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.”

Rassi hadn’t know how to make Solna believe that the Death Shadow attack wasn’t her fault. All the words and convincing arguments that should have been there were missing, and Solna knew why.

Because Rassi couldn’t be sure.

Oh, Rassi knew for certain that Solna wouldn’t have specifically called the Death Shadows down on the Silent Enclave. Even when Solna was busy denying the rage that had been building in her for years, she had a core of kindness that would have balked at the kind of collateral damage which had occurred.

And, for as much as they were both coming to understand and hate how they had been treated and how the Silent Enclave treated others, Rassi knew neither of them were so deep in their hate to willing murder anyone.

They’d seen what that level of corruption looked like.

What the Dark Side allowed and required. 

But Solna was right. The Force could be moved by unspoken desires, even ones the conscious mind turned away from.

Had she and Solna been angry and wished ruin upon Primus Dolon and the whole structure of the Enclave’s society? Yes. Definitely. Rassi couldn’t even claim that had changed, or that she didn’t wish it even more strongly than she had before.

That in turn left open the question of whether that unvoiced rage had been what had called to the Death Shadows. 

And whether they could indeed call them again.

“I don’t think we should tell anyone about this,” Solna said.

“You think they’ll blame us?” Rassi asked.

“The Horizon Knights have a mandate to hunt down people like the Death Shadows, and Force users who work with them,” Solna said. “I think they’d at least have to lock me up. Or worse.”

Rassi caught a flash of the future Solna was envisioning. A future marked by blood and pain.

But it wasn’t a real future. If was wrapped in shadows. A lie born of fear.

“They won’t,” Rassi said. “If this is something they’re familiar with, they can probably tell us whether it’s possible that we did this or not, and if we did, I know they’ll be able to teach us how not to do it again.”

“But will they trust us with that?” Solna was quiet, her awareness turned inwards, searching for some confirmation of what she feared she’d done.

“If we go to them? I think so,” Rassi said. “Think about Nulo and Muffvok. Lasha has been raising them since they were little and they’re not fanatics like we were.”

“I don’t know if we can judge that all that well,” Solna said. “I think they look more reasonable because they agree with the things we’ve been learning. We haven’t tried to go against their wishes at all so far.”

“They trusted us to call us in against the Lich,” Rassi said.

“Okay, yeah, that’s true,” Solna said. “But it still scares me.”

“Me too,” Rassi said. “How much of that is just inside us though? I mean, this was our home. We knew this place and it’s gone now. And we have broken all kinds of rules so far. Maybe this whole idea is just guilt over that?”

Solna closed her eyes and breathed in and out, slowly and regularly. Rassi kept her eyes open but made a similar effort at centering herself. 

“Maybe this is just guilt over leaving the Enclave,” Solna said at last. “I can’t feel where that guilt ends and the guilt over summoning the Death Shadows begins.”

“We’re too close to it,” Rassi said. “The Enclave was wrong about a lot of things, but some of their stuff just makes sense – I think it had to or nothing would work. When Honored Jolu taught us about getting an external perspective on feelings that seemed too big to manage, that’s probably a good idea.”

“Okay,” Solna released more than just the breath she’d drawn in. “But we need to make something clear if we’re going to let anyone know about this idea.”

“What’s that?” 

“I’m the one who might have done this. Not you.” Solna’s expression had gone adamantine in its resolve.

Rassi pulled her in to close hug.

“We absolutely do not know that,” Rassi said. “If this is something we did without knowing it, then I’m much more likely than you to have been responsible.”

“Why? And how? I’m already responsible for Nix finding us, that make me the most likely to have been bending the Xah for other things.”

“I don’t think so,” Rassi said. “You called to Nix because you wanted us to be rescued, to find a way out of the Enclave. I was the one who wanted it all to burn down.”

“I’m also the prodigy though right?” Solna said, clearly not believing the claim but still more than willing to use it to win the argument.

“And I’m the one who can copy the prodigy,” Rassi said. “Maybe while you were calling to Nix, my fear and anger were calling to the Death Shadows?”

“I do not want them to blame you for this,” Solna said. “I can’t let that happen.”

“This isn’t going to be about blame,” Rassi said. “It’s about understanding, whether either of us could have done this and, if so, what we need to do to make sure we never do it again.”

Solna leaned into the hug, which felt so good Rassi considered tossing away all other cares and simply staying like they were, hidden in one of the still standing buildings, away from everyone’s eyes.

“I hope you’re right,” Solna said. “I don’t think I would have gotten through this without you.”

“I think we belong together,” Rassi said, which wasn’t a particularly daring thing to say, they’d talked about presenting a united front to the world a lot of times. In this case though, Rassi felt like she was asking for something more than that. Something that maybe they already had but hadn’t ever named? 

“We do,” Solna said before drawing in a fortifying breath and pulling away from the hug at last. “And you’re right. This is something we should talk to people about. Hiding it would just be stupid and make everything worse.”

“We don’t have to rush though,” Rassi said, missing the closeness of the hug already.

“I don’t want to risk losing my nerve,” Solna said and took Rassi’s hand.

It wasn’t a hug, but it was still good.

They found Nulo first, following the sound of young Hutt’s hover platform to find her surrounded by ghosts.

They weren’t exactly friendly ghosts, but they were friendly enough under the circumstances.

“Oh hey,” Hendel the skeleton said. “We can’t find anymore of the Shadows lingering around here, so we’re thinking we’ve chased them off and people are safe now?”

“I don’t sense them either, but I wanted to find you and see what you thought,” Nulo said.

“They can probably hide better from us than from anyone,” Solna said.

“Yeah, if they’re used to hunting people from the Enclave, then they’d have to know how to hide from us,” Rassi said, considering for a moment just how terrifying the attack on the Enclave must have been.

They’d been told that the Death Shadows were a group of corrupted Xah users – frightening but still tangible and mortal. From what the ghosts of Praxis Mar had reported though the creatures they fought were very definitely not living beings.

“I was thinking about that,” Nulo said. “We haven’t found bodies in the Enclave, but we did find them in a tradeport. That means the Enclave members had to have evacuated before the Shadows got here, right? Which means the Enclave must have known they were coming, somehow, so maybe the Shadows aren’t ambush predators. They may be more like pack hunters, with only enough stealth to get in close to their prey.”

“Except in this case, the prey was able to spot them. That does seem to make sense,” Solna said.

“And if you’re right that they evacuated then there should be a beacon stone somewhere around here.” Rassi cast out her sense, both searching for any lingering traces of the Death Shadows and to see if she could find the beacon Honored Jolu had told them should be there.

“Beacon stone?” Nulo asked. 

“The Silent Enclave has survived as long as it has through anonymity and mobility,” Solna said, reciting one the lessons all children in the Enclave were taught. “We lived in tents and impermanent dwellings so that we could flee on a moment’s notice, and take as much with us as there were time for.”

“Which could be nothing,” Rassi added, since that point had always been stressed.

“The one thing the Enclave would not leave behind though was its own members,” Solna said. “Whenever the Enclave has to relocate, they’re supposed to find an unremarkable pair of stones and quiet the Xah in them both.”

“They showed us how to do it and it makes the stones almost unnoticeable,” Rassi said. It had been one of the rare assignments she’d done well with and had enjoyed. The other children had ruined it for her, but by that point it had hardly been a surprise.

“One stone is left behind and the other is taken and dropped on the planet the Enclave moves to,” Solna said. “By holding one, you can sense where the other is, supposedly even across the stars.”

“Wouldn’t that let whoever was following you just find you again though?” Hendel asked.

“There are traps setup around where the stone that’s taken along with the Enclave is hidden,” Solna said. “Anyone who follows the stone’s guidance must pass through the traps to find the Enclave. If you’re a member, they’ll know you when you show up and let you through. If not…”

“Then they kill you?” Nulo guessed.

“Or send you back believing that the stones led to a dead end,” Rassi said. “Dissuading people from finding the Enclave was supposed to be the Great Will of the Xah and anything and everything that supported that was automatically judged to be free of corruption.”

“So how do you find this stone if it’s unnoticeable?” Hendel asked.

“We were supposed to take three days centering ourselves, listening to the silences around us for the one which was too quiet,” Solna said.

“What if you were being pursued too though?” Nulo asked.

“In that case you’re not supposed to look for the Enclave,” Rassi said.

“The duty of anyone outside the Enclave when it moves is to be certain they are not followed back to it,” Solna said. “If that meant spending a week hiding out, you did it. If it meant spending a year hiding, you did it. If you had to die to be sure no one could follow you back, them you died. The safety of all was supposed to matter more than any personal safety.”

“That’s a fairly common stricture to find in hidden cults,” Kelda said, appearing beside Nulo.

“It sounds noble, and it enwraps the members into a community where intense devotion is expected to be the norm,” Ravas said, appearing on Nulo’s other side.

“That’s the Enclave,” Rassi said.

“The people in the tradeport are putting in a call for Republic assistance,” Kelda said. “They seem to be out of danger for now and they’re going to need help rebuilding this place.”

“And they would all feel more comfortable if we stayed around to make sure the Shadows don’t come back after nightfall or something,” Ravas said. “So you should have plenty of time to look for this beacon stone.”

“I don’t think they’ll need that much time,” Monfi said. “Unless I miss my guess, this was the beacon stone that you were talking about?”

In his hand, Monfi held the shattered pieces of a stone which had no noteworthy features.

Rassi could feel the chaotic scramble of the energy in the stone. It wasn’t alive, and had never been alive, so it shouldn’t have been part of the Force, but all matter resonates with the Force and the stone was no different.

If it had ever been connected to another stone however, that was completely lost, and with it any trace of where the stone’s twin might have been taken.

The worst thing to do when presented with a mysterious and unexpected scene which showed significant signs of having been a massacre was to leave the safety of the perfectly serviceable spaceship one had arrived in and venture out into said massacre scene to ‘find out what had happened’.

“You know we’re being watched, right?” Ayli asked. Tovos had decided that while investigating the partially constructed encampment was for some reason necessary, neither he nor his team needed to be the ones at the forefront of said investigation. That they’d snapped dura-steel shackles on Ayli and Nix’s wrists before forcing them out of the craft was so sadly predictable that Ayli hadn’t even bothered to complain. 

It helped that the shackles were the cheap store bought variety that Ayli had learned to escape before she knew how to read, but with her Dark Side still curled up and recovering from the thrashing Paralus had given it, she found she simply wasn’t as afraid of things as she probably should have been.

“Of course we are,” Tovos said. “The monsters scream in the Xah. They will not surprise us.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Nix said. “Predators are usually pretty good at distracting their prey. They don’t tend to last long as predators otherwise.”

Nix didn’t sound terribly concerned about their predicament either. Ayli attribute that to the subtle nudges the Force was giving them. It was oddly easy to remain peaceful despite their captivity, unless one took in account the sense each of them possessed that the will of the galaxy was in the corner, rooting for them. The Force was neither all knowing, nor all powerful, and could certainly be bent to evil ends, but its natural state was one of balance and after the time they’d spent on Praxis Mar, it was staggeringly refreshing to be able to feel just how powerful that was.

“Of course she knows about these monsters,” Felgo said. “She probably called them here with Jedi magic.”

“Not a Jedi,” Nix said. It had become an almost autonomic response. “And you would have felt any manipulations I did with the Xah, right?”

Ayli smiled. Playing their pride against their paranoia wasn’t a sound long term strategy, but the grumble of discontent it brought from Felgo was amusing nonetheless.

“Out of curiosity, since you know they can see us, why are you bothering with the cloaking technique?” Ayli asked.

“And isn’t that manipulating the Xah?” Nix asked. “It’s not supposed to be this quiet here.”

It seemed like a valid question to Ayli, even if she knew that Tovos dropping the cloaking effect which was hiding them from general detection would result in the immediate appearance of Nix and Ayli’s allies. That was, from Tovos point of view, an excellent reason to stay cloaked for the rest of his life, except he didn’t know that.

“There is no corruption in silence,” Felgo said. “We are a hunting party and the hunt must remain silent.”

“Don’t explain to them,” Tovos said. “That one came to steal our secrets.”

“Asking nicely and letting you drug me is stealing?” Nix asked.

“You took our children,” Felgo said. “Just like a Jedi.”

“Stop talking!” Tovos said. 

Ayli suppressed a chuckle. Tovos was too young to lead a team like that. True, he was clearly a young adult human, but he didn’t understand anything any the situation they were in or how to manage those under his command.

That was made abundantly clear in less than a second when Nix tackled him to the ground.

Which was quite nice of her.

The Death Shadow she’d saved Tovos from disagreed with that assessment however. With appendages that looked like arms broken in three extra places, it reached down for Tovos who was scrambling away from it on his hands and butt. 

Felgo and Osdo tried to shoot the Death Shadow with the blasters they were carrying but Felgo’s shots went wide in his panic and Osdo’s bolts passed right through the Death Shadow. 

That wasn’t the real problem they had though.

The real problem was that with the trap sprung, the rest of the Death Shadows were abandoning their hidden refuges and descending on the small party en masse.

One of the younger members of the hunting party, Ayli thought his name was Yoldo, tried to hold off a Death Shadow by using his rifle as a staff.

That did not work.

The Shadow passed through the rifle and grasped Yoldo by the throat before pouring itself down Yoldo’s throat and into his eyes.

Ayli threw off her shackles and stepped forward to help Yoldo, but was confronted by two of the Death Shadows.

“Nope,” Nix said and dragged both of the Shadows back with the Force, flinging them into each other, which seemed to stun the two.

In the moment’s delay that took however, Ayli saw Yoldo’s body twitch, spasm, and then shatter. What hit the group was already a corpse as the Death Shadow that had killed him came pouring back out of its victim.

“Run!” Tovos said, understanding at last what a tremendously bad idea investigating the partially constructed camp had been.

“No!” Nix called, calling up a swirl of debris to form a shield around them.

It wasn’t a shield to keep out the intangible Death Shadows though. It was a shield to keep the Enclave hunting party from scattering (and then dying individually Ayli foresaw).

“We have to stand together,” Nix commanded. “I can’t protect you otherwise.”

“Your corruption will not save us!” Felgo said.

Ayli yanked him back specifically, since he seemed determined to plow through the whirling barrier that Nix had called forth.

“Of course not,” Ayli said. “Mine will.”

The Death Shadows were a terrifying and utterly deadly threat. They were not, however, a planet sized Dark Side nexus, or a centuries old Lich capable of lifting mountains. Ayli hadn’t really defeated either the planet or the Lich, but they had adjusted her sense of scale and without the crushing pressure the Dark Side cutting her off from the Force, she was able to recognize a familiar element to the Death Shadows.

When the first one broken through Nix’s barrier, Ayli was ready to meet it.

It tried to grasp her and she let it.

Which let her grasp it as well.

When it tried to pour itself within her, she held it away and waggled a forefinger at it. It writhed and shrieked and strained against her grip, but she wasn’t holding it with only her hand.

“We are one with the Force,” she said, opening herself to the Force and sharing it with the Death Shadow. There was a commotion behind her but Ayli ignored it. What she was offering was a gift which to both the Force and the Death Shadow, and she was not accepting returns.

The Death Shadow gave one final shriek as something else swallowed it.

There was silence as the shriek faded away.

And then the Shadows were gone.

Ayli could feel them fleeing faster than thought, driven away by a horror which was wholly new to them.

And she regretted that.

They were monsters. That much was unquestionable. Why they were monsters however was a mystery, and one Ayli had the sense she wasn’t going to enjoy finding the answer to.

“There, now we can leave,” Nix said, allowing the ring of spinning debris to settle to the ground.

“Yoldo!” One of the other Enclave hunters, Poroto, screamed and collapsed when he saw what was left of his friend.

“What have you done?” Tovos had the barrel of his rifle directly under Ayli’s chin, which wasn’t a position she was overly found of, but which she trusted would work out okay.

She just had to keep Nix from breaking the poor boys hands.

“She sent the wraith back to its proper rest,” Nix said. “And you will want to put that down.”

“Your Jedi tricks don’t work on me,” Tovos snarled as he looked over towards her.

“That’s true. They do however work on the trigger of you blaster,” Nix said.

Whether that was true or not, Ayli still had all of her self defense training hard wired into her nerves.

She had the rifle out of Tovos’s hands, Tovos on the ground, and the barrel pressed to the Felgo’s forehead before she was even aware she’d decided to act.

“This is where we become very polite with each other,” she said. “And also where I point out that the wraiths are perfectly capable of returning once their rage overcomes the surprise that shocked them.”

“She’s right,” Nix said. “Listen for them. They’re regathering already.”

“We..You don’t order us,” Tovos said, choking from one of the blows Ayli had hit him with. 

First rule of combat, protect your vital parts and he’d failed even that.

Ayli frowned, if she was really going to start making up a numbered list, the first rule of combat should be ‘avoid it like the plague’. That should also be the second, third, fourth, and so on rules out to a million or so, just to make sure people really understood it.

“That’s good,” Nix said. “Because we’re not giving orders. We are however also no longer taking them.”

“You…you won’t corrupt us!” Osdo’s voice quavered with uncertainty as fear poured off him and his presence in the Force became a veritable roar compared to the previous whisper he had been.

“Osdo!” Tovos’ voice was sharp and stern. “Be silent.”

“Osdo’s correct,” Ayli said, in gentle and calm tones, offering Tovos her hand to help him rise. “We won’t corrupt you. We won’t ask for your secrets, and we won’t teach you any of the arts we’ve learned.”

“And we’re not going to mind trick you,” Nix said. “If you don’t believe that, then consider whether your literal lifetime of learning to listen to the Xah would somehow not be enough for at least one of you to notice if either Ayli or I tried to bend it to influence you. You all just felt what it’s like when I use Force. I’m sure that seemed like a corruption to you, but listen to each other, and listen to the Xah. I’m sure you can hear ripples in it, but are any of you corrupt now?”

“You killed Yoldo,” Poroto said, an all too familiar, irrational anger rising in him.

“We did,” Nix said. “By letting you take us into this obvious trap, our negligence resulted in his death. We should have refused your order to come here, overpowered you, and flown us all away.”

“The Death Shadows killed Yoldo,” Tovos said, not exactly falling on Nix and Ayli’s side. His aim was clearly to cut short the discussion of blame, since a fair portion of it rested on his shoulders.

“You know what the wraiths are?” Ayli asked, offering Tovos his blaster back.

Which allowed Poroto to shoot her.

Or at least try to.

“Wow do you need a timeout,” Nix said, struggling with the words as she held the blaster bolt in place. Ayli stepped lightly to the side allowing Nix to release the bolt which promptly blew a fist-sized hole threw one of the dura-crete walls which had been erected.

Poroto went to fire again, but this time Nix yanked the blaster out of his hands.

Ayli sense an index finger snap and Poroto dropped to his knees cradling his hand.

“One more attempt, just one more, and we’re going to find your people on our own,” Nix said.

“They are gone,” Tovos said. “They are gone and they cannot be found. There was no time to set up a relay.”

“No. We can’t be Lost. They wouldn’t leave us for Lost,” Osdo said. 

“The Death Shadows found them after they fled once,” Tovos said. “There will be no finding them a second time. We are still Silent, but we are now Lost.”

Desolation. What had once been a modern galactic encampment outside a profitable tradeport was nothing but smoking empty ruins. The tradeport hadn’t fared much better, but unlike the encampment, there were bodies in the tradeport. 

And survivors.

The presence of any living beings were largely due to the spirits of the dead which prowled the tradeport’s streets, searching for those in need. Of rescue or retribution.

“I can’t sense anyone else here,” Rassi said, fiddling with an onyx crystal in her left hand.

She wished it was a lightsaber despite the fact that she had never held one of the jedi laser swords, and had no idea how to fight with one.

Nor anyone to fight.

Not any longer.

The spirits of the dead who had travelled inside it across the stars at her behest were out roaming the shatter tradeport rending what aid and comfort ghostly revenants were capable of providing.

“I think the Praxians drove off the last of the Death Shadows,” Solna said. She held one of the crystals too, and hers was as empty as Rassi’s was.

“This wasn’t what we expected to find, but it seems it was good that arrived when we did,” Kelda said, materializing beside the two girls. 

“Though it would have been better if we could have gotten here sooner,” Ravas said.

They made an odd quartet, each of them visibly an outsider from the other three. Rassi was the largest and darkest by far. Solna was lighter in skin tone and by far the frailest in physique. Kelda was closer to the median for human physiology, and despite her aged appearance seemed spry and healthy enough, if one discounted the pale limbus of blue light surrounding her which announced her ghostly state. And then there was Ravas, whose horns announced her a Zabrak and who lacked Kelda’s ghostly aura despite being every bit as much a projection from the Force as Kelda was.

The bonds between the four weren’t visible, at least not to those without a familiarity with them or a deep connection to the Force, but they were present and grower rapidly stronger.

“We should have taken the Halzen Route,” Goldie said, her mechanical voice emerging from a comm device on Rassi’s belt.

“I don’t think so,” Solna said, her eyes gone distant and searching. “I don’t think it would have gotten us here before the Enclave left.”

Rassi went still, listening as Solna was listening, finding echoes of the past in the Force and whispers of alternate presents they had stepped aside from.

“She’s right,” Rassi said. “The Enclave left here before they captured Nix and Ayli.”

“They knew these Death Shadows were coming then,” Ravas said, not so much asking as testing out the idea.

“Your people are familiar with the Death Shadows?” Kelda asked, listening to the Force for whispers far more distant than the ones Rassi or Solna were searching for.

“They’re not our people,” Solna said. “Not anymore.”

Rassi cast her a glance and a nod of agreement. She would never have guessed that Solna would make a statement like that, but the change in Solna’s outlook had been building for years it seemed. Possibly even longer than the change in Rassi’s had.

The Silence Enclave had raised them, but despite the near continual brainwashing, had shunned and ostracised the girls in just the right manner to place fatal cracks in the foundations of unquestioning belief the Enclave had tried to inflict on Rassi and Solna.

There was also the small matter of Nix’s open gift of acceptance and support, not to mention the fact that Nix had damn near killed herself to show both Rassi and Solna that they were worthy of love and that they things they’d seen as flaws in themselves were unique strengths that were worth cherishing no matter what the Silent Enclave had taught them.

Which was why Rassi and Solna had convinced a small army of living, mechanical, and dead people to come with them to rescue Nix and Ayli from the clutches of the Enclave’s team who had apprehended them on Praxis Mar and dragged them off to face the Enclave’s justice.

It hadn’t been particularly difficult to convince any of their little army to come along of course.

Especially not Goldie, who viewed Nix and Ayli as her mothers and had been ready to drop in with guns blazing until Ravas had pointed out that they needed survivors to make sure they could find where Nix and Ayli were being kept.

As it had turned out though, finding survivors was far more challenging than they’d expected it to be.

“We were told stories about the Death Shadows,” Rassi said. “The Elders said they were worse than the Jedi, or sometimes they said they were a secret arm of the Jedi.”

“Looking back I can’t believe how much contradictory stuff they shoveled at us,” Solna said.

“They were always consistent about the Death Shadows being one of the reasons we had to stay hidden though,” Rassi said.

“Supposedly, the Death Shadows were manipulators of the Xah who became corrupt and sold their talents to the criminal cartels,” Solna said. “They were always on the look out for us, because we are the only ones who can see them, and the only ones who can report on their crimes.”

“No one had ever seen one of them though, so I always thought they were just stories to scare us into being quiet like they wanted us to be,” Solna said.

“Apparently not,” Ravas said. “From what we can see here, the Death Shadows are quite thorough in destroying things connected to the Enclave.”

“Even if that connection is tangential at best,” Kelda said her gaze returning to their immediate surroundings.

“Not to be a heartless mechanical monster, but the Death Shadows seem to be someone else’s problem, especially since the don’t seem to want to tangle with the Praxians. So shouldn’t we be trying to work out where my Moms are?” Goldie asked.

“Oh, we know where they are,” Kelda said. “They’re clearly with the Silent Enclave. The question is where did the Enclave go, which the Death Shadows might be able to help us uncover,” Kelda said, frowning in concentration.

“How can you be sure they’re with the Enclave?” Goldie asked.

“Because we can’t sense where they are and that’s normally impossible,” Ravas said. “To date it’s happened in only two circumstances.”

“When Ayli was shrouded in the Dark Side by the Lich,” Kelda said.

“And they clearly dealt with him before they left Praxis Mar,” Ravas said.

“And when Nix last visited the Silent Enclave,” Kelda said.

“But you’re sure their okay? I mean, that they’re still alive?” Goldie asked, the worry in her voice every bit as genuine as it would have been in an organic sapient.

“Definitely,” Ravas said. “Neither of them seems to be tremendously happy but they are still among the living.”

“How do we make sure they stay like that?” Goldie asked.

“We find them,” Kelda said. “Though at this stage, I suspect we may need help in that endeavor.”

“I’m willing to pitch in whatever I can, but I don’t know how much use I’ll be,” Archivist Bopo said.

Rassi wasn’t sure why the elderly Galruxian been willing to come with them on the trip to the Silent Enclave but she suspected it was some sort of trauma response to the events Bopo had recently been put through.

Which more or less made her a part of their odd little club.

Once they had rescued Ayli and Nix and had time to settle down, Rassi suspected they were all going to need an awful lot of mediation to reclaim the balance and sanity they were so had so clearly lost.

“An Archivist might be exactly what we need,” Ravas said. “Nix came to you for help in finding the hidden Force traditions who’d survived the Imperial purges, correct?”

“And the Jedi purges,” Bopo said. “Not all Force traditions play nicely with others after all.”

“As our current surroundings beat witness too,” Kelda said.

Rassi wasn’t sure if the Death Shadows were a Force tradition though. What the Enclave had taught her about them had too many inconsistencies, and just felt off somehow.

Since that characterized most of the information she’d learned from the Silent Enclave though, so couldn’t say it was all that surprising.

“If you were able to assemble a data set of likely locations where a set of Force users might be hiding out, it would perhaps behoove us to check the nearest other locations on that list,” Ravas said.

“What makes you think they might be close by?” Monfi asked, as the four Padal Horizon Knights strolled into the small clearing in the rubble which remained of the Enclave’s encampment. They were carrying various supplies which they’d managed to scavenge from the city and assemble into survival packets for the remaining survivors.

“They were prepared to leave and that’s most easily done when you’re destination is already decided upon,” Ravas said. “It should be nearby as that would allow them to check on its condition with greater frequency, and they would be the most exposed while they were in transit so a shorter trip would provide them with the quickest return to security.”

“They never told us about a place we would flee to,” Solna said. “But they did insist that everyone be ready to flee at a single command from the Council of Elders, or the Primus.”

“I seem to recall that the Primus wasn’t in much condition to issue orders when we left here,” Ravas said.

“What happened to him?” Lasha asked, setting off a hover flare to mark the location where the supplies were being collected.

“Nix happened to him,” Ravas said. “I believe he tried to kill her with the Force and she took offense to that. Toppled a building on him and set him on fire if I’m remembering correctly.”

“I thought she was the nice one?” Nulo asked.

“A lot of people think that after meeting her,” Kelda said.

“And after they get to know her?” Lasha asked.

“Pretty much the same,” Ravas asked. “Her pirate girlfriend was convinced she was a marshmallow, I think right up until Nix electrocuted her and then kidnapped her.”

“Pirate ex-girlfriend, and it was for Sali’s own good,” Kelda said.

“Should I be calling her in too? Aunt Sali and Aunt Zin?” Goldie asked. 

“You already did, didn’t you?” Ravas asked.

“Well, yes, but if you’d like I could tell them to hide that and say they just stumbled across us randomly,” Goldie said.

“We need to work on the timing of when you ask for permission for things,” Kelda said. “But in this case, Saliandris and Zindiana may have valuable information as well.”

“Saliandris is the pirate?” Lasha asked.

“Pirate-Queen,” Goldie said. “She was between thrones for a bit, but Aunt Zin says a throne’s really the only chair that suits her.”

“Never thought we’d be working with undead Force spirits, pirates, and Force Shadows,” Monfi said. “Also never thought we’d manage to take out a monster like Paralus though, so I suppose I can’t complain.”

“We’re not working with the Death Shadows,” Rassi said. “Not after what they did to the tradeport. Those people were innocents.”

“Most of the Enclave is too,” Solna said. “The Enclave is horrible but most of the people in it can’t see that. They’ve never had the chance.”

“Forgive me,” Monfi said. “I wasn’t referring to the Death Shadows. I was referring to the two of you.”

“We’re shadows?” Rassi asked.

“You slid past traps and wards setup by a centuries old Lich of unfathomable power,” Monfi said. “If you fell to the Dark Side, I’m not sure if there’s anyone in the galaxy who would be safe from you.”

Which, Rassi saw, was why the Silent Enclave was really hiding.