Praxis Mar did not settle down. Nor did it became a beacon of peace and light. The planet had been a Dark Side Nexus for centuries and billions of souls had been trapped in torment within it. No single act was going to make it ‘nice’ place, no grand deed would restore balance or erase the pain the souls there had suffered.

But that didn’t mean it wasn’t becoming better than it had been. 

In small pockets, bit by tiny bit, the lost souls of Praxis Mar began to find their way.

Nix and Ayli were a part of that, if only one small one. It wasn’t with Force powers or mighty battles that they worked to restore Praxis Mar’s balance though.

In a small clearing of long petrified trees, they sat and shared stories with the Hendel and other shades who were searching for a path towards a new tomorrow.

“I thought things would be easier after we won,” Hendel said, still a skeleton, but looking somehow more lively than he had before.

“There’s still a lot of spirits who are clinging to the Dark Side are there?” Nix asked.

“There are,” a spirit so faded that they’d lost all semblance of what their original being looked like.

“And they’re gaining ground in some places too,” a spirit who had to have been a child when they perished said.

“That’s a good sign, believe it or not,” Ayli said. She was leaning with her back against a short stump which Nix was sitting on.

“How could that be good?” the faded spirit asked, too weary for there to be any pain in its voice.

“Healing isn’t a linear process. You go back and forth, and a lot of people will resist and cling to what they’ve known even if its only brought them misery,” Ayli said, her voice taking on a quality not unlike Kelda’s had held when Ayli first heard those words.

“I don’t know that I have the strength to fight against that though,” the faded spirit said.

“You don’t need to fight,” Nix said. “At this point, finding what peace and balance within yourself is more than enough.”

“I thought we were all in this together? Isn’t that one of the things the Jedi say?” the child spirit asked, the centuries of their existence lending them a decidedly non-childlike air.

“I haven’t heard a Jedi specifically say that,” Nix said. “I sort of suspect they missed that point in their later teaching too since it seems like they tended to get sent out as solo or duo troubleshooters.”

“But you’re a Jedi?” the child said.

“I’ve studied some of the Jedi arts,” Nix said. “And I’ve trained with a Jedi, of sorts, but that doesn’t make a Jedi anymore than learning to speak Rhodian makes me one of them.”

“What we’re telling you comes from our own experiences,” Ayli said. “It’s not a holy writ. The answers you find to the problems here will definitely be different than ours and that’s fine. You have a whole different set of needs and priorities than we do.”

“And you’ve been through experiences we can only imagine,” Nix said. “What you can do? What’s going to resonate with you and give you the motivation to keep going? That’s going to be unique to who you are.”

“Our stories are just meant to give you ideas for things that might work for you,” Ayli said.

“And at least a few examples of what is possible,” Nix said. “Maybe that’ll help?”

“I think it has been,” Hendel said. “Some of our other listeners have wandered away and at least a few of them have been talking with other people.”

“He’s right,” the faded spirit said, sounding at least slightly more substantial. “The first promise you made, the dream of people coming here and bringing our stories to light? That spread all on its own. It was sort of whispered from one of us to the next. This feels much more substantial though. Before it was a beautiful dream in a sea of endless nightmare. Now though, you’re here, and you’re real, and you’re can’t be wished away like a dream.”

“What I don’t understand is why we’re not all simply fading away?” the child spirit said. “I mean, we’ve been dead for an aeon. Our time is passed. Shouldn’t we be moving on? Isn’t there some afterlife we’re supposed to be in?”

“I don’t know,” Nix said. “I’ve never been dead.”

“There are as many beliefs about the afterlife as their are stars in the galaxy,” Ayli said. “It’s a pretty fascination area of study – I had an elective in it during my second year – in your case though I’m wondering if its because you’re simply not ready.”

“After all this time, we’re not ready?” Hendel asked.

“Some of you probably are,” Nix said. “I suspect if you could do a census, you’d find that a lot of people have passed into the Force already. For a lot of you though? Well, tell me if this sounds right – you weren’t ready to die when you did? And the years spent trapped her didn’t exactly leave you feeling fulfilled? After so long, I think it would be pretty natural to hang on to this existence both because you still want more out of this world and because you were held here so long that its become a somewhat natural state for you.”

“Is that what we should be trying to fix?” the faded spirit asked.

“That’s your decision,” Nix said. “Though I don’t think it’s a case of ‘fixing’ anything. You’re here now because it’s what’s working for you. You’re not broken for being here. Going on to what comes next is something  that will happen when you’re ready.”

“Do you think we can be hurt like this?” the child spirit asked.

“Oh, definitely,” Ayli said. “You can think and reason, there’s plenty of disappointments and heartbreak that leaves you open to.”

“If you mean via Force powers, that’s probably possible too,” Nix said. “You were right to be careful about confronting Paralus – who knows what kind of nonsense techniques he’d worked out.”

“That makes it seem like going into the Force, or whatever happens next, is the only thing that would keep us safe?” the child spirit said.

“Well, there is at least one other thing that’ll keep you safe,” Nix said.

“You?” the faded spirit asked.

“I was thinking of something that could make a slightly bigger impact on anyone who tried to mess with the people here,” Nix said and nodded upwards at the Beast which towered over them like a mobile mountain range.

“Oh,” the child spirit said. “You think it would protect us?”

“It didn’t swat Paralus because it’s uninterested in what’s happening here,” Ayli said. “I get the sense that it hasn’t been happy with what happened to its world for a long time now.”

“Why didn’t it do something earlier then?” Hendel asked. “When all the other terrible people came here?”

“Why didn’t you?” Nix asked.

“Because there wasn’t any point,” Hendel said. “Or it didn’t feel like there was.”

“I know its a lot bigger than any of us, but to the Force, size doesn’t really matter,” Nix said. “It’s mind boggling huge and powerful but it has a heart the same as we do.”

“Point of clarification; I do not in fact have a heart, or any other vital organs,” Hendel said, gesturing to his skeletal form.

“Come on, you were trained in Force stuff,” Nix said with an encouraging smile, “you know we’re more than this crude matter.” She tapped Hendel’s surprisingly solid bones. “I hang out with ghosts regularly who are deeply in love with each other. Let me assure you, your heart remains long after all the solid bits of you are back to being stardust.”

“So you think we’ll be safe for now then?” the child spirit asked.

“I think so,” Nix said. “There’s going to be turmoil on Praxis Mar for a while, but I don’t think any of this would be happening if the planet, and the Force in general, wasn’t ready to start healing from what had happened.”

“Took it long enough!” the faded spirit said. “Look at me, there’s almost nothing left!”

“Yeah, it sucks it took that long,” Ayli said. “And it sucks that the apocalypse here happened in the first place. Life’s like that.”

“If it all sucks, why bother with it?” the child spirit asked.

“It sucking is why we bother,”  Ayli said. “If the world was perfect, we wouldn’t need to do anything. The parts that suck are the parts where we can make a difference.”

“That doesn’t always work out all that well,” Hendel said. “I say that from direct personal experience.”

“Oh, trust me, I’ve been there too,” Ayli said. “Sometimes we try and fail and we pay a horrible price. And sometimes its someone else who pays.”

“Which brings us back to the question of why bother?” Hendel asked.

“Because sometimes, a lot of times really, if we don’t try, things will be even worse. Sometimes, even if we fail, paying the price ourselves ensures that someone else doesn’t have to.”

“And failure isn’t always the end,” Nix said. “Just because things don’t work out when we try to make the world a better place doesn’t mean it never can be. Or that we can’t learn and try again, smarter and stronger the next time.”

“Is there anything we can really do though?” the faded spirit asked. “We can’t touch the world like you can, so changing it seems like a bit of a stretch.”

“Ideas can’t speak for themselves and they change the world all the time,” Ayli said. “So I’d say there there’s still quite a lot you can do. For example, give me a month or so to setup the grants and there’ll be a whole squad of archeologists out here who will be desperate to interview you for the next several decades.”

“Why would they want to talk to us?” the child spirit asked.

“There have been genocides throughout history and even world’s swept clean of life,” Ayli said. “So much have been lost as whole societies fell. You, all of you, represent a chance to not only reclaim a world of lost history but also understand how a planetary apocalypse can happen and, maybe, just maybe, how to avoid ones in the future.”

“There are going to be people here who don’t want their stories to come out,” Hendel said.

“Helping them move past their guilt and shame will take time,” Nix said. “And there’ll be some that we’ll probably never convince. Someone who will move on before sharing their stories.”

“And that’s fine!” Ayli said. “We can never have a complete view of history. To get even one of your stories though? From you? That’s priceless in my field.”

“Will you be here with us?” the child spirit asked.

“Eventually,” Nix said. “We’ll be back.”

“Where will you go?” Hendel asked.

“We don’t know,” Ayli said.

“It’s going to depend on where they take us,” Nix said.

“They who?” Hendel asked.

“Our friends from the Silent Enclave,” Ayli said. “The ones who’ve been here for about an hour now.”

“But we’re alone?” the faded spirit said.

“No, we’re not,” the child spirit said, freezing into stillness.

From the shadows around them an armed group of a warriors from the Silent Enclave stepped forward.

“You sensed us?” Tovos, the first Silent Enclave member Nix had met, asked.

“You’re very good,” Nix said. “But your emotions are conflicted.”

“We are here to bring you back to face justice,” Tovos said.

“I know,” Nix said. “I thought at first that we would be done with you. It didn’t seem like you valued Rassi very much and pursuing us couldn’t have been easy. But this is about more than Rassi isn’t it. Your Elders want to have a word with me, don’t they?”

“A trial,” Tovos said.

======

When Rassi and Solna landed on Praxis Mar it was somehow both more horrifying and more comforting than they’d expecting.

“It’s changing,” Ravas said, a note of awe in her voice.

“So are you,” Kelda said.

“What? How?” Ravas asked.

“Your eyes,” Kelda said, a quiet joy in her voice. “They’re the ones I fell in love with.”

“This place is a maelstrom,” Monfi said.

“Yes,” Lasha said. “A good one. The turmoil, it’s been too long delayed. The Dark Side’s hold is unraveling after, ugh, far too long for me to see.”

“I think we have your friends to thank for that,” Hendel said, hesitantly coming around a corner. “That is if you know Ayli and Nix.”

“We do,” Rassi said. “Where are they?”

“We don’t know,” the faded spirit said.

“They were taken away by shadows with guns,” the child spirit said. “They’re going to be put on trial and Expunged?”

“NO!” Rassi said. “No they won’t. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

“Not if we have anything to say about it,” Ravas said, glowing with a new found light.

Behind them a disturbingly large host of Force users and spirits looking to vent centuries of rage began to assemble. 

End of Book 2

Our Story Will Continue in Book 3 – Star Wars: Legacy of the Force