Nix snapped back into her body the moment the Death Shadows arrived. The soul crushing pressure the Elders of the Silent Enclave had brought to bear on her hadn’t been enough to cast her out and it wasn’t enough to save them either.

Not that they didn’t try.

Around them, Imperials began dropping like flies as the Elder tore the life out of them to engorge themselves with power. 

Where and how they’d learned such a Force-corrupting technique was something Nix didn’t want to know the answer to, but had to guess lay shrouded in the Enclaves earliest day. The existence of those abilities was probably why they had evolved such an extreme doctrine against ever manipulating the Force at all.

And yet the techniques had still been passed down.

Nix couldn’t judge the ancestors of Enclave. She had no idea what dangers they were faced with, or why they’d made the choices they had. Their descendants though? The current batch of Elders? Those she felt far more comfortable passing judgment on. 

They’d tried to kill her, which was a serious mistake. They’d tried to kill Ayli, which was utterly unforgivable. In Nix’s estimation therefor, they were getting precisely what they deserved.

“You should leave,” Kelda said. “You cannot save them, and the Death Shadows are not beings of great discrimination.”

“I agree,” Nix said. “Lasha, get the kids to safety.”

“That doesn’t sound like you’re agreeing completely there,” Lasha said over the cries of the battle which had erupted on the bridge.

“I’m not planning on saving them,” Nix said. “They’ve got a lot of tricks we’re not familiar with though and I’m not letting them sneak away from this. They’ve earned this.”

“It’s what the Death Shadows need too,” Ayli said, her gaze distant as she reached out to the Force. “These ones will never be at peace, but the Elders, they’re the last remnant of the Silent Enclave. The Death Shadows will sleep once they are gone.”

“For how long?” Lasha asked, the Horizon Knights notably being focused on eradicating abominations in the Force.

“Forever,” Ayli said. “Or until someone else tries to use the Expunging Rite or something like it.”

The Imperials, woken from the stupor the Elders had inflicted on them by the sheer horror of the situation turned to the first and last refuge. Their blasters.

Shooting incorporeal wraiths did not produce the effect they had been intending though. It wasn’t that no effect was produced. Their blaster fire did succeed in drawing the attention of the Death Shadows which were latched onto an Elder and fighting to push themselves into eyes and ears and mouths. Those Death Shadows with no set target were all too eager to show the Imperials why standing in support of the Elders was an unwise idea and the blaster fire helped the Death Shadows immensely with determining who their first students should be.

“Hmm, guess we are catching them at a bad time,” Sali’s hologram said as it sprang back to life from the command console. “Yo, Nix, you still alive in there?”

“Right here Sali!” Nix called back. “Could you hold off blowing this ship up for a minute or two?”

“For you? I can probably be talked into three, maybe even four minutes,” Sali said. “Five minutes though and I think these proton torpedoes are going to fire themselves.”

“They can be temperamental. Remind me about it and I can get you upgraded to a Simmstech firing system, they’re…” Nix started to say but Ayli cut her off.

“Something we should talk about later, look what’s happening with Dolon.”

Where the other Elders were draining the life to whatever nearby Imperials they could see, former Primus-Dolon had decided on a different strategy.

He was draining the other Elders.

As tactics went it was as effective as it was miserable, not because it gave him the strength to grab hold of the Death Shadows, but because he appeared to be able to twist the dead Elders into a sort of ablative shield which could bind the Death Shadows who tried to attack him.

“We have to stop him,” Nix said, sensing a far deeper problem.

“He won’t be able to protect himself long with abominations like that,” Kelda said.

“He won’t have to,” Nix said. “Listen to the Force inside the Elders he’s killing. Its tearing.”

“He’s not making a shield,” Ayli said, her eyes going wide with the same terror which gripped Nix. “He’s making a gate. He’s going to step away from here far enough that the Death Shadows will lose track of him.”

“That’s…that’s rather clever,” Ravas said. “He’s using their death as a cover so that if he’s pursued his trail will pass through the death and make it seem like he died too. The Death Shadows won’t be able to see beyond that.”

“Then we need to stop him here and now,” Nix said and ignited her lightsaber.

Ayli’s blade was drawn in the same instant and together they moved as one, cutting through the Imperials who registered their presence and still regarded them as enemies.

Dolon didn’t see either of them coming until Nix and Ayli hit him with cross cutting strikes, cleaving him into quarters.

“Ah, two more I can use,” Dolon said, his body knitting back together as fast as it had been sliced apart.

“We were never yours,” Nix said, catching a blast of pure Force energy on her blade.

“But you are ours to end,” Ayli said, meeting a separate blast of power with a Force push of her own.

“I have no end,” Dolon said. “I am eternal.”

And Nix heard the truth in his words.

Dolon was not who he appeared to be.

The real Dolon was a puppet. Or a suit the monster in front of Nix wore. He’d likely been a miserable person in life. Probably a greedy idiot who’d been receptive to any offer for power no matter its cost or who it hurt, so long as it wasn’t him. That absence of empathy and vast surplus of narcissism would have been crucial for the monster before her to scoop out the original Dolon’s soul and toss it out to make room for himself.

A vision flashed before Nix’s eyes. Confirmation from the Force. 

It had been the day of Dolon’s ascension as Primus. He’d been selected by the former Primus who’d been laying on his “death bed” or perhaps it was lying on his death bed, since the death that was to come was not the monsters at all, and the monster could have continued on for decade had it needed to.

But Dolon was ripe enough and the monster had been tired of playing the role of the older Primus. And so the Ascension Rite had begun. Prayers and ceremony and meditation, all to serve as a distraction from the subtle work the monster did. All to give time for the monster to make the sort of promises that would draw in someone as stupid and mean as the original Dolon had been. As all of the Primus’s had been.

The persistence of the Enclave’s worst, most corrupting disciplines was startling easy to understand in light of what Nix was seeing. The Enclave hadn’t passed down their most vile of rituals from generation to generation. What had been passed down was the parasite who had originally discovered the rites!  

With each new generation, and each new Primus, the man who had become a parasite had found a new host and a new means of sustaining his unnatural existence. 

So it was true that he was eternal.

From a certain point of view at least.

“Your Enclave is broken and destroyed. There won’t be anymore Primuses from you to feed on,” Nix said.

“There will always be people to feed on,” Dolon said. “Do you know how stupid you all are? Look at these Imperials. Their war has been lost for years and they still think they had authority and power. I will never lack for people who will crave what I can offer them.”

“Sure, people will always be stupid, but you’re missing a few things there,” Nix said.

“Enlighten me then, that would provide some meaning to your life before I take it.”

“Well, first, you’re a people too, so you’re not exempt from being just as stupid as the rest of us,” Nix said. “And second there’s not just one way to be smart. We can be incredibly stupid and incredibly brilliant at the same time. Brilliant enough in fact to get rid of nuisances like you.”

Dolon laugh and hammered Nix back three paces with his renewed assault. Bit of his attack bled past her defenses and she felt it tearing away of her connection to her body. Her connection to the Force was strong and old, as much a part of her as anything else, and his assault was still almost enough to overwhelm it.

She was in danger, and could feel the Force warning her of the peril the future held, but it was still with her.

“You’re…you’re going to have to try harder than that,” Nix said through gritted teeth as she dropped to one knee and used both hands to hold her lightsaber in front of her.

“Oh? Do you think I can’t?” Dolon said and a blast of immeasurable power battered her for a moment before two other people were at her side.

“She’s right. You don’t have what it takes to win this battle,” Kelda said.

“It’s why he kept his underlings so weak,” Ravas said. “He’s always been afraid of a having to put up a real fight.”

Dolon’s yell wasn’t in the same solar system as coherency, but it did signal a change in the battle.

Despite Kelda and Ravas’ help, Nix felt herself being torn from her body again, her defenses all but useless against Dolon’s assault.

Behind Dolon, the last of the Elders collapsed, their defenses shredding and allowing the Death Shadows to take them unfettered as Dolon drained their strength away to power his mad gambit.

“Nothing will save you now!” His eyes blazed with crimson lightning and his voice boomed as large as the Star Destroyer.

“Forget about someone did you?” Ayli asked and dropped a metric ton of power conduits onto Dolon. Live power conduits which she’d been gathering while Nix served as the perfect distraction.

The ship’s generator fed as much power into the main lines as was called for and so a very natural torrent of energy seared through Dolon, bright and hot enough to make his bones glow.

But that wasn’t enough to end him.

Charred and battered, Dolon screamed and hurled the power cabling away in an explosive blast. With a crack of thunder he turned to Ayli and caught her in a Force grab and began choking the life from her with the power of sheer malice.

No attack they could make was going to be enough to kill him.

So Nix turned to something that could make the sort of attack she never could.

Opening herself to the Force, she reached out the nearest Death Shadow and called it to herself.

It was a void whose existence was defined only by retribution. It wanted to destroy everything that was connected to its existence and after long centuries there was only one person left who fit that bill.

Reaching out her hand, Nix offered it what it needed, and it flowed into her.

She could hold it. Not even for a moment. Its natural was to destroy and her desire was not to be destroyed.

But more came.

And she welcomed them all.

Not into herself.

She welcomed them into the light.

Of her saber.

Dolon turned almost in time. His rage had blinded him for just long enough but he almost turned quickly enough to see what she was doing.

Even had he done so though, he couldn’t have stopped her.

With an arcing swing she brought her blade which held the Death Shadows within it down, through Dolon’s defenses, through his body, and through the core of his spirit.

And the Death Shadows feasted at last.