The Temple loomed above Ayli, eclipsing her peripheral vision in every direction even though most of its details were swallowed by shadows.

Behind her lay a thousand and one traps, pitfalls, and furious enemies. She’d won a path past them all, but not without cost.

“You seem to have suffered a few little injuries?” Paralus’s shade noted, floating around Ayli as she pulled herself towards the Temple’s main gate.

“C’mon, admit it,” she said. “You didn’t think I’d even make it this far, did you?”

“On the contrary,” Paralus said. “I was certain that you would.”

There was a lie lurking in his words despite each one being nominally true.

Ayli wasn’t worried about that though. Fear had little place in her heart anymore. The Dark Side howled around her but with her Shadow Self defeated and, temporarily, ‘dead’, the rancor and fury the temple radiated found only peace within her to echoed off.

Which might have been why Paralus’s shade was scrupulously staying out of arm’s reach from her.

Not that she was planning to assault him. Not here at least. And not how he imagined she would.

“Almost makes me tempted to go back and get eaten by the blood crystal things,” Ayli said. “But that wouldn’t spoil your plans quite enough, would it?”

“What is happening is what must happen. It is the inevitable consequence of the sin you brought to this place. You can no more thwart your fate, than you could fail to arrive her to meet it. This I have foreseen,” Paralus said.

“You must be happy with what will come next then,” Ayli said. “Or have you accepted that you’re doomed too?”

“Embracing the truth of the Dark Side is the path to becoming fate’s master,” Paralus said. “Where you still cling the delusions which shield fearful hearts, I have no such weaknesses by which I can be controlled or bent to fate’s whims.”

“And that’s what all of the Dark Side is like, is it? No weakness, only power?”

“There is only power,” Paralus said, floating in closer than he had before but still wary of Ayli’s reach. “The rules you imagine existing are enforced by power and only applied to those who lack the power to dictate their own rules. ‘Compassion’, ‘decency’, ‘mercy’? These are all illusions conjured by the weak to bind the powerful from exercising the control needed to keep the galaxy properly ordered.”

“Is that what you fear? Disorder?” Ayli asked, sensing as she did the sheer disgust in the Lich.

“Fear is a tool for those new to leashing the power of the Dark Side to their will. I have grown far beyond such simple tricks,” Paralus said.

Ayli was tempted to challenge him on that. To needle him about how certain he was that he wasn’t driven by an ever growing host of fears.

But why help him learn? Could he be called back into balance with the Force? Was he going to understand that other people had value just because Ayli made a convincing argument?

It might be possible for someone to help Paralus, to fish him out of the abyss he’d fallen into, or, more likely, give him reason to climb out of it himself. Ayli, however, was not that someone.

So she remained quiet and didn’t challenge Paralus’s assertions. At least not immediately. That he took her silence as acceptance of his argument and a victory was clearly agreeable to his ego and yet another seed in the field Ayli was sowing for his destruction.

“I can’t help but notice the weather has turned a bit deadly,” Ayli said, turning to other topics she suspected the Lich would be concerned about. “Is that for me?”

“Do you think yourself so important that a whole world would be placed in turmoil by your presence?” Paralus said. “No. You are but a tiny little tumor. A small blob of unwanted cells to be excise with care, certainly, but ultimately of no greater importance than any other bit of unwanted biological matter.”

Ayli turned away from Paralus and hung her head.

To keep herself from laughing.

Every word the Lich spoke was a lie.

And not even a good one.

The Dark Side rushed to assure her that she was wrong. Paralus spoke plain truth in saying she was insignificant. After all, what was she really? Just a little Rebellion brat who’d gotten lucky enough to have someone else end the war before her number came up like it had for so many others. What could possibly be special about that?

A massive bolt of lightning smote the top of the temple, heating the topmost spire until it glowed a deep purple.

Yes indeed. What was special about her?

It could have been anyone standing where she was.

Anyone could have woken a sleeping planet of the unquiet dead and put them in such turmoil that they were tearing apart the land and sky around her.

Anyone could have been targeted by a Force Lich and kidnapped to meet their doom.

Anyone could have, but not anyone had.

She had.

Paralus was right about fate calling her to where she stood.

Except Ayli didn’t call it fate.

To Ayli, it was the Force, and where she stood was where it had asked her to stand, and where she had chosen to be.

The gate to the Temple swung open.

“It is time you meet what awaits you, before the planet chooses its own fate for you,” Paralus said, gesturing for her to cross the unlit border into the darkness beyond.

Ayli drew in a long breath of the ozone filled air.

She still had choices before her.

She stood at a moment of change, but accepting or rejecting that changer was still within her power. She could run, and she could escape. Fixing Praxis Mar wasn’t a duty she owed to anyone. She could abandon it and reclaim the life she had with Nix.

Just like it had been abandoned before.

So many times.

And misused so many others.

Forgiving herself for that would be easy. She’d left people to die who she was close to. Leaving behind a planet of strangers wouldn’t even keep her awake for a single night.

If that was who she wanted to be.

But it wasn’t.

Nix would love her no matter the choice she made, but Ayli wanted to be someone who she felt was worthy of that love. She’d listened to fear so often in her life and even when it saved her, it had come at a cost. A slow chipping away at her ability to believe in herself or a future that was worth living in.

When the Rebellion has won, everyone around her had felt joyous glee. There’d been tears and screaming, but they’d been of a happy variety.

Ayli though? Ayli hadn’t felt anything. Not for a while. In time, it had sunk in that the fight was over. That they’d won. That all the sacrifices they’d made had been worth it.

In the moment though, she hadn’t been able to believe it.

Looking into the darkness of the Temple, she was cast back to that moment. Not trapped in it, but present once more as the sense that it was impossible for things work out well rose before her once more. 

It could have all been a lie. Praxis Mar very much wanted her to believe that it was. There hadn’t really been a time of safety, only a time of deception, a time for life to fool her into letting her guard down. All the celebration, all the peace and rejoicing, all the good that there was in her life? It was all a lie to keep her from avoiding the horror before her.

Paralus had made a mistake though.

He’d ‘destroyed’ Ayli’s Dark Side. Broken the part of her that was fueled by fear, and rage, and a lust for power.

It wasn’t really destroyed of course. Ayli could still hear the whispers of darkness within her.

It wasn’t destroyed but it was weakened. She wasn’t precisely numb, she still cared about life, she could still feel the thrill that had gone through her when she heard the words that Nix was coming for her. She was still in touch with the parts of herself that she cherished, it was only her fears and her anger which were diminished.

In striking down Ayli’s Dark Side, Paralus had made her far more powerful than she would otherwise have been. 

And far more protected from his own machinations and those of Praxis Mar.

Walking through the gate might destroy her. 

A single mistake on Paralus part did not mean her victory was assured. She suspected he could afford to make a hundred mistakes and would still be the favorite to win any battle just based on raw power alone.

Which was why she wasn’t going to fight him.

Not on a battle of power against power.

Or, at least not her power.

“Did you ever walk through a door like that?” she asked, not precisely stalling for time. She’d already made up her mind and heart, and entering the Temple was already a certainty for her. There were still things she needed to know though, insights she wanted to unearth and confirm.

She was beginning to see the outline of who and what Paralus was, but simple sketches could be deceiving.

Ayli was sure the Lich was playing for a particular ending out of all the win conditions open to him. His only awareness of the fears which drove him was that he might not achieve exactly the victory he thought he could.

A victory which almost certainly involved both Ayli and Nix falling into despair and revealing that their promise to Praxis Mar, that it could be better, that there could be a future for it, that the Dark Side didn’t have to dominate you even once you’d fallen to it, was all a lie.

Paralus needed that because while Ayli and Nix weren’t significant in his view, enough of the former denizens of Praxis Mar had embraced that idea that the planet itself had become unstable.

Ayli didn’t have to wonder about that last part.

On a planet which had fallen to the Dark Side, it shouldn’t have been possible to sense the presence of souls that were trapped in their history but had begun yearning for a tomorrow where they could be at peace, where joy and laughter and kindness could once again flourish. 

On a planet which was twisted completely into the Dark Side it wouldn’t have been.

But that wasn’t Praxis Mar anymore.

The storms and earthquakes which wracked the world weren’t a sign of the end of all things, or darkness rising to ascendency. 

All things had already ended, and those trapped within the corrupted atmosphere of the world had already been crushed under the Dark Side’s dominion.

Those were old truths, old realities.

What was causing the tumult on Praxis Mar, what Paralus feared without knowing or  understanding that he did, was that a new truth had crept in and the small sparks of hope it had brought with it had already been enough to bring down the Dark Side’s hold.

The malice which had frozen the world into death was cracking and thawing. There were those like Ayli, lost souls who couldn’t believe and couldn’t accept that change was possible. Where Ayli had friends to pull her through, and bright memories to mix with the dark ones though, the lost and forgotten of Praxis Mar had only centuries of darkness which had dimmed their sight. 

Those who were the most lost fought against a future they could not fathom, one which seemed to demand too much of them and which would lead to nothing more than fresh pain and degradation. 

Ayli couldn’t reach them. Not all of them.

But they were where her destiny awaited her, inside the Temple to stand as the answer to their prayers.

Nix was going to owe someone a ship. She hadn’t planned on owing anyone a ship, but Praxis Mar wasn’t proving to be especially welcoming on her approach to it.

“For as insistent as this place was on bringing me back, you’d like there’d be a better welcoming party than all these supercell storms,” she grumbled as she fought with the controls on Lasha’s ship to reach the group with the ship in more or less as many pieces as when she’d borrowed it.

“You are not welcome here I’m afraid,” Hendel the skeleton said. “Or at least not welcome by all.”

“I don’t recall feeling particularly welcome the last time I was here, but getting to the surface wasn’t this bad,” Nix said as a gust flipped the over sideways and blew them a dozen kilometers aways from where she’d been aiming to land.

“When last you arrived, we had been asleep for centuries. You changed that, and so turmoil rages once more.”

“I thought there were others like you though who wanted us here?” Nix said, seeing a path between two tornadoes which offered an escape from the boundaries of the storm.

“There are,” Hendel said. “And our numbers are growing. What you’re seeing is both the rage of those who would destroy you and the protection those who support you can offer.”

“So it could be worse than this?” Nix asked, cursing as a third tornado blew past closing off her path of escape.

“Far worse. The Beast does not sleep but it sits unmoving,” Hendel said.

“There!” Nix punched the drive over its rated limits and heard the superstructure of the ship groan. It was under so much strain but it would hold. It had been well maintained, and all of the microfractures she was inflicting on it could be repaired in a proper shop.

And the landing struts could be replaced.

She would do the work for free even.

Assuming that, having touched down on Praxis Mar at last, she would ever be able to leave.

“Everything is calm now,” she said. “Why? How?”

“The air was not enough to stop you,” Hendel said. “So now the land will try.”

Nix flinched at that, thinking of how a continent’s worth of land had tried to squash her the last time she’d been on Praxis Mar, but true to Hendel’s accounting, the Beast of Praxis Mar wasn’t move against her. Yet. 

What was moving were piles of dirt and sand, several dozen.

They each rose into a vaguely humanoid shape and began to stalk towards the ship like an onrushing tidal wave.

Nix tried to fire up the engines, which worked, to take off for pretty much anywhere else on the planet, which did not work.

“This place needs to make up its mind, does it want me here or not?” She wasn’t growling at the planet. That would have been silly. Planet’s can’t hear you after all. And when those that can apparently growl back a lot louder.

“You may want to flee this location,” Hendel said. “There seems to be an earthquake stalking you.”

“The thought crossed my mind. Unfortunately the ground is eating the lower half of the ship,” Nix fought with the control, briefly considered whether a tiny little hyperspace jump would be something she could pull off, decided (rightly) that the maneuver would be suicidal on a normal planet and extra-spicy deadly on a planetary Dark Side nexus, and settled on the only available course of action she could see.

Abandoning a ship that wasn’t her own didn’t feel like a wise decision. Ship hulls were significantly tougher than the squishy body she strolled around in for one thing. For another, she had no idea how far away Ayli was and the prospect of crossing half a planets circumference in order to find her wife was more than a little daunting.

On the other hand, Hendel hadn’t been wrong about the earthquake and it turned out that trying to kill one specific person with tectonic effects wasn’t exactly straight forward. Especially not when the person in question had spent her life attuning to the Force and a year in advanced training which including moving as only a Force user could.

“It has been forever since I got to do this,” Hendel said, Force Leaping as easily as Nix did despite lacking any particular musculature to channel the Force through.

Of course, Nix decided, if she was going to complain about that then asking how his otherwise disconnected bones were holding together in their proper positions rather resting as a pile on the ground would have been a better first question. As it was, she was simply grateful to have the company though.

“Does your faction have any safe locations we could head towards?” Nix asked, dodging a collapsing cliff which, honestly, was a really weak attempt on the planet’s part. She’d been able to see it was about to topple over without any Force sensitivity at all.

“Nowhere on Praxis Mar is safe,” Hendel said. “There are spots were more of us are gathering but those are the most imperiled spots of all.”

Which wasn’t what Nix had been hoping to hear, but intuition told her was probably what she’d most needed to be aware of.

The Force was great like that.

Have a problem?

Wonderful! Here’s another even worse one so that you can fix a whole bunch of things at once.

Nix hated working like that.

One problem at a time, spaced out over a reasonable interval.

Her entire career as a ship’s mechanic though had shown her that life simply did not work like that.

“Take me to the worst one then,” she said.

“Are you sure?” Hendel asked, tripping into a boulder which had come flying down from a new cliff which had erupted as the ground around them shattered. “It’s a lot worse than this at the Temple.”

“Worse that the ground trying to grind us to paste? What could be….oh, he’s there isn’t he?” Nix felt a tremendous pull to the south as the thought locked into her mind.

“Yeah,” Hendel said, defeat and resignation heavier than stone weighing down his words.

“Hey, it wasn’t like I was going to end up going anywhere else in the end,” Nix said, feeling more at peace with the doom she was rushing towards than was perhaps wise or warranted.

“It’s just…” Hendel stumbled over his words. “I’ve seen this. I’ve been here. I’ve been you. I don’t…”

“You don’t want to watch me fall,” Nix said. “You don’t want to have to relive what you went through.”

“You don’t deserve that.”

“You didn’t either.”

“I failed. I thought I was more than I was and that cost me and everyone else everything.”

“The same could happen to me,” Nix said, feeling the truth of that statement ripple through her. 

She was moving faster than she’d ever moved before. Praxis Mar was a Dark Side Nexus. It was home to fear and hate and despair so dense that it was all but palpable, but fear, hate, and despair were still a part of the Force, and the Force was with her.

“You don’t know what that means,” Hendel said. “The guy waiting for you at the Temple? He wasn’t here when Praxis Mar fell. He didn’t need to be. The Dark Side here? It’s uncontestable.”

“You’re probably right,” Nix said. “No, I take that back. You’re definitely right. You’re speaking from experience, not just supposition.”

“Then why aren’t you running away? Just…just leave. Go anywhere. Refuse the call of this place. It doesn’t need to claim more victims. There are enough of us here already.”

“You’re more than victims,” Nix said. “And you deserve better than this. Not deserved in the past tense. Deserve. Now. Today. You are absolutely correct that the problems of Praxis Mar are far, far beyond my ability to fix. I’m a ship’s mechanic with less training than a six year old Padawan Jedi, and we both know this place could swallow an army of Jedi who tried to fix it.”

“Then you know you’re going to your death?”

“There is no death, there is the Force,” Nix said, doing her best impression of Kelda. “Or at least so I’ve been told. Hanging around with a talking skeleton and a couple of Force Ghosts is sort of convincing proof of that but there are a lot of dead people who aren’t so talkative so maybe the jury is still out there.”

“You won’t come back as a Force Ghost here,” Hendel said. “There isn’t even a ‘you’ left most of the time, and if there is, it’s so much worse.”

“That’s why I need to do this,” Nix said. “I’ve turned my back on a lot of bad situations in the past. What happens here is going to stay with me for the rest of my life.”

“You can live with more than you think,” Hendel said. “And there’s a lot of good you can do that doesn’t require you to throw yourself into an impossible meat grinder.”

“I kind of hate that you’re speaking from experience and that you make so much sense,” Nix said, dodging a meteor of lava which a newly formed volcano had hurled on sub-orbital arc towards her.

“Thank you. If you mean that though, we need to turn around. We shouldn’t be this close and getting any closer means he’s going to be notice you for sure.”

“Oh, he knows exactly where I am,” Nix said, the hint of a feral smile teasing the corners of her lips.

“Then you’re already doomed,” Hendel said, dropping behind Nix as fresh despair sapped his strength.

“Hey,” Nix said, leaping back to grab his wrist bones and pull him forward. “If you’d known before hand that you were totally, one hundred percent, doomed, and nothing you could do would change that, what would you have done.”

“Something else, anything else,” Hendel said.

“Nope. You’re completely doomed remember. The other side has all the power. You’re helpless. So do you just lay down and give up? Will running from the conflict change anything?”

“No. No it won’t.” Hendel said, and Nix felt the cloud of despair around him grow just a tiny bit fainter.

“What about embracing it? What about spitting in the face of the Dark Side and making it work for its win?”

“It’s still going to win though,” Hendel said, coming to a standstill.

“Is it?” Nix asked, pausing beside him and not letting go. “Did you study the Dark Side at all? What’s the first rule of the Dark Side, and basically page 1 of the playbook that every tyrant work from?”

“The Dark Side lies.”

“You’ve been trapped in a Dark Side Nexus for centuries. Oh, you’re having problems imagining a better future? Hate seems to be overwhelmingly powerful? There’s no hope at all of fighting back? No chance that there can ever be a better future? Hmm, I wonder why that’s all you can see here in the land of ‘infinite’ darkness?”

“This doesn’t feel like a lie though,” Hendel said. “When I died, I fell because I’d believed a lie about myself and the strength I had, and Praxis Mar showed me how wrong that was.”

“Wow, you made a mistake. Well, we all know that everyone else is perfect and that no one can ever learn from a mistake.”

“Hard to learn much after you’re dead,” Hendel said, the hint of an unseen smile coloring his words.

“It’s never too late,” Nix said. “Those bones you’re wearing? This crude matter meat bot I’m piloting? These aren’t us. They’re how we express ourselves, but we are so much more than this. We are a part of all that lives, we are a part of history, we are the dreams of those who came before us, and the memories of those who follow after. This planet is lost in Darkness? So what? The Force is with us and we are the Force.”

Ayli wasn’t usually pleased with crash landings but under the circumstances she couldn’t help but smile.

“It’s a good thing there wasn’t any crew on board,” she said as she survey the kilometers long swath of ruin that remained on the Assassin class ship.

“Oh but there was,” Paralus’s projection said. Of course he hadn’t bothered to physically appear before Ayli, not when he could simply conjure an illusion of himself to talk through instead. “We’ll be recovering the machine intelligence before too much longer.”

“A useful tool is it?” Ayli asked, unable to suppress the grin which arose from her knowledge of the state of the servers on the ship.

“Everything and everyone are tools,” Paralus said. “It is only a question of how one puts them to use.”

“You don’t say.” Ayli tried to discern whether Paralus was including himself in that count. She suspected if pressed he would claim that embracing the ‘truth of darkness’ or whatever other nonsense was the scripture of his personal mania was sufficient to ‘truly free him’. It was terribly tempting to needle him into such a boast, but she didn’t want to draw his attention to how she was using him since it seemed to have escaped his attention that she hadn’t come along with him because she had no other choice.

“You would have been better served by landing closer to the temple,” Paralus said. “Praxis Mar is not home to many things which will grant you easy passage.”

“I am an invited guest,” Ayli said. “Certainly the Beast of Praxis Mar would not hinder my journey to the Lord of the world it is merely a guardian of?”

“You presume I would instruct it to deny its nature,” Paralus said.

“Then I suppose I will simply wait here,” Ayli said, surveying the ship’s ruins for anything she could add to the surviving command deck for comfort.

Pickings in that regards were fairly slim. With the damage Ayli’s had done to the shuttle bay, there hadn’t been the proper option of a taking a shuttle down to the surface, and with the damage her Dark Side had done to the rest of the ship, remaining in orbit hadn’t been particularly viable either. 

There had been enough control left of the sublight engines to manage the descent, which was how Ayli had been able to bring the ship down fast enough that Paralus hadn’t been able to influence its trajectory all that much. 

Landing it properly had never been part of the plan, but managing to destroy it as thoroughly as she had without killing herself in the process was something Ayli intended to hold onto a badge of honor for the rest of her life.

However long or short that might be.

Her plan called for her to escape Praxis Mar. She could see a future where she and Nix were back together, cuddled up alone in their house, safe and peaceful. That seemed wonderful and was exactly what she was striving for.

But she knew Paralus had a vision for the future too.

And he was powerful. Dreadfully so. 

Could she and Nix defeat him? Probably not? Could she, Nix, Ravas and Kelda defeat him? Again, probably not. For all that he blathered on endlessly, the Lich kept a lot about himself hidden, especially the true depths of his power. 

That was a smart move, and Ayli hated going up against smart enemies. The two smart Imperial Officers she’d ran up against had inflicted more losses on the Rebellion than any two dozen other officers combined. 

There was a thing about smart enemies though. Once you knew they were smart, their actions spoke louder than they did.

Paralus was smart, and he kept his power largely hidden. He’d attacked her when she was in the most vulnerable position she’d been in for over a year.

Which meant he was afraid.

Not necessarily of her. On her own, she couldn’t overcome his power. Ayli knew that for a certainty because of the fight between Paralus and her incarnated Dark Side. Even fully unleashed, Ayli’s rage and fear and desperation hadn’t come close to defeating the Lich.

Which wasn’t the victory which Paralus apparently thought it was.

“You will soon have cause to reconsider that,” Paralus said.

“And you care about this? That’s unexpected,” Ayli said, taking the chance that goading him into speaking might let her catch a glimpse of his true agenda.

“One must always care for one’s tools if they are to be of proper use,” Paralus said.

“You have a problem then don’t you? You can watch me sit here and come to whatever dire end Praxis Mar has in store for me, or you can exercise those great powers you have to clear a safe path to wherever you intend for me to go.”

“Or I can allow the denizens of this world to break all the parts of you which I have no need for,” Paralus said. “I believe that would bring the other one even sooner would it not?”

Ayli shook her head and sighed.

“If you’re going to lie, at least try to be consistent,” she said. “You’ve avoided torture so far because the moment you cross that line, they’ll be able to find exactly where I am and you need the people who are looking for me to stumble around and be worn down before you face them. You’ve kept me cloaked in the Dark Side this whole time because if I can communicate with them you know they’ll have a direct line to you.”

“I do not fear your ghosts or your partner. Nor do I fear the Horizon Knight you jettisoned. I have transcended you all. Even with twice your number on a far lesser world, I could slay you all. Here, on this site of perfected order though? Here no one may stand against me, no matter the armies they come in.”

Which, oddly, all sounded true. Ayli knew the miasma of the Dark Side which choked the planet was distorting her perceptions, but she could still tell that Paralus at least truly believed the words he’d spoken.

Which was fascinating because he was afraid of something.

If no power they could bring to bear against him would matter, then why was Paralus holding back as much as he was.

He couldn’t need her as a simple sacrifice. Ayli knew that if her blood could have satisfied him, Paralus would have cut her apart on the ship without a second thought.

She wanted to reach out to the Force. After a year of training, it had become a comfortable ally, one that she trusted more than herself at times. 

But Praxis Mar was not a place to listen to the whispers of the Force. The Dark Side was many things but honesty or even accuracy were not qualities it possessed.

In the distance, the Fallen Temple of the Heavens stood at the top of a ridgeline, backlit against the skyline by an aura which was only visible when Ayli looked at its presence in the Force. It was where Paralus had set his throne, and the last place on the planet Ayli should go.

Which was, of course, why she had to get there.

Facing Paralus at the center of his power wasn’t meaningfully different in the calculus of who was stronger. There wasn’t anywhere on the planet she could go where she wouldn’t be completely overwhelmed.

Which also gave her a piece to the puzzle of Paralus’ aims since no where else on the planet would she be as poised to strike a meaningful blow against him.

Was he refusing to clear a path for her because he wanted her to be weakened getting to him, or was he refusing because he lacked the power to control something as large of a planetary scale Dark Side Nexus? 

Or was it both? The last thing a ‘Dread Lich’ was going to admit was a lack of control and the first thing they would do was look for a means to turn that shortcoming into an advantage.

“Well this should be interesting then,” Ayli said. “I guess we’ll both get to see what it takes to break me, and what I can do once we meet face to face.”

She didn’t mean it as a threat, and so the desperate defiance which might have been there in her voice was notably absent.

Which unnerved Paralus and gave Ayli another clue to try to fit into the picture she was putting together.

“You will meet you destiny,” Paralus said. “One which you were never going to escape, no matter how far away you ran or who you turned to for shelter.”

Ayli could have pointed out that even inevitable conflicts could turn out very differently based on the preparations people made for them. As a purely random example, one might spend a year training with two master Force Users, supported by the most loving spouse Ayli could imagine, and working on the doubts and insecurities which had plagued her since she was old enough to form words. 

The woman she was had grown into someone quite different from the one she’d been before meeting Nix, and while that hadn’t involved the acquisition of unmatched cosmic power, it had given her something important to work with.

Faith.

In Nix, who was absolutely going to come for her, in her friends, who would support Nix and make sure there was a real chance for them to survive, and in herself.

“Let’s get started then,” Ayli said and hopped off the remnant of the landing strut she’d been sitting on.

And the ground immediately tried to swallow her whole.

It wasn’t the most subtle of traps. Ayli had sensed the hunger below her and its growing eagerness all during her conversation with Paralus.

Force Lightning would have been an excellent response to the attack, and the Force eagerly showed her how she could blast a crater of safety for herself which would deter all such attacks going forward.

With her Dark Side quiescent though, the jolt of overpowering fear was missing as she sank completely below the surface of the ground and she was able to react in a more considered manner.

Gently pushing on the walls of earth which entombed her, she lifted herself up and pressed the dirt slightly apart to allow her passage.

The hungry ghost which had fused with the land went wild at the loss of its prey, the only food it had held the promise of consuming in centuries.

Ayli felt its need and rage slam into her and let it pass right through.

She wasn’t angry with it. It was doing what it needed to, what it had been reduced to.

She wasn’t afraid of it. If it hurt her, that would just be how things went. She would respect it, and try to find a better path for both of them.

That did not assuage the hungry ghost. It still hungered. It still raged. 

But it was also confused.

What better path was there?

All was hunger.

Everything had always been hunger.

Hadn’t it?

Leaving the hungry ghost to ponder that, Ayli drifted beyond its reach and touched down to continue walking towards the Fallen Temple. It had taken some effort to escape the ghost and it was entirely likely that a thousand more awaited her on her path.

Her destiny lay in the Temple, and she knew she would make it there, but before she took a moment to be honest with herself; bravado aside, it was a daunting trip. Paralus was right to think that she could break during it.

What he hadn’t thought to ask himself though was what might happen if she didn’t?

Trials didn’t always make her stronger. They could be exhausting and they could leave her heart filled with regrets and shame. They could show her just how weak she was, and strip away the illusions she clung to.

Illusions like the belief that everything she’d done rested on; her faith in Nix.

By the end of the long and lonely journey she was about to make, her heart might prove to be weak enough to abandon that hope. 

Would she ever forgive herself for that?

Would she ever forgive Nix if the faith proved misfounded?

It was so tempting to simply declare that she would never crumble, never falter, but in the year of training, she’d come to know herself and her limits. For as much as she believe, for as much as she wanted to believe, she bore enough wounds that sometimes she needed a bit of reassurance to go on. Sometimes she needed people to be there for her.

“She’s coming. She’s on her way to you. You don’t know who I am, but I know who you are through her,” the voice of very quiet girl said from unimaginably far away and in her words, Ayli heard Nix’s love shining like a beacon across the stars.

Rassi wasn’t corrupting the Xah. There wasn’t a soul in the Silent Enclave who would agree with that appraisal but sitting within the center of a Force Communion, Rassi could see with peaceful clarity that what they were doing was far from corrupting anything.

Communicating with the flow of life wasn’t a sin or a crime, it was the reason the Force existed. Life sought out connection, sought out communication, even when words couldn’t reach across the gaps, life found ways of expressing itself.

The Silent Enclave had always taught her that imposing her will on others was bad and imposing her will on the Xah was unforgivable. 

All while imposing their will on her.

And she’d believed them.

Had internalized their message all while her heart yearned to speak with an listen to the currents of life which flowed through her rather than rejecting the Force at every turn.

Sitting in a circle with Solna, Nulo, and Moffvok though, she at last understood emotionally what her more reasonable thoughts had been telling her since long before she’d met Nix.

“It’s beautiful,” Solna said as Goldie’s interior faded away, replaced with the unfiltered light of the galaxy’s stars.

“It is what we are,” Moffvok said, speaking in Shyriiwook but clearly understandable in their shared mental space.

“It is what we protect and nurture,” Nulo said. Small Hutts don’t appear as particularly striking or noble figures, especially not with the Holonet’s insistence on using them as stock gangster villains everywhere they show up. In their Force vision, Nulo didn’t appear physically any different than she normally did, but Rassi could feel the strength of her spirit more clearly than ever, and saw not a tiny gangster but a fledgling with the soul of a true Knight.

“I could get lost in this forever,” Solna said. “But we need to deliver a message.”

“And who might you need to deliver a message too?”

Rassi almost broke the link.

Something vile had touched their minds.

In searching for Ayli across the galaxy, they’d stumbled into something truly terrible.

“You are not welcome here shadow,” Moffvok said, resolution more stern than iron in his voice.

“And what is this?” Paralus Stahl’s shade said. “A Padal Horizon Knight? I thought your kind were long extinct. Doomed to oblivion by your own prideful arrogance.”

“You would know all about prideful arrogance, wouldn’t you?” Nulo said with unflappable and unapologetic sarcasm.

“A Knight and a worm, how intriguing,” Paralus said. “Minds cast adrift seeking where they most certainly were not invited.”

Rassi wanted to speak too, but she knew she couldn’t manipulate the Force on the Lich’s level and didn’t want to give him any free openings.

“You will not bar us from our task,” Moffvok said, and Rassi had the sense of the Wookie standing tall before them.

“I believe you will find I will do whatever I wish to do,” Paralus said. “You should begin praying that won’t include snuffing your tiny flames out like the candles that you are.”

“You’re under the impression that we should be afraid of you?” Nulo asked, moving to stand beside Moffvok.

Rassi could tell that wasn’t only a gesture of support. Together Moffvok and Nulo’s presence eclipsed the fact that Rassi and Solna were present in the communion. 

Which meant Rassi was free to move into whatever striking position she chose having gone more silent than a whisper at Paralus’ approach.

“Whether or not you should fear me depends largely on what you were seeking,” Paralus said. “You were poking around in dark corners. If what you wish is darkness, then I would be delighted to show you the truths of the galaxy which those who refuse the Dark Side are afraid to acknowledge.”

“I’m afraid we’re not in the market for delusions and anxieties,” Nulo said.

“Then perhaps you sought pain, or your own destruction?” Paralus said. “I can offer those in abundance as well, though there is clay in you which could be worked into something far more useful than the shards of what you currently are.”

“What if the pain that we seek is pain that we’ll bring to you?” Nulo asked, which Rassi felt was a misstep. Threatening the Lich when they, likely, didn’t have the power to backup the threat had a hollow ring to it.

“I am far beyond pain, and far beyond loss,” Paralus said. “If you were real Horizon Knights you would know that though, so what are you?”

Rassi felt a weight pressing down on all of them as Paralus turned his attention to perceiving the interlopers in his domain he’d only barely noticed.

“What we are is the answer to galaxy’s disgust with you,” Moffvok said. “You’ve gone on long enough. It’s time for that to end.”

Paralus laughed at that. Not a chuckle, not a gentle laugh, an uproarious bellow of malicious mirth.

“By all means, yes,” he said. “This is too rare. Someone who honestly believes they can undo my existence. You know I could dismantle the craft you’re in, twist your bones until they’re dust, or simply choke the life from you, but none of those, not a one, will be as entertaining as watching you trying to make good on your ambitions.”

“Definitely not going to regret that one, are you?” Nulo taunted him.

“I never have before my dear little worm,” Paralus said. “So many who try lack the conviction I see in your friend though. Most of them tend to give up the moment they run into the slightest trouble. One little death among their numbers and they go scurrying away trying to hide from the darkness forever. And none of them ever succeed. Do you know why?”

“Because we all have darkness inside us,” Nulo said, sounding as bored as she could be.

“”Precisely. Darkness which we must use if we are to master it, and which we must master or it will serve as a gateway for others to master us.” Paralus was drawing closer to them as he spoke.

Because all of his banter served a purpose.

Rassi could see the trap he was leading them into and knew they had to break out.

Except that there didn’t seem to be anywhere to run. Paralus had engulfed them as Nulo and Moffvok spoke. The stars which had blazed so brightly were gone. 

And so was Solna.

Which was weird.

Rassi knew Solna hadn’t left her. She could still feel the touch of Solna’s hand in her own and knew the bond they shared was unbroken. Against the backdrop of Paralus’ cloud of darkness though, Rassi couldn’t sense where Solna was at all.

“So you’re not one of those people who think they’ve mastered the Dark Side, when it’s actually mastered them and turned them into a little twisted puppet?” Nulo said.

“I cut my strings long ago,” Paralus said. “One throat at a time. Tell me, how many rules do you live under? How much of your life is decided for you? How many choices forbidden simply because someone else believed they wouldn’t be ‘right’, or ‘just’, or ‘good’, or whatever lies they cling to in their fear of what an unfettered life could be like?”

“So you’re beyond fear then?” Nulo asked. “No concerns about another Dark Side user coming along and usurping the power you’ve stolen?”

“Power is always taken,” Paralus said. “Hiding behind childish concepts like stealing show how unfamiliar you are with the truth of galaxy. The rules you cling to are a trap to keep you weak.”

“And how weak do you think I am?” Nulo asked.

“Weak enough that you will never escape from here,” Paralus said and the shadows around them began to roil.

“I should hope not,” Nulo said. “I took a lot of effort to put together a prison that could hold you. And to keep you distracted while we built it.”

From deep within the cloud which had swallowed them, light bloomed forth in the form of dodecahedron in brilliant hues from across the spectrum.

“A trap? For me?” Paralus sounded profoundly grateful, which was exactly the tone he shouldn’t have been using from what Rassi could see. “It’s been so long since someone tried to trap me. Sadly, there is always a means of escaping these which so often escapes my potential wardens.”

“Killing me won’t free you,” Nulo said. “These bindings are complete within the Force by themselves. I’m not sustaining them at all.”

“Oh I wasn’t thinking to kill you to escape this quaint little prison,” Paralus said. He brought his hand up in front of his face and clenched his hand into a fist.

Around them the cage of light burst into filaments and shards before fading away into the darkness.

“You see the trick to freeing yourself from a prison of light is straight forward. All you need is power. Power is all that matters. You don’t believe that yet, and more importantly your Knightly friend doesn’t either. I think an object lesson is in order.”

Rassi sensed the blow that was coming and reached out to block it with the Force. With only her mind, she gathered up the shattered pieces of the prison and wove them together into a spear to pierce the spark of hate that had replaced the Lich’s heart. She was too new to manipulating the force, and too slow to lash out with the blow before it was too late though.

In the mind space, Nulo was lifted from the hoverskiff she rode and throttled by a tremendous force.

Moffvok roared as manacles of darkness weighed him down while Nulo’s life ebbed away. Rassi struggled to move forward, but the shadows had turned into tar and were pulling her down with every moment.

As Nulo’s mind went completely silent, Paralus cast the image of her corpse back onto the hoverskiff.

Except he’d missed something.

“Did that fill you with rage Knightling? Drink deep of it if so. You will need that power if you intend to face me.”

And then he was gone. 

Rassi broke them out of the link to find Nulo choking but still very much alive.

“That image, that was an illusion?” Rassi asked, understanding immediately what her senses had been telling her.

“Not the best one I’ve ever done,” Nulo said. “Thank the stars I had someone to help me with it.”

“You’re quite welcome,” Solna said

“Wait, where did you go?” Rassi asked.

“The same place you did,” Solna said. “The Enclave’s wrong about a lot of things, but the training we did in knowing how to hide really seemed to work there. I could barely perceive you at all.”

Moffvok growled and Nulo translated for him again.

“We were wondering if you’d managed to escape him entirely,” she said.

“I think we could have,” Solna said. “At least if we’d broken the mental link quickly enough but…”

“But nether of us wanted to leave you alone there,” Rassi said.

“Oh they wouldn’t have been alone,” Kelda said.

“And you all did quite well in that encounter,” Ravas said. “Thanks to you, we can mimic the Lich’s shadow now. That should prove to be quite help in bypassing the traps he has in place to protect his phylactery.”

“I’m more impressed that they drove him off,” Kelda said.

“We did what?” Rassi asked.

“He didn’t leave because he was done tormenting you,” Kelda said. “He could send beings working against him but he couldn’t tell where or what you were. The two of you terrified him.”

“And our two Horizon Knight gave him pause as well,” Ravas said. “He could have flooded this place with his shadows, but from how you stood your ground against him, he hesitated.”

“Why would he have been scared of us though?” Nulo asked. “My illusion aside, I don’t think there was anything we could have done to him.”

“If he’d struck you down then, you might have died, it’s true, but you also might have become more powerful than he could possibly imagine.”

Nix knew they were going to get into trouble. It was probably impossible to leave eight Force-users in one place and not have them draw in problems like a galactic sized black hole. Despite that though, she was able to trust that they would be okay.

Which was progress!

Once upon a time, she would have insisted that the Force tell her what she could do to keep the people close to her safe.

And it would have.

And more than once that had been enough to drive them away.

She had to admit that it was a little ironic that she was the one who was flying away faster than light, but they all knew the truth. Nix wasn’t flying away from Goldie and Rassi and Solna. She wasn’t leaving them at all. Not like she’d been left behind.

Out there, beyond the swirl of hyperspace, Ayli was waiting for her.

Searching the Force wasn’t as useful as Nix had imagined it would be though. She could feel her connection to Ayli pulsing like a shared heartbeat, but wherever Ayli was, she was cloaked in deep shadows.

Which might mean Paralus had already brought her back to Praxis Mar. Or she could still be on the Dark Side Nexus ship. 

“I’ll never find the ship,” she said to no one in particular, not at all lonely after spending nearly a year with her new family.

“That is likely his intent,” a skeleton said from the copilot’s seat beside her.

Nix hadn’t seen a skeleton there a moment earlier, nor had she sensed one’s arrival, but she was able to sense him in the Force as clearly as she could see him.

That he didn’t feel like a threat at all was surprising. That she detected no greater shadowing by the Dark Side on him was even more so.

“You’re not here are you?” she asked, as she sketched out more of his presence in the Force.

“As in death and in life, I am never quite ‘all there’,” the skeleton answered and then somehow turned more serious. “Apologies, I know our time is short, but it has been a rather long time since there was anyone I could offer a humorous turn of phrase too.”

“You’re from Praxis Mar?” Nix asked, the Force showing her conflict on a planetary scale when she searched for the skeleton’s origin point.

“Currently, and for quite a bit longer than I’d have preferred, yes,” the skeleton said. “Believe it or not though I spent most of my life on Feldar Station. Praxis Mar was only meant to be a brief trip. A brief and survivable trip. I turned out to be zero for two on that score.”

“Feldar Station? I spent a year there when I was growing up!” It had been a particularly formative year as well, to the point where Nix found herself dreaming she was back there fairly often even still.

“Which, I suspect, is why I am able to appear before you.” The skeleton looked down at himself. “Or what part of me is able to appear before you.”

“What’s your name?” Nix asked. “Maybe if we have more of a connection we can more than just bare bones acquaintances.”

She hadn’t exactly meant to make a joke of the question, but it was sitting right there, just begging to be said.

And was apparently exactly what the skeleton needed.

He started off with a surprised giggle, which he wasn’t able to suppress from turning into a guffaw and then a full bellied laugh (which was impressive given his lack of anything resembling a belly).

It hadn’t been that funny of a joke, but Nix found herself chuckling in response to the skeleton’s mirth.

“Sorry, sorry,” the skeleton said, wiping eyes from which no tears could flow. “It’s been even longer since I’ve talked to anyone else with a sense of humor.”

“Praxis Mar doesn’t have much night life?” Nix asked. 

She could have tried a more meaningful or relevant question, but a talking skeleton had appeared beside her while she was alone on a ship in hyperspace. And that wasn’t even the weirdest part of her day so far.

“It feels like it is always night there,” the skeleton said. “Or at least it did until you came there.”

“Me?” The thought that she’d had any noticeable impact on a Dark Side Nexus on the scale of Praxis Mar was ridiculous from what Nix knew. A million Jedi meditating on the most peaceful dreams in the Force for a million years might have disrupted Praxis Mar’s Dark Side for a few minutes. 

Or they would have been swallowed whole by the planet within minutes.

Probably the swallowed one, Nix remembered the Beast of Praxis Mar all too well, continent sized monsters tending to leave an indelible impression in one’s memories.

“You spoke to us,” the skeleton said. “You offered us a new future. Do you have any idea how many others have tried to do that?”

“In thousands of years? A lot I would guess?”

“I have the official count. Are you ready for it? If we add all the people who tried immediately after the planet was scoured of life, and then toss in the ones who arrived in the early period looking to take control of it, plus the ones who showed up after the Beast woke up and round that total off with the ones who showed once we were long dead and were only interested in drawing power for us? Checking the official register we keep for these things the grand total comes to one. One person, ever. In all that time. Only one ever thought of us as people. Only one ever suggested that just because we were lost in endless suffering, we didn’t have to stay there.”

“What?” It wasn’t the most well reasoned question, but Nix was feeling a bit overwhelmed at the thought of the singular position she seemed to hold.

“You have us hope,” the skeleton said. “Did you serious think there weren’t going to be repercussions to that?”

“What kind of repercussions are we talking about?” Nix asked, the Force reassuring her than the skeleton wasn’t here to inflict said repercussions on her but rather to warn her about them.

“You’ve felt the turmoil Praxis Mar is in. You almost returned to us,” the skeleton said.

“That was the whole planet though,” Nix said. “Nothing I did could have done that.”

“Why?”

“I’m too small. I’m not that important.”

Nix wasn’t sure how a skeleton could give her a disbelieving stare, but he managed it nonetheless.

“Ever caught a cold?” the skeleton asked.

And Nix saw what she’d done with crystal clarity.

The spirits of Praxis Mar hadn’t been offered a better future in thousands of years. Whatever immunity they’d had to hope they’d long since lost.

And it had spread among them like a virus.

“Why is the planet in so much turmoil then? Is that why Ayli and I are being drawn back there?” Something seemed very off about their present circumstances if so.

“Well, see, there are those of us who would like to sign up for your newsletter and maybe get an official membership card for the Future Doesn’t Have to be Miserable Club,” the skeleton said. “And then there are those who I really do not want to name, or even refer too all that much, who are rather unhappy with the status quo being threatened. An entire planet consumed by the Dark Side is a somewhat unique resource I gather and they’re blaming you for taking that away from them.”

Which made sense. Nix hadn’t intended to pick a fight with a Force Lich, but under the circumstances she could see where there wasn’t really any common ground for them to stand on. 

Paralus whole existence was based on the suffering of others. All of his power came from turning their misery into fuel for his existence. Had their paths never crossed naturally, Nix probably would have wound up hunting him down eventually. Questing for knowledge about the Force seemed to lead to that, and the Force had already shown her that it would like her to make the little problem of his existence go away finally.

“I’m not that strong!” she said, speaking more or less directly to the Force.

The Force did not, as usual, answer her directly in any manner.

Aside from the skeleton sitting beside her.

That was probably a tiny clue from the Force that it believed in her.

“I don’t think anyone is,” the skeleton said, more ruefully than Nix had anticipated.

“Wait, what brought you to Praxis Mar? You said you were only supposed to be there for a little while?” she asked, intuition skipping around the edges of the skeleton’s history.

“I thought I could help,” the skeleton said.

“With what? The war?”

“Stupid right?” The skeleton sagged into the memory, its face gazing down at the console in front of it.

“Probably,” Nix said. “It’s my kind of stupid though. Which is probably why I’m going back there now.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve got a better reason than a bunch of restless old ghosts to go there,” the skeleton said.

“I thought I did,” Nix said. “I’m starting to suspect that this isn’t about saving my wife though.”

“I know you’re not giving up on her,” the skeleton said. “I don’t even have eyes and I can see that.”

“Oh, Step One is definitely finding her,” Nix said. It wasn’t that the Force was revealing the future to her. 

More the reverse really.

“And Step Two will be to beat a hasty retreat?” the skeleton asked with a fragile curiosity that the answer might just be something else.

“I don’t think the Force dragged the two of us back here because it wanted us to see what it had done with the place,” Nix said.

“I gather it wasn’t so much the Force that’s responsible for your present situation though,” the skeleton said.

“Oh, I’m sure Paralus thinks this was his idea, and I’m sure he has plans for what he’s going to do to us and with us.”

“Maybe that’s why I’m here then,” the skeleton said. “I couldn’t understand the pull to you that I felt. I’d obviously been a failure of a Stonebearer in life, but to feel the Soul Currents, or the Force as you call it, open to me again after so long? Well I couldn’t very well refuse that could I? If I’m here to show you anything though it’s probably the perils of overestimating your own abilities.”

Nix blinked. Stonebearer? Soul Currents? Another Force Tradition? Sitting right there in the cabin with her? When she wasn’t even looking for one!?

“Oh, oh, you are not a failure,” she said with an almost unholy glee as a mania of new thoughts began storming the gates of her mind.

“I assure you I…that is an odd expression you are wearing,” the skeleton said.

“Sorry,” Nix said without being in the least bit sorry. “I think there’s quite a bit we need to talk about though.”

“I’ve been without pleasant conversation for so long that the time has lost all meaning,” the skeleton said. “I think I’d be delighted to answer any questions you might have. There is one problem however.”

“Oh that’s not true,” Nix said. “There’s far more than one problem. That said I do know what you’re about to say.”

“That you shouldn’t come to Praxis Mar, even if it is to save your wife?” the skeleton said.

“Definitely not that,” Nix said. “I have the coordinates laid in already. Paralus thinks he invited me here, but Ayli is the one who actually extended the invitation. There’s a crucial distinction there which I believe Paralus has discounted to his soon-to-be ruin.”

“And I’m sure that’s what he wants you to believe,” the skeleton said. “But on Praxis Mar, even together with your wife, you will be alone against his full and unfettered might. I cannot explain how much I would welcome the salvation you offered, but I must say that my example shows how one person, or even two, cannot stand against a planet and win. No matter how clever they may be.”

Goldie was not happy and Rassi couldn’t blame her.

“This is Bantha Puddu!” Goldie grumbled as they watched the Corvid-1256 leap to hyperspace carrying Nix towards a rendezvous no one was sure she was going to survive.

“How could none of us talk her out of this?” Solna asked. “Did she use some Jedi trick?”

“Those don’t work on me,” Goldie said.

“Us either,” Nulo, one of Lasha’s apprentices, said. “Even if she was powerful enough to influence us, she couldn’t do so without bending the Force so much that we noticed that disturbance, and the Force is pretty calm here at the moment. The space battle out the excepted.”

Rassi had never met a Hutt in person before, and guessed Nulo wasn’t a typical member of her species being fairly tiny still and softer spoken than Holonet vids typically depicted the gangster-species being.

That not all Hutts (or even most) were gangsters made more sense that the Holovid depictions of them, which left Rassi itching to quiz Nulo about what being a Hutt was really like except that they had a rather more critical matter to deal with.

Moffvok, Lasha’s other apprentice, gave multisyllabic Wookie growl in response to Nulo’s comment.

“Oh, that’s true,” Nulo said, translating for Rassi and Solna. “She wouldn’t be as effective a distraction if any of us were along.”

“Maybe for you, but Paralus wouldn’t even have known I was there,” Goldie said.

The adults and the Force Ghosts were off in the cabin in their own conference, discussing strategy for how they would approach the Lich’s phylactery. A strategy which they had been crystal clear would not include either the apprentices or Nix’s wards.

No one was under any illusion that the object which was the most precious thing in the galaxy to the Lich would be unprotected. Ravas had made a compelling argument that there likely wouldn’t be guards around the phylactery given the Dark Side’s complete absence of trust or faith in others, which meant there would be other, likely far worse, traps and protection in place. Which was why Monfi and Lasha were determined to retrieve and/or destroy it themselves.

Moffvok growled again, which Nulo translated once more.

“We can sense you, so it would be a bad gamble to assume the Lich couldn’t.”

“Yeah, but what is he going to do to me. I’m a ship. I had guns,” Goldie said.

“Destroy you, and drive Nix to enough rage that she corrupts the Xah within herself and becomes the kind of monster who falls under his control,” Solna said.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Goldie said. “If she was that angry, she’d never work with him. She’d just want to destroy him.”

“That’s logical,” Solna said. “But descending into enough rage to corrupt your Xah involves losing yourself to it.”

Rassi could tell it still wasn’t making sense to Goldie.

“What we were taught if that if anger strips away all your limits of reason and morality, you also lose the barriers which prevent others, those whose Xah is already corrupted, from controlling you. A corrupted can’t make you murder someone, but if you’re angry enough to kill blindly then they can make see and believe whatever they want you to see and believe. Nix could wind up ‘killing’ Paralus over and over and over again, each time slaying someone who stood against the Lich or was trying to bring her back to her senses.”

“Oh,” Goldie said and was quiet before adding, “Well that sucks.”

“I think she’ll be okay,” Solna said, surprising Rassi with the vote of confidence in someone Solna had been so deeply distrustful of mere hours earlier.

Of course, Nix had also danced with them and it was hard to ignore what she’d claimed for them, or to believe she had anything but their best interests at heart.

Which was why Rassi could understand Nix leaving them behind. They would have been not only in serious danger, but a serious danger to her since at least Solna and herself didn’t seem to have the same resistance to Force powers that even the non-Force using citizens of the galaxy did.

Goldie was right too though. It sucked to be left behind. Nix had supported her and Sola since the moment they’d met. Had that been Solna’s doing? No. Rassi could believe that Solna had unwittingly drawn someone to them who was willing to help, but talking to Nix for even five second was enough to prove that she was not being controlled by a corrupted Xah manipulation.

“I know she’s smart and all,” Goldie said. “This just seems really stupid. I don’t understand why Ayli gave herself up. I mean, sure, she had to save the people she was with, but she also had to know that she was going to put Nix at risk too doing that.”

Moffvok growled again.

“Maybe she was counting on that,” Nulo translated. “From how she spoke of her wife, maybe they feel more comfortable confronting the Lich together.”

“That would be just like them,” Goldie said. “She could have at least taken the ghosts though.”

“We would have been a similar liability,” Kelda said, appearing in the ‘kiddy’ room. “Though it would have been more challenging for Paralus to endanger us, it’s not impossible.”

“And our talents are much better spent on making sure he’s dealt with in a permanent and irrevocable manner,” Ravas said.

“Have you worked out a plan then?” Rassi asked, a small part of her hoping that there might be a place for her and Solna in it.

“Not as such,” Ravas said.

“We’ve agreed that we need to find the phylactery’s location first and that we’ll go there immediately once we do,” Kelda said.

“Monfi was suggesting we research whatever the location was so we’d know what we were getting ourselves into,” Ravas said. “Which isn’t the worst idea, but has certain problems associated with it.”

“Namely that we don’t know how long Nix and Ayli have,” Kelda said.

“And if they fall to Paralus, then he’ll know we can find his phylactery,” Ravas said.

“So he’d move it,” Solna said.

“Or be waiting for us there,” Nulo said.

Moffvok growled.

“If he can defeat two Jedi like Ms. Nix, he can probably handle us too,” Nulo answered. “Remember Master Lasha’s training. We don’t win by being stronger. We win by turning our opponent’s strengths into weaknesses.”

“That’s a very Jedi-like philosophy,” Kelda said with a hint of appreciation.

“The Jedi and most other martial systems in the galaxy,” Ravas snorted.

“How can we help?” Rassi asked.

“By being patient,” Kelda said.

“Because other people know what’s right to do,” Solna said and Rassi heard a strange anger in her tone.

“That’s often the case,” Kelda said. “This time however it’s because until we know what we’re up against, we’ll only tie ourselves in knots trying to plan for what might be.”

“But what about when we get there?” Rassi asked. “Are they going to let us help then?”

“There are many ways to help,” Kelda said.

“Like by staying quiet and out of the way.” Solna was in full on sulky mode, which Rassi knew was going to be challenging to get her out of. Even more so because Rassi suspected Solna was right. 

They’d just escaped a life where they were always told to be quiet, to stay out of the way and exactly what they were supposed to think. Rassi didn’t want to be part of the Silent Enclave anymore, and didn’t want to be part of a group who treated her like she was.

“How better to strike at you enemy when they least expect it?” Ravas asked, seemingly puzzled by Solna’s declaration.

“But, they’re not going to let us strike at anything, are they?” Rassi asked.

“Are you there apprentices?” Ravas asked.

“Well, no,” Rassi said.

“Do you need to do what they say then?”

“Well, no.”

“Should you disrupt their plans, or make their work harder?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then where’s the harm in allowing our Horizon Knight friends from doing their job, and aiding them as you see fit?”

“We are their apprentices though,” Nulo said.

“And I would not advise you to disobey your Master’s orders,” Ravas said. “I had at best a fifty percent success ratio when I did that after all.”

“Oh, it was higher than fifty percent,” Kelda said. “They just punished you fifty percent of the time because they didn’t want the rest of us getting ideas.”

“You seem to get them anyways,” Ravas said.

“Yes, but it took much too long,” Kelda said. “Imagine if I’d had the sense to run away with you when you left?”

“Oh, I have,” Ravas said. “Probably best you didn’t though. If we’d both been Sith apprentices, we would have had to fight to the death.”

“We could have become Horizon Knights?” Kelda suggested.

“Or perhaps Witches of Dathomir?”

“Or applied to the Silent Enclave.”

“I think I prefer being a ghost,” Ravas said.

“There are certainly worse fates,” Kelda agreed.

“You know, there is something we can do,” Solna said. “Something that wouldn’t even violate your orders to not interfere with the phylactery hunt.” She was looking to Nulo and Moffvok.

Moffvok growled and Nulo added, “We would both like to do something if we could but what is it that we can do from here?”

“And will I be able to shoot it?” Goldie asked.

“No, no shooting involved, I think,” Solna said. “But we could try to get a message to Ms. Ayli.”

“But we don’t…” Rassi had been about to say ‘know her’, except they did. Nix had shown them who Ayli was. All the needed to do was listen for her in the Force.

And then ask the Force to change.

“Are you sure?” she asked Solna, the weight of the suggestion hitting her all at once. They were going to ‘corrupt the Xah’. It wasn’t much of a corruption to whisper a message to someone, but Solna’s old life was falling away like a crumbling building for her to have even suggest it.

“No,” Solna said. “I know it’s wrong, but what we’ve been taught was wrong is wrong too. This isn’t going to hurt anyone, and we’re not doing it because we’re afraid or angry or any of the other things that can truly corrupt someone, so maybe it’ll be okay? We’ll see right?”

“Pardon, but I don’t understand something. Why would sending a message to Ms. Ayli be wrong?” Nulo asked.

“You all should compare notes on what you think about the Force,” Ravas said. “Especially before trying to work together.”

“Indeed. The relationship you have to the Force or the Xah will likely be very different from each other and any issues in communication may cause far greater problems than they solve,” Kelda said. 

Rassi hadn’t thought there could be that much for them to talk about. The Force and the Xah were just different names for the same thing after all, and Horizon Knights were just Jedi with a focus on hunting specific targets.

Four hours later, she was just beginning to appreciate how wrong she’d been about all of that.

Were the Force and the Xah the same things? Yes. Absolutely. Did someone’s understanding differ with them based on what they’d been raised to understand? Also, yes, absolutely.

Moffvok was the one who gave them all the key to understanding why there was a difference by relating it to the difference between Basic and Shyriiwook, his language. You could say the same things in both, mean the same thing, and both languages were simply tools for communicating ideas, but even “identical” sentences carried connotation and implied meanings the other lacked. And each had ideas which were difficult to express in the other. 

After another couple of hours, Rassi felt like she had enough of a grasp on the core beliefs of the Padal Horizon Knights that she would be able to work together with.

And that’s when they got dangerous.

Being screamed at was never Ayli’s favorite thing in the world. Being screamed at by a slightly monstrous version of herself from less than a handspan away however was oddly calming.

“I know,” she said as the shackles on her wrists fell away.

“Um, who is this?” Monfi asked, still as securely fastened to the wall as he had been before the room became filled with the shattered remains of a half dozen HK droids.

“Me,” Ayli said. “This is me. I’m her, she’s me.”

Her other self bared the razor sharp, jagged teeth which Ayli couldn’t help but admire after seeing them tear off a droid’s head.

“She doesn’t seem to be terribly fond of you,” Mondi said, sounding as deeply confused as Ayli had ever heard him.

Ayli raised her hand, palm open and facing towards the Dark Side double she’d met in Shadowed Cave. The doppelganger raised a matching hand bent into a claw by barely contained rage.

“I’m sorry I can’t be you,” Ayli said. “I can get us out of here though.”

The doppelganger screamed again, and tore at the air between their hands, but without touching Ayli.

“Yeah, I get it, believe me, you’re not wrong. Destroying the danger we’re in, it would feel so good, and so right. And the fear? It’s warning us about so many things we need to be careful of.” Ayli looked into eyes which would forever be the blood red of rage and yellow of terror. A breath in, and a breath out. The peace she could find at home eluded her, but she was able to find her center.

It was a tumult, but she’d expected that. She might be able to play a good game with an enemy like Overwhelming, but with herself she had to be honest. The vast extent to which she wasn’t was something Kelda, Ravas, and Nix had helped her learn.

Far from being destroyed by confronting that truth though, Ayli had found strength there. Strength which didn’t fail her when her fears rose against like they always did.

Her Dark Side knew that too and broke their gaze first.

“You can rest now,” Ayli said, but the doppelganger shook her head, unable to speak or meet Ayli’s eyes.

Ayli wanted to reach out to the warped version of herself and say that everything was going to be okay.

But she didn’t know that it was.

And her anger and fear weren’t ready to sleep just yet.

Not when they were needed.

Not when existing as a separate embodiment was oh so easy in the Dark Side nexus of the ship.

Spinning on her heels, Ayli’s Dark Side took three steps to stalk out of the room, vanishing before she took a fourth.

She hadn’t disappeared though. From out in the hallway, Ayli could hear metal tearing and more screaming. Her Dark Side was very much not ready to cease its rampage.

“That’s not something you see every cycle,” Bopo said, seeming content to stay right where she was in her cell.

“No, it’s not,” Ayli said. “This place is unique though.”

“I’ve never heard of a Dark Side nexus working with a Jedi,” Monfi said.

“Not a Jedi.” Ayli freed her legs and moved over to Monfi to unbind his shackles as well.

“You’re not a Sith either though,” Monfi said.

“Nope. I don’t think a Sith’s Dark Side would be separate enough from them to do what…,” she gestured to the hallway where the sounds of destruction were growing more distant, “whatever she’s doing.”

“You don’t know?” Bopo asked.

“Not a clue.” Ayli unlocked the controls Bopo’s prison cell but couldn’t find the switch to drop the forcefield. “Or, well, one clue; she’s going to destroy Overwhelming. And this ship.”

“You can see her? Or sense her here?” Monfi asked.

“No, I just know what I want to do and I don’t think ‘restraint’ is a notable trait of the Dark Side.”

“If she destroys this ship, won’t that present a few issues for us?” Bopo asked.

“Oh, we’ll definitely die if we’re still onboard when she gets through with this place,” Ayli said. “Which is why we need to leave.”

“The droid, Overwhelming, it can still hear us can’t it?” Bopo asked.

“I’m sure it can,” Ayli said. “It’s got control of the ship’s systems. In fact, I’m pretty sure it could kill us at any point it wanted to. I mean, I don’t breath vacuum very well, how about you? It’d take a half second or so to open airlocks and maybe a minute for the air to all get sucked out?”

“But it needs us alive,” Monfi said, understanding the point Ayli was making.

“Exactly. If it spaces us, I suspect Paralus will arrange for an even worse punishment for failure than my Dark Side is planning on inflicting on Overwhelming.”

Monfi saw the trouble Ayli was having with the door mechanism and came over to inspect it as well, gesturing the question to Ayli of whether she wanted his help or not.

“That works out well for it and for us though,” Ayli said. “It’s smart, and it’s capable of thinking long term. It can easily allow us to get to an escape shuttle that it’s put tracking beacons in. We could search for those and disable them, but we’re under a time crunch too and, realistically, there’s no chance we would find all of the trackers Overwhelming could hide on something the size of a shuttle.”

“Couldn’t it just kill your Dark Side before she did too much damage though?” Bopo asked.

“No,” Monfi answered. “You saw what she did to those HK droids. Ayli’s other self is working with the power of a full Sith Lord here. Also, she’s a projection of the Dark Side. Stabbing her, blasting her, even blowing up the whole ship won’t matter. If something could cleanse this ship and restore balance to the Force here, that would disrupt her ability to manifest but that doesn’t seem like something a droid would be capable of.”

He worked a bit of no-Force related magic and the door to Bopo’s cell powered down.

“So where’s the nearest escape shuttle?” Bopo asked.

“This direction,” Ayli said, leading them out into the hall and in the opposite direction as her doppelganger had headed.

“How do you know that? I thought the Force didn’t work for you here?” Bopo asked.

“The Force works everywhere, even inside a Dark Side nexus,” Ayli said. “In this particular case though, I’m just familiar with Assassin-class corvettes.”

“Do I want to know why?” Bopo asked.

“Well, the Rebellion won, so all those things probably aren’t crimes anymore, but no, you don’t want to know.” Ayli watched the hallways they passed by. 

She knew her reasoning was sound, and she knew Overwhelming had heard her and agreed at least to the point of not spacing them all the moment they escaped the prison room. That didn’t mean she could afford to blithely ignore any warning signs they came across. She hadn’t mentioned that in addition to tracking beacons, Overwhelming could inflict serious but not fatal wounds on all of them, constraining them to land the shuttle somewhere far more convenient to be captured again. If a holding a city hostage had worked after all, holding a hospital was just as likely to.

That thought, and many others like it kept Ayli on high alert as they stalked to the shuttle bay where Ayli hoped they would find a ship.

When they arrived and a ship was in fact waiting for them, she almost turned them around though.

“What’s wrong?” Monfi asked, reading her change in mood from body language rather than the Force.

“This is a trap,” Ayli said.

“The Force is saying that because this is a Dark Side Nexus.” Monfi took a step into the room, before Ayli caught his arm.

“I’m not listening to the Force,” Ayli said. “You’re right that the Dark Side won’t show us a true picture of what’s happening, but this is still a trap.”

“We knew that coming here didn’t we?” Bopo said. “If the droid knows everything we’re doing, then it knows we’re doing this and it’ll have its own plans in place. That was the deal you talked out with it.”

“It was,” Ayli said. “But it’s a machine intelligence that serves a Force Lich. Betrayal and backstabbing are the electricity they run on. It should have attacked us by now.”

“And you want to wait around until it does?” Bopo asked.

“We can’t do that,” Monfi said. “We’re running out of time as it is.”

An explosion shook the ship, followed by a stronger one, and then one which knocked out the lights leaving the only illumination the landing lights in the shuttle bay.

“And now we’re out of time,” Monfi said. “It’s this or we find some other means of surviving the destruction of this ship.”

“No. It’s gotta be this. It’s just that this is a mistake,” Ayli said.

“And why might that be?” Paralus Stahl asked, stepping out of the shadows from beside them.

Ayli reached for her lightsaber but that was the first thing the droid had taken from her.

“We’re not coming to you,” Ayli said, moving to step in front of Bopo.

“I assure you that you are,” Paralus said, smug certainty dripping from every word. “You’re current resistance cannot change your destiny. You will return. No matter how hard you fight against it and how little you desire to succumb to your fate.”

“You’re going to a lot of effort for someone who thinks we’re going to do what you want regardless,” Ayli said.

“Destroying you is no effort at all,” Paralus said.

“You’re about to lose a whole ship over it,” Ayli said. “The cost is just going to keep rising the longer you pursue us.”

“The ship is no concern,” Paralus said. “It will survive or it will become a ghost, luring the unwary to their doom. Nothing you do will improve anyone’s situation, least of all your own.”

“You should probably start celebrating then,” Ayli said. “If you’ve won already, if our fates are decided, might as well throw yourself a party.”

“Your destruction awaits in the future and it will be in the moment when you finally accept that, when despair claims you at last, that is when my celebration shall begin,” Paralus said. “But where are my manners. You have a guest with you. A guest for whom I have no need.”

Ayli felt the killing lightning starting to gather in Paralus’s fingertips and moved to block the bolts that would take Bopo’s life.

But an interruption occurred.

Before Paralus could strike, a red lightsaber blade stabbed clean through his torso. His form turned to smoke as he fell and reformed with a blade of his own, facing off against Ayli’s Dark Side.

“Now we leave,” Monfi said, dashing towards the ship.

A hail of automated blaster fire opened up on him, but he sailed like the wind past them as the Dark Side’s influence was concentrated on the battle between Paralus and Ayli’s Dark Side.

“I can’t move like that,” Bopo said, the distance to the shuttle an impossible gap for anyone without Force powers to cover.

“You won’t have to,” Ayli said and took hold of her friend’s hand. “Just walk with me.”

Bopo looked at her, uncertainty writ large over her features until she managed to make peace with the death that awaited her.

Ayli didn’t lead Bopo to her death though. Step by slow step, they advanced towards the shuttle which Monfi was prepping for launch.

Around them, electronics and machinery exploded as a tornado of power tore through them. Halfway to the ship, Ayli stumbled but rose with fresh determination before Bopo could help her out. 

By the time they reached the ship, the hangar looked worse than if a bomb had hit it.

But not one shot had landed on either of them. 

“We made it!” Bopo cheered as Ayli pushed her up the ramp to the ship.

“Yes,” Ayli said. “You did. And now you’re going to get to safety.”

“What? No. You’re not staying. Why would you?”

“Tell Nix she knows where she’ll find me,” Ayli said. “Tell her what my eyes looked like too.”

Without waiting for Bopo’s protest, Ayli Force pushed her friend into the shuttle, slammed the entry hatch shut.

As the Force tornado cast the shuttle out into the void, Ayli turned to face the thing that had weathered the worst her Dark Side could throw at it, the deal she knew he would accept waiting on her lips.