Ayli wasn’t usually pleased with crash landings but under the circumstances she couldn’t help but smile.

“It’s a good thing there wasn’t any crew on board,” she said as she survey the kilometers long swath of ruin that remained on the Assassin class ship.

“Oh but there was,” Paralus’s projection said. Of course he hadn’t bothered to physically appear before Ayli, not when he could simply conjure an illusion of himself to talk through instead. “We’ll be recovering the machine intelligence before too much longer.”

“A useful tool is it?” Ayli asked, unable to suppress the grin which arose from her knowledge of the state of the servers on the ship.

“Everything and everyone are tools,” Paralus said. “It is only a question of how one puts them to use.”

“You don’t say.” Ayli tried to discern whether Paralus was including himself in that count. She suspected if pressed he would claim that embracing the ‘truth of darkness’ or whatever other nonsense was the scripture of his personal mania was sufficient to ‘truly free him’. It was terribly tempting to needle him into such a boast, but she didn’t want to draw his attention to how she was using him since it seemed to have escaped his attention that she hadn’t come along with him because she had no other choice.

“You would have been better served by landing closer to the temple,” Paralus said. “Praxis Mar is not home to many things which will grant you easy passage.”

“I am an invited guest,” Ayli said. “Certainly the Beast of Praxis Mar would not hinder my journey to the Lord of the world it is merely a guardian of?”

“You presume I would instruct it to deny its nature,” Paralus said.

“Then I suppose I will simply wait here,” Ayli said, surveying the ship’s ruins for anything she could add to the surviving command deck for comfort.

Pickings in that regards were fairly slim. With the damage Ayli’s had done to the shuttle bay, there hadn’t been the proper option of a taking a shuttle down to the surface, and with the damage her Dark Side had done to the rest of the ship, remaining in orbit hadn’t been particularly viable either. 

There had been enough control left of the sublight engines to manage the descent, which was how Ayli had been able to bring the ship down fast enough that Paralus hadn’t been able to influence its trajectory all that much. 

Landing it properly had never been part of the plan, but managing to destroy it as thoroughly as she had without killing herself in the process was something Ayli intended to hold onto a badge of honor for the rest of her life.

However long or short that might be.

Her plan called for her to escape Praxis Mar. She could see a future where she and Nix were back together, cuddled up alone in their house, safe and peaceful. That seemed wonderful and was exactly what she was striving for.

But she knew Paralus had a vision for the future too.

And he was powerful. Dreadfully so. 

Could she and Nix defeat him? Probably not? Could she, Nix, Ravas and Kelda defeat him? Again, probably not. For all that he blathered on endlessly, the Lich kept a lot about himself hidden, especially the true depths of his power. 

That was a smart move, and Ayli hated going up against smart enemies. The two smart Imperial Officers she’d ran up against had inflicted more losses on the Rebellion than any two dozen other officers combined. 

There was a thing about smart enemies though. Once you knew they were smart, their actions spoke louder than they did.

Paralus was smart, and he kept his power largely hidden. He’d attacked her when she was in the most vulnerable position she’d been in for over a year.

Which meant he was afraid.

Not necessarily of her. On her own, she couldn’t overcome his power. Ayli knew that for a certainty because of the fight between Paralus and her incarnated Dark Side. Even fully unleashed, Ayli’s rage and fear and desperation hadn’t come close to defeating the Lich.

Which wasn’t the victory which Paralus apparently thought it was.

“You will soon have cause to reconsider that,” Paralus said.

“And you care about this? That’s unexpected,” Ayli said, taking the chance that goading him into speaking might let her catch a glimpse of his true agenda.

“One must always care for one’s tools if they are to be of proper use,” Paralus said.

“You have a problem then don’t you? You can watch me sit here and come to whatever dire end Praxis Mar has in store for me, or you can exercise those great powers you have to clear a safe path to wherever you intend for me to go.”

“Or I can allow the denizens of this world to break all the parts of you which I have no need for,” Paralus said. “I believe that would bring the other one even sooner would it not?”

Ayli shook her head and sighed.

“If you’re going to lie, at least try to be consistent,” she said. “You’ve avoided torture so far because the moment you cross that line, they’ll be able to find exactly where I am and you need the people who are looking for me to stumble around and be worn down before you face them. You’ve kept me cloaked in the Dark Side this whole time because if I can communicate with them you know they’ll have a direct line to you.”

“I do not fear your ghosts or your partner. Nor do I fear the Horizon Knight you jettisoned. I have transcended you all. Even with twice your number on a far lesser world, I could slay you all. Here, on this site of perfected order though? Here no one may stand against me, no matter the armies they come in.”

Which, oddly, all sounded true. Ayli knew the miasma of the Dark Side which choked the planet was distorting her perceptions, but she could still tell that Paralus at least truly believed the words he’d spoken.

Which was fascinating because he was afraid of something.

If no power they could bring to bear against him would matter, then why was Paralus holding back as much as he was.

He couldn’t need her as a simple sacrifice. Ayli knew that if her blood could have satisfied him, Paralus would have cut her apart on the ship without a second thought.

She wanted to reach out to the Force. After a year of training, it had become a comfortable ally, one that she trusted more than herself at times. 

But Praxis Mar was not a place to listen to the whispers of the Force. The Dark Side was many things but honesty or even accuracy were not qualities it possessed.

In the distance, the Fallen Temple of the Heavens stood at the top of a ridgeline, backlit against the skyline by an aura which was only visible when Ayli looked at its presence in the Force. It was where Paralus had set his throne, and the last place on the planet Ayli should go.

Which was, of course, why she had to get there.

Facing Paralus at the center of his power wasn’t meaningfully different in the calculus of who was stronger. There wasn’t anywhere on the planet she could go where she wouldn’t be completely overwhelmed.

Which also gave her a piece to the puzzle of Paralus’ aims since no where else on the planet would she be as poised to strike a meaningful blow against him.

Was he refusing to clear a path for her because he wanted her to be weakened getting to him, or was he refusing because he lacked the power to control something as large of a planetary scale Dark Side Nexus? 

Or was it both? The last thing a ‘Dread Lich’ was going to admit was a lack of control and the first thing they would do was look for a means to turn that shortcoming into an advantage.

“Well this should be interesting then,” Ayli said. “I guess we’ll both get to see what it takes to break me, and what I can do once we meet face to face.”

She didn’t mean it as a threat, and so the desperate defiance which might have been there in her voice was notably absent.

Which unnerved Paralus and gave Ayli another clue to try to fit into the picture she was putting together.

“You will meet you destiny,” Paralus said. “One which you were never going to escape, no matter how far away you ran or who you turned to for shelter.”

Ayli could have pointed out that even inevitable conflicts could turn out very differently based on the preparations people made for them. As a purely random example, one might spend a year training with two master Force Users, supported by the most loving spouse Ayli could imagine, and working on the doubts and insecurities which had plagued her since she was old enough to form words. 

The woman she was had grown into someone quite different from the one she’d been before meeting Nix, and while that hadn’t involved the acquisition of unmatched cosmic power, it had given her something important to work with.

Faith.

In Nix, who was absolutely going to come for her, in her friends, who would support Nix and make sure there was a real chance for them to survive, and in herself.

“Let’s get started then,” Ayli said and hopped off the remnant of the landing strut she’d been sitting on.

And the ground immediately tried to swallow her whole.

It wasn’t the most subtle of traps. Ayli had sensed the hunger below her and its growing eagerness all during her conversation with Paralus.

Force Lightning would have been an excellent response to the attack, and the Force eagerly showed her how she could blast a crater of safety for herself which would deter all such attacks going forward.

With her Dark Side quiescent though, the jolt of overpowering fear was missing as she sank completely below the surface of the ground and she was able to react in a more considered manner.

Gently pushing on the walls of earth which entombed her, she lifted herself up and pressed the dirt slightly apart to allow her passage.

The hungry ghost which had fused with the land went wild at the loss of its prey, the only food it had held the promise of consuming in centuries.

Ayli felt its need and rage slam into her and let it pass right through.

She wasn’t angry with it. It was doing what it needed to, what it had been reduced to.

She wasn’t afraid of it. If it hurt her, that would just be how things went. She would respect it, and try to find a better path for both of them.

That did not assuage the hungry ghost. It still hungered. It still raged. 

But it was also confused.

What better path was there?

All was hunger.

Everything had always been hunger.

Hadn’t it?

Leaving the hungry ghost to ponder that, Ayli drifted beyond its reach and touched down to continue walking towards the Fallen Temple. It had taken some effort to escape the ghost and it was entirely likely that a thousand more awaited her on her path.

Her destiny lay in the Temple, and she knew she would make it there, but before she took a moment to be honest with herself; bravado aside, it was a daunting trip. Paralus was right to think that she could break during it.

What he hadn’t thought to ask himself though was what might happen if she didn’t?

Trials didn’t always make her stronger. They could be exhausting and they could leave her heart filled with regrets and shame. They could show her just how weak she was, and strip away the illusions she clung to.

Illusions like the belief that everything she’d done rested on; her faith in Nix.

By the end of the long and lonely journey she was about to make, her heart might prove to be weak enough to abandon that hope. 

Would she ever forgive herself for that?

Would she ever forgive Nix if the faith proved misfounded?

It was so tempting to simply declare that she would never crumble, never falter, but in the year of training, she’d come to know herself and her limits. For as much as she believe, for as much as she wanted to believe, she bore enough wounds that sometimes she needed a bit of reassurance to go on. Sometimes she needed people to be there for her.

“She’s coming. She’s on her way to you. You don’t know who I am, but I know who you are through her,” the voice of very quiet girl said from unimaginably far away and in her words, Ayli heard Nix’s love shining like a beacon across the stars.