It was too late by the time Nix strolled into the temple and she was alone.

Or at least that’s what it looked like.

“And the last pawn takes its final place,” Paralus said at Nix’s appearance. 

That she was backlit by a tremendous crash of lighting from the storms outside was an unnecessary bit of dramatics, but Nix wasn’t going to deny her new friends their little flourishes.

“Hey,” she said instead, gazing around at the horrific ornamentation of the temple where Praxis Mar’s troubles had started.

Every memory and sensation she read from the ancient stone and the calcified bodies of sacrifices around her screamed of agony and misery, but after the centuries their voices were hoarse and tired. Time had diminished them enough for the other, even older whispers of the past to be audible.

The Temple was where Praxis Mar’s doom was centered, with the Maw at the high altar the violation which had brought the house of cards that was the planet’s society crashing down.

And it had been a house of cards.

No one person’s work had been the sole cause of the apocalypse which had twisted the world into a planetary nexus of the Dark Side. The atrocity in the temple had been no more than the tipping point at the end of a history where people had chosen time and again to pursue domination and power built on the oppression and suffering of those who could be cast as ‘the other’. 

The Dark Side had been well seeded into the bodies and souls of Praxis Mar long before its downfall, but in listening to and accepting the Darkness which pervaded everything in the planet, Nix heard the voices of her new friends too. Voices which had been forgotten, or which had never believed they mattered, or which had never believed that could exist alongside the blood and sins they were carrying.

“This is the end of your journey,” Paralus said with a faintly gleeful air.

Nix quirked up her eyebrows as though that was a singularly stupid statement.

“Well, yeah, that’s how journey’s work,” she said. “So, where’s my wife at?”

“She has passed beyond your reach. She is lost to you,” Paralus said. “There are none who stand with you and none who will aid you.”

Nix could feel Ayli’s presence, almost maddeningly near and yet still veiled from her.

The Maw.

It was the worst possible place Ayli could have gone, so, of course that had to be where so was.

Also there weren’t many hiding spots in the temple given it’s relatively open floor plan.

“Yes. She will be destroyed or she will become one such as I,” Paralus said. “And either end will be your undoing.”

“Think so do you?” Nix asked. Ayli was entirely too calm for someone who was being destroyed or turning into a Force Lich, but Nix was certain Paralus couldn’t sense that. 

Which was understandable. The Maw was singularly painful to even glimpse much less turn any deeper senses towards. For all his power, Nix suspected Paralus wasn’t immune to the distortion the Maw inflicted on any who tried to perceive it. Nix wasn’t quite so limited though since she had another place to search for Aylil; inside her own heart.

“No rage? No concern? How intriguing,” Paralus said. “You never truly did leave your flirtations with the Dark Side behind did you? Have you been this cold all along? No, I don’t think so. The infection you planted into the soil here wouldn’t have taken root if it was not sincere. Could it be that you broke already? That is truly disappointing if so.”

“You know my whole job is fixing broken things, right?” Nix said. “You seem thrilled with this place, but I’ve got to tell you, it’s just a mess.”

“It is perfection,” Paralus’ didn’t give voice to anger but it was there hiding behind his words, just like it always was. “Or it was until you arrived.”

Nix let an honest chuckle escape her lips.

“You think I did this?” she said. “One person. Me? You think I’m the one responsible for all this?” As if she’d queued it (which she essentially had) three bolts of lighting struck the temple and an earthquake shook the building had enough for bits of plaster to fall from the ceiling.

“Yours was the first sin, the first viral cell of undoing to disturbing the perfected order which existed here for time beyond reason,” Paralus said. “That is why I have drawn you back. That is why I have destroyed the one you hold most dear and why I will expunge the rest of your life’s work from the galaxy once you prove the folly of opposing the truth of the galaxy.”

“That’s impressive,” Nix said, walking towards Paralus’ shade and the Maw beyond it. “You got literally everything wrong there. There should be some kind of prize for that.”

“Ah, it is delusions that you cling to then is it?” Paralus said. “Could you still believe that there is hope left for you?”

“You know before coming here, I was wondering if there was hope left for both of us,” Nix said. “I kind of didn’t want there to be. It felt so hard to accept that someone who’d done what you did could be redeemable. That there should be any hope for someone who embraced what this place had become. You’re a monster, we both know that, but part of me knows that even monsters deserve hope and to be able to become something better.”

“The lies of the Jedi? How sadly uninspiring. Those have led fools to their doom since the founding of their sad religion,” Paralus said. “I had hoped for so much more from one who managed to do what you did.”

“Yeah, it’s difficult to accept that idea, isn’t it?” Nix said. “Forgiveness feels so vulnerable. It’s like inviting the pain to happen all over again.”

“It is weakness. There is never true forgiveness, only submission or revenge. But you don’t believe that do you? You are close to the precipice of true understanding than I’d imagined and yet you stubbornly cling to the lies the Jedi have taught you.”

“Wow. You really weren’t paying attention while you were spying on me were you?” Nix said. “Like, seriously, you had a year, right? How do you not know me better than that? Were you just peeping on me and Ayli having sexy fun times or something?”

“Jests will not save you,” Paralus said, his shade gaining substance and stature as Nix reach a dozen or so paces from it.

“Who’s jesting?” Nix said, her hands empty of weapons as the Lich’s demeanor changed to an image of death itself. “You seem to have no real idea what’s going on here, or who you’re dealing with.”

“Don’t I?” Paralus’ laugh was an ugly and supremely confident thing. “Nix Lamplighter. Orphan. Murderer. The Force spoke to you and you embraced its darkness once until your weakness felled you and you ran from the truth. Ran into a life servitude as mundane and menial as you could find. Ran and hid from the truth of what you are until a lesser apparition of the Force, herself a refuge from the truth, found you and let you believe the lie that you could use the Force and cling to your soft delusions, just like you clung to your soft wife, all while the truth of the Dark Side was growing inside her.”

Beyond a chuckle, Nix let a full throated laugh burst from her.

“You saw all that? You looked that far back and yet still, STILL, you didn’t understand what you were seeing? How? I mean, seriously, that took skill to mistake literally everything you saw about me like that.”

Nix paused to consider Paralus, who was looming above her at twice her height and growing.

“Or maybe it wasn’t skill,” she said growing contemplative rather than concerned. By all appearances she should have been terrified, but Paralus displaying his power as though he could overwhelm her meant he really was blinded to what was coming and Nix had every intention of keeping him focused on her even though it was already far too late for him on Praxis Mar. “Everything you see, all of your sense, you can only perceive things through the Dark Side can’t you? All you see is the worst possibly view of everything, and since that’s what you were afraid of all along, that’s all that you can believe is true. I’m…wow, that is actually really sad.”

“You will understand all too soon which of us sees the truth and which is wrapped in her own delusions,” Paralus said, raising his hands as Force Lightning began to crackle between his fingers.

“Oh, I already know you’re delusional,” Nix said. “I can see the darkness you do. It’s kind of hard to miss it and it’s really easy to focus on it out of fear and anger. Stars but it is easy. I did that for so long, but, in my defense, I was a child at the time. It took time, but I did eventually grow up, and looking at you I have to wonder, was that ever something you managed?”

Force Lightning was her answer.

Force Lightning which she was able to hold off. For about two seconds. Then it coursed through her and slammed her into a pillar twenty feet away.

Rising to her feet, steam wafting from the fresh burn marks she’d acquired.

“Hit a nerve there did I?” Nix asked, wiping a bit of blood from her mouth. “Guess I’m not the first one to call you a petulant child.”

More Force Lightning answered her again and once again she resisted it for only a few seconds before being cast back.

What Paralus didn’t seem to notice was that she had resisted it for longer and that her fall had seemingly been cushioned.

“Let me fill you in on what you missed,” Nix said, striding forward again.

She was distant enough this time to sidestep the first burst of Force Lighting Paralus threw at her. 

“My life? It was one I chose. I like fixing things. Mundane servitude? People paid me to do what I wanted to. I’m sorry you never got to experience that. Maybe a few weeks with a hydrospanner and a flux analyzer would have been enough to pull your head out of your own butt.”

The Force Lighting blast that hit her was the biggest Paralus had thrown so far, but this time Nix wasn’t alone in resisting it.

“Is this really a good idea?” Hendel the Skeleton asked, lending his mastery of the Force to Nix’s effort to hold back the Force Lightning blast.

It wasn’t enough but it did soften the blow tremendously.

“Foolish soul,” Paralus thundered, the rage he’d been suppressing clearly visible at last.

“Wow, I haven’t been hearing that for the last thousand years or anything,” Hendel shot back, a few centuries of annoyance backing up his words.

“See that’s the thing Lich-boy,” Nix said. “You’re so stuck gazing up your own dark sphincter that you missed the whole point of life. Did I do some really poodoo things as a kid? Hell yes. Am I along in that? Hell no. Do people keep on doing stupid, awful things despite how old they are? Unquestionably. But is that all we are? Is that our limit? Can we not grow beyond the mistakes we made? Learn from them? Become more than we were?”

The next lightning blast was stronger than all of the ones before, but Nix and Hendel held out against it, though not alone.

“You think giving in and embracing your worst qualities is the path to true power because it was easy and quick. You were afraid of compassion, and kindness, and everything that connects us to one another and the Force because  they require openness and vulnerable and you were too weak to risk those.”

The temple exploded, it’s roof crashing down as raw power, not even shaped into lightning, smashed down like a mountain on top of Nix, seeking to cover the words which were being heard by far more than one little Force Lich.

In the center of the temple a pit of fire awaited Ayli and in the center of the pit lay a maw of darkness.

“This was the first atrocity, wasn’t it?” she asked, aware of the mortal peril she was in and being very careful to hide all of the other things she was aware of.

“An attempt at perfecting a society,” Paralus said. “A failure only in resolve though, not intent.”

“What was it supposed to be?” It hurt to look at the maw directly. So twisted by the Dark Side the maw was, the very fabric of space and reality was rent asunder at its center.

“Not what. Who,” Paralus said. “This was the first man on this world to attempt a true Ascension to the Force.”

“And the statues of misery and pain around the room were a component of that?” Like many temples the central one on Praxis Mar bore iconography of various modes of suffering its architects had endured or could imagine. The archeologist in Ayli was itching to begin a comparative analysis of the room she was in with other planetary temples around the galaxy. The common elements would illuminate some phenomenal discoveries, she was certain. That it would also fill enough papers to guarantee her tenure at the university of her choice was an amusing concept as well, but with her lust for recognition temporarily offline by the beating her Dark Side has taken, she wasn’t quite as consumed by the idea as she might have been.

It was still quite appealing of course. Dark Side or no, she was still an academic.

“Those are not statues,” Paralus said. “Nor are they quite dead.”

Sensing any life within the statues was beyond Ayli’s talents with the flood of darkness she was wrapped within coupled with the brutalization by the Dark Side which the statue people had been subjected to for centuries, but she had no reason to doubt Paralus’ word on the matter.

“Ah, they were sacrifices then?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“The dearest and most cherished the Ascended could find.”

“And this struck him as a good idea?” The stupidity of evil never failed to amaze Ayli, but given that she was banking on it to see her through her present ordeal she was forced to hope it was as reliable as the rest of the galaxy’s stupidity.

“As a necessary one,” Paralus said. “Holding onto the things which tie us to one life denies us the capacity to transcend that life and become true Masters of the Force.”

“And that’s the secret to lichdom? Toss everything away?” Ayli asked, curious if she could get Paralus to reveal anything of his own origin.

“Not everything,” Paralus said, his ego incapable of not making others aware of his greatness. “To become as I am, you must hold tight to what truly matters.”

“Which would not be the people I care about and who give my life meaning?”

“Dependency on others is the undoing of all who cling to their weakness. The strong must stand alone. Power, that is what must be placed above all else. To believe in anything but oneself is to abandon the ability to command the Force to be as you desire. Only someone who had truly mastered themselves, and who controls their desire can control the Force and make the galaxy what they know it must be.”

Debating Paralus might have been fun. His arguments were the sort of childish logic constructs that first year philosophy courses were meant to help the students get out of their systems.

True, following that philosophy had led Paralus to an existence which few were capable of attaining. And he did have a vast amount of Force driven might to call on. His projections across the galaxy and his battle with Ayli’s Dark Side proved that. Ayli wondered if he ever thought to ask the question of whether the constraints on that power were worth the price he’d paid.

His might, for instance, was largely stolen from Praxis Mar. His sacrifices, whatever they’d been, had done nothing to grant him that. The insights he believed he had all relied on only the worst of all possible interpretations of events being true. Even his longevity was questionable since he was both not immortal, nor truly free to live as he chose, being restricted to existing only in the galaxy’s darkest corners.

Had it ever occurred to him that the existence he attained was one that few would have any interest in once the costs were known, and which denied him the freedom he believed he’d won for himself?.

He’d claimed that as a Master of the Dark Side, he’d transcended fear, but in every action and every word, Ayli could see Paralus’ fears steering him away from an end to the suffering he’d inflicted on himself.

“You know where you will go next,” Paralus said, indicating the maw with a twitch of his head.

Ayli knew she wasn’t seeing his real form, or even the physical body he wore as his own. That was hidden away far from where she could reach him.

I’m not a fool, he had clearly thought. Why expose himself to the smallest measure of danger when eternity awaited him? He’d set his wheels in motions and could watch the                                    future play out as he command. Or he had been the unwitting servant of the core of madness which lay at the heart of Praxis Mar, and it was the crumbling darkness of the planet which had commanded him as its tool, but subtly enough that Paralus never need to be aware of the leash around his neck.

Either of those could have been true, but from the glimpse of the outside world Ayli could see through the darkness around her, the truth was something very different indeed.

“I’m curious,” Ayli said, wondering if there was anything at all to save in the Lich. “If I were to adopt your beliefs, you wouldn’t be gaining an ally. I’d be more your enemy then than I am now. But you don’t strike me as the type of person who guides his enemies into existence when smiting them before they discover the secrets of true power is more likely to lead to your continued existence.”

“As I have said, I have moved beyond fear. In grasping the truth, you would not be my enemy but my apprentice.” Paralus loomed close to Ayli, though still not quite within arm’s reach.

“I believe you just said relying on others denies a Force user ‘True Mastery’,” Ayli said. Playing for time was a key element for both of them she noticed when Paralus turned to her.

“Apprenticeship and master arrangements between those who had embraced the true nature of the Force are not as you imagine them to be,” Paralus said and Ayli could see he was waiting for the same thing she was.

For Nix to arrive.

They both knew she was coming, and her arrival was the key to both of their plans.

“A True Master does not support their apprentices. A Master must use their apprentices and the apprentices must survive the tests their Masters set upon them.”

“So the master gains a minion and the apprentice gets a self-directed study course that’s all pass or die? What happens when the apprentice doesn’t have anything more to learn from the master?”

“Its in on the apprentice to learn how to use their master,” Paralus said. “A weak master will invite a challenge which may be their end or may result in the loss of an apprentice, but a True Master who raises another to True Mastery will have inculcated in the apprentice their own beliefs and desires. Conflict occurs when there is disparity in desire and will. Two True Masters will have no need for such conflict as the apprentice’s will and the Master’s will be as one. A victory for either is a victory for both. This is the true path to peace and the only means of manufacturing eternal harmony in the galaxy.”

Ayli turned away from Paralus to ‘gaze upon the maw’, though it was more so that he didn’t see her roll her eyes and suppress a groan at his arguments.

‘If only everyone thought exactly like I did, the galaxy would be a perfect place!’

It was the basis of the Empire’s philosophy and so many other regimes and religions. In a few cultures it had even come close to being implemented. 

And even in those it had still fallen apart.

How Paralus and those in his position never thought to add together the notions that ‘I wanted to be the only one who matters’ with ‘everyone should think like me’ and not see the unresolvable contradiction presented there was mind boggling to Ayli.

Even in hive mind species, the central mind was rarely an all powerful, singular will. Each drone had their own focus and initiative and pursued their tasks under their own recognizance. The central mind was something they all contributed to and which gave overall broad directives for each member to enact, like a captain on a ship choosing the destination and allowing the crew to implement how the ship arrived there.

But then people like Paralus rarely studied actual histories or had any appreciation for facts which weren’t relevant to making themselves seem more important.

“So I’m going to go into the maw and come out as your newest mind-wiped servant then?” Ayli asked, staring at the maw without flinching despite raw grating feeling it left at the back of her eyes.

“I very much doubt that you will come out at all,” Paralus said. “We both know you think you can endure that schism at the maw’s core, that you will somehow pass through unscathed and confirmed in the beliefs you carry. I know that you will not, despite how much your delusion insists it is how your fate must go.”

“And if you’re wrong?” Ayli asked.

“Then I shall indeed have a new apprentice, but not two I would imagine,” Paralus said. “Those futures were lost the moment you sinned against the harmony of this world. The moment your unleashed hope like the cruelest of blades to torment those who had long since been consumed by the truth of creation.”

“And why wouldn’t Nix and I emerge together if we go in together?” Ayli asked.

“This spot is primed for Ascension, but only one may achieve it,” Paralus said. “Within the maw, you will die unless you can transcend the life which holds you to your mortality and to do that, you must be more pure that the failure who became the maw was. Only in doing what he could not, only in slaying the last bit of love and compassion which you carry can you escape the shackles they place on you and be truly free.”

“And in doing that I’d play right into your hands, gotcha,” Ayli said.

“No, I already hold you in the palm of my hand,” Paralus said and Ayli felt a vast bestial tide of storm and storm moving underneath her. “You don’t know it yet, as your kind never does, but I have already won. All has transpired as I have foreseen and my victory is complete.”

“You do seem to have me in a difficult spot,” Ayli admitted. “I suppose even if I turned and left now, this place, this moment would always live within me. It would grow and consume my imagination, my dreams, and my waking thoughts. Could I live not knowing what the answer was? Whether I was truly lost? Would I have to run away from everything else because there might be too much peril in it and this memory stood as a hallmark that my courage would fail me? Is death really so much worse than that?”

A long, slow breath.

The feel of a familiar presence, drawing so close and giving Ayli strength.

The increasing rage of the storms outside and the shattering of the earth beneath her, heralding a devastation which she was certain Paralus was not ready for.

And lastly, from the maw, a single wordless cry.

That was all it took.

Ayli walked forward and into her destiny.

Solna was alone. It wasn’t a usual thing for her. Despite it’s name, the Silent Enclave was typically abuzz with the various mundane sounds of life, and everyone – literally everyone she often felt – was constantly poking and prodding and judging her.

It was something of a revelation to her when the others gave her space and solitude.

Even Goldie, who Solna still felt as though she was sitting inside the guts of. Goldie had assured her that wasn’t the case – Solna was supposed think of Goldie as a droid sitting in the ship’s central processing room, but given how Goldie was aware of (almost) everything that was going on within the Goldrunner, it was hard to fully accept the “droid in another room” theory.

Despite that though, Goldie did seem to be giving Solna the solitude she’d requested.

“Would it be okay if I meditated for a bit?” wasn’t a request that she’d expected a simple and uniformly positive assent to. In the Enclave there would been offers to join her, and offers to critique her techniques – one could always be better after all, especially someone as young as Solna.

Solna had always bristled at that. She knew she was young but she also knew she was far quieter than most of the adults who tried to show her how to meditate properly. Not that she’d ever been able to express that. Ego wasn’t specifically a corruption of the Xah but the elders seemed to weigh it as heavily against her.

Ravas, Kelda, Lasha and Monfi had all agreed readily though. Not caveats, no requirements, no time constraints. “Take the time you need” and “Finding your center again after an ordeal is important” and “If you have any questions, we are here”.

Rassi had offered to meditate with her, but Rassi didn’t need to recenter herself. Their encounter with the Lich had left Rassi more deeply certain of their path than she’d ever been. Solna could almost feel the glow from the fire which Rassi had kindled inside her heart.

It had been tempting to want to cuddle into that warm, to ask Rassi to stay with her, but that wasn’t a path that would lead to Solna listening to herself and understanding the torrent of emotions that swirled within her. Being with Rassi would offer comfort but also unearth a number of the questions and feelings which would be better dealt with once the future wasn’t a raging storm of uncertainty before them.

And so Solna sat, alone, in her room and breathed.

So much had changed so quickly, and yet, so much hadn’t too.

Her life in the Silence Enclave was drifting light years away, falling into an unrecoverable past.

But she had yearned for that for so long she’d lost track.

In her dreams, she had stood right where her feet had brought her.

Or, not exactly where she was – the Lich had not been a part of her plan – but in broad strokes the path she was on was one she’d been walking towards with each emotional step she took away from the people who had raised her.

Solna could feel the Xah moving through her, could feel the gentle current of it flowing through her life and carrying her onwards towards futures she both desired and feared.

The galaxy was dangerous and she was ill prepared for it. She’d known that and the fear of it had kept her caged in the Enclave for years.

Looking back, she could see the twisting of the Xah that fear represented. Being bound to the will of those ‘above her’ was not the inherent nature of the Xah. It was a construct and a corruption far beyond anything she’d done with the Xah so far.

And she was doing things with the Xah.

From the mind shield to the message she’d snuck out to the Jedi Nix, Solna knew she was breaking the central tenets of the Enclave.

It felt right.

And wrong.

Still.

She’d wrestled with this already, and she suspected she’d be wrestling with the lifetime of indoctrination she had for a long time to come.

But she knew what she wanted to believe, and she knew what she was feeling in the moment.

Far below, on the planet’s surface, the adults were tangling with the traps and tricks with Paralus had left to guard his most secret of bases. Light years away, Nix was racing towards her wife, and the Lich was playing a game to either crush or win their souls to the Dark Side.

Though she was safely in the Goldrunner, in orbit, far beyond the reach of Paralus’ machinations, Solna was a a part of both those endeavors, and it felt right.

The Xah below her was writhing and screaming. Lies echoed into space proclaiming doom, and danger, and emptiness. There was no treasure below, or so Paralus’ wards said. Only death awaits for those who land, just like it has for thousands of unwary other. This place is not on any astrogation charts because it has been condemned.

None of which were true. 

How could they be? Each was a twisting of what was, which was so easy to notice if you simply listened for it.

No treasure awaited? A lie built on truth. No gem, no metals, no precious items of any kind were sealed in the phylactery’s hiding place. The phylactery itself however was priceless.

Only death awaited? Another truth twisted into a lie. The Lich was dead, and had been for lifetimes. He was all that awaited below. He and the last link holding him from the death which should have claimed him.

That the planet didn’t show up on astrogation charts was the best lie though. Every chart on the Goldrunner showed the planet. It was simply shown on the wrong hyperspace lane. With billions of stars in the galaxy there were hundreds of millions of ones which were uninhabited and of little use to anyone. Even after thousands of years of the Old Republic’s assessments and record keeping corrections, there were still more errors in the “Unused Worlds” than anyone cared to think about.

All of those deceptions, all of the corruption in the Xah, woven by one person. Solna wanted to reject everything that the Enclave had taught her but faced with something like the Lich Paralus, it was impossible to pretend that evil didn’t exist. That it was fine to do whatever one wanted with the Xah.

And so she meditated, searching within herself for the lines that would divide her from something like Paralus if the ones the Enclave had taught her weren’t ones she could believe in anymore.

Rassi.

It was as simple as that.

Not that Rassi would define Solna’s moral compass. Solna was young, not stupid. She knew placing another person as the center of her universe was too big a thing to expect anyone to stand up under. 

Rassi was the line, or one of the lines, in that she was someone Solna cared about. It hadn’t taken much observation to see that Paralus cared about no one but himself, which was the first subversion of what the Xah was meant to be.

Life connected with life in many ways. Not all of them were kind or gentle, but not all of them were cruel or harsh either. What Solna landed on for how she would differentiate herself, from Paralus, and how she would prevent herself from becoming an abomination like he was, was respect.

Respect for those who supported her was easy, and the bare minimum of what was required to be a decent sentient being. Respect for those who stood against her, or who tried to hurt her? That was more complicated, but she felt like a path would be there.

She could picture taking up one of the Jedi laser swords to protect herself. She could picture cutting down someone who wanted to hurt her, or hurt someone she cared about. Those actions could be driven by necessity, but if she kept her respect even for the people who opposed her, she would treat them like people – offer them mercy if there was a chance to, defeat them and help them rise to be better if that was possible, or, if no other path was open, end them without malice or cruelty.

As her mind settled on those thoughts, it also became ravenous to read and discover if anyone else had reached those same conclusions.

Had she independently invented the Jedi Code? Or the dogma of the Horizon Knights? Had people thought like she did, and could she discover how that had worked out for them? Find any failings she wasn’t aware of?

She breathed.

And laughed.

Hadn’t Nix been looking for the same thing?

Oh stars, Rassi was going to insufferable when Solna told her about wanting to study other Force traditions.

Solna felt a deep warmth bloom within her.

She was so happy that she was going to get to see Rassi being insufferable.

“Uh, I hate to interrupt, but we have a problem,” Rassi said over the room’s intercom.

Because of course they did.

Solna groaned, but she was ready for this.

“I’ll be there. Where are you all?” she asked, knowing the rest were on the bridge, but to used to hiding the extent of her awareness to give up the reflex quite so easily.

“Like you need to ask?” Rassi said.

Insufferably.

Solna rolled her eyes.

Stupid friends who know her better than she knew herself. Or friend really. It wasn’t like there was another Rassi in the galaxy.

“What’s the problem?” Solna asked when she arrived on the bridge.

“We need your help,” Lasha said from the comms.

“No, we would like to ask for your help,” Kelda said.

“What’s the difference?” Rassi asked.

“This isn’t something we should be asking of you,” Kelda said. “You need to know the danger and you need to be able to say that you don’t feel comfortable with it.”

“What will you do then?” Nulo asked.

“Find another option,” Kelda said.

“There likely isn’t another option though,” Monfi said.

“There are always other options,” Kelda said. “Some of them simply have costs we’d rather not pay.”

“What is it that you need us to do?” Solna asked, suspecting that the adults would dance around the questions for hours if given the chance.

“Ravas is currently stuck in a trap,” Lasha said. “We need you to come down here and see if you can free her from it.”

“Wait, how did she get stuck?” Rassi asked. “I though she was able to impersonate the Lich’s shadow?”

“She can. She’s still doing so in fact,” Monfi said. “We’re deep into the complex now and Ravas has gotten us past easy three dozen checkpoints so far, and maybe twice as many traps.”

“What do you mean she’s still doing so?” Solna asked. “Did Paralus design a trap for himself?”

“Apparently so,” Kelda said. “Or at least a trap for someone utilizing this stratagem. At the moment my dear Ravas is inside a crystal which is engulfed in a field of Force Lightning.”

“Can that zap her?” Nulo asked.

“Most definitely,” Kelda said.

“She’s a ghost though, it can’t kill her deader can it?” Rassi asked.

“It could disrupt her to the point where she’d unable to reform and probably be lost into the Force forever,” Kelda said. “So, yes, it can make her deader than she is. In fact, the emitters seem to be capable of sending the lightning through the crystal itself but since she is mimicking the Lich’s shadow, it’s holding off on that.”

“What can we do? How can we help?” Solna asked, her mind already made up on going.

“There seems to be a control panel with a charging port,” Monfi said. “We need someone who’s quiet enough to avoid the rest of the sensors and reach that panel and given that they caught Ravas pretending to be a shadow, you two seem like our only hope here.”

The Temple loomed above Ayli, eclipsing her peripheral vision in every direction even though most of its details were swallowed by shadows.

Behind her lay a thousand and one traps, pitfalls, and furious enemies. She’d won a path past them all, but not without cost.

“You seem to have suffered a few little injuries?” Paralus’s shade noted, floating around Ayli as she pulled herself towards the Temple’s main gate.

“C’mon, admit it,” she said. “You didn’t think I’d even make it this far, did you?”

“On the contrary,” Paralus said. “I was certain that you would.”

There was a lie lurking in his words despite each one being nominally true.

Ayli wasn’t worried about that though. Fear had little place in her heart anymore. The Dark Side howled around her but with her Shadow Self defeated and, temporarily, ‘dead’, the rancor and fury the temple radiated found only peace within her to echoed off.

Which might have been why Paralus’s shade was scrupulously staying out of arm’s reach from her.

Not that she was planning to assault him. Not here at least. And not how he imagined she would.

“Almost makes me tempted to go back and get eaten by the blood crystal things,” Ayli said. “But that wouldn’t spoil your plans quite enough, would it?”

“What is happening is what must happen. It is the inevitable consequence of the sin you brought to this place. You can no more thwart your fate, than you could fail to arrive her to meet it. This I have foreseen,” Paralus said.

“You must be happy with what will come next then,” Ayli said. “Or have you accepted that you’re doomed too?”

“Embracing the truth of the Dark Side is the path to becoming fate’s master,” Paralus said. “Where you still cling the delusions which shield fearful hearts, I have no such weaknesses by which I can be controlled or bent to fate’s whims.”

“And that’s what all of the Dark Side is like, is it? No weakness, only power?”

“There is only power,” Paralus said, floating in closer than he had before but still wary of Ayli’s reach. “The rules you imagine existing are enforced by power and only applied to those who lack the power to dictate their own rules. ‘Compassion’, ‘decency’, ‘mercy’? These are all illusions conjured by the weak to bind the powerful from exercising the control needed to keep the galaxy properly ordered.”

“Is that what you fear? Disorder?” Ayli asked, sensing as she did the sheer disgust in the Lich.

“Fear is a tool for those new to leashing the power of the Dark Side to their will. I have grown far beyond such simple tricks,” Paralus said.

Ayli was tempted to challenge him on that. To needle him about how certain he was that he wasn’t driven by an ever growing host of fears.

But why help him learn? Could he be called back into balance with the Force? Was he going to understand that other people had value just because Ayli made a convincing argument?

It might be possible for someone to help Paralus, to fish him out of the abyss he’d fallen into, or, more likely, give him reason to climb out of it himself. Ayli, however, was not that someone.

So she remained quiet and didn’t challenge Paralus’s assertions. At least not immediately. That he took her silence as acceptance of his argument and a victory was clearly agreeable to his ego and yet another seed in the field Ayli was sowing for his destruction.

“I can’t help but notice the weather has turned a bit deadly,” Ayli said, turning to other topics she suspected the Lich would be concerned about. “Is that for me?”

“Do you think yourself so important that a whole world would be placed in turmoil by your presence?” Paralus said. “No. You are but a tiny little tumor. A small blob of unwanted cells to be excise with care, certainly, but ultimately of no greater importance than any other bit of unwanted biological matter.”

Ayli turned away from Paralus and hung her head.

To keep herself from laughing.

Every word the Lich spoke was a lie.

And not even a good one.

The Dark Side rushed to assure her that she was wrong. Paralus spoke plain truth in saying she was insignificant. After all, what was she really? Just a little Rebellion brat who’d gotten lucky enough to have someone else end the war before her number came up like it had for so many others. What could possibly be special about that?

A massive bolt of lightning smote the top of the temple, heating the topmost spire until it glowed a deep purple.

Yes indeed. What was special about her?

It could have been anyone standing where she was.

Anyone could have woken a sleeping planet of the unquiet dead and put them in such turmoil that they were tearing apart the land and sky around her.

Anyone could have been targeted by a Force Lich and kidnapped to meet their doom.

Anyone could have, but not anyone had.

She had.

Paralus was right about fate calling her to where she stood.

Except Ayli didn’t call it fate.

To Ayli, it was the Force, and where she stood was where it had asked her to stand, and where she had chosen to be.

The gate to the Temple swung open.

“It is time you meet what awaits you, before the planet chooses its own fate for you,” Paralus said, gesturing for her to cross the unlit border into the darkness beyond.

Ayli drew in a long breath of the ozone filled air.

She still had choices before her.

She stood at a moment of change, but accepting or rejecting that changer was still within her power. She could run, and she could escape. Fixing Praxis Mar wasn’t a duty she owed to anyone. She could abandon it and reclaim the life she had with Nix.

Just like it had been abandoned before.

So many times.

And misused so many others.

Forgiving herself for that would be easy. She’d left people to die who she was close to. Leaving behind a planet of strangers wouldn’t even keep her awake for a single night.

If that was who she wanted to be.

But it wasn’t.

Nix would love her no matter the choice she made, but Ayli wanted to be someone who she felt was worthy of that love. She’d listened to fear so often in her life and even when it saved her, it had come at a cost. A slow chipping away at her ability to believe in herself or a future that was worth living in.

When the Rebellion has won, everyone around her had felt joyous glee. There’d been tears and screaming, but they’d been of a happy variety.

Ayli though? Ayli hadn’t felt anything. Not for a while. In time, it had sunk in that the fight was over. That they’d won. That all the sacrifices they’d made had been worth it.

In the moment though, she hadn’t been able to believe it.

Looking into the darkness of the Temple, she was cast back to that moment. Not trapped in it, but present once more as the sense that it was impossible for things work out well rose before her once more. 

It could have all been a lie. Praxis Mar very much wanted her to believe that it was. There hadn’t really been a time of safety, only a time of deception, a time for life to fool her into letting her guard down. All the celebration, all the peace and rejoicing, all the good that there was in her life? It was all a lie to keep her from avoiding the horror before her.

Paralus had made a mistake though.

He’d ‘destroyed’ Ayli’s Dark Side. Broken the part of her that was fueled by fear, and rage, and a lust for power.

It wasn’t really destroyed of course. Ayli could still hear the whispers of darkness within her.

It wasn’t destroyed but it was weakened. She wasn’t precisely numb, she still cared about life, she could still feel the thrill that had gone through her when she heard the words that Nix was coming for her. She was still in touch with the parts of herself that she cherished, it was only her fears and her anger which were diminished.

In striking down Ayli’s Dark Side, Paralus had made her far more powerful than she would otherwise have been. 

And far more protected from his own machinations and those of Praxis Mar.

Walking through the gate might destroy her. 

A single mistake on Paralus part did not mean her victory was assured. She suspected he could afford to make a hundred mistakes and would still be the favorite to win any battle just based on raw power alone.

Which was why she wasn’t going to fight him.

Not on a battle of power against power.

Or, at least not her power.

“Did you ever walk through a door like that?” she asked, not precisely stalling for time. She’d already made up her mind and heart, and entering the Temple was already a certainty for her. There were still things she needed to know though, insights she wanted to unearth and confirm.

She was beginning to see the outline of who and what Paralus was, but simple sketches could be deceiving.

Ayli was sure the Lich was playing for a particular ending out of all the win conditions open to him. His only awareness of the fears which drove him was that he might not achieve exactly the victory he thought he could.

A victory which almost certainly involved both Ayli and Nix falling into despair and revealing that their promise to Praxis Mar, that it could be better, that there could be a future for it, that the Dark Side didn’t have to dominate you even once you’d fallen to it, was all a lie.

Paralus needed that because while Ayli and Nix weren’t significant in his view, enough of the former denizens of Praxis Mar had embraced that idea that the planet itself had become unstable.

Ayli didn’t have to wonder about that last part.

On a planet which had fallen to the Dark Side, it shouldn’t have been possible to sense the presence of souls that were trapped in their history but had begun yearning for a tomorrow where they could be at peace, where joy and laughter and kindness could once again flourish. 

On a planet which was twisted completely into the Dark Side it wouldn’t have been.

But that wasn’t Praxis Mar anymore.

The storms and earthquakes which wracked the world weren’t a sign of the end of all things, or darkness rising to ascendency. 

All things had already ended, and those trapped within the corrupted atmosphere of the world had already been crushed under the Dark Side’s dominion.

Those were old truths, old realities.

What was causing the tumult on Praxis Mar, what Paralus feared without knowing or  understanding that he did, was that a new truth had crept in and the small sparks of hope it had brought with it had already been enough to bring down the Dark Side’s hold.

The malice which had frozen the world into death was cracking and thawing. There were those like Ayli, lost souls who couldn’t believe and couldn’t accept that change was possible. Where Ayli had friends to pull her through, and bright memories to mix with the dark ones though, the lost and forgotten of Praxis Mar had only centuries of darkness which had dimmed their sight. 

Those who were the most lost fought against a future they could not fathom, one which seemed to demand too much of them and which would lead to nothing more than fresh pain and degradation. 

Ayli couldn’t reach them. Not all of them.

But they were where her destiny awaited her, inside the Temple to stand as the answer to their prayers.

Nix was going to owe someone a ship. She hadn’t planned on owing anyone a ship, but Praxis Mar wasn’t proving to be especially welcoming on her approach to it.

“For as insistent as this place was on bringing me back, you’d like there’d be a better welcoming party than all these supercell storms,” she grumbled as she fought with the controls on Lasha’s ship to reach the group with the ship in more or less as many pieces as when she’d borrowed it.

“You are not welcome here I’m afraid,” Hendel the skeleton said. “Or at least not welcome by all.”

“I don’t recall feeling particularly welcome the last time I was here, but getting to the surface wasn’t this bad,” Nix said as a gust flipped the over sideways and blew them a dozen kilometers aways from where she’d been aiming to land.

“When last you arrived, we had been asleep for centuries. You changed that, and so turmoil rages once more.”

“I thought there were others like you though who wanted us here?” Nix said, seeing a path between two tornadoes which offered an escape from the boundaries of the storm.

“There are,” Hendel said. “And our numbers are growing. What you’re seeing is both the rage of those who would destroy you and the protection those who support you can offer.”

“So it could be worse than this?” Nix asked, cursing as a third tornado blew past closing off her path of escape.

“Far worse. The Beast does not sleep but it sits unmoving,” Hendel said.

“There!” Nix punched the drive over its rated limits and heard the superstructure of the ship groan. It was under so much strain but it would hold. It had been well maintained, and all of the microfractures she was inflicting on it could be repaired in a proper shop.

And the landing struts could be replaced.

She would do the work for free even.

Assuming that, having touched down on Praxis Mar at last, she would ever be able to leave.

“Everything is calm now,” she said. “Why? How?”

“The air was not enough to stop you,” Hendel said. “So now the land will try.”

Nix flinched at that, thinking of how a continent’s worth of land had tried to squash her the last time she’d been on Praxis Mar, but true to Hendel’s accounting, the Beast of Praxis Mar wasn’t move against her. Yet. 

What was moving were piles of dirt and sand, several dozen.

They each rose into a vaguely humanoid shape and began to stalk towards the ship like an onrushing tidal wave.

Nix tried to fire up the engines, which worked, to take off for pretty much anywhere else on the planet, which did not work.

“This place needs to make up its mind, does it want me here or not?” She wasn’t growling at the planet. That would have been silly. Planet’s can’t hear you after all. And when those that can apparently growl back a lot louder.

“You may want to flee this location,” Hendel said. “There seems to be an earthquake stalking you.”

“The thought crossed my mind. Unfortunately the ground is eating the lower half of the ship,” Nix fought with the control, briefly considered whether a tiny little hyperspace jump would be something she could pull off, decided (rightly) that the maneuver would be suicidal on a normal planet and extra-spicy deadly on a planetary Dark Side nexus, and settled on the only available course of action she could see.

Abandoning a ship that wasn’t her own didn’t feel like a wise decision. Ship hulls were significantly tougher than the squishy body she strolled around in for one thing. For another, she had no idea how far away Ayli was and the prospect of crossing half a planets circumference in order to find her wife was more than a little daunting.

On the other hand, Hendel hadn’t been wrong about the earthquake and it turned out that trying to kill one specific person with tectonic effects wasn’t exactly straight forward. Especially not when the person in question had spent her life attuning to the Force and a year in advanced training which including moving as only a Force user could.

“It has been forever since I got to do this,” Hendel said, Force Leaping as easily as Nix did despite lacking any particular musculature to channel the Force through.

Of course, Nix decided, if she was going to complain about that then asking how his otherwise disconnected bones were holding together in their proper positions rather resting as a pile on the ground would have been a better first question. As it was, she was simply grateful to have the company though.

“Does your faction have any safe locations we could head towards?” Nix asked, dodging a collapsing cliff which, honestly, was a really weak attempt on the planet’s part. She’d been able to see it was about to topple over without any Force sensitivity at all.

“Nowhere on Praxis Mar is safe,” Hendel said. “There are spots were more of us are gathering but those are the most imperiled spots of all.”

Which wasn’t what Nix had been hoping to hear, but intuition told her was probably what she’d most needed to be aware of.

The Force was great like that.

Have a problem?

Wonderful! Here’s another even worse one so that you can fix a whole bunch of things at once.

Nix hated working like that.

One problem at a time, spaced out over a reasonable interval.

Her entire career as a ship’s mechanic though had shown her that life simply did not work like that.

“Take me to the worst one then,” she said.

“Are you sure?” Hendel asked, tripping into a boulder which had come flying down from a new cliff which had erupted as the ground around them shattered. “It’s a lot worse than this at the Temple.”

“Worse that the ground trying to grind us to paste? What could be….oh, he’s there isn’t he?” Nix felt a tremendous pull to the south as the thought locked into her mind.

“Yeah,” Hendel said, defeat and resignation heavier than stone weighing down his words.

“Hey, it wasn’t like I was going to end up going anywhere else in the end,” Nix said, feeling more at peace with the doom she was rushing towards than was perhaps wise or warranted.

“It’s just…” Hendel stumbled over his words. “I’ve seen this. I’ve been here. I’ve been you. I don’t…”

“You don’t want to watch me fall,” Nix said. “You don’t want to have to relive what you went through.”

“You don’t deserve that.”

“You didn’t either.”

“I failed. I thought I was more than I was and that cost me and everyone else everything.”

“The same could happen to me,” Nix said, feeling the truth of that statement ripple through her. 

She was moving faster than she’d ever moved before. Praxis Mar was a Dark Side Nexus. It was home to fear and hate and despair so dense that it was all but palpable, but fear, hate, and despair were still a part of the Force, and the Force was with her.

“You don’t know what that means,” Hendel said. “The guy waiting for you at the Temple? He wasn’t here when Praxis Mar fell. He didn’t need to be. The Dark Side here? It’s uncontestable.”

“You’re probably right,” Nix said. “No, I take that back. You’re definitely right. You’re speaking from experience, not just supposition.”

“Then why aren’t you running away? Just…just leave. Go anywhere. Refuse the call of this place. It doesn’t need to claim more victims. There are enough of us here already.”

“You’re more than victims,” Nix said. “And you deserve better than this. Not deserved in the past tense. Deserve. Now. Today. You are absolutely correct that the problems of Praxis Mar are far, far beyond my ability to fix. I’m a ship’s mechanic with less training than a six year old Padawan Jedi, and we both know this place could swallow an army of Jedi who tried to fix it.”

“Then you know you’re going to your death?”

“There is no death, there is the Force,” Nix said, doing her best impression of Kelda. “Or at least so I’ve been told. Hanging around with a talking skeleton and a couple of Force Ghosts is sort of convincing proof of that but there are a lot of dead people who aren’t so talkative so maybe the jury is still out there.”

“You won’t come back as a Force Ghost here,” Hendel said. “There isn’t even a ‘you’ left most of the time, and if there is, it’s so much worse.”

“That’s why I need to do this,” Nix said. “I’ve turned my back on a lot of bad situations in the past. What happens here is going to stay with me for the rest of my life.”

“You can live with more than you think,” Hendel said. “And there’s a lot of good you can do that doesn’t require you to throw yourself into an impossible meat grinder.”

“I kind of hate that you’re speaking from experience and that you make so much sense,” Nix said, dodging a meteor of lava which a newly formed volcano had hurled on sub-orbital arc towards her.

“Thank you. If you mean that though, we need to turn around. We shouldn’t be this close and getting any closer means he’s going to be notice you for sure.”

“Oh, he knows exactly where I am,” Nix said, the hint of a feral smile teasing the corners of her lips.

“Then you’re already doomed,” Hendel said, dropping behind Nix as fresh despair sapped his strength.

“Hey,” Nix said, leaping back to grab his wrist bones and pull him forward. “If you’d known before hand that you were totally, one hundred percent, doomed, and nothing you could do would change that, what would you have done.”

“Something else, anything else,” Hendel said.

“Nope. You’re completely doomed remember. The other side has all the power. You’re helpless. So do you just lay down and give up? Will running from the conflict change anything?”

“No. No it won’t.” Hendel said, and Nix felt the cloud of despair around him grow just a tiny bit fainter.

“What about embracing it? What about spitting in the face of the Dark Side and making it work for its win?”

“It’s still going to win though,” Hendel said, coming to a standstill.

“Is it?” Nix asked, pausing beside him and not letting go. “Did you study the Dark Side at all? What’s the first rule of the Dark Side, and basically page 1 of the playbook that every tyrant work from?”

“The Dark Side lies.”

“You’ve been trapped in a Dark Side Nexus for centuries. Oh, you’re having problems imagining a better future? Hate seems to be overwhelmingly powerful? There’s no hope at all of fighting back? No chance that there can ever be a better future? Hmm, I wonder why that’s all you can see here in the land of ‘infinite’ darkness?”

“This doesn’t feel like a lie though,” Hendel said. “When I died, I fell because I’d believed a lie about myself and the strength I had, and Praxis Mar showed me how wrong that was.”

“Wow, you made a mistake. Well, we all know that everyone else is perfect and that no one can ever learn from a mistake.”

“Hard to learn much after you’re dead,” Hendel said, the hint of an unseen smile coloring his words.

“It’s never too late,” Nix said. “Those bones you’re wearing? This crude matter meat bot I’m piloting? These aren’t us. They’re how we express ourselves, but we are so much more than this. We are a part of all that lives, we are a part of history, we are the dreams of those who came before us, and the memories of those who follow after. This planet is lost in Darkness? So what? The Force is with us and we are the Force.”

Ayli wasn’t usually pleased with crash landings but under the circumstances she couldn’t help but smile.

“It’s a good thing there wasn’t any crew on board,” she said as she survey the kilometers long swath of ruin that remained on the Assassin class ship.

“Oh but there was,” Paralus’s projection said. Of course he hadn’t bothered to physically appear before Ayli, not when he could simply conjure an illusion of himself to talk through instead. “We’ll be recovering the machine intelligence before too much longer.”

“A useful tool is it?” Ayli asked, unable to suppress the grin which arose from her knowledge of the state of the servers on the ship.

“Everything and everyone are tools,” Paralus said. “It is only a question of how one puts them to use.”

“You don’t say.” Ayli tried to discern whether Paralus was including himself in that count. She suspected if pressed he would claim that embracing the ‘truth of darkness’ or whatever other nonsense was the scripture of his personal mania was sufficient to ‘truly free him’. It was terribly tempting to needle him into such a boast, but she didn’t want to draw his attention to how she was using him since it seemed to have escaped his attention that she hadn’t come along with him because she had no other choice.

“You would have been better served by landing closer to the temple,” Paralus said. “Praxis Mar is not home to many things which will grant you easy passage.”

“I am an invited guest,” Ayli said. “Certainly the Beast of Praxis Mar would not hinder my journey to the Lord of the world it is merely a guardian of?”

“You presume I would instruct it to deny its nature,” Paralus said.

“Then I suppose I will simply wait here,” Ayli said, surveying the ship’s ruins for anything she could add to the surviving command deck for comfort.

Pickings in that regards were fairly slim. With the damage Ayli’s had done to the shuttle bay, there hadn’t been the proper option of a taking a shuttle down to the surface, and with the damage her Dark Side had done to the rest of the ship, remaining in orbit hadn’t been particularly viable either. 

There had been enough control left of the sublight engines to manage the descent, which was how Ayli had been able to bring the ship down fast enough that Paralus hadn’t been able to influence its trajectory all that much. 

Landing it properly had never been part of the plan, but managing to destroy it as thoroughly as she had without killing herself in the process was something Ayli intended to hold onto a badge of honor for the rest of her life.

However long or short that might be.

Her plan called for her to escape Praxis Mar. She could see a future where she and Nix were back together, cuddled up alone in their house, safe and peaceful. That seemed wonderful and was exactly what she was striving for.

But she knew Paralus had a vision for the future too.

And he was powerful. Dreadfully so. 

Could she and Nix defeat him? Probably not? Could she, Nix, Ravas and Kelda defeat him? Again, probably not. For all that he blathered on endlessly, the Lich kept a lot about himself hidden, especially the true depths of his power. 

That was a smart move, and Ayli hated going up against smart enemies. The two smart Imperial Officers she’d ran up against had inflicted more losses on the Rebellion than any two dozen other officers combined. 

There was a thing about smart enemies though. Once you knew they were smart, their actions spoke louder than they did.

Paralus was smart, and he kept his power largely hidden. He’d attacked her when she was in the most vulnerable position she’d been in for over a year.

Which meant he was afraid.

Not necessarily of her. On her own, she couldn’t overcome his power. Ayli knew that for a certainty because of the fight between Paralus and her incarnated Dark Side. Even fully unleashed, Ayli’s rage and fear and desperation hadn’t come close to defeating the Lich.

Which wasn’t the victory which Paralus apparently thought it was.

“You will soon have cause to reconsider that,” Paralus said.

“And you care about this? That’s unexpected,” Ayli said, taking the chance that goading him into speaking might let her catch a glimpse of his true agenda.

“One must always care for one’s tools if they are to be of proper use,” Paralus said.

“You have a problem then don’t you? You can watch me sit here and come to whatever dire end Praxis Mar has in store for me, or you can exercise those great powers you have to clear a safe path to wherever you intend for me to go.”

“Or I can allow the denizens of this world to break all the parts of you which I have no need for,” Paralus said. “I believe that would bring the other one even sooner would it not?”

Ayli shook her head and sighed.

“If you’re going to lie, at least try to be consistent,” she said. “You’ve avoided torture so far because the moment you cross that line, they’ll be able to find exactly where I am and you need the people who are looking for me to stumble around and be worn down before you face them. You’ve kept me cloaked in the Dark Side this whole time because if I can communicate with them you know they’ll have a direct line to you.”

“I do not fear your ghosts or your partner. Nor do I fear the Horizon Knight you jettisoned. I have transcended you all. Even with twice your number on a far lesser world, I could slay you all. Here, on this site of perfected order though? Here no one may stand against me, no matter the armies they come in.”

Which, oddly, all sounded true. Ayli knew the miasma of the Dark Side which choked the planet was distorting her perceptions, but she could still tell that Paralus at least truly believed the words he’d spoken.

Which was fascinating because he was afraid of something.

If no power they could bring to bear against him would matter, then why was Paralus holding back as much as he was.

He couldn’t need her as a simple sacrifice. Ayli knew that if her blood could have satisfied him, Paralus would have cut her apart on the ship without a second thought.

She wanted to reach out to the Force. After a year of training, it had become a comfortable ally, one that she trusted more than herself at times. 

But Praxis Mar was not a place to listen to the whispers of the Force. The Dark Side was many things but honesty or even accuracy were not qualities it possessed.

In the distance, the Fallen Temple of the Heavens stood at the top of a ridgeline, backlit against the skyline by an aura which was only visible when Ayli looked at its presence in the Force. It was where Paralus had set his throne, and the last place on the planet Ayli should go.

Which was, of course, why she had to get there.

Facing Paralus at the center of his power wasn’t meaningfully different in the calculus of who was stronger. There wasn’t anywhere on the planet she could go where she wouldn’t be completely overwhelmed.

Which also gave her a piece to the puzzle of Paralus’ aims since no where else on the planet would she be as poised to strike a meaningful blow against him.

Was he refusing to clear a path for her because he wanted her to be weakened getting to him, or was he refusing because he lacked the power to control something as large of a planetary scale Dark Side Nexus? 

Or was it both? The last thing a ‘Dread Lich’ was going to admit was a lack of control and the first thing they would do was look for a means to turn that shortcoming into an advantage.

“Well this should be interesting then,” Ayli said. “I guess we’ll both get to see what it takes to break me, and what I can do once we meet face to face.”

She didn’t mean it as a threat, and so the desperate defiance which might have been there in her voice was notably absent.

Which unnerved Paralus and gave Ayli another clue to try to fit into the picture she was putting together.

“You will meet you destiny,” Paralus said. “One which you were never going to escape, no matter how far away you ran or who you turned to for shelter.”

Ayli could have pointed out that even inevitable conflicts could turn out very differently based on the preparations people made for them. As a purely random example, one might spend a year training with two master Force Users, supported by the most loving spouse Ayli could imagine, and working on the doubts and insecurities which had plagued her since she was old enough to form words. 

The woman she was had grown into someone quite different from the one she’d been before meeting Nix, and while that hadn’t involved the acquisition of unmatched cosmic power, it had given her something important to work with.

Faith.

In Nix, who was absolutely going to come for her, in her friends, who would support Nix and make sure there was a real chance for them to survive, and in herself.

“Let’s get started then,” Ayli said and hopped off the remnant of the landing strut she’d been sitting on.

And the ground immediately tried to swallow her whole.

It wasn’t the most subtle of traps. Ayli had sensed the hunger below her and its growing eagerness all during her conversation with Paralus.

Force Lightning would have been an excellent response to the attack, and the Force eagerly showed her how she could blast a crater of safety for herself which would deter all such attacks going forward.

With her Dark Side quiescent though, the jolt of overpowering fear was missing as she sank completely below the surface of the ground and she was able to react in a more considered manner.

Gently pushing on the walls of earth which entombed her, she lifted herself up and pressed the dirt slightly apart to allow her passage.

The hungry ghost which had fused with the land went wild at the loss of its prey, the only food it had held the promise of consuming in centuries.

Ayli felt its need and rage slam into her and let it pass right through.

She wasn’t angry with it. It was doing what it needed to, what it had been reduced to.

She wasn’t afraid of it. If it hurt her, that would just be how things went. She would respect it, and try to find a better path for both of them.

That did not assuage the hungry ghost. It still hungered. It still raged. 

But it was also confused.

What better path was there?

All was hunger.

Everything had always been hunger.

Hadn’t it?

Leaving the hungry ghost to ponder that, Ayli drifted beyond its reach and touched down to continue walking towards the Fallen Temple. It had taken some effort to escape the ghost and it was entirely likely that a thousand more awaited her on her path.

Her destiny lay in the Temple, and she knew she would make it there, but before she took a moment to be honest with herself; bravado aside, it was a daunting trip. Paralus was right to think that she could break during it.

What he hadn’t thought to ask himself though was what might happen if she didn’t?

Trials didn’t always make her stronger. They could be exhausting and they could leave her heart filled with regrets and shame. They could show her just how weak she was, and strip away the illusions she clung to.

Illusions like the belief that everything she’d done rested on; her faith in Nix.

By the end of the long and lonely journey she was about to make, her heart might prove to be weak enough to abandon that hope. 

Would she ever forgive herself for that?

Would she ever forgive Nix if the faith proved misfounded?

It was so tempting to simply declare that she would never crumble, never falter, but in the year of training, she’d come to know herself and her limits. For as much as she believe, for as much as she wanted to believe, she bore enough wounds that sometimes she needed a bit of reassurance to go on. Sometimes she needed people to be there for her.

“She’s coming. She’s on her way to you. You don’t know who I am, but I know who you are through her,” the voice of very quiet girl said from unimaginably far away and in her words, Ayli heard Nix’s love shining like a beacon across the stars.

Rassi wasn’t corrupting the Xah. There wasn’t a soul in the Silent Enclave who would agree with that appraisal but sitting within the center of a Force Communion, Rassi could see with peaceful clarity that what they were doing was far from corrupting anything.

Communicating with the flow of life wasn’t a sin or a crime, it was the reason the Force existed. Life sought out connection, sought out communication, even when words couldn’t reach across the gaps, life found ways of expressing itself.

The Silent Enclave had always taught her that imposing her will on others was bad and imposing her will on the Xah was unforgivable. 

All while imposing their will on her.

And she’d believed them.

Had internalized their message all while her heart yearned to speak with an listen to the currents of life which flowed through her rather than rejecting the Force at every turn.

Sitting in a circle with Solna, Nulo, and Moffvok though, she at last understood emotionally what her more reasonable thoughts had been telling her since long before she’d met Nix.

“It’s beautiful,” Solna said as Goldie’s interior faded away, replaced with the unfiltered light of the galaxy’s stars.

“It is what we are,” Moffvok said, speaking in Shyriiwook but clearly understandable in their shared mental space.

“It is what we protect and nurture,” Nulo said. Small Hutts don’t appear as particularly striking or noble figures, especially not with the Holonet’s insistence on using them as stock gangster villains everywhere they show up. In their Force vision, Nulo didn’t appear physically any different than she normally did, but Rassi could feel the strength of her spirit more clearly than ever, and saw not a tiny gangster but a fledgling with the soul of a true Knight.

“I could get lost in this forever,” Solna said. “But we need to deliver a message.”

“And who might you need to deliver a message too?”

Rassi almost broke the link.

Something vile had touched their minds.

In searching for Ayli across the galaxy, they’d stumbled into something truly terrible.

“You are not welcome here shadow,” Moffvok said, resolution more stern than iron in his voice.

“And what is this?” Paralus Stahl’s shade said. “A Padal Horizon Knight? I thought your kind were long extinct. Doomed to oblivion by your own prideful arrogance.”

“You would know all about prideful arrogance, wouldn’t you?” Nulo said with unflappable and unapologetic sarcasm.

“A Knight and a worm, how intriguing,” Paralus said. “Minds cast adrift seeking where they most certainly were not invited.”

Rassi wanted to speak too, but she knew she couldn’t manipulate the Force on the Lich’s level and didn’t want to give him any free openings.

“You will not bar us from our task,” Moffvok said, and Rassi had the sense of the Wookie standing tall before them.

“I believe you will find I will do whatever I wish to do,” Paralus said. “You should begin praying that won’t include snuffing your tiny flames out like the candles that you are.”

“You’re under the impression that we should be afraid of you?” Nulo asked, moving to stand beside Moffvok.

Rassi could tell that wasn’t only a gesture of support. Together Moffvok and Nulo’s presence eclipsed the fact that Rassi and Solna were present in the communion. 

Which meant Rassi was free to move into whatever striking position she chose having gone more silent than a whisper at Paralus’ approach.

“Whether or not you should fear me depends largely on what you were seeking,” Paralus said. “You were poking around in dark corners. If what you wish is darkness, then I would be delighted to show you the truths of the galaxy which those who refuse the Dark Side are afraid to acknowledge.”

“I’m afraid we’re not in the market for delusions and anxieties,” Nulo said.

“Then perhaps you sought pain, or your own destruction?” Paralus said. “I can offer those in abundance as well, though there is clay in you which could be worked into something far more useful than the shards of what you currently are.”

“What if the pain that we seek is pain that we’ll bring to you?” Nulo asked, which Rassi felt was a misstep. Threatening the Lich when they, likely, didn’t have the power to backup the threat had a hollow ring to it.

“I am far beyond pain, and far beyond loss,” Paralus said. “If you were real Horizon Knights you would know that though, so what are you?”

Rassi felt a weight pressing down on all of them as Paralus turned his attention to perceiving the interlopers in his domain he’d only barely noticed.

“What we are is the answer to galaxy’s disgust with you,” Moffvok said. “You’ve gone on long enough. It’s time for that to end.”

Paralus laughed at that. Not a chuckle, not a gentle laugh, an uproarious bellow of malicious mirth.

“By all means, yes,” he said. “This is too rare. Someone who honestly believes they can undo my existence. You know I could dismantle the craft you’re in, twist your bones until they’re dust, or simply choke the life from you, but none of those, not a one, will be as entertaining as watching you trying to make good on your ambitions.”

“Definitely not going to regret that one, are you?” Nulo taunted him.

“I never have before my dear little worm,” Paralus said. “So many who try lack the conviction I see in your friend though. Most of them tend to give up the moment they run into the slightest trouble. One little death among their numbers and they go scurrying away trying to hide from the darkness forever. And none of them ever succeed. Do you know why?”

“Because we all have darkness inside us,” Nulo said, sounding as bored as she could be.

“”Precisely. Darkness which we must use if we are to master it, and which we must master or it will serve as a gateway for others to master us.” Paralus was drawing closer to them as he spoke.

Because all of his banter served a purpose.

Rassi could see the trap he was leading them into and knew they had to break out.

Except that there didn’t seem to be anywhere to run. Paralus had engulfed them as Nulo and Moffvok spoke. The stars which had blazed so brightly were gone. 

And so was Solna.

Which was weird.

Rassi knew Solna hadn’t left her. She could still feel the touch of Solna’s hand in her own and knew the bond they shared was unbroken. Against the backdrop of Paralus’ cloud of darkness though, Rassi couldn’t sense where Solna was at all.

“So you’re not one of those people who think they’ve mastered the Dark Side, when it’s actually mastered them and turned them into a little twisted puppet?” Nulo said.

“I cut my strings long ago,” Paralus said. “One throat at a time. Tell me, how many rules do you live under? How much of your life is decided for you? How many choices forbidden simply because someone else believed they wouldn’t be ‘right’, or ‘just’, or ‘good’, or whatever lies they cling to in their fear of what an unfettered life could be like?”

“So you’re beyond fear then?” Nulo asked. “No concerns about another Dark Side user coming along and usurping the power you’ve stolen?”

“Power is always taken,” Paralus said. “Hiding behind childish concepts like stealing show how unfamiliar you are with the truth of galaxy. The rules you cling to are a trap to keep you weak.”

“And how weak do you think I am?” Nulo asked.

“Weak enough that you will never escape from here,” Paralus said and the shadows around them began to roil.

“I should hope not,” Nulo said. “I took a lot of effort to put together a prison that could hold you. And to keep you distracted while we built it.”

From deep within the cloud which had swallowed them, light bloomed forth in the form of dodecahedron in brilliant hues from across the spectrum.

“A trap? For me?” Paralus sounded profoundly grateful, which was exactly the tone he shouldn’t have been using from what Rassi could see. “It’s been so long since someone tried to trap me. Sadly, there is always a means of escaping these which so often escapes my potential wardens.”

“Killing me won’t free you,” Nulo said. “These bindings are complete within the Force by themselves. I’m not sustaining them at all.”

“Oh I wasn’t thinking to kill you to escape this quaint little prison,” Paralus said. He brought his hand up in front of his face and clenched his hand into a fist.

Around them the cage of light burst into filaments and shards before fading away into the darkness.

“You see the trick to freeing yourself from a prison of light is straight forward. All you need is power. Power is all that matters. You don’t believe that yet, and more importantly your Knightly friend doesn’t either. I think an object lesson is in order.”

Rassi sensed the blow that was coming and reached out to block it with the Force. With only her mind, she gathered up the shattered pieces of the prison and wove them together into a spear to pierce the spark of hate that had replaced the Lich’s heart. She was too new to manipulating the force, and too slow to lash out with the blow before it was too late though.

In the mind space, Nulo was lifted from the hoverskiff she rode and throttled by a tremendous force.

Moffvok roared as manacles of darkness weighed him down while Nulo’s life ebbed away. Rassi struggled to move forward, but the shadows had turned into tar and were pulling her down with every moment.

As Nulo’s mind went completely silent, Paralus cast the image of her corpse back onto the hoverskiff.

Except he’d missed something.

“Did that fill you with rage Knightling? Drink deep of it if so. You will need that power if you intend to face me.”

And then he was gone. 

Rassi broke them out of the link to find Nulo choking but still very much alive.

“That image, that was an illusion?” Rassi asked, understanding immediately what her senses had been telling her.

“Not the best one I’ve ever done,” Nulo said. “Thank the stars I had someone to help me with it.”

“You’re quite welcome,” Solna said

“Wait, where did you go?” Rassi asked.

“The same place you did,” Solna said. “The Enclave’s wrong about a lot of things, but the training we did in knowing how to hide really seemed to work there. I could barely perceive you at all.”

Moffvok growled and Nulo translated for him again.

“We were wondering if you’d managed to escape him entirely,” she said.

“I think we could have,” Solna said. “At least if we’d broken the mental link quickly enough but…”

“But nether of us wanted to leave you alone there,” Rassi said.

“Oh they wouldn’t have been alone,” Kelda said.

“And you all did quite well in that encounter,” Ravas said. “Thanks to you, we can mimic the Lich’s shadow now. That should prove to be quite help in bypassing the traps he has in place to protect his phylactery.”

“I’m more impressed that they drove him off,” Kelda said.

“We did what?” Rassi asked.

“He didn’t leave because he was done tormenting you,” Kelda said. “He could send beings working against him but he couldn’t tell where or what you were. The two of you terrified him.”

“And our two Horizon Knight gave him pause as well,” Ravas said. “He could have flooded this place with his shadows, but from how you stood your ground against him, he hesitated.”

“Why would he have been scared of us though?” Nulo asked. “My illusion aside, I don’t think there was anything we could have done to him.”

“If he’d struck you down then, you might have died, it’s true, but you also might have become more powerful than he could possibly imagine.”