Rassi stood in the wreckage of a tomb, breath spent, limbs shaking from exertion and for a moment all she could do was look for more things to break.

“I think we did it,” Solna said, sounding just as tired as Rassi felt. Around them the broken detritus of a hundred random bits of tech lay strewn across a floor covered in darkened dust.

“Why do I still feel like we should set a proton torpedo to go off in here then?” Rassi asked.

They’d found the Lich’s Phylactery. Ravas was still trapped in the spirit sealing crystal, the adults were also trapped behind a series of Explosive Shield Walls, but those were problems with easy solutions given that they no longer had to worry about an all-powerful Force Aberration showing up to telekinetically rip them limb from limb. 

Rassi shook again at the notion.

They had been so, so very lucky. She’d sensed the Force traps in place in the room where the phylactery lay. She and Solna had snuck around so many of them but when it came time to destroy the Lich’s most precious possession there hadn’t been any choice but to trigger so many of the alarms on it. 

The Force had been with them though and, Rassi suspected, someone else had worked very hard to hold Paralus’ attention so that their work could be completed.

Someone Rassi owed an unimaginable about of gratitude too.

Someone she was determined should never have to see the room where the phylactery lay.

“Because even without the phylactery intact this place is still just wrong,” Solna said, scowling at the resounding screams which continued to ring out around them.

“How do we fix it?” Rassi asked.

Stomping the phrik-encased phylactery to dust had been challenging, and had involved listening for quite a while until they found the proper frequency to “corrupt the Xah” on in order to begin shattering the pulsing red crystal that was the Lich’s true heart.

Rassi smiled at the thought that even Solna wasn’t considering what they had done to be a “corruption” of the Xah. The misery and despair around them served as too clear of an example of what a corruption of the Xah actually looked like.

What they had done – destructive though it had been – was as “corrupt” as house cleaning. You didn’t want to get the chemicals on your hands while you were sanitizing a rest room and you didn’t want to use the Force as they’d done for normal purposes, but in both cases the tool fit the job and did what was needed.

“The rest isn’t for you to fix,” Kelda said, apparating beside them. “This place is a wound, and wounds take time to heal.”

“Will we need to stay here to keep it clean?” Rassi asked.

“I don’t think Nix or Ayli will be inclined to let you linger here a moment longer than necessary,” Kelda said. She flickered away for a long moment and then returned. “Oh and they both want me to tell you that they’re incredibly proud of you.”

“They’re okay?” Solna asked.

“They’re speaking with a continent at the moment, so, tentatively we’ll go with ‘yes’ I think,” Kelda said.

“This is unusual for you, isn’t it?” Solna asked, finding a spot on the floor to flump down onto

“Singularly so,” Kelda said, examining the remains of the phylactery and noting the intricate design work which had been etched into the phrik.

“And you’ve been around for a thousand years?” Solna caught Rassi’s eye and patted the ground as an invitation to sit beside her, which Rassi gratefully accepted.

“In one sense, yes, in other I’m not much older than I appear.” Kelda picked up a handful of dust which had once been a crystal filled with living power.

“And this all is still weird though, right?” Solna asked before dropping her head onto Rassi’s shoulder.

“In my experience? In my research and reading? In my general understanding? Yes to all of those,” Kelda said. She continued to study the dust but Rassi knew she wasn’t going to find any trace of Paralus there. 

The Lich’s departure from the living world had been all too easy to sense as the storm within each the grains of dust had settled into stillness.

In breaking the phylactery, they hadn’t slain the Lich. Paralus was still embodied in the construct he’d created on Praxis Mar. Right up until he wasn’t. 

Rassi didn’t know the specifics of what had happened, but she knew it had to have involved a massive amount of damage inflicted all at once from the shockwave that had passed through the shattered phylactery.

She’d sensed the moment when the Lich’s spirit had tried to jump back to the artificial anchor which held it within the living world only to find that anchor lost. 

There’d been a moment of transcendent beauty, the briefest of flashes of something far greater and grander than anything Rassi should ever have been able to perceive, and then the Lich was gone, and the remnants of its phylactery nothing more than very old refuse.

Rassi had kept on breaking things for a while after that, determined to be sure that there should be no secret bolt holes and refuges left open for the Lich to flee back to from the afterlife.

But there hadn’t been. Rassi was still nervous and shaking about the Lich returning, but there hadn’t been any fallback options that they’d missed. 

They’d done it. As the first thing in their new lives, she and Solna had helped end one of the greatest “corruptions of the Xah” and one of the greatest evils she could imagine.

“That’s a relief then. I was afraid this was going to be an everyday sort of thing,” Solna said.

“I believe you’ll find life to be noticeably quieter than this,” Kelda said, settling down to sit against the wall opposite the one Rassi and Solna were on.

That sounded comforting and very peaceful.

But Rassi surprised herself.

“We’ve had silence for a long time,” she said. “What if we wanted to be loud for a change?”

“Oh, that can most certainly be arranged,” Ravas said, looking somewhat worse for the wear but free from her crystal confinement at last.

===

Goldie wasn’t supposed to worry. She’d had herself outfitted with more munitions than even her mother’s knew about in an effort to feel like she could contribute when they inevitably got in trouble. Somehow that had only made things worse though since it introduced another set of actions she knew could only be exercised at the proper moment and determining when that moment was stood as another cause for concern.

She chased her thoughts around in maddening little logic circles like that until she finally had everyone she’d been entrusted with back on board.

Then she’d asked then one or two questions.

“It’s been four hours, believe me, there are no more details any of us can recall,” Solna said.

“You have drones, don’t you?” Rassi asked. “Maybe next time we can bring one with us?”

“Oh, that could have been handy,” Solna said. “You could have blasted right through the stone gate that separated us for a few minutes there.”

“My drones are unarmed,” Goldie admitted with regret.

“They’re unarmed for now,” Ravas said, clearly having no interest in playing the ‘good influence’ in this instance.

“Mom says arming the drones will lead me into more situations where I need to fix things by shooting them,” Goldie said, knowing Nix would not be thrilled with adding even stunners to the drones, much less the sort of ordinance needed to blast through stone walls.

“Nix is right about that,” Kelda said. “Yet, she also does carry a lightsaber. Usually anyways.”

“I could mount cutting torches with a lot more power than a lightsaber,” Goldie said.

“It’s not the power that gets you into trouble or out of it,” Ravas said. “Having options can make all the difference sometimes though. At least up to a point.”

“She’s not wrong about that,” Monfi said. “I’m thinking our next stop, once we get our ship back, is going to be a shopping trip. I need a lot more tools if we’re going to go poking around in places like that again.”

“Umm, about that,” Kelda said.

“Oh, I know, there’s always a practical limit to the tools you can bring with you,” Monfi said. “There’s a lot of miniaturized tech out there though that is very portable.”

“That’s not what she’s referring to,” Lasha said, narrowing her gaze in what Goldie knew to be justified suspicion.

“Nix wanted to tell you herself, but asked that I pass along her assurances that she’ll repair or replace what’s left of your ship once she’s able to find it.”

“Find it? What happened to our ship?” Monfi asked.

“It seemed to have been swallowed by the planet,” Kelda said.

“We’re going to a planet that swallows ships?” Solna asked, sitting up straighter at the idea.

“Wouldn’t be the first one,” Nulo said, to which Moffvok huffed in agreement.

“Maybe we should keep traveling with them?” Rassi said, glancing over to Solna who’d been in rather surprising agreement in Goldie’s estimation with the idea that they wanted something other than a ‘quiet life’.

After a year spent with few responsibilities and only infrequent and mostly planetary trips, Goldie felt like something of a traitor for agreeing with them. 

She could understand the principals of peace and calm which Kelda and Ravas taught, and while Goldie wasn’t exactly ‘Force capable’, she was able to appreciate how it had helped both Nix and Ayli with their training.

But it was boring.

And she didn’t want to go back to boring.

“From the repairs Nix described needing to do, I suspect we’ll all be traveling together for a while longer,” Kelda said. “Unless Masters Lasha and Monfi wish to continue their work separately.”

“Rule number Two of being a Horizon Knight,” Monfi said. “Don’t turn away those who can help.”

“What’s rule number One?” Rassi asked.

“Don’t turn away from those who need help,” Nulo said.

“I think we could get behind that,” Solna said.

“I don’t know if we want to be Horizon Knights though,” Rassi said. “No offense meant there though!”

Moffvok chuffed again, a laugh this time according to Goldie’s translation database and said, “Don’t worry, you’re too old,” which Nulo then translated.

“Too old?” Solna asked, looking back and forth between Rassi and herself.

“The Jedi would have said the same thing,” Kelda said.

“The idea is to start laying in the principals the tradition is founded on so that they’re part of the Jedi’s, or Horizon Knight’s it seems, core identity,” Ravas said. “There were still Jedi who fell to the Dark Side, but that was often the result of extraordinary circumstances or specifically targeted campaigns of manipulation.” She reflected a moment before adding, “Or the fallen was simply really really stupid.”

“I think it’s rather the reverse,” Kelda said. “The only Jedi I know who fell did so because she was too much smarter than the ones who were trying to train her. She could see all the problems in the Order at the time and none of the masters who were supposed to be able to answer her questions were able to communicate the love that was meant to underpin the strictures of the code we were supposed to follow.”

“I thought Jedi weren’t allowed to love?” Nulo asked.

“So did I,” Ravas said.

“So did a lot of people,” Kelda said. “I think it’s more accurate to say that to be a Jedi requires that you be able to love fully. That means not letting fear wear a mask of love and control you, or anger, or despair.”

“And it means being able to love yourself even in the face of your worst mistakes. The moment you give up on that, that’s when you truly fall to the Dark Side.” Ravas threaded her fingers throw Kelda’s, who nodded in agreement.

“Then maybe we should be Jedi,” Solna said and took Rassi’s hand in hers too.

Goldie noticed the spike in Solna’s heart rate and the calm, warm smile that spread across Rassi’s face, which even as a machine intelligence, was not hard to interpret.