It was too late by the time Nix strolled into the temple and she was alone.

Or at least that’s what it looked like.

“And the last pawn takes its final place,” Paralus said at Nix’s appearance. 

That she was backlit by a tremendous crash of lighting from the storms outside was an unnecessary bit of dramatics, but Nix wasn’t going to deny her new friends their little flourishes.

“Hey,” she said instead, gazing around at the horrific ornamentation of the temple where Praxis Mar’s troubles had started.

Every memory and sensation she read from the ancient stone and the calcified bodies of sacrifices around her screamed of agony and misery, but after the centuries their voices were hoarse and tired. Time had diminished them enough for the other, even older whispers of the past to be audible.

The Temple was where Praxis Mar’s doom was centered, with the Maw at the high altar the violation which had brought the house of cards that was the planet’s society crashing down.

And it had been a house of cards.

No one person’s work had been the sole cause of the apocalypse which had twisted the world into a planetary nexus of the Dark Side. The atrocity in the temple had been no more than the tipping point at the end of a history where people had chosen time and again to pursue domination and power built on the oppression and suffering of those who could be cast as ‘the other’. 

The Dark Side had been well seeded into the bodies and souls of Praxis Mar long before its downfall, but in listening to and accepting the Darkness which pervaded everything in the planet, Nix heard the voices of her new friends too. Voices which had been forgotten, or which had never believed they mattered, or which had never believed that could exist alongside the blood and sins they were carrying.

“This is the end of your journey,” Paralus said with a faintly gleeful air.

Nix quirked up her eyebrows as though that was a singularly stupid statement.

“Well, yeah, that’s how journey’s work,” she said. “So, where’s my wife at?”

“She has passed beyond your reach. She is lost to you,” Paralus said. “There are none who stand with you and none who will aid you.”

Nix could feel Ayli’s presence, almost maddeningly near and yet still veiled from her.

The Maw.

It was the worst possible place Ayli could have gone, so, of course that had to be where so was.

Also there weren’t many hiding spots in the temple given it’s relatively open floor plan.

“Yes. She will be destroyed or she will become one such as I,” Paralus said. “And either end will be your undoing.”

“Think so do you?” Nix asked. Ayli was entirely too calm for someone who was being destroyed or turning into a Force Lich, but Nix was certain Paralus couldn’t sense that. 

Which was understandable. The Maw was singularly painful to even glimpse much less turn any deeper senses towards. For all his power, Nix suspected Paralus wasn’t immune to the distortion the Maw inflicted on any who tried to perceive it. Nix wasn’t quite so limited though since she had another place to search for Aylil; inside her own heart.

“No rage? No concern? How intriguing,” Paralus said. “You never truly did leave your flirtations with the Dark Side behind did you? Have you been this cold all along? No, I don’t think so. The infection you planted into the soil here wouldn’t have taken root if it was not sincere. Could it be that you broke already? That is truly disappointing if so.”

“You know my whole job is fixing broken things, right?” Nix said. “You seem thrilled with this place, but I’ve got to tell you, it’s just a mess.”

“It is perfection,” Paralus’ didn’t give voice to anger but it was there hiding behind his words, just like it always was. “Or it was until you arrived.”

Nix let an honest chuckle escape her lips.

“You think I did this?” she said. “One person. Me? You think I’m the one responsible for all this?” As if she’d queued it (which she essentially had) three bolts of lighting struck the temple and an earthquake shook the building had enough for bits of plaster to fall from the ceiling.

“Yours was the first sin, the first viral cell of undoing to disturbing the perfected order which existed here for time beyond reason,” Paralus said. “That is why I have drawn you back. That is why I have destroyed the one you hold most dear and why I will expunge the rest of your life’s work from the galaxy once you prove the folly of opposing the truth of the galaxy.”

“That’s impressive,” Nix said, walking towards Paralus’ shade and the Maw beyond it. “You got literally everything wrong there. There should be some kind of prize for that.”

“Ah, it is delusions that you cling to then is it?” Paralus said. “Could you still believe that there is hope left for you?”

“You know before coming here, I was wondering if there was hope left for both of us,” Nix said. “I kind of didn’t want there to be. It felt so hard to accept that someone who’d done what you did could be redeemable. That there should be any hope for someone who embraced what this place had become. You’re a monster, we both know that, but part of me knows that even monsters deserve hope and to be able to become something better.”

“The lies of the Jedi? How sadly uninspiring. Those have led fools to their doom since the founding of their sad religion,” Paralus said. “I had hoped for so much more from one who managed to do what you did.”

“Yeah, it’s difficult to accept that idea, isn’t it?” Nix said. “Forgiveness feels so vulnerable. It’s like inviting the pain to happen all over again.”

“It is weakness. There is never true forgiveness, only submission or revenge. But you don’t believe that do you? You are close to the precipice of true understanding than I’d imagined and yet you stubbornly cling to the lies the Jedi have taught you.”

“Wow. You really weren’t paying attention while you were spying on me were you?” Nix said. “Like, seriously, you had a year, right? How do you not know me better than that? Were you just peeping on me and Ayli having sexy fun times or something?”

“Jests will not save you,” Paralus said, his shade gaining substance and stature as Nix reach a dozen or so paces from it.

“Who’s jesting?” Nix said, her hands empty of weapons as the Lich’s demeanor changed to an image of death itself. “You seem to have no real idea what’s going on here, or who you’re dealing with.”

“Don’t I?” Paralus’ laugh was an ugly and supremely confident thing. “Nix Lamplighter. Orphan. Murderer. The Force spoke to you and you embraced its darkness once until your weakness felled you and you ran from the truth. Ran into a life servitude as mundane and menial as you could find. Ran and hid from the truth of what you are until a lesser apparition of the Force, herself a refuge from the truth, found you and let you believe the lie that you could use the Force and cling to your soft delusions, just like you clung to your soft wife, all while the truth of the Dark Side was growing inside her.”

Beyond a chuckle, Nix let a full throated laugh burst from her.

“You saw all that? You looked that far back and yet still, STILL, you didn’t understand what you were seeing? How? I mean, seriously, that took skill to mistake literally everything you saw about me like that.”

Nix paused to consider Paralus, who was looming above her at twice her height and growing.

“Or maybe it wasn’t skill,” she said growing contemplative rather than concerned. By all appearances she should have been terrified, but Paralus displaying his power as though he could overwhelm her meant he really was blinded to what was coming and Nix had every intention of keeping him focused on her even though it was already far too late for him on Praxis Mar. “Everything you see, all of your sense, you can only perceive things through the Dark Side can’t you? All you see is the worst possibly view of everything, and since that’s what you were afraid of all along, that’s all that you can believe is true. I’m…wow, that is actually really sad.”

“You will understand all too soon which of us sees the truth and which is wrapped in her own delusions,” Paralus said, raising his hands as Force Lightning began to crackle between his fingers.

“Oh, I already know you’re delusional,” Nix said. “I can see the darkness you do. It’s kind of hard to miss it and it’s really easy to focus on it out of fear and anger. Stars but it is easy. I did that for so long, but, in my defense, I was a child at the time. It took time, but I did eventually grow up, and looking at you I have to wonder, was that ever something you managed?”

Force Lightning was her answer.

Force Lightning which she was able to hold off. For about two seconds. Then it coursed through her and slammed her into a pillar twenty feet away.

Rising to her feet, steam wafting from the fresh burn marks she’d acquired.

“Hit a nerve there did I?” Nix asked, wiping a bit of blood from her mouth. “Guess I’m not the first one to call you a petulant child.”

More Force Lightning answered her again and once again she resisted it for only a few seconds before being cast back.

What Paralus didn’t seem to notice was that she had resisted it for longer and that her fall had seemingly been cushioned.

“Let me fill you in on what you missed,” Nix said, striding forward again.

She was distant enough this time to sidestep the first burst of Force Lighting Paralus threw at her. 

“My life? It was one I chose. I like fixing things. Mundane servitude? People paid me to do what I wanted to. I’m sorry you never got to experience that. Maybe a few weeks with a hydrospanner and a flux analyzer would have been enough to pull your head out of your own butt.”

The Force Lighting blast that hit her was the biggest Paralus had thrown so far, but this time Nix wasn’t alone in resisting it.

“Is this really a good idea?” Hendel the Skeleton asked, lending his mastery of the Force to Nix’s effort to hold back the Force Lightning blast.

It wasn’t enough but it did soften the blow tremendously.

“Foolish soul,” Paralus thundered, the rage he’d been suppressing clearly visible at last.

“Wow, I haven’t been hearing that for the last thousand years or anything,” Hendel shot back, a few centuries of annoyance backing up his words.

“See that’s the thing Lich-boy,” Nix said. “You’re so stuck gazing up your own dark sphincter that you missed the whole point of life. Did I do some really poodoo things as a kid? Hell yes. Am I along in that? Hell no. Do people keep on doing stupid, awful things despite how old they are? Unquestionably. But is that all we are? Is that our limit? Can we not grow beyond the mistakes we made? Learn from them? Become more than we were?”

The next lightning blast was stronger than all of the ones before, but Nix and Hendel held out against it, though not alone.

“You think giving in and embracing your worst qualities is the path to true power because it was easy and quick. You were afraid of compassion, and kindness, and everything that connects us to one another and the Force because  they require openness and vulnerable and you were too weak to risk those.”

The temple exploded, it’s roof crashing down as raw power, not even shaped into lightning, smashed down like a mountain on top of Nix, seeking to cover the words which were being heard by far more than one little Force Lich.