It didn’t surprise Solna that though the mine she and Rassi were descending into had been closed for over a hundred years, the tech within it was still in perfect working order. She knew that the Silent Enclave wouldn’t have accepted subpar materials for any of their ventures. Everything she’d ever seen them use was old and durable, meant to work for lifetimes so that as little contact with the outside world as possible was required. Despite that however, in every pebble and shadowed corner, she could feel the mine collapsing on her.

She could have spoken to Rassi about her premonition, but when you were in danger, speech was forbidden. The Enclave’s rules held far less sway over her than they had a few days earlier (How had her world changed so much so quickly? How had she?), but some of their strictures were ones she wasn’t sure she really wanted to abandon.

Plus Rassi already knew what she was thinking.

They could both feel how the Xah was moving. It had been hurt. There was agony embedded in the stones and it had nothing to do with the mining process. Stone’s didn’t care if they were split apart or hauled away. They were stones. Agony was the province of those who could be aware of it.

Below us. Rassi didn’t need words to indicate that. The focus of her gaze, the set of her jaw, the solidity of her grip on Solna’s hand. There were channels of communication open to them which needed no words to break the silence they held. It’s strongest below us. 

It knows we’re here. Solna couldn’t be sure of that, the sense of being watched could have been nothing more than her own fears feeding back on her. Giving the unnatural depth of the shadows though Solna was inclined to pay attention to her fears.

It’s not attacking yet.

It could be waiting for us to come too close to escape.

Then it won’t be able to escape either. Rassi’s touch was firm and reassuring on that point.

Solna felt a grin crinkle the corner of her eyes. Rassi’s new found confidence was an overdue delight. There’d been so many years when, no matter how well she did, or how hard she worked, Rassi hadn’t been able to believe any compliment Solna ever paid her because the voices of the rest of the Enclave rang too loudly in her ears. 

Solna suspected Rassi’s confidence was at least partially a front put on to keep them moving forward, but even that felt like a massive step in the right direction.

Ahead of them, across a wide cavern that was littered with the detritus of a once active work site, a second set of lifts stood, function indicators lit once more after Solna had enabled the main power circuits to the mine. The haphazardly parked grav lifters and the piles of ore still awaiting sorting and processing provided clear testimony that whatever event had finally forced the Enclave to abandon the mines had to have happened suddenly and without warning.

That one? Solna asked indicating the lift that dropped to the lowest posted level. 

According to the map there were three significant deposits which were being excavated, each at progressively deeper depths than the previous one. The lifts were high speed transports to bring the ores to the central sorting and staging room which made up the top level of the mine where Rassi and Solna had arrived.. 

Rassi shook her head at the deep lift and indicated the overseers office which overlooked the plasma carved cave from high up the wall, above the elevators on the far side of room.

Solna raised an eyebrow at that. Whatever awaited them was below, and felt like it had sunk to the lowest depths it could fine.

Rassi gave a confirming nod, so Solna tagged along willingly. Was there something in the Xah leading Rassi there? Or was it some new Force skill she was developing? How quickly would their relationship with the Xah change? 

Or did it even have to change?

Solna’s mistrust of the lies she’d been taught had grown over the years with the last few days turning it into a violent revulsion against the Silent Enclave, but somehow that didn’t entirely carry over to her understanding of the Xah. 

She’d always been talented with it, controlling herself far better than any other child her age and better in a number of cases, she felt, than the adults who were supposed to be teaching and correcting her.

That’s they’d been teaching her to be a malleable, controllable, puppet of a person filled Solna with the sort of rage that she’d spent her lifetime learning to hide. 

The Xah though? The Xah had always been a source of comfort for her. She loved existing in harmony with it. Clumsy members of the Enclave, when they were trying very hard to be ‘silent’, inevitably left glaringly obvious voids in the Xah. Spots where everything was preternaturally still.

When Solna was pushed herself to utter silence, the Xah remained as it was because she offered it no resistance. As it flowed, so did she. Every movement and every moment was no different than if she hadn’t ever existed. That’s how in tune she was with the Xah.

Rassi, by contrast, had a curiously more active relationship with the Xah, at least from what Solna could see. The sort of silence which the Enclave valued so highly, and which came so peacefully to Solna, was always a struggle for Rassi, but a struggle that she somehow won, time and again.

Though their teachers would never admit it or ever off Rassi praise for it, there’d been more than one test where it had been Rassi, not Solna, who’d been the least perceptible, the most silent.

So which one of them was the prodigy? Which one of them was special? Nix had beaten them both and she’d apparently only been studying the Force for a little over a year, so did it matter how much the Enclave had managed to teach them at so young an age? Or what about Kelda and Ravas? They had literally centuries of experience with their abilities. They were avatars of the living Force, the Xah taking the form of the living and speaking to her directly, and yet neither of them were capable of fixing all the problems before them. So did all those years of experience make them more special than the rest?

Or had the Enclave been wrong about that too.

Could people be special in innumerably different ways?

By the time they’d navigated small mag lift up to the overseer’s office, Solna’s thoughts were spinning about as much as her world was, but as Rassi keyed open the door using one of the Enclave’s standard access codes, she understood what had drawn them here.

A fourth elevator, smaller than the others, was powered and waiting for them. Inside it were buttons for four destinations. One for each of the active excavation levels and one which required a special key to unlock.

The lock turned as the Force twisted around it and the elevator doors slid closed.

We’ve been invited. Solna meant it as a warning, but Rassi just smiled.

Because she’d been the one to knock on the creature’s door.

With as hidden as they’d been, nothing should have sensed them entering the elevator, and nothing would have, if Rassi hadn’t tapped a little beat into the Force.

Do we need stay silent? Solna asked.

Better to surprise whatever’s down there, than be surprised by it.

Which, as arguments went, was persuasive enough in Solna’s book to justify allowing her to continue doing what felt right and natural.

Descending down to the hidden depths of the mine however felt less and less right with each moment that passed.

This is definitely a trap. She didn’t need to warn Rassi, but it was almost impossible to not communicate that.

A trap for the Enclave. I don’t think whatever’s down there can sense what we are.

But it can tell that we’re using the Enclave’s techniques.

And yet it doesn’t know how to penetrate them.

Did they capture one of the Death Shadows?

That’s what I’m wondering. Maybe that was why they left here?

The elevator arrived at the lowest level and Solna felt their answers awaiting them in the darkness beyond the elevator’s door.

Before she could step out into the small area which the elevator’s lights were illuminating though, a wave of hunger hit Solna that was nearly strong enough to knock her out of the silence she was taking refuge in.

It doesn’t understand why we’re not here. Rassi had her eyes closed, searching for the presence which Solna could pinpoint all too easily.

Its there. Solna pointed into the darkness, indicating a pit with a grating over it. Though it was hidden by the lack of illumination, Solna could feel the precise geometry of the room from the waves of disgust which washed up from the pit.

Pit? Rassi asked.

At the bottom of the pit, but it’s in this room too, and now the elevator.

It’s the mist on the floor?

The mist is its hatred. It feels familiar.

Something from the Lich’s tomb?

No. Something from me. This things hates the Enclave.

I think it is a Death Shadow. Something in the pit must be trapping it.

I don’t know, maybe not? An idea was coalescing in Solna’s mind, but she was agonizingly aware of what a bad idea it might be.

What are you doing? Rassi asked, as Solna stepped forward out of the elevator and bent down to run her hands through the mist that was covering the floor.

The rage which suffused the mist wasn’t at all foreign to her. Whatever was in the pit didn’t hate the Enclave because it had been crafted with hate, or summoned for vengeance. The pit creatures…no, the pit persons hatred came from the same place hers did.

The person in the pit had lived with the Enclave.

They’d been Silent, like Solna had.

And the Enclave had destroyed them.

Solna’s breath caught.

They were a Death Shadow.

Or they could become one.

Just like she could.

“We need to free him,” she said aloud, dropping all the silence she’d attained.

The person in the pit recoiled, but from the unexpected arrival of a presence and the weight of the sentiment behind Solna’s words.

“Kelda, Ravas! We need you!” Rassi said aloud, and Solna could feel the worry that had swallowed Rassi’s heart.

“I’m okay,” Solna said. “He’s not though. We need to free him.”

“That’s not a person down there,” Rassi said. “Listen to the Xah, or ask the Force. What’s down there, there’s no life in it.”

“She’s right,” Ravas said. “I don’t know what it is, but that’s not something that was ever a part of the Force.”

“The Enclave hurt them. Whatever they are now, however impossible that is, I know that’s true.” Solna spoke the words as much for the person in the pit as for her companions and from the proto-Death Shadow, she felt an invitation to join it in its hate.

“Be careful,” Ravas said. “It’s hungry and it will do anything to get out of there.”

“We can’t leave it here,” Solna said. It wasn’t the Force which was telling her that. Not exactly. Her heart was clear on that point though.

“If we release this thing, it will become a roaming blight like the other Death Shadows we’ve encountered,” Kelda said. “Unless you have some other idea?”

“I think I do,” Solna said and for the first time in her life, she consciously asked the Force to help her.

In front of her, the grating on the pit lifted away and without waiting for the others, Solna stepped over the edge and dropped down into the darkness below.