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.”