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.

Nix’s body seemed to take the impending demolition of the camp around her as a sign that it was time to process the Covo juice she’d drunk into something a wee bit less debilitating.

“Stand down Goldie,” she said, rising to a fully seated position. “I was drunk, not in peril.”

“You’re on an unfamiliar world and surrounded by people who think your evil.” Goldie did not sound like she was standing down. In fact, from the background hum on the comm link Nix wore in her ear, it sounded distinctly like she’d kicked her engines up to the highest speed she could without the air traffic interdiction droids from activating.

“They don’t think I’m evil, just Unclean and Possessed,” Nix said massaging her temples. The effect of the Covos juice had faded far faster than most alcohol would have but she’d only taken three pulls from the container Barso had given her.

“And then they drugged you,” Goldie said. “That seems pretty close to being ‘in peril’ to me.”

“I’m not drugged,” which was true since Nix could still feel the Force trumpeting the galaxy at her. “I’m just enhanced. Sort of miserably so.”

“You’re really not making a solid case for yourself here you know,” Goldie said and in the background Nix heard the ping of the laser cannons Goldie had insisted on having installed after the mess on Praxis Mar announce that they’d achieved a passive targeting lock on something.

“Trust me, I’m fine,” Nix said, testing her legs to see if the numbness had worn off enough to let them support her weight.

“You’re not. Explain to me how you get out of this, and remember I’m recording all of this for playback to Other Mom if anything happens to you.”

Nix sighed. She would absolutely tell Ayli about her current little adventure. She would also do so in a manner that presented the information in the right order. For example starting with the fact that she was safe and that they were back together, and that the whole story was an amusing anecdote that wasn’t really as bad as it looked at the time.

“I don’t need to get out of it,” Nix said. “Not yet anyways. The whole point of this trip was to find information about one of the other Force Traditions in the galaxy. I’ve got a whole group of living practitioners here! One’s who managed to survive the Imperial purges and who, apparently, escaped the Jedi’s notice. They’re just about the perfect candidates for giving us a different perspective on the Force than what the Jedi left written down.”

“And what makes you think we will be telling you anything about Xah?” Honored Jolu said as she stepped back inside the tent. Behind her a pale skinned older man entered the tent as well. 

“Hope,” Nix said. “What you call the Xah, I understand as the energy of the connections between all living things. The Jedi, as you’ve said, called it the Force. Their view on it was limited, and they are not the ones who trained me. Most of what I know, I picked up through trial and error, and without really thinking about it. My hope is that, as a living tradition, you will be willing to share the knowledge you hold.”

“Why would we do that?” Jolu asked.

“Because sharing what we know makes the galaxy a better place? I know not everyone buys into that but when you look at most successful endeavors in galactic history, they weren’t about conquest or plunder. They came from times were various people pitched in to create something new.”

“What you describe is not the path of the Xah,” the pale skinned man said.

“Primus Dolon, perhaps you can explain the central tenet of the Xah to her?” Jolu said. “She has been tainted by the Jedi teachings but perhaps not fully corrupted.”

“Few and less are those who take up the Jedi perversions and are not irrevocably changed by their hubris,” Dolon said. “Has this one been purified yet?”

“Yes Primus,” Borso said, returning from the second floor with the instruments he’d gone to fetch..

“How long ago?” Dolon asked.

“A quarter turning,” Borso reported, checking the chronometer at his waste.

“And she was given a full purification?” Dolon eyed Nix skeptically and Nix responded by simply waiting. 

“Yes Primus. I have our initial readings here,” Borso gestured to the monitoring tools beside the bed Nix had collapsed on, “but this equipment doesn’t have the backup links if we want to keep it.”

Dolon stroked his chin while he considered the situation for a moment.

“Perhaps she is not corrupted then,” he said. “To be certain though another Purification should be performed. With the proper equipment this time.”

Nix wasn’t thrilled with that idea given how hard the Covos had hit her the first time, but she could feel with exceptional clarity that it wasn’t the moment to speak up.

“That will take time,” Jolu said. “Another dose so soon could lead to complications.”

Given that Covos was supposed to have a fairly low alcohol content, Nix wasn’t sure what those ‘complications’ could be, but guessed they were significant because even Dolon frowned at the suggestion before nodding in agreement.

“Still, there is no cause for haste here,” Dolon said, returning his gaze to Nix as though she were some sort of a mobile fungal colony – something to keep an eye on, but nothing that might have an opinion of its own.

Part of Nix, possibly the sensible part she knew, was inclined to toss the silly Force dampening earrings, make a vow never to touch a drop of Covos again, and leave the whole encampment behind as a bad idea. Goldie would be delighted, Ayli would commend her for being sensible, and there was a literal galaxy full of other places she could go to discover other perspectives on the Force.

But she was needed here.

It was the quietest of whispers in the Force. Without the Covos she was sure she couldn’t have heard it at all, and even with the painfully enhanced sensitivity the Covos provided Nix wasn’t certain she was hearing anything at all.

“Tovos was there when she dropped in on us,” Jolu said.

Dolon frowned at that, his ire seemingly wide enough to engulf both Jolu and Nix. Borso cowered back a few steps to avoid being in the splash zone, but Dolon made no outward show of the emotion he managed to even keep muted in the Force.

“I will bring Tovos to heel,” Dolon said.

“He should not need to be managed so closely,” Jolu said, her words carrying the weight of an old argument between the two.

“He is as the Xah would have him be,” Dolon said.

“Yes, Primus.” Jolu’s concession carried a soft tinge of waiting treachery should Dolon’s position become less tenable. 

Dolon was unphased by the watery threat and turned to the cowering Borso.

“See that she is accommodated securely and apply a second Purification once the required time have passed,” he said, before turning and striding out of the tent.

Borso did not however leap to comply with Dolon’s command. Instead he looked to Jolu for confirmation first.

“She should be secured,” Jolu agreed, also without consulting Nix’s opinion on the matter, and also leaving the tent so that Nix was Borso’s problem alone.

“Are you okay to walk a little ways?” Borso asked. “The tabletop can detach as a grav bed if not.”

“Does Covo juice usually render people incapable of basic movement?” Nix asked.

“No, not at all,” Borso said. “The first draught can have a range of effects though, depending on the subject. Umm, what you experienced in the first Purification, well, it will be much less intense in the second one. That’s, uh, that’s why we drink it regularly.”

“You are not drinking that again, less intense reaction or no,” Goldie said, though only Nix could hear her.

“I’m curious about the secure accommodations,” Nix said. “Whose benefit is that for? Mine or Tovos?”

“They’re going to put you in a prison cell,” Goldie said, which Nix mostly ignored.

It wasn’t like she didn’t already know that.

“Some of us are more sensitive than others,” Borso said, as though that explained everything.

“In other words, Tovos is going to try to kill you,” Goldie said. “I’ll try to get a firing lock on him too.”

There wasn’t a good option for countermanding Goldie’s impulses without giving away that Nix had a sentient gunship looking out for her, and, even as foolish as she knew she was being, it was rather comforting to have a fully armed and hair trigger gunship waiting as backup.

It would also have been comforting to have a fully trained former-Sith Warrior as backup, but Ravas, sensibly, did not seem to be lingering nearby.

In fact, unless Nix missed her guess, Ravas had gone back to the market, hiding as best she could in the throng of chaotic life which meandered around it ceaselessly.

“I can walk,” Nix said, and added for Goldie sake, “I feel fine now. The Covos seems like it burns off pretty quickly.”

“It doesn’t,” Borso said. “But if you’re not corrupted you probably adapted to it quickly.”

Nix longed to press him for more information on that, but she could feel with crystal clarity how quickly Borso would shutdown on her if she pushed any further.

“Where are we going?” Nix asked, taking a step towards the tent flap which Dolon and Jolu had left by.

“Oh, no, we’re…we don’t want to be out on the streets,” Borso said, indicating that she should follow him up to the second floor instead.

The second floor landing split off into the raised area in the tent and a fully enclosed pathway leading to another building, which Borso lead them down.

The next building turned out to be a solid construction with the sort of durasteel walls which likely signaled its previous usage as an outlier fort for the city in times past.

“The secure rooms aren’t that well stocked but I can get you something if you need,” Borso said.

“How long will we need to wait before the second purification?” Nix asked.

“Typically we wait for a full day cycle but because you didn’t encounter that severe of a reaction to the first dose we can probably do yours sooner,” Borso said. “I’ll review the scan results to be sure though and let you know what they look like.”

“They’re going to keep you prisoner for a full day?” Goldie asked.

If so, Nix wasn’t entirely unhappy with the prospect when she saw the “secure accommodations” that awaited her.

They weren’t particularly luxurious, but since they seemed to have been repurposed from an officer’s quarters, they were reasonably spacious and clean. There wasn’t any natural light since the windows have been plated over, but the artificial lighting was pleasant enough. All-in-all it was a better spot to rest off the effect of the Covos than her hotel room or Goldie passenger rooms would have been.

“Thanks, and if you could bring me some food, I haven’t had lunch yet.”

Borso nodded and scampered away the moment Nix stepped into her new prison cell and closed the locked door sealing herself in.

“Great, now you’r fully trapped, aren’t you?” Goldie asked.

“Nope,” Nix said.

“Oh good, you know how to get out of there then?”

“Sure,” Nix said. “I just need to talk to my roommate first.”

Nix hadn’t heard anyone else inside the room. She couldn’t detect anyone nearby in the Force. The room was quiet in fact. Blissfully so.

With the lingering (and still painful) sensitivity the Covos juice had gifted her though, the quiet was a clear give away.

“How did you know?” a heavy set dark skinned girl in plan coveralls asked as she stepped out of the small bathing area.

Ayli’s memories were a trifle dim after Kelda saved her in the Shadowed Cave. Taking a full barrage of Force Lightning to the back had only been survivable, she guessed, because she’d been carrying a manifestation of her own Dark Side there. Even with that though, collapsing into unconsciousness had seemed like a wonderful idea.

Sadly it hadn’t been a wonderful idea which Kelda allowed her to indulge in.

The crawl out of the cave hadn’t been pleasant, and it had happened over a much longer period of time than Ayli could account for based on how the sun’s position in the sky had changed, but she had eventually made it out into the low surf and the beach beyond the Shadowed Cave were Kelda had at last stopped pestering her and let her catch her breath.

She told herself she was only going to spend a moment before she moved on. With the Force no longer twisted up and tangled around her, she was able to draw on it like Kelda had taught her, calling in strength and healing which her poor, bedraggled body desperately needed. 

The moment she needed however was just a bit longer than she’d anticipated, and without meaning to, she found herself drifting down into a turbulent storm of dreams, waking just long enough to spoil any true rest she might have gotten only to sink down once more. 

It was dark by the time Ayli regained more than a passing degree of wakefulness, but the panoply of stars above her made the night endlessly brighter than the cave had been. 

“We have a problem,” Kelda said. She was sitting beside a small fire she had apparently assembled near enough to Ayli to ward off the night’s chill. In the distance the mouth of the Shadowed Cave loomed large, its aura accentuated by the well founded fear Ayli felt at the thought of venturing back inside.

“What happened in there?” Ayli asked, collecting the scattered remnants of her thoughts and tossing away the half remembered snippets of the dreams she’d been wrapped in while she lay on the beach.

“Something found you,” Kelda said. “Something that was not supposed to be there.”

For a moment, Ayli couldn’t recall anything that had happened within the Shadowed Cave. Only a black veil hung in her memories. Shaking her head to push it aside, bits and piece of the past returned to her.

“I fought…?” Ayli caught an image of herself screaming, a red lightsaber blade in hand.

“You passed your trial,” Kelda said. “You handled what you brought into the cave with you wonderfully. But there was something else in there.”

Ayli remembered pain. The Force Lightning that should have killed her.

The Force Lightning that had struck down her Dark Side doppelganger as well.

“What happened to her?” Ayli asked, pushing herself to sit up. “The other one. The other me?” That her doppelganger should be okay was somehow of paramount importance.

Kelda chuckled. “I think that’s something you can tell me.” 

“She was hurt. But she’s not here. Do we need to go back into the cave for her?” Ayli could feel her thoughts were still a bit disconnected from the world around her, but after spending a day collapsed due to wounds that were only feeling worse the more time went on, it felt like an excusable lapse.

“No. She’s quite safe. Seems to be in a bit of pain still. Which isn’t really surprising. Her back is a terrible mess.”

“You looked her over?” Ayli said, still not quite getting it.

“All day,” Kelda said. “I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to drag herself out of the cave on her own, but she’s made of tough stuff. If she’d feeling up to it though, I would recommend we return to the Temple and see about getting her some actual medical attention.”

“Uh, what? Where is she?” Ayli said before finally working out what Kelda was saying. “Oh. Yeah, okay, that’d be me then. She was just me. In fact, that was all me wasn’t it?”

“Unfortunately no,” Kelda said. “The version of yourself who you fought was a part of you. The thing that attacked you afterwards is something else.”

“Darsus Klex.” It was a profanity from how Ayli spoke the name. “Except, no, he said Darsus was dead. And that Darsus still hated me.”

Ayli’s memory of the thing Darsus had become was disturbingly vivid and yet cloud as well. She’d recognized him with perfect certainty as being Darsus but when she tried to call up an image of what he had looked like, the figure was cloaked in shadows, features obscured with only his general build matching what she remembered of Darsus.

“Those may both have been true statements.” Kelda led Ayli back up the twisting path away from the Shadowed Cave. “What attacked you in there is something that should never be. It’s the sort of thing the Jedi of my time and later would have been drawn to inexorably and removed from the galaxy no matter the cost.”

“Does it have a name?” The archeologist in Ayli couldn’t help but be curious about something with so ancient a history. The Force Sensitive in Ayli wasn’t quite so thrilled by it, but still wanted to know what she should call a foe she was pretty sure she was going to fight again.

“I’m sure it does,” Kelda said. “Finding out what that is will likely help us a great deal.”

“What did the Jedi used to call it?” Ayli asked.

“A problem,” Kelda said. “Each one has their own name, and their own limitations and capabilities. They also do not work together, they would consume each other in a heartbeat and grow more powerful in so doing. Collectively, they were called things like ‘Force Aberrations’, or ‘Dark Side Liches’, or ‘Walking Bantha Puddus’. I prefer the last of those, but it does fall a little short in describing what they’re capable of.”

“I’m going to guess whatever you did in there didn’t end him, just drove him off?” Ayli saw her and Nix’s bungalow in the distance and yearned for both food and the medpack she had stored there, though not in that order.

“You are sadly correct,” Kelda said. “If things like that were so easy to lay to rest, the Jedi would not have needed to be so vigilant against their incursions.”

“How long do we have before he comes back?” Ayli found the medpack waiting exactly where it should be, and freshly restocked with a note from Nix which read ‘hope you don’t need any of this’.

“I am not sure that it will, or that it can,” Kelda said. “Things like that are so bound to their hate or fear they can only manifest in areas which are strong sufficiently strong in the Dark Side.”

Ayli grabbed the severe burn cream from the medpack, mixed the base components together and started applying it to her back. The flesh she touched wasn’t as tender as she expected it to be but the pain still lingered there.

“You’re doing a good job healing it on your own, but the cream is still a good idea,” Kelda said.

“He said something about finding me being a disappointment. He was looking for the ‘other’, which has to be Nix right?” Ayli was already planning out the jump routes to follow her wife’s path.

Their separation was only supposed to have been for a week while Nix tracked down a promising lead she’d found. They’d both laughed at the idea that either of them would run into trouble in that period, coming up with increasingly far fetched problems that might occur the moment they left the sight of one another. After a quiet year of living together, and with no worrying wobbles in the Force, it had been all too easy to imagine that the tumultuous catastrophes which had threatened to swallow them whole when they first met were relegated to old stories and that they’d grown enough in wisdom to never fall into the same traps again.

And to be fair, they hadn’t.

This seemed to be a whole new problem Ayli had stumbled into.

New, even if it wore the face of an old adversary.

If it was after Nix though, Ayli had to warn her, especially with how easily the Lich had blindsided both Ayli and Kelda. 

“That’s it’s looking for Nix seems entirely likely. That it’s not able to find her yet also seems likely though. If it could it wouldn’t have come here.”

“So, could he only see me because I went into the Shadowed Cave then?”

“Possibly. As I said, the different Aberrations have different capabilities and different limitations. Sending you into the cave was a mistake born out of ignorance, and I apologize for that, but it may have been the only method by which this thing could be unearthed.”

“Ravas is with Nix still, right?” Ayli asked.

“She has not returned yet,” Kelda said, a hint of concern in her voice.

“That’s good. She would definitely warn Nix away from going into any Dark Side caves, right?”

“Yes.” Kelda had an oddly troubled look on her face which Ayli had no issue deciphering.

“And Nix has at best a fifty percent chance of listening to her.” Ayli knew her wife, and loved her not despite her quirks and eccentricities but because of them. Even with that though there were times when Ayli wished she had given into the impulse to install a tracking chip in Nix, and possibly an interstellar comm relay.

Of course, she didn’t really need either of those.

She had something far better.

“You are planning to travel to her and warn her?” Kelda asked. “I can be there much quicker.”

“Right. Force ghost powers. Let’s go with that. Just let her know that something related to Darsus Klex is looking for us. You don’t need to mention that I got fried. I’ll be in perfect shape by the time she gets back.”

Ayli did not want Nix racing back across the stars when it wasn’t necessary, and she especially didn’t want Goldie making “best time” on the journey since that was likely to involve damaging things that shouldn’t broken. Things like space docks, shuttle ports, or wherever else Goldie was birthed when Kelda found them.

“I understand,” Kelda said, seeming to share similar reservations. 

Ayli finished applying the burn cream and turned, expecting to see Kelda gone. Vanishing into the Force wasn’t even a trick at this point. It was just how Kelda moved about.

Except she hadn’t.

She was still standing in the room with Nix looking slightly puzzled.

“That’s odd?” Kelda seemed to be speaking to herself but she was looking at Ayli as though she might find an answer in that corner. “I can’t find her. I can’t find either of them in fact.”

“What,” Ayli said, her voice growing sharp and dangerous at the idea that something had already happened to Nix.

“They’re fine,” Kelda hastened to explain. “I can feel them both within the Force, but I don’t know where they are.”

“How is that possible? You always know where they are, don’t you?” As far as Ayli wa aware, she, Nix, and Ravas were Kelda’s principal anchors within the living world. No matter where they were, they were always within arms reach of Kelda since it was connection and not distance which bound them together.

“I do. Or I should,” Kelda said, still gazing outwards as though she could see beyond the stars if she simply looked hard enough. “Even if they had ventured into a Dark Side nexus, I should still be able to hear where they were. All I hear though is silence.”

“Can you get anything? A planet? A system? A general direction?” Ayli asked.

“No. I’ve never encountered this before. I would have sworn it was impossible in fact.”

“Should I be more afraid or less then?”

“Why don’t we go find them so we can be sure.”

Walking into an enemy encampment wasn’t something Nix did every day. Or ever before if she was being honest. Primarily that was because, spaceship mechanics didn’t tend to build up enemies – assuming one didn’t count the spare parts dealers most mechanics dreamed of throttling for selling junk refurbs as ‘factory new’. As a result that, Nix had to admit that she didn’t have enough experience to judge her present circumstances well, but the complete lack of interest shown about her by the other members of Honored Jolu’s encampment was a bit puzzling.

The Force wasn’t offering much help either. For all that Nix had seen a full dance troupe of them performing with a precision that suggested a deep awareness of the Force, the encampment was like a hush in the Force.

Not a Dark Side nexus. The Force didn’t seem to be twisted or snarled up in the encampment. The people all hummed with the same life as the ones she’d walked by in the market or waited in line with at the customs terminal. Unlike those people though, the Force wasn’t being churned up anywhere near as much in the encampment. 

“Does everyone here practice meditation?” Nix asked, curious if this was what the Jedi Temples might have felt like when they were fully populated.

“Not as you understand it,” Julo said. She didn’t seem inclined to expound on the answer, which Nix could understand. Julo was already taking a risk given that Nix was apparently “unclean” and “possessed” in the eyes of her people.

It was somewhat patronizing that Julo had decided that Nix was instead merely ‘mislead’, as though Nix hadn’t arrive at her present state entirely through her own (sometimes foolish) choices. On the other hand, given that the whole purpose of the trip was for Nix to learn about other Force traditions, she couldn’t think of a better method of discovering what Jolu’s people believed than by allowing Jolu to rant about everything the Jedi had gotten “wrong”.

“I hope you’ll have a chance to show me then,” Nix said, not precisely lying since she was interested in what Jolu and her people could teach her, but also not quite as willing to discard the understanding she’d spent her entire life developing of the Force as her words and tone might have indicated.

“That will be the Prelate’s decision,” Jolu said.

“Is that who we’re going to see now?” Nix asked.

“No. You will need to be purified first,” Jolu said, her expression again discouraging further inquiry.

Jolu’s encampment was located just outside the city on an unused fairground. While it was technically a ‘tent village’, the tents were not the sort common to low-tech nomads. The Hyvlar walls of the tent were lighter weight than animal hides and natural fabrics while also being substantially more blaster proof. 

Many of the tents were two story affairs, with open areas on the ground floor and, what Nix guessed to be, living quarters on the second floor. 

“Do your people need to move around a lot still?” Nix asked. She knew asking a barrage of questions wasn’t doing her any favors, but even if her curiosity could have been satisfied with simply observing the environs and customs of these people Nix had Ayli to think about. The anthropologist in her wife would take any answers Nix could bring back about a fascinating new culture of Force sensitives as the best present ever.

“Not since the Jedi fell,” Jolu said.

Nix frowned at that, wondering if Jolu’s people had struck some kind of deal with the Emperor. Except that the Emperor, from all reports, was not the sort to strike non-aggression pacts with other Force users.  When Nix’s brain finished translating Jolu’s Galactic Basic into general Galactic Basic though her meaning became clear. 

To Jolu the Jedi and the Sith was essentially the same thing, so she wasn’t speaking with the sort of precision someone familiar with the two groups would. With the fall of the Empire the ‘Jedi’ were finally gone in Jolu’s eyes. That at least a few handfuls of Jedi were still wandering the galaxy wasn’t important because they no longer carried the same renown and cultural weight that they once had. Most importantly, the Jedi were no longer going to come and snatch their children away, assuming they’d ever really done that in the first place. Similarly while there had to be some Dark Side users lurking out there, the threat of the Sith waiting in any and every shadow was a thing of the past.

Jolu stopped at one of the tents with a closed off first floor. She raised her hand to the flap and paused for a second, closing her eyes.

“He is ready for us.”

No mention of who ‘he’ was, or what ‘he’ was ready to do.

Nix checked in with the Force, but it wasn’t warning her of danger, so she shrugged and followed Jolu into the tent to find a well stocked medical facility within.

“Is this the P’shadu?” an older man with close cropped white hair and deep brown, weather wrinkled skin asked.

“Are the purification tools ready Barso?” Jolu asked.

“Of course Honored Jolu,” Barso said, gesturing to the countertop beside the examination table.

“Climb onto the table then,” Jolu said, addressing Nix directly.

Not ‘if you’re ready, climb onto the table’, or ‘if you’re still sure’. Which made a degree of sense if Jolu was convinced that Nix was a danger of some sort.

Which Nix was. Even without her lightsaber. It was unusual for someone to notice that though.

“What does this purification entail, exactly?” Nix asked. She was mostly willing to play along with the traditions of Jolu’s people but there were limits.

“It’s a two fold process,” Barso said. “First we fit you with a training stud so that you won’t disturb the Xah. They’re very safe, in case you’re nervous. We use them with our younglings all the time to help them maintain proper posture with the Xah as their skills are developing.”

“Can the training studs be removed?” Nix asked.

“Yes, but we will know if you do,” Jolu said, the warning in her voice crystal clear.

Nix wasn’t sure how she felt about gaining a pair of Force dampening earrings but she was curious enough to see how the devices worked that she nodded her approval of the process. In the worst case, she expected she’d get some interesting trinkets to take apart and analyze along with the animosity of an entire tradition of Force users. Since she had gained a fair degree of animosity with Jolu’s people simply by existing, she didn’t view that as a terrible trade.

“What’s the second part of the process?” Nix asked.

“Covo Juice,” Barso said, gesturing to pitcher which waited on the counter.

“And what is Covo Juice?” Nix asked, imagining a variety of horrible things cultures across the galaxy ingested.

“It’s a wine made from the Covo Lutrus flower,” Jolu said.

“Not toxic for humans?”

“Less toxic than most alcohols,” Barso said. “It forms benthine chains you see and…and you’re not interested in the chemistry.” Which was the furthest thing from correct he could be. Nix didn’t count herself especially well trained in chemistry or any other science, but she’d picked up some from understanding things like fuel mixtures and had a general fascination with learning things that listening to an expert expound on their area of competence sounded like a delightful passtime. Honored Jolu disagreed with that with a glance though and hence the lesson was cut abbreviated to, “Too much will make you drunk, but in moderate amounts it will serve to sharpen your awareness of the Xah.”

That…Nix was puzzled.

“You’re going to suppress my connection to the Xah and sharpen it?” she asked.

“No, no,” Barso said. “We are not changing anything about how the Xah flows through you. We’re not an Unclean practice.”

“You will understand after the Purification,” Jolu said.

Which was the sum total of the explanation Nix was going to receive. She considered demanding more, but that was only going to lead to a brick wall or a fight and neither would yield the answers she really wanted.

“Lay down on the table,” Jolu said.

“The studs hurt that much?” Nix said, hopping on the table without hesitation.

“This should be painless,” Barso said. “The Covo Juice has a bit of a kick though.”

True to his word, the new earrings he popped into her earlobes went in without even a twitch of pain after he swabbed a bit of anesthetic on each ear.

Also true to his word, the Covo Juice was just a mite stronger than Nix had expected it would be.

Also sweeter.

And if it hadn’t made her drunk with the first swallow, the first swallow was still all it took to send her mind reeling.

The Force, which had been so silent in the encampment swelled like a roaring tide until Nix was sure her head was going to split open.

By the end of her third swallow, she had to reach out her hand to calm the Force down. It yelling at her about everything. The entire galaxy was crashing into her mind and she had to push it out if she was going to survive.

That was when the studs cut in.

Nix tried to press the cacophony away and she felt her arm go numb. She pushed harder and flopped down bonelessly onto the table she’d been sitting on.

“Just a like a little kid,” Barso said, clearly amused by the whole process. His inner laughter swirled around Nix spinning her in its mirth until up and down were the barest of suggestions.

“She is not a child, and you would do well to keep that in mind,” Jolu said, her repressed anger burst over Nix, scorching her and making her fight back even more.

As choices went, that wasn’t a particularly wise one and she held onto consciousness more because the world was simply too loud to sleep through than due to any resiliency on her part.

“Give it a bit,” Jolu said. “You’ll adjust in time.” Nix heard her turn to leave the medical tent though Jolu paused at the tent flap. “I’ll be back in an hour. If she’s still fighting the Covo Juice then, we’ll need to make the proper arrangements.”

Nix had no idea how she was ‘fighting’ anything, since everything below her neck was too numb to move, and everything above her neck was too numb to feel.

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Barso said.

And he would. Nix could feel the pride Barso took in the care he offered. He sincerely wanted her Purification to proceed well and he intended to be diligent in ensuring that Nix didn’t experience any unforeseen complications. She was not going to be hurt, not on his watch.

How he was able to match that outlook with what was happening to her even at that moment seemed beyond belief to Nix, but from Barso’s perspective this was something everyone went through. No more traumatic than trimming fingernails.

Nix wondered if it was worse for her because she was already adept with sensing the Force, but Covo Juice seemed to be something adults in their culture drank regularly, so that didn’t make sense either.

With the Force battering her senses unrelentingly, Nix turned inwards, seeking to manufacture silence there if everywhere else was denied to her.

“Your vitals are all doing fine,” Barso said. “I should be recording this though, so give me a minute or two. I need to get the scanners from upstairs. They’ve got holonet links so that we can back the data up.”

And with that he scampered up to the second floor of the tent leaving Nix alone.

Or mostly alone.

“Hey Mom, you doing okay there? That data burst you just sent me seems a bit worrisome,” Goldie said.

“Doing great,” Nix managed to wheeze out.

“That sounds like a lie. You wouldn’t lie to your daughter would you. That would set a bad example.”

“Got slightly drunk, I think. Just wanted you to know what was up. You know, in case things get worse real quick.”

“I’m going to prep the engines and take the firing locks off the laser cannons. In fact I think I’ll go for a little cruise. You know just patrol those coordinates that were in your data burst.”

“Don’t shoot anyone. That’s not why we’re here.”

“Gotcha. Massive property damage only. I’m on my way.”

Stepping in the Shadowed Cave did not come with the sensations Ayli had expected. There was no shiver of cold to it. No mounting sense of dread. If she hadn’t been told it was a place where the Dark Side pooled, she could have had a nice picnic in it watching the waves crashing on the reefs beyond itself mouth.

“It holds what you bring in with you,” Kelda had said, but that simply didn’t seem to be the case. Ayli carried so much darkness inside her. She’d seen it and had reveled in it. For all that she hated how out of control and sick it made her feel, she also couldn’t deny just how good it had felt in the moment.

The raw power that had coursed through.

Feeling the shackles of civility fall away leaving her free to act on all the pain and rage she carried.

Had she ever been as fully her true self than when she gave in to the Dark Side? With no restraints in place, who else could she have been?

She felt the heat of the red lightsaber passing by her face a millisecond before it did.

The howl came next.

The Dark Side was strong within the Shadowed Cave, but it was not absolute.

Ayli let the Force guide her as she dodged backwards and ignited  the blue bladed saber Kelda had given her. It wasn’t hard to tell the counsel of the Force from the distractions of the Dark Side. Ayli had listened to whispers of self destruction all her life and tuning them out was a skill she’d had far too much practice at.

The shadow wielding the red blade had backed off for a moment when its first attacked missed, but whatever fear had stayed it’s hand was short lived as Ayli barely had her blade raised into a guard position when the shadow struck again.

Red and blue blades crashed together at head height, Ayli blocking her opponent with an ease derived from the attack being the most obvious one the shadow could have made.

She hopped back away from the knee the shadow tried to drive into her gut for the same reason.

The opening in the shadow’s guard was a trap. Ayli teased at it with a feint, and parried the expected riposte. She tried to step in to the opening she made, but the shadow was already retreating as she did. 

As though it knew her moves as well as she knew its.

That was all it took for Ayli to work out what she was fighting.

On the next exchange, she made sure to lock their blades together and with her free hand blew the tattered cloak of darkness off her doppelganger.

She stared into her own face across the cavern from her. Her own face, but not her own eyes. Not any more.

Since losing herself to the Darkside on Praxis Mar, Ayli’s eyes hadn’t regained their original hue. Every time she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she found the yellow and red marks of her failure staring back at her.

Her doppelganger – her Dark Side spawned doppelganger though – she had Ayli’s eyes. Her real ones. 

Ayli’s next slash wasn’t gentle and it wasn’t a feint.

It was met by an opposing slash that was every bit as powerful though and the lightsaber blades briefly locked together as Ayli and her foe struggled against one other, each growling at the resistance they faced. 

With their blades bound, Ayli shoved out with the Force, only to be hit by a matching Force Push that sent the two combatants flying to the opposite sides of the cave.

The shadow copy wasted no time in rising back into the fight, flying across the room with a scream.

The red lightsaber descended with enough power to crack the cave in two, but Ayli met it with her blade and stood her ground, struggling as much with holding off the blow as recovering her balance.

With a breath, she stopped pressing directly against the red lightsaber, turning instead to redirect the blow to her side.

The next swing, Ayli met by ducking under it and parrying behind her back.

That bought her a shot at tripping her foe, but the shadow hopped over Ayli’s spinning foot and avoided Ayli’s follow lightsaber strike by somersaulting backward.

The brief respite let Alyi spend a heartbeat focusing herself and looking at the situation like Kelda had taught her to.

This was what she had brought into the cave with her.

This was what she’d expected to find.

The shadow fought exactly like she did. 

And it made her angry.

She kicked herself mentally.

“You’re not my opponent,” she said aloud.

The shadow didn’t answer. It stalked around the perimeter of the caves towards her and drew a second lightsaber blade.

Ayli was puzzled by that for a moment until she caught a good look at the design of the hilt.

It was Nix’s blade and it had been scored and scorched. 

Ayli didn’t need psychometry to understand the meaning of the damage to hilt or what the red blade which sprang forth from it meant.

The hilt said it had been taken from Nix. The blade said its crystal had been corrupted when the lightsaber was used to kill a Force User. When it was used to kill Nix.

Ayli felt the jolt of fear shoot through her at the revelation. 

It tingled.

And with a deep breath and the inner awareness she’d spent a year struggling to attain, that was all it did.

In the Shadowed Cave, Ayli couldn’t quite find the feelings of peace and serenity that allowed her to feel in harmony with the Force but the darkness around her couldn’’t stop her from remembering the moments of grace she had found.

She’s lounging in bed on what promises to be a mild and sunny day. She’s perfectly awake and she could get up easily, but there’s a warm human woman nestled against her who is still blissfully slumbering. In a little while Nix will wake, and they’ll reheat the Paklar Lasagna they hadn’t finished the night before and then they’ll go for their morning walk along the seashore meditation path to start the day off with the sort of training that was particularly rigorous for those like Ayli who found peace and calm almost antithetical to their preferred mindset.

“I get it,” she said. “I do. This isn’t you. This what I’m tormenting myself with.”

The shadow growled and leaped in a spinning slash, which Ayli simply wasn’t there to be hit by.

“Fighting you is about as smart as punching myself in the face to knockout my own problems,” Ayli said, distinctly aware that if that had every been an option she would likely have taken it at several points in her life.

The shadows strikes didn’t get any slower, and it didn’t calm down, but Ayli found it increasingly easy to read them. She could feel the shadow’s frustration – her own frustration – and knew each moment what it would lead to.

Including the Force Lightning.

Ayli snapped her lightsaber to life for that and caught the lightning on her blade.

Shadow or not, real or not, Force Lighting was not something she was ready to fool around with. 

It also wasn’t a great sign that the shadow was escalating. 

“I don’t want to have to kill you,” Ayli said and then considered the idea for a moment longer. “Wait, can I kill you? What would that do to me?”

Her shadow clone raised both hands and screamed forth an even bigger torrent of Force Lighting.

It was enough that Ayli wasn’t able to catch it all with her lightsaber. Most of the bolts missed, flung wide by the shadow’s overwhelming aggression, but a few snuck around the blade and landed on her arms and legs.

Ayli dropped to one knee and only managed to keep one hand on her lightsaber as the rest of her muscles spasmed in agony.

“No!” she said through gritted teeth. “No. We’re not doing this. I am not letting you run out of control.”

She cast aside her lightsaber and held up both hands herself.

Rather than hurling her own Force Lightning back at the shadow though, she used the Force to draw power back into herself, making the storm of energy her own.

It wasn’t pleasant, but Ayli’s reserves held out long enough for the shadow to reach the end of its unnatural endurance and collapse in front of her.

With smoking hands, Ayli reached down and lifted the shadow back up to its feet.

“If I brought you in here, then you’re mine,” she said, sad to see that the shadow’s eyes now matching the yellow and red of her own.

The shadow tried to struggle, buy Ayli simply held the shadow’s wrists and waited. Rage is powerful but it is also terribly exhausting and Ayli could feel the crushing weight of fatigue that had built up on the shadow.

When the shadow finally collapsed, Ayli was ready to catch her, which seemed to surprise the doppelganger.

Finish this, the doppelganger said, her voice a perfect mirror of Ayli’s.

“There’s no finishing anything in here,” Ayli said. “I’m stuck with you. Even if I could stab my dark side away there’s no chance that I’m stupid enough to make that mistake anymore.”

Or leave me, the doppelganger’s voice was fading as its strength seemed to run out like the tide.

“Can’t do that either,” Ayli said and turned to lift her former foe onto her back. “I brought you in here. I’m bringing you out. Probably whether I want to or not.”

Then hate me, the shadow’s voice was little more than a whisper.

“I’ve tried that.” Ayli found the shadow’s weight bearable but only just. Each step took more effort than the last, but her determination rose with each one. “I’ve been afraid of you. I’m been mad at you. I’ve even given up on you. None of those have every worked though. So we’re going to try something new.”

What? the shadow’s voice gained some strength from either curiosity or puzzlement.

“I don’t know. Maybe believing in you? Accepting you? Seeing you for what you are? We’ll play it by ear and see how things go.”

You cannot accept me.

“You sure about that? Because I know someone who already has.”

The Force Lighting that slammed into Ayli came as a total surprise.

She was on the ground, burning inside and unable to understand how her doppelganger had marshaled enough hatred for another assault without it being obvious.

Except the doppelganger was on the ground writhing beside her.

RUN! the doppelganger screamed and fear flooded Ayli’s battered body.

It was good advice impeded by the small problem that Ayli was quite incapable of any movement at all.

“Disappointing,” a voice steeped in a far greater darkness that the shadow could ever have managed said. “I’d hoped for the other one but this one will do. It and its shadow might even prove some amusement.”

Ayli called on the Force and felt the Dark Side swallowing her like an ocean. Beside her, the doppelganger was weeping. She had shrunk down to a reflection of the terrified girl Ayli had been when she’d learned of her parent’s death.

Which might have been an understandable response as she was moments from her own. 

“Perhaps if I toy with it for a while, the other will sense this one’s pain and come back for it?” the man said and Ayli recognized the voice underneath all the hate.

“Darsus Klex? How are you alive?” 

“Oh, I assure you, he most certainly is not,” the man wearing Darsus’s body said. “But he still hates you. So, so very much. I cannot tell you the joy this brings him.”

“Go to hell,” Ayli said, drawing on the Force through sheer determination to struggle back up to one knee.

“Where do you think we are?” the man said, raising his hands as another, final stroke of Force Lighting gathered in his fingers.

“Somewhere you are not wanted,” Kelda said, appearing in front of Ayli with her hand outstretched.

The Force Lighting never left the man’s fingers.

Instead a wave of blue brilliance surged through the Shadowed Cave, driving back the darkness with light unyielding.