The calm of hyperspace washed over Solna’s senses like an endless ocean to sink her worries into.

Which was good because she had a lot of them.

She was in so much trouble. She could never be forgiven. She had corrupted the Xah on a fundamental level.

And she was certain she would do it again.

Certain she had been right to do it.

Somehow though, despite the fact that she’d rejected the Silent Enclave and burned at thinking about what they’d done to her and Rassi, somehow she was still terrified of them finding out what she had done.

It wasn’t rational. She knew it wasn’t rational. No one needed to tell her that.

And so Rassi hadn’t said a word.

Solna could feel Rassi struggling with her own memories of the experience, though Rassi’s struggles felt markedly different from the ones within Solna’s heart.

They would compare notes. Someday. When the memories were more distant and Solna had some kind of handle on them.

Until then, Solna sat at the foot of Rassi’s bed and let Rassi work on braiding her hair.

The simple physical contact and the relative quiet of hyperspace made things bearable enough and part of Solna could feel her emotions following suite with each light year that passed.

“Can I come in?” Nulo asked from outside the door to their small room.

Rassi glanced down at Solna who nodded quickly. Nulo wasn’t silent in the Force, but she wonderfully calm most of the time which was also nice to be around.

“Sure thing,” Rassi said. “What’s up?”

Nulo floated through the door on her grav plate and settled it onto the floor to put herself at Solna’s level.

“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” Nulo said. “There’s a tradition among Horizon Knight apprentices that after each mission an apprentice goes on, the other apprentices are supposed listen to whatever stories they have to tell. I know it’s probably different for you, but you two filled us on on what the raid against the Lich was like so I thought you might have a tale to tell about this one too.”

“This one was rough,” Rassi said. “We found one of the Death Shadows.”

“Ravas said you killed it or something like that?” Nulo asked.

“He was already dead,” Solna said. She hadn’t expected to be able to find her voice but the words came easily anyways. “What we did was closer to…” 

She wanted to say ‘granting him peaceful silence, but that was an Enclave phrase, and not at all what they’d really done.

“He’d been killed by the Silent Enclave,” Rassi said. “We were able to call back the pieces of his spirit and let the Force take them.”

“Is that what happened to all the Shadows?” Nulo asked.

“We don’t know, but probably,” Solna said.

“Which is a problem since it means they’re drawn to the Silent Enclave by their basic natures, not any technique we can replicate,” Rassi said, gathering up another bunch of Solna’s hair for another braid.

Nulo gave a low throated chortle which felt something like a rueful chuckle in the Force and said, “So, they’re literally a dead end.”

“Somewhat worse than death,” Rassi said. 

“And there are a lot of them,” Solna said, painfully aware of what that said about the Silent Enclave.

“We’re not totally out of luck,” Nulo said. “Monfi managed to find some old records about a property transfer. He thinks it might be from where the Enclave was setup before the mining colony.”

“I’m not sure how that’s going to help us at this point,” Rassi said. “Even if we find the first place the Death Shadows attacked, all we’re going to discover is the first place the Expunging Ritual was used, and that could have been thousands of years ago.”

“I know the Enclave is really good at hiding in the Force, but part of what we Horizon Knights do is look for things that hide themselves in the Force,” Nulo said. “I don’t think any of us ever needed to try to find the Enclave – you’re not monsters.”

“That’s debatable,” Rassi said.

“Okay, well they’re not the kind of monsters we usually look for,” Nulo said. “That could be good though. If we can find enough sites the Enclave was at Monfi and Lasha might be able to pick up on commonalities they can use to find where they are now. The Enclave is used to hiding from the Jedi, so hopefully they don’t know the kind of things we can do.”

“If we can find them…” Solna started to say and stopped. 

What if they could find the Enclave again? Could she stand against the Elders?

Or more importantly could she stand against them without killing every last one of them.

They weren’t weak of course, but knowing what they had done could she really leave any of them alive? The Expunging Ritual needed to die and the people who’d used it need to die right along with it.

That did not feel good in the Force though and she was keenly aware where those homicidal impulses would lead her.

But the Elders did need to be stopped.

“If we can find them, we can expose them,” Rassi said. “The Silent Enclave was a mistake. They claim that they’re hiding away from the galaxy to be safe from the Jedi but it was never about safety or the freedom to live in harmony with the Force. It’s always been about control. It’s what they did to us and it’s what they’ve killed for, over and over and over again.”

“If we expose them though, won’t they just disappear again?” Nulo asked.

Which was the obvious problem. Even the youngest member of the Enclave could cloak themselves and pass unseen by non-Force users and those with even a bit of training we able to evade anyone who lacked exceptional sensitivity to the Force.

“It depends who, or what, we expose them to,” Rassi said

Which was a chilling though.

Rassi’s struggles with what they’d done were very different than Solna’s were.

The image of what unleashing the Death Shadows on the Enclave and ensuring that the Enclave couldn’t escape them this time was terrible.

And terribly appealing.

“We need a better answer than that,” Solna said, casting the idea out into the galaxy despite the fact that her imagination couldn’t grasp what that solution could possibly be.

“Crew to the cockpit,” Goldie said over the intercom. “There was a message payload waiting for us on the holonet when we dropped out of hyperspace and you’ll all want to hear this.”

Solna looked at Nulo to see if the Hutt had any idea what the message might be, but Nulo gave a wiggle that was the Hutt equivalent of a shrug and keyed her grav plate to lift off from the deck.

In the cockpit they found the other Horizon Knights, Lasha, Monfi and Moffvok waiting along with Archivist Bopo who was at the comm station, apparently decrypting the message.

“Is it really from them?” Goldie asked.

“The key’s one Ayli has used before, so I’d wager good money this is legit,” Bopo said. “Unless you Force users has secret message encryption powers?”

“We use pretty much the same encryption tech you do,” Monfi said.

“Though I suspect ours in a little older,” Lasha said. “We don’t have the time or credits to stay as update as a proper archivist would.”

“You would be amazed at how little time or few credits they make archivists get by on,” Bopo said. “Ayli has, or at least had, better access to encryption tech than I ever did. I only saw her use that a few times though. This message is more her typical style.”

“That’s nice and all but what does it say?” Goldie asked, her mechanical patience wearing thin about as quickly as a flesh and blood daughter’s would have.

“Let’s find out,” Bopo said and clicked a final few keys on the terminal in front of her.

From a project at the front of the cockpit the image of Ayli in translucent blue hologram light sprang to life.

“Hi folks. Hopefully you didn’t have to wait to long to get this message. Check the timestamp on it to confirm, but Nix thinks it’ll be no more than a day from now that you’ll pass through the Hydraken System. We don’t know where you’ll be heading – probably looking for us is our guess. We can save you some time if so – Goldie, we’ll be staying with your aunt’s for a few days.”

The lights in the cockpit flashed in a sequence that Solna could only read as delight.

“If we’re not with them when you get there it means we either found a trail to follow sooner than we expected, or we needed to get back into hiding as quick as possible.” 

Nix and Ayli could have been hiding from any number of things, but of course it was the worst possible option.

“We’ve got Tovos and his crew with us, and there are some things that are hunting members of the Silent Enclave. From what we can tell, they don’t seem to be hunting you girls, Rassi and Solna, and we’re not sure why. You’re either good enough to hide from them on your own, or you’ve broken away from the Enclave enough that they don’t consider you a part of it anymore.”

“Or we’re carrying an army of angry dead souls who whupped them so bad the jumped to lightspeed on their own last time we met them,” Rassi said.

“However you’re staying safe from them, keep doing it,” Ayli folded her hands together in a show of how serious she hoped her words would be taken. “We don’t know what the Death Shadows are, or what they ultimately want, but we’ve seen what they can do to someone who can’t defend themselves.”

One of Tovos crew had died. Solna didn’t need to hear Ayli say the words. The Force confirmed what her own intuition was telling her.

Part of Solna wasn’t unhappy about that.

Tovos had always been a jerk and had tormented Rassi on more occasions than Solna could count. 

Also, he’d been the one to kidnap Nix and Ayli.

So he’d gotten what he deserved.

Except it hadn’t been him the Death Shadows had targeted. 

Or maybe he’d been better defended.

Which raised the question of how Nix and Ayli had dealt with the attack? The Death Shadows weren’t terribly discriminant when it came to attacking people near an Enclave. 

“We’re going to find the Enclave. Tovos says they’ll be under the deepest cloak they can weave, but Nix is pretty sure Goldie’s aunts will have some options for finding people that the Enclave isn’t familiar with.”

“Who are your Aunts?” Rassi asked.

“A pirate and a nun,” Goldie said.

“An odd pair of aunts,” Monfi said. “I take it we’ll be visiting one and then the other?”

“Only if Aunt Zin is on the road,” Goldie said. “Otherwise they’ll both be at Aunt Sally’s fortress.”

“You have an Aunt who owns a fortress?” Nulo asked and Moffvok added a wuff. “And is a pirate.”

“Technically she’s a Pirate Queen, but she says that ‘Planetary Administrator’ is getting to be more accurate every day.”

“You’ve already laid in a course to them, haven’t you?” Lasha asked.

“Yeah. We’ll be coming up on the hyperspace lane we need in about a half hour,” Goldie said. “I could do a lightspeed skip to get us there quicker, but Mom will not like what it does to my drives and I’d rather be the one to scold her than the other way round.”

Solna could picture the moment Goldie had in mind. She could picture turning the whole problem of the Silent Enclave over to Nix and Ayli and any other adult who could be trusted to deal with it.

She could picture all of that, even though the Force was telling her clearly that none of it was going to happen.

There had been shouting. There had been harsh words. There had even been some violence. Nix had been surprised that none of it had been direct at her or Ayli.

Ayli had apparently been ready for that though and had pulled Nix quietly to the side of the cargo room and sat them near a stack of supply crates which were too heavy to be casually knocked over as Tovos and his crew fell into the sort of screaming that inevitably came when a crew was pushed past their breaking point.

Happily, said screaming was not punctuated by blaster fire despite the fact that everyone on the ship except for her and Ayli were armed.

“You can’t believe them. It can’t be true. There must be some other reason. There must be some lie there. Jedi lies. The Jedi always lie!” Polu, one of the two youngest crew members yelled through tears which Nix was sure he would deny shedding later.

“They’re not Jedi.” That it was Tovos making the assertion was surprising only in that he beat Osdo to it, since Osdo had already backed up Nix and Ayli up on that three time so far in the argument.

“But we are Silent!” Yanni’s statement held enough desperation to border on being a question. “The Elder’s speak with the Xah. The Primus…”

“There have been false Primuses before,” Tovos said. “Buchadi.”

The name meant nothing whatsoever to Nix, nor to Ayli it seemed, who shrugged when Nix glanced at her to check.

“That was different,” Yanni said. “He was corrupt from birth, and he corrupted Elder Miknel and Elder Chini before becoming Primus.”

“They are all corrupt,” Tovos said. “They use the Xah as a weapon, and they use it against us.”

Nix wondered if she should step in. The anger driving Tovos and the fear driving the others was being fed by their failure of their mission and their despair at the lives they thought they’d lost. Though they weren’t that much younger than Nix, they’d been so sheltered and fed so many falsehoods about the galaxy and their place in it that Nix couldn’t help but feeling like she’d become the den mother for a group of particularly Dark Side vulnerable and well-armed toddlers.

She started to rise to inject some sanity into their discussion but Ayli grabbed her arm and silently shook her head, indicating for Nix to watch a bit longer.

“Which of them are corrupt doesn’t really matter, does it?” Felgo said. “We’re never going to see them again, we are alone in our silence.”

“Can we let a corruption in the Xah like that remain though?” Polu asked.

“We let the Jedi exist,” Osdo said.

“The Silent do not seek out conflict. We allow the Xah to bring to us the same conflicts it brings to all,” Tovos said, speaking by rote a maxim Nix could feel he didn’t fully believe in anymore.

It was odd being able to sense his emotional state so easily. He was still little more than a whisper in the Force, but the whisper was clearly there and only as quiet as it was out of a lifetime of habit.

“Maybe we should be seeking conflict,” Felgo said. “I mean, they taught us to close our eyes to what they were doing right? Isn’t that what Nix showed us? That we’ve been trained to be damned sheep? That all of this, everything we’re supposed to be, it’s all so they can can control us better? Why should we be silent about that?”

Nix definitely wanted to join the discussion there. She clearly remembered where that sort of explosive anger had led her and she was not about to let the little band in front of her go down that particular path to the Dark Side.

Once more though, Ayli wordlessly held her back, nodding towards Tovos for Nix to focus on what was really happening.

“We could do that,” Tovos said. “We could throw off our Silence. Take the Xah in our hands and use it to make things how we want them to be. I’m sure it would feel right. Like something we had to do.”

The words he didn’t speak were the ones the rest of his crew heard the most loudly.

“Oh, oh that’s what they did, wasn’t it?” Polu said.

“When they overthrew Primus Buchadi. They Expunged him as the rightful punishment for his crimes.” Yanni had a look of fresh dawning horror on her face as the Force confirmed each word she spoke.

“Which involved Expunging people in the Enclave who spoke against him,” Polu said, sharing the same horror as Yanni.

“Which they then continued to do themselves against everyone who spoke against them,” Osdo said.

“Or who tried to leave,” Felgo added.

“My older brother…” Tovos’s voice cutoff and all of the others nodded as a fresh wave of horror swept over them.

Tovos’s brother hadn’t been trying to leave the Enclave. He’d been used to stop someone from leaving the Enclave. A sacrifice to the Expunging ritual against someone who’d tried, as feebly as they were able to, to fight back.

Ayli ran a calming stroke down Nix’s arm which had gone tense as steel at the fresh evidence of what the Elders of the Enclave felt they were allowed to do.

“We’re not going to become them,” Tovos said, the fire of certainty fully returned to his voice. “We cannot find them to bring them justice, and we will not corrupt the Xah in an attempt to do so.”

“How will we even know what will corrupt the Xah though?” Polu asked. “The Elders were always the ones to guide us. If they were corrupt, then how can we know if anything they told us was or was not a corruption of the Xah?”

“You listen to it,” Nix said, after glancing at Ayli who nodded in agreement.

“We’ve always listened to the Xah though,” Polu said. “And we never heard any of this.”

“You did,” Ayli said. “You just weren’t allowed to notice it or remember it.”

“That’s not possible, is it?” Yanni asked.

“It’s difficult to do on most people, but definitely possible, and I’m sad to say, easier on you because they never taught you how to protect yourselves,” Nix said.

“Can you teach us?” Polu asked.

“Yes, but I don’t know if I should,” Nix said. “Don’t misunderstand me, I want you to be protected. The idea of you wandering the galaxy like you are seems like a horrible punishment for a crime you didn’t commit.”

“Why not teach us then?” Yanni asked.

“A few reasons,” Nix said. “First, how we approach the Xah and the Force is different. I know you can learn how I do things because Solna was able to pick up some simple shielding techniques in and five seconds of Ravas showing her what to do.”

“Solna is a prodigy. You’re concerned what she can do will be beyond us?” Tovos asked.

“Not at all. I mean, yes, she’s exceptional, but in my view, you all are,” Nix said. “No, what I’m concerned about there, is that I don’t want to change your relationship with the Xah to be like mine, since the relationship you have is special and let’s you do amazing things that I either can’t or would have a staggeringly hard time replicating.”

“Okay?” Yanni said, clearly uncertain of whether Nix’s appraisal was correct or not. “And the other reason?”

“The other reason is that you’ve been taught since birth not to trust people like me, other Force users, and I think part of proving I can be trusted, is to respect the boundaries you’ve set. I don’t want you to wake up tomorrow and feel like I tricked you into anything,” Nix said, which also didn’t seem to convince Tovos’ crew, so she added the most important idea she had. “And, I don’t think you need me to teach you how I do it. Your Elders shield themselves just as strongly as I do. I think protecting yourselves is something you can learn to do, your way. All it takes is practice and someone to work with, and that, that I am more than willing to do.”

“So you won’t turn us into Jedi, but you’ll help us turn ourselves into Jedi?” Tovos asked, an odd little quirk at the edges of his lips.

“They’re not Jedi,” Osdo and Felgo said in unison, which brought a much needed laugh to everyone in the cargo room, even Tovos.

“I was thinking more that you could turn yourselves in Elders. Elders as you’ve imagined them to be. Leaders and councilors,” Nix said. “Which, I suppose is what the Jedi made of themselves, but you’d be smarter than them.”

“We would be?” Tovos asked, amused incredulity rising over the fatigued anger and despair.

“Yeah. The Elders can get married right? The Jedi wouldn’t let their members do that. Kinda surprised it took them so long to fall if they believed in that kind of nonsense, but the galaxy is a weird place with plenty of room for weirdness,” Nix said.

“Wait, hey, that’s right, why didn’t we notice that before?” Yanni asked. “These two can’t be Jedi, they’re already married!”

“To be fair,” Ayli said. “We know a Jedi and a former Sith who are basically married too, so that particular Jedi tradition is a little flexible I would say, but yes, we are definitely married.”

“Even if we don’t exactly remember all of it,” Nix said.

“How do you not remember getting married?” Polu asked Nix. “Especially to her?”

Nix had to smile at that. Ayli was indeed an astounding catch.

“Copious amounts of Silur Brandy,” Ayli said. “Or was it Rasdan Schnapps?”

“Both. And, uh, I think we went for a round of Rembral ‘32?” Nix poked at the memories but even with the Force’s aid they were little more than a happy haze.

“It was a good night,” Ayli said.

“It was a good beginning,” Nix said.

“Maybe this is a beginning for us too then,” Osdo said. “Without the intoxicants.”

“It will have to to be,” Tovos said.

“Should we let our Cloak drop?” Polu asked. “We don’t need to keep it up against anyone anymore right?”

Nix felt the silence which surrounded them start to peel away but it was Ayli who stepped forward first.

“No!” she said. “Keep the cloak up! It’s all that’s protecting us at the moment.”

“Protecting us from what?” Felgo asked.

“We’re light years away from where we encountered the Death Shadows in this world, but they can move through the paths outside this world and are so much closer to us in the Force than they should be.”

“But you defeated them, didn’t you?” Yanni asked.

“I…it wasn’t exactly a defeat?” Ayli said. “I gave it to the Force. The Death Shadows are something like voids where a person should be. There are echoes in them, I think of what or who they once were and the echoes in that one called out for rest. Giving it to the Force sort of filled the void in and unmade the Shadow, but I don’t know if I can do that with all of them. The ones who come for us next will be the ones with less loss and more anger remaining in them I think.”

“So we’re going to be hunted by them for the rest of our lives?” Osdo asked.

“Not necessarily,” Nix said. “The Silent Enclave knows other means to keep them away. Means I probably disrupted when I broiled Dolon. If we can find them, I think I can convince them to share those secrets with us and the rest of the Enclave.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in using the Xah to compel people to do your will?” Felgo said.

“I don’t, and I won’t. I don’t like what it does to the Force, or what it does to me,” Nix said. “There’s lots of other methods of persuading people to do things though.”

“We will not find them using the Xah, not unless we truly corrupt it, and we will not do that,” Tovos said.

“What if I told you we didn’t need the Xah at all to find your people,” Nix said. “All we need is a quick stop at one of my favorite pirate havens.”

Rassi wasn’t used to asking the Force for anything. All of her training had been focused on the exact opposite of that. When she felt Solna reach out to the Force therefor she had no idea what her best friend might be doing. When she then saw Solna plunge into the pit with the Death Shadow, or whatever it was, she figured out what was going on.

Solna had lost her mind.

Rassi sprinted forward to the edge of the hole, intent on leaping in after Solna but from the depths of the pit, she saw a light rising back up.

“We don’t have long,” Solna said, cradling a luminous ball of deep purple and blue light as wide as her torso in front of her.

“For what?” Rassi said, instinctively shying away from the orb in Solna’s hands.

“To call him back,” Solna said.

“There is no one there,” Ravas said.

“Yes, exactly, and we can fix that,” Solna said, her eyes focused solely on glowing ball as the illumination from it began to writhe and pulse.

“What do you need?” Rassi asked.

The orb was absolutely a corruption of the Xah. It was the definition of awful, an aberration which shouldn’t have ever been allowed to exist. It could and would hurt them, as surely as a plasma flare.

Rassi could only sense peril from it, but she chose to ignore that for one very good reason. 

She could feel what Solna was projecting as well.

Comfort, camaraderie, and the promise of an end to its rage.

Rassi had no idea how Solna was going to provide any of those things but that didn’t matter. She know Solna well enough to believe it was possible, and more importantly, she believed in Solna. 

No matter what they were doing, Rassi would be at Solna’s side. Being anywhere else simply didn’t make sense.

“We need to listen,” Solna said. “He needs to tell us who he was.”

“This is a bad idea,” Ravas said. “That thing is a hole in the Force. It is a manifestation of the Dark Side even I haven’t run across. All it can do is mislead you.”

“That’s why we must do this,” Solna said, looking up and making eye contact with Rassi. “Please.”

Rassi didn’t answer with words.

She simply stopped breathing.

For her, quieting the Xah within herself so she could perceive the deepest truths of the Xah beyond her was always a battle. Her Xah, the Force within her, was a tempest in its quietest of moments. 

Fortunately, she’d had rather a lot of practice winning that battle. Or at least winning it well enough to hear what she needed to.

In the silence, she could feel the joy radiating from Solna quickly retreat into silence as well. That brief glimpse was enough to fill Rassi with confidence in what they were doing while also allowing her to focus on something other than the delightful emotion resonance between the two of them.

“I am no more.” 

The words were voiceless, spoken by nothing, and nothing more than the faintest of whispers in the preternatural emptiness in the Force Solna was carrying.

But whispers, no matter how faint, belong to someone.

“Who are you?” Rassi asked, only imagining the barest of touches on the Force to convey the words.

“I am no one.”

“But you were someone once,” Solna said.

“You were Silent,” Rassi said, a fleeting glimpse of a kindred soul passing through her mind.

Rassi wasn’t used to asking the Force for anything, but Solna had and Rassi could feel the Force struggling to aid them. It wanted to know who had been lost.

It wanted them back too.

“Silent?” the voiceless whispers gained volume and the barest hint of depth.

“Like me, like us,” Rassi said. “You were part of the Silent Enclave.”

The heat which greeted Rassi’s words was not a friendly bit of warmth. She could have mistaken it for blinding rage but the undercurrent of loss and sorrow was too great to ignore.

“We were too,” Solna said. “But listen to us speaking. We are Silent no more.”

“Silent no more,” and the voiceless whispers were no longer voiceless.

“Silent never again,” Solna said. “Speak to us and we will speak for you.”

“I am nothing.”

“But you were someone. What you most lack is what they once were,” Solna said, and Rassi could hear depths in the void Solna carried, deeper losses and greater pains.

“If you can’t tell us, may we search for the answers ourselves?” Rassi asked, acutely aware of how intimate the contact she was contemplating would be.

“Yes. Find…find what was lost. Find me.”

With no movement and no greater sign that the shift in her focus, Rassi asked Solna if this was what she had been planning. Solna’s answering nod was motionless but all too clear to Rassi, and so they began.

In the distance, Rassi heard Kelda and Ravas shift, moving to prevent what the Solna had conceived of doing, but seeking down into the void’s deepest places wasn’t a realm either the former Jedi or the former Sith had been trained to explore.

In the first pit, Rassi found herself in a strange inverted world. Into the absent spaces she poured her awareness, her understanding, and the Force which flowed within her.

What formed from the mold was the picture of a man clad in the robes of an Enclave guardian and the moment when his losses began.

Rassi felt the pride the man had carried and understood it well. The Enclave’s guardians were tasked with protecting the Primus whenever he was required to travel outside the Enclave’s boundaries. Earning a position among their number was one of the highest martial honors a member of the Enclave could aspire to.

He had been honored beyond so many and he had failed.

In the tableau which was cast from the mold, Rassi saw a Primus not only slain but Expunged. Struck down by a technique only the Silent Enclave knew. 

“You couldn’t protect him,” Solna said and the void resounded with that truth.

Rassi saw something more in the tableau though.

“He hadn’t deserved your protection,” she said.

Revulsion, rejection, and confusion swept the scene away.

“What had he done?” Solna asked, and Rassi sought out another pit within the void.

A new scene took shape.

A trial. 

The dead Primus was there in effigy and behind him an impossibly high mountain of bodies rose.

Around the Primus, his guards stood, no longer armed or respected, each chained to their own podium as changes were read out against them.

“They held you responsible for what he’d done,” Rassi said.

“Had you known?” Solna asked.

Shame crushed the scene to dust and a new scene rose from the exposed wound in the void.

The man stood guard at a door. It was a sacred door and what was transpiring beyond it was more profane than words could capture.

But there had been orders.

And without seeing what was happening, it had been easy to believe that no abuse of power was happening. All the guard had needed to do was remain blind and his conscience was clear. Believe in the Primus. Believe because to do otherwise would mean the world was so much worse than he wanted to face.

Because not believing would mean that he was so much worse than he wanted to face.

“Was this your punishment?” Solna asked.

Anger and righteous indignation tore the scene apart and replaced it with another one.

Banishment.

A wife and a child he would never see again.

His position lost, his authority stripped away, his future gone.

Flames of rage crackled in the scene though.

This hadn’t been his punishment.

This was the punishment he was given, and the one he’d accepted. Not immediately, but when he saw what he’d been a part of, he’d known that it was what he’d deserved.

The flames licked at the scene, scorching and burning away the false facade, calling back the moment which had been hidden at the bottom of the pit.

The man who was no longer a guard and no longer Silent was rendered in midstride, leaving the Enclave behind. 

The flames swelled, consuming the scene and replacing it with one of the man alone on the road, walking to nowhere, and carrying the burden of the fate he’d accepted. 

And then he wasn’t alone.

New guardians struck him down.

And shackled him.

Into the mine they brought him.

Down empty passages.

To a room where his wife and child waited.

His wife a hostage not against his behavior, but as coercion for his child.

Someone was needed to bear the cost of the ritual.

Someone who he would not fight back against.

The scene became hot enough to sear flesh but the worst was still to come.

“Choli,” the voice was the man’s but the name was his child’s

The child who had survived the ritual. Who the man had sacrificed everything to spare. 

Who had been killed once the ritual was finished anyways.

“Why?” Solna croaked out and to Rassi the flames that surrounded them didn’t seem nearly hot enough.

There was no answer from the void, but Rassi heard the echoes from an age past in the Force.

“They wanted justice,” she said. “The banishment wasn’t enough for some of them. The people who’d lost their loved ones to the Primus’ Expunging rituals wanted more than blood. They wanted the scales to be balanced.”

“Not like this,” Solna said. “Horror can never balance horror.”

“No. It cannot,” Ravas said.

“Did you see all that?” Rassi asked.

“We saw it through you,” Kelda said.

“Why kill Choli though?” Solna’s voice was tight with the void’s anguish.

“They didn’t want any witnesses,” Ravas said. 

“They’d condemned the Primus for what he’d done. They didn’t want anyone to say they were the same as he was,” Kelda said.

“But the power was still too alluring to pass up, especially when they could pretend it served a righteous cause,” Ravas said.

“What are we going to do then?” Rassi asked, feeling entirely unmoored by what she’d seen.

“The Enclave left this world over a hundred years ago,” Kelda said. “Those involved in this are all long dead. There’s nothing that can be done to them.”

“This isn’t about them,” Solna said. “This is about him.”

“He’s gone as well,” Ravas said, her voice heavy with sympathy.

“We can bring him back,” Solna said. 

“No. Bringing the dead to life, it’s worse than you can imagine,” Kelda said.

“Not to life,” Rassi said, understanding Solna’s meaning. “We can bring him back to the Force.”

“To Choli,” Solna said.

“How would…?” Ravas started to asked, but neither Solna nor Rassi waited to answer her.

In the silence, they shared their fears with each other.

Neither had ever tried anything like what Solna was suggesting, and both knew it would be considered an unforgivable corruption of the Xah. 

The could be costs far beyond anything they were aware of as well. 

At best they would simply fail.

At worst they could drop into the void themselves, destroying everything they were in the effort to restore what a total stranger had once been.

And what he had been wasn’t anything wonderful.

He’d been a small and cowardly man, given authority and prestige to lord over others with. He’d been part of a series of atrocities. The people who’d known him and what he’d done hadn’t believed he could ever deserve forgiveness and was it Rassi and Solna’s place to offer the forgiveness he’d been willfully denied?

Rassi didn’t have a elaborate answer to those questions. What she saw before her was not justice though. 

And what she and Solna were going to offer was not forgiveness. 

The man would not escape the weight of his actions. He would carry them into eternity. 

Just like everyone else. 

Rassi wasn’t used to asking the Force for anything, and the Force wasn’t used to asking Rassi for what it needed. 

The wound before them needed to be healed though, and so Rassi opened her heart, and at last let herself be as loud as she could be as the Force crashed through her like thunder, filling her and filling the void to call back the scattered, forgotten pieces of the man who’d once been.

She only saw his spirit for a moment.

He had no place in the world of the living, and the Force was more than ready to welcome him back.

The Force and two spirits who’d been waiting for him for so very long.

Ayli was surprised when Nix returned to their “cell” both by the smile hiding on Nix’s lips and the company she was dragging with her.

“Got a moment?” Nix asked with Tovos and Felgo both in tow.

Ayli glanced over to Osdo who was studiously hiding his face from Tovos, despite that fact that both his expression and his presence in the force were entirely guilt-free/

“I have quite a few moments,” Ayli said. “Did you all want to join me in meditating?”

“Not exactly,” Nix said. “I need you to demonstrate something, and perhaps dance with me.”

Ayli quirked her head to the side, but listening to the Force told her that Nix was oddly serious on both counts.

“What are we demonstrating?” Ayli asked, intrigued more by the chance to get to dance with Nix, but willing to take things in the order presented. However Nix planned to win over Tovos’ crew probably involved one or more dangerous uses of the Force – it was Nix after all.

“Tovos says that the Xah doesn’ talk to them,” Nix said.

“Uh, I thought it was a point of pride that you can listen to the Xah better than anyone?” Ayli said, glancing from Tovos and Felgo to Osdo for confirmation.

“We listening but the Xah does not speak,” Osdo said. “Not to us.”

“What do you hear then?” Ayli suspected that the language limitations of Galactic Basic might be tripping them up, but working around those was often challenging. What a word like “speak” meant in one language might take a doctoral dissertation to explain to someone who spoke a different language. That everyone crammed their native languages down into the homogenized stew that was Galactic Basic was responsible for maybe a third of the conflict in the galaxy in Ayli’s estimation (with the other two thirds being split between willful stupidity, greed, and people simply being awful.)

“The Xah is the wind, it is a river, it is the beat of blood inside it,” Tovos said. “It brings us information, but it does not speak.”

“I notice you’re saying ‘it does not speak’, not ‘it cannot speak’?” Nix waited for confirmation from Tovos but Ayli could feel Nix’s attention drifting over the other members of the crew, both the ones present and the ones working elsewhere on the ship.

“It…” Osdo started to say, but Tovos cut him off.

“The Elders can hear the Xah speaking to them,” Tovos said. “It is what marks them as an Elder, and why they speak with one voice.”

“But they don’t?” Nix said, sounding as confused as Tovos was.

“Yes they do,” Osdo said. “The guidance of the Elders is always clear because they can hear the guidance of the Xah.”

“I had a few scant minutes of interacting with them and in that short time Honored Jolu and your Primus definitely disagreed about things,” Nix said.

“Then the Xah was conflicted,” Tovos said. “That is what you bring to us.”

“The Xah was fine,” Nix said. “Remember, I put up no resistance. When I saw how much a small leap had disturbed you, I made sure I didn’t ask the Force for anything. Think back, after I, somewhat rudely it seems, landed near you, did you sense anything out of the ordinary from me. It wasn’t until later that I got…I suppose loud is underselling it.”

“You destroyed a building,” Felgo said.

“I did. I really did,” Nix said sounding much too fondly proud of the accomplishment. “To be fair though, that was after Dolon tried to kill me like an idiot. And he was the only one in the building. I think I set him on fire too, didn’t it? I bet that was nasty. Generator fires can burn super hot, though the model you had was pretty middling. If it had been one of the good ones, I                                                                                         probably could have vaporized him. A good CrashTech 8100 or a 9200 even? That would have been a sight to see. Might have taken out some other buildings too though, which was not the intent. Of course if it had been a serious one like a PlasDrive 220A? One of those things could have cratered the whole tradeport. That’s why you only find them on the combat class capital ships. Sorry, where was I?”

Ayli chuckled at the looks on their “captors” faces. That particular mix of awe, revulsion, curiosity, and sheer confusion was one which only her wife could produce.

“That cannot be true,” Tovos said, shaking his head and rallying. “You attacked Primus Dolon unprovoked. He told us that himself.”

“He lied,” Nix said. “He does that. A lot, from what Rassi and Solna have said.”

“Jedi lie. The Elders cannot lie. Lies disturb the Xah!” Felgo’s declaration had all the rote certainty which was missing in Tovos’ silence.

“They do,” Nix said with a nod. “But if you tell the lie through the Force, the one you tell it too will have a much harder time discerning that. The Jedi used that to resolve conflicts peacefully, but it is still a violation of the people who are ‘mind tricked’ and the Force itself.”

“That is the Jedi,” Felgo said.

“And your Primus,” Nix said.

Felgo’s hand went to his blaster, but Tovos was oddly still.

“The Jedi lie and you cannot prove what you say.” That small traces of conflict showed on his face struck Ayli at last. Neither of the other Enclave members were displaying anything except blank, calm emotions. That Tovos wasn’t suppressing his, or wasn’t suppressing them fully was either the sign of extreme turmoil inside him or something even more serious.

“Yeah.” Nix sighed. “The Force said we’d get to this point. It’s great like that. Pointing out the incredibly obvious, even when I’d really don’t want it to be right. Stupid Force.”

“You hate your Force?” Osdo asked.

“No. I love my connection to it,” Nix said. “I’ve relief on it my whole life, way before I knew what it was. The Force is wonderful. And awful. And terrifying. And occasionally incredibly freaking smug!” She shook a fist as though something beyond the room’s ceiling was looking down on her.

“Smug?” Osdo asked.

“Smug.” Nix confirmed and brief in a deep breath. “There is something we can do that will prove what I’m saying.”

Ayli took a breath too and felt how disgruntled Nix was at what she was going to suggest next.

Then Ayli saw why.

“It’s okay. We’ll be okay,” she said, earning her a a nod of gratitude from Nix and looks of further confusion from the others.

“Your Jedi mind tricks won’t work on us,” Tovos said, a weariness in his voice.

“Sadly they would. None of you were ever allowed to develop the natural resistances to mental manipulation which most Force users possess,” Nix said. “But that’s not how we can convince you. Or its not how I’m willing to convince you. Subverting your will to my own? You would never trust me again, and if I did that I’d be proving that you never should.”

“Then what are you going to do?” Tovos asked.

“Dance. Ayli and I are going to dance.”

“And how would a dance prove anything?” Tovos was shading into irritation, a cycle he seemed to have run through repeatedly.

“You tell me,” Nix said. “If Ayli and I were to dance a Silent Dance, would we be able to have the strength to craft lies in the Xah? Or would what I showed you have to be what I’d witnessed myself?”

“You cannot silence yourself enough for it to matter,” Tovos said.

“But you would know that too,” Ayli said, knowing the answer before she asked the question.

“Your failure will prove nothing.” There was an air of uncertainty which was breathtaking given the repression the three Enclave members were capable of.

“Which is why we’re not going to fail,” Nix said.

“Dying will not change anything for us,” Tovos said.

“Which is why we’re not going to die,” Ayli said.

Tovos looked like he wanted to argue, and Ayli saw that he probably should. Her and Nix successfully conveying what Nix had experienced was going to shatter them. 

But sometimes, people need to break.

She certainly had.

Over and over again.

Each time losing bits of herself.

Or that’s what she’d thought. For the first time she began to wonder if what she’d managed to recover from those losses wasn’t every bit as valuable as what she’d left behind.

Seeking destruction, or worse, seeking to inflict it on others, wasn’t a path to growth, but neither was shrinking from the fear of loss.

Failure had to be more than option, it had to be a reality. If she’d never pushed herself far enough to fail, she wouldn’t be half the person she was.

And so, when everyone gathered in the small cargo hold, she danced.

Nix had been right to grumble at the Force’s suggestion that a Silent Dance would convince Tovos and his crew of Nix’s words. 

Not because it wouldn’t. 

Even as they started, Ayli could feel that it would work. 

But that didn’t make the dance itself even vaguely pleasant.

She followed Nix’s lead, quieting her breath, calming her blood, and eventually, stilling her heart. 

In the Rebellion, Ayli had heard countless remarks about ‘dancing with death’. More than once, she’d been the one to make them and had been perfectly accurate in her claims. Those had always been frantic, adrenaline fueled bursts of chaos and madness, where death had roared like blaster bolt and a plasma bomb and a scream to end all tomorrows.

The Silent Dance was none of those things.

Her heart’s final beat was long past and she was still stepping onwards, following, following, and ever following Nix down into a darkness so still that the call of the Force beyond it was almost undeniable.

Answering the call was her destiny. And the destiny of all others. It was the one mercy and kindness absolutely guaranteed to all who lived, that at the end there would be peace, and serenity, and a place in eternity with all who’d passed before.

But her soul wasn’t bound for eternity. She was set on something much more important.

With her last step, she followed Nix a pace further, rising back towards life even though she had left it so far behind. 

Too far for her life to be stretched.

Too far for her to return.

But not to far for the Force to carry her.

“Was…did we do it?” she asked, blearing and not quite able to see at first.

“She’s alive!” It sounded like Osdo said that but Ayli had a more pressing concern.

Where was Nix?

Opening her eyes and bringing blood back to everywhere that needed it, she got her answer. Nix was right beside her.

Laying on the ground.

Still and unbreathing.

“Away,” Ayli said, not that anyone had dared get close to either of them.

Though her ability to feel fear was muted still, the site of Nix unresponsive and not breathing did a fantastic job of lighting up Ayli’s limbic system.

“Breathe,” she whispered, lowering her head to Nix’s to begin rescue breathing. At her touch though, she felt the faintest echo the Force stirring in Nix and changed her plans. “Bring her back to me. There’s more for us to do.”

There was always more for those who passed on to do, which made that a less than compelling argument, but Ayli wasn’t arguing, and the Force agreed. It didn’t understand why Nix had pushed it away beyond a general sense of the need which had driven Nix’s actions, but it was more than happy to flow into her and Ayli was more than happy to help.

A moment later, Nix coughed weakly, twitched, and at last opened an eye.

“Ugh, yeah, that was just as bad as I thought it was going to be,” she said. 

“Lies,” Tovos said, anguish writ on his face and through his presence in the Force. “Everything we were taught has been lies.”

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

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

Plus Rassi already knew what she was thinking.

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

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

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

It’s not attacking yet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or did it even have to change?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or had the Enclave been wrong about that too.

Could people be special in innumerably different ways?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do we need stay silent? Solna asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did they capture one of the Death Shadows?

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

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

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

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

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

Pit? Rassi asked.

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

It’s the mist on the floor?

The mist is its hatred. It feels familiar.

Something from the Lich’s tomb?

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

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

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

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

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

The person in the pit had lived with the Enclave.

They’d been Silent, like Solna had.

And the Enclave had destroyed them.

Solna’s breath caught.

They were a Death Shadow.

Or they could become one.

Just like she could.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nix hadn’t expected to be able to win over Tovos and so was neither disappointed nor surprised by his stubbornness.

“We are Lost but we are still Silent,” he said as though that pronouncement was the summation of what the rest of his life would be.

“Hey, lost things can be found again,” Why that wasn’t obvious escaped Nix but she felt it was worth pointing out anyways. “But that’s not what you mean is it? Well, maybe this will help; you haven’t failed this mission, or your crew yet. That only happens when you give up. You can still bring Ayli and I back to your Elders, and you can be part of the Enclave, if that’s what you want.”

“You know nothing about us. We will never find the Enclave again, must less be a part of it.” He seemed so certain of that, especially his second claim, that Nix had the inkling she was faced with more than the practical issue of finding a group of Force users who made hiding their sole focus.

“I think it you bring Ayli and I in, and you can explain to the Enclave how you found them so they can guard against it in the future, they’ll be more than willing to take you back in.” It was how anyone who was even vaguely reasonable would act, which left Nix only about half certain of her words.

“They cannot be found, and we cannot be forgiven,” Tovos said. They were alone in the freighter’s cabin, with Tovos in the pilot’s chair gazing out at the star filled void in front of them, so Nix wasn’t sure if he meant that his crew couldn’t be forgiven or if he’d direct that remark at her specifically.

“I plan to have a little discussion with Primus Dolon,” Nix said. “He will be in a very forgiving mood when we’re done.”

“That won’t bring Yoldo back.” Tovos’ words held no outward recrimination or anger. They were pale and numb. “There is no forgiveness for that.”

“Of course there is,” Nix said. “They didn’t tell you that a leader never loses anyone did they?”

Tovos was silent in reply which more or less confirmed that whether the Elders had spoken those words or not, Tovos had been raised to believe that was the standard he had to meet.

“You weren’t supposed to have to fight the Death Shadows,” Nix said. “There was warning they were near, but how they attacked Yoldo was something you couldn’t have prepared for.”

“You were,” Tovos said. “And your wife. Her Xah corruption dispersed one.”

“Our skills are different than yours. Some scenarios we’ll have the answers for that you don’t. That’s true no matter who we are or what we can do,” Nix said, hearing flickers of anger starting to surface in Tovos’ voice and taking that for a good sign.

“We are Silent. We will not be corrupted,” Tovos said, retreating to the platitude to shut out the words which had to seem like devil whispers.

“Another’s actions can’t corrupt you,” Nix said. “You are responsible only for your own decisions.”

She reached out with the Force, trying to sense if her words were having any impact on him, but it was like listening to a brick with his skill at hiding himself.

“What do you want?” Tovos asked, irritation in his tone if not in his presence in the Force.

“To bring you, all of you, back to the Silent Enclave,” Nix said, which had the benefit of being the plain truth. She also wanted to have a ‘conversation’ with Primus Dolon, but that had become a secondary concern.

“Why? Why would you want that? Are you stupid? They are going to kill you! Why didn’t you fight us?” Tovos’ spun the command chair to face Nix and she saw he face was completely devoid of the anger that surged through his words.

The Force which had been artificially placid and serene around him had gone almost perfectly, and unnaturally, silent. 

“Tovos. Dolon already tried to kill me. I don’t know what he told you, but he gathered up some of the children and tried to rush through the Expunging ritual.”

“That’s not…children are not part of the ritual!” Tovos shook his head to deny the truth the Force was trying to tell him. “And it’s never rushed. The Council must approve it and it’s only used on the most corrupt of souls.”

“It’s used on anyone who defies the Elders or the Primus,” Nix said. “And children are very much a part of it. You were never called because you have always been valued and trusted. Rassi and Solna weren’t called because they weren’t trusted. The children between those extremes though? Dolon calls them to ‘special duty’ when he needs to expunge someone.”

“That’s no possible. If he had Expunged you, you would be dead. You’re lying!”

Nix drew in a deep centering breath and opened herself in the Force for Tovos to see. He was resolutely closing himself off from what the Force was trying to tell him, but the truth was still Nix’s best tool for prying his eyes open.

“The ritual is meant to be used on Enclave members. You are amazing at hiding yourselves, and amazing at controlling the Xah within you, but you have almost no defenses against someone who has a connection to you twisting the Xah until it destroys you. That’s not your fault. You’ve never been taught how to resist manipulations like that.”

“Lies. The Jedi always lie.” Tovos hand went to his blaster but he wasn’t quite foolish enough to draw it on her.

“I know you’re tired of hearing this, but I’m not a Jedi,” Nix said. “I’m not saying I don’t lie. And I’m not saying I haven’t trained with a Jedi, or that I don’t know some of their arts, but I was not raised in temple. I grew up on starships. This bucket of bolts? I can probably tell you the part numbers on every piece of equipment and every panel in this thing.”

“You carried a Lightsaber, and you move through the Xah like a Jedi would,” Tovos said.

“The Lightsaber was a gift from the Jedi I trained with. She didn’t need it anymore on account of having been dead for about a thousand years,” Nix said. “And what you sense of me in the Xah is what you would sense of anyone who has a strong and open connection to it. I can introduce you to some Padal Horizon Knights and I bet you’d find them pretty similar to me.”

“Jedi Knight, Horizon Knight, there’s no difference. You are all corrupt. You all abuse the Xah for power,” Tovos said.

“Am I abusing you now?” Nix asked.

“What?” Tovos frowned, his perfectly neutral expression cracking from confusion at the turn in the conversation.

“Am I abusing you? Not in general, not with the Xah, just here and now, by talking to you?” Nix asked. Tovos wasn’t stupid, but he was being willfully blind, just as he’d been taught to be. Nix didn’t have much hope of overcoming a lifetime of indoctrination and cultural programming. That was something only Tovos would be able to do. The most Nix could manage would be to plant some seeds and help him see the lies he’d been trapped in when he was ready to accept the ugly falsehoods others had built his life on.

“I am Silent. You cannot harm me,” Tovos said, missing the glaring irony of the statement.

“This where I’m supposed to cackle maniacally and say something like ‘my Jedi techniques can destroy you’, or something idiotic like that right?”

“No. Wait. What are you talking about?” 

“Let me try asking again; is this conversation damaging you, or corrupting you?”

“No. I cannot be corrupted so simply,” Tovos said, eyes narrowed as he searched for some hint of where Nix’s question was leading.

“This is all that I do with the Xah,” Nix said. “What you’ve been taught is manipulation and abuse, is, for me at least, nothing more than a conversation.”

“Yes. Lies to the Xah, and yourself,” Tovos said.

“That can work, sort of,” Nix said. “Lying to yourself can get you pretty twisted up, and lying to the Xah is certainly a path to the Dark Side, or what you would call a corruption of the Xah. But that’s not the only way to have a conversation. Can I show you something?”

“I won’t be corrupted.” Tovos announced it like a warning, so Nix nodded in agreement.

“I know you and the other Silent ones enjoy exceptional senses. I think by being so silent in the Xah you learn to pick up on much smaller ripples in it than most are able to. All I’m asking is that you watch and listen for a moment.”

Tovos’ frown deepened but he didn’t refuse, so after a moment, Nix still her thoughts and reached out with the Force.

There was a switch on the console at the co-pilot’s station that would be nice to have flipped on. She wasn’t nearby it, but she knew the Force was. Would it be okay with tapping the switch to the other setting?

A reading light blinked on over the co-pilot’s seat.

The Force almost laughed at her for making such a big deal over so little of a thing, but then everything was little from its perspective. Nix acknowledged the silliness of the over formality with a slight grin. Normally, she and the Force worked together with a much more natural give and take, the Force providing direction and Nix providing execution, or vice versa as the situation warranted. 

Nix knew she wasn’t abusing the Force, largely because she’d learned at an early age what twisting the Force into something it didn’t want to be felt like.

That had been a terribly tempting hole to fall down for a while, and it had taken her a while to repair the relationship she had with the Force, longer because she hadn’t been consciously aware that was what she was doing. Each time she backslid into flirting with the Dark Side though, she’d felt the same hurt sickness and little by little, by listening to her ‘better self’ (as she’d thought of Force), she’d learned to find the harmony that didn’t leave her soul feeling ravaged. 

That sense had led her across the galaxy, to lonely moments and ones of boisterous merriment, but weathering the bad moments and not being overly captivated by the good ones had been so much easier so long as she held onto the peace within her that honest communion with the Force brought.

“You corrupted the Xah,” Tovos said.

“Did I?” Nix asked. “Did you feel any discomfort or violation there? Is the Xah disturbed or in pain?”

“No, but that was very small.”

“To the Xah, everything is small,” Nix said, gesturing to the starry sky outside the viewport. “When we speak with the Xah, we’re not talking to some small part of ourselves. We’re talking to that. To everything. Size doesn’t matter because nothing we interact with will ever be even a tiny fraction of the galaxy we’re a part of.”

“The Xah is greater than we are, but it can still be twisted, still be torn and rent asunder. What you do can damage the Xah even when you do not wish it to,” Tovos said.

“Yes. Exactly. Just wishing isn’t enough. We have to listen. We have to understand. We can hurt each other so, so easily if we don’t pay attention, or even if we do and we take a chance on something that doesn’t work out,” Nix was pleased to see Tovos nodding along with her. “But we can also make amends for the harm we do. We can heal, and we can help each other grow. That’s true between all of us sapients, and between us and the Xah. When I ask the Xah to do something, it’s not a demand. I’m not putting a blaster to the Xah’s head, or whipping it into doing what I want. And it’s the same when the Xah asks me to do something. We don’t punish each other, because that’s not what friends do.”

“Wait, the Xah speaks to you?” Tovos asked, confusion and shock plain on his face.

Rassi could hear the faintest murmurs of history in the silent city she and Solna walked through.

The tradeport and the home Rassi had known were light years behind them. From the empty remains of the Enclave they’d taken what few items they could that still resonated with connection and meaning.  All together, the tiny statues and rings and old faded paintings had held just enough memories of the the Silent Enclave’s history to lead Goldie’s crew to the refuge the Enclave had sheltered in a century before they moved to Rassi’s former home.

“What do you think happened here?” Solna asked, gazing as the empty buildings which were weathered and overgrown by the jungle which had spent the century reclaiming the broad streets and open plazas of the fallen city.

“I don’t know,” Rassi said, listening to the Force as closely as she could. “I don’t think it was the Death Shadows though.”

“I think you’re right.” Solna was concentrating as much as Rassi was. “I can hear cries lingering but they it doesn’t feel like the people we victims of a threat like the shadow.”

“I’ve tapped into the planetary holonet,” Goldie said over the comm box Rassi was carrying.. “According to local history, this whole area was lost during their last civil war. One side was using Surroxon gas and they managed to seed a lethal number of dispersal tablets into the everything on this continent. No one’s moved back because they’d need to remediate the soil to be able to do any farming or mining here and their population hasn’t bounced back enough yet to need the room.”

“That must be why the chose to settle next to a tradeport for our home,” Solna said. “It  obviously let them evacuate as fast as possible.

“That and they were able to get in good with the Port Administrator. I bet they never wanted to be caught in the middle of a war like that again,” Rassi said, the memories the land held rising to reflect her words.

The Encampment had been bigger then. It had been a prosperous time with the existing members flourishing and new ones being allowed to join after they’d passed the trials and bound themselves to someone in the Enclave. 

In the empty streets, Rassi and Solna walked with the colorful shadows of their ancestors. People who was lost to history, but who were achingly familiar, not at all different from the Enclave members Rassi had known.

“Are you finding anything there?” Goldie asked.

“Yes,” Rassi said, keeping her focus on the drifting and dreamy after images of souls who had long since rejoined the Xah, who’d become one with the Force.

“And no,” Solna said. “This was an Enclave base, but it’s not one which can tell us where the Shadows came from.”

“How about where the Enclave was before this place?” Goldie asked, sounding far more concerned than a droid should have been. 

Of course it took around ten seconds in her company to notice that Goldie was something quite different than a droid. Calling her a ‘machine intelligence’ didn’t seem a large enough term to cover it either, so Rassi simply thought of her as a person.

A person who was worried she was never going to see her mothers again.

Rassi felt an echoing pit of dread in sympathy at that notion.

“I think the Enclave was here for a long time,” Rassi said. “Have the others found anything yet?”

“Not yet. They’re still spreading around the city. Kelda says its going to take a while with all the ground you have to cover. Only Bopo seems to be having much luck.”

“Bopo found something?” Rassi asked.

“She’s been on the holonet with me,” Goldie said. “She was able to dig up some old land ownership records. She hasn’t found any land ownership records in the city for the Enclave but she thinks they did acquire a small mining concern just south of the polar ice caps.”

Rassi felt a gentle tug towards the north when she heard that.

“Could you get us there?” she asked.

“If it’ll help you find Nix and Ayli, I’ll hyperjump you there,” Goldie said, fire filling her artificial voice.

“I don’t think we need that,” Solna said. “Rassi’s right that something might be there, but if it it, it’s been there for a long time now. Also, we probably don’t want to attract too much attention. A lot of people trampling all over the place would just make everything harder to sense there.”

“Come on back to the ship then,” Goldie said. “I’ll have a runabout prepped and waiting for you.”

—-

Rassi had never flown a runabout, which turned out to be a compact little four seat shuttle which was cleverly camouflaged as part of Goldie’s exterior paneling. 

Solna had offered to try flying it, but Goldie had assured them that wasn’t necessary.

“I can pilot it for you,” she said. “It’s meant for exploring planetary systems, just sending you to another spot on this planet is like swatting a bug with a thermal detonator.”

“Should we look for something else there?” Rassi asked.

“What? Oh, no – not at all. In this case a thermal detonator is more than called for.”

The thermal detonator in question seemed to be lodged in the runabouts engine since Goldie blasted them off at something which felt like it had at least a passing resemblance to light speed. In terms of not attracting attention, Rassi wasn’t sure how successful they were, but in terms of getting them to the mining station quickly, the trip was a resounding success.

From the moment Rassi’s feet touched down on a long abandoned ground, she was sure it was a success of another sort as well.

A success she had been dreading they would find.

“There was an attack here,” Solna said. “I can hear the screams.”

“Do I need to get you out there?” Goldie asked, flaring the runabout’s engines to life.

“No. This happened a long time ago,” Rassi said.

“But it was bad. I think…” Solna began to say but couldn’t finish her sentence.

“That someone was Expunged here,” Rassi said.

“More than someone,” Solna said. “There are a lot of screams from in there.”

“Should we call for the others?” Rassi asked.

“You don’t need to call, we are always here for you,” Ravas said.

“Not that we’re always listening, it’s your feelings which call to us,” Kelda said.

“So long as we’re not covered by an Enclave hunting song, right?” Solna asked.

Rassi had been raised to be proud of the techniques the Silent Enclave had developed and to believe in their supreme efficacy. While the Enclave had spent most of her life proving that most of its claims were either outright lies or gross distortions of the truth, they seemed to be annoyingly accurate about just how good they were at hiding. Kelda and Solna could feel that Nix and Ayli were still alive, as well as their general emotional state, but despite the two women being the primary anchors to the living world, locating either or both was beyond the two ghosts.

“It’s terrifying to think what I could have done with that sort of technique while I was alive,” Ravas said. “Though I suspect it is one which someone as lost to the Dark Side as I was would not have been able to replicate.”

“Even at the height of my strength, I’m certain I couldn’t either,” Kelda said. “Unless I miss my guess, the silence they can evoke is derived from a lifetime of suppressing their interactions with the Force. I think for any Jedi or Sith to replicate that would require abandoning all of the other powers we developed and living without them for a very long time.”

Ravas narrowed her eyes.

“Why did I never appreciate what a scholar you were?” she asked.

“What do you mean? You cheated off me on tests all the time?”

“Yes, but that was only because I wanted to be in the same section as you.”

“The lesson to take from this girls is that five minutes of honesty can save you several hundred years of headaches,” Kelda said.

“Though the question of lessons is an interesting one, isn’t it?” Ravas said, the slightly smitten expression she often wore around Kelda fading to curious calculation as she regarded Rassi and Solna.

“That occurred to me as well,” Kelda said. “And I believe Nix may have observed that before either of us.”

“Observed what?” Solna asked.

“The abilities you possess now would likely fade if we began to train you in the Jedi arts,” Kelda said. “You would be opening yourself to the Force and communing with it, which would mean becoming much less ‘silent’ in the process. Nix didn’t press you to learn how we interact with the Force for a number of reasons, but one was probably so you wouldn’t lose the unique talents you’ve spent so long developing.”

“Would that be so bad?” Rassi asked, not feeling especially fond of the isolation the Enclave’s doctrines had imposed on her.

“That’s for you to decide,” Kelda said. “But it’s a decision to make when you’re fully aware of the consequences of all the options.”

“For now our current abilities are probably ones we want to hang onto,” Solna said. “I don’t know if we’d be able to hear what happened here so clearly if we lost them.”

“I hear distant echoes of pain, and a terrible wound in the Force,” Ravas said. 

“The mine ahead, strong remnants of the Dark Side remain within it,” Kelda said, her eyes closed and one hand raised in the direction of the central opening to the mine complex.

“Another Dark Side Nexus?” Ravas asked.

“Not quite,” Kelda said. “If it once was then time had brought some measure of healing.”

“Or there is a smaller, more focused nexus within which the remnants gather around.”

“I think we need to go in there,” Rassi said.

“Something’s waiting there.” Solna’s eyes were closed too as she listened intently for the faded whispers.

“Then we should be the ones to face it,” Ravas said, her outfit shifting from the robes she usually appeared to be wearing to heavy fabric with solid plates affixed to it.

“Can you hear its call?” Solna asked.

“I only hear the echoes of pain which remain here,” Ravas said.

“I think it will only meet with us,” Rassi said. “I think it recognizes us.”

“This is very likely a trap,” Kelda said. She remained in her robes but the thin illumination which usually surrounded her was stronger and more solidified.

“Could it be another Death Shadow?” Ravas asked. “Without being able to sense it directly, I can’t tell from here.”

“Maybe,” Solna said, “but it doesn’t feel like the others.

“It could be using a different hunting strategy,” Ravas said.

“We’ll go together,” Rassi said, taking Solna’s hand. “If it is a trap we’ll hold out until you can get to us.”

Ravas and Kelda shared a glance and then a sigh.

“Trust in each other,” Kelda said. “We are with you.”

“But we will keep our distance until you call,” Ravas assured them.

Rassi checked with Solna who nodded in agreement.

The mines held more than they’d expected. There was an answer in there. Once which their people could have found with ease.

One which the Elders already knew?

Rassi didn’t like that idea, but the more she turned it over in her head the more correct it seemed.

What had happened here was not a mystery to the Enclave’s leaders. They knew what they’d done and they knew the result. They kept that knowledge from the rest of the Enclave but that was hardly surprising – the Elder’s power lay in the belief that they were supreme due to their devotion to the Enclave’s teachings. No one who could feel what the mine had become would believe for an instant in the Elder’s possessing any devotion to the ideals they spouted.

As they passed into the darkness, Rassi found herself wondering the Elders had been wrong or whether the ideals themselves were?

She suspected both were as flawed and corrupted as they claimed the rest of the galaxy was, but that left her with a deeper question; if she no longer believe in the Enclave’s ideals, then what did she believe in?

The answer, of course, was walking at her side and holding her hand in a warm, soft grip.

Ayli didn’t know how Nix was going to find the Silent Enclave, she was fairly certain Nix didn’t know either, but she found that she could trust that Nix would make it happen. That trust hadn’t come easily, a lifetime of experience had taught Ayli that problems only tended to get worse and that the ones you ignored were the ones that shot you in the head with a blaster at point blank range. With Nix though?

Part of Ayli said that love makes you stupid. She’d seen that too. More than once, both within the Rebellion and in her academic career. Opening yourself to someone else, letting them matter more that you did? Those were recipes for disaster.

But Nix had come for her.

Everytime.

Ayli had fallen in love with Nix far too quickly, but it hadn’t been senseless need overwhelming either of them. From their first night together, drunken and poorly remembered as it might have been, they’d fit together, and together they’d done incredible things.

So Ayli was able to sit in quiet serenity as Nix went off to court disaster, knowing that some disasters are the doors to a better future.

Quiet serenity proved to be its own sort of disaster though as Ayli quieted her thoughts like Kelda had taught her.

All around them, throughout the ship, there was a surreal calm in the Force. It was like a blanket muffling the normal perturbations of life. Intellectually she knew how many people were on the ship, but to her senses, natural and otherwise, there seemed to be far fewer crew members than there were. And none of them were important. They were background extras, the cast members of a series who were never credited and weren’t worth paying attention too.

The Silent Enclave cloaking technique wasn’t harmful or predatory, but around the edges Ayli could sense tinges of the Dark Side.

Far from the “we shall not corrupt the Xah” mindset the Enclave espoused, their cloaking skill was very clearly a manipulation of the Force. One driven as much by fear and the desire to remain disconnected from others as a desire to protect those shielded by it.

But there was a protective element to it. And it was a shared skill, one Tovos’ entire team were equal partners in maintaining, which helped it retain a measure of balance too. Disconnected from others, but connected to each other. Avoiding conflict but embracing their duty. The duality of the technique fascinated Ayli and she followed it down into the subtle ebb and flow of the Force which remained.

“Oh, no, sorry, she’s still here,” Osdo said. He’d opened the door to the “prison cell”/storage room Nix and Ayli were sharing, seemingly expecting it to be empty.

“Can I help you with anything?” Ayli asked without opening her eyes. Osdo’s presence in the Force was so muted Ayli would have said it felt like she was speaking to a ghost but she’d spoken to ghosts for the last year and they had far more substantial Force presences.

“What were you doing?” Osdo asked. 

His blaster registered easily enough in Ayli’s senses, but since he wasn’t pointing it at her she tried to put it out of her mind.

“It’s very quiet here,” Ayli said. “I was admiring the work you’ve put into the cloak which is shielding us from detection.”

“You won’t learn our secrets Jedi,” Osdo said.

“Would it be terrible if I did?” Ayli asked. “It might help keep us all safe if I could help with the cloak. Or at least be less of a disruption to it. I have to imagine covering Nix and I with it when we’re so loud naturally isn’t easy.”

“You could never master our techniques. The Jedi are corrupt and all they do is corrupt the Xah,” Osdo said.

“The Jedi are dead,” Nix said. “I don’t know how much you know about galactic politics but they were killed at the end of the Galactic Civil War. Executed by the Emperor to complete his rise to power.”

“Some of them clearly survived. You survived,” Osdo said. He was as silent in the Force as ever but Nix could hear the conflict in his voice. He wanted to leave, he was terrified of “being corrupted by her”, but he had to “win” too, had to have the last word and be “right”.

Underneath it all though, she could hear a call for help.

He’d lost one of his best friends. Brutally lost them.

He was far from a home he was certain he was never going to see again.

He didn’t know what to do or what was going to happen. The grand adventure he’d thought he was on had turned to horror and he wanted more than anything to feel the safety again that he’d known his whole life.

Ayli remembered a little Twi’lek girl who’d thought she was going to save the galaxy. Remembered the rush of being on her first real Rebel mission. All she had to be was clever and quick. Place a thermal detonator in the foot linkage of an unguarded AT-ST. Easy. A minutes work. Anyone small and unnoticeable could do it and get away before the evil Imperials noticed. 

Anyone but her.

The storm trooper wasn’t supposed to be repairing the AT-ST’s controls. He wasn’t supposed to hear the clunk of the detonator being dropped into the gap in the foot armature. And he definitely wasn’t supposed to raise the alarm.

Even with that though, she’d been fast and clever and quick. She’d made it back to her leader. And they’d made it to their sewer escape entrance.

Or she had.

She still didn’t know if he’d meant to distract the troopers by dropping the sewer grate and turning to face them or if he’d just been surprised. The blaster bolts that had burned through his chest and forehead had made sure she’d never get the answer to that question.

His sacrifice had saved her life but had shattered the idea that she was a grand hero of any sort. She’d been alone and terrified and had survived largely because there had been others who understood what she was going through.

They hadn’t asked her to continue believing that she was a great hero, or that she would be safe. They’d simply showed her that even in an unsafe world, you could still carry on.

“I did survive,” Ayli said. “But not as a Jedi. I grew up as a fighter. We were just trying to protect the people we knew and we didn’t have anything like the skills you do.”

“But you are a Jedi,” Osdo said. “We saw what you did.”

“I know some of the Jedi arts,” Ayli said. “Last year I was possessed by the ghost of a Sith. It…I was was marked by that. I’ve been working since then to learn a better way, learning how to deal with my own Dark Side. And it’s been the ghost of a Jedi who’s been teaching me. That’s why you see a Jedi in me.”

“The ghost is an abomination. It had corrupted you,” Osdo said.

“She is a woman who loved so deeply that she safeguarded someone’s soul for a thousand years,” Ayli said. “It’s thanks to her that a planet which was lost to the Dark Side is awakening to a brighter future. And she’s taught me that the rage I’ve felt all my life isn’t something I need to fear, and is something I can move past.”

“But any ghost is a corruption of the Xah,” Osdo said. “They are unnatural.”

“Corruption may not be what you’ve been taught it is,” Ayli said. “If she’d been with us, she would have stood against the Death Shadows. Her and Ravas both would have and Ravas used to be a Sith.”

“The Sith are the Jedi that admit what they are?” Osdo asked, trying not to reveal his ignorance.

“A Sith might say that, but they’d likely be lying. Sith tend to do that, a lot,” Ayli said.

“As do the Jedi,” Osdo said, sounding certain of the assertion.

“I suppose that’s true,” Ayli said. “Though from what Kelda’s said, the Jedi tend to think they’re helping when they lie, whereas the Sith tend to lie to destroy their opponents or for personal gain.”

“Lies are lies.” Osdo made the statement as though it were unassailable fact.

“Good or bad, they do carry similar costs,” Ayli said. “It takes a bravery to speak the truth, and a lot more to listen to it.”

“That is what Silence teaches us,” Osdo said. “We know the truth, because we know how to listen.”

“What have you heard listening to me then?” Ayli asked.

“I…I don’t know,” Osdo said. 

“If it sounds like I’m telling the truth, that would be because I am,” Ayli said. “I could lie. I could tell you know I’ve never met a Jedi and that the techniques I know come from a whole different Force Tradition native to my people.”

“I wouldn’t believe you,” Osdo said.

“I know. That’s why I’m not hiding anything,” Ayli said. “You don’t need that kind of hassle. Not with all that’s happened.”

Osdo was silent in response to that, so Ayli gave him a moment collect his thoughts before she spoke again.

“I’m going to guess that I’m the first Force user outside of the Enclave that you’ve ever met, right?” Ayli asked. Osdo remained silent, offering no confirmation aside from his body language which screamed that her assessment was correct. “You were concerned I was trying to steal the secret of your cloaking technique, or break it right? Hopefully you can sense that wasn’t my intent. I really was just observing the work, it’s incredible when you see it from the inside.”

“Thank you,” Osdo said as though someone was forcing the words from him with a hot poker.

“I know you’ve got to have other questions than that though,” Ayli said. “I certainly do. Asking you to answer my questions though is unfair. I do not want to leave you wondering if I’ve tricked any information out of you. So let me answer your questions. You can listen to my answers and listen to the Force to hear that they’re truthful.”

“We’re not supposed to talk to either of you,” Osdo said.

“You don’t need to be afraid of Nix or me,” Ayli said. “None of you do. Well none of you here. Or in the Enclave in general. Primus Dolon though? Yeah, he’s got plenty of reason to be scared of Nix given that he tried to Expunge her. I don’t think she’s planning to kill him, but depending on how repentant he is, I’m not making any promises there.”

“You’re going to kill the Primus?” Osdo’s hand went to his blaster but he refrained from pulling it on her.

“He tried to kill the woman I love,” Ayli said. “I’m not able to feel much anger at the moment but on a purely intellectual level I am more than willing to defend her in a lethal and permanent fashion if he tries that again.”

Osdo stood conflicted for a moment, before sagging in despair.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re never going to see them again.”

“Let’s say that’s true, I’m not sure that it is, Nix might be able to figure something out, but if you really are ‘Lost’, you’ll need allies,” Ayli said. “It’s how we survived in the Rebellion, and it’s how we won since none of us stood a chance alone.”

“You will betray us though,” Osdo said.

“That’s the scary part,” Ayli said. “It’s never safe to trust someone else. We can always hurt each other, even when we don’t want to. But we’re so much stronger together.”

“So what are we supposed to do that?” Osdo asked.

“Learn about each other,” Ayli said. “Trust doesn’t have to be unfounded. If we talk to each other, and then judge our actions against the claims we’ve made, we can build our trust on something solid.”

“But why would you ever trust us?” Osdo asked.

“Because I know what it’s like to not be able to go home,” Ayli said.

Solna focused on the fragment of the beacon stone and let herself grow dangerously quiet to inspect it. No breath. No beat of her heart. No flow of blood. No noise in the Xah at all as she searched for some final, faint trace of the link to the beacon’s mate.

But there was nothing.

“It’s just a rock now,” she said, opening her eyes to find an audience of the living and the dead awaiting her. “It definitely was part of the beacon stone, but someone who knew what they were doing destroyed it.”

“Tovos,” Rassi said. “They would have sent Tovos and his team after Nix.”

“Really? He seemed immature and unseasoned,” Ravas said.

“No one’s done a mission like that since I’ve been alive, but Tovos dreamed of it,” Rassi said. “If they didn’t send him, he probably would have gone on his own.”

“The Elders definitely sent him though,” Solna said. “They cleaned the encampment out too well and too thoroughly to not have known things were going to happen.”

“I’m unclear on why they would have wanted to kidnap Nix if they also planned to disappear?” Kelda asked. “If they’d simply moved with all of the Enclave members, they wouldn’t have had to leave behind a beacon stone and Nix and Ayli wouldn’t have been able to find them at all. And that’s assuming that either of them even gave the Silent Enclave another thought.”

“I believe you said Nix did some damage to the High Elder, this Donol person?” Monfi asked, looking at Rassi who nodded in confirmation. “In which case I suspect he, and possibly the other Elders, felt they had to apprehend her. If their authority is never meant to be challenged then suffering a defeat like that and making no reply leaves them looking weak, and tyrants who appear weak do not retain their power very long.”

“Which would be why they wanted her brought back alive,” Ravas said. “Ruling through fear requires that the masses be keenly aware of what awaits them if they step out of line. Her corpse could have been the result of anything. A public execution on the other hand is very definitely the will of the rulers being brought to bear on those they dislike.”

“That sounds like the voice of experience talking,” Hendel said as he escorted a returning trio of Praxis Mar ghosts back into one of the carrying crystals they were using to venture the stars.

“It is. Both theoretical and practical,” Ravas said. “The only reason those ghosts aren’t haunting me here and now is that the Force is merciful and has given them the rest they deserve.”

“That seems to largely be the case with those who were slain at the tradeport as well,” Lasha said. “The ravages of the Death Shadows have left scars on this place and holes in the community, but there is no supernatural element to the sorrow and grief they left behind.”

“If there had been, could we have used that to track where they went?” Nulo asked.

“Tracking the Shadows wouldn’t be that helpful,” Ravas said. “Kelda or I could do that now, but the Shadows are searching as well. It feels like they found a trap or a misdirection and hunting once more.”

“Following them might lead us to the Enclave, if they can find it though, no?” Monfi asked.

“They’ve supposedly been searching for the Enclave for a thousand years and only found us a handful of times,” Rassi said. “So it could be a long wait if we tag along after them.”

“Maybe forever if no one else calls them,” Solna said.

“What do you mean?” Kelda asked.

“It might be our fault that the Death Shadow’s found the Enclave,” Rassi said.

“My fault,” Solna said.

“Our fault, or maybe even just mine,” Rassi said.

“And you would this why?” Ravas asked.

“I didn’t know that I was calling Nix to us, but it seems like that’s exactly what I did,” Solna said. “If I could call her, then  what’s the chance that I didn’t also call the Death Shadows here?”

“Or me,” Rassi said. “Solna wanted to help me, but I had a lot more reason to want to hurt Primus Dolon.”

“And did you?” Ravas asked. “Hurt Dolon? If the desire was there, you are certainly strong enough with the Force to lash out with it. Windpipes in humanoids are frighteningly easy to crush, but often anger can be turned to bloodier ends. Force Lightning is a bit beyond you yet, but I imagine you could have broken a rib into his heart if you were properly motivated.”

“What? No! I never did anything like that.”

“I expected not,” Ravas said, not looking disappointed, but still disturbingly calm about the mayhem she was describing.

“While it is always good to be mindful of our thoughts and feelings, thoughts and feelings alone carry no weight of virtue or guilt,” Kelda said. “A rage you feel and put aside before acting on it will not lead you to the Dark Side.”

“But if we can corrupt…I mean if we can use the Force without intending to, how can we know if we’re hurting people with it?” Solna asked.

“The Force arises from life,” Monfi said. “Killing, or even harming, things with it is an act against it’s fundamental nature. It’s not easy to do by mistake and there’s a resistance which is quite noticeable.”

“Noticeable if you’re not engulfed in rage,” Ravas said.

“Or drowning in sorrow, or otherwise deeply unbalanced,” Lasha said. “It’s not impossible to do as you fear, and its why those who are talented with the Force should be trained, but it is not trivial to make a mistake like that either. If you had sat brooding and silently raging for years focusing only on destroying the Primus, then you could have called something like the Death Shadows to him, but you would not be unsure of your role in their summoning once it was done.”

“There is also the small point to consider that there were other notable events which played out within the Enclave recently,” Kelda said, gently pointing out the glaringly obvious element Solna hadn’t considered. “Nix mentioned that the Primus tried to ‘Expunge’ her, correct? That sort of action is an abomination in the Force and if anything was going to attract the attention of the Death Shadows, it would most certainly have been that.”

“But they’ve expunged people before,” Solna said, her guilt at the destruction of her former home not quite willing to give up the fight just yet. “If the Shadows could sense that they’d have come years ago.”

“Do they ever Expunge people publicly? In the Enclave?” Monfi asked.

“No. It’s usually people who are trying to get away,” Rassi said.

“And they let them get far enough away that tracking back from where they are to the Enclave is difficult to impossible I would imagine?” Monfi said.

“I don’t know, maybe?” Rassi said.

“They didn’t wait for that with Nix,” Ravas said. “But she did make him a little desperate.”

“And they left this location immediately afterwards,” Kelda said. “Which suggests Monfi is correct. They knew what they did would call the Death Shadows, they were just used to calling them to the isolated locations where their victims were.”

“I like these people less with everything I hear about them,” Lasha said.

“I though they told you that the Death Shadows were some kind of rival organization though?” Nulo asked. “What we saw were people. They were something else.”

“The wraiths we saw were supposed to be the weapon the Death Shadows used. At least in the stories they told us,” Rassi said.

“But they didn’t feel like weapons,” Solna said, thinking back to the raw screaming frenzy in the Force she’d heard from the Death Shadows.

“It’s possible they’re both,” Ravas said. “There are many things the Dark Side can be used for, and raising spirit vessels of pain and torment is certainly on the list. In this case however, I don’t think that’s what we’re seeing.”

“The Shadows weren’t summoned,” Monfi said. “Part of our training as Horizon Knights is to listen for the connections between servitors and masters. It doesn’t do much good to hunt down an abomination of the Force only for the one who created it to simply call forth another one.”

“Then what we were told was a lie,” Solna said. “Which is not exactly surprising at this point.”

“What if it wasn’t though?” Rassi asked, her gaze going distant and unfocused.

“What do you mean?” Monfi asked, his voice soft to not disturb Rassi’s focus.

“There are echoes here,” Rassi said. “Both from the Shadows and the Enclave. The animosity goes back to a long, long time ago, and it doesn’t feel like the Death Shadows started it. They’re unnatural, even as bits of the Dark Side. Aren’t they?”

Solna listened and could hear the echoes of conflict and battle that Rassi was referring too. There were layers to them, with the loudest being the most recent assault, but underlaying though were centuries of hostility in ever quieter ripples from an event too far back for her to hear.

“They are,” Ravas said. “I can’t sense a connection to a summoner anymore than Monfi can, but the Shadows did not arise on their own.”

“What if that’s because their summoners are all long dead?” Rassi asked. “Would the Shadows have to fade away with them?”

“Generally summoned spirits depart the moment those who call them return to the Force,” Kelda said.

“But there are exceptions,” Hendel said, being one such exception not exactly in the flesh, since he was still entirely skeletal, but exemplary of the idea nonetheless.

“Special cases abound,” Kelda said. “Your situation, and that of the other ghosts of Praxis Mar is likely quite different from the Death Shadows though. They seem to be intent on a singular purpose and bound only by that.”

“Whereas we were just bound by how much Praxis Mar sucked,” Hendel said.

Solna had only experienced Praxis Mar in its “recovering” state and even that confirmed Hendels words. It had a density of misery to rival a black hole and Solna had breathed a sigh of relief the moment Goldie managed to escape the atmosphere and return to space.

“Sadly, however they came into being, it doesn’t seem that the dead can lead us to the living who we seek,” Lasha said.

Moffvok whuffed and Nulo translated for him, “How do the Death Shadows track the Enclave at all?”

“They would need to have some connection to it, a personal relationship would be the easiest to exploit, but unlikely given the Enclave’s refusal to use the Force,” Ravas said. “It’s also possible that the process which created them also forged the link to the Silent Enclave as a whole.”

“Why destroy the tradeport too then?” Monfi wondered aloud.

“Because they can’t sense us,” Solna said. “Or at least not that well. Whether they were built with it, or just learned over the years, they have to know that we can hide ourselves really well. If they showed up here after the Expunging, expecting to find the Enclave and the place was empty, their only choice would be to lash out at everything and hope to catch someone in the blast.”

“So they can sense the Enclave, but not us individually?” Rassi asked.

The Force pinged in Solna’s awareness.

“Oh! Yes. That’ exactly it!” she said, carried along on the rush of intuitive understanding. “The Shadows can see the Enclave because it’s still what it was. All the old traditions, all the old techniques and skills and everything. Everything except us. We’re not the people who were in the Enclave when the Shadows were created. We have a connection to those people but after so many generations its weak. We’re still part of the Silent Enclave, but we’re not the people they’re looking for. Not exactly.”

“Tell men,” Ravas said. “Is there a story of the first attack the Death Shadows made on the Silent Enclave.”

“Yes,” Solna said. “They killed half the Enclave before the rest vanished and fled to the stars.”

“And how long was it before they attacked again.”

“Two hundred years,” Rassi said. “The Enclave held tight for two hundreds until the Nameless led the Shadows back because they refused to listen to the Elders.”

“Which means they never caught the ones they were created to search for,” Ravas said.

“And they are using only the most tenuous of connections to find the Enclave now,” Kelda said.

“We need to find how they were made,” Solna said. “If we can learn how a link was formed between them and the Enclave, we can make it work for us since we do know the people of the Enclave.”

“We’ll need to backtrack the Enclave across all the systems they’ve lived in until we find the one where the first attack happened,” Rassi said.

“And then we can backtrack the Shadows to find out who made them,” Solna said, already heading back to Goldie. 

The mood in the rickety Enclave freighter was morose. 

Or rather the mood among the Enclave’s hunting team was morose. Which made sense. They were all young, and they’d lost one of the own. There was grief for Yoldo and hiding under it was grief for themselves. For their dreams of being mighty hunters which Yoldo’s death had shattered and for the perceived loss of their place within the Enclave.

“There is no more voice to guide us,” Tovos had said, intoning the words as a pledge from scripture.

“No.” Osdo’s presence in the Force felt as though he were completely at peace, but Nix could heart the pleading heartbreak in that one word echo as clearly as a blaster shot.

“There is no more voice, but we remain Silent,” Felgo had said, apparently completing the scriptural quote.

And with that they had departed.

Lacking a ship, or any sense what planet they were on, Nix and Ayli had tagged along with their former captors, who didn’t seem to quite know what to do with them.

“Are they powering up the hyperdrive engines?” Ayli asked a moment before the familiar lurch answered her question.

“Think we should ask if they know where they’re going?” Nix suspected she knew the answer and that it was less a matter of ‘going to’ someplace and more simply getting away from the site of their failure.

The Enclave team had reacted to Tovos’ words like they’d all been gut shot, the fight going out of them to where even Poroto, who’d been willing to continue fighting with his broken hand had slumped into defeat.

The impending return of the Death Shadows had been the only thing which seemed to motivate them, and so they’d gathered what supplies they could and abandoned what should have been their home. Tovos’ last act before leaving had been to say some sort of prayer in one of the pre-Basic languages over Yoldo’s remains and then place a thermite charge on the corpse.

They’d been boarding the ship when the charge went off, the fireball large and bright enough to scour the partial camp clean and reduce everything near the detonation point to ash.

No one was going to find useful evidence about the Silent Enclave from what was left behind.

“They’re all hurting,” Ayli said. “This had to be their first mission so far away from the Enclave, and it was definitely the first they lost someone on.”

“You can sense that? They’re so quiet in the Force,” Nix said.

Ayli shook her head though.

“Not a Force thing. I’ve just seen this before. Human body language is a bit more limited, so I had to watch it pretty closely when I was kid. This team has their emotions almost completely disconnected from the Force, but their expression, and their postures? They’re wrecked.”

“And an experienced team wouldn’t be, would they?”

“Not if it was a Rebel team,” Ayli said. “Losing people didn’t happen all the time, but everyone knew someone who hadn’t made it, and the threat of it always seemed real. This team though? They didn’t think anything could touch them. And they couldn’t imagine losing like they have.”

“They need someone to talk to,” Nix said. 

“Sadly that can’t be us. Even apart from the fact that they think everything we say is sin and heresy, we’re not part of their group and its ingrained in them not to trust any outsiders.”

“That sounds like you’re also speaking from experience.”

“There wasn’t exactly a lack of people who were interested in making a quick cred by selling Rebels out to the Imperials,” Ayli said. “That’s why I like archeology. Dead people are real good at keeping their lips shut.”

She said the last with a smile, but Nix could feel the cutting truth behind the words. Ayli trusted her because Nix was ‘part of her group’, other people though, even people she wanted to be close to, were always held at a distance, if even unintentionally. 

Nix wanted to reassure her, but reflecting on her own life, she found a similar division in play. She hadn’t been a Rebel. Hadn’t fought and killed and watched people die in the dark, but she’d held herself apart from most of the crew’s she’d been a part of. 

Oh, she’d had friends, certainly, but as she drifted from ship to ship those friendships had drifted away too. There were the odd cases like Saliandrus where the bond persisted, but then Sali was an odd case all on her own, as Pirate Queens are won’t to be.

That things felt different for her since meeting Ayli was something Nix hadn’t consciously noticed, but came into clear focus seeing the Enclave team struggling to find the connections they needed.

Nix had followed the flow of the Force all her life, without any clear awareness of what she was doing. Meeting Ayli though had changed that, had finally made her consider the idea of there being a ‘forever’ with someone, even if their forever had started under fairly questionable circumstances. 

Once there was one forever in her life though, Nix had started to feel the hunger for more. She hadn’t had a family, and had thought, given how successful she’d been at surviving on her own, that she didn’t have an interest in one. 

Except it turned out that ignoring her own needs was, in fact, a skill she was a grandmaster of. 

She knew it wasn’t all self delusion. She had no interest in generating a child of her own. But a family? That was a lot broad of an idea than simple biological links. Kelda and Ravas? They were the Elders she’d always wished she could turn to for answers. Or rebel against. Or seek consolation from. Ayli? Even though they were together, Nix hungered for her wife, not simply to touch and hold but to be with. To share time and tasks and interests. To talk about nothing and to share everything. 

And then there was Rassi and Solna.

What would they be? Would they stay to be part of the family Nix was building? Intellectually she knew, and was determined to make sure, that it was their choice. In her heart though, if she was being honest with herself, she wanted them to be a part of her new family too. Daughters? Younger sisters? Cousins of an aunt’s second sister’s nephew’s grand niece? The name for the relationship was an affectation at best. All that mattered was the bond they could share, and they place they would have in each other’s hearts.

“And these idiots need to be there too,” Nix said with a sigh.

“What’s that?” Ayli asked, not being psychic in the literal ‘read minds all the time’ sense.

“This is going to be a disaster,” Nix said, knowing Ayli would understand.

Which she did.

“You’re going to talk to Tovos anyways aren’t you?” she asked, out of idle, unconcerned curiosity.

“I was thinking Felgo,” Nix said. “He seems to have a bigger problem with me.”

“You’re right, it will be a disaster.”

“Any thoughts on how to mitigate the disaster part?”

“Nope. We could avoid it, but if we’re not doing that, then embracing it is the next best thing,” Ayli said. “Or maybe I’m sort of drunk on being off balance with the Force. Seems fine to me though. You’ll make it work. Somehow.”

“Did you want to come with me?” Nix asked, wondering if Ayli had gained a new depth of insight with the Force or if her lack of fear was more of a disability than some new power.

“Probably better not to gang up on them,” Ayli said. “Plus if I’m not there, I can come and bail you out when they start reaching for their blasters.”

“When?”

“Maybe when. They are just devilishly hard to see in the Force.”

“Can you imagine what they must have been put through to wind up like that? You’d think this was an corp office building not a ship full of grieving teenagers.”

“Teenagers with blasters and a lifetime of brainwashing against you specifically.”

“Gotta start undoing that somewhere.” Nix shrugged. Disaster it was and disaster it would be.

She found Felgo in the engine room and cleared her throat to begin the carnage.

“Go away,” Felgo said, his voice too tired and his gaze held steady on the powerline he was adjusting.

“That needs to be replaced,” Nix said, largely because power transfer modules were not meant to be that particular shade of burnt plastic, but also because ship repairs were the definition of her comfort zone.

“Does it look like we’ve got replacements?” Felgo said, annoyance rising in his voice.

“Yep. Right there, near your left foot,” Nix said. She’d been inside the guts of so many freighters she felt like she’d wandered home when she wasn’t looking.

Which, in a sense was true. Ayli was there after all, so the ship was as good as anywhere else to call home.

“Can’t use that. Don’t know where it goes.” Felgo’s fatigue only wanted her to go away. He had reached the limit of problems he could handle and was probably going to explode on her no matter what she said next.

“You’ve had a miserable day,” Nix said asking the Force to guide her words into gentler waters. “And I’m not helping that.”

“Then why are you here?” Irritation colored Felgo’s words but that was better than the explosive rage that lurked within him.

“You need someone to be mad at, and I do know where that powerline goes,” Nix said.

Felgo finally turned to look at her, brows creased in confusion and frustration.

“Why do you want me to be mad at you?” That he grew more angry and suspicious with each word in the question was a good thing. Or so Nix tried to tell herself. “This is some Jedi trick isn’t it?”

“Not a Jedi,” Nix said. “It is a trick though. It’s the get a crew member to blow off steam before they blow us all up trick. Had to use it a bunch of times now when repairs just go to hell and no one’s having a good day.”

“I don’t…I’m not interested in your Jedi tricks. And I’m not going to blow us up.”

“Not working on the powerline you’re not. But you all have had about the worst days in your lives right? I don’t know what Tovos meant when he said you were Lost but that sounded like more than you just didn’t know where to go.”

Felgo went to speak but clamped his jaw shut and glared at her. Nix guessed he could hear Tovos telling him to shut up and had finally taken that command to heart.

“I’ve had bad days, believe it ir not,” Nix said. “The galaxy just loves to drop all the bantha puddu it can on us sometimes.”

Felgo remained silent and glaring.

“And you have zero reason to trust me. Maybe less than zero in fact,” Nix said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you don’t deserve what’s happened. Life is just unfair like that sometimes.”

Felgo was growing even more suspicious of her the more Nix spoke. She could see it in his eyes and was starting to feel it in this Force.

Which was not a good sign.

“Here’s the thing though,” she said sensing the need to get to a point Felgo could wrestle with. “The galaxy isn’t what’s fair. We are. We’re supposed to be the answer to the things that go wrong. You and I aren’t on the same side, right? You’re Silent and I’m a loud, corrupt Xah abuser? Except we’re not.”

“Shut up,” Felgo growled, just about to break. “I will always be Silent, whether I am Lost or not.”

“Yeah, obviously,” Nix said. “But being Silent isn’t all that you are. You’re also a young human. You’re also a hunter. You’re also Tovos’ best friend. We are all so much more than any one label we carry. Maybe you’re ‘Lost’ now but lost things can be found. That’s my wife’s entire career now.”

“We will never be found,” Felgo said. “It’s impossible.”

“Want to bet on that?” Nix asked. “I found your Enclave once and I didn’t even know what I was looking for. I’m not a Jedi, and I’m not a corrupter of the Xah, but I can still do things you can’t even imagine.”