

Which made sense. Nix hadn’t intended to pick a fight with a Force Lich, but under the circumstances she could see where there wasn’t really any common ground for them to stand on. 

Paralus whole existence was based on the suffering of others. All of his power came from turning their misery into fuel for his existence. Had their paths never crossed naturally, Nix probably would have wound up hunting him down eventually. Questing for knowledge about the Force seemed to lead to that, and the Force had already shown her that it would like her to make the little problem of his existence go away finally.

“I’m not that strong!” she said, speaking more or less directly to the Force.

The Force did not, as usual, answer her directly in any manner.

Aside from the skeleton sitting beside her.

That was probably a tiny clue from the Force that it believed in her.

“I don’t think anyone is,” the skeleton said, more ruefully than Nix had anticipated.

“Wait, what brought you to Praxis Mar? You said you were only supposed to be there for a little while?” she asked, intuition skipping around the edges of the skeleton’s history.

“I thought I could help,” the skeleton said.

“With what? The war?”

“Stupid right?” The skeleton sagged into the memory, its face gazing down at the console in front of it.

“Probably,” Nix said. “It’s my kind of stupid though. Which is probably why I’m going back there now.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve got a better reason than a bunch of restless old ghosts to go there,” the skeleton said.

“I thought I did,” Nix said. “I’m starting to suspect that this isn’t about saving my wife though.”

“I know you’re not giving up on her,” the skeleton said. “I don’t even have eyes and I can see that.”

“Oh, Step One is definitely finding her,” Nix said. It wasn’t that the Force was revealing the future to her. 

More the reverse really.

“And Step Two will be to beat a hasty retreat?” the skeleton asked with a fragile curiosity that the answer might just be something else.

“I don’t think the Force dragged the two of us back here because it wanted us to see what it had done with the place,” Nix said.

“I gather it wasn’t so much the Force that’s responsible for your present situation though,” the skeleton said.

“Oh, I’m sure Paralus thinks this was his idea, and I’m sure he has plans for what he’s going to do to us and with us.”

“Maybe that’s why I’m here then,” the skeleton said. “I couldn’t understand the pull to you that I felt. I’d obviously been a failure of a Stonebearer in life, but to feel the Soul Currents, or the Force as you call it, open to me again after so long? Well I couldn’t very well refuse that could I? If I’m here to show you anything though it’s probably the perils of overestimating your own abilities.”

Nix blinked. Stonebearer? Soul Currents? Another Force Tradition? Sitting right there in the cabin with her? When she wasn’t even looking for one!?

“Oh, oh, you are not a failure,” she said with an almost unholy glee as a mania of new thoughts began storming the gates of her mind.

“I assure you I…that is an odd expression you are wearing,” the skeleton said.

“Sorry,” Nix said without being in the least bit sorry. “I think there’s quite a bit we need to talk about though.”

“I’ve been without pleasant conversation for so long that the time has lost all meaning,” the skeleton said. “I think I’d be delighted to answer any questions you might have. There is one problem however.”

“Oh that’s not true,” Nix said. “There’s far more than one problem. That said I do know what you’re about to say.”

“That you shouldn’t come to Praxis Mar, even if it is to save your wife?” the skeleton said.

“Definitely not that,” Nix said. “I have the coordinates laid in already. Paralus thinks he invited me here, but Ayli is the one who actually extended the invitation. There’s a crucial distinction there which I believe Paralus has discounted to his soon-to-be ruin.”

“And I’m sure that’s what he wants you to believe,” the skeleton said. “But on Praxis Mar, even together with your wife, you will be alone against his full and unfettered might. I cannot explain how much I would welcome the salvation you offered, but I must say that my example shows how one person, or even two, cannot stand against a planet and win. No matter how clever they may be.”