Life, by and large, is not peaceful. It churns and twists and makes a mess of everything. Somehow though, it can find moments of peace too. Islands of serenity where calm can flow in, and  the all the strife and turmoil can be seen for what they are; just moments as well, pieces of experience that challenge and teach as much as they hurt and destroy.

Nix’s reflections on that weren’t where her mind usually wandered as she sat by the small reflecting pool outside the cabin she shared with Ayli.

Normally she found the most relaxing things to think about were the schematics for the various ships she still hoped to have a chance to work on. She’d always known that the galaxy wasn’t a clockwork or a mechanism of any sort. There were too many moving parts to it and too many different purposes and goals each little one was pursuing. With the Force, she was tuned in to all of that, which was probably what had pushed her to becoming a mechanic, she knew.

Being able to understand each component of a greater machine and know what that machine needed was such a relief when even the Force often had no idea what the solution to a planet, or a city, or even a single person’s problems might be.

In moments of calm though, she thought she could see the answer, or maybe just an answer. All the tumult which surrounded her? However overwhelming it might feel, it would never be the whole of her life. The moments of reprieve, the moments of connection and joy and wonder? They were going to be there too. She could let the Force guide her to them, but so to she could guide the Force and show it the things that only she could bring to the galaxy. Her unique perspective, her choices, and her dreams.

In the pre-dawn light, the world around her was golden, the silence of the fading night broken by the call of morning birds and the crash on the incoming tide. In a sense that made it like any other day, and in sense, it was.

The day which lay before her would like be loud. It might have a fight or two even. There was almost certainly going to be laughter, and it wasn’t impossible that there would be a few tears. Nothing was really going to change or be different by the end of the day though. 

The ring on her finger wouldn’t be any heavier for the vows she was going to lay on it.

The ceremony they were going to undertake wasn’t going to change them or make what was between them ‘real’. It couldn’t since what they shared had been real the moment they woke up together and decided to make it real.

But it wasn’t going to be meaningless either.

Standing together before all of their friends and declaring their love was a step neither one of them had imagined taking before they’d met the other. 

The weeks of planning had also been something neither had expected to do, and had led on not a few occasions to the suggestion that they could simply elope to somewhere more official than Canto Bight this time.

But they hadn’t.

Because they did want to share the moment with the people in their lives.

Of which there were also far more than either had expected there to be.

Beyond Sali and Zin, who they were less-than-secretly trying to upstage with the reception they had planned, there was Rassi and Solna, their official new apprentices. 

Kelda had explained that young Jedi learners were properly referred to a padawans.

Which made it clear that Rassi and Solna should be apprentices and none of them had interests in being mistaken for Jedi.

Attending with Sali and Zin there were going to be a sizable contingent of underworld sorts, pirates and ne’er-do-wells who’d been on the periphery of Nix and Ayli’s antics since they’d met. If Nix had a family to speak of, they were probably the closest thing she had to cousins and aunt and uncles or weird grandparents that could be found.

On Ayli’s side, there were her parents and Archivist Bopo as well as a contingent of academics who were, if anything, rowdier than the pirates were, given how the rehearsal dinner had gone.

And then there were the people who were there for both of them.

People like Tovos and his crew. People who they’d helped either directly or indirectly, who were all to happy to have some warmth to celebrate in what could sometimes be a pretty cold galaxy.

“You’re pretty quiet today,” Ayli said, sitting down on the mat beside Nix and gazing out at the dawn bright horizon.

“But not silent,” Nix said, relaxing from her meditation posture and leaning over to plant a kiss on Ayli’s cheek.

It was a fairly chaste gesture, but not a chaste invitation.

Ayli responded by running her left hand gently up Nix’s spine, which offered promises for things to come without disturbing the calm of the moment they were sharing.

“Just so long as you’re there for the vows, you can be as quiet or silent as you like,” Ayli said.

“Do you think it will be different? Saying them in front of everyone?” Nix asked, enjoying the warmth of Ayli’s hand on her back.

“That one’s tough isn’t it? I mean, in theory, I think we took our first vows in front of, what, an entire casino?”

“That sounds right? I think?”

“Yeah, I mean, I know I said something, but I can’t really recall what our vows even were.”

“Probably whatever boilerplate the Canto Bight crooks have cooked up.”

“Well, whatever they were, they worked,” Ayli said and learned over to return Nix’s kiss.

“I don’t think it was the vows,” Nix said, shifting to look Ayli in the eyes. “It was you. Each day. You were there, and you chose me and you made it worth it. That means so much more than those vows do.”

“You make it so hard to wait sometimes, do you know that? I swear, even after all the prep we did, I kind of still want to just steal you away and elope right this instant.”

“Your parents would hunt us down.”

“And Sali and Zin would help, I know.”

“I mean, we still could,” Nix said, mischief and mayhem sparkling up inside her.

“Oh. Oh that would be fun. Could you imagine having the entire wedding reception chasing us from star to star?”

“You would have one problem,” Kelda said, appearing on the other side of the reflecting pool.

“They’d catch you before you left,” Ravas said.

“We’d make sure of it,” Kelda said.

“Aww, but why!” Nix said, comfortable letting her inner child out in front of the thousand year old Force ghosts.

“Do you know how many times we got to go to a wedding?” Kelda asked.

“A Jedi and a Sith? Who were either forbidden from marrying or who noone in the right mind would marry?” Ravas asked.

“So, you’re living vicariously through us?” Ayli asked.

“Has that not been apparent for a while now?” Kelda asked.

“You know, we could have you two up there with us,” Nix said. “A double wedding is as easy to put on as a single one.”

“I believe there is commonly a term in the vows about death dissolving the marriage,” Ravas said. “That would likely present a problem for us.”

“So don’t say them,” Nix said.

“Don’t say what?” Kelda asked.

“The part of the vows about death parting you. I mean, it clearly didn’t.”

“Yeah, if anything it brought you back together,” Ayli said.

“Well that’s true but…” Ravas stammered.

“We’ve never…” Kelda stammered as well.

Nix and Ayli shared an eye roll and a sigh.

“You’ve never actually told each other that you love each other enough that you want to be together? Seriously?” Ayli asked.

“Well, it was clear now wasn’t it,” Kelda said.

“Was it?” Nix asked.

“Yes, of course,” Ravas said, with only a hint in her voice that she was lying.

“Then you should make it clear to the people who love you,” Ayli said.

“Yeah, you were both cheated out of what your lives should have been. It’s time to make up for lost time and make the lives you wanted to have back then,” Nix said.

“There’s the slight problem that we’re not alive,” Kelda said.

“And that we weren’t cheated,” Ravas said. “This is very much the consequence of my actions.”

“Sure. Right. Except none of that is correct,” Nix said.

“She’s right. It’s good to take responsibility for what we do, but you’ve got to remember that you don’t get to take all the responsibility for everything,” Ayli said. “You didn’t actually do this to yourself. Not alone anyways.”

“And, rather more importantly, you’re not dead,” Nix said and held out her hand.

Kelda waved her hand through Nix’s as a refutation of her statement.

“Yep. That’s a neat trick,” Nix said and then reached out to catch hold of Kelda’s wrist.

“That’s…you’re just using the Force,” Kelda said.

Nix glanced over at Ayli and sighed.

“Yes. And where does the Force come from?” Ayli asked.

“You. The living,” Ravas said and paused. 

Or stopped really.

“You’re really just figuring this out?” Nix asked. “I mean, to be fair, it took me a long time too. If Monfi hadn’t mentioned something to Ayli, I don’t think either of us would have put it together.”

“What did the Horizon Knight say?” Kelda asked, still confused.

“I said you were a Force Ghost and he almost immediately said that you were something else,” Ayli said. “We talked about it later and he didn’t know what you were but her pointed out that Force Ghosts can usually only be seen by those they had a connection to in life.”

“The only exceptions he knew of were in places where the Force was in an exceptionally heightened state,” Nix said.

“Like a Dark Side Nexus, where we met you,” Ayli said, looking at Ravas.

“Except I met Kelda in one of Sali’s gardens,” Nix said. “Not exactly much of a Force nexus there, but the plants were nice.”

“True,” Ayli said. “Neither of us knew enough to question that though.”

“They can’t be right, can they?” Ravas asked.

“More like, we can’t be wrong,” Nix said. “Not on this at least. You, both of you, have appeared to plenty of people, none of whom you knew in life. Even if we’re your anchors because of what happened on Praxis Mar, you still have lives outside of us.”

“And they are lives,” Ayli said. “Leaving aside the fact that you are embodiments of the Force, which, is LIFE, you’ve both been changing, which, as an academic I have to point out, is one of the things that living things do. Sort of an essential quality for them to have.”

“But…” Kelda said.

“But that would mean…” Ravas said.

“That it’s not too late for you,” Nix said. “And that you will definitely be joining us up there on the altar.”

“We’re carrying on what you began,” Ayli said. “And we still have a lot to learn from you.”

“Just like Rassi and Solna have a lot that we can teach them,” Nix said.

“But that doesn’t mean you’re done,” Ayli said.

“Just because you’ll live on in us, doesn’t mean you don’t get to live for yourselves too.” Nix said.

“What can we say?” Kelda asked, looking a bit more overwhelmed than she ever had before.

“To us?” Nix asked. “You don’t have to say anything to us. What matters is what you’re going to say to each other.”

“What matters if what you’re going to be to each other.”

“The reason I held on,” Kelda said.

“The reason I came back,” Ravas said.

Nix took Ayli’s hands.

“The reason we made it this far,” Ayli said.

“And the reason we’ll keep going.”

[Chronicles Complete]

[…for now]

Rassi and Solna caught up with Nix, Ayli and the others on a pirate station which looked like it had never seen better days, mostly because it looked like it had never seen any good days at all. With a trio of Sister Zin’s fellow space nuns serving as their escort though none of the pirates offered them any trouble.

Which seemed odd to both of them?

“You’ve been here before?” Solna guessed, the Force being smugly quiet about the lack of response the nuns were generating.

“Others of our Order do business here,” Sister Calvarex said. 

Rassi was a big girl, both in height and width. For the first time however, she looked on the smaller side compared to Sister Calvarex. 

Which might also explain why the pirates were uninterested in giving them much trouble.

With that in mind, neither Rassi nor Solna were alarmed when they turned down a dark side alley that turned into an odd little maze. Had anyone else led them into a spot like that it wouldn’t have turned out well for someone, but the Sisters clearly knew where they were going.

That their destination turned out to be a bright and airy flower garden at the top of long lift ride was not at all what they’d been expecting, but the sight of their new friends told them they’d definitely come to the right place.

“So, is a new fleet worth the ship we banged up a little on you?” Nix asked.

“If its only a little banged up then you should be able to bang it right back into shape, right?” Sali asked.

“That is something I could do, yes, with enough time,” Nix said. “I would just need you to collect it first.”

Nix’s smile said she knew she was in at least mildly warm water in terms of the state of the ship, and she wasn’t quite willing to admit to what it was “mild” in comparison to.

“That should be easy enough,” Sali said, her smile matching Nix’s only in that, while she was legitimately happy that Nix was still alive, she was absolutely not going to pass up the opportunity to make her former lover squirm a bit. “We have, what, four, five salvage teams in the area? I’m sure they can bring it in you give them the coordinates where you left it.”

“Yeah, about that,” Nix said, pausing to find the right words.

“They’re going to need more than one set of coordinates,” Ayli said, finding, if not the right words, at least an accurate set of them. “Maybe a few thousand?”

“So, my ship is in a thousand pieces?” Sali said.

“More like a million probably,” Ayli said. “But most of the bits should still be grouped together, roughly speaking.”

“So banging it back together?” Sali said. “Might take a little while.”

“A little,” Nix said.

“Or,” Ayli offered. “We could give you something much better.”

“You really don’t need to,” Zin said. “That ship was insured after all.”

“No, no, this I want to hear,” Sali said. “What’s better than getting my very nice ship back?”

“There’s a Proton Beam Cannon floating out there,” Ayli said. “It’s damaged, but still functional. It’s also cloaked, but the cloak will be fading. As it stands I’m pretty sure one of your ‘friends’ is going to stumble across it as soon as they get done divvying up the fleet they captured.”

“Do we really want to put that kind of temptation into Sali’s hands?” Nix asked.

“I don’t know? Do we want it in anyone else’s hands?” Ayli asked.

“I mean, we could use it,” Nix said.

“I second that! And third it! And fourth it!” Goldie said over the comm Nix was carrying.

“Okay, maybe that would be a bad idea too,” Nix said.

“There, you see, so how does your very own proton beam cannon sound? You know in place of it being someone else’s proton beam cannon?” Ayli asked.

“I hate you,” Sali said. “Both of you.”

“Yay!” Nix said. “Hey, I’ll even install it if you want.”

“No!” Sali said.

“What? Why?”

“You will absolutely put a destructive fuse in it so it fries itself the first time I try to fire it,” Sali said.

“Well, I mean, no one else would know that,” Nix said.

“Why did I ever date you,” Sali said. “You are the worst.”

“It was so you could appreciate your current girlfriend more,” Nix said.

“I don’t have a girlfriend anymore,” Sali said.

Zin bapped her on the shoulder and held up her left hand.

Which Sali did as well to display their matching rings.

“CONGRATULATIONS!” Nix squealed and leapt to embrace them both.

“Now you officially can’t have her back,” Zin said.

“She’s been taken for a while now,” Ayli said.

“Not outside of Canto Bight,” Zin said, which was news to Rassi and Solna.

“Huh, we never did get that fixed, did we?” Ayli said, and glanced down at the ring on her fingers which was a twin to the one on Nix’s.

“We should probably fix that then,” Nix said and got down on one knee.

“Oh no you don’t! I get to propose to you,” Ayli said, also getting down on one knee.

“You proposed last time though!”

“Maybe! We don’t know that for sure though.” Ayli held forth her lightsaber for Nix to take, apparently as a betrothal gift.

“Wait, what?” Sali asked. “How do you not know…ah, Canto Bight. Right.”

Rassi and Solna exchanged a glance at each other in confusion, but it was Nulo who was floating nearby who cleared things up.

“Canto Bight is a, uh, resort world,” she said. “It’s sort of infamous for all the substances that can deprive people of their senses.”

“Makes for better gambling,” Sali said. “From the house’s perspective.”

“So are you two actually married?” Solna asked.

“They are definitely married,” Rassi said.

“Thank you,” Nix said. “And yes, in every way that matters, this is my wife.”

“For legal purposes though, for example in the eyes of the New Republic, our marriage certificate might as well be written in crayon,” Ayli said. “We don’t have to deal with the New Republic very much, so it hasn’t come up in the last year or so, but if these two are going to be all official, we can’t very well let them show us up.”

“I don’t think you’ll benefit from the same tax loopholes that she will?” Zin said to Ayli, indicating Sali.

“Hey! I married you for more than the tax breaks,” Sali said. “Those were just a nice bonus.”

“Which is why you’ll be giving me the proton beam cannon right?” Zin said, smiling sweetly.

“What’s mine is yours,” Sali said, looking genuinely smitten for a moment.

“Okay, for you I’ll do the installation and not put in the kill circuits on it,” Nix said. “That can be my wedding present to you.”

“Thank you,” Zin said.

Ayli cleared her throat.

“I believe there’s another wedding under discussion?” she said, noting that they were both still kneeling.

“Ah, good, so you accept my proposal then!” Nix said, turning a mischievous smile on Ayli.

“That depends,” Ayli said. “What are you offering for my betrothal?”

“I’d give you my saber, but, it’s…”

“Not exactly wedding material, yeah.”

Again, Rassi and Solna shared a puzzled look.

“What happened to it?” they asked together.

Nix drew forth a fairly plain hilt, and offered it to no one.

There was a presence within it. Dim. Sleeping.

And unspeakably deadly.

“I don’t want to call it a Death Saber, because that sounds so overwrought and pathetic…” Nix said.

“But that’s not an inaccurate name for it,” Ayli finished.

“What did you do? What is it?” Solna asked, pushing away her sense of it in the Force. She wanted absolutely nothing to do with whatever was in that hilt at all.

“When you sent the Death Shadows to us, they turned on the Elders,” Nix said.

“But we didn’t send them to you?” Rassi said.

“You did, in a manner of speaking,” Kelda said.

“When you broke the Silent Enclave, you broke the tether the Death Shadows had to you,” Ravas said. “We helped them find the Elders but honestly it wasn’t hard. They were drawn them like light into a black hole.”

“Which is very good,” Nix said. “We owe our lives to you two.”

“Really?” Rassi asked.

“How?” Solna asked.

“Our plans didn’t work out quite how we thought they would,” Ayli said.

“And the Elders were a lot stronger than we were ready to deal with,” Nix said.

“To be fair, they were slurping down Imperial lives like they were bacta packs,” Ayli said.

“True, and that wasn’t the sort of thing we’d ever seen them do before, so kind of a cheat,” Nix said.

“What do you mean ‘slurping down Imperial lives’?” Sali asked.

“Remember how we said it was a bad idea for the pirates to try taking on the Elders?” Ayli asked. “Turns out the Elders knew a Force trick where they could rip the life out of someone and add it to their own. The Imperials had the bridge filled with troopers when they brought us there to use as hostages. A smart move given what we’d been doing to them, but kind of stupid as it turned out with what it let the Elders do.”

“How did you survive?” Rassi asked.

“Blocking that sort of thing isn’t hard if you’ve got even halfway decent shields,” Nix said. “Honestly a bunch of the pirates probably could have managed it too. Imperials on the other hand are so hungry to worship the powerful and so lacking in basic empathy that they’re all but divorced from the Force, or at least any meaningful dialogue with it.”

“Which isn’t to say they weren’t a problem,” Ayli said. “Nix taunted Dolon and they hit her with something that came pretty close to ripping her apart.”

“It came close to ripping us all apart,” Lasha said.

“Sounds like I had the easier time of things then,” Monfi said, his arm which was cradled in a sling and the cast on his leg making that a questionable claim, though still perhaps an accurate one.

“Dolon wasn’t who we thought he was,” Nix said. “Not since he was named Primus at least. Which means I never met the original.”

“What do you mean the original?” Solna asked.

“The Elders weren’t just trying to kill us. If they wanted us dead they could have managed that without ever being in danger themselves. What they were really doing was trying to shred us and leave our bodies as empty husks to put their own spirits into,” Nix said. “With the Imperials dead they could have let the pirates take over, claimed that they were Ayli, Lasha, the kids and me and waked away with no one the wiser.”

“But you were too strong for them?” Rassi asked.

“Not in the slightest,” Nix said. “I was maybe two seconds away from becoming their meat puppet when the others stepped in and then the Elders started eating the Imperials for extra strength. We fought back, but Ayli even chopping off Dolon’s head didn’t help.”

“Okay, I am definitely glad we let you be the boarding party,” Sali said.

“Same,” Nix said. “Don’t get me wrong, that entire situation sucked, but I at least knew we would get through it.”

“How?” Solna asked.

“The Force was with us,” Ayli said.

“Eagerly in fact,” Nix said. “What the Elders were doing was everything they’d told you a ‘corruption of the Xah’ was, and the Force was basically done with their idiocy.”

“Which was probably why the Death Shadows were able to find us so quickly,” Ayli said. “The moment the Elders dropped their cloaking to assault us it must have been like a signal flare went up.”

“Even they weren’t quite enough though,” Nix said. “So Ayli dumped the Star Destroyer’s main power conduits onto Dolon and let the reactor fry him.”

“Which, before you think that sounds too good, he survived,” Ayli said.

“But to do so, he ate the rest of the Elders,” Nix said. “Which made him a bit bigger of a problem.”

“So you hit him with your lightsaber?”

“Lightsabers weren’t really bothering him at that point,” Ayli said.

“Yeah. And the Death Shadows couldn’t get to him,” Nix said. “So I called them in and gave them what they needed to reach him.”

“What? How?” Solna asked.

“I wasn’t the one they wanted. They would have hurt me, they do that just by existing, but I knew I wouldn’t take much organ damage if I gave them a place to go.”

“Which was into her lightsaber, which turned the most disturbing shade of nothing,” Ayli said.

“Nothing as in the black of space?” Sali asked.

“Nothing as in invisible,” Nix said. “Unless you move it, then it looks like a tear in reality.”

“That sounds rather dangerous,” Monfi said.

“It is,” Lasha said. “Which is why she’s not going to turn it on again.”

“Yes. For that reason and because I do not want to wake up the all the Death Shadows which are sleeping within it. They’ve earned their peace. Just like we have.”

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

Not that they didn’t try.

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

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

And yet the techniques had still been passed down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was draining the other Elders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Nix heard the truth in his words.

Dolon was not who he appeared to be.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So it was true that he was eternal.

From a certain point of view at least.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that wasn’t enough to end him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But more came.

And she welcomed them all.

Not into herself.

She welcomed them into the light.

Of her saber.

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

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

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

And the Death Shadows feasted at last.

The Silent Enclave had fallen and was no more. In the face of the the Death Shadow’s relentless assault, it’s end had been all but certain, and as history rolled onwards, the marks it had left on the galaxy would be washed away with the time and tides of new galactic struggles.

Which is not to say that its people would be forgotten.

Or that they would forget what they once were.

“They’re gone.” 

Rassi wasn’t sure if it was Tovos who spoke, or one of the other young men of the enclave. Whoever it was though gave voice to the wonder which had enspelled everyone present.

Around them stood a ring of tired, slowly fading ghosts and around the ghosts? 

Nothing.

The raging horde was gone.

More than that.

The raging horde of vengeful voids no longer pursued them.

Some of the Death Shadows were at peace at last. Rassi and Solna had shown the people around them what it took to begin healing the injuries the Death Shadows had sustained, and while none of the formerly-Silent Enclave members could have replicated the feat on their own, together they’d been able to accomplish so much more. 

Together and working at long last with the Xah. In embracing the Force and allowing it to answer the calls they’d always been cut off from making, the people around Rassi had cast off the silence and accepted the burden of the power they’d hidden from for centuries.

That hadn’t solved all their problems of course, or even saved them from all of the Death Shadows.

“I don’t understand,” Jilla said. “There were ones we couldn’t reach.”

“Yeah.” Osdo’s gaze was turned entirely inwards as he searched for the answer to his survival which was so obvious Rassi almost giggled. “We helped some of them, and I think, I don’t know, maybe they forgave us? There were other though…others that..”

“Others that will never forgive,” Yanni said, her voice soft as though the enormity of what they’d faced had filled her entire being.

Which, it kind of had.

Rassi could feel the rest of the Enclave so clearly. Their cloak had been killing them. Their silence had been a carcinogen for their society. Even the people who clung the strongest to their denial, the ones who were the most invested in the Silent Enclave’s status quo, they were all still a part of the society of their peers, were still connected to the people around them. 

No matter how small and cruel they were, Rassi saw that everyone in the Enclave had someone they could feel empathy for, someone, in turn, who could influence them.

Dragging the entire Enclave out of the silence wasn’t something she ever could have done on her own. Or with Solna. Or even with Tovos and his whole crew. For the Enclave to change, it had taken the whole of the Enclave to do it.

But the change had started with her, and her change had started with Solna.

She dropped her head sideways onto Solna’s shoulder and relaxed something inside that she’d never known she had been holding tense.

“Will they be back?” Jolu, no longer Honored, but somehow the more honorable for that, asked.

“No. They’re gone and they won’t be drawn to anywhere here ever again,” Solna said.

“Where did they go though?” Jilla asked.

“To find the Silent Enclave,” Hendel said, plopping his skeleton body down beside Rassi.

“But they found us,” Tovos said.

“They did,” Rassi said and let the music in the Force wash over her. “And they destroyed the Silent Enclave. Or we did. I don’t think they care about that though.”

“But, we didn’t trick them, and we couldn’t hide anymore?” Polu said. “They know we’re still here.”

“We are,” Rassi said. “But the Silent Enclave isn’t.”

Plenty of faces turned to her, searching for understanding, but Rassi was more aware of Solna’s chuckle. Because of course Solna got it.

“All we were supposed to do is listen right?” Rassi said. “So listen. To us. All of us. What do you hear?”

“Oh. Oh no,” Yanni said. “We’re…no, wait, we’re not disturbing the Xah? It sounds…”

“Happy. It sound happy,” Felgo said, sound more perplexed than any of the others.

His experience was one which Rassi could feel was shared by many of the others who’d believed deeply in the Silent Enclave’s dogma.

This wasn’t supposed to be what it was like when people touched the Xah. Touching the Xah, expressing yourself, it was supposed to be a corruption. 

Whatever a “corruption” was.

Growing up the idea of ‘corrupting the Xah’ had always felt nebulous to Rassi. She’d imagined it like poisoning a river in that she was pretty sure she was far too tiny to change the course of something as mighty as the Xah, but maybe something she did could make part of it dangerous for others?

Clearly that was possible. They’d just survived an assault by the consequences of someone’s actions who’d gravely misused and abused the Xah.

But the enforced silence of the Enclave had been a grave abuse as well.

And the people could hear that at last.

In joining together and raising their voice in the Xah to shout that they would protect each other, and die for each other, they’d broken the silence to which they’d been held in thrall and, unknowingly in some cases, finally started singing along with the Xah as it coursed through their lives.

It was such sweet music to Rassi that she almost wanted to stay with them.

Almost.

“We’re not silent anymore.” No one person spoke those words. They came from everyone in the Enclave. 

Recognition of what a past that had been lost and the freedoms they had gained.

Freedoms which, Rassi suspected, would wind up being somewhat wasted. She couldn’t picture the Enclave changing as drastically as she felt they needed to, but in the wake of what they’d been through, she also knew they wouldn’t be able to stay as they were.

Listening to the Force told her that the future would be messy and complicated for the Enclave. They would fight and struggle, they would try to hold onto whatever parts of the past they could while grasping for a new understanding which incorporated the experiences they shared. 

And they would do it without her.

The struggles of the Enclave? She’d been bound to them for too long and where they’d had the comforts of tradition ripped away, she’d cast them off willingly. However far the Enclave would be able to go, Rassi knew that she could go much, much father.

“So where are the Death Shadows now?” Jolu asked. “Even if they are not our problem, I would say we still bear some responsibility for them.”

“Kelda and Ravas took the unforgiving ones away,” Solna said. 

“Wait, they could do that?” Jilla asked.

“Not until the Death Shadows had no one here to pursue,” Solna said. “And I think there is only one place they could have brought the Death Shadows to.”

“The other Elders.” Jolu whispered her sudden understanding into existence like she was pronouncing a doom.

Which she wasn’t.

She hadn’t doomed the other Elders.

That had been entirely their own handiwork.

Rassi would have expressed sorrow or sympathy for them, but she was feeling so open to the Force that everyone would have instantly felt the lie in her words.

The sorrow she felt for the Elders was that no one had stopped them sooner, or taught them how to be even vaguely decent people early enough in their lives to prevent the tragedies they’d perpetrated.

Would the Enclave produce better people from here? Maybe? It produced some good ones already. Solna at the least. And Jolu if Rassi was feeling charitable. And Tovos, and, and, and, okay and a lot of others. 

It was possible that she might have some things to work on still, and some trauma she was going to be dealing with for a while.

Happily there was a whole galaxy out there for her to explore while she did.

And, maybe, a few people she could turn to who knew a little bit more about the Force than she did.

“We should get going, shouldn’t we?” Solna said, not objecting to the weight of Rassi’s head on her shoulder, but clearly feeling the same pull Rassi did.

“You’re leaving?” Jilla asked, surprise and concern warring in her eyes.

“We did what we came for,” Rassi said.

“You don’t have to leave though,” Jilla said. “I mean, I know, before, we were…but now…”

“Now things are different?” Rassi asked. “They are. For all of us. This place, it’s not…not where I’m needed.”

“That’s not true!” Jilla said. “We…you saved us.”

“You saved yourselves,” Solna said. “And you’ll do it again if it’s needed.”

“I know everything’s still kind of scary,” Rassi said. “You’ve got what you need now though. Your listening to each other. That’s all I can give you.”

“But…” Jilla said.

“No,” Jolu said. “Rassi’s right. Listen to the Xah. We were a burden on her heart. Any debt she had to us is paid in full. Her calling is out there.” Jolu gestured towards the stars, and Rassi felt herself lifted up to them by the gesture.

“There will be one little problem with that,” Tovos said. “We weren’t kidding when we said that the Death Shadows wrecked all of our ships.”

“Yeah, about that…” Solna said, and smirked in time as the whumps and thumps from a distant fleet of clunky repulsor lift flyers became audible.

“I don’t understand?” Jolu asked.

“We mentioned to Sister Zin that we might need a ride out of here when we were done,” Solna said. “She has a contact on the planet. It’s how we found you in the first place.”

“That sounds like more than a ride,” Jilla said.

“It might also be the cavalry?” Rassi said. “We weren’t sure what kind of welcome we were going to get. Or what was going to be happening with the Death Shadows.”

“Normal forces wouldn’t have been able to deal with the Death Shadows though?” Jolu said.

“I don’t think these are normal forces,” Osdo said. “These are the space nuns right?”

“Yeah. Might be a small army of them,” Rassi said. “Still wouldn’t have been able to handle the Death Shadows, but from how Queen Sali talked, I don’t think they’re exactly ‘normal security operatives’ either.”

“Perhaps we can arrange transport with them as well then,” Jolu said. “Or repairs if they’re capable. How bad were our shuttles damaged?”

Rassi let talk turn to the inevitable planning and logistics required to deal with a population the size of the Enclave and settled in to wait for space nuns to arrive.

“Do you think we’ll be able to find Nix and Ayli?” Solna asked. She wasn’t whispering, exactly, since she didn’t need to hide her words, but they were really only for Rassi.

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Rassi said. “Sister Zin’s friends should be able to find where she is, and she should know where Nix and Ayli are. Do you think it’s okay if we go to them?”

“I was wondering that. I feel like I kind of hijacked the journey Nix was on.”

“I don’t think she minded,” Rassi said. 

“I think she’s had a lot of other things to think about since we ran into her,” Solna said. “Once all the chaos is past, she’ll probably want to get back to her regular life.”

“Which does not include us,” Rassi said.

“Well, it hasn’t up till now,” Solna said. “I was thinking, if you wanted, that we could ask them if they’d train us in what they know. I mean, Nix said she didn’t want us to lose the connection we have to the Xah, but I don’t think we can just stay like we were. I think that was what the Enclave was doing wrong for so long. Well, that and killing people with the Force.”

“Yeah, let’s not do that shall we.”

“I think we can find a better path than that.”

“Together?”

“Together.”

For five experienced Force Users, taking down a legion of Storm Troopers was not an entirely unreasonable proposition. Even with the cloaking field the Elders of the Silent Enclave were still projecting, Ayli sensed she, Nix, and Lasha could probably manage it. Nulo and Muffvok weren’t quite as significant a part of the equation, but they would likely at least be able to keep themselves safe and could pitch in at unexpected moments to deal with problems before they got out of hand. They could mange it. They could win.

Instead though, they surrendered.

Surrender wouldn’t have been possible before. The Imperials had been under “kill on sight” orders, but with the loss of the proton beam cannon the danger Ayli and her team posed to the Elders and their Imperials masters had reduced substantially.

That alone wouldn’t have been enough to alter the kill order though. Ayli alone was still capable of causing significant damage to both the personnel and infrastructure of the Imperial flagship.

Which she’d been eminently prepared to do before she felt the shift in intention of the troops coming for them.

New orders had been issued and she had a guess as to why.

“They’re going to want to disarm us,” she said.

“That’s going to be harder than they think,” Nix said and Ayli could swear she heard the crackle of lightning behind Nix’s words.

That wasn’t something she wanted for the woman she loved. Drawing power from the Dark Side was as staggeringly effective as it was staggeringly painful. Even if they won free from a situation the Force seemed intent to send them into increasing worse permutations of, Nix would be months or years in regaining the calm center she’d managed to find.

But that wasn’t going to be needed.

The Storm Troopers were going to take them straight to the bridge.

Right past all the automated defenses.

“Drop your weapons!” the lead trooper ordered when they caught up to Ayli’s team.

Nix simply raised her empty hands. She’d clipped her lightsaber to her tool belt where it hung along with a couple hydrospanners, a half dozen diagnostic tools and a few ‘cut and mend’ tools as she called them.

Ayli didn’t have that kind of camouflage for her lightsaber, but she made a show of dropping the stolen Blaster Rifle to the deck.

The Storm Troopers, demonstrably not the brightest of military personnel, seemed fine with that and contented themselves with slapping a set of shackles on Ayli’s team. Or they were until they got to Nulo. 

Most people weren’t familiar with young Hutts. Wrist locks depended on the species in question having notable wrists. Hutts technically did but as, uncharitably, giant space slugs the bones which would have constrainted them into a set of manacles were rather squishy, especially in an adolescent Hutt.

After a few moment of dithering, the Troopers put the manacles on Nulo’s wrists anyways and linked her hoverskiff to one of the Troopers so she couldn’t “make a getaway”.

Ayli wondered if any of them were aware of just how easily a Force user could slip from from a set of manacles, or just what kind of damage she could do even while she was locked into a pair of them. Rather than point any of that out or demonstrate their foolishness however, Ayli held her voice. For the first time in her life, her fight wasn’t with them.

The trip to the bridge would have been a quiet one if not for the near ceaseless pounding of munitions detonating against the Star Destroyer’s deflector shields.

“Most of the time a fleet has picket ships to keep fire off the flagship doesn’t it?” Nix asked.

“Yeah. I saw at least a half dozen of them before we landed,” Ayli said.

“That’s probably down to, what, one or two now?” Nix asked.

“Shut up,” the Storm Trooper behind her said.

“No.” Nix continued walking.

“Shut up or we will blast you all,” the Storm Trooper said and poked her with his Blaster Rifle.

“You won’t,” Nix said. “You need us as hostages. It’s why you were ordered to bring us in alive.”

“They said ‘alive’, not ‘uninjured’, or don’t you care about your little friends?” he trained the Blaster Rifle on Nulo.

“Who do you think has more value, you, a random flunky your bosses can sacrifice for political capital on a whim, or the four of us who are all that are preventing the pirates outside from reducing this ship to space dust?” Nix asked.

Ayli was sure that wasn’t going to be a winning conversational strategy, but then she noticed Nix’s miscount.

There weren’t four of them. Lasha, Nulo, and Muffvok plus Nix and Ayli herself made a five person team.

She’d paused to think about that and watched as the Storm Trooper behind her stepped around her and kept going.

Why would…?

The Force felt awfully still around her.

Ayli frowned.

Nix.

Nix had gone on a expedition to learn new Force techniques.

And stumbled on the Silent Enclave.

Who, of course, she learned from,

Being a thoroughly awful wife, she’d then used what she’d learned about making people stealthy for someone other than herself.

If that didn’t make Ayli love her even more, she would have punched Nix for it.

Being unobserved wasn’t the same as being invisible, but for Ayli’s purposes it was close enough. She kept close to group, passing other patrols and checkpoints by virtual of being ‘part of the crowd’. 

A part of her catalogued every detail, wishing she could somehow hurl the information back to her younger self.

All too soon though, they arrived at the bridge and flights of fancy gave way to the harsh reality before them.

The Elders were, of course waiting for them. As were the senior staff officers of the Imperial remnant. All backed up by as large a contingent of Storm Troopers as could be reasonably squeezed into the space available.

Standing tall over all of them was a holo-projection of Sali.

“As you can see, we have your precious friends,” the Imperial ‘Admiral’ said. “You will cease your attack now or watch as we torture them to death in front of you.”

“She’s technically my Ex,” Nix said, drawing the room’s attention to herself in a manner that was not wonderful for her continued survival but excellent at preserving the cloak she’d thrown over Ayli.

Ayli felt for the edge of the cloak, trying to determine if it would hold long enough for her to close the distance to the Admiral and get a blaster up against his head.

She started to move and felt the attention of the Elders drift towards her.

So probably “no” on taking the Admiral hostage.

“That’s true,” Sali said. “In your favor though, you did introduce me to an upgrade, so I suppose I owe you for that.”

“Ouch, I mean, Zin’s and you are great, but still, upgrade? Ouch,” Nix said, steadfastly refusing to take the small Imperial army around them seriously.

“So what do you think? Should I call off the attack for you?” Sali asked.

“Definitely not,” Nix said. “You know the moment you do, they’ll just shoot us anyways.”

“Sadly, I have seen that happen,” Sali said. “Now if the Admiral were to put you into an escape pod, I’d be willing to order a ceasefire until we collected your pod.”

“That would be a good deal for them. They could probably work out some hyperspace jump coordinates with the time it would buy them,” Nix said and then, because she was indeed truly awful, added. “Except…”

She held up a finger for just a moment before dropping it in time to a tremendous explosion which rocked the entire Star Destroyer.

“Except they don’t have a working hyperdrive anymore,” she said with a smile on their face.

“Execute them!” the Admiral shouted as klaxons blared and emergency lights flashed.

“Hold!”

And everyone froze.

Well, everyone except the Force Users who were present.

Primus Dolon was a wreck of a man, but even if his prime he would not have been able to command Nix, Ayli, or any of the people with them.

The Imperials however? Not renowned for being bastions of willpower or intellect.

“She has done far worse than damage this ship,” Dolon said. He should have been terribly burned, a ruined wreck of a man. Instead, he strode forward from the small crowd of Elders with the strength and vigor of a young man.

Literally.

The cloak the Elders were projecting wasn’t even close to strong enough to hide the stolen lifeforce which screamed through Dolon’s aged frame.

“Silence you!” the Admiral, apparently possessed of at least a modicum of willpower, said. “You’ve already cost us a priceless weapon system. You will sit down and stay quiet until I decide what we’re going to do with you.”

“I don’t think so,” Dolon said and with a gesture twisted the Admiral’s head around more than 180 degrees. “If anyone else thinks they are in charge, please step forward now.”

Bravery, notably, is also not a particular virtue among Imperials, and so quiet was restored, aside from the thud of the Admiral’s body on the deck.

“You will die,” Dolon said, addressing Nix directly. “But we shall survive, and so that may buy you some time.”

“You’ve tried to kill me already,” Nix said. “Didn’t work out so well for you then. You sure you want to try again?”

“Yes, you are strong in the Xah. But your companions? I think they may lack your talents,” Dolon said. “Shall I kill one of the little ones to make my intentions clear? Or shall we negotiate as you came here to?”

“I’m the one you need to be negotiating with,” Sali said. 

Dolon waved his hand again and the holo-projection was cut off.

“You can inform your attack dog of the resolution of our negotiation,” Dolon said. “We both know she will do no more than disable this vessel while you are still alive on it.”

“You might want to listen to the Xah a bit more closely,” Nix said. “Queen Saliandrus is not the sort who takes orders from anyone. Or whose especially long on sentimentality.”

“Then you should make your pleas for your lives quickly then,” Dolon said.

“I don’t think I will,” Nix said. “You seem to be under the assumption that our goal here is to escape when what we really want is to make sure you don’t.”

“Is that so?” Dolon asked. “Then you certainly shouldn’t have come so close to us.”

The cloak dropped.

And the Force ran wild.

Ayli felt Dolon’s attack hit like a thousand sledgehammers and she wasn’t the one it was directed at.

One by one, the Elders of the Silent Enclave sagged as a spectral manifestation of stepped forward from each them and cast twisted vines the Force into Dolon.

Dolon’s assault on Nix was something else though.

He wasn’t trying to kill her.

Her body was unharmed by the Enclave’s strange technique.

Something else was though.

As Ayli watched, light erupted from behind Nix as though it was being pushed out through every pore in her body.

Nix staggered and tried to scream but the relentless pressure of every remaining Elder beating down on her prevented even that.

Lasha, Nulo and Muffvok cast their shackles off and reached out to aid Nix but the three of them were no match for the far larger number of Elders.

So Ayli did what she needed to.

She beheaded Dolon.

Throwing a lightsaber isn’t a difficult trick, and lightsaber blades are exceptionally good at severing flesh.

As she caught the returning blade though, Ayli saw it hadn’t been enough.

Instead of collapsing, Dolon, headless though he was, extended a hand and one of the Imperials collapsed instead. With freshly stolen lifeforce, Dolon knit his head back into his body and turned to Ayli, who stood revealed for all to see.

“You cannot kill me,” he said and directed part of the Elder’s assault against her.

It lessened the pressure against Nix, but not enough. Neither of them, or even both together could overwhelm the sheer magnitude of the attack directed against them.

Ayli felt herself being ripped from her body.

To make room for the souls of the Elders.

They were going to escape by using her as their escape pod!

She fought back, raged, but before she could call on her Dark Side, she heard the voice of her salvation. The voices the Force had promised would arrive in time.

“She can’t kill you,” Kelda said.

“But they can,” Ravas said.

As Death Shadows began to pour onto the Imperial bridge.

The Force is all life and all the connections which life has. It was born with the universe and is able to express itself through all who are a part of it. A stream is a part of the Force, as are the stars and even the billions of barren worlds in the galaxy. It touches all of them and everything beyond, but it only listens and speaks to those who can speak and listen to it.

And when they do speak, they are not speaking to one small part of it, and it is not a tiny spark which speaks back.

“Kelda! Ravas! We need you!”

No voice could speak words loud enough to be heard around a world. No sound could leap from one world to another. And nothing could have shifted through the galaxy to find the two spirits who were endlessly far from Rassi when she called out for aid.

Nothing except for the Force.

Solna sensed what was coming and spun to embrace Rassi and shield her, though Rassi’s growing smile said she wasn’t in any danger at all. Which was fine. Solna was still more comfortable embracing Rassi and protecting her than she would have been anywhere else in the galaxy.

The silence of the crowd was met with silence from both the Dead and the Death Shadows as everyone, even the least Force sensitive felt a vast power moving.

“We’re with you,” Kelda and Ravas whispered from trillions of miles away.

Thunder cracked, shattering the silence and blasting everyone back.

Everyone except Rassi and Solna.

Because the thunder had come for them.

And in the center of the Silence Enclave, stood the Enclave’s oldest and greatest fear.

The Jedi had found them at last.

“I’ve got the Death Shadows,” Ravas said, rising to her full height and taking stock of the situation like a general dumped into the middle of a battlefield. “You find out what they need.” She indicated Solna and Rassi with a nod of her head but Kelda was already headed towards them.

With a rave of her hand, Ravas called the fallen and flagging Dead of Praxis Mar back to their feet and filled them with a renewed vigor before striding towards the abomination Elgonu had become and which Monfi was stalemating against.

“Thank you,” Kelda said, when she reached Rassi and Solna’s position. “We’d gotten a bit bound up. Turns out some people have tricks for dealing with spirits like us.”

“Wh..who is this?” Jilla asked, having carefully placed Rassi between herself and the shining blue Force Ghost. That the shining Blue Force Ghost was wearing Jedi robes was possibly the strongest conceivable mark against her, but the calm and peace she radiated offset that to a surprising degree.

“A friend,” Kelda said, offering Jilla slow bow of respect.

“At a time when we could dearly use one,” Rassi said, before turning to Kelda. “We can’t stop the Death Shadows. Not all of them. And I don’t know if the Enclave can learn how quickly enough.”

They couldn’t. Solna knew that. The Enclave wasn’t starting from the right place. They were all terrified and desperate. Their focus was, reasonably, on saving themselves, not on bringing peace to the “monsters” that were menacing them. It wasn’t likely that many others would repeat Elgonu’s foolish mistake and warp themselves into Corruptions in the Xah, but the ones who were the deepest in denial, or locked in their anger would probably stumble in that direction. As for the rest, even the ones who might be open to try Rassi and Solna’s approach would be fighting both their own terror and a lifetime of training against ‘manipulating the Xah’.

Solna could feel how much she’d changed from them. How embracing the Force had placed her so far apart from who and what the others of the Silent Enclave were and how far they would need to go to reach the spot she had.

All of it highlighted how long she’d been walking the path she had.

Her near breakdown on the ship when they’d fled the Enclave had been a bolt of lightning setting fire to kindling she’d been gathering all her life. The sheer fact that she’d been able to, unconsciously, call Nix to their aid showed just how far outside the Silent Enclave’s strictures she’d always lived.

Unlike Rassi though, Solna had been able to hide the communion she had with the Force. Even from herself. Though on reflection, she had to wonder how much she’d really been hiding.

Part of her had always known. The part which had dismissed her discussions with the Force as ‘just little bits of imagination’, or “what-if’s she was even in a situation where she really really needed to ‘risk corruption’ for the good of the whole Enclave”. 

That she was currently in exactly such a situation and that it was far worse than she’d ever imagined somehow filled her with resolve rather than terror though. She wasn’t going to lose here. She couldn’t.

Kelda closed her eyes for moment, becoming even more translucent than usual.

“Some of these lost ones are still bound to the fragments of who they once were,” Kelda said without opening her eyes. “Otherwise are voiceless and truly empty. All that remains in them is the hunger retribution. The lost ones will be drawn to you, but the voiceless ones cannot be given peace.”

“How can we stop those one then?” Rassi asked.

“They won’t stop,” Solna said, listening to the same whispers Kelda was hearing. “Not until they’ve destroyed the ones responsible for their destruction.”

“That…if there is another path to laying those to rest, I’m not certain we will be given the time to discover it,” Kelda said.

“Does that mean, we have to die?” Jilla asked.

“No.” Solna, Rassi, and Kelda answered in unison.

“We can hold those off while you all get away again,” Solna said. “The Silent Enclave has hidden from the Death Shadows for centuries. You can manage it again.”

“If no more Death Shadows are created, their attention won’t be drawn to you as easily,” Kelda said. “That is what began this for each of them and it was the botched Expunging Ritual which your Primus attempted which drew them this time.”

“If it was Dolon’s fault, why aren’t they chasing him still?” Rassi asked.

“I’ve been trying to figure that out myself,” Solna said. “There’s blood on his hands and all the other Elders, and they all left.”

“Not all of them,” Honored Jolu speaking for the first time as she joined the crowd which was slowly forming around Kelda.

“You?” Rassi asked, the tremble in her voice giving away a grief that Solna was surprised to find echoed in herself.

“I am Primus now,” Jolu said. “I am the one they are seeking.”

“Are you?” Kelda asked, her gaze a surgical scalpel as she inspected Jolu.

“The Silent Enclave is mine to govern, mine to utilize, and my responsibility,” Jolu said. “The credits and debts accrued by our past rest on me.”

“The you can save us?” Jilla asked, a question which brought a chorus of understanding nods from the rest of the Enclave.

“No,” Kelda said. “She can’t.”

“I can buy them time,” Jolu said.

“Like hell you can,” Rassi said.

Solna had never noticed before how much larger Rassi was the Honored…or Primus Jolu.

Jolu had always been larger than life. Their mentor and Elder. The one who understood and would always be stronger than they were.

But Rassi had grown, both in body and in spirit. Physically, she could have folded Jolu up like a ragdoll, but it was the fire within Rassi which truly dwarfed the Enclave’s new Primus.

The Enclave, however, was not happy to have a potential source of salvation torn away from them.

“She’s right,” Solna said, stepping forward. “Jolu can die for you, but it won’t save you. She’s not enough.”

“I am more than you have ever known,” Jolu said, rising to her full height.

Rassi laughed.

“You are. And that’s still not enough,” she said. “None of these Shadows are looking for you. Are they?”

Jolu looked away and didn’t answer.

“What does she mean?” Jilla asked Jolu. “What did you do?”

“It’s what she didn’t do,” Solna said, seeing at last what Rassi had perceived.

“She’s never been a part of an Expunging Ritual,” Rassi said. “It’s why she stayed with you here. None of the Death Shadows will be satisfied with only killing her.”

Solna saw a wave of confusion pass over the crowd, and guessed it’s source.

“The Death Shadows will still kill her. Just like they’ll kill all of us,” Solna explained. “Their existence encompasses hatred for everything the Silent Enclave is because we all supported the people who destroyed them.”

“The ones who have nothing but retribution left though? The ones we can’t give peace to? They’ll only stop when they devour someone who invoked the ritual which created them,” Rassi said and turned to Kelda. “Right?”

“They seek balance,” Kelda said. “With nothing left of what they were, they will only cease when the means of their creation has been destroyed forever.”

“Which is why I can lead them away,” Jolu said. “I know the Rite.”

“And have never used it,” Kelda said, taking Jolu’s hands with kindness in her words and gesture. “Knowledge is not evil or good. It is the actions we take we can be judged on, and yours speak well of you. In this regards at least.”

“How do we survive then?” Jilla asked. “Can we still get away?”

“There’s a problem with that,” Tovos said, limping into the circle with the rest of his crew in a similar shape. Behind them the other team of assassins was hobbling forward looking even worse for the wear.

“They destroyed the ships first this time,” Degu, the leader of the other team said, as two members of his team carried him forward. “We thought they were just watching our fight. But they weren’t.”

Solna heard the anguish and despair in his voice and felt it pass through the rest of the Enclave.

They’d fled across the stars and it hadn’t been enough. Scattering on foot was all that was left to them.

And what would be the point?

There was no escape.

In the distance the Abomination roared, even the talents of Monfi and Ravas proving to be insufficient to fully overcome it.

“Let me do this,” Jolu said. “I may not have used the Ritual, but I knew it was being used. I am the only Elder left. It is my right to bear this burden.”

“I’m sorry, but you can’t,” Rassi said. “Not alone. This is something we face together, or not at all.”

“But they’ll destroy us. Nothing is stopping them!” It was a new voice who spoke, a man’s voice Solna couldn’t place and whose identity didn’t matter in the sense that he spoke for everyone in the Enclave.

“Maybe nothing will. Maybe nothing can,” Rassi said. “Maybe all we can do is fall together, but let me ask you this; is there someone here you would be willing to fall with. Someone who you would spend your life for? Is there anyone who matters so much to you, that you would give everything you have for them?”

Rassi reached over, took Solna’s hand and held it high.

“I’ve found the person I would give everything for,” she said.

And then she took one of Jolu’s free hands.

“And she’s not the only one,” Rassi said. “Reach out to each other. I didn’t come back here to watch you die. I know how much we matter to each other. Reach out to the people you refuse to lose. All of you matter.”

Solna cast her right hand out and felt Yanni and Osdo take it.

Throughout the Enclave people began turning to each.

And hands began clasping hands.

In twos and threes and even more, a web was formed.

The simple gesture spoke volumes as with one voice the Enclave communicated the simplest words to one another.

And the Silence was at last broken.

The next attack came when Nix least expected it. Which was so sadly predictable that the two Elders who led it were dead before they had a chance to cry out.

“To be fair, dropping down from the catwalk behind us was a good ambush,” Ayli said, shutting off her lightsaber.

The Elder’s hadn’t been the ones to jump off the catwalk and make the first assault. Three of their empowered Storm Troopers had been poised to led the charge, and likely would have been backed up by the five others who were moving to get into position in case the ambush failed.

They’d been quite and, within the limits of Nix’s abilities, impossible to sense in the Force.

What they hadn’t accounted for was that Ayli didn’t need to use the Force to be aware of attack lines and ambush spots. It had required precisely a single glance up to the catwalk and a frown to communicate to Nix the danger they were in.

It had then taken Nix a single thought to breech the fuel wall in the flight pack of the Storm Trooper at the center of the formation. A significant amount of lift is required to hoist an armored body into the air and keep it there for an extended time. Turning the fuel required to produce that lift was only advisable when you were well away from the fireball which followed.

Nix and her people were.

The Elders were not.

Why the Elders hadn’t donned armor was an interesting, if no longer relevant question. Contrary to the reputation it had for flimsiness, the Storm Troopers armor was sufficient to save them from the blast. Well, the ones who had another trooper or two to act as shields at least. The Elder’s had been at the center of the pack and had been making very sure the Force would provide no danger warnings to anyone. 

The few Storm Troopers who’d survived had, despite their sudden depowering, rocketed down at their targets and opened fire indiscriminately. As Nix had learned though, firing blaster bolts at a Force User with a tool capable of deflecting them was a bad idea in general and a worse one when the Force user in question had been drilled by both a Jedi and a former-Sith mentor in sending attacks back where they’d come from.

“We’ve always avoided using Light Savers to avoid being confused with the Jedi,” Lasha said. “I’m thinking we may want to reevaluate that policy though.”

“We can show you how to make them,” Ayli said. “If you don’t start with a processed crystal, it makes for a nice workout.”

“And if you do, the rest of the circuitry takes about five minutes to put together,” Nix said.

“So why do people think they’re magical?” Nulo asked.

“Probably because anyone who tried to parry a blaster bolt without training in the Force would be laughed out of the afterlife,” Nix said. “Any sane person brings a blaster to a blaster fight.”

“No. Sane people bring a starship to a blaster fight,” Ayli said. “Anyone carrying one of these around is saying they don’t mind if someone confuses them with a Jedi, which has been a bad idea for a long time.”

“Since the Empire?” Nulo asked.

“Since the Jedi were founded I think,” Ayli said. “That’s the problem with being a troubleshooter, trouble gets good at shooting back, and if you’re just pretending to be one, you’ll run into troubles that’re way out of your league.”

“Speaking of troubles, the other Elders are going to have felt those two die,” Nix said. “So they’ll know exactly where we are.”

“Do you think they’ll start running?” Lasha asked.

“I think they’ve run as far as they can,” Nix said. “If they’ve been working for the Imperials, and there’s no chance they fled here otherwise, then this is the strongest ally they have access to.”

“And Imperials do not make for forgiving allies. They’re probably be tolerating the Elders for concessions the Elders gave them like this whole Force-powered Storm Trooper thing they can do. If the Elder’s try to abandon them and the Imperials survive, the Elders will have turned an ally into an ugly, ugly enemy.” Ayli’s tone suggested that she’d seen that happen more than once.

“They’ll still be on the bridge then,” Lasha said. “Which we know is guarded by about a legion of Storm Troopers.”

“And the automated defenses. Storm Troopers are vulnerable to misdirections and aren’t generally the brightest of sorts,” Ayli said. “The automated defenses, we really need someone to splice into for us though because they will absolutely rip us to shreds.”

“If we can find a working terminal would you be able to do it?” Nix asked, recalling the design schematics for the various types of Star Destroyers and considering where the closest terminals with the right access might be.

“Doubt it,” Ayli said. “I lost some of my stuff when the Lich’s droid grabbed me, and even if I had it, most of the codepacks I had are older.”

“Knowing Imperials standards, I’d be shocked if they’d ever updated the systems. In fact given that they’re systems are still working and they don’t have an Imperial starport to do overhauls at, I’ll wager hard credits they’re running old code on everything here.”

“I’d still need better stuff than what I’ve got to splice it though,” Ayli said.

“We have some tools that could manage it,” Lasha said. “But they’re back at our home. This wasn’t meant to be a mission with Imperial entanglements.”

“If we can’t turn the automated systems off, then maybe we can get them to come to us instead,” Nix said, not particularly liking the plan she’d come up with but not having a better one to offer in its place.

“The Elders and the Imperial command will agree on one thing unanimously,” Ayli said. “And that’s that their own lives are more important than anything else. I don’t think we can trick them to put themselves in any significant sort of peril.”

“Yeah. I expect that to be true too,” Nix said. “Which is why we’ll need to let them see how much peril they’re in already.”

“We’re pretty formidable, but I think they have a sense of what our limits are,” Ayli said.

“I think we can make that work in our favor,” Nix said. “Remember how Kelda and Ravas brought Sali in to help us because they’d seen us being killed by a ship exploding?”

“Yeah. There’s a proton beam cannon onboard the flagship,” Ayli said and stopped. Nix watched as understanding dawned in Ayli’s eyes.

“You’re thinking to threaten their prize weapons to lure them out?” Lasha asked.

“Not exactly,” Nix said, still hesitant to even voice the idea.

“She’s planning to blow it up,” Nix said.

“That will cause us certain problems if we’re still on the ship won’t it?” Lasha asked.

“Or within a staggering large radius of it,” Nix said. “Which is why I only want them to believe we’re going to blow it up.”

“And how would you lead them to this belief?” Lasha asked.

“But setting the engine’s power drive to feed into weapon and breaking the cutoffs which would let them stop it.” Nix knew what her own reaction would be to discovering someone had done that as the Elders had, arguably, an even stronger self-preservation instinct than she did.

“Would that bring them to us though?” Lasha asked. “Or aren’t they more likely to flee to the escape pods.”

“Assuming they or the Imperials know anything about ship design? No. Escape pods won’t get them far enough away, and would be easy pickings for the pirates, who might or might not take them into the custody rather than blasting them out of the sky for a laugh.” Nix was reasonably sure any pirates Sali had conned into helping them would be of the ‘take prisoners and sell them to the new Republic’ variety but Sali had been pressed for time.

“So then their own real option will be to deal with us themselves? Ah, yes, I suppose it would be. If they brought along a legion of Storm Troopers, we might think the odds are hopeless and blow the weapon up immediately,” Lasha said, understanding the shape of Nix’s plan at last.

“We’ve dealt with the strike teams they sent. If they come for us again, they won’t make the mistake of coming against us in twos and fours anymore,” Ayli said.

“Yeah, I suspect it will be an all or nothing sort of thing,” Nix said. “They won’t like having to do their own dirty work, but they’ll like the idea of being atomized a whole lot less. Or am I missing something?”

Ayli and Lasha considered the question for a moment but it was Nulo who spoke up first.

“Could they turn to a tech solution to the problem? Like shutting down the engines, or ejecting the weapon out into space? Or venting all the air in this section of the ship?”

“Venting the air would kill all of their own personnel in whatever area we’re in,” Nix said.

“So they will definitely do that. We’ll need to find some space suits for us before we make it clear what we’re planning,” Ayli said.

“Shutting down the engines would be possible too, but that would be its own solution to the problem,” Nix said.

“Because there’s a bunch of pirates out there and they need power to keep them from boarding?” Nulo asked.

“Exactly. After they stabbed me and shot my wife, I’m less opposed to Sali’s friends coming in with plasma casters and cooking the whole lot of them it turns out.”

“The pirates would suffer significant casualties in the process.” Lasha didn’t seem to be arguing against the idea, merely pointing out an easily overlooked aspect of it.

“Not if we lend a hand,” Nix said. “After all if they shutdown power to the ship, the automated defenses go away too.”

“What about ejecting the beam cannon? Can they do that?” Lasha asked.

“It’s too valuable,” Nix said. “Those things cost a fortune to make, even if all they can really accomplish is the same as serious set of bombing runs. It would have to be a retrofit, and probably a shoddy one, which says if they’d put anything like explosive decouplers in at strategic points so they could jump the cannon’s assemble any jump away from it, they’d probably have lost it already. The cannon itself will be hard welded onto the super structure and its support assembly will be patched into the power grid with redundant connecting seals to make sure nothing comes loose when they fire.”

“Then it looks like we’ve got a plan,” Ayli said. “Let’s make it happen!”

—–

They did not have a plan.

What they had was a perfectly viable strategy up until the point where it wasn’t.

Getting Nix and Ayli a set of spacesuits was simple enough. A handful of Storm Troopers were easily distracted from a supply depot and the ones who were rushing to intercept them or on alert were not ready for five Force Users to ruin their day.

Things went well with navigating the Star Destroyer down to the lowest decks where the cannon was attached. There were more Storm Trooper patrols to avoid or fight through, but none of them were accompanied by an Elder, which seemed to confirm that the Elders were no longer willing to risk themselves, even in numerically superior groups.

Nix allowed herself a moment of hopefulness that her premonitions were only anxiety but a part of her knew better. She’d been listening to the Force for her whole life and she couldn’t deny the whispers which were making through any longer when they arrived at the main junction point for the proton beam cannon.

Only the void of space awaited them where an entire deck of the ship should have been.

Nix had been right, she saw. There hadn’t been any preplanned charges capable of ejecting the cannon. Instead the super structure had been ripped apart as though several powerful Force Users had bent their will towards removing the one thing which could threaten their position still.

Rassi had always thought that Solna was a genius, a prodigy of Silence, but hearing her speak so profoundly via the Force dispelled that notion. Solna wasn’t a genius of Silence. She was simply a genius.

Without words or violence of any sort, she’d undone one of the Death Shadows. She hadn’t killed it. That was impossible because the Death Shadows weren’t alive to start with. They were screaming voids left where a life had once been.

What Solna had given it was peace. And restoration. And a place in the Force.

Looking out at the stunned faces of the Silent Enclave, Rassi could hear nothing from them but could feel the swell of disbelief.

They’re world was shifting under them. They’d been told, everyone one of them, since birth, to only every listen and never speak to the Xah, never commune with the Force. They’d been lied to. At every turn. Whenever the Elder’s needed something, the Force had been turned against them and the act scrubbed from their memories. 

That couldn’t have been the life they had. None of them wanted to believe that. No one wanted to be a victim like that. Or have their beliefs they rooted themselves in crumble away.

Many in crowd were pushing back, grasping denial like a cudgel to beat back the truth that threatened to destroy everything they depended on.

None of that was surprising to Rassi. She couldn’t imagine the Silent Enclave believing the news of what had been hidden from them. Not when it had worked so well for some of them so long. She’d been unique, in a sense, in that the Silent Enclave had never worked for her. Even so though, there were parts of her, voices of doubt and fear which questioned what she was doing and warned of dire consequences.

Being afraid was never enjoyable, and it didn’t matter that she’d had a lot of experience with it. None of the times she’d been afraid while growing up made the fear in her any less. Where fear had chipped away at the bedrock of her heart, she was still as wobbly as ever.

What let her stand and face her former people wasn’t experience or raw courage.

It was Solna.

And Nulo. And Muffvok. And Lasha. And Kelda and Ravas.

And Nix.

They’d shown her what a better future looked like.

And they’d believed in.

She could face the crowd before her, because she wasn’t alone, and never had been.

And the surprising part, the part she hadn’t been ready for at all, were all the people in the crowd who started moving to stand with her.

“I don’t want to die,” Jilla, a girl only a few years older than Rassi said. Jilla had been mean to Rassi a few times, but not so exceptionally that Rassi could recall even the general details of the encounters. The Jilla who walked up to Rassi did seem to remember though, each step which brought them closer together driven as much by sorrow and shame as it was by hope at Rassi’s words.

“Good. Let’s get out of her together then!” Rassi said holding up her hand for a fist bump.

Jilla did not fistbump her.

She cast her arms around Rassi in the sort of hug that precisely one person had ever given her in her time in the Silent Enclave.

The look on Rassi’s face must have been priceless. Rassi knew this because of the insufferable grin Solna shot her direction.

Before Rassi had time to figure out if she was supposed to hug Jilla back, Jilla pulled away, took a step back and said, “Thank you. But how? I can’t do what she did.” She nodded over towards Solna.

Solna whose answer was interrupted by three more of the Death Shadows breaking through the ranks of the Praxis Mar Dead whose protective perimeter was shrinking steadily under the onslaught of the Death Shadows.

“Trust the Xah!” Solna shouted, throwing herself in front of one of the Death Shadows.

That was definitely the first step, but Rassi knew it wasn’t going to be enough. There was one far more vital action they needed to take.

“Let the Xah help you!” she screamed as a tumult of sound erupted from the formerly ‘Silent’ Enclave.

“How…how do you we do that?” Jilla was trembling with fear, but she wasn’t leaving Rassi’s side, which saved her life.

The second of the Death Shadows came directly for her and it was up to Rassi to stand before it.

That was somehow easier than speaking to the Enclave had been though.

“Like this,” Rassi said and felt the rivers of the Force around her.

There was so much life within her, so many reasons to live, and so many people she was connected to.

The Death Shadow represented the end of all of that. It’s mere existence spoke of lives broken and ended, reason turned to horror and tragedy, and the fragility of all connections.

Rassi opened herself to the Death Shadow’s pain. She couldn’t deny it, the violation of a life it stood for was too real and too present to pretend it had never happened, or that she could simply ignore it.

Rassi couldn’t deny what the Death Shadow was and what it meant, but she could encompass it. Draw it in and show it how it was only a part of an even greater truth.

Lives end, but that is only one moment in them against so many others. Against the shattering final loss stands every moment of joy, of wonder, of hope, of humor, and love. 

And not only those. 

Holding out her hand to Jilla, Rassi invites the older girl to join her.

Rassi and Jilla had never been friends, had never even been kind to one another, but even so there was a still a bond there. They shared a sense of what a community was, and what people should do for each other. They knew both believed what had been done to the Death Shadows was unforgivable, and that what the Death Shadows were doing was wrong and had to be resisted. 

And standing together, the veils between Jilla ands Rassi  were tearing away. Jilla had never understood that Rassi wasn’t the person or the problem the Elders made her out to be, and Rassi had never imagined that Jilla might possess the courage to rise beyond the life she’d been forced into.

“You can’t keep doing this,” Jilla said.

It’s time to go. Time to rest. We’ll take care of things from here. It’s not your burden anymore, Rassi said, speaking only through the Force and enunciating each word loud enough that the Death Shadow couldn’t deny them.

It’s time was done, and was yet to come again. The pieces it once held belonged together again. They could be part of the cycle of the Force once more. It didn’t need to hold them apart. That was causing it more suffering than taking the risk that it might live again once more someday.

On the other side of the crowd, a very different encounter with a Death Shadow played out however.

“No. You don’t get to take him. He’s mine and I’ll kill you first!” Elgonu, one of the older members of the Enclave yelled. Rassi knew him largely because it was assumed he was only a year or so away from the joining the Elders. He was an unremarkable man, who Rassi tended to avoid because he spent most of his time lecturing people about obscure (and Rassi suspect largely imaginary) tales of crimes against the Enclave by the Jedi, the Galactic Empire, Wookies, and whatever other group or people he felt like railing against.

As the Death Shadow she was dealing with faded away into the Force, Rassi felt the surge of anger rising within Elgonu and started to yell a warning to him.

But it was already too late.

Elgonu lashed out with the Xah. Not Force Lighting. And not an Expunging ritual. Just a wild and uncontrollable surge of anger and force to destroy the Death Shadow which had been heading for his adult son.

The Death Shadow switched course immediately, the blast of power doing precisely nothing to it.

The people around Elgonu were not so lucky though. The clumsy attack hurled the  six people closest time him away, sending three of them crashing in a wall and the other three (including both of his sons) into the dias the crowd was gathered around.

That left Elgonu alone in the middle of a small clearing at the edge of the crowd.

He lashed out again, but it again did nothing, despite the growing anger behind the attacks.

His third attempt was cut short when the Death Shadow reached him. Each of Elgonu’s attack had been in blatant violation of the norms of the Silent Enclave – he was clearly corrupting the Xah – but Rassi hadn’t understood what that really meant until the Death Shadow poured itself into Elgonu and he continued to fight.

In place of being brutally murdered, something much worse happened.

Elgonu managed to truly corrupt the Xah, just like the Elders had always warned them could happen.

From Elgonu’s perspective, Rassi was sure the difference was hard to see. Where the assassin who’d been killed by a Death Shadow had died a gruesome death though, Elgonu lived. 

Sort of. 

The assassin’s Xah, the spirit which was who and what they really were, had passed immediately into the Force on the destruction of his body. Rassi wasn’t sure if the assassin was ‘at peace’ exactly, it felt like it was probably possible to carry regrets into the Force, but the assassin’s spirit was at the very least no longer connected to any suffering or pain.

Elgonu was not so lucky.

He lived, but only in the sense that his shattered and ruptured body was still shambling around with something that had once been a person’s spirit torn and twisted up in it.

From what Rassi could sense, any spark of personality had been as shredded as the Xah was around the Death Walker. All that remained was a twisted, raging monstrosity which was devouring itself and a moment from devouring everyone else.

“I think this one’s mine,” Monfi said, leaping from the building where he’d taken down one of the assassin’s who’d been lining up for a shot on Rassi the lifetime of two minutes previously. “Also, don’t do what this guy did. It’s not what Rassi and Solna are doing.”

Rassi appreciated the support, but saw the problem before them. The one she could have solved. Except that she didn’t have time.

She could give the Enclave an example of how they could live. She could even convince some of them to listen to her.

But they weren’t going to be able to do what she could.

They hadn’t spent their lives with so deep a connection to the Force that their biggest problem was that they simply had to speak to it sometimes, despite that meant ‘being loud’ and getting punished for it. 

That meant that even if the people of the Enclave were willing to throw away the prohibitions they’d lived under, and only some of them were, they simply didn’t have the skill with speaking to the Force to bring enough of it into the conversation with one Death Shadow, much less the army of them that was about to break through the rapidly collapsing ranks of the ghosts who were trying to protect them.

“We need to call for help,” Solna said, at Rassi’s side again, along with more and more of the Enclave.

“Who else is there?” Jilla asked. “The Elders deserted us. Do you have more friends like that one?” She pointed towards where Monfi was battling with the Death Walker and preventing it from devouring the retreating members of the crowd.

“Not like that one,” Rassi said before raising her voice and calling out, “Kelda! Ravas! We need you!”

Solna felt five threats against Rassi diminish to four and then three. Three assassins was still plenty to end her friend’s life though and Solna wasn’t sure how she was going to stop them all.

Before she could though, they ran out of time.

Not her. Not Rassi. Not even the assassins.

All of them. Everyone in the Silent Enclave had missed that their brief window of safety had closed early.

The Death Shadows were in the camp.

Solna froze.

Just like everyone else.

Still.

Silent.

The instinct of a prey animal when it was caught with only the barest hint of cover, but taken to a supernatural level.

No one breathed. The wind which blew with the Death Shadows arrival carried the sound of no whispers, no creaking bones, and no heartbeats. 

It was an unsustainable state. 

Like one of their dances, there was only so long anyone could hold themselves in perfect stillness and silence. Some few might have the control and determination to go beyond the point of no return and avoid the Death Shadows by carrying themselves into a silent death, but a far larger number were going to break and gasp for breath long before then.

And then things would get loud.

From freeze to flight, people were going to scream. They were going to run. 

And they were going to die anyways.

Solna could feel a creeping miasma in the Xah, the curdled blood stench of lives cut short and a beckoning abyss.

The Lich’s tomb had felt like that. 

Death hadn’t come yet, but the unnatural carnage that awaited them would birth a nexus to the Dark Side which would last until all memory of the Silent Enclave had long since faded from the galaxy.

Rassi stepped forward and Solna bit back the urge to scream.

She could not let Rassi be the first one to fall.

But that wasn’t Rassi’s plan.

Solna saw that and stepped forward with her, raising the crystal she carried which matched the one Rassi held aloft.

“Hey,” Rassi whispered, breaking the silence as effectively as a gong.

“We could use a hand now,” Solna said, every eye in the crowd on her.

From the crystals they carried, a nightmare poured forth. The dead of another world. Captured by cruelty and locked in suffering for an age and more.

Solna knew how it looked to the Silent Enclave. She could see and feel the terror in them rise as a new, more visibly horrifying threat rose from the black clouds that billowed from her hand and Rassi’s. She couldn’t blame them either. The Dead of Praxis Mar did not, for the most part, appear as they had in life, but rather stood as the centuries of torment had shaped them to be.

The Silent Enclave was missing something though.

The spectres before them were a nightmare, but who they were going to be a nightmare for was still an open question.

“There are a lot more of the Shadows here than at the tradeport,” Hendel the skeleton said.

“Can you hold them back? We just need a bit more time,” Rassi asked, her gaze fixed somewhere beyond the crowd.

The Death Shadows had drawn back in a wave at the arrival of the Praxis Mar Dead, but like the tide, Solna could feel their presence swelling for a return.

“Don’t know for how long, but yeah, holding out against something horrible isn’t exactly unusual for us,” Hendel said and with a wave of his hands the spectres spread through the crowd breaking the silence with gasps of surprise and cries of fear.

That was all it took to bring the Death Shadows surging back.

The clash between the two, the Shadows and the Dead was not a silent one. Each screamed louder than Solna could have ever imagined was possible and in their own uniquely disquieting manner.

Where the Dead roared with centuries of pent up rage and suffering, the Shadows’ cries rang out from an unfillable well of agony and hunger.

“So what will it be?” Rassi asked, speaking not just to Jolu but the crowd as a whole. “Are you going to let someone here kill me, or are you going to listen?”

Incredibly, Solna felt two of the assassin’s rising to take their shot.

She didn’t want to kill anyone else, but letting Rassi be hurt wasn’t even vaguely a choice.

Come to me, she called to one of the Death Shadows and reached out with the Force, drawing it past the perimeter of the Dead.

With one hand, she caught a blaster bolt an inch from Rassi’s head – or really the Force did. She’d surrendered herself completely to it. The only future she wanted was one where they could be together. Whatever the Force needed from her, it could have.

As for the assassin?

“That one is yours,” she said aloud, pointing to the roof of a nearby shed the assassin had perched on.

The Death Shadow flowed around Solna, touching her face, her shoulder, her arms.

She understood it.

Her heart was not gentle. Or peaceful. She wasn’t willing to turn the Force on a living person, but she did want to see the assassin die.

Had she become something like the people who Expunged the Death Shadow?

Should it take her too?

The Death Shadow wasn’t precisely a sapient being. It was the void where a sapient should have been. What moved it wasn’t a desire from vengeance or rage at what had happened to it. It’s actions were somewhat mechanical in nature, guided only by the echoes of the person it had once been.

“Take me as well, if you need,” Solna said. “But don’t let any of these people hurt her.”

Solna would have been lying is she said the desire for vengeance which the Shadows were lacking didn’t burn bring in her heart, but more important than that, far more important, was that Rassi be protected, and she really would give anything to make sure of that it seemed.

It should have been terrifying, to feel the embrace of death tracing chill lines across her flesh, but there wasn’t any fear in Solna’s heart.

All she felt was proud.

“I don’t think so,” Rassi said, drawing the Death Shadow away from Solna and leaving everyone, even the Death Shadow stunned. “You’re not here for her. And taking anyone how you want to take them won’t fill in what’s missing from you.”

Solna was too slow and too stunned to stop the next blaster bolt. Part of her objected in outraged denial. How could anyone possibly be so stupid as to keep trying to kill a girl who was trying to save everyone?

The attack didn’t quite work out how the last assassin was expecting though.

Solna and Rassi hadn’t come to the Enclave entirely of their own volition. They’d been following the flow of the Force, and Rassi was still quite calmly centered within it.

With a wave of her hand, and a tidal wave of backing from the Force, she batted the blaster bolt away.

That, unfortunately, required releasing the Death Shadow.

Which hadn’t exactly heard the words Rassi had spoken.

It merely sensed someone who was exactly like the ones it hungered for.

The Shadow didn’t cross the distance between Rassi and the assassin. It merely took one step forward and then was beside the assassin.

What happened next was the sort of thing the adults in the crowd shouldn’t have seen, much less the children. Many of them knew the assassin. He’d been a member of the community for fifty years. He’d taught a number of them basic self defense techniques. He’d played Sabbac with others. He’d even won the yearly prize for Garsho Chili for the last five years.

And he’d been an unrepentant murderer.

The cruelty and callousness which lived inside him did not remain there for another instant longer though. Pretty much nothing did when the Death Shadow turned him completely inside out and, while the process started in the blink of an eye, it, sadly for everyone, did not finish that quickly.

From the pile of gore, the Death Shadow arose, larger and screaming louder than ever.

“I’ve got this,” Solna said, with no idea how she was going to hold back the Death Shadow she’d pulled through the ever weakening perimeter of the Praxis Mar Dead. “Tell them what they need to know.”

Rassi began speaking, uninterrupted by assassins at last, and told the gathered crowd about what the expunging rites really were. Her words would have fallen on hardened hearts and unfriendly ears but everyone in the Enclave could feel how the Xah flowed through her. 

Could feel her not as a corrupter of the Xah, but as the voice of the Xah, moving with it and moved by it but without exerting the pressure to move them which they had all grown unconsciously accustomed to whenever an Elder spoke.

When she turned to speaking of how they had been raised to have no defenses so they could be more easily controlled, a wave of denial and outrage arose. 

That was impossible, they couldn’t have been tricked like that! 

The Elders got their positions through experience and oneness with the Xah!

They had defenses! The Xah was their ally. Their ally they were taught never to call on. And which would decide when they lived and died as was natural. As was right!

The Xah which was screaming at them through Rassi to LIVE!

The Xah didn’t want them to die.

So why had the Elders left?

And why couldn’t they be like Rassi?

She wasn’t anything special? She was terrible at being silent! Everyone knew that! She wasn’t anything special, so why was the Xah speaking through her? 

And why wasn’t Honored Jolu speaking at all?

The rock solid denial began to crack under those doubts but the outrage didn’t diminish, it merely began to shift its target.

Which wasn’t an especially good thing from Solna’s point of view since the outrage seemed to be feeding the Death Shadows and driving them into an even  greater degree of frenzy.

It didn’t work out like you hoped, did it? The question wasn’t formed with words. Solna put it together from the empathy she was able to piece together for the Death Shadow.

It didn’t respond with understanding, but it did pause, which was good enough to begin with.

What’s consuming you, the emptiness, it wasn’t filled at all by that was it? She wasn’t blaming or admonishing the Shadow. She wanted to find a path forward for the two of them, because the same abyssal need to hurt people yawned wide in her heart as well.

The Death Shadow did not want empathy though. Or kindness. Or a path forward. It’s nature, all that was left to it, was to destroy.

But Solna had felt its touch. She knew the memories that were lost to it yearned for something more.

For rest. For peace. For justice.

It wanted to leave behind a world where it would never have existed.

What was isn’t what will be. We can learn from what happened. We can see what becomes of our actions. We can do better.

The thoughts called some of the Death Shadows memories back, but with them came the capacity to deny Solna as well.

People don’t learn. They repeat the same mistakes over and over. And what does it matter if they can do better, when what was done is unforgivable?

Everything changes. Even the things we think are forever. Even the worse things. Our power is in carrying the things we love with us, and learning from the things we leave behind.

Solna felt like she was hearing the words as much as speaking them.

Was the Xah speaking through her too? Or had she been thinking about her place and purpose since her old life was lost to her for more reasons than she’d known?

Somewhere in Rassi’s speech, she’d made her points and fallen silent.

So that everyone could watch what Solna was doing.

And could hear what she was saying.

The Death Shadow could not change. It was a crime of the past which could never be left behind.

You don’t need to be bound to the suffering others inflicted on you, Solna said. You don’t need to forgive them, but you can let them go and embrace the new life that’s before you.

Resting her hands on the Death Shadow’s chest, she let the Force flow through her and carry it away to where all the scattered fragments of the person it had once been were waiting for it.

It wasn’t the first time Nix had stood in the wreckage of a starship. If she was feeling honest, it wasn’t even the tenth time she’d stood in the wreckage of a starship that she’d been responsible for. 

All things told though, it wasn’t really so bad. She wouldn’t even need much of a crew to get the broken viewports structurally sound again. Maybe an hour and a couple lifter droids? The rest of the officers lounge was, maybe, a bit worse of a job. The security door was a complete loss, as was all the furniture and the entertainment electronics. Even the comm system was trashed and those could be a devil to route the cabling for on an Imperial ship.

“You don’t have to fix this place up you know,” Ayli said, shaking Nix from her reverie.

“Oh, I know,” Nix said. They’d been talking about not letting the Imperials escape, which Nix was still committed to, when the state of the room had caught her attention.

“Do you need to catch your breath? We’ve probably got a minute or two before they can scramble a combat squad here?” Ayli asked, as she checked Nix over for injuries.

Nix paused for a moment. Had she been injured? A quick internal inventory suggested she was okay, though she knew some hits were easy to overlook.

“I’m good,” she said. “And I don’t think we’ve got that long.”

The Force was oddly muffled – or not so oddly given who their principal opposition was – but Nix was still able to catch the warning it was yelling at her.

With a flick of her left hand, she asked the Force to collapse the ceiling in the hallway which lead past the officer’s lounge. With her right hand she grabbed Ayli and tossed them both to the floor in time to avoid a barrage of blaster fire.

“Oh I really hate those Enclave jerks,” Ayli said, reaching out to drop more of the hallway on the strike team.

“I know they’re here on the Star Destroyer, but I can’t pinpoint them any closer than that,” Nix said. “Probably not in the room with us but I can’t even swear to that.”

“They’re on the bridge,” Ayli said. “That strike team would only have been this close if someone warned the command staff to have them in place, and the only ones who could have sensed us coming are the Elders.”

“We can verify that,” Ravas said.

“Be careful. The Elders knows about you. If the Enclave has any techniques that can hurt you, they’ll be masters of them and they’ll be expecting you to show up,” Nix said, knowing that Ravas and Kelda were both more aware of that than she was.

“We may have a few surprises in store for them too,” Kelda said and sunk through the floor, with Ravas following her a moment a later.

“They’ll send another team soon. We should be elsewhere by then,” Ayli said, looking for any viable exits which were left since the ruin filled hallway didn’t offer much hope of egress.

“There should be a maintenance tunnel underneath the deck,” Nix said. “That would be great if we wanted to sneak up on them.”

“But, of course, we can’t sneak up on the Elders.” Ayli’s grumble showed that she’d grasped the largest problem they faced.

“The good news is I don’t think they’ve worked out the danger they’re in yet,” Nix said, letting her senses expand to take in the ship she was on.

In her mind the schematics of the Star Destroyer flickered into memory, overlaid with the sounds and smells and more distant sensations she was picking up. 

There was the sound of the docking bay, right where she expected it to be and so much farther than she would prefer. 

Far to the rear, the engines hummed with restrained power, the ships reserves being diverted to deflector arrays and its weapon systems. Nix was closer to the engines than the docking bay, which wouldn’t have been her preference and presented some annoying difficulties, but was also perhaps an opportunity in disguise.

“To be fair, if they have anything like a full crew, a Star Destroyer should have enough onboard combat squads that I think we’d have trouble even if the Elders weren’t here.” Ayli had her eyes closed as well but was searching for different things in the Force than Nix was.

“Normally, I’d say we could sneak past them, but maybe this time we want to get their attention and hold it.” Nix didn’t so much have a plan as the germ of an idea and what felt like the tacit reassurance from the Force that it would be with her to help make things work out.

Against a group of more numerous and more experienced Force users, a capital ship full of enemies, and the automated defense systems which Nix knew came standard on Imperial vessels.

Plus the unknown.

That was the real peril.

“I don’t think holding their attention will be a problem,” Ayli said. “For people who don’t like to use the Force, I can feel the Elders twisting the hell out of it.”

“They know better than to try that Expunging nonsense on us,” Nix said. “They don’t have anyone to sacrifice to it and even if they did, Dolon has to know that I’d cram it back down his throat.”

“It doesn’t feel like they’re doing that.” Ayli frowned and concentrated harder. “Whatever it is, they want to kill us, but it’s not a direct attack. It’s something else.”

“Let’s make them work a bit to get to us then,” Nix said. 

From what she could remember the next room over from the officer’s lounge was a supply closet and the room beyond that was where the officer’s living quarters began. The walls between the rooms were solid enough to serve as pressure vessels, but weren’t exactly battle hardened since any explosion which went off inside the Star Destroyer was likely too powerful for even a thick wall to contain.

The Force was not a explosion. It did not have an issue with reducing the two walls to a flying cloud of debris either though.

“You would have been so handy to have around when I was kid,” Ayli said.

“I was a menace as a child. You would have hated me.” Nix smiled at the thought of meeting Ayli years earlier though.

“I’m pretty sure I could never have hated you,” Ayli said.

The first officer’s quarters did not have an Imperial officer in residence. It did however have the officer’s belongings, including a few trophy weapons he’d hung on his wall.

“He left a charged Pogos-12 Blaster Rifle on his wall? I should shoot him just for failing basic Blaster safety,” Ayli said, helping herself to the rifle and one of the pistols which was hanging below it.

“Shame he hadn’t picked up one of those gatling rigs,” Nix said, scoring a pair of blaster pistols for herself. She didn’t recognize the make or model but the trigger and the blasty end of the barrel were obvious enough that she knew she could make them work. “Sali took me a range once to show off her armory. I love the gatling. So little need to aim.”

“She’ll probably be a bit worried about us, won’t she?” Ayli asked, leading Nix out in the only somewhat demolished hallway and trotting forward at a quick walk.

“Probably. We could have Kelda or Ravas let her know what we’re up to.”

“I don’t sense either them at the moment,” Ayli said, pausing well before the next intersection as though listening for something.

“I don’t either. The Elder’s cloak is growing thicker.” Nix wasn’t precisely worried about that but she wasn’t happy with it either. 

“They’re on the bridge,” Ravas said, appearing from behind them a bit more haggard than usual. “We can tell you that much based on the intensity of what they’re doing, but we can’t get in there to pinpoint precisely where they’re standing.”

“Or how many of them are there,” Kelda said, looking similarly fatigued.

“Which means there are definitely a few who are out hunting us on their own,” Nix said.

Whatever else they were, the Silent Enclave was also a training ground for assassins and the Elders were the ones who were the most intimately familiar with that. That their playbook began and ended with “runaway, hide, attack when the target is unaware, then hide again” was more or less a given.

“They won’t be alone,” Ayli said. “Basic operational security. You only send out a single asset when the asset of expendable. None of the Elders think of themselves like that. They’ll have a main group on the bridge focused on blocking out ability to sense anything, and a hit team of at least four out hunting for us.”

“Four?” Nix asked.

“Better to outnumber your foe if possible,” Ravas said. “Ideally, in their view, they’d bring along a pack of apprentices too as cannon fodder to distract you with.”

Nix felt a stabbing jolt from the Force and spun just in time to avoid a slash from a vibroknife with an odd red field around it.

There was an attack coming in from her other side which she could dodge at the expense of bumping into Ayli.

Who was a hair slower than Nix but was shifting away from a blade which was trying to slice her throat open and another which had awful intentions for her right kidney.

Sensing that a stab in her left side wasn’t going to be instantly fatal, Nix focused instead on tossing her first attacker through the nearest wall into one of the other officer quarters.

Fear for Ayli and anger at the (mostly) unprovoked attack made Nix’s fingers tingle with the old, bad lightning. 

But that wasn’t who she wanted to be.

The Force was with her whatever she choose, but that meant it was on her to choose to be better.

Being stabbed wasn’t fun. Especially not when the red field on the vibroblade turned out to be a shock charge that disabled all of Nix’s muscles and left her wide open for a follow up strike.

Ayli fared a little better, managing to dodge the neck strike entirely and avoid the kidney stab through Kelda’s intervention.

Ravas ensured that the followup strike Nix was about to be beheaded by never landed, tossing the assassin away into a pile with the one Nix had pushed.

And then Nix shot them.

It wasn’t exactly hard. Blasters are simple to use and quite accurate at short ranges. Typically they’re quite lethal too, but they do have one unusual drawback.

The Elders demonstrated that by parrying both bolts that Nix shot with their enhanced vibroblades.

Ravas deflected the bolts into the wall, but the point had been made. Random blaster fire was not going to win the battle.

Unless of course it was blaster fire from the opposition.

From around the left and right corners of the intersection two squads of Storm Troopers ran forward and took up firing positions.

Four on two odds had briefly shifted to four on four with Kelda and Ravas joining the fray, but that ratio had flipped against to be closer to twenty on four.

Nix did not like those odds.

Surrendering and playing for time later however was not an option.

The Storm Troopers opened fire and Nix felt Ravas hurl her into the same room the Elders had been tossed into. 

The Elders who were still quite active and getting to their feet.

Through the hole in the wall, Nix could see Ayli and Kelda deflecting the blaster fire with the Force but a lot of bolts were only being slowed for a moment. That was enough for Ayli to dodge them but Nix could see Ayli’s strength draining with each bolt she held back.

This wasn’t a fight they could win, and Nix wasn’t sure if it was one they could even survive.