Arc 2: Perilous Padawans

(26 BBY, ~2 years before the start of the Clone Wars)

Initiates, JOREL DRETTZ and ANAÏS-VAND RYSSA, are accepted by two mysterious masters. Neither Master’s views aligns with that of the TEMPLE on CORUSCANT, and both Padawans are learning that there is more to being a Jedi than they first thought.

ANAÏS’ Master, LUCIAN, an ancient Jedi the TEMPLE would rather forget existed, travels off the plotted hyperspace lanes in a cloaked ship, going where the FORCE directs to bring peace, usually through killing all that would threaten it. After some initial training, ANAÏS, charged with a mission to find and save someone by the FORCE itself, does so, though her victory leaves her mostly unfulfilled.

JOREL’s master, ER’IZMA, commands a capital ship, the DOVE, from which he directs his personal legion, the FLOCK, to bring peace to the galaxy through military might. JOREL finds himself drafted by the Knight, partnered with the enigmatic CHISS woman HISKU’BIATHA’PUSI, who herself has talent in the FORCE, a fact that she hates. Directed by the FORCE, the pair saved dozens of lives, but in order to survive themselves JOREL had to use the DARK SIDE of the FORCE, something he promised himself he never would do again.

Both Padawans are only a few months into their training, but both have gone through their first trials, and come out successful, if not unscathed. Both believe they will have years to grow, as the GALACTIC REPUBLIC has been at peace for nearly a millennia. However, both are learning that there is a difference between the Republic, and the Galaxy as a whole. . . .

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Anaïs ran through the jungle, pulse in her ears, Force singing through her body, seconds away from death, exactly where she was supposed to be.

The herd of beasts charged forward behind her, nipping at her heels, trampling everything in their path as she leapt over fallen trees, swung on branches, keeping herself on the path her master had outlined. The creatures, fifteen feet tall, six limbed, and green furred, had taken exception to the smell of the pendant Master Lucian had handed her, along with the warning ‘don’t squeeze it, or things will go badly’. Through the Force she could feel said master nearby, closing in, followed by a second, larger herd, a dark shape that darted in next to her, the two groups of animals merging into one angry mass.

“Why hello Padawan,” he greeted, the smug jerk, not even winded as she was almost gasping, his ability with the skill of Force Body easily outstripping her own. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“How much farther?” she demanded, legs feeling heavy, even as she pushed herself not to fall behind the Jedi. A small piece of her was glad to have him here, a way to know that she was keeping far enough in front of the herd that she wouldn’t be hit by their reaching, fanged trunks, but not far enough that they’d give up. A larger part of her was annoyed that she was even here in the first place.

The Jedi Master smiled, “Only another hour or so.” She looked at him, aghast, about ready to fall down on the spot. “Or minutes. I get them confused. Whichever one’s shorter,” he added, catching her as she tripped over a vine she hadn’t noticed, pulling her out of the way as an angry creature tried to gore her. Despite his smaller size, he moved her as if she were weightless, helping her back to her feet as they both ran.

“Master Lucian,” she tried to growl angrily, knowing he was needling her to see if she could remain calm but not caring, too busy gasping for breath to sound more than annoyed. “Please.”

“You should be able to feel our hosts through the Force,” he informed her, and she spared a glance his way, to see if he was serious. She was doing her best to just sense the safe ways to go through the trees in front of her, the path that wouldn’t end up with her killed practically glowing to her senses, but to also reach forward to sense others was just asking too much!

She tried to split her focus, to look afar while also looking forward in time, and had to be caught and pulled upright as she hit a slippery root and almost fell, only her Master keeping her from certain death as the Force blared a warning to her.

“This isn’t the best place to try new things!” she informed her Master, once again focusing on finding the correct path instead of looking for other presences in the Force. She was able to know where Lucian was because of the Padawan bond they shared in the Force, but to find others right now was ridiculous.

However, instead of seeing her perfectly reasonable point, the centuries old Jedi Master just laughed. “On the contrary Padawan, now is the perfect time! Try once more, but don’t lose sight of the path, just take a glance!”

Anaïs bit back her reply of how that was easier said than done. Both techniques, Farsight and Force Sense, required focus of their own to handle, while she was still using the Force to strengthen her body, but she was nowhere near using three separate techniques at once!

Only, she thought, he doesn’t think of them as two different techniques, does he? In one of their first conversations, he’d seen the nine Force powers that every Padawan tried to learn as merely six, ‘Farsight’ and ‘Force Empathy’ both under the umbrella of ‘Force Sense’. So. . . so maybe they’re not as different as I thought?

Both required one to open oneself to the Force, in a way, to watch the patterns in its currents, though in very different manners. However, while on one level, they were technically the same thing, on another they were reading the movements of the Force with completely contrary methods! It was like looking in two different directions at the same time!

“Having difficulty?” her Master asked, on her right, darting behind her to come up on her left. “Need a hint?”

“Yes I need a-” she started to say, almost stumbling again, before realization dawned. She’d just looked in two different directions! Trying her best, she looked at the path she needed to take, figuring out not just the next step, but the next three, before, following them automatically, she sent her senses forward.

It wasn’t the gentle probing she’d been taught at the Temple to do, carefully reaching outward, more a frantic throwing herself into the Foce, feeling as she banged mental hands on something, barely having time to recognize what they were before she had to once again focus on her path, the jungle starting to thin, to know the branch she was about to reach for would break in her hand.

Throwing out a blast of Force to further her jump, she hurtled past it, grabbing another and swinging up, pushing off that one to land on a patch of wet plants that’d support her, sending her sliding forward just as she wanted. Once more presented with a clear trail she could run on for a few seconds, she threw her senses forward again, getting a clearer sense of what was before her.

The method was. . . noisy, in its own way, sending ripples through the Force that would have the Temple masters reprimanding her, but her Master only laughed merrily, darting past her as he called “Good job, Anaïs! I knew you could do it.”

With a yank, he picked her up with his own Telekinesis, easily overcoming the innate resistance to Force powers that all Force users possessed, and carried her a few steps, before launching himself high, high into the air, breaking through the tops of the enormous trees in two hops, into the clearing of the village they’d stopped at, their ship parked nearby.

From above, the houses, huts, and other rough brick buildings looked so small, packed together tightly except for the single, open field they’d landed in, and the fenced area that was their destination. Instead of landing in the enclosure, however, her Master reached over and removed her pendant, squeezing it and shattering the nut it was made from, throwing it, along with his own, down to the ground below them. Then, with a ripple in the Force, they were shoved forward as if thrown, clearing the top edge of the corral’s barrier by inches.

Landing on the far side of large, sturdy fencing, made of whole logs driven into the ground, Lucian put her down next to him. No longer held up by his telekinesis she collapsed, legs buckling now that the danger had passed, as she greedily sucked in air, having unconsciously held her breath as they flew.

Walking up to them was one of the squat-bodied, long armed aliens that lived on this planet in the middle of nowhere. An odd mix of mollusk and man, it was something that was closer to neither than both, but her Master had told her they were friendly. The creature greeted them in a watery trill, Anaïs unable to comprehend the language, but able to understand its meaning through her connection to her master.

“Greetings Dark-Sun,” it had said, inclining its slug-like head in a gesture of respect. “How goes the Gathering?”

“It goes well,” her master replied, making himself understood through the Force, just as he was understanding the alien. He gestured to the other side of the fence, where the pounding of enormous feet could be heard, “I believe that’s all of them.”

Turning to look through the thin gaps in the fence, she could see the large creatures charging out of the forest and into the mostly enclosed area, focusing in on the area Lucian had dropped the broken nuts, then milling about, confused. More and more, her entire herd, along with what looked like four more groups, those gathered by her master, entered.

As the last ones charged in, the herds beginning to realize they were trapped, the aliens started to move forward, the Force shifting and changing. If she hadn’t been looking out for it, she never would’ve felt these aliens work through the Force, reaching out to the minds of the creatures and calming them, as more closed up the fence behind the herds. Finding a race of Force Sensitive aliens, in the Outer Rim, on what was supposed to be a wild world, untouched by civilization, was shocking. However, they were individually weak, far more than the lowest of Padawans, and only by pooling their talents could they act through the Force.

That was one of the reasons they were so easy to overlook, she assumed, the ripples in the Force that were their presences so small that, even if a Jedi were in orbit and searching for them, they likely wouldn’t find the aliens that were now all around her. It was that lack of Force ability that was part of why they’d needed her Master’s help, as the man could easily lift one of the creatures with the Force, a feat that, if the entire village were to work in concert, they likely could not replicate. Instead they had a delicate touch to their workings, the likes of which she couldn’t ever remembering seeing, except possibly from Grandmaster Yoda.

The union of so many in common purpose held a beauty of its own, now that she’d regained enough of her equilibrium to notice. Anaïs had heard of Force techniques where Jedi worked together in harmony, the Temple having said it was one of the purest manifestations of the Light Side, though they’d only called it the Force, not the Light. Even here, she could feel it beckoning her to join in, to add her own power to theirs, to help accomplish their task.

Said task was curing a disease which had started to spread amongst the herds of those creatures, nipping it in the bud before it could bloom into something terrible. As far as tasks went, it was small, but it was the first thing they’d done since Noonar, and was a task they’d received through the Force itself. More than that, though, it was the first task her and her Master had received that was the sort of thing she’d expected a Jedi to actually do.

The last task from the Force had ended anticlimactically. They’d dropped off Mrs. Vondarr, the woman Anaïs had almost died to save, while Lucian kept an entire army busy, on Ithor. The old woman had promised to turn her network of spies, informants, and agents to another that would do good with it, and Anaïs hoped she did, but, in a year’s time, they’d find out if she kept her word, or if Master Lucian would have to follow through on his threat. The woman hadn’t taken it well when her Grandson, the slicer Crix, had decided not to leave with her, Lucian having finally Mind Tricked the old woman into going home, and then they’d been off.

The young data expert had stayed with them only another day longer, dropped off on Ord Mantell, to join a group Lucian knew, one that looked out for trouble, passing their findings along to those who could do something about it. Crix had said goodbye, hugged her again, which was just as awkward the second time, and left.

When she’d asked her master if she’d ever see the young man again, the centuries old Jedi had just shrugged, and said, “Hopefully we won’t need to.”

She pushed that thought, and what it implied, from her mind, and focused on the now, as the angry, sick, and hurting animals were calmed, several of the aliens entering the enclosure now that the risk of being trampled to death had decreased. She felt out the gestalt mind of the tribe within the Force, watching how it waxed and waned with power, flowing yet also resolute, and found herself reaching deeper in. They were here to heal, and she had as much ability in the Force as thirty of them, maybe more, so it was only natural that she started to offer her help.

A firm hand on her shoulder, and the bands of shadow around her own Presence that were her master’s connection pulled back and broke her from her meditation. “Apprentice, no,” he warned, not judgmental, but firm.

“But, I could help,” she argued, the aliens were now beside the sick animals, reaching out in the Force to heal them with skill, brimming with the Light Side and their intent to nurture life.

“Watch,” was all the Jedi said, serious and ancient eyes staring at her from his youthful face.

She nodded, not seeing why, but trusted in her master. Looking out with the Force again, she watched the aliens work from afar, struggling to handle the task with their meager abilities. It pulled at her emotionally, not through the Force, but just in her wanting to help.

Then, something rippled.

The combined presence of the Force changed, parts of it shifting away from something bright and peaceful to something angry, something malicious, something Dark.

Anaïs watched in horror as, easy as breathing, the aliens shifted from using the Light Side of the Force, to the Dark Side, the ones by the animals reaching out not with hope and empathy, but with a seething hatred that repulsed her, the emotions magnified by the dozens of users working in concert, even as the rest of the village still, somehow, stayed in the Light.

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As one Dark-wreathed alien reached out, she bit back a call to do something, to warn the animal, maybe, to allow it to escape whatever was coming to it. However, as the alien laid a rubbery, four-fingered hand on the animal’s side, brushing aside fur to touch the hidden pustule of plague underneath, the animal stilled, but was unhurt, the rage, and anger, and murderous intent not directed towards it but. . . into it.

Watching, confused, she turned to her master, but Lucian said nothing. In the Force, though, she could feel him direct her attention, helping her understand. “They’re hurting the. . . disease?” she asked, skeptical. “They’re burning it out. They’re . . . healing with the Dark Side?”

“All medicines are poisons,” the Jedi replied simply. “Isn’t a large part of surgery just stabbing someone very carefully?” At her incredulous look, he chuckled. “They’re not healing now, not really, they’re merely, only killing the disease, cleansing it from the wounds, or attempting to. What do you think would’ve happened if you’d joined, Padawan?”

She grimaced, not knowing the answer, but knowing it wouldn’t be good. Maybe she wouldn’t be part of the group using the Dark Side, but, looking at the ones that were in the Light, they were also in the Dark, just a little, as well. Perhaps she would’ve pulled out before that, but. . . would she have been able to? Would her doing so without warning have done something else? “You told me you can’t use both Dark and Light!” she argued instead.

“No, I said that it was not worth it. And it is not. Look at how it works though, each user of the Dark is being held up by three others, but even then they are not doing so without cost,” the Jedi directed. “And it’s about to get worse.”

Anaïs frowned, turning to her master, who only pointed, his Presence prodding her to look deeper. She did, her training to resist the Dark allowing her to do so closely without being pulled in as it tried to brush up against her. She was watching the aliens use the Force in a way she never would, but there was something else, something deeper hiding. The use of the Dark Side in the animals intensified, before setting off a pulse of Malice, streaming up from the diseased creatures, who bellowed in pain and panic, lashing out at the Aliens trying to heal it. From the animals, the tainted energies ran back along the connection in the Force to the aliens, sinking into them like rats digging into flesh.

“Is. . . is that a Sith Plague?” she asked, horrified, as lesions started to open on the skin of the healers, the Dark Side rebounding on them. She’d heard of them from her ancient history lessons in the Temple, horrible creations which killed untold billions as they ravaged entire systems, spreading suffering, misery, and death for those monsters to channel into their own powers.

She wanted to do something, though she had no idea what, as Lucian shook his head. “Not a Sith plague, it’s far too basic, but it is one born of the Dark side, and this is the reason why we’re here.”

From his tone. . . “You knew?” she demanded, thinking of how close she’d been to those creatures, and fear shot through her, as she wondered if she, too, was infected. However, she was a Jedi, and did not let that fear control her. She didn’t suppress it, as the Temple had instructed her to do, but acknowledged it as Lucian had instructed, understood what she was afraid of, and moved to counter the source, rather than be paralyzed by the feeling, or letting it drive her to do something unwise.

Even as she meditated, feeling herself in the Force, searching for corruption, the older Jedi nodded. “Yes. Do you remember what I said to Vondarr, about what she could not do?”

Anaïs frowned, finding no trace of illness within her body, and had to tell herself that she could trust her master to keep her safe. “You said a lot, but. . . thinking large?”

“Indeed,” he nodded, as the aliens in front of her suffered, but he did nothing. “Indeed. The galaxy is large, but travel down the hyperspace routes is fast. In just over a mere two weeks you can travel from Terminus, at the lowest end of the galactic south, to Bastion, at the highest end of the galactic north. In a single month, a virulent enough disease can spread across galaxy, but they rarely do. Do you know why?”

She did her best to pay attention to her teacher, but with the aliens dying from disease and weeping in pain in front of them, she just couldn’t. “Master, we can talk later? They need our help! They’re going to die!”

“A few of them will,” he nodded, and she didn’t understand, until she looked past the pain and at what was truly going on. All of the aliens that’d tried to heal the animals were infected now, and lethally so, having gone from completely healthy to barely able to stand, trying to hold fast in the face of the Dark Side enhanced disease, but failing. As she watched, though, the healers slowly crawled together, the aliens outside the fence barely able to keep the herds calm.

The aliens gathered, each one riddled with disease, pestilence thick around them, but as they did so, they pushed their disease out, not into the air, but into each other. Anaïs felt sick as the desperate struggle happened, those who started to clean themselves of their sickness gaining in strength, better able to shove it into those who had suffered the most, selfishly curing themselves by making the deaths of other a certainty, the entire process thick with the Dark.

She wanted to do something, anything to help them, even as she hated the fact that she needed to stay still, to trust her master, to know that he knew what he was doing, when it seemed like he was just watching without care as these poor aliens died.

Beside her, Lucian sighed. “Stay here,” he ordered, before leaping up, grabbing onto the thirty-foot-tall fencing, and hurling himself over the side. Landing silently, he strode forward towards the pile of sickness and death, while the Padawan looked on in mute horror.

Reaching them, he bent down down, touching an alien seconds away from succumbing to illness, and the disease started to slowly, but surely, flow out of the tribesman and into himself. The others started to swarm him, but stopped, desperation clear in their movements, but they did not touch the Jedi until he stepped towards them, holding hands out.

In seconds they’d collected around him, touching them, trying to force their disease into him, but he did not resist, taking it all, as his skin split open, lesions and pustules forming on his face and hands, the rest of him hidden under dark robes.

Despite herself, Anaïs was frozen with fear and panic, on one level knowing her Master was about to die, but again having to trust that he knew what he was doing. In minutes, the aliens were cured, shakily retreating, even as the animals backed away nervously. In the center Lucian stood, looking nothing so much as a living corpse. His Presence in the Force was shot through with sickness and disease that was even now still spreading through him, trying to taint and corrupt as much as it could, to kill him, or worse.

Then the Master Jedi closed his eyes, let out a long, rasping, rattling breath, and, in the Force, exploded. Lucian’s Presence, normally a dark storm with glints of hidden light, restrained and small, as if on the horizon, now carried a fell miasma as it expanded into an all-consuming tempest. Black winds spread out, consuming the traces of Dark within him and seemingly suffocating them. No, they were carried in deep where glimmers of gold could barely be seen, something far within was drawing the evil down, the malignance caught and ripped to pieces, never to leave.

Unlike on Noonar, this time his unrestrained Presence carried no danger to those around him, seeming to pull gently at those around her instead. One after another, the aliens added their presences to his, Zephyrs in a storm, only to rebuffed, forcefully shoved away as the slug-man next to her stumbled, making an odd warbling sound.

As the cyclone of Force raged, the man was swiftly healed, fresh flesh replacing diseased tissues, his Presence pulling ever tighter, until it was a thin twister of shadows, tall, but sucking in the Dark all around. Slowly, the alien healers moved back to the skittish beasts, once again trying to work. However, instead of channeling the Dark side, they siphoned thin streamers of Lucian’s own presence, using that instead.

Again, the Force-enhanced disease pulsed outwards, almost as if it were alive, but instead of infecting the aliens the malignance was caught in that storm, carried inside and crushed, even as faint patterns of pustules flashed across the Jedi Master’s face, gone in seconds.

Together, slowly, over the course of an hour, every single animal was cured, until not a trace of the Dark Side remained. The aliens all collectively slumped in exhaustion, not only the healers, but the one beside Anaïs, and every other slug-person in sight. The entire village seemed out of it as her Master let out one more long, sick sounding breath and swayed slightly, before a flash of Force centered him, and, casually, he walked back towards her.

Reaching the fence made of sunken tree trunks he barely paused, slamming a fist out, the entire log shattering in an instant, bits of timber falling down around him as he strode over to her. “Now, your answer?”

“. . . What was that?” she asked instead, having seen her Master use the basic techniques of their order, but never anything like that.

“A very dangerous technique,” he replied blandly, as if that answered anything. “And we were talking about disease. Why do you think galaxy-wide plagues are not an issue, given how quickly they can be transported?”

Anaïs blinked, still trying to understand, but gave the Temple answer, not having one of her own, yet. “Because of different species? What makes one sick might not infect another?”

“Indeed,” he answered. “Mind you what counts as ‘species’ is an odd thing, as, by some understandings, there is no ‘Human’ species, merely several dozen that fall under the umbrella, with hundreds of others falling under the classification of ‘Near-Human’, like me,” he smiled, flicking his own pointed ears. “But what would spread through Correllians like wildfire might only find the barest of holds on Alderaanians, and not affect those of Tionese descent at all. However, Padawan, with the Force, all things are possible.”

The girl stared at him, before realization twisted like a snake through her stomach. “And what infects a Human, would also kill a Rodian.”

“And a Twi’lek, and a Bith, and a Chiss, and Gand, and a Mon Calamari, and maybe even a Wookie, though that species is much hardier than they have any biological right to be,” Lucian agreed, even as she wondered what that third one was, never having heard of that species before. “A created plague can cross species barriers to great effect, to a point, and Sith plagues are both created and driven by the Dark Side, but if we hadn’t stopped this disease here, Anaïs, it would have spread.”

“But, how?” the padawan asked. “It’d spread across this world, sure, but I’d never heard of this planet until we arrived, and we’re off the Hyperspace routes. Who else would come here to spread it?”

In response, her master turned to look towards their ship. Yes, she thought, they could spread it, but the locals were still figuring out basic metallurgy. It was lucky that there’d been that open space for them to land in, as it was nothing but thick forests for fifty miles in every direction!

Every direction, the phrase seemed to prod her, something about it bugging her.

Every direction.

When clearing out the jungle with these alien’s level of technology would’ve been monstrously difficult.

When the only possible reason they would’ve done so would be to build, which they did tightly, to hold animals, as they had in the fenced area, or to farm, and there were no plants where they’d landed. Which meant there had to be another reason for them to clear it out and not use it.

“You’re not the only one that comes here, are you?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“I am not. They may not look it, but the hides of those beasts make for wonderful clothing, both the leather and the fur, spun into fabric,” the Jedi commented. “Not to mention the medicinal value of some of the herbs grown here. This planet has more of a presence in the Force than normal, not enough to draw the attention of more powerful users like us, but enough to enhance anything that grows here.”

And from there, it would only be a matter of time before someone came, she realized. Even if the entire village died, a trader who landed wouldn’t know that until they’d already touched down and looked around, no way for the locals to leave a beacon to warn them. And by the time they figured it out, they might already be infected. If they could make it back to a planet on the nearby hyperspace lane before they started showing severe enough symptoms. . . “It’d be another Enregaad Plague,” she muttered.

“Without that sickness’ unusual treatment,” the Jedi nodded, turning to the alien that was slowly approaching them, holding itself up with a gnarled branch, Force underlying his words to make himself understood. “Where did this disease come from, honored elder?”

The slug-man, almost twice as powerful as the others, yet still weaker than the lowest Initiate, nodded its head. “From Bleeding-Mountain. Thank you Dark-Sun. Life-Balancers survive because of you.”

Lucian smiled, “And I would have likely not survived, were it not for your elders. Should other clans be notified? I remember Prowling-Guthark. . .” The slug man shook his head. “How long ago?”

The old slug-thing warbled, which through Lucian Anaïs understood to be a heavy sigh. “Two hands of hands ago, maybe longer. Bleeding-Mountain’s work, likely.”

“About a month ago,” her Master translated, “Thirty-two days. To pull off something like this plague, they’d need. . . an outside resource to power their workings.”

She shivered, having only gotten the basest of instructions on Dark Side practices these last few months, something the Temple would never have allowed her to learn. One thing was of note was that Dark Side users could draw in power from death and suffering, in much the same way that Jedi could pull from nature and harmony.

Only you couldn’t make nature and harmony exist on demand.

Looking back to the alien, Lucian nodded. “I understand. Rest, recover, and let me handle the Cleansing.”

The slug-man looked back at her master. “Dark-Sun, you may stay. So may Shining-Mist,” it said nodding her way.

However, her master deferred. “Your ways are not ours. I appreciate it, but must decline.”

The alien warbled again, before nodding, and slowly walked away. The Jedi stared after him for a moment, shaking his head and walking towards their ship, the herds that Anaïs had worked to help gather already starting to leave the open corral and meander back into the forest.

Walking up the boarding ramp, he looked to a crate that had been empty when they arrived, now filled with fruits and furs, and snorted, shaking his head again as he moved to the bridge, Anaïs following. As he started the ship, and she took her normal seat, he spoke again.

“One can learn from other Force sects, Padawan, but you must never, never, use their techniques without learning everything about how they function. Far better to derive your own, based on the insights you gain from them,” he warned, completely serious. “Few sects are as stringent as ours about refusing to use the Dark Side. It is the short path to power, and, worse, it can be used, for a little while, but never without cost. Most think they can handle it, that they know the price they pay, but few rarely do, and the effects might not truly manifest for decades. When someone think they might die in a few years, that does not matter, but when, using them, they live for a century, they destroy everything they’ve ever loved.”

Looking up at her, his gaze was understanding, but hard and uncompromising. “You care Anaïs, if you hadn’t I never would’ve take you as an apprentice, but strengths can be turned to weaknesses, if you’re not careful. You would’ve walked away from that alive, but hurt, possibly scarred, and what you would’ve done, having followed them into the Dark without their tribes training to ride it, without others to tether you to the Light, you might’ve regretted for the rest of your life.”

Anaïs shivered, trying not to think too deeply on it, but unable to. “Did that happen to you?” she finally asked, wondering if that was what he was referring to when he spoke to the tribal elder.

But the centuries old Jedi shook his head. “No, I learned of their people from a Fallen Jedi, who found this world, adopted their practices, but did not understand them. So I came to see if I was needed to destroy another Dark side cult, and found them.”

“And realized you were wrong,” she nodded, stopped as her Master shook his head.

“No, the clan that taught him, I killed to the last, as their technique was a not what you saw. But I found others, and, when I had need, I remembered,” Lucian told her. Their ship lifted up into the atmosphere, and the Jedi flew it manually, but only a relatively short distance, stopping high over a mountain. “Tell me what you feel,” he instructed, “but carefully. Your quick scan worked, but was loud, and they’ll hear you.”

Frowning, she did so, carefully reaching out in the Force, past the encircling shadows that hung around their nameless ship, out into the world. It was wild, and free, and full of life, but as she reached down towards the mountain, her stomach turned at the vileness below her.

Looking at the screen, the mountain seemed innocuous enough, the red stone almost beautiful, but in the Force it bled malevolence, and hatred, and suffering. “How did I miss this? How did anyone?” she demanded.

“The planet’s presence masks it,” Lucian answered easily, as if there was nothing noteworthy about it. “Now, as that clan did for the Gorinath herds, it’s time for a cleansing of our own.”

“From up here?” Anaïs asked, confused, wondering how they were going to extract the Dark Side from the location, wondering how it was even possible. “Is the Light Side version of what they did that powerful?”

The starship twisted in the air, facing straight down. “Oh, we’re not using the Light Side,” her master said simply, her momentary worry turning to confusion as he powered the weapons. “While the Little One and I disagree on many things, not every problem needs to be solved by calling upon the Force.”

The ship’s artificial gravity kept them in their seats as they looked straight down, the ship’s lasers starting to fire in a staccato beat of pulses, over and over again, down into the mountain. Watching, shocked, she saw the blasts start to chip away at the stone. Shifting the ship slightly, Lucian shot at something she couldn’t see. “Collapsing tunnels,” he informed her, when she looked at him questioningly. “I’d use a proton torpedo, but I don’t want to mess things up for the tribe.”

More and more the ship fired, occasionally shifting slightly, seemingly in a random pattern, until, after ten minutes of a nearly continuous barrage, the mountain itself started to shift, before collapsing in on itself like a deflating balloon made out of boulders. “Tunnels,” he offered, until finally the tall, bloody tooth was nothing more than a pile of red rubble, but the deaths of hundreds of Dark Side users rolled up like a plume of blackest hate, reaching towards them, screaming for Vengeance.

Anaïs unconsciously pushed back in her seat to try to escape them as it reached out to engulf the ship, to choke them with their deaths, only for the howling mass of Dark to splash against the shadows of her Master’s Presence, sent outwards, before the shadows shifted and, almost lazily, consumed the Darkness, leaving behind only the echoes of their passing.

Lucian sighed, stretching, a single drop of blood coming from the corner of one eye, quickly wiped away on a dark sleeve. “That’s never fun,” he commented, taking the ship up and out of the atmosphere. “Now, I believe it’s time to go.” Taking a single sniff, he added, “Also, go hit the fresher and get a new set of clothes. You stink. I’ll make dinner.”

“Like you’re any better,” she shot back automatically, but stood on reflex, heading towards her room, wondering where they’d go next.