“I’m serious, what kind of allies can we find out here…and don’t give me that crap about how you found us,” Alhoy said as we stepped off the ship. We touched down in the middle of a mountainous red forest with mists closing in around us. The place smelled of death and decay. The trees were lifeless and without leaves. The ground was a disgusting mixture of mud and slime.

Between the destruction caused by Grievous's attack and the dark rituals the Nightsisters invoked to defend themselves, Dathomir was in ruins. Well, this part of Dathomir was in ruins. There were other sects of witches, though none had wielded the power that the Nightsisters could. Their weakness allowed them to survive. Where the Nightsisters became rivals to Sidious and needed to be crushed, the other sects weren't even on his radar. What was left of the Nightsister's territory was either completely destroyed or covered in so much rubble that it would take excavation equipment to unearth their secrets.

“There are…or were a group of witches here. They can use the dark side in mysterious ways. I believe if we can get one on board, they’ll make a good compliment to the crew,” I explained.

“What kind of mysterious ways?” asked Alha, who perked up once she heard about them using the force.

“Most importantly, they can create potent illusions,” I replied. “As powerful as I am, my abilities are limited to more direct means,” I continued, before feeling a small ping of danger ripple through the force.

“Illusions?”

I nodded and then said to her, “Now, close your eyes and see if you can sense anything…out of the ordinary about our surroundings?”

She did as I commanded and cocked her head in a few odd directions. Then after a few moments, she said, “There are people, watching us from along the ridges. More of them are approaching our ship from all sides, we’re going to be attacked!”

“Impressive Alha,” I exclaimed. I was astonished at how perceptive she was. It should have taken a lot more time to hone her force sens-.

“What’s so great about that, any Togruta worth their salt should be able to make them out,” Alhoy complained and indicated at his head growths.

“Crinking Montrals,” I muttered. “We’ll need a way to isolate your senses next time. Enough teaching for now,” I said before reaching my hand out to the ridge. Without having a complete visual, I was able to pick out my target by seeing him and visualizing his position through the force. It wasn’t unlike an infrared vision able to pierce through the small rocks and foliage. I reached out and used the power to grab him and soon enough an incapacitated Zabrak male was floating towards us.

“Tsk, Tsk. Quite the welcome,” I said as to the levitating Zabrak.

“You are not welcome here,” he strained to reply.

“You have one chance. Take us to Viscus or I’ll have your entire clan ended,” I offered once he was a few feet away.

To answer, he spat in my face.

I touched my cheek with my unoccupied left hand and wiped the slimy substance from it. After examining his handiwork and anger flared inside me. I closed my hand into a fist and his neck snapped from the pressure in correspondence to the move. His death and the corresponding ripple in the force gave me a feeling of power. It only serves to heighten the anger I felt at his disrespect.

“Kill them.” I commanded my two companions before igniting my blade. I had planned on either not fighting or, if fighting occurred, allowing the siblings to do it and possibly better examine their skills. It had only been a few days since they came aboard and while they had performed admirably, I couldn’t very well rank their skills against others without seeing more live combat.

Though that plan went out the window the moment that moof-milker didn’t even bother to parlay.

Through the force, I could feel twelve warriors spread out around us. One of them was left on the ridge about sixty feet up with an energy-bow. Three were approaching from the front while the rest circled around from the back. They had some talent, as most wouldn’t have seen them coming. Though, my group was hardly “most”.

Alhoy jetted into the air, while Alha unsheathed her new vibroblade and settled into an attack stance. Not that I cared much at the moment, I was solely focused on killing everything in front of me.

Allowing my rage to guide me, I ripped the fool with an energy bow off the tall ridge with a whipping motion. At the same time I tossed my saber at one of the Zabraks in front of me. In the time it took for the blade to slice his head off, I had already leaped into the air towards the other two. While the first warrior died with a scream upon realizing his fate as he fell, the second had no time to react before his head tumbled to the ground.

The saber returned to me just as I was coming down for a force smash between them. Unlike the droids and the teenage pirates, these men did have some martial training, and they knew to get out of my reach before they were blown to the ground.

The two then charged me from opposite sides. One wielded a spiked club, while the other brandished a menacing sickled blade. They could have been armed with a thousand blades and it still wouldn't have mattered. I sent the first man flying into one of the dead trees with a force push. He hit the bark hard enough for something to crack, whether it was the tree or his back, I couldn’t tell, though I felt no death coming from him. The other warrior's sickle was sliced in half when he tried to break my guard while I was bent down. The fool really thought a glorified farming tool would stand up against a lightsaber.

I rose to my feet and towered over the lean, yellow-skinned humanoid.

“Did you really think any of you were a match for me?” I said as I twirled my blade. I raised it for a slash and mocked him some more, “The Nightsisters are like playthings compared to the monsters I’ve fought. And you? You’re basically just their breeding slave…”

His face was hardened, but he couldn’t hide the fear in his eyes. Scenes of Ventress brutalizing the Nightbrothers during Savage’s selection came to mind. Then I remembered how the Nightsisters forced him to kill his own brother as he begged for mercy. My anger dissipated and the euphoric power faded with it.

They were just slaves, forced to defend against any visitors. I lowered the blade slowly and shakily. Part of me was asking to raise it again and finish the deed, though I denied it. Some of them must survive, it was the smart thing to do. We needed a guide.

But...man this really sealed the deal. In my real life I wouldn't have been able to do something like this. Killing came so easily to me, fighting came so easily to me. This wasn't normal.

Instead of a killing slash, he received a punch to the face that may have broken his nose, but also definitely knocked him out of the fight.

Back at the ship, my companions were fairing with mixed results. Against the technologically inferior tribesmen, Alhoy was unstoppable. Up in the air he was safe from their melee weapons, and energy bows were useless against beskar. On the trip over, he even had time to rig up the helmet to fit around his head tails, albeit awkwardly. Now he sported the time honored T-visor and full head protection of a mandalorian. He was covering Alha with blaster fire while shooting others where he could. He was clearly unused to the unsteadiness inherent in flying and didn’t have the same precision shots.

Two dead Nightbrothers with slashes through their chests were evidence that Alha had been successful in killing the warriors. But just as I got back to them she received the butt end of staff to the cheek which sent her reeling.

I restrained the offending warrior with the force as he went to continue the assault on her.

“Enough!” I yelled. My voice boomed throughout the valley. It was carried and amplified by the force and laced with an aura of intimidation. In a sense, it sounded like multiple voices speaking as one being stacked on top of each other. For a moment, everyone stopped moving, even Alha and Alhoy turned to look at me in shock.

“You can continue to die, or you can take us to Viscus. I’ve stopped myself once, it won’t happen a second time,” I explained. Of the thirteen that originally attacked, only four still stood. They looked at each other and then nodded.

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Among them, one stepped up beside the still restrained warrior, his skin was a deep orange, almost red color. “We can take you to our new leader, but Viscus is dead,” he explained.

“…Malicos then?” I asked.

The warrior nodded. I frowned. I really only needed the leader as someone who could lead me to Merrin. Viscus would be easier to deal with than Malicos, though meeting him may become a teachable moment for Alha.

“Collect your dead, check on your wounded. We have a kolto tank that will help with any injuries. Then take us to Malicos,” I offered.

“Your terms are generous…,” the orange man replied. He looked to the other survivors, probably for advice, though they stayed silent. After a few moments, he accepted the offer.

Alhoy made our wounded guests comfortable in the medbay while Alha joined me on the way to Malicos. I assumed we’d be led to the Nightbrother village, but instead Tyros, that was what the orange warrior was called, brought us farther into the twisted woods, toward a set of jagged mountains that stretched up at an incredible angle.

“When did Malicos arrive?” I asked him while we trudged through the muck.

“A party of warriors brought him to the village two days ago. They found him battered in a starship wreck,” he replied.

“…and then Viscus decided to kill him, but that didn’t go according to plan, correct?”

Tyros stared at me for a second in bewilderment and then nodded.

“And what do you think of him?”

“He is a powerful warrior, but he does not think of us as his brother,” he replied.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He turned to me with a grim face. “He wields pain and death as a tool against my brothers. He does not follow our ways,” he explained.

“And Merrin allows this?”

“She…” he stopped himself and then opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying to formulate the right words. “He knows things…with him she can rebuild the clan,” he said once the right words came.

I felt Malicos before I saw him. His presence, unlike the almost natural state of dark side decay that emanated from Dathomir, was a whirl of negative emotions. We were just outside the ruins of a Nightsister temple when I stopped our group.

I turned to Alha and said, “I wasn’t sure when we arrived, but this will be a good lesson for you. You expressed an interest in power, and I told you it won’t kill you. That is the truth to an extent.” I thought for a moment, drawing on my twin sets of knowledge and experiences before continuing. “The dark side is a power of destruction, but we are not immune to that destruction. We use it just as it tries to use us, do you know what that means?”

Alha rubbed a finger along her cheek in thought for a few moments. Then said, “I’m not sure. Maybe that the dark side will try to force us to do things we don’t want to do.”

“Yes…and no. I will ask you again after we meet Malicos,” I replied and then continued on into the structure.

We found Malicos in the cloistered courtyard of the temple proper. He was seated on the ground in its center with a ragged brown cloak obscuring his features. In front of him were his two lightsabers, disassembled, with their crystals laid bare. They were still blue, though faint red sparks crackled around them.

The courtyard was a wreck. Columns had fallen, walls collapsed, and menacing vines had grown into it. While the bodies had been removed, blood and blaster marks on the stonework and craters in the ground made it clear that this was a battlefield.

Without looking up, he called out to us and said, “have you come to finish me off?”

I didn’t bother answering his question and instead said, “Already bleeding your crystals? Days ago, you were a true believer.”

Malicos looked up and pulled his hood back, revealing his muddy face and bedraggled brown hair with grey streaks. While he wasn’t showing all the symptoms of dark side usage, his brown eyes had small rings of yellow within them. “You know me?”

“I know of you,” I corrected him. “I’m here to speak with Merrin, though I’m not foolish enough to search for her.”

Malicos narrowed his eyes. The man reeked of emotions and projected them with every move. His fear at being discovered by outsiders combined with suspicion at the mention of his newfound ally. “What’s your business with the Clan Mother?” he inquired. His sabers began to reassemble themselves.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Jedi,” I replied. Then I gave him a smile, “Too bad a Nightbrother’s place is not to question the business of a Nightsister,” I replied.

Malicos twitched. “As I am also Merrin’s mentor, I advise you to leave. You have no place here,” he stated with annoyance.

“I really do plan on leaving, but not without speaking to Merrin,” I replied. Then I cupped my hands around my mouth and began calling for her.

That really set him off though. His blades finished assembling and shot into his hands as he stood up. His cloak parted a bit and showed off the fresh scarring from where he carved into his chest. “Leave! Tyros show them out now!” he commanded.

The Zabrak didn’t move; though even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. I was already restraining his body before he had a chance.

“Merrin, I know what you’ve gone through, and I know where another Nightsister lives!” I called out.

“Get out! Get out!” Malicos roared and ignited his two blades.

“We already did this today,” I replied lazily as I ignited my own and stepped forward to meet him.

“You!” Malicos screamed before rushing me. He swung at me with wild ferocity, though there was a surprising lack of power behind the attacks. Compared to Anakin’s strength with the blade, Malicos felt downright weak. When I was able to press my own attacks, he was soon sent back and pushed off balance.

After a particularly hard clash that almost knocked him over, Malicos leaped back into the center of the courtyard. “Come to finish the job? How did you find me? Probe droid? Track my ship? Track me?” he rattled off manically.

“I’m really not here for you,” I tried to explain.

“Hah!” he exclaimed before channeling the force into the sections of a broken column behind him. In the next moment three large sections, one after another were sent flying through the air at me. The first, I cut vertically in half. The trick to destroying a projectile in this way, I instinctively knew, was that you couldn’t just cut it with the blade. If you did that, you would just have two pieces of whatever you cut, still flying towards your body. Instead, a force barrier had to be created along the blade at an angle to send the pieces safely past you. I diverted the second with the force to the left. While the third section received its own vertical slice. I was about finished with the spat at that point.

As soon as he sent the third piece at me, he was already closing the distance with an incredibly fast dash. Both of his sabers closed in on me from opposite directions. Instead of contesting his blades with my own saber, I dropped it from my hand and filled my body with the force.

With both my grips freed, I caught Mallicos’s wrists and pulled him towards me. As I did that, I stepped forward and kicked his crotch. It landed perfectly, and Mallicos let out a gurgled noise before beginning to go limp. For good measure, I increased my grip on his arms and began twisting his wrist until he dropped his sabers, then tossed him away towards the far end of the courtyard. He came to a rolling stop just before hitting the rear wall.

When I was retrieving all the sabers, the giggling laughter of a girl reverberated through the courtyard. It originated from the empty bough of a twisted vine near the top of the left-hand wall. When I looked up at it, the laughter stopped abruptly. A girl sitting on the vine materialized. She was no older than twelve or thirteen years old.

“What-“ she began to say in her childish and vaguely Romanian voice only to stop in surprise. She coughed and then continued. This time her voice was twinged with an unnaturally low tone overlayed onto her own voice, “What brings you to a temple of the Nightsisters?”

“As I said before, I know the location of another Nightsister and…well the possible location of a second. I’ll give you the information, I’ll even deliver you there, but I require your help in return,” I explained.

“How can I trust you? Trust that you even know what you say?” she replied.

“Her name is Shelish, she left the planet before your clan was destroyed. The other one is a girl named Yenna,” I explained.

She regarded me with suspicion before a green flashed across her eyes. Then she brightened up and jumped down to the courtyard.

“Where’s sister-Shelish!?” she demanded after running up to me.

Merrin didn’t take long to convince after that. In fact, it took longer to lug the books, stone tablets, and ritual materials to the ship. Once Merrin realized this would be an extended trip, she took just about anything that might prove useful. I imagine, if she had the strength, she would even try to dig up the Nightsister’s main altar and load it onto the ship.

“Do you remember what I asked earlier?” I said to Alha as we loaded the ship. “How would you describe Tarron Malicos?”

I was carrying a cauldron of the green ichor using the force. Alha was struggling along with a similar one in her hands.

“He looked like he hadn’t used a refresher in days,” she said firmly.

I rolled my eyes and she gave me a confused look.

“Yes, but what about his personality; his demeanor. Sum it up in a few words,” I replied.

She set the cauldron down on the landing ramp. “He seemed irritable. Maybe also rude, erratic, and quick to anger. I mean he wouldn’t listen to a word we said. Then he attacked you,” she replied.

“Would you believe me if I told you he was none of those things a few days ago?” I asked. She gave me a weird look and shook her head. So, I continued, “Malicos was a Jedi, probably a decent one. I would bet my life that he was patient and kind; caring even.”

“Then…” she began to say.

“Yes, he is now a practitioner of the dark side. Did you see how he disassembled his lightsabers before we arrived? Why do you think that is?”

“Maintenance?” she offered.

“He was completing an important ritual in casting aside his Jedi teachings and becoming…well not a Sith, but a dark Jedi I suppose. He doesn’t even realize it, or maybe he does, but he’s given himself over to dark side and it’s changed him,” I explained.

“That drastic of a change in such a few short days?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes, though he should mellow out into more of an angry and duplicitous schemer in a few years. The same happened with that guy Anakin we fought in the Temple,” I explained. “Just as we try to control the dark side, it is trying to control us.”

“What about you? Why are you so normal?”

It was my turn to look at her with confusion. “I just killed a bunch of those warriors in a rage. I nearly killed you because the dark side influenced my actions. But I understand what you mean. If I had to guess, it’s because those Jedi are treating the dark like their trusted light. To gain power from the light, you must listen to it. There’s no harm in doing so, since it is like a trusted companion. The Dark is like a devious and dangerous monster. Despite taking its power, you can never trust it and never listen to it,” I explained.