The Force is all life and all the connections which life has. It was born with the universe and is able to express itself through all who are a part of it. A stream is a part of the Force, as are the stars and even the billions of barren worlds in the galaxy. It touches all of them and everything beyond, but it only listens and speaks to those who can speak and listen to it.
And when they do speak, they are not speaking to one small part of it, and it is not a tiny spark which speaks back.
“Kelda! Ravas! We need you!”
No voice could speak words loud enough to be heard around a world. No sound could leap from one world to another. And nothing could have shifted through the galaxy to find the two spirits who were endlessly far from Rassi when she called out for aid.
Nothing except for the Force.
Solna sensed what was coming and spun to embrace Rassi and shield her, though Rassi’s growing smile said she wasn’t in any danger at all. Which was fine. Solna was still more comfortable embracing Rassi and protecting her than she would have been anywhere else in the galaxy.
The silence of the crowd was met with silence from both the Dead and the Death Shadows as everyone, even the least Force sensitive felt a vast power moving.
“We’re with you,” Kelda and Ravas whispered from trillions of miles away.
Thunder cracked, shattering the silence and blasting everyone back.
Everyone except Rassi and Solna.
Because the thunder had come for them.
And in the center of the Silence Enclave, stood the Enclave’s oldest and greatest fear.
The Jedi had found them at last.
“I’ve got the Death Shadows,” Ravas said, rising to her full height and taking stock of the situation like a general dumped into the middle of a battlefield. “You find out what they need.” She indicated Solna and Rassi with a nod of her head but Kelda was already headed towards them.
With a rave of her hand, Ravas called the fallen and flagging Dead of Praxis Mar back to their feet and filled them with a renewed vigor before striding towards the abomination Elgonu had become and which Monfi was stalemating against.
“Thank you,” Kelda said, when she reached Rassi and Solna’s position. “We’d gotten a bit bound up. Turns out some people have tricks for dealing with spirits like us.”
“Wh..who is this?” Jilla asked, having carefully placed Rassi between herself and the shining blue Force Ghost. That the shining Blue Force Ghost was wearing Jedi robes was possibly the strongest conceivable mark against her, but the calm and peace she radiated offset that to a surprising degree.
“A friend,” Kelda said, offering Jilla slow bow of respect.
“At a time when we could dearly use one,” Rassi said, before turning to Kelda. “We can’t stop the Death Shadows. Not all of them. And I don’t know if the Enclave can learn how quickly enough.”
They couldn’t. Solna knew that. The Enclave wasn’t starting from the right place. They were all terrified and desperate. Their focus was, reasonably, on saving themselves, not on bringing peace to the “monsters” that were menacing them. It wasn’t likely that many others would repeat Elgonu’s foolish mistake and warp themselves into Corruptions in the Xah, but the ones who were the deepest in denial, or locked in their anger would probably stumble in that direction. As for the rest, even the ones who might be open to try Rassi and Solna’s approach would be fighting both their own terror and a lifetime of training against ‘manipulating the Xah’.
Solna could feel how much she’d changed from them. How embracing the Force had placed her so far apart from who and what the others of the Silent Enclave were and how far they would need to go to reach the spot she had.
All of it highlighted how long she’d been walking the path she had.
Her near breakdown on the ship when they’d fled the Enclave had been a bolt of lightning setting fire to kindling she’d been gathering all her life. The sheer fact that she’d been able to, unconsciously, call Nix to their aid showed just how far outside the Silent Enclave’s strictures she’d always lived.
Unlike Rassi though, Solna had been able to hide the communion she had with the Force. Even from herself. Though on reflection, she had to wonder how much she’d really been hiding.
Part of her had always known. The part which had dismissed her discussions with the Force as ‘just little bits of imagination’, or “what-if’s she was even in a situation where she really really needed to ‘risk corruption’ for the good of the whole Enclave”.
That she was currently in exactly such a situation and that it was far worse than she’d ever imagined somehow filled her with resolve rather than terror though. She wasn’t going to lose here. She couldn’t.
Kelda closed her eyes for moment, becoming even more translucent than usual.
“Some of these lost ones are still bound to the fragments of who they once were,” Kelda said without opening her eyes. “Otherwise are voiceless and truly empty. All that remains in them is the hunger retribution. The lost ones will be drawn to you, but the voiceless ones cannot be given peace.”
“How can we stop those one then?” Rassi asked.
“They won’t stop,” Solna said, listening to the same whispers Kelda was hearing. “Not until they’ve destroyed the ones responsible for their destruction.”
“That…if there is another path to laying those to rest, I’m not certain we will be given the time to discover it,” Kelda said.
“Does that mean, we have to die?” Jilla asked.
“No.” Solna, Rassi, and Kelda answered in unison.
“We can hold those off while you all get away again,” Solna said. “The Silent Enclave has hidden from the Death Shadows for centuries. You can manage it again.”
“If no more Death Shadows are created, their attention won’t be drawn to you as easily,” Kelda said. “That is what began this for each of them and it was the botched Expunging Ritual which your Primus attempted which drew them this time.”
“If it was Dolon’s fault, why aren’t they chasing him still?” Rassi asked.
“I’ve been trying to figure that out myself,” Solna said. “There’s blood on his hands and all the other Elders, and they all left.”
“Not all of them,” Honored Jolu speaking for the first time as she joined the crowd which was slowly forming around Kelda.
“You?” Rassi asked, the tremble in her voice giving away a grief that Solna was surprised to find echoed in herself.
“I am Primus now,” Jolu said. “I am the one they are seeking.”
“Are you?” Kelda asked, her gaze a surgical scalpel as she inspected Jolu.
“The Silent Enclave is mine to govern, mine to utilize, and my responsibility,” Jolu said. “The credits and debts accrued by our past rest on me.”
“The you can save us?” Jilla asked, a question which brought a chorus of understanding nods from the rest of the Enclave.
“No,” Kelda said. “She can’t.”
“I can buy them time,” Jolu said.
“Like hell you can,” Rassi said.
Solna had never noticed before how much larger Rassi was the Honored…or Primus Jolu.
Jolu had always been larger than life. Their mentor and Elder. The one who understood and would always be stronger than they were.
But Rassi had grown, both in body and in spirit. Physically, she could have folded Jolu up like a ragdoll, but it was the fire within Rassi which truly dwarfed the Enclave’s new Primus.
The Enclave, however, was not happy to have a potential source of salvation torn away from them.
“She’s right,” Solna said, stepping forward. “Jolu can die for you, but it won’t save you. She’s not enough.”
“I am more than you have ever known,” Jolu said, rising to her full height.
Rassi laughed.
“You are. And that’s still not enough,” she said. “None of these Shadows are looking for you. Are they?”
Jolu looked away and didn’t answer.
“What does she mean?” Jilla asked Jolu. “What did you do?”
“It’s what she didn’t do,” Solna said, seeing at last what Rassi had perceived.
“She’s never been a part of an Expunging Ritual,” Rassi said. “It’s why she stayed with you here. None of the Death Shadows will be satisfied with only killing her.”
Solna saw a wave of confusion pass over the crowd, and guessed it’s source.
“The Death Shadows will still kill her. Just like they’ll kill all of us,” Solna explained. “Their existence encompasses hatred for everything the Silent Enclave is because we all supported the people who destroyed them.”
“The ones who have nothing but retribution left though? The ones we can’t give peace to? They’ll only stop when they devour someone who invoked the ritual which created them,” Rassi said and turned to Kelda. “Right?”
“They seek balance,” Kelda said. “With nothing left of what they were, they will only cease when the means of their creation has been destroyed forever.”
“Which is why I can lead them away,” Jolu said. “I know the Rite.”
“And have never used it,” Kelda said, taking Jolu’s hands with kindness in her words and gesture. “Knowledge is not evil or good. It is the actions we take we can be judged on, and yours speak well of you. In this regards at least.”
“How do we survive then?” Jilla asked. “Can we still get away?”
“There’s a problem with that,” Tovos said, limping into the circle with the rest of his crew in a similar shape. Behind them the other team of assassins was hobbling forward looking even worse for the wear.
“They destroyed the ships first this time,” Degu, the leader of the other team said, as two members of his team carried him forward. “We thought they were just watching our fight. But they weren’t.”
Solna heard the anguish and despair in his voice and felt it pass through the rest of the Enclave.
They’d fled across the stars and it hadn’t been enough. Scattering on foot was all that was left to them.
And what would be the point?
There was no escape.
In the distance the Abomination roared, even the talents of Monfi and Ravas proving to be insufficient to fully overcome it.
“Let me do this,” Jolu said. “I may not have used the Ritual, but I knew it was being used. I am the only Elder left. It is my right to bear this burden.”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t,” Rassi said. “Not alone. This is something we face together, or not at all.”
“But they’ll destroy us. Nothing is stopping them!” It was a new voice who spoke, a man’s voice Solna couldn’t place and whose identity didn’t matter in the sense that he spoke for everyone in the Enclave.
“Maybe nothing will. Maybe nothing can,” Rassi said. “Maybe all we can do is fall together, but let me ask you this; is there someone here you would be willing to fall with. Someone who you would spend your life for? Is there anyone who matters so much to you, that you would give everything you have for them?”
Rassi reached over, took Solna’s hand and held it high.
“I’ve found the person I would give everything for,” she said.
And then she took one of Jolu’s free hands.
“And she’s not the only one,” Rassi said. “Reach out to each other. I didn’t come back here to watch you die. I know how much we matter to each other. Reach out to the people you refuse to lose. All of you matter.”
Solna cast her right hand out and felt Yanni and Osdo take it.
Throughout the Enclave people began turning to each.
And hands began clasping hands.
In twos and threes and even more, a web was formed.
The simple gesture spoke volumes as with one voice the Enclave communicated the simplest words to one another.
And the Silence was at last broken.