Rassi found ghosts peaceful. That made less than no sense. For one thing they were clearly dead and yet still poking around in the living world which was as deep a corruption of the Xah as she could imagine. For another, they were Jedi. Jedi! Like, not the new fangled type Nix seemed to be. One of them, Kelda, was straight up wearing ghostly Jedi robes, and the other, Ravas, was surrounded by a chorus of memories both dark and light. 

And love.

Both of the ghosts sung of love by their presence. 

Not the wild hollering of first love, though Rassi could hear clearly that they’d never loved anyone but one another. Theirs was the quiet, abiding sort of connection that drowned out even the echoes of their deaths.

Kelda had come with news of a problem, something to do with Nix’s wife – and that was a concept that set Rassi’s toes and fingers tingling – but even with that and the dread concern it filled Nix with, Rassi felt peaceful in Ravas and Kelda’s presence.

“This doesn’t make any sense!” Nix kept her voice low and controlled but in the Xah she was screaming. “If you couldn’t find me, and Ayli couldn’t sense me, how did Paralus manage it? I don’t have any connection to him at all!”

“You must,” Kelda said. “Something you did caused a massive change in something he’s a part of. He wouldn’t be able to reach beyond the stars and manifest before you otherwise.”

“There’s zero chance anything I’ve done to him had more impact than what Ayli and I are to each other,” Nix said. “Or you and me. I’d still be completely ignorant of my connection to the Force if it wasn’t for you.”

“When he came for Ayli, she was in the Shadowed Cave,” Kelda said.

Ravas bapped her on the head.

“You let her take that test without us there to help?” Ravas asked.

“Yes, and she passed it easily,” Kelda said. “I told you she was ready. She even got her eyes back.”

“I’m sorry, what test is this? What did you do to her eyes?” Solna asked.

Solna who resolutely refused to accept that the Jedi were anything other than an abomination. Solna who had never so much as nudged the Xah in the slightest. Solna who nevertheless still called Rassi her friend despite Rassi’s increasingly frequent “mistakes” and “fumbles” with influencing the Xah.

Rassi did not understand her friend, couldn’t tease out the contradictions in her to get them to make sense, and didn’t really want to try in fear that she might unravel whatever it was that held them together.

“Ayli’s eyes changed color after some encounters we had about a year ago. Kelda’s been helping her fix that,” Nix said, clearly distracted as she…

Rassi could quite tell what Nix was doing. It wasn’t manipulating the Xah. That was easy to sense. Nix only seemed to be listening. 

Aggressively.

And then calmly.

And then more aggressively.

“Things are getting worse,” Nix said.

“I can return to her,” Kelda said.

“Or we both could,” Ravas said, with a not-terribly-subtle ripple in the Xah to indicate she intended to bring violence and mayhem along with her.

“No, she’s handling it,” Nix said. “I think.”

“What are you seeing?” Solna asked.

“It’s not sight,” Nix said. “It’s in here.” She tapped her chest. “I can’t do the manifest across the stars. I’m not strong enough and I wouldn’t be able to do anything there even if I could manage it.”

“And it would be wrong,” Solna said, which didn’t seem like the right thing to say or the right time to say it.

“I should be with her,” Kelda said. “If that tank caught up to her, she’ll need someone watching over her shoulder while she fights it.”

“She’s not fighting,” Nix said. “And she has someone with her. No. Someone’s. That’s got to be Bopo and, and someone I don’t know.”

“Monfi,” Kelda said. “He’s a Padal Horizon Knight. He’s hunting Paralus as well.”

“I thought the Horizon Knights were wiped out generations ago?” Ravas said.

“The galaxy is a rather large place it seems. The Jedi, the Sith, the Dathomiri Night Witches, the Silent Enclave, and so many other Force Traditions that people thought were destroyed are hanging in there just fine.”

“I think she’s been captured,” Nix said, her hands were steady over the ship’s controls, but Rassi could feel the tremors in the Force.

Jedi were supposed to be masters of their emotions. Cold and merciless as they bent the fate of the galaxy to their will (until it finally snapped back at them). If that was true, then Rassi could believe that Nix was no Jedi. Not from how Nix was pulsing the Xah around her like hands spasming into angry fists.

“Just tell me where they’re going and I’ll plot an intercept course,” Goldie said.

“Praxis Mar,” Nix said, closing her eyes.

And the disturbing ripples she was sending into the Xah ceased.

Nix wasn’t peaceful. Rassi could still sense the tension inside her, but she’d chosen to stop interfering with the Xah despite her emotions.

Which was something Rassi had never once managed.

“What kind of ship are they on?” Goldie asked, a nervous tension in her mechanical voice.

“I don’t know,” Nix said. “Something dangerous.”

“That makes two of us,” Goldie said.

“Was it her choice?” Ravas asked.

“I think it was,” Nix said. “Which means she’s counting on us to get her out of there.”

“We do not want to go back to Praxis Mar,” Kelda said.

“I know,” Nix said. “But they’ve got a headstart.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t catch them,” Goldie said.

“Ayli will buy us time,” Ravas said. “And she can buy you more if we’re there to help her.”

“If only we could go,” Kelda said, putting a hand on Ravas’s hand.

“What do you mean?” Ravas asked. “I can sense her clearly.”

“As can I. We could even get to Praxis Mar before her,” Kelda said. “And both are traps.”

“What do you…oh, well that’s, annoying,” Ravas said.

“Traps?” Nix asked.

“Whatever ship she’s on, it was the scene of a ghastly enough tragedy to turn it into a floating Dark Side Nexus,” Kelda said. “The moment we appear within it, Paralus will know we are there and will likely be able to manifest more completely because of the imbalance either of us would cause by being there.”

“We could fight him together,” Ravas said, but Rassi could hear the uncertainty in her voice.

“If he is backed by the might of Praxis Mar, we would have a challenging time of it. Particularly since he could likely drag us back there, turning us into hostages rather than assets,” Kelda said.

“I thought I was meant to be the pessimistic one,” Ravas grumbled.

“I’m not being pessimistic,” Kelda said. “We will fight him, but on our terms, not his.”

“Will your wife be okay on a ship like that?” Rassi asked, trying to imagine what could be awful enough to permanently corrupt the Xah if the Expunging Rite didn’t do it.

“She thinks she will be,” Nix said. “And knowing her she’s probably right, but I don’t like ‘probably’. Not for her. Goldie can you get Thirty Two on the line. Last I checked, he was in charge of the fleet Sali left to guard Praxis Mar.”

“Sending a holo-message out now. I’ll have an optimal hyperspace route calculated in about five minutes too.”

“Jump the instant the calculation is done,” Nix said.

“I’m making some guesses about what their path might be from Cellondia. Do you want to check them over?” Goldie asked.

“Nope. You’re going to think of everything I would, and I don’t want to lose even an instant.”

“Should we drop these two off somewhere?” Kelda asked, gesturing to Solna and Rassi.

Rassi flinched at that. 

From how they’d been talking about Praxis Mar, it sounded like a deadly dangerous place. Leaving the two people they could least depend on behind made a lot of sense, but it would mean she and Solna would be defenseless and alone on a strange world. 

If Primus Dolon regrouped and tried the Expunging Rite on them, they’d be dead before Nix would even know they were danger.

“We can’t do that,” Nix said, sending a wave of relief crashing through Rassi. “These two are under my protection, and for now, they still need it.”

“Can you protect them Praxis Mar?” Ravas asked.

“We can,” Nix said. “Alone, I don’t think I’m a match for this Paralus. Together though?”

“I doubt it is unaware of the strengths we possess,” Kelda said. “It has waited a standard year for the chance to assault Ayli and yourself. It was likely observing your actions for a great deal longer than that.”

“You should teach us how to fight it,” Solna said.

Which showed that she’d clearly been possessed.

Or had suffered the sort of grievous head injury that only occurred in the holos where no actual damage was done and yet the victim’s personality was completely reversed.

“What? We can’t…” Rassi started to say but was cut off.

“That’s a good idea,” Nix said. “And it will keep me from slamming the hyperspace button and just hoping we’re pointing in the right direction. Let’s go down to the cargo hold.”

“I know I’m normally the last one to ask this, but are you sure this is a good idea?” Ravas said.

“Oddly, yes,” Nix said. “I’m not sensing these two playing any special role in what’s to come, but try to sense them in general.”

“It’s easier to notice where they’re not,” Ravas said. “Please tell me you’re not planning to make use of that. Spies have a far higher mortality rate than most people understand.”

“Which is exactly why they will not be spying for us,” Nix said. “Or engaging with anything that we find which has anything to do with Paralus Stahl.”

“Why then would they need training?” Kelda asked.

“Three reasons,” Nix said. “First, I’m done with being blind sided. I can’t foresee everything that’s before us, but I can plan around the sort of problems which are almost certain to arise and running into unexpected problems is almost guaranteed to happen. Second, they deserve to know that they can defend themselves, without using the Xah even.”

“What?” Solna asked, as surprised by that as Rassi was. 

Rassi wrestled with the smile that tried to cross her face. Solna had asked for training “knowing” that Nix would refuse, or that the training would involve committing Jedi-style sins against the Xah, which would in turn prove that she was right to distrust them.

“I know you hold to your traditions, and I don’t want to take that from you,” Nix said. “I’m not going to change who I am, even if you think that makes me an abomination, because that’s my choice, but it doesn’t have to be yours.”

“Of…of course,” Solna said, looking more rattled than Rassi could remember seeing her in a long time.

“What’s the third reason?” Rassi asked.

“I said I don’t see you or Solna playing a role in what’s to come,” Nix said. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t. I’m not going to ask anything of you. You deserve safety and support, not to be used as tools or weapons.”

“Bending our fates with Jedi powers is worse than asking us to fight for you,” Solna said.

“Absolutely true,” Nix said.

“And our fates are being bent,” Solna said. “We’re not supposed to be here.”

“Also true,” Nix said, a faint smile spreading across her lips as she glanced at Kelda and Ravas.

“Then why are you doing it?” Solna asked. “I didn’t see it at first, but with this? There is no way we’re here at precisely the time you need more soldiers by accident.”

“I don’t think it’s an accident either,” Nix said. “But look at me, really look, and you’ll see, I’m not the one who was asking for the Force to change your destiny’s.”

Rassi did as Nix asked. 

Nix wasn’t lying.

And she wasn’t wrong.

“That’s all your doing,” Nix said, looking not at Rassi but at Solna.

Ayli didn’t crash into her friend Bopo’s home. Smashing through the front door and causing several thousand credits of property damage did not, necessarily, mean that she had “crashed” into Bopo’s house. 

Especially since what awaited them more than justified the destruction they brought with them.

Archivist Bopo was an older Galruxian, an offshoot species from the Rodians. She had gone back to pursue an academic career after working in starship manufacturing for the first several decades of her life. In her time as a researcher, she hadn’t lost an appreciable amount of the muscle mass she’d developed hauling ship components around, which made it all the more concerning to see her struggling to break free of the grip of the Hunter-Killer droid which had her gripped by the neck.

Ayli could have wasted time trying to reason, or threaten, or plead for Bopo’s life, but none of those held even the slightest chance of success.

So she threw her lightsaber.

It wasn’t entirely unreasonable. She’d suspected that Paralus would move against Bopo based on the fact that Bopo was Ayli’s primary connection on the planet. That Paralus’ droid accomplice would use Bargus Brell’s HK droid to do its dirty work was also more or less a given, since that’s what HK droids were built for.

There was still a chance that negotiations could have produced a peaceful resolution – Paralus was likely to have some demands he intended to make if nothing else.  Crashing through the doors however bought Ayli a moment of surprise that she couldn’t afford to waste.

The HK droid had a machine’s response time to dangers which lay within its prediction algorithms domain. Rather than dodging the flying laser sword, the HK unit simply swung Bopo around as a shield.

Which Ayli had anticipated it might do because, while she did not have machine reflexes, she could hear the warnings in the Force, and she could see what the obvious counter to her attack was. By giving the HK something it thought it could respond to though, Ayli ensured it would stay in position, which let her close the gap to it with a Force assisted leap.

Calling her saber back to her hand before it could strike Bopo wasn’t hard. Her hand was where it was meant to be. Unfortunately the HK unit saw the change in Ayli’s attack while she was mid-leap and it had weapon systems to spare.

Monfi swatted the first blaster bolt away before it could hit Ayli, and she caught the second on her blade.

The HK switched to jets of flame, but Ayli had the velocity to dive under it’s arc and take its left leg off at the knee joint.

Despite its heightened response time, there wasn’t any argument it could make against gravity pulling it to the ground, which dropped both it and Bopo on top of Ayli.

Acting as a cushion for Bopo wasn’t the worse thing in the galaxy, but the HK unit was significantly heavier than it looked.

Ayli had shut her lightsaber off when she dodged under the flame stream to avoid hitting Bopo by mistake. As the HK unit spun two of it’s chest lasers at her though, Ayli flicked the blade back to life, plunging it through the the HK’s central chassis. 

She wasn’t sure where it kept it’s memory banks, but she did know which compartment was the only one large enough to house its power supply.

With a Force assisted kick, she flung the inert carcass of the HK off herself and Bopo before the minor explosion in it’s chest reduced it to a pile of very expensive rubble.

“Y…yo…you…” Bopo tried to choke out, finding it understandably difficult to speak after being held aloft by her throat.

“It’s okay,” Ayli said. “We’ll get you out of here to somewhere safe.”

“I think she’s trying to tell us there’s a problem with that,” Monfi said, a pair of blasters in his hands.

“Indeed,” a chorus of mechanized voices said in perfect unison.

Ayli looked away from Bopo, following her friend’s wide-eyed look of terror to find at least a dozen more HK units emerging from doorways and alcoves, each with a clear shot at herself, Bopo, and Monfi.

Against one assassin droid, Ayli hadn’t felt too uncertain. Even before she’d learned to use the Force she’d encountered one of them and they weren’t as impossible to outfight as their reputation suggested. Against a dozen assassin droids, Ayli also didn’t feel much uncertainty, though for very different reasons.

“I am supposed to thank you for accepting my invitation,” the mechanized voice said. “I am also to instruct you that you are to surrender yourself, or this person, and everyone else you know and care about will pay the price.”

“Who am I surrendering to?” Ayli asked, inwardly groaning that they’d entered a negotiation phase despite her best efforts.

Not that negotiations were a bad idea in general. Negotiations were a fantastic thing when the parties involved each had a reason to seek an end to their hostilities. When it came to resolving differences between two parties who each believed themselves to be the aggrieved one, entering negotiations as soon as possible was always the best move.

The controller of the HK droids did not wish to resolve its conflict with Ayli any more than the Imperial Officers she’d stared at down the barrel of a blaster had ever been interested in pursuing justice. These negotiations were about asserting control and maneuvering to be sure Ayli didn’t have any counter plans in play, while she tried to buy what time she could and look for an opportunity to swing things back in her favor.

With over twelve HK units holding target locks on her though, Ayli didn’t need Force visions to show her those opportunities were going to be largely figments of her imagination.

“You are surrendering to overwhelming firepower,” the mechanized voice said.

“That’s a ‘what’, not a ‘who’,” Ayli said.

“Correct,” the mechanized voice said.

“Okay then Overpowering, why am I surrendering to you?” Ayli asked.

“The alternative is death,” the mechanized voice said.

Ayli laughed.

“Oh, sorry there, that one’s not going to cut it. Please try again,” Ayli said.

“Surrender or you will die, and your companions will die as well,” Overpowering said.

“Nope, see that’s not how this works,” Ayli said. “The choice you’re giving me is to either die here and do some damage to you in the process, or wait and die later after you’ve been able to get something that you want. There’s no logic in surrendering under those conditions, and you know that. So, like a good little machine, why don’t you play back the instructions you’ve been given to convince me to do what your master commanded you to get me to do.”

Ayli hadn’t been certain that she’d be able to provoke Overpowering but the blaster bolt one of the HK units fired at Bopo told her she had managed to hit a nerve. She felt almost as proud of that as she did bouncing the bolt back at the offending droid to send it toppling headless to the floor.

One down, lots left to go.

“Surrender now and you, and you alone, will be brought back to the one who seeks you,” Overpowering said. Ayli was intrigued that it hadn’t said ‘my master’ or anything of the sort. 

That Overpowering was an unfettered machine intelligence was horrifyingly obvious, but Ayli had still expected it to bow to the one who was really calling the shots, especially since ‘that one’ was a Dark Side Lich and Dark Siders were egomaniacs, the lot of them.

“Okay. Excellent. Now we have something to work with,” Ayli said. “My answer is no.”

“Then you will die.”

“Uh uh, not so fast,” Ayli said. “You haven’t asked me why my answer is no.”

“Your reasons do not matter. You will die,” Overpowering said.

“I think they rather do matter.” Ayli knew she couldn’t talk any of them out of the situation, but buying time meant buying hope and that she could definitely do. “Your orders are to bring me back. As a corpse might be a viable alternative but alive is the preference.”

“Preferences can change,” Overpowering said.

“They can. Mine are quite flexible in fact,” Ayli said. “But you still haven’t asked me why my answer is ‘no’.”

“Your reasons are immaterial. Surrender or be destroyed.”

“Again, your programming is coming up just a bit short.” Ayli knew that Overpowering wasn’t a droid, and if there was one thing the other unfettered machine intelligence she knew hated, it was when people assumed the limitations of a droid applied to them as well.

“I am superior to you by all measures.” Which was the kind of thing an entity would say when it had been told since it’s creation that it was nothing more than a tool.

“You need some help with understanding people still though,” Ayli said. “See, you’re not threatening me with death and destruction. That’s a given no matter what choice I make. The choice you’re offering is whether the people with me will be part of that death and destruction or not.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Which is why I have to say ‘no’. Because while you’ve made that offer, its purely empty words, and there’s no trust relationship between us which you can call upon to support your claim.”

“There can be no trust between us.” Overpowering seemed confused by why the concept had even arisen in the conversation.

“Sure there can,” Ayli said. “You can establish an easy trust bridge by letting these two go.”

“Ayli, what are you doing? Don’t be stupid girl,” Bopo said. 

“I’m not. I brought this trouble to your door, or what’s left of it. Let me take it away too.”

“Your friend can go,” Monfi said. “I have a vested interest in seeing how this plays out.”

Because if he was with her, his partner could follow them. 

It wasn’t a bad plan.

Ayli was terribly interested in having Horizon Knight blood on her hands, but she also knew Nix would kill her if she turned down backup when it was offered, especially since alone she really was likely to wind up dead.

“I’m sorry, in what galaxy do you think I‘m going to watch a bunch of bolt buckets walk one of my friends off to her death?” Bopo said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Because, of course she wasn’t.

Ayli wasn’t sure why that surprised her. Bopo had always been a sensible sort, with a knack for somehow still making the worst decisions Ayli had ever seen. 

Somehow that reminded Ayli of Nix, which left her questioning if she had a preferred personality type she liked to associate with and what that said about her.

“It seems I am in need of an alternate means of persuasion,” Overpowering said as glaring red floodlights streamed in through the windows from outside. A deep and multi-harmonic rumbling accompanied the lights.

“I recognize those engines,” Boppo said. “That’s an Assassin-class Corvette out there!”

The Assassin-class Corvettes were Imperial ships. Ayli knew them well. One had burned a city to the ground trying to root out the Rebel cell she’d been with.

“If you recognize the ship, then you know what it is capable of,” Overpowering said.

“You’ve moved up to holding the city hostage now?” Ayli asked, the smell of a hundred burning buildings rising from memory.

“Will that be enough to convince you to surrender or shall I destroy it to prove my sincerity and look for bigger or more personal targets?” Overpowering asked.

Ayli tried to sense where her decisions would lead her, but so many branches of her future were cloaked in the Dark Side that the Force did not seem like a trustworthy source to turn to for divination.

So she looked instead to her companions.

Monfi nodded his agreement, and while she hadn’t known him long, she appreciated his support nonetheless. It was Bopo who convinced her though. Bopo who had seen her make the dumbest of mistakes was looking back at her with confidence and a trust Ayli knew she couldn’t let down.

“We surrender then,” Ayli said. “Let’s go have a chat with your master.”

Nix had braced herself for an argument on two fronts. From Rassi, she expected disbelief fueled by the natural denial of the horror that had befallen her parents. From Solna, on the other hand, she’d expected a refusal to trust an outsider and the immediate dismissal of everything Nix said on the grounds that Nix wasn’t part of the Silent Enclave and therefor could never be trusted.

“What do you mean?” Rassi asked, the denial Nix expecting sweeping over her features.

Solna however simply looked away.

So that Rassi wouldn’t see the understanding in her eyes.

“Oh wow. Now is not the time for this,” Nix said. “I’m not quiet like you two and everyone is going to notice that in about a minute when they get the building fire under control. Please, just trust me. We need to leave.”

“You do,” Solna said. “Rassi’s not like you. She can be on the other side of the camp when they find you. She can be safe.”

“Sol, no,” Rassi said, her confusion turning to gentle certainty. “I’m never going to be safe here.”

“You could be,” Solna said, clearly trying to convince herself as much as anyone else. “You have been. We can make it work.”

“They’ll kill you too,” Rassi said. “I’m slipping. So much. People are going to know. And if my parent’s weren’t an accident, then I won’t be either. And they won’t stop at me.”

The shared sorrow between the two felt so mild to Nix’s sense, at least until she adjusted for how quiet each of them usually was in the Force.

Which was a good, if terrible, sign.

They were mourning the loss of everything they knew, and they would only do that if they’d already made their decision.

“Time’s up,” Goldie said. “I’ve got multiple groups converging on your position, and they are most definitely armed and dangerous.”

“Come pick us up then,” Nix said, drawing the Force into herself in a blatant display of Jedi-style power. 

The Silent Enclave would discover that Rassi and Solna was missing soon enough, but at least in this moment, Nix wanted their presence with her to be a secret.

“Inbound. Small problem though, you’re still inside and they’ve got you surrounded on all the sides that have doors leading out,” Goldie said.

“Then make us a new one,” Nix said. “Don’t worry about anyone in here. I’ve got that covered.”

“Oh I love you Mom! One door coming right up!” Goldie said, her glee radiating through the Force despite her mechanical nature.

“Uh, what does that mean?” Solna asked, looking away from Rassi with panic in her eyes as the future descended on them.

That was when one of Goldie’s proton torpedoes obliterated the wall behind them.

Nix, knowing exactly what she’d asked her daughter to do, was ready for that and caught both the debris and the blast wave with a wall of Force power that clanged louder than the bomb blast in the Silent Enclave.

“It means I will not let either of you be hurt and that we are getting out of here,” Nix said as Goldie slammed down outside the new exit the building had gained with the sort of force she would only use when there were no crew members to be splattered by it.

Rassi and Solna turn and looked eyes with one another. Their decision was already made and the look they shared was merely the confirmation of that.

Where Rassi went, Solna would follow.

Nix was pleased when that turned out to the the edge of space and beyond only a few moments later as Goldie blasted out of the atmosphere and began running the calculations for a jump to light speed.

“What about your friend?” Rassi asked as Nix led them to Goldie’s cockpit.

“I’m more her daughter really,” Goldie said over the intercom.

“What? Who is that? There’s no one else here!” Solna said, eyes darting to the viewports around as though she might catch sight of a stowaway grappled to the outside of the ship.

“Rassi, Solna, meet Goldie. She’s the ship we’re in,” Nix said. “And also my daughter.”

“That sounds complicated,” Rassi said.

“Not terribly, she built me. Isn’t that what mother’s usually do with their kids?” Goldie said.

“You…you exist in the Xah?” Solna said. “But that’s not possible. Droids, unliving things, they can’t be part of the Xah!”

“Generally a true statement,” Nix said. “But life is a lot more complicated than we usually give it credit for being.”

“Oh, Rassi, this is wrong. What had we done,” Solna said.

“Taken a very frightening step into the galaxy that is all of our birthright,” Nix said. “I know this is a lot, and there’s no need to try to take it all in right away. The key is that you’re safe now.”

“But we’re not,” Solna said.

“You will be in five…four…” Goldie jumped to light speed on four before continuing, “threetwoone. We’re in hyperspace now. Whatever problems you had, they are light years behind you and will have four hundred billion systems to try to track you through if they try to figure out where you’ve gone.”

“No,” Rassi said. “They’ll know. They always know where we are. People have fled to the stars before. It didn’t save them.”

“The Enclave must be kept secret at all costs,” Solna said.

“They’re not going to Expunge you,” Nix said.

“They could,” Solna said.

“No. They really can’t,” Nix said. “You’re with me now and the Expunging Rite isn’t one that either the Jedi or the Sith used.”

“Because it was a secret,” Rassi said.

“Not exactly,” Ravas said, appearing on the bridge in the open co-pilot’s seat. “I saw what Primus Dolon was beginning to work on and the rest of pretty easy to understand from basic principals.”

“Then you know how deadly it is!” Solna said.

“Deadly yes,” Nix said. “Practical? Eh, that’s more debatable.”

“I don’t understand?” Rassi said.

“The Expunging Rite, as you call it, is primarily used against recalcitrant members of your sect, correct?” Ravas asked. “People who have intentionally stunted their ability to manipulate the Force.”

“People who do no corrupt the Xah,” Solna corrected her.

“People who have reduced defenses against others manipulating the Force around them,” Ravas said. “The Expunging Rite capitalizes on this in a similar manner a martial art designed to be used against comatose targets might be designed if the aim was to produce a maximum amount of horror.”

“Think of it like a fighting style were you tear your opponent apart with your teeth,” Nix said. “It’s terrifying, and works perfectly well if the victim can’t defend themselves. Using it against someone who know how to fight though? If you’re lucky they’ll cave your face in with a punch the moment you come charging at them teeth first.”

“That…that can’t be right,” Solna said.

“It kills us because we’re weak?” Rassi said.

“Absolutely not,” Nix said. “The rite kills people because the person behind made an unforgivable choice. The victims are not at all fault. Being unused to manipulating the Force isn’t a reason for someone to die. We all have weaknesses, and it’s not our fault if others exploit those against us.”

“So we must stay with you then,” Solna said. “Because we are weak and only you can protect us.”

Nix knew that Solna was trying to provoke her. It was as much about searching for a reason to flee from the change before them as it was about defining where the boundaries were in a new relationship.  Knowing that there was a fathomless pool of fear behind her words made it, slightly, easier to remember that Solna was even more of a child than Nix had been at her age, and that gave her a path to the patience she needed, when a host of other alarm bells were ringing in her mind.

“Well, right at the moment we’re in hyperspace, so while leaving is theoretically possible, I’m pretty sure that theory states the best case scenario would be winding up stranded in interstellar space,” Nix said, wondering if she’d even get the hint of a smile from Solna.

She did not.

“We both know that’s not what you meant though,” Nix said. “You’re wondering if, like all the Jedi you’ve heard about, I’ve kidnapped a couple of kids to indoctrinate into my corrupt Jedi-ways. Is that about right?”

“No.” Solna’s scowl told Nix she’d more or less hit the mark though.

“Good. Since that would both be a horrible and a deeply stupid thing for me to do,” Nix said. “Which is why we’ll do this instead; I basically stole you. It was for what I believed was your own good, but you had no time to prepare and don’t know what tools you have to exist outside the Silence Enclave yet. Since I stole you, I’m responsible for you. That doesn’t mean I own you, and it absolutely does not mean you need to give up your beliefs or start training to become a Jedi or any of nonsense like that. What it does mean is that I owe you food and lodging. I also promised that you would be safe, and so, yes, I will defend you. Part of that, if you choose it, is that I will teach you what I know about how to foil the Expunging Rite, as well as anything else I understand about the Force.”

“And what do we owe you for all of this. What price do we have to pay?” Solna asked, clearly incapable of believing a word Nix said. 

Which on reflection, Nix couldn’t blame her for. Words rarely ever captured the full truth of a thing, and could so, so easily be slanted so that even the truth they did convey could misdirect the listener. Solna was right not to trust her, at least until Nix had the chance to fill the framework of her words with the clarity of deeds.

“You’ve already paid a hell of a price in leaving the Enclave,” Nix said. “The rest of the price is that I get to sleep at night knowing that the dying hopes of two loving people didn’t fall into the void.”

“And that’s all you want from us?” Solna asked.

“Oh I want a heck of lot more,” Nix said. “I would love to learn more about the Xah and the relationship your people have with it. It would be fantastic to have a pair of padawans as gifted as you two are. Heck, even having someone who was willing to clean out the heat exchange relays every five day would be a nice change of pace. None of that are things you have to do. Or should worry about at all until our current crises are a bit more settled down.”

“The heat exchange relay cleaning would be really nice,” Goldie said. “I can do a lot with the waldos but they are not good at dealing with those.”

“Where are we going to go?” Rassi asked, offering her hand for Solna to hold.

Solna shook her head at the offer, and Nix could feel her discomfort at admitting, even tacitly, the emotional weakness she was feeling.

“My wife and I have a home on an island with an old Jedi temple,” Nix said. “It’s not an abandoned village or anything, there are other people there, it just hasn’t been used as a Jedi temple in centuries.”

“So we won’t need to put on Jedi robes or anything?” Rassi asked a faint hint of disappointment in her voice.

“Nope. I prefer coveralls like this,” Nix said, pointing to her attire. “And Ayli, that’s my wife, wears all kinds of stuff. You’ll get to meet her when we get there. She’s been training with the other Force Ghost we know.”

“How many Force Ghosts do you know?” Rassi asked.

“More than they should,” Kelda said, manifesting beside Ravas. “And this one comes bearing problems I’m afraid.”

Ayli hadn’t stolen the speeder she was driving. Stealing something implied that someone owned it and, given that it wasn’t sufficiently locked down to prevent her hotwiring it, she had to assume that no one owned this particular bike. Some planets had individual scale public transportation after all, and as long as Ayli didn’t look into the laws in Haliph City she wasn’t breaking any of them.

That was definitely how it worked.

She was sure.

The sirens in the distance? Couldn’t be for her.

Nor was the shouting she heard when she rocketed away on the speeder likely at all related.

The city was having a bad day after all. Droids had blown up in a bunch of different places.

Places that she’d been admittedly.

But still.

And then there were the assassin.

Only one of whom was probably dead. 

Another might or more not have a fractured skull.

But he’d survive.

On the back of the speeder, Ayli’s new friend Monfi had his arms around her waist in a vice grip and his eyes shut as hard as they could be.

That did not make navigating traffic at high speeds any easier.

It also did not include Ayli to reduce her speed by any amount.

She was on a rescue mission after all.

She couldn’t claim to have a deep connection with Archivist Bopo but they’d known each other since Ayli attended her first classes in xeno-archeology. As with most of Ayli’s academic associates, they’d lost touch after she graduated, and had kept in touch more via following each others work than through direct correspondence, but Ayli had remembered Bopo fondly enough to suggest her as a source to check in with when Nix announced she wanted to search for other Force traditions.

Which meant Bopo was in trouble.

“Kelda, have you regained enough strength to manipulate physical objects yet?” she asked, knowing that her Force Ghost friend would be able to hear here despite the roar of the wind and the fact that there wasn’t really even space for two on the speeder, much less three.

“You’d like me to get the ship prepped for launch?” Kelda asked. Because Force Ghosts had rather good intuition. Who could imagine?

“Yeah. I’ve got the departure documentation loaded in the buffers. If you can send that and start up the engines as soon as I get to Bopo’s there might be some chance we get out of her without any more attacks.

“My associates have that covered,” Monfi said without opening his eyes.

“Do you think that, or do you know it?” Ayli asked, sliding the speeder under a transport lifter because stopping at an intersection was simply not on the agenda.

“The kill order that brought the assassins in was logged by one of Paralus’ minions. They’ve been neutralized,” Monfi said.

“You mentioned that before, which means you’re not working alone?” Kelda asked.

“Horizon Knight’s don’t. We are frequently outmatched by the things we hunt, so we hunt in groups.”

“Not unlike the Jedi,” Kelda said. “We would bring our Padawans along on safe missions, and other Knights if we sensed danger in the offing. Or, if we were feeling particular foolish, we would rush off alone to confront the problem.”

“A Horizon Knight’s mission almost always involves danger, so our apprentices follow us no matter what end we pursue,” Monfi said.

“Which was something else the Jedi didn’t approve of as I recall,” Kelda said. “Then a mere thousand years later, they let themselves be embroiled in a war and dragged their children along with them.”

“Wait, are you saying you have kids here? In Haliph?” Ayli asked, gritting her teeth at the extra time it would take to collect them all.

“My apprentice has long since flown off on his own,” Monfi said. “My partner on the other hand has both of her apprentices here, and the three of them tracked down Paralus’ associate, a man named Bargus Brell,  already. If they hadn’t the tank you noticed earlier would have been a problem long before now.”

As though the Force took some unholy glee in disputing statements like that, Monfi had no sooner said those words than the building in front of the speeder bike exploded outward as a droid operated tank burst through it and began blasting its main cannon at that.

Ayli’s lightsaber was in her hand before she was consciously aware of it.

She knew she blocked two of the tank’s blasts, mostly because she was conscious of the choices she made for where the ricochets would land.

Just because she was having a terrible day, didn’t mean anyone else needed to have their lives ruined or cut short by Imperial cannon fire.

Ayli shook her head.

It wasn’t the Imperials who were after her.

The Empire was dead.

The Rebellion had cut it’s head off, and burned every bit of its body they could find.

In the moment it took her to remind herself of that fact, Monfi had snapped to action, opening his eyes and extending a hand towards the tank. It didn’t explode like the (much smaller) recon droid had. Instead it’s main barrel simply bent downwards by the width of a handspan.

Which was enough to completely ruin the firing channel.

Ayli hoped the droid pilot would fail to process the damage properly and blow itself up with the next attempt to fire the main cannon, but it didn’t.

Instead four blisters rose on the sides of the tank and extended the barrels of the smaller secondary cannons to continue the onslaught.

Ayli knew how fast those could fire and the sort of damage they could inflict on unshielded bodies. Whether she’d be able to parry the onslaught with her lightsaber was something she wasn’t inclined to research however, so she banked the speeder into a hard turn, leaving the main road to crash down alleys in search of a more sheltered path to her destination.

“Should I still prep the ship?” Kelda asked.

“Definitely. We’ll be departing with a crew of three, not counting you.” 

“You mean five do you not?” Monfi asked.

“Nope. Three. You, me, and Bopo,” Ayli said.

“And my partner and her apprentices?” Monfi asked.

“You have a ship. We may need a backup. They should get that in the air. You can send them our coordinates and heading as soon as we have one.”

“Reasonable, but who is the third who’ll be departing with us?” Monfi had closed his eyes once more.

“Bopo’s a friend of mine from school,” Ayli said. “I’m also hoping she’ll have some idea where my wife might have gotten herself too.”

“As a Jedi you should be able to sense that directly shouldn’t you?” Monfi asked.

“I’m not a Jedi, but yes, I should.”

“Oh. I understand the question about Paralus attacking our connections,” Monfi said.

The alleyways weren’t designed to support traffic at the same speeds as the main thoroughfare. In Ayli’s view that was a mark in their favor since her pursuers would have a harder time keeping up.

That the narrow gaps of alleys and the sudden ninety degree turns meant that she had to focus too much on her piloting to think about what might have happened to Nix was also a blessing.

“I don’t understand though. They had to have neutralized Brell. If not we’d be swarmed with assassins by now,” Monfi said. “And I don’t sense anyone still connected to the contract.”

“Your partner did her job,” Ayli said. “Bargus Brell is well connected but he’s an idiot when it comes to tech.”

“The droid were under the control of the assassins though,” Monfi said.

“Some of them. Maybe most of the original batch,” Ayli said. “Bargus has a droid servitor though. A decommissioned HK bot. Give it the right commands and it could hack all sorts of bots around the city, from the taxi droid that took the first shot at killing me to the tank who just crashed through a building about three blocks back.”

“But someone has to be controlling the droid, don’t they?” Monfi said.

“Normally? Yeah. Droid that can kill people are kept on a tight lockdown. Droids that can control other droids to kill people are melted down to scrap on sight.”

“Which would suggest they wouldn’t be the problem here.”

“Yes. Except that I can’t sense the person who’s the problem here. Or even that there is a person whose the problem, which means…” She braked the speeder so hard its tail end flipped over its front as the spiraled out of the alleyway, dodging the cannon shot which had been waiting for them and expecting movement that was in the same star system as sanity.

“Which means Brell and his droid are both trying to kill us,” Monfi said a moment after Ayli twisted them upright into a landing which didn’t entirely destroy three parked cruisers.

 “Not the HK,” Ayli said. “That’s the access point. It’s too well known here. Whatever company that tank belongs to definitely has security in place to keep an HK out of their systems. Paralus must be working with a unrestricted droid of his own. That’s probably who brought the kill order to Brell in the first place.”

“A droid wouldn’t be any faster to get here than Paralus himself would though,” Monfi said. “Unless Paralus needed to be somewhere else though. Or couldn’t come here at all for some reason.”

“Just to verify, even if he’s good at hiding himself, there’s nothing special about a Lich that let’s them hide the Dark Side they exude right?” Ayli asked, splitting her focus despite it being a monumentally bad idea.

Well, monumentally bad for someone who wasn’t as good a pilot as she was.

“Not that the Horizon Knights have ever discovered,” Monfi said. “I don’’t think that helps us though. The Dark Side exists everywhere people do.”

“That’s true, but I’ve had a lot more experience than I’d prefer with Dark Side monsters. Even when you can’t see them, you can tell they’re around if you know how to listen for them.”

It was not as easy as Ayli suggested, nor was she practiced enough with the Force to be sure she could detect the monsters the Dark Side spawned reliably.

Except in this case.

Paralus Stahl was focused on her.

Something she’d done had forged a connection between the two of them. A connection that had allowed him to track her across the stars. A connection which let him foresee her actions to the point where he could have agents in place the moment she landed on a new world.

Connections, however, go in both directions.

She didn’t know who he was. Not really. Or what she’d done that placed her in his sights.

But she knew he was looking for her, and so she looked back.

Casting her awareness into the Force while driving at twice the posted speed limit down crowded streets wasn’t difficult. It didn’t require a special effort of will, or a special degree of talent. It simply required trust.

Trust in the Force.

She’d always listened to it when she was behind the controls of a vessel. It had taken being possessed by a Sith Force Ghost and a year of training under the tutelage of a trio of very dear instructors, but that had allowed her to hear more than distant whispers of the Force.

As her awareness rose outwards towards the stars seeking the heart of the malice which was directed at her, she gave control of her body over to the Force almost entirely.

Where once the Force had been a distant echo, from within the trance she embraced she caught glimpsed echoes of the world around her and piloting through it with perfect awareness of what was around her and what would be at every instant of the course she’d chosen.

The greater part of her awareness though was swallowed by the void between the stars.

Within the endless dome of the sky there were countless lives and distance on a scale to dwarf all understanding. Deep inside that though, she could feel the hate that sought her.

Hate that had an all too familiar home.

From across the light years, Praxis Mar was at war, and it was calling her home.

There were a variety of reactions Nix could have chosen from on being confronted by Darsus Klex’s return. Most of them were violent, with a few of them also being explosive. Despite the seething mass of emotions roiling inside her though, Nix chose one of the non-confrontational approaches.

“Go peddle your nonsense somewhere else,” she said, casting about for a path which would lead them to safety-by-way of Rassi’s friend Solna.

“I’m not here to sell you anything,” Darsus said. “Quite the opposite. I’m here to collect.”

Except it wasn’t Darsus Klex.

It looked like him.

It was his body.

No.

It was a projection of his body.

And every path forward led through him.

Which was inconvenient.

“Who is that?” Rassi asked.

“A dead man,” Nix said. “Not an important one either.”

“You seem distracted. Perhaps I should clear your agenda,” the thing that wasn’t Darsus Klex said and stretched out his arm.

Nix felt the Force coil and surge, not quite in the soul destroying manner of the Expunging Rite, merely with enough malice sufficient to kill in a more standard manner. The killing blow flowed into Nix but passed through her, following the connection she’d forged with Rassi, the intent on twisting the young girl’s throat until it collapsed permanently. 

In the first instant Nix cast herself against the flow. The rage simmering in her rose to meet the attack, intent on tearing it and the false Darsus Klex to pieces.

But he turned out to be strong.

A lot stronger than she was in fact.

With a sickening dread, Nix felt the assault crashing over and around her rage like a tidal wave, far too large for her to stuff back to its source.

Fortunately, fluid mechanics was a field she was well versed in on both a practical and academic level thanks to her eclectic experience and reading habits.

Shoving a wave back was a terrible idea. Redirecting a wave to a more useful direction though? That was a winning strategy.

So she sent the killing Force towards Primus Dolon.

Despite being on fire and in a collapsing building, Dolon still had the presence of mind to resist the deadly blow as well.

Which was curious.

The Silent Enclave wasn’t supposed to know how to manipulate the Force.

The Expunging Rite was a rite because it offered a clear external mechanism for directing the Force to destroy someone. The resistance Dolon offered was that of someone who was used to manipulating the Force with an incredible degree of precision and subtlety.

Not really a surprise that the leader of a sect who swore off using the Force to influence their fates would in fact be using the Force to influence his own fate, but it did stoke Nix’s anger a bit higher.

Which seemed to please the false Darsus Klex.

“I wonder if I need to anything at all,” he said. “You seem to be understanding the true nature of things on your own.”

“I understand that I do not have time to deal with you,” Nix said. “And I understand that you do not have time to spare either.”

“And why would you say that?” the false Darsus said.

“You’re rushing things,” Nix said. “If you wanted to kill me you would have gotten down to that immediately, without this pointless banter. If you planned to corrupt me, you would be making a better effort at it than this half-assed attempt.”

“I’m wounded,” the false Darsus said.

“Not yet,” Nix said. “I mean, you’re dead, so there’s limits to what I can do to you, but I’m willing to get creative if that’s how you want to play whatever this is?”

“This is corrective surgery,” false Darsus said. “Your light is a cancer that needs to be excised. Darkness or death, either will serve.”

Nix could feel the malice hiding behind the controlled demeanor of the man in front of her. That coupled with the memory of his please at her anger against Dolon gave Nix the key she needed to banish the Force projection he was using.

“You know there’s a service charge for everything right?” she asked, allowing a deep breath to uncoil the tension that was locking her into violent reactions. “I usually charge standard repair rates if we’re going with an hourly approach, but I don’t think contracting an assassination on yourself really counts as a repair? There’s probably also ethical and legal restrictions I’d need to check on so, maybe we can circle back to that once I’ve been able to do some research on the local laws wherever you are? I can submit a standard bidding form, but I’m not sure how I’d break the pricing out. Maybe transport, custom fees, and cleanup when I’m done? We can work something out I’m sure.”

“Uh, what?” Rassi asked.

“He asked me to kill him,” Nix said. “I don’t usually do assassinations. I’m a ship’s mechanic, so fixing things is more where my skillset is, but, and this is important, he did just try to kill you about a minute ago, so I’m provisionally on board with taking this particular assassination job.”

“I don’t think…” Rassi started to say and then interrupted herself, “wait, where did he go?”

Nix chuckled.

“Ran out of stamina,” she said. “That Force Projection trick isn’t easy. Could you feel how much Force was just radiating off him. It was meant to be intimidating but once I stopped focusing on all the murder that was in the air, I could tell it was a sign of how much energy he was putting into showing up here.”

“I don’t understand,” Rassi said.

“I’ll explain more later,” Nix said. “Right now, we need to get to Solna.”

“Okay, she’s in the light sculpturing lab,” Rassi said and started leading Nix out of the lab.

“Is anyone there with her?” Nix asked.

“Ask her where is it too and I can touch down next to it,” Goldie asked. “Oh, wait, no worries, I’m in their net. Got the location.”

“I think she’s alone,” Rassi said. “Everyone else is out in the streets looking for you, or heading towards the burning building.”

“Good.”

“I don’t know how we can get to her though?” Rassi said.

“Leave that part to me,” Nix said, breathing slowly and regularly to get herself back to a state where she could speak to the Force without anger or fear putting jagged edges on her words.

They reached the door out of the far end of the building Nix had been incarcerated in and discovered that Rassi’s senses were entirely accurate. There was a tremendous amount of commotion and it fell into three categories; those helping with the partially collapsed building, those forming a defensive perimeter in case the enclave was under some greater attack, and, the most worrisome group, those who were hunting for Nix.

In regaining control of her emotions, Nix had been able to quiet her presence in the Force enough that those who’d been drawn towards her like moths to a bonfire were momentarily confused. That they were all within her immediate vicinity was something of a problem though.

“They’re waiting for us out there,” Rassi said. “They know this is the exit that we’ll use. How are we going to get out?”

“We’re going to walk,” Nix said, breathing in deeply and closing her eyes.

I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.

It was an old mantra, one Kelda had taught her, one which predated the Jedi, and one which was still able to fill her with the peace she needed.

When the Dark Side cloaks someone, it is a numbing of the senses. It wraps deadly intentions in impenetrable darkness and dims the awareness of those who might interact with those intentions.

Nix’s request to the Force came from a different place. She bore no hatred of the people who sought her harm. She wished for nothing to happen to them, no harm, no befuddlement, no terror at not being able to perceive their foe. She merely wished to pass by them in peace.

Silently voicing her wish to the Force, she gathered Rassi by her side, including the young girl in her wish by the bonds she felt with a child who needed to protected just as much as she herself had.

Together they left the building and calmly walked past the anxious people, and down the street filled with the shocked and terrified masses.

It wasn’t until they stepped inside the lab Rassi was leading them to that either spoke.

“How?” Rassi asked, looking at Nix with a wholly unfounded sort of awe.

“The Force can have a strong influence on mind’s which aren’t trained to think for themselves,” Nix said. “It helped too that we were giving them what they wanted.”

“They wanted to find us though, didn’t they?”

“Not really. They wanted to be able to say that they looked for us everywhere they could. That they followed their orders and did as good a job as anyone expected them to,” Nix said, following Rossi through the lobby and down a hallway. “None of them really wanted to face a Great and Terrible Jedi Warrior who’d cut them to pieces with her magic laser sword.”

“You don’t have a magic laser sword though?” Rassi said.

“Yeah. People are surprisingly confused by what a lightsaber is,” Nix said. “I mean, they look pretty, but a blaster will make you just as dead and can do it from a lot farther away. I’m also not particularly Great or Terrible, but you’ll get to see that for yourself I’m sure. Is this where she is?”

“Uh, yeah,” Rassi said.

“And she knows we’re here right?”

“Yes, she does,” Solna said, opening the door to the lab and blocking the entrance to it with her body.

Where Rassi was solidly built, Solna had the physique which suggested someone had found a pile of sticks and used them to assemble an overly bright and curious human being.

“And will she be coming with us?” Nix asked. The Force said Solna definitely had to leave the encampment with Rassi, but Nix wasn’t about to engage in double kidnapping unless at least the kids involved were in agreement with it.

“She will not,” Solna said. “Rassi, what are you doing? Have you gone insane?”

“No! Solna, I…I know how this looks, but we need to go. Primus Dolon? He’s going to kill you if you stay!”

“And he’s going to kill you, Expunge you, if you leave!” Solna said.

“I’d rather be expunged than let you die!” Rassi said, grabbing Solna by the shoulders.

Solna was half a head taller than Rassi but in terms of mass couldn’t begin to resist being pushed into the room.

So she grabbed Rassi’s shoulders and shook her instead.

“Don’t you ever say that!” Solna maintained her calm insofar as she didn’t move her hands from Rassi’s shoulders to her throat and start throttling her, and Nix admired the restraint. 

“I’m sorry,” Rassi said. “I don’t want either of us to die, but after today? I can’t stay here.”

“Why?” Solna asked and turned to Nix. “What did you do to her?”

“Swore I would protect her,” Nix said. “And you. No one is going to harm either one of you. Not without getting through me and all my Evil Jedi powers first.”

“What? That doesn’t make any sense. You don’t even know her. Or me!’

“I didn’t,” Nix said. “Not until the Force, or the Xah if you prefer, showed me something I can’t walk away from.”

“The Xah doesn’t do that though,” Solna said. “It doesn’t make us do anything.”

“It’s not,” Nix said. “I’m making me do this. I have to.”

“Why? What did you see?”

“I saw how her parents died. I was with them in the Force and I know their last thoughts were the hope the she be protected and love.”

Rassi and Solna were both silent at that for a moment.

“But why does that mean we need to leave?” Solna asked.

“Because I also saw who killed them.”

Pulling a lightsaber on someone had expressed an interest in keeping you alive wasn’t the friendliest of gestures. 

Ayli wasn’t in a terribly friendly mood though. 

Also there was a recon droid hurtling towards the window on the far side of the room.

Without the time to leap past the shabby robed man, Ayli took the next best option and threw her lightsaber to disable the droid. With the help of the Force, the blade rocketed from her grasp like a missile and Ayli changed her focus to reclaiming it once it had punched a hole through the incoming attacker.

But that wasn’t quite how things worked out.

As the blade sailed past the man, he casually snagged it from the air, seeming to move far too slowly to have accomplished such a feat.

At the same time, the incoming droid exploded in a shower of pieces. There was no flame, and no detonation. Only bits of bot falling from the sky.

“My apologies,” the man said. “We will not be interrupted again.”

“Who are you?” Ayli asked, feeling more than a little concerned that she’d just disarmed herself by giving a potential foe her best weapon.

Not that her lightsaber was necessarily his best weapon. What he’d done to the droid, Ayli had the suspicion he would be able to do to her as well, though the droid wouldn’t have had any connection to the Force to call on to resist the attack.

“My name is Monfi Kyl, though I’ve been called a lot of other things, at least a handful of which aren’t profanities,” Monfi said. “You can let me know your name after I convince you that I’m here to help.”

“Help with what exactly?” Ayli asked, moving into the room but not yet taking the seat opposite Monfi. She could feel that he was trustworthy, but for all the training she’d had with the Force, she was still wary of relying on her feelings outside of combat. Being paranoid had served her well since she was a child and it hard to break away from a successful strategy.

“You’ve drawn the attention of someone truly foul,” Monfi said, and drew in a deep breath through his nose. “More than the attention. He’s hurt you already hasn’t he?”

“Before I answer that, I want my lightsaber back,” Ayli said, holding out her left hand.

“Oh! Of course,” Monfi said, and passed the unlit hilt over without hesitation. “It’s a fascinating design. The components are all new are they not? Yet the design has the elegance of an ancient Jedi style.”

“It was patterned after one I used to carry,” Kelda said, manifesting visibly within the room.

“Welcome Jedi! Or, hmm, is that the right appellation?” Monfi asked.

“She’s a ghost,” Ayli said.

“Oh, certainly not,” Monfi said. “Though I do acknowledge the similarities.”

“I died somewhere around a thousand standard years ago,” Kelda said. “And yes, I was a Jedi, once.”

“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Monfi said. “Both of you.”

“You’re a Phantom Stalker, aren’t you?” Kelda asked.

Ayli braced for combat, despite the Force offering no suggestion that violence was in the offing.

Because violence usually came without warning in her experience.

Especially if she was the one initiating it.

“That is indeed one of the things I’ve been called, though you make it sounds much less like a curse than I’ve been told Jedi typically do,” Monfi said. “For what it’s worth, the preferred title I bear is Padal Horizon Knight, but this is neither the time nor the place for honorifics.”

“Not if that riot tank out there decides these walls are basically tissue paper,” Ayli said, curious that the Force was offering no warnings of danger at all, and that the crashing destruction she expected to hear from outside was entirely absent.

“The suborned droids have been freed,” Monfi said. “There are still assassins in the city who are looking to collect the bounty posted on you, but if you can give me enough time that issue can be removed as well.”

“Why?” Ayli asked. People without obvious agendas tended to have bad ones. There were exceptions but it wasn’t the exceptions who shot you in the back.

“We have a common enemy, I believe,” Monfi said.

“Darsus Klex?” Ayli could easily believe that Darsus had managed to make a wide array of enemies but it was still rather convenient that one had shown up just when she needed him.

“No, and yes,” Monfi said, proving that one did not need to be a Jedi to be talented at answering questions in the most irritatingly ambiguous manner possible.

Ayli offered only a weary glare in response to which Monfi held up his hands in a gesture of peace.

“We’re speaking of the same person,” Monfi said. “But the guise he wears as this ‘Darsus Klex’ is not who our mutual enemy truly is. He is not a man at all to be accurate, but rather a ‘phantom’, or a ‘Dark Side Lich’ as our former-Jedi might call him.”

“And you’re a Phantom Stalker, at least according to the Jedi?” Ayli asked. “Why didn’t they call you a Lich Stalker?”

“The phantom part was used in a derogatory sense,” Monfi said. “The Jedi did not care for my Order’s focus. They felt that our focus on seeking out aberrations in the Force led to too man of us being corrupted by the fear we followed.”

“The Jedi were also not overly found of people who refused to help with tangible problems and chased what, we thought, were usually imaginary enemies,” Kelda said.

“This feels like a pretty tangible problem at the moment,” Ayli said. “And I’ve still got the burns to prove it.”

“I suspect most of the foes the Padal Knights chased were similarly tangible,” Kelda said. “Though to be fair, I have a rather different vantage point now than most of the Jedi of my time did.”

“So if this Lich isn’t Darsus Klex, who is he?” Ayli asked.

“His true name is gone, destroyed in the process of making himself into a lich,” Monfi said. “Since rising as one, he has adopted as many names and titles as those whose lives he’s usurped. The first such life was a vile monster of a man named Paralus Stahl, and that’s the one he’s returned to again and again.”

“Sounds like a delightful individual,” Ayli said. “Why is he after me?”

“I was rather hoping you would be able to tell me that,” Monfi said. “I caught his trail on Nestaba Rel. There’s a Dark Side nexus there we keep a watch over and he arrived at its door already in possession of the body he wears now, and focused on his mission.”

“What did he do to the body?” Kelda asked.

“He drowned it,” Monfi said. 

“In the Dark Side?” Aly asked, remembering with a shudder what Praxis Mar had been like.

“Yes, though more tangibly in the lake at the center of the nexus. From what I was able to read, it was an excruciating death.”

“Reading the past in a Dark Side nexus is almost guaranteed to show the viewer the lies they fear most,” Kelda said.

“For a Jedi, yes,” Monfi said. “And I won’t pretend it was easy to peer past though illusions, but the Force can be guided, even in a Dark Side nexus to reveal the truth. Given how often that is where the trails we follow lead us, my Order has techniques focused on providing the Force with the guidance it needs.”

“Why would this Paralus kill a body he was already possessing?” Ayli asked, understanding pretty easily why someone would want to kill Darsus, but unsure how that could have benefited someone who was capable to possessing Darsus in the first place.

“For the same reason all Dark Side user do anything,” Monfi said. “Power. The body he wears still moves and can still interact with the living world, but it is powered only by the corrupted energies of the Dark Side.”

“Like Ravas’ body was?” Ayli asked, glancing over to Kelda.

“It can’t be quite the same, otherwise he would be inert anywhere outside a Dark Side nexus,” Kelda said, watching Monfi for his reaction.

“That’s the trick of it from what we’ve been able to ascertain,” Monfi said. “A Lich possessing a body is usually limited because the Force which flows through the host resists the twisted Dark Side energy the Lich has warped its very self into. It will spend as much of its strength constantly fighting its host as it can use to do anything else.”

“Oh, I see,” Kelda said. “Drowning the host in a Dark Side nexus, or I suppose any other suitably horrific death, corrupt the host’s life force and allows the Lich to empower the host with its own energies without resistance. It weaves the host’s suffering into conduits for its own malice and rage.”

Monfi nodded with a broad smile on his face.

“I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to hear a Jedi say that. I’ve been taught that the Jedi regarded our our understandings of the Dark Side as impossible fantasies.”

“Why would they think that? It fits with what we’ve seen and I’ve had all of one interaction with him so far,” Ayli said.

“Because it shouldn’t be possible,” Kelda said. “Murder does not grant anyone power. Drowning a person, even in a Dark Side nexus, is a good method of producing a corpse and not much else.”

“She’s right,” Monfi said. “From everything we know, what a Lich does can’t work. And then we watch it work anyways. Really hard to argue with someone in cases like that.”

“So where does that leave us?” Ayli asked.

“At a choice,” Monfi said. “Your attackers were sent by one of Paralus’ minions. My associates have dealt with that problem, for now at least. If you wish, you may leave and chose your own path forward. Paralus will almost certainly come for you again, or those connected to you, but you have survived one brush with him so I will not claim doing so again is impossible, only that he will have learned from your encounter much as you have.”

“And the other choice is to combine our efforts with yours?” Kelda said.

“We will be stronger working together,” Monfi said, “providing we can trust one another.”

“Wait. You said Paralus would strike at those connected to us? How distant could those connections be? And what could he do?” Ayli asked, a thousand concerns leaping to her mind.

“Physical distance is generally irrelevant to a Force Lich,” Monfi said. “What matters more is how entangled your life is with someone else’s.”

“So my parents?”

“Are at risk, especially if they are often in your thoughts,” Monfi said.

Ayli was a bit ashamed that, for as much as she loved them, she’d spent months focused on her Jedi training without thinking about her adopted parents much.

There was someone else however who was never far from the center of her mind.

“And my wife?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“Unless you are estranged by apathy, I’m afraid she’s in peril as well,” Monfi said.

“Could Paralus cloud her in the Dark Side to where neither of us would be able to sense her?” Ayli asked, as the echo of a terrible rage seemed to scream across the stars to her.

“That’s not something we’ve ever seen a Lich do,” Monfi said. “I doubt they can since we’re most often stuck with tracking them by listening for their victims. If they could hide the people they target we’d almost never find them.

The scream was so far away and yet Ayli could feel it echoing out of her heart.

And Kelda could do too from the look on her face.

“Something is very wrong,” Kelda said.

“We have to go. Now,” Ayli said. “And you’re coming with us.”

Nix sat quietly within the Force. All around her, the living flow of the Force grew calm and undisturbed as Nix dwelled on the glimpses she’d seen of the past.

Of the deaths of Rassi’s parents.

Kodo had died in terror. He’d felt the Force being wrenched around the woman he loved most in the galaxy and twisted into a noose he wasn’t strong enough to pull her free of. He’d given everything he had in the vain struggle to spare her the agony they were both being subjected too.

Lipa had died in despair. She’d survived Kodo only by a moment. Only long enough to feel every instant of his death, to feel his desperation and to know that they were going to lose everything. She’d fought on evenknowing it was hopeless, holding out for a miracle even as the man she loved was extinguished forever.

For each of them their last thought had been the same though. 

It had been a prayer.

Their daughter would be raised by the people who were murdering them. To an uncaring galaxy they’d sent their last, unreasonable hope out in a call that someone, literally anyone else, would care for her.

Not avenge them. Not destroy the cancerous culture that had destroyed them. 

All they’d wanted was that Rassi would be protected.

And loved.

Nix was quiet.

No.

She was silent.

For a trio of heartbeats she sat in perfect silence. Unmoving. A void within the Force as she withdrew inside herself.

“Uh, are you okay?” Rassi asked, backing away from where Nix sat as still as a pillar.

Breath.

In.

Out.

“No,” Nix said at last.

What unfurled from her was a bloom of purity.

Rage screamed.

That was to provide a warning Nix saw.

This was not the time for warnings.

She was beyond offering a warning.

She was beyond rage.

Dolon had made a terrible, terrible mistake.

He’d given her the sensitivity to see past his obfuscations.

Or.

No.

She’d always had that sensitivity.

He wasn’t that subtle. If she hadn’t been drugged she would have seen it sooner. If she’d wanted to.

Pinpointing where he was though?

Feeling his life pulsing in the Force?

He couldn’t have imagined she’d be capable of that.

He was too well hidden.

Too used to being supreme in his manipulation of the Force.

Nix saw more.

No Jedi or Sith had come the Silent Enclave within the lifetime of anyone currently in it.

But the Jedi had been such a useful boogeyman for Dolon and those who came before him. The Primuses used that the fear of the Jedi, of every other Force tradition, to keep generations corralled to the their wills.

And those who saw past the lies? Or who even simply dared to hope for another life than the ones they’d been consigned to?

Dolon thought of himself as a gardener. Trimming the unruly was both a responsibility and a pleasure.

Nix wasn’t consciously aware that her eyes had become shining gold ringed with crimson malice.

She didn’t feel the earrings she wore flare to their maximum setting before sputtering out and falling from her ears.

She’d come seeking a new understanding of the Force. She’d hoped to learn more of its secrets, and in that silence she did.

“NO!” 

Nix hadn’t moved. Hadn’t begun to do anything. Wasn’t an instant away from grasping the flame of Primus’ Dolon’s life and extinguishing it.

She wasn’t about to turn his corpse into a Dark Side nexus by tearing the life he carried apart using the life of the Force around him.

She wasn’t because Ravas was standing before her, shining with a light Nix had never seen within her, and blocking Nix from her quarry.

“Do not do this,” Ravas said, speaking with the voice of the centuries she carried in life and death.

“I have to,” Nix said, unwilling to accept a universe where Primus Dolon existed when Rassi’s parents did not. “There must be balance.”

“Yes,” Ravas said. “Balance. You will not find balance in your own destruction.”

Nix felt her own anger at last and lashed against Ravas, trying to push the meddling ghost away before Dolon escaped.

Ravas was unmovable though.

Nix wailed and hammered harder at her but the blows but were met with only a gentle embrace.

“There are many ways to fall to the Dark Side,” Ravas said, holding onto Nix as tears that should have belonged to Rassi fell from Nix’s eyes. “I won’t let this be yours.”

It took a long moment for Nix to let go of the embrace.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last, shame replacing rage.

“I don’t understand?” Rassi asked. “What…who is she?”

Ravas wasn’t visible. Nix knew she was there because of their closeness in the Force. Rassi knew she was there because Rassi was, it seemed, disturbingly observant with the Force.

Nix wiped the tears from her eyes and focused on gaining some distance from her emotions.

“This is my friend,” Nix said. “Ravas this is Rassi, she would like to leave here.”

“A pleasure to meet you Rassi Savos and that seems wise,” Ravas said. “Everyone in this encampment is aware of you at the moment.”

“Oh no. Oh no no no,” Rassi said, going so quiet in the Force that she wasn’t merely hidden, she was functionally invisible. “They’re going to expunge you. They won’t wait. They’ll do it now.”

Nix chuckled at that, and all of the darkness she felt ran through that chuckle.

“Let them try,” she said, her eyes glittering with crimson rage.

“He will use the children for support,” Ravas said and Nix felt her rage curdle. 

She understood the “Expunging” rite the Silent Enclave practiced now, having witnessed it from within the echoes of Kodo and Lipa’s deaths. It could be performed by a single individual, provided they were more practiced with manipulating the Force than their victim was. That wasn’t how any Primus worked though due to the risks involved in the rite.

Twisting the Force into a tool of death was the most deeply corruptive action Nix could imagine, and one that the Force did not naturally acquiesce to. The simplest problem was that if the victim resisted successfully, the malformation the caster had crafted would rebound on them and obliterate their life force instead. Nix was supremely confident that she could (and would) inflict such retribution on Primus Dolon the instant he attempted to expunge her.

As Ravas said though he would not come for her alone.

Apart from being fearful of Nix’s strength (which he clearly was not sufficiently aware of), there was the problem that the Expunging Rite warped the caster no matter what effect it had on its victim. 

Prior to her vision, Nix would have sworn than directly destroying a life with the Force (as opposed to using an indirect means such as crushing someone’s throat or broiling them with lightning – it was fine distinction to be sure) would also destroy the Force users life as well. There simply didn’t seem to be a means by which the caster would avoid the black hole of death they had created, since they would need to be connected with the victim on an inescapable level.

Which was why the Primuses ganged up on their victims. 

With a group of Force users to draw on, the caster of the rite was capable of using their combined strength to crush the victim and could rely on their supporters to pull them back before they experienced the consequences of their deed.

And Dolon preferred to use children for his support.

Because they would still believe in him with all their hearts.

Because they hadn’t yet grown accustomed to suppressing their relationship with the Force to a completely passive state.

Because they were the most replaceable if anything went wrong. After all if the victim did resist and someone needed to suffer a death to see that the expunging went through to completion, well then the Xah had clearly called a little Saint back to its embrace. The Primus was much too important to be lost to that duty after all.

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Rassi said.

“I saw your past,” Nix said. “And I learned some things that have left me not at my best. Ravas is helping me, but at the moment I am in a very dangerous mood.”

“Can I start shooting yet Mom?” Goldie asked and Nix was tempted, so very tempted, to give the order to glass the entire settlement.

“No. If you attack a citizen settlement, the local patrols will shoot you down,” Nix said.

“Who’s that?” Rassi asked.

“Goldie. She’s how we’ll get out of here without using the Force.” Nix tapped the earbud she was still wearing to indicate how she was talking with someone who wasn’t present. “Or, I guess using the Force doesn’t matter anymore.” Nix could sense the commotion throughout the enclave. At least two groups of adults were converging on her cell, while Dolon gathered together the young supporters he needed for the rite.

Curiously, Honored Jolu was not with neither Dolon nor the groups who were approaching to kill Nix in a more traditional manner.

“What’s happening there?” Goldie asked.

“I’ll explain everything later. We need to move now,” Nix said, reaching out a hand to Rassi.

“Wait, like, right now?” Rassi asked. “I need to get my stuff first.”

“I’m sorry, there’s no time for that,” Nix said.

“My friend! We need to take Solna too!” Rassi said, looking around frantically as though her friend might already be at hand.

“I can distract the killers they’re sending,” Ravas said. “Go.”

For a blessed change, when Nix reached out to the Force for guidance it was clear as crystal.

She needed to get Rassi away from the enclave.

And Rassi needed Solna. 

The Force didn’t seem to have a problem with the Silent Enclaves general existence but it was finally being vocal, as only an inaudible cosmic presence could be, that Nix needed to rescue not one but two kids. And herself.

She nodded to Ravas.

“Don’t do anything dangerous. Kelda will kill me and send my ghost to find you if you do.”

Ravas laughed at that and vanished, which could have been comforting if Nix hadn’t known Ravas for over a year.

“Where’s Solna at? Can you sense her?” Nix asked.

“Of course! I always know where she is,” Rassi said as she jumped down into the open hatch in the cell’s bathroom.

Nix followed, allowing herself a moment smile at the sudden disruption and chaos both of the groups who were closing on her experienced.

Ravas wasn’t using any Dark Side techniques, but even a former-Jedi Padawan could play merry havoc against people who were sensitive to the Force but inexperienced in manipulating it.

That observation gave her an idea.

She grabbed Rassi’s arm as they ran down one of the basement hallways so she wouldn’t lose track of her.

“I need a second. Dolon’s thinks he’s going to try the Expunging Rite but I think he needs to worry about some other things.”

“Like what?”

Nix’s heightened sensitivity to the Force showed her exactly what she was looking for, which led, a moment later, to an explosion that rocked the building they were in.

“No fair!” Goldie said.

“What did you do?” Rassi asked, looking perplexed.

“Dolon was setting up for the rite in one of the actual buildings rather than his tent. A building which had a generator in it. Generators, in case you’re curious, are shockingly fragile beasts if you know which parts to break. So now Primus Dolon can worry about the burning building that’s collapsing on him rather than trying to become an even greater abomination than he already is. Oh, and for what it’s worth, he was alone in the building, so no one else is there to help him. His panic really shouldn’t feel this good, but oh stars it does.”

“That’s wonderful to hear,” a man said from behind Nix. “Perhaps you’ll be amenable to undoing the damage you’ve caused, unlike your wife was.”

Nix turned, trying to draw her lightsaber only to remember that she didn’t have it with her.

Which was bad, because if there was ever someone who deserved to be hit with a lightsaber, it was Darsus Klex.

The problem with explosions was that they tended to draw all sorts of attention. From the bystanders who would easily be able to identity her (since there wasn’t exactly a surplus of Twi’leks on Cellondia), to the law enforcement goons whose sirens Ayli could already hear blaring to life in the distance. 

In theory as the assaulted party, law enforcement should have been on her side. In practice however, they were almost uniformly on the side of the people who signed their paychecks, who in turn were rarely, if ever, interested in people involved in lowering property values, no matter whether they were the perpetrators or the victims. 

“We both know you’re not going to tell me anything about who hired you,” Ayli said, mindful of how little time she had left. “All I want to know is how much.”

“How…what?” the only conscious assassin asked.

“How much were you offered for the job?” Ayli said. “Tell me that, and you can start running. The law thugs are going to get your partners. There’s no chance they get away with the state they’re in now. If you’re fast though they won’t get you too.”

“I don’t know how much it was,” the assassin said. “Not exactly. It was a big score though. Like retire for a year big, from what Moklar said.”

The assassin was frozen in place, but Ayli could feel the barely suppressed terror radiating from him. Being held at lightsaber point wasn’t a fun experience in general, but the assassin knew how tenuous is position was. All Ayli needed to do was flick the blade forward a few inches and he’d be looking for a new body to mount his head on.

“Good enough,” Ayli said. “Door’s behind you. I suggest heading down. They’ll have flyers patrolling who’ll catch you quick if you try for the roofs.”

The assassin hesitated, understandably Ayli thought. If there was ever a time when he was likely to get murdered it would be the instant he turned his back on the person threatening him with the glowing plasma blade.

Ayli shut the blade off and waited. 

He was completely safe with her, provided he didn’t make the same stupid mistake desperate people so often did.

In a shocking display of basic survival instincts, the assassin did not go for any of the hold out weapons Ayli could sense he carried. Instead, he got to the door, waited an instant to make sure it wasn’t a trap, and then turned and plunged through it.

Ayli couldn’t tell if he went for the stairs down or up, but he retreated enough that he was no longer her problem. Or possibly anyone else’s. It had felt right to give him a another chance. The Force didn’t provide any clarity on whether he would use it well or poorly – that decision lay with him and awaited him the uncertain waters of the future.

“Will he draw the law enforcers away?” Kelda asked.

“Probably not,” Ayli said. “They’ll be searching the scene here and finding the first two assassins is going to tie them up for a while.”

“And you? I feel like you have a plan for removing yourself from the vicinity as well.”

“I wasn’t lying about the roofs being a bad idea, but I was exaggerating how long it will take them to get flyers up to search them.” Ayli said and Force Leapt to the roof of the building across the courtyard.”

“How can you tell that?”

“The sirens are coming by ground. Maintaining an aerial fleet of patrollers is more costly, only really nice places with stuff worth spending a lot of money to protect tend to go in for those. They won’t scramble costly assets until the ground forces call for them and that’ll only happen after the preliminary investigation.” Ayli cast around for a moment, spied the proper sort of building five rooftops away and began making less obvious leaps to reach it.

“That was how the Empire worked?” Kelda didn’t need to worry about crossing the distance like Ayli did. She simply trailed along invisibly over Ayli’s shoulder.

“Oh, not at all,” Ayli said. “If the Imperials bothered to put a city under their direct patrol, they were focused on crushing it. Aerial surveillance was constant and they’d have droids sniffing out the sewers too. Whatever it took, they’d find enough people ‘involved in treason’ to make for an ‘effective’ public execution spectacle.”

“That doesn’t seem sustainable.”

“It didn’t have to be. All they were looking for was to create informants and satiate the appetites of the base of people who welcomed autocratic rule. All the places they didn’t bother with making an example of, they left to the local security forces, who ultimately reported to them anyways. The local forces didn’t have the same budgets though, so they were always easier to work around.”

“And that’s changed since the Empire fell?”

“In some places? Sure. It depends a lot on how many people embraced the Empire compared to how many have a drop of compassion in their blood. I’ve seen a few ex-Imperial planets that had enough of the second type to make things work. And a few that definitely did not. Reform is tough, but it’s possible if people put in the time and energy. Well, if they put in enough time and energy and someone deals with all the Imperial-wannabes who will try to sabotage them.”

Ayli landed on a building with a rooftop garden and a door leading inside. She paused a moment, reaching out with the Force, searching for signs of any inhabitants, only to find a party in full swing one level below them.

“There’s a question we should be considering,” Kelda said.

“Yeah. How did those assassin’s know where to find me?”

“And who sent them.”

“I’m going to go with Darsus,” Ayli said. “No one else has come after us in months.”

“That’s the most reasonable assumption, but how would a Force Ghost arrange a meeting with assassin’s he’d never met before?”

“Maybe that’s why whoever it is possessed Darsus?” Ayli turned her attention to the street below them. Foot traffic was moving erratically, some trying to move towards the explosion to see what had occurred, some trying to move away from it so that it wouldn’t become their problem. “He’s got to have connections to a lot ethically questionable people.”

“Ethically questionable people who would want to see a hard currency chit or easily marketable valuables I imagine. Force projections are notably lacking in either of those.”

“That’s a valid point.” Ayli felt as much as saw the opening that she needed appear and hurled herself off the top of the building without a second’s hesitation. He’d have to have a local associate for things like that.”

As she landed, Ayli assumed a walking posture and joined segment of the crowd which was pressing away from the explosions. In theory, she knew she could have asked the Force to mask her presence. While the Dark Side was exceptionally good at that, bein unobtrusive wasn’t a necessarily “Dark” ability, especially if there was no malice in the intent. 

With the right sort of attitude though, there was no need to trouble the Force for an assist. With an unhurried stride, Ayli looked like someone who had nothing in particular to hide and nowhere to be urgently.

Which was sufficiently boring that no one had any reason to give her a second thought.

No one except the driver of the of truck which jumped the curb, intent on plowing through the crowd to get to her.

Catching a speeding truck was a lot harder than it sounded.

Size mattered not from what Kelda had taught her.

Velocity on the other hand?

Force pushing a truck which was intent on moving forward to crush her was theoretically no more difficult than lifting a single rock. In neither case was Ayli the one who was doing the lifting. The Force flowed freely on Cellondia. To it, a pebble or a mountain were functionally the same. 

But to Ayli they weren’t.

She was only a tiny presence in the Force, and only knew how to call on, what felt like, a tiny bit of it. That tiny bit was enough to shove aside everyone who was in between her and the truck, with just enough left over to cushion the impact, but that was the extent of what she was able to manage.

The building behind her sold overprice speeder bikes. It was not terribly pleasant being rammed through the front wall of the shop, what felt like the majority of the stock they had on hand and then the back wall of the shop as well.

The truck would have kept moving but the debris it plowed through had been crammed up into its engine compartment and severed a number of necessary linkages. Instead it simply pinned Ayli to the remains of the wall and set the flammable bits of wreckage underneath it on fire.

“Kelda! Could use a hand here!” Ayli said, trying to lift the broken truck away but feeling exhausted from the effort of simply surviving.

“Don’t try to move the truck. Push the rest of the wall at your back away. It’s mostly broken already.”

Which was rather helpful Ayli decided.

Slipping a hand behind herself (unnecessary as that was), she reached out and shoved. The pressure she was under loosened instantly, sending her tumbling backwards. 

The flames in the shop hit a rack of fuel cells and fire shot everywhere. Ayli wondered if the driver would survive, only for that worry to be cut short as a droid tore itself loose from the driver’s compartment and began clawing a path through the flaming rubble to get to her.

“Droids should not be able to do that,” Ayli said, keenly aware of the behavioral control modules installed in any droid which controlled potentially life threatening equipment from the number of times she’d subverted those modules to send haywire droids against Imperial encampments and garrisons.

“Then you had best run if you’re still able to.”

“I’m going to have to be,” Ayli said, feeling a stitch in her side which she did not like.

“This alleyway is clear of droids and people,” Kelda said, standing at its mouth.

“For now,” Ayli said, with the distinct feeling that she was being herded somewhere she did not want to go.

“Can you make it back to the ship?” Kelda asked.

“I can, but I’m not going there yet,” Ayli said, calculating where she was and how to get to the parts warehouse where she might find a clue to Nix’s location.

“Anywhere we go will put innocents in danger,” Kelda said.

“Not anywhere. There’s one place we can head where no one innocent will be around to hurt,” Ayli said, struggling to find a calm breath inside her.

“Darsus may only be a projection here too,” Kelda said.

“Possibly, probably, but there has to be someone he’s working through. Take that person out and we can get back to finding Nix and Ravas without destroying the town in the process.” 

The problem with alleyways is that they’re only so long. 

And they allow travel in very specific direction.

Ayli could have been surprised when an armored police van pulled up and blocked the end of the alley.

She could have been hopeful that help had arrived.

She could have made a lot of mistakes like that.

She’d seen a lot of people make mistakes like that.

She hadn’t seen any of them live to regret those mistakes though which was why she didn’t bother with hoping or being surprised.

She simply crashed through the nearest door in time to avoid the barrage of blaster cannon fire which ripped through the alleyway.

“Oh good. You’re still alive!” said a human male dressed in the shabbiest of formerly white robes Ayli had ever seen.  “Let’s see about keeping you that way.”

At the height of the influence and fame, there was a belief that it was impossible to surprise a Jedi. The speed with which they reacted to events around them was supposedly due to their ability to foresee the future, which meant ambushes were simply impossible to pull off.

Then the Emperor had the entire Order executed at the same time by the clone troops who’d been dying in the millions to the basic droids fielded by the Separatists. 

What little reputation the Jedi had left in the Imperial era was therefor rather tarnished, and any belief in their infallibility or impossible capabilities was thoroughly shattered. 

Nix suspected that was part of the reason why, despite the Emperor being long dead, and the New Republic firmly established in its governance the core world, no one seemed to be suggesting that the Jedi Order the Old Republic had relied upon be re-established as well.

Despite that, right in front of her stood a girl who believed Nix to be a Jedi, or at least the next best thing to one. Believed her to be a Jedi and was hoping with all her heart that a Jedi would be able to save her.

Nix’s first impulse was to correct the young woman, but she held that thought at bay. Far more important than correcting the girl was learning what it was she needed to be saved from.

“How did I know you were there? If I wanted to arrange a meeting with me that other people wouldn’t notice, this is exactly when and where I would do it,” Nix said, plopping down into one of the chairs in her prison cell / temporary housing. She glanced at the chair opposite her own, invite the young woman to rest too.

“But you couldn’t have sensed me.” The girl was worried about the implications of that, and the lingering effect of the Covos juice let Nix feel the shape of the fear which lay beyond those fears.

“I didn’t. You were very quiet. Much quieter than I could be. Much quieter than the Force, or the Xah as you call it, is, even in a place like this.”

“Is that a Jedi technique? Warping the Xah so you can hear even those who are maintaining proper posture?” the young woman asked.

Nix pointed to the earring’s she’d been given.

“I can’t warp anything now,” Nix said. “I just know how to listen, its a mechanic thing. When I hear something that’s too quiet, that can be as worrisome as something loud.”

“Oh no!,” the young woman said. “They already put the baby chains on you?”

Nix was pretty sure she knew what that meant, but she touched her left earring and shot the young woman a questioning look, which was answered by a crestfallen nod.

“And if I take them off?” Nix asked, curious if she hadn’t sensed a betrayal there because her captors were simply that good at hiding their agenda or if they’d been on the up and up.

“They’ll know. They’ll know and they’ll expunge you immediately,” the young woman said.

“That would be a mistake,” Nix said and allowed the young woman to imagine that the mistake would be on Nix’s part, rather than the storm of hellfire that Goldie would reign down on the encampment if Nix’s captors tried to do something unpleasant.

“I’m sorry. I thought you could help me,” the girl said and turned to leave.

Via the access panel in the restroom’s floor? Nix saw a flash of the young woman’s arrival and wondered if her captors knew that her cell was quite a bit less than secure.

“Why don’t you tell me what you need help with, Miss…?” Nix let both questions hang there, hoping that the easier to answer one might lead to an explanation of the more difficult question.

“Rassi.”

“Of the two of us, I’m going to guess that you’re the one who’s more trapped here?” Nix didn’t need Force-powered intuition to arrive at that conclusion. 

“How?” Rassi asked, looking flabbergasted to have been discovered.

“I’m not sure what else you might think I could offer you except escape,” Nix said. “If you think I’m a Jedi, I doubt you’re planning to ask me to assassinate someone, and anything to do with your people, I kind of lack the social clout to do much about.”

Rassi dropped her face into her palms and shook a bit, her laughter not especially happy, but more a mix of relief and despair warring against one another.

“You’re not wrong,” she said, without lifting her face up. “But its too late for that.”

“Why? Not why is it too late, though I am curious about that, but why do you want to leave?”

“I don’t belong here.”

Nix turned to the Force, hoping that her enhanced sensitivity to it might spare Rassi from explaining what was clearly a painful subject. Peering into the past however only showed Nix flashes of the times she’d been shunned or rejected for being too weird for the people around her.

There were more than she recalled. A lot more. 

Wincing at the residual shame, she felt a tingle of numbness around her ears.

Her earrings were objecting to looking into the past? 

That was interesting. 

Nix could understand why, in a community of Force sensitive people, helping children retain control of their ability to manipulate the world around them with the Force could be a good thing. The exact method the community was using seemed barbaric to Nix, especially when applied to children, but she knew keeping an open mind was critical. 

To a certain point.

“What did they do to you?” she asked, dark suspicions roiling in her mind.

“No. Nothing. I’m just…I’m too loud,” Rassi said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

Except she wasn’t speaking of audible volume.

“You use the Force. Actually use it,” Nix said, thinking back to the many years she’d done the same without any conscious awareness of what she was doing.

“No! I mean, I don’t do it. It just happens.”

Because Rassi was the same as Nix had been.

“And what do they do to you when that happens?” Nix asked, acknowledging the anger that was burning surprisingly hot inside her. 

The last thing she needed was to lash out with the Force, and that made it all the more tempting to her darker impulses.

“Nothing! They…no one knows that its me,” Rassi said.

That seemed unlikely but Nix reflected on how incredibly quiet Rassi was compared even to people like Barso who Nix could still hear despite the growing physical distance between them. 

“I gotcha,” she said. “And I’ve got you. When I leave, you’re coming with me. If you still want to.”

“You won’t be leaving though,” Rassi said.

“You mentioned they would try to ‘expunge me’. Who are ‘they’ and what does ‘expunging’ involve?” Nix asked.

“Primus Dolon, and the Honored if he needs them,” Rassi said. “They can erase people from the Xah. They only do it for the worst crimes though.”

“When you say erase, you mean kill with the Xah don’t you?” Nix asked, acutely aware of exactly how evil, and difficult, it was to snuff out a life directly with the Force.

“It’s worse than that,” Rassi said. “They unweave the Xah inside the person. It’s like the person they expunge never existed. They’re just gone.”

“And they perform this rite against only the worst criminals?” Nix asked, a bone deep suspicion of what might constitute a capital offense stoking the flames of anger within her.

“That’s what they say,” Rassi said. “I’ve never seen them do it. It’s just something people talk about.”

“And would one of these crimes be discovering the existence of this enclave?” Nix asked.

“Only if you take off the earrings,” Rassi said.

Which fit with the unspoken threat Jolu had made.

Nix took a long, slow breath, cooling her rising temper.

Rassi was telling the truth. But it was her truth.

Would Donol and Jolu really try to kill Nix? Maybe. It was certainly something Rassi had heard they would do, but that was only a rumor. 

Had Rassi’s people mistreated her? In Nix’s view, absolutely. But would her parents have a different perspective? Definitely. Far more importantly, would her parent’s perspective have any validity to it? Did they love her and were trying as best they knew how, failing as people inevitably will but still trying?

Nix’s inclination was to doubt that. It didn’t take a social genius to see that the encampment held fairly extreme views and enforced those views as the harshest of religious dogma.

“Even with the earrings, I’ll be able to get out of here,” Nix said.

“But you can’t use your Jedi arts,” Rassi said.

“I’m more than the Force tricks I’ve picked up,” Nix said. “The same’s true for you too. The Force isn’t something that controls everything. It can help guide us, but my Engine Top Griddle Cakes require precisely zero skill with the Force and have won me three whole jobs so far. Which, yeah, three isn’t a lot, but ship mechanic jobs can be surprisingly hard to come by in some ports. Especially if you don’t have a local license. Griddle Cakes though? Everyone loves griddle cakes. Well, not Hutts. Or not Mabbu the Hutt. Made her spectacularly sick. Ever see a Hutt projectile vomit? It is not a pretty sight, and the clean up? Had to leave that the droids and it took them days.”

Nix blinked, reeling herself back from a happy little trip down memory lane.

“Uh, what was I saying?” she asked, mostly to buy herself time.

“Griddle cakes?”

“Oh, no, sorry, that was just an example. What’s important is that the Force, or the Xah, it’s only a part of us. We exist, I think, because there’s so much more that we can do than the Force can. It’s like if all the Force wanted was life, there’s plenty of planets that are covered from pole to pole with mono-cellular life. Plenty that are covered in vegetation too. Those places, from what I’ve read, and the few I’ve visited, can feel like boundless oasis of potential in the Force. So why bother with us complicated, sapient animal types?”

“Because we can do more.”

“Exactly. We’re all constantly expressing ourselves and our lives. We don’t need ‘meaning’. We’re the ones who create it. And the Force is a part of that, but what we can do goes well beyond the limits of ourselves.”

“And all that will let you escape?” Rassi asked, not sounding entirely convinced, but Nix was willing to take even partial belief at this stage of their discussion.

“All of that will let both of us escape. If you want to.” It was a dangerous promise to make. It would absolutely leave Nix set against a small army of Force sensitives, some of whom were clearly willing and empowered to violate their societal taboo against manipulating the Force.

“Of course I do!” Rassi said.

“I believe you. It took cleverness and bravery to get in here and the only reason to use either of those is because you’re serious about what you say. There is a price here though.”

“I’ll pay it. Whatever you want!” Rassi said and Nix pictured all the myriad paths where that declaration could have gone terribly, terribly wrong.

“It’s not what I want. Never trust someone who asks you for things that seem wrong or uncomfortable. No, the price I’m talking about is that if I spirit you away from her, you’ll be leaving behind family, friends, and the world you’ve known. The galaxy is not a particularly safe place, and you may find you like it a lot less out there, than here.”

“I won’t,” Rassi said, fierce conviction surging through her. “My Mom and Dad, they were trying to get us out. They’d seen other places, and they knew this wasn’t where we were supposed to be.”

Nix didn’t like the past tense Rassi was using for her family.

“What happened to them?” she asked, a new frost entering her heart.

“He said it was an accident. Primus Donol did. One of the ones that’s meant to be by the Xah, so its hidden from us as an act of mercy.”

The Covos juice had been a mistake. They never should have given it to Nix. Not if there was the possibility that she might meet Rassi.

Not if she might be able to peer back into the past of the girl before her.

It was only a flash, a brief few seconds played out from a perspective Rassi hadn’t seen, couldn’t see in fact because someone had shrouded the moment in the Dark Side, but a moment Nix’s Covos enhanced vision penetrated with ease.

A moment where Kodo and Lipa Savos had perished.

A moment which had decidedly not been an accident.

Ayli had lived in many places but there were few were she felt more at home than in the cockpit of a starship. The familiar rhythm of pre-flight checks and the engine cycles as the sublight and hyper drives came to life were a familiar balm which dulled her worry by almost a full one percent.

“I still can’t determine where either of them are, but I can sense that they left Cellondia days ago,” Kelda said from the copilot’s seat.

As a ghost, she didn’t need to sit for the trip, but it did make conversing easier.

“That checks out with Nix’s plans,” Ayli said. “I’ve sent a message to Archivist Bopo to see if she was able to point Nix in any particular direction but local time in Haliph City is the middle of the night so she’s not going to get it for another four or five hours.”

“And the trip to Cellondia is five hours?” Kelda asked.

“Yeah, so we might get a new destination right as we land.” Ayli confirmed the hyperspace route calculation, toying with the riskier alternative that would cut an hour off the trip but discarding it when a nudge from the Force suggested it would leave her ship damaged when she very much needed it to be ready for anything.

“And if the Archivist had no leads for them to pursue?” Kelda asked.

“Then we’ll track down whatever they did manage to find,” Ayli said. “If Cellondia had been a complete bust, they would have come home after all, so they had to have found something here.”

“True,” Kelda said. “But each of them can be quite clever.”

“Yes, but if it comes to it you know all we need to do is think of the most ill-advisable place to look for further information and make a beeline there and we’ll be right on their tracks.”

Kelda sighed.

“I wish I could say you were wrong. I wish I could say that wasn’t a consistent pattern of behavior dating back across the centuries in fact.”

“On the upside, we can make it work in our favor for a change,” Ayli said. “And it’s possible that Darsus, or whoever is wearing his skin these days, won’t be aware of that fact.”

“My suspicion is that our visitor in the cave is not navigating via normal corridors of spacetime which you pass through,” Kelda said. “There are worlds-between-worlds, and darkened pathways spirits may travel.”

“Was he a spirit though?” Ayli asked. “He looked just like Darsus Klex. Why would a spirit of someone else do that unless they’d possessed him like Ravas possessed me?”

“I don’t know. Which is worrisome. I can say for certain though that the shade that assaulted you was a projection. Had he been present in person, I doubt I could have driven him off as I did.”

“I’m surprised you were able to do anything in a Dark Side nexus like that?” Ayli said.

“Light shines the easiest in the Dark,” Kelda said. “But I’d rather not have to repeat that stunt. It was…tiring.”

Ayli heard an odd note in Kelda’s voice and turned to her before initiating lift off.

“Are you going to be okay?” Ayli asked.

“In time I’ll be fine.” 

“And until then?” 

“I’m wondering if that might be part of why I’m having trouble locating Ravas and Nix,” Kelda said. “The Dark Side is exceptionally good at cloaking things and I submerged myself in quite a lot of it there. I’m still submerged in it in fact.”

“Still? How?”

“The light you saw? That was me. Not as simply the source, but the light itself was me.”

“That you blasted out like an explosion?”

“Not an explosion exactly but yes.”

“And how are you going to be okay after doing that how?”

“I’m always connected to myself. I’m just spread a little thinner than usual. With time I’m gathering myself back together though. No need to worry.”

Ayli chuckled and brought the engines to life.

“Still working on the ‘worry’ thing,” she said, thinking back to the many meditation sessions they’d spent together unpacking the mess that was Ayli’s childhood.

Four hours later, as they arrived at the main starport in Haliph City, Ayli was forced to admit that she perhaps had a bit more work to do on that front.

“We seem to be ahead of schedule.” There was no accusation in Kelda’s tone but Ayli knew the instability in the flight had drawn a bit of attention. She could feel Kelda standing beside her, but it was easier to deal with disembarking if no one else noticed her, so Ayli had snagged a headset comm unit to wear so she didn’t look too odd speaking to thin air.

“I took a few short cuts.” 

Nix would have described them less charitably, but Nix had gone and fallen off the edge of the galaxy, so her complaints weren’t ones Ayli felt warranted much consideration.

No matter how right she would have been.

“Can we call on the archivist this early?” Kelda asked.

“Probably not the best idea. Bopo tends to be a bit cranky before her first three cups of kaf. If I know Nix though, she would have checked in with one of the local tech warehouses.”

“That seems like an odd place to look for clues to hidden Force traditions.”

“If they’re hidden then temples or libraries would be the odd places to find them wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose that is the first place someone might look.”

“Nix is more comfortable around mechanics and suppliers too,” Ayli paused as a public info kiosk to search for any supply warehouses near Bopo’s residence. “I don’t know what tact she would take but bring up Force users in casual conversation with a parts vendor would probably be easier for her than with anyone else.”

“You speak as though you lack her skill in that area.”

“Oh definitely,” Ayli found two likely candidates, both the sort of places that mostly dealt with fleet level procurement rather than personal retail. “I don’t need to bring up anything mystical though. I’m just going to tell them I’m looking for my wife.”

“And they’ll believe you?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. That’s what the Force is for,” Ayli said.

“Take care there,” Kelda said. “The Force can have a strong influence on weak minds, but persuading people with it is dangerous for a number of reasons.”

“Oh, no. I’m not going to do any mind control stuff. That’s…I don’t want to do that. I’m just going to listen. Like Nix taught me.”

“Ah, to see if they’re lying,” Kelda said, shaking her head in agreement.

“And hopefully get a sense of why.” Ayli called for a droid speeder to pick them up and noticed an odd glitch in the system that forced her to double enter her identity chit. 

“I may be able to help with that,” Kelda said.

“You’re recovering still aren’t you?” Ayli asked as a tiny whisper of concern began to worm a path towards her heart.

“Yes, but there’s plenty left of me to listen along with you,” Kelda said, seemingly not sharing Ayli’s misgivings. “You expect they might lie to protect Nix? Or simply to offer resistance to a potential bounty hunter?”

“Yes. To both. If they’re concerned for Nix, I can show them a holo of our last call to prove I am who I say I am. If they think I’m a bounty hunter all they’re going to want is their cut.”

“We don’t have that kind of credit on hand do we?”

“I wouldn’t trust buying that info even if we did. All they’d need to do is say something like ‘she was going to Coruscant’ or some other common destination even if they’d never seen her before.”

The droid speeder arrived and popped the backdoor open for Ayli to enter.

She hesitated for a moment, feeling more certain than ever that she was walking into a trap.

“The meter is already running,” the droid driver reported.

And walking into a trap she could sense was probably better than waiting for one to find her when she wasn’t aware of it.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“I logged the destination in the pickup call,” Ayli said, not entirely surprised to find an automated system that couldn’t connect even the basic information given to it.

The driver twitched for a second before righting itself.

Without a word it pulled the speeder away from the curb and began heading in exactly the wrong direction.

“This isn’t right,” Kelda said, her voice and gaze going distant as she spoke.

“It is not,” Ayli agreed. She didn’t have her lightsaber in her hand only because she knew the attack which was imminent wouldn’t come until they were in a less populated area.

“I’m afraid I will not be much help in this,” Kelda said, growing more present but no more visible or solid than she had been.

“The last year argues otherwise,” Ayli said, thankful for all the training she’d received but especially the strides she’d made in learning to quiet her mind and react to danger with clarity and reason rather than impulse and fear.

“Normally Padawan’s are not exposed to this sort of test until they’d had ten years of study or more,” Kelda said. “But you have been an exceptional student.”

Ayli was half tempted to ask what sort of test Kelda was referring too but the droid cut her off by pivoting 180 degrees and raising a blaster pistol to point directly at the center of Ayli’s forehead.

Ten years seemed like a fairly brief span before subjecting children to a life or death scenario.

Then Ayli remembered the Imperial officer who’d tried to arrest her when she was eleven. They never found his body.

And they weren’t going to find the droid’s either.

She’d sliced it’s arm off and buried the lightsaber into the droid’s core before its sensors told it she was moving. 

The droid had only been the first part of the trap though of course, which was why Ayli rolled out of speeder rather than diving for the controls.

A stand selling local produce broke her fall and she rose just in time to duck behind a sheltering wall before the speeder itself exploded.

For a typical assassination attempt that would have been the end of it, but Ayli could feel that someone had sprung for a professional.

Her worry crystallized into an area on the ground directly at her feet and she leaped away as a pulse grenade landed where she’d been standing. Following its trajectory back she saw a group of three human men holding a launcher, a range finder and control device.

Without waiting Ayli used the Force to hurl the pulse grenade back at them.

Its fuse was unfortunately set to too short a value to allow it complete the journey back to its source but the explosion surprised the assassins nonetheless.

That gave Ayli the opening she needed.

Wisdom told her to flee. She hadn’t provoked this fight, and she didn’t need the trouble which an armed brawl in the city would bring. At the very least, the law enforcers would hold her in custody for previous hours she could instead be searching for Nix with.

Flight was the wise option.

Experience however had other things to say on the matter.

“Where did she go?” the bald assassin said from about ten meters below the top of Ayli’s Force assisted leap.

“Seal suits,” the one who was clearly the leader said as an armored helmet unfurled over his head.

“Reloading,” the one with the grenade launcher said just in time for Ayli to finish her leap and slash the gun in half.

She didn’t waste time with banter. One Force Push and the leader went tumbling off the balcony they were standing on. The fall wasn’t enough to kill him unless he landed poorly and Ayli found herself unconcerned as to that outcome.

The bald assassin was the large of the two remaining, so she bludgeoned him with the hilt of the lightsaber to distract him, grabbed his ear and proceeded to wrap his head against the nearby durasteel wall enough times that he sank to the ground senseless.

That was when she lit the lightsaber.

“Think carefully before you go for any hold out weapons you’re carrying,” she said to the remaining assassin, who was about to have a much worse day that Ayli’s had been so far.